September 15, 2025 • 40 mins
Margaret talks with Bridget Todd about Jagadish Chandra Bose, the inventor of radio, and Kenneth Rexroth, the poet involved in the creation of public radio.
Sources:
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/kenneth-rexroth
https://libcom.org/article/rexroth-kenneth-1905-1982
https://www.montecitojournal.net/2023/05/16/kenneth-rexroth-a-poet-of-montecito/
https://www.britannica.com/technology/telegraph
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/rescue-development-radio/
https://gizmodo.com/a-magician-used-the-first-pirate-radio-station-to-troll-1681527405
https://www.wshu.org/vintage-radio/2015-12-14/so-what-did-marconi-hear
https://www.orarc.org/?p=2297
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v06/n01/george-woodcock/elegy-for-an-anarchist
https://discovernikkei.org/en/journal/2022/8/28/kenneth-rexroth/
https://crimethinc.com/2020/12/22/a-poem-by-kenneth-rexroth-painted-across-the-rooftops-of-the-world-on-the-occasion-of-his-birthday
https://www.thing.net/~grist/ld/young/revkyoung.htm
https://www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/sf/1961.htm
https://www.literatureandarts.com/kenneth-rexroth/project-four-2h97
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Zone Media, Hello, and welcome to Cool People did
Cool Stuff your weekly reminder that when there's bad things happening,
there's good things happening, which is a particularly funny thing
to say this week. But if you're listening in the future,
I've had to do this bit like so many times
where I'm like, well, if you're listening to the future,
clearly this was a crazy week. But it's twenty twenty five,
(00:23):
so you have no idea what a week I'm talking
about unless you're listening next week. Anyway. I'm your host,
Margaret Kiljoy, and I have a guest this week, and
my guest is Bridget Todd.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Hi, how are you? Hi? Margaret? You know, things are happening.
Life is happening, as you alluded to you. Hm, it's
been a lot this week. If you're listening at a
different time, you probably have no idea what we're talking about.
I'll assume there's a lot going on whenever you're listening
to you.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
Know already by like next Monday when this comes out, Like,
who knows is something else going to happen?
Speaker 2 (00:54):
Genuinely truly, who knows?
Speaker 1 (00:56):
Yeah, Well, we're not going to tell you because obviously
this is a really good moment to just talk about history.
But first I want to introduce this week's producer, well
always one of the producers, just not always on air,
is Ian.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
Hi Hey, Margaret Hey, Bridget hi Ian excited to be here. Yeah,
it's a wild time we're living in. But you know what,
let's learn about something cool and positive right now. So
let's do it.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
Yeah, it's mostly about stuff that later got used for bad,
but it doesn't get Actually that's not true. I think
this is a genuinely positive week. Ooh okay, cool stuff
with only minor setbacks along the way. Our audio engineers,
Eva hi Eva hi.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
Eva hi Eva, thank you for editing this episode.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
Yeah, and our music was produced for us by Unwoman.
So this is a nice, calm, peaceful week to record
a history podcast. Obviously we can all take a break
and think about things that happened a long time ago.
And I was thinking, well, I'm gonna have Bridget Todd
on the show. And for people who are listening who
don't know who you are, you are the host of
(02:03):
the show. There are no girls on the internet, which
is confusing because there are girls on the internet. But
I think it might be irony.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
Yes, it's that. I mean, every time I am asked
about that title, I kind of regret it because it's
sort of an inside joke with myself. It's also a mouthful,
but that is the name of the show, and there
are girls on the internet. There's everybody on the internet.
We're all represented here, there, everywhere.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
I think it's a good title. I liked long titles,
and I think that the irony is clear and present.
It's just it's much like making a joke out of
someone's name. You like, you've probably heard a million times though,
but there are girls on the Internet, so I already
regret trying to make that a bit.
Speaker 3 (02:41):
And the acronym is pretty fun too, Tangoti is fun
to say.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
So yeah, that was intentional. I knew I wanted a
show name that you can make into an acronym that
you could like say out loud, Margaret. Do you get
the same thing? Also having a long podcast title.
Speaker 1 (02:57):
Oh, what I get is that no one remembers the title.
And I meet people and they're like, I love your show.
I listen every week to cool people who did to
do cool things, and I'm like, you know what that's
on me? It cannot hold it against anyone that they
can't keep that straight.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
Yeah close enough.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
Yeah, yeah, I'm happy that people listen. I don't really
care if they know the title or not. But you
do a lot of work around telecommunications. I think it's
fair to say, well, we're going to talk about the
history of telecommunications, because we're going to talk about the
history of radio. That's what we're going to talk about
this week.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
Ooh hell yeah. This is very much in my sphere
of interest.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
Cool. I thought that that was possible, and so I'm
excited to talk about it. Last week we talked about
the history of pirate radio, because what happened is I
started researching the history of pirate radio, being like, clearly,
this is where all the radicals are, this is going
to be the really interesting part of radio history. And
there was a lot of really cool stuff there. And
then I started running across public radio and like open
(04:05):
source radio technology as a whole separate thing that I
got really excited about. So this week that's what we're
talking about. We were talking about the history of public radio,
and we're talking about the guy who actually invented radio,
who isn't who everyone says invented radio because you'll be
shocked to know this. He wasn't a white man.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
I am not shocked to know this, but I'm please
all the same. I want to add something if that's okay,
which is, yeah, please do. The reason why I'm kind
of geeking out about this is that I am such
an audio girly. I'm such a like radio person. And
the reason why I'm a podcaster is because I grew
up in a house where my parents always had an
PR on, always had public radio on. In the car,
(04:48):
we had public radio on. My parents donated to public radio.
It was just a thing that was in the background
of my childhood and young adulthood. And I genuinely do
not think I would be a podcaster now if not
for grow going up immersed in public radio. It's such
an important resource that we have.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
Yeah, I've been thinking a lot about how everything this
year is just me accidentally researching the history of stuff
they're trying to take away from us. Yes, you know,
a while ago is all revolutions, and then this year
I'm like, it's the basic infrastructure of our society that
actually is worth maintaining, you know. And it's interesting because
we're well, I'll get to this, okay, but first I
(05:25):
want to talk about what is radio because I love context.
The ability to communicate over distances has been wildly important
technology since forever. The faster and more losslessly we can communicate,
the more we can organize ourselves and accomplish things, which
of course also means accomplishing bad things like the ability
(05:46):
Communication systems are a very important part about exercising power
at distance, and so the ability for states and empires
to exist has a lot to do with communication systems.
Besides the point a little bit, there's all kinds of
ways that people have communicated over distance. I'm not going
to get into the history of all of them because
I didn't research the history of all of them. But
you know, you have like horns and smoke and all
(06:09):
this kind of stuff. But my favorite is semaphore. You
ever heard of semaphore?
Speaker 2 (06:13):
I have not.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
Semaphore is what ships do where you have flags.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
Yeah, it reminds me of color guard, which I did
when I was in high school.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
Oh yeah, you're basically doing semaphore. Yeah, early telecommunication was
color guard. I say that as if I'm joking. I'm
kind of not that actually is what it is basically,
and so people would use windmill like towers to communicate
over long distances. You set them up at different distances
so they can see each other, and you can transmit
a signal that way, right by having the different arms
(06:46):
do different things. The most famous example of this in
history is of course, the signal fires that Gondor lit
to request aid from Rome.
Speaker 3 (06:55):
I was literally thinking of that. We were talking about
signals over long diest. Oh, like the fire's and Gondor okay, great,
that's aw.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
Exactly okay, And you know, but that was only a
binary form of communication. They're either lit or unlit. Semaphore towers,
which you know obviously were developed after the Third Age
of Middle Earth, are much more useful for a lot
of this. Semaphore towers were used for like stock prices
and all this stuff that I have researched at different
periods in my life that are not this one. They're
(07:23):
not in the script. Then you get the telegraph, which
changes the fucking world using a code called Morse Code
invented by a guy named Morse. Although after researching the
rest of this episode, I feel like if I like
dug into it, I'd be like, actually, he didn't invent it,
some other.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
Guy, but yeah, probably yeah, yeah, probably a traditionally marginalized
person and he just got credit.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
Yeah, exactly. And I don't know anything about Morris. I
did not research this part of it. But the first
telegraph message transmitted over any real distance was between DC
and Baltimore and it was May twenty fourth, eighteen forty four,
and that message was what hath God wrought?
Speaker 2 (08:02):
WHOA What an intense message to be the first thing
it transmitted.
Speaker 3 (08:07):
Yeah, for the first one.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
Yeah, I feel like it's a real classy way to
do it. And people use telegraph to control railroads and
then spread news. But people were like, yeah, but what
about without wires? And some folks starting in eighteen twenty
were like, huh, if you run electricity through a wire,
it makes magnetic waves. And by eighteen sixty four someone
(08:30):
was like, you can actually pick those electric magnetic waves
up from far away. But they weren't very good at
that part of it yet receiving Actually it was the
harder hurdle for people to cross. And a guy named Hertz,
after whom the measurement of waves is named, was like, also, yeah,
they travel at the fucking speed of light. Isn't that cool?
Almost every version of who Invented Radio comes down to
(08:51):
a pissing match between Tesla, who didn't invent radio, and
an Italian guy named Wielmo Marconi. And almost every article
you will find, and I started writing this script based
on all of the articles I found that say, good
old Wielielmo Marconi invented this. He's the guy who commercialized it.
(09:14):
He's the guy who tried to make a lot of
money off of it. He did invent some radio things,
but he was both a successful inventor and grifter behind.
Every rich white guy inventor is an inventor, not all
three of those things, often two of them. It's often
like a rich whitey.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
I was just thinking, I mean, I know, you're talking
about stuff from history, but not a damn thing changed.
I feel like I could name some inventor grifters today.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
I know, I don't even have the research in front
of me. The motion picture was Addison, who gets the
credit for inventing motion picture. It was a guy who
worked for him, So it was a non rich white guy.
I think anyway, whatever, one of the people who was
left out of this story, not every verse the story.
Obviously I did not do all of this whatever. I
(10:03):
eventually found more interesting research about an Indian scientist named
Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose. And I was really sad because
I'd done all this research about Marcroni and he's like
a real mid guy. I'm not excited about him as
a person. Jaggaedis fucking rules as far as I can tell.
Haven't found a negative thing about him yet. And I
(10:25):
even go through all the like check marks about like
well where were they politically, Like well, how does he
treat him?
Speaker 2 (10:30):
You know, you're the diving deep. You're like, I want
the backstory. If there's tea, I want to know about it.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
Yeah, totally when I eventually do my eventual spinoff, which
is basically a version of your favorite problematic the old
Tumblr page, but then just about historical figures. Jagadish was
born on November thirtieth, eighteen fifty eight, in Bengal, in
a part that was then India but it's now Bangladesh.
Jaggatish grew up the child of privilege. To be sure,
(10:59):
his father was high up in the British colonial government
of India. The Indian civil services and so worked for
the colonizing folks. But his dad one was part of
a Hindu group that specifically was against the caste system.
And also instead of sending Jagadish to an English school,
which is what the children of privilege were supposed to do,
(11:20):
he was sent to a vernacular school so that he
could grow up speaking Bangla, his traditional language, and his
family was committed to preserving Indian culture in the face
of colonization. But do you know what comes into the
middle of things to change them and try and make
money off of them.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
I could not even imagine advertising, of course, Yeah, much
like the ads that you're going to listen to now.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
And we're back, okay. So Jagadish at vernacular school, his
classmates were of all different classes and castes, and they
were Muslim and Hindu alike. And one of his best
friends was Muslim, which is abe like still a big
deal today. There's a you know, huge amount of tension
in South Asia. So one of his best friends was
Muslim and another one was a fisherman's son, and he
(12:09):
talked his whole life about how he thought the Hindu
versus Muslim conflict in South Asia was bullshit, and he
talks about how he learned to love the natural world
from his friend who was raised by a fisherman, and
so just he was like, which is a little bit
of a like rich kid gets to hang out with
the poor kid and like learn stuff.
Speaker 3 (12:25):
But like yeah, he's like, oh, going outside is like
actually kind of fun, Like it's nice.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
Yeah, yeah, they're right about this whole going outside and
getting some sunshine thing.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
Yeah, obviously everyone's just choosing to be a fisherman. I
can't imagine any other society. Yeah. So Bo's grows up
and he goes off to London to study science, and
then he comes back to India and he starts studying microwaves,
which were called I think millimeter waves at the time,
and two years before the Italian guy takes all the
credit for it, he publicly demonstrates the existence of radio waves.
(12:57):
And he does it with like flair. I think he
sets it up so that the receiver once it receives
it's like it goes through multiple walls and does all
this stuff and then it triggers a gun that goes bang.
Speaker 3 (13:11):
Okay, not what I was expected.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
Yeah, I know, pretty badass also.
Speaker 3 (13:15):
But yeah, very dramatic. I love it.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, he which is funny too, Rick, because
it's like he didn't get famous for it, and you
would think, oh, because he just sort of quietly only
cared about the science. Like no, he's doing public expositions,
he is traveling the world. He just he is from
the wrong country, he's the wrong color, and he's not
trying to make money off of it.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
And it sounds like a flair for pageantry.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
Also oh yeah, yeah, absolutely to quote write up from
Interesting Engineering dot Com. Quote to aid in his studies,
he invented almost all of the basic components of microwave systems,
and when we say microwave we mean millimeter waves, we
mean radio waves in this context, and he didn't patent
almost anything. Decades later, he was convinced by one of
(14:00):
his friends to apply for a patent or two, but
he didn't want to capitalize on it. He invented much
better radio receivers, and twice two different times in his
life he like dramatically improves radio receivers because for years
what people have been using before was called a coherer,
in which little bits of metal would be held in
a tube and then as conductors pick up radio waves.
(14:21):
It would cause them to stick together and that would
create enough conductivity for the electricity to move through it.
I am absolutely I did okay in science class, but
I am an art school dropout.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
That all sounded right to me. I also did bad
in science, but two like DC science students combined.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
That's like, we know we're doing Yeah totally. And after
this coherer it worked, but you would have to reset
it every single time it picked up a radio wave,
which is obviously not a very effective system. So Joggaty
invented a better coherer, which was made with mercury an
oil and an iron disc and stuff that is over
my head and pretty regularly on the show, I start
(15:06):
reading about a guy who seems cool and then is
kind of a dick to the people he loves, but
Jagadish early on in his life, as he's invented all
this stuff, he marries one of the earliest and most
important Indian feminists, a social worker named Lady Abala Bos.
Their titles come later. He gets knighted in the nineteen
ten sometime, and then even that right, I've occasionally covered
(15:28):
like people from colonized areas who become knights on this show,
like there's this Irish guy who you know, became a knight,
and I'm like, oh, that's kind of complicated because right
like if someone was like, hey, you can be a knight,
I'd be like really torn, right Yeah, although the Wikipedia
list of people who refuse knighthood is like just kind
of cool. That's all the people who are like, man,
I want nothing to do with the United Kingdom, fuck you.
(15:51):
But even that right to like spoil something's going to
come later. Like he was like, oh, absolutely, I'd happily
be a knight as he continues to like hide revolutionaries
and like euse the fact that he's this important scientist
to advance the cause of independence in India.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
Awesome.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
Yeah, but radio wasn't this man's passion. I was all
said to be like, oh, there's this guy invented some stuff.
Speaker 3 (16:14):
Right, this is like a side project for him. Oh
my gods.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
Yea, it's like he's like learning this stuff. He cares
about it now. His passion is that he wants to
prove that all living things feel, and even more than that,
he actually is really into proving that there's not a
huge difference between living and non living matter and that
everything is in flux all of the time. But he
wants to prove specifically the main thing that he's like
(16:39):
known for besides inventing radio, is he wants to prove
that plants have response to stimuli, that they can feel pain,
and that they have what amounts to emotions, that they
have a nervous system. And so he studied how plants
react to stimuli. Have you ever heard this stuff about
like the whole plants can feel?
Speaker 3 (16:59):
I have.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
Yeah, I have to say, I'm so curious how this
just became his thing. You know, it's like, I'm gonna
invent radio on the side, but my true passion is
pointing out that plants feel stuff.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
What I think it comes I read it didn't end
up in the script. I read a bunch of different
things about him, and I think it comes from that
he was like, while doing radio stuff, he got really
interested in just like all of these different things putting
out different kinds of like waves and different kind of
ways of essentially communicating that we can't hear.
Speaker 3 (17:30):
Okay, that's interesting.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
And so he was kind of like, what else is
under there?
Speaker 3 (17:34):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (17:35):
Interesting?
Speaker 1 (17:36):
And he also it was a kind of spiritual thing
for him. Too, and this is part of why it
gets ignored in the West. For like one hundred years,
people are into it again. But for like one hundred
years people were like, we're just gonna ignore this guy.
So the same year, in nineteen oh one, we're gonna
get to it. But in nineteen oh one, Marconi, the
Italian guy, is gonna do this like elaborate hoax pretending
(17:56):
to transmit radio waves that people still think is real.
And and Bose presented evidence of plants responding to stimulus,
and he wrote, quote, all around us, the plants are communicating.
We just don't notice it. He also was like into
the idea that like, harsh music makes them grow unhappy,
and happy music makes them grow happy, and that plants
(18:17):
that are spoken to kindly are happier. And this is
stuff that's like this is debated today. There's like mixed studies.
There's some studies that are like, oh, yeah, there seems
to be some evidence around that, and other ones that
are like.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
I've heard this stuff today, and yeah, when you describe
it that way, it does make more sense how his
interest in radio is connected to these positions about plants. Also,
I feel like it's classic audio nerd podcaster of like,
I have these very specific interests that I'm resuming on
the side, it's like every podcaster I know that's their
(18:50):
mo Yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
Absolutely. I feel like podcaster, like writer, is one of
those things where it can't be your only interest because
you have to do it about things. You have to
care about things.
Speaker 3 (19:01):
You know, right, Yeah, like what's the podcast about?
Speaker 1 (19:05):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (19:08):
And Okay, So.
Speaker 1 (19:11):
His idea is very ahead of his time. He's very
into plants, but he's also very into radio, and he's
seen as one of the founders of the open source
movement for like modern telecommunications because of the fact that
he would refuse to patent all of his things, and
he wanted just to advance knowledge, right. And it's interesting
because you get this like with radio and the Pirate
(19:34):
Radio episodes, we talked about how there's kind of a
three way fight over who owns the airwaves. Is it
owned by commercial interests, is it owned by state interests,
or is it owned by the public, And those are
like kind of the three possible polls. And so in
some ways, by really just wanting to advance knowledge of radio,
he's kind of help laying some groundwork for what becomes
(19:56):
public radio. I mean, he's obviously laying the groundwork for
any radio right, but the idea that this should be
a public good. He's doing some of that groundwork. As
he gets older, he continues to invent new radio things.
He uses semiconductor junctions whatever they are, to detect radio signals.
So this is the second time that he completely changes
the way that people receive radio waves. He writes science fiction.
(20:21):
His best friend was a poet who fought for Indian independence,
but was explicitly an internationalist, not a nationalist, which is
already like, if you're fighting for independence from a colonized
country and you want to be a nationalist, I am
not giving you shit, you know, But if you want
to be an internationalist instead, that's like even cooler from
my point of view. Yeah, When he gets hired as
(20:42):
a professor at a college in Calcutta, he realizes they're
not giving him like full professorship, and they're only giving
him a third of the salary of his white peers,
which is I think this is the only time that
this has happened in history.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
I can't think of any other examples. Yet, it certainly
never happened to me.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
Why would it I can't imagine it. I've never noticed
any disparity, so it clearly isn't happening. And so he
refuses his entire salary and protest, which is one of
those things where you're like, doesn't that just help the
other side, But it actually after three years of him
refusing the salary, the school caves and starts paying people equal.
Speaker 2 (21:25):
Wow, So doing this actually got pay equity for everything.
Speaker 1 (21:30):
Which is like literally him using his class privilege in
a positive way because he can take it on the
nose and like go without pay for three years. Apparently,
I'm starting to.
Speaker 2 (21:40):
See what you mean about this guy. Very rad guy.
Speaker 1 (21:43):
And I've only found a little bit about this anyone
who's famous for something other than politics. People don't talk
about their politics, right, and so I've only been able
to find one thing, and it's mostly saying like, hey,
people don't really talk about his politics. But he and
his wife would use the fact that the British government
trusted them to hide Indian revolutionaries and independent activists in
(22:03):
their home because no one will go look there because
he's a sir. You can't go into his house, you know,
And all along he's kind of like a wing that
scientist guy, right, And when he eventually opens his own school,
the Bows Institute, he said at it's opening quote, I
dedicate today this institute not merely a laboratory, but a temple.
(22:27):
The power of physical methods applies to the establishment of
that truth, which can be realized directly through our senses
or through the vast expansion of the perceptive range by
means of artificially created organs. And so he's just basically
he's like, we're going to try and discover truth, which
we can't totally do, but we can do it with
science and our senses and making new senses through machines.
(22:52):
And I'm like, that's kind of cool.
Speaker 3 (22:54):
Yeah, that's badass. Yeah, that's cool.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
When he was in his seventies, he was still traveling
the world people that plants have a nervous system, and
he basically like hit this point where in the West
people are just dismissing his ideas about plants because they
blend with spirituality and are like, this isn't science, and
he is applying the scientific method, but it's like also
(23:18):
he's seeing like and so therefore and making statements that
people are like, oh, I can't totally back whatever. People
are just being like, everything is not cold, weird Western science,
so we don't have anything to do with you, you know.
And so for generations his work was ignored. But it's
having a bit of a comeback now. Yeah, he's not
the guy who gets credit for radio.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
Yeah, it's so interesting because I do feel like he
sounds like somebody who was really ahead of his time,
because a lot of these ideas, as you were saying,
are I've heard today. I've heard this idea of talking
to plants, playing nice music to plants. I do not
know what the evidence is there. I couldn't I couldn't
speak to it. But it's interesting that these ideas that
were sort of talked about as sort of crackpot dismissed
(24:00):
against this backdrop of really not accepting spiritualism today are
sort of much more commonplace.
Speaker 1 (24:05):
Right, and like and some of the stuff that he
is talking about, you can scientifically say where you like, well,
you can actually study the plant's reaction to stimuli.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
Right.
Speaker 1 (24:14):
You can't then say, oh, it's because you said something
nice that the plant is doing well. And Yeah, I
just like this guy, but he's not who gets credit
for radio. Do you know ads don't get credit for
radio either, but they're tightly connected in so really, I
don't know, here's ads and we're back. So there are
(24:38):
people who took radio and capitalized on it and did
some of the actual inventing, as far as I can tell.
The guy that I originally thought i'd be talking about,
And so I was just speed running the radio history
because it wasn't interesting me and getting to the other parts.
But then I discovered this whole other subplot and got
really excited about it. Whatever. Marconi is the guy who's
famous for it, this Italian aristocrat wheely Elmo Marconi, and
(25:02):
he was like, all right, let's do something with all
this radio stuff. In eighteen ninety nine he presented real
telegraphy with radio waves. Real, Hey, I'm going to communicate
something over distance with this. He did it four years
after Jagadish, and then in nineteen oh one he claimed
to transmit across the Atlantic from the UK to New
York City. And I wrote this in my first version
(25:26):
of the script because every I don't know if you've
run across this. Whenever I researched a history thing, every
like pop version of a history is just wrong. Yeah,
it's so frustrating because it shouldn't be, because, like I'm
still doing a pop history. I'm not a historian, right,
But it's the easiest, laziest version of the story, or
(25:49):
not even lessarly laziest, the version of the story that
everyone hears. That makes a nice, clean story.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
Yeah, I completely agree with you. I'm so happy that
we have people like you who are committed to telling
the real story because oftentime, the real story, even if
it's more complicated or more nuanced or messier, it's just
as juicy, just as interesting.
Speaker 1 (26:10):
Yeah, Like him being kind of a grifter and an
inventor kind of makes him more interesting. Otherwise he was
just like a rich Italian dude. I was like, I
discovered the radio, I'm wonderful, you know, definitely, And he
kind of did, right, Like I think he's sending messages
more than just make gun go bang, right, And so
he sets up to transmit from the UK to New
York City and articles say, and then he did. But
(26:34):
the thing is, it was probably a hoax. And if
it wasn't a hoax, he was just wrong because he
was the one listening to the headphones in New York City.
In nineteen oh one and was like, aha, I can
hear the transmission, right, and no one else put on
(26:54):
the headphones to hear it. I can't believe they let
that shit slide. And also the whole thing he was
transmitting was I think it's the Morse letter s, but
it's just a dot, you know, like Morse codes like
dots and dashes, right, and so it was just a dot,
that's all he was transmitting. So any like interference or
noise could have sounded like that, right, But realistically he
(27:17):
probably just like straight up lied or maybe he thought
it was gonna work and he like waited there for
a long time and he was like, uh yeah, yeah, yeah,
there it is, you.
Speaker 2 (27:25):
Know Elizabeth Holmes style, right, Like I thought I could
get it to work. It didn't work, but you know,
a for effort, I try to fuck it.
Speaker 1 (27:32):
And modern analysis of how he did this transmission using
that same technology as like, nah, that wouldn't have worked.
As a write up by the public radio station WSHU
put it, quote, atmospheric conditions would have made propagation at
this frequency nearly impossible, even using today's sensitive receivers and
(27:54):
modern transmitters of far greater power than Marconi's station produced.
Speaker 2 (28:00):
He's just sort of pulling a fast one here.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
And it is this moment that is like the history book,
and radio has made it. It's nineteen oh one and
it has crossed the Atlantic, you know. But they are
already transmitting things by radio, originally Morse code. By nineteen
oh six, someone transmits music by radio. By nineteen ten,
(28:24):
there's entertainment broadcasting. The first commercial radio station in the
US was in Pennsylvania in nineteen twenty, and until the
TV hit the scenes in the nineteen fifties, the radio
was kind of the home entertainment of choice for at
least Americans. Marconi was kind of a dick and a grifter.
(28:44):
At one point he was making this claim that his
radio waves couldn't be interfered with. He was like, it's
secure this way of transmitting, it'll be fine. But by
nineteen oh three, when he's making this claim, it's kind
of wild how fastation moves. Even one hundred years ago,
people are like, oh, everything's so fast with the internet.
By nineteen oh three, there's other people doing this at
(29:07):
the same scale that he's doing it, right, And so
by nineteen oh three, other people have been working on
this stuff too, and so they're like, yeah, that's not true.
Radio isn't secure. What are you talking about. And so
rather than just say hey, he's lying, instead they did
the first wireless hack, the first pirate radio broadcast, and
(29:30):
the first act of telecommunications trolling all at once.
Speaker 2 (29:34):
Oh my god, Oh my god, that's awesome.
Speaker 1 (29:38):
I got really excited about this part. This is why
I was going to include the history of radio at all.
Was this moment. So Marconi set himself up three hundred
miles away from I think London, and was going to
transmit messages to his associate, a scientist named John Fleming,
who is lecturing for the Royal Society, which is a
big deal because it has Royal in the name, and
(30:00):
it's a society. It's one of the like sciencey things.
And Fleming is giving this whole lecture, and then the
Morse code receiver at the back starts receiving words which
it's supposed to. It starts receiving first the word rats
over and over again, and then rats, rats rets, and
then it starts in on a dirty limerick to make
(30:23):
fun of Marconi. Oh my god, and I've only found
the first lines of this limerick, which was there was
a young man from Italy who diddled the public quite prettily.
Speaker 2 (30:38):
Not the first recorded it sounds like it.
Speaker 3 (30:45):
Sounds like it.
Speaker 1 (30:47):
And so while researching this, I workshopped what a full
limerick might have been with my friends. This would have
been a perfect transition, but we've already done with them,
so I'm not going to do it. What we've got
for the full dirty limerick, that is a tie, just
me and my friends making it up, and also the
dirtiest thing I'll probably ever say on air. There once
(31:07):
was a young man from Italy who diddled the public
quite prettily. He faked a message in Morse and got
on his horse and sucked him myself off quite literally.
And if he needed an ad break, it was gonna be.
He faked a message in Morse and got on his
horse and cut to ads immediately. That would have been good,
(31:30):
That would have been what I wanted to pull off.
Speaker 2 (31:34):
But yeah, that's this.
Speaker 1 (31:36):
And so this hack was done by a guy named
Neville Masculine. Hold on mask Elin, his name is fucking masculine,
just leaving me not knowing to pronounce this guy's name.
It's m A M A s k E l y
n E masculine, Neville masculine who ran a competing wireless
(31:58):
service and was also a stage man magician. So a
fucking stage magician did this.
Speaker 2 (32:03):
I love all the theatric that explains all of the
theatrics and pageantry involved in all of this.
Speaker 1 (32:09):
Yes, absolutely well, because like early science and like stage
magic weren't the most dissimilar fields, you.
Speaker 2 (32:16):
Know, right, Yeah, it was just this is such a
non sequitor. But I was watching that Nathan Fielder show,
the rehearsal the season about flight, and I was so
interested to learn that in the early days of people
trying to do aviation and like learn how to fly
and make flying machines, all those guys were also like
showmen and comedians, and so it was like, like I
(32:36):
looked down upon trade aviation before it was a thing
and it was associated with like showmanship and entertainment and comedy.
It's just interesting how science and I don't know, intentional
spectacle is all sort of overlapped.
Speaker 1 (32:50):
Which is cool because it's like, and maybe I say
this because I'm in you know, pop history, not academic history,
but like I think it's cool that how do you
present these ideas to the public. Has always kind of
been part of it, even if it does lead to
an awful lot of grifters.
Speaker 2 (33:06):
I mean, there probably is a straight line from that
sentiment to people like Elon Musk making big shows of
what their technology can do, or like Sam Altman making
a big show about what their technology can do, only
to be like, oh, well this was all a lie.
Speaker 1 (33:19):
Yeah, or even the like big huge like announcing the
new Mac products and it's like iPhone thirty four and
you're like, is it different than iPhone thirty three and
they're like.
Speaker 2 (33:31):
Yeah, they literally just had one that was like that.
Speaker 3 (33:34):
Yeah, it's like the battery last longer.
Speaker 2 (33:38):
She's got a new hat.
Speaker 1 (33:39):
Totally so much pageantry and everyone gets really excited, and
I'm like, all right, you know whatever. I like being
entertained as well. But I do think it's interesting that
the stage magician was the one who was like, I mean,
he's he's pranking, right, but he's the one being like, no,
this is because you lied. This is because you're a grifter.
I'm calling you out for that, you know. And the
(34:00):
way that they did it is that they they just
sent out a more powerful signal from closer, which is
all that it takes to overdo a radio signal is
transmit something more powerful from closer. And so now radio exists.
And one of the biggest questions at the beginning of
radio was who's going to own the airwaves? Is it corporations,
(34:23):
is it the state? Is it the public? And Europe
the answer was generally the state. We talked about this
on the Pirate Radio episodes because we focused on Europe
and how like commercial radio and like rock and roll
only really hit because Pirate radio commercial stations played and
they were like, Hey, we want to play pop music
(34:43):
and we're going to do it with ads and all
that stuff illegally or skirting the law. Like some of
the first ones were basically people parking boats outside in
international waters outside of England. In the US, will be
shocked to know the answer from the beginning was like corporations,
but all along there were people who were also like, no,
(35:04):
it's us, It's the public who should own this. And
you will be shocked, absolutely shocked to hear that I
am the most excited about the last of these three
about public ownership. You might be shocked because I work
for iHeartMedia, who owns iHeartRadio, which is basically a rebranding
of Clear Channel Communications, which has since the nineties basically
bought up every possible radio station it can legally own
(35:27):
without being in trouble for creating a monopoly, which during
massive deregulation in the nineties, meant more and more stations,
currently a total of eight hundred and fifty five stations,
which is more than three times the second biggest radio network, Odyssey.
And then in twenty eighteen, iHeart acquired a podcast network
and that's who I work for. But thanks genuinely thanks
to the umbrella of cool Zone Media, there is no
(35:47):
interference on what I can and can't talk about besides
like what will get me sued or arrested.
Speaker 2 (35:52):
Anyway, Margaret, iHeartRadio was a wonderful company. I don't know
what you're implying here. There are a wonderful company.
Speaker 1 (35:58):
We all love them. What's funny is that, do y'all
know what clear channel means?
Speaker 2 (36:05):
Does it have a meeting? It does?
Speaker 1 (36:07):
I didn't know this. Clear Channel is AM radio stations
that are given like monopoly over an area so that
there's no interfering airwaves happening in that area.
Speaker 2 (36:20):
Wow, pretty bold to name your radio company that.
Speaker 3 (36:25):
Oh my god. Okay, yeah, I did not know.
Speaker 1 (36:27):
It's okay, it's totally different company. And so I like
public ownership of the airwaves the best, and that is
the hardest one to get. Basically, state owned radio was
the norm in the Eastern Bloc as well as the
UK with the BBC, while privately owned commercial broadcasters with
the norm and much of the rest of the world.
State owned radio has proven to be fundamentally conservative most
(36:50):
of the time, while corporate owned radio has reached for
the lowest common denominator of content over and over again
despite having free speech. But as for what people are
going to do about that, one answer is to create
public radio, which means, of course, to talk about public radio,
we're going to talk about a Buddhist, Catholic and Arco
(37:10):
Pacifist poet who spent his youth as a hobo and
is mostly famous for being the godfather of the Beat poets,
even though he hated the beats of course, naturally, of course,
and to talk about that guy and public radio, we'll
do it on Wednesday. That's my Cliffhanger, very strange man,
coming soon.
Speaker 2 (37:29):
I'm so excited. I kind of had a feeling that
all of the voices and stories behind public radio were
unique and interesting. But I'm happy to find out that
I was right.
Speaker 1 (37:39):
Isn't it like it's interesting? I have this thing where
whenever there's like a public good that seems obvious, like
libraries is my main example of this, I take libraries
for granted, right, I'm like, well, of course we have libraries. Yeah,
But the idea of trying to pitch the American public,
or specifically the American government on libraries today, if they
didn't already exist, would be impossible. Like, hear me out.
(38:03):
Here's this place. It's like a store, but everything's free
and you just have to bring it back. But if
you don't, it's not a big deal and you're not
going to get arrested for it.
Speaker 3 (38:13):
Like yeah, And they're like, so how do we make
money on that? Here's the thing, Like, you don't. It's
just for people.
Speaker 2 (38:19):
It's just good for people.
Speaker 1 (38:21):
I'm sure there's studies that prove it makes the economy stronger.
Speaker 2 (38:23):
I don't know a thousand percent. No, I mean, what's
more punk rock than the library? Shout out to my
public library. Not that long ago. I needed a soldiering iron,
and I only needed it for one small thing. I
could have gone to Amazon bought it and then had
it just be junk around my tiny apartment forever. Yeah,
I was able to borrow one from the public library.
So they have a lot more than just books. They
(38:44):
have all kinds of things you could need. Yet I do.
Speaker 1 (38:48):
It's such a good idea, and public radio is such
a good idea, you know, And it's yeah, it's one
of these things that I take for granted. I'm like, oh,
of course there's NPR everywhere, but then you realize that,
like in a lot of rural areas where I live,
NPR is like the only actual source of news, you.
Speaker 2 (39:04):
Know, and when we I mean not to get on
my soapbox, but when hostile fascist administrations cracked down on that,
it's not an abstract thing. You are making it harder
for those communities to stay informed about what's going on.
Speaker 1 (39:18):
Right totally, And yeah, rural communities, poor rural communities are
going to be hit are already being hit incredibly hard
by the stripping of all public good. But obviously we
don't care about the present here. This is totally just
a history show we totally don't do this so that
people are aware of how hard everyone had to fight
to have the good things and how hard we should
(39:39):
fight to keep them.
Speaker 2 (39:41):
And how easily they can be taken away if we
don't really protect them intentionally.
Speaker 1 (39:46):
That part I didn't. I also took for granted as
a kid, you know, I took all that for granted.
But I don't anymore. Yeah. Same anyway, Well, you got
anything you want to plug here at the.
Speaker 2 (39:57):
End, Yeah, you can listen to my podcast on the
wonderful iHeartRadio Network. There are no girls on the internet.
Please check it out.
Speaker 1 (40:06):
Hell yeah, what else should we shout out? There's now
new feeds for a whole bunch of the shows on
cool Zone Media, including cools on media, book Club now
as its own feed. If you want to hear me,
read you stories, and ian you guys think you want
to plug?
Speaker 3 (40:21):
No, you nail that. I was going to call out
the feeds, but you beat me to it. So yeah,
we're great. Just a great episode and keep enjoying the content, people, and.
Speaker 1 (40:30):
I'll see you all on Wednesday.
Speaker 3 (40:33):
Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of
cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2 (40:37):
For more podcasts and cool Zone Media. Visit our website
Speaker 1 (40:40):
Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
I'm a Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Cool Zone Media, Hello, and welcome to Cool People did
Cool Stuff your weekly reminder that when there's bad things happening,
there's good things happening, which is a particularly funny thing
to say this week. But if you're listening in the future,
I've had to do this bit like so many times
where I'm like, well, if you're listening to the future,
clearly this was a crazy week. But it's twenty twenty five,
(00:23):
so you have no idea what a week I'm talking
about unless you're listening next week. Anyway. I'm your host,
Margaret Kiljoy, and I have a guest this week, and
my guest is Bridget Todd.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Hi, how are you? Hi? Margaret? You know, things are happening.
Life is happening, as you alluded to you. Hm, it's
been a lot this week. If you're listening at a
different time, you probably have no idea what we're talking about.
I'll assume there's a lot going on whenever you're listening
to you.
Speaker 1 (00:48):
Know already by like next Monday when this comes out, Like,
who knows is something else going to happen?
Speaker 2 (00:54):
Genuinely truly, who knows?
Speaker 1 (00:56):
Yeah, Well, we're not going to tell you because obviously
this is a really good moment to just talk about history.
But first I want to introduce this week's producer, well
always one of the producers, just not always on air,
is Ian.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
Hi Hey, Margaret Hey, Bridget hi Ian excited to be here. Yeah,
it's a wild time we're living in. But you know what,
let's learn about something cool and positive right now. So
let's do it.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
Yeah, it's mostly about stuff that later got used for bad,
but it doesn't get Actually that's not true. I think
this is a genuinely positive week. Ooh okay, cool stuff
with only minor setbacks along the way. Our audio engineers,
Eva hi Eva hi.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
Eva hi Eva, thank you for editing this episode.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
Yeah, and our music was produced for us by Unwoman.
So this is a nice, calm, peaceful week to record
a history podcast. Obviously we can all take a break
and think about things that happened a long time ago.
And I was thinking, well, I'm gonna have Bridget Todd
on the show. And for people who are listening who
don't know who you are, you are the host of
(02:03):
the show. There are no girls on the internet, which
is confusing because there are girls on the internet. But
I think it might be irony.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
Yes, it's that. I mean, every time I am asked
about that title, I kind of regret it because it's
sort of an inside joke with myself. It's also a mouthful,
but that is the name of the show, and there
are girls on the internet. There's everybody on the internet.
We're all represented here, there, everywhere.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
I think it's a good title. I liked long titles,
and I think that the irony is clear and present.
It's just it's much like making a joke out of
someone's name. You like, you've probably heard a million times though,
but there are girls on the Internet, so I already
regret trying to make that a bit.
Speaker 3 (02:41):
And the acronym is pretty fun too, Tangoti is fun
to say.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
So yeah, that was intentional. I knew I wanted a
show name that you can make into an acronym that
you could like say out loud, Margaret. Do you get
the same thing? Also having a long podcast title.
Speaker 1 (02:57):
Oh, what I get is that no one remembers the title.
And I meet people and they're like, I love your show.
I listen every week to cool people who did to
do cool things, and I'm like, you know what that's
on me? It cannot hold it against anyone that they
can't keep that straight.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
Yeah close enough.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
Yeah, yeah, I'm happy that people listen. I don't really
care if they know the title or not. But you
do a lot of work around telecommunications. I think it's
fair to say, well, we're going to talk about the
history of telecommunications, because we're going to talk about the
history of radio. That's what we're going to talk about
this week.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
Ooh hell yeah. This is very much in my sphere
of interest.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
Cool. I thought that that was possible, and so I'm
excited to talk about it. Last week we talked about
the history of pirate radio, because what happened is I
started researching the history of pirate radio, being like, clearly,
this is where all the radicals are, this is going
to be the really interesting part of radio history. And
there was a lot of really cool stuff there. And
then I started running across public radio and like open
(04:05):
source radio technology as a whole separate thing that I
got really excited about. So this week that's what we're
talking about. We were talking about the history of public radio,
and we're talking about the guy who actually invented radio,
who isn't who everyone says invented radio because you'll be
shocked to know this. He wasn't a white man.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
I am not shocked to know this, but I'm please
all the same. I want to add something if that's okay,
which is, yeah, please do. The reason why I'm kind
of geeking out about this is that I am such
an audio girly. I'm such a like radio person. And
the reason why I'm a podcaster is because I grew
up in a house where my parents always had an
PR on, always had public radio on. In the car,
(04:48):
we had public radio on. My parents donated to public radio.
It was just a thing that was in the background
of my childhood and young adulthood. And I genuinely do
not think I would be a podcaster now if not
for grow going up immersed in public radio. It's such
an important resource that we have.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
Yeah, I've been thinking a lot about how everything this
year is just me accidentally researching the history of stuff
they're trying to take away from us. Yes, you know,
a while ago is all revolutions, and then this year
I'm like, it's the basic infrastructure of our society that
actually is worth maintaining, you know. And it's interesting because
we're well, I'll get to this, okay, but first I
(05:25):
want to talk about what is radio because I love context.
The ability to communicate over distances has been wildly important
technology since forever. The faster and more losslessly we can communicate,
the more we can organize ourselves and accomplish things, which
of course also means accomplishing bad things like the ability
(05:46):
Communication systems are a very important part about exercising power
at distance, and so the ability for states and empires
to exist has a lot to do with communication systems.
Besides the point a little bit, there's all kinds of
ways that people have communicated over distance. I'm not going
to get into the history of all of them because
I didn't research the history of all of them. But
you know, you have like horns and smoke and all
(06:09):
this kind of stuff. But my favorite is semaphore. You
ever heard of semaphore?
Speaker 2 (06:13):
I have not.
Speaker 1 (06:15):
Semaphore is what ships do where you have flags.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
Yeah, it reminds me of color guard, which I did
when I was in high school.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
Oh yeah, you're basically doing semaphore. Yeah, early telecommunication was
color guard. I say that as if I'm joking. I'm
kind of not that actually is what it is basically,
and so people would use windmill like towers to communicate
over long distances. You set them up at different distances
so they can see each other, and you can transmit
a signal that way, right by having the different arms
(06:46):
do different things. The most famous example of this in
history is of course, the signal fires that Gondor lit
to request aid from Rome.
Speaker 3 (06:55):
I was literally thinking of that. We were talking about
signals over long diest. Oh, like the fire's and Gondor okay, great,
that's aw.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
Exactly okay, And you know, but that was only a
binary form of communication. They're either lit or unlit. Semaphore towers,
which you know obviously were developed after the Third Age
of Middle Earth, are much more useful for a lot
of this. Semaphore towers were used for like stock prices
and all this stuff that I have researched at different
periods in my life that are not this one. They're
(07:23):
not in the script. Then you get the telegraph, which
changes the fucking world using a code called Morse Code
invented by a guy named Morse. Although after researching the
rest of this episode, I feel like if I like
dug into it, I'd be like, actually, he didn't invent it,
some other.
Speaker 2 (07:38):
Guy, but yeah, probably yeah, yeah, probably a traditionally marginalized
person and he just got credit.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
Yeah, exactly. And I don't know anything about Morris. I
did not research this part of it. But the first
telegraph message transmitted over any real distance was between DC
and Baltimore and it was May twenty fourth, eighteen forty four,
and that message was what hath God wrought?
Speaker 2 (08:02):
WHOA What an intense message to be the first thing
it transmitted.
Speaker 3 (08:07):
Yeah, for the first one.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
Yeah, I feel like it's a real classy way to
do it. And people use telegraph to control railroads and
then spread news. But people were like, yeah, but what
about without wires? And some folks starting in eighteen twenty
were like, huh, if you run electricity through a wire,
it makes magnetic waves. And by eighteen sixty four someone
(08:30):
was like, you can actually pick those electric magnetic waves
up from far away. But they weren't very good at
that part of it yet receiving Actually it was the
harder hurdle for people to cross. And a guy named Hertz,
after whom the measurement of waves is named, was like, also, yeah,
they travel at the fucking speed of light. Isn't that cool?
Almost every version of who Invented Radio comes down to
(08:51):
a pissing match between Tesla, who didn't invent radio, and
an Italian guy named Wielmo Marconi. And almost every article
you will find, and I started writing this script based
on all of the articles I found that say, good
old Wielielmo Marconi invented this. He's the guy who commercialized it.
(09:14):
He's the guy who tried to make a lot of
money off of it. He did invent some radio things,
but he was both a successful inventor and grifter behind.
Every rich white guy inventor is an inventor, not all
three of those things, often two of them. It's often
like a rich whitey.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
I was just thinking, I mean, I know, you're talking
about stuff from history, but not a damn thing changed.
I feel like I could name some inventor grifters today.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
I know, I don't even have the research in front
of me. The motion picture was Addison, who gets the
credit for inventing motion picture. It was a guy who
worked for him, So it was a non rich white guy.
I think anyway, whatever, one of the people who was
left out of this story, not every verse the story.
Obviously I did not do all of this whatever. I
(10:03):
eventually found more interesting research about an Indian scientist named
Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose. And I was really sad because
I'd done all this research about Marcroni and he's like
a real mid guy. I'm not excited about him as
a person. Jaggaedis fucking rules as far as I can tell.
Haven't found a negative thing about him yet. And I
(10:25):
even go through all the like check marks about like
well where were they politically, Like well, how does he
treat him?
Speaker 2 (10:30):
You know, you're the diving deep. You're like, I want
the backstory. If there's tea, I want to know about it.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
Yeah, totally when I eventually do my eventual spinoff, which
is basically a version of your favorite problematic the old
Tumblr page, but then just about historical figures. Jagadish was
born on November thirtieth, eighteen fifty eight, in Bengal, in
a part that was then India but it's now Bangladesh.
Jaggatish grew up the child of privilege. To be sure,
(10:59):
his father was high up in the British colonial government
of India. The Indian civil services and so worked for
the colonizing folks. But his dad one was part of
a Hindu group that specifically was against the caste system.
And also instead of sending Jagadish to an English school,
which is what the children of privilege were supposed to do,
(11:20):
he was sent to a vernacular school so that he
could grow up speaking Bangla, his traditional language, and his
family was committed to preserving Indian culture in the face
of colonization. But do you know what comes into the
middle of things to change them and try and make
money off of them.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
I could not even imagine advertising, of course, Yeah, much
like the ads that you're going to listen to now.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
And we're back, okay. So Jagadish at vernacular school, his
classmates were of all different classes and castes, and they
were Muslim and Hindu alike. And one of his best
friends was Muslim, which is abe like still a big
deal today. There's a you know, huge amount of tension
in South Asia. So one of his best friends was
Muslim and another one was a fisherman's son, and he
(12:09):
talked his whole life about how he thought the Hindu
versus Muslim conflict in South Asia was bullshit, and he
talks about how he learned to love the natural world
from his friend who was raised by a fisherman, and
so just he was like, which is a little bit
of a like rich kid gets to hang out with
the poor kid and like learn stuff.
Speaker 3 (12:25):
But like yeah, he's like, oh, going outside is like
actually kind of fun, Like it's nice.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
Yeah, yeah, they're right about this whole going outside and
getting some sunshine thing.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
Yeah, obviously everyone's just choosing to be a fisherman. I
can't imagine any other society. Yeah. So Bo's grows up
and he goes off to London to study science, and
then he comes back to India and he starts studying microwaves,
which were called I think millimeter waves at the time,
and two years before the Italian guy takes all the
credit for it, he publicly demonstrates the existence of radio waves.
(12:57):
And he does it with like flair. I think he
sets it up so that the receiver once it receives
it's like it goes through multiple walls and does all
this stuff and then it triggers a gun that goes bang.
Speaker 3 (13:11):
Okay, not what I was expected.
Speaker 2 (13:13):
Yeah, I know, pretty badass also.
Speaker 3 (13:15):
But yeah, very dramatic. I love it.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, he which is funny too, Rick, because
it's like he didn't get famous for it, and you
would think, oh, because he just sort of quietly only
cared about the science. Like no, he's doing public expositions,
he is traveling the world. He just he is from
the wrong country, he's the wrong color, and he's not
trying to make money off of it.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
And it sounds like a flair for pageantry.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
Also oh yeah, yeah, absolutely to quote write up from
Interesting Engineering dot Com. Quote to aid in his studies,
he invented almost all of the basic components of microwave systems,
and when we say microwave we mean millimeter waves, we
mean radio waves in this context, and he didn't patent
almost anything. Decades later, he was convinced by one of
(14:00):
his friends to apply for a patent or two, but
he didn't want to capitalize on it. He invented much
better radio receivers, and twice two different times in his
life he like dramatically improves radio receivers because for years
what people have been using before was called a coherer,
in which little bits of metal would be held in
a tube and then as conductors pick up radio waves.
(14:21):
It would cause them to stick together and that would
create enough conductivity for the electricity to move through it.
I am absolutely I did okay in science class, but
I am an art school dropout.
Speaker 2 (14:34):
That all sounded right to me. I also did bad
in science, but two like DC science students combined.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
That's like, we know we're doing Yeah totally. And after
this coherer it worked, but you would have to reset
it every single time it picked up a radio wave,
which is obviously not a very effective system. So Joggaty
invented a better coherer, which was made with mercury an
oil and an iron disc and stuff that is over
my head and pretty regularly on the show, I start
(15:06):
reading about a guy who seems cool and then is
kind of a dick to the people he loves, but
Jagadish early on in his life, as he's invented all
this stuff, he marries one of the earliest and most
important Indian feminists, a social worker named Lady Abala Bos.
Their titles come later. He gets knighted in the nineteen
ten sometime, and then even that right, I've occasionally covered
(15:28):
like people from colonized areas who become knights on this show,
like there's this Irish guy who you know, became a knight,
and I'm like, oh, that's kind of complicated because right
like if someone was like, hey, you can be a knight,
I'd be like really torn, right Yeah, although the Wikipedia
list of people who refuse knighthood is like just kind
of cool. That's all the people who are like, man,
I want nothing to do with the United Kingdom, fuck you.
(15:51):
But even that right to like spoil something's going to
come later. Like he was like, oh, absolutely, I'd happily
be a knight as he continues to like hide revolutionaries
and like euse the fact that he's this important scientist
to advance the cause of independence in India.
Speaker 2 (16:06):
Awesome.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
Yeah, but radio wasn't this man's passion. I was all
said to be like, oh, there's this guy invented some stuff.
Speaker 3 (16:14):
Right, this is like a side project for him. Oh
my gods.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
Yea, it's like he's like learning this stuff. He cares
about it now. His passion is that he wants to
prove that all living things feel, and even more than that,
he actually is really into proving that there's not a
huge difference between living and non living matter and that
everything is in flux all of the time. But he
wants to prove specifically the main thing that he's like
(16:39):
known for besides inventing radio, is he wants to prove
that plants have response to stimuli, that they can feel pain,
and that they have what amounts to emotions, that they
have a nervous system. And so he studied how plants
react to stimuli. Have you ever heard this stuff about
like the whole plants can feel?
Speaker 3 (16:59):
I have.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
Yeah, I have to say, I'm so curious how this
just became his thing. You know, it's like, I'm gonna
invent radio on the side, but my true passion is
pointing out that plants feel stuff.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
What I think it comes I read it didn't end
up in the script. I read a bunch of different
things about him, and I think it comes from that
he was like, while doing radio stuff, he got really
interested in just like all of these different things putting
out different kinds of like waves and different kind of
ways of essentially communicating that we can't hear.
Speaker 3 (17:30):
Okay, that's interesting.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
And so he was kind of like, what else is
under there?
Speaker 3 (17:34):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (17:35):
Interesting?
Speaker 1 (17:36):
And he also it was a kind of spiritual thing
for him. Too, and this is part of why it
gets ignored in the West. For like one hundred years,
people are into it again. But for like one hundred
years people were like, we're just gonna ignore this guy.
So the same year, in nineteen oh one, we're gonna
get to it. But in nineteen oh one, Marconi, the
Italian guy, is gonna do this like elaborate hoax pretending
(17:56):
to transmit radio waves that people still think is real.
And and Bose presented evidence of plants responding to stimulus,
and he wrote, quote, all around us, the plants are communicating.
We just don't notice it. He also was like into
the idea that like, harsh music makes them grow unhappy,
and happy music makes them grow happy, and that plants
(18:17):
that are spoken to kindly are happier. And this is
stuff that's like this is debated today. There's like mixed studies.
There's some studies that are like, oh, yeah, there seems
to be some evidence around that, and other ones that
are like.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
I've heard this stuff today, and yeah, when you describe
it that way, it does make more sense how his
interest in radio is connected to these positions about plants. Also,
I feel like it's classic audio nerd podcaster of like,
I have these very specific interests that I'm resuming on
the side, it's like every podcaster I know that's their
(18:50):
mo Yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
Absolutely. I feel like podcaster, like writer, is one of
those things where it can't be your only interest because
you have to do it about things. You have to
care about things.
Speaker 3 (19:01):
You know, right, Yeah, like what's the podcast about?
Speaker 1 (19:05):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (19:08):
And Okay, So.
Speaker 1 (19:11):
His idea is very ahead of his time. He's very
into plants, but he's also very into radio, and he's
seen as one of the founders of the open source
movement for like modern telecommunications because of the fact that
he would refuse to patent all of his things, and
he wanted just to advance knowledge, right. And it's interesting
because you get this like with radio and the Pirate
(19:34):
Radio episodes, we talked about how there's kind of a
three way fight over who owns the airwaves. Is it
owned by commercial interests, is it owned by state interests,
or is it owned by the public, And those are
like kind of the three possible polls. And so in
some ways, by really just wanting to advance knowledge of radio,
he's kind of help laying some groundwork for what becomes
(19:56):
public radio. I mean, he's obviously laying the groundwork for
any radio right, but the idea that this should be
a public good. He's doing some of that groundwork. As
he gets older, he continues to invent new radio things.
He uses semiconductor junctions whatever they are, to detect radio signals.
So this is the second time that he completely changes
the way that people receive radio waves. He writes science fiction.
(20:21):
His best friend was a poet who fought for Indian independence,
but was explicitly an internationalist, not a nationalist, which is
already like, if you're fighting for independence from a colonized
country and you want to be a nationalist, I am
not giving you shit, you know, But if you want
to be an internationalist instead, that's like even cooler from
my point of view. Yeah, When he gets hired as
(20:42):
a professor at a college in Calcutta, he realizes they're
not giving him like full professorship, and they're only giving
him a third of the salary of his white peers,
which is I think this is the only time that
this has happened in history.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
I can't think of any other examples. Yet, it certainly
never happened to me.
Speaker 1 (21:00):
Why would it I can't imagine it. I've never noticed
any disparity, so it clearly isn't happening. And so he
refuses his entire salary and protest, which is one of
those things where you're like, doesn't that just help the
other side, But it actually after three years of him
refusing the salary, the school caves and starts paying people equal.
Speaker 2 (21:25):
Wow, So doing this actually got pay equity for everything.
Speaker 1 (21:30):
Which is like literally him using his class privilege in
a positive way because he can take it on the
nose and like go without pay for three years. Apparently,
I'm starting to.
Speaker 2 (21:40):
See what you mean about this guy. Very rad guy.
Speaker 1 (21:43):
And I've only found a little bit about this anyone
who's famous for something other than politics. People don't talk
about their politics, right, and so I've only been able
to find one thing, and it's mostly saying like, hey,
people don't really talk about his politics. But he and
his wife would use the fact that the British government
trusted them to hide Indian revolutionaries and independent activists in
(22:03):
their home because no one will go look there because
he's a sir. You can't go into his house, you know,
And all along he's kind of like a wing that
scientist guy, right, And when he eventually opens his own school,
the Bows Institute, he said at it's opening quote, I
dedicate today this institute not merely a laboratory, but a temple.
(22:27):
The power of physical methods applies to the establishment of
that truth, which can be realized directly through our senses
or through the vast expansion of the perceptive range by
means of artificially created organs. And so he's just basically
he's like, we're going to try and discover truth, which
we can't totally do, but we can do it with
science and our senses and making new senses through machines.
(22:52):
And I'm like, that's kind of cool.
Speaker 3 (22:54):
Yeah, that's badass. Yeah, that's cool.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
When he was in his seventies, he was still traveling
the world people that plants have a nervous system, and
he basically like hit this point where in the West
people are just dismissing his ideas about plants because they
blend with spirituality and are like, this isn't science, and
he is applying the scientific method, but it's like also
(23:18):
he's seeing like and so therefore and making statements that
people are like, oh, I can't totally back whatever. People
are just being like, everything is not cold, weird Western science,
so we don't have anything to do with you, you know.
And so for generations his work was ignored. But it's
having a bit of a comeback now. Yeah, he's not
the guy who gets credit for radio.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
Yeah, it's so interesting because I do feel like he
sounds like somebody who was really ahead of his time,
because a lot of these ideas, as you were saying,
are I've heard today. I've heard this idea of talking
to plants, playing nice music to plants. I do not
know what the evidence is there. I couldn't I couldn't
speak to it. But it's interesting that these ideas that
were sort of talked about as sort of crackpot dismissed
(24:00):
against this backdrop of really not accepting spiritualism today are
sort of much more commonplace.
Speaker 1 (24:05):
Right, and like and some of the stuff that he
is talking about, you can scientifically say where you like, well,
you can actually study the plant's reaction to stimuli.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
Right.
Speaker 1 (24:14):
You can't then say, oh, it's because you said something
nice that the plant is doing well. And Yeah, I
just like this guy, but he's not who gets credit
for radio. Do you know ads don't get credit for
radio either, but they're tightly connected in so really, I
don't know, here's ads and we're back. So there are
(24:38):
people who took radio and capitalized on it and did
some of the actual inventing, as far as I can tell.
The guy that I originally thought i'd be talking about,
And so I was just speed running the radio history
because it wasn't interesting me and getting to the other parts.
But then I discovered this whole other subplot and got
really excited about it. Whatever. Marconi is the guy who's
famous for it, this Italian aristocrat wheely Elmo Marconi, and
(25:02):
he was like, all right, let's do something with all
this radio stuff. In eighteen ninety nine he presented real
telegraphy with radio waves. Real, Hey, I'm going to communicate
something over distance with this. He did it four years
after Jagadish, and then in nineteen oh one he claimed
to transmit across the Atlantic from the UK to New
York City. And I wrote this in my first version
(25:26):
of the script because every I don't know if you've
run across this. Whenever I researched a history thing, every
like pop version of a history is just wrong. Yeah,
it's so frustrating because it shouldn't be, because, like I'm
still doing a pop history. I'm not a historian, right,
But it's the easiest, laziest version of the story, or
(25:49):
not even lessarly laziest, the version of the story that
everyone hears. That makes a nice, clean story.
Speaker 2 (25:55):
Yeah, I completely agree with you. I'm so happy that
we have people like you who are committed to telling
the real story because oftentime, the real story, even if
it's more complicated or more nuanced or messier, it's just
as juicy, just as interesting.
Speaker 1 (26:10):
Yeah, Like him being kind of a grifter and an
inventor kind of makes him more interesting. Otherwise he was
just like a rich Italian dude. I was like, I
discovered the radio, I'm wonderful, you know, definitely, And he
kind of did, right, Like I think he's sending messages
more than just make gun go bang, right, And so
he sets up to transmit from the UK to New
York City and articles say, and then he did. But
(26:34):
the thing is, it was probably a hoax. And if
it wasn't a hoax, he was just wrong because he
was the one listening to the headphones in New York City.
In nineteen oh one and was like, aha, I can
hear the transmission, right, and no one else put on
(26:54):
the headphones to hear it. I can't believe they let
that shit slide. And also the whole thing he was
transmitting was I think it's the Morse letter s, but
it's just a dot, you know, like Morse codes like
dots and dashes, right, and so it was just a dot,
that's all he was transmitting. So any like interference or
noise could have sounded like that, right, But realistically he
(27:17):
probably just like straight up lied or maybe he thought
it was gonna work and he like waited there for
a long time and he was like, uh yeah, yeah, yeah,
there it is, you.
Speaker 2 (27:25):
Know Elizabeth Holmes style, right, Like I thought I could
get it to work. It didn't work, but you know,
a for effort, I try to fuck it.
Speaker 1 (27:32):
And modern analysis of how he did this transmission using
that same technology as like, nah, that wouldn't have worked.
As a write up by the public radio station WSHU
put it, quote, atmospheric conditions would have made propagation at
this frequency nearly impossible, even using today's sensitive receivers and
(27:54):
modern transmitters of far greater power than Marconi's station produced.
Speaker 2 (28:00):
He's just sort of pulling a fast one here.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
And it is this moment that is like the history book,
and radio has made it. It's nineteen oh one and
it has crossed the Atlantic, you know. But they are
already transmitting things by radio, originally Morse code. By nineteen
oh six, someone transmits music by radio. By nineteen ten,
(28:24):
there's entertainment broadcasting. The first commercial radio station in the
US was in Pennsylvania in nineteen twenty, and until the
TV hit the scenes in the nineteen fifties, the radio
was kind of the home entertainment of choice for at
least Americans. Marconi was kind of a dick and a grifter.
(28:44):
At one point he was making this claim that his
radio waves couldn't be interfered with. He was like, it's
secure this way of transmitting, it'll be fine. But by
nineteen oh three, when he's making this claim, it's kind
of wild how fastation moves. Even one hundred years ago,
people are like, oh, everything's so fast with the internet.
By nineteen oh three, there's other people doing this at
(29:07):
the same scale that he's doing it, right, And so
by nineteen oh three, other people have been working on
this stuff too, and so they're like, yeah, that's not true.
Radio isn't secure. What are you talking about. And so
rather than just say hey, he's lying, instead they did
the first wireless hack, the first pirate radio broadcast, and
(29:30):
the first act of telecommunications trolling all at once.
Speaker 2 (29:34):
Oh my god, Oh my god, that's awesome.
Speaker 1 (29:38):
I got really excited about this part. This is why
I was going to include the history of radio at all.
Was this moment. So Marconi set himself up three hundred
miles away from I think London, and was going to
transmit messages to his associate, a scientist named John Fleming,
who is lecturing for the Royal Society, which is a
big deal because it has Royal in the name, and
(30:00):
it's a society. It's one of the like sciencey things.
And Fleming is giving this whole lecture, and then the
Morse code receiver at the back starts receiving words which
it's supposed to. It starts receiving first the word rats
over and over again, and then rats, rats rets, and
then it starts in on a dirty limerick to make
(30:23):
fun of Marconi. Oh my god, and I've only found
the first lines of this limerick, which was there was
a young man from Italy who diddled the public quite prettily.
Speaker 2 (30:38):
Not the first recorded it sounds like it.
Speaker 3 (30:45):
Sounds like it.
Speaker 1 (30:47):
And so while researching this, I workshopped what a full
limerick might have been with my friends. This would have
been a perfect transition, but we've already done with them,
so I'm not going to do it. What we've got
for the full dirty limerick, that is a tie, just
me and my friends making it up, and also the
dirtiest thing I'll probably ever say on air. There once
(31:07):
was a young man from Italy who diddled the public
quite prettily. He faked a message in Morse and got
on his horse and sucked him myself off quite literally.
And if he needed an ad break, it was gonna be.
He faked a message in Morse and got on his
horse and cut to ads immediately. That would have been good,
(31:30):
That would have been what I wanted to pull off.
Speaker 2 (31:34):
But yeah, that's this.
Speaker 1 (31:36):
And so this hack was done by a guy named
Neville Masculine. Hold on mask Elin, his name is fucking masculine,
just leaving me not knowing to pronounce this guy's name.
It's m A M A s k E l y
n E masculine, Neville masculine who ran a competing wireless
(31:58):
service and was also a stage man magician. So a
fucking stage magician did this.
Speaker 2 (32:03):
I love all the theatric that explains all of the
theatrics and pageantry involved in all of this.
Speaker 1 (32:09):
Yes, absolutely well, because like early science and like stage
magic weren't the most dissimilar fields, you.
Speaker 2 (32:16):
Know, right, Yeah, it was just this is such a
non sequitor. But I was watching that Nathan Fielder show,
the rehearsal the season about flight, and I was so
interested to learn that in the early days of people
trying to do aviation and like learn how to fly
and make flying machines, all those guys were also like
showmen and comedians, and so it was like, like I
(32:36):
looked down upon trade aviation before it was a thing
and it was associated with like showmanship and entertainment and comedy.
It's just interesting how science and I don't know, intentional
spectacle is all sort of overlapped.
Speaker 1 (32:50):
Which is cool because it's like, and maybe I say
this because I'm in you know, pop history, not academic history,
but like I think it's cool that how do you
present these ideas to the public. Has always kind of
been part of it, even if it does lead to
an awful lot of grifters.
Speaker 2 (33:06):
I mean, there probably is a straight line from that
sentiment to people like Elon Musk making big shows of
what their technology can do, or like Sam Altman making
a big show about what their technology can do, only
to be like, oh, well this was all a lie.
Speaker 1 (33:19):
Yeah, or even the like big huge like announcing the
new Mac products and it's like iPhone thirty four and
you're like, is it different than iPhone thirty three and
they're like.
Speaker 2 (33:31):
Yeah, they literally just had one that was like that.
Speaker 3 (33:34):
Yeah, it's like the battery last longer.
Speaker 2 (33:38):
She's got a new hat.
Speaker 1 (33:39):
Totally so much pageantry and everyone gets really excited, and
I'm like, all right, you know whatever. I like being
entertained as well. But I do think it's interesting that
the stage magician was the one who was like, I mean,
he's he's pranking, right, but he's the one being like, no,
this is because you lied. This is because you're a grifter.
I'm calling you out for that, you know. And the
(34:00):
way that they did it is that they they just
sent out a more powerful signal from closer, which is
all that it takes to overdo a radio signal is
transmit something more powerful from closer. And so now radio exists.
And one of the biggest questions at the beginning of
radio was who's going to own the airwaves? Is it corporations,
(34:23):
is it the state? Is it the public? And Europe
the answer was generally the state. We talked about this
on the Pirate Radio episodes because we focused on Europe
and how like commercial radio and like rock and roll
only really hit because Pirate radio commercial stations played and
they were like, Hey, we want to play pop music
(34:43):
and we're going to do it with ads and all
that stuff illegally or skirting the law. Like some of
the first ones were basically people parking boats outside in
international waters outside of England. In the US, will be
shocked to know the answer from the beginning was like corporations,
but all along there were people who were also like, no,
(35:04):
it's us, It's the public who should own this. And
you will be shocked, absolutely shocked to hear that I
am the most excited about the last of these three
about public ownership. You might be shocked because I work
for iHeartMedia, who owns iHeartRadio, which is basically a rebranding
of Clear Channel Communications, which has since the nineties basically
bought up every possible radio station it can legally own
(35:27):
without being in trouble for creating a monopoly, which during
massive deregulation in the nineties, meant more and more stations,
currently a total of eight hundred and fifty five stations,
which is more than three times the second biggest radio network, Odyssey.
And then in twenty eighteen, iHeart acquired a podcast network
and that's who I work for. But thanks genuinely thanks
to the umbrella of cool Zone Media, there is no
(35:47):
interference on what I can and can't talk about besides
like what will get me sued or arrested.
Speaker 2 (35:52):
Anyway, Margaret, iHeartRadio was a wonderful company. I don't know
what you're implying here. There are a wonderful company.
Speaker 1 (35:58):
We all love them. What's funny is that, do y'all
know what clear channel means?
Speaker 2 (36:05):
Does it have a meeting? It does?
Speaker 1 (36:07):
I didn't know this. Clear Channel is AM radio stations
that are given like monopoly over an area so that
there's no interfering airwaves happening in that area.
Speaker 2 (36:20):
Wow, pretty bold to name your radio company that.
Speaker 3 (36:25):
Oh my god. Okay, yeah, I did not know.
Speaker 1 (36:27):
It's okay, it's totally different company. And so I like
public ownership of the airwaves the best, and that is
the hardest one to get. Basically, state owned radio was
the norm in the Eastern Bloc as well as the
UK with the BBC, while privately owned commercial broadcasters with
the norm and much of the rest of the world.
State owned radio has proven to be fundamentally conservative most
(36:50):
of the time, while corporate owned radio has reached for
the lowest common denominator of content over and over again
despite having free speech. But as for what people are
going to do about that, one answer is to create
public radio, which means, of course, to talk about public radio,
we're going to talk about a Buddhist, Catholic and Arco
(37:10):
Pacifist poet who spent his youth as a hobo and
is mostly famous for being the godfather of the Beat poets,
even though he hated the beats of course, naturally, of course,
and to talk about that guy and public radio, we'll
do it on Wednesday. That's my Cliffhanger, very strange man,
coming soon.
Speaker 2 (37:29):
I'm so excited. I kind of had a feeling that
all of the voices and stories behind public radio were
unique and interesting. But I'm happy to find out that
I was right.
Speaker 1 (37:39):
Isn't it like it's interesting? I have this thing where
whenever there's like a public good that seems obvious, like
libraries is my main example of this, I take libraries
for granted, right, I'm like, well, of course we have libraries. Yeah,
But the idea of trying to pitch the American public,
or specifically the American government on libraries today, if they
didn't already exist, would be impossible. Like, hear me out.
(38:03):
Here's this place. It's like a store, but everything's free
and you just have to bring it back. But if
you don't, it's not a big deal and you're not
going to get arrested for it.
Speaker 3 (38:13):
Like yeah, And they're like, so how do we make
money on that? Here's the thing, Like, you don't. It's
just for people.
Speaker 2 (38:19):
It's just good for people.
Speaker 1 (38:21):
I'm sure there's studies that prove it makes the economy stronger.
Speaker 2 (38:23):
I don't know a thousand percent. No, I mean, what's
more punk rock than the library? Shout out to my
public library. Not that long ago. I needed a soldiering iron,
and I only needed it for one small thing. I
could have gone to Amazon bought it and then had
it just be junk around my tiny apartment forever. Yeah,
I was able to borrow one from the public library.
So they have a lot more than just books. They
(38:44):
have all kinds of things you could need. Yet I do.
Speaker 1 (38:48):
It's such a good idea, and public radio is such
a good idea, you know, And it's yeah, it's one
of these things that I take for granted. I'm like, oh,
of course there's NPR everywhere, but then you realize that,
like in a lot of rural areas where I live,
NPR is like the only actual source of news, you.
Speaker 2 (39:04):
Know, and when we I mean not to get on
my soapbox, but when hostile fascist administrations cracked down on that,
it's not an abstract thing. You are making it harder
for those communities to stay informed about what's going on.
Speaker 1 (39:18):
Right totally, And yeah, rural communities, poor rural communities are
going to be hit are already being hit incredibly hard
by the stripping of all public good. But obviously we
don't care about the present here. This is totally just
a history show we totally don't do this so that
people are aware of how hard everyone had to fight
to have the good things and how hard we should
(39:39):
fight to keep them.
Speaker 2 (39:41):
And how easily they can be taken away if we
don't really protect them intentionally.
Speaker 1 (39:46):
That part I didn't. I also took for granted as
a kid, you know, I took all that for granted.
But I don't anymore. Yeah. Same anyway, Well, you got
anything you want to plug here at the.
Speaker 2 (39:57):
End, Yeah, you can listen to my podcast on the
wonderful iHeartRadio Network. There are no girls on the internet.
Please check it out.
Speaker 1 (40:06):
Hell yeah, what else should we shout out? There's now
new feeds for a whole bunch of the shows on
cool Zone Media, including cools on media, book Club now
as its own feed. If you want to hear me,
read you stories, and ian you guys think you want
to plug?
Speaker 3 (40:21):
No, you nail that. I was going to call out
the feeds, but you beat me to it. So yeah,
we're great. Just a great episode and keep enjoying the content, people, and.
Speaker 1 (40:30):
I'll see you all on Wednesday.
Speaker 3 (40:33):
Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of
cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2 (40:37):
For more podcasts and cool Zone Media. Visit our website
Speaker 1 (40:40):
Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
I'm a Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Host
Margaret Killjoy
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