February 10, 2022 • 14 mins
Langston answers a listener's email about the secret racism of the bottled water industry.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Motherfucking many years, so many episode, motherfucking many episode. Yep, yep,
there it is. There it is. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome
to another phenomenal, beautiful, romantic I don't know why it
(00:23):
would be romantic romantic episode of My Mama Told Me
Podcast where we dick deep deep into the pockets of
black conspiracy theories and we finally work to prove the
theories that you the listener have at home. This is it.
It's a mini episode. We're doing one of them short
(00:44):
bitches again, and we ain't got nothing against short bitches.
Sometimes bitches is big, sometimes bitches are small. Either way,
we love all our business, do we not? Listeners at home?
We love our bitches and this bitch is no different.
We have a great episode ahead of you. I got
an email from a person named Daniel. Daniel sent me
(01:07):
a theory that he wanted me to dig into, and
and I'm excited to share with you. This is not
one of the classic I played the voices. I'm not
gonna You're not gonna hear another human's voice. You're stuck
listening to me, so buckle up as I attempt to
read Daniel's email. Now Daniel said, Hey, Lankston, My mama
told me that the entire bottled water industry emerged out
(01:29):
of racism. Oh ship, she waffled on. They only ended
jim Crow once they decided to bottle water for the
whites and shunn water fountains anyways, and the bottle water
industry was created to cater to thirsty whites in Jim
Crow States who no longer felt comfortable enough to drink
from the newly desegregated water fountains. Now, my mom is
(01:52):
a white lady from Schenectady, New York, so I'm not
sure where she gets these series, but she was married
to a black man. First, my older siblings are half black,
and it's not something I've heard from them or their father.
Hint at. I d k if this was something swirling
around in the Zeitgeists in the nineteen eighties and she
caught wind of it, or if she just likes to
(02:14):
hotep that ship. Either way, I love the many episodes
and felt this could be a good topic. I d
k this was from Daniel, and now there's a lot
in this that I enjoyed. Daniel, first of all, thirsty whites.
I'm gonna be using that a lot more often in
my personal exchanges. Everybody's gonna be a thirsty white as
(02:36):
far as I'm concerned. And your mother having married a
black man and found her way back to the white man,
Now that's devildom if I've ever heard of it. Once
you go black, you never go back, mostly because your family, uh,
they disconnect from you. They're not really interested in you
as much anymore now that you've been tainted. But your
mother found her way back, much like those little big
(02:56):
feet men from that Lord of the Ring Show movie?
What what is it called? What were their names? I
shouldn't be asking anyone because I'm alone. The bag of
Vance was that? No, they weren't Bag of Vance. That
was Will Smith. He had a different, uh racial issue
in that movie. Anyway, The point is I started doing
(03:17):
some research, Daniel, into your mother's theory about these supposed
white water fountains leading to the end of Jim Crow.
That's a silly fucking concept that but white people were
so upset at the very idea that they would have
to share water fountains that they created water bottles and
then ended an entire arrow segregation. I don't know if
(03:40):
it's true, But I did do some research and I
did find some pretty interesting stuff. Now let's start from
the beginning. I think we all feel like we remember
when America first started running the bottle water scam on us, right,
any we all have memories of that. For years, I
remember it through McDonald's. I remember I would go to McDonald's,
(04:01):
which I want to say this, which is a corporation
I've long maintained has never done anything bad to anyone
in the history of time. McDonald's is perfect. McDonald's never
hurt anybody. They they're flawless in their behavior. But for years,
I didn't even know McDonald's had water. I didn't know
they starved water at all, cup bottle nothing. I thought
(04:22):
McDonald's just had soda, and if you didn't want soda,
you could drink the inside of an apple pie, you
know what I mean. You would just stick a straw
and an apple pie and you you'd sip that, and
that was what McDonald's had to offer. But then suddenly,
out of nowhere, when I was a young person, McDonald's
started offering bottled waters with your meal options. It blew
(04:44):
my mind that they were charging for water. I had
never seen it before. I didn't think it would last. However,
the water bottle industry did not start when I was
a child, despite what I thought to be true. The
water bottled industry, the bottled water industry. I don't know
why be watered bottles, and that doesn't make sense at all.
I am drunk. I am drunk off of the joy
(05:07):
of reading your your message, Daniel. No, I'm drunk off
of whiskey. Um, whiskey drunk, Daniel. The point is, the
first emergence of bottling and selling water actually came in
the first half of the nineteenth century. The nineteenth century.
That's the eighteen hundreds, you dumb fox. Some of y'all
don't know how to measure time in that way, but
(05:28):
eighteen hundreds is when we first start selling bottled water.
Back then, bathing and drinking water was super unreliable, you
know what I mean. Every glass of water you drank
back then pretty much had a little bit of horse
knee in it. I think that's how it went. You
just drink some water and be like, is that God
damn it? This got some horse knee in it. But
(05:49):
you didn't You couldn't afford to throw the water away.
Because you had to go to a well where the
horses would dip their knees, so you just drank it anyway.
But so back then, these fancy people would often buy
bottles quote unquote from sellers who had access to rare
springs in New York and Maine. In West Virginia. However,
(06:09):
as Americans began to improve our filtration systems and remove
the horse knees floating in our glasses, the bottle water
industry took a major hit. They were doing hot, they
were doing great for a while selling these rare waters,
and then suddenly they had to to dial it back
so much so that at one point in the nineteen
(06:30):
seventies the bottle water industry had gone down so low
that they were selling essentially a gallon and a half
of water of bottled water per person per year. That's it,
a gallon and a half. And then out of nowhere,
and this is always how it goes. The water industry
is dying. At least the bottle water industry is dying.
(06:51):
Everybody just drinking tap water and living easy lives and
then well, ignoring all the racism and uh and and
devastate ation that came out of the wake of the
Civil rights movement. Everything else was easy, super easy. Anyway.
The point is then comes these rich bitches at perry A.
Now you know perry A. They're very fancy. They pride
(07:15):
themselves on being very fancy water, and by the late
seventies they figured out how to pitch their water as
like this foreign, rare treat, which causes waves of people
at this time to want to spend more money than
they've ever spent on water for something that they otherwise
were able to access for free, and like all things
(07:37):
related to capitalism, once this happens, a snowball effect happens
of competition of people beginning to create their own water
companies and create more fancy origin stories for where their
water comes from and what kind of cool things that
does for your health and your body. So much so
that water hits this major upswing in sales, and it
(08:01):
forces the soda companies, which for a long time, we're
just selling soda. They were just proud, you know, pepsi,
so pepsi, cope, so coke and cocaine, but mostly coke,
and so they're selling what they know. But so much
so that the water companies are now in competition with them,
and they begin making their own bottled water, thus causing
(08:21):
the market to become literally flooded. Look what I just
did right there, literally flooded with bottled water options. And
by the time we get to the bottled water market
was growing by thirty percent each year. Thirty percent each year.
That sounds like the rate that my penis grows. No, No, Lengthston, No,
(08:42):
this isn't a crass podcast. This is a podcast for
learning and growth. You don't get to make penis jokes.
My apologies. And today Americans now drink more bottled water
than any other package beverage, any other package beverage, and
that includes whiskey, which I am very drunk on right now. Now.
(09:06):
The question, Daniel, that you brought up that your mother,
who wants what's with the black man is is no
longer with the black man, and will study that later
how she made her way out of that. But more importantly,
the question that your mother asked was how does this
relate to race? And what I found is, as it
turns out, of the U S population still to this
(09:28):
day drinks water from unsafe systems. That's right, and you
guessed it, Daniel. Most of those forty. Most of that
most of those thirsty bitches are people of color. That's right.
You know, places like Flint and Newark have been struggling
for years. The Flint water crisis started in twenty fourteen.
(09:51):
That means little miss Flint is my age. Now. She's
thirty four years old, and she's got massive biceps and
a thick beard from all at lead water. She's been
drinking a little tail too. She's Oh, she's a giant
weird freak because of the poison water that she's been
forced to drink since. And that ultimately leads us to
(10:13):
the realization that I don't know that white people, seeing
that they had to share a water fountain was enough
to completely reconsider the way that they deal in water
forever and always. But I do think that a mix
between capitalism and racism has created the water bottle industry,
(10:34):
and like most things, water bottles have become a method
of creating new walls of access, you know what I'm saying.
So if you can't afford water bottles, then you may
also not be able to afford clean drinking water. And
if you can't afford clean drinking water, then you're probably
a nigga, and every week a group of extremely hydrated
(10:56):
white devils are finding new and exciting ways to kill you.
And they'll kill you even if it's just from what
comes out of your own sink. So, Daniel, your mother's
theory is a little outrageous. I think she's out of control.
I think she may also be whiskey trunk. But I
don't think that she's totally incorrect in theorizing. The end
(11:20):
of Jim Crow, at least in its timing, leads to
the ultimate sort of creation of new systems of destruction
and separation between rich people and poor people. And unfortunately,
the people who are often most affected by poverty and
its punishments happen to be people of color, specifically black people. Daniel,
(11:44):
I think this answers your question. I hope it does.
I hope you and your your white lady mom from Schenectady,
up New York feel more certain that you. I guess
you're completely unaffected by this. Schenectady sounds like a nice place,
and your mom is I assume clean drinking water, so
much so that she has a lot of time to
speculate about the water bottle industry. But the point is.
(12:07):
She sounds like a lovely woman. And I appreciate you
sending this, Daniel, I really do. And I hope that
in her third husband she she goes black again. I
hope she makes a nice white man sandwich between all
of these relationships. And I hope she has another set
of babies. I don't know how old she is, but
I have to as very old. And let's get weird, Daniel.
(12:27):
Let's let her drink some weird drinking water that's poisonous,
and then she can get her period back and have
some more kids and they can be mixed, and then
you can feel like a total outsider and create a
new America. This is what I dream of. And I'm
sorry I I asked you to imagine your mother having
sex again. That's probably not what you wanted, Daniel, certainly
(12:48):
not at the end of this bottled water theory. Anyway,
I've rambled far too long. This has been a wonderful episode.
I think I think this is maybe one of our best.
I don't know. I stopped gay a long time ago. Anyway,
if you want to send me stuff like, Daniel, if
you have ideas that are floating around in your mother's head,
that have since been transferred over to you. You can
(13:10):
send them to my Mama pod at gmail dot com.
I read them on I don't always reply to everything.
Some of them make me hugely uncomfortable, and you know,
I gotta work past that. I'm extremely grateful for each
and every one of you that sends stuff, but some
of the things you send shame on you. You really
gotta self reflect and take a minute to be like,
(13:31):
should I press send and and ask another adult to
absorb this into his psyche and go on with his
day knowing that this is the way the human brain works.
I don't think you should, but it's not for me
to judge anyway. My Mama Pott at gmail dot com
send me ship and please like, subscribe. I don't know
why I say, like, can you like podcasts? Like it?
(13:54):
Subscribe it, retweet it, do whatever you need to do
to make this podcast as as successful and popular is possible,
and leave a comment. Send nice words on Apple Podcasts
so that we can make it to our dream goals.
We want to win the big podcast competition and that's
(14:15):
only possible if you send your love. Okay, that's it, bye, bitches.
Motherfucking many years so many years, so motherfucking many years, so,
motherfucking many years. So many years, motherfucking many years. So
Motherfucking many years, so many episode, motherfucking many episode. Yep, yep,
there it is. There it is. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome
to another phenomenal, beautiful, romantic I don't know why it
(00:23):
would be romantic romantic episode of My Mama Told Me
Podcast where we dick deep deep into the pockets of
black conspiracy theories and we finally work to prove the
theories that you the listener have at home. This is it.
It's a mini episode. We're doing one of them short
(00:44):
bitches again, and we ain't got nothing against short bitches.
Sometimes bitches is big, sometimes bitches are small. Either way,
we love all our business, do we not? Listeners at home?
We love our bitches and this bitch is no different.
We have a great episode ahead of you. I got
an email from a person named Daniel. Daniel sent me
(01:07):
a theory that he wanted me to dig into, and
and I'm excited to share with you. This is not
one of the classic I played the voices. I'm not
gonna You're not gonna hear another human's voice. You're stuck
listening to me, so buckle up as I attempt to
read Daniel's email. Now Daniel said, Hey, Lankston, My mama
told me that the entire bottled water industry emerged out
(01:29):
of racism. Oh ship, she waffled on. They only ended
jim Crow once they decided to bottle water for the
whites and shunn water fountains anyways, and the bottle water
industry was created to cater to thirsty whites in Jim
Crow States who no longer felt comfortable enough to drink
from the newly desegregated water fountains. Now, my mom is
(01:52):
a white lady from Schenectady, New York, so I'm not
sure where she gets these series, but she was married
to a black man. First, my older siblings are half black,
and it's not something I've heard from them or their father.
Hint at. I d k if this was something swirling
around in the Zeitgeists in the nineteen eighties and she
caught wind of it, or if she just likes to
(02:14):
hotep that ship. Either way, I love the many episodes
and felt this could be a good topic. I d
k this was from Daniel, and now there's a lot
in this that I enjoyed. Daniel, first of all, thirsty whites.
I'm gonna be using that a lot more often in
my personal exchanges. Everybody's gonna be a thirsty white as
(02:36):
far as I'm concerned. And your mother having married a
black man and found her way back to the white man,
Now that's devildom if I've ever heard of it. Once
you go black, you never go back, mostly because your family, uh,
they disconnect from you. They're not really interested in you
as much anymore now that you've been tainted. But your
mother found her way back, much like those little big
(02:56):
feet men from that Lord of the Ring Show movie?
What what is it called? What were their names? I
shouldn't be asking anyone because I'm alone. The bag of
Vance was that? No, they weren't Bag of Vance. That
was Will Smith. He had a different, uh racial issue
in that movie. Anyway, The point is I started doing
(03:17):
some research, Daniel, into your mother's theory about these supposed
white water fountains leading to the end of Jim Crow.
That's a silly fucking concept that but white people were
so upset at the very idea that they would have
to share water fountains that they created water bottles and
then ended an entire arrow segregation. I don't know if
(03:40):
it's true, But I did do some research and I
did find some pretty interesting stuff. Now let's start from
the beginning. I think we all feel like we remember
when America first started running the bottle water scam on us, right,
any we all have memories of that. For years, I
remember it through McDonald's. I remember I would go to McDonald's,
(04:01):
which I want to say this, which is a corporation
I've long maintained has never done anything bad to anyone
in the history of time. McDonald's is perfect. McDonald's never
hurt anybody. They they're flawless in their behavior. But for years,
I didn't even know McDonald's had water. I didn't know
they starved water at all, cup bottle nothing. I thought
(04:22):
McDonald's just had soda, and if you didn't want soda,
you could drink the inside of an apple pie, you
know what I mean. You would just stick a straw
and an apple pie and you you'd sip that, and
that was what McDonald's had to offer. But then suddenly,
out of nowhere, when I was a young person, McDonald's
started offering bottled waters with your meal options. It blew
(04:44):
my mind that they were charging for water. I had
never seen it before. I didn't think it would last. However,
the water bottle industry did not start when I was
a child, despite what I thought to be true. The
water bottled industry, the bottled water industry. I don't know
why be watered bottles, and that doesn't make sense at all.
I am drunk. I am drunk off of the joy
(05:07):
of reading your your message, Daniel. No, I'm drunk off
of whiskey. Um, whiskey drunk, Daniel. The point is, the
first emergence of bottling and selling water actually came in
the first half of the nineteenth century. The nineteenth century.
That's the eighteen hundreds, you dumb fox. Some of y'all
don't know how to measure time in that way, but
(05:28):
eighteen hundreds is when we first start selling bottled water.
Back then, bathing and drinking water was super unreliable, you
know what I mean. Every glass of water you drank
back then pretty much had a little bit of horse
knee in it. I think that's how it went. You
just drink some water and be like, is that God
damn it? This got some horse knee in it. But
(05:49):
you didn't You couldn't afford to throw the water away.
Because you had to go to a well where the
horses would dip their knees, so you just drank it anyway.
But so back then, these fancy people would often buy
bottles quote unquote from sellers who had access to rare
springs in New York and Maine. In West Virginia. However,
(06:09):
as Americans began to improve our filtration systems and remove
the horse knees floating in our glasses, the bottle water
industry took a major hit. They were doing hot, they
were doing great for a while selling these rare waters,
and then suddenly they had to to dial it back
so much so that at one point in the nineteen
(06:30):
seventies the bottle water industry had gone down so low
that they were selling essentially a gallon and a half
of water of bottled water per person per year. That's it,
a gallon and a half. And then out of nowhere,
and this is always how it goes. The water industry
is dying. At least the bottle water industry is dying.
(06:51):
Everybody just drinking tap water and living easy lives and
then well, ignoring all the racism and uh and and
devastate ation that came out of the wake of the
Civil rights movement. Everything else was easy, super easy. Anyway.
The point is then comes these rich bitches at perry A.
Now you know perry A. They're very fancy. They pride
(07:15):
themselves on being very fancy water, and by the late
seventies they figured out how to pitch their water as
like this foreign, rare treat, which causes waves of people
at this time to want to spend more money than
they've ever spent on water for something that they otherwise
were able to access for free, and like all things
(07:37):
related to capitalism, once this happens, a snowball effect happens
of competition of people beginning to create their own water
companies and create more fancy origin stories for where their
water comes from and what kind of cool things that
does for your health and your body. So much so
that water hits this major upswing in sales, and it
(08:01):
forces the soda companies, which for a long time, we're
just selling soda. They were just proud, you know, pepsi,
so pepsi, cope, so coke and cocaine, but mostly coke,
and so they're selling what they know. But so much
so that the water companies are now in competition with them,
and they begin making their own bottled water, thus causing
(08:21):
the market to become literally flooded. Look what I just
did right there, literally flooded with bottled water options. And
by the time we get to the bottled water market
was growing by thirty percent each year. Thirty percent each year.
That sounds like the rate that my penis grows. No, No, Lengthston, No,
(08:42):
this isn't a crass podcast. This is a podcast for
learning and growth. You don't get to make penis jokes.
My apologies. And today Americans now drink more bottled water
than any other package beverage, any other package beverage, and
that includes whiskey, which I am very drunk on right now. Now.
(09:06):
The question, Daniel, that you brought up that your mother,
who wants what's with the black man is is no
longer with the black man, and will study that later
how she made her way out of that. But more importantly,
the question that your mother asked was how does this
relate to race? And what I found is, as it
turns out, of the U S population still to this
(09:28):
day drinks water from unsafe systems. That's right, and you
guessed it, Daniel. Most of those forty. Most of that
most of those thirsty bitches are people of color. That's right.
You know, places like Flint and Newark have been struggling
for years. The Flint water crisis started in twenty fourteen.
(09:51):
That means little miss Flint is my age. Now. She's
thirty four years old, and she's got massive biceps and
a thick beard from all at lead water. She's been
drinking a little tail too. She's Oh, she's a giant
weird freak because of the poison water that she's been
forced to drink since. And that ultimately leads us to
(10:13):
the realization that I don't know that white people, seeing
that they had to share a water fountain was enough
to completely reconsider the way that they deal in water
forever and always. But I do think that a mix
between capitalism and racism has created the water bottle industry,
(10:34):
and like most things, water bottles have become a method
of creating new walls of access, you know what I'm saying.
So if you can't afford water bottles, then you may
also not be able to afford clean drinking water. And
if you can't afford clean drinking water, then you're probably
a nigga, and every week a group of extremely hydrated
(10:56):
white devils are finding new and exciting ways to kill you.
And they'll kill you even if it's just from what
comes out of your own sink. So, Daniel, your mother's
theory is a little outrageous. I think she's out of control.
I think she may also be whiskey trunk. But I
don't think that she's totally incorrect in theorizing. The end
(11:20):
of Jim Crow, at least in its timing, leads to
the ultimate sort of creation of new systems of destruction
and separation between rich people and poor people. And unfortunately,
the people who are often most affected by poverty and
its punishments happen to be people of color, specifically black people. Daniel,
(11:44):
I think this answers your question. I hope it does.
I hope you and your your white lady mom from Schenectady,
up New York feel more certain that you. I guess
you're completely unaffected by this. Schenectady sounds like a nice place,
and your mom is I assume clean drinking water, so
much so that she has a lot of time to
speculate about the water bottle industry. But the point is.
(12:07):
She sounds like a lovely woman. And I appreciate you
sending this, Daniel, I really do. And I hope that
in her third husband she she goes black again. I
hope she makes a nice white man sandwich between all
of these relationships. And I hope she has another set
of babies. I don't know how old she is, but
I have to as very old. And let's get weird, Daniel.
(12:27):
Let's let her drink some weird drinking water that's poisonous,
and then she can get her period back and have
some more kids and they can be mixed, and then
you can feel like a total outsider and create a
new America. This is what I dream of. And I'm
sorry I I asked you to imagine your mother having
sex again. That's probably not what you wanted, Daniel, certainly
(12:48):
not at the end of this bottled water theory. Anyway,
I've rambled far too long. This has been a wonderful episode.
I think I think this is maybe one of our best.
I don't know. I stopped gay a long time ago. Anyway,
if you want to send me stuff like, Daniel, if
you have ideas that are floating around in your mother's head,
that have since been transferred over to you. You can
(13:10):
send them to my Mama pod at gmail dot com.
I read them on I don't always reply to everything.
Some of them make me hugely uncomfortable, and you know,
I gotta work past that. I'm extremely grateful for each
and every one of you that sends stuff, but some
of the things you send shame on you. You really
gotta self reflect and take a minute to be like,
(13:31):
should I press send and and ask another adult to
absorb this into his psyche and go on with his
day knowing that this is the way the human brain works.
I don't think you should, but it's not for me
to judge anyway. My Mama Pott at gmail dot com
send me ship and please like, subscribe. I don't know
why I say, like, can you like podcasts? Like it?
(13:54):
Subscribe it, retweet it, do whatever you need to do
to make this podcast as as successful and popular is possible,
and leave a comment. Send nice words on Apple Podcasts
so that we can make it to our dream goals.
We want to win the big podcast competition and that's
(14:15):
only possible if you send your love. Okay, that's it, bye, bitches.
Motherfucking many years so many years, so motherfucking many years, so,
motherfucking many years. So many years, motherfucking many years. So
Hosts And Creators
Langston Kerman
David Gborie
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