September 3, 2025 • 42 mins
Margaret continues her talk 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
https://time.com/5289117/aerial-photography-drones-history/
https://www.thoughtco.com/the-first-impressionist-exhibition-183013
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Media.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Hello, and welcome to cool People who did cool stuff.
You're a weekly reminder that I have a podcast that
comes out more than once a week, and yet I
say weekly every single time. It's part of what I say,
and at this point, if I changed it, I would
probably get confused and end up rambling, which I'm certainly
not doing. I am your host, Margaret Kiljoy. My guest
is Mango, who's the host of Part Time Genius. And
this is part two of a two parter that is
(00:26):
not really a two parter. It's two separate one parters,
but that's the way that I always introduce the show.
So here I am Wait.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
Wait, if you didn't listen to part one, you can
actually still start with part two, which is very different
than normal.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Oh that's true, Sick, It's true. It's your time to
shine backwards a week people. How are you doing today
on this day that is obviously the same day as
last time you're.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
I'm having a great time. It's so nice to be
hang out with you and Sophie.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
Yeah, I am excited. It's nice to have weeks where
it's just talking to people who are nice to talk to.
But I actually have a very nice job. I complain
about working a lot because it takes a lot of
work to make this thing, but it's a nice job.
It's just like I like talk to people who are
cool about shit that matters, and it's nice.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
One day, I want to do this with both you
and Will if he ever ever has a free minute,
I want to do that. I think it would be
really fun.
Speaker 3 (01:26):
That'd be super fun. Yeah, and he's really funny.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
I know.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Well, i'd be like, hello, my boss's boss, how are you. Well,
I don't have a boss. I'm a freelancer, but so
if he's my boss.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
Anyway, he's a really fun guy to get. Is it
a diet mountain dew?
Speaker 2 (01:44):
Is that what he likes?
Speaker 1 (01:45):
Is it regular mountain dew?
Speaker 3 (01:46):
I forget diet montain.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
I got it right, I get a diet mountain dew with.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
Probably better. It's one of those things where like, I
don't know whatever, I'm not sureing to pine on sugar
soever this non sugar.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
So that that's the problem.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
A without having a podcast, as You're like, I want
to just like talk about random shit, and I'm like, no,
people are listening, and I don't have an opinion here
That anyone should care about. There's people who actually know
about these things. But you know, I don't know. Whatever, drunk,
whatever you want, I don't care. So funny, So this
week we were talking about inventions made by people who
(02:25):
are participating in social struggles because I find it interesting.
The second invention I want to talk about instead of
talking about all of the other things that I could
talk about that people involved in social struggles have invented
that are complicated, is one that I think is probably good.
Air Mail seems like good, right, It seems neutral to me.
(02:46):
But I like the post office even more right now
now that I'm realizing they might get destroyed.
Speaker 3 (02:51):
Yeah, me too. Getting things in the mail is really wonderful.
Yeah yeah, And.
Speaker 4 (02:56):
It would be really nice to get mail from people
who are in a city that is besieged by Prussians.
Don't you think like if you were like, oh, my
friends are in a city that's besieged by Prussians and
you're like, oh, I got a nice letter, you know, yeah,
what have you got like broken up with by someone
who's been in the city that's besieged by Prussians, I
(03:17):
feel like I'd be like, you could have waited.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
I'm gonna sit that later.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
So the second invention I want to talk about this
week is the result of another siege on a city,
but it is sixty years earlier, about eight hundred miles
further north, when the people of Paris, which is a
city in France, was besieged by Prussian forces, and they
invented air mail by using hot air balloons. And its inventor,
or at least the person who gets credit for inventing it,
(03:47):
is a socialite, a socialist, a celebrity photographer, and his
name is Nadare you've ever heard of this guy? You big?
Like history of photography nerd by any is like the
only avenue by which anyone would know this man.
Speaker 3 (04:03):
No, I don't. I don't think so. I mean, I
can't imagine that I do know, But I'm fascinating. I
feel like you've picked all these multi hyphenits.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
Oh yeah for the show. This is our last character
was a jack of all trades. Yeah, this person hates
what he is famous for because he doesn't want to
do the same job.
Speaker 3 (04:22):
Huh.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
We learned about him an eight year at history in
high school. He took portraits of people, am I.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
Yeah, he's like the first celebrity fortograph.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
Okay, oh wow, I just remember like big mustache photography
for something ease.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
Yeah, really good mustache. And he did a lot of
like natural light photography and he like he actually was
a really good photographer for something that's like portrait photography.
Speaker 3 (04:45):
Mhm.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
Is interesting. He also goes by just one name most
of the time. He also goes by Felix and a Dare.
We've talked about the Siege of Paris on this show
before in a series we did about the Paris Commune,
but that was years ago, and I think it's worth revisiting.
And I like how neatly it ties into the story
of foosball, because it's a story of people whose primary
love was the arts being totally willing to turn their
(05:07):
skills towards invention in community defense, all in a backdrop
of autocracy versus the republic, a struggle that is on
people's minds. Again. So you've got a country called France.
It's in Europe. It's a relatively famous country. I feel
like most people have heard. It would be nice to
be like not everyone needs to know about the countries
(05:30):
in Western Europe, you know, like that would be nice
to imagine, but unfortunately everyone is either from one of
those countries or from a place that was destroyed and
colonized by those countries. So yeah, it is what it
is in France in the nineteenth century, and it has
spent a lot of time going back and forth about
(05:50):
whether it was an empire or a public This was
a game it liked to play with itself by killing
it a lot of people. In eighteen forty eight, left
nationalist revolutions broke out all across Europe, and nationalism had
a again. Speaking of words at had really different meanings
at different times in different places. It sure matters whether
you're like a colonized person or a colonizing person when
(06:13):
you use the word nationalist. Right, So revolutions are breaking
out all across Europe, people being like I don't want
to be part of the empire. I want to be
my own thing, and also I would like to all
take care of each other in a socialist y way,
and that is all happening in eighteen forty eight. Most
of these revolutions failed, some of them are sort of successful.
(06:37):
In eighteen forty eight, France got rid of its king
and declared the Second French Republic. This is like I
held off learning the ins and outs of French revolutions
for so long because I was so annoyed about how
it's the only revolutions that anyone talk about, and less
the American Revolution. But eventually you learn about these things
(07:00):
and you start trying to figure out which Napoleon is which,
which is a very frustrating game. They declared the Second
French Republic, but they made a critical mistake. They let
a Napoleon be their president, Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, who became
Napoleon the third. Most of the time, I now said,
I hate when I have to learn about the French Revolution.
(07:21):
But don't worry. It's entertaining. Everyone's entertained most of the time.
When people say Napoleon, they mean Napoleon the first. Can
you keep the Napoleons apart? Is this an important part
of your life? Do you spend a lot of time
thinking about the Napoleon's.
Speaker 3 (07:33):
The only Napoleon I think about a lot is one
of the Napoleons had a brother named Joseph Napoleon, like
Joey Napoleon. Oh shit, and he came to New Jersey.
I think No, he lived in Jersey Shore, Pennsylvania.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
He's just his name, Joe.
Speaker 3 (07:49):
Yeah, it's like Joey Napoleon.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
Yeah, it's Joe Napoleon.
Speaker 3 (07:55):
He's the one I think about a lot.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
Okay, I don't know about Joey Napoleon the short Sophie.
Speaker 3 (08:01):
Do you know Jason English?
Speaker 1 (08:02):
Of course, what a wonderful person.
Speaker 3 (08:05):
Jason's the one who told me about Joey Napoleon, and
so we were always trying to figure out how to
make a show about joe Napoleon.
Speaker 1 (08:10):
Funny another like, really lovely human, such a nice guy.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
Jason, Well, he should just claim to be descended from
Joey Napoleon. I agree, do like, you know, one of
those like I'm getting in touch with my roots and
learning about, you know, in the same way that like
everyone who's like dad is a cult leader a serial
killer will do a podcast. I'm actually not disparaging that.
If your dad is a cult leader, a serial killer
and you can somehow try and scrape together some way
(08:37):
of dealing with it, I'm not mad. So Napoleon the
first is the main Napoleon, right, got the hat, he
hides the arm. He wasn't actually short that guy the Waterloo.
Abba wrote a song about him. It is the only
reason anyone knows. It's a very good song. And who
started off the leader of the first French Republic after
(09:00):
the French Revolution, which again, if people save the French Revolution,
they usually mean the first one of seventeen eighty nine.
Eventually he became emperor within a few years, by eighteen
oh four, and then he marched around conquering Europe and
eventually lost it in Waterloo. That's the first Napoleon. Napoleon
the second, Napoleon's kid doesn't really matter. He would never
actually ruled. He was like technically in charge, but not,
(09:21):
and then he wished he was in charge, and then
he died of tuberculosis when he was twenty one years old.
Napoleon the Third is Napoleon's nephew. I hope he's the
one who's brothers with Joey. I just feel like it
could be a good story that way. Napoleon the third,
he's the one who matters to our story today. He
was elected president eighteen forty eight, and he's the first
ever president of France. And then in eighteen fifty one,
(09:44):
when the constitution said he couldn't be president again. He
was like, well, actually, I don't care what the constitution says,
I have an army. And he cooed himself and stayed
in power and became Emperor of the Second French Empire.
That's who's in charge. He's kind of a be nvolent
dictator to the French, and he's absolutely a shitty colonizing
monster to the overseas colonies. He is absolutely the kind
(10:07):
of guy to get his country dragged into wars that
can't handle Prussia. Later, Germany was getting too big for
its breeches, and France was like, actually, we like being
in charge of Europe, so let's have a dick measuring contest,
which we'll call the Franco Prussian War. Prussia under Auto
von Bismarck was like, yeah, fuck it, sure, I'm going
to win, and Auto von Bismarck was right. On July sixteenth,
(10:31):
eighteen seventy, France declared war. Within a couple of weeks,
they invented Prussia. Prussia was like, we actually have railroads
that go in both directions, and you all have railroads
that go in one direction, so we're going to win,
and they did. They steamrolled France and literally The railroad
thing was a big part of it. They also had
better guns and stuff, but the ability to send rail
(10:51):
roads in both directions instead of one direction is really important. Yeah,
they just had double tracks. Napoleon captured at the Battle
of Sedan, and without its emperor, the empire falls. The
Third French Republic is declared and elections are called for,
but they can't happen because the Prussian army marches on
(11:12):
Paris and lays siege to the capital of actually Versailles
might have been I don't remember. I think Versaill was
the capital at this point. Whatever, they lay siege to
the important city. They figured they'd storm the place, but
then they realized that the city had half a million
people defending it, and they were like, you know what,
let's wait outside. Let's just let's just hang out. The
National Guard is good in this story.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
Interesting.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
Yeah, the national Guard was all of the working Again,
one lesson about stopping fascism is you arm the working class. Anyway.
Oh my god. It was even literally like you know,
have you seen that like Texas like come and take it,
cannon flag. Unfortunately, there's this like thing where like Texas
Second Amendment people are like come and take it, and
(11:56):
it's a picture of a cannon.
Speaker 3 (11:58):
Huh.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
One of the most import or like socialist radical things
in history was the Paris Commune. And it started with
the government trying to take the people's canons away, like
literal canons, and the people were like, nah, we're the
National Guard and we have the canons and you can't
take them. And then they took over their own city
and had a Paris Commune, and that's a different story
(12:20):
that I've already told a different time. Anyway, the Prussian
army marches on Paris, and the rich flee to their
estates outside the city, and the poor flood into the
city because they're looking for some modicum of safety. And
so the class composition of the city shifts dramatically. And
it matters because every adult male is conscripted into the
(12:42):
National Guard, and this means that the National Guard becomes
incredibly far left, which means the government is like, all right,
let's surrender the Prussians. We're surrounded. This isn't gonna work.
The National Guard was like, nah, fuck it, let's keep fighting.
And it's kind of wild that the people of the
country were like, no, we want to hold out and
(13:04):
starve rather than give into the Prussians.
Speaker 3 (13:06):
That's pretty incredible, yeah, I know.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
And so a supplies cut off to the outside world,
everyone started running around and panicking and murdering each other,
just like every apocalypse movie you've ever seen, except actually
that didn't happen at all. When Paris was cut off
from the outside world, mutual aid centers popped up all
over the city, feeding everyone they could. There's soup kitchens everywhere.
Rents are suspended, people pitchin together to avoid starving. People
(13:33):
eat every animal in the city, including everything in the zoo.
That part's a little dark, yeah, but I'd probably eat
an elephant before dying. And I'm a vegan. And there
was a guy there and he was like, you know what,
I love hot air balloons. We should use hot air balloons.
(13:53):
And his name was Felix Nadir And he is really
interesting and he did a lot of shit first, like
the first air photograph, the first underground photograph. He did
a lot of the developing in use of artificial light
for photography. He was one of the early political cartoonists.
He changed some of the way that political cartooning is done.
He actually political cartooning goes like eighty years prior to him,
(14:16):
but he worked at a humor magazine, which is part
of why I picked him for you. And he invented airmail,
and I'm grateful he went by just Nadair or Felix
Nadair rather than his birth name Gaspar Felix Torna Scholan
because I do not like pronouncing French because I am
bad at it, and now I feel bad making fun
(14:36):
of But I used to just be totally like whatever
them French. They can't pronounce the words just because it's funny,
they're not, I don't know whatever. But then I learned
recently that the reason that French has pronounced so differently
than all the other Romance languages. Have you heard this?
This is just I like random facts. It's probably because
of the indigenous Celtic pronunciation in Brittany.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
Interesting.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
So they were like, all right, we'll use your words,
but we use our pronunciation, and so now I feel
bad making fun of it, but I still can't pronounce
it correctly, So I'm glad he went by Nadair. And
much like Monday's Hero, the first thing that happened in
Nadair's life, inundated with advertising, just washed over it, baptized
(15:25):
in advertising, much like we are about to be baptized
by these ads. Yeah, these ads are really important. We
handpicked them for spiritual value. Oh anyway, here's ads and
(15:49):
we're back. Felix Nadair was born in eighteen twenty in
Paris into a fairly wealthy family, ninety nine years before
our last hero. He's born into a fairly wealthy family.
His dad was a printer and a publisher who could
read eight languages and had fought in the First French Revolution.
He's like where the word liberal comes from. You know.
He is like this, like progressive, I want a republic,
(16:13):
I'm willing to fight. I'm an upper middle class white
man guy, you know.
Speaker 3 (16:18):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
His dad loved liberty more than he loved being good
at business, and his publisher that he ran went under
in eighteen thirty three. Young Felix did well in school
most of the time, and he was always trying to
impress his dad. All of the people who psychoanalyze this
man are like daddy issues because he loved his dad.
I dislike the way that people analyze people about that.
(16:40):
I think he had a nice family and he liked
his dad. His dad was pretty warm to him. He
was also though constantly getting in trouble. His dad probably
wouldn't have fucking snitched him out for stealing a gold bracelet,
but he absolutely would have stolen a gold bracelet. He
was kicked out of school because he blew up the
stove with fireworks.
Speaker 3 (17:00):
Oh wow.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
Nada is like, I'm kind of annoyed by how much
I see myself and this guy who died like a
long time ago, who was like this has some ups
and downs. He was super in love with Romanticism and art,
like the Romantics as like an art movement, and his
hero was future friend of the Pod the Black author
Alexandre Duma, who wrote The Three Musketeers, which I read
(17:24):
in middle school and then apparently went around telling I
was talking to one of my old middle school friends
and she was like, yeah, you came up to me
and were like, I read an eight hundred and thirty
page book last weeks, so you I know. And all
I remember about that book is that they ride the
horses to death, and I'm like that seems bad.
Speaker 3 (17:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
Anyway, Nadair's dad died in eighteen thirty seven, when young
Felix was about seventeen or so and Nadair he's been
kicked out of school and he's like, you know what,
I'm gonna go to med school. So he goes to
med school for a while, he studied mental illness and
eventually they were like, but you didn't actually finish your
bachelor's you can't actually be here, and he was like, ah, fuck,
(18:11):
I don't want to go back to undergrad. So he
just became a college dropout bohemian guy. Like the original
bohemian era was like I think eighteen thirties forties France. Well,
actually the original bohemia is a part of what I
believe now the Czech Republic, but the Western Europeans like
taking something that seems exotic and calling it their name
(18:33):
of their lifestyle, so they were the Bohemians at this point.
He's like a cool, subcultural homeless guy, right, and he
starts talking in like basically thieves can't. That was popular
at the time where the people who like hated authority
had this way of talking in a fake medieval French
(18:57):
what yeah, yeah, no. I was always like, how did
this guy get this name? And almost every source is like, ah,
you know, he just added the nonsense syllable dar to
the end of his name, like no. He was speaking
a subcultural lingo where everyone adds were like dared or
(19:17):
dar to the end of all of their words.
Speaker 3 (19:20):
Huh.
Speaker 2 (19:20):
And he was also embarrassed because he had a bougie
last name, so he started going by first Tornidar, and
then he shortened it to just Nadar. And he bummed
around for ten years. This is literally what I did,
is I dropped out of college and bummed around of
being involved in protest movements and living in squads and
like sleeping out rough and not using money and whatever.
(19:41):
And so he did this like one hundred and seventy
years before me. From eighteen to twenty eight, he would
go from house to house. He would shack up with
whoever caught his fancy. He would make his tiny living
writing and drawing cartoons. And later he would write about
how people saw the bohem in life and romanticized it,
but he was like, actually it sucked. It was just hard,
(20:06):
like huh. And the deprivation that he suffered became sufferable
when he did it with friends and with art and
they would all rent some cheap room together for a
while until the landlord figured out they weren't paying rent,
and then you get thrown out. And he would like
make pipes out of wood he found in the parks
in the city and sell the pipes. And all of
these bohemians they're all socialists of a proto socialist type,
(20:29):
like modern socialism would get defined later in the century.
And at some point during all this he gets to
meet his hero Duma, and he starts getting slowly more work.
He's writing theater reviews. He does paste up layout basically
for various newspapers, which was literally my career. I made
my tiny living while living in a van doing layout
(20:50):
for books and magazines.
Speaker 3 (20:52):
Huh.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
It's unnerving, yeah, anyway, and he makes a little bit
of money here and there. He's actually despite king of
revolutionized photography, to the point where people study him centuries
after he died. He was successful, but he was never rich.
Soon enough, he's editing newspapers, he's doing journalism, he's drawing caricatures,
and he's doing whatever's necessary for publication. How old does
(21:15):
he know, he's like in his early twenties, mid twenties. Okay, Yeah,
the cops are after him a lot. By the time
he's twenty three. The police wrote about him as quote
one of those dangerous sorts who spreads the most subversive
doctrines throughout the Latin Quarter. And I had to do
digging to find his political affiliations because people just want
(21:37):
to talk about his use of natural light and the
way he posed people. Every political artist has their political
views stripped from them by history. This man was not
subtle in what he believed in, but it took the
deep dive to find any of it. He believed in
a humanist socialism and a morality of the heart. He
believed in socialist democracy over capitalist monarchy. He hated the
(21:59):
rich politicians, even as he like celebrated. He got really
into like celebrity culture and being kind of a socialite
a little bit, I think, although kind of always just
like as a weird guy, you'd rather like fly hot
air balloons. But whenever he had to like photograph politicians
and the rich, he was just like real unhappy about it.
And he was a romantic. He's at the tail end
of the romantic movement, but he was writing short fiction
(22:22):
and like books and stuff for a long time. As
wasn't what he's remembered for but he always wanted to
write in ways that would offer hope to the reader.
That was like a specific thing that he was trying
to do, which annoys me because that's what I do.
Get your own shtick. In an air, one friend referred
to his invincible good humor and that he was quote
(22:46):
like the cheerful music of our misery. He made friends
for life, and he was fiercely loyal. I honestly like,
this is another man where I was expecting him to
kind of turn. He is going to I'll talk about
his marriage in a little bit.
Speaker 3 (22:57):
Mac.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
Parent just wanted you to let you know that you're
like the truthful music of our misery.
Speaker 3 (23:01):
Oh thanks.
Speaker 2 (23:06):
I always want to be like, hey, it's actually miserable
right now, but what can we do about it? You know?
Speaker 1 (23:11):
I mean that would just be your invincible good humor.
Speaker 2 (23:14):
Yeah, yeah, fair enough, thank you. It took a long
time to find. So he gets arthritis young, he's plagued
with his whole life, but he aggressively keeps up a
lust for life. At some point when he was like
twenty five, he was in a duel and I wish
I knew more than that sentence it might have been
about money, my conjecture, because he aggressively avoided pain rent
(23:37):
and eventually he's going to go to debtors prison, which
I'm very glad it's not a thing anymore. His time
in prison in eighteen fifty is going to turn him
into an aggressive advocate for prison reform. And when the
revolution broke out in eighteen forty eight and people of
France went to the barricades and ended the monarchy, he
didn't fight on the barricades, and he is mad at
(23:59):
him himself about that. He is like, why didn't I
do it? And he kind of talks about being like
I was kind of caught up doing my own like
young dumb shit, you know. Like So for a brief moment,
this new government seems revolutionary and socialist. It's going to
go right wing very quickly. But when this ostensibly revolutionary
(24:21):
government puts together a force of Polish exiles to go
fight for Polish freedom, two hundred frenchmen volunteered to go
with them, and a Dare goes with them. So he
marches off to war with the like socialist polls to
go free Poland from Austria Hungary. I have covered this
before on the show, and I couldn't tell you. I
(24:42):
think it's Austrian and Hungarian empire. And he writes to
his friend he says he wanted to join quote I
thought I could be good for something. And so he
kind of knows that he's just like, this is a
fuck up artist guy, you know. And his father had
fought in a re and he had sat out his
own generation's revolution, and then he wrote, quote, it is
(25:06):
very difficult to get killed usefully.
Speaker 3 (25:12):
And that is the.
Speaker 2 (25:13):
Most like twenty five year old leftist thing I've ever
read in my life.
Speaker 3 (25:21):
An amazing quote.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
Yeah, yeah, all the polls and the French folks get
arrested and the French volunteers are freed and send back
to Paris on foot. Nadir became a spy in Germany
for the French Revolutionary Army for a while, and then
he returned to France and it was going right wing
and fast, and so he was like, I don't like
this Napoleon guy. I don't think we should elect him.
(25:43):
And he joined a paper that was basically just trying
to make sure that Napoleon the Third wouldn't get elected
because that dude was right wing. As fuck, and Nadir
drew political cartoons against the right wing, which meant that
the paper he worked for got censored by the new government,
by the new president when Napoleon gets elect did and
so at this point, Nadair's like, I guess I'm gonna
be a characterature artist for a living. He's not great
(26:06):
at his job because he's too headed in the clouds,
he's too political, and he's not always great at the
business side of art. But he's still a freelance artist.
Speaker 1 (26:15):
You know.
Speaker 2 (26:17):
He takes on too many jobs. He's late for all
of them. Meanwhile, he's caring for his mother the whole time.
He apparently lives with a large number of animals, like
it's called a menagerie, and I don't know what they
are or were, and I'm also sad about that. I
also am frustrated at my own desire to learn foreign languages,
primarily so I can do research about obscure figures in
(26:38):
history instead of communicate with the people who live in
the world around me. But I'm like, if I had
enough time, I would learn enough French just to read
more and find out what animals this man lived with.
The Republic becomes the Empire Alla Star Wars. Yeah, like
to the point where I kind of think that might
be what they were drawing from with Star Wars, that
(27:01):
this is not the first time that the French Republic
is going to become an empire. So political caricature becomes
an impossible business under the empire, and so he decides
He's like, I'm going to do this grand art project
where I'm going to draw one thousand artists. The pantheon
of artists is called the Pantheon. He's going to have
them all come sit for caricatures, which is really funny
(27:23):
because the characatures are like this like mocking thing, right, Yeah,
but he was drawing them of people he loved and respected,
and he wasn't afraid to draw himself in the same
mocking way. He didn't ever finish this work, and the
loans he took out for it were running out. He
takes the rest of the loan and he sets up
a photography studio kind of for his younger brother, but
(27:46):
then his starts doing it with his brother, and his
brother starts going by Nadair, which doesn't make him happy. Sure,
and basically the two are going to sue each other
like tried constantly to be like, could you just stop
stealing my name? And he's like, no, I'm different. I'm
the Dare young Like I'm the Dare the younger or whatever.
Speaker 3 (28:08):
But two Gallaghers?
Speaker 2 (28:10):
Is there more than one Gallagher? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (28:12):
I think there are two people that toured as Gallagher and.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
They're both just smashing watermelons and somehow that's funny. Did
one of them find a way to make it funny? Sorry,
I Gallagher might be funny. I don't know. All I
know is he smashes watermelons.
Speaker 3 (28:26):
They they smash watermelons, and.
Speaker 2 (28:29):
Not in a non binary way but in a double.
Speaker 3 (28:31):
Yeah, it's so funny.
Speaker 2 (28:35):
Goddamn eventually, and it's it's funny because like, this chunk
of his life is like what half of the shit
I can find is about his lawsuits of this brother,
which I kind of don't care about the important part
from my point of view. Nd Air wins in court.
He tries to not go to court, but his brother's
like nah, and the Air wins in court and wins
the right to be the sole person publishing isn't a
Dare And one of his first subjects is an eighteen
(28:59):
year old he is going to marry named Ernestine when
he's thirty four years old, and it's just the style
at the time. I don't know what to say about that.
Whenever that should happen. She's an adult and she's religious
and she's Protestant, and he doesn't invite his friends to
the wedding. This is seen as like his break with
his youth. But he loves her. As far as I
(29:23):
can tell, they are going to grow old together. He
is going to outlive her. He is going to like
caretake her when she's paralyzed. He photographs her entire life
in like the most loving ways. Long after he hates photography,
and so I'm kind of like, yeah, he fell in love.
The age gap of people in the past is a
(29:43):
thing that comes up a lot anytime you cover any
people in history. Yeah, he becomes famous as a photographer
now that he is this studio set up, and his
thing is is that he only uses natural Eventually he's
going to have to use our official lights sometimes, but
during his peak years he only us natural light I
think coming in through the window. And he has none
(30:03):
of the weird props that other studios have where they're
like propped up on a Greco Roman column and whatever,
you know, and he he chats and connects with each
subject to photograph them honestly, and it comes across like,
you know, people talk about I kind of hate the
line between craft and art, like I don't really care
(30:26):
where that line is, and I think that people elevate
art too highly and look down on craft. But I
see it that his portraitures his art. And a lot
of if you look at photos of like old celebrities,
and also like half of the socialists or whatever that
I cover on the show, they're all photographed by this guy,
(30:48):
and he photographs women more naturally than other men do.
And then there's this whole thing and I can't source
this because it happened the last time I looked him up,
and I couldn't find it this time. There's this whole thing.
He always is photographing men with their hand and their
pants pocket, and apparently that's like a sexy thing. And
so he's photographing men sexy because their hands near their dick,
and so there's kind of a like Isnader gay vibe
(31:10):
going on too, you know, But he photographs women a
lot more naturally than other male photographers do. And he
also started doing gender analysis about beauty standards out of
his photography. This man is so fucking cool. Basically, like
people kept saying that it's now is that like women
are so obsessed with how they look and blah blah blah, right,
(31:31):
and he's basically able to be like well, quote nine
times out of ten, I would say eleven times out
of ten, you will see that the wife is absorbed
by the portraits of her husband, while the husband no
less hypnotized, but by his own image, seems miles away
from even thinking of the image of his other half,
(31:53):
and like he's doing fucking gender nosts whatever. And he's
obsessed with ballooning. This is the other, completely, the other
random part of his life. He is obsessed with hot
air balloons. But he knows the real trick is that
eventually we have to invent heavier than aircraft, and he
tries to help people invent it. It doesn't succeed. He thinks
that the helicopter is the way to go. In eighteen
(32:15):
fifty eight, he takes the first successful aerial photograph because
he has to figure out there's like the problem where
like the gases being off gas from the balloons. We're
fucking up all of the photos, and he like solves
all this shit. He's tethered two hundred and sixty two
feet in the air outside of Paris. That photo has
been lost, so the oldest surviving aerial photograph is from
two years later, a guy taking a picture in Boston.
(32:38):
His love affair for ballooning ate up all of the
money he made at the studio. He was obsessed. His
friend Victor Hugo supporting his efforts about air travel and
about hot air balloons, and wrote, quote, it is the
abolition of all boundaries. It is the destruction of separation.
It is the prodigious, peaceful revolution. And like, I love
(32:59):
how I enteenth century people were like, oh, we're going
to invent this thing, and finally humanity will be united.
You know.
Speaker 3 (33:08):
Yeah, I mean there is romance and the idea of
like you know, not having boundaries and being able to
like escape the earth, you know, yeah, pretty wonderful, and.
Speaker 2 (33:18):
You can like meet people from all over the world
so much more easily, and you can like you know,
like nothing destroys bigotry, like just actually meeting people.
Speaker 3 (33:26):
There's like an effect that people in space feel right,
like when they look on Earth and they suddenly feel
like more appreciative of the world when they see it
from a distance. Yeah, yeah, and of humanity, And like
I wonder if like there's an early aspect of that
as well.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
That makes sense. But do you know what I find
really helps me see the best in humanity?
Speaker 3 (33:51):
What is that?
Speaker 2 (33:52):
It's the products and services that support this show. All
of them bring joy to my heart.
Speaker 3 (33:56):
How can I learn more about them?
Speaker 2 (33:58):
Well, you're in luck because here they are. And Rebeck
so Nadair lives in Paris, does not leave when the
Prussians are coming and is under siege. When Paris is
under siege, Nadir is like, all right, we're going to
(34:21):
use hot air balloons to get mail out of the city.
They can't get mail into the city this way, so
it is one way letters. So you know, someone writes
you from besieged Paris and says they're breaking up with you.
It's the final word. You don't get to write them back.
To use hot air balloons to get mail out of
the city past the Prussian guns. Also, they use balloons
(34:42):
to spy on enemy movements, although that would happen more
during the Paris Commune, which happened shortly thereafter. Sixty six
flights made it out carrying millions of letters. Nine balloons
didn't make it out, and we're taken down and I
believe by the enemy. And this is how air mail
is invented. Wow, is I want to get letters out?
Speaker 3 (35:02):
That's incredible.
Speaker 2 (35:05):
And after the siege of Paris and then later the
Paris Commune, which I've covered at length, which kind of
sets up a lot of the distinctions between types of
leftists in the modern world, and also that people can
try and take care of themselves and control their city.
After that, Nadair helps organize the first Impressionist exhibition, which
takes place at his studio. His wife, Ernestine, was bed
(35:28):
ridden with partial paralysis starting in eighteen eighty seven. She
lives for about another ten years or so, and he
takes really sweet photographs of her, the last studies he
ever took. There's like these photos of her holding violets
against her mouth, and they're my favorite of his photos.
They're just showing it's like love of people who've been
(35:50):
together for decades, and like, if you look really closely,
you can figure out that these are probably photos of
her in bed and they don't look like it, and
like it's all done with the lighting. Like I don't know.
He just he lived this kind of amazing life where
he lived this like wild youth and he settles down,
but he doesn't change as a person fundamentally, you know.
(36:13):
And he's like participating in like the politics of the era.
He's participating in the art world. Oh and the whole
thing that I barely covered is that all of the
shit he's famous for is about six years. That's how
long he ran this studio. He was like, I hate this,
I hate doing this. He wants to just balloon and
do weird shit. He also took the first photographs of
(36:35):
the Catacombs. It's like the first underground photos were taken
by him. He photographs the catacombs by using artificial light.
Wildly important in art history of a photographic history. But
he wrote constantly being like by doing the same thing
every day, I am destroying my soul. And he called
himself a jack of all trades. He was like, this
is the death of a jack of all trades. But
(36:57):
he's also really good at it.
Speaker 3 (36:58):
It's so funny because like he's so clearly like wants
his life to have meaning, right, Like he talks about
that like as a you know, wanting to die for
how hard it is to die for a cause or whatever.
Speaker 2 (37:10):
Die usefully?
Speaker 3 (37:11):
Uh huh yeah, And yet like so much of what
he wants to do is like be in a hot
air balloon and like like you know, and yeah, you
can see how like maybe the photography just feels too
simple for him or something, even though he's good at it.
Speaker 2 (37:26):
Totally, I think that's it. And like his son takes
over the studio after he retires from it, and he
outlives most of his friends as well as his wife,
and he dies in nineteen ten at ninety years old.
And it's like, I'm glad he didn't find a way
to die usefully when he was twenty eight years old,
you know, even though it's like going to go try
and fight in a war of liberation as a noble cause, right,
(37:50):
But like, I'm glad he survived and got to do
so many other things, and you know, maybe all get
so lucky and live to be ninety after are reinventing
so many things and trying to participate in making the
world a better place by whatever means.
Speaker 3 (38:06):
We know how I feel really excited that, like I
get to go discover his photography now, you know, like
that wasn't something I knew about before.
Speaker 2 (38:14):
If this was more of a visual thing, I would
just screen share it. But it's worth looking up. It's
just na da r and some of us like, yeah,
that's a portrait. That's a guy, you know, but once
you like looking into the eyes of the subjects. And
then also yeah, like looking up the photos of Ernestine.
Any Like, I don't know, I get excited about wife
guys in history. It's like a thing because like often
(38:36):
you cover historical men and they are not great to
the people who are like supporting them and helping them
live their lives, and you know, ye should be their
partner an equal in their life. And so I get
it's kind of awful because then I end up being
like really excited about like wife guys. But then I'm
very rarely like, ah, here's a husband lady, you know,
(38:57):
but I still I get excited. And who knows, I
don't know. I haven't read her journals. I don't fucking know.
But anyway, that's an air that's the invention of airmail,
and like half of the photographic shit in history and
why hot air balloons are kind of cool even though
I will probably never go in one. That sounds terrifying,
the idea of like I'm gonna go flying and I
(39:18):
don't know where it's gonna go, Like what a chaos
method of travel.
Speaker 3 (39:23):
Also the landing seem rough, like, yeah, he looks so
gorgeous in the air, and then like the way they
like bounce around on the ground in places that you
don't know where you're gonna land, like it just feels yeah.
Speaker 2 (39:35):
Oh, both him and his I didn't cover, like because
most of the things about him cover his photography really extensively,
and his hot air balloons really extensively, and those are cool.
But he built one called the Giant, this hot air balloon,
and he would like take people up on like tourists
and where he would like bring cold chicken and tea
or something I can't remember. But then during one of
the landings of the Giant, both him and Ernestine I
believe were injured.
Speaker 3 (39:56):
No, yeah, I.
Speaker 2 (40:00):
Probably won't end up in a hot air balloon. Maybe
I'll never say never that one. Either of you ever
been in a hot air balloon?
Speaker 1 (40:08):
No, absolutely not.
Speaker 2 (40:10):
It sounds horrible.
Speaker 3 (40:13):
I think. I think my parents took us to like
a festival. I feel like, either in North Carolina or
like New Mexico or something, and I remember seeing like
a whole bunch of hot air balloons like together, but
I've never been in one.
Speaker 2 (40:25):
It's no for me, dog. Yeah, fair enough. Well, here
we are at the end. Anything you want to.
Speaker 3 (40:32):
Plug, Yeah, totally. We just brought this new show onto
our network. It's called No Such Thing, and it's three
really sweet friends who ask a question and argue and
then go out and do the research for it. So
like one of the questions they asked, was our city
dogs happier than suburban dogs or which way?
Speaker 2 (40:50):
What's the answer?
Speaker 3 (40:51):
Well, you should listen because it's a crop.
Speaker 2 (40:54):
I think country dogs are the happiest. Just that's my guess.
Speaker 3 (40:58):
Well, but also like why tosani tastes so different from
other water and.
Speaker 1 (41:03):
It was deep in pandemic times the only water that
was always available because nobody wanted it.
Speaker 2 (41:10):
Yeah, isn't it like slightly salted or something? It's aid.
Speaker 1 (41:15):
Yeah, they did like water testing and it came back
like really acidic, and everybody was like, wait a second.
Speaker 2 (41:25):
Well, hopefully that wasn't our main sponsor today, and if
it was, acid is good. What do I got to plug?
I have a substack. Everyone knows that I talk about
it all the time, but I post almost every week
and I try to do the hopeful misery or however
it was phrased. That's a thing. You can google my name.
(41:47):
We'll find it, Sophie.
Speaker 1 (41:49):
Cool Zonemedia dot com.
Speaker 3 (41:52):
Hell yeah, awesome.
Speaker 2 (41:54):
Oh and Coolzone Media book Club has its own feed now,
and you probably heard that because there's a little thing
interjected into it. But I I'll run another podcast called
cool Zone Media book Club Every Sunday comes out on
this feed. But you're like, I don't want to learn history.
I just want to hear Margaret read me bedtime stories,
which aren't planned as bedtime stories. But I've run into
a lot of people who tell me that cool Zone
Media is bedtime.
Speaker 3 (42:13):
Story and that's fine.
Speaker 2 (42:15):
So it has its own feed.
Speaker 1 (42:17):
And the artwork is really cute.
Speaker 2 (42:19):
It's somebody's goblins anyway, See y'all next week.
Speaker 1 (42:25):
By Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production
of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts and cool Zone Media,
visit our website. Foalzonemedia dot com, or check us out
on the Fiord Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
get your podcasts.
Cool Media.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Hello, and welcome to cool People who did cool stuff.
You're a weekly reminder that I have a podcast that
comes out more than once a week, and yet I
say weekly every single time. It's part of what I say,
and at this point, if I changed it, I would
probably get confused and end up rambling, which I'm certainly
not doing. I am your host, Margaret Kiljoy. My guest
is Mango, who's the host of Part Time Genius. And
this is part two of a two parter that is
(00:26):
not really a two parter. It's two separate one parters,
but that's the way that I always introduce the show.
So here I am Wait.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
Wait, if you didn't listen to part one, you can
actually still start with part two, which is very different
than normal.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Oh that's true, Sick, It's true. It's your time to
shine backwards a week people. How are you doing today
on this day that is obviously the same day as
last time you're.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
I'm having a great time. It's so nice to be
hang out with you and Sophie.
Speaker 2 (00:59):
Yeah, I am excited. It's nice to have weeks where
it's just talking to people who are nice to talk to.
But I actually have a very nice job. I complain
about working a lot because it takes a lot of
work to make this thing, but it's a nice job.
It's just like I like talk to people who are
cool about shit that matters, and it's nice.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
One day, I want to do this with both you
and Will if he ever ever has a free minute,
I want to do that. I think it would be
really fun.
Speaker 3 (01:26):
That'd be super fun. Yeah, and he's really funny.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
I know.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
Well, i'd be like, hello, my boss's boss, how are you. Well,
I don't have a boss. I'm a freelancer, but so
if he's my boss.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
Anyway, he's a really fun guy to get. Is it
a diet mountain dew?
Speaker 2 (01:44):
Is that what he likes?
Speaker 1 (01:45):
Is it regular mountain dew?
Speaker 3 (01:46):
I forget diet montain.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
I got it right, I get a diet mountain dew with.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
Probably better. It's one of those things where like, I
don't know whatever, I'm not sureing to pine on sugar
soever this non sugar.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
So that that's the problem.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
A without having a podcast, as You're like, I want
to just like talk about random shit, and I'm like, no,
people are listening, and I don't have an opinion here
That anyone should care about. There's people who actually know
about these things. But you know, I don't know. Whatever, drunk,
whatever you want, I don't care. So funny, So this
week we were talking about inventions made by people who
(02:25):
are participating in social struggles because I find it interesting.
The second invention I want to talk about instead of
talking about all of the other things that I could
talk about that people involved in social struggles have invented
that are complicated, is one that I think is probably good.
Air Mail seems like good, right, It seems neutral to me.
(02:46):
But I like the post office even more right now
now that I'm realizing they might get destroyed.
Speaker 3 (02:51):
Yeah, me too. Getting things in the mail is really wonderful.
Yeah yeah, And.
Speaker 4 (02:56):
It would be really nice to get mail from people
who are in a city that is besieged by Prussians.
Don't you think like if you were like, oh, my
friends are in a city that's besieged by Prussians and
you're like, oh, I got a nice letter, you know, yeah,
what have you got like broken up with by someone
who's been in the city that's besieged by Prussians, I
(03:17):
feel like I'd be like, you could have waited.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
I'm gonna sit that later.
Speaker 3 (03:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
So the second invention I want to talk about this
week is the result of another siege on a city,
but it is sixty years earlier, about eight hundred miles
further north, when the people of Paris, which is a
city in France, was besieged by Prussian forces, and they
invented air mail by using hot air balloons. And its inventor,
or at least the person who gets credit for inventing it,
(03:47):
is a socialite, a socialist, a celebrity photographer, and his
name is Nadare you've ever heard of this guy? You big?
Like history of photography nerd by any is like the
only avenue by which anyone would know this man.
Speaker 3 (04:03):
No, I don't. I don't think so. I mean, I
can't imagine that I do know, But I'm fascinating. I
feel like you've picked all these multi hyphenits.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
Oh yeah for the show. This is our last character
was a jack of all trades. Yeah, this person hates
what he is famous for because he doesn't want to
do the same job.
Speaker 3 (04:22):
Huh.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
We learned about him an eight year at history in
high school. He took portraits of people, am I.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
Yeah, he's like the first celebrity fortograph.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
Okay, oh wow, I just remember like big mustache photography
for something ease.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
Yeah, really good mustache. And he did a lot of
like natural light photography and he like he actually was
a really good photographer for something that's like portrait photography.
Speaker 3 (04:45):
Mhm.
Speaker 2 (04:47):
Is interesting. He also goes by just one name most
of the time. He also goes by Felix and a Dare.
We've talked about the Siege of Paris on this show
before in a series we did about the Paris Commune,
but that was years ago, and I think it's worth revisiting.
And I like how neatly it ties into the story
of foosball, because it's a story of people whose primary
love was the arts being totally willing to turn their
(05:07):
skills towards invention in community defense, all in a backdrop
of autocracy versus the republic, a struggle that is on
people's minds. Again. So you've got a country called France.
It's in Europe. It's a relatively famous country. I feel
like most people have heard. It would be nice to
be like not everyone needs to know about the countries
(05:30):
in Western Europe, you know, like that would be nice
to imagine, but unfortunately everyone is either from one of
those countries or from a place that was destroyed and
colonized by those countries. So yeah, it is what it
is in France in the nineteenth century, and it has
spent a lot of time going back and forth about
(05:50):
whether it was an empire or a public This was
a game it liked to play with itself by killing
it a lot of people. In eighteen forty eight, left
nationalist revolutions broke out all across Europe, and nationalism had
a again. Speaking of words at had really different meanings
at different times in different places. It sure matters whether
you're like a colonized person or a colonizing person when
(06:13):
you use the word nationalist. Right, So revolutions are breaking
out all across Europe, people being like I don't want
to be part of the empire. I want to be
my own thing, and also I would like to all
take care of each other in a socialist y way,
and that is all happening in eighteen forty eight. Most
of these revolutions failed, some of them are sort of successful.
(06:37):
In eighteen forty eight, France got rid of its king
and declared the Second French Republic. This is like I
held off learning the ins and outs of French revolutions
for so long because I was so annoyed about how
it's the only revolutions that anyone talk about, and less
the American Revolution. But eventually you learn about these things
(07:00):
and you start trying to figure out which Napoleon is which,
which is a very frustrating game. They declared the Second
French Republic, but they made a critical mistake. They let
a Napoleon be their president, Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, who became
Napoleon the third. Most of the time, I now said,
I hate when I have to learn about the French Revolution.
(07:21):
But don't worry. It's entertaining. Everyone's entertained most of the time.
When people say Napoleon, they mean Napoleon the first. Can
you keep the Napoleons apart? Is this an important part
of your life? Do you spend a lot of time
thinking about the Napoleon's.
Speaker 3 (07:33):
The only Napoleon I think about a lot is one
of the Napoleons had a brother named Joseph Napoleon, like
Joey Napoleon. Oh shit, and he came to New Jersey.
I think No, he lived in Jersey Shore, Pennsylvania.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
He's just his name, Joe.
Speaker 3 (07:49):
Yeah, it's like Joey Napoleon.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
Yeah, it's Joe Napoleon.
Speaker 3 (07:55):
He's the one I think about a lot.
Speaker 2 (07:57):
Okay, I don't know about Joey Napoleon the short Sophie.
Speaker 3 (08:01):
Do you know Jason English?
Speaker 1 (08:02):
Of course, what a wonderful person.
Speaker 3 (08:05):
Jason's the one who told me about Joey Napoleon, and
so we were always trying to figure out how to
make a show about joe Napoleon.
Speaker 1 (08:10):
Funny another like, really lovely human, such a nice guy.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
Jason, Well, he should just claim to be descended from
Joey Napoleon. I agree, do like, you know, one of
those like I'm getting in touch with my roots and
learning about, you know, in the same way that like
everyone who's like dad is a cult leader a serial
killer will do a podcast. I'm actually not disparaging that.
If your dad is a cult leader, a serial killer
and you can somehow try and scrape together some way
(08:37):
of dealing with it, I'm not mad. So Napoleon the
first is the main Napoleon, right, got the hat, he
hides the arm. He wasn't actually short that guy the Waterloo.
Abba wrote a song about him. It is the only
reason anyone knows. It's a very good song. And who
started off the leader of the first French Republic after
(09:00):
the French Revolution, which again, if people save the French Revolution,
they usually mean the first one of seventeen eighty nine.
Eventually he became emperor within a few years, by eighteen
oh four, and then he marched around conquering Europe and
eventually lost it in Waterloo. That's the first Napoleon. Napoleon
the second, Napoleon's kid doesn't really matter. He would never
actually ruled. He was like technically in charge, but not,
(09:21):
and then he wished he was in charge, and then
he died of tuberculosis when he was twenty one years old.
Napoleon the Third is Napoleon's nephew. I hope he's the
one who's brothers with Joey. I just feel like it
could be a good story that way. Napoleon the third,
he's the one who matters to our story today. He
was elected president eighteen forty eight, and he's the first
ever president of France. And then in eighteen fifty one,
(09:44):
when the constitution said he couldn't be president again. He
was like, well, actually, I don't care what the constitution says,
I have an army. And he cooed himself and stayed
in power and became Emperor of the Second French Empire.
That's who's in charge. He's kind of a be nvolent
dictator to the French, and he's absolutely a shitty colonizing
monster to the overseas colonies. He is absolutely the kind
(10:07):
of guy to get his country dragged into wars that
can't handle Prussia. Later, Germany was getting too big for
its breeches, and France was like, actually, we like being
in charge of Europe, so let's have a dick measuring contest,
which we'll call the Franco Prussian War. Prussia under Auto
von Bismarck was like, yeah, fuck it, sure, I'm going
to win, and Auto von Bismarck was right. On July sixteenth,
(10:31):
eighteen seventy, France declared war. Within a couple of weeks,
they invented Prussia. Prussia was like, we actually have railroads
that go in both directions, and you all have railroads
that go in one direction, so we're going to win,
and they did. They steamrolled France and literally The railroad
thing was a big part of it. They also had
better guns and stuff, but the ability to send rail
(10:51):
roads in both directions instead of one direction is really important. Yeah,
they just had double tracks. Napoleon captured at the Battle
of Sedan, and without its emperor, the empire falls. The
Third French Republic is declared and elections are called for,
but they can't happen because the Prussian army marches on
(11:12):
Paris and lays siege to the capital of actually Versailles
might have been I don't remember. I think Versaill was
the capital at this point. Whatever, they lay siege to
the important city. They figured they'd storm the place, but
then they realized that the city had half a million
people defending it, and they were like, you know what,
let's wait outside. Let's just let's just hang out. The
National Guard is good in this story.
Speaker 1 (11:34):
Interesting.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
Yeah, the national Guard was all of the working Again,
one lesson about stopping fascism is you arm the working class. Anyway.
Oh my god. It was even literally like you know,
have you seen that like Texas like come and take it,
cannon flag. Unfortunately, there's this like thing where like Texas
Second Amendment people are like come and take it, and
(11:56):
it's a picture of a cannon.
Speaker 3 (11:58):
Huh.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
One of the most import or like socialist radical things
in history was the Paris Commune. And it started with
the government trying to take the people's canons away, like
literal canons, and the people were like, nah, we're the
National Guard and we have the canons and you can't
take them. And then they took over their own city
and had a Paris Commune, and that's a different story
(12:20):
that I've already told a different time. Anyway, the Prussian
army marches on Paris, and the rich flee to their
estates outside the city, and the poor flood into the
city because they're looking for some modicum of safety. And
so the class composition of the city shifts dramatically. And
it matters because every adult male is conscripted into the
(12:42):
National Guard, and this means that the National Guard becomes
incredibly far left, which means the government is like, all right,
let's surrender the Prussians. We're surrounded. This isn't gonna work.
The National Guard was like, nah, fuck it, let's keep fighting.
And it's kind of wild that the people of the
country were like, no, we want to hold out and
(13:04):
starve rather than give into the Prussians.
Speaker 3 (13:06):
That's pretty incredible, yeah, I know.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
And so a supplies cut off to the outside world,
everyone started running around and panicking and murdering each other,
just like every apocalypse movie you've ever seen, except actually
that didn't happen at all. When Paris was cut off
from the outside world, mutual aid centers popped up all
over the city, feeding everyone they could. There's soup kitchens everywhere.
Rents are suspended, people pitchin together to avoid starving. People
(13:33):
eat every animal in the city, including everything in the zoo.
That part's a little dark, yeah, but I'd probably eat
an elephant before dying. And I'm a vegan. And there
was a guy there and he was like, you know what,
I love hot air balloons. We should use hot air balloons.
(13:53):
And his name was Felix Nadir And he is really
interesting and he did a lot of shit first, like
the first air photograph, the first underground photograph. He did
a lot of the developing in use of artificial light
for photography. He was one of the early political cartoonists.
He changed some of the way that political cartooning is done.
He actually political cartooning goes like eighty years prior to him,
(14:16):
but he worked at a humor magazine, which is part
of why I picked him for you. And he invented airmail,
and I'm grateful he went by just Nadair or Felix
Nadair rather than his birth name Gaspar Felix Torna Scholan
because I do not like pronouncing French because I am
bad at it, and now I feel bad making fun
(14:36):
of But I used to just be totally like whatever
them French. They can't pronounce the words just because it's funny,
they're not, I don't know whatever. But then I learned
recently that the reason that French has pronounced so differently
than all the other Romance languages. Have you heard this?
This is just I like random facts. It's probably because
of the indigenous Celtic pronunciation in Brittany.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
Interesting.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
So they were like, all right, we'll use your words,
but we use our pronunciation, and so now I feel
bad making fun of it, but I still can't pronounce
it correctly, So I'm glad he went by Nadair. And
much like Monday's Hero, the first thing that happened in
Nadair's life, inundated with advertising, just washed over it, baptized
(15:25):
in advertising, much like we are about to be baptized
by these ads. Yeah, these ads are really important. We
handpicked them for spiritual value. Oh anyway, here's ads and
(15:49):
we're back. Felix Nadair was born in eighteen twenty in
Paris into a fairly wealthy family, ninety nine years before
our last hero. He's born into a fairly wealthy family.
His dad was a printer and a publisher who could
read eight languages and had fought in the First French Revolution.
He's like where the word liberal comes from. You know.
He is like this, like progressive, I want a republic,
(16:13):
I'm willing to fight. I'm an upper middle class white
man guy, you know.
Speaker 3 (16:18):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
His dad loved liberty more than he loved being good
at business, and his publisher that he ran went under
in eighteen thirty three. Young Felix did well in school
most of the time, and he was always trying to
impress his dad. All of the people who psychoanalyze this
man are like daddy issues because he loved his dad.
I dislike the way that people analyze people about that.
(16:40):
I think he had a nice family and he liked
his dad. His dad was pretty warm to him. He
was also though constantly getting in trouble. His dad probably
wouldn't have fucking snitched him out for stealing a gold bracelet,
but he absolutely would have stolen a gold bracelet. He
was kicked out of school because he blew up the
stove with fireworks.
Speaker 3 (17:00):
Oh wow.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
Nada is like, I'm kind of annoyed by how much
I see myself and this guy who died like a
long time ago, who was like this has some ups
and downs. He was super in love with Romanticism and art,
like the Romantics as like an art movement, and his
hero was future friend of the Pod the Black author
Alexandre Duma, who wrote The Three Musketeers, which I read
(17:24):
in middle school and then apparently went around telling I
was talking to one of my old middle school friends
and she was like, yeah, you came up to me
and were like, I read an eight hundred and thirty
page book last weeks, so you I know. And all
I remember about that book is that they ride the
horses to death, and I'm like that seems bad.
Speaker 3 (17:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
Anyway, Nadair's dad died in eighteen thirty seven, when young
Felix was about seventeen or so and Nadair he's been
kicked out of school and he's like, you know what,
I'm gonna go to med school. So he goes to
med school for a while, he studied mental illness and
eventually they were like, but you didn't actually finish your
bachelor's you can't actually be here, and he was like, ah, fuck,
(18:11):
I don't want to go back to undergrad. So he
just became a college dropout bohemian guy. Like the original
bohemian era was like I think eighteen thirties forties France. Well,
actually the original bohemia is a part of what I
believe now the Czech Republic, but the Western Europeans like
taking something that seems exotic and calling it their name
(18:33):
of their lifestyle, so they were the Bohemians at this point.
He's like a cool, subcultural homeless guy, right, and he
starts talking in like basically thieves can't. That was popular
at the time where the people who like hated authority
had this way of talking in a fake medieval French
(18:57):
what yeah, yeah, no. I was always like, how did
this guy get this name? And almost every source is like, ah,
you know, he just added the nonsense syllable dar to
the end of his name, like no. He was speaking
a subcultural lingo where everyone adds were like dared or
(19:17):
dar to the end of all of their words.
Speaker 3 (19:20):
Huh.
Speaker 2 (19:20):
And he was also embarrassed because he had a bougie
last name, so he started going by first Tornidar, and
then he shortened it to just Nadar. And he bummed
around for ten years. This is literally what I did,
is I dropped out of college and bummed around of
being involved in protest movements and living in squads and
like sleeping out rough and not using money and whatever.
(19:41):
And so he did this like one hundred and seventy
years before me. From eighteen to twenty eight, he would
go from house to house. He would shack up with
whoever caught his fancy. He would make his tiny living
writing and drawing cartoons. And later he would write about
how people saw the bohem in life and romanticized it,
but he was like, actually it sucked. It was just hard,
(20:06):
like huh. And the deprivation that he suffered became sufferable
when he did it with friends and with art and
they would all rent some cheap room together for a
while until the landlord figured out they weren't paying rent,
and then you get thrown out. And he would like
make pipes out of wood he found in the parks
in the city and sell the pipes. And all of
these bohemians they're all socialists of a proto socialist type,
(20:29):
like modern socialism would get defined later in the century.
And at some point during all this he gets to
meet his hero Duma, and he starts getting slowly more work.
He's writing theater reviews. He does paste up layout basically
for various newspapers, which was literally my career. I made
my tiny living while living in a van doing layout
(20:50):
for books and magazines.
Speaker 3 (20:52):
Huh.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
It's unnerving, yeah, anyway, and he makes a little bit
of money here and there. He's actually despite king of
revolutionized photography, to the point where people study him centuries
after he died. He was successful, but he was never rich.
Soon enough, he's editing newspapers, he's doing journalism, he's drawing caricatures,
and he's doing whatever's necessary for publication. How old does
(21:15):
he know, he's like in his early twenties, mid twenties. Okay, Yeah,
the cops are after him a lot. By the time
he's twenty three. The police wrote about him as quote
one of those dangerous sorts who spreads the most subversive
doctrines throughout the Latin Quarter. And I had to do
digging to find his political affiliations because people just want
(21:37):
to talk about his use of natural light and the
way he posed people. Every political artist has their political
views stripped from them by history. This man was not
subtle in what he believed in, but it took the
deep dive to find any of it. He believed in
a humanist socialism and a morality of the heart. He
believed in socialist democracy over capitalist monarchy. He hated the
(21:59):
rich politicians, even as he like celebrated. He got really
into like celebrity culture and being kind of a socialite
a little bit, I think, although kind of always just
like as a weird guy, you'd rather like fly hot
air balloons. But whenever he had to like photograph politicians
and the rich, he was just like real unhappy about it.
And he was a romantic. He's at the tail end
of the romantic movement, but he was writing short fiction
(22:22):
and like books and stuff for a long time. As
wasn't what he's remembered for but he always wanted to
write in ways that would offer hope to the reader.
That was like a specific thing that he was trying
to do, which annoys me because that's what I do.
Get your own shtick. In an air, one friend referred
to his invincible good humor and that he was quote
(22:46):
like the cheerful music of our misery. He made friends
for life, and he was fiercely loyal. I honestly like,
this is another man where I was expecting him to
kind of turn. He is going to I'll talk about
his marriage in a little bit.
Speaker 3 (22:57):
Mac.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
Parent just wanted you to let you know that you're
like the truthful music of our misery.
Speaker 3 (23:01):
Oh thanks.
Speaker 2 (23:06):
I always want to be like, hey, it's actually miserable
right now, but what can we do about it? You know?
Speaker 1 (23:11):
I mean that would just be your invincible good humor.
Speaker 2 (23:14):
Yeah, yeah, fair enough, thank you. It took a long
time to find. So he gets arthritis young, he's plagued
with his whole life, but he aggressively keeps up a
lust for life. At some point when he was like
twenty five, he was in a duel and I wish
I knew more than that sentence it might have been
about money, my conjecture, because he aggressively avoided pain rent
(23:37):
and eventually he's going to go to debtors prison, which
I'm very glad it's not a thing anymore. His time
in prison in eighteen fifty is going to turn him
into an aggressive advocate for prison reform. And when the
revolution broke out in eighteen forty eight and people of
France went to the barricades and ended the monarchy, he
didn't fight on the barricades, and he is mad at
(23:59):
him himself about that. He is like, why didn't I
do it? And he kind of talks about being like
I was kind of caught up doing my own like
young dumb shit, you know. Like So for a brief moment,
this new government seems revolutionary and socialist. It's going to
go right wing very quickly. But when this ostensibly revolutionary
(24:21):
government puts together a force of Polish exiles to go
fight for Polish freedom, two hundred frenchmen volunteered to go
with them, and a Dare goes with them. So he
marches off to war with the like socialist polls to
go free Poland from Austria Hungary. I have covered this
before on the show, and I couldn't tell you. I
(24:42):
think it's Austrian and Hungarian empire. And he writes to
his friend he says he wanted to join quote I
thought I could be good for something. And so he
kind of knows that he's just like, this is a
fuck up artist guy, you know. And his father had
fought in a re and he had sat out his
own generation's revolution, and then he wrote, quote, it is
(25:06):
very difficult to get killed usefully.
Speaker 3 (25:12):
And that is the.
Speaker 2 (25:13):
Most like twenty five year old leftist thing I've ever
read in my life.
Speaker 3 (25:21):
An amazing quote.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
Yeah, yeah, all the polls and the French folks get
arrested and the French volunteers are freed and send back
to Paris on foot. Nadir became a spy in Germany
for the French Revolutionary Army for a while, and then
he returned to France and it was going right wing
and fast, and so he was like, I don't like
this Napoleon guy. I don't think we should elect him.
(25:43):
And he joined a paper that was basically just trying
to make sure that Napoleon the Third wouldn't get elected
because that dude was right wing. As fuck, and Nadir
drew political cartoons against the right wing, which meant that
the paper he worked for got censored by the new government,
by the new president when Napoleon gets elect did and
so at this point, Nadair's like, I guess I'm gonna
be a characterature artist for a living. He's not great
(26:06):
at his job because he's too headed in the clouds,
he's too political, and he's not always great at the
business side of art. But he's still a freelance artist.
Speaker 1 (26:15):
You know.
Speaker 2 (26:17):
He takes on too many jobs. He's late for all
of them. Meanwhile, he's caring for his mother the whole time.
He apparently lives with a large number of animals, like
it's called a menagerie, and I don't know what they
are or were, and I'm also sad about that. I
also am frustrated at my own desire to learn foreign languages,
primarily so I can do research about obscure figures in
(26:38):
history instead of communicate with the people who live in
the world around me. But I'm like, if I had
enough time, I would learn enough French just to read
more and find out what animals this man lived with.
The Republic becomes the Empire Alla Star Wars. Yeah, like
to the point where I kind of think that might
be what they were drawing from with Star Wars, that
(27:01):
this is not the first time that the French Republic
is going to become an empire. So political caricature becomes
an impossible business under the empire, and so he decides
He's like, I'm going to do this grand art project
where I'm going to draw one thousand artists. The pantheon
of artists is called the Pantheon. He's going to have
them all come sit for caricatures, which is really funny
(27:23):
because the characatures are like this like mocking thing, right, Yeah,
but he was drawing them of people he loved and respected,
and he wasn't afraid to draw himself in the same
mocking way. He didn't ever finish this work, and the
loans he took out for it were running out. He
takes the rest of the loan and he sets up
a photography studio kind of for his younger brother, but
(27:46):
then his starts doing it with his brother, and his
brother starts going by Nadair, which doesn't make him happy. Sure,
and basically the two are going to sue each other
like tried constantly to be like, could you just stop
stealing my name? And he's like, no, I'm different. I'm
the Dare young Like I'm the Dare the younger or whatever.
Speaker 3 (28:08):
But two Gallaghers?
Speaker 2 (28:10):
Is there more than one Gallagher? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (28:12):
I think there are two people that toured as Gallagher and.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
They're both just smashing watermelons and somehow that's funny. Did
one of them find a way to make it funny? Sorry,
I Gallagher might be funny. I don't know. All I
know is he smashes watermelons.
Speaker 3 (28:26):
They they smash watermelons, and.
Speaker 2 (28:29):
Not in a non binary way but in a double.
Speaker 3 (28:31):
Yeah, it's so funny.
Speaker 2 (28:35):
Goddamn eventually, and it's it's funny because like, this chunk
of his life is like what half of the shit
I can find is about his lawsuits of this brother,
which I kind of don't care about the important part
from my point of view. Nd Air wins in court.
He tries to not go to court, but his brother's
like nah, and the Air wins in court and wins
the right to be the sole person publishing isn't a
Dare And one of his first subjects is an eighteen
(28:59):
year old he is going to marry named Ernestine when
he's thirty four years old, and it's just the style
at the time. I don't know what to say about that.
Whenever that should happen. She's an adult and she's religious
and she's Protestant, and he doesn't invite his friends to
the wedding. This is seen as like his break with
his youth. But he loves her. As far as I
(29:23):
can tell, they are going to grow old together. He
is going to outlive her. He is going to like
caretake her when she's paralyzed. He photographs her entire life
in like the most loving ways. Long after he hates photography,
and so I'm kind of like, yeah, he fell in love.
The age gap of people in the past is a
(29:43):
thing that comes up a lot anytime you cover any
people in history. Yeah, he becomes famous as a photographer
now that he is this studio set up, and his
thing is is that he only uses natural Eventually he's
going to have to use our official lights sometimes, but
during his peak years he only us natural light I
think coming in through the window. And he has none
(30:03):
of the weird props that other studios have where they're
like propped up on a Greco Roman column and whatever,
you know, and he he chats and connects with each
subject to photograph them honestly, and it comes across like,
you know, people talk about I kind of hate the
line between craft and art, like I don't really care
(30:26):
where that line is, and I think that people elevate
art too highly and look down on craft. But I
see it that his portraitures his art. And a lot
of if you look at photos of like old celebrities,
and also like half of the socialists or whatever that
I cover on the show, they're all photographed by this guy,
(30:48):
and he photographs women more naturally than other men do.
And then there's this whole thing and I can't source
this because it happened the last time I looked him up,
and I couldn't find it this time. There's this whole thing.
He always is photographing men with their hand and their
pants pocket, and apparently that's like a sexy thing. And
so he's photographing men sexy because their hands near their dick,
and so there's kind of a like Isnader gay vibe
(31:10):
going on too, you know, But he photographs women a
lot more naturally than other male photographers do. And he
also started doing gender analysis about beauty standards out of
his photography. This man is so fucking cool. Basically, like
people kept saying that it's now is that like women
are so obsessed with how they look and blah blah blah, right,
(31:31):
and he's basically able to be like well, quote nine
times out of ten, I would say eleven times out
of ten, you will see that the wife is absorbed
by the portraits of her husband, while the husband no
less hypnotized, but by his own image, seems miles away
from even thinking of the image of his other half,
(31:53):
and like he's doing fucking gender nosts whatever. And he's
obsessed with ballooning. This is the other, completely, the other
random part of his life. He is obsessed with hot
air balloons. But he knows the real trick is that
eventually we have to invent heavier than aircraft, and he
tries to help people invent it. It doesn't succeed. He thinks
that the helicopter is the way to go. In eighteen
(32:15):
fifty eight, he takes the first successful aerial photograph because
he has to figure out there's like the problem where
like the gases being off gas from the balloons. We're
fucking up all of the photos, and he like solves
all this shit. He's tethered two hundred and sixty two
feet in the air outside of Paris. That photo has
been lost, so the oldest surviving aerial photograph is from
two years later, a guy taking a picture in Boston.
(32:38):
His love affair for ballooning ate up all of the
money he made at the studio. He was obsessed. His
friend Victor Hugo supporting his efforts about air travel and
about hot air balloons, and wrote, quote, it is the
abolition of all boundaries. It is the destruction of separation.
It is the prodigious, peaceful revolution. And like, I love
(32:59):
how I enteenth century people were like, oh, we're going
to invent this thing, and finally humanity will be united.
You know.
Speaker 3 (33:08):
Yeah, I mean there is romance and the idea of
like you know, not having boundaries and being able to
like escape the earth, you know, yeah, pretty wonderful, and.
Speaker 2 (33:18):
You can like meet people from all over the world
so much more easily, and you can like you know,
like nothing destroys bigotry, like just actually meeting people.
Speaker 3 (33:26):
There's like an effect that people in space feel right,
like when they look on Earth and they suddenly feel
like more appreciative of the world when they see it
from a distance. Yeah, yeah, and of humanity, And like
I wonder if like there's an early aspect of that
as well.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
That makes sense. But do you know what I find
really helps me see the best in humanity?
Speaker 3 (33:51):
What is that?
Speaker 2 (33:52):
It's the products and services that support this show. All
of them bring joy to my heart.
Speaker 3 (33:56):
How can I learn more about them?
Speaker 2 (33:58):
Well, you're in luck because here they are. And Rebeck
so Nadair lives in Paris, does not leave when the
Prussians are coming and is under siege. When Paris is
under siege, Nadir is like, all right, we're going to
(34:21):
use hot air balloons to get mail out of the city.
They can't get mail into the city this way, so
it is one way letters. So you know, someone writes
you from besieged Paris and says they're breaking up with you.
It's the final word. You don't get to write them back.
To use hot air balloons to get mail out of
the city past the Prussian guns. Also, they use balloons
(34:42):
to spy on enemy movements, although that would happen more
during the Paris Commune, which happened shortly thereafter. Sixty six
flights made it out carrying millions of letters. Nine balloons
didn't make it out, and we're taken down and I
believe by the enemy. And this is how air mail
is invented. Wow, is I want to get letters out?
Speaker 3 (35:02):
That's incredible.
Speaker 2 (35:05):
And after the siege of Paris and then later the
Paris Commune, which I've covered at length, which kind of
sets up a lot of the distinctions between types of
leftists in the modern world, and also that people can
try and take care of themselves and control their city.
After that, Nadair helps organize the first Impressionist exhibition, which
takes place at his studio. His wife, Ernestine, was bed
(35:28):
ridden with partial paralysis starting in eighteen eighty seven. She
lives for about another ten years or so, and he
takes really sweet photographs of her, the last studies he
ever took. There's like these photos of her holding violets
against her mouth, and they're my favorite of his photos.
They're just showing it's like love of people who've been
(35:50):
together for decades, and like, if you look really closely,
you can figure out that these are probably photos of
her in bed and they don't look like it, and
like it's all done with the lighting. Like I don't know.
He just he lived this kind of amazing life where
he lived this like wild youth and he settles down,
but he doesn't change as a person fundamentally, you know.
(36:13):
And he's like participating in like the politics of the era.
He's participating in the art world. Oh and the whole
thing that I barely covered is that all of the
shit he's famous for is about six years. That's how
long he ran this studio. He was like, I hate this,
I hate doing this. He wants to just balloon and
do weird shit. He also took the first photographs of
(36:35):
the Catacombs. It's like the first underground photos were taken
by him. He photographs the catacombs by using artificial light.
Wildly important in art history of a photographic history. But
he wrote constantly being like by doing the same thing
every day, I am destroying my soul. And he called
himself a jack of all trades. He was like, this
is the death of a jack of all trades. But
(36:57):
he's also really good at it.
Speaker 3 (36:58):
It's so funny because like he's so clearly like wants
his life to have meaning, right, Like he talks about
that like as a you know, wanting to die for
how hard it is to die for a cause or whatever.
Speaker 2 (37:10):
Die usefully?
Speaker 3 (37:11):
Uh huh yeah, And yet like so much of what
he wants to do is like be in a hot
air balloon and like like you know, and yeah, you
can see how like maybe the photography just feels too
simple for him or something, even though he's good at it.
Speaker 2 (37:26):
Totally, I think that's it. And like his son takes
over the studio after he retires from it, and he
outlives most of his friends as well as his wife,
and he dies in nineteen ten at ninety years old.
And it's like, I'm glad he didn't find a way
to die usefully when he was twenty eight years old,
you know, even though it's like going to go try
and fight in a war of liberation as a noble cause, right,
(37:50):
But like, I'm glad he survived and got to do
so many other things, and you know, maybe all get
so lucky and live to be ninety after are reinventing
so many things and trying to participate in making the
world a better place by whatever means.
Speaker 3 (38:06):
We know how I feel really excited that, like I
get to go discover his photography now, you know, like
that wasn't something I knew about before.
Speaker 2 (38:14):
If this was more of a visual thing, I would
just screen share it. But it's worth looking up. It's
just na da r and some of us like, yeah,
that's a portrait. That's a guy, you know, but once
you like looking into the eyes of the subjects. And
then also yeah, like looking up the photos of Ernestine.
Any Like, I don't know, I get excited about wife
guys in history. It's like a thing because like often
(38:36):
you cover historical men and they are not great to
the people who are like supporting them and helping them
live their lives, and you know, ye should be their
partner an equal in their life. And so I get
it's kind of awful because then I end up being
like really excited about like wife guys. But then I'm
very rarely like, ah, here's a husband lady, you know,
(38:57):
but I still I get excited. And who knows, I
don't know. I haven't read her journals. I don't fucking know.
But anyway, that's an air that's the invention of airmail,
and like half of the photographic shit in history and
why hot air balloons are kind of cool even though
I will probably never go in one. That sounds terrifying,
the idea of like I'm gonna go flying and I
(39:18):
don't know where it's gonna go, Like what a chaos
method of travel.
Speaker 3 (39:23):
Also the landing seem rough, like, yeah, he looks so
gorgeous in the air, and then like the way they
like bounce around on the ground in places that you
don't know where you're gonna land, like it just feels yeah.
Speaker 2 (39:35):
Oh, both him and his I didn't cover, like because
most of the things about him cover his photography really extensively,
and his hot air balloons really extensively, and those are cool.
But he built one called the Giant, this hot air balloon,
and he would like take people up on like tourists
and where he would like bring cold chicken and tea
or something I can't remember. But then during one of
the landings of the Giant, both him and Ernestine I
believe were injured.
Speaker 3 (39:56):
No, yeah, I.
Speaker 2 (40:00):
Probably won't end up in a hot air balloon. Maybe
I'll never say never that one. Either of you ever
been in a hot air balloon?
Speaker 1 (40:08):
No, absolutely not.
Speaker 2 (40:10):
It sounds horrible.
Speaker 3 (40:13):
I think. I think my parents took us to like
a festival. I feel like, either in North Carolina or
like New Mexico or something, and I remember seeing like
a whole bunch of hot air balloons like together, but
I've never been in one.
Speaker 2 (40:25):
It's no for me, dog. Yeah, fair enough. Well, here
we are at the end. Anything you want to.
Speaker 3 (40:32):
Plug, Yeah, totally. We just brought this new show onto
our network. It's called No Such Thing, and it's three
really sweet friends who ask a question and argue and
then go out and do the research for it. So
like one of the questions they asked, was our city
dogs happier than suburban dogs or which way?
Speaker 2 (40:50):
What's the answer?
Speaker 3 (40:51):
Well, you should listen because it's a crop.
Speaker 2 (40:54):
I think country dogs are the happiest. Just that's my guess.
Speaker 3 (40:58):
Well, but also like why tosani tastes so different from
other water and.
Speaker 1 (41:03):
It was deep in pandemic times the only water that
was always available because nobody wanted it.
Speaker 2 (41:10):
Yeah, isn't it like slightly salted or something? It's aid.
Speaker 1 (41:15):
Yeah, they did like water testing and it came back
like really acidic, and everybody was like, wait a second.
Speaker 2 (41:25):
Well, hopefully that wasn't our main sponsor today, and if
it was, acid is good. What do I got to plug?
I have a substack. Everyone knows that I talk about
it all the time, but I post almost every week
and I try to do the hopeful misery or however
it was phrased. That's a thing. You can google my name.
(41:47):
We'll find it, Sophie.
Speaker 1 (41:49):
Cool Zonemedia dot com.
Speaker 3 (41:52):
Hell yeah, awesome.
Speaker 2 (41:54):
Oh and Coolzone Media book Club has its own feed now,
and you probably heard that because there's a little thing
interjected into it. But I I'll run another podcast called
cool Zone Media book Club Every Sunday comes out on
this feed. But you're like, I don't want to learn history.
I just want to hear Margaret read me bedtime stories,
which aren't planned as bedtime stories. But I've run into
a lot of people who tell me that cool Zone
Media is bedtime.
Speaker 3 (42:13):
Story and that's fine.
Speaker 2 (42:15):
So it has its own feed.
Speaker 1 (42:17):
And the artwork is really cute.
Speaker 2 (42:19):
It's somebody's goblins anyway, See y'all next week.
Speaker 1 (42:25):
By Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production
of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts and cool Zone Media,
visit our website. Foalzonemedia dot com, or check us out
on the Fiord Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
get your podcasts.
Host
Margaret Killjoy
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