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Hitchhiking: Two thumbs out! · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:00
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  Speaker 4: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the podcast I'm Josh, and there's
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: Chuck and Jerry's here too, and we're just making it
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: our own way, grooving on down the road. E'sn on down,
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: e'sn on down the road out yep, with our thumbs
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: out and our chest puffed and are I don't know,
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: standing on our tippy toes. That all makes this stuff?
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: You should know, by the way.
• 1:28
  Speaker 4: Uh?
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, can we shout out that great book that a
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: lot of this is culled from.
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
• 1:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah?
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: What great?
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: Jack Reid wrote a book called Roadside America's colon the
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: Rise and Fall of Hitchhiking in a Changing Nation. Uh,
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: and about an e book. I actually read a lot
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: of that thing.
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, how is it?
• 1:57
  Speaker 3: It's really good.
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: I mean it seems like the book on hitchhiking in
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: the United States.
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: That's really great because I ran across a lot of
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: other stuff, not books, but articles that had been written
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: over the decades. In like, there's some really interesting, helpful,
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: authoritative writings on hitchhiking out there. So I'm sure that
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: guy had the nerve to write an entire book about
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: it. It was probably pretty good.
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it was good, and I guess we should say
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: that hitchhiking is. This feels like one of those where
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: we would just breeze right into it. Yeah, but we
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: should say that hitchhiking is. When you stand on the
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: side of a road. You may hold a sign that
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: says you know, Akron or bust but the traditional and
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: we'll talk about the thumb in a minute, but traditional
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: ways to hold the old thumb out. Then someone eases
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: off and says where your head, and buddy, you say
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: I'm heading to Akron. You go on that way and
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: he says no, but hop in and then you get killed.
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: It's pretty much a part for the course. Yeah.
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, shitching a ride, it's grabbing a ride to figure.
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: Everyone knew that, but you never know.
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: Yep, there was one flaw in your story, Chuck. No
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: one's headed to Akron. Everybody's leaving Akron. Oh, if you
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: wanted to ride out of Akron, I'm sure it would
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: be very easy to catch.
• 3:14
  Speaker 3: One ouch, So then your sign would just say anywhere
• 3:17
  Speaker 3: anywhere but here, oh man or Akron.
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: We should talk about the origin of the term hitchhiking too,
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: because there's a lot of competing stories for where the
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: term hitchhiking came from, and I think I found the
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: real one.
• 3:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm not so sure about that, but go ahead.
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: Well, let's start with the first one. There was a
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: nineteen seventy eight American Motorist magazine article that said, everybody's
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: shut up. It all dates back to the Old West,
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: and hitchhiking was a technique of method for two people
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: to share one horse. And it went like such, Yeah,
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: I haven't explained it yet. I just set you up
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: to explain it.
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: No, No, I mean, I'm happy for you to explain this part.
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: Well, I was gonna make it make a horse walking
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: sound while you explain it. But okay, So basically, you
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: have two people with one horse. One person rides the horse,
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: They take it to a predetermined spot and tie it up,
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: and they start walking, and eventually the other person, who
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: started walking from the same spot that the other person
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: started riding from, comes upon the horse that's tied up.
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: They get on the horse and they start riding to
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: the next predetermined spot, probably passing the person walking on
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: the way, and then the person walking catches up to
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: the horse, and so on and so forth. And what's
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: the beauty of it too, is the horse gets to
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: rest in between rides as well. It sounds like a great,
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: great idea, and I guess hitching the horse to a
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: tree or something. That's where the term hitchhike came from.
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: Not convinced by this one, but I think it's a
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: great story.
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm not either. That sounds like some sort of
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: demented relay race.
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: All right, you want to move on to the one
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: I think it is.
• 4:57
  Speaker 3: I go ahead, because I'm not so sure about this either.
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: I think it was a nineteen sixty six Sports Illustrated
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: long form article on hitchhiking that was written by Janet Graham,
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: a veteran season hitchhiker, and she made an offhanded reference
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: jokingly about how people look down on hitchhikers so much
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: so that the definition of hitching is to move with jerks,
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: making it sound like you're traveling along with other hitchhikers.
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: But there's like a kernel of truth in there. The
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: word hitch to hitch means to move along in short,
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: sudden movements, kind of like how you scoot a chair
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: up to a table, right, So you're moving by jerks,
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: and jerks are short sudden movements, So that's hitching, And
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: it makes sense if you look at the entire ride
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: you're hiking. That's the that's the whole walk, but in
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: between it's punctuated by short periods in a car that
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: kind of get you further along the hitch part. So
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: you're hitch hiking.
• 5:58
  Speaker 3: Another great story.
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: Well, okay, mister smarty pants, what's the word hitchhiking from?
• 6:04
  Speaker 3: I'm not really sure.
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: I just know that I go with the Oxford English
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: Dictionary because I think they are superior researchers, and they
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: have it dated back to the term at least in
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: nineteen twenty three, even though obviously people were hitchhiking before
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: nineteen twenty three.
• 6:19
  Speaker 3: Yeah, but.
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: The whole thumb thing in nineteen twenty seven at least,
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: or at least that far back. They called hitchhikers thumb pointers,
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: which I think is pretty fun.
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: But note that it's in parentheses or not parenthes quotes,
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: which indicates that the writer did not believe that the
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: proven reader would know what they were talking about.
• 6:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Probably so.
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but it's interesting, like the history of hitchhiking, because
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: it's the people that hitchhiked and why they did it
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: and how it was viewed has really kind of morphed
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: a lot over the decades in the United States, and
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: in the nineteen twenties when when it kind of first
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: got going, it was it was not like hitchhiking today.
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: It was a lot of like sometimes affluent young people,
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: like college students who would be like, I want to
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: go down to Palm Beach and I go to school
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: in Syracuse, and so I can just put my thumb
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: out and get a ride. And it was it was
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: a pretty safe thing to do for a long time.
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: Even though you know it was safe, though, there were
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: people from the very beginning that were like, maybe you
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: shouldn't do this, and early reasons, you know, were less
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: like it's dangerous for you and more like, hey, if
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: you pick someone up, you might get sued or something,
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: or at least be responsible if you, like you get
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: in a wreck with someone in your car that you
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: don't know.
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And apparently trucking companies eventually by mid century had
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: banned their drivers from picking up hitchhikers for that very reason,
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: because they were on the hook totally. Yeah, but it
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: makes sense that hitchhiking really started around the twenties because
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: that's the very beginning of the time when people started
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: to have cars. So the whole kind of idea behind
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: it was like, Hey, I'm being adventurous and young, you
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: have a car, give me a ride for a little bit.
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: And there was like just the novelty of the whole
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: thing of having a car and then also picking up
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: just some random person. It kind of went well together
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: because the whole thing was fairly new.
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure, the idea of like the original warnings
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: be being more about like the the legalities of being
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: the driver. There was also talk of like, hey, you know,
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: if you start doing this next thing, you know it's
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: that slippery slope thing you're going to be, it'll lead
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: to a life of crime or something, or you know,
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: it's sort of and you'll see that this is a
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: big argument from certain people in this country ever since
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: hitchhiking started, was like this is just one step away
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: from like begging you for money and living on the street.
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and smoking marijuana cigarettes and becoming a pop fiend.
• 8:56
  Speaker 3: Yeah jazz cigarettes.
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: Right, So that was, like you said, the original version
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: was this kind of adventurous and novel and usually kind
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: of young, white middle class, typically in the twenties in
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: the thirties, hitchhiking, which had already been established as a thing,
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: became like a viable method of transportation for people who
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: are down on their luck, and because so many people
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: were down on their luck, hitchhiking actually kind of gained
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: a measure of respectability during that period because there was
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: this whole idea of people who were fortunate enough to
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: own a car helping out the less fortunate, because we're
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: all going through this together, right. The thing is is
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: there were also plenty of people that were considered hobos
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: and tramps who were viewed by the public at large
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: is not really wanting to work. So if you were
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: a hitchhiker and you were trying to move to the
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: next town to look for work, you were generally considered
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: like an upstanding person trying to do whatever they could
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: to make an honest living. But you had to differentiate yourself,
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: and oftentimes you would dress as clean cut, maybe wearing
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: a suit and a hat, anything you could to basically
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: stand out and say like, I'm not like these scumbags.
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: I actually want a job.
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: You know that expression, dressed for the job you want,
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: not for the job you have. Yes, I think that
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: was like dress for the ride you want and not
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: for the ride you have, which is zero rides exactly.
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: I think you're one hundred percent right with that.
• 10:26
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: So that era the nineteen thirties, like you said, society,
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: you know, didn't look down upon it so much. There
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: was even a pole in nineteen thirty eight by the
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: Institute of Public Opinion that said forty three percent of
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: Americans viewed hitchhiking favorably, and Mike, if you were to
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: take that poll today, I can't imagine how low that
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: number would be.
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: The latest I saw was a UK number and it
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: was in the twenty tens and it was down to
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: nine percent.
• 10:57
  Speaker 3: No, they never liked it over there though, No.
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: But it was still it's really popular, even though publicly
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: people claimed it to dislike it as a whole, like
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: bollocks to that, right, that's what they said.
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: So once you got to World War Two, another thing happened,
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: which was American serviceman you know that would go on
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: leave and you know, people in the army or whatever
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: would sometimes hitchhike to where they wanted to go. And
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: if you stopped and picked up a service person who
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: was hitchhiking, then that means that you were doing your
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: patriotic duty by giving you know, a fine young citizen
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: a ride somewhere.
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so in like twenty years, hitchhiking went from a fun, thrilling,
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: relatively safe thing for college kids to do to a
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: necessity for people who were moving from town to town
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: looking for work, to a patriotic duty to stop and
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: pick up a serviceman hitchhiking on their way maybe back
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: to base or out on leave away from.
• 11:51
  Speaker 3: Base, away from Akron.
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: If you were a fat like a right exactly, If
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: you were a factory worker and a woman, you also were,
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: people were expected to pick you up as well, to
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: give you a lift to the factory. You were just
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: supposed to like hold out your credentials for you know,
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: whatever defense factory or whatever you worked in, just to
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: make sure no one got the wrong idea.
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and you had to have on that Rosie the
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: riveter bandana right tied in the front. That was your
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: credential right now.
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: That definitely gave it away for sure. And then there
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: was there's something else to mention about hitchhikers during this time,
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: and it actually is, It's true. Throughout the entire time
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: of people picking up hitchhikers. But it started at this time,
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: which was it wasn't that the hitchhikers were just mooching.
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: They actually provide and provided back then a service as well.
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: Like a lot of times people would pick up a
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: hitchhiker at night because they were getting sleepy and they
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: needed somebody awaken alert to be like, hey, hey, wake up,
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: don't fall asleep at the wheel. Other people just were
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: looking for interesting conversation to distract them from a boring
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: road trip. And then I saw a poem from very
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: early days of hitchhiking where the guy references that he's
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: essentially a counterweight to the driver in the car so
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: that the car doesn't tip over, because that's how flimsy
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: of the original cars were.
• 13:11
  Speaker 3: Interesting.
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: I thought so too. So it's not like anyone was
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: viewing these people as just completely mooching. That came later on.
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and back to World War Two. If you were
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: a hitchhiking army army person that's what they call him, sure,
• 13:29
  Speaker 2: a soldier, you could It depends on where you are,
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: but you could reasonably wait in a shelter. There were
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: certain towns who would say, like, hitchhiking is such a
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: thing that we're gonna build shelters like this was in
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: the nineteen sort of early nineteen forties, and a couple
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: of examples in California where they would build, you know,
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: and I get the feeling it's sort of like a
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: bus stop kind of thing where you could just sort
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: of get out of the rain or wind while you
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: thunder ride, which is pretty cool.
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: Yes, And hitchhiking. I guess it's spread overseas Europe in particular,
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: I guess by the nineteen thirties, but it definitely wasn't widespread.
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: It became widespread through American servicemen who did the same
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: thing over in Europe that they did in America, and
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: the practice started to catch on after World War Two,
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: where it was kind of like a introduced widely during
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: World War Two.
• 14:23
  Speaker 3: You think that's a good place for a break.
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: Sure, I wouldn't call it a cliffhanger, but do they
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: all have to be?
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: I mean, we said the war was over, right exactly.
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: I think everyone knows what happened next.
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: No cliffhanger, right, Okay, so we'll take a break then starting.
• 14:39
  Speaker 5: Now stop shut.
• 15:01
  Speaker 3: All right.
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: Now we're in the nineteen fifties and this was sort
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: of the first real push. Well that's not true actually,
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: because I read in the book there were sort of
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: anti hitchhiking pushes from the very beginning, but it was
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: sort of here and there, depending on what town you're
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: in or what state you were in. But the first
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: kind of national push came thanks to Jay Edgar Hoover,
• 15:22
  Speaker 2: of course, who basically was one of the first guys
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: to put out the idea that this could be really
• 15:29
  Speaker 2: dangerous for you, like the next, you know, the next
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: murderer that you hear about on the news could be
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: the person that's getting in your car right now. And
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: of course there were government I mean, I guess propaganda
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: or at least warning posters that sort of indicated that.
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: One of them said death and disguise, and you know,
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: it had like an all American family basically stopping to
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: pick up what looks like a clean cut hitchhiker death
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: and disguise.
• 15:57
  Speaker 3: Is he a happy vacationer or an escaping krima.
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, a pleasant companion or a sex maniac? That's what
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: else it said, Thank.
• 16:05
  Speaker 3: You Jaugar Hoover.
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, Jaegar Hoover considered hitchhiking a menace. I think that
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: guy considered everything he didn't like a menace to America, right,
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: But it's really revealing what the social attitudes were toward hitchhiking.
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: In this nineteen fifty seven FBI bulletin that included a
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: letter that he personally wrote about how terrible hitchhiking was
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: and we needed to stamp it out. He was pointed
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: out that what law enforcement was up against was changing
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: the minds of the public. That against the idea that
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: the courtesy of the road demands that a driver give
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: a hitchhiker a lift if they're able to so. At
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: that time, by the mid fifties, that's what people thought
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: like if you saw some guy walking down the road
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: or gal and they had their thumb out, you were
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: basically obligated to stop.
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there were a couple of high profile murders in
• 16:58
  Speaker 2: the nineteen fifties dealing with hitchhikers though, and that of
• 17:02
  Speaker 2: course is going to.
• 17:03
  Speaker 3: Help ssuade the public opinion.
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: Yes, And of course is something that Hoover is going
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: to jump on and sort of highlight, as you know,
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: one of the big dangers the crime rate and like
• 17:13
  Speaker 2: the United States was, you know, at one of the
• 17:16
  Speaker 2: all time lows in American history and hitch hiking certainly
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: didn't like ramp it up or anything. But it's not
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: like it was a big like statistical analysis that was presented.
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: It was just like, hey, this big murder happened, and
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: you know, it's one of those alarmist things where if
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: it can happen one time, then is it really worth
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: the risk for you to pick up that hitchhiker.
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that became the premise in non Hitchhiking America. And
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: it was just the same thing as like stranger danger.
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: It was a moral panic, right, Like, yeah, for sure,
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: something so vile happened a handful of times, statistical anomaly essentially,
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: but was well publicized and so horrific, like murders of
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: entire families. There was a guy named Billy Guy Cook
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: who killed a family of five, including the three kids
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: ages seven, five, and three, and the family dog because
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: they just made the mistake of kindly picking him up
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: while he was hitchhiking. Like, news like that spread And yes,
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: I watched that for research last night.
• 18:16
  Speaker 3: Did you really?
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah?
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: I actually saw it a couple of years ago, and
• 18:19
  Speaker 2: I think it holds up pretty good.
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah, It definitely had like a modernish feel to it.
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: It didn't feel like stuck in the mid eighties, and
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: I feel like it really captured the spirit of like
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: the average hitchhiking interaction.
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, where you ate fingers as French fries.
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it was nuts, but yeah, I liked it. I
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: thought it was very long, overly long, but yeah, it
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: was a good Yeah.
• 18:44
  Speaker 3: I know that's so funny.
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: I don't remember why I watched it, other than it
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: might I doubt if it was on a plane. That
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: feels like something I would do on a plane.
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know. It's enough of a classic that
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: I could see it being on like a hip airline.
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: Was it Virgin? Were you flying Virgin that you saw it?
• 19:00
  Speaker 3: No? No, no, no, I don't. I only fly one airline.
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: So there were like those. I think that Billy Cockye
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: Cook killing Spree came in nineteen fifty one, just in
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: time for people to start freaking out. As we'll see,
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: movies are made about these kind of things. The FBI's
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: beating the drum against this kind of stuff, and so
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: it gets kind of a bad rap, and that's a
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: trajectory that it's followed over the decades. Every decade or so,
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: they'll be like a handful of highly publicized, really horrific
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: murders that took place because somebody hitchhiked. But if you
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: look at it statistically, it just it's like a blip
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: on the radar.
• 19:40
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: Sure, but it scared everybody enough that, like parents were like,
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: you do not hitchhike. Like I would never ever hitchhike
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: because my mom scared me so thoroughly as a kid
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: that it's just not gonna I'm just not gonna do it. Sorry.
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: Oh, interesting, So the danger that was drilled into you
• 19:57
  Speaker 2: is more hiking than picking up a hitchhiker either one.
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: No, either one for sure? Okay for sure? Like, yes,
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: I was in grave danger, almost one hundred percent guaranteed
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: to be murdered horribly if I did either one. That's
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: basically what got drummed into my head.
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: I guess technically I did hitchhike one time, now that
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: I think about it, I got lost one time camping
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: with some friends. I like kind of went off to
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: hike on my own, Like we had set up camp
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: and we were fishing or something, and I went off
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: to hike on my own, and I got lost and
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: ended up miles and miles down the road and found
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: a road, thankfully, and I got a ride.
• 20:37
  Speaker 3: I remember now, like I.
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: Don't know if I put my thumb out or if
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: I just looked like, you know, maybe I had a
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: fishing pole or something, and they were like, this guy
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: needs hand, clearly. But I definitely remember, like I got
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: a ride from a stranger and they took me back
• 20:52
  Speaker 2: to the you know kind of the area where I
• 20:54
  Speaker 2: could hike back to the camp.
• 20:55
  Speaker 1: Wow, and you weren't murdered.
• 20:57
  Speaker 3: No, And I would hitch.
• 20:59
  Speaker 2: I mean I would now just because you know, I
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: don't need to and I'm older and I have a family.
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: But then not too distant past, I would. I would
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: have considered hitching a ride way more than picking up somebody. Really, yeah,
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: because I like, what are the chances that someone that
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: pulls over to give you a ride as a serial
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: killer or something.
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: True. Okay, that's really smart, But.
• 21:23
  Speaker 3: But picking someone up Ooh, I don't know about that.
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: Okay, that is really smart, for sure. That's a great,
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: great point. But there were some of those really high profile,
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: publicized horrible murders. Serial killings typically did involve people being
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: like they were hitchhikers and they were picked up by
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: serial killers who were out looking for hitchhikers.
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: Well, I think what's his name picked up hitchhikers, right, Bundy.
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: If I'm not mistaken, Probably that would have been during
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: a time where hitchhiking was a thing.
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: Still, yeah, I'm pretty sure that was something that happened,
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: and I think he might have killed some of them.
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there were I mean overseas that happened too. There
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: were some famous murders in Australia that Australian backpacker murders
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: from like I think the late eighties even like, it
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: just happens from time to time and it's so scary
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: and you feel so badly for those people. Your mind
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: just kind of goes to how horrible a way that
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: would be to die that You're like.
• 22:18
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm not gonna hitchhike.
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, totally see Thomas hal I mean he put the
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: fear of God in me.
• 22:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah, Jo No, he was pretty good.
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: So moving forward to the sixties, this is when it
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: got like really popular again. Of course because of the
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: hippie movement. It became a big thing for hippies to
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: do because not only could they get around and like
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: you know, kind of travel the world doing so it
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: was really like it just sort of fit the hippie
• 22:46
  Speaker 2: ethos of trusting one another, and it's counterculture. It's anti
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: like you know, owning a car and sort of anti consumerism,
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: and it's a little bit rebellious, and it really just
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: jibed with the whole hippie thing. So there was a
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: lot of hitchhiking in the sixties.
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, harkened back to that original kind of ethos of hitchhiking,
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: which was you know, people just helping other people out
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: and like you know, yeah, man being rewarded with some
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: great conversation and maybe even making a friend and just
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: shooing what happened. Yeah, totally worked with that. But it
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: also provided very practically a way for people who were
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: living the hippie life and didn't have money to go
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: see the world. Like if you could make it to Europe,
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: you could literally see Europe in Eurasia and Africa if
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: you could make it down there just by hitchhiking on
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: a couple of dollars a day. Because this is also
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: a time when youth hostels had really kind of taken
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: hold and spread, so you could if you could make
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: it over to Europe, you were set for a vacation
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: of a lifetime.
• 23:47
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 23:49
  Speaker 2: Into the nineteen seventies, it remained pretty popular, at least
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: early on. There was a poll in nineteen seventy three,
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: and this is just a sort of a little RinkyDink
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: poll from a high school, but it was two hundred
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: and seventy two junior and I guess junior high and
• 24:04
  Speaker 2: high school students said that more than twenty five percent
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: of them hitchhiked, either regularly or occasionally. So it was
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: still going strong among the utes of America, and most
• 24:15
  Speaker 2: in that same poll I said they were I don't
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: think they were too worried about dangers. And one kid
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: even said, I think there were more nuts walking around
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: than in cars.
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: Pretty smart.
• 24:28
  Speaker 3: I guess he's probably right.
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: Probably, I mean, that's your that's your take on it, right,
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: That's why you wouldn't pick up a hitchhiker. That's why
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: you but you would hitchhike because there's more nuts walking
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: than in cars.
• 24:40
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I think I think that jibes.
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: So another teenager in one of those polls said was
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: asked like, why do you hitchhike? And they're like to
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: get to where you're going, of course.
• 24:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: And in the sixties and seventies, in particular, hitchhiking among
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: kids who weren't of driving age yet or couldn't afford
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: a car. That was a thing, like you would hitchhike
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: home from school rather than take the bus to ride
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: your bike. You would hitchhike across town to go buy
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: something from Eddie's trick shop, like a new magic illusion trick.
• 25:13
  Speaker 3: Sure, yeah, did you go there?
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: No, I guess I know that name from you telling
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: me I don't remember the name of the one in Toledo,
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: the magic shop that I used to go to. But
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: it never even dawned on me, like I want to
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: go buy some mad magazines, I'll just hitchhike over there.
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: Like it's like our generation, like our age group was
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: one of the last ones to be able to just
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: like run around the neighborhood like wild animals and then
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: come home in time for dinner. This was like that,
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: plus like you would just get in a car with
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: the stranger to go buy a comic book because it
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: was too far to walk or you didn't feel like
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: riding your bike. For us, it was or for me
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: at least. It was like, if your parents wouldn't take you,
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: you just didn't get to do it.
• 25:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah, shame here.
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so that's what kids were doing though in the
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: sixties and seventies. They were just hitchhiking. It was just
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: kind of thing that they did, and they weren't necessarily
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: doing it to be rebellious or to be part of
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: the counterculture. They were doing it because they didn't have
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: a way to drive themselves.
• 26:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 26:09
  Speaker 2: I wonder if some of that was more prevalent and
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: more trusted small town America than like the main streets
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: of Dolino and Stone Mountain where we grew up. Yeah, yeah,
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: what am I talking about? Like I was some urban
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: you know, tough right.
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you used to play kick the can with Harvey Kitel.
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: So hitchhiking, like I said, was doing pretty well into
• 26:33
  Speaker 2: the seventies, but it started that's when the decline that
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: we're at today basically kind of started, was in the
• 26:40
  Speaker 2: early to mid seventies. You know, reputationally, it started to go.
• 26:44
  Speaker 3: Down by the end of the eighties.
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: It was there was one journalist who said, basically it's
• 26:50
  Speaker 2: all but dead and that jobs are just my memory.
• 26:52
  Speaker 3: I said, jibe three times a day. Four Now.
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: That reconciles with my own memories of and I'm sure
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: yours of growing up of kind of seeing it, you know,
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: be because I remember seeing it some when I was
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: a kid, but just less and less over the years.
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: And a lot of that had to do with car ownership.
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: In the forties. About half of Americans owned a car
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: in nineteen forty one. Less than twenty years later that
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: was at eighty percent. And then into the seventies and eighties,
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: you saw the deal like was in my family and
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: a lot of other even you know, sort of regular
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: middle class families where you ended up with an extra
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: car for the sixteen year old to drive because that's
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: the one that mom aged out of or whatever. So
• 27:36
  Speaker 2: in our family, it was the VW Beetle that my
• 27:39
  Speaker 2: mom drove, you know, from nineteen sixty eight to the
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: I guess till my sister. I'm not sure if my
• 27:47
  Speaker 2: sister drove it or not, but I ended up driving
• 27:49
  Speaker 2: that Beetle because that was the extra car. And there
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: were extra cars in American households kind of for the
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: first time, and so all of a sudden, teenagers had wheels,
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: usually some old car like eight beetle.
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, So I just found that fascinating. It wasn't just
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: that people were scared out of hitchhiking. Even kids in
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: those early seventies Poles were aware of the dangers, but
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: they weren't afraid of it enough to not hitchhike. It was,
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: at least in part that whole group of people who
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: hitchhike because they were trying to get from point A
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: to point B didn't have to do that any longer
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: because they had more and more expanded access to cars. Right,
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: Because even if your parents didn't have a car, you
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: might have a friend now that had a car and
• 28:30
  Speaker 1: would come pick you up. Right, that's a big one.
• 28:33
  Speaker 3: There's always a friend that had the car.
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: Another thing that seems to have changed things for hitchhiking
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: is the spread of interstate travel in the US and
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: in Europe. There's plenty of laws these days that basically
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: prevent people from hitchhiking on the Highway in particular, but
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: even in places where it's not prohibited. Just the practicality
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: of getting somebody going eighty miles an hour to slow
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: down and pull over and not be a mile and
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: a half ahead a point that you have to trot
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: to that far to get in the car. It just
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: it's not conducive to hitchhiking at all. So as interstate
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: travel spread, hitchhiking just became a little bit harder, although
• 29:17
  Speaker 1: people started just standing on entrance ramps or right apparently
• 29:22
  Speaker 1: on the Autobahn. You know, if you go to Europe,
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: they have like those gas stations that you just it's
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: like an exit and then the gas station and then
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: the entrance ramp right back onto the highway. You know
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: what I'm talking about. Yeah, I think so, So they
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: have those, and people would just go from gas station
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: to gas station, like you could get a ride at
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: a gas station and still do interstate travel. So there's
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: ways around it, but it's still put a crimp in
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: the whole idea. You could just pull over to the
• 29:46
  Speaker 1: side of the road and pick somebody up pretty easily
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: like you could before the interstates.
• 29:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and the I mean they were always sort of
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: depending on where you are in the United States or
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: anti hitchhiking laws. Maybe in some districts or regions or
• 30:00
  Speaker 2: towns that weren't too keen on it. And this goes
• 30:03
  Speaker 2: back to the very beginning, but it wasn't the kind
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: of thing that was like super It may have been
• 30:08
  Speaker 2: on the books, but it wasn't super enforced. Some more
• 30:11
  Speaker 2: conservative towns may have enforced it more obviously, you know,
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: kind of the elephant in the room is if you
• 30:17
  Speaker 2: were demographically, like you said, it was a lot of
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: sort of middle class white men earlier on, you had
• 30:24
  Speaker 2: a much harder time getting right. If you were a
• 30:26
  Speaker 2: person of color, you had a lot of times. You
• 30:31
  Speaker 2: would have an easier time if you're a woman. But
• 30:33
  Speaker 2: they were discouraged from doing it more for I guess,
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: you know, the dangers that they thought a woman could
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: face versus a man. But it was just sort of
• 30:42
  Speaker 2: lucy goosey as far as you know, who a cop
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: decided to hassle.
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: Interestingly about that sexism thing. I saw it also go
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: in a different direction too that I think that nineteen
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: sixty six Sports Illustrated article by Janet Graham, she basically
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: talks about that how you like you want to dress
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: enough to catch people's attention, but you don't want to
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: like throw out a sign like hey, come pick me up,
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: because you might attract the wrong kind of guy, or conversely,
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: you might also just get passed by by some guy
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: who doesn't trust you because of how you're dressed.
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's interesting. Sports Illustrade used to do lots of
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: weird articles like that.
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, this is a really long article with great illustrations.
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: Like Sports Illustrated lived up to its name. Had a
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: lot of illustrations in this article, and it's it's definitely
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: worth looking up. It's a great artis not really well,
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: apparently they did have like, I don't know what you
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: call them, but basically speed trials. A bunch of hitchhikers
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: would all get picked up in the same town and
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: try to make it to this pre arranged destination. See
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: who got their fastest.
• 31:48
  Speaker 3: All right, that's a sport.
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: There's another thing that seems to have led to a
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: decline in hitchhiking too, and that is that as fewer
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: people actually needed to hitchhike, the people who were left over,
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: who still needed to hitchhike because they couldn't, say, afford
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: a car or something like that, were viewed less and
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: less favorably or sympathetically.
• 32:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 32:11
  Speaker 2: That was the real change, I think is when it
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: got to the point where they're like, oh, well, if
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: that person can't even afford a car, and this is
• 32:19
  Speaker 2: when you could buy a used car that ran for
• 32:22
  Speaker 2: you know, a couple of grand or something. So it
• 32:24
  Speaker 2: was like, if they can't afford that, then they're bad news, right.
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: So they're downtrodden, So I'm going to look down upon them.
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: And that means that hitchhiking itself by association came to
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: get a bad name, which further meant that anybody who
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: hitchhiked couldn't had to be bad news. And so this
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: feedback loop started and it was I think still to
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: this day that hitchhiking has that image because of that
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: change in perception.
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: Sadly, yeah, and of course because of the the Reagan
• 32:52
  Speaker 2: years and the Thatcher years, that was a big sort
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: of I don't know about a sea change, but at
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: least a very public view that like you're lazy if
• 33:04
  Speaker 2: you're hitch hiking, just like you're lazy if you're on
• 33:07
  Speaker 2: food stamps, and if you're out of work and you
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: can't afford a car, then that means you're sort of
• 33:12
  Speaker 2: sort of derelict. And was it was sort of a
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: conservative movement in two ways, Like politically conservative, it was
• 33:21
  Speaker 2: looked down upon by them, but also just the word
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: conservative in its true definition, just like risk averse, people
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: became a little more conservative as as far as like
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: what kind of risk they were willing to undertake by
• 33:34
  Speaker 2: picking up a hitchhiker or I guess hitchhiking.
• 33:36
  Speaker 5: Yeah.
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: And then also during that time, transactional society kind of developed,
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: where everything had a price, nothing was free, and anything
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: that was free as communist, right, that's what communists are into.
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: But there's this guy named Joe Moran who's a historian
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: who wrote in the Guardian. He wrote about the gift relationship,
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: the kinds of exchanges based on trust and goodwill that
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: bring intangible benefits to everyone but are the hardest to
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: retrieve when they're gone. Those kind of got stamped out
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: in that transactional economy that Thatcher and Reagan brought. And
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: I think it's just fascinating. You can blame basically everything
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: on Thatcher and Reagan and probably be right the vast
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: majority of the time. So I think the upshot of
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: the whole thing, Chuck, is that the the ethos of
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: I have a car, you don't, I'm gonna help you
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: out converted into my car's mine, So ts for you
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: loser is kind of what that that change over happened.
• 34:33
  Speaker 3: All right, that's a good place for a break.
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: So so angry people can compose emails and we'll be
• 34:39
  Speaker 2: right back and we'll talk about some notable famous hitchhikers
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: over the years.
• 34:44
  Speaker 4: Shut stop you shut.
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: Okay, chuck, So we're back. We'd have gotten a lot
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: of angry emails in the interim, but that's okay.
• 35:11
  Speaker 3: They're in.
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: Let's talk a little bit about demographics, because you kind
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: of hit on how it's easier in some cases for
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: some people to catch a rye than it is for others.
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: But the main demographic I could see when you look
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: at just the differences in hitchhiking experiences, seem to be
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: pretty much just divided between men and women. And I
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: think one of the things that you see is that
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: this whole sexist idea that if a woman hitchhikes and
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: something happens to her, she was just basically asking for it.
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: She put herself in unnecessary danger, which is a terrible
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: way to look at a crime against an innocent person
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: under any circumstances. But there was there's a reader's digest
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: like that that was just a whole thread of thinking.
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: There's a Reader's Digest article from nineteen seventy three that
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: said that in the case of girl who hitchhikes, the
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: odds against her reaching her destination unmolested are today literally
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: no better than if she played Russian Roulette, which from
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: what I've read, is totally made up. And that there
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: was also two girls that conducted a science experiment in
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: San Diego in nineteen seventy seven, and they solicited three
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: hundred and fifty six rides, and they were either wearing
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: a control costume of like pretty conservative clothing or a
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: revealing costume, and they found that the revealing costume far
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: and away attracted more rides, mostly from men.
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: All Right, we promised talk of notable hitchhikers, and you know,
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: we could go on all day listing famous people who
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: at one point or another hitchhiked. For me, John Waters
• 36:47
  Speaker 2: is a pretty fun one because he hitchhiked and enjoyed
• 36:51
  Speaker 2: it as a kid and then eventually wrote a book.
• 36:54
  Speaker 2: He hitchhiked as a sixty eight year old grown man
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: in the like twenty thirteen from his home in Baltimore
• 37:02
  Speaker 2: to his other home in San Francisco and wrote a
• 37:05
  Speaker 2: book about it called Carsick.
• 37:07
  Speaker 3: John Waters hitchhikes across America.
• 37:10
  Speaker 2: And this one's kind of fun because the whole first
• 37:12
  Speaker 2: half of the book is just fiction. It's like fun
• 37:15
  Speaker 2: stories he wrote about, like who could pick him up
• 37:18
  Speaker 2: and what that could lead to, whether it was a
• 37:20
  Speaker 2: serial killer or you know, something a little more fun.
• 37:26
  Speaker 2: But the second half of the book I think is
• 37:28
  Speaker 2: about like his real journey hitchhiking, and he made it
• 37:30
  Speaker 2: all the way.
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: That's great. I mean, I'm glad John Waters survived because
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: he's a national treasure.
• 37:37
  Speaker 3: Who else?
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: Hitchbot is the other one I want to cover.
• 37:42
  Speaker 3: I'd never heard of Hitchbot. Is that a famous person?
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: You have? We talked about hitchbot and I think Internet
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: roundup or something like that. Oh really, Back in twenty fifteen,
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: there was a robot. It was very like basic in design.
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: It was a social experiment more than anything. They want
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: to see how people responded to a robot. And they
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: sent this kluegy junkie cartoonish looking robot all the way
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: across Germany, all the way across to the Netherlands, all
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: the way across Canada, and they finally said, okay, it's
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: time for America. We're going to set this guy out
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: on the road in Salem, Massachusetts and see if he
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: can make it to San Francisco's destination. He made it
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: to Boston, he made it to New York, he made Philadelphia,
• 38:23
  Speaker 1: and he didn't get out of Philadelphia alive. He was
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: dismembered and completely taken apart by some jerk vandal somewhere
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: who was caught on video wearing a football shirt, like
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: a football jersey. I can only imagine it was an
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: Eagles jersey. And so this robot made it through three
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: countries and didn't even get past Philadelphia in the United States, which,
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: you know, kind of sad. I remember being sad about
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: it at the time. But we definitely talked about Hitchbot.
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: But he's a very famous hitchhiker as well. He had
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: a real positive spirit. He like tweeted the whole time
• 38:58
  Speaker 1: about however, everything.
• 38:59
  Speaker 2: Was, Yeah, let me see what do we got here?
• 39:04
  Speaker 3: I don't want to talk about Dave Matthews.
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: Do we no?
• 39:08
  Speaker 2: He hitchhiked one time to a concert. I guess we
• 39:10
  Speaker 2: can say that at least, you know, we should cover
• 39:12
  Speaker 2: on a short stuff.
• 39:13
  Speaker 3: Is that Dave Matthews poop Bridge incident? Do you hear?
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: No?
• 39:21
  Speaker 3: Well, we'll talk about it a short stuff.
• 39:23
  Speaker 2: It's when his tour bus dumped the contents of their
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: Oh I did hear that thing like off a bridge
• 39:29
  Speaker 2: on two people, or it was on a boat or
• 39:31
  Speaker 2: something that.
• 39:32
  Speaker 3: Was bellowed the bridge. My god, they got in trouble
• 39:35
  Speaker 3: for it.
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: Let's talk about movies instead, what about that?
• 39:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, you know, in media in general, Like
• 39:41
  Speaker 2: you know, there are some very famous, famous books and
• 39:44
  Speaker 2: movies that were kind of centered around hitchhiking, whether it's
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: obviously Jack Kerouac's On the Road is a big one,
• 39:50
  Speaker 2: or Tom Robbins, even Cowgirls Get the Blues, the Gus
• 39:55
  Speaker 2: Van's ant movie Sissy, the main character was born with
• 39:58
  Speaker 2: a abnormally large thumb, so you know, she obviously had
• 40:03
  Speaker 2: a talent as a hitchhiker. And that's kind of one
• 40:05
  Speaker 2: of the subplots of the of the book and film.
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: Right, and yeah, hitchhiking It depends on the film, but
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: it can be depicted as like a cautionary tale where
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: you know, it just goes so off the rails bad
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: that no one should ever hitchhike ever, like in Hitcher,
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: like we were talking about with see Thomas Allen Rucker Howard. Yeah,
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: that that Billy Cockye Cook murder Spree got turned into
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: a movie two years after, called The Hitchhiker. It was
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: supposedly pretty good and yeah, so throughout from from the
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: fifties onward, hitchhikers could be depicted as murderous people or
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: people picking up hitchhikers could be depicted as murderous. Right,
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: but there was also like hitchhiking made appearances as mcguffins
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: and a lot of films as just kind of a
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: funny like little side thing like Pee Wee Herman getting
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: picked up by Large Marge and PE's Big Adventure, What
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: Big Bird and follow that Bird did a lot of
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: hitchhiking in that movie. Yeah, have you ever seen I
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: Saw the Devil?
• 41:11
  Speaker 2: I don't think so. That's Rob Zombie right.
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: No, it's a Korean film, a Korean serial killer film.
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: I can't remember the guy's name who directed it, but
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: it's really good. But there's this one scene in there
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: where the main character, the antagonist I guess is a
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: serial killer, but they follow him so much he's basically
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: the main character. He hitchhikes gets picked up by a
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: car that's being driven by a guy who had already
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: picked up another hitchhiker. So now there's two guys including
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: him in the car being driven by a third guy,
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: and they all turn out to be serial killers, and
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: they get in this fight driving down the road, a
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: fight to the death. It's like a really interesting just
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: kind of like a side scene that they could have
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: easily edited out, but it's so good. It's it's nuts.
• 41:57
  Speaker 2: That sounds really familiar. I might have seen actually.
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: It came out in twenty ten. I think.
• 42:03
  Speaker 3: Yeah, the mcguffin thing is big.
• 42:04
  Speaker 2: Though, I feel like most times, if hitchhiking isn't a
• 42:10
  Speaker 2: plot that's like turns out to be really bad or
• 42:12
  Speaker 2: something that you're supposed to think it is, at least
• 42:15
  Speaker 2: like very few times, I feel like it's just a
• 42:19
  Speaker 2: scene where someone hitchhikes and is no big deal, unless
• 42:21
  Speaker 2: it's like a period thing, you know, from the sixties
• 42:23
  Speaker 2: or whatever.
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: Yes, a good example of that is Dumb and Dumber,
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: where Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels pick up the guy
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: who's trying to assassinate them and he ends up dying
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: because of the hot sauce burger they trick him into eating. Yeah,
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: that's a good one that was a good movie and
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: then apparently I've never seen it, but like the definitive
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: earliest hitchhiking scene is from It Happened One Night with
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert. It's very cute scene. Oh yeah, Yeah,
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: he's basically being a man teaching her how it's all
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: in the thumb. It's all in the thumb, that's how
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: you hitchhike. And he's getting nowhere with it, and she
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: like leans down and kind of sticks her leg out
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: and adjusts her stocking, and a car just comes like
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: to a screeching halt to pick them both up.
• 43:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and she's like, stick that thumb where the sun
• 43:13
  Speaker 2: don't shine.
• 43:14
  Speaker 3: Exactly if you were in Europe.
• 43:17
  Speaker 2: We kind of mentioned kind of how it was going
• 43:19
  Speaker 2: post World War Two, but throughout the years it's kind
• 43:22
  Speaker 2: of ebbed and flowed in Europe. But it seems to
• 43:24
  Speaker 2: be more popular and doable depending on what country you're
• 43:30
  Speaker 2: in in Europe today, Like I think the Netherlands is
• 43:33
  Speaker 2: still sort of very well known as a country where
• 43:35
  Speaker 2: you can pretty safely hitchhike. I think Germany, at least
• 43:40
  Speaker 2: for a while it was pretty popular. Always generally frowned
• 43:44
  Speaker 2: upon in the UK, but.
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: People still didn't apparently still today, if you're around Glastonbury,
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: you're probably going to get hit up. Oh ride at
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: festival time.
• 43:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that kind of thing.
• 43:55
  Speaker 2: Of course, there's always somebody on the side of the
• 43:57
  Speaker 2: road trying to go see some big music festival, probably
• 44:01
  Speaker 2: Dave Matthews or I'm sure, what's a burning man. I
• 44:04
  Speaker 2: bet that's half hitch hiking.
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, I'm sure any of the big festivals
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: there's probably a lot of people hitching there.
• 44:11
  Speaker 2: We have to mention Cuba because it is a pretty
• 44:15
  Speaker 2: singularly unique country in terms of hitch hiking, in that
• 44:21
  Speaker 2: after the Berlin Wall fell, the oil from the Soviets
• 44:24
  Speaker 2: really dried up, and that I can't remember what the
• 44:27
  Speaker 2: period it was called, like the Special period or something
• 44:29
  Speaker 2: like that, where basically the national bus system and transportation
• 44:34
  Speaker 2: public transport system kind of stopped, it slowed down, then
• 44:39
  Speaker 2: eventually just went away, and then they nationalized it. In
• 44:42
  Speaker 2: that if you are a government I think it was
• 44:47
  Speaker 2: only until twenty fourteen, like you had to have a
• 44:49
  Speaker 2: special government license to even have a private car, but
• 44:53
  Speaker 2: if you are a government car, you are required supposedly
• 44:57
  Speaker 2: to pick up hitchhikers, and from what I read, I
• 45:01
  Speaker 2: read a few articles about it, like hitchhiking is public
• 45:04
  Speaker 2: transportation in Cuba.
• 45:05
  Speaker 3: Now, wow, it's kind of set up.
• 45:07
  Speaker 2: They're called yellow points where you stop at a certain
• 45:10
  Speaker 2: place if you're a government car, like if you're an
• 45:13
  Speaker 2: agricultural truck or whatever carrying something, you know, from province
• 45:17
  Speaker 2: to province, you're required to stop pick people up. They
• 45:21
  Speaker 2: pay you if it's within province, like a penny an
• 45:24
  Speaker 2: American dollars or I think eleven cents if it's trans provincial.
• 45:28
  Speaker 2: But really really interesting, and it's all on the hitch
• 45:31
  Speaker 2: wiki website. Of course, there's all kinds of great websites
• 45:34
  Speaker 2: now where you can really kind of find out where
• 45:36
  Speaker 2: it's good and not, because it's still a thing that
• 45:39
  Speaker 2: like a culture that a lot of people embrace. But
• 45:41
  Speaker 2: hitchwiki said that everybody hitchhikes in Cuba.
• 45:45
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's just a way of life.
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: I was reading about Poland in the Cold War, I
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: think the fifties or sixties, where they essentially nationalized it
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: by I think they passed some regulations saying you basically
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: have to stop if you see a hitchhiker, private citizen
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: have to pick up hitchhikers. Now we're going to sweeten
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: the pot. We're going to sell these books of vouchers
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: that hitchhikers buy for very cheap, and then they give
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: you a voucher for picking them up, and then you,
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: the driver, hand it in and get a lottery ticket
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: in exchange, so you could win big bucks. But apparently
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: even still the Polish people were like, we don't like
• 46:19
  Speaker 1: being told that we have to pick up strangers if
• 46:21
  Speaker 1: we don't want to, and it kind of it was
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: never popular and it went away, but it's sounded like
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: an interesting experiment.
• 46:27
  Speaker 2: There's two lotteries, and there's the lottery of if you
• 46:30
  Speaker 2: have a serial killer that you've picked up, right, and
• 46:33
  Speaker 2: then there's a second lottery. I did forget one thing
• 46:36
  Speaker 2: about Cuba, and I thought was interesting. They call it
• 46:39
  Speaker 2: ear cone la botella, which means going with a bottle.
• 46:42
  Speaker 2: That's what they call it there because apparently they think
• 46:45
  Speaker 2: when you like stick your thumb up like that, it's
• 46:48
  Speaker 2: resembling you like holding something and taking a drink.
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: Awesome. Yeah, And then speaking of today, also, like you said,
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of sights that kind of trade info
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: and best places to get picked up and where to
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: avoid and all that stuff. That's a huge deal that
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: people even out on the road are connected. And I
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: saw that that actually you can make a really good
• 47:10
  Speaker 1: case that that's morphed into a combination between that whole
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: free spirit, freedom of the road, environmental thing, like it's
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: less environmentally impactful than not drive yourself, but to hitch instead,
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: combined with that transactional nature of our society. And now
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: we have ride share apps essentially the same thing, except
• 47:33
  Speaker 1: you're paying somebody to come get you rather than standing
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: out there relying on someone else's good will.
• 47:38
  Speaker 2: Well, there are also hitchhiking apps that are essentially ride
• 47:42
  Speaker 2: share apps that you don't pay for m h. And
• 47:44
  Speaker 2: I think it's just a way of connecting the hitchhiker
• 47:47
  Speaker 2: culture to like potentially ride supposedly.
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: Also one more thing in DC still to this day,
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: from what I read, there's something called slugging, and every
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: morning people who want to ride in the carpool but
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: are driving to work by there's like these pre determined
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: spots where people just line up and you just stop
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: and somebody gets in your car and you take them
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: into DC with you on your commute so you can
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: ride in the carpool lane.
• 48:11
  Speaker 2: That's like when Larry David picked up a sex worker
• 48:15
  Speaker 2: so he could get to the Dodger game quicker and
• 48:18
  Speaker 2: he ended up having to take her to the game
• 48:20
  Speaker 2: and all, oh, yeah, I had you know.
• 48:24
  Speaker 3: That's classic curb. Yeah.
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: So I would strongly recommend people read that nineteen sixty
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: six Sports Illustrated article by Janet Graham. It's called rule
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: of Thumb for the Open Road. And there's another one
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: from the under review of books by Mike j called
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: that Old Thumb. Both of them are just excellent. I
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: guess chronicles on hitchhiking over the decades.
• 48:45
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and that book's great.
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: Okay, well, chucks it. That book's great and we don't
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: have anything else to say about hitchhiking. So I think
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: that means everybody, it's time for a listener mail.
• 48:59
  Speaker 2: I'm gonna call this that Brook is great because this
• 49:02
  Speaker 2: is from Brook.
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: Okay, you like how did that?
• 49:05
  Speaker 3: Hey, guys, my name is Brook. I love listening to
• 49:07
  Speaker 3: your show now.
• 49:08
  Speaker 2: In the latest episode, Peanuts Part two, you stated that
• 49:11
  Speaker 2: the comic strip setting is unknown. We were wrong, my
• 49:14
  Speaker 2: friend on behalf of Minnesota I had to mention that
• 49:17
  Speaker 2: Hennepin County, Minnesota, was actually stated to be the setting
• 49:21
  Speaker 2: in a nineteen fifty seven strip.
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: Okay, I don't like this email. I don't want to
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: know this.
• 49:26
  Speaker 2: Minnesota's are especially obsessed with Peanuts and Snoopy. Minnesota is
• 49:30
  Speaker 2: over five hundred five foot Peanuts statues scattered across the state,
• 49:34
  Speaker 2: with more than one hundred of them being in Saint Paul.
• 49:38
  Speaker 2: They also used to be a Peanuts theme park in
• 49:40
  Speaker 2: the Mall of America called Camp Snoopy.
• 49:43
  Speaker 3: Sadly, Camp Snoopy.
• 49:44
  Speaker 2: Would later become Nickelodeon Park in two thousand and eight.
• 49:48
  Speaker 2: Even still, statues of the Peanuts gang are scattered far
• 49:52
  Speaker 2: and wide, including a Linus statue at the Minnesota State Fair.
• 49:56
  Speaker 2: Even my uncle had a Linu statue in his yard.
• 49:59
  Speaker 2: Had no idea. Thanks so much for the show. I
• 50:02
  Speaker 2: listen while I am trail skating thirty plus miles for
• 50:06
  Speaker 2: marathon skate training.
• 50:08
  Speaker 3: Wow, do you know that was the thing.
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: No, I'm taking that to mean like rollerblading.
• 50:14
  Speaker 2: I guess, or roller skates for whatever thirty something miles.
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: I'll bet Brooke has extraordinarily strong thighs at this point
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: I can't imagine.
• 50:23
  Speaker 2: Dude, gabs and feet and big toes and little toes.
• 50:26
  Speaker 2: I bet it's all very strong. You guys definitely helped
• 50:29
  Speaker 2: me get through it. I love all the little jokes
• 50:31
  Speaker 2: in side comments. I hope you have a great day.
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: Thanks a lot, Brook. That was a quintessential Minnesota. Nice
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: sign off too, By the way, thank you. Totally great email,
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: and even though I it contained information I didn't really
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: want to hear, I still must off my hat to
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: you for that oneft. If you want to be like
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: Brook and get in touch with us with some information
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: we don't necessarily want to hear, we prefer you didn't
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: do that. Otherwise, you can email us at stuff podcast
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: at iHeartRadio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio.
• 51:05
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• 51:08
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