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Winnie the Pooh: Silly Old Bear · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck,
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: and Jerry's here, too. And we're continuing on with our podcast.
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: Endless nostalgia talk. Which is fine by me.
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: Were you into Winnie the Pooh?
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. I mean, I was raised on the Disney version.
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: I don't know if I ever had any of the
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: original storybooks. But as I became an adult, I grew
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: pretty fond of those. So, you know, every night you
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: and me and I will read a couple to each other.
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: Oh, that's nice.
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: I'm kidding.
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: Well, that sounded like a nice evening.
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: It really would, for sure. And maybe we will start
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: because I was reading some of these again and I'm like, God,
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: these are sweet.
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's sweet stuff. I don't remember.
• 0:53
  Speaker 3: I guess I was into it a little bit, but
• 0:55
  Speaker 3: it doesn't stand out as like a hugely like formative
• 0:59
  Speaker 3: piece of culture from my childhood.
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: What did you think about it? rereading some of the stuff, though, today.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: I mean, the same. It's just wonderful stuff. And it's
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: kind of like a little bit of a bummer, like
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: the real life stuff.
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah. So much so I'm like, maybe we should just
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: skip that part because I've watched that biopic or biopic,
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: depending on your pronunciation. Which one? Goodbye, Christopher Robin.
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: And it is harsh.
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:30
  Speaker 3: I mean, that's the real story. I think, you know,
• 1:32
  Speaker 3: Disney made the Christopher Robin movie. I didn't see that one,
• 1:37
  Speaker 3: the one with Ewan McGregor, but that seemed to be
• 1:39
  Speaker 3: very much a Disney-fied version of the real Christopher Robin's adulthood.
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: I see. So this was about– it focused easily half
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: the movie on his very, very early life. I'd say
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: about two-thirds or three-quarters of the movie. Maybe five-eighths. We'll
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: just say that. But it was like based on an author–
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: like a really exhaustive biography from the 90s. And man,
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: it did not pull punches. It was tough to watch.
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: And the mom, Daphne, is not treated sympathetically at all. Essentially,
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: if there's a villain in the movie, it's her.
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I totally agree.
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: Well, at any rate, before we get off on that,
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: we should probably talk about the celebrated Winnie the Pooh.
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: And hopefully you can continue on separating the art, the
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: work of magic that A.A. Milne created. From, you know,
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: the real life behind the scenes stuff, because that's real life.
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: Winnie the Pooh is not real life. And that's what
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: makes it so magnificent.
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: That's right.
• 2:42
  Speaker 3: But it was birthed from a real life thing, which
• 2:44
  Speaker 3: is I mean, the story starts out incredibly sweet. And
• 2:48
  Speaker 3: it starts out in Canada in 1914 when a soldier
• 2:52
  Speaker 3: shows up at basic training and has an orphaned black
• 2:56
  Speaker 3: bear cub. And this is Lieutenant Harry Colburn, who was
• 2:59
  Speaker 3: a veterinarian from Winnipeg.
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: Shout out, Winnipeg.
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: City we went to for the very first time on
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: tour this summer.
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: Shout out Winnipeg.
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: Had a great time.
• 3:09
  Speaker 3: But he apparently, as the story goes, got this bear
• 3:12
  Speaker 3: from a train platform on his way to the military base.
• 3:16
  Speaker 3: It was for sale by a hunter who had killed
• 3:19
  Speaker 3: the bear's mom. So he brings this bear along who
• 3:22
  Speaker 3: was a little girl bear.
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: By the way.
• 3:24
  Speaker 3: And that's kind of set me down the path of like,
• 3:27
  Speaker 3: wait a minute, was Winnie the Pooh a girl bear? Yeah.
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: No.
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: And apparently not. So we'll kind of get to that switch.
• 3:33
  Speaker 3: But because he was from Winnipeg, he nicknamed this real
• 3:36
  Speaker 3: bear Winnie and took this real bear to like the
• 3:40
  Speaker 3: barracks and it became like a little base bear.
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah. That's so Canada, too, you know?
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: Oh, totally.
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: I love it. Also, in the version of the story
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: in my head, Lieutenant Harry Colburn left that hunter a
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: bloody pulp just barely clinging to life.
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, sure.
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: So Colburn is at the base and he's like called
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: off to World War I. And that's, you know, even
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: Canadian friendliness has its levels. They're like, no, you can't
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: take the bear with you.
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: So he, because he was stationed in London, he took
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: it to the London Zoo and said, can you hang
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: on to my bear for me for a few years
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: until I come back? And the London Zoo said, sure.
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: And in the meantime, while he was gone, Winnie the
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: bear became a huge sensation because she had been raised
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: around humans. She was very gentle, so much so that
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: kids were able to interact with her, you know, smartly
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: or otherwise.
• 4:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: But by the time Colburn came back from World War One,
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: he found like when he was so beloved, he was like,
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: I think you belong to London now, not me. Yeah.
• 4:43
  Speaker 3: And especially with that cute voice that this bear had,
• 4:48
  Speaker 3: you know. So now we got to go to the
• 4:51
  Speaker 3: story of A.A. Milne, the author of these books, Alan
• 4:55
  Speaker 3: Alexander Milne. He was a writer before Winnie the Pooh
• 4:59
  Speaker 3: came along. He edited a humor magazine called Punch. He
• 5:03
  Speaker 3: was also sent off to World War I in 1914,
• 5:07
  Speaker 3: and he came back a mess. And especially if you
• 5:10
  Speaker 3: see this movie, like if that movie is the truth,
• 5:16
  Speaker 3: and it seems like it is because it's based on
• 5:17
  Speaker 3: that exhaustive book, then he had a pretty severe case
• 5:21
  Speaker 3: of PTSD after being injured and seeing the horrors of war.
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: Yes, and was very much– His view of the world
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: was really wrecked as well. Like he just couldn't understand
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: how people could send other people off to die like
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: the way he saw people die. And yeah, he had
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: what they called at the time shell shock. And he,
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: like you said, he had worked for Punch Magazine. He
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: kind of established himself, but he continued to write and
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: he tried writing other stuff. He wrote a play that
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: was turned into a silent movie. And he was an
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: essayist as well. I think it wasn't until about the
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: early to mid-1920s that he really found his calling. And
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: he found his calling after he had his one and
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: only child, Christopher Robin.
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 6:10
  Speaker 3: I mean, I kind of assume most people knew that
• 6:12
  Speaker 3: Christopher Robin was the real kid's name.
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: But if you didn't know, surprise.
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: You can't make that kind of name up.
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: You can't.
• 6:20
  Speaker 3: He had a nickname, which was Billy Moon. He was
• 6:22
  Speaker 3: born in 1920. And like you said, once he had
• 6:25
  Speaker 3: this little boy... He started writing children's poetry and in
• 6:31
  Speaker 3: 1923 wrote a poem called Vespers, which mentioned his son,
• 6:35
  Speaker 3: Christopher Robin, by name and the little stuffed bear that
• 6:39
  Speaker 3: he had. It was a realized stuffed bear. And if
• 6:42
  Speaker 3: you're ever in New York City, go to the New
• 6:44
  Speaker 3: York City Public Library because all these his little original
• 6:47
  Speaker 3: stuffed animals that these stories were based on are sitting there.
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: And it's wonderful to see.
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Under a glass case. And if you go at
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: the right time after closing. You can hear them banging
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: on the glass and coming out.
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: It's funny. I couldn't remember where I saw those when
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: I was doing the research.
• 7:03
  Speaker 3: I was like, I know I saw those somewhere and
• 7:04
  Speaker 3: I couldn't remember what museum.
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: And then when, who helped us with this? Julia?
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Julia. This is a Julia joint.
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: A Julia joint. Yeah. When she said that it was
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: a New York Public Library, I remembered.
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: Did you say, by God, that's right.
• 7:20
  Speaker 3: I did. But you know, when you have a little
• 7:22
  Speaker 3: gnawing thing that you don't know the answer to and
• 7:23
  Speaker 3: it's so satisfying to.
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: Have that memory, even though it wasn't a memory?
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's called my normal life, but I don't get
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: the satisfying remembrance. It's just, I have to just give
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: it up.
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: I'm sorry to hear that, but I'll send you a
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: little stuffed bear.
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: Okay, fair enough. I have a question for you though, Chuck.
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: I think you might be able to answer this. You
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: said that Winnie, Winnie was a girl bear, Winnipeg, the
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: Canadian bear. And Winnie the Pooh is not a girl bear.
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: So how did Winnie the Pooh get the name Winnie?
• 8:01
  Speaker 3: You're being coy, but I'll play along. You know, like
• 8:05
  Speaker 3: I said, he had this real stuffed bear. He got
• 8:06
  Speaker 3: it as a I think a one year old on
• 8:09
  Speaker 3: his first birthday from his mom, Daphne.
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: And he nicknamed this bear or he named it, I guess, Edward.
• 8:17
  Speaker 3: So right out of the gate, this bear is gendered.
• 8:22
  Speaker 3: And then later on, the name Winnie comes around because
• 8:25
  Speaker 3: he meets that real bear that we were talking about, Winnipeg,
• 8:29
  Speaker 3: at the London Zoo, nicknamed Winnie. So he changed Edward
• 8:32
  Speaker 3: to Winnie and just said, I guess you're still a boy.
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: So, yeah, I think in the movie or somewhere his
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: dad said, well, is he a boy or is he
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: a girl? I thought he was a boy. He said
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: he's neither. He's a bear. Sure. Which is just a
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: great Christopher Robinism.
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I agree.
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: I knew. So Edward for a bear is not that odd.
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: It's actually kind of cute. But I knew a man
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: once who had a dog named Jason. And I still
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: to this day think that's the oddest dog name I've
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: ever heard. Yeah.
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: The real human names for dogs can be funny.
• 9:03
  Speaker 3: And I think Jason is one of them. But there
• 9:06
  Speaker 3: are definitely human names that are more that are funnier
• 9:09
  Speaker 3: than others.
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: Jason's pretty high up there. It is.
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: But I don't think the guy was being funny, which
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: made it even stranger.
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I guess you're right.
• 9:19
  Speaker 3: What's a funny name, real name for a dog? I mean,
• 9:22
  Speaker 3: my in-laws had a dog named Josh. I don't think
• 9:24
  Speaker 3: I ever told you that.
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: No.
• 9:26
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: They always named their dogs real names like Josh and Toby.
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: Toby, I can see. Josh, that's a surprising one too.
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: It's no Jason though.
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: How about Lois?
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: See, no, that's, yeah, that's almost, that's starting to be,
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: that's purposefully silly.
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: Or Elizabeth. That's a weird dog name.
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: That is a weird dog name. But I could also
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: see some real frou-frou like little Pomeranian or something.
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: I almost said Pomeranian. Look at us.
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: So, okay. I think we were talking about... Winnie the
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: Pooh at some point, right?
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: That's right.
• 10:02
  Speaker 3: It went from Edward to Winnie after he met the
• 10:04
  Speaker 3: real Winnipeg bear at the London Zoo.
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: Well, while we're on it, what the heck is the
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: Pooh then?
• 10:12
  Speaker 3: Well, Pooh, I think, came from, he was on vacation,
• 10:17
  Speaker 3: the young Christopher Robin Milne, And there was this swan
• 10:20
  Speaker 3: that he nicknamed Pooh that he fed every morning. And apparently,
• 10:24
  Speaker 3: as the story goes, when the swan did not show up,
• 10:26
  Speaker 3: he would just say, Pooh, like, I don't care if
• 10:28
  Speaker 3: you're coming or not, even though obviously he did. And
• 10:32
  Speaker 3: so I guess it just sort of morphed into Winnie
• 10:34
  Speaker 3: the Pooh, hyphenated at first.
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, pretty cute. Yeah. One of the all time great names, too. Like,
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: I think that is in no small part one of
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: the reasons for Winnie the Pooh's belovedness. That is such
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: a great name.
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: I agree.
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: So as we said, A.A. Milne was definitely suffering from
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: PTSD and he was back in London. He was trying to,
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: you know, pick up his career again. And it was
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: just those two things were not going very well together.
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: So he decided that what would be best for him
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: and in turn his family was to leave the city
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: and move to Sussex. which is, I guess, it's called
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: the Home County. It's like an exurb of London. It's
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: not that far away, but it's pretty rural from what
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: I understand. And he bought Cotchford Farm near this forest,
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: was just exactly the kind of impetus they needed to
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: come up with the 100-acre woods, thanks to forays with
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: his son, which was, he says in the movie, and
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: I totally buy it, but these were the happiest times
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: of his life, making up games and stories with his,
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: you know, three, four, five-year-old son walking through Ashdown Forest.
• 11:39
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and I hate to issue a correction, but I
• 11:41
  Speaker 3: know we're going to hear from listeners if you don't
• 11:44
  Speaker 3: correct 100-acre wood singular.
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: Thank you. That's absolutely true.
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: A small thing, but it jumped out at me.
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: Thank you. Well, yeah, if it jumped out at you,
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: we were definitely going to get some mean emails. How
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: could you be so stupid? I know.
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: It's not an S. Did you mention the other stuffed animals?
• 12:06
  Speaker 3: I know I mentioned all of them being in the
• 12:08
  Speaker 3: New York City Public Library. But all of those characters
• 12:12
  Speaker 3: that would eventually end up in these books, he had
• 12:14
  Speaker 3: his little stuffies. He had a little pig. He had
• 12:16
  Speaker 3: a little donkey. He had a tiger and a kangaroo
• 12:19
  Speaker 3: and that bear, which is just all this stuff couldn't.
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: Be any sweeter.
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: No, it's true. That little piglet one is adorable.
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, very much.
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: So Mill, um, you said he wrote Vespers and that
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: apparently became quite popular. It was just super sweet. It was, um,
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: definitely along the lines of what he would later write
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: for Winnie the Pooh. And the first thing he did
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: was start writing, uh, children's poetry. And then, uh, as
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: I said, like, as he started hanging out with his
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: son in the woods, just having fun time with them, um,
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: he would bring a little Chris, Christopher Robin would bring
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: his stuffed animals along on these walks. And, um, They
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: became like characters in the woods themselves. So the woods
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: very quickly became their home in these stories they were
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: making up.
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: And what were their names? We haven't even said these yet,
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: I don't think.
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: So you've got Piglet. I love Piglet. You have Eeyore,
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: the sad donkey.
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: Tigger, the hyperactive tiger. But actually, he's not really a tiger.
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: He's a tigger. He's one of a kind. Yeah. Kanga,
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: the incredibly sweet and patient mom. Her Joey Rue, who's
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: a lot of fun to have around. And then, of course,
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: Winnie the Pooh, the willy nilly silly old bear.
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: Oh, goodness. It's just too much for me. So I
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: got to take a break if that's all right.
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure.
• 13:41
  Speaker 3: All right. We'll be right back, everybody, with more on
• 13:43
  Speaker 3: Winnie the Pooh. All right, everyone, we're back with more sweetness.
• 14:12
  Speaker 3: It's Christmas Eve, 1925, and the London Evening News publishes
• 14:18
  Speaker 3: a short story and introduces the world to little poo.
• 14:22
  Speaker 3: It was called The Wrong Sort of Bees, and it
• 14:25
  Speaker 3: would be the first chapter of a short story collection.
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: Or I guess just a story collection. Well, they were
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: short stories, right?
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: They were short stories, sure.
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: All right, great.
• 14:33
  Speaker 3: And that published as a unit the next year. And
• 14:37
  Speaker 3: almost all of the characters were in this first group.
• 14:42
  Speaker 3: And they all had their distinct personalities that, you know,
• 14:44
  Speaker 3: as we'll see later, people extrapolated on like maybe what
• 14:47
  Speaker 3: the meaning of these personalities were.
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: But what were they like?
• 14:51
  Speaker 2: Well, there were two also that we didn't mention, rabbit
• 14:54
  Speaker 2: and owl. And that was because there was no rabbit
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: or owl stuffed animal. They came later. But they were
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: in this first book. Tigger was the only one who
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: didn't make his first appearance in the first storybook. He
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: came out in the second one. But Piglet, he was
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: always very scared and nervous and worried and anxious. Rabbit
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: was a perfectionist. He was very much... I never really
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: caught on to his character quite as much. But I
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: just know that he was very much preoccupied with everything
• 15:26
  Speaker 2: going right, if I'm not mistaken.
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: Owl was one of those guys who likes to hear
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: himself talk and would just say stuff.
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: The other characters, you know, Winnie the Pooh frequently talked
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: about how he didn't have a brain or he was
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: filled with fluff or something like that. And so the
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: other characters are taking whatever Owl says is, you know, correct,
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: even though it's sometimes wildly off.
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure.
• 15:51
  Speaker 3: I think you already mentioned earlier that Eeyore was, of course, sad.
• 15:55
  Speaker 3: And then Kanga was obviously is the mom, a very
• 15:59
  Speaker 3: nurturing character.
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: And you got Rue, who was a little, you know,
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: he's a little rambunctious baby.
• 16:06
  Speaker 2: He was like the tiny Tim. Just super sweet and cute.
• 16:10
  Speaker 2: Just having him present was fun.
• 16:12
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and that was The Wrong Sort of Bees. And
• 16:14
  Speaker 3: then you mentioned The House on Pooh Corners when Tigger
• 16:16
  Speaker 3: comes along. And we should talk about The Wrong Sort
• 16:20
  Speaker 3: of Bees because it kind of just lays out a
• 16:22
  Speaker 3: template for, I.
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: Guess, things to come.
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: And it's just so gosh darn cute, too.
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: It's so cute.
• 16:29
  Speaker 3: And it sets the tone for, like, these personalities and
• 16:32
  Speaker 3: what readers are in.
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: For, right?
• 16:35
  Speaker 2: Yes. So in it– The whole thing, and actually the
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: book ends the same way in the opposite direction. But
• 16:43
  Speaker 2: Christopher Robin, the real boy, comes down the stairs dragging
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: his bear by the arm and asks his father to
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: tell him a story. We'll tell his bear a story.
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: And that's how the whole thing starts. Winnie the Pooh
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: is sitting under a sign that says Mr. Sanders. And
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: that's the only mention that's ever made of it, as
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: far as I can tell. It's just such a weird
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: little detail. But he starts trying to go for honey
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: because he realizes he hears some bees. And to him,
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: the only purpose of bees is to make honey for
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: him to eat.
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's that honeypot, always getting them into trouble.
• 17:20
  Speaker 3: And it starts off right off the bat in book one.
• 17:23
  Speaker 3: So he wants to climb up this tree, obviously get
• 17:25
  Speaker 3: into that honeypot. A branch breaks and he falls down.
• 17:30
  Speaker 3: And to a little prickly, prickly bush. And he's like,
• 17:34
  Speaker 3: all right, I've got a new idea. I wish I
• 17:36
  Speaker 3: could do the voice. But he says he's got a
• 17:38
  Speaker 3: new idea. He wants to become a cloud and trick
• 17:41
  Speaker 3: these bees. So he decides to become a dark cloud
• 17:44
  Speaker 3: by rolling himself in mud, borrows a blue balloon from
• 17:48
  Speaker 3: his friend, Christopher Robin, so he can float up. And
• 17:51
  Speaker 3: he's like, this is going to work. They're going to
• 17:54
  Speaker 3: be scared of this dark cloud. And I'm going to
• 17:56
  Speaker 3: get that honeypot.
• 17:58
  Speaker 2: Yes. But the bees don't seem to be buying it.
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: And so he asked Christopher Robin to go get his
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: umbrella and walk underneath Pooh with the umbrella out saying, tut, tut,
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: it looks like rain to help fool the bees even further.
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: That still doesn't work. But now Pooh realizes that he's
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: stuck up there because if he just lets go of
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: the balloon, he's going to fall and it's going to hurt.
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: That's right.
• 18:23
  Speaker 3: And the title Wrong Sort of Bees comes from The
• 18:26
  Speaker 3: fact that the bees don't buy into his plan and
• 18:28
  Speaker 3: Pooh says these are the.
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: Wrong sort of bees, which is adorable.
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: It is.
• 18:32
  Speaker 3: So Christopher Robin helps him out, shoots a hole in
• 18:34
  Speaker 3: that balloon, and he drifts down safely, doesn't learn a lesson,
• 18:40
  Speaker 3: which is a very much established sort of thing for
• 18:43
  Speaker 3: Winnie the Pooh. Like he's still going to go after
• 18:45
  Speaker 3: that honeypot a million times in the future.
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: So that was the first one. That was the one
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: that premiered in the London Evening Times on Christmas Eve. 1925.
• 18:57
  Speaker 2: And that was the first chapter in that book. And
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: the other ones are super cute, too. Like there's one
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: where Pooh goes to visit Rabbit and is Warren and
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: eats too much. He takes too much advantage of Rabbit's
• 19:10
  Speaker 2: hospitality and starts eating condensed milk and honey. But he
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: doesn't want to make a nuisance of himself. So he
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: very politely tells Rabbit, no need to get me any bread.
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: I'll just eat the condensed milk and honey as is.
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: And he gained so much weight that he can't get
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: back out The hole to Rabbit's Warren. And he gets
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: stuck and has to stay there for a week while
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: he goes on a diet until he slims down enough
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: to be pulled out.
• 19:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah. There's a lot of food and gluttony related storylines
• 19:39
  Speaker 3: with Winnie.
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: For sure. For sure. But he's also adorable. And one
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: of the other things that's so adorable to me is
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: the way that Christopher Robin looks at Pooh and sees Pooh. Mm-hmm.
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: He very frequently thinks to himself, silly old bear. And
• 19:54
  Speaker 2: it's just such like a loving, tender feeling that's just
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: evoked in just that little phrase that he thinks of
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: him and calls him sometimes. And it's just super cute.
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: I love it.
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: I don't know if we've gotten across. This stuff is
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: really cute.
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: It is. It's so sugary sweet.
• 20:10
  Speaker 3: So we should talk about the illustrations a little bit
• 20:12
  Speaker 3: because they have become just completely iconic.
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: It was an illustrator named E.H. Shepard. And they're very,
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: you know, it's nothing fancy. It's pretty straightforward stuff.
• 20:23
  Speaker 3: I don't think they became color until 1931.
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: Is that right?
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: I didn't see that anywhere. I saw a couple of
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: references to it, but all I ever saw were black
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: and white, like just pencil or just line illustrations, uncolored.
• 20:37
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's somewhere in here. So we'll get to it.
• 20:38
  Speaker 3: I think it was the early 1930s. But yeah, initially
• 20:40
  Speaker 3: black and white. And again, nothing, nothing fancy going on.
• 20:45
  Speaker 3: Very simple sort of shapes and lines. Shepard also had
• 20:50
  Speaker 3: gone to World War One and had a pretty rough
• 20:53
  Speaker 3: go of it. And it seems like and, you know,
• 20:55
  Speaker 3: this is in the movie as well, that England just
• 21:00
  Speaker 3: really sort of post-war England needed this sweetness in their lives.
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: Exactly. That's one reason why it's posited. It became so
• 21:09
  Speaker 2: popular so quickly. This is like an enormous sensation, pretty
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: much out of the gate, as we'll see. And I
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: think that's also why a lot of people point to
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: it as being just as popular 100 years on, you know.
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: People just need that kind of sweet, like, way of
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: living and looking at life, you know, without being bowled
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: over by it at every turn, you know, just kind
• 21:33
  Speaker 2: of saying that's. That's life. You just keep going and
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: be positive. Yeah.
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: There's some good, simple messages in all these books.
• 21:41
  Speaker 3: He originally modeled the drawings on the real stuffed animals
• 21:45
  Speaker 3: from Christopher Robin, except when he got to the final
• 21:47
  Speaker 3: version of Winnie, that came from inspiration. That was inspired
• 21:52
  Speaker 3: by his own kid's teddy bear. It was a little chubbier,
• 21:55
  Speaker 3: I think, than Christopher Robin's real doll.
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: Not his real doll. You know what I'm saying.
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: Right. He he also had to like I said, there
• 22:04
  Speaker 2: wasn't a rabbit or an owl doll. So he had
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: to use live models with Christopher Robin holding them still
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: on the table, holding them down so they wouldn't wriggle
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: too much or get away.
• 22:16
  Speaker 3: That reminds me of if you look, I might have
• 22:19
  Speaker 3: said this before at some point. If you look at
• 22:21
  Speaker 3: baby pictures of my brother, you will notice that my
• 22:24
  Speaker 3: mother's hand is in the photo propping him up because
• 22:28
  Speaker 3: my brother was so round. He would roll over in
• 22:32
  Speaker 3: Olin Mills' portrait. So we have a lot of baby
• 22:35
  Speaker 3: pictures of Scott with my mom's hand in there.
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: Man, he's like a weeble that'll wobble but won't fall down. Yeah.
• 22:42
  Speaker 1: And now he can't gain a pound, you know. So
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: thanks for that.
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah. One other thing about E.H. Shepard that stuck out
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: to me is in that The Wrong Sort of Bees,
• 22:53
  Speaker 2: that first chapter. Uh-huh. Where Christopher Robin shoots the balloon
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: so that the air slowly comes out so Pooh can
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: come down safely to the ground. If you look at
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: his gun, it's a pop gun. There's like a cork
• 23:06
  Speaker 2: on a string hanging out of it, which I thought
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: was a good little touch from E.H. Shepard. And that
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: was like the kind of thing that he would have done. Because, again,
• 23:13
  Speaker 2: this whole thing is like meant to be the antithesis
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: or the antidote to the war that Europe just went through.
• 23:20
  Speaker 2: And I think that's evidence of how they were trying
• 23:24
  Speaker 2: to make things feel.
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, a bazooka would have been completely inappropriate.
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: With like smoke coming out of the end.
• 23:32
  Speaker 1: That would be weird.
• 23:33
  Speaker 3: If you think that some of this original stuff is
• 23:35
  Speaker 3: very valuable, you'd be right. Because in 2018, the original
• 23:39
  Speaker 3: 100-acre wood map that Shepard hand-drew sold at auction for $ 568, 761,
• 23:43
  Speaker 3: which set a record for a single book illustration. And
• 23:45
  Speaker 3: then just last year in 2025– someone paid 120 or
• 23:57
  Speaker 3: close to 120 grand for a collection of Milne's early
• 24:01
  Speaker 3: drafts and like, you know, poems, illustrations, stuff like that.
• 24:05
  Speaker 3: And apparently there was some notes to Shepard from Milne
• 24:09
  Speaker 3: that says the illustrations were very poor.
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: Not cool.
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: So that hand-drawn map of the 100-acre wood that went
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: for 600K, I was looking at it and it's purported
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: to have been Drawn with scare quotes by Christopher Robin
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: with the help of E.H. Shepard because it says drawn
• 24:31
  Speaker 2: by me. And then it says Mr. Shepard helped like H.E.L.P.D.
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: Oh, interesting.
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Like that, you know, that makes it kind of cute.
• 24:40
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Once again, cuteness abounds with all these sad, sad
• 24:46
  Speaker 3: adults trying to work their way through their war drama.
• 24:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Agreed. And again, like we said, there's some other
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: bittersweet sadness to it as well behind the scenes. But
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: before we get to that, I said that this was
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: like a huge, huge phenomenon right out of the gate.
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: I think it sold 200,000 copies in Great Britain and
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: the United States by the end of the year, which
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: is even more impressive when you realize that it came
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: out in October. Yeah. That is unheard of at the time.
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: It was like... On the level of what Mickey Mouse
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: would soon be, I think Steamboat Willie came out around
• 25:24
  Speaker 2: the same time, but I don't think was quite as
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: big as Winnie the Pooh was. And Winnie the Pooh
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: became the first mass-marketed children's character, thanks to a guy
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: named Stephen Schlesinger, who bought the Canadian and U.S. rights
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: in 1930. Yeah, he paid $ 1, 000 for....
• 25:44
  Speaker 3: Plus royalties. I'm not sure how that worked. I was
• 25:47
  Speaker 3: trying to get more detail, but it's hard to find
• 25:49
  Speaker 3: stuff about these old deals. And could this number be correct,
• 25:55
  Speaker 3: or did Julia already West Egg that number up?
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: I don't think so. I could see it being correct.
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: All right.
• 26:03
  Speaker 3: So according— I' m going to blame Julia.
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: If this is wrong.
• 26:08
  Speaker 3: But within a year of purchasing the rights to Poo
• 26:11
  Speaker 3: and Company— Apparently, he was making in 1931 dollars, 50
• 26:18
  Speaker 3: million bucks a year on merch and media, which would
• 26:22
  Speaker 3: be over a billion dollars a year in today money.
• 26:27
  Speaker 2: I mean, he put it on absolutely everything and licensed
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: it to to a lot of people to do more
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: than just make toys with, like to make like little.
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: animated shorts or make records that were, you know, the
• 26:43
  Speaker 2: stories acted out, that kind of stuff. So, I mean,
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: that is a lot of money, but Julie is usually
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: pretty good about saying like in today dollars or something
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: when she means that. Yeah.
• 26:53
  Speaker 3: I mean, what I tried to do was look up
• 26:55
  Speaker 3: Schlesinger's like net worth when he died and they didn't,
• 26:58
  Speaker 3: you know, they don't have kind of information on that
• 27:01
  Speaker 3: kind of stuff because I think he died in the
• 27:02
  Speaker 3: 1950s maybe. But he was well known in the business
• 27:06
  Speaker 3: for like merchandising and buying rights to a lot of characters.
• 27:10
  Speaker 3: And there's a really long, detailed, I don't even know
• 27:14
  Speaker 3: all the details, story of the rights and how that
• 27:17
  Speaker 3: worked over the years. Because Milne died in 1956 and
• 27:21
  Speaker 3: left the rights to his widow through a trust and
• 27:25
  Speaker 3: to his widow and three organizations, the Westminster School, the
• 27:29
  Speaker 3: Royal Literary Fund and the Garrett Club. And Disney bought
• 27:32
  Speaker 3: the rights from the widow at least that she controlled
• 27:36
  Speaker 3: in 61 and struck a deal with the other four–
• 27:39
  Speaker 3: I'm sorry, the other three organizations to like pay them
• 27:42
  Speaker 3: out semi-annually. And then I think in 2001, Disney bought
• 27:47
  Speaker 3: it outright from those other entities for $ 350 million. Wow.
• 27:49
  Speaker 3: But it's– The article went on and on about like
• 27:55
  Speaker 3: more nuance and subtleties over the years and lawsuits and
• 27:58
  Speaker 3: all this kind of crazy stuff, obviously, when you're dealing
• 28:00
  Speaker 3: with hundreds of millions of bucks. But long story short,
• 28:03
  Speaker 3: Disney ultimately acquired all the rights because I think Walt
• 28:07
  Speaker 3: Disney's daughter really loved Winnie the Pooh.
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: And he was like, I'll buy it for you then.
• 28:12
  Speaker 2: Yeah. She said, get it for me, daddy. I want it.
• 28:15
  Speaker 3: And I don't think we mentioned the real Christopher Robin
• 28:17
  Speaker 3: voiced Christopher Robin on those early records and radio shows.
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: Right. Yes, he became a overnight sensation. His dad became
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: a celebrated literary sensation overnight as well, because not just kids,
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: but adults loved Winnie the Pooh right out of the
• 28:34
  Speaker 2: gate as well. So, yes, they became a huge smash
• 28:39
  Speaker 2: hit in the toast of England, at least if not further,
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: which became problematic for them for sure. I say we
• 28:47
  Speaker 2: take a break and we'll come back and talk about
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: some of those problems after, well, the break.
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: Let's do it.
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: Okay. Thank you. OK, Chuck, thanks for leaving it to
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: me to kick this part off. But as we mentioned,
• 29:25
  Speaker 2: that movie from 2017, Goodbye, Christopher Robin, was based on
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: a biography of A.A. Milne from 1990. And I don't
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: remember the biographer's name, but it was like it. it
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: did not, like I said, pulled many punches, if any.
• 29:42
  Speaker 2: And it was starring Domhnall Gleeson, Brendan Gleeson's son. Yeah,
• 29:48
  Speaker 2: he was in Ex Machina, a few other movies, but
• 29:51
  Speaker 2: he was also in Frank. Have you ever seen Frank?
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: I don't think so. What was that?
• 29:57
  Speaker 2: It's an indie film about an indie band led by
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: a guy with a giant paper mache head who no
• 30:04
  Speaker 2: one has ever seen. He will not take it off.
• 30:07
  Speaker 2: And it turns out it's Fassbender playing Frank. Yeah, yeah.
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: That's a true story.
• 30:11
  Speaker 2: Is it? Yeah.
• 30:13
  Speaker 3: And I think our old buddy John Ronson wrote the
• 30:17
  Speaker 3: book that that was based on, if I'm not mistaken.
• 30:20
  Speaker 2: Well, that is a great, great movie. I'm guessing the
• 30:23
  Speaker 2: book's even better because that's usually the case.
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I didn't read the book or see the movie.
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: I need to do both.
• 30:28
  Speaker 2: Go see the movie for sure. It's a great little movie.
• 30:32
  Speaker 2: I would recommend it to anybody.
• 30:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that was a weird true story. And of course,
• 30:38
  Speaker 3: right up John Ronson's alley.
• 30:39
  Speaker 2: For sure. So anyway, that was neither here nor there.
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: But the point of Goodbye, Christopher Robin was this idea
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: that A.A. Milne essentially stole Christopher Robin, the real life
• 30:55
  Speaker 2: Christopher Robin's childhood and sold it in book form. He
• 30:59
  Speaker 2: packaged it and sold it and got very, very rich
• 31:02
  Speaker 2: off of it. And his son became very, very unhappy.
• 31:06
  Speaker 2: Even before he realized that that's– even before he could
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: put into words something like that, he just knew something
• 31:13
  Speaker 2: was quite wrong. And he did not like all of
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: the attention. He liked it at first, but very quickly
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: it became overwhelming and overtaxing for him. And his nanny, Olive,
• 31:22
  Speaker 2: who he loved very much. Right.
• 31:25
  Speaker 3: Who in the movie was played by– what's her name from–
• 31:28
  Speaker 3: Kelly McDonald.
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Trainspotting. That book, by the way, was written by
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: Anne Thwaite.
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: Thank you.
• 31:34
  Speaker 3: And– In that book, she goes on to sort of
• 31:38
  Speaker 3: detail how in some ways this kind of, I don't
• 31:43
  Speaker 3: want to go so far as to say ruin their lives,
• 31:45
  Speaker 3: but it wasn't a great thing. Like, you know, this
• 31:49
  Speaker 3: was a writer, A.A. Milne, who wanted to do other things.
• 31:51
  Speaker 3: He was like, I don't want to write this stuff anymore.
• 31:54
  Speaker 3: I was a satirist to begin my career and then
• 31:57
  Speaker 3: a playwright. And nobody wanted that. Everyone just wanted more poo.
• 32:02
  Speaker 3: And he felt, you know, I think this happens sometimes
• 32:05
  Speaker 3: when you get a big breakout hit with a thing
• 32:08
  Speaker 3: sort of imprisoned by that thing.
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And something similar happened to E.H. Shepard, although I
• 32:13
  Speaker 2: don't think to nearly the degree that happened to A.A.
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: Milne and Christopher Robin in his real life, not his career,
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: his real life. He ran into the same problems that
• 32:23
  Speaker 2: his father ran into with his career. But, you know,
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: the point is made that Shepard died. He was a
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: political cartoonist, so he had an edgy, satirical career as well.
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: And people were like, draw some more piglets for us.
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: But I did see that he continued to have a
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: very long, illustrious career at Punch magazine into the late 40s.
• 32:49
  Speaker 2: So his career wasn't totally derailed like A.A. Milne's was.
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: He's like, here's Pooh as Uncle Sam.
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: Exactly. And here he is as Chairman Mao.
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 32:59
  Speaker 3: So Christopher Robin Milne had a rough go. Like you said,
• 33:03
  Speaker 3: he was bullied all kind of all throughout school. Kind
• 33:08
  Speaker 3: of that thing where anytime, you know, you think like
• 33:11
  Speaker 3: being a famous kid is a cool thing, but it
• 33:14
  Speaker 3: seems to never work out that way at school.
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: Like you become a target.
• 33:18
  Speaker 3: He went off to war, enlisted to to kind of
• 33:21
  Speaker 3: prove that, you know, all the kids would call him names.
• 33:23
  Speaker 3: They would call him a sissy and like names that
• 33:25
  Speaker 3: they said, you know, at the time like that.
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: And.
• 33:29
  Speaker 3: Went off to war, graduated college, and even in his
• 33:33
  Speaker 3: professional life, like, I.
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: Get the idea.
• 33:36
  Speaker 3: It's sort of like, you know, he goes to get
• 33:38
  Speaker 3: a job and they're like, wait, Christopher Robin, you're that
• 33:40
  Speaker 3: Christopher Robin?
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: No way.
• 33:42
  Speaker 3: And yeah, and he just had a hard time breaking
• 33:44
  Speaker 3: free of being that character, even though he was a
• 33:47
  Speaker 3: real human.
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he and he became more and more resentful, especially
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: as he was able to put into words what he
• 33:54
  Speaker 2: felt like his father did for him or to him.
• 33:57
  Speaker 2: as far as his childhood goes. And also, his father
• 34:00
  Speaker 2: wasn't exactly like walking around with his heart on his sleeve.
• 34:03
  Speaker 2: He supposedly was very, very reserved, maybe even more than
• 34:08
  Speaker 2: Domino Gleason portrays him in that movie, according to the
• 34:12
  Speaker 2: real Christopher Robin later in life. So for his adolescence
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: all the way up to middle age, he had a
• 34:21
  Speaker 2: seething resentment for his father. And it wasn't until later
• 34:25
  Speaker 2: in life that he finally was able to happily make peace,
• 34:29
  Speaker 2: not just with his father, but also with Winnie the Pooh.
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 34:33
  Speaker 2: And came to appreciate Winnie the Pooh again. Because Christopher Robin,
• 34:36
  Speaker 2: the real life Christopher Robin, ironically, was the one kid
• 34:39
  Speaker 2: in the entire world over generations who hated Winnie the Pooh.
• 34:44
  Speaker 2: And he was able to overcome it, which I think
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: is a really triumphant story. But he had a quote
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: I read when he was, I think, age 60. He said,
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: my father had got where he was by climbing on
• 34:55
  Speaker 2: my infant shoulders. He filched from me my good name
• 34:58
  Speaker 2: and left me with nothing but the empty fame of
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: being his son. That's how he felt about his father
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: for decades.
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: That is rough. And his dad was a deeply damaged
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: human because of the war.
• 35:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: We promise sadness, everyone. So I hope we're delivering on that.
• 35:15
  Speaker 3: Yeah. 1932 is when he got color. on a record sleeve.
• 35:21
  Speaker 3: And that's when the iconic red shirt became a thing.
• 35:24
  Speaker 3: And I guess we should talk a little bit about
• 35:27
  Speaker 3: the Disney cartoons. Like I said, they got the rights
• 35:30
  Speaker 3: in 61. And I think five years after that, the
• 35:34
  Speaker 3: first featurette came out, Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree.
• 35:38
  Speaker 3: And all of a sudden, it was like a living, breathing,
• 35:42
  Speaker 3: moving thing on the big screen. And people drank this
• 35:46
  Speaker 3: in as much as they did the books.
• 35:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it outshined the first live-action movie that
• 35:52
  Speaker 2: it was paired with in theaters, The Ugly Dachshund, starring
• 35:56
  Speaker 2: Suzanne Plachette and Dean Jones. It looked like a stink bomb.
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: I think I saw that, actually.
• 36:02
  Speaker 2: Did you really? It's basically like a giant dog that
• 36:06
  Speaker 2: is playing with dachshunds and thinks it's a dachshund for
• 36:09
  Speaker 2: like an hour and a half. I saw that. It
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: just looked awful. Plus, there's something about Dean Jones I've
• 36:14
  Speaker 2: never put my finger on, but I don't know. I
• 36:16
  Speaker 2: don't know. I just don't see him as a family
• 36:19
  Speaker 2: film kind of guy, even though that's mainly what he
• 36:22
  Speaker 2: was in.
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: Oh, interesting. I wonder if there's a Subway Jared story
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: in there somewhere.
• 36:26
  Speaker 2: I don't know. Maybe not that far, but I could
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: see him shouting at the child actors in between takes
• 36:33
  Speaker 2: about how terrible they're doing.
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: I love you've created this scenario.
• 36:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I know.
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: Poor guy.
• 36:41
  Speaker 3: So as far as the Disney movies go and the featurettes,
• 36:44
  Speaker 3: It was like an all star team from Disney from
• 36:47
  Speaker 3: the beginning.
• 36:48
  Speaker 1: It was directed.
• 36:49
  Speaker 3: The originals were directed by Woolly Reitherman, who was one
• 36:53
  Speaker 3: of the legendary nine old men.
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: Of Disney who were these nine dudes.
• 36:57
  Speaker 3: That's the name Walt Disney gave them, who were who
• 37:00
  Speaker 3: kind of like all those early kind of up through
• 37:03
  Speaker 3: like the late 70s. Even I think one of them
• 37:05
  Speaker 3: even worked until the mid 80s. All those early animated
• 37:09
  Speaker 3: movies were these nine dudes kind of running the show.
• 37:12
  Speaker 3: And then they had an all-star cast voicing these things too, right?
• 37:15
  Speaker 3: Not like these days all-star cast when it's like Patton
• 37:18
  Speaker 3: Oswalt and Maya Rudolph, like back in the day when
• 37:21
  Speaker 3: they were animated voice stars.
• 37:24
  Speaker 2: Well, Sterling Holloway, he's a great example. He was Ka,
• 37:28
  Speaker 2: the serpent in the Jungle Book. He played the stork
• 37:31
  Speaker 2: in Dumbo, who I think he's like drunk and accidentally
• 37:36
  Speaker 2: delivers Dumbo somewhere else, right? Yeah. you would just totally
• 37:40
  Speaker 2: recognize his voice and probably his face, too, because he
• 37:42
  Speaker 2: was in a lot of like live action movies, too.
• 37:46
  Speaker 2: But he played Winnie the Pooh. And I can't hear
• 37:50
  Speaker 2: Winnie the Pooh as any other voice but his.
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, totally. Barbara Letty did the lady voice for Lady
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: and the Tramp.
• 37:56
  Speaker 3: She was Kanga. Clint Howard, of course, famed actor. And
• 38:02
  Speaker 3: I hate to have to say this, but he is
• 38:04
  Speaker 3: Ron Howard's brother.
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: I'm sure he gets tired of that designation, though.
• 38:08
  Speaker 2: I would think so. I've heard he's actually a really
• 38:10
  Speaker 2: cool dude. Yeah, he is. And kind of easygoing. So
• 38:13
  Speaker 2: he probably doesn't let on that it bothers him. He
• 38:16
  Speaker 2: was also the star of the terrible, terrible movie, The
• 38:19
  Speaker 2: Ice Cream Man, which Riff Trax does. And it's so bad,
• 38:23
  Speaker 2: I can't even watch Riff Trax to it.
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: Oh, no.
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: But get this, my brother-in-law is producing a remake of
• 38:30
  Speaker 2: The Ice Cream Man. No way. So I'm kind of
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: excited to see that, yes. I don't know if Mila's
• 38:35
  Speaker 2: in it or not, but I know my brother-in-law's producing, co-producing.
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: Oh, she's got to be, right?
• 38:40
  Speaker 2: Hopefully, she'll at least have some sort of walk-on, you know,
• 38:42
  Speaker 2: where she like spikes the camera and waves in the background.
• 38:46
  Speaker 2: One of those.
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: That'd be great.
• 38:47
  Speaker 3: So Clint Howard was Rue. Buddy Baker was the composer.
• 38:51
  Speaker 3: He did the Mickey Mouse Club theme. You know, the
• 38:55
  Speaker 3: legendary animators of the early days of Disney were all
• 38:57
  Speaker 3: put on this, of course. And they just started kind
• 39:00
  Speaker 3: of pumping these things out one after the other in
• 39:02
  Speaker 3: the late 60s, you know, through the mid 70s and beyond.
• 39:07
  Speaker 2: Yes. And I mean, when you say pumping them out,
• 39:11
  Speaker 2: I feel like we should also accompany that with like
• 39:14
  Speaker 2: these were also like Oscar winning shorts, too. Yeah. It
• 39:18
  Speaker 2: really started getting pumped out in, like, the 90s with
• 39:21
  Speaker 2: a lot of, like, direct-to-DVD stuff.
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: These were still very much, like, cared for and, like,
• 39:28
  Speaker 2: they were a big deal when... they were produced. You
• 39:31
  Speaker 2: know what I mean?
• 39:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it didn't seem like, hey, how can we print
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: more money next?
• 39:36
  Speaker 2: Exactly. That started in the 80s and 90s.
• 39:40
  Speaker 3: So now I think we should finish up a little
• 39:43
  Speaker 3: bit with this thing that's happened with Winnie the Pooh
• 39:46
  Speaker 3: over the years, which is it is a wonderful children's
• 39:50
  Speaker 3: story or set of stories and films and everything. But
• 39:54
  Speaker 3: it has always or very soon after, I feel like
• 39:57
  Speaker 3: branched out as like being kind of co-opted, but not
• 40:02
  Speaker 3: in a bad way as like, hey, there's a lot
• 40:04
  Speaker 3: more to Winnie the Pooh than meets the eye. And
• 40:09
  Speaker 3: we're talking like religion, mental health, philosophy, and as we'll see,
• 40:13
  Speaker 3: even political resistance.
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: How do you feel about Winnie the Pooh getting that
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: kind of treatment?
• 40:18
  Speaker 3: Oh.
• 40:19
  Speaker 2: Or being used in that manner. That's what I should say.
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: I don't mind it.
• 40:23
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: What about you?
• 40:24
  Speaker 3: I mean, I don't think it totally like disrupts the
• 40:28
  Speaker 3: purity of it because it's people sort of like saying, hey,
• 40:32
  Speaker 3: there's a lot of like life philosophies you can draw
• 40:34
  Speaker 3: from each of these characters' distinct point of view. Sure.
• 40:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, for sure. And I think that even if
• 40:40
  Speaker 2: it stunk across the board, somehow it still wouldn't spoil
• 40:45
  Speaker 2: Winnie the Pooh completely. As Winnie the Pooh. You know
• 40:47
  Speaker 2: what I'm saying?
• 40:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: And I think that's also evidence, Chuck, by the fact
• 40:51
  Speaker 2: that the original books, the original stories coexist alongside the
• 40:56
  Speaker 2: Disney-fied version. Yeah. Like one of the things Disney is
• 40:59
  Speaker 2: just known for is taking the original. And redoing it
• 41:02
  Speaker 2: in such a way that it has to consume the
• 41:05
  Speaker 2: original and basically wipe it out of existence to produce
• 41:10
  Speaker 2: the Disney-fied version.
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 41:12
  Speaker 2: Like AI companies scanning old books and destroying them, right? Yeah.
• 41:17
  Speaker 2: It's essentially what Disney did. Winnie the Pooh survived that.
• 41:21
  Speaker 2: And that's really notable and noteworthy. And that says a
• 41:23
  Speaker 2: lot about Winnie the Pooh, too, I think.
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Winnie shall not be denied his place. No.
• 41:31
  Speaker 2: Winnie the Pooh will take his place by force if
• 41:33
  Speaker 2: you don't give it to him.
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: That's right. Well, we should mention that movie at the end. Oh, okay.
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: So I mentioned philosophy at first.
• 41:43
  Speaker 3: There was a book in 1995 called Pooh and the
• 41:47
  Speaker 3: Philosophers where all of the characters are sort of written
• 41:52
  Speaker 3: about as embodying.
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: All the famous philosophers, Plato, Kant, Descartes. Pooh was Nietzsche. Mm-hmm.
• 42:00
  Speaker 3: And then that followed. Actually, that was 1995. But earlier
• 42:04
  Speaker 3: than that, and I remember this in the 80s, the Tao.
• 42:07
  Speaker 1: Of Pu in 1982.
• 42:08
  Speaker 3: And how do you pronounce that?
• 42:11
  Speaker 2: The day?
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: The day of piglet?
• 42:14
  Speaker 2: So Tao is the way or the path of day
• 42:17
  Speaker 2: is virtue. Okay.
• 42:18
  Speaker 3: So that was 82 and 92. And that looks at
• 42:21
  Speaker 3: the characters, obviously, through the lens of Taoism.
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: Might be D.
• 42:24
  Speaker 2: I'm not sure. But yeah, so Poo, actually, that one
• 42:29
  Speaker 2: really works. And that's probably by far the most celebrated
• 42:32
  Speaker 2: adaptation of Winnie the Pooh. Because the point of the
• 42:37
  Speaker 2: Tao of Poo is that Poo is a perfect example
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: of the goal of Taoism, which is wu-wei, which is
• 42:45
  Speaker 2: not doing. And that doesn't mean just sit around not
• 42:48
  Speaker 2: doing anything. It means like you go with the flow
• 42:51
  Speaker 2: of nature rather than trying to oppose it to bend
• 42:54
  Speaker 2: it to your will. And that's perfectly embodied by Pooh,
• 42:57
  Speaker 2: who just kind of happily goes along and, you know,
• 43:01
  Speaker 2: completely rebounds from obstacles and problems and just moves a
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: different direction, essentially.
• 43:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah. They've also been like mental illness treatment and self-help
• 43:13
  Speaker 3: books and things.
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: They have been assigned.
• 43:17
  Speaker 3: Well, you know, it seems sort of obvious that maybe
• 43:19
  Speaker 3: Eeyore is depressed or maybe Piglet has anxiety.
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: Tigger, they say, has ADHD.
• 43:25
  Speaker 3: And again, it's sort of, you know, this one feels
• 43:28
  Speaker 3: a little more gross to me, but if it's helping people,
• 43:31
  Speaker 3: then that's fine.
• 43:32
  Speaker 2: I wonder, though, if it is, you know, maybe. I
• 43:36
  Speaker 2: could see Tigger with ADHD like helping a kid with
• 43:39
  Speaker 2: ADHD feel better.
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: I think that's probably what they use it for, don't
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: you think?
• 43:43
  Speaker 2: I don't know. I think they use it for think
• 43:45
  Speaker 2: pieces that can be really annoying. Yeah.
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: I mean, I've seen a lot of shrinks over the
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: years and no one ever brought this up to me.
• 43:51
  Speaker 2: No, unless they're like, cheer up, Eeyore.
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, good point.
• 43:55
  Speaker 2: That's what my shrink always says to me.
• 43:58
  Speaker 3: And then we got to talk a little bit about
• 44:00
  Speaker 3: the political resistance thing. So in 2017, there were some
• 44:04
  Speaker 3: satirical memes around about Chinese President Xi Jinping. And like, hey,
• 44:09
  Speaker 3: that's when he like depicting him as Winnie the Pooh.
• 44:12
  Speaker 3: So it's China. So they were like, you know what?
• 44:15
  Speaker 3: We're going to kind of almost ban Winnie the Pooh, basically.
• 44:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, you cannot legally put a picture of Winnie
• 44:23
  Speaker 2: the Pooh and a picture of President Xi next to
• 44:26
  Speaker 2: one another. That's illegal in China now. And so, of course,
• 44:29
  Speaker 2: South Park got wind of this and dedicated a whole
• 44:33
  Speaker 2: episode to, you know, skewering China over it. And I
• 44:36
  Speaker 2: think they kill Winnie the Pooh in it.
• 44:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 44:39
  Speaker 2: So China outlawed South Park, which is surprising to me
• 44:43
  Speaker 2: that that is when they outlawed South Park. It seems
• 44:45
  Speaker 2: like they would have outlawed South Park back in the aught,
• 44:48
  Speaker 2: you know?
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for real.
• 44:49
  Speaker 2: This is 2019. And then the Taiwanese Air Force kind
• 44:53
  Speaker 2: of took that and ran with it. And they have
• 44:55
  Speaker 2: a patch. Some of the pilots have a patch of
• 44:57
  Speaker 2: a Formosan black bear, which is a native to Taiwan,
• 45:01
  Speaker 2: punching Winnie the Pooh in the face.
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 45:03
  Speaker 2: And I don't like the concept of Winnie the Pooh
• 45:05
  Speaker 2: being punched in the face, but it is a pretty
• 45:07
  Speaker 2: funny looking patch, I have to say. Yeah.
• 45:10
  Speaker 3: And then, you know, the movie we referenced that we
• 45:12
  Speaker 3: were going to mention, I had seen this trailer before
• 45:14
  Speaker 3: when it came out. I guess the idea is that
• 45:17
  Speaker 3: Winnie the Pooh eventually entered the public domain, which means
• 45:20
  Speaker 3: people are going to do awful things.
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: What was the name of the movie?
• 45:23
  Speaker 2: Winnie the Pooh, colon, Blood and Honey. Yeah.
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: So it plays Winnie the Pooh as like a murderous bear.
• 45:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, who after Christopher Robin left them and never came back,
• 45:35
  Speaker 2: they went feral. But they also are able to use
• 45:39
  Speaker 2: axes and handguns and stuff like that. So it's a
• 45:41
  Speaker 2: slasher flick with Winnie the Pooh and friends exacting revenge
• 45:45
  Speaker 2: on Christopher Robin and his friends. And it's live action,
• 45:48
  Speaker 2: which makes it even more bizarre.
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and the Pooh looks pretty good. You know, the
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: character they created.
• 45:54
  Speaker 3: I remember when that came out and reading about the
• 45:56
  Speaker 3: news about the public domain or whatever. And.
• 46:00
  Speaker 3: I don't think it's supposed to be very good, but
• 46:02
  Speaker 3: I'd still like to see some of it, I guess.
• 46:04
  Speaker 2: Me too. Me too. The coolest adaptation I saw is
• 46:07
  Speaker 2: called The Call of Puthulu. And it is, I think,
• 46:10
  Speaker 2: a dozen different authors, horror authors, writing Winnie the Pooh stories,
• 46:14
  Speaker 2: but then weird like Cthulhu mythos stuff like from Lovecraft
• 46:19
  Speaker 2: is woven in. And it sounds awesome. So it's coming
• 46:22
  Speaker 2: to my house on Monday.
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: Oh, cool. I love it.
• 46:25
  Speaker 2: Can't wait.
• 46:27
  Speaker 3: The, you know, Pooh is as big as ever. I
• 46:30
  Speaker 3: believe it's never been out of print, The House on
• 46:33
  Speaker 3: Pooh Corner at least. These stories are available in more
• 46:36
  Speaker 3: than 50 languages, have sold more than 50 copies around
• 46:39
  Speaker 3: the world.
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: This is a little fun fact.
• 46:41
  Speaker 3: The Latin language version in 1958 is the only Latin
• 46:47
  Speaker 3: language book to ever make the New York Times bestseller list, which.
• 46:50
  Speaker 2: Is pretty cool. Yeah, for sure. And you can actually
• 46:53
  Speaker 2: go to the setting of the 100-acre wood house. um,
• 46:58
  Speaker 2: Ashdown forest, which is basically, I don't want to say
• 47:01
  Speaker 2: it's been converted into the hundred acre wood, but there's
• 47:04
  Speaker 2: definitely poo related stuff all over the place. And for
• 47:07
  Speaker 2: good reason, I mean, like if you're going to go there,
• 47:09
  Speaker 2: you kind of want to see the stuff that originally
• 47:12
  Speaker 2: inspired this. So there's the poo sticks bridge, which is
• 47:15
  Speaker 2: where the game of poo sticks, where you drop us, uh,
• 47:18
  Speaker 2: each person drops a stick in the water, and then
• 47:20
  Speaker 2: you run to the other side of the bridge to
• 47:21
  Speaker 2: see who stick passes under the bridge fast, uh, fastest.
• 47:25
  Speaker 2: And that's the winner. There was an original bridge from,
• 47:30
  Speaker 2: I don't know when it was, but they rebuilt it,
• 47:32
  Speaker 2: but true to its original form. So that's still there.
• 47:35
  Speaker 2: I think Eeyore's house is there. There's a bunch of
• 47:38
  Speaker 2: cool stuff to do.
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I bet there's a gift shop.
• 47:41
  Speaker 2: There definitely is. It's called Pooh Corner. And not only
• 47:44
  Speaker 2: can you buy gifts there, you can also buy coffee
• 47:48
  Speaker 2: and maybe even have tea, like a high tea there.
• 47:52
  Speaker 3: Oh.
• 47:52
  Speaker 2: I would guess. I'm surmising, but I'll bet I'm right.
• 47:55
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that sounds fun. I mentioned, you know, the New
• 47:57
  Speaker 3: York Public Library. They've been there, the little original stuffy
• 48:00
  Speaker 3: since 1987, except for Rue, which apparently was left behind
• 48:05
  Speaker 3: in an apple orchard, I guess, by Christopher Robin. And
• 48:09
  Speaker 3: just this year, just a few months ago, in fact,
• 48:11
  Speaker 3: in April, Queen Camilla gifted the library an exact replica
• 48:17
  Speaker 3: of that original stuffy. And I believe that one's there.
• 48:20
  Speaker 3: So I did not see that one because I went
• 48:22
  Speaker 3: a couple of years ago.
• 48:24
  Speaker 2: Well, you need to go back. Yeah.
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: See that recreation? Yep.
• 48:29
  Speaker 2: If you want to be reminded of your humanity every
• 48:32
  Speaker 2: once in a while, just go read the last chapter
• 48:35
  Speaker 2: of The House of Pooh Corner. It's the second of
• 48:37
  Speaker 2: the only two actual Winnie the Pooh story collections that A.A.
• 48:41
  Speaker 2: Milne wrote. And Christopher Robin is essentially saying goodbye without
• 48:46
  Speaker 2: saying goodbye because he started to grow up and now
• 48:49
  Speaker 2: he has to go to school and he can't just
• 48:51
  Speaker 2: do nothing all day. And he's trying to explain it
• 48:54
  Speaker 2: to Pooh and Pooh's not really catching on, but they
• 48:56
  Speaker 2: managed to kind of communicate in their own way in
• 49:00
  Speaker 2: the end. And it is really touching. Like, just go
• 49:03
  Speaker 2: read it now. Yeah.
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: And bring the Kleenex.
• 49:07
  Speaker 2: It's so great.
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 49:09
  Speaker 2: It's cute, too. So, Chuck, I say that's it for
• 49:13
  Speaker 2: Winnie the Pooh for now, okay? Yeah.
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: I'm sad to leave him behind.
• 49:17
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, we have to. We have to go to school.
• 49:22
  Speaker 2: If you want to know more about Winnie the Pooh,
• 49:24
  Speaker 2: go read the last chapter on the House of Pooh Corner.
• 49:26
  Speaker 2: It's a great place to start. And in the meantime,
• 49:29
  Speaker 2: we're going to do listener mail.
• 49:33
  Speaker 3: You know what just happened? You said it's time to
• 49:34
  Speaker 3: go to school. And that was such a sweet sentiment.
• 49:37
  Speaker 3: But for some reason, immediately in my brain, I pictured
• 49:39
  Speaker 3: you and I on a school bus and like me
• 49:42
  Speaker 3: shooting spitballs and you with a pocket knife, like carving
• 49:45
  Speaker 3: something in the seat in front of you.
• 49:47
  Speaker 2: Wow. All right. All right. I'll go that way. Just
• 49:51
  Speaker 2: for just for a day.
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: It's just what popped into my head. All right. Listener mail.
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: This is a very sad one. So just warning to everybody.
• 49:59
  Speaker 2: Thanks for that.
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: Hey guys, I'm writing and listening from Chile. Last year,
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: my wife passed away at.
• 50:06
  Speaker 3: Only 29 years of age after battling a rare kind
• 50:08
  Speaker 3: of cancer, NUT carcinoma.
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: Maybe it can inspire an episode, guys.
• 50:13
  Speaker 3: But through this battle, we often escaped to my mother-in-law's
• 50:16
  Speaker 3: house on the beach to find some peace and quiet.
• 50:18
  Speaker 3: And it was our tradition to listen to two episodes
• 50:20
  Speaker 3: of Stuff You Should Know because the two-hour drive on
• 50:22
  Speaker 3: our way there and then two more on our way back.
• 50:24
  Speaker 3: Slowly but steadily, you guys became an important part of
• 50:26
  Speaker 3: our travels and brought us knowledge, joy, and laughter.
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: On many grim occasions.
• 50:30
  Speaker 3: And this week I came back to that coast after
• 50:33
  Speaker 3: almost a year of not being able to do so
• 50:34
  Speaker 3: because of the memories. And when I did, the first
• 50:37
  Speaker 3: thing I did was put on the podcast and have
• 50:39
  Speaker 3: you guys come along. It would mean, sorry, I'm getting
• 50:43
  Speaker 3: emotional here.
• 50:44
  Speaker 2: That is so sweet. So Chuck, you just beeped because
• 50:47
  Speaker 2: you cleared your throat. And I was like, is Chuck
• 50:49
  Speaker 2: getting choked up? And yes, you are. That is amazingly sweet.
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: I know I'd have a hard time with this one.
• 50:54
  Speaker 3: Guys, it would mean the world to me if you
• 50:56
  Speaker 3: could dedicate an episode in the memory of Jacinta. who
• 51:00
  Speaker 3: especially loved and laughed at Josh's laugh. Keep up the
• 51:04
  Speaker 3: good work and may you come with me to many
• 51:06
  Speaker 3: more trips. And that is from Lucas. And I told
• 51:09
  Speaker 3: Lucas it was going to be in this episode and
• 51:12
  Speaker 3: there was a cancer episode coming out soon, but I'd
• 51:15
  Speaker 3: rather tag it with this one.
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: And this one's dedicated to Jacinta.
• 51:20
  Speaker 2: Good idea, Chuck. That was perfect. Thank you for that.
• 51:24
  Speaker 2: Thank you for that, Lucas, for listening to us all
• 51:26
  Speaker 2: this time and for letting us know. the little role
• 51:29
  Speaker 2: we played in your life and Jacinta's life. So thank you.
• 51:34
  Speaker 2: I don't know what else to say, Chuck. That was
• 51:35
  Speaker 2: just great. If you want to make Chuck and I
• 51:39
  Speaker 2: quiet at the end of an episode, take your best shot.
• 51:43
  Speaker 2: You can send it off via email to stuffpodcasts at iheartradio.com.
• 51:51
  Speaker 2: Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple Podcasts,
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.