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July 14, 2011 51 mins

What makes America unique? In the second segment of this special two-part episode, Josh and Chuck join up with guests from The Daily Show and The Onion to take a closer look at the Stuff You Should Know About America.

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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you should know
from House Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, we're back. I
guess you could say it's a part two of two.

(00:21):
This is the second concluding part of our two part
series on America, the part of the July. You gotta
say hey and welcome to the podcast because this is
uh the beginning of part two. Yeah, but we're technically
in the middle. All right, Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
Thank you? You feel better? All right? So this is
uh picking up where we left off. We still don't
know where we cut off, so our guess is as

(00:43):
good as yours and vice versa. Awesome. This is stuff
you should know about America from the serious X Time
studios in New York City. Now more it's from Josh
and Shucks actually doing Thank you Jay, Thank you Jill.
That was as great as I hoped it would be.
Joe Angel something when he told me he's like, we're
gonna need another mic in a v I P seat

(01:03):
because I got someone doing footnotes, like what what does
that mean? And now I know? And knowing is half
the battle. That's what I do. So chuck. Um, I
don't think we could do a July four show reasonably
and not talk about fireworks, right, It'd be a big
rip off. I mean, I don't think there's any better
way to enjoy a fireworks display than to know the

(01:27):
chemistry that's going behind it, right. I feel like you
take that that kind of understand well, whether you like
it or not, we're going to teach you this right now, right. Yeah, man,
you're the expert on this, but I do like, well,
I'll chime in. Go ahead, it's gonna be like I
like the name of the Chinese manual. Well, you take
the name of the Chinese manual first. Let me set

(01:48):
you up, okay, um? So, uh, fireworks are based on
black powder, which has been around since at least ten
forty four. Uh, and it was discovered in China, right, Um.
It was either the result of some alchemists who are
looking for a way to preserve youth or a hapless
chef who accidentally discovered it. Can I stop you there,

(02:11):
because I've the first one doesn't make any sense to me.
The second one does, I get it. Chinese chef making
bananas foster or something. Boom and all of a sudden,
there's there's gunpowder. But how does gunpowder figure into trying
to make yourself look younger? Is what I wanted. I
don't know. I have no answer for that. I charcoal,
I guess, potassium nitrate, which is saltpeter, and then the sulfur.

(02:36):
I think if you applied those things separately to your
face and then wash them off well enough and just
don't light it right, well, if you know, if you
got too close to a fire, then ka boom okay, yeah,
all right, well that makes sense now, but those are
the three ingredients in black powder, right, that's right? And uh,
I wanted to point out the Chinese. Uh, we know
it has been around since ten forty four because it

(02:56):
was in the Collection of the most Important Military Techniques.
That's what they called their book. It is a good
book name, pretty straightforward. So um, however they discovered it
um Now, I don't know if they understood what was
going on back then. Now we have a pretty good
understanding of what's going on with black powder. Right. So

(03:16):
you've got um, potassium nitrate, which is saltpeter, which is
um an oxidizer. Right, Yeah, that's like the mix is charcoal,
which is fuel, and then you've got sulfur, which is
a reducing agent, and that's the last ten percent, that's right.
So you mix them all together, you introduce flame, which

(03:39):
ignites it, and all of a sudden, the potassium nitrate
starts releasing all this oxygen which feeds the charcoal a right,
binds to it and creates the light and the heat
that you see in fireworks. Right boom, Right, we're almost there, um.
And then you have the oxygen from the potassium nitrate
also re acting with the sulfur to create this explosive force.

(04:03):
As c O two and nitrate, nitrogen are produced and
they expand and that's the boom right yeah, okay, and okay,
you just hit it earlier to get a point. So
you've got the sulfur and the oxygen binding together, creating
C O two and nitrogen and that's where you get

(04:24):
the explosive force. Boom, Thank you, it was good. You
wouldn't think it'd be that hard. Um. And that's that's
the basis of um fireworks, right, Yeah, that's the basis
of the firecracker. And so now we move on to sparklers,
which is pretty much the same thing it pretty much is.
But what you do with the sparkler is you have
that black powder, add a little sugar, add a little water,

(04:45):
and you get something called you know, sort of like
a slurry. You dip your stick into it, as it were,
and uh metal stick. And because everything's spread out, it's
not gonna be like as volatile and create a big
flash bang boom, it's over. It's spread out because it's
mixed with a slurry. And you add a little uh
whatton metal to that, like some sort of metal dust

(05:07):
or shavings, and then that heats up and jumps off
and becomes incandescent. And there's a sparkler. What's the noise
for that sparkler? Okay, there we go. There's just sparkling.
And the reason this is important is because when you
go out on the fourth of July wherever you do
that here in New York, imagine there everywhere and you
see the big pyrotechnic display, it is really just versions

(05:30):
of sparklers and firecrackers, right. The sparkler and the firecracker
the basis of all other fireworks. Right, that's right. So
these aerial displays, it's just a shell which is like
a ball filled with black powder and then little pellets
of um sparkler composition that they call stars, right, And
in the middle of that is a firecracker, and you

(05:51):
use a lifting charge to send it into the air,
and the lifting charge ignites the fuse nice and then
when it when it hits a certain altitude and that
that fuse goes off and the firecracker in the middle
blows up. It ignites the black powder. Right. So there's
your explosion, and that in turn sends the pellets the
stars scattered lights them and there's your firework. That's it,

(06:14):
as you say about it being bot a boom bon
Jovi fireworks. Let's say that. And you can get fancy
with it if you want to cobble these together. You
cobble the shells together, add something called a breaking charge,
and that is when you see like the one shell
explode and then that breaking charge sets off the other ones.
And that's where you get the cool little things that
everyone ooze and oz at. Right. And then you add

(06:35):
some chemical salts for color. That's right, like, uh, what
do we have blue for copper? Blue is copper, Stronium
is red, and then stronium and copper make purple. Wow,
look at you. I got sodium for yellow, calcium for orange,
aluminium for my British friends, uh is silver and bare

(07:00):
m is green. Pretty neat, right. So now when you're
watching the fireworks display, you can curse us because you're
sitting there thinking about the sulfur is a reducing agent?
What's that smell? Oh, that's the reducing agent. Just give
me a beard and shut up exactly. So that's a
that's a fireworks, right. But but that's just like fireworks

(07:21):
when they go right, that's that's the optimum of what
can happen with firework what we just said, right, But
we live in La la land in a lot of ways,
and fireworks don't always go well right. So um, we
have our friend Hallie heglind here to talk to us about,
um when fireworks don't go so well. Right, that's right.
Hally apparently has a pretty true story for us. So

(07:42):
everybody welcome Holly. All right, let's see that's right. I
was good? Is this good? Should I lower this? Or
I don't even know who I'm talking You can probably
you can write angle it down. Okay, this is the

(08:03):
highlight of the show. Yeah, never let it be said that, Um,
Josh and Chuck, don't teach the controversy, because that's why
I'm here. Um, alright, Well, I have some facts and
figures in my presentation, so I may need to refer
to my notes. Um. But I'm sure that you've all
seen the public service videos that local news stations roll

(08:28):
out around this time of year. You know, there's like
a fake adorable child posed in a field of grass
and uh, you know, obviously celebrating something because they're wearing
something really nice from the local J C. Pennies. Um.
And uh, you know it's a mannequin that's completely faceless, um,

(08:49):
and yet human like because they put a straw sun
sun hat on the head to remind you, like, be careful,
this fake child is sensitive to the sun. So you know,
so that so that, so the mannequin is posed in
like some position of youthful curiosity, and all of a
sudden boom, you know, a Roman candle blows its head off,

(09:15):
and in the blink of an eye there's nothing but
like a cloud of smoke and lime dust and a
sin straw hat two feet away in the grass. So um,
this is uh what we all see every day. You
know the hazards of fireworks, and if it's if it's
a low budget sort of news station, they actually just

(09:37):
blow up a watermelon. But either way they teach you
the havoc that fireworks can wreak upon our nation's children
or our nation's fruit. Yeah. So if you don't think
fireworks are dangerous, can I ask you a question? Okay,
since how many fireworks fact stories do you think have

(10:00):
burned down? According to my not very thorough research, it's
up five okay, so Denmark, Holland, the UK, England, and
the Philippines. So here let me get my numbers. If
you don't think they're dangerous, just ask the one one thousand,

(10:24):
two hundred and fifty people in n Shade, Holland left
homeless after nine ms, which I did the math. It's
one thousand, nine hundred and eighty pounds of fireworks were
accidentally detonated at their local factory. Or talked to the
people of Cavite in the Philippines who felt the ground
shake nearly two miles away from the explosion when a

(10:46):
demonstration at their local firecracker factory went wrong. Or the
two thousand people evacuated from ceased to Denmark, when factory
workers accidentally dropped a container of fireworks somehow called using
it to ignite. I watched a lot of internet videos
in my research, and I will say, if you have

(11:08):
to witness a human tragedy firsthand, um, a fireworks factory
exploding is definitely the coolest you are going to come by.
I mean, it's like cooler than the Disney World fireworks display.
I'd say, yeah, Um, did you know that while celebrating
Chinese New Year in two thousand nine, it only took

(11:30):
one stray firecracker to burn down Beijing's thirties story luxury
Mandarin Hotel. Now, to be fair, the Chinese are unincredibly
efficient people, so what took them one firework would probably
take us like reliefs of box okay um. In the
United States, in two thousand ten, the Consumer Products Safety

(11:51):
Commission reported three firework related desk deaths, which is up
fifty percent from two. That was in nine, when only
two firework related deaths were reported. And I don't expect
the trend to turn around, because, let's face it, the
economy is going to hell this Fourth of July. Americans

(12:12):
are gonna want nothing more than to just throw back
a six pack and just sparkler the world away. Okay, Okay,
So maybe the cold hard statistics don't touch you. Maybe
something more anecdote will get through to you. So I
have witnessed the brutality of the firework firsthand. Let me

(12:33):
take you back to Denver, Colorado, five of July. I
am about to turn ten and my older brother Eric
is fourteen. And you should know in Denver there is
about a week right around the fourth of July where
summer drought and a child stockpile of fireworks both simultaneously

(12:56):
reach their peak. Um, so we have really hoarded this
incredible stash. I mean we had every kind of fire work.
We had snaps, we had sparklers, we had bottle rockets,
we had Roman candles, we had tanks, we had snakes,
we had bird cages, and of course we had smoke bombs.
So um, we had sort of burned through most of

(13:17):
our reserves. On the driveway the night before. My father
has all these pictures that he took of us at night,
and we're like crouch next to the garage door, and
I'm wearing this Mexican pueble address that my mom bought
for me. In Portavayarta, and my brother's wearing his hot
pink jams, and you can see we're just sort of

(13:37):
mesmerized by this black cat screech and scream fountain that
we've just ignited. And uh, you know, there's like a
deadness in my eyes and something about how I never
brushed my hair that I'm really like spot on for
Drew Barrymore and the fire starter posters, and um, my
brother just keeps begging, like just one more, just one more,

(13:59):
like like he's going to go into withdrawal if we
stopped lighting fireworks. So what I'm saying is I feel like,
looking at this picture, you could tell we were already
struggling with some pretty serious demons. The next day, I
was in a fog all day, you know, despite a
full night of sleep. I was exhausted after our explosives bender,

(14:22):
and so, uh, sometime in the afternoon, I went to
the basement to find a cool place, and I was
watching a current affair if you guys remember that, and
I I must have drifted off because I remember I
was awakened by a sound of sirens. Now my brother,
I didn't know this at the time, was upstairs with
three other boys from our block on the street, and

(14:44):
they were playing this game that we played in our
neighborhood all the time. I really hope no children are
listening to this, and if you are, this is really
bad game, so don't play this game. I was sort
of um, you know. It was a spinoff of ding
on Ditchum. So one person would go stand on the
porch um poised to ring the doorbell, while another person

(15:07):
would stand in the street with a smoke bomb. So
as soon as the smoke bomb was lit in the street,
the person on the porch would ring the doorbell and
then run away and the person in the street would
throw the smoke bomb. So ideally, your neighbor opens their
door to a cloud of smoke and they think like
a wizard just rung the door, and then they got

(15:28):
really shy or something. But let me remind you again
that Denver was a tinder box at that time of year,
so my brother and his friends probably should have skipped
the house across the street, the four Stads House, which
was flanked by these two huge juniper trees. Uh actually

(15:51):
historic trees. We later found out they were planted by
the then governor Roy Romer's father in law, and about
fifty years fire, and every so often the roamers would
pile in their car and just drive through the neighborhood
to check out how their trees were doing, because that's
really what people in Colorado do for fun, They go

(16:12):
and check out trees that they planted a long time ago.
So it was actually my brother who threw the offending
smoke bomb, and the smoke bomb was blue, so he
he lit it and he aimed at the porch, but
his aim was off and so instead of landing on
the porch, it landed in the juniper tree on the right,

(16:33):
and everyone just sort of sat there, stunned as the
smoke billowing from the tree turned from blue to light
blue to gray, and then you just heard this crackling sound.
And it didn't take long for the fire for the
fire in one tree to spread to the adjacent tree,
and then to the roof of the four Stats house,

(16:56):
and then to the roof of the neighbors of the
four Stats House, and they just sort of stood there
stunt like, how could this game have possibly gone back?
And my mom, actually I was talking to this morning,
and she reminded me of the fact that she at
some point had come out onto the porch and when
she saw fire, and she just saw the kids frozen
in the street, and and they just looked her and

(17:17):
they we don't know what to do. We don't know
what to do. But then instead of running to my house,
they ran to one of the other boys houses because
the mom was way nicer, and they hid in the
bathroom while the mom called the fire department. So, you know,
after all there were there were the two trees were
totally destroyed, and there was serious damage to two roofs,

(17:39):
and also the four stops car which had been marked
in the driveway. So that night, um everyone assembled for
sort of a disciplinary meeting on our side porch would have,
which happened to offer a prime view of the charred,
scorched earth across the street. And uh, you know, it
was all the boys and all the parents, and I

(18:00):
sort of tiptoed out and was just standing on the
edge watching everything, and all the parents thought that the
boys were just staring down because they were so shamed
and sort of in shame and deference, when really I
was just nobody wanted to look up because if they
look sideways, they would just burst out laughing. I mean,

(18:21):
it was so pathetic how this forest house looked. It
was it looked like one unlucky house on like a
beautiful block had just been struck by lightning. And as
they discussed what kind of work the boys could do
to pay off the four thoughts insurance deductible, I listened
and I really, I really had no impulse to laugh

(18:43):
because I thought about how easily that sorry smoke bomb
toss could have been mine. And so as they laid
out chores that they could possibly do, I just thought, there,
but for the grace of God, go I I feel sure.
Now that's a true story, right, yeah, she said, She

(19:03):
talked to her mom. Oh well that makes it true, right, So, Um, Chuck,
I used to blow stuff up like crazy? Yeah, like, uh,
model cars. Any guy's ever strapped like bottle rockets to
their model cars and try and make them? Guys a
rather like, oh yeah, dude, still do did you ever,
um break the sticks off of bottle rockets and line

(19:25):
them and just throw them and see where they go,
Just see what happened? That's what actually I would. Me
and my buddy Chuck built this. Uh. I had a
friend named chuck growing up, either that or a very
sad child. I built. We built bottle rocket guns in
his little wood shop he had, like his dad made

(19:45):
the little rubber band guns and sold them at fairs
and stuff. So we modified those two hold bottle rockets
and you drop it in and throw the little flap
down and shoot them at each other. So what what
kind of modifications are required specifically? Well, we we used
the stock of the gun, it was like a rifle,
and then we basically just got rid of the rubber
band part and made a box with a flap on

(20:08):
top like a door because you didn't want it to,
you know, shoot back at you, so you would light it,
put it in there, and we kind of dug out
a groove so it goes straight. We put a lot
of thought into this, and you know you would light
it and then shoot at your friend bon Jovi. Yea,
So did you patent that? No? We should have. Actually, yeah,

(20:29):
we'll have to go home and hold him in Denver evidently. So, um,
let's talk American dreams, shall we? Yeah? Man, the American
dream as a thing. And you did most of this
research and you put this one on me too. No,
no, no no, I'm not putting this one on you, but
I'm just, uh, I notice from your research when I
looked at this, the American dreams sort of his ebbed

(20:50):
and flowed from the it's early origins, and it's sort
of coincides with like how the economy is doing. Right,
then pretty much it's either like, yes, the can dream
or oh it's dead, yeah, and then it's alive again,
and then it's dead. And I also noticed the American
dream is either like every man for himself and like
you just do the best you can and make as

(21:12):
much money as you can, or it's all about community
and looking out from one another, and all that depends
on how the economy is doing. That's right, because if
everybody's broke, everybody's like, yeah, of course, government spending, that's
what the American dreams about. And uh, if if everyone's
making money, then you know, everyone turns into Patrick Bateman
all of a sudden. So let's talk about it, Chuck.

(21:33):
Where did where did this come from? Obviously it was
the famed historian James Truslow Adams, who wrote the ninety
one book The Epic of America, Right, yeah, and that's
where he mentioned the American Dream, but earlier than that,
in sixteen thirty, John Winthrop gave his famous City upon
a Hill sermon to his fellow Puritan colonists, and um,

(21:56):
he didn't use the word dream, but he did detail
a vision of society where everyone could prosper, everyone could
get ahead as long as you just team together and
work together and followed the Bible, right exactly. But but
that kind of laid out the groundwork for the American
dream that in America, specifically, if you worked really hard,
the sky was the limit. Right, that's right. Okay, So, um,

(22:18):
that was sixteen thirty when Winthrop gave that City upon
a Hill sermon. Uh, and then by seventeen seventy six
when t. J. Sat down from June eleven to um,
it was a god given, inalienable right to succeed because
it's in the it's in the Constitution. We're guaranteed the
the life, liberty in the pursuit of happiness. Right, that's right,

(22:41):
which is kind of the the American dream in a nutshell,
it's the pursuit of happiness. Yeah, does that? What does
the Statue of liberty saying? Now, that's awful. I don't
know that is that what it says there? Now, what
does it say something? It says like yeah, all that
other stuff. People are just shouting out words. He says,
welcome to Shawnees. Did you see this? And it's not

(23:03):
a torch, but it's a burger. So um, the the
the the Declaration of Independence really kind of gives the
lift to the American dream. But it's really it becomes
embodied in the nineteenth century. Um, there was a guy
named Alexis to Tokoville, right, that took this is a
sort of a snotty thing to say, laughing. Yeah, uh,

(23:26):
it might not have been a snotty thing to say,
but because he was French, I took it that way. Um.
He visited the United States in the eighteen thirties and
he called this belief the charm of anticipated success. And
that just sounds sort of like like it's not real,
it's just the charm. He's British all of a sudden.
He could also be a Nazi. Yeah you can do

(23:47):
that accent. Um. I took it as kind of like
a pat on the head or he was charmed himself.
Either way, he was he was an outsider making an
observation that the Americans over there think like they have
this thing called American exceptionalism, which means there's no other
country on Earth like America. Right, that's right, And that's
what he was mentioning. And then um, I think it

(24:08):
got another boost by Henry David Thoreau. Yeah, Walden, he
really laid out the American dream as well. Yeah, and
that was eighteen fifty four. And his quote, uh, actually
like this one, if one advances confidently in the direction
of his dreams and I'm gonna say her dreams, let's
modernize this, uh, and endeavors to live that the life
he has imagined, he will meet with his success unexpected

(24:30):
in common hours. Can you see that in like one
of those posters, it says like effort and it has
that underneath there's like a whales tale. Back then, the
Walden that was like it was a guy chopping wood.
It was Thorow himself actually, right, he was the first
guy to do an inspirational poster. It was a wood carmen.

(24:52):
So that that's the mid eighteenth century. Um, towards the
end of the the you know, the mid nineteenth century,
I'm sorry, yes, toward the end of that you had
a lot of immigrants coming and also a westward push,
and so the American Dream kind of gets laid onto
these two things too. It's actually written about. They use
the words American Dream more and more in newspapers and

(25:12):
you know, chok. Yeah, and magazine's the whole kind of
thing where, Um, people love their ragaster richest stories in
the late nineteenth century, right, but I mean they really
loved them then, really like compared to today, it's like
but so so everything's going and going. By the time

(25:32):
the twentieth century comes around, Um, the American Dream is
pretty much like code for upwardly mobile. That's right. That
the persons living the American dream, rather than a promise
to be able to try the American dream, is starting
to become wealthy, Like you're wealthy. It's about the time
of the turn of the century. And then by the

(25:53):
time James Chooselaw Adams writes his Epic of America, Um,
there's a lot of doubt, right because this want. Something
really big happened that kind of put a ding in
the American dream. Yeah, the Depression came along and destroyed
a lot of these big fortunes and these people that
had you know, live the American dream ras the riches,
uh self made millionaires and the like, and h Herbert

(26:15):
Hoover said, you know what, prosperities just around the corner,
and everyone said, screw you, three rocks. That's right, But
uh FDR came along and did usher in a little
bit of real hope after that. He did even even
before going to war, which I think most most historians
kind of point to is the turning point for the
American economy was all the military spending in World War Two?

(26:38):
Um so I guess um. Roosevelt introduces the New Deal, right,
which is again all the government spending social programs to
the American dream kind of becomes more of a sense
of community where America is a place where you know,
you can not only make your own way, but if
you can't make your own way, like you're elderly or

(26:58):
you're disabled or whatever, the community is going to take
care of you. That's right. And then we go over
to Europe and to Africa and Italy and the Pacific
and kicktail and come back and the suburbs are born,
and then the americansumes just right on this up tick again. Right,
so we're on the uptick of the roller coaster in
the nineteen fifties. Americans at the time made up six

(27:20):
percent of the population and consumed one third of the
goods and services, which means we're doing great because you know,
we're Americans and we're using up all this stuff, which
is awesome. Wages rose, Yeah, that was pretty good. Uh,
affluent workers moved, like you said, into the suburbs spread out,
and I guess at the time that meant, uh, things

(27:42):
were good if you moved to the suburbs. Well, I
wonder if the suburbs were kind of a turning point
as well, because when the suburbs started to hit their
their stride, that's when the social strife in the sixties
came along, where basically, um African Americans said like, hey,
I'm really happy that you guys are having a great
time over there, but there's this whole other part of
America that's been left out so far. And MLK famously

(28:05):
redefined the American dream. Yeah, he called America a dream
yet unfulfilled. And he was kind of right on the money,
and he said that it shouldn't be about wealth, it
should be about Thomas Jefferson t J again saying all
men are created equal and give equal rights to minorities,
rebuild these inner cities that are decaying, and let's eradicate hunger.

(28:26):
And people are like, wait a minute, I just thought
I was supposed to get rich and moved to the suburbs.
What are you talking. At the same time, their kids
are doing the same thing. They're attacking them from from
the from another side, right, waiting for them to come
home from working, then jumping out of the closet. Maybe
um and uh they they the the sixties are at

(28:47):
their peak and the seventies hit and the economy just
slides down the toilet. Whoever, So there's social strife and
others economic strife and every at every turn, the American
dream is analyzed in this context. Right, So, which is
what we're doing. We're just following in tradition. That's right.
And thankfully another French person came along to point this out.

(29:07):
In nineteen seventy four, French historian Ingrid Carlander published a
book called how do you pronounce it? Lazy American? It
sounds very much like lazy American? Uh, you really don't
like the press, No, I love the French. Um. She
proclaimed that America the American dream was in fact dead,
and uh that was pretty much it. And with the

(29:30):
you know, the gasoline lines and the empty swimming pools
and uh, because you know you shouldn't put uh. I
think it was l a that suffered the drought and
they were like, you know, we can't afford all this
water for swimming pools even but luckily that was good
for skateboarding. It was that gave rise to skateboarding, didn't it.
It did, um And then out of California, out of

(29:50):
the Promised Land, came the Golden Child, right, the former governor,
a guy who came from a farm family, who had
worked his way up to a star in hell Cats
of a Navy, and uh he took over and basically Reagan,
by the way, he said, the American dream is back, baby,
I think is what his words were. Learning so and

(30:12):
his uh deal very uh, the very simplified version was, hey,
let's cut taxes and uh stimulate growth. Let's reduce some
of these government programs because uh, we want self reliance
and that's what it makes America strong. That's what it
makes America strong Italian as well, and uh, you know

(30:34):
it worked to a certain degree in America started to
prosper again. But then critics came along and said, yeah,
but you know what, we don't know about all this
Uh how would really helped the common man. It may
have just been the rich you were helping out and
we don't really know if you cut spending that went
who is that easy Chinese? Now? So uh, we we

(30:54):
find ourselves now, um, after the the affluent eighties, UM
and the nineties, which is just a party man. Um,
we we kind of we we have kind of this
hangover now where we have all this stuff, but we
also have all this debt and like reality of like
what you know, just buying stuff and just consuming without
producing anything. Because remember back in um the forties or fifties,

(31:17):
we were producing one third of the world's goods, but
we were consuming that too, but we were producing as well.
And then through the eighties and the nineties, we stopped
producing and just started consuming. And we got to this
point where this UM Harvard professor named John quelch Um
pointed out that basically, too many Americans have been expressing
the American dream through the acquisition of stuff, right, so

(31:40):
now everybody's getting browbeaten with the American dream that's the
point that we're at right, right, It's like it's greedy.
Is that the point? I think what he's saying is
it's kind of become greedy, like it was originally an
opportunity and now it's how much stuff do you have?
So what he suggests we do is go back to

(32:00):
the original James truth Loow adams ideal of the American
dream and through that allow it to survive, right, right,
And we'll finish up with a quote from Adams, uh,
a social order in which each man and each woman
shall be able to attain the fullest stature to which
they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for
what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth

(32:22):
or position. And how about that? That's right on the money.
Truth was this is stuff you should know about America
from the Sirius XM studios in New York City. Now
more from Josh and Chock. So um, this is I
would argue, I might cry at this part. When I

(32:45):
was researching, I was crying, um laughing. We have one
of our good friends here, Joe Randazzo. He edits the
onion like we said, um, and here that it's a
big deal The Onion. I've turned into a frenchman. Um
and he uh, he was so kind as to go
through their sevent three edition, right uh and come up

(33:08):
with some great headlines for us to share from the
era from the age. So everyone please welcome Joe Randazzo. Hi, Joe, Hi.
How are you gonna wear of those? Yeah? Yeah, I
like it. Joe put on headphones and now I feel naked.
Why do you hear your hat on? I've got nothing
that's true. I have to say that last segment I

(33:31):
was staving off a panic attack. Were roller coaster ride
ups and downs? What does the American dream isn't even achievable? Oh?
I thought you because you were nervous. It was no, no, no, no,
no no. It was terrible, nice, awful, terrible segment. So, um,
how how did you end up panicked? Or? I don't know.

(33:53):
I'm in the midst of it right now. We're gonna
see what happens. Well, we'll take us through some of this.
You you guys have been America's findest news source for
how many well. The Onion was founded in seventeen sixty
five by Friedrich Zwiebel, who was a Prussian tuber farmer um.
And the only words that he knew, I think this
is right, Joe were the an Onion, right, oh, mercantile

(34:15):
and Onion. So it was founded as the Mercantile Onion
Um with the express purpose UM of accumulating capital and
fleecing its readers and y R N y oh and
I own okay now I thought at the time though
it was no, you're way off base. UM. So then
so I was found in seventeen sixty five, and then

(34:36):
the Mercantile and the Onion split in seventeen eighty three. Uh,
and the Onion has continued on since then independently since
seventeen three. So these are these are UM articles from
our seventeen eighty three edition, which is technically the first
issue of the Onion as it as it's now now. Okay,
So they split in seventeen yeah, okay, Well we'll share

(34:56):
with this some of the highlights of what was going
on that year, because it seemed to be a busy
a year from what I what I was reading. Yeah,
it was a busy year. You know. We we reissued
this in two thousand eight, UM, so that's a fact.
So let's see where do you want to start. I mean,
one thing that we like to do in Americans day
is read books, right am? I? Right? Oh? I forgot

(35:19):
the line I wanted to say. It was this amazing
line American Dream more like American Night terror. Um. So
this is just in this October three. These the top
twenty best selling books in print at present UM a

(35:39):
little section of the paper called Publisher's Corner. The twenty
top most books in print at present. Number one's The
Bible UM with two D three hundred thirty nine copies.
Number two is Common Sense UH. The third most popular
book is The Thousands upon Thousands of the Mohicans. Number

(36:05):
four The Return of Common Sense Back to Basics, UH five,
The Diary of a Woman Who Knew How to Write UH.
Number six The Bible with a red cover. Number seven
The Plowman's Diet. Eight top selling book is The Book

(36:29):
of Blank Pages. Number nine is Leeches, a comprehensive tone
of the known medical facts. Tend the Bible with the
blue cover, The Gentleman of New Amsterdam. Twelve, God's Revenge
Against Idleness a children's book, and We're thirteen Guide to

(36:50):
North American Jews fourteen, the Bible German edition number fifteen,
common sense three. It just makes sense spelled with the sea.
It's a pun uh sixteen. The lever and Fulcrum for
village idiots, Number seventeen, natural still birth and eight do

(37:16):
not exist. There were only eighteen seventeen books. So that's
a strong way to start write a list, rattling them off.
You guys, what else is going on at the time,
Joe ran dawzer Um, Were there any of these of
interest that kind of stood out to you? I have one, yes,

(37:37):
that I thought was pretty neat. The Surgeon General has
added snuff to the tobacco period. That was a controversial move.
Everybody's familiar, of course with the food pyramid, as I
stall um. But I'll just read a little excerpt from here.
So this is obviously this was written in seventeen three.
The language is a little more kind of flowery and

(37:59):
baroque almost, uh than what we're used to now. So
this reads from our Baltimore cousins. Comes news of the
felicitous health benefits of the powder tobacco snuff and the
recommendation that multiple pinches be taken until blood flows freely
from the nose and service of balancing the humors. Pre
eminent barber, surgeon and former General of Loyalist Ilk, Thomas

(38:20):
Haysworth has added the cure all physic to his famed
and most singular tobacco pyramid. The robustness chart learned in
grammar schools crossed the whole of our nation and has
given snuff greater importance even than pipe smoke. Um, let's see.
The measure of snuff, suggested by General Haysworth to be
most advantageous for children under six years of age, is

(38:42):
not to be an excess of four sizeable nose packings
per four and twenty hours, and taken always with two
drafts of strong brandy. Those unable to procure the finally
ground tobacco should quaff freely from cuspadours at every opportunity
to derive at least a little benefit from the meritorious
effects of stuff. Obviously, snuff is no longer on the
tobacco pyramids. In the seventies, in so Joe, one of

(39:07):
the ones I ran across um was the there was
a woman who wandered out of her house and they
couldn't figure out what was going on. Yeah, she caused
quite a stir A mischievous woman wandered outside of home.
The headline, A mischievous woman wandered outside of home. I'll
just read a little bit of this as well. The
gentle town of Harrisburg was confronted with a most worrisome

(39:28):
and shocking sight the day before last one, owing to
the sudden appearance of wife and child bearer Margaret Cook
from the interior of her home. Defying all reason, Cook
was observed to exit into the open air, though no
man had instructed her to do so. No domestic task
required her to be out of doors, and no sign

(39:49):
of suffocating fire had surfaced from her modest dwelling. Um,
so she wandered around town, brought up quite a consternation,
and then the last line of the story, Margaret Cook
was reprimanded, disowned, and hanged until dead after returning to
replace of residence. Tougher times one that you alluded to earlier.

(40:10):
It was foreshadowed. Um. Today we're all interested in sort
of news of the weird and these peculiar news items
from around the world. World. I think that in the
world's oldest person just recently die. Now there's a new
oldest person. Yeah, um. So this um, the world's tallest man,
towers at five ft and eleven inches. Should I read

(40:35):
a little passive um from the honest and sworn captain
of the bark Stilla, freshly returned from the Baltic news
of the existence of a modern blong shanks, a veritable
giant before whom many tremble said. Pantroguel, who makes his
residence in the city of Danzig, reaches nearly six ft
into the heavens. At an astonishing eighteen hands high. He

(40:58):
is head and shoulders above even the loftiest of his brethren,
and when striding the thoroughfares of Danzig, can be seen
from thirty paces away. So colossal is he that master
carpenters cut a hole above his door and raised the
portal to accommodate his great head. This Ajax sleeps in
especially fashioned bed, so that his lower limbs do not
dangle off the edge. His tailor keeps a stock one

(41:20):
surplus bolt each of wool and muslin. Should the Leviathan
desire a new suit of clothes to him, our daily
bread is but mere crumbs. The proprietress of an inn
where the mammoth takes meals testified that he could devour
one half of one one hundreds of his weight in
beefsteak in one sitting. It is a further wonder that
the floorboards of his house have not given way under

(41:42):
his great heft, and that being estimated at nearly twelve
stone or one hundred sixty five pounds. Um, that's it.
He's a giant, five ft eleven inches. I've got one
for you, Joe. We all have Ben Franklin, right, Yeah,
invented lightning, that's right. And he invented a lot of things.

(42:04):
And uh, from the historical archives, he invented so many
things that they would actually print them week to week
every week there was a future Ben Franklin inventions this
week and I will go ahead and read a couple
of of this week. I don't even know what week
it was. This is I think the week of October.
He invented the death kite. It's kind of needo. Uh.

(42:27):
He invented the carton device for conveyance of eggs to
minimize breakage on even the most uneven of footpaths. Yep,
he invented the US patent. Are these all appropriate to read? Radio?

(42:48):
I think the next one we shall not read. He
also apparently that we invented power windows, the inflatable oblong balloon,
the sort that hedmits a thunders one resembling sorry thunder's clap,
one resembling the loud exhale from one's nether regions, the
whoopee cushion, maidenhead glue because that one flies, uh and

(43:14):
math and I love the last one he invented, being
a great and pretentious old wind bag. Joe, do you
have the one about the amazing public spectacle? It seemed
like almost an advertisement or like an upcoming event that
captured my attention, I do, Josh, and public is spelled
with the K in this case, and that is right.

(43:39):
That's that's right, Chuck, I have it right here. No,
I need to do this. Yeah, so yeah, you know
people still needed their entertainment in in the eighteenth century.
Um so this was an amazing public spectacle. Indian taught
to wear hat see the Savage Mohican, who, by grace

(44:01):
of God and much patient training, has been taught to
wear a hat in the manner of an actual human
and amusing novelty for the public. Different times, but those
are different times. Can we scoff at Alexis to Tulkoville.
Again those one of the best moments. I like this
one a lot. This was very important when a kidney

(44:22):
being shaped organ recently discovered. Uh this was by uh
cheer of surgeons and blood letters in Boston discovered in
organelle of the body and that human excise from the
back and modeled purple in color and very likely a
kidney being in shape which removed when removed causes expiration

(44:45):
as with all organs. I found it. Here's the kidney
being one. Um. And then you know, even then there
was some you did the the podcast recently on on
Mouth's right overpopulations. They were even worried about this in
seventeen three, this um sort of opinion piece will New

(45:05):
York someday be too crowded for farming? An issue even
more worrisome to experts is the reduced acreage of cleared
forest available for farming within the city limits. Is a
well known fact that no urban community can survive without
an agricultural base on which to found the city's infrastructure. Um,
go go on line and read it, really hilarious, read

(45:28):
silently to yourself. And then there was another one about
New York where um, the population was expected to to
go over ten thousand, so it had already reached twelve thousand.
It was causing a lot of concerns. New York is
threatened by over crowding as population climbs to twelve thousands.
And that that had a companion piece another worried one.

(45:51):
Um where uh it was urban sprawl and then there's
only thirteen thousand acres of forest remaining on Manhattan. Urban
sprawling so severe settlements, cooking fires can be seen from
as far as Greenwich Village was as true today as
it was back then. Right, that's right, yeah, you got

(46:11):
you you have anything else too. I was gonna say
a fact, uh from real from the real history of
the world, which was um Stuyvesant was the original governor
of New York, I believe, and when he was banished
from New York, he went to retire, uh in his
farm in the West Village. That's where he went to

(46:32):
get away from everybody was the West Village, New York.
Only in New York. So thanks for coming by, Joe,
thanks for having me. Also, like everybody, I mean, thanks
thanks stuck. Do you realize what that means? We are
out of this, Yes, we're out of segments. I think
that means that you will be able to have a

(46:54):
drink in your hands soon, yes, which I know is
something you've been looking forward to every day, every day. Um, everybody,
thank you for joining us. We really appreciate you. Can
clap for yourself, vote, clap for your guys. So great.
Everybody out there listening in your car right now, clap
for yourself, but keep your elbows on the steering wheel

(47:15):
while you do so. Maybe everybody else in the car
can clap for you, the driver while you keep nine
and three. It's not anymore at home. You can clap
if you're listening to this in a shopping mall, clap everybody. Clap,
um and uh, and have a very safe Fourth of July.
And when you when you see fireworks, remember sulfur is
a reducing agent. Yeah, don't throw smoke bombs that brittle trees. Right.

(47:39):
The the American dream will never die no matter what.
And buggery is not only bestiality but also sodom. Thank
you very much until next time. The stuff you should know, so,
ma'am hoff On is that Wow? Yeah, wow, that was
epic monumental. Um, it was okay, and it ran longer

(48:02):
than I thought it would. I was worried about it
lasting an hour, and it was an hour and forty
five minutes. Yes, once we get Gavin, get a Gavin,
it's hard to shut us up. It lasted fourteen hours
in full bladder time. Yeah, so we want to say
thank you to h all the fans who came what
we like to refer to as the fifty um. Look

(48:23):
like everyone had a good time. It was good meat
and folks. I saw faces from the Brooklyn trivia night. Yes,
I saw some familiar faces. We get some bread. Chris
Kine was there, who did our two headed uh Josh
and Chuck thing. He was the dude and the Ghostbusters. Okay, yeah,
I saw that guy, but he didn't come up weird.
I don't know. It was like, dude, what's your deal?
That's really weird, Chris. And then we met kubs don

(48:45):
kuby ye and you called her out. I called her
out a little bit, which you heard. We also want
to thank Whyatt Sanak and Hallie Haglin of the Daily
Show with John Stewart, and thank the Daily Show for
letting him do it. Yeah, that was a big deal.
So thank you. Thanks to Jan over the Daily Show
for helping us with that, and then all of our
peeps at the Onion and Joe's and the Jill. Yeah,

(49:07):
thank you to all three of you. Yes, and big
thanks to Paul from Serious X him and uh, I
can't remember our engineer's name that day. He was a
really nice guy and says that he's a new fan.
And also Jeremy of Serious who came to the show. Yeah,
and he's a big wig. Yeah, and he came by
to see it. So thanks for all that. Thanks to

(49:28):
Roxanne our head a video for helping us out up there,
and special thanks to the video team that we had
assembled fans that said, dude, we will shoot this in
a professional fashion for free for you guys to put
on your website. And every step of the way you're like,
well you can use my carent No. No, well you

(49:49):
don't need to edit it. No. No, well it doesn't
need to look good. No no, So every step of
the way they've they've wowed and amazed and topped our expectations. Yeah,
so we want to plug them for sure. That would
be uh. Martin laca Henson of Handcrafted by Martin and
you can see his work at www dot hand Crafted
by Martin dot com. His live in gal he called

(50:13):
his wife domestic partner uh Sa Toko Sugiyama, and she
was one of the main shooters and you can find
her work at www dot The Passage Chronicles dot com.
And uh finally they had one more shooter. They had
three cameras and she did sound as well. Lari Sumi,

(50:33):
who um you can find her work at www dot
Lauri Sumi dot com. L A U R I E
s U M I y E very appropriate U R
L yes, And they did an awesome job and we
really can't say thanks enough. And you can find that
video look for it. We'll have it. We'll put on
Facebook to point people to the website where you can

(50:55):
watch this thing in pieces in full. Yeah, and thank
you your listener for plodding through this thing with us.
We hope it was worth it. And um, we'll be
back to our regular scheduled podcasts next week if you
want to, as always, shoot us an email send that
thing to stuff podcast at how Stuff works dot com.

(51:20):
Be sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff
from the Future. Join how Stuff Work staff as we
explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow, brought
to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready,
are you

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