Friday 4: Most Fascinating People

Friday 4: Most Fascinating People

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's time for the Friday four matt case. When it
comes to Friday four, for people who may be joining
us for the first time, how do you best describe
what what we have on tap here?

Speaker 2 (00:09):
Well, it's your top four of something, if you want
to think of it this way, it's your mount rushmore
of something. It could be anything. We've had so many
different some serious, some silly, and everything in between. You've
got your top four cartoon dogs, your top four candy bars,
you know, sports related, your top four favorite quarterbacks of
all time, board games, board games, it's gone every.

Speaker 1 (00:31):
Different, vacation spots, vacation spots. We've done a lot of these.
We've done a lot of these. You actually suggested a
good one that I wanted to do today. And what
is that? Because we talk about, you know, the inaugurations,
you know, a week from Monday, and we do live
in a time that we have quite a few historical figures,
even beyond presidents around the world, that people fifty one

(00:55):
hundred years from now are going to be talking about,
and there's going to be plenty of stuff on what
was the idea behind what we're talking about today.

Speaker 2 (01:01):
Well, the idea is basically, who throughout history. I know,
we have plenty of history buffs in the audience, including
two here in the studio.

Speaker 1 (01:13):
I don't know, I loosely defined buff, but certainly interested
in history regardless. Yeah, I'm like, I'm history fit, maybe
not buff, you know, Oh nice, I'm a what a
little little fat fit, you know.

Speaker 3 (01:27):
What I mean?

Speaker 2 (01:27):
Like, I got a little marble around the edges, But
I get back in the I get back in the gym,
start start binge watching the History Channel again.

Speaker 3 (01:33):
I'll get right back there. Yeah, yeah, you're you're you're
listing dumbbells.

Speaker 1 (01:36):
You just may not be getting the gains that maybe
some of these crazy guys who went to school for
this sort of thing.

Speaker 2 (01:41):
Yeah, I'm not like injecting roids in between my toes,
you know what I mean?

Speaker 3 (01:45):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:45):
Yeah, I mean anyways, that analogy got away from either. Yeah, yeah,
lost the plot a little bit. So my idea was,
who are your top four your mount Rushmore of most
fascinating people that you'd love to read the book on
your mount Rushmore of of most fascinating people who's whose

(02:07):
life you think would make the best book. And it's
and this list is going to include a lot of
people who certainly many books have already been written.

Speaker 1 (02:14):
Right one, but that you are interested enough to read
a book. And this is different than watching a movie,
because you could do the same thing with movie watching.
But uh, there's a good example here, right. There was
that Reagan movie that dropped in the summer, right like
at the late summer, and we had a lot of
people that went and watched that and had different thoughts

(02:34):
on it.

Speaker 3 (02:34):
Right.

Speaker 1 (02:35):
But you're asking somebody just to go and sit and
watch something very visual for two hours, and there's an
element of I don't know, you don't have to commit
more than two hours to it. That's pretty easy. Well,
a book is, Yeah, it's a little bit more of
a commitment here, Like you're so interested in this historical
figure that you're willing to sit down and read the

(02:58):
book that's written about their life, or about the events
of their life, or even like pinpointing certain events. So
that's what we're going to talk about today. The historical
people that are most fascinating, historical people that you would
read a book about. You're so interested that you would
love to learn more about them. And we are going
to give you our list coming up, and we'll take

(03:19):
your list after we get to the bottom of the hour.
Stay with us. It's four thirteen on news radio eleven
ten kfab Amas telling what for people would you most
likely be interested in doing that exact thing for right now?
Most fascinating historical people that you would read a book about. So, Matt,
we're sitting here and we're talking about this, and there

(03:40):
are a couple of different ways that you can approach this.

Speaker 3 (03:42):
Now.

Speaker 1 (03:43):
I've read a lot of books about historical figures, and
so I'm trying to I don't want to make it
super obvious, and I also don't want to pinpoint people
that I've already read books about. Does that seem fair,
you know, because I could go and just dig from
that well if I'm super interested in them. But I
feel like that's just a little bit too easy, and

(04:04):
I already kind of have.

Speaker 3 (04:05):
A head start on some of this stuff. Does that
make sense? Yeah? It does.

Speaker 2 (04:09):
Now I'm probably not going to use the same rules
because I'd have to change my list.

Speaker 1 (04:13):
Yeah, sure, but that that makes sense. Yeah, whatever, whatever
floats your boat on this. I'm not trying to not
trying to be the kind of guy that you know
tells people how.

Speaker 3 (04:25):
To interpret what the rules are for what we do here.
So but I'll go ahead and I'll start.

Speaker 1 (04:31):
If that's okay, I got, I got the I gotta
feel like a pretty good list. My first one is Ulysses,
says Grant. Ulysses says Grant, of course, the eighteenth president
of the United States and was the leading general for
the Union Army in the Civil War. But this is
a guy his entire life leading up to the war,
the way that he thought, the way that he had strategies,

(04:51):
and then how that helped kind of set him up
to be a president in his life afterwards. This just
seems like the biggest man's man of all time. And
we just don't talk about him like that in an
era of like the West, right, like we talk about
the settlement of the American West and manifest destiny and
all this stuff, and we talk about some of the

(05:13):
great war heroes of all time and brilliant minds in
our military. I don't feel like he gets talked about
in the same way that we talk about maybe even Eisenhower,
or we certainly don't talk about him like we talk
about somebody like George Washington. But this is a guy
that had a very similar trajectory, but he did it
in like the manliest way possible, in maybe the most

(05:36):
manly era in America where he kind of had this
kind of shift. It's not colonial times where people are
really still just kind of playing around in the dirt
trying to figure out what they can grow. But we
actually had some industry that was really created in a
lot of ways. And this is a guy that was
a big proponent of, you know, that style of just

(06:00):
like manliness. But at the same time then he also
had the brains and was incredibly vital to the Union's
victory in the Civil War. I mean, if it wasn't
for Ulysses, says Grant, there's a chance that that work
could have gone a lot longer, and the longer to win,
certainly the more chance that the South had to win.
So I think Ulysses, says Grant, I would definitely sit

(06:20):
down and read a book about Ulysses Grant and learn
more about what he had going on. How about this
one Jim Crayton from about the same timeframe. Jim Crayton,
have you heard that name before? I don't know if
I have. If I have, it just has glanced past me,
it doesn't ring a bell. Yeah, So he has nothing
to do with Creighton the school. It's a completely different guy.

(06:43):
He was one of the first great baseball players ever.
And I love sports, but Jim Crayton was a great
hitter and a great pitcher for the rules of the day.
In the eighteen fifties, the late eighteen fifties, baseball started
to become this popular sport that not only people wanted
to play, but people to watch. And this is just
on the precipice of the first professional team, which would

(07:05):
eventually in the late eighteen sixties become the Cincinnati Red Stockings,
and all of a sudden professional baseball took over and
organized sports became a big business. Well, Jim Crayton didn't
make it to there because he died as a as
a very young man. And there's a it's shrouded in
mystery of what actually happened to him. People say it

(07:27):
was because of a swing. Like legend has it that
he swung and hit a baseball so hard that he
like ruptured his spleen or ruptured in intestine and ended
up contracting an infection and dying like a week later.
I mean, it's an incredibly sad story, but one that
I'm so fascinated by in my entire life that I
just couldn't figure out. I just wish we had more information.

(07:51):
I mean, he died at the age of twenty one,
so I mean he was a very young guy, and
you can find limited information on him. But I would
absolutely read if somebody had like a whole book on
that guy, I would absolutely be interested in that. Another
person that I'd read a book about is Edwin Sands.
Have you heard of Edwin Sands. Edwin Sands is a
guy who is we talk about our founding fathers in

(08:13):
our country, especially in the way that in colonial times
well Edwin Sands was incredibly It's spelled Sands is spelled
s A N d ys. I don't know why it's
spelled that way, s A N d ys like Sandy's.
But it's pronounced Sands. You just don't pronounce the D
or the y. Maybe the D but yeah, I mean

(08:34):
the y is definitely not something you pronounce. But anyway,
look him up. He was instrumental in America being settled
at all. He was a politician and he was in
charge of the Virginia Company in England, who helped organize
the Jamestown Colony, and eventually he was the guy that
empowered the colonists, or if you want to call him,

(08:57):
that the people who were settling, the settlers were settling Virginia,
the first true permanent settlers of the Anglo Saxons in
what would become the United States of America. He empowered
them to be self governing, to be able to meet together,
have a representative government, and figure out their own problems,
because you know, he can't him and the people that

(09:18):
are in England can't be you know, sending letters back
and forth on ships that take six months at a time.
There's going to be stuff that you're going to need
to figure out on your own. So Edwin Sands I
read about him in that sixteen nineteen book that I
highly recommend by James Horn, But I want people to
understand that this is a really important figure in American history,

(09:38):
even if he has he was so far away from America.
But it was his principles in the way that he
felt about politics in the settling of the North America
that really got America off on what became a representative republic.
Foot and then lastly, this one is a little bit
of a cheat, I think, because he's a president that

(10:00):
people do talk about, but I did a big book
report when I was a kid on him. But a
fascinating guy that doesn't get the credit that a lot
of his contemporaries get, and that's John Adams, second President
of the United States. People talk about Samuel Adams being
this incredibly loud and obnoxious but really admirable patriot and
all this stuff. And George Washington, of course great first president,

(10:22):
and he had the military history. But you have John
Adams who was in the north. He was in Massachusetts
where a lot of these other guys were like Jefferson
and Washington, they were Virginians.

Speaker 3 (10:35):
And this was in a.

Speaker 1 (10:36):
Time where the guys from the northeast, the New Englanders,
and the guys in the south, like the Virginians, they
didn't get along all that well, and they lived very
different lives. It was like two completely different sets of
people here. And John Adams, I think, kind of got
caught up in the wash a little bit. Because Thomas
Jefferson wrote a lot of the things like the Declaration
of Independence, he was able to utilize his connection with,

(11:01):
you know, the American public as you know, this incredibly
gifted writer, and he has such a legacy in that. However,
John Adams was incredibly important for the diplomatics of the day,
and his wife, even Abigail Adams, was incredibly important in
terms of the way that she was able to commentate

(11:21):
and speak on behalf of the women of the colonists
in the Revolution. It was really an important time frame
in American history. And I think because he only served
one four year term and not a lot happened in
his presidency, we take for granted some of the stuff
that you know, this guy did, including you know, instituting
our own American Navy. He had a lot of things

(11:44):
that he did in the run up to not just
the Declaration of Independence and of course winning the American Revolution,
but he just didn't kind of have the charm I
guess to historians that the Jeffersons, the Madisons, the Washington
the Ben Franklin's, the Samuel Adams had. And I think
I would love to sit down and read a full
on John Adams biography, and I'd love to see if

(12:06):
somebody wanted to make some awesome musical like they did
for Alexander Hamilton, for somebody that's also I think equally underrated,
like John Adams. So that's my list, Ulysses, says Grant
baseball star Jim Creighton from the eighteen forties.

Speaker 3 (12:20):
In eighteen fifties, I should say.

Speaker 1 (12:23):
Edwin Sands, who helped set up the settlement in Virginia,
and John Adams, the second President of the United States.
We'll come back, we'll get Matt's list, and we'll take
your list as well. Four historical fascinating people that you
would read a full book about. We'll talk about more
when we come back on news radio eleven ten kfab.

Speaker 3 (12:41):
Emrie Sunger on news radio eleven ten kfab mat Case.

Speaker 1 (12:48):
You got a Friday for they're Mount Rushmore figures you
would like to read a book about?

Speaker 2 (12:52):
I do, and I got to start in this one.
You know, a lot of times my lists are not ranked,
but this one is because there's a clear and obvious
number one. It's Jesus Christ of Nazareth as number one.
Obviously the New Testament, I was gonna say, written about him,
and there's been plenty of books since then that have
been written about about Jesus. But I think that I
got to start there with my list as I think

(13:15):
that he is the most fascinating person that's ever walked
on this earth.

Speaker 3 (13:19):
And it's not even close. Yeah, it's uh gosh.

Speaker 1 (13:22):
Yeah, when you think about that time frame, right, and
just what it must have been like to be living
in that area of the world and have something like
that happen.

Speaker 3 (13:32):
Right, you have the Messiah.

Speaker 1 (13:33):
It's born in the manger in Bethlehem to a virgin
and the life that he then would live, and it's
pretty well documented from the people that were there. So
but yeah, yeah, I mean that's a good one. That's
a good one. Yeah, I'm fascinated this to who's number two?
Number two goes along with that theme. It would be
David from the Bible. I think that.

Speaker 2 (13:55):
And I mentioned this in that there are a couple
of books in the Bible that talk about David. But
I would just love a deep dive as to I mean,
he is you want to talk about underdog stories, He's
the example of what an underdog story is David or
the classic David Goliath tail. But his story goes so
much more than that. It doesn't just stop there, right,

(14:15):
Like he becomes the King of Israel. He also has
a giant fall from grace, but also he's known in
the Bible as a man after God's own heart. So
I just think that if you want to talk about
someone who has an absolutely fascinating journey from beginning to end,
whether it was initially being chosen when he was so

(14:36):
young and basically being chosen from literal.

Speaker 3 (14:39):
Obscurity, obscurity. Am I saying that word right? Obscurity?

Speaker 4 (14:43):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (14:43):
I think so. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (14:44):
We were talking about words that are hard to pronounce
off air, and I think I'm just questioning myself. My
word growing up, by the way, to finish the conversation
off air, was cinnamon. I used to not be able
to say cinnamon. I always said simonin.

Speaker 3 (14:54):
Yeah, it's like anemone or eeminy. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (14:57):
Oh, that's definitely time I start saying that, and I'll
start getting other words wrong just because I got that
one right.

Speaker 3 (15:02):
Yeah. Yeah, your brain, your brain hurts.

Speaker 1 (15:05):
Yeah, So, David, I mean, this is a guy who
lived almost a thousand years before Jesus did. So, I
mean that's pretty a wide range of folks. Think about
how long that time span is, right right? All right,
So you got Jesus, you got David. Those are a
couple of premiere. I mean, you could make the argument
that David is, I mean, along with Moses, maybe the

(15:25):
most fascinating figure of that entire Testament, like the Old Testament,
because of all the different kind of episodes that occur
in his life. You know, Moses certainly would have a
conversation to be had there. But David and you talk
about the ups and the downs, and then you can
talk about Solomon just kind of as an appendage to him.
You know, it's a it makes for a fascinating conversation.

(15:47):
That's that's.

Speaker 3 (15:49):
At least for sure, absolutely all right, So what else?

Speaker 2 (15:52):
Number three? I got to go with the guy who
made the portrait of David or the bust, Leonardo de Vinci.
Da Vinci. You want to talk about a guy, I mean,
what's the term in baseball the utility? The utility? Like
what this guy was a utility artist. There's nothing he
couldn't do if I remember correctly.

Speaker 1 (16:12):
Yeah, and this is a guy that lived fourteen fifty
two to fifteen nineteen. So again, man, he was like,
this is back in a time where you have different
Renaissance figures out there that you could probably refer to,
as you know, maybe the definitive one, and I don't
think you could really have that conversation without the Finci

(16:34):
being in that mix. And like you said, Wikipedia says
known for you want to here's what he's known for. Painting, obviously, drawing,
of course, engineering, anatomical studies, hydrology, botany, optics, and geology.
I mean, who who is like this? I mean, in
a world of specializing, there's nobody that's ever going to

(16:57):
have their finger this professionally involved in so many different
things in an era where there were so many great minds.

Speaker 2 (17:03):
Yeah, I mean it's absolutely fascinating that he was brilliant.
It's so many different things you would just love to
sit down and just be able to pick apart exactly
what made his mind so incredibly brilliant. And I think
his brilliance moves on whether it's being you know, whether
a teenage mutant Ninja Turtle being named after him, or

(17:24):
a prominent actor being named after him, or books the
Da Vinci Code, things like that. I mean, it's he
remains in popular culture as just this larger than life
figure that we're still fascinated by. And so yeah, I
mean there's obviously been many books written about him, but
I think he makes the mount rushmore of mine because

(17:45):
he's just completely fascinating human.

Speaker 1 (17:47):
Yeah, cartography and paleontology are also a couple of things
that he was interested in and had something to do
with that architect as well.

Speaker 3 (17:55):
This is it.

Speaker 1 (17:56):
I mean, I would just be fascinated as to what
the brain like. This was a guy that was like
Elon Musk before we had any of the technology. I mean,
like he he would have if we would have had
like media there and it could have been more widespread
in the world. Could like know who's like really good
at all this stuff in the moment as it's happening.

(18:17):
He would be like Elon Musk times five because of
how many different things that he's like moving around in
a timeframe where that just wasn't happening. Like all of
his contemporaries were very like way more specialized into one
thing or the like Michaelangelo. Obviously he was way in
the art field, right they like you can compare them

(18:37):
as artists, But da Vinci had all this other stuff
going on. Like I wish we could just like open
up his brain. Why did it work the way that
it did? Can you learn the stuff that he learned?
Since or are you just born with that? So yeah, and
I liked.

Speaker 3 (18:50):
It a Vinci code by the way, for whatever it's worth.

Speaker 2 (18:52):
And I don't know if I mean well on on Elon,
on the Elon comparison, I just I don't know if
the whole like art one for I don't I don't
know if Elon really has anything to say in the
art field.

Speaker 1 (19:03):
Well yeah, or the anatomical field. But you know, to
be fair, Leonardo devinc didn't have a whole lot to
do with the internet, world or space. Well there's a
reason for that, but yeah, sure, you know what I mean,
you know, like certainly, but the inventions, you know what
I mean, they had some wild ideas for inventions, and
they just like and they liked to they had their
toes in a lot of different sectors, like to tinker. Yeah,

(19:25):
they weren't. They didn't sequester themselves into one little thing.

Speaker 3 (19:29):
Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Speaker 2 (19:31):
Number four, I got to go with another person who's
well documented throughout history and plenty of books have been
written about her.

Speaker 3 (19:38):
But I gotta say, Joan of Arc you went so old.

Speaker 1 (19:42):
Yeah, like I was, I'm like, you actually did people that,
you know, it's hard to learn about because of how
how old these people are.

Speaker 3 (19:51):
But that joan of arc.

Speaker 1 (19:52):
You want to talk about an old or a young
person who had just this incredible crazy life.

Speaker 3 (19:59):
Yeah, I mean g is.

Speaker 2 (20:01):
A crazy life and a quick one because she didn't
live for very long unfortunately.

Speaker 1 (20:06):
Like they think, what like eighteen or nineteen and then
she was burned at the stake. Just a what a
crazy time to be alive. If that was a thing
that people were doing in all of the military and
the fighting. But man, you have a girl nineteen years
old is when yeah, there you go killed. Yeah, and
she was what like fifteen when they were like she

(20:27):
was leading men in the battle.

Speaker 3 (20:30):
That's wild.

Speaker 1 (20:31):
Yeah, fifteen year old girl in the fourteen hundreds are
doing this.

Speaker 3 (20:35):
That's insane.

Speaker 2 (20:36):
Yeah, there's just so much about here that it's so
incredibly unique and completely different than anything else you can
find in anyone else's story throughout history. So it's just
it's a fascination and she certainly belongs in the list
of most fascinating people if you ask me. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (20:50):
And the circumstances around her trial and execution at the
age of nineteen heresy accused of having blesphemed. Is that
how you say that last themed, last last themed by
wearing men's clothes, of acting upon visions that were demonican,
and of refusing to submit her words and deeds to
the church because she claimed she would be judged by

(21:11):
God alone. And then they were like, okay, we're gonna
set you on fire. Now what the world?

Speaker 3 (21:17):
Man?

Speaker 1 (21:18):
You want to talk about the world and how crazy
the world has changed. Just read the books of the
four people that you've just mentioned, and then read the
four books of the people I've mentioned, and just like
in the time that has come on like this, it's
incredible what we used to be and what we are now.
It's just crazy stuff. It's a good list. That's a
good list. You just teach a history class. Uh four

(21:39):
forty seven. Let's go ahead and open this up. You
got fascinating people of history that you would like to
read a book on that you would really love to
learn more about. Call us four h two five five
eight eleven ten. Is the number four h two five
five eight eleven ten, or you can email me Emory
at kfab dot com. It's news radio eleven ten KFAB.

Speaker 3 (21:56):
Well, don't you know, Amory Song is going to take
a quick break but folks, he'll be back. In fact,
I think he's back. Now.

Speaker 1 (22:06):
Let's listen in John, Welcome to the show today. What's
on your mind?

Speaker 4 (22:10):
Ah? Yeah, Emory, I've got a couple of books to
recommend to you. The first is about ulysses As Grant.
It is simply called Grant. It is written by Gron
Schuirnow s hr no excuse me. C h e r
n ow, c h r n ow. He's the guy

(22:32):
though he also yeah, the copyright is twenty seventeen. He
also wrote the book about Alexander Hamilton that kind of
was the inspiration for the play and the musical. The
other one is the book on John Adams written by
David McCullough, whom I know you like. Yeah, and that

(22:54):
I read twenty five years ago or more. I think
the copyright I think is probably in the mid to
late nineteen ninety. So those two Ron schurnew on Grant
and John Adams by David mccoough. Okay, my Friday four
would be I need to read more about Abraham Lincoln

(23:17):
George Washington. I also had written down Joan of arc
so I agree with Matt on that. And also there's
a book that I did read about Audrey Hepburn and
what she went through in World War Two, called Dutch Girl.
So I've read that book, but that I thought that

(23:40):
was kind of fascinating too.

Speaker 1 (23:41):
Yeah, that's good. John, like the background there. Thanks for
the book recommendations. I'm definitely going to look into that
Chure now book. I definitely have that John Adams book
on my list I need to get. I have some
mccollens McCollough books already, but that's what I just haven't
read yet.

Speaker 3 (23:55):
But I really appreciate you colling in Man. Thanks for
listening to us.

Speaker 4 (23:58):
Yeah, that's a thousand pages, but it's it's good from
the get go, so love it.

Speaker 3 (24:02):
Love it.

Speaker 1 (24:02):
That sounds like the book that I'm looking for. Appreciate
you calling in man. Thanks for listening.

Speaker 3 (24:07):
Having the weekend.

Speaker 1 (24:08):
Yeah, let's go to Jeff. Jeff's on a phone line
four oh two five five, eight eleven ten. What do
you got for me today, Jeff?

Speaker 5 (24:14):
Yeah, I've always been interested in Clemens von Minterneck. Who
Clemens von Mentornick. He was, Uh, he's kind of like
the Henry Kids cheer of the eighteenth century.

Speaker 3 (24:23):
Lemon's okay, all right, he was.

Speaker 5 (24:26):
Involved in uh in in in bill creating a post
European posted fully in Europe and uh and stuff like that. Okay,
yeah I found him in Austrian diplomat.

Speaker 3 (24:37):
Yeah I found him. Okay, So Clemens with a K,
got it? Got it?

Speaker 1 (24:40):
Yeah, that's good. That's the kind of guy that I'm
looking for. These guys that in history is a tough
to fight. And if you don't know, you don't know.
But now we know, Jeff, you got any more for me?

Speaker 5 (24:51):
Yeah? I've always been here with momarket Offie too.

Speaker 3 (24:54):
Okay, Yeah that makes sense in character. Yeah, yeah, that
guy for sure. Love it. Jeff, thanks for the call.
That's awesome. There you go.

Speaker 1 (25:03):
There's a couple of guys that you wouldn't maybe have
thought about as part of this list.

Speaker 3 (25:08):
I wanted to take more calls on this.

Speaker 1 (25:09):
If you've got some fascinating historical figures that you would
love to learn more about. Our name drop is part
of this conversation and kind of more underrated under the
radar that we could learn more about maybe as a whole.
Feel free to give us a call at four oh
two five five eight eleven ten four oh two five
five eight eleven ten is the number. You can also
send me emails Emory at kfab dot com, E M. E. R.

(25:31):
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