August 8, 2025 • 55 mins
It isn't every week Angie brings the pain, yet here we are. This week Angie shares the Lebensborn program. During this 9-year program, the Third Reich attempted to breed more soldiers. It starts with unwed Aryan mothers going to country estates to give birth and ends with the SS kidnapping children who looked the part.
Theresa offers a palate cleanser by sharing Harvard's Bad Butter Rebellion. Listen to the pre-Revolutionary War era hysterics over Harvard's dining hall serving rancid butter and the chaos that ensues.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:12):
Hi, and welcome to the Unhinged History Podcast.The podcasts were two complete, absolute crazy
heads, are going to compulsively study historyand then report to each other the stories we've
only recently learned and hope the other one hasnever heard it before. I'm host one, I'm Teresa.
(00:33):
And that is host two. I'm Angie. I don't know, I wasgoing to say something different just then. I
don't mind Angie. It's like, who? Yeah. What? Cla?And you are? I got a... Hold on, I got to go text
Angie's husband. I think she's having a mentalbreak. It's Brittany, bitches. First off, really
(00:59):
shitty Brittany impression, but that's also, Ithink, the first time I've got to say that word.
Secondly, I just came out of a huge sneezing fit.Okay, so try again. No, it's not going to sound any
better. See, I just wanted to call out the bullshitthere because it was the solid bullshit. It's
Brittany, bitches. Yeah, I don't know. I'd have tolisten to it more. I've only heard a few times.
(01:24):
Isn't it bitch singular? It's Brittany, bitch.Yeah, you're right. At least in the song. I'm sure
if she showed up at a party, that would be herentrance. She would do... She'd pluralize. I
mean, it would be a very sad party if there was onlyone other member there. Hey, don't make fun of my
(01:45):
parties. Hey, listen, if that's the way you party,live your dream, man. I'm not trying to stop you. My
parties are literally... Oh yeah, no, that wouldbe too low of a bar. She needs more people. Yeah.
Yeah. Party for me is literally me on the couch witha glass of wine. That sounds like a great party to
(02:05):
me, if I'm honest. Yeah, I know. Yeah. Thank you forthe party. Oh. Oh, man, are you ready? Are you ready
for me? Oh, yeah, that's right, because you'regoing to go first. I am going to go first. There is no
way to open this. So I don't know if I should startwith... Yeah, whatever. The Leaving Born
(02:33):
program. The Holocaust, the Nazi genocideagainst the Jewish people. That's from the Sydney
Jewish Museum. The Holocaust Encyclopedia,which is run by the United States Holocaust
Memorial Museum. There is a phenomenal resourcecalled German History and Documents and Images,
(02:56):
where they have collected the history of theircountry and have organized it in sections. So you
can just, like, your ranges. So you can go throughand see whatever documents were available to be
digitized. So that was actually reallyphenomenal. The Youth in Asia program and ACON T4
(03:21):
of the Holocaust Encyclopedia. And then afabulous YouTube video that I watched called
Leavens Born the Nazi Nurseries by BestDocumentary. You're doing the Leaving Born? Oh,
my. Okay. And then there is this archive called theArlesen Archives. It's 85 years of Leavens Born.
(03:46):
And this archive manages a handful of things, butthis is one of their bigger collections, and it was
all handed to them. They had a lot of stuff to be inwith, but one particular author got, like, she'd
been studying it for years and years and years, soshe turned all of her documents over to them, and
they've digitized and, you know, done their bestto curate this information. So I've got a tense
(04:11):
one. It's not super long, but I think it's animportant one nonetheless. And I know that some of
our listeners that throws them off when I bring thepain, but I heard about an aspect of my story
recently and was like, I thought I've heard aboutthis in passing before, but I wasn't entirely
sure. Like, it sounded familiar, but it alsosounded like something I didn't know anything
(04:37):
about, so I immediately began looking into it. SoI'm going to tell you, like you said, I'm going to
tell you about the Leavens Born program, and Ithink the best way to start is a quick recap of the
Nuremberg Laws of 1935. So back on July 14th of1933, the Nazi regime enacts a sterilization law.
(04:57):
This law is called the Law for the Prevention ofOffspring with Hereditary Disease. I think we've
mentioned this particular section before in someof our stories. We had to have. But basically, if
it's not out there in the world, here it is. Itallows the government to forcibly sterilize
(05:17):
Germans with certain diseases. There are ninespecific medical conditions that this applies
to, and according to the Reich, all our conditionsinfluenced by genetic hereditary factors. These
are congenital mental deficiencies,schizophrenia, manic depression, hereditary
epilepsy. Epilepsy? Thank you. I can never saythat word. Epilepsy. Hereditary St. Vitus Dance,
(05:45):
which I was like, what? Oh, wait a minute. Wait aminute. So they just, first off, I didn't realize
that St. Vitus' dance, the dancing plague washereditary. So there's another name for it, and
it's called Huntington's Choria. And I don't knowif it's the same or just shares the name, but I had
(06:07):
the same question was like, put a pin in thatbecause I'm real curious. I'm going to have to
Google that later. Now, in case you're wondering,I have to derail us for a second. St. Vitus' dance or
the St. Vitus illness, that was covered when I didthe dancing plague. And that is a real thing. That
(06:31):
is episode 68. Oh, okay. Yeah, the dancing plagueof 1518. And the title is Nothing is More Annoying
Than a Dead Wife. Honestly. So yeah, if you haven'tlistened to that episode, I regularly go back and
(06:52):
listen to that episode because Theresa Docs it outof the park with that story and the best possible.
Additionally, you have hereditary blindness,hereditary deafness, and then you have like
serious hereditary physical deformities. Andthen anyone suffering from chronic alcohol
alcoholism can also be sterilized. Furthermore,section 12 states that once the court has decided
(07:18):
on sterilization, the operation must be carriedout even against the will of the person to be
sterilized. Unless that person applied for ithimself, the state physician has to attend to the
necessary measures with the police authoritieswhile other measures are insufficient. Direct
force may be used. And that's devastating to me. Sothat law goes into effect on January 1 of 1934. In
(07:47):
the timeframe that that law was being used, about400,000 people are sterilized. So then in 1935,
the Nuremberg laws were long story short, as Imentioned. They're a legislation that shows this
rapid growth in anti-Semitism and other targetedgroups such as any other like the Roma, Jehovah's
(08:13):
Witnesses, and of course, homosexuals. They'reall deemed undesirable and these laws work to
protect the racially acceptable German orrelated blood, the whole Aryan-Masser ace thing.
So it also forbids marriage as well as anyextramarital relationships between Jewish and
non-Jewish Germans, which is insane to me, but Iguess when you want complete control, there you
(08:40):
go, right? Right. So from the get-go, this is like aterribly problematic problem, but it gets so much
worse. First of all, the Reich citizenship lawclassified people as Jewish if they were
descended from three or four Jewishgrandparents. But the criteria that defines a
grandparent as Jewish is not really specific andit makes this definition like circular. At this
(09:09):
point, whatever remaining civil or politicalrights the Jewish community have are stripped.
And so this is sort of the world that theLevens-born are born into. And I feel like the
Levens-born would never have even been a thing ifwe could have just, I don't know, left our people
(09:31):
alone to do their thing. Like, but here we go. Yeah.The Levens-born program was created by the SS in
December of 1935 in order to promote the growth ofGermany's healthy Aryan population. I am saying
this with such a healthy dose of air quotes.Himmer. Himmer. Air quotes are the best thing to
(09:52):
use in an audio format for a podcast. I know, aren'tthey? Himmer personally founded this as his
response to what he saw as a drop in the birth rateamong germs. Shocking. I know. I mean, when you're
just sterilizing people, it's weird. Well, Imean, but you look at, okay, so let's zoom out a
second, right? Let's push back on that becauselook at the developed countries we have now. We've
(10:16):
got drops in birth rates in Japan. We have drops inbirth rates in the U.S. I would agree with that
except for in our, I don't, well, I don't know how itworks in Japan, but I'm actually one of my classes
talked about this. Birth rates have droppedglobally because women have jobs and most women,
(10:43):
not all, most women have access to birth control.Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. But that's not to
say that this isn't the same thing that'shappening in Germany at the time, right? Oh, yeah.
Like maybe women are just making choices to haveless children. Maybe families aren't marrying as
(11:03):
young. Like there's so many things added to this ontop of this forced sterilization program that
they have going on. But he is also seeing that thereis an allegedly high number of abortions that are
being done by single-arean mothers. So whetherthat's true or not, he sees it and that's what he
(11:25):
thinks is going on. Additionally, as the war yearsprogress, this program was radicalized even more
to the ideals of Himmler. And he begins to worryabout the loss of good, racially elite soldiers
because we're in the war years and we're losingtons of men. And so we need more men, but we need
(11:45):
babies to have more men, right? Yeah. Like theyhave to grow up first. So he sees this program, like
it's designed with the hope that there would, thiswould be like ground zero for the, for generations
of the quote, racially valuable humans. Sooriginally the program focuses on encouraging
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the men of the SS to have large families. In fact,the documentary I watched, it said that there was
like a minimum of four children per family. Andthen the documentary also points out that the men
of the SS were given additional orders to seekracially valuable women outside of the marriage
to further their procreation. Wives love that.Wives really love that. I super love that. Good for
(12:35):
them, I guess. Along with these orders, theLevens-Worn program strongly discouraged
unmarried pregnant, arraigned women fromseeking illegal abortions. In an effort to ensure
that this was the case, the first Levens-Worn homewas opened in Steinhorn, Bavaria on August 15th in
1936. The word Levens-Worn literally means soundof life. And I just, I hate how insidious every bit
(13:04):
of this is. So this home was quote, a verywell-equipped maternity and children's home.
After this initial home was open, around 30 morewould pop up throughout Germany, as well as
Austria, and then later into occupiedterritories like Norway, Belgium, France, and
Luxembourg. Often, if not always, the homes wereon these grand country estates, so they're
(13:28):
private, they're out. They give this idea ofluxury and just peace. Like that's the whole
point. In fact, one of my sources, you can actuallygo and look at the entire pamphlet that they
created about it. Whoa. Which is, it's all inGerman, but it's still fascinating to see, even if
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you don't speak German, like what was going onthere. And because this isn't insidious enough,
the United States Holocaust Memorial Museumsays, quote, The Levenson-Worn Program was
heavily influenced by Nazi racial ideology andtheories of eugenics. It only accepted healthy
applicants who could establish their area ofancestry. The SS screened individuals' personal
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medical histories as well as their familyrecords. Applicants could be denied on the basis
of their alleged racial impurity or healthissues. Now, based on what I said earlier about the
individuals who were sterilized, applicantscould be denied if their family history had any
issues. They could be denied any of the samephysical, mental or psychiatric disabilities
that were listed earlier. I hate it, but that makessense. Right. They seem to go hand in hand. Right.
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Awful, but yeah, okay, if you're not going to rollout in one place, why would you allow it in the
other? If my sister's deaf, you think I'd probablycarry those genes, which checks. Right. Himmler
was so into this idea of the men of the SS belongingto this group of the biological and racial elite
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that made up Nazi Germany. So the members of the SS,as well as their future brides, had to pass medical
examinations to establish their anarianismbefore they could even vary. I think every bit of
this is so disgusting, but I think it's soimportant to share because we don't, at least for
me, when you think about, you think about thebattles and the big plot, right? But to me, you
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never see the back end of things, and this feelslike the back end of things, like the backstage.
Yeah, how the sausage is made. Exactly. And it'sjust so heartbreaking to me. So that said, women
who found themselves to be both Aryan and unwedwould be welcome into these leaving-born homes
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because at the time, as always, there was strongpressure against single motherhood in society.
Now, they were frowned upon. You said encouraged.I'm assuming later on encouragement becomes much
more animated, a little bit more intense, andyou're more than encouraged. So here's the thing.
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I would love to tell you yes on that, but, and I'llget into this a little bit more later. They didn't
do great at advertising these homes, and soencouraged in that sense is really the only words
that could be used because they didn't want it to besomething that was out in the mass public
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knowledge, but they also wanted as many unwedsingle Aryan mothers as they could get. So it was
this very weird line of like how to keep it underwraps, but how to kind of recruit more ladies at the
same time, and they never really figured it out.But I'll get into that in just a minute. Okay. So
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these women, they find themselves with thispressure of society, right, to be, if they're
unwed, it's just so unfortunate that you would befound pregnant. But these programs, they offered
mothers both financial support and adoptionservices. So if you're young and you're looking at
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this situation and you're thinking, oh my God, Ican't even, like, what am I going to start showing?
My mom's going to know, or society is going to know,these are homes that are offering you a way out,
basically. As I mentioned earlier, these areprivate homes away from judging eyes. Himmler
himself hoped that this alone would discouragethe idea of abortion. And I hate that it's not
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because he values human life, but because hevalues the Nazi ideals. Like, I want to encourage
you to continue having children, but not because Ibelieve in children. It's his motivation.
Absolutely. But because, like, while the Naziregime is strengthening preexisting laws that
(18:12):
prohibit most abortions, they're also operatingthis hereditary health court that orders
abortions and sterilizations that, like Imentioned earlier. And despite the Reich's
increased penalties for seeking abortions,Himmler estimates that there's at least 100,000
biologically valuable pregnancies terminatedin Germany every year. I don't know how he's coming
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up with these numbers. I feel like that's reallysort of kind of plucked out of the thin air, but
because none of Himmler's statistics in this are,like, confirmed. They're just supposed to expect
it. Honestly, I think if I were divorced from mycurrent timeline, I would probably go, okay, he
(19:02):
probably has a study for this, and I might blindlybelieve it. Being alive now in his current
timeline, I kind of go, I feel like a lot of thesenumbers are made up a little bit just like he sounds
like a good round number. We'll go with 100,000.That's okay. We've seen the meme of, like, 85% of
all statistics are made up on the spot. Yeah. Thatfeels like this. I would have to agree with you.
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Now, I mentioned these homes. They're countryestates. They're designed to be pleasant spaces
where the women can live comfortably as theyreceive care, both prenatal care, all the way
through labor and delivery, as well as recovery.Now, because the program sought out women who
would want to avoid public scandal, the homesprioritize anonymity and the staff is incredibly
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discreet. This obviously leads to the problem ofnot having a ton of women show up. So there's that.
The program also states that single women wouldhave to obtain permission from the Leavens-born
central office before they could take theirnewborns home. Meanwhile, the program would
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assume guardianship of the children anddetermined where they would be raised. And in
everything that I read and everything that Iwatched, it seemed more often than not the mother
didn't get to keep their child. And I don'tentirely know the, like, because you have the
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homes and then you have these SS officers that aretold to make all the babies with their wives. So I'm
assuming if you are an SS officer and you have a wifeand your wife is pregnant with baby number five,
baby number five gets to come home with you. But I'mnot really clear on that. And none of my sources had
anything to say about it. And so it makes me think itwas a case-by-case situation and there's no
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numbers to determine how many children actuallygot to stay with their mothers. And that breaks my
heart. Well, and I think if we probably, like, wentto a country estate that was a spot where the
Leavens-born program occurred, I think thatinformation would probably be easier to have. But
if the information is still available, right?Right. Anyway, as the Warriors are raging,
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Himmler notes that these homes are not bringingforth enough babies. So he branches out to other
countries. And the women who are perceived to holdthe qualities the Reich loved, tall, blonde, and
blue-eyed. So they set their eyes on the rest of theoccupied regions and fell in love with Norway. You
got to say, Scandanavia, here we come. Mm-hmm. TheLeavens-born program took control of these
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foreign mothers, especially. So basically they,like, they send their troops out and they're like,
go, make babies, find the tall blonde women, do thething, right? And then they would take control of
the children, especially if the health, familyhistory, and, quote, area and ancestry could be
(22:18):
established with these foreign women. And if thatwasn't enough, the Leavens-born program also
became involved in the kidnapping of thousands offoreign children that met the standards by the act
of repatriation. There we go. Thousands ofchildren, mostly from Eastern and Southeastern
Europe, were kidnapped and brought to these homesbecause they either had German ancestry or simply
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looked the part. I cannot. My brain cannot. Like,excuse me. My youngest son was a blue-eyed blonde.
I cannot imagine just walking down the street oneday and the rite being like, we'll take that one.
Yeah, he looks the part. Come with me. No, thankyou. The program would then help place these
(23:07):
children with German families, telling theadopting families that the children had been
orphaned by war. So these adopting families had noclue. Probably until after the war when it all came
to light. And even then they may not have everknown. Maybe they would have suspected, but now
you would think that this would be successful,right? We are birthing babies and we're still in
(23:28):
children, but nope. The program's homes claim touphold the highest standards of modern medicine,
but there were serious complaints about thequality of medical care and the staff. They start
to emerge fairly quickly. And, you know, the wholebasis of the program being like anonymous and
relying on its privacy, it had trouble attractingthe eligible women. So, Himmler had estimated
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that, like I said earlier, 100,000 biologicallyvaluable German women had obtained abortions
illegally each year despite the increasedpenalties, but only 7,000 children were born
until the Levensborn home during the entireprogram's nine-year run. In fact, the homes would
foster more kidnapped foreign children than theywould natural born children. I hate this. Right?
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As always, the precise numbers are difficult tofully know how many they sold and how many they
birthed. And the legacy of the Levensborn programincludes both broken homes and deved state of
parents, but it also left an entire generation ofchildren unknown participants in one of the
world's worst ideas. This pretty much abandonsthem to their problems and their labels as Nazis or
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Nazi sympathizers, whether they were or not. Andit's no shocker, but these children had no desire
to be associated with any of it. In the documentaryI watched, it includes interviews with several
children of the program who now are, of course,adults, right? I would highly recommend it. It's
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so enlightening. Like, enlightening the newsthat you hear in here and the stories they tell are
heartbreaking. Like, one man talks about how hemade it out of the home with his mother, and they
went, they escaped Germany at kind of one of thereal pivotal moments. And left, I think they fled
(25:34):
north, and when they finally made it back toGermany, her husband found a man and, or her mom,
his mom found a man desperately wanted to marryhim, and the man just adored her. And his mother
said, you can't marry that woman because of thatlittle Nazi sausage to his face. So she abandons
(25:54):
him. She abandoned the boys. And that happened alot. There are stories of children who were born in
these homes, and for the most part, their earlyyears are spent in these homes. So they're raised
around SS soldiers who were good to them. They werekind to them. They gave them candy and trinkets,
(26:17):
and they played with them to find out when theallies invaded that they're the bad guy. So now
they're having to deal with this, like, emotionalroller coaster of, but he was good to me. He was kind
to me. And you're supposed to be the bad guy. Yeah.Like, so there's a lot of emotional turmoil that
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comes out of it. There's a whole generation of kidswho may or may not have ever met their birth
parents, who may or may not have ever even knownthat they were part of this program. Obviously
against their will, like they were born into it, orthey were stolen from their families. And I'm so
curious to know, because obviously thisinformation is coming to light now, and it's been
(27:01):
available for a while, but I'm curious to know howmany people actually were able to reunite, or if
they even wanted to. Because that doesn't seem tobe the case with a lot of the interviewees. This is
their life, and they were raised by someone whocared for them, and that's the end of it. Now what?
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And it just, it's heartbreaking to me. But that'smy story of how the third right thought babies and
kidnapping was going to be the future of their massrace. Joy. I know. And there's pictures. I just
want to show you one, because it's insane to me, andI cannot imagine they're just so insidious. Okay,
(27:49):
here's the picture. This is them, the childreneating their meal, right? It just looks like a
kindergarten class having lunch. Yeah, it's...And not even all the kids are blot. There are some
burnets up in that photo. Mm-hmm, yep. There areburnets up in that photo. There is... Let's see if I
(28:13):
can find it fairly quickly. There is a... Okay.This is what the homes were described as in the
pamphlets. So it looks like a country club. It is agiant estate. We're talking four or five stories
tall, massive. Massive. One to two blocks big.This thing is a castle in the middle of the country.
(28:36):
Mm-hmm. And you've got dining rooms that arestaffed and a full nursing staff. Unfortunately,
and I didn't know this, and I mean, it makes sense,but I didn't know this until reading about them. A
lot of the nurses were part of like theSocialist... Like the Nazi party. They had a whole
(28:57):
wing of nurses that believed in their eugenicsprogram. Of course they did. Right? So a lot of the
nurses were from that operating in these thingsthat are meant to look and and feel like retreats to
these people who are literally in a pickle, it'snothing else. Like I just... I can't stop thinking
(29:22):
about these poor kids. Like it's heartbreaking tome. So there you go. But you can go and you can see the
documents and you can look at the pamphlet and youcan learn all about the leave and spawn yourself.
Well, okay. If you want something to cry over. Iwill do a sharp pivot to... Oh, thank you. So a very
different topic. Okay. Okay. At the beginning oflike the week, Andrea told me that she needed a
(29:50):
palate cleanser. I was deep in my field because Ihad already done a ton of notes. So I adjusted
sharply. But here we go. So I'm going to tell you thestory of the Bad Butter Rebellion. Bad Butter? Bad
Butter. I am so excited. My sources, EmergingRevolutionary War Era, they have an article by
(30:17):
Phil Greenwald called The Great ButterRebellion. The Harvard Crimson, Riot and
Rebellion. Oh! The Harvard Crimson, Bad Butterand University Commons, caused the Great
Rebellion of 1776. The Harvard Independent, SourButter 300 Years Later by Katie Lynn. And Grub
Street, Harvard's first rebellion involvedbutter by Kara Baskin. I am so happy you're doing
(30:41):
the story. It has been on my list literally sincethe beginning. Really? Yes. I knew nothing about
it, but it was volunt told to me by a viewer onTikTok. And I had it on my list, didn't even record
the person's name, and was just like, I'll get toit. And then I was just like, what is this Bad Butter
Rebellion? And I was excited. I think part of itwas, you know, I recently covered the founding of
(31:06):
the FDA and how that really soured you. Like it wasgrocery food. And I was like, you know, this feels
adjacent. I feel like it's time. Love this for me. Istill haven't had milk, just so you know. Well, let
me remove butter from your menu. I love butter.Let's not ruin butter for me. I'm imagining a trash
(31:30):
bag of Keri Gold. But here we go. In the middle of the1700s, the food served in college dining rooms
produced notable discontent among itsundergraduates. At the time, colleges are full of
the gentleman, emphasis on the men. They're also,you know, because they're the aristocrats and
their children, it's a very tasteful group. Soit's 1766. There is a bunch of people up in arms and
(31:57):
deep in their fields over what they consider poorquality in food. And this ends up being Harvard's
first real insurrection. And this was the GreatButter Rebellion prompted by the serving of sour
butter, which President Edward Holyoke, he firstdeclines to replace it. He's like, you know what,
(32:18):
the butter sucks, but eat up. So good. Yeah, likeget over yourself. You're just the children of the
elite. What are you going to do to me? My dad will behearing about this. Let him. We play golf on
Tuesdays. I'll tell him. It's fine. Yeah, hethinks he or she does not know his brat anyhow. The
(32:42):
disturbances that this butter created settled,like it got a little bit out of hand. And so it was
taken to the board of overseers, which feels likethe board of trustees. I'm going to assume that's
yeah. And the faculty is certain that theirdefense of the president and his rotten butter is
(33:03):
well taken by the undergraduate party. They'relike, you know what, the faculty, we've all come
together. We're like, get over yourself. Just notnose punks. And the undergraduate body, they
become a little bit indignant, a littleself-righteous. Shocking. Considering this is
probably the same age, like the same timeframe asthe, oh my gosh, the egg nog riots, I think the egg
(33:29):
nog riots were in the 1800s because you have many ofthose people who end up being a part of the Civil
War. Oh, that's right. That's right. That'sright. Okay. That's right. I'm just totally
imagining the burrito scene, like paying theguard, you have burrito money. Anyway, sorry
guys. And the egg nog riots that Angie is going backto, now I get to look that up. That is the episode
(33:52):
title wasn't worth the burrito. And that wasepisode 52. It's a good one. Yeah. In case you're
wondering, egg nog riots, school and the overlapof all of those. Okay. So back to Harvard. There's
three students that are all seniors that are deepin their fields. We have Aisa Dunbar, Daniel
(34:18):
Johnson, and Thomas Hodgson, or Hodgson. They'dhad enough of the lack of fresh food. Now Dunbar,
he's apparently best known for being grandpa toHenry David Thoreau. Oh, okay. So Aisa Dunbar, he
led the protest stating that the butter served bythe college was, quote, stinketh. And he incited
(34:42):
the student body to reject the rancid fair byjumping on his chair and shouting the phrase,
quote, behold our butter stinketh. Thereforegive us butter that stinketh not. My God, what a
man. This is so full of drama. I hear for it. Sounsurprisingly, Dunbar faces disciplinary
(35:07):
action. He's being punished forinsubordination, instigating a potential riot,
and he receives his punishment. And the studentbody enacted another protest by walking out of the
hall, cheering loudly in the Harvard yard, andthen continuing all the way to Cambridge to dine
there instead. This is so stupid. I mean, but thisfeels like college behavior. It is perfect. I'm
(35:37):
just imagining like a troop of them from one campusto the next to decide that we will die here this
evening. And you know, okay, so think about it,right? Because this is a cafeteria. It's an
old-timey cafeteria. It's a cafeteria. You know?We're not, yeah. They make food for the number of
(35:58):
students they have. Now imagine the entirestudent body. I mean, because if you see all of your
classmates stand up and be like, screw this, we'regoing to Cambridge, and they start walking out,
you're like, well, I guess I'm going to go on achowder run. You walk out with everybody that
(36:19):
you're with because they're, you know, peerpressure. You just become a liming. You know, that
mob mentality kicks in. And then you go toCambridge, and Cambridge is like, we only made
food for the 150 students we had. Share and sharealike. You know, like they can't have dined
heartily. But it makes a point, Dammit. It doesmake a point. Now, we're going to go from- I want to
(36:44):
read the letter home to Dad. Father, this schoolhas terrible butter. You told me you were sending
me the best school in the country. It's got badbutter. It's stinketh. It's stinketh. Asa Dunbar
said, butter's stinketh. And I, Father, quitewell agree with him. It's indeed. So we're going to
(37:08):
give the college some credit. The administrationacknowledges, hey, you know what? We do admit
butter's rancid. But hey, you know what? There'ssome economic difficulties. We don't have access
to all the fresh food that we want. So it is what itis. Okay. Now, Massachusetts has moved closer to
(37:28):
open rebellion against the British Parliamentand the Crown. And this example gets mirrored by
the student body of Harvard, because this isBritish rule that we're under. We're not
Americans yet. Okay. So there is a month ofimpasse, a month of discontent between students
and dining staff. Oh, my God. Okay. Love this. Andthis includes, quote, insulting proceedings of
(37:56):
the Royal Governor of Massachusetts, Sir FrancisBernard, who personally addressed the student
body in the chapel on campus and the protest andsubordinations of the student body continued. So
you get, imagine, the governor of your state,Newsom, comes to your college to talk to your
(38:16):
student body about their actions in the dininghall. About bad butter. About bad butter. Well,
listen, if Newsom does anything right, I know hewould fix the butter situation, because he too
doesn't want to eat bad butter. But in this, I can'timagine that he's on the student side. Probably
(38:38):
not. Now, the students end up writing what iscalled the Book of Harvard. Love this. And it is a
account in biblical language documenting thedisorders of the college, and that publishes in
September of 1776. I like the air quotes there,because air quotes are the most feeble thing on a
(39:07):
podcast you record. You know what? Your butterstick is. That's my new favorite insult. Now,
okay. Okay. So the Book of Harvard is the documentthat is produced by the students in that biblical
language. I'll give you a quote later on. It's a bitoutrageous. This is all happening as the stewards
(39:38):
are continuing to serve bad butter in the commons.They're not backing down. And then we have the
faculty who they begin to refuse to accept thecustomary and time honored, but very elastic
excuses for absence from college exercises. Sothey're used to like being like, well, I was dead at
(40:03):
the time. I was on the moon with Steve and theydecide, you know what, we'll let it go. But they
start. Don Barr and I were, it was weird. We wereasleep and our door was locked and we couldn't get
out. We were stuck in our room. Yeah. And it's likewe called first you were doping it, but they didn't
hear us. They couldn't hear us. Yeah. So there endsup being this other thing written called the
(40:30):
arguments for the defense. And this gives thestudent side of the question, well, the faculty
prepares what they call this long list ofrepresentations and the faculty, the
representations gives their side to theoverseers. So both sides are preparing their
documents. Now there's, there's trouble in theair when the authorities insisted that the
(40:53):
student body should eat only in the commons andthat scholars should be restrained from dieting
in private family. You must eat here. We made foodfor all of you. We're not throwing it all out. We
don't have refrigeration. So you need to come hereand eat it. When it's cooked right now, whether
(41:13):
it's stinketh or not, because it's going to stinkit's more tomorrow. Ew. So 1776, the faculty, they
draw this harsh law there. They end up kicking offthe trouble here. Because part of the text that
follows is article one and all scholars while attheir meals shall sit in their places and behave
(41:37):
with decency and who so ever shall be rude orclamorous at such time shall be punished by one of
the tutors, not exceeding five shellings. So itsounds like for every time you're loud and
obnoxious and trained at the butters stinketh,that's a five shilling fine. Oh my God, I love this
so much. Now hold on to that number five shillingsbecause article 10 states that every scholar
(42:00):
shall for the present pay seven shillings and fourpence a week for his whole diet. So if it's $7 or
seven shillings, I don't know what a shillingtrade likes to do. Seven shillings for a week's
worth of food. Five shillings for one instance ofdisobedience is quite substantial. Yeah. But
(42:25):
Dunbar can afford it. You would think. Article 13states no scholar shall be allowed to go into debt
to the butler above $5 and shall have no more credittill that is paid. Okay. So basically you need to
pay your fines. You need to pay your fees. The bookof Harvard account of the rebellion. Here's a
(42:49):
chunk of it. Chapter one or chapter first one. Andit came to pass in the ninth month on the 23rd day of
the month, the sons of Harvard murmured and said,behold, bad and unwholesome butter is served at
unto us daily. Now let us therefore dispute. Asadescribed go on to our ruler and seek redress. Now
(43:15):
the whole account. Go ahead. I just love them. Theyhave like the full on account and it goes on and on
and on and it drills like the King Testament. Goodfor them. You don't attend Harvard for nothing.
I'm not a person. I'm the King Testament, the KingJames version of I knew what she meant. Okay. Thank
(43:38):
you for translating because I would have listenedto this later gone. Theresa Marie, you know
better. Now according to the Harvard Gazette,this is even a decade before the American
Revolution. Harvard's great butter rebellion of1766 was perhaps the first sign of America's
spirit as United in civil disobedience. And itstarted in Harvard's dining hall. Which I don't
(44:03):
think we give Harvard enough credit for.Honestly. Now, despite the strangest of this
origin story, the student and I the studentalliance from bad food is a trend that's
continuously found throughout the university'slong history. Since the 18th century, students
have continued to form new communities to escapeHarvard's dining offerings. Harvard needs to
(44:28):
step up its cafeteria game. You know what can'tstop won't stop. We have some street cred we need to
keep because if it works for your great, great,great, great grandfathers, it works for you.
Honestly. They could play on that now and theircafe could be called stinketh. Right. People
(44:49):
would be down like I'd go. Are you going to stinkethor are you going to rotted butter? I'm going to
stinketh today. Exactly. During the country'sdownturn in economic stability to access the
fresh goods in the years leading up to theRevolutionary War. An act of activism led to half
of the student body getting suspended. And this isreported in the Colonial Society of
(45:15):
Massachusetts. So Harvard students grewincreasingly dissatisfied with the decline in
the quality of food and Holyoke's failure tosatisfy those demands. The colony or the Colonial
Society described that for Asa Dunbar class of1767, the meal presented with particularly
soured butter was the final straw. As the firststudent to raise conflict Dunbar is rumored to
(45:39):
have brought evidence of the inedible food to hissenior tutor, decrying behold our butter
stinketh. Therefore give us butter that stinkethnot. So it could be that he brought the butter to the
tutor. It could be these stippling the chair andshouted. We get some conflicting reports. Maybe
both could be a little bit of both. I mean, I have afeeling that if you're emboldened by the man
(46:00):
around you shouting, you're here. You'reprobably going to continue on with your bullshit.
Honestly. Yeah, because at this point you're justone of those obnoxious teenage punks who's just
going to double down. I mean, good for him. So thethe stinketh not that catching his phrase. It's
(46:22):
stuck and soon enough his fellow students join inthe model yelling and protesting the tensions
between the Hottie administration and themotivated cramp is grew and became violent and
illegal. Now President Holyoke is fed up andeventually demands that the students return.
Nope. The students turn in the leaders of thisrebellion. There's no names that are offered. So
(46:45):
this is when Holyoke suspends half the studentbody. My God, I love this. This is just. There's no
greater force than a shared idea here. Thestudents though have suspended remain silent.
And this is at the United States dawn of its birth asan independent country and argumentally this is
(47:09):
one of the most political turbulent moments inAmerican history, which is a wild concept to know
that. We were protesting butter. And Harvardundergraduates united under a common goal
refused to turn in one another despite theacademic threats from the university.
Eventually the colonial society explains thatthe board of overseers reinstated the status of
(47:32):
all the suspended students and replace thebutter. So if you keep up with your bullshit long
enough, you get your demands met. Squeaky willgets the grease. Exactly. And so just like that,
one of harvest. Harvard's greatest showings ofstudent solidarity supported some of the
humblest beginnings. The fight for unsourbutter. The notoriety of Harvard as a campus for
(47:59):
famously bad food has become an escapeablereputation. One aided by the college's own
students and continuing to lament and violentlyprotest its offerings. Hey, man, when you want the
burrito, you want the burrito. You do. They're inbad butter. So despite all of this butter
(48:23):
protesting, the peace and quiet that comesafterwards that only last two years. Of course.
There's the great rebellion of 1768 and it's likethe first in a direction. It was incited by the
college food and it lasted for a month. I love this.The riots are now more violent, but even more
(48:48):
unsuccessful. I'm never going to get good butter.No, this is what happens when you give into the
demands of terrorists. That's basically what thecollege is saying. And so we just are not going to
negotiate with terrorists anymore. So thepenalties are severe and the feeling of that the
(49:09):
punished were still martyred lingers. So they'remaking martyrs out of everybody they're
punishing and everyone's like, yeah, stand up forASA. Yeah, justice. 1778. So we're now Americans.
The undergraduates are continued to bedissatisfied with their offerings and they form
(49:32):
plans for weekly group dinners where memberswould rotate hosting dinner parties. When the
turn came to Joseph the clean class of 1794, hepresented whole roast pork. Which makes me wonder
about these doors. Yeah, okay, fair. Yeah, now thestudents can take me and brought it from home.
(49:55):
Yeah. So there's these dinner plans that areforming and they're enjoying each other's
company just as much as the lavish food on theirplates. And apparently these meetings never
fully ceased over the last two centuries. Theaccurately named pork club or Priscilla in has
evolved into this ever prestigious and notoriousfinal club. Originating as an escape from Harvard
(50:24):
University dining service or HUDs for simple mealtimes. Their story is rooted in the same
motivations as Harvard's great butterrebellion. A group of students tied to the
quality. Tied to eating the tire. I cannot read outloud. A group of students tired of eating the poor
quality tasteless food offered by the universitycame up with their own crafty solutions. And so
(50:51):
this gives birth to the final clubs where some ofthe most notable examples of status divisions on
campus exist. That's awesome. If you've got the incrowd on the poor mouth, I've never gotten into the
final clubs. Let's be honest. Oh, my God, you'vecome to my final meeting and it would be like, well,
(51:14):
ketchup cracker sandwiches because that's what Iwas eating during college. Oh, I mean, it wasn't
that bad, but there were some nights where I did geta little creative. The final clubs themselves
there. Are you going to say something? Iinterrupted. No, no, I just was agreeing. Yeah.
(51:34):
They're shrouded in a cloak of mystery, intrigueand critique from the outside. Yeah, if you can't
get in, of course, you're going to critique it.Yeah. Final clubs are now considered notoriously
exclusive and elitist parts of Harvard socialscene. Fair. Okay. Now, as all this dinner drama is
(51:58):
evolving, I'm going to take us back to theRevolutionary War era because I feel like this is
important. So the Revolutionary Warsapproaching the groans of hunger are drawn out by
the patriotic spirit, which has completelycaptured the undergraduates of Harvard, Harvard
College. Writing breaks out only once during thedays surrounding the Revolutionary or the
(52:20):
Revolution. And that's when two Tory studentsbrought tea into the college room, the college
dining room in 1775. 1780, there was anothersuccessful student revolt in the history of the
college, and it was the mildest, reportedly.There's a large student body that forms in the yard
(52:42):
one evening past resolutions against PresidentSamuel Langdon, and they are demanding his
dismissal. So they are deep in their fields. Andthis is after reading charges against him.
Langdon submitted his resignation withoutobjection. He's like, you know what? Screw you,
kids. I'm going home. Fair. Didn't like youanyway. 1807, there's the Rotted Cabbage
(53:08):
Rebellion. And this is another protest againstcollege food. Love this. So the students assemble
first at the tree at the end of Hallis Hall, whichhad become the rebellion Elm, or which was to
become the rebellion Elm. Okay. And they beg forthe food to be improved, especially the cabbage.
(53:29):
Well, at least the butter's not the problem thistime. They march out of the dining hall in a group
and 17 of them are eventually dismissed. The foodremained largely the same. Devastating. 1818, a
wild food fight broke out and is chronicled in arhyme by the clever scholar, Augustus Pierce. And
(53:55):
he said, and thus arose a fearful battle, thecoffee cups and saucer's rattle, the bread bulls
fly at a row full weight and break many in a learnedfate. I should also mention that earlier that year
there was a violent brawl involving crockery thatalso occurred. Of course. Because why wouldn't
(54:22):
there be? And that is the drama of eating atHarvard. You know, I'm so glad you shared the
story. My whole day has been made. I mean, I had to dosomething to frame us up, get us ready for the
weekend and take us out of the bad taste of the leapand sporn. Bad butter. That'll do it. Sour butter.
(54:46):
Yeah, it's stinking. I do it again. So gross. Youknow, I mean, look. When I do offer palate
cleansers, palate cleansers, they are not. Yeah,they definitely don't inspire you to eat
anything. That's for sure. So there you go. Enjoybrunch this weekend and share this with your
(55:15):
favorite person who also hates butter thatstinketh. You know, I, I. And on that note,
goodbye. Bye. You
Hi, and welcome to the Unhinged History Podcast.The podcasts were two complete, absolute crazy
heads, are going to compulsively study historyand then report to each other the stories we've
only recently learned and hope the other one hasnever heard it before. I'm host one, I'm Teresa.
(00:33):
And that is host two. I'm Angie. I don't know, I wasgoing to say something different just then. I
don't mind Angie. It's like, who? Yeah. What? Cla?And you are? I got a... Hold on, I got to go text
Angie's husband. I think she's having a mentalbreak. It's Brittany, bitches. First off, really
(00:59):
shitty Brittany impression, but that's also, Ithink, the first time I've got to say that word.
Secondly, I just came out of a huge sneezing fit.Okay, so try again. No, it's not going to sound any
better. See, I just wanted to call out the bullshitthere because it was the solid bullshit. It's
Brittany, bitches. Yeah, I don't know. I'd have tolisten to it more. I've only heard a few times.
(01:24):
Isn't it bitch singular? It's Brittany, bitch.Yeah, you're right. At least in the song. I'm sure
if she showed up at a party, that would be herentrance. She would do... She'd pluralize. I
mean, it would be a very sad party if there was onlyone other member there. Hey, don't make fun of my
(01:45):
parties. Hey, listen, if that's the way you party,live your dream, man. I'm not trying to stop you. My
parties are literally... Oh yeah, no, that wouldbe too low of a bar. She needs more people. Yeah.
Yeah. Party for me is literally me on the couch witha glass of wine. That sounds like a great party to
(02:05):
me, if I'm honest. Yeah, I know. Yeah. Thank you forthe party. Oh. Oh, man, are you ready? Are you ready
for me? Oh, yeah, that's right, because you'regoing to go first. I am going to go first. There is no
way to open this. So I don't know if I should startwith... Yeah, whatever. The Leaving Born
(02:33):
program. The Holocaust, the Nazi genocideagainst the Jewish people. That's from the Sydney
Jewish Museum. The Holocaust Encyclopedia,which is run by the United States Holocaust
Memorial Museum. There is a phenomenal resourcecalled German History and Documents and Images,
(02:56):
where they have collected the history of theircountry and have organized it in sections. So you
can just, like, your ranges. So you can go throughand see whatever documents were available to be
digitized. So that was actually reallyphenomenal. The Youth in Asia program and ACON T4
(03:21):
of the Holocaust Encyclopedia. And then afabulous YouTube video that I watched called
Leavens Born the Nazi Nurseries by BestDocumentary. You're doing the Leaving Born? Oh,
my. Okay. And then there is this archive called theArlesen Archives. It's 85 years of Leavens Born.
(03:46):
And this archive manages a handful of things, butthis is one of their bigger collections, and it was
all handed to them. They had a lot of stuff to be inwith, but one particular author got, like, she'd
been studying it for years and years and years, soshe turned all of her documents over to them, and
they've digitized and, you know, done their bestto curate this information. So I've got a tense
(04:11):
one. It's not super long, but I think it's animportant one nonetheless. And I know that some of
our listeners that throws them off when I bring thepain, but I heard about an aspect of my story
recently and was like, I thought I've heard aboutthis in passing before, but I wasn't entirely
sure. Like, it sounded familiar, but it alsosounded like something I didn't know anything
(04:37):
about, so I immediately began looking into it. SoI'm going to tell you, like you said, I'm going to
tell you about the Leavens Born program, and Ithink the best way to start is a quick recap of the
Nuremberg Laws of 1935. So back on July 14th of1933, the Nazi regime enacts a sterilization law.
(04:57):
This law is called the Law for the Prevention ofOffspring with Hereditary Disease. I think we've
mentioned this particular section before in someof our stories. We had to have. But basically, if
it's not out there in the world, here it is. Itallows the government to forcibly sterilize
(05:17):
Germans with certain diseases. There are ninespecific medical conditions that this applies
to, and according to the Reich, all our conditionsinfluenced by genetic hereditary factors. These
are congenital mental deficiencies,schizophrenia, manic depression, hereditary
epilepsy. Epilepsy? Thank you. I can never saythat word. Epilepsy. Hereditary St. Vitus Dance,
(05:45):
which I was like, what? Oh, wait a minute. Wait aminute. So they just, first off, I didn't realize
that St. Vitus' dance, the dancing plague washereditary. So there's another name for it, and
it's called Huntington's Choria. And I don't knowif it's the same or just shares the name, but I had
(06:07):
the same question was like, put a pin in thatbecause I'm real curious. I'm going to have to
Google that later. Now, in case you're wondering,I have to derail us for a second. St. Vitus' dance or
the St. Vitus illness, that was covered when I didthe dancing plague. And that is a real thing. That
(06:31):
is episode 68. Oh, okay. Yeah, the dancing plagueof 1518. And the title is Nothing is More Annoying
Than a Dead Wife. Honestly. So yeah, if you haven'tlistened to that episode, I regularly go back and
(06:52):
listen to that episode because Theresa Docs it outof the park with that story and the best possible.
Additionally, you have hereditary blindness,hereditary deafness, and then you have like
serious hereditary physical deformities. Andthen anyone suffering from chronic alcohol
alcoholism can also be sterilized. Furthermore,section 12 states that once the court has decided
(07:18):
on sterilization, the operation must be carriedout even against the will of the person to be
sterilized. Unless that person applied for ithimself, the state physician has to attend to the
necessary measures with the police authoritieswhile other measures are insufficient. Direct
force may be used. And that's devastating to me. Sothat law goes into effect on January 1 of 1934. In
(07:47):
the timeframe that that law was being used, about400,000 people are sterilized. So then in 1935,
the Nuremberg laws were long story short, as Imentioned. They're a legislation that shows this
rapid growth in anti-Semitism and other targetedgroups such as any other like the Roma, Jehovah's
(08:13):
Witnesses, and of course, homosexuals. They'reall deemed undesirable and these laws work to
protect the racially acceptable German orrelated blood, the whole Aryan-Masser ace thing.
So it also forbids marriage as well as anyextramarital relationships between Jewish and
non-Jewish Germans, which is insane to me, but Iguess when you want complete control, there you
(08:40):
go, right? Right. So from the get-go, this is like aterribly problematic problem, but it gets so much
worse. First of all, the Reich citizenship lawclassified people as Jewish if they were
descended from three or four Jewishgrandparents. But the criteria that defines a
grandparent as Jewish is not really specific andit makes this definition like circular. At this
(09:09):
point, whatever remaining civil or politicalrights the Jewish community have are stripped.
And so this is sort of the world that theLevens-born are born into. And I feel like the
Levens-born would never have even been a thing ifwe could have just, I don't know, left our people
(09:31):
alone to do their thing. Like, but here we go. Yeah.The Levens-born program was created by the SS in
December of 1935 in order to promote the growth ofGermany's healthy Aryan population. I am saying
this with such a healthy dose of air quotes.Himmer. Himmer. Air quotes are the best thing to
(09:52):
use in an audio format for a podcast. I know, aren'tthey? Himmer personally founded this as his
response to what he saw as a drop in the birth rateamong germs. Shocking. I know. I mean, when you're
just sterilizing people, it's weird. Well, Imean, but you look at, okay, so let's zoom out a
second, right? Let's push back on that becauselook at the developed countries we have now. We've
(10:16):
got drops in birth rates in Japan. We have drops inbirth rates in the U.S. I would agree with that
except for in our, I don't, well, I don't know how itworks in Japan, but I'm actually one of my classes
talked about this. Birth rates have droppedglobally because women have jobs and most women,
(10:43):
not all, most women have access to birth control.Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. But that's not to
say that this isn't the same thing that'shappening in Germany at the time, right? Oh, yeah.
Like maybe women are just making choices to haveless children. Maybe families aren't marrying as
(11:03):
young. Like there's so many things added to this ontop of this forced sterilization program that
they have going on. But he is also seeing that thereis an allegedly high number of abortions that are
being done by single-arean mothers. So whetherthat's true or not, he sees it and that's what he
(11:25):
thinks is going on. Additionally, as the war yearsprogress, this program was radicalized even more
to the ideals of Himmler. And he begins to worryabout the loss of good, racially elite soldiers
because we're in the war years and we're losingtons of men. And so we need more men, but we need
(11:45):
babies to have more men, right? Yeah. Like theyhave to grow up first. So he sees this program, like
it's designed with the hope that there would, thiswould be like ground zero for the, for generations
of the quote, racially valuable humans. Sooriginally the program focuses on encouraging
(12:07):
the men of the SS to have large families. In fact,the documentary I watched, it said that there was
like a minimum of four children per family. Andthen the documentary also points out that the men
of the SS were given additional orders to seekracially valuable women outside of the marriage
to further their procreation. Wives love that.Wives really love that. I super love that. Good for
(12:35):
them, I guess. Along with these orders, theLevens-Worn program strongly discouraged
unmarried pregnant, arraigned women fromseeking illegal abortions. In an effort to ensure
that this was the case, the first Levens-Worn homewas opened in Steinhorn, Bavaria on August 15th in
1936. The word Levens-Worn literally means soundof life. And I just, I hate how insidious every bit
(13:04):
of this is. So this home was quote, a verywell-equipped maternity and children's home.
After this initial home was open, around 30 morewould pop up throughout Germany, as well as
Austria, and then later into occupiedterritories like Norway, Belgium, France, and
Luxembourg. Often, if not always, the homes wereon these grand country estates, so they're
(13:28):
private, they're out. They give this idea ofluxury and just peace. Like that's the whole
point. In fact, one of my sources, you can actuallygo and look at the entire pamphlet that they
created about it. Whoa. Which is, it's all inGerman, but it's still fascinating to see, even if
(13:53):
you don't speak German, like what was going onthere. And because this isn't insidious enough,
the United States Holocaust Memorial Museumsays, quote, The Levenson-Worn Program was
heavily influenced by Nazi racial ideology andtheories of eugenics. It only accepted healthy
applicants who could establish their area ofancestry. The SS screened individuals' personal
(14:18):
medical histories as well as their familyrecords. Applicants could be denied on the basis
of their alleged racial impurity or healthissues. Now, based on what I said earlier about the
individuals who were sterilized, applicantscould be denied if their family history had any
issues. They could be denied any of the samephysical, mental or psychiatric disabilities
that were listed earlier. I hate it, but that makessense. Right. They seem to go hand in hand. Right.
(14:46):
Awful, but yeah, okay, if you're not going to rollout in one place, why would you allow it in the
other? If my sister's deaf, you think I'd probablycarry those genes, which checks. Right. Himmler
was so into this idea of the men of the SS belongingto this group of the biological and racial elite
(15:06):
that made up Nazi Germany. So the members of the SS,as well as their future brides, had to pass medical
examinations to establish their anarianismbefore they could even vary. I think every bit of
this is so disgusting, but I think it's soimportant to share because we don't, at least for
me, when you think about, you think about thebattles and the big plot, right? But to me, you
(15:36):
never see the back end of things, and this feelslike the back end of things, like the backstage.
Yeah, how the sausage is made. Exactly. And it'sjust so heartbreaking to me. So that said, women
who found themselves to be both Aryan and unwedwould be welcome into these leaving-born homes
(15:57):
because at the time, as always, there was strongpressure against single motherhood in society.
Now, they were frowned upon. You said encouraged.I'm assuming later on encouragement becomes much
more animated, a little bit more intense, andyou're more than encouraged. So here's the thing.
(16:21):
I would love to tell you yes on that, but, and I'llget into this a little bit more later. They didn't
do great at advertising these homes, and soencouraged in that sense is really the only words
that could be used because they didn't want it to besomething that was out in the mass public
(16:43):
knowledge, but they also wanted as many unwedsingle Aryan mothers as they could get. So it was
this very weird line of like how to keep it underwraps, but how to kind of recruit more ladies at the
same time, and they never really figured it out.But I'll get into that in just a minute. Okay. So
(17:04):
these women, they find themselves with thispressure of society, right, to be, if they're
unwed, it's just so unfortunate that you would befound pregnant. But these programs, they offered
mothers both financial support and adoptionservices. So if you're young and you're looking at
(17:24):
this situation and you're thinking, oh my God, Ican't even, like, what am I going to start showing?
My mom's going to know, or society is going to know,these are homes that are offering you a way out,
basically. As I mentioned earlier, these areprivate homes away from judging eyes. Himmler
himself hoped that this alone would discouragethe idea of abortion. And I hate that it's not
(17:50):
because he values human life, but because hevalues the Nazi ideals. Like, I want to encourage
you to continue having children, but not because Ibelieve in children. It's his motivation.
Absolutely. But because, like, while the Naziregime is strengthening preexisting laws that
(18:12):
prohibit most abortions, they're also operatingthis hereditary health court that orders
abortions and sterilizations that, like Imentioned earlier. And despite the Reich's
increased penalties for seeking abortions,Himmler estimates that there's at least 100,000
biologically valuable pregnancies terminatedin Germany every year. I don't know how he's coming
(18:37):
up with these numbers. I feel like that's reallysort of kind of plucked out of the thin air, but
because none of Himmler's statistics in this are,like, confirmed. They're just supposed to expect
it. Honestly, I think if I were divorced from mycurrent timeline, I would probably go, okay, he
(19:02):
probably has a study for this, and I might blindlybelieve it. Being alive now in his current
timeline, I kind of go, I feel like a lot of thesenumbers are made up a little bit just like he sounds
like a good round number. We'll go with 100,000.That's okay. We've seen the meme of, like, 85% of
all statistics are made up on the spot. Yeah. Thatfeels like this. I would have to agree with you.
(19:31):
Now, I mentioned these homes. They're countryestates. They're designed to be pleasant spaces
where the women can live comfortably as theyreceive care, both prenatal care, all the way
through labor and delivery, as well as recovery.Now, because the program sought out women who
would want to avoid public scandal, the homesprioritize anonymity and the staff is incredibly
(19:53):
discreet. This obviously leads to the problem ofnot having a ton of women show up. So there's that.
The program also states that single women wouldhave to obtain permission from the Leavens-born
central office before they could take theirnewborns home. Meanwhile, the program would
(20:13):
assume guardianship of the children anddetermined where they would be raised. And in
everything that I read and everything that Iwatched, it seemed more often than not the mother
didn't get to keep their child. And I don'tentirely know the, like, because you have the
(20:35):
homes and then you have these SS officers that aretold to make all the babies with their wives. So I'm
assuming if you are an SS officer and you have a wifeand your wife is pregnant with baby number five,
baby number five gets to come home with you. But I'mnot really clear on that. And none of my sources had
anything to say about it. And so it makes me think itwas a case-by-case situation and there's no
(21:00):
numbers to determine how many children actuallygot to stay with their mothers. And that breaks my
heart. Well, and I think if we probably, like, wentto a country estate that was a spot where the
Leavens-born program occurred, I think thatinformation would probably be easier to have. But
if the information is still available, right?Right. Anyway, as the Warriors are raging,
(21:30):
Himmler notes that these homes are not bringingforth enough babies. So he branches out to other
countries. And the women who are perceived to holdthe qualities the Reich loved, tall, blonde, and
blue-eyed. So they set their eyes on the rest of theoccupied regions and fell in love with Norway. You
got to say, Scandanavia, here we come. Mm-hmm. TheLeavens-born program took control of these
(21:56):
foreign mothers, especially. So basically they,like, they send their troops out and they're like,
go, make babies, find the tall blonde women, do thething, right? And then they would take control of
the children, especially if the health, familyhistory, and, quote, area and ancestry could be
(22:18):
established with these foreign women. And if thatwasn't enough, the Leavens-born program also
became involved in the kidnapping of thousands offoreign children that met the standards by the act
of repatriation. There we go. Thousands ofchildren, mostly from Eastern and Southeastern
Europe, were kidnapped and brought to these homesbecause they either had German ancestry or simply
(22:41):
looked the part. I cannot. My brain cannot. Like,excuse me. My youngest son was a blue-eyed blonde.
I cannot imagine just walking down the street oneday and the rite being like, we'll take that one.
Yeah, he looks the part. Come with me. No, thankyou. The program would then help place these
(23:07):
children with German families, telling theadopting families that the children had been
orphaned by war. So these adopting families had noclue. Probably until after the war when it all came
to light. And even then they may not have everknown. Maybe they would have suspected, but now
you would think that this would be successful,right? We are birthing babies and we're still in
(23:28):
children, but nope. The program's homes claim touphold the highest standards of modern medicine,
but there were serious complaints about thequality of medical care and the staff. They start
to emerge fairly quickly. And, you know, the wholebasis of the program being like anonymous and
relying on its privacy, it had trouble attractingthe eligible women. So, Himmler had estimated
(23:52):
that, like I said earlier, 100,000 biologicallyvaluable German women had obtained abortions
illegally each year despite the increasedpenalties, but only 7,000 children were born
until the Levensborn home during the entireprogram's nine-year run. In fact, the homes would
foster more kidnapped foreign children than theywould natural born children. I hate this. Right?
(24:22):
As always, the precise numbers are difficult tofully know how many they sold and how many they
birthed. And the legacy of the Levensborn programincludes both broken homes and deved state of
parents, but it also left an entire generation ofchildren unknown participants in one of the
world's worst ideas. This pretty much abandonsthem to their problems and their labels as Nazis or
(24:48):
Nazi sympathizers, whether they were or not. Andit's no shocker, but these children had no desire
to be associated with any of it. In the documentaryI watched, it includes interviews with several
children of the program who now are, of course,adults, right? I would highly recommend it. It's
(25:10):
so enlightening. Like, enlightening the newsthat you hear in here and the stories they tell are
heartbreaking. Like, one man talks about how hemade it out of the home with his mother, and they
went, they escaped Germany at kind of one of thereal pivotal moments. And left, I think they fled
(25:34):
north, and when they finally made it back toGermany, her husband found a man and, or her mom,
his mom found a man desperately wanted to marryhim, and the man just adored her. And his mother
said, you can't marry that woman because of thatlittle Nazi sausage to his face. So she abandons
(25:54):
him. She abandoned the boys. And that happened alot. There are stories of children who were born in
these homes, and for the most part, their earlyyears are spent in these homes. So they're raised
around SS soldiers who were good to them. They werekind to them. They gave them candy and trinkets,
(26:17):
and they played with them to find out when theallies invaded that they're the bad guy. So now
they're having to deal with this, like, emotionalroller coaster of, but he was good to me. He was kind
to me. And you're supposed to be the bad guy. Yeah.Like, so there's a lot of emotional turmoil that
(26:38):
comes out of it. There's a whole generation of kidswho may or may not have ever met their birth
parents, who may or may not have ever even knownthat they were part of this program. Obviously
against their will, like they were born into it, orthey were stolen from their families. And I'm so
curious to know, because obviously thisinformation is coming to light now, and it's been
(27:01):
available for a while, but I'm curious to know howmany people actually were able to reunite, or if
they even wanted to. Because that doesn't seem tobe the case with a lot of the interviewees. This is
their life, and they were raised by someone whocared for them, and that's the end of it. Now what?
(27:23):
And it just, it's heartbreaking to me. But that'smy story of how the third right thought babies and
kidnapping was going to be the future of their massrace. Joy. I know. And there's pictures. I just
want to show you one, because it's insane to me, andI cannot imagine they're just so insidious. Okay,
(27:49):
here's the picture. This is them, the childreneating their meal, right? It just looks like a
kindergarten class having lunch. Yeah, it's...And not even all the kids are blot. There are some
burnets up in that photo. Mm-hmm, yep. There areburnets up in that photo. There is... Let's see if I
(28:13):
can find it fairly quickly. There is a... Okay.This is what the homes were described as in the
pamphlets. So it looks like a country club. It is agiant estate. We're talking four or five stories
tall, massive. Massive. One to two blocks big.This thing is a castle in the middle of the country.
(28:36):
Mm-hmm. And you've got dining rooms that arestaffed and a full nursing staff. Unfortunately,
and I didn't know this, and I mean, it makes sense,but I didn't know this until reading about them. A
lot of the nurses were part of like theSocialist... Like the Nazi party. They had a whole
(28:57):
wing of nurses that believed in their eugenicsprogram. Of course they did. Right? So a lot of the
nurses were from that operating in these thingsthat are meant to look and and feel like retreats to
these people who are literally in a pickle, it'snothing else. Like I just... I can't stop thinking
(29:22):
about these poor kids. Like it's heartbreaking tome. So there you go. But you can go and you can see the
documents and you can look at the pamphlet and youcan learn all about the leave and spawn yourself.
Well, okay. If you want something to cry over. Iwill do a sharp pivot to... Oh, thank you. So a very
different topic. Okay. Okay. At the beginning oflike the week, Andrea told me that she needed a
(29:50):
palate cleanser. I was deep in my field because Ihad already done a ton of notes. So I adjusted
sharply. But here we go. So I'm going to tell you thestory of the Bad Butter Rebellion. Bad Butter? Bad
Butter. I am so excited. My sources, EmergingRevolutionary War Era, they have an article by
(30:17):
Phil Greenwald called The Great ButterRebellion. The Harvard Crimson, Riot and
Rebellion. Oh! The Harvard Crimson, Bad Butterand University Commons, caused the Great
Rebellion of 1776. The Harvard Independent, SourButter 300 Years Later by Katie Lynn. And Grub
Street, Harvard's first rebellion involvedbutter by Kara Baskin. I am so happy you're doing
(30:41):
the story. It has been on my list literally sincethe beginning. Really? Yes. I knew nothing about
it, but it was volunt told to me by a viewer onTikTok. And I had it on my list, didn't even record
the person's name, and was just like, I'll get toit. And then I was just like, what is this Bad Butter
Rebellion? And I was excited. I think part of itwas, you know, I recently covered the founding of
(31:06):
the FDA and how that really soured you. Like it wasgrocery food. And I was like, you know, this feels
adjacent. I feel like it's time. Love this for me. Istill haven't had milk, just so you know. Well, let
me remove butter from your menu. I love butter.Let's not ruin butter for me. I'm imagining a trash
(31:30):
bag of Keri Gold. But here we go. In the middle of the1700s, the food served in college dining rooms
produced notable discontent among itsundergraduates. At the time, colleges are full of
the gentleman, emphasis on the men. They're also,you know, because they're the aristocrats and
their children, it's a very tasteful group. Soit's 1766. There is a bunch of people up in arms and
(31:57):
deep in their fields over what they consider poorquality in food. And this ends up being Harvard's
first real insurrection. And this was the GreatButter Rebellion prompted by the serving of sour
butter, which President Edward Holyoke, he firstdeclines to replace it. He's like, you know what,
(32:18):
the butter sucks, but eat up. So good. Yeah, likeget over yourself. You're just the children of the
elite. What are you going to do to me? My dad will behearing about this. Let him. We play golf on
Tuesdays. I'll tell him. It's fine. Yeah, hethinks he or she does not know his brat anyhow. The
(32:42):
disturbances that this butter created settled,like it got a little bit out of hand. And so it was
taken to the board of overseers, which feels likethe board of trustees. I'm going to assume that's
yeah. And the faculty is certain that theirdefense of the president and his rotten butter is
(33:03):
well taken by the undergraduate party. They'relike, you know what, the faculty, we've all come
together. We're like, get over yourself. Just notnose punks. And the undergraduate body, they
become a little bit indignant, a littleself-righteous. Shocking. Considering this is
probably the same age, like the same timeframe asthe, oh my gosh, the egg nog riots, I think the egg
(33:29):
nog riots were in the 1800s because you have many ofthose people who end up being a part of the Civil
War. Oh, that's right. That's right. That'sright. Okay. That's right. I'm just totally
imagining the burrito scene, like paying theguard, you have burrito money. Anyway, sorry
guys. And the egg nog riots that Angie is going backto, now I get to look that up. That is the episode
(33:52):
title wasn't worth the burrito. And that wasepisode 52. It's a good one. Yeah. In case you're
wondering, egg nog riots, school and the overlapof all of those. Okay. So back to Harvard. There's
three students that are all seniors that are deepin their fields. We have Aisa Dunbar, Daniel
(34:18):
Johnson, and Thomas Hodgson, or Hodgson. They'dhad enough of the lack of fresh food. Now Dunbar,
he's apparently best known for being grandpa toHenry David Thoreau. Oh, okay. So Aisa Dunbar, he
led the protest stating that the butter served bythe college was, quote, stinketh. And he incited
(34:42):
the student body to reject the rancid fair byjumping on his chair and shouting the phrase,
quote, behold our butter stinketh. Thereforegive us butter that stinketh not. My God, what a
man. This is so full of drama. I hear for it. Sounsurprisingly, Dunbar faces disciplinary
(35:07):
action. He's being punished forinsubordination, instigating a potential riot,
and he receives his punishment. And the studentbody enacted another protest by walking out of the
hall, cheering loudly in the Harvard yard, andthen continuing all the way to Cambridge to dine
there instead. This is so stupid. I mean, but thisfeels like college behavior. It is perfect. I'm
(35:37):
just imagining like a troop of them from one campusto the next to decide that we will die here this
evening. And you know, okay, so think about it,right? Because this is a cafeteria. It's an
old-timey cafeteria. It's a cafeteria. You know?We're not, yeah. They make food for the number of
(35:58):
students they have. Now imagine the entirestudent body. I mean, because if you see all of your
classmates stand up and be like, screw this, we'regoing to Cambridge, and they start walking out,
you're like, well, I guess I'm going to go on achowder run. You walk out with everybody that
(36:19):
you're with because they're, you know, peerpressure. You just become a liming. You know, that
mob mentality kicks in. And then you go toCambridge, and Cambridge is like, we only made
food for the 150 students we had. Share and sharealike. You know, like they can't have dined
heartily. But it makes a point, Dammit. It doesmake a point. Now, we're going to go from- I want to
(36:44):
read the letter home to Dad. Father, this schoolhas terrible butter. You told me you were sending
me the best school in the country. It's got badbutter. It's stinketh. It's stinketh. Asa Dunbar
said, butter's stinketh. And I, Father, quitewell agree with him. It's indeed. So we're going to
(37:08):
give the college some credit. The administrationacknowledges, hey, you know what? We do admit
butter's rancid. But hey, you know what? There'ssome economic difficulties. We don't have access
to all the fresh food that we want. So it is what itis. Okay. Now, Massachusetts has moved closer to
(37:28):
open rebellion against the British Parliamentand the Crown. And this example gets mirrored by
the student body of Harvard, because this isBritish rule that we're under. We're not
Americans yet. Okay. So there is a month ofimpasse, a month of discontent between students
and dining staff. Oh, my God. Okay. Love this. Andthis includes, quote, insulting proceedings of
(37:56):
the Royal Governor of Massachusetts, Sir FrancisBernard, who personally addressed the student
body in the chapel on campus and the protest andsubordinations of the student body continued. So
you get, imagine, the governor of your state,Newsom, comes to your college to talk to your
(38:16):
student body about their actions in the dininghall. About bad butter. About bad butter. Well,
listen, if Newsom does anything right, I know hewould fix the butter situation, because he too
doesn't want to eat bad butter. But in this, I can'timagine that he's on the student side. Probably
(38:38):
not. Now, the students end up writing what iscalled the Book of Harvard. Love this. And it is a
account in biblical language documenting thedisorders of the college, and that publishes in
September of 1776. I like the air quotes there,because air quotes are the most feeble thing on a
(39:07):
podcast you record. You know what? Your butterstick is. That's my new favorite insult. Now,
okay. Okay. So the Book of Harvard is the documentthat is produced by the students in that biblical
language. I'll give you a quote later on. It's a bitoutrageous. This is all happening as the stewards
(39:38):
are continuing to serve bad butter in the commons.They're not backing down. And then we have the
faculty who they begin to refuse to accept thecustomary and time honored, but very elastic
excuses for absence from college exercises. Sothey're used to like being like, well, I was dead at
(40:03):
the time. I was on the moon with Steve and theydecide, you know what, we'll let it go. But they
start. Don Barr and I were, it was weird. We wereasleep and our door was locked and we couldn't get
out. We were stuck in our room. Yeah. And it's likewe called first you were doping it, but they didn't
hear us. They couldn't hear us. Yeah. So there endsup being this other thing written called the
(40:30):
arguments for the defense. And this gives thestudent side of the question, well, the faculty
prepares what they call this long list ofrepresentations and the faculty, the
representations gives their side to theoverseers. So both sides are preparing their
documents. Now there's, there's trouble in theair when the authorities insisted that the
(40:53):
student body should eat only in the commons andthat scholars should be restrained from dieting
in private family. You must eat here. We made foodfor all of you. We're not throwing it all out. We
don't have refrigeration. So you need to come hereand eat it. When it's cooked right now, whether
(41:13):
it's stinketh or not, because it's going to stinkit's more tomorrow. Ew. So 1776, the faculty, they
draw this harsh law there. They end up kicking offthe trouble here. Because part of the text that
follows is article one and all scholars while attheir meals shall sit in their places and behave
(41:37):
with decency and who so ever shall be rude orclamorous at such time shall be punished by one of
the tutors, not exceeding five shellings. So itsounds like for every time you're loud and
obnoxious and trained at the butters stinketh,that's a five shilling fine. Oh my God, I love this
so much. Now hold on to that number five shillingsbecause article 10 states that every scholar
(42:00):
shall for the present pay seven shillings and fourpence a week for his whole diet. So if it's $7 or
seven shillings, I don't know what a shillingtrade likes to do. Seven shillings for a week's
worth of food. Five shillings for one instance ofdisobedience is quite substantial. Yeah. But
(42:25):
Dunbar can afford it. You would think. Article 13states no scholar shall be allowed to go into debt
to the butler above $5 and shall have no more credittill that is paid. Okay. So basically you need to
pay your fines. You need to pay your fees. The bookof Harvard account of the rebellion. Here's a
(42:49):
chunk of it. Chapter one or chapter first one. Andit came to pass in the ninth month on the 23rd day of
the month, the sons of Harvard murmured and said,behold, bad and unwholesome butter is served at
unto us daily. Now let us therefore dispute. Asadescribed go on to our ruler and seek redress. Now
(43:15):
the whole account. Go ahead. I just love them. Theyhave like the full on account and it goes on and on
and on and it drills like the King Testament. Goodfor them. You don't attend Harvard for nothing.
I'm not a person. I'm the King Testament, the KingJames version of I knew what she meant. Okay. Thank
(43:38):
you for translating because I would have listenedto this later gone. Theresa Marie, you know
better. Now according to the Harvard Gazette,this is even a decade before the American
Revolution. Harvard's great butter rebellion of1766 was perhaps the first sign of America's
spirit as United in civil disobedience. And itstarted in Harvard's dining hall. Which I don't
(44:03):
think we give Harvard enough credit for.Honestly. Now, despite the strangest of this
origin story, the student and I the studentalliance from bad food is a trend that's
continuously found throughout the university'slong history. Since the 18th century, students
have continued to form new communities to escapeHarvard's dining offerings. Harvard needs to
(44:28):
step up its cafeteria game. You know what can'tstop won't stop. We have some street cred we need to
keep because if it works for your great, great,great, great grandfathers, it works for you.
Honestly. They could play on that now and theircafe could be called stinketh. Right. People
(44:49):
would be down like I'd go. Are you going to stinkethor are you going to rotted butter? I'm going to
stinketh today. Exactly. During the country'sdownturn in economic stability to access the
fresh goods in the years leading up to theRevolutionary War. An act of activism led to half
of the student body getting suspended. And this isreported in the Colonial Society of
(45:15):
Massachusetts. So Harvard students grewincreasingly dissatisfied with the decline in
the quality of food and Holyoke's failure tosatisfy those demands. The colony or the Colonial
Society described that for Asa Dunbar class of1767, the meal presented with particularly
soured butter was the final straw. As the firststudent to raise conflict Dunbar is rumored to
(45:39):
have brought evidence of the inedible food to hissenior tutor, decrying behold our butter
stinketh. Therefore give us butter that stinkethnot. So it could be that he brought the butter to the
tutor. It could be these stippling the chair andshouted. We get some conflicting reports. Maybe
both could be a little bit of both. I mean, I have afeeling that if you're emboldened by the man
(46:00):
around you shouting, you're here. You'reprobably going to continue on with your bullshit.
Honestly. Yeah, because at this point you're justone of those obnoxious teenage punks who's just
going to double down. I mean, good for him. So thethe stinketh not that catching his phrase. It's
(46:22):
stuck and soon enough his fellow students join inthe model yelling and protesting the tensions
between the Hottie administration and themotivated cramp is grew and became violent and
illegal. Now President Holyoke is fed up andeventually demands that the students return.
Nope. The students turn in the leaders of thisrebellion. There's no names that are offered. So
(46:45):
this is when Holyoke suspends half the studentbody. My God, I love this. This is just. There's no
greater force than a shared idea here. Thestudents though have suspended remain silent.
And this is at the United States dawn of its birth asan independent country and argumentally this is
(47:09):
one of the most political turbulent moments inAmerican history, which is a wild concept to know
that. We were protesting butter. And Harvardundergraduates united under a common goal
refused to turn in one another despite theacademic threats from the university.
Eventually the colonial society explains thatthe board of overseers reinstated the status of
(47:32):
all the suspended students and replace thebutter. So if you keep up with your bullshit long
enough, you get your demands met. Squeaky willgets the grease. Exactly. And so just like that,
one of harvest. Harvard's greatest showings ofstudent solidarity supported some of the
humblest beginnings. The fight for unsourbutter. The notoriety of Harvard as a campus for
(47:59):
famously bad food has become an escapeablereputation. One aided by the college's own
students and continuing to lament and violentlyprotest its offerings. Hey, man, when you want the
burrito, you want the burrito. You do. They're inbad butter. So despite all of this butter
(48:23):
protesting, the peace and quiet that comesafterwards that only last two years. Of course.
There's the great rebellion of 1768 and it's likethe first in a direction. It was incited by the
college food and it lasted for a month. I love this.The riots are now more violent, but even more
(48:48):
unsuccessful. I'm never going to get good butter.No, this is what happens when you give into the
demands of terrorists. That's basically what thecollege is saying. And so we just are not going to
negotiate with terrorists anymore. So thepenalties are severe and the feeling of that the
(49:09):
punished were still martyred lingers. So they'remaking martyrs out of everybody they're
punishing and everyone's like, yeah, stand up forASA. Yeah, justice. 1778. So we're now Americans.
The undergraduates are continued to bedissatisfied with their offerings and they form
(49:32):
plans for weekly group dinners where memberswould rotate hosting dinner parties. When the
turn came to Joseph the clean class of 1794, hepresented whole roast pork. Which makes me wonder
about these doors. Yeah, okay, fair. Yeah, now thestudents can take me and brought it from home.
(49:55):
Yeah. So there's these dinner plans that areforming and they're enjoying each other's
company just as much as the lavish food on theirplates. And apparently these meetings never
fully ceased over the last two centuries. Theaccurately named pork club or Priscilla in has
evolved into this ever prestigious and notoriousfinal club. Originating as an escape from Harvard
(50:24):
University dining service or HUDs for simple mealtimes. Their story is rooted in the same
motivations as Harvard's great butterrebellion. A group of students tied to the
quality. Tied to eating the tire. I cannot read outloud. A group of students tired of eating the poor
quality tasteless food offered by the universitycame up with their own crafty solutions. And so
(50:51):
this gives birth to the final clubs where some ofthe most notable examples of status divisions on
campus exist. That's awesome. If you've got the incrowd on the poor mouth, I've never gotten into the
final clubs. Let's be honest. Oh, my God, you'vecome to my final meeting and it would be like, well,
(51:14):
ketchup cracker sandwiches because that's what Iwas eating during college. Oh, I mean, it wasn't
that bad, but there were some nights where I did geta little creative. The final clubs themselves
there. Are you going to say something? Iinterrupted. No, no, I just was agreeing. Yeah.
(51:34):
They're shrouded in a cloak of mystery, intrigueand critique from the outside. Yeah, if you can't
get in, of course, you're going to critique it.Yeah. Final clubs are now considered notoriously
exclusive and elitist parts of Harvard socialscene. Fair. Okay. Now, as all this dinner drama is
(51:58):
evolving, I'm going to take us back to theRevolutionary War era because I feel like this is
important. So the Revolutionary Warsapproaching the groans of hunger are drawn out by
the patriotic spirit, which has completelycaptured the undergraduates of Harvard, Harvard
College. Writing breaks out only once during thedays surrounding the Revolutionary or the
(52:20):
Revolution. And that's when two Tory studentsbrought tea into the college room, the college
dining room in 1775. 1780, there was anothersuccessful student revolt in the history of the
college, and it was the mildest, reportedly.There's a large student body that forms in the yard
(52:42):
one evening past resolutions against PresidentSamuel Langdon, and they are demanding his
dismissal. So they are deep in their fields. Andthis is after reading charges against him.
Langdon submitted his resignation withoutobjection. He's like, you know what? Screw you,
kids. I'm going home. Fair. Didn't like youanyway. 1807, there's the Rotted Cabbage
(53:08):
Rebellion. And this is another protest againstcollege food. Love this. So the students assemble
first at the tree at the end of Hallis Hall, whichhad become the rebellion Elm, or which was to
become the rebellion Elm. Okay. And they beg forthe food to be improved, especially the cabbage.
(53:29):
Well, at least the butter's not the problem thistime. They march out of the dining hall in a group
and 17 of them are eventually dismissed. The foodremained largely the same. Devastating. 1818, a
wild food fight broke out and is chronicled in arhyme by the clever scholar, Augustus Pierce. And
(53:55):
he said, and thus arose a fearful battle, thecoffee cups and saucer's rattle, the bread bulls
fly at a row full weight and break many in a learnedfate. I should also mention that earlier that year
there was a violent brawl involving crockery thatalso occurred. Of course. Because why wouldn't
(54:22):
there be? And that is the drama of eating atHarvard. You know, I'm so glad you shared the
story. My whole day has been made. I mean, I had to dosomething to frame us up, get us ready for the
weekend and take us out of the bad taste of the leapand sporn. Bad butter. That'll do it. Sour butter.
(54:46):
Yeah, it's stinking. I do it again. So gross. Youknow, I mean, look. When I do offer palate
cleansers, palate cleansers, they are not. Yeah,they definitely don't inspire you to eat
anything. That's for sure. So there you go. Enjoybrunch this weekend and share this with your
(55:15):
favorite person who also hates butter thatstinketh. You know, I, I. And on that note,
goodbye. Bye. You
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