Part One: Bread And Puppet: The Dawn of Giant Protest Puppets

Margaret talks to Jamie Loftus about some radical hippies who built gigantic puppets and an entire culture.  

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Zone Media.

Speaker 2 (00:04):
Hello, and welcome to Cool People to Do Cool Stuff.
You're a weekly podcast about puppets. I'm your host, Margaret Kilroy,
and this week I have a guest, and my guest
is Jamie Loftus.

Speaker 3 (00:17):
Hi.

Speaker 2 (00:18):
I should explain who you are. You're Wait, you do
so many things. Sixteenth minute of fame is the easiest
one to say because you are also a podcast host
on the same network as me, which is true. Sixteenth
minute of fame.

Speaker 3 (00:28):
Yeah, let's stick with that. Yeah, sixteen fame.

Speaker 2 (00:31):
Only thing you've done. We also have a producer named
Sophie Hi.

Speaker 3 (00:36):
Sophie him Magpie Hi, Jamie Hi, Sophie.

Speaker 2 (00:40):
And we have an audio engineer named Eva Hi Eva
Hi Eva.

Speaker 3 (00:45):
I like that you looked up like you're like where
Eva lives, if it even lives in heaven? He is
up there.

Speaker 2 (00:52):
Well, I have another monitor that has the recording progress.
So when I look at the recording, which is what
Eva will be looking at, that is.

Speaker 3 (01:00):
There he is.

Speaker 2 (01:01):
Yeah, that rocks.

Speaker 1 (01:02):
I like Jamie's version better.

Speaker 2 (01:04):
Yeah, no, absolutely, like I look up to heaven.

Speaker 3 (01:06):
We're my editor's right.

Speaker 2 (01:08):
Wait, but that's dark because he's very much alive. That's yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:12):
We don't need to talk about Eva's mortality.

Speaker 2 (01:15):
No, but someday. But that's as true. That's true Eva.
I'm sorry to break this too. At one point, all
podcast editors must.

Speaker 3 (01:29):
It's the new All dogs go to heaven. All podcast
editors good, also good to heaven.

Speaker 2 (01:35):
Despite many of them doing terrible things to the world
by creating podcasts.

Speaker 3 (01:39):
It's true. Actually, yeah, you might be stuck in purgatory.
You're doing a thoroughly neutral act.

Speaker 2 (01:45):
Yeah, hosts go to hell. I'm sorry to say easy.

Speaker 3 (01:49):
I mean, you don't even need to think about it.

Speaker 2 (01:51):
Really, No, I think that's the basis of most Christianity.
Actually is, podcast hosts go to help. I'm really well
versed in the Jamie Loftus. You occasionally perform, Yes, as
a performer. What are your opinions about puppets?

Speaker 3 (02:09):
Ooh, okay. I like puppetry a lot. I guess I'm
pro puppet. I'm not pro unnecessary puppet. I think that
there's like nothing more insecure and unpleasant to me than
someone using a puppet on stage simply because they are

(02:32):
too nervous to be themselves on stage. I like when
someone uses a puppet that is additive to the act.

Speaker 2 (02:40):
That makes sense.

Speaker 3 (02:41):
It's a very thorough answer, but I think that it
describes how I feel.

Speaker 2 (02:44):
Okay, what about eighteen foot tall puppets? Yes, all right,
Well then you might like today's episode.

Speaker 3 (02:51):
Well, oh, are you going to talk about the Broadway
production of Shrek?

Speaker 2 (02:55):
Well, I did first see this in New York City.

Speaker 1 (02:57):
Two and a half minutes.

Speaker 3 (03:00):
Well they have the dragon that are little shop. Oh
my god, I'm thrilled.

Speaker 2 (03:06):
So for the past few months, I've been doing this
thing where all of the podcast episodes have been related
in one way or another, and I've been trying to
tell this story of the alter globalization movement, which was
the movement of movements that came together at the turn
of the twentieth century. The big famous thing that happened
is the Battle of Seattle in nineteen ninety nine, where
they shut down the World Trade Organization, And you know,

(03:28):
it's the battle against neoliberalism. We've talked about neoliberalism. We've
talked about the Zapatistas in Chiapas, we've talked about the
rise of the Black Bloc in Germany, and we've talked
about the Battle of Seattle in nineteen ninety nine. But
along the way, I talked about how giant puppets were
ubiquitous in the alter globalization movement. Really oh yeah, that

(03:53):
you could not walk down the street without tripping over
a puppet three times taller than you.

Speaker 3 (03:59):
Fascinating.

Speaker 2 (04:00):
Yeah, and they were all very dramatic puppets. They are
like weeping women that are like held up by three puppeteers,
like as they like.

Speaker 3 (04:10):
That makes sense because I feel like theater kids generally
have a tendency to join their resistance.

Speaker 2 (04:17):
That's true.

Speaker 3 (04:18):
Yeah, it's part of why the resistance can get so.

Speaker 2 (04:20):
Loud, that's true. The same way that like marching bands
was like only a couple things as you can do
as an adult who really liked marching band, and the
primary one is Joined Protests. That is like the main outlet.

Speaker 3 (04:32):
Yeah, I said Ice Protests at a hotel a couple
of weeks ago, and yeah, there was a very enthusiastic
pop up brass section that they're like, I haven't taken
this out in years. Let's go like just oh, it
was nasty business, but it was great.

Speaker 2 (04:50):
If you are listening and you are a band camp kid,
you should find a marching band and go join Ice protests,
and they absolutely change the tenor of what happening in
the street without diminishing the radicalness of it, instead encouraging.

Speaker 3 (05:04):
Yeah, it's great. It's a very festive and effective way
to join a protest.

Speaker 2 (05:09):
Yeah, totally, Although it can be if you get pepper
spray and arrested. At least there's good images as they
like pepper spray the tuba or whatever.

Speaker 3 (05:17):
You know, Yeah, you will be held up as an
example of like they came for the tuba player.

Speaker 2 (05:23):
Yeah, and I say nothing. Yeah, And one of the
things that happened is that they came for the giant puppets. Actually, ah,
but I am excited to tell this story about Giant
Puppets for a bunch of reasons, not the least of
which is that it ties together a lot of the
themes of the show. But also I don't get a
lot of chances to tell a pretty simple love story

(05:45):
on this show. And I can tie the rise of
Giant Puppets to a hippie couple who one of them
is still alive and the other person isn't, but like
who spent decades and decades together making.

Speaker 3 (05:58):
Things, making pits, making puppets. That's wait, fat, what is
your history puppets? I be curious enough.

Speaker 2 (06:07):
I don't have a lot of history of puppets, although
I will say after I finished the script, I ran
around my house telling everyone who's visiting and being like,
I'm sorry everyone, I'm quitting everything I do to just
make giant puppets.

Speaker 1 (06:17):
Now.

Speaker 2 (06:17):
We just make giant puppets at the land. That's that's
what we do now.

Speaker 3 (06:20):
I thought you were talking about like puppets is a
part of stand up, which just sends you right to
like Jeff Dunham's story, and it's like get them out.

Speaker 1 (06:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (06:28):
No, these are like dramatic feeder, like serious theater puppetry.

Speaker 3 (06:32):
One of my college internships was at a puppet theater,
and like, though I don't know, I did it mainly
because I had a crush on the puppeteer that lived
on the top floor of the puppet theater.

Speaker 2 (06:45):
Uh huh, the well adjusted person that you're about to describe.

Speaker 3 (06:49):
Good old Brad. But you know, while I did not
get Brad's attention, I did learn puppet folks are good vibes.

Speaker 2 (06:58):
I have tended to think. So my own history puppets
is that I went to a lot of these protests,
and I was a little bit busy being like, oh,
we got to accomplish the following things while wearing all black.
But I loved the theater that was happening kind of
everywhere around. And then also, well, I went to a
radical puppet show before I became politically radical in New

(07:20):
York City. I went to a show put on by
Today's Guests. No, you're the guests. I was like, us, Yeah,
I actually a billion of time machine. I went to
a show put on by Bread and Puppet. Have either
of you all ever heard of Bread and Puppet? No, nope,
I'm excited to tell you about Bread and puppett.

Speaker 3 (07:40):
This is great.

Speaker 2 (07:42):
The shortest version is that a bunch of hippies on
the Lower East Side of Manhattan, especially this particular couple,
got together and made giant puppets and did street theater
and did community theater in the late sixties, and they
had radical politics interwoven throughout the entire thing. And then
they moved to Vermont and then they became cool hippies,
and their theater troupe still performs all over the world,

(08:04):
and they've inspired so much radical theater that it's kind
of hard to track.

Speaker 3 (08:11):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (08:11):
I did a while trying to track their influence, and
I'm like, oh no, they just was this well spring
of political theater done with giant puppets. So the simplest
version is the thing I just related. But I want
to do the version that goes back fifty years and
starts with someone's grandparents. Incredible because these people come from

(08:32):
a lineage.

Speaker 3 (08:33):
Are they puppet Nepo?

Speaker 2 (08:34):
No, they're radical NEPO. I can accept that, but spread
across a bunch of countries, but in complicated ways.

Speaker 3 (08:41):
Cool.

Speaker 2 (08:42):
One of the founders of Bread and Puppet is the
woman who Okay, this is going to be the big reveal.
The big shocking thing is that when people talk about
Bread and Puppet, they mostly talk about the guy who
runs it ugh. And you will be absolutely flabbergasted to
realize that his wife, who is not necessarily equal part
of all the creative things, but made the entire thing
happen through labor. That somehow it's hard to imagine labor

(09:05):
being invisible. Ye absolutely, but I think that that sometimes happens.

Speaker 3 (09:10):
Are you saying a woman did everything and no one
cared what, what what?

Speaker 2 (09:18):
And I will caveat that even though the man I'll
describe it a little bit, is always centered in the
conversations around Bread and Puppet. I don't believe he wrote
his wife Elka.

Speaker 3 (09:28):
Yeah, story that's always frustrating to encounter. And I always
appreciate when in a dynamic like that, you know, the
man's like, hey, appreciate the positive feedback. But Elsa's a
bender the whole time, Like I don't know, it's hard.

Speaker 2 (09:45):
Yeah, exactly, and like it's kind of funny because I
realized after writing a script that a bunch of people
I know have like worked with Bread and Puppett, and
I just I am working off of written sources primarily,
so I don't know as much about people's personalities and
how they interacted besides like what I been able to
glean from interviews and things like that. But I want
to talk about Elka and start with her because I

(10:07):
actually think her background is more interesting. No offense, the
man who might actually be listening to this because he's
still alive, Alco.

Speaker 3 (10:13):
She's listening in podcast Heaven that we made up.

Speaker 2 (10:16):
Yeah that is, yes, absolutely, podcast even is the subjects
of POC No wait, most podcasts are about bad things anyway.

Speaker 3 (10:23):
Well your podcast subjects go to podcast heaven.

Speaker 2 (10:26):
Yeah, exactly, I'll go to heaven. So Elka Lee Scott
Schumann is a third generation leftist. Her grandparents co wrote,
or rather her grandfather and his grandfather's wife, and then
she gets left out of the story.

Speaker 3 (10:42):
Well, family tradition, it doesn't happen elsewhere.

Speaker 2 (10:45):
Yeah, they co wrote one of the core books that
inspired the back to the Land movement of the sixties
and early seventies. WHOA, So this is her grandparents or
her grandfather and her grandfather's second wife wrote this. Okay,
but we're actually gonna start with her grandfather. There's a
man named Scott Nearing who is a regionally major player

(11:06):
in leftist politics. Like he has a Wikipedia page in
Elka doesn't, right, okay, and this is her grandfather. Throughout
the early twentieth century, he was like one of those
names that would be known at the time that doesn't
really get passed on, or at least I hadn't ever
run across it before. He's a kind of classic American
radical guy from this period. He's born in the eighteen

(11:26):
eighties in Pennsylvania. He is rich as shit. His grandfather
ran the coal company in town. But Scott as in
the nineteenth century became a vegetarian, pacifist, socialist, feminist. Okay,
so if you're gonna be richish shit, you might as
well do some of that, you know, may.

Speaker 3 (11:45):
As well do it as ethically as you're able to.

Speaker 2 (11:48):
Yeah. He first rose to prominence when he was let
go from the university he taught in in nineteen fifteen
for being too rattle.

Speaker 3 (11:57):
Was it the vegetarianism?

Speaker 2 (12:00):
I am constantly surprised by the like deep history of
like I say, this is a vegan, the kind of
annoying vegans. It have always been part of leftist politics. Yes,
that part never gets like focused on necessarily, right, He's
like mostly known as a socialist and a hippie back
to the lander, you.

Speaker 3 (12:17):
Know, I do like the concept of that somehow being
the last straw.

Speaker 2 (12:21):
Yeah. So they finally let him go because they're like,
you're not gonna eat the fucking eggs because they said vegetarian,
but he is, actually I believe it is vegan.

Speaker 3 (12:28):
Are you serious?

Speaker 2 (12:28):
Oh?

Speaker 3 (12:29):
And I should be ashamed that I'm eating my egg Yeah.

Speaker 2 (12:32):
Yeah, yeah, totally. He's like, I didn't say that, And
they're like so you think I should hate myself.

Speaker 3 (12:36):
I didn't say that.

Speaker 2 (12:37):
I just don't want to eat it, Like, oh, you
fucking vegan. I didn't say anything. I don't know. Maybe
there's a dick about it. I don't actually know.

Speaker 3 (12:47):
Could be a professor projection though, Like, you think you're
so much fucking better than me, don't you. That's like
my uncle's attitude towards veganism. You're just like, no, they
don't leave them alone. They don't think about it.

Speaker 2 (13:00):
I want to eat a messy doug. It's fine, Yeah,
I don't care at all. I wouldn't be able to
get up in the morning if I like.

Speaker 3 (13:09):
Them A thousand uncles on your chest, like, and.

Speaker 2 (13:14):
So they kick him out and people rise up to
defend him, and like you can't kick him out, and
soon enough he joins the Socialist Party and then the
Communist Party. He traveled around, including to the USSR, but
he was like, actually, I don't think I like the
USSR very much. In the nineteen twenties, and in nineteen
thirty they kicked him out of the Communist Party for

(13:35):
he like wrote some article but he didn't follow the
party line. And they were the Communist party, so they
kicked him out. He took his hefty inheritance and he
bought a big old farm and he got really into
hopesteading and vegan organic gardening. And this isn't the like
early thirties and twenties, I think nice. He and his
second wife, Helling Nearing, liked to pretend that they were

(13:57):
self sufficient with their farm, but it was actually just
their hairds that paid for it.

Speaker 3 (14:01):
Wow, this is a tradwife model.

Speaker 2 (14:03):
Yeah, exactly. And I actually do think this kind of
like belaze a lot of the lies in the back
of the Land movement. I say, this is someone who
intentionally moved out to the country. But these folks with
a bunch of inheritances wrote a book together called Living
the Good Life, How to Live simply and sanely in
a troubled world.

Speaker 3 (14:21):
Okay, they're like influencers. Yeah, They're like Barnes and Noble influencers.

Speaker 2 (14:27):
Yeah, because once the back of the Land movement gets big,
hippies start making kind of a pilgrimage to their homestead
to like learn from them and stuff. So I feel
like they like influencer tradwife culture. They're stealing that from socialists.

Speaker 3 (14:41):
That's what I have to say, one of their many crimes. Yeah, no,
they're only crime, You're right, right, No, no, no otherwise.

Speaker 2 (14:48):
Yeah, everything else, that's fine. So this is granddad. Scott
Nearing had a son. I'm going to trace all these motherfuckers.
Scott Nearing had a son named John Scott, who actually
I think was originally a Nearing, but he didn't like
his dad. By the end of his life, we changed
his name to his dad's first name. Yeah, I know,
it's weird. I it couldn't.

Speaker 3 (15:08):
I didn't know you could do that.

Speaker 2 (15:11):
All right, do whatever you want with names. Well, not sure,
probably now now.

Speaker 3 (15:15):
But it's nice to remember.

Speaker 2 (15:17):
Yeah, John Scott is a second generation radical. His father
was like, actually, the USSR isn't so great, But John
Scott's like, no, they're doing the revolution. So he dropped
out of college to move to the USSR in the
nineteen thirties.

Speaker 3 (15:33):
Okay, okay, how'd it go?

Speaker 2 (15:37):
Well, it actually wasn't great to be a communist in
the nineteen thirties Russia. It actually turns out.

Speaker 3 (15:41):
I thought I was going to turn out different for him.

Speaker 2 (15:43):
That's yeah, he survives, Okay, although it becomes a dick
but we'll talk about that.

Speaker 3 (15:49):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (15:50):
So he's eager to help build the glorious Bolshevik Revolution,
and he gets a job as I think he's doing
some like engineering stuff, but he's also a steel worker
I think at the end of the day. And he
marries a Russian woman named Maria Ivanova and they have
two kids, including Elka, who was born in the Soviet Union.
As we've talked about extensively on the show, the most

(16:10):
ideologically communists were among Stalin's main enemies. Stalin got paranoid
about the internationalists, all the people who'd moved to the
USSR to be steel workers and shit, he was like,
those are the enemy inside. All the people who were
like I love the USSR so much, I'm lieving America
to go there. He's like, that's the real fucking enemy.

Speaker 3 (16:29):
Get rid of them.

Speaker 2 (16:30):
Yeah. So John Scott and a bunch of other people
lost their jobs. Their family moved to Moscow and he
got work as a journalist, and he did not keep
his mouth shut, and he wrote a piece critical of
Stalin and the family had to flee the country and
their ship left port just hours before the Nazis betrayed
their alliance with Stalin and invaded the USSR.

Speaker 3 (16:49):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (16:51):
Yeah, so that's Elka's childhood, right.

Speaker 3 (16:56):
Honestly, it's like whatever coping mechanism you need, Alka, Yeah,
giant puppets, yea, right, no worries.

Speaker 2 (17:05):
Yeah. So she's only a few years old, she's already
had to flee both Stalin and Hitler. And the family
makes its way to America, first to a farm in
Pennsylvania and with like family friends, and then at Greenwich
Village in New York City. And she grows up speaking
both Russian and German, and home and young Alka grows

(17:26):
up obsessed with the arts and social justice and leftist politics.
As a teenager, she would go work as a social
worker in low income neighborhoods. And she decided to do
her junior year college abroad in Munich, West Germany. And
the problem is that West Germany, of course was capitalist,
and so therefore they had ads just like us, unlike

(17:47):
glorious Russia, where you just get murdered instead.

Speaker 3 (17:51):
Wow, what an incredible, incredible.

Speaker 2 (17:55):
I should have been hired to do the Cold War.
I'm always saying that there are people who basically whatever anyway,
So here's the advertisers that support this podcast, and we're back.
So she goes to West Germany to Munich. This is

(18:16):
nineteen to fifty five, and she meets the man who
is usually presented as the main character of the Bread
and Puppet story, and he is the creative head of it,
a German Bohemian man. When I say Bohemia, I don't whatever.
I mean what people think, not that he's from Bohemia,
which is nearby.

Speaker 3 (18:34):
We're talking about, Like he's wearing kind of silly pants.

Speaker 2 (18:37):
Yeah, he's a proto hippie.

Speaker 3 (18:39):
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (18:40):
And she meets this man, Peter Schumann, and she meets
him I think in the hospital. I've read a couple
different of their meetcutes, and I don't entirely understand why
she's in the hospital, but I know why he's in
the hospital. He is in the hospital because he had
been out trying to recruit people for his experimental dance
troop ooh, and he needed to do that by riding

(19:03):
a bicycle.

Speaker 1 (19:04):
I want to be in an experimental dance troupe.

Speaker 2 (19:07):
And he got into a bike accident and almost died.

Speaker 3 (19:10):
You think you do Experimental dance troup TV has probably
the same energy of like an experimental comedy group. If
it's anything similar, everyone's fucking each other and no one
speaks five years from now. Also, it's like improv sort of,
but a little bit cooler, a little better, and dancing

(19:31):
as much. Yeah. Yeah, I'm very anti improv.

Speaker 2 (19:35):
Fair enough, Well, I probably would have wanted to join
his dance troupe. That would have been fun.

Speaker 1 (19:40):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (19:41):
Well, especially because it's like I'm imagining, everyone's in their twenties.
It's just a bunch of hot twenty something's dancing around.
Hell yeah, who.

Speaker 2 (19:47):
All survived World War Two as children in Germany?

Speaker 3 (19:50):
Again, whatever you guys need, whatever you need, gess it out.

Speaker 2 (19:55):
Yeah, they fall in love Elka and Peter, and Elka
takes a year off of school. This is my favorite part,
just because I identify with this so hard to go
hitchhike around Germany bringing her loot with her, and the
two of them bringing woodcuts to sell. Wow, they're both
woodcut artists.

Speaker 3 (20:14):
You are of them? Yes?

Speaker 2 (20:16):
I love that there's a lineage that I can point
to of Google's a word that no one knows what means.
But people traveling around with instruments and whatever shit they
can sell.

Speaker 3 (20:29):
All that rocks her lut.

Speaker 2 (20:32):
I know she does a lot of the music stuff
for all of the things that go through. She's obsessed
with music and do just like really amazing stuff awesome. Peter,
for his part, was born in Germany and he started
making bread. Bread and Puppet is actually just as famous
for giving out bread. And I forgot to say that
part in the short version they give out a rye
sour dough loaf that is pretty that rocks. Yeah, hippies

(20:55):
were into some like crunchy bread. You know sure.

Speaker 3 (20:58):
I just anytime that like us is involved in the production,
I'm like, yeah, I'm in.

Speaker 2 (21:03):
They didn't coin that. I'm sure people have been doing
that forever, but that is like their thing is like
bread and Puppet, you get both.

Speaker 3 (21:10):
That's brilliant because I do feel like, you know, whether
you're into the performance or not, I will be thirty
percent more amenable to what's happening in front of me,
at least if you give me a snack.

Speaker 2 (21:22):
See this actually makes sense because there's this way of
when you run into a problem with your book and
you don't know what the plot should do, and you're
like writing a book and you don't know what plot
should do. There's a tried and true method that I
learned from a webcomic and I don't remember the author
of the webcomic, and I'm deeply sorry. Where you go
and you find a friend and you give them snacks
and then you explain the plot of your book. The
friend does not react. The friend just eats the snacks,

(21:45):
and you work through on all the problems while talking
to them, and they get snacks.

Speaker 3 (21:50):
I love that. Yeah, that does work.

Speaker 2 (21:52):
Yeah, the very effective method.

Speaker 3 (21:54):
There is no resentment sewn between the two of you.
You've both forgotten something. Yeah, exactly, because what his friendship
if not a beautiful, complicated transaction of feelings.

Speaker 2 (22:07):
So he starts making bread with his mother when he's
six in Germany, and sourdough rye bread was the common
people's food of Germany at this time, and Germany wasn't
doing real well throughout the twenties thirties forties, and I
don't actually know when they turned it around, but twenties
thirties forties not a good time to be in Germany.
So his whole life until now, basically, yeah, sourdough rye

(22:29):
is his thing. And when his family is ten, they
live in a part of Germany that the Allies are
bombing and the Russian tanks are invading and it's not
safe to live there, and they become internally displaced refugees.
And so they moved to a small village in Germany
near Denmark. And he can only bring one bag with him,
so he brought a bag full of puppets.

Speaker 1 (22:50):
Oh yeah, I hope he brought a sourdough starter.

Speaker 2 (22:54):
Well, his mom has that.

Speaker 3 (22:55):
Yeah, that's that's a mommy back thing. Wow, that's really wow.
This is like a Pixar.

Speaker 2 (23:01):
Movie, I know, although there's going to be a remarkably
non Pixar actually an old school Disney move in one
a second.

Speaker 3 (23:06):
Nice.

Speaker 2 (23:08):
So they're internally displaced and they're dirt poor, and they're
like all the other refugees. They're living off of gleaning
the field for like little bits of whatever they can get,
and they make sourdough rye bread and spread elderberry and
rose hip jam on it because that's what they can
pick by the side of the road, or elderberry's and
rose hips. It also means so he's German. This is
World War two, his first public performance. There's some dots

(23:30):
people don't connect when they tell this story, and I'm
just gonna connect the dots because I'm rude. I actually
like this man. But his first public performance as a
puppeteer was when he was eleven, and he is a
refugee and he goes and puts on a puppet show
for the German soldiers in town.

Speaker 3 (23:47):
Was this show about Magpie?

Speaker 2 (23:50):
I don't actually know what it was about, but it's
for Nazis? He went his first public performance was.

Speaker 3 (23:53):
For not was for Nazi Okay, yeah, unless.

Speaker 2 (23:55):
There's a small chance the war had ended by that point.
But it's nineteen forty five, Like there's a small chance that.

Speaker 3 (24:01):
But anyway, look, Peter, there's still time to set the
record straight. Yeah yeah, Or did you not perform for
Nazis at age ten?

Speaker 2 (24:08):
Yeah? Because this does not in any way influence this
man's politics, like at all.

Speaker 3 (24:15):
If anything, you performed for Nazis under duress, But we
would like the record string. Yeah, this is a silly connection.
But did you see the Del Toro animated interpretation of
Pinocchio that came out a few years.

Speaker 2 (24:28):
I haven't, which is funny because I really like Del Toro.

Speaker 3 (24:31):
It's terrific. It's very characteristically, it's very very intense. But
in that I believe that Pinocchio performs for Mussolini. WHOA
I mean think if I'm remembering correctly.

Speaker 2 (24:44):
Anyone who's listening who's mad at an eleven year old for
doing this has not thought this through. No, It's like,
here's like, no one's actually upset.

Speaker 3 (24:52):
I'm saying, if the Peter performing for Nazis at age ten,
allegations are true, Pinocchio did it. Pinocchio performed from right.
It's true there were kids.

Speaker 2 (25:03):
And for a glow up. The most recent interview I've
read with this man is from a couple months ago,
in twenty twenty five, and he is ninety one years old,
screaming about how important Palestine is. Incredible, Like God, yeah,
So Alka and Peter together now, and the pair of
them are bumbing around Germany for a while, and Elka
goes back home to the States after a year, finishes

(25:25):
college and then goes right back to Germany to be
with Peter. And I think that's sweet. I like that
she like had to figure out some stuff for herself,
and also like I guess, just so mad about how
this narrative could easily just be told on Peter about
but it's like largely them figuring things out together and
not deemphasizing Elka's agency like all throughout it.

Speaker 3 (25:46):
So I feel like that's a classic indicator of a
healthy relationship. It's like, Yeah, she doesn't drop her entire
life right now, Like she goes to, yeah, do whatever
she used to do.

Speaker 2 (25:56):
Yeah, and he's gonna move to like to help her
with her career or later he's gonna like anyway, we'll
get to that. By nineteen sixty, the pair moved to
the United States together with two kids in tow and
they moved to the Lower East Side of Manhattan, which
at the time was the center of a growing counterculture
and was also coincidentally an affordable place to live. And
so you can kind of get away with being a

(26:18):
weird artist.

Speaker 3 (26:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (26:21):
I've actually talked a bit on the show before about
the theater and arts movement of New York City during
the fifties and sixties, but I'm going to like revisit
some of it because it's of my favorite shit I've
talked about on the show. I did an episode about
an anarchist street gang called Up Against the Wall motherfuckers.
That was in the late sixties, and they were like
friends with all the Black Panthers and all the like
new left movements or whatever. Yeah, and they came out

(26:43):
of an art group, a like anarchist surrealist art group
called Black Mask. Okay, all right, I want to revisit
some of that episode to set this scene, because to
show that they're part of this vibrant art scene, so
it's not just like, oh, they invented theater on the
Lower East Side, which they don't claim, you know, right, Okay,
And I also like drawing these really weird big pictures

(27:03):
about how everything works politically and getting all my string together.
By the nineteen forties, leftist politics were dramatically waning across
the West for a few reasons. Prior to the Russian
Revolution in nineteen seventeen, you have the anti authoritarian and
democratic tendencies were more dominant parts of the left. Democratic
socialists and anarchists were a bigger part of it. But

(27:24):
after the authoritarian communist Bolsheviks won the Russian Civil War
by exterminating their leftist rivals. Yes, Margaret has opinions about this,
theirs became the ascendant star and Bolshevism was kind of
the thing. So you're in the nineteen twenties, you get
this big burst of energy of people being like, fuck, yoah,
we're going to pull this off, like what happened in Russia,
we can do it here. And then you find people
would go to Russia and be like, oh god.

Speaker 3 (27:44):
Uh, never mind, never mind, never mind.

Speaker 2 (27:46):
Yeah, turn around, yeah, Jase, your mind. As Stalin became
more obviously Stalin, the left started to fracture, as people
of conscience died at his hands or left communist parties.
At the same time, you start getting the first scares
in the US and a real strong propaganda campaign against communism,
and then at the end of the thirties you get

(28:06):
the sort of big last hurrah for social revolution in
the West with the Spanish Civil War nineteen thirty six
nineteen thirty nine. We've talked about extensively. I think I
made you guess on that episode. Actually, I want to
tell a story about this because I think it's funny. Okay,
I was writing a podcast script at a coffee shop
that my friend was working at, and they got off
work and we're talking about some shit. We're talking about
this and that and I knew a lot of stuff

(28:27):
about a lot of the stuff I've been writing about,
and you know, gave me at some point I was like, oh,
like the Spanish Revolution. I swear to God, they look
at me in the cafe and go, I don't really
know much about that. Can you explain it to Magpie?

Speaker 3 (28:37):
That was your time?

Speaker 2 (28:40):
I know, I felt like it was a track naturally, wasp,
where's the cameras, Magpie?

Speaker 1 (28:46):
I like to imagine a podcast microphone just magically appeared
from the grounding.

Speaker 2 (28:54):
Yes, the flames of hell light up behind me.

Speaker 3 (28:56):
Well, I know a thing or two of that. Yeah. Wow.
So how long were you at the coffee shop for?

Speaker 2 (29:05):
Yeah? Days later? Yeah, longer than it took for the
nineteen thirty six nineteen thirty nine thing to happen. It's
actually happened before I started this show.

Speaker 3 (29:16):
Good God, what a war drop that you're like, Well,
actually this podcast came out of a day I held
some what hostage for a sudden.

Speaker 1 (29:24):
The theme song of this show takes over the coffee
shop speaker system.

Speaker 3 (29:31):
An echo from the back.

Speaker 2 (29:33):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (29:35):
Oh that's God. Give Bloomhouse a couple of years. There
will be a movie about a haunted podcast.

Speaker 2 (29:42):
I have seen a horror movie about a podcaster who
goes to go report on a Oh I can't remember
it was actually it was alright. It was a podcaster
goes to the middle of nowhere to go report and
then it turns out that everything is whatever scary rural people.

Speaker 1 (29:58):
I get really offended when they put the job of
podcast into film or television, because I'm like, that's wrong.
If you're not like unshowered and like on the floor
trying to record a podcast, like that's inaccurate. They have
them in these.

Speaker 3 (30:16):
Like bougie studios like full hair.

Speaker 2 (30:21):
I'm like, no, no, there needs to be pets or
it's not a podcast studio.

Speaker 1 (30:27):
Potentially smelly, like you don't know.

Speaker 2 (30:30):
Yeah, I shower, I swear, I shower, I swear.

Speaker 3 (30:32):
Listeners. I would love to see a super cut of
like ways they've been report Like, yeah, because I don't
think the media has been very kind, not that we deserve.

Speaker 2 (30:43):
It, but we're not kind to ourselves either.

Speaker 3 (30:46):
Yeah, it's like we hate ourselves already. That's so kind
of part of the job.

Speaker 2 (30:51):
I think, at least being a feminist podcaster is like
being aware that you're in a field that is like
not full of good in the world, hate us more
we dare you.

Speaker 1 (31:00):
A friend of ours made me watch the pilot of
And just like that where Carrie Bradshaw is being a
podcast and it's the worst thing I've ever seen, and
it made me really sad.

Speaker 3 (31:10):
I think it's kind of charming because it reminds me
of like a kid show about a kid who does
the morning announcement. It's treated like that. True, Well, I
hope you have an awesome day and I'll talk to
you next time. Okay, I'm done. Like it's like, I
think it's kind of cute.

Speaker 1 (31:26):
Fair, Okay, sorry, back to the script, back to the sorry, right.

Speaker 2 (31:33):
Get three podcasters in the Oh god, it's true. So
all right, Spanish Civil War happens. I've covered it extensively,
but basically fascist forces took over Spain and the left
kept their shit together long enough to join the partisan
fight against Nazis in Europe. But honestly, at least the
anti authoritarian left kind of fell apart after that, and

(31:55):
you have this very fractured thing. And between the Red
Scare and all this stuff happening, and the fact that
all these commanists and leftists of various stripes that just
died right in large numbers, but actual people involved in
all of those struggles survived. And I love that I
can draw this through line where like a ton of people,
for example, who fought in the Spanish Civil War made
their way to New York City, and the folks who

(32:17):
kept the flame alive for several decades were some of
the people who were politically engaged but mostly on a
cultural front. Okay, you could draw this narrative differently, but
you can kind of refer to this sort of dead
period of the left between the forties and the sixties.
And obviously there's a ton of people doing a ton
of work, especially the civil rights type stuff, but like

(32:37):
there is a lull that you can map in terms
of militant leftism or whatever. And the people who kept
the flame alive, among others, were artists, and they were pacifists,
and they were like religious anarchists, especially Jewish anarchists, and
they were like authors and musicians and play rights and
they just kind of partly because they like weren't threatened,

(33:00):
right because like kind of have some free speech sort of.
I mean, it's the rest here, it's the only kind
of do.

Speaker 3 (33:05):
It's funny to think of like periods of time where
making leftist art is not dangerous, but like, also it's
not cool. I don't know.

Speaker 2 (33:17):
Yeah, oh, I was gonna get dangerous again.

Speaker 3 (33:19):
Oh yeah, it's true.

Speaker 2 (33:22):
And the oldest experimental theater group in the US is
called the Living Theater in New York City. Yes, and
it was founded in nineteen forty seven by two anarchist pacifists,
Judith Mulane and Julian Beck. And I find them really fascinating.
And so I'm going to I've never done this before.
I'm just going to quote my own previous episode.

Speaker 3 (33:42):
Here oooh okay, because it was the.

Speaker 2 (33:44):
Coolest side years ago, and I think it's the coolest
side now, partly because it ties into the Adams family.

Speaker 3 (33:50):
Oh okay, I'm in.

Speaker 2 (33:51):
Judith Mulane was a German Jewish immigrant. Her parents came
over in nineteen twenty nine when she was three. They
were some of the first people to be like, this
might go bad. We should get the fuck out of here.
Julian Beck was her husband and they were in an
open marriage in the early fifties. He is bisexual or
queer or whatever. I'm not sure what he called himself.

(34:13):
He had his own boyfriend outside the marriage, but the
couple were also sort of in a triad with yet
another guy who was a doc worker who was also
married to someone else. Okay, hot, yeah, long history of polyamorous,
queer anarchist theater people.

Speaker 3 (34:27):
Yeah, none of this is shocking to me. And they
got into theater.

Speaker 2 (34:31):
Yeah wait, they started the oldest experimental theater in the
United States. And in nineteen eighty six. He also played
the villainous preacher in Poltergeist two stop. Oh he died
in nineteen eighty five, but it came out after if
Terry died excellent, or he's the Poltergeist in it? Literally
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (34:49):
I mean there the productions are haunted.

Speaker 2 (34:51):
Yeah, it was before podcast, so we might be in heaven. Okay.
And then he wrote a ton of books, mostly poetry
and some about theater and judas. I've played Granny in
the Adams Family movies.

Speaker 3 (35:03):
No wait, like the original series.

Speaker 2 (35:06):
No, in the nineties movies, Oh.

Speaker 3 (35:09):
My god, the Angelica Houston ones.

Speaker 2 (35:11):
I don't remember the names of actors, Okay.

Speaker 3 (35:17):
Having conversations with you, and because you can tell me
five thousand things I don't know and then I can
teach you a simple fact.

Speaker 2 (35:24):
This is yes, I know the politics of the Granny
of adams family, but I don't know the main characters.

Speaker 3 (35:31):
Sports tsha, oh my god, jud yes, Judith Molina.

Speaker 2 (35:36):
Wow, yeah, I yep. She's been on the Sopranos a
bunch of shit.

Speaker 3 (35:42):
Yeah, she was working. She didn't come back for Adam's
family values. She was replaced by Carol Kane.

Speaker 2 (35:48):
Oh okay, okay, so only in the first.

Speaker 3 (35:50):
I mean, if you've got to be replaced by someone
Carol Kane, not bad.

Speaker 2 (35:54):
And I kind of can't get over the fact that
the original crone witch of my childhood granny from Adam's
family was played by a polyamorous, anarchist Jew who'd fled
the Nazis at three years old.

Speaker 3 (36:05):
What more could you want? That's terrific.

Speaker 1 (36:08):
I know.

Speaker 2 (36:08):
At one point the couple got arrested for not paying
their taxes, and their argument was basically like, what we did
a lot to pay taxes. Government's bad.

Speaker 3 (36:16):
Oh sorry for bothering you, got it totally.

Speaker 2 (36:19):
They represented themselves in court, and when they represented themselves
in court, Jude is dressed up in a Shakespeare costume.
I don't know how that went. But another time they
got arrested for having indecent exposure because they would have
plays that involved nudity.

Speaker 3 (36:32):
Oh come on, okay, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (36:35):
The Living Theater that they formed is still around and
it performs in streets and in prisons, and they try
to undermine authority in both content and form, and I
think they're swell. And I also think that some of
the first organizing meetings I ever went to for the
ultra globalization movement were at the Living Theater before I
knew what that was. Really, I'm not certain that's a

(36:57):
guess because I remember the theater, but I don't. There's
a lot of theaters in New York. Sure, Okay, that
is the end of that self plagiarism. And I brought
them up in a previous episode because.

Speaker 3 (37:08):
They sorry, oh that was cool, I'm going to use that.

Speaker 2 (37:17):
Yeah, but you know who would never do plagiarism. These advertisers,
That's right, none of them would ever.

Speaker 3 (37:25):
They are not using AI to write the copy.

Speaker 2 (37:28):
Guys.

Speaker 3 (37:28):
Come on, no, no, God, you'd be the judge.

Speaker 2 (37:38):
And we're back. Okay. So I brought them up in
the previous episode, the Living Theater, because they helped radicalize
bem Maria, who went on to become one of the
founders of one of the more radical and interesting groups
of the late sixties, the anarchist street gang, mostly white
and Puerto Rican called Up against the Wall Motherfuckers and
if you want to hear about it, I'm just advertising
my own show. You can go back and listen. And

(38:00):
that was part of the culture of New York City
at the time. This theater that was radical. Although they
were pacifist. That actually doesn't make them less radical at all,
but it means that they might not have joined an
Anarchistrea King. But our protagonist of this week, Elka and Peter,
they're part of a pretty vibrant art scene and they're
part of yet another proto hippie movement that we've talked

(38:21):
about on the show before, a neo dataist movement called Fluxus.
You randomly heard of this, no, so when I did
a bunch of episodes about the band Crass, the like
an arcopunk band from the seventies in the UK. They
were also old hippies who were part of this neo
dadaist movement called Fluxus that basically just like did Avant

(38:44):
garde shit like pre hippie avant garde. That's how weird
can we make our art? And so they're influenced by data,
which we've talked about on the show. Radical anti art
movement from the early twentieth century, and Flexus was also
particularly inspired by this gay anarchist composer named John Cage.

(39:04):
I know, I just keep being like everyone's an anarchists,
This isn't true. Many of our Cage is amazing. Yeah,
John Cage is fucking cool, and he is most famous
for his composition for thirty three sits, where you, dear listener,
could play this you just sit in front of a
piano for four minutes and thirty three seconds and loot required.
Yeah that's right. Yeah, although you did need a piano. Yeah,

(39:26):
he'd be kind of like faking it to just imagine
a piano.

Speaker 3 (39:30):
Whenever I think about John Cage, You're like, oh, wouldn't
be so cool to be like nineteen again and just
learn about the existence of four thirty three And I'd
be like, oh my god, Like it's ah, put that
feeling in a bottle.

Speaker 2 (39:44):
It's also so beautiful at how it like triggers conservative
art people. Yeah, but also it's like made by one
of the better composers of the twentieth century.

Speaker 3 (39:55):
No, he could also play yeah quite well.

Speaker 2 (39:59):
And near the end of his life he would talk
about how he practiced four thirty three every day, what
a good meditation practice.

Speaker 3 (40:06):
That's I love that. He uh god, I'm like, what
is our version of that? He somehow managed to take
a meditation and made it part of the work too, Yeah, totally.
It's like, no, he was still working yeah, yeah, ah,
that's incredible.

Speaker 2 (40:19):
Yeah, recording yoga for content that would be yep, yep.
So Fluxus is basically this art movement that's like how
weird can we get? And it ties into way more
shit than I would have expected, like the fact that
you can talk about an arcopunk, which heavily influenced European
protest culture as well as like a ton of music.

(40:40):
And it's through Fluxus that you get bread and puppet
and therefore giant puppets, street theater at protests and these
are like really opposite lineages, but they're not. They come
back together and like literally are at the same protests
with each other, you know, decades later. That's amazing And
I just I fucking love this shit. And so if
you ever have like a street theater person and like
a black block person are giving about tactics on the street,

(41:01):
you can be like, y'all all the same grandparents, Like
ideologically you all come from John Cage.

Speaker 3 (41:06):
You four thirty three motherfuckers have to figure this out,
get along.

Speaker 2 (41:10):
Yeah, totally, that's beautiful.

Speaker 3 (41:13):
That's like what makes me I mean, it does happen here,
but it makes me wish that I had lived in
New York at any point where it just seems like
New York and Chicago is just like incredible places to
literally walk into someone that shares your ideology but interprets
it completely differently.

Speaker 2 (41:30):
It just ooh yeah, yeah, totally, there's an advantage to cities.
I have to accept this as I like living in
the woods, but I'm also like, there's a reason that
being around people can make amazing things.

Speaker 3 (41:44):
I mean, it's still overrated at the end of the day.

Speaker 2 (41:48):
Yeah, but yeah, so Bred and Puppett they move into
this kind of New York City, this Lower East Side,
Elka and Peter heavily influenced by John Cage and Fluxus
aside a lot of other influences. I just am not
going to track down all of them. But they're not
just into doing avant garde shit. They want to do
more medieval and traditional forms of storytelling as well, and

(42:11):
so there's like kind of a sort of almost like
ritual element to a lot of what they do, and
they're not just an avant garde. And so when they
move there, they fall in with a group that their
own web sites right up calls a commune slash cult,
the Uranian philant Uranian Philanstery.

Speaker 3 (42:32):
Okay, which and what do they mean by that?

Speaker 2 (42:35):
Well, I don't really know, because I don't know what
a philanstery is. Great, but Wikipedia says it's an artist
collective and not a commune slash cult, and they still
have a website, they're still around. But I didn't dive
in any further to that because I was like asking
to be a rabbit hole, and a rabbit hole that.

Speaker 3 (42:51):
Sounds like a terrific rabbit hole, and it also sounds
like the kind of thing where like it being confusing
as a part.

Speaker 2 (42:57):
Of it, I suspect as much. Yeah, yes, it is
starting to make puppets, and he likes making large puppets.
He told some interviewers that the large puppet thing came
from he saw Sicilian theater performed by working class Italian
mechanics in New York and little Italy okay, which is
another just like cool New York City thing, being like, oh,
these like mechanics came from Italy and they were like, Oh,

(43:18):
we're going to do the Sicilian theater where we make
ninety pound wood and steel puppets that are like five
feet tall or so, and like they like shake the
feater as they're like moving around. Ah.

Speaker 3 (43:31):
Okay, I love it.

Speaker 2 (43:33):
And Peter doesn't understand a word of it because like
I don't know if he speaks to any Italian, but
I think he specifically said he couldn't understand like the
Sicilian dialect. Okay, And Peter starts putting on performances, and
I think he's already developed his signature move at this point.
He bakes bread and he brings it to the performance
and he passes it out to everyone to eat sourdough

(43:54):
rye bread.

Speaker 3 (43:55):
That's way better than my signature move, which was once
passing my pubes around the audience in a bag and
butt chugging milk, just aspiring performers. You can't overshoot a
hospitable calling card. Yeah, that's my best friend, some harder

(44:16):
cell when you're like, does anyone seem the funnel I
put in my asshole because I go, I would die
for you. I love you.

Speaker 2 (44:24):
So you can just do the midsummer thing and bake
food with your pupes in it.

Speaker 3 (44:29):
And then there's like, what was it? It was like
menstrual blood cocktail or whatever to be like, you are
my chosen one.

Speaker 2 (44:35):
Yeah, exactly, Like I think that's a fine and totally
ethical thing to do. I don't actually think that. I
get more and more nervous about people taking the things
I say literally. No, I've learned I have a very
dry sense of humor and my mind that was very
off anyway. Whatever, So we talked about hippies and bread
a bunch on our episodes, and we did some episodes

(44:56):
about the modern diggers, and I keep calling them hippies
when I'm talking about them, because that is the word
that communicates the thing that I'm trying to get across.
But in this early scene in the sixties, the more
radical elements of it at least would not have called
themselves hippies. They would have called themselves freaks, and hippies
was coined in the nineteen forties to describe white people
trying to be blacker than black people as a pejorative,

(45:18):
and the concept of the hippie was more of a
media construction. I don't know what Elkam Peter called themselves.
I believe that that scene would have called themselves freaks. Okay,
I like that better, I know, because I feel like
that's like still kind of like if you just like
described like the outcast, like funny strange kids, it's like
freaks for every probably like yeah, fuck yeah, you know,

(45:40):
it's like one.

Speaker 3 (45:41):
Of the most reclaimable terms there is.

Speaker 2 (45:43):
Yeah, yeah, and it's a little bit more open ended.
Hippie is like pretty specific connotations, you know, Yeah, some
of which there are great hippies absolutely, but freaks you.

Speaker 3 (45:53):
Could be doing quite literally anything, Yeah, and fit under
the umbrella, Yeah totally.

Speaker 2 (45:58):
Peter's first US show is at Judson Church, which is
a longstanding social justice Baptist church where I've been to
a bunch of events. It's right next to Washington Square Park,
and so they're busy being freaks or bohemians or whatever.
On the Lower East Side, but Elko wants to go
back to school to work on her masters, and her
master's is in Russian, not just in the Russian language,
but like on Russian. Okay, And so the pair of them,

(46:22):
because he's willing to follow her for her career, pack
up and move to Vermont in nineteen sixty two. And
I think that their grandparents are doing the majority of
the childcare during this period.

Speaker 3 (46:32):
Okay, gotcha.

Speaker 2 (46:34):
Elka starts teaching Russian at the university she's studying at,
and basically like, okay, subtext here it was a little
bit like, hey, you can get a job too, buddy,
maybe with Peter's own or whatever. Anyway, he gets rejected
for a position teaching dance choreography. They're like, ah, we
don't actually need that, or we don't need you doing it.
He does some work as extracurricular at the university, teaching puppetry,
but he also just takes the time to start touring

(46:56):
around doing puppet shows around New England. He hooks up
a trailer as a makeshift stage to the back of
the car, which is either a jeep or station wagon.
I've read both, and just like bums around doing this
thing for a while in the sixties early sixties.

Speaker 3 (47:11):
Look, I love this, But if the lone guy pulls
up it says, would you like to see my puppet show?
I would say I'm good. I just hope he's scheduling
the shows, I guess.

Speaker 2 (47:26):
And not just expecting, like anyone any you could busk
with it, but it would have to be in a
place people were going to be anyway, you know.

Speaker 3 (47:35):
Yeah, yeah, puppet busking is you know, it's a harder cell. Yeah,
it's hard.

Speaker 2 (47:41):
Yeah, accordion, real good busking instrument.

Speaker 3 (47:44):
Yes.

Speaker 2 (47:45):
They moved back to New York City in nineteen sixty three,
and the two of them come up with a name
for what will become their life's work, the credit of which,
of course gets given a Peter. I'm not a bitter feminist,
kill joy. I don't know what you're talking about. And the
two of them come up with the name bread and Puppet,
and the idea is both we give you bread and
we have puppets here. But also I assume it's a

(48:06):
reference to the labor slogan of the early nineteen tens
and also suffragette slogan bread and roses. Oh okay, we
need bread, we need to eat, but we need roses too.
We need beauty as sustenance just as much as we
need food. And in this case, beauty is just you know,
represented by puppets.

Speaker 3 (48:22):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (48:24):
He told a newspaper called Seven Days about this quote.
We fed bread to the public so that they were
chewing while they were watching the show. We thought they
were a better audience. And I love that. Like, sometimes
the answer is this like very dramatic thing about like
politics and stuff, and somebody's like, no, they pay better
attention if you give them food.

Speaker 3 (48:42):
They just like the show better if they're not hungry.
You really, Yeah, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (48:48):
And he wrote a longer piece about this name in
nineteen seventy and I want to quote that for a
long time, the theater arts have been separated from the stomach.
Theater was entertainment. Entertainment was meant for the skin. Bread
was meant for the stomach. The old rights of baking
and eating and offering bread were forgotten. The bread decayed
and became mush. The breadshell remind you of the sacrament

(49:10):
of eating. We want you to understand that the theater
is not yet an established form, not the place of commerce,
that you think it is where you pay and you
get something. Theater is different. It is more like bread,
more like a necessity.

Speaker 3 (49:24):
That's beautiful.

Speaker 2 (49:26):
Yeah, And so I think this is where we're going
to leave it. You know, Part one is context. And
they have now created bread and puppet. Our heroes have
just named the thing they will spend the next fifty
years of their lives doing. And in one of my
favorite love stories I ever got to tell on this show.

Speaker 3 (49:44):
I love that having performed for years and years, it's
really nice being like, you know, bread is a more
political act than you know, warm tacats is what I think.
That's mostly that's the version of bread that I'm familiar
with with regard to the art uh huh free food.
It is a warm takata. Does that count kind?

Speaker 2 (50:08):
Does yeah? The various points in my life, the answer is.

Speaker 3 (50:11):
Yes, yes, count yeah, CEUs enough.

Speaker 2 (50:14):
Yeah. On Wednesday, we'll talk about them doing all the
radical stuff they're going to do, and they're also going
to create a festival that tens of thousands of people
come to and they're going to influence a ton of
folks and it's gonna, you know, do the whole beautiful
change in the world one bit at a time, brick
by brick thing that we can all aspire to do.

Speaker 3 (50:35):
I love this.

Speaker 2 (50:36):
It's not very dramatic cliffhanger. It's just a like, isn't
this like kind of wholesome? This is one of the
moost wholesome episodes I've ever gotten to do.

Speaker 3 (50:43):
I feel great. Yeah, like, this is so lovely. I
love a lack of a cliffhanger, like and do you
want to hear about their positive legacy? Tune in Wednesday?

Speaker 2 (50:53):
Yeah, totally anyway, Yeah, you got anything you want to plug?
Here at the end.

Speaker 3 (51:00):
Sixteenth minute right here on Cooles and Media. Produced by
Sophie Lijaman, who I've heard of her.

Speaker 2 (51:08):
I like everything she does.

Speaker 3 (51:09):
She's just a legend. Yeah, she's a legend in the field.
She's a credit to humans writ large. She's my best friend.
I guess I will also plug my book raw Dog
that just came out on paperback, so get it out
of the library, which is so cool. By the way, thanks,
I'm happy that it's available. I feel like it was

(51:31):
always meant to be in paperback.

Speaker 2 (51:32):
It's a very paperback style book. I listened to the audio,
but it is a very like as adventure. I mean,
it's not a pulp adventure novel, but it's a pulp
adventure novel describing the history of hot dogs and you
traveling across the country.

Speaker 3 (51:44):
Thank you so much.

Speaker 2 (51:45):
The most tragic thing that happened in these episodes involves
a hot dog and you're gonna have to wait till
Wednesday to.

Speaker 3 (51:51):
Find really well, you have to wait like Tiger totally.

Speaker 2 (51:56):
I want to plug that. I don't know. Listen to
other shows on cool Zone Media. You can also listen
ad free with cooler Zone Media. And also you can
go out and directly interfere with wait Nope. You can
join protests that advocate against ice.

Speaker 3 (52:15):
They're everywhere and if they're not near you, yeah, make
all right?

Speaker 2 (52:20):
You see you all Winston.

Speaker 1 (52:24):
Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of
cool Zone Media. For more podcasts on cool Zone Media,
visit our website Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out
on the Ihard radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
get your podcasts.