September 1, 2025 • 45 mins
Margaret talks with Mangesh Hattikudur about the antifascist who invented table soccer and the socialist photographer who invented air mail.
Sources:
https://spainonthisday.com/alejandro-finisterre-the-inventor-of-table-football
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2007/feb/24/guardianobituaries.spain
https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alejandro_Finisterre
https://historia-hispanica.rah.es/biografias/50737-alejandro-campos-ramirez
https://raicesalaire.com/alejandro-finisterre/
https://www.revistadefrente.cl/el-poeta-anarquista-que-invento-el-taca-taca-para-la-ninez-victima-de-la-guerra-civil-espanola/
https://www.adiantegalicia.es/reportaxes/2019/09/08/alejandro-finisterre-la-historia-jamas-contada-del-genio-del-futbolin-en-el-ano-del-centenario-de-su-natalicio.html
https://www.lambiek.net/artists/n/nadar.htm
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Hello, and welcome to Cool People Pitted Cool Stuff. You're
a weekly reminder that when bad things are happening, there's
people trying to do good things, and sometimes the things
that they do is invent things in the middle of
a crisis. I'm your host, Marra Kilchray and my guest
today is the one and only mangsh Hedaicoder who brought
the world Mental Floss and as the host of the
show Part Time Genius and runs the production company Kaleidoscope.
(00:28):
And I just learned right before we started recording, did
a podcast on astrology that I have to hear.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
It's called stylin Drive. I highly recommend it.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
I got told that you wouldn't tell me what it
was about ahead of time, but now we're on air,
so you have to. Eh, you could.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Give the elevator pitch mango.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
I was just really curious and so this is a
good way to pressure you into it. Hi, Welcome to
my show.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
The whole thing for me was growing up Indian. You know,
astrology was such a joke in the US in a sense,
but in indiots take so seriously and for me the
idea was like, I don't believe in astrology. But it
keeps happening to me in the fact that, like my parents,
they were introduced to each other as you know, an
(01:12):
arranged marriage, and so they were given lots of options.
They were only introduced to one another because their charts
matched up. And so like, my mom couldn't have a
mother in law because like her chart basically like would
indicate bad health for the mother in law. And my
dad his mom passed away when he was like one
or something, and so like that's part of the reason,
and the other elements of their chart match up too.
But it's one of these things that whether or not
(01:33):
you believe in astrology, there's so many other people that
believe in astrology that the world is affected by it,
and so it was kind of an exploration of that.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
Yeah, No, it's really interesting to me because I'm really
interested in the idea that if you create a structure,
you can create meaning out of a structure. You know,
I don't know, I'm I'm excited to listen to your show.
Speaker 3 (01:52):
I think that's absolutely true. And I also think, like
you know, for Indians in particular, there's this joke that
like it's okay to to be a psychiatrist, but not
see a psychiatrist. Right, That's so funny and so like
astrology like provides similar space for grief and for dealing
with problems and trying to understand or cope, and so like,
(02:16):
it makes sense why it's such an important part of
Indian culture.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
Yeah, I like that that it creates this pocket to
actually talk about things that, like you can't otherwise talk about.
But what we're gonna talk about today is normally the
show is very serious. That's not always true, but currently
I've been on this like string of very serious episodes.
But I woke up this morning and read the news.
And by this morning, I mean two days ago when
(02:40):
I wrote this part of the script. I woke up
this morning, I read the news, which was a mistake.
And it's funny because it would have been even more
of a mistake today as we deal with a whatever.
So the news wasn't particularly good this morning or the
morning when I wrote this script. And if you're listening
to this in the future, you're probably gonna be like, well,
that could have been any morning in twenty twenty five.
I've noyede what you're talking about, Margaret, And so I'm
(03:02):
not going to clarify. Usually, I rise to the occasion
of dire news and try my hardest to make the
show's topics specifically relevant to the modern world. And I've
been doing this whole series about the rise of the
modern protest movement for months now, and I am not
doing that today. Today I'm going to do something slightly different.
I was listening to this tiny niche podcast called Behind
(03:23):
the Bastards.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
Have never heard of it?
Speaker 2 (03:25):
Yeah, no, it's a show about bad people. Why would
anyone listen to a show about bad people that doesn't
make anything idea? I like that show a lot. And
I was listening to the fact that a fascist invented
stand up comedy, and I thought, well, our side has
invented a bunch of really weird things too. Yeah, so
(03:45):
today I'd rather talk about table soccer than fascism.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
I love that. That's what you got from the Frank Fame episode.
You were like, that's us. What about good inventions?
Speaker 2 (04:01):
Yeah, so today and Wednesday we're gonna talk about two
different things invented by two different people, and people who
were involved in fighting for a better world who also
invented some stuff. And I want to start with table soccer, foosball.
You ever played table soccer?
Speaker 3 (04:21):
I have? But before that, can I just say like,
I've been thinking a ton about inventions recently, Okay, like
it's just been on my mind because I'm trying to
make some new shows for Kaleidoscope. And one of the
things I used to watch as a kid was between cartoons.
Sometimes they had this show with this guy named doctor
Fad who had invented I don't know if you remember
(04:42):
this or if you're too young, but there was like
a wacky WallWalker, which was this like spider, this globby
spider that you would throw at at glass and it
would slowly walk. Yeah, yeah, And so he made like
millions of dollars on this. He used to come in
like cereal boxes and stuff like that the prize, and
then he had this inventions show on Saturday mornings, and
(05:04):
so like he'd tell you like the history of the
skateboard or like these other things, and then he'd bring
on kid inventors.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
One of our subjects today was a kid inventor.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
I remember doctor Fad.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
He was so cool, but it made me and my
friends try to make like a Rube Goldberg machine that
would fry an egg for us, and you know, we
just broke a lot of eggs. But it was just
like fun. And you know, today like every kid wants
to be like a coder or they're like vibe coding
or whatever. Influence and stuff like that versus like like
(05:39):
actually putting things together and playing and making things and
so like, I've been thinking about inventions a lot, so
I love that this is the topic.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
I'm so glad because when I was a kid, I
loved the little weird books that were like wacky inventions.
And it's the guy who invented the hat where it
doffs itself so that if you see something, if a
doff your cap but you're holding your groceries, you can
like nod in your hat doffs you know, I remember
that one really clearly.
Speaker 3 (06:07):
That's so great.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
That's basically we're talking about about the anti fascist version
of this. There was this long list that I could
have gotten to. There's like weird connections to all kinds
of things, including the the technical, like a if you
put a machine gun in the back of a pickup truck.
This was invented by anarchists in Ukraine during the Russian
(06:31):
Civil War. It's called the tachanka. Oh we're not covering
that one. I had this whole long list and then
there was like negative ones that like our side invented,
like the car bomb, but instead I went with table
soccer airmail. Just to spoil the second one.
Speaker 3 (06:48):
Well, I have played table soccer. I really love it,
and so I'm excited to hear about the origin.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
Hell yeah, I didn't play it a lot as a kid,
but when I would spend time in like squats in Europe,
it was a big deal, a very serious thing. People
took it very seriously, and unfortunately I sort of lied
when I said I wasn't gona talk about fascism this
week because the reason we have table football, and I'm
gonna call it table football from here on out, because
I've spent enough time in the not United States that
(07:15):
football is clearly the appropriate word. I hate to be like, no,
it's Barcelona, but like, I hate to be that way,
but football is clearly the right word for the game
that the entire rest of the world plays, where you
kick the ball with your feet.
Speaker 3 (07:29):
I like the idea that for the rest of this transcript,
all the words will have extra use in the.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
Yeahs, Yeah, I'm gonna talk about Napoli instead of people.
But it's football, it's table football, perfect. Fine, How would
you even make a table football of American football would
be terrible. So the reason we have table football is
because of anti fascism, and the reason we have anti
(07:57):
fascism is because Mussolini went and invented fascism. And unfortunately,
if we're going to acknowledge all the shit that the
left invented, I'm gonna be brutally honest here for a
second and say that that list includes fascism. Fascism is
not a left wing ideology. It is not. It has
always been a right wing ideology. It's just the thing
that distinguishes fascism from traditional conservatism is that it takes
(08:20):
revolutionary ideas and strategies from the left and applies it
to right wing politics. This is what Mussolini was doing.
And Mussolini was raised a leftist and spent the early
period of his life a leftist. His parents were involved
in Italian nationalism, which was a left wing cause, and anarchism,
which was a left wing cause. Mussolini himself became a socialist.
(08:42):
I oh, just to warn you, I really like context
in this show so in order to talk about table soccer,
I have to talk about the invention of fascism. But
we'll get to table soccer. Oh no, I said, I'd
call it football.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
Fuck already, fucking it up, magpie already.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
I can't do it.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
In America too long.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
I know, I know, it's like born here or something.
And so Mussolini was a socialist for a long time,
but he realized he liked all the fiery rhetoric of socialism,
but he hated all that everyone should take care of
each other and be nice and equal and all that stuff.
So he invented fascism. That was the little domino that
(09:20):
gets pushed over to the big important domino of foosball
at the end of the chain. Right, that's the main
thing that happened with fascism because one guy who liked
fascism and was a dictator of Spain was named Francisco Franco.
And it's worth knowing that if you name your kid
Francisco Franco, I just why would you give your kid
(09:42):
the same name twice? Why would you name your kid
John Johnson. I don't know. It just doesn't seem like
you're setting them up for success. I don't think that
this is why Franco turned out the way he did.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
But one of the greatest people I knew was named
Mark Markuson.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
Oh really, yeah, I feel like, what's wrong with your parents?
Speaker 1 (10:02):
I think they named him William, but he went by Mark,
so it was a self choice. Oh okay, Oh, but
he was Mark Markerson and he was a wonderful man
and he was very kind to my father.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
So I guess I am a big believer and you
can name yourself whatever you want. I am too, So
all right, I take it back. Franco's problem is that
he's a fascist.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
Yeah, nothing is.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
The same name. Twice, take it back. You ever heard
of the Spanish Civil War? This is the trick question
of the show.
Speaker 3 (10:30):
Basically, tell me, okay, tell me all about it. I'm
here for all right.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
Spanish Civil War I've covered I have more times on
this show than I should should have because it's one
of the most important fascist versus anti fascist fights in history.
It's like the little precursor to World War Two in
a lot of ways, and it is remarkably relevant today.
I'm sad to say the way in which the Spanish
Civil War played out and the shortest version is that
(10:55):
Spain had a brand new republic. It had democracy and
all of that, and the far right wasn't happy about that.
So this general named John Johnson, sorry Francisco Franco, tried
to stage a coup and he was like, all right,
I'm taking over. We can't have all this democracy nonsense.
I'm in charge now again irrelevant to today, and he lost.
Franco lost this coup because scrappy militias made out of
(11:19):
a narcosyndicalists and the local cops basically worked together. No
one likes to admit that particular team up, and they
stopped the coup in its tracks. The workers were armed
and they stopped the coup. It became a long drawn
out civil war with a revolution nestled inside of it,
and basically organized labor delayed fascism for years, and I
(11:43):
think that is a thing worth looking at as we
look at the modern world. One of the big parts
of the civil war is that the capital city, Madrid,
was under siege by fascists for years. This is the
context that's going to lead to foosball. Madrid is under
and a bunch of people lived in Madrid, including a
strange teenaged poet named Alejandro Fistade. His last name, which
(12:09):
he picked for himself, means the end of the world,
which is a name that goes hard. He also picked
it because he's from a town called Finistade, so it
wasn't like a I'm still here for when people name
themselves the end of the.
Speaker 3 (12:21):
World, right right.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
Alejandro was an anarchist communist. He was also a businessman.
He was an inventor. He was an adventurer. He was
an anti fascist spy. He was an exile. He was
a hijacker. He was the emperor of poetry publishing according
to a bunch of people by the end of his life.
And he is just a fucking interesting man. I went
into this being like, oh, yeah, the guy I'm been
(12:45):
a table soccer I've like heard him.
Speaker 3 (12:47):
You know, that's unbelievable.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
At some point he's gonna have a monopoly on slot
machines in a country. But we'll get there. There is
not a ton about al Jhanna thrown English, and some
of what is available in English is contradictory, and so
I'm relying on several article length biographies, like his obituary
in the Guardian as well as machine translations of various
(13:12):
Spanish sources, which is not usually what I do. So
I just kind of want to admit that there's gonna
be some machine translated sources, and those sources that people
can look at, well, they don't have to look at
the machine translations. That if you speak Spanish better than
I do, you can just read it. But this is
the best I can stitch together about this interesting man's life,
that every version of it is contradictory to every other version.
(13:36):
And the first thing that happened in this man's life
was that he had to go to ads. It happened
as soon as he was born, just immediately upon being born,
immediate ad break. He had an ad break, yep, just
like us. And so in honor of that pivotal moment
of his life, his baptism as it were, into now,
(13:57):
this guy wouldn't have been a podcaster. He would have
been a poetry pot podcaster and no one would have listened.
So funny, there's probably poetry podcasts anyway, here's ads and Rebecca.
Alejandro was born Alejandro Campas Ramirez on May sixth, nineteen nineteen.
(14:19):
He was one of ten kids, which is to say
that Spain is a Catholic country, and he was raised
by a lighthouse keeper in Galicia, which is in the
northwest of Spain, up there above Portugal. The lighthouse was
in a town called Finnistade the end of the World,
and his family was apparently well to do. His father
was a radio operator for the lighthouse, and it was
(14:40):
like this like hard to get job. His father, the
lighthouse keeper, decided to become a shoemaker. Also, maybe he
comes from a long line of shoemakers, but some of
the articles are literally like, we don't understand how this
can be true. Anyway, whatever, he's a shoemaker and a
lighthouse keeper and a radio operator and they move into
(15:01):
the city when Alejandro's five. His father, I believe, is
fairly conservative and once turned his kid in to the
police for stealing a gold bracelet. I can't imagine turning
my kid into the police.
Speaker 3 (15:12):
But also I know that feels traumatizing.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
I know watching this kid turns out fine, So I'm like,
it doesn't you know this was like a Mastard's episode.
You'd be like, and that's where it all went. No, like,
it turns out great. When Alejandro is fifteen, he went
to Madrid to study basically the equivalent of high school,
but his father's business goes bankrupt. The shoemaking shoes aren't shoemaking,
and in order to stay in school, he has to
(15:37):
start working as a teacher's assistant in the school, he's
like grading younger kid's papers. He also works as a bricklayer.
He works as a type setter and a tap dancer.
Because I didn't even mention that this man is going
to write ballets and do ballet.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
It's amazing.
Speaker 2 (15:53):
This man is one of the most jack of ball.
I think a lot of inventors are jack of all trades.
If you're a jack of all trades, are stuck being
a writer, a podcast or an inventor. I think the
other thing he does for money is he starts a
literary journal and sells copies of poetry magazines, which I'm
you know, honestly, that probably actually was better business one
hundred years ago. He starts a literary journal alongside this
(16:14):
major literary figure in Spain who is not yet a
major literary figure in Spain, and an anarchist named Leon
Felipe and another friend, and they're selling copies of a
paper called Paso a la Juventud Step to Youth, and
I think it's I actually can't figure out what it means.
I tried several times to figure out exactly what they
mean by that, but it's a paper like a like, hey,
(16:35):
step up, let's be radicals. He's part of this radical,
you know, art movement that's going on, and he's mostly
remembered for inventing table soccer. But his own recollection of
his life is about poetry, and it's actually not about
his own poetry. He's very like I'm a mediocre poet.
He's really into promoting other people's poetry. And then the
(16:56):
war breaks out, that whole coup thing, right, and he's
and he's living in Madrid and the fascists are trying
to seize Madrid. It's the capital, it's the place to seize.
And the fascists have tens of thousands of trained armed soldiers,
mostly from the colonies, and they've got Nazi tank units
and they've got Nazi bombers and all this shit. And
(17:18):
the Republicans, the people who want the republic to continue
with democracy and all of that. I love the Spanish
Civil War because literally every definition is just like the
opposite of you know, the Republicans are the leftists. The
Republicans holding the city have the numerical advantage, but it's
mostly cops and labor unions, and they're mostly armed with rifles,
and the labor unions are mostly anarchists. They're in the
(17:39):
CNT and they only got armed very very recently because
the government for some weird reason didn't want to give
out tens of thousands of rifles to anarchists. This is
the weirdest war. I can't find confirmation that Alejandro was
part of the fighting. Everything about the story always implies
(18:03):
that he was, and everything about his personality and his
actions I believe he was. He was only seventeen, so
who knows. The fighting when they try to take Madrid,
it's later going to be a long drawn out siege,
but when they just like try to storm and take it.
The fighting goes on for eleven days in November nineteen
thirty six, from November eighth to November nineteenth. And this
(18:27):
is some of the most cinematic dramatic war fighting I've
ever heard about. You have well trained soldiers being driven
back by this scrappy and unlikely coalition that keeps falling
apart to infighting because it's leftists. At one point, the
Republican general like all the troops are like failing and
(18:47):
starting to run away, and the Republican general just like
walks out with a pistol in his hand and he's like,
I'm going to stand here and die, you know. And
so everyone rallies and they push out the Nazis while
the fascist the Nazis are well, the Nazis are there too, actually,
and they push them back and they win. Along the way,
nineteen hundred internationalist forces from all over the world show
(19:10):
up to boost morale, including plenty of German socialists who
are like, we don't like the whole Nazi thing. We
are absolutely here to fight against the Nazis. And you've
got people from all sorts of countries fighting on both
sides of this battle. There's like a whole thing that
doesn't get talked about enough that I want to do
more about. Where like a lot of the nationalist forces
(19:31):
were like African forces from the colonies, but then there
were also like African forces in the Republican side, and
they don't get talked about as much, and like it's
it's so messy. This is my no one who's listening
to surprise by this, this is my like Roman Empire thing.
Speaker 3 (19:50):
I mean, it's fascinating. Why were people so invested from
the rest of the world.
Speaker 2 (19:55):
Yeah, this was the first war against fascism. So you
have this where basically everyone expects the Western democracies to
step up and go fight, right, France, England, the UK,
Oh sorry France, the UK and America. People are like, oh, well,
of course, we're not going to let fascism take over, right,
We're going to defend the republic. And instead the only
(20:18):
two countries that send material aid are the USSR in
Mexico and the USSR Stalin. So he does it really
badly and he tries to control everything. And so you
have all of these socialists that like, you've just had
this Popular Front government elected in France, where basically the
entire left, from liberals to progressives to everyone is like,
(20:39):
we just don't want fascism, so we will vote It's
like the blue no matter who, only it's much it's
not Democrats, you know, it's like much more radical. And
everyone's like, we're going to stop fascism by whatever means.
And so we have this popular Front government in France.
Everyone's like, of course that we're going to go fight,
(21:00):
and instead what they do is that the Western powers
put an embargo on Spain where they're like, no one
can help either side, and that means helping the fascists.
And everyone was really disappointed. So thousands of people, including
George Orwell's kind of the most famous English language person.
Speaker 3 (21:18):
Yeah, I remember like driving an ambulance or something, right, or.
Speaker 2 (21:22):
Like Hemingway wrote it, drove an ambulance Hemingway or Well
through grenades at fascists. It got shot through the neck. Oh,
him and his wife had to escape Spain because the
Stalinists were after them in the end. And this is
part of why this man hated the USSR, is that
he went to go kill fascists and had to flee
(21:43):
the communists.
Speaker 3 (21:45):
Yeah, that's crazy.
Speaker 2 (21:46):
Yeah. So when nineteen hundred internationalist forces show up, everyone's like,
it's not enough troops to change the tide, right, But
it's like we're not alone, you know, even though we're
cut off from the rest of the world, you know,
here we are. And then the last unit to show
up to try to break this siege was four thousand
(22:07):
anarchists from the Drudi column. Who is this anarchist general
and former bank robber Buenaventuida Deruti, And he's killed in
the fighting, possibly by friendly fire, possibly he was assassinated
by the communists. People will argue about this until the
sun devours the earth, and either way is honestly possible.
So all these people show up to help break the
siege and they defend the city, and the fascists fail
(22:30):
to take Madrid, which means that the civil war and
the anti fascists are right when they come together to
fight in Spain, because this drags the civil war out
for years, which means by the time that Franco takes power,
just as World War two is about to kick off,
Spain is fucking wrecked by war. So Franco is all
(22:50):
the incentive in the world to stay the fuck out
of World War Two. He's like, yeah, I no, I
get it. I don't want to lose any more than
I already have, which means, in an indirect way, I
really like drawing grand conclusions about butterflies flapping their wings
and then saving the world from fascism. In this indirect way,
the people who defended Madrid for eleven days in November
nineteen thirty nine, helped every single one of us who
(23:14):
isn't living under Nazi control right now. The reason I
like thinking about that is that I like thinking about
how we all have this role to play, even if
it's just like I don't want my town to be
taken over by fascist forces, which again only happened in
the nineteen thirties, but like, if it were to happen now,
it would probably be important for people to prevent that from happening.
(23:34):
Fights that seem smaller opten much larger than we realize
is the thing that I like about reading about this
battle in Madrid.
Speaker 3 (23:41):
I like that too. I like the idea of people's
fights and struggles like meaning something right, there's something really
nice about that.
Speaker 2 (23:48):
And you never know what it's going to be, you know,
you never know, Like every single political struggle that I've
covered in the show, you have all of these tiny
little things, and sometimes they're like the thing that matters,
you know. So the fascist fail to take Madrid, and
so instead of being like, all right, find whatever, I
guess you don't want fascism, No, they just bomb the
(24:11):
shit out of the city. And it's one of the
first like aerial bombardments of a civilian population in history
is the bombing of Madrid. I'm willing to bet because
the thing I read said one of the first. I'm
willing to bet that that means that probably Western democracies
did that to colonies before that. That's my assumption, but
I don't know. And so Nazi planes are dropping bombs
(24:31):
over every part of the city except the richest neighborhoods
where more of the fascist sympathizers live, so they don't
bomb that area, and they bomb everywhere else. And this
I believe is when our seventeen year old poet who
tap dances and is trying to go to school, his
house falls on top of him.
Speaker 1 (24:52):
Oh my god.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
Yeah, it could have been earlier in the fighting, but
he is crushed by the rubble of his own house.
And the most likely moment is the four days of bombing.
He survives a fucking house falling on him, which is impressive, unbelievable. Yeah, yeah,
I would be seventeen. Again. I don't know. I mean,
it's also just luck, but like he's very badly wounded
(25:16):
and he's taken first to I've tried so much to
figure out how the siege affected getting medical refugees out
of the city, and I don't know, and I'm frustrated.
But there's so many books written about this conflict, and
I've only read so many of them. So he's taken
it first to Valencia on the coast, and then further
up into Catalonia, which is the northeastern part of Spain,
(25:37):
although if you live in Catalonia you're mad that I've
called it part of Spain, because it does not want
to be part of Spain. Catalonia is an anarchist hands
at this point, the CNT the labor unions have taken
over the region and are trying to run things basically
from each according to ability, to each according to need,
and theoretically the decisions are being made democratically from the
(25:59):
bottom up. There's whatever a revolution. So this is where
he shows up, and he's now in revolutionary Catalonia, recovering
in a hospital I believe for wounded children because he's
seventeen years old, and he looks around and he goes
all of these kids, they just wish they were out
playing football and they can't because they're wounded. So he
(26:24):
invents football in table football. Little guys on rods on
a table that kick a ball when you spin the rods.
Speaker 3 (26:33):
That is incredible.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
Yeah, he does it within like a month of showing
up there because he's wounded in November, and by Christmas
they're all playing fucking foosball together. And there's a bunch
of different versions of table soccer, and some of them
came before his, but his is the main one that's
around today. When he's trying to invent this thing, he
(26:56):
gets another refugee, a Bosque carpenter named Francisco Javier Altuna,
to make the table and the figures, and then Alejandro
patents it at the start of nineteen thirty seven, which yeah,
means that he's invented it enough to patent it within
two months of getting his own house. I believe dropped
on him and it was the local leader of the CNT,
(27:18):
the labor union who encouraged him to patent it. And
all the kids who were disabled by war get to
play football together. And it wasn't even the first thing
he invented in the hospital. But yeah, so another invention
that he made a bunch of money off of his
entire life when he's seventeen, he had a crush on
one of the nurses named Nuria, and Nuria was a pianist,
(27:41):
and so he invented the first foot operated page turner
for sheet music in order to impress her.
Speaker 3 (27:52):
That's amazing, I know, and I.
Speaker 2 (27:55):
Have no idea like that is I want a movie
this guy so badly, and this is the start of
his fucking life.
Speaker 3 (28:06):
So it's also insane that, like at seventeen, he's done
all this stuff right, Like he started a poetry magazine
or whatever, revolutionary like all these things and.
Speaker 2 (28:17):
Helped save the world from fascism potentially. I actually again
did not know whether he fought one way or the other.
But he is going to be fleeing from the fascists
the rest of his life, so like, well, actually he
outlives them, which is cool. But Franco wins the war
in nineteen thirty nine and all the Republicans and the
anarchists and the communists are forced to flee on foot
over the Pyrenees Mountains to get to France. We've covered
(28:38):
this a bunch before on the show. They were all
put into a French concentration camp before the Nazis took
over France. Some of them continued to cross back and
forth into Spain, trying to assassinate Franco and continue the fight.
Others knuckle down and become partisans fighting against the Nazis.
It's Spanish anarchists who roll the first tanks into Paris
to liberate it from the Nazis. Alejandro crosses the mountains
(29:02):
on foot, despite the fact that his leg never fully healed,
and one version of the story is he did it
as soon as Franco took power, and another is that
he did it years later. And I don't fucking know.
I think he might have done it multiple times, I whatever.
While he's crossing the mountains, he says, all I had
with me was a can of sardines, the patent papers
(29:23):
on my inventions, and two plays he had written again,
probably seventeen years old, or he doesn't flee until nineteen
forty seven. I've read both. In France, he writes ballets,
most of them are based on Galician folklore. He becomes
a fairly famous folklorist during his time in France, and
(29:46):
the story is about what happened to him in the
nineteen forties. This is the most contradictory part it seems
that he went to France, he came back because he
was broke. He was conscripted into the Francoist army in
the colonies, but he served four years in prison in
Morocco rather than actually serve in the military. Somewhere along
the way, he marries a woman, has a kid, The
(30:06):
kid dies young, and by the end of the nineteen
forties he's back in Paris. In France, one of his
old friends from the hospital had sold table soccer to
a French company. So Alejandro is actually, actually I patented that.
That's why it's so important that, oh the rain destroyed
his patent papers. I don't remember if I said that,
(30:27):
Oh no, that's crazy. So he's crossing and he's like,
oh the rain destroyed it, or he's a liar. I
actually believe him about all this shit.
Speaker 1 (30:36):
I kind of love when you're like or maybe.
Speaker 2 (30:39):
Anyway, here's the problem with researching historical men is that, like,
you get all the way down and then you'll be like,
wait a second, this man's a liar. But I actually
I think that this because he wasn't self aggrandizing as
far as I can tell.
Speaker 1 (30:52):
Can I give a disclaimer it's not just historical men.
Speaker 2 (30:57):
What what? But we've had both feminism and me too.
Speaker 1 (31:03):
Why howdy?
Speaker 2 (31:04):
Oh well that I need some time to think about that. Yeah,
why don't we listen to ads and then when we
come back, we'll have solved patriarchy and we're back. All right,
Everyone have their notes about what's going to destroy patriarchy. Mango,
you can go first. Oh wait, no, you shouldn't have
(31:27):
to go first. You shouldn't go first anymore. That's right, Yeah, Sophie.
Speaker 1 (31:31):
That's going to destroy patriarchy.
Speaker 2 (31:33):
Yeah, yeah, we all join the ads. We ought to
solve this problem.
Speaker 1 (31:37):
For some reason, because we're talking about sport things. The
first thing that came to my mind was Cocoa golf.
She's going to destroy patriarchy. You don't know who that is, No,
I have.
Speaker 2 (31:45):
No idea, but I'm excited that she's going to destroy patriarchy.
Speaker 1 (31:48):
She's a really awesome women's tennis player.
Speaker 3 (31:50):
I think you're right, though, Sophia. I think women's sports
might be the key. I mean, like watching the liberty here,
like play, and like the excitement around. I mean we
were going a couple of years ago before, like tickets
were as expensive and they only have like the first
like tier available, and then they left the rest of
the stadium empty. But like, I never would have imagined that,
(32:11):
like my son would know all the like women basketball players,
like you know, and and your favorite. He really loves.
There's a new I forget what her name is. There's
like a new point guard that came. He also likes
Brianna Stewart. Yes, Stuart Stewie is Cloud Natasha Cloud.
Speaker 1 (32:34):
Oh yeah yeah, yeah, like Sabrina. I love Sabrina.
Speaker 3 (32:38):
Yeah, I like Serrina too.
Speaker 1 (32:40):
So cool.
Speaker 2 (32:40):
Yeah. I think that women's sports is the answer, and
I actually think tennis is a big part of it,
because isn't there something where like almost all men who
are surveyed think that they could score a point against
like the world's best like woman tennis player. Yes, well,
once they all lose, and then the ones who feel
(33:03):
really strongly about it, they can do the thing where
they think that they would win a fight against a bear,
and maybe all men who think that they would win
a fight against a bear have the opportunity. And I
think that would solve a lot of problems issues. I think, yeah, yeah, well,
I'm glad we solve that. During the ads, there see
(33:26):
people are like, why do you have ads, and like
major world issues solved, like my ability to have a
salary and feed my dog that too. So he gets
this money not from ad revenue but instead from patent
revenue from having a mentaled table football, which I tried
to do, but it turns out someone had already done it.
Speaker 1 (33:45):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (33:46):
He uses the money to move to Ecuador, and then
he heads to Guatemala and he starts working selling foosball tables.
He's working with indigenous folks to produce hand card versions
of the game he improves upon the original design. He
famously plays table soccer with Jae Gavara a bunch of times.
He mostly is into publishing a poetry journal. This is
the main thing he does instead of he's like, yeah, yeah, yeah,
(34:07):
sometimes I play foosball with Jegavarro. But he publishes a
poetry journal. Some articles say that it publishes mostly the
Spanish exiles, but I find another source more believable that
says that each issue focused on the poets from a
different country, and that I think maps much more with
what I understand about him. But he's involved in the
(34:28):
Republican diaspora from Spain. More directly because so many people
had to leave Spain. Franco had said, I am willing
to kill half of Spain to rule the other half. Wow,
which means that if you're the half, you gotta get
the fuck out of there. In the early fifties, Guatemala
was one of the countries that recognized the Spanish Republic
(34:49):
as the legitimate government in Spain, so they had an
ambassador still from the Spanish Republic, and at one point
Alejandro is like doing spy shit, transporting papers for him
to Mexico along the way. He's also apparently a businessman
who makes slot machines and is about to bid successfully
on the state monopoly on slot machines for the country.
(35:16):
So he's just such a like he's this total lefty,
but he's also this like go getter, like entrepreneur asshole.
I love him. I love him so much.
Speaker 3 (35:27):
I know because you had me thinking he just has
his like heading the clouds when he's not playing table football,
he's like dreaming poetry and just.
Speaker 2 (35:36):
No, this man's a steamer that he's scheming completely. Yeah,
And part of his scheming is how do I spy
for the Republic against the Francoists, and part of it
is like, all right, slot machines, let's go that's amazing.
Oh that would have been where I should have done
my ad. Oh well, so it goes.
Speaker 1 (35:56):
I just really I just really want every time you
say slot machine for there to be like a.
Speaker 2 (36:03):
Can you add that?
Speaker 1 (36:03):
Can we have like a magpie coaching sound effect? Yeah,
it just seems so funny to me slot machine.
Speaker 2 (36:13):
The CIA is in the US at the time, well,
they were kind of everywhere, and they're rubbing its hands.
It's rubbing its hands together, and it's like, I wonder
if we could overthrow democracy in Guatemala and institute a
right wing dictator, And unfortunately the answer to that question
was yes. In nineteen fifty four, there was a coup,
which means that Alejandro is on fascist takeover of a
(36:34):
country at least number three in his life, possibly more,
but at least three countries he has lived in have
fallen to the far right Spain, France, and Guatemala, and
Francoists decide to kidnap him, and most sources say this
is because he was working for the Republican government as
a spy. But I found one source that was like nah.
(36:57):
They wanted that slot machine money, and it was just
like the way to get rid of him was like
turn him into the francoists. And so they try to
kidnap him and they fail, and then they try to
kidnap him again and they succeed the second time. So
they have him on a plane to Spain and he's like, fuck, fuck,
(37:19):
fuck if I go back to Spain, Franco's just like
killing people left and right. Well, no left, he's killing
people to the left. And so Alejandro goes into the
bathroom of the plane, takes a bar of soap, wraps
it in tinfoil, comes back out and it's like, I
have a bomb. I'm going to kill all of us
(37:40):
if you take me back to Spain. I'm a refugee.
I'm being kidnapped. And the people on the plane are like, well,
we like you and we don't want to blow up,
So that sounds fine, and apparently it's a fairly peaceful hijacking.
They land the plane in Panama and let him out.
What he doesn't go to Spain. He foils the kidnapping attempt.
(38:05):
That foils this is like some fucking Dillinger carving a
gun out of soap bullshit. It's like literally even involved soap,
and Okay, one thing that's annoying is that this is
not his fault. This is the way the history is written.
(38:27):
I think he's still married and she's like in these
countries with him too, and I don't know. I think
he walks to Mexico. It was phrased marches to Mexico.
I suspect he might have gotten on a bus or something.
And I believe his wife meets him there. But again,
his personal life not covered so much. So he moves
(38:47):
to Mexico and he hooks back up with the poet
Leon Filippe, whose old mentor, and when Felipe dies and
I think the sixties, Alejandro becomes his literary executor of
this like fame miss Spanish poet. Alejandro writes some poetry,
but he doesn't see himself as a poet. He's a
publisher and a person who makes poetry happen. He wrote quote,
(39:09):
I published what was forgotten by commercial publishers. And he
visits Spain here and there during the Franco years. I
think at some point it becomes kind of safe for
him to go there, but not to stay there. But
since he publishes a lot of shit, like he specifically
published a bunch of shit that called Franco a toad.
He gets arrested when he goes back to Spain at
(39:31):
one point, and he gets arrested and he gets sentenced
to a year in prison for the shit he's writing
against Franco. But this man is so lucky. Franco dies
and Alejandro serves five days of his sentence before Franco
dies and he's released. Oh wow, incredible, Yeah, that is unbelievable.
Speaker 3 (39:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (39:57):
So he moves back to Spain after half a century
mostly exile, and lives out the rest of his days
outliving the fucking fascists and may we all outlive them.
He marries a second time, I do not know what
happened to his first wife, and he spends the rest
of his days going back and forth between Spain and Mexico.
He lives to the age of eighty seven. He died
(40:19):
on February ninth, two thousand and seven, and one of
the last things he wrote was I believe in progress.
There is a human drive towards happiness, peace, justice and love,
and that world will one day arrive. And that's Alejandro
that is.
Speaker 3 (40:36):
An incredible story, an incredible life.
Speaker 2 (40:39):
I know when he's seventeen, he invented foosball, and that's
the only I'd be almost annoyed at seventeen, You're like,
it's like being a one hit wonder.
Speaker 1 (40:49):
Yeah, what a cool weird little guy.
Speaker 2 (40:52):
Yeah yeah, yeah, he's the inverse of weird little guy.
Speaker 1 (40:55):
Yeah he's a cool weird little guy. Yeah, I'm a fan.
Speaker 2 (41:00):
And yeah, and on Wednesday, I will tell you about
the socialist hippie from the eighteen hundreds who revolutionized photography,
was obsessed with hot air balloons, showed the world its
first aerial photograph, an invented airmail.
Speaker 1 (41:14):
Okay, brag.
Speaker 3 (41:18):
I really really loved the story though. It made me
so happy.
Speaker 2 (41:22):
Also, like the taft.
Speaker 3 (41:23):
Dancing, it's insane writing ballets, folklorists. Who also is into
slot machines, Like, just unbelievable.
Speaker 1 (41:34):
Macpie, what have you invented?
Speaker 2 (41:38):
Nothing to this scale?
Speaker 1 (41:40):
That's true, Mango? Did you invent something?
Speaker 3 (41:46):
As a kid, I tried to invent a heated driveway
so that I wouldn't have to shovel.
Speaker 2 (41:52):
Oh shit, yes, how'd you do it?
Speaker 3 (41:54):
It was more theoretical, Yeah, I couldn't actually figure out
how to make it work.
Speaker 1 (42:01):
Yeah, the only thing I invented relates to podcasting. And
it's not that interesting when you.
Speaker 2 (42:07):
Invant relates to podcasting the podcast.
Speaker 1 (42:10):
No, I invented all these different ways to like import
from feed to feed and like create like many miniature
playlists for things, so that downloads go to one thing
and count to other things. And it's not that interesting,
but it's helped me in my career and my friends shows.
Speaker 2 (42:26):
I mean, that's the thing about like most inventions is
most inventions are like specific niche needs that only affect
like one industry.
Speaker 1 (42:33):
Yeah, you know how if you listen to Cool Zone
Media book Club, you can listen to it and they
could have to hear feed or the cool People Feed.
You're welcome, Thank you. That was me.
Speaker 2 (42:44):
Okay, well you got anything you want to plug here
at the end.
Speaker 3 (42:50):
Yeah. Part Time Genius is the show I do, and
I really love it, and I feel like it has
some of the similar spirit of finding people who are
just fascinating and crazy and wonderful and so I and
this felt very akin to my sensibilities.
Speaker 1 (43:02):
Oh yeah, and I really like your co host.
Speaker 3 (43:05):
Yeah, I co host it with my friend Will who
used to live next to me in college, in the
room next to me through college, and we co founded
Mental Flaws together, and we still get to make a
show together, which is pretty awesome.
Speaker 1 (43:19):
He's also he's also my boss.
Speaker 2 (43:21):
It's like a cool version of the like the thing
that you do when you're young actually sets up like
the rest of your life.
Speaker 1 (43:30):
Yeah you know.
Speaker 3 (43:31):
Yeah cool, Yeah, it's pretty fun.
Speaker 2 (43:34):
Well, why do I have to plug? Listen to Weird
Little Guys? It's a podcast that's like the inverse of
this one. There's only one podcast that's in verse of
this one. It's Weird Little Guys. I can't think of
any others.
Speaker 1 (43:47):
No, no idea.
Speaker 2 (43:50):
It's funny to make that joke. I don't know.
Speaker 1 (43:52):
Why can I plug a thing?
Speaker 2 (43:54):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (43:55):
Yeah, I wanted to plug Sean Mahlan's book, The Podcast Pantheon,
which is available for pre order now, one hundred and
one podcast that change. Shall we listen? It's a feel
proprietor now. It's out in September. Where we get books
behind the Bastards, isn't it?
Speaker 2 (44:07):
I was about to ask if any cool zone got
into it?
Speaker 3 (44:09):
Fuck you? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (44:10):
Yeah. He wrote nice things, which I appreciate. But yeah,
it's this is really a cool book. Cool book, and
it like is like, you know, a book so I
can show my friends and family that, yes, my job real,
I'm my job real.
Speaker 2 (44:25):
Isn't it funny that like the number of people who
are going to no offense to that book, the number
of people are going to read that book, yeah, versus
listen to the podcast in that book. Like, but books
are so meaningful, Like the fact that I have books
out is like the anchor of my like credibility. It
is not the majority of the people who I mean,
(44:46):
everyone reads my books. I'm the most best selling author.
Speaker 1 (44:48):
Yeah, you are the world. Well here's the thing. Here's
the thing. The one time, this is before the pandemic,
that my brother and his wife, my brother the doctor,
his wife the lawyer, came to visit me at the
iHeartRadio podcast studio in Los Angeles. There was only one
other person there and they were asleep on the couch.
So my job it looked like I had like, you know,
you fake job, rented a fake office, and that I
(45:11):
did not actually have real job.
Speaker 2 (45:13):
So there's a book.
Speaker 1 (45:15):
Now, there's a book. You best believe I ordered them
a copy.
Speaker 2 (45:21):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (45:22):
Sean. Yeah, that's what I wanted to plug.
Speaker 2 (45:25):
Oh yeah, all right, I will see you all Wednesday.
Speaker 1 (45:28):
They Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production
of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts and cool Zone Media,
visit our website Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out
on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
your podcasts.
Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Hello, and welcome to Cool People Pitted Cool Stuff. You're
a weekly reminder that when bad things are happening, there's
people trying to do good things, and sometimes the things
that they do is invent things in the middle of
a crisis. I'm your host, Marra Kilchray and my guest
today is the one and only mangsh Hedaicoder who brought
the world Mental Floss and as the host of the
show Part Time Genius and runs the production company Kaleidoscope.
(00:28):
And I just learned right before we started recording, did
a podcast on astrology that I have to hear.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
It's called stylin Drive. I highly recommend it.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
I got told that you wouldn't tell me what it
was about ahead of time, but now we're on air,
so you have to. Eh, you could.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Give the elevator pitch mango.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
I was just really curious and so this is a
good way to pressure you into it. Hi, Welcome to
my show.
Speaker 3 (00:52):
The whole thing for me was growing up Indian. You know,
astrology was such a joke in the US in a sense,
but in indiots take so seriously and for me the
idea was like, I don't believe in astrology. But it
keeps happening to me in the fact that, like my parents,
they were introduced to each other as you know, an
(01:12):
arranged marriage, and so they were given lots of options.
They were only introduced to one another because their charts
matched up. And so like, my mom couldn't have a
mother in law because like her chart basically like would
indicate bad health for the mother in law. And my
dad his mom passed away when he was like one
or something, and so like that's part of the reason,
and the other elements of their chart match up too.
But it's one of these things that whether or not
(01:33):
you believe in astrology, there's so many other people that
believe in astrology that the world is affected by it,
and so it was kind of an exploration of that.
Speaker 2 (01:41):
Yeah, No, it's really interesting to me because I'm really
interested in the idea that if you create a structure,
you can create meaning out of a structure. You know,
I don't know, I'm I'm excited to listen to your show.
Speaker 3 (01:52):
I think that's absolutely true. And I also think, like
you know, for Indians in particular, there's this joke that
like it's okay to to be a psychiatrist, but not
see a psychiatrist. Right, That's so funny and so like
astrology like provides similar space for grief and for dealing
with problems and trying to understand or cope, and so like,
(02:16):
it makes sense why it's such an important part of
Indian culture.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
Yeah, I like that that it creates this pocket to
actually talk about things that, like you can't otherwise talk about.
But what we're gonna talk about today is normally the
show is very serious. That's not always true, but currently
I've been on this like string of very serious episodes.
But I woke up this morning and read the news.
And by this morning, I mean two days ago when
(02:40):
I wrote this part of the script. I woke up
this morning, I read the news, which was a mistake.
And it's funny because it would have been even more
of a mistake today as we deal with a whatever.
So the news wasn't particularly good this morning or the
morning when I wrote this script. And if you're listening
to this in the future, you're probably gonna be like, well,
that could have been any morning in twenty twenty five.
I've noyede what you're talking about, Margaret, And so I'm
(03:02):
not going to clarify. Usually, I rise to the occasion
of dire news and try my hardest to make the
show's topics specifically relevant to the modern world. And I've
been doing this whole series about the rise of the
modern protest movement for months now, and I am not
doing that today. Today I'm going to do something slightly different.
I was listening to this tiny niche podcast called Behind
(03:23):
the Bastards.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
Have never heard of it?
Speaker 2 (03:25):
Yeah, no, it's a show about bad people. Why would
anyone listen to a show about bad people that doesn't
make anything idea? I like that show a lot. And
I was listening to the fact that a fascist invented
stand up comedy, and I thought, well, our side has
invented a bunch of really weird things too. Yeah, so
(03:45):
today I'd rather talk about table soccer than fascism.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
I love that. That's what you got from the Frank Fame episode.
You were like, that's us. What about good inventions?
Speaker 2 (04:01):
Yeah, so today and Wednesday we're gonna talk about two
different things invented by two different people, and people who
were involved in fighting for a better world who also
invented some stuff. And I want to start with table soccer, foosball.
You ever played table soccer?
Speaker 3 (04:21):
I have? But before that, can I just say like,
I've been thinking a ton about inventions recently, Okay, like
it's just been on my mind because I'm trying to
make some new shows for Kaleidoscope. And one of the
things I used to watch as a kid was between cartoons.
Sometimes they had this show with this guy named doctor
Fad who had invented I don't know if you remember
(04:42):
this or if you're too young, but there was like
a wacky WallWalker, which was this like spider, this globby
spider that you would throw at at glass and it
would slowly walk. Yeah, yeah, And so he made like
millions of dollars on this. He used to come in
like cereal boxes and stuff like that the prize, and
then he had this inventions show on Saturday mornings, and
(05:04):
so like he'd tell you like the history of the
skateboard or like these other things, and then he'd bring
on kid inventors.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
One of our subjects today was a kid inventor.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
I remember doctor Fad.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
He was so cool, but it made me and my
friends try to make like a Rube Goldberg machine that
would fry an egg for us, and you know, we
just broke a lot of eggs. But it was just
like fun. And you know, today like every kid wants
to be like a coder or they're like vibe coding
or whatever. Influence and stuff like that versus like like
(05:39):
actually putting things together and playing and making things and
so like, I've been thinking about inventions a lot, so
I love that this is the topic.
Speaker 2 (05:45):
I'm so glad because when I was a kid, I
loved the little weird books that were like wacky inventions.
And it's the guy who invented the hat where it
doffs itself so that if you see something, if a
doff your cap but you're holding your groceries, you can
like nod in your hat doffs you know, I remember
that one really clearly.
Speaker 3 (06:07):
That's so great.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
That's basically we're talking about about the anti fascist version
of this. There was this long list that I could
have gotten to. There's like weird connections to all kinds
of things, including the the technical, like a if you
put a machine gun in the back of a pickup truck.
This was invented by anarchists in Ukraine during the Russian
(06:31):
Civil War. It's called the tachanka. Oh we're not covering
that one. I had this whole long list and then
there was like negative ones that like our side invented,
like the car bomb, but instead I went with table
soccer airmail. Just to spoil the second one.
Speaker 3 (06:48):
Well, I have played table soccer. I really love it,
and so I'm excited to hear about the origin.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
Hell yeah, I didn't play it a lot as a kid,
but when I would spend time in like squats in Europe,
it was a big deal, a very serious thing. People
took it very seriously, and unfortunately I sort of lied
when I said I wasn't gona talk about fascism this
week because the reason we have table football, and I'm
gonna call it table football from here on out, because
I've spent enough time in the not United States that
(07:15):
football is clearly the appropriate word. I hate to be like, no,
it's Barcelona, but like, I hate to be that way,
but football is clearly the right word for the game
that the entire rest of the world plays, where you
kick the ball with your feet.
Speaker 3 (07:29):
I like the idea that for the rest of this transcript,
all the words will have extra use in the.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
Yeahs, Yeah, I'm gonna talk about Napoli instead of people.
But it's football, it's table football, perfect. Fine, How would
you even make a table football of American football would
be terrible. So the reason we have table football is
because of anti fascism, and the reason we have anti
(07:57):
fascism is because Mussolini went and invented fascism. And unfortunately,
if we're going to acknowledge all the shit that the
left invented, I'm gonna be brutally honest here for a
second and say that that list includes fascism. Fascism is
not a left wing ideology. It is not. It has
always been a right wing ideology. It's just the thing
that distinguishes fascism from traditional conservatism is that it takes
(08:20):
revolutionary ideas and strategies from the left and applies it
to right wing politics. This is what Mussolini was doing.
And Mussolini was raised a leftist and spent the early
period of his life a leftist. His parents were involved
in Italian nationalism, which was a left wing cause, and anarchism,
which was a left wing cause. Mussolini himself became a socialist.
(08:42):
I oh, just to warn you, I really like context
in this show so in order to talk about table soccer,
I have to talk about the invention of fascism. But
we'll get to table soccer. Oh no, I said, I'd
call it football.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
Fuck already, fucking it up, magpie already.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
I can't do it.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
In America too long.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
I know, I know, it's like born here or something.
And so Mussolini was a socialist for a long time,
but he realized he liked all the fiery rhetoric of socialism,
but he hated all that everyone should take care of
each other and be nice and equal and all that stuff.
So he invented fascism. That was the little domino that
(09:20):
gets pushed over to the big important domino of foosball
at the end of the chain. Right, that's the main
thing that happened with fascism because one guy who liked
fascism and was a dictator of Spain was named Francisco Franco.
And it's worth knowing that if you name your kid
Francisco Franco, I just why would you give your kid
(09:42):
the same name twice? Why would you name your kid
John Johnson. I don't know. It just doesn't seem like
you're setting them up for success. I don't think that
this is why Franco turned out the way he did.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
But one of the greatest people I knew was named
Mark Markuson.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
Oh really, yeah, I feel like, what's wrong with your parents?
Speaker 1 (10:02):
I think they named him William, but he went by Mark,
so it was a self choice. Oh okay, Oh, but
he was Mark Markerson and he was a wonderful man
and he was very kind to my father.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
So I guess I am a big believer and you
can name yourself whatever you want. I am too, So
all right, I take it back. Franco's problem is that
he's a fascist.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
Yeah, nothing is.
Speaker 2 (10:23):
The same name. Twice, take it back. You ever heard
of the Spanish Civil War? This is the trick question
of the show.
Speaker 3 (10:30):
Basically, tell me, okay, tell me all about it. I'm
here for all right.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
Spanish Civil War I've covered I have more times on
this show than I should should have because it's one
of the most important fascist versus anti fascist fights in history.
It's like the little precursor to World War Two in
a lot of ways, and it is remarkably relevant today.
I'm sad to say the way in which the Spanish
Civil War played out and the shortest version is that
(10:55):
Spain had a brand new republic. It had democracy and
all of that, and the far right wasn't happy about that.
So this general named John Johnson, sorry Francisco Franco, tried
to stage a coup and he was like, all right,
I'm taking over. We can't have all this democracy nonsense.
I'm in charge now again irrelevant to today, and he lost.
Franco lost this coup because scrappy militias made out of
(11:19):
a narcosyndicalists and the local cops basically worked together. No
one likes to admit that particular team up, and they
stopped the coup in its tracks. The workers were armed
and they stopped the coup. It became a long drawn
out civil war with a revolution nestled inside of it,
and basically organized labor delayed fascism for years, and I
(11:43):
think that is a thing worth looking at as we
look at the modern world. One of the big parts
of the civil war is that the capital city, Madrid,
was under siege by fascists for years. This is the
context that's going to lead to foosball. Madrid is under
and a bunch of people lived in Madrid, including a
strange teenaged poet named Alejandro Fistade. His last name, which
(12:09):
he picked for himself, means the end of the world,
which is a name that goes hard. He also picked
it because he's from a town called Finistade, so it
wasn't like a I'm still here for when people name
themselves the end of the.
Speaker 3 (12:21):
World, right right.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
Alejandro was an anarchist communist. He was also a businessman.
He was an inventor. He was an adventurer. He was
an anti fascist spy. He was an exile. He was
a hijacker. He was the emperor of poetry publishing according
to a bunch of people by the end of his life.
And he is just a fucking interesting man. I went
into this being like, oh, yeah, the guy I'm been
(12:45):
a table soccer I've like heard him.
Speaker 3 (12:47):
You know, that's unbelievable.
Speaker 2 (12:50):
At some point he's gonna have a monopoly on slot
machines in a country. But we'll get there. There is
not a ton about al Jhanna thrown English, and some
of what is available in English is contradictory, and so
I'm relying on several article length biographies, like his obituary
in the Guardian as well as machine translations of various
(13:12):
Spanish sources, which is not usually what I do. So
I just kind of want to admit that there's gonna
be some machine translated sources, and those sources that people
can look at, well, they don't have to look at
the machine translations. That if you speak Spanish better than
I do, you can just read it. But this is
the best I can stitch together about this interesting man's life,
that every version of it is contradictory to every other version.
(13:36):
And the first thing that happened in this man's life
was that he had to go to ads. It happened
as soon as he was born, just immediately upon being born,
immediate ad break. He had an ad break, yep, just
like us. And so in honor of that pivotal moment
of his life, his baptism as it were, into now,
(13:57):
this guy wouldn't have been a podcaster. He would have
been a poetry pot podcaster and no one would have listened.
So funny, there's probably poetry podcasts anyway, here's ads and Rebecca.
Alejandro was born Alejandro Campas Ramirez on May sixth, nineteen nineteen.
(14:19):
He was one of ten kids, which is to say
that Spain is a Catholic country, and he was raised
by a lighthouse keeper in Galicia, which is in the
northwest of Spain, up there above Portugal. The lighthouse was
in a town called Finnistade the end of the World,
and his family was apparently well to do. His father
was a radio operator for the lighthouse, and it was
(14:40):
like this like hard to get job. His father, the
lighthouse keeper, decided to become a shoemaker. Also, maybe he
comes from a long line of shoemakers, but some of
the articles are literally like, we don't understand how this
can be true. Anyway, whatever, he's a shoemaker and a
lighthouse keeper and a radio operator and they move into
(15:01):
the city when Alejandro's five. His father, I believe, is
fairly conservative and once turned his kid in to the
police for stealing a gold bracelet. I can't imagine turning
my kid into the police.
Speaker 3 (15:12):
But also I know that feels traumatizing.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
I know watching this kid turns out fine, So I'm like,
it doesn't you know this was like a Mastard's episode.
You'd be like, and that's where it all went. No, like,
it turns out great. When Alejandro is fifteen, he went
to Madrid to study basically the equivalent of high school,
but his father's business goes bankrupt. The shoemaking shoes aren't shoemaking,
and in order to stay in school, he has to
(15:37):
start working as a teacher's assistant in the school, he's
like grading younger kid's papers. He also works as a bricklayer.
He works as a type setter and a tap dancer.
Because I didn't even mention that this man is going
to write ballets and do ballet.
Speaker 1 (15:51):
It's amazing.
Speaker 2 (15:53):
This man is one of the most jack of ball.
I think a lot of inventors are jack of all trades.
If you're a jack of all trades, are stuck being
a writer, a podcast or an inventor. I think the
other thing he does for money is he starts a
literary journal and sells copies of poetry magazines, which I'm
you know, honestly, that probably actually was better business one
hundred years ago. He starts a literary journal alongside this
(16:14):
major literary figure in Spain who is not yet a
major literary figure in Spain, and an anarchist named Leon
Felipe and another friend, and they're selling copies of a
paper called Paso a la Juventud Step to Youth, and
I think it's I actually can't figure out what it means.
I tried several times to figure out exactly what they
mean by that, but it's a paper like a like, hey,
(16:35):
step up, let's be radicals. He's part of this radical,
you know, art movement that's going on, and he's mostly
remembered for inventing table soccer. But his own recollection of
his life is about poetry, and it's actually not about
his own poetry. He's very like I'm a mediocre poet.
He's really into promoting other people's poetry. And then the
(16:56):
war breaks out, that whole coup thing, right, and he's
and he's living in Madrid and the fascists are trying
to seize Madrid. It's the capital, it's the place to seize.
And the fascists have tens of thousands of trained armed soldiers,
mostly from the colonies, and they've got Nazi tank units
and they've got Nazi bombers and all this shit. And
(17:18):
the Republicans, the people who want the republic to continue
with democracy and all of that. I love the Spanish
Civil War because literally every definition is just like the
opposite of you know, the Republicans are the leftists. The
Republicans holding the city have the numerical advantage, but it's
mostly cops and labor unions, and they're mostly armed with rifles,
and the labor unions are mostly anarchists. They're in the
(17:39):
CNT and they only got armed very very recently because
the government for some weird reason didn't want to give
out tens of thousands of rifles to anarchists. This is
the weirdest war. I can't find confirmation that Alejandro was
part of the fighting. Everything about the story always implies
(18:03):
that he was, and everything about his personality and his
actions I believe he was. He was only seventeen, so
who knows. The fighting when they try to take Madrid,
it's later going to be a long drawn out siege,
but when they just like try to storm and take it.
The fighting goes on for eleven days in November nineteen
thirty six, from November eighth to November nineteenth. And this
(18:27):
is some of the most cinematic dramatic war fighting I've
ever heard about. You have well trained soldiers being driven
back by this scrappy and unlikely coalition that keeps falling
apart to infighting because it's leftists. At one point, the
Republican general like all the troops are like failing and
(18:47):
starting to run away, and the Republican general just like
walks out with a pistol in his hand and he's like,
I'm going to stand here and die, you know. And
so everyone rallies and they push out the Nazis while
the fascist the Nazis are well, the Nazis are there too, actually,
and they push them back and they win. Along the way,
nineteen hundred internationalist forces from all over the world show
(19:10):
up to boost morale, including plenty of German socialists who
are like, we don't like the whole Nazi thing. We
are absolutely here to fight against the Nazis. And you've
got people from all sorts of countries fighting on both
sides of this battle. There's like a whole thing that
doesn't get talked about enough that I want to do
more about. Where like a lot of the nationalist forces
(19:31):
were like African forces from the colonies, but then there
were also like African forces in the Republican side, and
they don't get talked about as much, and like it's
it's so messy. This is my no one who's listening
to surprise by this, this is my like Roman Empire thing.
Speaker 3 (19:50):
I mean, it's fascinating. Why were people so invested from
the rest of the world.
Speaker 2 (19:55):
Yeah, this was the first war against fascism. So you
have this where basically everyone expects the Western democracies to
step up and go fight, right, France, England, the UK,
Oh sorry France, the UK and America. People are like, oh, well,
of course, we're not going to let fascism take over, right,
We're going to defend the republic. And instead the only
(20:18):
two countries that send material aid are the USSR in
Mexico and the USSR Stalin. So he does it really
badly and he tries to control everything. And so you
have all of these socialists that like, you've just had
this Popular Front government elected in France, where basically the
entire left, from liberals to progressives to everyone is like,
(20:39):
we just don't want fascism, so we will vote It's
like the blue no matter who, only it's much it's
not Democrats, you know, it's like much more radical. And
everyone's like, we're going to stop fascism by whatever means.
And so we have this popular Front government in France.
Everyone's like, of course that we're going to go fight,
(21:00):
and instead what they do is that the Western powers
put an embargo on Spain where they're like, no one
can help either side, and that means helping the fascists.
And everyone was really disappointed. So thousands of people, including
George Orwell's kind of the most famous English language person.
Speaker 3 (21:18):
Yeah, I remember like driving an ambulance or something, right, or.
Speaker 2 (21:22):
Like Hemingway wrote it, drove an ambulance Hemingway or Well
through grenades at fascists. It got shot through the neck. Oh,
him and his wife had to escape Spain because the
Stalinists were after them in the end. And this is
part of why this man hated the USSR, is that
he went to go kill fascists and had to flee
(21:43):
the communists.
Speaker 3 (21:45):
Yeah, that's crazy.
Speaker 2 (21:46):
Yeah. So when nineteen hundred internationalist forces show up, everyone's like,
it's not enough troops to change the tide, right, But
it's like we're not alone, you know, even though we're
cut off from the rest of the world, you know,
here we are. And then the last unit to show
up to try to break this siege was four thousand
(22:07):
anarchists from the Drudi column. Who is this anarchist general
and former bank robber Buenaventuida Deruti, And he's killed in
the fighting, possibly by friendly fire, possibly he was assassinated
by the communists. People will argue about this until the
sun devours the earth, and either way is honestly possible.
So all these people show up to help break the
siege and they defend the city, and the fascists fail
(22:30):
to take Madrid, which means that the civil war and
the anti fascists are right when they come together to
fight in Spain, because this drags the civil war out
for years, which means by the time that Franco takes power,
just as World War two is about to kick off,
Spain is fucking wrecked by war. So Franco is all
(22:50):
the incentive in the world to stay the fuck out
of World War Two. He's like, yeah, I no, I
get it. I don't want to lose any more than
I already have, which means, in an indirect way, I
really like drawing grand conclusions about butterflies flapping their wings
and then saving the world from fascism. In this indirect way,
the people who defended Madrid for eleven days in November
nineteen thirty nine, helped every single one of us who
(23:14):
isn't living under Nazi control right now. The reason I
like thinking about that is that I like thinking about
how we all have this role to play, even if
it's just like I don't want my town to be
taken over by fascist forces, which again only happened in
the nineteen thirties, but like, if it were to happen now,
it would probably be important for people to prevent that from happening.
(23:34):
Fights that seem smaller opten much larger than we realize
is the thing that I like about reading about this
battle in Madrid.
Speaker 3 (23:41):
I like that too. I like the idea of people's
fights and struggles like meaning something right, there's something really
nice about that.
Speaker 2 (23:48):
And you never know what it's going to be, you know,
you never know, Like every single political struggle that I've
covered in the show, you have all of these tiny
little things, and sometimes they're like the thing that matters,
you know. So the fascist fail to take Madrid, and
so instead of being like, all right, find whatever, I
guess you don't want fascism, No, they just bomb the
(24:11):
shit out of the city. And it's one of the
first like aerial bombardments of a civilian population in history
is the bombing of Madrid. I'm willing to bet because
the thing I read said one of the first. I'm
willing to bet that that means that probably Western democracies
did that to colonies before that. That's my assumption, but
I don't know. And so Nazi planes are dropping bombs
(24:31):
over every part of the city except the richest neighborhoods
where more of the fascist sympathizers live, so they don't
bomb that area, and they bomb everywhere else. And this
I believe is when our seventeen year old poet who
tap dances and is trying to go to school, his
house falls on top of him.
Speaker 1 (24:52):
Oh my god.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
Yeah, it could have been earlier in the fighting, but
he is crushed by the rubble of his own house.
And the most likely moment is the four days of bombing.
He survives a fucking house falling on him, which is impressive, unbelievable. Yeah, yeah,
I would be seventeen. Again. I don't know. I mean,
it's also just luck, but like he's very badly wounded
(25:16):
and he's taken first to I've tried so much to
figure out how the siege affected getting medical refugees out
of the city, and I don't know, and I'm frustrated.
But there's so many books written about this conflict, and
I've only read so many of them. So he's taken
it first to Valencia on the coast, and then further
up into Catalonia, which is the northeastern part of Spain,
(25:37):
although if you live in Catalonia you're mad that I've
called it part of Spain, because it does not want
to be part of Spain. Catalonia is an anarchist hands
at this point, the CNT the labor unions have taken
over the region and are trying to run things basically
from each according to ability, to each according to need,
and theoretically the decisions are being made democratically from the
(25:59):
bottom up. There's whatever a revolution. So this is where
he shows up, and he's now in revolutionary Catalonia, recovering
in a hospital I believe for wounded children because he's
seventeen years old, and he looks around and he goes
all of these kids, they just wish they were out
playing football and they can't because they're wounded. So he
(26:24):
invents football in table football. Little guys on rods on
a table that kick a ball when you spin the rods.
Speaker 3 (26:33):
That is incredible.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
Yeah, he does it within like a month of showing
up there because he's wounded in November, and by Christmas
they're all playing fucking foosball together. And there's a bunch
of different versions of table soccer, and some of them
came before his, but his is the main one that's
around today. When he's trying to invent this thing, he
(26:56):
gets another refugee, a Bosque carpenter named Francisco Javier Altuna,
to make the table and the figures, and then Alejandro
patents it at the start of nineteen thirty seven, which yeah,
means that he's invented it enough to patent it within
two months of getting his own house. I believe dropped
on him and it was the local leader of the CNT,
(27:18):
the labor union who encouraged him to patent it. And
all the kids who were disabled by war get to
play football together. And it wasn't even the first thing
he invented in the hospital. But yeah, so another invention
that he made a bunch of money off of his
entire life when he's seventeen, he had a crush on
one of the nurses named Nuria, and Nuria was a pianist,
(27:41):
and so he invented the first foot operated page turner
for sheet music in order to impress her.
Speaker 3 (27:52):
That's amazing, I know, and I.
Speaker 2 (27:55):
Have no idea like that is I want a movie
this guy so badly, and this is the start of
his fucking life.
Speaker 3 (28:06):
So it's also insane that, like at seventeen, he's done
all this stuff right, Like he started a poetry magazine
or whatever, revolutionary like all these things and.
Speaker 2 (28:17):
Helped save the world from fascism potentially. I actually again
did not know whether he fought one way or the other.
But he is going to be fleeing from the fascists
the rest of his life, so like, well, actually he
outlives them, which is cool. But Franco wins the war
in nineteen thirty nine and all the Republicans and the
anarchists and the communists are forced to flee on foot
over the Pyrenees Mountains to get to France. We've covered
(28:38):
this a bunch before on the show. They were all
put into a French concentration camp before the Nazis took
over France. Some of them continued to cross back and
forth into Spain, trying to assassinate Franco and continue the fight.
Others knuckle down and become partisans fighting against the Nazis.
It's Spanish anarchists who roll the first tanks into Paris
to liberate it from the Nazis. Alejandro crosses the mountains
(29:02):
on foot, despite the fact that his leg never fully healed,
and one version of the story is he did it
as soon as Franco took power, and another is that
he did it years later. And I don't fucking know.
I think he might have done it multiple times, I whatever.
While he's crossing the mountains, he says, all I had
with me was a can of sardines, the patent papers
(29:23):
on my inventions, and two plays he had written again,
probably seventeen years old, or he doesn't flee until nineteen
forty seven. I've read both. In France, he writes ballets,
most of them are based on Galician folklore. He becomes
a fairly famous folklorist during his time in France, and
(29:46):
the story is about what happened to him in the
nineteen forties. This is the most contradictory part it seems
that he went to France, he came back because he
was broke. He was conscripted into the Francoist army in
the colonies, but he served four years in prison in
Morocco rather than actually serve in the military. Somewhere along
the way, he marries a woman, has a kid, The
(30:06):
kid dies young, and by the end of the nineteen
forties he's back in Paris. In France, one of his
old friends from the hospital had sold table soccer to
a French company. So Alejandro is actually, actually I patented that.
That's why it's so important that, oh the rain destroyed
his patent papers. I don't remember if I said that,
(30:27):
Oh no, that's crazy. So he's crossing and he's like,
oh the rain destroyed it, or he's a liar. I
actually believe him about all this shit.
Speaker 1 (30:36):
I kind of love when you're like or maybe.
Speaker 2 (30:39):
Anyway, here's the problem with researching historical men is that, like,
you get all the way down and then you'll be like,
wait a second, this man's a liar. But I actually
I think that this because he wasn't self aggrandizing as
far as I can tell.
Speaker 1 (30:52):
Can I give a disclaimer it's not just historical men.
Speaker 2 (30:57):
What what? But we've had both feminism and me too.
Speaker 1 (31:03):
Why howdy?
Speaker 2 (31:04):
Oh well that I need some time to think about that. Yeah,
why don't we listen to ads and then when we
come back, we'll have solved patriarchy and we're back. All right,
Everyone have their notes about what's going to destroy patriarchy. Mango,
you can go first. Oh wait, no, you shouldn't have
(31:27):
to go first. You shouldn't go first anymore. That's right, Yeah, Sophie.
Speaker 1 (31:31):
That's going to destroy patriarchy.
Speaker 2 (31:33):
Yeah, yeah, we all join the ads. We ought to
solve this problem.
Speaker 1 (31:37):
For some reason, because we're talking about sport things. The
first thing that came to my mind was Cocoa golf.
She's going to destroy patriarchy. You don't know who that is, No,
I have.
Speaker 2 (31:45):
No idea, but I'm excited that she's going to destroy patriarchy.
Speaker 1 (31:48):
She's a really awesome women's tennis player.
Speaker 3 (31:50):
I think you're right, though, Sophia. I think women's sports
might be the key. I mean, like watching the liberty here,
like play, and like the excitement around. I mean we
were going a couple of years ago before, like tickets
were as expensive and they only have like the first
like tier available, and then they left the rest of
the stadium empty. But like, I never would have imagined that,
(32:11):
like my son would know all the like women basketball players,
like you know, and and your favorite. He really loves.
There's a new I forget what her name is. There's
like a new point guard that came. He also likes
Brianna Stewart. Yes, Stuart Stewie is Cloud Natasha Cloud.
Speaker 1 (32:34):
Oh yeah yeah, yeah, like Sabrina. I love Sabrina.
Speaker 3 (32:38):
Yeah, I like Serrina too.
Speaker 1 (32:40):
So cool.
Speaker 2 (32:40):
Yeah. I think that women's sports is the answer, and
I actually think tennis is a big part of it,
because isn't there something where like almost all men who
are surveyed think that they could score a point against
like the world's best like woman tennis player. Yes, well,
once they all lose, and then the ones who feel
(33:03):
really strongly about it, they can do the thing where
they think that they would win a fight against a bear,
and maybe all men who think that they would win
a fight against a bear have the opportunity. And I
think that would solve a lot of problems issues. I think, yeah, yeah, well,
I'm glad we solve that. During the ads, there see
(33:26):
people are like, why do you have ads, and like
major world issues solved, like my ability to have a
salary and feed my dog that too. So he gets
this money not from ad revenue but instead from patent
revenue from having a mentaled table football, which I tried
to do, but it turns out someone had already done it.
Speaker 1 (33:45):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (33:46):
He uses the money to move to Ecuador, and then
he heads to Guatemala and he starts working selling foosball tables.
He's working with indigenous folks to produce hand card versions
of the game he improves upon the original design. He
famously plays table soccer with Jae Gavara a bunch of times.
He mostly is into publishing a poetry journal. This is
the main thing he does instead of he's like, yeah, yeah, yeah,
(34:07):
sometimes I play foosball with Jegavarro. But he publishes a
poetry journal. Some articles say that it publishes mostly the
Spanish exiles, but I find another source more believable that
says that each issue focused on the poets from a
different country, and that I think maps much more with
what I understand about him. But he's involved in the
(34:28):
Republican diaspora from Spain. More directly because so many people
had to leave Spain. Franco had said, I am willing
to kill half of Spain to rule the other half. Wow,
which means that if you're the half, you gotta get
the fuck out of there. In the early fifties, Guatemala
was one of the countries that recognized the Spanish Republic
(34:49):
as the legitimate government in Spain, so they had an
ambassador still from the Spanish Republic, and at one point
Alejandro is like doing spy shit, transporting papers for him
to Mexico along the way. He's also apparently a businessman
who makes slot machines and is about to bid successfully
on the state monopoly on slot machines for the country.
(35:16):
So he's just such a like he's this total lefty,
but he's also this like go getter, like entrepreneur asshole.
I love him. I love him so much.
Speaker 3 (35:27):
I know because you had me thinking he just has
his like heading the clouds when he's not playing table football,
he's like dreaming poetry and just.
Speaker 2 (35:36):
No, this man's a steamer that he's scheming completely. Yeah,
And part of his scheming is how do I spy
for the Republic against the Francoists, and part of it
is like, all right, slot machines, let's go that's amazing.
Oh that would have been where I should have done
my ad. Oh well, so it goes.
Speaker 1 (35:56):
I just really I just really want every time you
say slot machine for there to be like a.
Speaker 2 (36:03):
Can you add that?
Speaker 1 (36:03):
Can we have like a magpie coaching sound effect? Yeah,
it just seems so funny to me slot machine.
Speaker 2 (36:13):
The CIA is in the US at the time, well,
they were kind of everywhere, and they're rubbing its hands.
It's rubbing its hands together, and it's like, I wonder
if we could overthrow democracy in Guatemala and institute a
right wing dictator, And unfortunately the answer to that question
was yes. In nineteen fifty four, there was a coup,
which means that Alejandro is on fascist takeover of a
(36:34):
country at least number three in his life, possibly more,
but at least three countries he has lived in have
fallen to the far right Spain, France, and Guatemala, and
Francoists decide to kidnap him, and most sources say this
is because he was working for the Republican government as
a spy. But I found one source that was like nah.
(36:57):
They wanted that slot machine money, and it was just
like the way to get rid of him was like
turn him into the francoists. And so they try to
kidnap him and they fail, and then they try to
kidnap him again and they succeed the second time. So
they have him on a plane to Spain and he's like, fuck, fuck,
(37:19):
fuck if I go back to Spain, Franco's just like
killing people left and right. Well, no left, he's killing
people to the left. And so Alejandro goes into the
bathroom of the plane, takes a bar of soap, wraps
it in tinfoil, comes back out and it's like, I
have a bomb. I'm going to kill all of us
(37:40):
if you take me back to Spain. I'm a refugee.
I'm being kidnapped. And the people on the plane are like, well,
we like you and we don't want to blow up,
So that sounds fine, and apparently it's a fairly peaceful hijacking.
They land the plane in Panama and let him out.
What he doesn't go to Spain. He foils the kidnapping attempt.
(38:05):
That foils this is like some fucking Dillinger carving a
gun out of soap bullshit. It's like literally even involved soap,
and Okay, one thing that's annoying is that this is
not his fault. This is the way the history is written.
(38:27):
I think he's still married and she's like in these
countries with him too, and I don't know. I think
he walks to Mexico. It was phrased marches to Mexico.
I suspect he might have gotten on a bus or something.
And I believe his wife meets him there. But again,
his personal life not covered so much. So he moves
(38:47):
to Mexico and he hooks back up with the poet
Leon Filippe, whose old mentor, and when Felipe dies and
I think the sixties, Alejandro becomes his literary executor of
this like fame miss Spanish poet. Alejandro writes some poetry,
but he doesn't see himself as a poet. He's a
publisher and a person who makes poetry happen. He wrote quote,
(39:09):
I published what was forgotten by commercial publishers. And he
visits Spain here and there during the Franco years. I
think at some point it becomes kind of safe for
him to go there, but not to stay there. But
since he publishes a lot of shit, like he specifically
published a bunch of shit that called Franco a toad.
He gets arrested when he goes back to Spain at
(39:31):
one point, and he gets arrested and he gets sentenced
to a year in prison for the shit he's writing
against Franco. But this man is so lucky. Franco dies
and Alejandro serves five days of his sentence before Franco
dies and he's released. Oh wow, incredible, Yeah, that is unbelievable.
Speaker 3 (39:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (39:57):
So he moves back to Spain after half a century
mostly exile, and lives out the rest of his days
outliving the fucking fascists and may we all outlive them.
He marries a second time, I do not know what
happened to his first wife, and he spends the rest
of his days going back and forth between Spain and Mexico.
He lives to the age of eighty seven. He died
(40:19):
on February ninth, two thousand and seven, and one of
the last things he wrote was I believe in progress.
There is a human drive towards happiness, peace, justice and love,
and that world will one day arrive. And that's Alejandro
that is.
Speaker 3 (40:36):
An incredible story, an incredible life.
Speaker 2 (40:39):
I know when he's seventeen, he invented foosball, and that's
the only I'd be almost annoyed at seventeen, You're like,
it's like being a one hit wonder.
Speaker 1 (40:49):
Yeah, what a cool weird little guy.
Speaker 2 (40:52):
Yeah yeah, yeah, he's the inverse of weird little guy.
Speaker 1 (40:55):
Yeah he's a cool weird little guy. Yeah, I'm a fan.
Speaker 2 (41:00):
And yeah, and on Wednesday, I will tell you about
the socialist hippie from the eighteen hundreds who revolutionized photography,
was obsessed with hot air balloons, showed the world its
first aerial photograph, an invented airmail.
Speaker 1 (41:14):
Okay, brag.
Speaker 3 (41:18):
I really really loved the story though. It made me
so happy.
Speaker 2 (41:22):
Also, like the taft.
Speaker 3 (41:23):
Dancing, it's insane writing ballets, folklorists. Who also is into
slot machines, Like, just unbelievable.
Speaker 1 (41:34):
Macpie, what have you invented?
Speaker 2 (41:38):
Nothing to this scale?
Speaker 1 (41:40):
That's true, Mango? Did you invent something?
Speaker 3 (41:46):
As a kid, I tried to invent a heated driveway
so that I wouldn't have to shovel.
Speaker 2 (41:52):
Oh shit, yes, how'd you do it?
Speaker 3 (41:54):
It was more theoretical, Yeah, I couldn't actually figure out
how to make it work.
Speaker 1 (42:01):
Yeah, the only thing I invented relates to podcasting. And
it's not that interesting when you.
Speaker 2 (42:07):
Invant relates to podcasting the podcast.
Speaker 1 (42:10):
No, I invented all these different ways to like import
from feed to feed and like create like many miniature
playlists for things, so that downloads go to one thing
and count to other things. And it's not that interesting,
but it's helped me in my career and my friends shows.
Speaker 2 (42:26):
I mean, that's the thing about like most inventions is
most inventions are like specific niche needs that only affect
like one industry.
Speaker 1 (42:33):
Yeah, you know how if you listen to Cool Zone
Media book Club, you can listen to it and they
could have to hear feed or the cool People Feed.
You're welcome, Thank you. That was me.
Speaker 2 (42:44):
Okay, well you got anything you want to plug here
at the end.
Speaker 3 (42:50):
Yeah. Part Time Genius is the show I do, and
I really love it, and I feel like it has
some of the similar spirit of finding people who are
just fascinating and crazy and wonderful and so I and
this felt very akin to my sensibilities.
Speaker 1 (43:02):
Oh yeah, and I really like your co host.
Speaker 3 (43:05):
Yeah, I co host it with my friend Will who
used to live next to me in college, in the
room next to me through college, and we co founded
Mental Flaws together, and we still get to make a
show together, which is pretty awesome.
Speaker 1 (43:19):
He's also he's also my boss.
Speaker 2 (43:21):
It's like a cool version of the like the thing
that you do when you're young actually sets up like
the rest of your life.
Speaker 1 (43:30):
Yeah you know.
Speaker 3 (43:31):
Yeah cool, Yeah, it's pretty fun.
Speaker 2 (43:34):
Well, why do I have to plug? Listen to Weird
Little Guys? It's a podcast that's like the inverse of
this one. There's only one podcast that's in verse of
this one. It's Weird Little Guys. I can't think of
any others.
Speaker 1 (43:47):
No, no idea.
Speaker 2 (43:50):
It's funny to make that joke. I don't know.
Speaker 1 (43:52):
Why can I plug a thing?
Speaker 2 (43:54):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (43:55):
Yeah, I wanted to plug Sean Mahlan's book, The Podcast Pantheon,
which is available for pre order now, one hundred and
one podcast that change. Shall we listen? It's a feel
proprietor now. It's out in September. Where we get books
behind the Bastards, isn't it?
Speaker 2 (44:07):
I was about to ask if any cool zone got
into it?
Speaker 3 (44:09):
Fuck you? Yeah?
Speaker 1 (44:10):
Yeah. He wrote nice things, which I appreciate. But yeah,
it's this is really a cool book. Cool book, and
it like is like, you know, a book so I
can show my friends and family that, yes, my job real,
I'm my job real.
Speaker 2 (44:25):
Isn't it funny that like the number of people who
are going to no offense to that book, the number
of people are going to read that book, yeah, versus
listen to the podcast in that book. Like, but books
are so meaningful, Like the fact that I have books
out is like the anchor of my like credibility. It
is not the majority of the people who I mean,
(44:46):
everyone reads my books. I'm the most best selling author.
Speaker 1 (44:48):
Yeah, you are the world. Well here's the thing. Here's
the thing. The one time, this is before the pandemic,
that my brother and his wife, my brother the doctor,
his wife the lawyer, came to visit me at the
iHeartRadio podcast studio in Los Angeles. There was only one
other person there and they were asleep on the couch.
So my job it looked like I had like, you know,
you fake job, rented a fake office, and that I
(45:11):
did not actually have real job.
Speaker 2 (45:13):
So there's a book.
Speaker 1 (45:15):
Now, there's a book. You best believe I ordered them
a copy.
Speaker 2 (45:21):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (45:22):
Sean. Yeah, that's what I wanted to plug.
Speaker 2 (45:25):
Oh yeah, all right, I will see you all Wednesday.
Speaker 1 (45:28):
They Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production
of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts and cool Zone Media,
visit our website Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out
on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
your podcasts.
Host
Margaret Killjoy
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