Latest / Ridiculous History / The Bizarrely Disturbing History of People Jumping Out of Cake
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Ye.
- 0:27Speaker 1: Welcome to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you so much
- 0:30Speaker 1: for tuning in. Would like to open today's episode by saying, Hey,
- 0:34Speaker 1: shout out to everyone who is celebrating a birthday or
- 0:37Speaker 1: just celebrated one, or celebrating an anniversary. Shout out to
- 0:42Speaker 1: all those kids class of twenty who just graduated. Great job, guys, Uh,
- 0:47Speaker 1: you know, hopefully you still enjoyed this tremendous milestone despite
- 0:52Speaker 1: the different social distancing you know, laws in effect. Hi,
- 0:56Speaker 1: I'm Ben, Hey Ben, I'm no Ben. Did you ever
- 1:00Speaker 1: have a birthday where someone popped for a human being
- 1:03Speaker 1: to pop out of your cake? Uh? No, not, not
- 1:06Speaker 1: that I'm aware of it, And I'm pretty glad I
- 1:08Speaker 1: didn't because, you know, not to sound too much like
- 1:11Speaker 1: a germophobe, but I'd be worried about eating the cake afterward,
- 1:15Speaker 1: you know what I mean? I mean, you know it's true. Uh,
- 1:18Speaker 1: there are measures that historical measures even that have been
- 1:21Speaker 1: put in place, but they're all a bit on the
- 1:23Speaker 1: blunt instrument side, you know what I mean. Like, I
- 1:25Speaker 1: don't find that any of them were particularly precise or
- 1:28Speaker 1: well thought out. Um, but yeah, I've never had a
- 1:32Speaker 1: human being pop out of a cake in my presence,
- 1:34Speaker 1: scantily clad female or otherwise. I I would, honestly, I
- 1:39Speaker 1: don't like surprises. First of all, I don't like jump scares,
- 1:42Speaker 1: as they call them in the horror movie genre, So
- 1:45Speaker 1: I would be a little irritated if someone did that
- 1:48Speaker 1: for me. I would. I would call it more doing
- 1:50Speaker 1: it to me. It's a weird it's so, I know,
- 1:54Speaker 1: and I wish we would save this, honestly for weird
- 1:56Speaker 1: historical flexes, which I think will be rearing It's weird
- 2:00Speaker 1: exy head again in the near future. But for now,
- 2:03Speaker 1: there's a lot to this story, the weird, dark and
- 2:07Speaker 1: troubling history of women popping out of cakes. Who knew?
- 2:12Speaker 1: Who knew? Uh? I think I, like many of us,
- 2:15Speaker 1: had sort of assumed this was one of those old
- 2:18Speaker 1: saws that maybe really happened once, and then it became
- 2:22Speaker 1: embellished as the years went on. Oh, we should check
- 2:25Speaker 1: super producer Casey Pegram. Have you, in fact had someone
- 2:31Speaker 1: jump out of a cake at a celebration in on
- 2:34Speaker 1: your Behalf? I have not had a direct personal experience
- 2:37Speaker 1: of this, however. Um The first thing that came to mind,
- 2:40Speaker 1: was the sequence in the Steven Seagal vehicle under Siege?
- 2:44Speaker 1: What did it involve a spray of machine gun fire?
- 2:47Speaker 1: It did? Indeed, after pretty soon after the cake jumping
- 2:50Speaker 1: event occurred, I think, yeah, wait, wait, wait, did uh
- 2:53Speaker 1: Steven Seagal's character whatever his name is in this Uh
- 2:57Speaker 1: did Steven Seagal's character jump out of the cake and
- 2:59Speaker 1: shoot guns? Because that would be dope objectively? Uh? Yeah,
- 3:03Speaker 1: you know, I have to I have to fess up.
- 3:05Speaker 1: I don't even remember if it's him that jumps out
- 3:07Speaker 1: of the cake or like a bad guy, or it's
- 3:09Speaker 1: actually just like a model or something that does it.
- 3:12Speaker 1: But there's something involving cake jumping on a cruise shop.
- 3:15Speaker 1: You know, it's funny. Casey uh, casey on the case. Indeed,
- 3:18Speaker 1: with that one, we're going to get to a historical
- 3:22Speaker 1: precedent that that was paying homage to. That is not
- 3:25Speaker 1: the the the only, the lone example of a of
- 3:29Speaker 1: someone popping out of a of a cake and and
- 3:31Speaker 1: and shooting machine guns. Did you reach, guys realize that
- 3:34Speaker 1: Under Siege was a pretty unsuccessful uh franchise? If I'm
- 3:38Speaker 1: not mistaken. Wasn't there a sequel to under Siege? Did
- 3:41Speaker 1: it involve be a different type of vehicle being under siege?
- 3:45Speaker 1: Wasn't the first one a ship and the second one
- 3:47Speaker 1: was like a train? Maybe that I make that up?
- 3:49Speaker 1: Under se You are correct, No, under Siege to Dark
- 3:53Speaker 1: Territory ve Uh. It also had Steven Seagal in it.
- 3:58Speaker 1: He was playing Casey right back. Uh hopefully not uh,
- 4:02Speaker 1: not related to our own Casey. But I don't want
- 4:05Speaker 1: to put you in a box. I don't want to
- 4:07Speaker 1: put you in a cake here, Casey. I don't want
- 4:09Speaker 1: you to be in a corner. So if you want to, uh,
- 4:12Speaker 1: if you want to do a remake, a reboot of
- 4:15Speaker 1: under Siege, I morally support you, not financially, but morally,
- 4:19Speaker 1: just for the record. Under Siege one ship, under Siege
- 4:22Speaker 1: to train. So wait a second, they did get Seagull
- 4:25Speaker 1: for the second one. Yeah, that's why I'm saying they
- 4:27Speaker 1: have the train and Seagal. It makes me wonder, Casey,
- 4:30Speaker 1: if you're thinking of some sort of really direct to
- 4:33Speaker 1: DVD third under Siege movie that we've all completely forgotten about,
- 4:38Speaker 1: this could be. This could be. I mean, if you
- 4:40Speaker 1: see the stuff Segall is doing now, it's it's pretty
- 4:42Speaker 1: impressively terrible, especially his music videos, which are a story
- 4:47Speaker 1: for another day. I want to get back to the
- 4:50Speaker 1: cake aspect here, because you know, it's true. This even
- 4:54Speaker 1: though we've seen this as a trope in a lot
- 4:57Speaker 1: of film, TV shows, cartoons and go on, uh, it
- 5:02Speaker 1: really does happen. It's actually happened in the past. It's
- 5:06Speaker 1: actually happening in the modern day, especially in place in
- 5:11Speaker 1: you know, like dens of hives of scum and villainy
- 5:14Speaker 1: like Vegas. Nowadays, the cakes are usually made from a
- 5:18Speaker 1: sort of flimsy cardboard. I think that's part of the
- 5:22Speaker 1: the health precautions that that we alluded to earlier. But
- 5:26Speaker 1: it turns out that people have been putting not just people,
- 5:30Speaker 1: but other living things in food for the purpose of
- 5:35Speaker 1: you know, um, snickers and giggles. Since we're family show
- 5:39Speaker 1: for for hundreds and hundreds of years, like our first
- 5:43Speaker 1: our first look at this takes us all the way
- 5:45Speaker 1: back to ancient Rome. Correct. Yeah, And and I have
- 5:48Speaker 1: a personal real problem with this situation for obvious reasons
- 5:52Speaker 1: that if anyone's longtime listeners will very quickly queue into um, yeah,
- 5:57Speaker 1: it's true. Revelers in ancient rome Um would often serve
- 6:01Speaker 1: up bizarrely decadent dishes at these kind of gluttony parties,
- 6:08Speaker 1: you know, these sort of back and aals that were
- 6:10Speaker 1: rife with drunkenness and even you know, overeating to the
- 6:14Speaker 1: point of vomiting. You know, we all know about that
- 6:16Speaker 1: and the idea of these vomitoriums. It was a real
- 6:19Speaker 1: time of excess, and they would often uh like these
- 6:23Speaker 1: these chefs I guess or these you know, um royal
- 6:26Speaker 1: caterers or whatever, would try to like one up each
- 6:30Speaker 1: other by putting weirder and weirder creatures into these dishes,
- 6:36Speaker 1: stuffing them, uh, serving up well, they would actually first
- 6:38Speaker 1: of all cook the actual animals. Will get to the
- 6:41Speaker 1: live aspect of it later, but things like peacocks or ostriches.
- 6:46Speaker 1: I have had Ostrich jerkey. I think you have to
- 6:48Speaker 1: Ben because you're kind of the jerky guy. You're the
- 6:51Speaker 1: exotic jerky guy. Ostritch Pretty pretty okay. I can get
- 6:55Speaker 1: behind that. Um dor mice. What's a dormouse? I know
- 6:58Speaker 1: it's that character from uh they say, dead as a dormouse,
- 7:02Speaker 1: isn't it a character from Alice in Wonderland? Isn't an
- 7:04Speaker 1: actual mouse? I don't know. We'll get to that in
- 7:06Speaker 1: a little bit, but maybe not. I'm I'm I'm holding
- 7:09Speaker 1: off from interceding, but but I will jump in to
- 7:12Speaker 1: hit those two points. Yeah, there are actual dor mice.
- 7:15Speaker 1: And then also, jerky guy UM is a little bit misleading.
- 7:20Speaker 1: I just tend to eat a lot of weird stuff
- 7:22Speaker 1: in my weird adventures um, And actually, you know I'm not.
- 7:26Speaker 1: I'm not the biggest jerky fan. It's interesting in game because,
- 7:30Speaker 1: like with sausage, UM, jerky from game Animals is usually
- 7:35Speaker 1: just cover with spices to kind of get rid of
- 7:37Speaker 1: the taste, but ostrich itself if you can get it fresh.
- 7:40Speaker 1: Not bad, not bad at all. It's almost got more
- 7:42Speaker 1: of a beef like quality to it because it's a
- 7:44Speaker 1: very dark meat, because it's obviously a very lean animal,
- 7:47Speaker 1: and it almost tastes more like steak or something. But Ben,
- 7:50Speaker 1: I didn't mean to mischaracterize you as the jerky guy.
- 7:52Speaker 1: I just meant that you are probably one of the
- 7:55Speaker 1: people who, in my life I've known to have eaten
- 7:58Speaker 1: the most unusual of jerkys. So that let me caveat that.
- 8:02Speaker 1: But I like where you're going with this because we
- 8:06Speaker 1: know that food has always been and you know, as
- 8:09Speaker 1: much of an occasion as it has been a sustenance,
- 8:12Speaker 1: particularly for the elites of the world. Right. Uh, like
- 8:16Speaker 1: a lot of medieval cuisine this will baffle people, but
- 8:19Speaker 1: a lot of medieval cuisine, uh placed this huge emphasis
- 8:23Speaker 1: on making things taste like things. They weren't so making
- 8:26Speaker 1: foul tastes like fish and so on. They were. Yeah,
- 8:30Speaker 1: they were always David Copperfield esque stunts, you know, like, um,
- 8:34Speaker 1: like we we see the the modern version of this
- 8:38Speaker 1: interur ducking. Right, that's that's the one where it's like
- 8:41Speaker 1: a what is it, It's a chicken stuffed inside a
- 8:45Speaker 1: duck inside a turkey. Well, I think it's gotta go
- 8:48Speaker 1: Russian nesting doll styles, so it would be the biggest
- 8:51Speaker 1: on the outside. So I think the turkey would be
- 8:53Speaker 1: the outside, and the duck inside the turkey and the
- 8:56Speaker 1: chicken inside the duck. So okay, So like I said, yeah,
- 8:59Speaker 1: because a chicken give me smaller, right U? Yeah, so
- 9:02Speaker 1: likes this is an old, old practice. People have been
- 9:07Speaker 1: stuffing an animal inside another one, uh, since the days
- 9:12Speaker 1: of Rome, since the glory that was room. Yeah, it's true.
- 9:15Speaker 1: Um and and and uh you know, today's episode is
- 9:17Speaker 1: obviously about live things human or otherwise, um popping out
- 9:22Speaker 1: of other things, and we're definitely gonna get to that.
- 9:24Speaker 1: But there was a whole period to where you know,
- 9:26Speaker 1: the pageantry of these uh, these dinner parties was really
- 9:29Speaker 1: on full display. Um. Chefs would even create these kind
- 9:33Speaker 1: of imaginary creatures known as cock and tress, which was
- 9:36Speaker 1: like this just bizarre kind of Norman Batesy kind of
- 9:40Speaker 1: splicing of like a pig and a chicken um into
- 9:44Speaker 1: this totally new animal. And then there was also a
- 9:49Speaker 1: historian named Patronius wrote of all of these dishes that
- 9:53Speaker 1: were made to look like they were still alive, this
- 9:56Speaker 1: idea of fish swimming in the sea of sauce using
- 10:00Speaker 1: some maccabb kind of you know mechanism, and and and
- 10:04Speaker 1: a rabbit that had birds wings sewn onto it made
- 10:08Speaker 1: to look like some sort of bizarre pegasus. Uh. But
- 10:12Speaker 1: then Ben, we get into the period of of medieval times,
- 10:17Speaker 1: and you made a really good point earlier, this idea
- 10:19Speaker 1: of stuff tasting like other things. Um. One thing that
- 10:22Speaker 1: there's a really great show called Heston Blooman Falls Feast
- 10:26Speaker 1: or something like that, and he's this really interesting chef
- 10:29Speaker 1: out of the UK who's all about like kind of
- 10:31Speaker 1: tricking the mind into and when when flavors are concerned,
- 10:35Speaker 1: and he um would recreate a lot of these dishes
- 10:37Speaker 1: that we're gonna talk about in a second, one of
- 10:39Speaker 1: which was he made like a really delicious piece of
- 10:42Speaker 1: fruit that actually was made of meat. Um. And that
- 10:45Speaker 1: was a thing to this idea of kind of tricking
- 10:47Speaker 1: the senses and subverting expectations. But in those medieval days
- 10:51Speaker 1: we really got into the most grotesque and kind of
- 10:55Speaker 1: maccab area of using live and moles um. And that's
- 11:01Speaker 1: when you start to see the idea of like a
- 11:03Speaker 1: suckling pig with an apple in its mouth made to
- 11:06Speaker 1: look like it was kind of still alive. Um. That
- 11:08Speaker 1: was where that sort of trope comes from. But once
- 11:11Speaker 1: we get into uh deeper into the medieval period, uh,
- 11:16Speaker 1: just just the appearance of an animal being alive wasn't
- 11:18Speaker 1: enough anymore, right, right, Yeah, So we moved past the
- 11:23Speaker 1: the edible dioramas that people were making where it looked
- 11:27Speaker 1: like the fish were swimming and looked like, you know,
- 11:29Speaker 1: these various animals from mythology were real and on the
- 11:33Speaker 1: banquet table to the use of birds and frogs. They
- 11:38Speaker 1: were placed into pies and this was uh, this was
- 11:43Speaker 1: pretty popular. Actually, this was not a one off thing.
- 11:46Speaker 1: You can actually find some recipes for this in Italian cookbooks,
- 11:51Speaker 1: one especially from fourteen seventy four. A guy named Maestro
- 11:55Speaker 1: Martino explains the nuts and bolts of this. You make
- 11:59Speaker 1: a hole in the bottom crust of a pie, you
- 12:01Speaker 1: put another pie inside, and then in the empty space
- 12:05Speaker 1: that remains around the pie, put live birds as many
- 12:08Speaker 1: as you can hold in there. And they should be
- 12:10Speaker 1: placed in just before this thing can be served, so
- 12:13Speaker 1: that they're still, you know, healthy enough to fly. And
- 12:16Speaker 1: when it's served, before everybody seated at the bake, wait
- 12:19Speaker 1: you remove the cover, the birds fly away. This is
- 12:22Speaker 1: done to entertain and amuse your company, and then, in
- 12:26Speaker 1: order to make sure that they don't get disappointed by this,
- 12:29Speaker 1: make sure they know there's also a real pie. I
- 12:32Speaker 1: want to shout out one book in particular. You guys
- 12:34Speaker 1: can see it because we're on camera here. This is
- 12:37Speaker 1: a book by one of my favorite nonfiction um writers,
- 12:40Speaker 1: a guy named Mark Kurlanski. It's called Choice Cuts, And
- 12:44Speaker 1: if you want to learn more about medieval food, check
- 12:48Speaker 1: this book out. He didn't pay me to say this.
- 12:50Speaker 1: I just I love the guy. Yeah, and stuff like
- 12:52Speaker 1: this kind of lived on in song and these nursery rhymes. Um,
- 12:57Speaker 1: the song sing a song of sixpence? How is the
- 13:00Speaker 1: lyric about four and twenty blackbirds being baked in a pie?
- 13:03Speaker 1: Actually mentioned this to a friend of mine who's a
- 13:05Speaker 1: superhistory buff, and he was unaware of this was an
- 13:07Speaker 1: actual thing that they that people did, and I was
- 13:10Speaker 1: only aware of it because of that Heston Blumenthal show.
- 13:13Speaker 1: And he does do this actual recipe. And the key
- 13:16Speaker 1: is like, you know, having that ridge sort of like
- 13:18Speaker 1: reservoir on the outside around the actual pie, so the
- 13:21Speaker 1: birds can like crap all over that part, I guess.
- 13:24Speaker 1: But again, you want to put them in there pretty
- 13:26Speaker 1: quickly before you do this. They don't have too much
- 13:28Speaker 1: time to you know, do their business inside of the
- 13:31Speaker 1: and the food stuff. But still seemingly not a particularly thoughtful,
- 13:37Speaker 1: um mechanism to keep the food clean. Yeah, I don't
- 13:41Speaker 1: imagine Peter would be particularly enthused about this. Uh. We
- 13:46Speaker 1: do want to mention, of course, families like the Medici's,
- 13:49Speaker 1: you know, of Italian infamy, were known for creating these
- 13:53Speaker 1: kind of things. These were not dishes you would make
- 13:56Speaker 1: it home to like surprise your kids. Uh. The Medici's
- 14:01Speaker 1: get sited in the sixteen hundreds for bringing frogs into
- 14:07Speaker 1: the mix, and the entirety to your point about feeling
- 14:10Speaker 1: like a person jumping out of a cake would be
- 14:13Speaker 1: a surprise at you instead of for you. The frogs
- 14:16Speaker 1: were definitely meant to be a surprise at someone, causing
- 14:20Speaker 1: the noble women to lose their minds. I love you
- 14:25Speaker 1: you're pointing out the song because I also thought that
- 14:27Speaker 1: was just uh, I don't know, some some whimsical j
- 14:32Speaker 1: June nonsense June. I don't know this word, Ben, I
- 14:36Speaker 1: love it. Please tell me so. June is one of
- 14:39Speaker 1: those beautiful English words that doesn't get used often. Actually
- 14:44Speaker 1: it's a French word, I believe, but you can use
- 14:46Speaker 1: it in English. It just means simplistic or superficial. Why
- 14:50Speaker 1: I'm adding that to my at to my arsenal of
- 14:52Speaker 1: new words, Ben, thank you for that. And so, like
- 14:59Speaker 1: we said, um, you know, this does eventually kind of escalate.
- 15:03Speaker 1: I guess we can say to using actual humans, but
- 15:05Speaker 1: that doesn't happen until this trend kind of you know,
- 15:10Speaker 1: fell out of fashion. Because obviously it was kind of
- 15:13Speaker 1: gross and absurd, and uh, you know, people got into
- 15:16Speaker 1: more like the idea of having delicious food instead of
- 15:19Speaker 1: weird flex pageantry, you know, like with for French cuisine
- 15:23Speaker 1: and stuffan. Obviously there's you know, still things like the
- 15:25Speaker 1: order lawn, that rare songbird that people would eat covering
- 15:29Speaker 1: their faces to hide their shame from God. Like in
- 15:32Speaker 1: a single bite, they would eat this tiny little bird,
- 15:35Speaker 1: bones and all um. But apparently that's a delicacy and
- 15:38Speaker 1: it is supposed to be not only a weird flex
- 15:40Speaker 1: but pretty tasty and and you know braizen in butter
- 15:44Speaker 1: and fried or some something like that. I don't know
- 15:47Speaker 1: if you get a sauce with your order lawan or
- 15:49Speaker 1: if you're just supposed to eat it all in one go.
- 15:50Speaker 1: It's a weird one. You're it's so small, uh that
- 15:53Speaker 1: you you really it's just a few bites. It's like
- 15:56Speaker 1: a topa got it. It's like like it's like a
- 15:58Speaker 1: like a hand roll or something, right, Um, But yeah,
- 16:01Speaker 1: the human component really doesn't come in until the sixteenth century. Yeah,
- 16:05Speaker 1: that's correct. This is weird. A lot of this comes
- 16:08Speaker 1: to us from a researcher named Jesse d hurl butt. Uh.
- 16:13Speaker 1: He was at the symposium on Medieval Studies over Indiana University,
- 16:18Speaker 1: and he tells some stories that sound I'll just say it,
- 16:22Speaker 1: they sound patently untrue. It's weird that the truth is
- 16:26Speaker 1: stranger than fiction. Here there's a guy named Philippe le Bone.
- 16:30Speaker 1: He's a famous French engineer, and once upon a time
- 16:33Speaker 1: true story. He threw a party where twenty eight musicians
- 16:38Speaker 1: were baked in a giant meat pie, and they came
- 16:41Speaker 1: out of the pie playing their instruments again. You know,
- 16:44Speaker 1: I can see how the spectacle of that is amazing.
- 16:48Speaker 1: That's a cool concert. I guess Kanye West doing something
- 16:51Speaker 1: like that, But I don't think I would want to
- 16:53Speaker 1: eat the pie. You know these people do They have
- 16:55Speaker 1: shoes on, and they washed their hands. These very important
- 16:59Speaker 1: questions Bennett, just to quickly point out him, not to
- 17:01Speaker 1: as sult anybody's intelligence. But these are pies more like
- 17:05Speaker 1: a like a pasty or a meat pie, like a
- 17:07Speaker 1: giant pot pie. Uh, usually with beef and vegetables and
- 17:11Speaker 1: some kind of gravy um with a nice crust on
- 17:15Speaker 1: the outside. So this wouldn't have been a sweet pie.
- 17:17Speaker 1: This would have been a savory pie. Um. Yeah, yeah,
- 17:20Speaker 1: just really quickly to point that out. Uh. And then
- 17:23Speaker 1: in sixt six we have an example um perpetrated I'm
- 17:27Speaker 1: gonna say, by the Duke and Duchess of Buckingham Um,
- 17:31Speaker 1: who were presenting Charles the First and his wife with
- 17:35Speaker 1: a similarly novelty giant pie. This one filled with with
- 17:41Speaker 1: the dwarf. Is it okay? It's dwarf? Okay? Is that
- 17:43Speaker 1: what we say? Well, we're quoting the historical context here, uh.
- 17:47Speaker 1: And people have still used the phrase. I don't know
- 17:50Speaker 1: if you want to go with um little person, but
- 17:53Speaker 1: I I find little person to be more neignrative and
- 17:56Speaker 1: condescending for something. I just want to know what the
- 17:58Speaker 1: actual community uh things. I thought that dwarf was okay,
- 18:02Speaker 1: but maybe that's that that sounds wrong, So let's just
- 18:04Speaker 1: go with that as the historical context here. Yeah, we're
- 18:07Speaker 1: saying that because that's what they said, and that is
- 18:10Speaker 1: what they said. And this was a gentleman by the
- 18:14Speaker 1: name of Sir Jeffrey Hudson, a k a. Lord Minimus,
- 18:19Speaker 1: the Queen's Dwarf, and he was wearing a full suit
- 18:22Speaker 1: of armor so absolutely meant to poke fun at this
- 18:26Speaker 1: gentleman's stature and make a mockery of him. Uh not
- 18:30Speaker 1: cool or okay at all, um, But this is the
- 18:33Speaker 1: kind of stuff that the royals got off on back
- 18:36Speaker 1: in those days. We also have to mention, of course,
- 18:39Speaker 1: it's similar to the idea of hermit gardners, the fact
- 18:41Speaker 1: that people had would would make a career out of
- 18:44Speaker 1: being a novelty for the wealthy. There is an argument
- 18:48Speaker 1: to be made that perhaps uh, Sir Hudson had a
- 18:52Speaker 1: better existence at the time than he would have otherwise,
- 18:57Speaker 1: just physically but mentally. That stuff has to take a
- 19:00Speaker 1: toll on you. You know what I mean. I don't
- 19:03Speaker 1: want to be paid to be the court amusement. But
- 19:06Speaker 1: now onto the cake cake Cake, cake Cake. By the
- 19:10Speaker 1: eighteen hundreds, we know uh this, we know a story
- 19:15Speaker 1: that um of someone named Susie Johnson. Now we do
- 19:19Speaker 1: want to say as we go into this a bit
- 19:21Speaker 1: of a disclaimer. Like we said at the top, parts
- 19:24Speaker 1: of this story take a dark turn. This does delve
- 19:28Speaker 1: a little bit into the world a true crime, um.
- 19:31Speaker 1: But we think it's fascinating and we think it would
- 19:35Speaker 1: be unfair of us if we didn't tell the whole
- 19:38Speaker 1: story to the best of our ability. Yeah, and and
- 19:41Speaker 1: to to to to piggyback off of that disclaimer, it
- 19:44Speaker 1: does involve some violence towards women um and some sexual assault. Uh,
- 19:50Speaker 1: but the guilty parties ultimately get their come up and
- 19:53Speaker 1: send this story, which is this is another reason that
- 19:55Speaker 1: I thought it was an interesting one to include. Um.
- 19:58Speaker 1: So let's start off with the story of Susie Johnston. UM.
- 20:03Speaker 1: Show girls jumping out of cakes in the fifties was
- 20:07Speaker 1: a was a big old thing, became super mainstream. That's
- 20:10Speaker 1: probably where most of us have seen this trope is
- 20:13Speaker 1: in some sort of suare involving rich, wealthy you know,
- 20:18Speaker 1: well dressed gentleman smoking cigars and drinking you know, their
- 20:21Speaker 1: scotches and uggling some sort of scantily clad young woman
- 20:26Speaker 1: that pops out of the cake. Right, Yeah, like some
- 20:29Speaker 1: kind of uh stereotypical bombshell doing some like Happy birthday,
- 20:36Speaker 1: Mr bosy Day. It's kind of yes. Yeah. So by
- 20:41Speaker 1: the eighteen hundreds, this this concept of live people coming
- 20:47Speaker 1: out of baked goods starts to be limited in its demographic.
- 20:52Speaker 1: It's primarily going to be uh, conventionally attractive women, and
- 20:56Speaker 1: they're gonna be a decadent parties thrown by the aristocrats
- 21:00Speaker 1: of the modern age, wealthy dudes right often in industry,
- 21:03Speaker 1: probably some aristocrats too. So we want to introduce to
- 21:07Speaker 1: this story a character. I would call him a prominent
- 21:11Speaker 1: antagonist in this story. His name is Stanford White. As
- 21:16Speaker 1: you can imagine if you have biases toward names, that's
- 21:20Speaker 1: that's the name that sounds like a well off guy.
- 21:23Speaker 1: He's a wealthy architect. He specializes in building houses and
- 21:29Speaker 1: religious buildings for his wealthy friends and other institutions in
- 21:33Speaker 1: New York City. On MA he throws a dinner party
- 21:39Speaker 1: where we believe around fifty other equally well off men,
- 21:44Speaker 1: uh come into play and attend this. This is weird, Okay,
- 21:49Speaker 1: these guys are such jerks. One of them is such
- 21:52Speaker 1: a jerk. Uh. It's a party ostensibly a wedding anniversary
- 21:56Speaker 1: for a polo player named John Elliott cow To and
- 22:00Speaker 1: and uh, I just want to point out before we
- 22:03Speaker 1: get into anything else, it's his wedding anniversary party and
- 22:07Speaker 1: his wife is not invited. Yeah, conspicuously not invited. Uh.
- 22:11Speaker 1: There are no women on the guest list, only on
- 22:13Speaker 1: the staff, and pretty much all of them are very
- 22:18Speaker 1: scantily clad. Um. So we had a handful of models
- 22:23Speaker 1: that would entertain the male guests, you know, serving them
- 22:26Speaker 1: their their brandies and their coffees and there you know,
- 22:30Speaker 1: fine delicacies of oysters and clams and champagne cocktails, etcetera.
- 22:36Speaker 1: There was even a rumor that the hair colors of
- 22:42Speaker 1: the staff of of models was coordinated to go with
- 22:46Speaker 1: the wine courses, so the brunettes would pour the red wine,
- 22:50Speaker 1: the blonds would pour the white. Um, there's a lot
- 22:53Speaker 1: of apocryphal kind of like built into this story because
- 22:56Speaker 1: of one of the accounts that we're going to get into.
- 22:58Speaker 1: But um, i'd know that seems like the kind of
- 23:02Speaker 1: obscene bacchanalien flex that like a guy like this would
- 23:06Speaker 1: would would be into agreed, Like he's definitely trying to
- 23:10Speaker 1: impress his his attendees, and his his attendees are famous
- 23:16Speaker 1: in their day. Nicola Tesla was there, uh an illustrator
- 23:21Speaker 1: named Charles Dana Gibson who is the creator of the
- 23:23Speaker 1: famous Gibson Girl. And you know they're there are loads
- 23:27Speaker 1: and loads of who's who's attending this place, right And
- 23:31Speaker 1: according to what we understand again about this story, it
- 23:34Speaker 1: was Stanford White's idea to involve Susie Johnson. So she
- 23:40Speaker 1: was the big ticket performance of this dinner party. After
- 23:44Speaker 1: these guys have gnashed to their hearts content, they bring
- 23:47Speaker 1: out this enormous pie. And then, according to Evelyn Nesbitt,
- 23:53Speaker 1: who also plays a role in this story, out of
- 23:55Speaker 1: this pie jumped Susie Johnson. She was only wearing a
- 24:00Speaker 1: flimsy piece of of see through gauze. And you know,
- 24:04Speaker 1: this might sound like it's kind of body otherwise goodhearted
- 24:07Speaker 1: Vegas style fun, but I need we have to point
- 24:10Speaker 1: out this girl was sixteen years old. Uh. And and
- 24:15Speaker 1: there were also a lot of birds that jumped out
- 24:17Speaker 1: with us. So they flew out in the room. The
- 24:18Speaker 1: sixteen year old girl, addressed in virtually nothing, uh, pops
- 24:22Speaker 1: out and uh it's like, you know, happy anniversary or whatever.
- 24:26Speaker 1: Where's your wife? Yeah, it's true that the pie was
- 24:31Speaker 1: full of nightingales and other songbirds. I got a question
- 24:36Speaker 1: for you, Ben, just just on a purely practical kind
- 24:39Speaker 1: of functional level, what do you do now you just
- 24:42Speaker 1: accept that they are just birds roaming around your party
- 24:45Speaker 1: for the rest of the evening, is there a bird
- 24:47Speaker 1: wrangler that then goes and scoops them all up and uh,
- 24:50Speaker 1: you know he hurries them off into some back room
- 24:53Speaker 1: to be dealt with or what happens to these birds?
- 24:56Speaker 1: We we we don't ever, nobody ever talks about that, right, right,
- 24:59Speaker 1: This is impor point because not all birds behave equally. Right.
- 25:03Speaker 1: If they were releasing a bunch of a bunch of EMUs,
- 25:07Speaker 1: it would be hilarious, but they would be tougher to wrangle. Uh.
- 25:11Speaker 1: So you know, if they were releasing trained pigeons, then
- 25:14Speaker 1: the pigeons would just fly to wherever they were supposed
- 25:16Speaker 1: to roost. What kind of birds did they have? It
- 25:19Speaker 1: was more than one? Right, Yeah, I think I said
- 25:20Speaker 1: nightingales earlier. They also were using canaries and doves, um,
- 25:26Speaker 1: you know, and doves. Doves are trainable, they're they're used
- 25:28Speaker 1: in magic shows a lot, and there they behave pretty well.
- 25:31Speaker 1: I think canaries are also, you know, domesticated birds. I guess,
- 25:36Speaker 1: let's say, for lack of a better term, don't know
- 25:38Speaker 1: about nightingales. Um. I just know that song in Nightingales
- 25:41Speaker 1: sang in Harvard Square. But I digress. So yeah, I
- 25:45Speaker 1: would personally leave the party immediately if this were to happen.
- 25:48Speaker 1: I would consider it a personal affront and would have
- 25:50Speaker 1: been very upset that no one gave me the heads up.
- 25:53Speaker 1: It reminds me of a crazy stunt the Rolling Stones
- 25:55Speaker 1: tried to pull. I believe it was at Madison Square
- 25:57Speaker 1: Garden on the Exile and Main Street tour. They this
- 26:00Speaker 1: idea that they were going to drop like something like
- 26:02Speaker 1: a thousand live chickens from the rafters onto the crowd,
- 26:06Speaker 1: just to see what would happen. They just wanted to
- 26:08Speaker 1: watch the world burn, you know, or get packed to
- 26:11Speaker 1: death by chickens. Thankfully, I don't know that it actually happened,
- 26:15Speaker 1: and if it had, God, God help the Rolling Stones,
- 26:18Speaker 1: that would have been a total melee. I think it
- 26:22Speaker 1: would have been a disaster of their own device. So
- 26:26Speaker 1: I'm glad hopefully that everybody in the band remains safe,
- 26:31Speaker 1: as safe as you can't be when you're doing Keith's
- 26:33Speaker 1: level of drugs. Oh my god, I can't believe that
- 26:35Speaker 1: guy is still with us. Uh. And so Susie Johnson,
- 26:38Speaker 1: remember she's emerged from this cake these birds fly away. Um,
- 26:42Speaker 1: she also has her own little kind of topper. She's
- 26:45Speaker 1: got a little hat on that looks like a nightingale itself. Um,
- 26:49Speaker 1: I guess you sort of meant to be like a
- 26:51Speaker 1: sexy nightingale, you know, humanoid nightingale kind of creature. Sixteen
- 26:56Speaker 1: years old, sixteen years old. As we get into it,
- 26:59Speaker 1: if you can believe the reports of this pretty sensationalized
- 27:03Speaker 1: account that was printed in the book Evelyn Nesbitt and
- 27:06Speaker 1: Stanford White, Love and Death in the Gilded Age by
- 27:10Speaker 1: Michael Mooney. Um, well, let's read a little exert here, Ben,
- 27:14Speaker 1: would would you like to join me in this? Uh? Yeah,
- 27:16Speaker 1: this is a really long one. Well, why don't we
- 27:18Speaker 1: split it up totally? Okay? Yeah. The room soon hung
- 27:22Speaker 1: heavy with acrid smells, the combination of wines, too much food,
- 27:27Speaker 1: of fog, of cigarette smoke, the sweat of the men
- 27:30Speaker 1: mingled with the steaming sweats of the girls that mixed
- 27:34Speaker 1: with their powders and perfumes. Then a whistle sounded, and
- 27:37Speaker 1: through the swinging doors of file of Roman slave girls appeared,
- 27:41Speaker 1: their bodies streaked with sweat, burying a huge trestle, six
- 27:45Speaker 1: girls on each side of it. Upon the trestle was
- 27:48Speaker 1: what appeared to be a monstrous pie, the crust of
- 27:52Speaker 1: a meringue of ermine whites, and the base surrounded by
- 27:57Speaker 1: banks of red and blue flowers. They began to circle
- 28:00Speaker 1: the pie and to sing to it, their voices now
- 28:03Speaker 1: heavy with wine and passion and incipient. Qutar. You're gonna
- 28:09Speaker 1: have to do a little explanation of that word later.
- 28:12Speaker 1: And at the queue, the top of the pie rose up,
- 28:14Speaker 1: and birds, doves, canaries, and nightingales began to fly everywhere
- 28:18Speaker 1: in the room. As the birds scattered, a shining blonde
- 28:22Speaker 1: child rose from the center of the pie, making graceful
- 28:26Speaker 1: weaving motions with her arms. So just a says stage here, qutar,
- 28:32Speaker 1: incipient quitar Uh. That that's a word for a build
- 28:36Speaker 1: up of mucus in your throat. It's not a sexy word.
- 28:42Speaker 1: Like they had spit in their mouths. So a lot
- 28:43Speaker 1: of people were just kind of hacking and wheezing. Is
- 28:46Speaker 1: that the implication, or that they were just like Pavlovian
- 28:49Speaker 1: dogs drooling over the sound of the bell. Perhaps there
- 28:53Speaker 1: was a bell involved. Yeah, yeah, it becomes I think
- 28:55Speaker 1: it's both of those. They are waxes. It was a whistle.
- 28:58Speaker 1: It was a whistle. Yeah, But you see what I'm
- 28:59Speaker 1: saying there, Like I've been reading some accounts of this
- 29:01Speaker 1: particular tale that was printed in this book, and uh,
- 29:05Speaker 1: this gentleman Mooney is not considered to be the best
- 29:08Speaker 1: of primary sources. As you can see, there's probably some
- 29:11Speaker 1: editorialising going on here, but it's fascinating time capsule kind
- 29:14Speaker 1: of peace either way. So what happens next then, and
- 29:18Speaker 1: this is where the to the story really does take
- 29:19Speaker 1: kind of a dark turn. So it's important to say
- 29:22Speaker 1: that Susie Johnson will later go on to be described
- 29:26Speaker 1: by some sources as one of the best and most
- 29:29Speaker 1: well known models in New York City, but this is
- 29:32Speaker 1: after a terrible, terrible thing happens to her. Uh. The
- 29:37Speaker 1: public finds out about this in uh, in a couple
- 29:42Speaker 1: of different places, and the public doesn't react very well
- 29:46Speaker 1: to it. Um. You can see a photo in an
- 29:49Speaker 1: illustration in New York World where the architects Stanford White
- 29:53Speaker 1: is standing to the left of and I believe you
- 29:56Speaker 1: could look up this illustration online now, but the architects
- 29:59Speaker 1: standard White. He's standing next to Susie Johnson's left, and
- 30:02Speaker 1: he's sort of like proffering a kitchen knife like he's
- 30:05Speaker 1: about to carve up. It's it's predatory a f The
- 30:08Speaker 1: thing is that this dinner the public learns this dinner
- 30:12Speaker 1: costs more than twenty three hundred times the daily wage
- 30:17Speaker 1: of the average worker in New York. So this looks
- 30:20Speaker 1: like um degenerate activities of the aristocracy, right. We also
- 30:27Speaker 1: know that Susie herself was Several accounts say that she
- 30:34Speaker 1: was later physically assaulted by the guy for whom the
- 30:39Speaker 1: party was being thrown. So on the night of his
- 30:42Speaker 1: tenth wedding anniversary, this dude attacked a sixteen year old child.
- 30:47Speaker 1: It's true, ben um and in a publication called The
- 30:50Speaker 1: New York World UH magazine or or kind of it
- 30:54Speaker 1: was more of like a bit of a pulpy kind
- 30:57Speaker 1: of rag at the time. Um. There's an m edge
- 31:00Speaker 1: an illustration of this event with Susie Johnson not shown
- 31:05Speaker 1: quite in the buff like she would have been, or
- 31:07Speaker 1: or you know, more with a like very very see
- 31:09Speaker 1: through outfit on she's more kind of cloaked in this
- 31:11Speaker 1: billowy kind of dress. But there you can see uh
- 31:15Speaker 1: an image representation of Stanford White standing to her left
- 31:19Speaker 1: with a large kitchen knife. This kind of like almost
- 31:23Speaker 1: wolffish look at his eyes. And it turns out that
- 31:25Speaker 1: wasn't too far from the truth because Evelyn Nesbit, who
- 31:28Speaker 1: becomes a key player in in where the story is
- 31:30Speaker 1: ultimately going um remarked to Uh to White later that
- 31:36Speaker 1: I heard you ruined, Uh, Susie Johnson. Ruined being sort
- 31:41Speaker 1: of a euphemism for, at the time, taking one's virginity
- 31:45Speaker 1: or some sort of um, you know, robbing someone of
- 31:49Speaker 1: their innocence or you know, because in the eyes of society,
- 31:52Speaker 1: you would be looked at as damaged goods, you know,
- 31:55Speaker 1: for to use the term that was thrown around at
- 31:57Speaker 1: the time, um, or you would you know, no one
- 31:58Speaker 1: would want to marry you. It would be a huge
- 32:02Speaker 1: blow to one's reputation if they found out that someone
- 32:05Speaker 1: had lost their virginity. Um are are you know, been
- 32:08Speaker 1: been pregnant out of wedlock or all that stuff was
- 32:10Speaker 1: a really big deal at the time. So but it
- 32:13Speaker 1: turns out that it was so that it was Evelyn
- 32:16Speaker 1: Nesbit that would really bear the brunt of this in
- 32:19Speaker 1: a pretty explosive way. Isn't that right? Then? Yeah, that's correct.
- 32:24Speaker 1: So ruined was a euphemism for sex outside of wedlock. Uh.
- 32:29Speaker 1: The idea of them being that if someone was not
- 32:31Speaker 1: a virgin, their marriage prospects would go from one hundred
- 32:35Speaker 1: to zero or maybe one. So here's how this situation
- 32:40Speaker 1: goes down. The first recorded pop out cake party isn't
- 32:44Speaker 1: just linked to people jumping out a cake or jumping
- 32:48Speaker 1: out of pie. In this case, it's also linked to
- 32:51Speaker 1: true crime. Um. This is where we dive into some
- 32:55Speaker 1: of the some of the terrible details here. M H.
- 33:04Speaker 1: So White is not just kind of scummy to Susie,
- 33:11Speaker 1: he is also scummy to Evelyn Nesbitt. We know that
- 33:15Speaker 1: he had According to sources, he was forty seven at
- 33:19Speaker 1: the time of his interactions. Whether she was like Susie
- 33:22Speaker 1: sixteen and he said he was going to He's like,
- 33:25Speaker 1: I'm gonna make your career as a model. I'm gonna
- 33:28Speaker 1: care for you. I'm gonna pay for your expenses. I'm
- 33:30Speaker 1: gonna pay for your mom's expenses. Uh, let's just work
- 33:34Speaker 1: something out. This happens. We have to remember in the
- 33:37Speaker 1: eight nineties when New York City was full of young
- 33:40Speaker 1: women who are coming to the Big Apple to make
- 33:43Speaker 1: it big and Broadway. Sometimes they would end up being
- 33:46Speaker 1: models for the ad industry. Sometimes the would be in
- 33:48Speaker 1: a chorus line. Sometimes they would make it on stage.
- 33:51Speaker 1: Sometimes they would get a job at a factory or
- 33:52Speaker 1: they have to resort to sex work. So when White
- 33:56Speaker 1: invites Nesbit to his street of heartment and he owns
- 34:01Speaker 1: a lot of apartments, again he's wealthy. He takes her
- 34:03Speaker 1: to the top floor and he's rigged a velvet swing
- 34:07Speaker 1: to hang from the ceiling. He sat her on the
- 34:09Speaker 1: swing and then he um pushed her on the swing basically,
- 34:13Speaker 1: which is creepy. But nothing else happens really that night.
- 34:17Speaker 1: A little bit afterwards, he takes this kid again, a teenager,
- 34:22Speaker 1: to his bedroom. He drugs her with champagne and he
- 34:24Speaker 1: assaults her and she wakes. When she wakes up, he's
- 34:28Speaker 1: he says, now you belong to me. That is some
- 34:33Speaker 1: like serious villainy right there. Just absolutely um talk about gosh,
- 34:39Speaker 1: it's good to see nowadays people like that and positions
- 34:43Speaker 1: of power, you know, getting taken to task like a
- 34:46Speaker 1: Weinstein or something. But this was the earliest, most egregious
- 34:51Speaker 1: version of taking advantage of folks who are trying to
- 34:56Speaker 1: you know, make their careers. And he literally offered to
- 34:58Speaker 1: take care of her and to pay her and her
- 35:01Speaker 1: mother's costs of living. You know, absolute wolf, you know,
- 35:06Speaker 1: just a really disgusting man and we're not This isn't
- 35:08Speaker 1: conjecture that I mean this, This is all stuff that
- 35:11Speaker 1: came out in a trial that would ultimately ensue uh
- 35:15Speaker 1: so Nez but didn't tell anyone about this rape until
- 35:19Speaker 1: a few years later, when she told the man she
- 35:22Speaker 1: was about to marry, my man named Harry Thaw the story. Um.
- 35:27Speaker 1: Thaw also apparently wasn't the most upstanding of gentlemen. He
- 35:31Speaker 1: was rumored to have beaten many working class women with
- 35:35Speaker 1: dog whips and uh soaked them in boiling water, like
- 35:40Speaker 1: as some kind of kink. Maybe, ben, I don't just
- 35:44Speaker 1: I'm not quite sure about that. The idea of bull
- 35:47Speaker 1: whips and and the water thing make me think it
- 35:49Speaker 1: was some sort of like fetish, but it's it's not
- 35:52Speaker 1: clear from from the record here. Um, but yeah, he
- 35:56Speaker 1: uh he heard this story from his his his betrothed
- 36:00Speaker 1: um and he absolutely lost his mind right because he
- 36:06Speaker 1: didn't want uh, he did not want white doing stuff
- 36:11Speaker 1: to his wife that he apparently had no problem doing
- 36:14Speaker 1: to other women. Uh. And I for what, I'm glad
- 36:17Speaker 1: to live in an age where it's possible to not
- 36:20Speaker 1: know what a dog whip is. That's disturbing that that's
- 36:23Speaker 1: just a casual thing thrown around. So, yeah, he is incensed.
- 36:27Speaker 1: He's livid. Uh, he is not dealing with his own hypocrisy. Instead,
- 36:31Speaker 1: he's taking action. On June nine six, at the opening
- 36:34Speaker 1: performance in Madison Square Garden, the same theater that Stanford
- 36:38Speaker 1: White himself had designed, Harry Thaw finds Stanford White and
- 36:42Speaker 1: he shoots him fatally. He's getting marched out of the
- 36:46Speaker 1: theater by a nearby fireman and he's still hold like
- 36:50Speaker 1: they've they've taken the gun away, and he's like yelling
- 36:52Speaker 1: at his wife Evelyn, and he says, he ruined your life, dear,
- 36:56Speaker 1: That's why I did it. And then it goes to
- 36:58Speaker 1: the courtroom you were talking about. That's right. It was
- 37:01Speaker 1: the trial of the century, even though it was suddenly
- 37:04Speaker 1: the very beginning of the century. Um. But it was
- 37:08Speaker 1: a massive media frenzy because Nesbit actually was able to
- 37:14Speaker 1: testify on the stand and she narrated every detail of
- 37:19Speaker 1: this horrific rape to the courtroom and then answered, uh
- 37:24Speaker 1: in very dignified fashion and really, you know, held her
- 37:27Speaker 1: head high. Um. So this is a very early example
- 37:30Speaker 1: of of disgusting you know, powerful men having done terrible
- 37:34Speaker 1: things and being kind of taken to task for it.
- 37:37Speaker 1: Faugh was uh committed to a psychiatric institution. UM. And
- 37:45Speaker 1: Nesbit did not have an easy life after this. She
- 37:48Speaker 1: had problems with addiction, but she continued UM her life
- 37:53Speaker 1: as a performance a dancer, UM, a performer because she was,
- 37:57Speaker 1: you know, from that world of theater as well, and
- 37:59Speaker 1: she also taught UH. And then in the nineteen sixties
- 38:02Speaker 1: she she did pass away Johnson. On the other hand,
- 38:05Speaker 1: we you know, Johnson was the girl from the cake.
- 38:08Speaker 1: Let's not forget. Nesbitt was just kind of the chronicler
- 38:11Speaker 1: of a lot of the stuff and became sort of
- 38:13Speaker 1: the face of this kind of you know, speaking out
- 38:16Speaker 1: against them, against these kinds of activities. Uh. Johnson sort
- 38:20Speaker 1: of disappeared into kind of the red light district after
- 38:23Speaker 1: the situation, which she was a successful model for a time,
- 38:27Speaker 1: but then she sort of went off the grid. UM.
- 38:29Speaker 1: And we don't really have a whole lot of information
- 38:31Speaker 1: about her UM, but one report from nineteen oh seven
- 38:35Speaker 1: UM indicates that she did get married, but then her
- 38:38Speaker 1: husband eventually found out about her pie girl days and
- 38:42Speaker 1: that alone just being the object of men's you know,
- 38:46Speaker 1: for another man to see your wife, you know, without
- 38:49Speaker 1: her clothes on. That would be enough to drive a
- 38:52Speaker 1: man at this time like into a rage and and
- 38:54Speaker 1: a completely jealous fugue state. Um. So yeah, he found
- 38:58Speaker 1: out about this and apparently, according to the account from
- 39:00Speaker 1: nineteenah seven, left turn, Yeah, it's the end of the tail.
- 39:05Speaker 1: And we like that there's I don't know about you,
- 39:07Speaker 1: but I like to think that maybe things did turn
- 39:10Speaker 1: out better for uh Susie, and that maybe this yellow
- 39:14Speaker 1: journalism was just chasing a headline instead of presenting facts.
- 39:17Speaker 1: It's such a it's a it's such a purient case,
- 39:20Speaker 1: and the kind of stuff that would have just had
- 39:22Speaker 1: these yellow journalists kind of licking their chops, you know,
- 39:25Speaker 1: and just like like, how can we exaggerate an already
- 39:29Speaker 1: pretty um over the top story. So that's why I
- 39:32Speaker 1: gotta take some of the stuff with a grain of
- 39:34Speaker 1: salt in this especially uh that that account of the party, even,
- 39:37Speaker 1: I mean, it seems like there's some truth to it,
- 39:39Speaker 1: but there's also seems to be a lot of liberties
- 39:41Speaker 1: being taken and that was just sort of par for
- 39:43Speaker 1: the course at the time. And yeah, yeah, good point.
- 39:46Speaker 1: And and look, we're not saying this should ruin your
- 39:49Speaker 1: experience with your friends, your loved winds are paid professionals
- 39:53Speaker 1: jumping out of cakes. It's just fascinating to know that
- 39:56Speaker 1: it has such a deep store worry behind it. You
- 40:01Speaker 1: can see in the In the modern day, you can
- 40:03Speaker 1: still see this practice. If you so desire, you can
- 40:08Speaker 1: pay someone to build a cake for someone else to
- 40:11Speaker 1: jump out of. Right, Oh yeah, you totally can't. It's actually,
- 40:14Speaker 1: you know, it's just a lot more accessible these days
- 40:16Speaker 1: because back then it was kind of relegated to the
- 40:18Speaker 1: super rich, and the cakes were meant to be edible,
- 40:20Speaker 1: and they would be like, you know, you'd have to
- 40:22Speaker 1: figure out a way to stuff human person in a
- 40:25Speaker 1: in a hollow cylinder inside of like a pastry. Uh.
- 40:30Speaker 1: And today you can actually order one of these things
- 40:33Speaker 1: about twenty five pounds and it comes in sort of
- 40:35Speaker 1: a modular package of of different folded cardboard pieces, sort
- 40:39Speaker 1: of like building like a cardboard castle for your kids
- 40:42Speaker 1: or whatever. But you know, not the same at all. Um.
- 40:46Speaker 1: There's instructions that come with it. Everything you need to
- 40:48Speaker 1: do only takes about five minutes to put together. And
- 40:51Speaker 1: this comes from a gentleman by the name of Danny,
- 40:54Speaker 1: who's the office manager at centerfold strips entertainment. Um, and
- 41:00Speaker 1: and uh, I think Danny might be a might be
- 41:02Speaker 1: a might be a woman. But um, apparently this is
- 41:06Speaker 1: a thing that they specialize in and they can send
- 41:10Speaker 1: these packages all around. Yep, that's right. So if you've
- 41:14Speaker 1: ever wondered, hey, how do I get in on that
- 41:17Speaker 1: medici level debauchery, well, you you're you're closer than you
- 41:20Speaker 1: might think. This practice we have to note is uh
- 41:24Speaker 1: is safer than the old the old practices. And and
- 41:28Speaker 1: you know, obviously, of course some people are are jerks,
- 41:31Speaker 1: and there's still certain stigmas surrounding sex workers, but it
- 41:35Speaker 1: is a much more accepted thing and there's not this
- 41:38Speaker 1: you know, absolutely damning stigma of you know, if if
- 41:41Speaker 1: you're caught doing this kind of work, or if you're
- 41:43Speaker 1: a caught kind of a cake or something, you're going
- 41:45Speaker 1: to be absolutely unmarriable. That's just not nearly the case anymore.
- 41:50Speaker 1: And um, there is an interview in this article on
- 41:52Speaker 1: thrillist dot com about this company that makes the cakes
- 41:55Speaker 1: some with a sex worker by the name of Fantasy
- 41:59Speaker 1: who talks about how she enjoys being the girl in
- 42:02Speaker 1: the cake and finds it empowering. Because she knows. This
- 42:05Speaker 1: is a quote from her that, uh, you're the reason
- 42:08Speaker 1: a night is going to turn crazy, especially when you're
- 42:12Speaker 1: the reason that men go wild, so um, taking ownership
- 42:15Speaker 1: of that, uh that power. Yeah, and i'd like to
- 42:19Speaker 1: I'd like to sum it up with one observation here.
- 42:21Speaker 1: It is actually easier now to have a live person
- 42:25Speaker 1: jump out of a cake than it is to have
- 42:27Speaker 1: a live animal jump out of a cake or a pie,
- 42:30Speaker 1: because human beings, of course, can consent to getting in
- 42:35Speaker 1: in the first place. Very good point, then, thanks Nel,
- 42:38Speaker 1: And with that we're going to call it a day.
- 42:42Speaker 1: We hope that you've enjoyed this strange, twisted tail. And
- 42:47Speaker 1: I think one good takeaway from this is that you
- 42:51Speaker 1: never know what kind of practice has a has a
- 42:55Speaker 1: weird story behind it. I'm still personally baffled by neck ties,
- 42:59Speaker 1: like why we where those? It did a Breen Stuff
- 43:01Speaker 1: video about that back in the day. It never really
- 43:05Speaker 1: had a function, but check that out. I don't think
- 43:08Speaker 1: we should do an episode on it, by the way,
- 43:10Speaker 1: it's it's too short. It's weird. Well, I will tell you, man,
- 43:13Speaker 1: this one had a lot more going on in it
- 43:15Speaker 1: than I ever would have expected. Upon initial uh, initially
- 43:19Speaker 1: seeing the headline and when Gabe sent us kind of
- 43:21Speaker 1: this this topic. So thanks huge thanks to UM research
- 43:26Speaker 1: associate Gabe Luger, who we're definitely going to have on
- 43:28Speaker 1: very soon UM as we all occupy our our private
- 43:32Speaker 1: uh are broadcast quarantine bunkers uh in this time of
- 43:37Speaker 1: self isolation. So hope everyone's doing well out there. Ben.
- 43:41Speaker 1: It's always a joy to kind of be able to
- 43:43Speaker 1: pop on and do these with you, uh and super
- 43:45Speaker 1: producer Casey Pegram. It kind of makes me feel a
- 43:47Speaker 1: little less crazy. I'm very lucky that part of our
- 43:49Speaker 1: job is actually interacting with with you intelligent and fine,
- 43:54Speaker 1: fine gentlemen, So I really appreciate you guys being there. Likewise,
- 43:58Speaker 1: thanks little Big Thing of course or super producer Casey
- 44:02Speaker 1: pegrov our our you know, on and off again erstwhile
- 44:07Speaker 1: nemesis Jonathan Strickland a k a. The Quister thinks that
- 44:11Speaker 1: Eve's Jeff Cote thanks to Christopher has Otis, who we
- 44:16Speaker 1: also we have this list of some people who will
- 44:19Speaker 1: be making some cameos on our show. We don't want
- 44:21Speaker 1: to thank them all yet, but stay tuned because we
- 44:24Speaker 1: have such wonders to show you, uh, and tune in
- 44:27Speaker 1: next time when let's see I don't want to spoil
- 44:30Speaker 1: this too much, but we have a very weird story
- 44:32Speaker 1: about a bottle for you. Let's just leave it at that.
- 44:35Speaker 1: I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than
- 44:37Speaker 1: a frontal of ottomy. You know that one spoonerism Tom
- 44:40Speaker 1: Waits is that Tom Waits. Well, he's the one who
- 44:42Speaker 1: popularized it. At least it's too well. This uh, this,
- 44:46Speaker 1: this story, it's all about somebody preferring to have a
- 44:48Speaker 1: bottle in front of them as well, uh and doing
- 44:51Speaker 1: some pretty interesting things supposedly allegedly with said bottle. Uh.
- 44:56Speaker 1: You let your imaginations out there in podcast land have
- 44:58Speaker 1: to be running a whild right now, and I'm absolut
- 45:00Speaker 1: okay with them. We'll see you next time. Post. For
- 45:12Speaker 1: more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart
- 45:14Speaker 1: Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your
- 45:17Speaker 1: favorite shows.