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Roland the Farter and the Weird World of Professional Flatulence · Ridiculous History

0:23
Speaker 1: First things first, everyone, no matter who you are, from
0:28
Speaker 1: a king to a pauper, everyone farts. Not to fart
0:32
Speaker 1: would be not only medically fascinating, but it would probably
0:35
Speaker 1: be dangerous. On the average day, most people are passing
0:39
Speaker 1: more than a leader of gas per day, spread out
0:41
Speaker 1: over like one incidents. Isn't there a book about this,
0:45
Speaker 1: Everybody farts? There should be, surely there is. I think
0:49
Speaker 1: that's poops. Everybody Poops is the children's book, But Everybody
0:53
Speaker 1: Farts would be a great follow up. Surely there should
0:55
Speaker 1: be one, and that should be a series, a series
0:58
Speaker 1: that we could write. Noel, that's you, oh Man, and
1:01
Speaker 1: you're Ben and as apparently you also far Yes, yes,
1:06
Speaker 1: even our super producer Casey Pegrum. Just it's just a
1:11
Speaker 1: medical fact that people do this. However, the vast majority
1:15
Speaker 1: of human beings do it purely as a labor of love. Purely.
1:22
Speaker 1: Is a thing that happens in the human body. That's
1:25
Speaker 1: sort of a regulatory process, right, It keeps your your
1:28
Speaker 1: systems and check your guts and all that. Right. Yeah,
1:30
Speaker 1: most of us are amateur farters. However, they're very very
1:36
Speaker 1: small number of people who have managed to become professional.
1:40
Speaker 1: Flatti list. It's true, Ben, it's true, and this date's
1:44
Speaker 1: back much farther than you might think. Or maybe I
1:47
Speaker 1: don't know, maybe it's exactly as far as you might think.
1:49
Speaker 1: Maybe it's even less far than you would think. But
1:51
Speaker 1: where we're going to start today's story is in the
1:54
Speaker 1: medieval times. Like the restaurant you know, where you go
1:57
Speaker 1: and you eat a turkey leg and they got the
1:59
Speaker 1: horses and the the show I can the cable guy
2:02
Speaker 1: and you cheer for whichever team you're assigned to. Yeah,
2:05
Speaker 1: it turns out that restaurant concept based on an actual
2:08
Speaker 1: historical period, right, Oh yeah, right, it's not uh the
2:14
Speaker 1: medium level of evil the way that some people might assume. Yeah,
2:17
Speaker 1: I thought that for a long time. She spelled really
2:19
Speaker 1: funny too, like M E. D. It's it's one of
2:21
Speaker 1: those words I can never properly spell. Um. But I
2:24
Speaker 1: we digress. I do at least, Ben tell us about
2:27
Speaker 1: fartestry in medieval times. I'm glad you asked Noel travel
2:31
Speaker 1: with us, folks to the reign of King Henry the Second.
2:36
Speaker 1: There's a great line about King Henry the Second from
2:41
Speaker 1: historic uk dot com. The very first sentence of the
2:45
Speaker 1: poor guy's biography, Henry two seems to struggle to make
2:48
Speaker 1: any impactable in popular history. That's the first sentence, and
2:53
Speaker 1: that is also printed on his gravestone. Ouch, that's not true,
2:57
Speaker 1: But that'd be funny. That would be funny and sad.
3:00
Speaker 1: So King Henry two, who reigned from the December of
3:05
Speaker 1: eleven fifty four to eleven eighty nine, was known for
3:10
Speaker 1: several different, hugely important things in the course of the
3:13
Speaker 1: history of the United Kingdom. But did you know, fellow
3:18
Speaker 1: ridiculous historians, that he also had a notoriously popular jester.
3:25
Speaker 1: That's right, And we're gonna we're gonna invoke a word
3:27
Speaker 1: here that every time I see it printed, I think
3:29
Speaker 1: it's a different word. The word that it actually is
3:31
Speaker 1: as flaty list. The word I always think it is
3:33
Speaker 1: when I see it on paper is flout ist. I
3:36
Speaker 1: both do involve making sounds by expelling air from their bodies,
3:39
Speaker 1: but the flaty list is a little bit different. Um.
3:42
Speaker 1: It is, as we've alluded to, a professional farter. But
3:46
Speaker 1: what's really cool about this is it requires a pretty
3:50
Speaker 1: specific set of skills, doesn't it better? That's right, So
3:54
Speaker 1: this guy Nol was known as Roland the farter. He
3:58
Speaker 1: had several other nicknames. They are in French. At this point,
4:02
Speaker 1: I'd like to ask for some help from you, Casey,
4:05
Speaker 1: could you help us out with some of Roland the
4:08
Speaker 1: Farter's French nicknames. Yeah, so that would be roland Less,
4:14
Speaker 1: Roland lefart, and Roland la petur is but off the
4:20
Speaker 1: record while the court is not in session. I have
4:24
Speaker 1: a couple more questions, Casey, could you translate some of
4:28
Speaker 1: these for us into a into English. So, uh, Roland
4:31
Speaker 1: lefarter farterre pretty self explanatory right there. Fart, Roland leetur
4:37
Speaker 1: petur derived from pete, which is the French verb to
4:40
Speaker 1: fart pass gas, So p e t r is the
4:43
Speaker 1: verb form, and then peteur is just that kind of personified.
4:47
Speaker 1: And then the last one, roland Less, comes from Old French.
4:52
Speaker 1: And I'm getting this from a book called on Farting,
4:56
Speaker 1: Language and Laughter in the Middle Ages by v Allen.
4:59
Speaker 1: And in that book they write that it's a variation sars,
5:03
Speaker 1: a variation on sorrey to sieve. Alternately, sarcier means to darn. Also,
5:09
Speaker 1: sarcara could simply just be a slip of the pen,
5:12
Speaker 1: and they meant to write farce air, which is from
5:15
Speaker 1: farcier to just or to make fun of. Well, you
5:17
Speaker 1: know they do say you ever heard somebody say something
5:20
Speaker 1: was tight as a sieve. Maybe they're talking about you know,
5:24
Speaker 1: those are leaks like a sieve. Oh wow, okay, yeah,
5:29
Speaker 1: maybe no one says tight as a Hey, let's start it.
5:33
Speaker 1: Let's start. I think it starts today. Well, you know,
5:36
Speaker 1: because a sieve just let certain things pass through. So
5:39
Speaker 1: maybe you know it's about the the action of passing,
5:43
Speaker 1: because you know, passing of the gas. I have a
5:45
Speaker 1: question for you, Ben, and I think you have an
5:46
Speaker 1: answer for me. Um. With this jester being a British
5:50
Speaker 1: jester and English jester, why has he got all these
5:53
Speaker 1: French nicknames? Ah? Great question. You see, although Henry two
5:58
Speaker 1: was King of England, he never learned the English language
6:02
Speaker 1: himself because his family came over from Normandy in ten
6:06
Speaker 1: sixty six, which means that they spoke Norman French. Now
6:11
Speaker 1: Henry was intelligent, he spoke Latin as well, which was
6:15
Speaker 1: the language of the elite at the time, just as
6:19
Speaker 1: French was. So his court would have a lot of
6:21
Speaker 1: business conducted. All right, So let's pop into this Latin
6:25
Speaker 1: section here there is a book, a document, a collection
6:28
Speaker 1: of ledgers called the English Liver Feodorum, which translates roughly
6:34
Speaker 1: to the Book of Fees. And this is where we
6:36
Speaker 1: get the information that we know about Roland, because it
6:39
Speaker 1: was an account of all the payments that went to
6:42
Speaker 1: various members of the court, but unfortunately didn't have any dates.
6:46
Speaker 1: It just had um personnel and what they were paid,
6:49
Speaker 1: and you know what their particular skill was or the
6:52
Speaker 1: action that they were paid for for Roland. The language
6:56
Speaker 1: is as such, unum saltum at syphiliteum at um bumble
7:01
Speaker 1: um executed simultaneously. That translates in English to one jump,
7:07
Speaker 1: one whistle, and one fart. And this happens every Christmas,
7:11
Speaker 1: every Christmas because they had a big old shindig soire
7:15
Speaker 1: um thing. And what does he get in return for
7:18
Speaker 1: this very specific physical stunt. Yeah, Henry the second must
7:22
Speaker 1: have been a huge fan of of this guy, because
7:26
Speaker 1: he was awarded with like lands, like and and an estate. Right, Yes,
7:32
Speaker 1: he was granted a manner house hemming Stone in Suffolk
7:37
Speaker 1: and depending on which source you read, either thirty acres
7:41
Speaker 1: of land or a hundred, which is a heck of
7:44
Speaker 1: a variation. Yeah, but that was. He didn't keep particularly
7:47
Speaker 1: good records back in those days, so you know, yeah,
7:49
Speaker 1: and we do know that although Roland the Farter really
7:55
Speaker 1: did exist and really did carry out this very specific
7:59
Speaker 1: act of a jump, a whistle and a fart once
8:02
Speaker 1: a year executed, at the same time, we know that
8:06
Speaker 1: his story gets very murky, very quickly. There's actually very
8:10
Speaker 1: little verifiable information about the guy other than the Book
8:14
Speaker 1: of Fees, and later biographers loved this story so much
8:19
Speaker 1: that if you look back at the timeline all told,
8:23
Speaker 1: it sounds as if he has been doing he was
8:25
Speaker 1: doing this for more than a hundred years, which is
8:27
Speaker 1: clearly not true. No, there's no way. And it was
8:30
Speaker 1: this like his big finish, the jump in the whistle
8:33
Speaker 1: in the far, or was this you know, it sounds
8:35
Speaker 1: like he was sort of a member of a particular
8:38
Speaker 1: type of performer that would have had a variety of skills,
8:41
Speaker 1: not just being able to jump, whistle and far simultaneously.
8:44
Speaker 1: But this was his particular kind of like signature move
8:48
Speaker 1: he would pull off. And the fact that he was
8:49
Speaker 1: credited like that in a legal document that speaks volumes, well,
8:52
Speaker 1: that was the only thing that he legally had to
8:56
Speaker 1: do but surely there was a bit of showman ship.
8:58
Speaker 1: There was a bit of lee into it, you know,
9:01
Speaker 1: probably a couple of politically sensitive hot take kind of jokes,
9:06
Speaker 1: because jesters occupies such a unique and powerful role in
9:12
Speaker 1: a court. We also know that Roland was not the
9:17
Speaker 1: only professional flat list. We know that there are practices
9:23
Speaker 1: involving Did I see these pictures to you of Japan
9:26
Speaker 1: in the Edo period? I'm just gonna show this to
9:29
Speaker 1: you knowl Oh, that's a whole like genre of art.
9:32
Speaker 1: I've seen like these prints, these Japanese woodcut prints of
9:36
Speaker 1: like dudes just you know, with crazy explosive fart lines
9:41
Speaker 1: coming out of there usually bear right. There's this artistic
9:47
Speaker 1: trope of in Japan of depicting farts both as satire
9:52
Speaker 1: and as weapons of battle. The word where would be
9:57
Speaker 1: he gossan h e ash g A S S E N.
10:01
Speaker 1: There were also the brugade or or farters of Ireland,
10:06
Speaker 1: and there were several other ritualistically important or professionally paid
10:15
Speaker 1: flat lists throughout history. Unfortunately, we do know a lot
10:20
Speaker 1: about one of the most famous, I would say the
10:23
Speaker 1: most famous flag lists in history. Yes, yes, that's right,
10:30
Speaker 1: Le pet A k A. Joseph Peugeot, who was a
10:34
Speaker 1: young Frenchman from Marseilles. I believe that Marseilles, Marseilles, Marseille.
10:40
Speaker 1: That's been Casey on the Case, Part two, Part two,
10:44
Speaker 1: and we've got a third one coming up. Don't don't you,
10:46
Speaker 1: don't you worry? And that was in eighteen fifty seven.
10:48
Speaker 1: By the way, that that he was born, Um, Yeah,
10:50
Speaker 1: he was. He was the son of a baker, and
10:53
Speaker 1: baking becomes another one of his passions throughout his life.
10:56
Speaker 1: But he there's a really great story about young Pug
11:01
Speaker 1: when he um was a young man, he was swimming
11:04
Speaker 1: in the sea and realized that he was actually taking
11:10
Speaker 1: in water up his uh his uh anos. I was
11:18
Speaker 1: going to say Australia for the euphemism, but or his
11:21
Speaker 1: wrecked him. We could just go into the scientific term
11:24
Speaker 1: series yeah uh. And this happened as he was inhaling.
11:29
Speaker 1: There's a great depiction of this off damn interesting dot
11:33
Speaker 1: com written by Alan Bellows. He returned to shore and
11:37
Speaker 1: he freaked out, understandably feeling this water in the wrong
11:41
Speaker 1: place or an unexpected place, and he immediately goes back
11:45
Speaker 1: to shore where he is astonished to see quote a
11:48
Speaker 1: great deal of seawater pouring from his backside. Luckily, a
11:52
Speaker 1: doctor said that this was not something he needed to
11:55
Speaker 1: be gravely concerned about, and Joseph, in a way similar
12:00
Speaker 1: to like a Marvel superhero, discovers that he has an
12:04
Speaker 1: extraordinary ability. Yeah, he could actually do this with uh,
12:09
Speaker 1: with air in addition to water, which makes sense. Um,
12:13
Speaker 1: but you know, how cool is it to be able
12:14
Speaker 1: to realize this is something he could control and not
12:16
Speaker 1: just a fluke, because I'm sure he was kind of,
12:18
Speaker 1: you know, understandably freaked out by it. And then all
12:20
Speaker 1: of a sudden it became like empowering. It's like I
12:22
Speaker 1: can do this, you know, for fun. Yeah, and and
12:25
Speaker 1: and and oh what fun he had. Yeah, he found
12:28
Speaker 1: that he could deliberately suck water in through this area
12:32
Speaker 1: of his body and then projected back out, even creating
12:36
Speaker 1: a spout that went on for several meters. He thought,
12:40
Speaker 1: you know, this is cool, but let's see if I
12:42
Speaker 1: can do the same thing with air. And in addition
12:46
Speaker 1: to discovering that he could do the same thing with air,
12:49
Speaker 1: he also learned that with the right contortion rhythm, he
12:54
Speaker 1: could reproduce some songs. And again, he's a young person,
12:59
Speaker 1: at this point he's still school. Uh this is a
13:01
Speaker 1: hit in his classroom. You can only imagine. Can I
13:05
Speaker 1: bet the teachers loved him? They might have. They probably
13:10
Speaker 1: laughed about it outside of the classroom. We haven't even
13:18
Speaker 1: talked about the fact that farts are are are funny. Still.
13:22
Speaker 1: Farts are funny because there something a little bit naughty
13:26
Speaker 1: that applies to everyone, you know what I mean. She's
13:29
Speaker 1: pretty equalizer like death. And as Allen wrote in the
13:33
Speaker 1: in the book that Casey had mentioned earlier, uh, farts
13:37
Speaker 1: had a We're seen as a reminder of mortality back
13:40
Speaker 1: in the day, so they occupied this important role. We
13:44
Speaker 1: learned so many fart facts for today's episode, fun fart facts,
13:48
Speaker 1: fun fart facts. Just so. We learned that the oldest
13:52
Speaker 1: joke in the world is a joke about farts, which
13:55
Speaker 1: maybe we can get to at the end of the story.
13:58
Speaker 1: It's not really related to this, but it is interesting
14:01
Speaker 1: also objectively, I don't think it's that funny. I think
14:04
Speaker 1: something's lost in the translation. But back to let before
14:09
Speaker 1: he becomes this professional fartist, he joined the army. Yeah,
14:14
Speaker 1: and I've seen it in a couple of different places
14:16
Speaker 1: that he he actually got that nickname from his army buddies.
14:20
Speaker 1: They bestowed it upon him. And as we learned from
14:23
Speaker 1: A Roland, the Farter or the pet tour right, this
14:27
Speaker 1: means fart, but it takes it, took it a step
14:31
Speaker 1: beyond where Roland's name was. It took it to the
14:35
Speaker 1: level of an artist, the fartest. Yes, he became known
14:41
Speaker 1: as the Fartiste. And when he left military service, he
14:46
Speaker 1: opened a bakery in his hometown and he was known
14:50
Speaker 1: for making these amazing brand muffins. But he decided to
14:55
Speaker 1: take it further and in eight seven, when he was
15:00
Speaker 1: thirty years old, he went on stage in his hometown,
15:04
Speaker 1: not to do a live baking demonstration, but to take
15:08
Speaker 1: his flatulence to the to the theater. Aren't brand muffins
15:13
Speaker 1: uh a little bit farty? Yeah, that's one of the
15:15
Speaker 1: common beliefs about them. They contain fiber which makes people regular, right,
15:21
Speaker 1: so that could play a role. We also we had
15:23
Speaker 1: a long list in some old episode of brain Stuff
15:27
Speaker 1: of all the different foods that are thought to be
15:30
Speaker 1: fart inducing foods. Of course beans, right, and brand muffins
15:35
Speaker 1: could be on there. I don't know. I hesitate to
15:38
Speaker 1: ask people to write in and tell us about their
15:40
Speaker 1: experience brand muffins. In this regard, why don't hesitates welcome
15:45
Speaker 1: your brand stories with open arms? So what was his
15:47
Speaker 1: performance all about? Ben, I'm glad you asked Noel. Initially
15:51
Speaker 1: it was met with a lot of skepticism. Fartestry said
15:56
Speaker 1: the French audience members, what on earth could this be?
16:00
Speaker 1: And surely it's a one time gig. But he won
16:04
Speaker 1: the audience over. He was a big success. We I
16:08
Speaker 1: think maybe now it's time to let the badge round
16:11
Speaker 1: of the bag. We have an example of some of
16:15
Speaker 1: his work, don't we? We do we do? This is
16:17
Speaker 1: what one of his performances might have sounded like, let's
16:20
Speaker 1: roll the tape. But whatever found, that's fame. I thought
16:34
Speaker 1: that faith anything, and we heard it up. I think
16:46
Speaker 1: we've heard it up. This is let's stop there. You
16:49
Speaker 1: could hear it in full. I can't help I am
16:52
Speaker 1: such a child. I just think I just can't help it. Laugh. Well,
16:55
Speaker 1: it's his it's his also his real job. I'm sure
16:57
Speaker 1: he'd be glad to hear that his craft is affected
17:00
Speaker 1: well in And what you realized too is he's like
17:03
Speaker 1: he's doing bits in between. He's he's setting up the
17:06
Speaker 1: different types of fart's doing, giving context, like any good impressionists,
17:12
Speaker 1: let's if we could stop the let's let's defer to
17:16
Speaker 1: Casey Pegram. Casey, can you help us out with I
17:20
Speaker 1: know that audio is really rough, but could you give
17:22
Speaker 1: us any guesses at what the pet mona is saying
17:26
Speaker 1: in these? Yeah? So you guys sent me this clip,
17:30
Speaker 1: and at first I didn't know if I was going
17:31
Speaker 1: to be able to get much of anything out of it,
17:33
Speaker 1: but I did eventually kind of decode a few different
17:36
Speaker 1: other phrases, and then I was able to plug those
17:38
Speaker 1: into Google and actually find a complete transcript of the
17:40
Speaker 1: entire thing, uh, courtesy of somebody on Reddit. Then that
17:44
Speaker 1: Reddit person was Ariyott, and that was on the r today.
17:49
Speaker 1: I learned subreddit six years ago. Anyway, So some of
17:52
Speaker 1: my favorites here, well, to begin with one of the
17:55
Speaker 1: early ones, the pet ma bell mare my mother in
17:58
Speaker 1: law's fart ma pette de maison. That's a pretty rough rue.
18:06
Speaker 1: That's the mason's part, thank uh. And then immediately after
18:19
Speaker 1: he says lemm sec it's to monke, which is the
18:22
Speaker 1: same dry being failed. So wait, he gambled and he
18:27
Speaker 1: lost I think is the Yeah, yeah, there's there's a
18:31
Speaker 1: little sum extra at the end of that one. Was
18:34
Speaker 1: there something about giraffes? Yeah? Yeah. The draft one is bizarre.
18:38
Speaker 1: That So the pet de Lameto debut part of the
18:49
Speaker 1: standing up draft or the draft as it's standing up,
18:51
Speaker 1: it cuts one. Uh. And that's been Casey on the
18:55
Speaker 1: case Part three, Part three. We're at part three and
19:00
Speaker 1: I'm loving every second of it. He also, uh, the
19:03
Speaker 1: Peto man, not our man, Casey. He also played songs
19:07
Speaker 1: and he blew out candles, and we should mention I
19:09
Speaker 1: guess some of the song stuff, because that's what seems
19:12
Speaker 1: tough to me. Right, even if you can expel gas
19:16
Speaker 1: on command, getting the right tone is different. Well, man,
19:19
Speaker 1: it's a lot like whistling, my friend. I mean, you're whistling.
19:21
Speaker 1: You make different tones just by changing the tightness or
19:25
Speaker 1: looseness of your lips. So I would imagine the same
19:29
Speaker 1: would apply to uh, to the butt. We're being very like,
19:34
Speaker 1: I'm proud of us for being as diplomatic. We're doing
19:37
Speaker 1: our best as we are at this points. So we said.
19:41
Speaker 1: The crowd reacted uh favorably despite their initial skepticism. So
19:47
Speaker 1: what happened? What happened to the Peto man after this
19:50
Speaker 1: first show, Well, he was a hit. He was a
19:53
Speaker 1: massive hit, right, yeah, and he he he parlayed that
19:57
Speaker 1: first performance into a pretty creative contract at the famous
20:02
Speaker 1: Mulin Rouge, Yeah, the same one that you've heard about
20:05
Speaker 1: in film. And the show started to get a hint
20:08
Speaker 1: of danger, right because people were laughing so much that
20:12
Speaker 1: some women would pass out because of their laughter. And
20:15
Speaker 1: they're tight corsets. And then one guy had a heart
20:19
Speaker 1: attack and died. That's terrible, but you know, farting is
20:23
Speaker 1: objectively hilarious, and uh, I guess that's an okay way
20:26
Speaker 1: to go. Well, they capitalized on it in the marketing.
20:30
Speaker 1: They put up signs and they had nurses stationed around
20:33
Speaker 1: the theater and the signs of like this maybe dangerous.
20:37
Speaker 1: Now let's point something out, okay before we go any further. Um,
20:40
Speaker 1: this might be grossing you guys out, and I can
20:42
Speaker 1: understand that. But let's not forget that La Patu man.
20:46
Speaker 1: Remember that first story about the intake of the water. Yes, well,
20:51
Speaker 1: he basically was able to give himself kind of an
20:54
Speaker 1: automatic animal, right, and he did that up to three
20:57
Speaker 1: times a day. He was apparently a health food and
21:00
Speaker 1: a vegetarian and a teetotaler. He did not drink a drop,
21:04
Speaker 1: even in the crazy, absinthe soaked world of the Mulan Rouge.
21:08
Speaker 1: Not a drop. His effort was devoted entirely to his craft,
21:11
Speaker 1: so his farts did not smell bad. That's an interesting point. Yeah. No,
21:18
Speaker 1: he did smoke cigarettes from both ends, so it was
21:21
Speaker 1: it completely healthy. I think everybody smoked cigarettes, and I
21:24
Speaker 1: think that was just a rite of passage for being French.
21:27
Speaker 1: It would be abnormal not to at this point in history, right. Uh,
21:31
Speaker 1: and it's true, his expellations really did not generate a
21:37
Speaker 1: noticeably terrible smell. And just to clarify, as the grand finale,
21:42
Speaker 1: when he's playing the songs, he has an ocarina attached
21:46
Speaker 1: to the end of a hose and he plays through
21:48
Speaker 1: the ocarina and the audience sings along with him, a
21:52
Speaker 1: little bit of crowd work at the end. Yeah, and
21:56
Speaker 1: he's a real seasoned pro and he gets an exclude
22:00
Speaker 1: of contract with Mulan Rouge. Do we mentioned that part? No,
22:02
Speaker 1: I just said it was a contract, but yeah, exclusive
22:05
Speaker 1: is right, and uh, it caused him a little bit
22:07
Speaker 1: of trouble um because he I think did a piece
22:12
Speaker 1: of his act like on the street for somebody, or
22:14
Speaker 1: like a private uh fart serenade, Yeah, to promote a
22:19
Speaker 1: friend's new business in And that did not go over
22:23
Speaker 1: well with the proprietors of the Mulan Rouge. Yeah, the
22:27
Speaker 1: owner of the theater sued him for breach of contract
22:31
Speaker 1: because of this public serenade. His contract allowed him only
22:36
Speaker 1: to do this sort of performative farting. It's a weird term,
22:40
Speaker 1: performative farting in the Mulan Rouge theater itself. And this
22:46
Speaker 1: might make the owner of the theater sound like a
22:49
Speaker 1: real pill, but it's important to note for context. At
22:53
Speaker 1: the time of this lawsuit, Le petal Mount is the
22:58
Speaker 1: highest paid entertainer in the entirety of France. He's like
23:03
Speaker 1: the Michael Jordan's professional farting. That's twenty thousand francs for
23:09
Speaker 1: some of his higher performing shows. And that's not per year,
23:12
Speaker 1: that's a single show. And again that's way back in
23:15
Speaker 1: the late eighteen hundreds. Yeah, we actually off. Mike tried
23:19
Speaker 1: to run this through the handy Daindy inflation calculator, but
23:22
Speaker 1: it could not crunch the numbers this time. The time
23:25
Speaker 1: frame and the currency exchange was a little too much
23:28
Speaker 1: for the inflation calculator to crunch. Old Flaty can't win
23:33
Speaker 1: them all, but the inflation calculator will return in future episodes,
23:37
Speaker 1: you have our word. So he gets sued by the
23:46
Speaker 1: owner of the Mulan Rouge, and he doesn't take this
23:50
Speaker 1: sitting down, because that's not part of the act. He
23:54
Speaker 1: instead fights the situation in court. But while this is
23:58
Speaker 1: going on, the moon On Rouge decides to replace him
24:03
Speaker 1: with a different performer. Now it's really really a rough
24:08
Speaker 1: time for old La Peto Man because they replaced him
24:11
Speaker 1: with a lady fartist um named it was just Le
24:16
Speaker 1: fem pet Man, Yeah, yeah, who turned out to be
24:23
Speaker 1: a fraud fatale. It's right. Yeah. Apparently under her her
24:28
Speaker 1: enormous petticoats, she was hiding a bellows that was being
24:33
Speaker 1: worked I'm guessing by her foot or maybe like thigh
24:37
Speaker 1: master rules, But couldn't you see that? And adding insults injury?
24:43
Speaker 1: Her act was a wonder one rip off of of
24:46
Speaker 1: his act um and it it you know, it was
24:50
Speaker 1: quite a kerfuffle. Yeah, it was. It was quite a
24:54
Speaker 1: to do for sure. No, Joseph Pruole not to be defeated, said,
24:59
Speaker 1: you know what, I'm gonna open my own theater. God
25:02
Speaker 1: knows I have the money in the capital to do so.
25:05
Speaker 1: So he opens his own theater and begins working for himself,
25:09
Speaker 1: and for years and years and years he is doing
25:12
Speaker 1: quite well. He builds up a name people go to see,
25:15
Speaker 1: the world famous Le Peto mant and things are rolling
25:19
Speaker 1: smoothly along until World War One occurs in nine Yeah,
25:25
Speaker 1: I don't know, I guess, I guess things just got
25:27
Speaker 1: kind of dark, and uh, people just weren't in the
25:32
Speaker 1: same mirthful spirits they used to be where where farts
25:34
Speaker 1: would would make them, you know, have heart attacks in
25:37
Speaker 1: the aisle they were, they were having heart attacks from
25:39
Speaker 1: like serious stuff, like you know, having bombs dropped on
25:41
Speaker 1: them and things, and just living in utter fear and terror.
25:45
Speaker 1: And additionally, his two sons were disabled in World War One.
25:52
Speaker 1: So he packs up his career as a professional flash
25:57
Speaker 1: list and he reopens a bait which he was doing
26:01
Speaker 1: at the beginning of the story. And guess what he's
26:04
Speaker 1: known for, nol Is it the brand Muffins. It is
26:07
Speaker 1: the brand Muffins. He lives to the ripe old age
26:12
Speaker 1: of eighty eight years old and expires in nineteen Yeah,
26:18
Speaker 1: and leaves behind him a legacy of of of fartestry
26:21
Speaker 1: that has has actually been carried on today by a
26:27
Speaker 1: pretty admittedly small group. Um. But uh, there is one
26:33
Speaker 1: guy who is carrying this mantle um and and I
26:37
Speaker 1: mean in appearance on the BBC in nine he goes
26:41
Speaker 1: by the name of Mr Methane and uh uses the
26:45
Speaker 1: same technique, the whole idea of inhaling air into the
26:49
Speaker 1: sphincter and pushing it back out and being able to
26:51
Speaker 1: make different tones. And you can kind of tell by
26:55
Speaker 1: the way he sticks the microphone right in his butt
26:58
Speaker 1: um and then speaks into it afterwards that he too
27:02
Speaker 1: has a odorless expulsion. Well, he certainly certainly presents it
27:08
Speaker 1: as such. An we can talk a little bit about
27:10
Speaker 1: the science of this too, But first let's let's play
27:13
Speaker 1: a clip of Mr Methane if we've got got one handy. Oh,
27:16
Speaker 1: by the way, this clip was banned from the BBC
27:18
Speaker 1: on the grounds of bad taste. According to this this
27:22
Speaker 1: YouTube clip here, you'd be the judge a party of
27:27
Speaker 1: my heartstits still somebody, it's always His name was Pail. Oh,
27:44
Speaker 1: his name was Bill just just set the tone. This
27:54
Speaker 1: guy is wearing green spandex with a with a purple
27:57
Speaker 1: cape and a green little face mask. And that is
28:00
Speaker 1: Mr Methane and Frank Skinner and performing did do Run Run,
28:05
Speaker 1: which is backed by the band The skinnerets Um for
28:09
Speaker 1: BBC Television unit enty seven um, but apparently it did
28:12
Speaker 1: not make it to air. I want to confirm that,
28:14
Speaker 1: but I that is what I'm reading here. He is
28:17
Speaker 1: not for the record singing. He is just providing the uh,
28:21
Speaker 1: the wind for this Praised as a true genius, a
28:26
Speaker 1: huge star by Howard Stern. He's appeared on numerous different programs,
28:32
Speaker 1: not just the BBC, but he's on Frances Got Talent,
28:36
Speaker 1: Brittain's Got Talent. Uh. Simon Cowell called him a disgusting
28:41
Speaker 1: creature did in fact call him that. That's true, but
28:43
Speaker 1: he also Mr Methane not Simon got to the German
28:47
Speaker 1: version of the show Dos Super Talent. He made it
28:50
Speaker 1: to the semifinals. Uh. The winner was actually a dog.
28:53
Speaker 1: You know. The Germans are into that stuff. You can
28:55
Speaker 1: read the entire story from his perspective at his website,
29:00
Speaker 1: which is still up Mr methane dot com. He also
29:04
Speaker 1: has a Facebook page where he has six thousand five likes. So,
29:09
Speaker 1: you know, an admittedly niche talent, but very much you know,
29:14
Speaker 1: carrying on the torch of of of you know, past
29:18
Speaker 1: heroes like rolland the Farter and La Peto Main. And
29:23
Speaker 1: since we promised it in the beginning, we can go
29:27
Speaker 1: ahead while while we're on the subject of farts, tell
29:30
Speaker 1: you the world's oldest joke. It has been traced back
29:34
Speaker 1: to nineteen hundred b c E. And it is Samarian.
29:39
Speaker 1: Uh these the Marians lived and was now southern Iraq.
29:43
Speaker 1: And here it goes. Tell us if you think it
29:47
Speaker 1: still translates something which has never occurred since time immemorial,
29:52
Speaker 1: semi colon Here a young woman did not fart in
29:55
Speaker 1: her husband's lap. That's it. That's the joke. Stand. I
30:00
Speaker 1: don't get it either. It feels like maybe there's some
30:02
Speaker 1: social commentary that applied more to that time than it doesen.
30:08
Speaker 1: But it's it's neat that the world's oldest joke is
30:10
Speaker 1: a fart joke. Yeah, you said you like fart humor.
30:14
Speaker 1: I just don't think. I just I like, I don't know.
30:17
Speaker 1: I would rather hear up here of fart than than
30:19
Speaker 1: that joke and uh, someone who did not like poop humor.
30:23
Speaker 1: This might surprise some of us, learned, was La petel
30:26
Speaker 1: Man himself. He did not want to denigrate or diminish
30:31
Speaker 1: the quality of his artistry and impressions. He was a fartiste.
30:35
Speaker 1: He had been working on this craft for many years.
30:37
Speaker 1: I don't even think we we said that that from
30:39
Speaker 1: the time he found out about his talent. At the
30:42
Speaker 1: time he actually graced the stage for the first time,
30:45
Speaker 1: he had been like working on this stuff for like
30:47
Speaker 1: five years or something, you know, work shopping him. Yeah,
30:51
Speaker 1: picture him staying up late night at the bakery just
30:54
Speaker 1: humming songs to himself and trying to figure out where
30:57
Speaker 1: he could slip the right fart in. And you know, well,
31:00
Speaker 1: I think this was a pretty good one. This is
31:03
Speaker 1: this is some fascinating stuff. I gotta speak up in
31:06
Speaker 1: defensive farts though. I wonder how many times we said
31:08
Speaker 1: the word fart in this episode. Well, we've certainly said
31:11
Speaker 1: the word more often than hopefully either of us have
31:15
Speaker 1: actually farted during this recording. Well, I don't know, man,
31:17
Speaker 1: didn't you have a stat about how often in a
31:21
Speaker 1: day people fart and they don't even realize it. It's
31:23
Speaker 1: not like they're like big, you know, boisterous ones. Then
31:26
Speaker 1: it's just like that that kind of regulation of your gas. Yeah,
31:30
Speaker 1: like I said in the top of the show, it's
31:32
Speaker 1: it's about a leader to one point five leaders of
31:35
Speaker 1: gas per day, and most people will tend to fart
31:39
Speaker 1: on average about thirteen to twenty one times. So we're
31:42
Speaker 1: all on this together. We're all in this together. And
31:45
Speaker 1: as I was, as I was setting up in defense
31:48
Speaker 1: of farts, if you ever feel guilty for laying a
31:52
Speaker 1: particular stinker, remember your farts are going to be manufactured
31:57
Speaker 1: by the bacteria that lives within your body. About of
32:02
Speaker 1: your farts are created in your lower intestine, not by you.
32:06
Speaker 1: So the true culprit of a smelly fart is not you,
32:09
Speaker 1: but your bacteria. And that's why le Peto Mant and
32:13
Speaker 1: other professional flash lists don't have that smell because they're
32:18
Speaker 1: taking an air from outside and then expelling it. But
32:21
Speaker 1: you're saying that the legit way, it's not even your
32:23
Speaker 1: fault because you're really just farting your farts farts, right,
32:26
Speaker 1: which leads us to a bigger question, who are what
32:29
Speaker 1: are we farting inside of? Let us know what you think.
32:31
Speaker 1: You can write to us at Ridiculous at how stuff
32:34
Speaker 1: works dot com. You can check us out on Facebook
32:36
Speaker 1: and Instagram. Or we are Ridiculous History and we should
32:40
Speaker 1: thank everybody. Yeah, we'd also like to before we go
32:43
Speaker 1: to our thank you issue, a clarification. Uh. Previously we
32:47
Speaker 1: had attributed to episodes to our research associate, Christopher Haciotis. Christopher,
32:54
Speaker 1: being the stand up, great guy that he is, wrote
32:58
Speaker 1: to us off air to point out that those previous
33:01
Speaker 1: two episodes were actually the work of our research associate,
33:05
Speaker 1: Eve's Jeff Code. And you can find more of Eve's
33:08
Speaker 1: work over at the Afropunk Solution Sessions show, as well
33:12
Speaker 1: as Stuff Mom Never Told You So do tune in
33:16
Speaker 1: check those out. Thanks, of course to super producer Casey Pegrum,
33:19
Speaker 1: Thanks Alex Williams who wrote this track, and thanks to
33:22
Speaker 1: you Noel, always a pleasure. You're welcome, Ben, goodbye,