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The Sordid History of Bachelor/Bachelorette Parties · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I
0:04
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh,
0:13
Speaker 1: and there's Chuck and Cherry's here too, and we're just
0:15
Speaker 1: batching it on this episode of Stuff you Should Know. Yeah,
0:22
Speaker 1: uh So before we get going, my friend, we want
0:24
Speaker 1: to alert people we've got a little something special at
0:27
Speaker 1: the end of this episode. Our former colleague who was
0:31
Speaker 1: no longer with My Heart but dare I say, one
0:35
Speaker 1: of the best dudes ever and one of our most
0:37
Speaker 1: beloved colleagues, Man Guesh, had to condure he has is
0:42
Speaker 1: doing his own little uh like he calls it his
0:44
Speaker 1: own little podcast shingle, and he's making shows now and
0:48
Speaker 1: he has a great new show that he's launched called
0:51
Speaker 1: Obsessions Colan Wild Chocolate, hosted by Rowan Jacobson, And we're
0:57
Speaker 1: gonna play a preview that at the end of the EPISO. So,
1:00
Speaker 1: but we wanted to tell people what it was about, right, Yeah,
1:03
Speaker 1: it's pretty awesome. Like they kind of call it the
1:05
Speaker 1: Indiana Jones of chocolate, where basically these people who are
1:08
Speaker 1: like really into chocolate, chocolate makers are like, yeah, all
1:12
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1:15
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1:21
Speaker 1: and they go to find it, and Man Guesh made
1:24
Speaker 1: a podcast out of it. So it's really interesting stuff.
1:27
Speaker 1: It's really well made. Man Guest is really good and
1:30
Speaker 1: knows what he's doing with podcasting, so congratulations to him
1:33
Speaker 1: on his podcast company Kaleidoscope, and on Wild Chocolate too.
1:37
Speaker 1: That's right, so check it out Obsessions, Wild Chocolate. It's
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Speaker 1: wherever you can get podcasts and stick around after listener
1:43
Speaker 1: mail where we're gonna have a little preview of it. Okay, Chuck,
1:47
Speaker 1: so we're back at it. Then that's right. A little
1:50
Speaker 1: c a here. This one's probably rated at least PG
1:54
Speaker 1: thirt I would say that, yeah, I mean it's not
1:57
Speaker 1: rated are necessarily, but you know there's it's about bachelor
2:02
Speaker 1: and bachelorette party. So I'm just gonna be talking about
2:06
Speaker 1: some stuff you want You do you really want your
2:08
Speaker 1: kid to learn about bachelor parties? No? I don't either.
2:12
Speaker 1: It's a fair warning. And if you are in other
2:16
Speaker 1: parts of the world and you're like a bachelor party,
2:18
Speaker 1: what's that we're talking about a stag party those of
2:21
Speaker 1: you in the UK, Ireland and Canada. In Australia, we're
2:25
Speaker 1: talking about the Bucks party for that was that was Boston.
2:31
Speaker 1: And by the way, have you seen Kevin kin f himself?
2:34
Speaker 1: Uh no, I have not. We got recommended that from
2:36
Speaker 1: a lot of people after the sitcoms up. It's yeah,
2:39
Speaker 1: it's good. That's why I picked it up too. I
2:42
Speaker 1: mean I was familiar with her, aware of it, but yeah,
2:44
Speaker 1: it's definitely definitely worth watching. Yeah right, I've only seen
2:47
Speaker 1: the first episode and I'm like, this is this has
2:49
Speaker 1: legs for sure? What does that have to do with
2:51
Speaker 1: Bucks parties in Australia. It's set in Worcester and the
2:57
Speaker 1: house from Boston, yes exactly. And a lead I don't
3:01
Speaker 1: know the actor's name, but she, you know, from um
3:04
Speaker 1: Ship's Creek, the daughter sister from Ship's Creek is an
3:08
Speaker 1: amazing like Boston accent without overdoing it. Like she's really good.
3:14
Speaker 1: So it's a good, good show. Chuck. Uh well, quickly then,
3:18
Speaker 1: while we're seguing or diverting, I was just in Boston
3:22
Speaker 1: and I just wanted to shout out. I went up
3:24
Speaker 1: there for a pavement show and from my hotel room.
3:27
Speaker 1: I looked out and what was sitting there but the
3:30
Speaker 1: Wilber Theater. Yeah, our Boston Live Performance Home, right outside
3:34
Speaker 1: my hotel window and right next door to the Whang
3:37
Speaker 1: Theater where Pavement played, And I probably bumped into seven
3:44
Speaker 1: different stuff you should know listeners cool who all came
3:48
Speaker 1: up and chatted it up, sat right next to a
3:50
Speaker 1: couple and promised them live showed freebees, which they need
3:55
Speaker 1: to email me. By the way, if you're out there
3:56
Speaker 1: and listening, it's the only way could happen. We'll probably
4:00
Speaker 1: be in Boston this year. Is a better than average
4:02
Speaker 1: chance when you say, I would say so. So just
4:04
Speaker 1: a big shout out to the Boston Nights because they're
4:07
Speaker 1: always super supportive and nice. And I think my friend
4:10
Speaker 1: from high school and his friends who were with us
4:11
Speaker 1: were like, jeezus, chuck that famous and Nights No, not
4:15
Speaker 1: at all, Like this is like this happens once every
4:18
Speaker 1: few months, not seven times in a night. Sure, I
4:20
Speaker 1: think the fact that it took place at a Pavement
4:22
Speaker 1: show kind of skewed the um in population. Yeah, they
4:26
Speaker 1: were probably on the lookout at any payment show I
4:28
Speaker 1: might be there. Yeah, So back to the content, Yeah,
4:33
Speaker 1: back to back to bachelor parties. What do they call
4:36
Speaker 1: him in France? Oh, in France, they have a great
4:38
Speaker 1: name for him, the entire Monte de vie de Gasson,
4:41
Speaker 1: which means the burial of the life as a boy heavy,
4:45
Speaker 1: Which makes a lot of sense because bachelor parties in
4:48
Speaker 1: particular started at a time like the late nineteenth century,
4:53
Speaker 1: uh is when they really started to become what we
4:57
Speaker 1: understand of them today. Um, at a time when, like
5:02
Speaker 1: you probably were, there's a higher than likely chance that
5:07
Speaker 1: you were going into marriage is a virgin, and so
5:10
Speaker 1: this was exposing you for one last time. You're one
5:13
Speaker 1: last opportunity to you know, um, how do I put
5:18
Speaker 1: this man? If? So, I guess, but without actually doing
5:22
Speaker 1: that more just like you know, seeing a naked woman
5:26
Speaker 1: doing a strip tease or something like that, like this
5:28
Speaker 1: was your chance to do that before you got married
5:30
Speaker 1: kind of thing. And so back then it actually made
5:33
Speaker 1: sense in a certain way, whereas today, because people are
5:37
Speaker 1: getting married later and later, the bachelor party makes less
5:40
Speaker 1: and less sense. But the same behavior from days of
5:45
Speaker 1: your is expected. So there's this weird tense juxtaposition between
5:51
Speaker 1: bachelor parties now and how people actually whether or not
5:55
Speaker 1: they enjoy bachelor parties today, you know what I mean? Yeah,
5:58
Speaker 1: And I mean I think we should just go ahead
6:00
Speaker 1: and say I can speak for you. Neither one of
6:02
Speaker 1: us are big on the traditional bachelor party. Uh, we're trying.
6:07
Speaker 1: We're going to try not to yuck the yums and
6:10
Speaker 1: get to judge. I went camping for my quote unquote
6:13
Speaker 1: bachelor party. Uh that's uh. Never been into strip clubs
6:19
Speaker 1: at all, Uh, much less for a bachelor party. Which
6:22
Speaker 1: is it? Just it makes me uncomfortable just thinking about it. Well, supposedly,
6:27
Speaker 1: Chuck like there's there was at least one ethnographic study. UM. Oh,
6:34
Speaker 1: I can't find it right now. We'll come across it
6:37
Speaker 1: later on. From two thousand sixteen. This uh, this ethnographic
6:41
Speaker 1: study basically followed UM bachelor parties to Bitha and like
6:46
Speaker 1: other places around Europe, and they interviewed UM like the
6:51
Speaker 1: people who were there just kind of candidly, and most
6:53
Speaker 1: of them were like, no, I really don't enjoy this
6:56
Speaker 1: at all. I'm not having that much fun. Like the
6:59
Speaker 1: time when we're hanging out back at the rented house
7:01
Speaker 1: drinking together, that's fun, but like being put on stage
7:05
Speaker 1: and you know, whipped by a stripper is not that fun.
7:08
Speaker 1: It's kind of humiliating, and no, it's not really enjoyable,
7:11
Speaker 1: but I feel like I have to go through it.
7:13
Speaker 1: So that's the tension that I was talking about, where
7:16
Speaker 1: it's like that kind of body raucous, you know, objectifying
7:21
Speaker 1: behavior that again kind of like maybe made sense in
7:25
Speaker 1: the fifties in a different time, it doesn't make sense today,
7:28
Speaker 1: but people still do it, and so it makes people
7:31
Speaker 1: deeply uncomfortable. Um as far as most I can't say
7:36
Speaker 1: most days, as far as plenty of studies who have
7:38
Speaker 1: actually looked at this thing and a lot of anecdotal
7:40
Speaker 1: evidence to say, yeah, I'm a full belief that the
7:45
Speaker 1: traditional hedonistic bachelor party thing is being driven still by
7:49
Speaker 1: like a small minority of guys that are like, go
7:56
Speaker 1: to do it, dude, that kind of guy. They are
7:58
Speaker 1: called you're desperate already married friend. Those are the ones
8:02
Speaker 1: that are trouble at a bachelor party. You have to
8:05
Speaker 1: look out for. Those are the ones that push everybody
8:08
Speaker 1: else to do dumb stuff that they wouldn't totally do
8:11
Speaker 1: and that they'll later regret. As a matter of fact,
8:14
Speaker 1: if you want to have a chill bachelor party. Do
8:16
Speaker 1: not invite me desperate already married friends. No, not at all,
8:21
Speaker 1: or hopefully if you're you know, get married a little
8:23
Speaker 1: later in life, then then everyone is sort of a
8:26
Speaker 1: little more on board with something chill. And that seems
8:29
Speaker 1: to have um caused bachelor parties to evolve into you
8:33
Speaker 1: know what they're becoming more and more today, which are
8:36
Speaker 1: basically like men's retreats to barbecue and like hike and
8:40
Speaker 1: stuff like that. And there are definitely plenty that go
8:43
Speaker 1: to Vegas or you know, go out of the country
8:46
Speaker 1: or something like that and just party hard, but there's
8:49
Speaker 1: a growing number of of ones that just do like
8:53
Speaker 1: you said, like go camping, you know, just hang out
8:55
Speaker 1: with your pals, which is ultimately what the points supposed
8:57
Speaker 1: to be. The point of a bachelor party, isn't it
8:59
Speaker 1: you umiliate the groom to be But that is a
9:03
Speaker 1: huge kind of through thread, uh in a lot of them.
9:08
Speaker 1: The point is to just like celebrate your time as
9:11
Speaker 1: an individual. I saw I put so perfectly. It was
9:14
Speaker 1: on a gay marriage website and they were talking about
9:16
Speaker 1: whether you should throw a bachelor party for both grooms
9:20
Speaker 1: or a combined one. And this website was saying one
9:23
Speaker 1: for each because what they're doing is going into a
9:26
Speaker 1: marriage and they're combining themselves. This is one of those
9:29
Speaker 1: times when they can be celebrated as individuals separately, distinctly,
9:34
Speaker 1: And that's ultimately what a bachelor party is supposed to
9:37
Speaker 1: be about. It's celebrating this individual before they basically become
9:41
Speaker 1: responsible and enter into a union with another person and
9:44
Speaker 1: become a couple. That's that's ideally what the bachelor party
9:48
Speaker 1: sentiment is supposed to be. That's right. Uh. And the
9:51
Speaker 1: only time I will get super judge is if you
9:54
Speaker 1: are one of those dudes that thinks it is okay
9:58
Speaker 1: or you should like have sex with one last girl
10:04
Speaker 1: before you get married. Make the worst decision you've ever made.
10:08
Speaker 1: You are cheating on them, and you will cheat on
10:11
Speaker 1: them again one day probably, and that is not right
10:14
Speaker 1: in any way, shape or form. So again this is
10:17
Speaker 1: anecdotal self reporting. But on George ta Kay's website, I
10:23
Speaker 1: don't know what he was doing. He hosted like a
10:27
Speaker 1: that was Jeffrey Tambor and George t Ka cross together?
10:32
Speaker 1: Yeah or Hank? What was hankstand? Hank? Yeah? Um? So
10:37
Speaker 1: On George t Kay's website, he had this this like
10:40
Speaker 1: list of like people who wrote in and said, like, yeah,
10:43
Speaker 1: I was at this bachelor party and the wedding ended
10:45
Speaker 1: because the groom cheated on his fiance, like at the
10:48
Speaker 1: bachelor party the night before the wedding, and the you know,
10:51
Speaker 1: the fiance found out because her brothers there. That was
10:55
Speaker 1: part of the bachelor party. Um. And so apparently there
10:59
Speaker 1: have been again I didn't see like, you know, anything
11:02
Speaker 1: out of like Rutgers or m I T that was
11:06
Speaker 1: a study on this, but anecdotally, there have been marriages
11:09
Speaker 1: that have ended before they started because just terrible decisions
11:13
Speaker 1: were made at the bachelor party. That's right, And uh,
11:16
Speaker 1: ladies were not forgetting about you. The bachelorette party is
11:19
Speaker 1: a big thing. They also called them hind parties. Uh
11:22
Speaker 1: they called them early on, I think hind parties, but
11:24
Speaker 1: they came about much later, generally between the seventies and
11:28
Speaker 1: the nineties is when that kind of started. And we'll
11:31
Speaker 1: touch on both as we go along. But first, and Livia,
11:36
Speaker 1: God bless her. I feel bad for even putting her
11:38
Speaker 1: through this, but she helped us put this one together
11:41
Speaker 1: and did a really good job. And that she looked
11:44
Speaker 1: at a lot of other sort of pre wedding traditions,
11:47
Speaker 1: and you know, the bachelor and batchelrette parties are one thing,
11:50
Speaker 1: but there's a long, long history across every culture you
11:53
Speaker 1: can think of kind of since marriage was even a thing,
11:56
Speaker 1: that there is some sort of pre day before or week.
11:59
Speaker 1: But for rituals that different cultures partake in, yep, ritual bath,
12:05
Speaker 1: the mikvah and Jewish tradition, ancient Greece, women used to
12:10
Speaker 1: hang out and sacrifice things to the gods before the
12:14
Speaker 1: day before. There was one in Sweden I thought was
12:17
Speaker 1: pretty interesting. In seventeenth century Sweden. They celebrated the muck Verlaar,
12:23
Speaker 1: which is virgin nights, so they would bathe and feast
12:26
Speaker 1: and drink with their friends. And there was actually one
12:29
Speaker 1: town in sixty nine of Uppsala that said no more,
12:34
Speaker 1: like you're showing up so hungover on the wedding day,
12:37
Speaker 1: Like we can't do the muk vlaar here anymore. It's banned.
12:41
Speaker 1: That's another thing too, like there are a few bad
12:45
Speaker 1: ideas that have to do with marriage that are are
12:47
Speaker 1: worse than having a bachelor and or bachelor at party
12:52
Speaker 1: the night before the wedding. Not the time to it.
12:54
Speaker 1: That's when you have your rehearsal dinners and stuff. Usually, right,
12:56
Speaker 1: it's supposed to be like kind of chill and exciting,
12:59
Speaker 1: not not partying like that the day the night before
13:02
Speaker 1: the wedding. Like you have to be so bad at
13:05
Speaker 1: thinking things through to actually do that that it's just
13:09
Speaker 1: kind of mind boggling but also hilarious in a way. Uh,
13:12
Speaker 1: there's one in the northeastern Scotland, I think in rural
13:15
Speaker 1: Scotland that I think still happens. I'd love to hear
13:17
Speaker 1: from our friends there. But they will drive it's called
13:22
Speaker 1: the Blackening. They will get the bride and groom and
13:25
Speaker 1: kind of fake kidnaped them. And you'll see that happens
13:28
Speaker 1: a lot in a lot of these traditions. It's like
13:29
Speaker 1: what we've got you now, and they will cover them
13:32
Speaker 1: with disgusting sticky things, dog food, rotten eggs, does anything
13:39
Speaker 1: that'll kind of stick to your body and humiliate you,
13:41
Speaker 1: and they will drive you around in the back of
13:43
Speaker 1: a truck basically around town. And they basically said there
13:47
Speaker 1: are not many rules except that you're uncomfortable and embarrassed. Basically.
13:53
Speaker 1: One thing I saw was that, um, this is like
13:55
Speaker 1: a farming community, so that like manure doesn't actually work
14:00
Speaker 1: because everybody's so used to the smell of manure that
14:02
Speaker 1: if you smear it on somebody like whatever, it's not
14:05
Speaker 1: they're not close to the coast, so they'll actually drive
14:09
Speaker 1: to the coastal areas to get like fish guts and
14:11
Speaker 1: stuff because those people do find the particularly disgusting and
14:16
Speaker 1: offensive smelling. Wow. Yeah, it's kind of mean, but it
14:19
Speaker 1: actually evolved out of a tradition of washing the bride's
14:23
Speaker 1: feet and it ended up becoming bad in this little
14:27
Speaker 1: part of Skyland. But yeah, it still goes on from
14:29
Speaker 1: what I saw. So if you look at the US, uh,
14:33
Speaker 1: in the United States, we're talking about, like you said,
14:35
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century when these things kind of became a thing. Uh.
14:39
Speaker 1: There's a sociologist named Thomas Turnell read that did an
14:45
Speaker 1: article with Life Science and basically said, you know, when
14:48
Speaker 1: we became industrialized and we moved into the cities and
14:51
Speaker 1: started working in factories, new rituals came about. Now that
14:54
Speaker 1: you weren't in doing sort of the farming community rituals
14:57
Speaker 1: where if you had kind of any sort of promotion
15:01
Speaker 1: or anything to mark a rite of passage, people would
15:05
Speaker 1: maybe an apprenticeship would end or something. You would take
15:08
Speaker 1: people out and you would like to drink beer with them,
15:11
Speaker 1: maybe played practical jokes on them, maybe tarn feather there
15:16
Speaker 1: their jumpsuit for work or something like that. And this
15:20
Speaker 1: is what this sociologist thinks sort of led to this
15:23
Speaker 1: tradition of bachelor and bachelorette parties of getting the other
15:26
Speaker 1: drinking a lot. Maybe some practical jokes will get to
15:29
Speaker 1: those later, but those are still a thing apparently. Yeah,
15:32
Speaker 1: which makes sense. I think it's a pretty good argument
15:34
Speaker 1: because you have these these you know, new living situations,
15:38
Speaker 1: but still some of those old surviving traditions, so you
15:41
Speaker 1: have to come up with, you know, new customs around
15:44
Speaker 1: those traditions because the old living situation isn't around anymore.
15:47
Speaker 1: I totally buy that. I buy it too. Uh. And
15:50
Speaker 1: Livia also found this really cool story that sort of
15:53
Speaker 1: exposed a lot of um how the how the richies
15:59
Speaker 1: lived in Gilded Age in New York. It was exposed
16:02
Speaker 1: with something called the Awful Seely Dinner. And this was
16:06
Speaker 1: the Seely family in New York and this was these
16:10
Speaker 1: were relatives, I think, ancestors of P. T. Barnum, right,
16:15
Speaker 1: the descendants of P. T. Barnum. Yeah, the grandson. What's
16:18
Speaker 1: the difference. I always forget P. T. Barnum who came
16:22
Speaker 1: before was their ancestor descendants, right, So Um isn't one
16:27
Speaker 1: of your favorite movies, The Descendants it is, But I
16:30
Speaker 1: also called the ancestor sometimes so Herbert Barnum seely uh
16:36
Speaker 1: through this party for his brother Clinton. Um. Just I
16:39
Speaker 1: guess eleven days before he was to be married, and
16:42
Speaker 1: I guess did get married. And it was at a
16:45
Speaker 1: restaurant called Sherry's. At a time before there was like
16:50
Speaker 1: dining out was a thing, So this was really really expensive. Actually,
16:54
Speaker 1: you know what, dining out was a thing. I looked
16:56
Speaker 1: into this party a little bit more. But uh, if
16:59
Speaker 1: you were really a leat, as you'll see, you like
17:02
Speaker 1: a lot of privacy and you like to do some
17:04
Speaker 1: like nasty things sometimes. So there was this big private
17:08
Speaker 1: dining scene in New York at the time that was
17:10
Speaker 1: a really really big deal. Okay, potato potato, But so
17:15
Speaker 1: they were doing this private dining thing. Yeah, that actually
17:18
Speaker 1: makes a lot of sense because they they had very
17:22
Speaker 1: tight lipped wait staff help performers. When they were interviewed
17:26
Speaker 1: with the cops, all these people were like, it is
17:28
Speaker 1: not within our our social strata to inform on the
17:32
Speaker 1: people who hired. We just can't. And from what I understand,
17:35
Speaker 1: the cops were like, yeah, we we totally get it.
17:37
Speaker 1: We don't have a case, but we totally get it.
17:40
Speaker 1: And it wasn't until Herbert Barnum Seeley told the cops
17:43
Speaker 1: who some of the attendees were. The cops went and
17:46
Speaker 1: interviewed these incredibly rich people and stuff started to come out,
17:50
Speaker 1: and it was like, no, they actually did have a
17:52
Speaker 1: woman who did like this, who jumped naked out of
17:54
Speaker 1: a I guess a cream pie or something like that
17:57
Speaker 1: and danced on the table. Her name was Little Egit.
18:00
Speaker 1: She was kind of a famous dancer at the time.
18:03
Speaker 1: But this is a time where like, as far as
18:06
Speaker 1: society was concerned, you did not do this. This is
18:09
Speaker 1: like finding out that, you know, the wealthy have eyes
18:13
Speaker 1: wide shut parties. I think was was what it what
18:15
Speaker 1: it was like, but you know, times a million, because
18:18
Speaker 1: the the Victorian era was so genteel. Yeah, but here's
18:22
Speaker 1: the thing, they totally did this, which is why they
18:26
Speaker 1: had all those private dining events because they like to
18:29
Speaker 1: do stuff like this. So they were tipped off, but
18:31
Speaker 1: I think an agent of one of the dancers. The
18:34
Speaker 1: cops were tipped off that there was, you know, lurid
18:36
Speaker 1: things happening. So the cops show up and accidentally walk
18:40
Speaker 1: in on um a bunch of dancers changing, like you know,
18:45
Speaker 1: changing their outfits, and were embarrassed away basically away from
18:49
Speaker 1: the premises, said we you know, didn't see anything, and
18:52
Speaker 1: then the seelis it probably would have just kept quiet
18:55
Speaker 1: if it hadn't been for the Seelie's taking it back
18:57
Speaker 1: to the city and saying, you know what, what you wanna,
19:00
Speaker 1: we want these cops investigated, and so all of a sudden,
19:03
Speaker 1: they're dirty laundry is being dragged out. And it was
19:06
Speaker 1: quite the scandal of the New York court system because,
19:11
Speaker 1: like you said, these people didn't this quote unquote low society,
19:14
Speaker 1: didn't mix with the high society. And all of these
19:18
Speaker 1: people were brought through to testify in court, and apparently
19:21
Speaker 1: the people in court watching was everything from the high
19:24
Speaker 1: society person looking to get dirt or laugh at their
19:28
Speaker 1: you know, uh, their comrades or whatever, to the to
19:33
Speaker 1: the the guy on the street who was just looking
19:35
Speaker 1: for warmth in the courtroom. And so they were all
19:38
Speaker 1: kinds of people mixing in New York when you really
19:40
Speaker 1: never saw this happening. And you know, the the dancers,
19:43
Speaker 1: they had all their outfits rigged to either be snipped
19:46
Speaker 1: off with scissors or for their stockings to drop, and
19:49
Speaker 1: it was just for the time. Very lord stuff, big
19:53
Speaker 1: time embarrassment. There's a lot of fun um contemporary contemporaneous articles.
20:00
Speaker 1: There's one from the New Yorker that's really fun to
20:02
Speaker 1: read about the Awful Seely Party. Uh. And just a
20:05
Speaker 1: little quick side note about little egypt Um. She was
20:08
Speaker 1: quite the business lady. Apparently she was a real estate
20:11
Speaker 1: investor and died of very sadly died a couple of
20:15
Speaker 1: years later gas asphxiation and apartment, but died with in
20:20
Speaker 1: today's dollars, about a million bucks in the bank. Yeah,
20:24
Speaker 1: so she had it going on. Yeah. And apparently she
20:26
Speaker 1: was secretly married and her husband wouldn't claim her in public,
20:29
Speaker 1: but when she died he came forward immediately. It was like,
20:32
Speaker 1: that was my wife, that's my money. So um. The
20:37
Speaker 1: upshot of the Awful Seely Dinners, it was called it
20:40
Speaker 1: gave bachelor parties or bachelor dinners is what they were.
20:43
Speaker 1: Called at the time kind of a bad name because
20:45
Speaker 1: everybody had assumed that, yeah, there's some drinking and you know,
20:48
Speaker 1: they smoked maybe an extra cigar or something like that.
20:51
Speaker 1: This really exposed them, uh and and just just gave
20:56
Speaker 1: him bad reputation, it turns out, for like twenty five
20:59
Speaker 1: years tops, because no less than Emily Post in her
21:05
Speaker 1: book Etiquette in Society and Business, in Politics and at Home,
21:09
Speaker 1: wrote that the bachelor dinner is popularly supposed to have
21:13
Speaker 1: been a frightful orgy, but in reality it was a
21:16
Speaker 1: sheep in wolf's clothing. So her point was less than
21:20
Speaker 1: a quarter century after this awful Sealy dinner when it
21:22
Speaker 1: comes out that the rich at their bachelor parties higher
21:25
Speaker 1: like couples to perform sex shows in the middle of dinner.
21:29
Speaker 1: Um By by this time, Emily posted saying, no, that
21:32
Speaker 1: was all just hysterical. They're actually very staid events. Yeah,
21:36
Speaker 1: and she really I don't know if she didn't know
21:39
Speaker 1: what she's talking about, That's what I think. Probably, So
21:42
Speaker 1: I was just didn't know if she was trying to
21:44
Speaker 1: just make things seem a little more upstanding than they were.
21:47
Speaker 1: But yeah, she probably just didn't even know what was
21:49
Speaker 1: really going on, because Uh, I think it was that
21:53
Speaker 1: very same time period. There was a counterclaim, which I
21:57
Speaker 1: just called the reality of it all. Uh. There was
22:00
Speaker 1: an oral history gathered by the w p A, which
22:04
Speaker 1: is a Rhode Island French Canadian of a Rhode Island
22:09
Speaker 1: French Canadian tech stile worker named Henry Boucher, who described
22:13
Speaker 1: in first person his own stag party, and it was
22:17
Speaker 1: a raucous affair. Basically, they had a priest there that
22:20
Speaker 1: gave a speech about the duties of a married man
22:22
Speaker 1: and gave a toast. But then they basically said he
22:25
Speaker 1: had a good you know, the good sense to get
22:28
Speaker 1: out of there really quickly. Uh. And we were really
22:31
Speaker 1: relieved because you know, income the the strip tease acts
22:34
Speaker 1: and stuff like that, and we didn't want the priest here.
22:37
Speaker 1: So Emily Post had it all wrong. That's that's my
22:41
Speaker 1: take that she was just like, this isn't possible. My
22:43
Speaker 1: my brain won't comprehend what's actually going on at these
22:46
Speaker 1: bachelor dinners. So um, at the very least by the
22:51
Speaker 1: nineteenth late nineteenth century into the twenties, the bachelor party
22:55
Speaker 1: is really starting to evolve and take shape and reflect
22:58
Speaker 1: what we're seeing today. Right, and I say, something else
23:01
Speaker 1: that's evolving and taking shape is a ad break. Very nice, okay, Chuck.
23:30
Speaker 1: So the whole time that the bachelor party is evolving,
23:32
Speaker 1: starting in the late nineteenth century, there wasn't really anything
23:35
Speaker 1: that was um, what's the word I'm looking for, chunk,
23:39
Speaker 1: i't know. The bride didn't have anything quite similar to
23:44
Speaker 1: the bachelor party analogus, yes, thank you, um, but there
23:49
Speaker 1: was like a bridal shower. Those have been around since
23:52
Speaker 1: from what I saw, sixteenth century Belgium, and the origin
23:56
Speaker 1: story for those is really sweet. There was a wealthy
23:59
Speaker 1: girl who all in love with a poor I saw
24:02
Speaker 1: a miller's son, um, and her father was like, you
24:05
Speaker 1: can't marry him, and if you try to proceed, I'm
24:08
Speaker 1: I'm keeping your dowry and you guys will be broke,
24:11
Speaker 1: and so don't even try it. She said, I don't care, father,
24:14
Speaker 1: I'm marrying him anyway. And they got married anyway, and
24:17
Speaker 1: the town found out about this and was so moved
24:19
Speaker 1: by their love that they actually brought gifts to get
24:23
Speaker 1: This couple started in life too in in lieu of
24:27
Speaker 1: the dowry that I think the father finally relented him
24:29
Speaker 1: was like here fine, here's the dowry too. But they
24:31
Speaker 1: say that that's the origin story of the bridle shower,
24:34
Speaker 1: which was the bride and her friends and her future
24:36
Speaker 1: in laws and her mom and her future mother in law. Um,
24:40
Speaker 1: kind of hanging out having a very nice, um tasteful
24:44
Speaker 1: like luncheon or brunch and then getting you know, presents
24:47
Speaker 1: that were usually of like a household nature, that's right. Uh.
24:50
Speaker 1: And in the twentieth century, early twentieth century and Britain,
24:55
Speaker 1: women there started celebrating, uh, what was called ribbon girl traditions,
25:02
Speaker 1: and they would decorate the bride with ribbons and hearts
25:06
Speaker 1: and kitchen utensils and stuff like that, because of course
25:10
Speaker 1: this is a time where they're like get ready for
25:12
Speaker 1: a life of you know, domestic servitude, because that's what's
25:16
Speaker 1: coming your way. And yeah, and they would parade her
25:19
Speaker 1: around on the factory floor where she worked. Um. And
25:22
Speaker 1: then this sort of evolved over time, and then by
25:24
Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties is especially into the seventies, is when women,
25:29
Speaker 1: especially in the US, started saying, hey, you know, maybe
25:33
Speaker 1: these showers were throwing should be a little bit more
25:36
Speaker 1: like what these guys are doing, and um, this is
25:40
Speaker 1: kind of pre bacherette party still, but they would have
25:43
Speaker 1: what they would call a personal shower where all of
25:45
Speaker 1: a sudden, you're not getting a toaster or a spatula,
25:48
Speaker 1: but you might get you know, like a sex toy
25:51
Speaker 1: or something fun like that, right, and the future mother
25:55
Speaker 1: in law was typically not invited to that, typically unless
25:58
Speaker 1: you know she's fun and as a open mind. Sure,
26:02
Speaker 1: so that's the sixties, I guess I'm taking it as
26:05
Speaker 1: the late sixties. Within three decades, um, the early nineties,
26:11
Speaker 1: So within just a couple of decades actually, yeah, Um,
26:14
Speaker 1: it evolved at least in the UK into him parties,
26:17
Speaker 1: which became like boozy, raucous body events where the bachelor
26:25
Speaker 1: atte party that you might see at a club today
26:28
Speaker 1: really kind of finds its route from what I understand
26:31
Speaker 1: in the UK in the early nineties, Um, and there's
26:35
Speaker 1: I think they're still called him parties today, and then
26:38
Speaker 1: in the United States, Chuck. They attribute the rise of
26:41
Speaker 1: bachelorette parties not necessarily from people going over the UK
26:44
Speaker 1: for hem parties and coming back and saying like we
26:46
Speaker 1: gotta try this, but almost evolving independently thanks to the
26:50
Speaker 1: arrival of the Chippendale's review in Los Angeles in nine
26:55
Speaker 1: that that apparently kicked off the bachelorette industry, bachelorette party industry.
27:00
Speaker 1: I can only think of Chris Farley when I hear
27:02
Speaker 1: the word Shippendale's and Patrick Swayze, Yeah, what a great
27:06
Speaker 1: bit um And that look that Patrick Sayzy has where
27:09
Speaker 1: he's just like, I can't compete with this when he's
27:11
Speaker 1: watching Chris Farley, it was just priceless. I would like
27:14
Speaker 1: to equally shame the bachelorette parties because there are two
27:19
Speaker 1: words of advice. If you see a big, raucous bachelor
27:22
Speaker 1: party coming your way in a bar or a club,
27:24
Speaker 1: run the other way. If you see a bachelorette party
27:27
Speaker 1: headed your way at a club or a bar, run
27:29
Speaker 1: the other way. For you don't want to be swept
27:31
Speaker 1: up into any of these shenanigans. Uh. And I have
27:34
Speaker 1: unwittingly somehow been swept up in bachelorette party shenanigans more
27:40
Speaker 1: than once in my life because a lot of yeah,
27:43
Speaker 1: a lot of times there's a bacheltte parties will have
27:46
Speaker 1: a kind of um body scavenger hunt kind of thing
27:49
Speaker 1: where they're like, but they're all dares, like the bride
27:52
Speaker 1: has to go do whatever to whoever. And I've been
27:56
Speaker 1: that guy a couple of times somehow where they're like,
27:58
Speaker 1: she wants to do uh uh, I don't even know.
28:02
Speaker 1: It's just like a shot out of your belly button
28:04
Speaker 1: or something dumb. It wasn't that, but just it's it's
28:07
Speaker 1: always stuff like that. Take a shot from a stranger's beard.
28:14
Speaker 1: I think I still have a bachelor at in my
28:16
Speaker 1: beard somewhere. Uh. There might be like whip cream involved.
28:20
Speaker 1: Just just go away. You don't want to be a
28:22
Speaker 1: part of any of this stuff. It's true. At least
28:24
Speaker 1: I don't want to be. It's just embarrassing for me.
28:26
Speaker 1: You'll put a penis shaped straw in your mouth faster
28:28
Speaker 1: than you can say. You open your mouth to say,
28:32
Speaker 1: wait a minute, and there it goes. So Um chipping
28:36
Speaker 1: Dale show up in nineteen The word bachelorette party is
28:41
Speaker 1: um coined in a New York Times article. Um, and
28:45
Speaker 1: they're just talking basically about what you might think of
28:49
Speaker 1: is more of like a spa weekend today, not at
28:51
Speaker 1: the bachelor atte party like you just described. Um. That
28:55
Speaker 1: didn't come along until about the eighties or the nineties,
28:59
Speaker 1: and one of the reasons why, at least, I should say,
29:01
Speaker 1: in the United States, definitely in the early nineties. In
29:04
Speaker 1: the UK, some people say, no, it still wasn't even
29:08
Speaker 1: a thing in the early nineties in the US. But
29:11
Speaker 1: one of the reasons why they became bodier and body
29:13
Speaker 1: or and more and more extravagant and more and more
29:16
Speaker 1: out and proud. Basically proud is the wrong word, but
29:21
Speaker 1: you understand what I mean is because people started getting
29:25
Speaker 1: married later and later, and so they didn't have to
29:27
Speaker 1: go to their parents and be like, I need five
29:29
Speaker 1: thousand dollars to throw this party that you would not
29:32
Speaker 1: want me to have ever in a million years. They
29:35
Speaker 1: had their own money and their friends had their own
29:37
Speaker 1: money because they weren't. They weren't getting married at twenty
29:41
Speaker 1: one and then starting their professional life. They've been working
29:44
Speaker 1: for a decade already before. Now they're going to get hitched.
29:47
Speaker 1: And that changed everything. That was the big sea change
29:51
Speaker 1: for bachelor parties that in my opinion, made them no
29:55
Speaker 1: longer make sense in that context any longer, because peop
30:00
Speaker 1: we weren't getting married basically as children. They were getting
30:03
Speaker 1: married as grown adults now, and so it doesn't make
30:06
Speaker 1: sense to go back and behave like children the you know,
30:10
Speaker 1: a few days before you get married. That's that's what
30:13
Speaker 1: I'm saying. No, I'm with you. Um. And also as
30:16
Speaker 1: that sort of was in lock step with the rise
30:18
Speaker 1: of a party industry, that kind of you know, marched
30:22
Speaker 1: in lockstep with it. So people started having more money
30:25
Speaker 1: because they were getting married later, and all of a
30:28
Speaker 1: sudden there was this industry surrounding it where you know,
30:32
Speaker 1: you just have to call a company if you want to.
30:35
Speaker 1: You can also play in your own stuff, of course,
30:36
Speaker 1: and people still do that, but I mean Lyda gave
30:39
Speaker 1: one example. There was a scholar UH named Diane Tye
30:42
Speaker 1: who interviewed and of course this is all again that
30:45
Speaker 1: the Thankfully they don't do a lot of studies, like
30:47
Speaker 1: real studies on this stuff, but they did some. She
30:51
Speaker 1: did some interviews with UM, middle class Eastern Canadian middle
30:55
Speaker 1: class white women in the mid nineties, and then interviewed
30:59
Speaker 1: the same type of people UH in two thousand, seventeen
31:03
Speaker 1: and eighteen. And the big difference was in the mid
31:06
Speaker 1: nineties they were all just sort of planning the stuff
31:08
Speaker 1: from scratch, and by the time the two thousand tents
31:10
Speaker 1: came along, you would call a company up and there
31:13
Speaker 1: would be a script basically where you drink these you know,
31:17
Speaker 1: uh colored sugary drinks, and there was a penis cake
31:22
Speaker 1: and uh games, you know, pin the pin the penis
31:25
Speaker 1: on the Playboy, and there might be mail strippers and
31:29
Speaker 1: just a lot of phallic stuff happening. Yeah, but you know,
31:33
Speaker 1: it's like it's one thing to plan all that from scratch,
31:36
Speaker 1: Like that is your best friend who did that for you?
31:38
Speaker 1: And I think for your best friend to just like
31:40
Speaker 1: email a company and be like I need and I
31:42
Speaker 1: need this on this night and we'll show up and
31:44
Speaker 1: then that's it. You know, the soul's taken out of
31:47
Speaker 1: it a little bit. Oh No, I totally agree, because
31:49
Speaker 1: any any party you throw for someone should have that
31:53
Speaker 1: personal planning touch, I think, you know. Yeah, So hats
31:57
Speaker 1: off to the maids of honor from the early nineties.
32:00
Speaker 1: Out out to them, right, that's right. Uh, If you
32:04
Speaker 1: do any kind of research on bachelor and bachelotte parties,
32:07
Speaker 1: you will find a lot of articles kind of starting
32:10
Speaker 1: in the late nineties everywhere from like Vice to maxim
32:15
Speaker 1: to the New York Times. So they and they're all
32:18
Speaker 1: written a little mournfully and sadly where where they're saying, like,
32:21
Speaker 1: you know, the old days of the wild hedonistic bachelor
32:24
Speaker 1: parties are going the way of the dodo in These days,
32:28
Speaker 1: guys just want to go on a fly fishing trip
32:30
Speaker 1: and ladies just want a nice spa weekend with some
32:32
Speaker 1: good wine and prosecco. Uh. And isn't it a shame
32:37
Speaker 1: almost that that guys aren't going out and trying to
32:39
Speaker 1: have sex with one more lady before their wedding day? Right,
32:44
Speaker 1: They're very annoying to read to me. Yeah, no, it's
32:47
Speaker 1: true for sure, And like they always like interview somebody
32:49
Speaker 1: who's like, what's going on? This terrible? You know exactly.
32:54
Speaker 1: But the thing is, from from all appearances, the bachelor
32:59
Speaker 1: party is not actually going away anytime soon, the rowdy,
33:03
Speaker 1: raucous bachelor and bachelor atte parties again. Yes, more and
33:06
Speaker 1: more people are coming up with alternatives that suit them
33:09
Speaker 1: and their friends and their you know, demeanors much more.
33:12
Speaker 1: They're just like, I don't need to be publicly humiliated
33:16
Speaker 1: because this is some sort of right of passage that
33:19
Speaker 1: you know, my dad went through. My older brother, who cares.
33:22
Speaker 1: I'm not going to do that anymore. And I think
33:24
Speaker 1: that that sentiment has really kind of freed people quite
33:26
Speaker 1: a bit, but they're still I would say the vast
33:29
Speaker 1: majority of a bachelor and bachelorrette parties are of the
33:33
Speaker 1: very stereotypical kind that you imagine. Yeah, and you know what,
33:36
Speaker 1: I haven't even been to many of those uh my
33:40
Speaker 1: dude friends. I feel like a few of them had those,
33:44
Speaker 1: and I was out of town when they got married,
33:46
Speaker 1: so I was just around for the wedding. But I
33:48
Speaker 1: went to one of them, of one of my good
33:50
Speaker 1: friends who had kind of a stereotypical I mean there
33:54
Speaker 1: were no like sex acts, but you know, there were
33:57
Speaker 1: strip clubs and just to auchery, and I was so like,
34:02
Speaker 1: all that stuff just makes me. It's not even uncomfortable,
34:06
Speaker 1: but nervous, like, oh, I just I've seen too many
34:10
Speaker 1: movies and we'll get to the movies in a second,
34:12
Speaker 1: or just I don't know, just bad luck coming that.
34:16
Speaker 1: I just don't want to be super involved. And these
34:20
Speaker 1: are like close friends sometimes and so for for that one,
34:23
Speaker 1: I was the uh d' not putting myself up as
34:26
Speaker 1: some like saint or anything at all, but I just
34:29
Speaker 1: don't want to be involved in that level of of
34:32
Speaker 1: hard partying for the night. Um, and I was the driver.
34:35
Speaker 1: We rented a van and I sober drove everyone around,
34:39
Speaker 1: drove into all the places. We saw Snoop dog at
34:41
Speaker 1: a strip club in Atlanta, which was kind of fine. Uh,
34:44
Speaker 1: and he remarked that we all had sideburns. This was
34:46
Speaker 1: the nineties after all, so Snoop Dogg recognized us. He was, well,
34:52
Speaker 1: i'll tell you what he said later. Uh in private.
34:54
Speaker 1: But uh. As soon as I got them back to
34:57
Speaker 1: the rented hotel and everyone was, you know, going to
35:00
Speaker 1: be in one place, I said good night and I left.
35:04
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, you're like, okay, you're all safe, goodbye things.
35:06
Speaker 1: That was it. And I heard the stories later and
35:08
Speaker 1: I was like, boy, am I glad I left? Right?
35:10
Speaker 1: And these are people that I love and I'm not
35:11
Speaker 1: judging them, but it's just never been my scene. I'm
35:14
Speaker 1: too nervous about that kind of thing. Yeah, but again,
35:16
Speaker 1: I think it's really cool that younger people today and
35:20
Speaker 1: I'm younger means I guess people in their thirties, even
35:24
Speaker 1: as far as we're concerned chuck um like that, they
35:27
Speaker 1: are comfortable saying I don't really want to do that. Everybody,
35:30
Speaker 1: do we have to do that, and everybody else is saying, no,
35:33
Speaker 1: we don't have to do that. Let's figure something else out,
35:36
Speaker 1: you know. Not. And again, if you're really really into
35:39
Speaker 1: bachelor parties and you're so psyched that your best friend
35:42
Speaker 1: is going to throw you just a rager of a
35:44
Speaker 1: bachelor party, man, hats off to you. Like, I don't
35:47
Speaker 1: think anything we're saying is meant to like like you said,
35:50
Speaker 1: yuck that yung. I just think that there's there's people
35:53
Speaker 1: are like, okay, cool, you know, let's do something different instead,
35:56
Speaker 1: and they feel comfortable doing that because it shows that
35:58
Speaker 1: America and the West is growing up. Let's take a break. Okay,
36:04
Speaker 1: we'll be right back. Stop. All right, we promised talk
36:30
Speaker 1: of movies. You can't talk about bachelor bachelorette parties without
36:33
Speaker 1: talking about movies, because there are movies called bachelor Party.
36:38
Speaker 1: There was one called The Bachelor Party from seven. I
36:41
Speaker 1: want to see this movie. I kind of do too.
36:43
Speaker 1: I was faced on an old stage. I'm sorry, TV play,
36:46
Speaker 1: but uh, this is sort of one of those things
36:48
Speaker 1: where goodness wins in the end because the newlywed, uh,
36:53
Speaker 1: you know, inevitably, it's revealed that his his home life
36:57
Speaker 1: is secure, quiet home life is much better then his
37:00
Speaker 1: playboy friends, who kind of plans this evening right, and
37:03
Speaker 1: the potential love interest is played by Mortisia Adams. Okay,
37:09
Speaker 1: Caroline Jones, I think was her name. I don't know
37:12
Speaker 1: if I've ever seen her, not in her Mortia get up.
37:15
Speaker 1: It's it's odd. You can tell it's her if you
37:19
Speaker 1: know that it's her, but it's just, you know, it
37:21
Speaker 1: just doesn't quite look like her. Um. And then there's
37:24
Speaker 1: like the hilarious typical boomer humor of How to Murder
37:29
Speaker 1: Your Wife, a n Jack Lemon movie, who who figures
37:33
Speaker 1: out that he married a a not great woman who
37:38
Speaker 1: was the person who jumped out of his friend's cake
37:40
Speaker 1: at the bachelor party the night before, which The Hangover
37:43
Speaker 1: totally stole. Yeah, it was married, Heather Graham. Sure, yeah,
37:51
Speaker 1: I don't know if we should jump forward to The
37:53
Speaker 1: Hangover yet because that was just such a monumental movie
37:55
Speaker 1: as far as the bachelor party genre goes Chuck that,
37:57
Speaker 1: I want to give it it's do. Yeah. Yeah, we'll
37:59
Speaker 1: wait on the uh because we have to parkt a
38:03
Speaker 1: bachelor party with Tom Hanks, who Olivia points out, like
38:06
Speaker 1: if you if you only know, sort of today's Tom
38:09
Speaker 1: Hanks and you haven't people in the airport to get
38:13
Speaker 1: away from his wife. Yeah, exactly. Uh, this is very
38:16
Speaker 1: off brand for him, um, but on brand for him back. Well,
38:19
Speaker 1: I'm not on brand. But you know, he did a
38:21
Speaker 1: lot of kind of uh different kind of comedies earlier
38:24
Speaker 1: in his career. And I used to love the movie
38:27
Speaker 1: Bachelor Party. I thought it was so funny. Uh looking
38:31
Speaker 1: back on it now, it is kind of an I mean,
38:34
Speaker 1: it's still funny in a lot of ways, but it
38:35
Speaker 1: also has you know, transphobia and uh casual racism here
38:41
Speaker 1: and there, and of course women are sexually objectified through
38:45
Speaker 1: the whole thing. There's a donkey that they almost get
38:48
Speaker 1: to have sex with a woman, but it's it's sort
38:51
Speaker 1: of a red heron because the donkey dies of a
38:54
Speaker 1: drug overdose before it couldn't happen. But I still love
38:58
Speaker 1: Bachelor Party. I'm just I haven't seen it in a
38:59
Speaker 1: long time, but that was one of my movies in college.
39:03
Speaker 1: Very Bad Things was a dark comedy where there was
39:07
Speaker 1: the accidental killing of a sex worker. That was such
39:11
Speaker 1: a terrible movie. I saw it back then. It was
39:13
Speaker 1: it wasn't good at all. No, and not like the
39:16
Speaker 1: acting is bad or the direction, but it's like just
39:18
Speaker 1: the concept of it. It was meant to be funny
39:21
Speaker 1: and it wasn't like it really missed the mark and
39:23
Speaker 1: just me, the whole thing just terrible. Totally. It was
39:27
Speaker 1: I'm like in my early twenties and I'm like, this
39:30
Speaker 1: is reprehensible. Yeah, you know. Uh, The Hangover finally came
39:34
Speaker 1: along two thousand nine, which took the place of Bachelor Party.
39:38
Speaker 1: I think it's sort of the quintessential, definitely bachelor party movie.
39:41
Speaker 1: And I'm still on record as thinking the first Hangover
39:44
Speaker 1: it was a very very funny movie. Okay, you didn't
39:47
Speaker 1: like it, right, I think we talked about this before.
39:51
Speaker 1: Not really. I mean, it's fine if I'm not gonna
39:54
Speaker 1: try to detract from mean, I know, it's like one
39:56
Speaker 1: of the most successful movies of all time. Yeah, I
39:59
Speaker 1: thought it was very fun me. I thought Zach Gallafanakis
40:01
Speaker 1: was great and uh, what's his name, Mike Tyson? No, well,
40:08
Speaker 1: I thought Ed Helms was great, and I thought Kenjong
40:12
Speaker 1: it was very very funny, and I just I thought
40:15
Speaker 1: it was very funny and the and the sequel is terrible.
40:20
Speaker 1: Wasn't the one in Thailand. Yeah, it wasn't good at all.
40:23
Speaker 1: I did not think Bradley Cooper was very good in
40:25
Speaker 1: the Hangover though he didn't have a good role written
40:28
Speaker 1: for him. He had play the straight man for everybody else.
40:30
Speaker 1: And of the jerk. Yeah. Yeah, but I love Zack
40:34
Speaker 1: and Ed and Ken John. I thought they were very funny. Yeah.
40:37
Speaker 1: What about Bride'smaids? Have you seen that? I have not
40:39
Speaker 1: seen that one. Oh, Bridesmaids is great. Yeah, it is
40:43
Speaker 1: really really funny. Yeah, I've heard nothing, but yeah, you
40:46
Speaker 1: should check out Bridemaids Kristen Wig. Just the plain scene
40:50
Speaker 1: with Kristen Wig is worth the admission price alone. Yeah.
40:54
Speaker 1: That one came out in two thousand and eleven, and
40:56
Speaker 1: there was like this kind of grassroots um a pro
41:01
Speaker 1: feminist social media movement around it saying like, go see it.
41:05
Speaker 1: It's like I saw it described as like a um
41:09
Speaker 1: like I can't remember the wording they used, but basically,
41:11
Speaker 1: if you're a feminist or you're for women's rights, you
41:14
Speaker 1: have to go see that movie. Basically that it was
41:17
Speaker 1: like that groundbreaking and monumental, and it basically said Okay,
41:20
Speaker 1: women can have the same kind of movies as men. Yeah, like,
41:23
Speaker 1: you know, the women's version of The Hangover in a
41:26
Speaker 1: lot of ways, at least as far as like genre
41:28
Speaker 1: stuff goes, I think it was more well written than
41:30
Speaker 1: The Hangover for sure. Yeah, it was funny. And then
41:33
Speaker 1: there was a movie that I don't know how I
41:35
Speaker 1: never heard of, this movie from seventeen called rough Night,
41:39
Speaker 1: and it was had Scarlett Johansson and a lot of
41:44
Speaker 1: Glazer and Zoe Kravitz and Kate McKinnon and Jillian Bell
41:48
Speaker 1: like huge cast. Never even heard of this movie. But
41:52
Speaker 1: it's sort of like a bachelorette party that goes wrong,
41:55
Speaker 1: sort of like very bad things. But it wasn't critically
42:00
Speaker 1: reviewed very well, but the filmmakers great, uh, because she
42:04
Speaker 1: does that along with her husband does that TV show Hacks,
42:08
Speaker 1: which is really really good. Oh yeah, so maybe the
42:11
Speaker 1: movie just missed the mark or maybe you know, I
42:13
Speaker 1: need to see it and judge it for itself. But
42:14
Speaker 1: not well reviewed. Okay, what else? That's it. That's all
42:20
Speaker 1: the movies I got. Okay, so um we I think
42:25
Speaker 1: we've talked quite a bit about the fact that humiliating
42:28
Speaker 1: the brider groom is like a thing, and part of
42:31
Speaker 1: that is kidnapping them so it's not just humiliation, it's
42:35
Speaker 1: domination too, and that typically comes through in um the
42:40
Speaker 1: idea that that the bride or the groom is kidnapped
42:44
Speaker 1: at some point they're taking against their will and they
42:47
Speaker 1: don't have any say in the planning, like this is
42:50
Speaker 1: done for them but also done to them. Yeah, that's
42:53
Speaker 1: I can't imagine being scarier than going to a bachelor
42:58
Speaker 1: party that was planned without my knowledge. Right. So apparently
43:02
Speaker 1: in Australia, their bucks parties, all of them start with
43:05
Speaker 1: a kidnapping, and like a serious kidnapping, so much so
43:08
Speaker 1: that I saw an article about you know, um imaginative
43:12
Speaker 1: ways to kidnap the groom to be and they were saying,
43:15
Speaker 1: do not do it on the street in broad daylight
43:19
Speaker 1: like a vand because the cops will be called. But
43:23
Speaker 1: apparently that's how how seriously they take it that they
43:26
Speaker 1: need to actually tell people not to do that. They're like,
43:29
Speaker 1: how else you supposed to kidnap someone? Right? Uh? Yeah,
43:33
Speaker 1: And those can get out of hand with um. This
43:35
Speaker 1: is when the practical jokes come and play. There was
43:39
Speaker 1: one account from a journalist David Boyer and his book
43:43
Speaker 1: Bachelor Party Confidential, where and this is so wrong and
43:47
Speaker 1: mean where these friends quote unquote friends, um got this
43:54
Speaker 1: groom so drunk that he passed out and then they
43:57
Speaker 1: had his leg put in a full cast, uh and
44:00
Speaker 1: told him that he broke it and did not tell
44:03
Speaker 1: him until after his honeymoon. Yes, like not to not
44:09
Speaker 1: like the night before the wedding or even after the wedding.
44:13
Speaker 1: After the honeymoon, they finally told him that his leg
44:16
Speaker 1: wasn't actually broken into Not funny. I think it's funny.
44:20
Speaker 1: I think it's hilarious up until like the wedding and
44:23
Speaker 1: then you tell him and he's just watched. He's just
44:25
Speaker 1: washed over with relief, and that's hilarious to not tell
44:29
Speaker 1: him before the wedding, so he's up on crutches that
44:31
Speaker 1: he doesn't need. And then the honeymoon is the real clincher.
44:35
Speaker 1: I think then they it just that was just mean, Yeah,
44:39
Speaker 1: your expensive honeymoon. For sure, you can't go swimming in Fiji, right, Uh?
44:45
Speaker 1: I thought, great conception, poor execution. Yeah, like day before
44:50
Speaker 1: the wedding, they I'll take the hammer out and break
44:52
Speaker 1: the cast up. Yeah, that's a fun that's a fun scene.
44:56
Speaker 1: All right. Well, let's wrap it up with a little
44:58
Speaker 1: bit on money. Uh, these things are quite expensive, or
45:01
Speaker 1: can be quite expensive these days. There was a survey
45:06
Speaker 1: uh by Savings dot com, and we should point out
45:11
Speaker 1: that out of the five people they surveyed, they made
45:14
Speaker 1: um of them made over a hundred grand years, so
45:17
Speaker 1: these are well funded people. But they said the average
45:20
Speaker 1: costs for a man's bachelor party is about fifteen hundred
45:24
Speaker 1: bucks and a bacherette party was about nine hundred and
45:27
Speaker 1: said it was uh like a weekend event in sixties.
45:32
Speaker 1: Six percent it was a destination thing. Scent was international.
45:38
Speaker 1: So these things have gotten really expensive. And I think
45:42
Speaker 1: they interviewed about half the people very quietly said Hey,
45:45
Speaker 1: I think it's gotten a little too expensive and it's
45:47
Speaker 1: gotten a little out of hand, but I felt like
45:50
Speaker 1: I had to do it. I read that this was
45:52
Speaker 1: um not fully but largely attributable to the rise of Instagram. Uh.
45:58
Speaker 1: People are now trying to like, like their lives just
46:02
Speaker 1: look so amazing, you know, and like the bachelorrette and
46:05
Speaker 1: bachelor party is such a big part of like the
46:08
Speaker 1: life at that age that that was. That's definitely something
46:12
Speaker 1: they spend money on just Instagram. It basically I'm gonna
46:15
Speaker 1: start once a week, I should just start posting pictures
46:19
Speaker 1: of my bear beer belly. Okay, just to fight that
46:24
Speaker 1: whole notion that you know what I mean, what filter
46:28
Speaker 1: will you use? There is no filter? Oh my god, Chuck,
46:32
Speaker 1: that hasn't been invented yet. You've gone mad. Just I'm
46:37
Speaker 1: I'm going to Chuck the podcaster for some disgusting photos
46:39
Speaker 1: of me. Yeah right, doing hearth hands, sunset over your
46:44
Speaker 1: beer over my belly pledge. And that's my attempt to
46:49
Speaker 1: make the world a better place. I think that's a
46:51
Speaker 1: great idea, Chuck. I support that. I will like every
46:55
Speaker 1: single one of those posts. You're gonna hurt my stomach
46:58
Speaker 1: for sure. Uh you got anything else? No, thankfully. Now Okay,
47:03
Speaker 1: that's it for Bachelor and Bachelor at parties. I'm sure
47:05
Speaker 1: we could go on. There's more details, but you know,
47:08
Speaker 1: just go to a Bachelor bachelorrette part and see what
47:10
Speaker 1: you think. And since I said that, it's time for
47:13
Speaker 1: listener mail. Uh yeah, but before the listener mail, another
47:18
Speaker 1: reminder that after we read this, you can check out
47:21
Speaker 1: a preview of Obsessions Wild Chocolate, the great new show
47:24
Speaker 1: from our old friend Manesh. Excellent. I'm gonna call this.
47:29
Speaker 1: Oh and By the way, we need to shout out
47:31
Speaker 1: another listener mail real quick. We heard from Diarrhea Planet.
47:35
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, did you see that email? No, I didn't
47:38
Speaker 1: see that. I gotta go check. Yep. We got an
47:40
Speaker 1: email from them and they said, hey, guys, we heard
47:42
Speaker 1: that you were talking about us again. Please and I'm
47:45
Speaker 1: sure you've heard that we have a reunion show coming
47:47
Speaker 1: up in Nashville. And then they said, if it sweetens
47:50
Speaker 1: the pot, you guys are our guests for the nights
47:52
Speaker 1: waituh and I really want to go, but it's in
47:55
Speaker 1: the two days of Thanksgiving week and Nashville and that's
48:00
Speaker 1: just a tall order diarrhea Planet to uh to talk
48:04
Speaker 1: my family into stay and like, Hey, I'm gonna leave
48:08
Speaker 1: Thanksgiving week for a night because see diarrhea Planet right
48:12
Speaker 1: at he's understanding, but that may draw that may be
48:14
Speaker 1: where the line is drawn. Yes, but regardless whether we
48:17
Speaker 1: make it or not, that was very very kind of
48:20
Speaker 1: Diarrhea Planet to offer. What I want them to do
48:22
Speaker 1: is come to Atlanta and do it another show, right,
48:25
Speaker 1: because you like chomping on a cigar, You're like, you
48:27
Speaker 1: come to make Yeah, come to me baby, all right.
48:30
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna call this. Thanks for the company. Hey guys,
48:33
Speaker 1: been listening stuff. You should know my drive to work
48:34
Speaker 1: For about three years. An old coworker introduced me to
48:37
Speaker 1: the show and I would look forward to our discussions
48:39
Speaker 1: on each episode every morning of our coffee. Recently had
48:43
Speaker 1: a baby girl, and my husband and I agreed, uh,
48:46
Speaker 1: that it was best that I stay home for a
48:47
Speaker 1: little while. After about four months in, I noticed I
48:50
Speaker 1: was showing some signs of postpartum depression and it hit
48:53
Speaker 1: me one morning but that what I really just missed
48:56
Speaker 1: was those morning chats in the office and the freak cofee.
49:01
Speaker 1: So I started an episode with you guys and began
49:03
Speaker 1: deep cleaning our home. Decluttering and organizing has always been
49:07
Speaker 1: something that made me feel better, and every day I
49:09
Speaker 1: continue to tune in and clean during naps, uh presumably
49:14
Speaker 1: your baby's naps, because that would be amazingly efficient if
49:16
Speaker 1: you can clean right. I now have those same discussions
49:19
Speaker 1: with my husband when he gets home from work, and
49:21
Speaker 1: I really just want to say thanks for the company,
49:23
Speaker 1: the memories and the new ones to come. And that
49:26
Speaker 1: is from Anonymous. Great thank you Anonymous. H. That was
49:30
Speaker 1: a wonderful email and I'm glad we could feel that
49:33
Speaker 1: little hole for you, right, Chuck totally. And if you
49:36
Speaker 1: want to let us know about something nice we did
49:38
Speaker 1: for you and we didn't even realize we did. We
49:40
Speaker 1: love hearing that stuff. You can send it to us
49:42
Speaker 1: in an email to stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com.
49:49
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of I Heart Radio.
49:52
Speaker 1: For more podcasts my Heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,
49:56
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
50:17
Speaker 1: I'm in the co pilot seat of the small Cessna
50:20
Speaker 1: plane and we're circling in the Bolivian Amazon. Beside me,
50:27
Speaker 1: pilot sweating because we're looking for a place to land
50:29
Speaker 1: and we can't find one. The weather was bad and
50:35
Speaker 1: and the pilot was nervous, and it was it was
50:38
Speaker 1: quite exciting behind me. Is this guy just been a
50:41
Speaker 1: day ago? This German caccau hunter named Volker Lahman. Volker
50:45
Speaker 1: looks a bit like the German director Werner Herzog. Sounds
50:48
Speaker 1: like him too. The more dangerous or tricky the situation
50:53
Speaker 1: dance with the Kalmar I get. It's two thousand ten,
50:57
Speaker 1: and Folker's letting me tag along. If you searches for
50:59
Speaker 1: a holy Grail wild cocoo, the tree that gives us chocolate.
51:03
Speaker 1: Cocao's native to the Amazon, and now it's farmed all
51:05
Speaker 1: over the tropics, mostly in Africa. A few years before
51:09
Speaker 1: our trip, Focus dumbled upon an incredible variety of wild
51:12
Speaker 1: cocao in Bolivia and he turned it into this mind
51:15
Speaker 1: blowing chocolate. So now there's a gold rush for these
51:17
Speaker 1: magic beans. And Volker's hope is to say, one step ahead.
51:22
Speaker 1: There's an indigenous group in the forest called the eurocare
51:26
Speaker 1: Rumor has it they have a ton of wildcata cell
51:30
Speaker 1: So the plan is fly in, find a landing strip,
51:34
Speaker 1: take a dugout canoe to the Eurokara village, strike a deal.
51:42
Speaker 1: Below us, the jungle looks otherworldly. The whole thing is steaming,
51:47
Speaker 1: miss rising to form these immense thunderheads, and the thunderheads
51:51
Speaker 1: are dropping ropes black rain back to the forest. At
51:56
Speaker 1: one point we punched through a storm and water comes
51:58
Speaker 1: spitting through the vents of the plain. I shoot a
52:00
Speaker 1: glance of the pilot, like what, but he just waves
52:03
Speaker 1: me off. It's getting hard to tell what to worry
52:07
Speaker 1: about and what not to worry about. For that, all
52:10
Speaker 1: I can do is counting vulgar because he's been navigating
52:13
Speaker 1: the Amazon for twenty years. This part of Olivia is
52:16
Speaker 1: all rainforests and grasslands. It's also a major cocaine flyaway.
52:21
Speaker 1: The rivers are dotted with these homemade landing strips and
52:24
Speaker 1: small planes swoop in, pick up the drugs, and head
52:27
Speaker 1: for Brazil. Those landing strips are super convenient if you
52:32
Speaker 1: need to get into the deep woods quickly, which we do,
52:35
Speaker 1: but it's also super dangerous. Hundreds of people get shot
52:38
Speaker 1: in the Amazon every year for all sorts of reasons.
52:42
Speaker 1: Just being an environmental activist is enough, but stumbling upon
52:45
Speaker 1: a cocaine lab that's one of the surest ways to
52:48
Speaker 1: make it happen. But when you need a landing strip,
52:56
Speaker 1: you need a landing strip. The problem is that is
52:59
Speaker 1: the rainy season and everything is flooded. The rivers have
53:03
Speaker 1: risen like thirty feet, the trees are in standing water,
53:07
Speaker 1: the ground is gleaming like a mirror. At last, there's
53:11
Speaker 1: a strip near a small cabin on the river, but
53:14
Speaker 1: it's really short. The rain swamped part of the landing strip,
53:20
Speaker 1: and the landing strip was homemade. No, it's not official
53:24
Speaker 1: landing strip. The pilot swoops down to get a closer look,
53:28
Speaker 1: and he doesn't like what he sees, and neither do I.
53:31
Speaker 1: He pulls back up and circles the area looking for alternatives.
53:35
Speaker 1: There are no alternatives. The pilot keeps circling back to
53:39
Speaker 1: that original strip. I think he's trying to psych himself up.
53:42
Speaker 1: And for all I know, we're running well on fuel.
53:46
Speaker 1: Get voltas still sitting there like another day in the park,
53:50
Speaker 1: and that is making me more nervous because I can
53:53
Speaker 1: tell that his appetite for risk is a lot higher
53:55
Speaker 1: than that. And then the pilot banks the plain that strip.
54:01
Speaker 1: For a second, I think, well, this must be another
54:04
Speaker 1: reconnaissance run, because nobody would. Oh no, he's going for
54:08
Speaker 1: it right now. The ground is rising in front of
54:11
Speaker 1: us fast, so I grabbed the handle above the door
54:14
Speaker 1: and tucked my head and grace and we hit actually
54:19
Speaker 1: hits the wrong word. It's super soft thanks to all
54:23
Speaker 1: that spongey ground. So we break hard and slammed with
54:26
Speaker 1: stopped spraying puddles, and I'm like, we made it. So
54:38
Speaker 1: I grabbed my back and hop out vulcans behind me
54:41
Speaker 1: and it's like, hello Amazon, it's a cathedral. When you're
54:45
Speaker 1: on the ground, there's these massive trees that are dripping
54:48
Speaker 1: thick vines. There's flocks of actual parrots screeching through the canopy.
54:53
Speaker 1: And then from that little cabin off ahead, four guys
54:57
Speaker 1: emerge and they're holding rifles. There were like one guy coming,
55:02
Speaker 1: and then the second, and the third and the fourth,
55:04
Speaker 1: and then they were surrounding us. And I was looking
55:07
Speaker 1: at the pilot and he said, I have to leave
55:11
Speaker 1: because of the weather, and you know, nobody said anything,
55:15
Speaker 1: and so he turned around this plane and off he
55:18
Speaker 1: off he went. And then I realized, oh, we are
55:22
Speaker 1: in the middle of some people we don't know. I
55:26
Speaker 1: was nervous. I am trying not to make any fast
55:30
Speaker 1: moves because these guys are twitchy, and everything they say
55:33
Speaker 1: confirms my worst fears. They're watching this place for their boss,
55:36
Speaker 1: who's a Columbian man, and we've just landed on his
55:38
Speaker 1: private runway without permission. And I've been in the Amazon
55:44
Speaker 1: for all five minutes, and I'm starting to wonder if
55:46
Speaker 1: maybe I'm not really cut out for this cacall anything.
55:50
Speaker 1: And all I can do is look over Vulgar and think,
55:53
Speaker 1: I hope you got this collide us soope, and I
56:00
Speaker 1: heart podcast. This is obsessions wild Chocolate. I'm rolland Jacobson.
56:07
Speaker 1: Chapter one, The Hunt