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The Weird Life of George Washington, Part 1 · Ridiculous History

0:23
Speaker 1: Welcome to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you for tuning in.
0:27
Speaker 1: My name is Ben, my name is no. This is
0:30
Speaker 1: an interesting kind of tradition, more traditional way to start
0:33
Speaker 1: the show. You threw me for a loop there, Yeah,
0:35
Speaker 1: I it took it hard. Somebody somebody remembered you. Guys
0:39
Speaker 1: on the internet recently referred to me as what's his name?
0:43
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna try to just play it straight lace
0:46
Speaker 1: for a little while. Ben. Did they steal your thunder
0:49
Speaker 1: Have they robbed you of your mojo? I don't know.
0:51
Speaker 1: I don't want to feel thunderless. How are we going
0:53
Speaker 1: to get your groove back? Well, we're going to rely
0:55
Speaker 1: on the help of our super producer, Casey Pegram as always,
1:00
Speaker 1: and that sound always gets my groove right up. So
1:03
Speaker 1: we have a pretty fascinating show for you today, folks,
1:07
Speaker 1: because it came about through a somewhat circuitous fashion. And
1:13
Speaker 1: who better to help us explain the story of how
1:15
Speaker 1: we got to this episode for today than our returning
1:19
Speaker 1: special guest friends and neighbors Christopher Haciotis Hey everybody, Hey Casey, Hey,
1:24
Speaker 1: no a, what's your name? Too soon? Yeah? Come on,
1:30
Speaker 1: We've got a nurture band do we we do? Okay,
1:33
Speaker 1: very contract. This is a safe space, yes, Bishop, container
1:37
Speaker 1: is a is a safe space. Fine. Fine. So we
1:40
Speaker 1: love having you on the show, Christopher, and we always
1:43
Speaker 1: have a bang up time whenever you bless us with
1:47
Speaker 1: some historical knowledge. But in our conversations off air, the
1:52
Speaker 1: four of us were, you know, we were kicking around
1:55
Speaker 1: ideas what should we explore on air today? And you
1:59
Speaker 1: recently were turned from a trip to Washington. Yeah, that's
2:03
Speaker 1: Washington state. I was out in Seattle for podcom Too,
2:07
Speaker 1: which is a podcast convention, podcast conference, so kind of
2:10
Speaker 1: diving into the weird, strange growing world of podcasting. Headed
2:15
Speaker 1: out there was a very sort of d i y scene. Um,
2:18
Speaker 1: a lot of great creators, a lot of great podcasters.
2:21
Speaker 1: Aaron Manky, who's got some shows over here on our network,
2:24
Speaker 1: he was out there, and um, it was my first
2:27
Speaker 1: time in Seattle. And I know you've got your goal
2:30
Speaker 1: of doing a show about every state. So I don't
2:33
Speaker 1: know if this really counts that I was in Washington
2:35
Speaker 1: and we're gonna talk about what we're gonna talk about.
2:37
Speaker 1: I don't know that accounts for Washington, but that's up
2:40
Speaker 1: to you. I don't make your rules. I just sit
2:42
Speaker 1: in the back and judge from a distance. Um. But yeah,
2:45
Speaker 1: we were out there and and that trip to Seattle
2:48
Speaker 1: to Washington State made me think, Hey, what's this place
2:52
Speaker 1: named after? It's named after a guy. Did you have
2:55
Speaker 1: a guess? You know, it wasn't named after an apple. Okay,
3:00
Speaker 1: wasn't named after a city on the other side of
3:02
Speaker 1: the nation. And it wasn't named after George Washington Carver.
3:05
Speaker 1: It wasn't President Numerouno George Washington himself. Yeah, I thought
3:11
Speaker 1: there's a there's a lot of cool stuff that we
3:13
Speaker 1: can talk about when it comes to George Washington. He's
3:15
Speaker 1: a you know, revered statesman, our first president, a general,
3:21
Speaker 1: super military commander. Um. You may know him for his
3:26
Speaker 1: fake teeth, his cherry tree. We can get into all
3:28
Speaker 1: of that. And whether that actually happened. Quite a snappy dresser,
3:32
Speaker 1: well weren't. Weren't they all sure he had a particularly
3:38
Speaker 1: I mean during their paintings, they did exactly know what
3:40
Speaker 1: they wore on a regular Thursday. Yeah, I mean the paintings,
3:43
Speaker 1: the things that are on the dollar bill, that's essentially
3:46
Speaker 1: like the Instagram of the time. It's what they wanted
3:48
Speaker 1: to put forth. You know, you can be looking at
3:50
Speaker 1: someone's Instagram feed and they're happy, they're with their significant other,
3:53
Speaker 1: and you have no idea that they're going through financial
3:56
Speaker 1: troubles and dealing with a mortgage and they're about to
3:58
Speaker 1: break up. Looks like the life is so I think
4:01
Speaker 1: it's just got real. Not not speaking from personal experience here,
4:06
Speaker 1: but um, yeah, so maybe. Uh. You know, that's one
4:09
Speaker 1: of the nice things about paintings. You can put the
4:10
Speaker 1: best foot forward. You can work a lot of symbolism
4:12
Speaker 1: into it. Um, all of a sudden, we're talking, aren't theory.
4:15
Speaker 1: But let's let's get back to George. Yeah, let's get
4:18
Speaker 1: back to George. One thing I want to mention that
4:20
Speaker 1: I think is a very classy aspect of his character.
4:25
Speaker 1: He refused to become king. Right. There were proposals early
4:30
Speaker 1: on in the days of the founding of the nation,
4:32
Speaker 1: and people said, George, you're great, and he's like, I'll
4:36
Speaker 1: stop keep going, stop, no, keep going, And they said
4:39
Speaker 1: you should be king and he said, nah, I guys
4:42
Speaker 1: were kind of missing the point. And that is, in
4:45
Speaker 1: my opinion, uh, something that speaks very highly to his
4:49
Speaker 1: character and his reputation. But along the way. As we
4:53
Speaker 1: decided to explore the life of George Washington, we also
4:57
Speaker 1: decided to not not to the basic origin story, life
5:02
Speaker 1: and times and then death. We decided to look into
5:06
Speaker 1: some of the strangest, weirdest things the average person might
5:10
Speaker 1: not know about George Washington. And previously on the show,
5:13
Speaker 1: nol you and I had answered back and forth about
5:17
Speaker 1: the misconception surrounding Washington's teeth or his his his allegedly
5:23
Speaker 1: wooden teeth seahorst teeth. It was straight seahorse teeth and
5:27
Speaker 1: bringing it back, bring it back, no, but seriously, I mean,
5:29
Speaker 1: that was a time where it was absolutely a thing
5:33
Speaker 1: to have animal teeth as dentures. Also, I think the
5:36
Speaker 1: episode in question was about using the teeth of fallen
5:40
Speaker 1: soldiers um for dentures. And then we we we discovered
5:44
Speaker 1: that seahorse teeth weren't actually the teeth of tiny, tiny
5:47
Speaker 1: sea horses. That was just what they called hippopotamus as
5:49
Speaker 1: they called them seahorses and Christopher, in case you missed
5:53
Speaker 1: it now, straight seahorse teeth is one of our new catchphrase,
5:56
Speaker 1: just like saying something's dope, super dope, straight sea horse teeth. Yeah, yeah, Okay,
6:02
Speaker 1: you picked it up so quickly, super easy. Somehow it
6:06
Speaker 1: sounds like it sounds better when you say it straight
6:09
Speaker 1: sea horse teeth, straight, sea horse teeth. It's hard to say,
6:14
Speaker 1: my friend, you could not do it. But no, that
6:16
Speaker 1: just means if I, if I had, I would have
6:17
Speaker 1: conjured like a little demon sea horse right here. That
6:19
Speaker 1: would have messed up this studio. Something fierce, sort of
6:22
Speaker 1: a homunculous type, a bit of a bit of a quister.
6:26
Speaker 1: Please don't kidding, kidding, kidding, have you ever been present
6:29
Speaker 1: for the quister? I feel like he's here right now, Sorry, listeners.
6:33
Speaker 1: He usually is. He kind of does sort of that
6:35
Speaker 1: ex ray sisty type thing, or he just sort of
6:37
Speaker 1: clings to the ceiling in his head, rotates and looks
6:39
Speaker 1: at us downward. It's a whole thing. He's kind of
6:41
Speaker 1: the n essay of how stuff works. You know, he's
6:44
Speaker 1: he's always around, but he would agree with us. I
6:48
Speaker 1: hazard that George Washington is an amazing guy who lived
6:53
Speaker 1: an astonishing life. We know the gist, Christopher. I think
6:57
Speaker 1: you set it up quite nicely for us. George Shington
7:00
Speaker 1: born February twenty second, seventeen thirty two passed away December fourteen,
7:05
Speaker 1: seventeen ninety nine. But in that span of time he
7:09
Speaker 1: lived quite a full life, and there are so many
7:14
Speaker 1: facts about him. There's so many misconceptions he is. He
7:17
Speaker 1: has moved from the realm of earthly creatures into the
7:21
Speaker 1: world of myth in many ways. And we decided to
7:26
Speaker 1: each find some lesser known aspects of George Washington's life
7:32
Speaker 1: and times and share them with each other, and share
7:35
Speaker 1: them with you listening today. When did you say his
7:37
Speaker 1: birthday was been February twenty two? So apparently that in
7:41
Speaker 1: and of itself is a misconception. Is that the case? Yeah,
7:46
Speaker 1: according to this mental Philows article twenty five things you
7:48
Speaker 1: might not have known about George Washington, his actual birthday
7:51
Speaker 1: was February eleven. But that's that's a that's a calendar
7:55
Speaker 1: thing we're talking here. This is true because it has
7:57
Speaker 1: to do with the Gregorian calendar versus the Julian callend.
8:00
Speaker 1: But it's just that, and I just thought that was fine.
8:01
Speaker 1: That is, the man is shrouded in mystery. Calendars are
8:04
Speaker 1: weird anyway, So you're right, the colony switched from the
8:08
Speaker 1: Gregorian calendar to the Julian calendar, and his birthday was
8:12
Speaker 1: moved eleven days. I wonder which of those answers is
8:16
Speaker 1: the acceptable answer in a trivia game. That's a good question,
8:20
Speaker 1: and it depends on the trivia host. And how how
8:22
Speaker 1: deep into nartitude do you want to get? I was
8:23
Speaker 1: about to put a call out to any trivia host
8:25
Speaker 1: in the audience. Is there a code amongst trivia hosts
8:29
Speaker 1: as to this kind of thing? How pedantic is too pedantic?
8:32
Speaker 1: For some of the trivia games I've been to, It's
8:35
Speaker 1: never too pedants And it depends on how much beer
8:38
Speaker 1: you've had. So February eleventh, seventeen thirty one, but then
8:43
Speaker 1: it changed to February twenty second, seventeen thirty two, and
8:47
Speaker 1: actually also changed in terms of the year. And as
8:51
Speaker 1: you said, Nold, this is just the beginning of the
8:54
Speaker 1: of the historical mysteries surrounding George Washington. We learned some
9:00
Speaker 1: fascinating quick, one off trivia things. You pointed out something
9:05
Speaker 1: interesting about his name, Christopher. Yeah, George Washington. That's his name.
9:10
Speaker 1: That's it, Noddle, what are you saying, no middle name,
9:13
Speaker 1: just George. That's that's illegal. Just George. That's not It's
9:17
Speaker 1: not okay, George Washington. What happened? What more do you need?
9:20
Speaker 1: That's he made a state. You know, he's not Prince,
9:22
Speaker 1: he's not Madonna, He's George Washington. This he's not George
9:26
Speaker 1: Stephen Washington. This begs the question of when did the
9:29
Speaker 1: middle name start? And why? Why? Is why people get
9:32
Speaker 1: so hung up on the middle name because my reaction
9:34
Speaker 1: there was very real and visceral, but now I'm questioning it.
9:37
Speaker 1: You know, there is another president who had a middle
9:42
Speaker 1: name made up. It was are we talking Truman situation here?
9:47
Speaker 1: It was, Yeah, it was a fake middle initial. Right. Well,
9:50
Speaker 1: there's there's some dispute about Harry S. Truman, a lot
9:54
Speaker 1: of and again this kind of gets back to Noel's
9:56
Speaker 1: favorite pedantic trivia folks. But you know, people will often
10:00
Speaker 1: claim Harry S. Truman he did not have a period
10:03
Speaker 1: after the S and his name, and that's the way
10:05
Speaker 1: it is. And you know, it's the kind of people
10:07
Speaker 1: who love to jump down your throat on the internet
10:08
Speaker 1: and say like, well, technically, actually, actually those are our
10:13
Speaker 1: people that they can be. But those you know, it
10:15
Speaker 1: can be a little aggressive, It can be a little
10:17
Speaker 1: off putting. If you are always looking to correct other
10:19
Speaker 1: people and to shape the world into the way you
10:22
Speaker 1: see it in my opinion. So, um, yeah, Harry S. Truman.
10:26
Speaker 1: Sometimes he signed his name with a period after the S.
10:29
Speaker 1: So again, it's one of those things that's not consistent,
10:31
Speaker 1: and um left to the mysteries of the history and
10:35
Speaker 1: just to stay in keeping with the pedantry of of
10:37
Speaker 1: our of our people here. Uh. The middle name actually
10:40
Speaker 1: began in the Middle Ages, and it had to do
10:42
Speaker 1: with families not being able to decide whether to give
10:44
Speaker 1: their kids a family name or a religious name, so
10:47
Speaker 1: they were able to give them both. And it's different
10:49
Speaker 1: in other cultures, right exactly. So not to focus too
10:54
Speaker 1: much on on President Truman in our George Washington episode,
10:57
Speaker 1: which we are endeavoring to count as our Washington State episode.
11:02
Speaker 1: You know what, let's let's go. Let's give it a go.
11:05
Speaker 1: Let's give it a go. I think we can. We
11:07
Speaker 1: can always leave the door open to do another Washington episode.
11:10
Speaker 1: But while we're filling out our fifty, I say, who's
11:13
Speaker 1: gonna stop us? Oh, Chris So so Harry S. Truman,
11:21
Speaker 1: According to the story, when he was born in eighteen
11:25
Speaker 1: eighty four, his parents couldn't decide on a middle name,
11:27
Speaker 1: so they went with the letter S to honor his
11:30
Speaker 1: paternal grandfather and his maternal grandfather, a Ship and a Solomon, respectively.
11:37
Speaker 1: When he took the presidential oath of office, the Chief
11:40
Speaker 1: Justice Harlan F. Stone said, I Harry Ship Truman, and
11:45
Speaker 1: the President replied, I Harry S. Truman. So we buttoned
11:51
Speaker 1: that up. Well, does that mean he actually was never president?
11:54
Speaker 1: As folks said about Obama when there was like a
11:56
Speaker 1: little bit of a discrepancy during the swearing in, I
11:59
Speaker 1: don't know, will be not because cable news did not exist.
12:02
Speaker 1: On Twitter was not a thing, thankfully for Mr Harry Truman.
12:05
Speaker 1: This is a good point you make. And now we
12:09
Speaker 1: return to George Washington having solved the case of Harry S.
12:13
Speaker 1: Truman's frankly fake presidency. Right, that's not a sweeping statement.
12:17
Speaker 1: He had to make an appearance. He just couldn't couldn't
12:21
Speaker 1: leave well enough alone. Harry S. Truman, He's the quister
12:23
Speaker 1: of fo He's the quister of American president. Really really
12:26
Speaker 1: is so, George Washington? Yeah, no, middle, I mean, is
12:30
Speaker 1: there more behind the story or is that is that
12:32
Speaker 1: where the story is there? Okay, and I'll leave you
12:35
Speaker 1: with that, because that's what I know. I like it.
12:37
Speaker 1: I like it, I like I like this mysterious air
12:41
Speaker 1: we are we are creating in today's episode, but we
12:45
Speaker 1: are not just going to present mysteries for the entirety
12:49
Speaker 1: of the show. We do have some fascinating facts that
12:54
Speaker 1: you may not have learned in your school years. Uh,
12:58
Speaker 1: And I think that I think we're we're all on
13:01
Speaker 1: the same page. But how do we want to start? Guys?
13:04
Speaker 1: I thought we were. We were already off to the races. Well,
13:06
Speaker 1: off to the races. Okay, yeah, let's was that your
13:09
Speaker 1: first one. Christopher doesn't know that had nothing to do that.
13:11
Speaker 1: We're just bantering. This is going to be a good one.
13:16
Speaker 1: You guys to go first. I propose that Christopher goes
13:20
Speaker 1: pretty here. I am alright, Well, we started off talking
13:27
Speaker 1: about George Washington's birth, his birth date and the change
13:31
Speaker 1: of that. So let's just fast forward, let's skip all
13:33
Speaker 1: the rest, and let's go straight to the end of
13:35
Speaker 1: his life. So yeah, no, I mean, he's not dead yet.
13:40
Speaker 1: Twilight Year, He's almost dead. He's not dead yet. So
13:43
Speaker 1: in George Washington leaves the presidency, what's he gonna do
13:47
Speaker 1: with his life? He decides. There's an actual quote from
13:49
Speaker 1: one of his biographers, George Washington when he leaves the presidency,
13:53
Speaker 1: he wants his retirement to be quote more tranquil and
13:56
Speaker 1: freer from cares end quote. Yeah, that sounds nice. It
14:00
Speaker 1: was a chill, Yeah, more tranquil free or from cares.
14:03
Speaker 1: And he's of course doing this on his palatial estate,
14:05
Speaker 1: Mount Vernon, right, Yeah, Mount Vernon, which is uh, it's
14:08
Speaker 1: south of where d C is now. It's on the
14:10
Speaker 1: Virginia side of the Potomac River. It's his his estate
14:13
Speaker 1: of tens of thousands of acres. And while there in
14:16
Speaker 1: his in his final days he's retired, he has a
14:19
Speaker 1: man managing the plantation, a Scottish immigrant named James Anderson.
14:23
Speaker 1: Now this plantation manager had a background and a training
14:27
Speaker 1: in distillation. He made booze. So Anderson suggests to Washington,
14:33
Speaker 1: Hey Washington, Hey, George Washington, if you're gonna use the
14:35
Speaker 1: full name, why not start making some booze. So we
14:39
Speaker 1: almost had George Washington whiskey, and the country did for
14:43
Speaker 1: a long time. So George Washington died in sin he'd
14:46
Speaker 1: left the presidency in for the last couple two and
14:50
Speaker 1: a half years of his life. He started a distillery
14:53
Speaker 1: in Mount Vernon. It ended up being one of the
14:56
Speaker 1: largest distilleries in the Americas at the time. By by
15:00
Speaker 1: early which is the year he ended up dying, at
15:03
Speaker 1: the end of that year, in December, they were producing
15:05
Speaker 1: eleven thousand gallons of whiskey. Now, whiskey became really popular
15:09
Speaker 1: because in the seventeen eighties and during the Revolutionary period,
15:14
Speaker 1: rum was the drink of choice. Soldiers were given rations
15:16
Speaker 1: of rum, sometimes whiskey, but essentially it became problematic importing
15:21
Speaker 1: a lot of the sugarcane from the West Indies to
15:24
Speaker 1: create rum. So this homegrown liquor whiskey became much more popular.
15:29
Speaker 1: And um, yeah, there's a distillery right there that Washington ran.
15:32
Speaker 1: His signature whiskey was made with six rye corn and
15:36
Speaker 1: five percent barley. And wasn't it considered a non aged rye. Yeah,
15:42
Speaker 1: it was just it was it was distilled and ready
15:44
Speaker 1: to go. It didn't last years and years. Um. You
15:46
Speaker 1: know a lot of the whiskeys you can buy now
15:48
Speaker 1: in the Rise, they're aged in oak barrels. They're given us.
15:53
Speaker 1: How it gets the color, Yeah, exactly. They're they're mature
15:55
Speaker 1: over a long period of time they developed more flavor.
15:58
Speaker 1: But um, no, I mean the stuff was distilled right
16:00
Speaker 1: away and sold, So doesn't that mean it was almost
16:02
Speaker 1: a little bit closer to something like moonshine or lightning
16:05
Speaker 1: pretty much pretty much. Um, And it was sold, but
16:07
Speaker 1: it wasn't bottled. It wasn't sold in cans or pouches
16:12
Speaker 1: or anything like that. It was just packaged in barrels pouches. Yeah. Well,
16:16
Speaker 1: I'm trying to think of how you could have like
16:18
Speaker 1: a juice box exactly, like you know, one of those
16:21
Speaker 1: little foil caprisson kind of things. Sure, it's the kind
16:26
Speaker 1: of thing you could find it like the I don't know,
16:27
Speaker 1: fire festival or something too soon. Yeah, it was just
16:31
Speaker 1: sold in barrel straight straight to taverns. They would buy
16:35
Speaker 1: a whole barrel of this of this whiskey. They didn't
16:38
Speaker 1: just make whiskey though. They also made other kinds of
16:40
Speaker 1: brandy on the side. There was a peach brandy and
16:43
Speaker 1: apple brandy per simmon brandy, and they would also take
16:46
Speaker 1: the leavings of that and make vinegar. They would take
16:49
Speaker 1: all the grains that had fermented and feed those to
16:52
Speaker 1: the pigs that lived on Mount Vernon, So it's a
16:54
Speaker 1: sort of cyclical, sustainable, good way to use what you've grown.
16:59
Speaker 1: Also wildly successful. In his final days, George Washington was
17:03
Speaker 1: becoming one of the pre eminent whiskey barons in the
17:06
Speaker 1: United States. The only thing that really derailed the company,
17:09
Speaker 1: and one of the reasons why we don't have Washington
17:12
Speaker 1: Whiskey as as a massive legacy institution in the country
17:15
Speaker 1: today is he died in sev So after he died,
17:19
Speaker 1: the distillery was passed to Martha, his wife's granddaughter and
17:22
Speaker 1: her husband. But a fire in eighteen fourteen burned down
17:26
Speaker 1: the distillery and that was pretty much the end of
17:29
Speaker 1: the operation. So that that really put the final screw
17:32
Speaker 1: in the tombstone. Nail in the coffin, screw screw in
17:36
Speaker 1: the tombstone. It's more secure than a nail. It's one
17:39
Speaker 1: of those ikea tombstones, I think, and now correct me
17:43
Speaker 1: if I'm wrong in this, or maybe you have a
17:44
Speaker 1: better timeline. But they're back at it again at Mount Vernon.
17:47
Speaker 1: They are. They're back at it. Yeah, a couple of
17:49
Speaker 1: years ago, within the last ten years, they reopened the
17:52
Speaker 1: distillery at his historic home. I don't know if they're
17:55
Speaker 1: using the exact same techniques and methods, but it's in
17:59
Speaker 1: the same place. And yeah, the Washington distilleries up and running,
18:02
Speaker 1: probably not going to give some of the other notable
18:04
Speaker 1: names in the whiskey world today a run for their money,
18:07
Speaker 1: but if you go visit Washington's historic Mountain Vernon, you
18:11
Speaker 1: can definitely sample the whiskey. Come for the history, stay
18:14
Speaker 1: for the whiskey. I thought you were going to say whiskery, whiskery.
18:18
Speaker 1: I love pronouncing that hard age. According to Mountain Vernon
18:20
Speaker 1: dot org um, you can buy a bottle of the
18:23
Speaker 1: stuff for about ninety eight dollars, which, right, sh ain't
18:26
Speaker 1: cheap um And they refer to the recipe as the
18:28
Speaker 1: mash bill, which must have been the old timy way
18:30
Speaker 1: of referring to this whiskey recipe. And it is um
18:35
Speaker 1: using the same recipe that they found in the ledgers
18:38
Speaker 1: from the original distillery. So great, I would love I
18:41
Speaker 1: would love to take a road trip up there. I
18:43
Speaker 1: think it would be a lot of fun if we
18:44
Speaker 1: could buy not just a bottle, you know, because you
18:46
Speaker 1: couldn't buy a bottle then, so they're being a little
18:47
Speaker 1: a historical. I would just love to just load up
18:50
Speaker 1: a barrel and bring it back to the office. Get
18:53
Speaker 1: a whole barrel. That's what the studio is missing. This
18:55
Speaker 1: would not be our first time sampling some tipple from
18:59
Speaker 1: George Whiskey Power Washington. I believe we've mentioned on previous episodes.
19:03
Speaker 1: A good friend of ours, our coworker, producer Alex Williams,
19:07
Speaker 1: is known around how stuff works for making towards the
19:12
Speaker 1: end of the year making an historically accurate version of
19:16
Speaker 1: George Washington's famous eggnog, and just between us folks, that
19:21
Speaker 1: stuff packs a punch. Oh man, it's boozy. And the
19:24
Speaker 1: last little direction in the recipe the best part. It
19:28
Speaker 1: says to let's set in cool place for several days
19:32
Speaker 1: and taste frequently, as one does with just about anything
19:36
Speaker 1: in your cool place. There you go. I think it
19:37
Speaker 1: would startle most of us in the modern age to
19:41
Speaker 1: travel back in time to the days of the founding
19:43
Speaker 1: Fathers and see just how much and how often they drank.
19:48
Speaker 1: It's insane. I would say, there was never a sober moment.
19:52
Speaker 1: I'll point out though, that you know, we were talking
19:53
Speaker 1: about George Washington's distillery and his recipes. Again, this was
19:57
Speaker 1: a man who commanded an entire plantation, so he was
20:00
Speaker 1: kind of up at the head. This wasn't Washington himself
20:03
Speaker 1: sitting in there in the distilling room tinkering with a recipe,
20:05
Speaker 1: coming up with what he most favored. This wasn't really
20:08
Speaker 1: a passion project for him. It was a way for
20:09
Speaker 1: him to make money at the end of his life
20:12
Speaker 1: because he wasn't nearly as rich as some people may
20:15
Speaker 1: have thought he was. He wrote to a nephew who
20:18
Speaker 1: was asking him for money, Yeah, I'll give you this loan,
20:20
Speaker 1: but I'm not made of money like most people think
20:22
Speaker 1: I am. So this this was really a project of
20:24
Speaker 1: James Anderson, the plantation manager, as well as six enslaved
20:28
Speaker 1: Africans who were the ones doing the actual hard labor
20:31
Speaker 1: of making this this distilled liquor getting none of the credit. No,
20:34
Speaker 1: and uh, and we'll we'll get back to Washington's enslaved
20:38
Speaker 1: staff soon. Yes, that's that's foreshadowing. Also, before we get
20:43
Speaker 1: too into the disturbing facts of Washington's life, I have
20:48
Speaker 1: a proposal for us on the show. Why don't we
20:51
Speaker 1: hunt for a middle name for George Washington. In the
20:55
Speaker 1: course of this episode, as we learned stuff, so right now.
20:58
Speaker 1: We've got mash Bill, which I think is right. I'm
21:00
Speaker 1: a fan of seahorse teeth. Seahorse teeth, I think that's great.
21:03
Speaker 1: One word, yeah, okay. I also like whiskey pouch because
21:09
Speaker 1: it makes them seems so disreputable. It's very good. Can
21:12
Speaker 1: I can I suggest George George George Washington. That sounds
21:17
Speaker 1: like an eighties singer. It's George George Washington. Uh yeah,
21:22
Speaker 1: let's see, let's see what we find. These are all
21:24
Speaker 1: some great contenders, but we are just setting off on
21:29
Speaker 1: our weird Washington journey. What do you what do you think?
21:32
Speaker 1: Do you have one? Do you want to go? Do
21:33
Speaker 1: you want to flip? For sure? Okay, it's one to
21:37
Speaker 1: three go. We've got Christopher is a witness? All right?
21:39
Speaker 1: Ready go? No, does that mean you get to choose
21:47
Speaker 1: what you do? Does that mean you gobih that? I think? Man?
21:51
Speaker 1: I'd like you to go. Man, Okay, I have something
21:55
Speaker 1: that is a bit strange but will be old beans
21:58
Speaker 1: to people who also are fans of our other show stuff.
22:01
Speaker 1: They don't want you to know. George Washington, you see,
22:05
Speaker 1: had any number of extracurricular activities, one of which was freemasonry.
22:11
Speaker 1: George Washington became a Master Mason in seventeen fifty three,
22:15
Speaker 1: and ever since this has driven more fringe or conspiratorial
22:19
Speaker 1: researchers further and further into the depths of speculation. He
22:25
Speaker 1: was a young Virginia planter when he became a master
22:29
Speaker 1: Mason in Fredericksburg, Virginia, Masonic Lodge number four. He was
22:34
Speaker 1: only twenty one years old, and soon he would command
22:37
Speaker 1: his first military operation as a major in the Virginia
22:41
Speaker 1: Colonial Militia. We know, I think basically what freemasonry is.
22:48
Speaker 1: It's evolved from the practices and rituals of Stonemason's guilds
22:52
Speaker 1: in the Middle Ages, and it was still a powerful
22:57
Speaker 1: force in America even and during the time of tension
23:01
Speaker 1: in the later in the War for Independence against the
23:04
Speaker 1: British Empire. The first American Masonic Lodge was founded in
23:08
Speaker 1: Philadelphia in seventeen thirty and do you know who was
23:13
Speaker 1: a founding member of that. It's pretty easy to guess,
23:16
Speaker 1: Benny Franks. It is it is. It's the old Libertine himself.
23:22
Speaker 1: So for a lot of people, this association would seem
23:27
Speaker 1: to indicate that there's something at work behind the behind
23:32
Speaker 1: the screen of history right that Freemasonry was involved in
23:38
Speaker 1: the American Revolution, or that people were acting under orders
23:42
Speaker 1: of the Masonic organization. But really, for George Washington, joining
23:48
Speaker 1: the Mason's was a rite of passage, and it was
23:50
Speaker 1: sort of an exercise of his civic responsibility. After he
23:54
Speaker 1: became a master Mason again at the age of twenty one,
23:56
Speaker 1: he had the option of passing through a number of
23:59
Speaker 1: additional rights that would take him to higher degrees that
24:02
Speaker 1: would place him higher in the hierarchy of Masonry. In
24:05
Speaker 1: shortly before he became the first President of the US,
24:10
Speaker 1: he was elected the first Worshipable Master of Alexandria Lodge
24:15
Speaker 1: number twenty two. And he was not alone in this,
24:18
Speaker 1: as we pointed out, Benjamin Franklin was also a Mason.
24:21
Speaker 1: As where Paul Revere, John Hancock, the Marquis de Lafayette
24:26
Speaker 1: of the Hamilton's musical fame, and the Boston Tea Party,
24:29
Speaker 1: saboteurs and Masonic rights were in play. They were witnessed
24:34
Speaker 1: events like Washington's inauguration, the laying of the cornerstone of
24:38
Speaker 1: the US Capitol Building in Washington, d C. D C.
24:42
Speaker 1: Again is a city supposedly designed with a lot of
24:44
Speaker 1: Masonic symbols in mind. You have to admit the Washington
24:48
Speaker 1: Monument it's pretty abstract, you know what I mean. He
24:52
Speaker 1: definitely looms large in the horizon in a very sinister way.
24:55
Speaker 1: If you're walking around on the mall at night, it
24:57
Speaker 1: kind of gives me the creeps. To be honest, I
25:00
Speaker 1: the whole idea of conspiracy and the Masonic lodge and
25:03
Speaker 1: all that, it's it doesn't really take into account the
25:05
Speaker 1: reality of the situation at the time. It's now in
25:09
Speaker 1: the two thousands. It's easy to look back and think,
25:11
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, all these people knew each other, they
25:14
Speaker 1: were all part of the same organization. Everything ties into everything.
25:17
Speaker 1: But the reality is the population of the colonies at
25:21
Speaker 1: the time was so small compared to what what we
25:24
Speaker 1: have today, right, So, I mean, essentially you're talking about
25:27
Speaker 1: a population in terms of the landowners and the white
25:30
Speaker 1: European immigrants or settlers. We're talking tens of thousands, hundreds
25:34
Speaker 1: of thousands of people. Essentially. These are small towns or
25:37
Speaker 1: small cities, so everyone's going to know everyone, especially if
25:39
Speaker 1: you're near the top of the the upper echelon of society.
25:43
Speaker 1: It's not quite as nefarious cabal creating as it sounds,
25:48
Speaker 1: absolutely not. That's that's the thing. In many ways, it's
25:51
Speaker 1: a social club. These people are sharing their interests, and
25:56
Speaker 1: do they talk about things that they want to do,
25:59
Speaker 1: like do they talk about political goals or business ideas?
26:02
Speaker 1: Of course they do, because that's what friends do when
26:05
Speaker 1: they hang out with each other, you know, they talk
26:07
Speaker 1: about the things they care about and the things that
26:09
Speaker 1: they're working on. I enjoy this theory, and I especially
26:14
Speaker 1: appreciate Christopher, you're pointing out that it's easy for us
26:19
Speaker 1: to look back in retrospect and perhaps see patterns where
26:23
Speaker 1: none actually exist. You know what I mean. A lot
26:26
Speaker 1: of history is coincidence. The human species is not chock
26:31
Speaker 1: full of amazing planners with very complicated schemes. Now, everything
26:35
Speaker 1: in the past looks like it unfolded in a way
26:38
Speaker 1: that it was meant to and in a way that
26:40
Speaker 1: made sense. But that's because that's the way we know
26:43
Speaker 1: how things unfolded. There are innumerable other ways things could
26:46
Speaker 1: have happened, and other paths history could have taken that
26:49
Speaker 1: if we travel down those timelines, would make this one
26:52
Speaker 1: look particularly ridiculous or strange. The guys you're completely overlooking
26:56
Speaker 1: the blood magic rituals to molok Oh, I mean they
27:00
Speaker 1: did on the regular. Yeah, but that's I mean I
27:02
Speaker 1: think that I thought we were talking about the one
27:04
Speaker 1: that I was going to do later. I didn't mean
27:08
Speaker 1: to blow up yall. Spot you guys are coming right well.
27:10
Speaker 1: I didn't get an invite. I brought snacks. I love
27:13
Speaker 1: a good snack. I mean, come for the mallock, stay
27:16
Speaker 1: for the snacks. One last thing about freemasonry and George
27:21
Speaker 1: Washington in d C. I have such a fun time
27:26
Speaker 1: imagining the pitch meeting for building the Washington Monument and say, okay,
27:31
Speaker 1: we think he's the greatest president, we think he's the
27:34
Speaker 1: first president. We need something that really says this man
27:39
Speaker 1: the first president. And you know, they go back and
27:41
Speaker 1: forth and someone says, well, maybe a statue of the guy.
27:44
Speaker 1: And they go, uh, I like the idea of something
27:48
Speaker 1: like a big structure. Okay, okay, maybe like he's on
27:52
Speaker 1: a horse or as you like to say, Ben, No,
27:55
Speaker 1: let's get weird with it. That's exactly it. Yeah, they said,
27:58
Speaker 1: let's get let's get weird with it. Have you guys
28:00
Speaker 1: heard of like obelisk? And then you mean obelisks like
28:04
Speaker 1: a dude like in Egypt right on, and that was history.
28:08
Speaker 1: I am mostly kidding because if you look into the
28:11
Speaker 1: story of the Washington Monument, which could be its own episode,
28:14
Speaker 1: they had much more ambitious plans, and what we see
28:18
Speaker 1: today is essentially a compromise in scaling down. Again, the
28:24
Speaker 1: story of our nation and the story of our history
28:26
Speaker 1: is compromises, half baked plans that in retrospect look like
28:30
Speaker 1: what should have happened, but in reality we're just thrown
28:33
Speaker 1: together at the time with no real idea of what
28:35
Speaker 1: ramifications would come to pass decades down the line. I mean,
28:39
Speaker 1: look at anything involving well, we don't need to get
28:41
Speaker 1: into health insurance and tax law and all sorts of
28:45
Speaker 1: compromises made in Congress. But yeah, we we are just
28:49
Speaker 1: a collection of mistakes and bumbles through through the years,
28:53
Speaker 1: some of which have incredible staying power. Yes, very much.
28:56
Speaker 1: So much like a monument itself to our first president,
28:59
Speaker 1: I would argue, maybe they just want were like, how
29:01
Speaker 1: are we going to remind people that he was the
29:03
Speaker 1: first president? Let's this This looks like a big number
29:06
Speaker 1: one number one, So let's reset just a second here,
29:16
Speaker 1: because it occurs to me that we may be well
29:19
Speaker 1: on the way to making something that sounds like a
29:22
Speaker 1: hit piece on George Washington. Because he's a whiskey tycoon,
29:26
Speaker 1: he's a freemason, he's a slave owner. He's a slave owner. Yeah,
29:29
Speaker 1: we can't forget that part. But it wasn't it wasn't
29:32
Speaker 1: all complicated, weird, problematic stuff he had. He had some
29:37
Speaker 1: other notable wins. And I don't think being a whiskey
29:39
Speaker 1: tycoon is that bad. I have nothing wrong with that.
29:41
Speaker 1: I think was a slave labor I think that while
29:44
Speaker 1: there's me. Yeah, and it's also one of those things
29:46
Speaker 1: where it's I can't even fall behind the whole. It
29:50
Speaker 1: was just that everyone was doing it. It It was it
29:53
Speaker 1: was a different time. I mean, the thing is he
29:55
Speaker 1: he also was a pretty forward thinking individual in so
29:59
Speaker 1: many ways. In fact, he was so influential in creating
30:02
Speaker 1: the structure that is very much still a part of
30:04
Speaker 1: our military today that he was posthumously given this title
30:08
Speaker 1: um the General of the Armies of the United States,
30:11
Speaker 1: that is forever un out rankable. Yeah, it's total, total
30:15
Speaker 1: god mode. You know, you can't let's say they create
30:18
Speaker 1: seven star generals, eight star generals, nine star generals in
30:21
Speaker 1: the next couple of years, those still will be underneath Washington.
30:25
Speaker 1: Kind of similar in some ways to the eternal President
30:29
Speaker 1: of the d p R K. Kim Il Sung, but
30:32
Speaker 1: we didn't call him internal president. We just called him
30:34
Speaker 1: General of everything. Yeah, and I think it's important to
30:37
Speaker 1: remember about Washington that and and most of the men
30:40
Speaker 1: back then, this was the first time they were doing that.
30:44
Speaker 1: He was setting the precedent for the president, the presidential
30:47
Speaker 1: precedent exactly. And so yeah, he the way he acted,
30:51
Speaker 1: the choices he made, the statements he put forth, they
30:54
Speaker 1: set the stage for what we've had, what we've had
30:57
Speaker 1: over the past several hundred years leading up to today.
31:00
Speaker 1: It's important to keep in mind that anyone who's given
31:02
Speaker 1: that sort of authority carries weight. They embody what a
31:07
Speaker 1: country is moving forward. And that actually played into some
31:10
Speaker 1: of the misconceptions about Washington because his biographers said, we
31:14
Speaker 1: we don't need just a man, we need a myth.
31:17
Speaker 1: So we're going to invent this whole thing about the
31:19
Speaker 1: cherry tree. We're gonna make up some stories to make
31:22
Speaker 1: him larger than life. Biographer Weems, biographer Slash mythologize absolutely
31:29
Speaker 1: and and just blatantly, like made it up, not not
31:33
Speaker 1: fudged it a little bit. Some of the stuff was
31:35
Speaker 1: just made up to make him larger than life. Oh absolutely,
31:38
Speaker 1: I mean, and I honestly, very very frequently confused the
31:43
Speaker 1: myth of the cherry tree with Abe Lincoln because if
31:46
Speaker 1: everyone called him honest Abe, so I sometimes conflate those
31:49
Speaker 1: stories because he also was a very larger than my figure,
31:51
Speaker 1: who grew up poor and in kind of more of
31:54
Speaker 1: a rural setting. And he's also similar to Washington. He
31:58
Speaker 1: has a real underdog story because Lincoln ran unsuccessfully for office.
32:03
Speaker 1: That's multiple times, you know, so people love to see
32:06
Speaker 1: some perseverance. Oh man, we're I think we're doing pretty
32:10
Speaker 1: well here so far. We've got we're drawing in Truman,
32:13
Speaker 1: we're drawing in Lincoln. Well, remember earlier, Christopher, when you're
32:16
Speaker 1: talking about how the United States was sort of a
32:18
Speaker 1: agglomeration of half baked ideas. I look forward to the
32:24
Speaker 1: emails speaking of half baked ideas. Washington smoked a lot
32:28
Speaker 1: of weed. No, that's not true, but he grew a
32:30
Speaker 1: lot of hemp. That is true. That part is true.
32:33
Speaker 1: I was waiting for that. I needed to do that
32:35
Speaker 1: call back. I had to do it. Thank you for
32:37
Speaker 1: supplying me with that never true. Um. Hemp was one
32:41
Speaker 1: of his main cash crops well before he got into
32:44
Speaker 1: the whiskey trade. On Mount Vernon, Um he grew copious
32:48
Speaker 1: amounts of hemp, which is marijuana, but it is a
32:53
Speaker 1: slightly different strain of marijuana. Doesn't contain the psychoactive substance
32:58
Speaker 1: th HC or it's very very very low tetra hydra
33:02
Speaker 1: cannabin alls um. And it was used historically for making ropes.
33:07
Speaker 1: It was a fantastic fiber used the stem that had
33:11
Speaker 1: these uh. They grew it so it would have these
33:13
Speaker 1: elongated strands, these fibers in the stems um as opposed
33:17
Speaker 1: to the plants that were grown to smoke, or you
33:21
Speaker 1: would think of the ones that are grown today to
33:23
Speaker 1: smoke are much shorter, less hardy plants. Um. They look
33:26
Speaker 1: a little more like little bushes. But he grew fields
33:30
Speaker 1: of this stuff in an area on Mountain Vernon that
33:33
Speaker 1: he called the Muddy Hole, the Muddy Hole, and it
33:37
Speaker 1: was because it was a very uh sought after substance,
33:41
Speaker 1: because it was used to make They even referred to
33:43
Speaker 1: ropes in those days as hemps. They call them like
33:45
Speaker 1: sailing hemps, like for what all the riggings in various
33:49
Speaker 1: types of vessels, and he um would have continued to
33:54
Speaker 1: grow it if he hadn't have done some kind of
33:56
Speaker 1: shrewd calculations and realized that actually, wheat is probably a
34:00
Speaker 1: more profitable crop to um use his land for. But yeah,
34:04
Speaker 1: he he grew it for quite some time. And as
34:07
Speaker 1: it turns out, in the very same way that Mountain
34:10
Speaker 1: Vernon is now back to distilling whiskey Mashville. Um, they're
34:15
Speaker 1: also now growing hemp. Yeahs of two thousand eighteen, right, right,
34:20
Speaker 1: they harvested their first hemp crop in centuries, I believe.
34:25
Speaker 1: And the interesting thing is is that hemp, even though
34:28
Speaker 1: it doesn't contain very high levels of the psychoactive substance
34:33
Speaker 1: at all, were outlawed and made a Schedule one drug
34:37
Speaker 1: right alongside um. They more you know, trippy counterparts. UM,
34:42
Speaker 1: So growing hemp was outlawed. But it's not the same thing, right,
34:45
Speaker 1: I Mean, they're there, these plants are cousins, they're related.
34:47
Speaker 1: But that's like if you had prohibition of alcohol and
34:51
Speaker 1: all of a sudden you couldn't serve cough syrup at
34:54
Speaker 1: a drug store, right because just because it has a
34:56
Speaker 1: little bit of alcohol in it. We're kind of on
34:58
Speaker 1: the same thing, like like people are over re thing
35:00
Speaker 1: and and bunching things together, very very very similar. But
35:03
Speaker 1: if you look at a field of hemp, it looks
35:05
Speaker 1: like a field of marijuana players. I mean, they're very
35:07
Speaker 1: very similar. And in fact, so what I was what
35:09
Speaker 1: I was getting to is in there was a farm
35:13
Speaker 1: bill that passed that allowed UM research for growing hemp,
35:18
Speaker 1: and some states have legalized essentially limited hemp farming, and
35:23
Speaker 1: another bill that passed in the Senate was going to
35:27
Speaker 1: allow for full legalization. I don't know if that one
35:30
Speaker 1: has has gone through yet or not. I don't have
35:32
Speaker 1: to do a little more follow up on that, but
35:33
Speaker 1: the point is you can get UM. There's another substance
35:37
Speaker 1: of compound that's in marijuana and hemp. It's called cb D,
35:40
Speaker 1: which you may have read a lot of research about
35:42
Speaker 1: people use it for anxiety. It can treat a lot
35:46
Speaker 1: of different ailments and just kind of has become a
35:49
Speaker 1: very popular UM kind of remedy that people are using,
35:52
Speaker 1: and it is legal in states where marijuana is not
35:55
Speaker 1: legal because you can get it from hemp. It's pretty
35:58
Speaker 1: interesting UM but Yeah. Now there's no evidence. A lot
36:01
Speaker 1: of other Founding fathers grew have to, like John Adams
36:04
Speaker 1: and Thomas Jefferson, um, but there is no evidence showing
36:07
Speaker 1: that any of them ever tried to smoke. Yeah, it's
36:09
Speaker 1: it's a useful crop, and it's a It might be
36:11
Speaker 1: a disappointment to your stoner buddy out there who's saying, oh,
36:14
Speaker 1: Washington and the Founding Fathers had hemp, we need to
36:16
Speaker 1: legalize everything. It's not quite the same thing, but it
36:19
Speaker 1: does argue for nuance, It argues for understanding the uses
36:24
Speaker 1: of plants and that uh that anyone plant or one
36:29
Speaker 1: species can have different applications. Well said. And also just
36:34
Speaker 1: a soft historical note there. I don't believe any form
36:38
Speaker 1: of cannabis was actually scheduled one until the nineteen seventies,
36:42
Speaker 1: so it's relatively recent, right, Yeah. And I mean we
36:44
Speaker 1: are definitely in a ce change of legalization sweeping the
36:48
Speaker 1: nation right now, which is pretty fascinating time to be
36:50
Speaker 1: around with so many of these changes coming so quickly. Um.
36:53
Speaker 1: There's actually a pretty quick great quote in this article
36:56
Speaker 1: for the Smithsonian that talks about the first hemp crop
36:59
Speaker 1: um being harvested at Mount Vernon recently from this fellow
37:03
Speaker 1: by the name of John Hudak. He says, I think
37:05
Speaker 1: where we're at right now is a situation in which
37:08
Speaker 1: finally a lot of members of Congress and finally stopped
37:10
Speaker 1: buying drug war era rhetoric, stopped thinking about the cannabis
37:13
Speaker 1: plant in a very uniform way. So very much sad
37:16
Speaker 1: supports your point, Christopher, and fascinating For all of our
37:21
Speaker 1: listeners outside of the US and my friends who live
37:25
Speaker 1: in different countries, it's it's a weird process to explain
37:28
Speaker 1: to them that you can be arrested for one thing
37:31
Speaker 1: in one state and it's completely fine in another, and
37:35
Speaker 1: you can hop a flight for a few hours and
37:38
Speaker 1: being a place where you're in the same country, but
37:40
Speaker 1: the laws are completely different. And I kind of have
37:42
Speaker 1: a feeling that old George Washington might have had issues
37:45
Speaker 1: with prohibition of any kind, you know, being that he
37:49
Speaker 1: liked his whiskey and he liked his hamp and you know,
37:51
Speaker 1: it seemed like a you know, civil liberties kind of fellow.
37:54
Speaker 1: You know, I don't know, I wonder what he would
37:55
Speaker 1: have to say as long as it applied to white landowners. Well, okay,
37:59
Speaker 1: that's fair. It was a different time. Yeah, And and
38:02
Speaker 1: there there is historical record of of Washington complaining about
38:05
Speaker 1: soldiers who were drunkards, who consumed too much, who over indulged.
38:10
Speaker 1: And that's been argued by some that Washington was a
38:13
Speaker 1: little more uptight than you might be led to believe.
38:15
Speaker 1: But to me, in reading what he actually said and wrote,
38:18
Speaker 1: it looks more like he was against the over indulgence,
38:20
Speaker 1: not the actual substance itself. He didn't assign a moral
38:23
Speaker 1: value to alcohol or to whatever might have been smoked.
38:27
Speaker 1: You know what else he wasn't was evangelical. He was
38:30
Speaker 1: actually very a religious He was a very moral man
38:33
Speaker 1: and had a real code that he lived by. But
38:35
Speaker 1: he was not a strict adherent to any form of religion.
38:39
Speaker 1: That has been made clear in the record which he had.
38:42
Speaker 1: He had these sorts of beliefs placing rational morality over
38:47
Speaker 1: spiritually motivated morality, in common with some other Founding fathers
38:51
Speaker 1: like Jefferson and his famous Jefferson Bible, where he really
38:55
Speaker 1: he removes everything that he thought was remotely supernatural, which
38:59
Speaker 1: is story for another day. Okay, so we we've painted
39:05
Speaker 1: uh pretty in depth picture right now, and just to
39:09
Speaker 1: just to recap. We've got a whiskey tycoon who is
39:13
Speaker 1: also a freemason who is also a hemp farmer. Hemp tycoon?
39:19
Speaker 1: Is that fair? It seems like he was testing in
39:21
Speaker 1: a little bit more and then he kind of like
39:23
Speaker 1: switched over to grain um. But I don't know. He
39:26
Speaker 1: definitely made some money. And it turns out to that
39:29
Speaker 1: the it became a very profitable export because the Brits
39:33
Speaker 1: really relied on it. They were actually growing in a
39:35
Speaker 1: lot when the colonies were still under British control and
39:40
Speaker 1: they relied on that from them. So when they split,
39:43
Speaker 1: they turned it into much more of a business like exchange.
39:46
Speaker 1: So hang on, guys, hang on, Casey, could we get
39:49
Speaker 1: a like a game show out of time sound effect? Perfect?
39:54
Speaker 1: What's going on? Well, it turns out, Christopher, that we
39:57
Speaker 1: have made a game time decision. We are unning low
40:00
Speaker 1: on times. We want to give this topic the justice
40:04
Speaker 1: it deserves, which means that we are in for a
40:07
Speaker 1: spontaneous two partter. What do you guys say, Oh my gosh,
40:10
Speaker 1: I love it when you actually decide it's going to
40:12
Speaker 1: be a two partner in real time as opposed to postmortem.
40:15
Speaker 1: You know, Wait, Ben, what's going on. It sounds like
40:18
Speaker 1: you've just got to get out of here. You don't
40:19
Speaker 1: want to hang out with us for another couple of
40:21
Speaker 1: hours and talk about George Washington. I I do, I do,
40:24
Speaker 1: and through the magic of editing, will do that in
40:27
Speaker 1: a later episode. Okay, okay, okay, because as we know
40:30
Speaker 1: in the podcast world, time is but an illusion, a
40:33
Speaker 1: flat circle. Indeed, we've actually been here in the studio
40:37
Speaker 1: for about twelve hours talking about George Washington has always
40:40
Speaker 1: been here here. We are check in anytime you like,
40:42
Speaker 1: but you can never leave. We're kidding. This will mark
40:45
Speaker 1: the end of part one of our George Washington and
40:49
Speaker 1: Washington State episode technically, but this will not mark the
40:53
Speaker 1: end of the show. Please tune in for our next episode,
40:57
Speaker 1: when we explore even more strange of secure facts about
41:01
Speaker 1: the first president of the United States. In the meantime,
41:04
Speaker 1: you can say hello to Casey, Noel, Christopher and myself
41:07
Speaker 1: on Instagram. You can find us on Facebook, you can
41:10
Speaker 1: find us on Twitter. Hit us up with your favorite
41:12
Speaker 1: strange historical facts, and if you want to hang out
41:15
Speaker 1: with our favorite part of the show, your fellow listeners,
41:18
Speaker 1: visit us on our community page. Ridiculous historians on Facebook.
41:21
Speaker 1: If you want a little tiny peek into our relatively
41:24
Speaker 1: run of the mill lives, but you know, we do
41:26
Speaker 1: some cool things every now and then, you can check
41:27
Speaker 1: me out at embryonic Inside on Instagram, and I am
41:30
Speaker 1: at Ben Bullen on Instagram molock free photo content. So far,
41:37
Speaker 1: it's good to know. Until the next episode comes out,
41:39
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna be sitting here pulling dollar bills out
41:41
Speaker 1: of my wallet, very very few dollar bills, two money bags,
41:45
Speaker 1: just staring at George, staring at George. Wanted to talk
41:47
Speaker 1: about him with you guys again soon. I can't wait.
41:50
Speaker 1: Do you have any plugs you'd like to plug? I
41:51
Speaker 1: do have some plugs. If you want to find me
41:53
Speaker 1: on Instagram, I'm at Haciotis. That's h A S. S
41:56
Speaker 1: I O T I S. And we all hang out
41:58
Speaker 1: on the Ridiculous of his story and Facebook page. We'll
42:00
Speaker 1: be there too. In the meantime. We would like to think,
42:03
Speaker 1: of course, our super producer, Casey Pegram, would like to
42:06
Speaker 1: thank Alex Williams, who composed our track. We'd like to
42:08
Speaker 1: thank our pal Gabe who helps us out with research,
42:11
Speaker 1: and of course you'd like to thank Christopher Haciota is
42:12
Speaker 1: our incredible guest uh and lifelong pal. No, thank you, Casey.
42:17
Speaker 1: Thanks and if one of you guys would thank what's
42:19
Speaker 1: his name over here for me, I'd appreciate it. We'll
42:22
Speaker 1: see you next time.