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Who Was Dr Seuss? · Dirt Nap City - History's Most Interesting Dead People

0:07
SPEAKER_01: Hello, everybody, and welcome to Dirt Knap City.
0:11
SPEAKER_01: I'm Kelly here with my pal Alex.
0:14
SPEAKER_01: Uh, we are both in Texas but in different cities, but we're hanging out together and we're having a great day.
0:19
SPEAKER_01: Alex, how are you?
0:20
SPEAKER_01: I'm doing great, Kelly.
0:21
SPEAKER_01: How are you doing?
0:22
SPEAKER_01: I am excited that we're gonna finish out this season and we are going to start season two next year.
0:28
SPEAKER_01: But man, the responses we've been getting from people has been amazing.
0:31
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I I apologize.
0:33
SPEAKER_02: Uh at the beginning of uh season one, I uh I made some sort of uh crack about uh we'll start season two uh with me by myself.
0:42
SPEAKER_02: Finale to season one would be of your death.
0:45
SPEAKER_02: Right.
0:45
SPEAKER_02: And a lot of people um are getting worried about that.
0:48
SPEAKER_02: People have said, oh my gosh, you're starting season two.
0:51
SPEAKER_02: Does that mean something happened to Kelly?
0:53
SPEAKER_02: Kelly's in great health, guys.
0:54
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I am.
0:55
SPEAKER_02: I am right.
0:56
SPEAKER_02: So I was wrong about that.
0:57
SPEAKER_02: Quit emailing about that, though.
0:59
SPEAKER_01: I appreciate the concern.
1:01
SPEAKER_01: I appreciate the thoughts and prayers, all the stuff you guys have been giving us.
1:04
SPEAKER_01: But we are closing out season one with a bang.
1:07
SPEAKER_01: Uh, and I want to tell you, I've got the most interesting person I think we've done so far for us today.
1:15
SPEAKER_01: And I'm really excited to uh share this one with you.
1:18
SPEAKER_01: Of course, as you know, Alex does not know who the person is because it's uh my episode to choose.
1:24
SPEAKER_01: You all know because you clicked on the thumbnail, and there was probably a picture of this person on the thumbnail, but this person does live in dirtknap city, and this person is interesting.
1:33
SPEAKER_01: So you ready to get started?
1:35
SPEAKER_01: I am can't wait.
1:36
SPEAKER_01: All right, so this person was born in 1904 on March 2nd and moved to Dirt Knap City on September 24th, 1991.
1:50
SPEAKER_01: So 1904 to 1991.
1:53
SPEAKER_02: I think we have our first two-part episode, Kelly.
1:56
SPEAKER_02: No way.
1:58
SPEAKER_02: This is awesome.
2:00
SPEAKER_02: I I'm really happy about this, though.
2:02
SPEAKER_02: Actually, I'm actually happy because this is an interesting person, and we can both um riff on this as as much as we want.
2:10
SPEAKER_01: Love it, love it.
2:11
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that let's do it.
2:12
SPEAKER_01: Okay, we'll we'll um so so we're uh both talking about Orville Redenbacher, right?
2:20
SPEAKER_02: That would be awesome.
2:21
SPEAKER_01: Was he born in Springfield, Mass?
2:22
SPEAKER_01: He was, and he was an author.
2:25
SPEAKER_01: Um, he had a pseudonym.
2:26
SPEAKER_01: No, guys, if you don't know yet, and you already do, we are talking about uh Theodore Seuss um Geisel, and his pen name, of course, was Dr.
2:37
SPEAKER_01: Seuss.
2:38
SPEAKER_01: Somehow both Alex and I picked him, and that's really is kind of cool because I was looking for somebody with sort of a holiday theme, but at the same time, uh somebody that wasn't Father Christmas or St.
2:50
SPEAKER_01: Nicholas, right?
2:51
SPEAKER_01: And so that's who I came up with, and that's who you came up with.
2:55
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, we need to get a statistician on this to find out what the odds are, how many people are dead, and of those how many were interesting.
3:02
SPEAKER_02: Right.
3:03
SPEAKER_02: And then what are the odds in a 10-episode season that in uh season one we would end, uh we wouldn't even get to the 10th person before we had a duplicate.
3:13
SPEAKER_01: Well, you know, it's a simple XY axis graph.
3:16
SPEAKER_01: I mean, you could totally you could totally draw this thing.
3:18
SPEAKER_01: Um, you're a professor, you know, and at some point where they cross.
3:22
SPEAKER_01: Um, but yeah, he was born, as you said, in Springfield, Massachusetts, the son of Henrietta and Theodore Robert Geisel.
3:30
SPEAKER_01: And his father actually managed a family brewery and was appointed to the public park system of Springfield, Massachusetts, uh, after the brewery closed because of prohibition.
3:42
SPEAKER_01: Now, he was of German descent and he actually experienced a little bit of bullying and prejudice in school because of the outbreak of World War I.
3:53
SPEAKER_02: Now, you know, um his uh his name Geisel.
3:57
SPEAKER_02: Um did you know that his mother's name was Seuss.
4:03
SPEAKER_02: You know what his mother's yeah, Seuss, but that's not how they pronounced it.
4:05
SPEAKER_02: Did you know that?
4:07
SPEAKER_01: No, how did they pronounce it?
4:09
SPEAKER_02: We've been saying it wrong all this time, man.
4:12
SPEAKER_02: It's it's uh uh it's uh Zeus.
4:15
SPEAKER_01: Zoyce, but spelled with uh spelled with an S at the beginning?
4:20
SPEAKER_02: Uh yeah.
4:21
SPEAKER_02: Uh I think the actual German pronunciation is Zeus.
4:24
SPEAKER_02: Zoize.
4:25
SPEAKER_02: And actually actually, uh when when he used to hang out with his uh writer buddies, um, sure we'll get to his uh time at Dartmouth, but uh one of his buddies made up a uh little poem that said uh you're as wrong as the deuce and you shouldn't rejoice if you're calling him Zeus, he pronounces it Zeus.
4:44
SPEAKER_01: That's awesome.
4:45
SPEAKER_01: Zoyce.
4:46
SPEAKER_01: Um so his mother, that was her name, and as you said, uh he attended Dartmouth College, uh, and that was where he actually wrote for a humor magazine.
4:57
SPEAKER_01: Do you know the name of the humor magazine?
4:59
SPEAKER_01: Was it was it um um the Jack-o'-lantern?
5:02
SPEAKER_01: The Dartmouth Jack-o-Lantern, yes.
5:04
SPEAKER_01: And and he became the editor-in-chief of the Dartmouth Jack-o'-lantern, but uh he unfortunately was caught drinking with his friends, and the dean, whose name was Craven Laycock, he said that Geisel had to resign from extracurricular activities, including the Jack-o'-lantern.
5:24
SPEAKER_01: And that's when he decided to start penning his articles as Seuss.
5:29
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and you know, it wasn't that he was like underage, although he might have been, but drinking was illegal back then.
5:35
SPEAKER_02: That was during prohibition.
5:37
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's also why his father lost his job, right?
5:40
SPEAKER_01: His father was had ran the ran a brewery, and his father lost his job and ended up having to work for the parks department in parks department in Springfield, Massachusetts, because of prohibition.
5:51
SPEAKER_01: I didn't know any of that.
5:53
SPEAKER_02: Um, but he was drinking gin.
5:55
SPEAKER_02: I think that's uh um kind of uh uh old man thing to uh to be drinking uh in uh college.
6:02
SPEAKER_01: You know, you know what they called it when they would get together and drink gin with him, right?
6:06
unknown: No.
6:07
SPEAKER_01: Gin and Seuss.
6:10
SPEAKER_01: Sipping on gin and sus.
6:12
SPEAKER_02: Which doesn't sound as good as gin and zoyce.
6:15
SPEAKER_01: Zoyce, right?
6:16
SPEAKER_01: But you know, if you're saying if you're saying Zeuss, you're all you're you're all uh wrong anyway.
6:21
SPEAKER_02: Now now when I say we said it, we're saying it wrong, he did not insist that people were saying it wrong.
6:26
SPEAKER_02: He anglicized that name because he liked the sound.
6:28
SPEAKER_02: He sound thought it sounded like Mother Goose.
6:31
SPEAKER_02: Uh so he he embraced that later on.
6:33
SPEAKER_02: So I don't want anyone going around uh correcting people.
6:38
SPEAKER_02: They're saying Dr.
6:38
SPEAKER_02: Seuss.
6:39
SPEAKER_02: Don't be that guy.
6:40
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, especially kids.
6:41
SPEAKER_02: It's not Dr.
6:42
SPEAKER_02: Zeyce.
6:43
SPEAKER_01: Well, you read me Dr.
6:44
SPEAKER_01: Seuss, you idiot.
6:46
SPEAKER_01: It's Dr.
6:47
SPEAKER_01: Zeus.
6:48
SPEAKER_01: He ended up graduating from Dartmouth, and then he went to school in England, right?
6:52
SPEAKER_01: And at Oxford, at Lincoln College in Oxford, England, and he was going to get his doctor of philosophy, and then he also met his future wife, Helen Palmer, there, who encouraged him to not get his doc well, not become an English teacher, which is I think what he wanted to do, and actually draw for a living.
7:13
SPEAKER_01: Because she said he always had these great drawings, and she felt like that was his passion, it was unique, and he should really share that with the world.
7:21
SPEAKER_02: I mean, obviously uh that that worked out well for him.
7:24
SPEAKER_02: Um, but you know, a little sad that he uh didn't stay and get his degree just as an educated person myself, but uh sure.
7:31
SPEAKER_01: Well, you always wonder should we thank Craven Laycock or Helen Palmer for his uh becoming Dr.
7:37
SPEAKER_01: Seuss?
7:37
SPEAKER_01: But maybe it was a combination.
7:39
SPEAKER_02: Or of the people in this story, who should have changed his name?
7:42
SPEAKER_02: Uh Theodore uh Geisel or uh Craven Lacock?
7:47
SPEAKER_01: Laycock.
7:49
SPEAKER_01: Uh you know, uh that's debatable.
7:52
SPEAKER_01: But he did he did end up not getting his degree, and he um moved back to the U.S.
7:58
SPEAKER_01: in 1927, immediately began submitting writings, drawings, uh, etc.
8:03
SPEAKER_01: to magazines, and apparently was turned down quite a bit, but eventually got published in the Saturday Evening Post, which was a big, big deal back in the day, I think.
8:15
SPEAKER_01: After that publishing, he actually felt um, I think he felt like he had um kind of tasted success, made a little money off of what he loved doing.
8:25
SPEAKER_01: Kind of like when we finally monetized this show, right?
8:27
SPEAKER_01: It's gonna be time for us to move to New York City.
8:31
SPEAKER_01: And he uh moved to New York City, got a job as an illustrator with the humor magazine Judge, and then started to kind of feel like he had enough money to get married and not actually start a family because he didn't have kids.
8:44
SPEAKER_02: No, but have you ever read one of the humor magazines from back in the day?
8:48
SPEAKER_02: Not very funny.
8:50
SPEAKER_02: Just humor is something that really is kind of time specific.
8:55
SPEAKER_02: Um barely crack a smile when I read that kind of stuff.
8:58
SPEAKER_01: Well, you said you said crack a smile, so there was cracked and mad.
9:01
SPEAKER_02: Those are really the only things that was back that was in the like 60s and 70s, though.
9:06
SPEAKER_02: These these magazines like Judge and um and some of the stuff that he was writing is really I mean it seems corny to us, but it was the because it seems corny because corny seems old-fashioned, but this was like the OG of dad jokes, of but it was original at the time.
9:25
SPEAKER_02: So, but you can't possibly read that stuff now and think it's funny.
9:29
SPEAKER_02: It just the humor just ages so poorly a lot.
9:31
SPEAKER_01: Well, yeah, yeah.
9:32
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's kind of like going back and watching a John Hughes movie, right?
9:35
SPEAKER_01: You know, it's like oh, it's very cringy, a lot of it, and a lot of it's really, really kind of wrong, you know, very misogynistic and racist and all kinds of other stuff that at the time we just didn't think it think anything of.
9:47
SPEAKER_02: And you could say the same about a lot of other Dr.
9:50
SPEAKER_02: Seuss books, too.
9:51
SPEAKER_01: True, true.
9:52
SPEAKER_01: Well, uh, we will definitely get into that.
9:55
SPEAKER_01: But as we continue our story, he ended up in 1928.
10:00
SPEAKER_01: Um he actually had done a cartoon that mentioned Flit.
10:08
SPEAKER_01: Now, you know what Flit was, right?
10:10
SPEAKER_01: I don't.
10:11
SPEAKER_01: I I heard of it, but uh I don't know what it was.
10:14
SPEAKER_01: Flit was a bug spray manufactured by Standard Oil Company of New Jersey.
10:19
SPEAKER_01: And when he he he had a cartoon that mentioned the bug spray in it, you know, sort of off-handedly.
10:26
SPEAKER_01: And according to Geisel, uh Dr.
10:29
SPEAKER_01: Seuss, later, he said that the wife of an advertising executive happened to see the cartoon and urged her husband to sign him.
10:38
SPEAKER_01: She said, This is great.
10:39
SPEAKER_01: And he ended up being uh the ad man for Flit.
10:42
SPEAKER_01: He drew a lot of their cartoons, and that kind of got him into standard oil.
10:47
SPEAKER_01: And a lot of his work early in the day, uh, a lot of his work in the early days was for oil companies.
10:53
SPEAKER_01: I think he did some things for Ford Motor Company.
10:56
SPEAKER_01: He did a lot of stuff for like oil, gas, and transportation kind of work, which is a little bit ironic considering that he ended up, you know, being, or at least writing books about environmentalism later in life.
11:07
SPEAKER_02: You know, yeah.
11:08
SPEAKER_02: Uh I think that flit ad was bigger than we can imagine.
11:12
SPEAKER_02: I think that was a very popular ad.
11:16
SPEAKER_02: Have you ever heard of the game show back in the day called To Tell the Truth?
11:20
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
11:21
SPEAKER_02: You'd you get three people on the stage pretending they're somebody famous, um, but it's somebody you wouldn't recognize, kind of like our show, basically, but uh uh somebody you wouldn't recognize by their face.
11:31
SPEAKER_01: And they're one of them really is famous.
11:33
SPEAKER_02: One of them really is, and then they have these uh celebrity questioners trying to figure out who it is.
11:38
SPEAKER_02: He was on an episode of that, and I I was watching um YouTube video, it's pretty cool.
11:43
SPEAKER_02: And because it's pretty obvious to me which one he is, maybe because I know what he looks like, but only one of the panelists got it right.
11:52
SPEAKER_02: But at the beginning, they mentioned that he was the original, that he came up with the Flit ad and like the whole audience gasped, like, oh that like they all remembered.
12:02
SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah, like like I saw that.
12:04
SPEAKER_01: I remember that was sitting right next to our toilet for years and years and years.
12:09
SPEAKER_01: It was the only magazine.
12:10
SPEAKER_01: And you say flit you say flit was in the that was in the 20s?
12:15
SPEAKER_01: That was in 1928.
12:17
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so this this to tell the truth was like from 1957.
12:22
SPEAKER_02: So I mean that's a 30-year-old ad, and people still remembered it was a radio jingle, probably.
12:27
SPEAKER_02: It probably wasn't TV.
12:29
SPEAKER_02: Well, or maybe it was print.
12:31
SPEAKER_01: Might have been printing.
12:32
SPEAKER_01: I think it was print.
12:32
SPEAKER_01: I think this was I think because I think he was the illustrator in all this.
12:35
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so so it was print.
12:37
SPEAKER_01: But you know, as I said, what what happened from there is he ended up getting into other standard oil products, uh, motor oil, Fode Ford Motor Company was one of his clients, Holly Sugar.
12:48
SPEAKER_01: These were clients that he had.
12:50
SPEAKER_01: And then, of course, in 1931, he wrote a book that uh today, you know, just like just like the humor magazines of of your and the John Hughes movies, the title of this book really doesn't float very well today.
13:05
SPEAKER_01: You wanna you want to tell us what it was called, Alex?
13:07
SPEAKER_01: Is this the book called Boners?
13:09
SPEAKER_01: It was called Boners, and it was actually in uh in 1931.
13:15
SPEAKER_01: It topped the nonfiction bestseller list and led to a sequel.
13:19
SPEAKER_01: You know what that was called?
13:21
SPEAKER_01: Was it called More Boners?
13:22
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
13:27
SPEAKER_01: This is not a sound effect, people.
13:29
SPEAKER_01: This is really me laughing.
13:30
SPEAKER_01: Did you know there was a third book?
13:32
SPEAKER_02: You know what it was called?
13:34
SPEAKER_02: Even more?
13:36
SPEAKER_02: Still more boners.
13:37
SPEAKER_02: Oh, okay.
13:39
SPEAKER_02: Then there was a fourth book called Prize Boners for 1932.
13:44
SPEAKER_01: Then there was you're serious about this.
13:46
SPEAKER_02: The omnibus omnibus boners, the second boners omnibus, and then uh my favorite way later, 1952, uh they re- they came back to this and wrote a book called Bigger and Better Boners.
14:05
SPEAKER_02: So at that point, I think in 1952, by that.
14:10
SPEAKER_02: I think no, I think that they knew exactly what they were doing with that title in 1952.
14:15
SPEAKER_01: Well there there are um there are copies of this book still available.
14:22
SPEAKER_01: I just looked it up.
14:23
SPEAKER_01: Uh I looked up the author Alexander Abingdon, and and uh you can buy um you can buy a copy of that book from uh used beginning at four dollars.
14:37
SPEAKER_01: No thanks.
14:38
SPEAKER_01: Um you know that you don't you don't want to have that book laying around your house.
14:44
SPEAKER_02: I feel bad that I even Googled it.
14:46
SPEAKER_01: Um I know you're certain just think what's coming up in your search now, you know, all these little ads and stuff, all this Viagra.
14:54
SPEAKER_02: You know, for uh during World War II, though, um, even though this book had already been out for like 15 years, um, there was a million copies sold by 1945.
15:04
SPEAKER_02: It was one of the best selling paperbacks of World War II.
15:08
SPEAKER_02: Like every soldier had this book, and they were just little stupid little uh sayings.
15:14
SPEAKER_02: Again, not very funny.
15:16
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
15:17
SPEAKER_02: Do you know any examples of this uh in this book?
15:20
SPEAKER_00: You can't change the direction of the wind, but you can reset your sails.
15:26
SPEAKER_02: Rella, is that one of them?
15:27
SPEAKER_02: No, I have no idea.
15:29
SPEAKER_02: Like uh a man who marries twice commits bigotry.
15:35
SPEAKER_02: Bigotry instead of big bigamy.
15:39
SPEAKER_02: Just like there were like things that kids like maybe school kids say like accidentally, like a virgin forest is a forest in which the hand of man has never set foot.
15:51
SPEAKER_01: Wow.
15:52
SPEAKER_02: That's actually from the book?
15:54
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, those that's what the passes for humor.
15:56
SPEAKER_02: That was a million copies sold back then.
15:58
SPEAKER_01: Now, wasn't there a show uh called Kids Say the Darndest Things or something like that?
16:04
SPEAKER_01: Um, was this based on boners?
16:07
SPEAKER_02: Way better title than boners.
16:10
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well, I mean, was it because the book sold millions of copies, you know?
16:15
SPEAKER_01: If it had been called something else, maybe it wouldn't have.
16:17
SPEAKER_01: I think a lot of people ordered it by mistake.
16:20
SPEAKER_01: That's honestly what I think happened.
16:23
SPEAKER_01: I think they sent it to all those soldiers in World War II thinking it was more of a you know, they're away from their wives kind of thing.
16:30
SPEAKER_01: And yeah, that's what I thought it was.
16:32
SPEAKER_01: But I think somebody in the procurement office in the government really made a big mistake.
16:36
SPEAKER_02: Well, originally it was called Kids Make the Biggest Boners.
16:41
SPEAKER_01: And that that one that one wouldn't fly.
16:44
SPEAKER_01: And and people, if you're gonna pull random quotes from this show, don't pull that one.
16:50
SPEAKER_01: But if you do pull it, remember Alex said it.
16:53
SPEAKER_01: So so after the the boner's debacle and the more boner's debacle and the even bigger boner's debacle.
17:02
SPEAKER_01: Oh, we're such children.
17:03
SPEAKER_01: Uh, in 1936, Geisel and his wife were returning from an ocean voyage, and he said that uh the rhythm of the ship's engine is what inspired a poem that later became his first book, first children's book, and to think that I saw it on Mulberry Street.
17:20
SPEAKER_01: Do you know this book?
17:22
SPEAKER_01: That's actually one I don't know that well.
17:24
SPEAKER_01: I I know of it, but that's not one.
17:26
SPEAKER_01: He it's like him walking down the street and seeing seeing things, right?
17:30
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I I don't know it that well.
17:32
SPEAKER_02: I mean, if you said the name of it, I probably would have said that he wrote it, but I I can't tell you anything about it.
17:38
SPEAKER_01: I think I might have it.
17:40
SPEAKER_01: I have a big stack of Dr.
17:41
SPEAKER_01: Seuss books that we had for my kids.
17:42
SPEAKER_01: Maybe I'll go grab them in a minute and you know, and and show it because that works really well in podcasts.
17:47
SPEAKER_01: But um as far as um the the varied accounts, um that book was actually rejected.
17:56
SPEAKER_01: Uh Geisel said over the years, sometimes he said it was 20, and he said up to 43 publishers rejected that book before someone actually took to it and and decided to do it.
18:06
SPEAKER_01: He actually had given up.
18:08
SPEAKER_01: He was very close to giving up when uh he ran into a classmate from Dartmouth who uh was able to get it published by Vanguard Press.
18:17
SPEAKER_01: He wrote four more books before the U.S.
18:19
SPEAKER_01: entered World War II, including the 500 bats, 500 bats, 500 hats of Bartholomew Cubans, as well as the King's Stills and the Seven Lady Godivas.
18:30
SPEAKER_01: Now I'd never heard of any of those.
18:32
SPEAKER_02: You you know about the Seven Lady Godives?
18:35
SPEAKER_01: I don't.
18:36
SPEAKER_02: That was his that was his try at an adult book.
18:41
SPEAKER_02: Really?
18:42
SPEAKER_02: And uh it was a failure.
18:44
SPEAKER_02: It only sold 2,500 copies.
18:46
SPEAKER_02: Now we'd already said that the boner's book had sold a million copies, right?
18:50
SPEAKER_01: Wow, yeah.
18:50
SPEAKER_02: Um, and he he wasn't writing in the he was just illustrating in that boner's book.
18:56
SPEAKER_02: Um he wrote this seven lady godivas, and it was um had nudity throughout.
19:01
SPEAKER_02: It was um it was um based on it was about seven sisters who never wear clothing.
19:08
SPEAKER_02: And the reason they didn't really say why, other than they wanted to be themselves and they didn't want to disguise it.
19:14
SPEAKER_02: But the book was two dollars, which during the Great Depression was a lot.
19:19
SPEAKER_02: That was like a month's worth of food, and it was like it had nudity on every page, it was just drawings of of naked women.
19:27
SPEAKER_01: See, that's what they should have sent the soldiers, right?
19:30
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, right, right.
19:32
SPEAKER_02: Um, this is yeah, exactly.
19:34
SPEAKER_02: But uh later he said um the reason it was a failure, uh uh this is his quote, it was all full of naked women, and I can't draw convincing naked women.
19:44
SPEAKER_02: I put their knee this is what he said, I put their knees in the wrong places.
19:51
SPEAKER_02: It's the algebra that got me.
19:54
SPEAKER_02: I tried to draw the sexiest women I could, but they came out just ridiculous.
19:59
SPEAKER_02: Wow.
19:59
SPEAKER_02: And after that experience, he decided he was just gonna write for kids.
20:04
SPEAKER_02: He said he'd rather write for kids because they were more appreciative.
20:07
SPEAKER_02: I think the was this uh failure of the Lady Godives really hit him hard.
20:12
SPEAKER_02: Um, and he he said about adults later, he said, adults are obsolete children and to hell with them.
20:20
SPEAKER_01: Wow, wow.
20:22
SPEAKER_01: Uh that's a good quote.
20:23
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and they of course, you know, he never had kids.
20:26
SPEAKER_01: Right.
20:27
SPEAKER_01: And he had a great quote about that.
20:29
SPEAKER_01: Did you ever hear that quote about not having having kids?
20:32
SPEAKER_01: You have them and I'll entertain them.
20:33
SPEAKER_01: Yes, yes.
20:34
SPEAKER_02: I thought that was a really good quote.
20:36
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so the only other adult book that he ever wrote, and we're using the term adult book, not in the the um Yeah, not in the pornography, not pornography sense.
20:46
SPEAKER_01: Although there were naked women in it, so true.
20:48
SPEAKER_02: Uh he didn't write another book for adults until 1986, at the end of his life, uh, about being old, called You're Only Old Once.
20:58
SPEAKER_02: And the subtitle of that book was actually a book for obsolete children.
21:02
SPEAKER_02: He just took that that that idea of adults are just obsolete children.
21:08
SPEAKER_02: Children are like the ideal, and once they become adults, they are kind of of no use to him at all, um, and in terms of being consumers of his uh of his uh art.
21:19
SPEAKER_02: So uh that Lady Godiva thing really, I think, um hit him because he was on a pretty good winning streak until everything he was touching was was doing really well, but that really hit him hard.
21:32
SPEAKER_02: And his his illustrations are very uh appealing to children.
21:37
SPEAKER_01: And uh yeah, the style, I mean, the giant uh exaggerated features on animals, the giant exaggerated features on you know, people type things, and who's and witsits and bitsits and yitsits and all that stuff.
21:50
SPEAKER_01: And of course the rhyming, right?
21:51
SPEAKER_01: That's the other thing that just the the sort of poetic nature of the way that he uh would take words.
21:58
SPEAKER_01: As a matter of fact, the little story about the cat.
22:00
SPEAKER_01: And the hat.
22:00
SPEAKER_01: Do you know the story about how that book was written?
22:03
SPEAKER_02: I do, but let's why don't you tell us?
22:05
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
22:06
SPEAKER_01: So apparently there was a big um kerfuffle about the fact that American school children had bad vocabularies.
22:13
SPEAKER_01: They didn't like to read because children's books were boring at the time.
22:17
SPEAKER_01: Uh today our kids would say they were awkward, but you know, back then it was boring.
22:21
SPEAKER_01: And he was given a set of words, uh, I think it was 348 words, and was asked to uh write a book using those words because they were words that were essential for a first grader's vocabulary.
22:35
SPEAKER_01: He cut that down to 250 words, and in nine months he wrote The Cat in the Hat, and he had his drawing style, he had his verse and his rhymes and everything else, and that really kind of was a big hit, not only because um it was an entertaining book, but it used those vocabulary words.
22:54
SPEAKER_01: It was interesting to children and it taught them vocabulary.
22:57
SPEAKER_02: I love the idea that it's a challenge to take a list of 348 words and try to make them into uh or cut them down to 250 and try to make a book only using those words.
23:08
SPEAKER_02: I love I love that in terms of a creative exercise.
23:12
SPEAKER_02: Um, it probably made it uh relatively easy to write a book that way.
23:16
SPEAKER_02: You know, when you hear stories about people that write Christmas music, for example, most of the Christmas songs that we enjoy, um, you'll hear people say that they wrote it in 10 minutes, half an hour.
23:28
SPEAKER_02: And the reason is because they have uh they're limited as to what you there's only so many words you can use in a Christmas song, right?
23:36
SPEAKER_02: You can probably list them out right now, but so it constrains you as to the words you can write, and that's why it's real easy to write songs when you know, as opposed to write a love song.
23:46
SPEAKER_02: There's so many different synonyms for all the different things, but for Christmas and winter, there's only so many.
23:53
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and I think this was kind of the same thing.
23:56
SPEAKER_02: It's like, all right, you can only use these 250 words, probably made it pretty easy, especially and then you see of those which ones rhyme.
24:03
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I think either one of us could have written Cat in the Hat if presented that challenge.
24:08
SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
24:09
SPEAKER_01: I I think it it might have been the dog on the log, you know, because I'm more of a dog guy, but yes.
24:16
SPEAKER_02: And if you weren't good at it, it'd probably be the dog in the hat.
24:19
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so that was quite a quite a little exercise.
24:23
SPEAKER_01: And so just a little bit of a tangent here.
24:25
SPEAKER_01: Have you ever heard um alphabet aerobics?
24:29
SPEAKER_01: No.
24:30
SPEAKER_01: By the band Black Alicious?
24:32
SPEAKER_01: No.
24:34
SPEAKER_01: When we get off this call, you should go look that up.
24:37
SPEAKER_01: It's it's uh it's A to Z, um, a rap that goes from A to Z with all these words, every you know, a bunch of words that begin with A, a bunch of words that begin with B.
24:46
SPEAKER_01: It's really well done.
24:47
SPEAKER_01: And and children?
24:49
SPEAKER_01: It could be, it could be.
24:50
SPEAKER_01: It's not, it's not there's no profanity or anything like that in it.
24:54
SPEAKER_01: But uh, you know, again, it's it's taking not necessarily a set of words, but taking a parameter and then writing around it that I think is really cool.
25:02
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
25:02
SPEAKER_01: Well, let's go back to World War II for a second.
25:05
unknown: Okay.
25:06
SPEAKER_01: Do you remember um do you remember anything about a film that he was involved in uh during World War II?
25:14
SPEAKER_01: Would this be Design for Death?
25:16
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
25:17
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
25:17
SPEAKER_01: There's quite a bit of uh talk about that online.
25:20
SPEAKER_02: And man, I just watched uh YouTube video that was a head clip of this.
25:26
SPEAKER_02: Have you seen this?
25:28
SPEAKER_01: Um the no, I haven't seen that YouTube video.
25:30
SPEAKER_01: What was the clip of?
25:32
SPEAKER_02: It was of um it was of the uh so before Design for Death, there was a short uh 15-minute movie.
25:41
SPEAKER_02: Like a train training video that the government did, right?
25:44
SPEAKER_02: For soldiers that were about to go uh fight the Japanese.
25:49
SPEAKER_02: Very disturbing uh from today's sensibilities.
25:52
SPEAKER_02: I mean, you're basically it was telling our soldiers about the part I watched said uh Yeah, well it basically said look, when they were born, they weren't this way, and they were just like the rest of us, they meeting Japanese people, and uh and they got brainwashed uh to thinking that they could take over the world, but um the Japanese brain could actually be used for good things, and that's um it was it was about what to do with post I'm sorry, it wasn't about fighting the Japanese, about to what to do with post-war Japanese and post-t ones who were being interred or or well in internment camps.
26:39
SPEAKER_02: Uh and he was pro-interment, by the way.
26:41
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
26:42
SPEAKER_02: He was uh he was for basically everything the FDR was for.
26:45
SPEAKER_02: He was a big time liberal democrat, um, big New Deal guy, and basically an FDR guy, anti-isolationist.
26:54
SPEAKER_02: Um, but this this design for death actually won an Academy Award for best documentary.
27:00
SPEAKER_02: Wow.
27:01
SPEAKER_02: In 1947.
27:02
SPEAKER_02: But it was a you know, it was a US propaganda film, basically.
27:07
SPEAKER_01: Well, and and quick shout out to the Eleanor Roosevelt episode.
27:10
SPEAKER_01: If you want to know about FDR and Eleanor, check out that episode.
27:14
SPEAKER_02: We uh we'll never really talk about FDR.
27:17
SPEAKER_02: We'll just talk about all the people in his orbit, right?
27:19
SPEAKER_02: Right, right.
27:20
SPEAKER_01: Yeah he he's a he's a recurring minor character in all of these episodes.
27:24
SPEAKER_01: But exactly I did know that he was a Democrat and a supporter of FDR, and that he did um support internment of the Japanese during or after World War II, uh, or during World War II, actually, because people were afraid they were going to come in and kill kill other people.
27:41
SPEAKER_01: But he actually said something to the effect, and I think I can kind of understand this.
27:46
SPEAKER_01: I'm not saying I I support it or I believe in it, but I can understand, you know, if your country is at war with another nation, you just kind of put all those people into a bucket and say, I don't trust him, you know, and I think that's essentially what he said is I don't trust him.
28:01
SPEAKER_01: And then I think later he did try to um try to sort of make up for that with with uh a couple of his books, didn't wasn't Horton Here's a Who was all about um like an allegory about that?
28:14
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I think there was room for uh redemption there.
28:18
SPEAKER_02: Uh certainly in term is one of the most shameful things that this country's ever done.
28:24
SPEAKER_02: And I think over time, I think he started to realize that.
28:27
SPEAKER_02: And that's why he wrote a book, Horton Here's a Who.
28:31
SPEAKER_02: You know, it's uh which is an allegory.
28:33
SPEAKER_02: He wrote a lot in allegory, right?
28:36
SPEAKER_02: Um not so much messages, not so much morals, um or uh or or uh you know moral of the story.
28:46
SPEAKER_02: He hated that, but he definitely wrote in allegories, and just pretty much every one of his books has something to do with something that was going on at the time, which is really amazing that still today a lot of those books resonate with other things that we face kind of history repeating itself.
29:02
SPEAKER_02: So Horton Hears a Who.
29:04
SPEAKER_02: We don't think about Japanese internment when we see it, but we definitely see uh other uh instances of of uh race relations, for example, that we have in this country.
29:14
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
29:14
SPEAKER_02: Um when we see Horton Hears a Who.
29:16
SPEAKER_01: So well, it's kind of the the beauty of a good allegory is it it it can it can evolve over time.
29:23
SPEAKER_01: The story is the same, but the meaning, you know, and how you how you draw analogies to other things in life um actually change, right?
29:32
SPEAKER_01: And so I think that's that's a testament to how well, how good of an actual writer he was, not just an illustrator, but the content itself, you know, and how it how it has survived.
29:42
SPEAKER_01: And and I will say, um, you know, every so often my kids and I will sit down and we will read an old book that we have.
29:50
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes they're Dr.
29:51
SPEAKER_01: Seuss, sometimes they're others.
29:53
SPEAKER_01: Like we always do Bears Christmas at Christmas, if you remember the Barenstein Bears.
29:57
SPEAKER_01: Um, but but we'll do that, and the books are still fascinating, they're still super interesting.
30:03
SPEAKER_01: Um, the butter battle book, do you remember that one?
30:06
SPEAKER_02: I don't know, no, I have it on my list here, but I don't, I've never heard of that.
30:09
SPEAKER_01: That was from 1984, and that one was basically about escalation of war.
30:15
SPEAKER_01: So each side, like one side prefers their butter on the top of their toast, and the other side likes it on the bottom of their toast, and they each sort of uh have to outdo the other side, so they get bigger butter and bigger toast, and they start throwing them over the wall to the other city at with catapults, and pretty soon they're in this massive war that's escalated out of control, and you know, it's it's just showing that those things can escalate really quickly.
30:46
SPEAKER_02: Just shows how absurd it all is, huh?
30:48
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
30:49
SPEAKER_01: And it's about you know it's about something as silly as butter, just like you know, things we've fought wars about that are almost as silly.
30:56
SPEAKER_01: So um, yeah, and I I don't know.
31:00
SPEAKER_01: There was also a book called Fox and Sox.
31:02
SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna look real quick and see if Fox and Sox was actually written by Dr.
31:05
SPEAKER_01: Seuss.
31:06
SPEAKER_01: It was 1965.
31:08
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
31:08
SPEAKER_01: Uh that was one of my favorites.
31:11
SPEAKER_01: I don't know if you if you ever read that one, but um there are so many great rhymes in that books, in that book, and there is a part about Tweedlebeetles.
31:22
SPEAKER_01: Have you read have you read Fox and Sox?
31:25
SPEAKER_02: I can't, I I don't know.
31:27
SPEAKER_02: I I can't quote any of it.
31:28
SPEAKER_01: Well, okay.
31:29
SPEAKER_01: When when a Tweedlebeetle, uh this is from memory.
31:32
SPEAKER_01: I don't have this typed out.
31:33
SPEAKER_01: When a Tweedlebeetle battles, when Tweedlebeetles fight, it's called a Tweedlebeetle battle.
31:38
SPEAKER_01: And when Tweedle Beetles fight in a bottle, it's called a Tweedlebeetle bottle battle.
31:44
SPEAKER_01: And when Tweedlebeetles fight in a bottle and the bottle's on a poodle and the poodle's eating noodles, this this is where this this rhyme goes, and it's so awesome.
31:56
SPEAKER_01: I I I absolutely my favorite part of that book, and probably my favorite section of any Dr.
32:01
SPEAKER_01: Seuss book.
32:02
SPEAKER_02: I wonder if MM at all was influenced by Dr.
32:07
SPEAKER_02: Seuss.
32:08
SPEAKER_02: Hmm.
32:10
SPEAKER_01: Or hearing you do that, the more uh influenced by Chefboy RD, you know, with mom spaghetti.
32:19
SPEAKER_02: Just hearing you do that kind of reminds me of the way MM kind of the way he flows.
32:24
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
32:25
SPEAKER_01: When a Tweedlebeetle fights, it's a Tweedlebeetle battle.
32:28
SPEAKER_02: That's not really him, but when a Tweedlebeetle fights, it's a Tweedlebeetle.
32:31
SPEAKER_02: I can't do MM.
32:32
SPEAKER_02: It just he does it so fast, and it you could picture somebody doing that.
32:35
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, what other what other you've mentioned a lot of them?
32:38
SPEAKER_02: Um uh what other Dr.
32:40
SPEAKER_02: Seuss books do you remember?
32:43
SPEAKER_02: I mean, we got the Grinch for sure, right?
32:46
SPEAKER_01: Okay, I'm gonna also look up real quick.
32:48
SPEAKER_01: Go Dog Go.
32:49
SPEAKER_01: I don't think that was by uh Dr.
32:51
SPEAKER_01: Seuss.
32:51
SPEAKER_01: That was Petey Eastman.
32:53
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, see, Petey Eastman would be what you call uh uh um opportunist, right?
32:59
SPEAKER_02: But they had a similar vibe, right?
33:03
SPEAKER_02: I mean, I guess you could say, you know, fun with Dick and Jane had a similar vibe, but it wasn't like the system.
33:10
SPEAKER_01: No, no, no.
33:11
SPEAKER_01: Big because because that was about real people.
33:14
SPEAKER_01: Go Dog Go was about these dogs that drove cars.
33:17
SPEAKER_01: You know, it was sort of a fantasy, um, really crazy kind of situation.
33:23
SPEAKER_01: And then the illustration style of Go Dog Go, you you know the book.
33:26
SPEAKER_01: They're all in a big tree having a party.
33:28
SPEAKER_01: If you remember Go Dog Go.
33:30
SPEAKER_01: Oh man, that was another one that but it's not it's not Dr.
33:33
SPEAKER_01: Seuss, it was Petey Eastman.
33:34
SPEAKER_01: But I think it's often confused with Dr.
33:37
SPEAKER_01: Seuss because I think um a lot of times you'll have that book and it has it actually has the Cat in the Hat uh logo on it.
33:45
SPEAKER_01: It's like Brighton Early Books or something like that.
33:47
SPEAKER_01: It was a it was a label, a book um I can read by myself.
33:53
SPEAKER_02: Would you say that Petey Eastman was the Franco-American to Dr.
33:58
SPEAKER_02: Seuss's Chef Boy RD?
34:00
SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
34:01
SPEAKER_02: So Horton hatches the egg came out in 1940, and then Horton Here's a Who didn't come out until 1954, which I thought is odd because that means that the people, the children were 14 years older when that came out.
34:16
SPEAKER_02: So it was a for all entirely different generation, yeah, which I think is the tricky part about being a children's author, is that you are identify with that particular generation and then they all get older.
34:28
SPEAKER_02: So whether you're talking about modern Harry Potter or Diary of a Wimpy Kid or those kind of books, your market ages out of your stuff, and you have to appeal to the next cohort that's coming along.
34:42
SPEAKER_02: I think that's very hard to do.
34:43
SPEAKER_02: And I think Dr.
34:44
SPEAKER_02: Seuss did a great job.
34:45
SPEAKER_02: I mean, he was writing children's books for 60 years.
34:49
SPEAKER_01: You can appeal to the parents and you can appeal to their nostalgia, right?
34:54
SPEAKER_01: So part of the reason I like to read Dr.
34:56
SPEAKER_01: Seuss to my children is because that appeals to the nostalgia that I have for hearing it when I was a kid, right?
35:03
SPEAKER_01: And so it and also so much of the nonsensical stuff isn't time-specific, right?
35:10
SPEAKER_01: It isn't like stuck in a certain time period because he's referencing a certain person or certain technology or whatever, or you know, bad humor of the day, like we were talking about earlier.
35:20
SPEAKER_01: It's when you're in these nonsensical uh imaginary lands, they're timeless.
35:26
SPEAKER_01: And so that that's another, I think he I doubt he did that on purpose, but I think that's another reason why his books are so in enduring over the years because they are truly timeless.
35:36
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and I think there's some kind of some kind of brain chemistry that rhyming is always soothing to the ears.
35:43
SPEAKER_02: And rhyming with silly words is always fun.
35:47
SPEAKER_02: And when you're just learning to read, it's fun.
35:49
SPEAKER_02: Like you said, some of the books, like Cat in the Hat, are meant for you to read by yourself.
35:54
SPEAKER_02: Other books uh are better when your parents read them to you, like the Sneeches, for example.
36:01
SPEAKER_02: And some of these words with some of these complicated, nonsensical words would be hard for a first grader to read by him or herself, but having your parents read it to you is fun.
36:14
SPEAKER_02: You can kind of go back and forth in these books.
36:16
SPEAKER_02: It's just brilliant.
36:17
SPEAKER_02: Like I said, I don't know if if he knew this from the beginning, but it certainly worked, and this stuff will uh last for uh a long time.
36:26
SPEAKER_02: The one that we used to always um get a kick out of was a book called The Sleep Book.
36:32
SPEAKER_02: Have you ever heard of that book?
36:33
SPEAKER_01: I have heard of it.
36:34
SPEAKER_01: I don't, I don't know, I don't know anything about it.
36:36
SPEAKER_02: We read it, we read it to our son every single night uh as part of the ritual, the bedtime ritual, and we knew it so well that well, today the book is completely, you know, ripped and just dog eared and all that, but I really don't know why, because after a while we didn't even need the book.
36:58
SPEAKER_02: We just knew that thing by heart so well.
37:01
SPEAKER_02: And even today, if you you know, I can throw my wife a couple of lines and she'll come back and just you know, after not thinking like an old song that you tickles that part of the brain, right?
37:13
SPEAKER_01: I was gonna say it's written itself onto your hard drive.
37:16
SPEAKER_01: It's it's like you know, you can you can you can access it still.
37:19
SPEAKER_01: It's not it wasn't in random access memory that goes away when you fall asleep.
37:23
SPEAKER_01: It was it's written to your hard drive.
37:24
SPEAKER_01: So throw us a throw us a quote from the sleep book.
37:27
SPEAKER_01: What's what's a I don't have it in front of me, man.
37:30
SPEAKER_02: I don't have it in front of me.
37:31
SPEAKER_02: You just you just said you know it like the back of your head.
37:34
SPEAKER_02: I said if you throw my wife a line.
37:37
SPEAKER_01: You just said you read it so much you didn't need it anymore.
37:40
SPEAKER_02: That was 18 years ago, man.
37:42
SPEAKER_02: Oh, all right, all right.
37:44
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I mean, uh, you know, there's it was I remember it was in a place called Van Vleck.
37:50
SPEAKER_01: Van Vleck.
37:51
SPEAKER_01: That's where the sleep book took place.
37:53
SPEAKER_02: Right.
37:54
SPEAKER_02: So it's it started.
37:55
SPEAKER_02: The news just came in from the county of Keck that a very small bug by the name of Van Vleck is yawning so wide you can look down his neck.
38:04
SPEAKER_02: This may not seem very important, I know, but it is, so I'm bothering telling you so.
38:09
SPEAKER_02: And then it just went on.
38:10
SPEAKER_02: Wow.
38:11
SPEAKER_02: Kind of crazy.
38:12
SPEAKER_01: I have never I have never read that book, so that's this is all news to me.
38:16
SPEAKER_02: Um yeah, it was just about going to sleep, you know.
38:19
SPEAKER_02: The whole thing was about how these people are trying to go to sleep and they can't, which you know, I would like to tell you it made my son go to sleep, but all it did was made us go to sleep.
38:28
SPEAKER_02: Right.
38:29
SPEAKER_02: We would doze off and he'd be wide awake.
38:31
SPEAKER_01: Right.
38:32
SPEAKER_01: Um he's jumping on the bed like Van Vleck, Flan Fleck.
38:36
SPEAKER_01: Well, that's awesome.
38:37
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I do think there are so many people of our generation, earlier generations, and now later generations that have a relationship with the books that Dr.
38:48
SPEAKER_01: Seuss wrote, you know, and I I do think there is this general sometimes um uh misconception perhaps or sensationalism about the the um thing that we were talking about earlier with the internment of the Japanese and some of the some of the political things that he said.
39:07
SPEAKER_01: I I think people like to just, oh, I heard he was a racist.
39:11
SPEAKER_01: You know, they like to just generalize that sort of thing.
39:14
SPEAKER_01: And I don't really believe that's true based on what I've read about him.
39:18
SPEAKER_01: Um not at all uh true, but you know, it's unfortunate that sometimes that's just what people latch on to.
39:24
SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah, I heard he was a racist, you know, and and so um he definitely had some some thoughts and some things he said that were uh probably uh not very smart and not very kind and not very well received.
39:39
SPEAKER_01: But I think he in the end realized those were wrong and took it to a better place and apologized and you know did all the things you do, and at the end of the day, touched so many people's lives in a positive way that I'm certainly able to look past those things that he said, you know, in his in his days during the war.
40:01
SPEAKER_02: Let's put something else to rest.
40:03
SPEAKER_02: He has not been canceled.
40:05
SPEAKER_02: All right, he's recently kind of been a hero of the right um for somebody who has been canceled for that stuff.
40:12
SPEAKER_02: He has not been canceled.
40:13
SPEAKER_02: Uh his estate, so his you know, relatives and people that uh publish his books have decided that because of some of the more unfortunate drawings of particular Asian people, that's the one that has a big problem.
40:29
SPEAKER_02: And you know, like we said, he got his start kind of uh drawing pictures during World War II, drawing political cartoons.
40:36
SPEAKER_02: Um, he carried a lot of that drawing over, and he um there's a lot of drawings in there that are insensitive.
40:43
SPEAKER_02: So his estate has decided to stop publishing those but to retire, as they call it, retire those books.
40:50
SPEAKER_02: Nobody canceled them, the government didn't cancel him, nobody uh Biden didn't cancel him.
40:57
SPEAKER_02: Uh it's it's not thanks, Obama.
40:59
SPEAKER_02: No, nobody's he's not canceled.
41:02
SPEAKER_02: Uh he's just they they've just looking at this stuff in the light of today, it uh it makes sense to not keep putting the stuff out there.
41:11
SPEAKER_02: Uh but nobody's canceling Dr.
41:13
SPEAKER_02: Seuss, and he shouldn't be uh some sort of First Amendment hero because he's he's not alive anymore, and he probably, like you said, uh would regret the way a lot of this stuff is uh is put out there.
41:25
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
41:25
SPEAKER_02: Did you know though that his um his estate, Dr.
41:31
SPEAKER_02: Seuss, um made 32 million dollars in 2022?
41:35
SPEAKER_02: Wow.
41:36
SPEAKER_03: Wow.
41:37
SPEAKER_02: So I ran across a list that you might be interested in.
41:39
SPEAKER_02: This is a total fodder for dirt nap city, I think.
41:42
SPEAKER_02: This is a list of the highest paid dead celebrities of 2022.
41:47
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
41:47
SPEAKER_01: Okay, so these are this is totally this is right up our alley.
41:52
SPEAKER_02: So in Dirtnap City, these are the people that are living in the high-rent district.
41:56
SPEAKER_01: Right.
41:56
SPEAKER_02: Uh the the top 10 people that they made in 2022.
42:02
SPEAKER_01: After already being dead.
42:03
SPEAKER_02: I will tell you that Dr.
42:04
SPEAKER_02: Seuss is number eight on the list of the highest paid dead celebrities.
42:09
SPEAKER_01: Number one being the most money?
42:11
SPEAKER_01: Most money, the most he's he's way he's at the bottom of this list of the top ten.
42:16
SPEAKER_02: Now remember, this isn't cumulative since they died.
42:18
SPEAKER_02: This is in 2020.
42:22
SPEAKER_00: What one year one year value.
42:24
SPEAKER_02: Number one on this list made five hundred million dollars this year.
42:28
SPEAKER_02: Jesus.
42:29
SPEAKER_02: Is it Jesus?
42:31
SPEAKER_02: No.
42:32
SPEAKER_02: Start start with uh start with number 10.
42:35
SPEAKER_02: Okay, okay.
42:36
SPEAKER_02: Uh number 10 is also an author that made 24 million dollars in 2022.
42:41
SPEAKER_01: Uh am I supposed to guess?
42:44
SPEAKER_02: I will tell you that.
42:45
SPEAKER_01: Who wrote the Great Gatsby?
42:47
SPEAKER_02: Um his name.
42:48
SPEAKER_02: No, no.
42:49
SPEAKER_02: This guy's name is Charles Schultz.
42:51
SPEAKER_02: Charles Schultz.
42:53
SPEAKER_01: You know, it's really funny.
42:55
SPEAKER_01: Probably you and I think alike.
42:56
SPEAKER_01: That was a consider person I considered actually doing for this episode.
43:00
SPEAKER_02: No, I never considered him.
43:01
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
43:02
SPEAKER_01: Charles Schultz.
43:02
SPEAKER_02: Number nine peanuts.
43:04
SPEAKER_02: I need a reason for number nine.
43:06
SPEAKER_02: Number nine is actually a studio session drummer named Jeff Porcaro that actually died like 30 years ago.
43:14
SPEAKER_02: He was a drummer for huge hits of the 70s.
43:18
SPEAKER_02: Pretty much every song that you know from the like soft rock kind of Toto and stuff like that.
43:23
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you know what they call that, right?
43:24
SPEAKER_02: Um it's called Yacht Rock.
43:27
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, Yacht Rock, right, exactly.
43:29
SPEAKER_02: Uh he was a drummer.
43:32
SPEAKER_02: He made$25 million uh in 2022 and died in 1991.
43:36
SPEAKER_01: Well, you know why.
43:37
SPEAKER_01: I mean, because he gets a residual for every one of those songs, and every time every time you listen to Rosanna on Spotify, that guy's estate gets 25 cents, you know.
43:49
SPEAKER_02: Well, I have not been putting anything into this guy's coffers, I'll tell you that.
43:53
SPEAKER_02: Um, Dr.
43:54
SPEAKER_02: Seuss is number eight.
43:55
SPEAKER_02: Number seven is the uh musician Leonard Cohen.
43:59
SPEAKER_02: Oh, wow.
44:00
SPEAKER_02: 55 million.
44:01
SPEAKER_02: Number six, Michael Jackson, seventy-five million.
44:05
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
44:06
SPEAKER_02: Number five, a hundred million dollars, James Brown.
44:10
SPEAKER_02: Wow.
44:11
SPEAKER_02: Is he dead?
44:13
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
44:14
SPEAKER_02: Number four, uh Elvis, 110 million.
44:19
SPEAKER_01: That makes sense.
44:21
SPEAKER_02: Number three, David Bowie,$250 million in 2022.
44:27
SPEAKER_01: I would have honestly thought that Michael Jackson would be above David Bowie and Elvis, but maybe he got a little bit canceled.
44:36
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
44:37
SPEAKER_02: It's amazing that he still makes as much as he does.
44:40
SPEAKER_01: Well, it's actually, it's actually just kind of funny.
44:42
SPEAKER_01: Now when I hear a song on the radio, I, you know, because they're great songs, right?
44:46
SPEAKER_01: I mean, there's they're still great songs, but you just um yeah, it's it's like I always have a little bit of a pause when I hear it.
44:52
SPEAKER_01: I'm like, oh, radio's playing Michael Jackson again.
44:54
SPEAKER_01: That's good, I guess.
44:56
SPEAKER_02: Number two uh died two years ago is all the uh basketball player Kobe Bryant.
45:03
SPEAKER_02: Kobe Bryant, wow, okay.
45:05
SPEAKER_02: 400 million dollars.
45:06
SPEAKER_02: Still they're still selling Kobe's shoes.
45:08
SPEAKER_01: Uh Nike is so that's and and and you know, I think he's still really relevant to this generation and you know, um seen as a bit of a hero.
45:18
SPEAKER_01: And so I think he'll I don't think he'll stand the test of time um as much as some of the other people on the list, but that's just my guess.
45:27
SPEAKER_02: Number one, five hundred million dollars in twenty twenty-two.
45:31
SPEAKER_02: When I take a guess, an author.
45:34
SPEAKER_01: An author.
45:35
SPEAKER_01: Um oh no, she's not dead.
45:38
SPEAKER_01: I was gonna say uh J.K.
45:40
SPEAKER_01: Rowling.
45:41
SPEAKER_01: Uh$500 million in 2022.
45:45
SPEAKER_02: Initials goes goes by initials.
45:48
SPEAKER_01: Petey Eastman.
45:49
SPEAKER_02: Wouldn't that be great if Petey Eastman was bringing in$500 billion a year for uh hop on pop or whatever you said?
45:56
SPEAKER_01: Uh yeah.
45:57
SPEAKER_01: What what is it?
45:58
SPEAKER_01: Who is it?
45:59
SPEAKER_02: Uh J.R.R.
46:01
SPEAKER_02: Tolkien.
46:02
SPEAKER_01: J.R.R.
46:03
SPEAKER_01: R R Tolkien.
46:04
SPEAKER_01: Wow.
46:05
SPEAKER_01: Lord of the Rings.
46:06
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
46:06
SPEAKER_01: Well that makes sense.
46:07
SPEAKER_01: Because that's really popular right now.
46:09
SPEAKER_01: There's all kinds of series and spin-offs.
46:11
SPEAKER_02: And all right.
46:12
SPEAKER_02: So what I would like to know is what did we love about Dr.
46:17
SPEAKER_02: Seuss?
46:18
SPEAKER_02: Did we well, first of all, do you think of him as a cartoonist or as a poet?
46:23
SPEAKER_02: What comes first, do you think?
46:25
SPEAKER_02: What would what was his talent?
46:26
SPEAKER_01: Illustration first and and poetry second.
46:29
SPEAKER_01: I think I based on you know what I know about him already and also what I've learned from this episode, I think he he was kind of a doodler and a sketcher and an artistic guy early on.
46:41
SPEAKER_01: And then he started writing to catch up with the art.
46:46
SPEAKER_01: I mean, that was one of the things his wife said.
46:48
SPEAKER_01: Uh, Helen Palmer Geisel said that you know he would doodle all the time, and she thought it was really great and encouraged it.
46:55
SPEAKER_01: So I thought he was an illustrator first.
46:57
SPEAKER_01: Long-winded answer, illustrator.
47:00
SPEAKER_02: No, I think you're right.
47:01
SPEAKER_02: I I what do you think made his cartoon so much fun to look like?
47:04
SPEAKER_02: For me, it was the machines.
47:06
SPEAKER_02: I like all the little machines, yeah, little bicycles that had symbols on them, and yeah, just all the really complicated machines that he used to have.
47:16
SPEAKER_01: Um what what were those things called when you push push one thing and it hits something else?
47:20
SPEAKER_01: Uh Rube Goldberg machines.
47:22
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
47:23
SPEAKER_02: The and he would always have fun names from like the doodoodlers and the swind swindlers and those kind of things, and they always seemed to be uh also in motion, like they were all bicycles or cars.
47:35
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, they didn't just sit there, or they were making something, you know, it'd be like something that were a vat, and it something would come out of the vat.
47:41
SPEAKER_01: You know, it's interesting you say that though, because if if you had asked me, like if you hadn't said that, I would have said it was more the sort of organic and biological aspects of the drawing, meaning the exaggerated features on animals and the and the wings, like they always had really interesting wings on birds and the sort of long beaks that the birds had, and they kind of showed sharpness, but at the same time, they were approachable.
48:07
SPEAKER_01: They weren't none of the animals were scary.
48:09
SPEAKER_01: All and the eyes, the eyes on all of his animals were very um, all of his creatures, you know, the humanoid creatures and the non-humanoid creatures were always very empathetic.
48:20
SPEAKER_01: Like you didn't you didn't feel like that thing was gonna eat you.
48:23
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's true.
48:24
SPEAKER_02: That's kind of like the Muppets are like that.
48:26
SPEAKER_02: Um they they make monsters, but they're not scary.
48:29
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, they're not they, you know, they'll take your cookie and and and maybe uh maybe um you know, throw some trash around, but they're not gonna kill you.
48:39
SPEAKER_02: And very few humans, it seems like all of the humans in his books are kind of of the copy and paste variety, where it'd be like nine people that look exactly the same kind of standing in a row.
48:51
SPEAKER_01: Right.
48:51
SPEAKER_02: Um never the stars of the never the stars of the children.
48:56
SPEAKER_01: The animals always look different.
48:58
SPEAKER_01: You're right, and that and they children are empowered, whereas the adults are kind of dolts.
49:04
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, sort of expired, or uh what did you say?
49:08
SPEAKER_01: Obsolete.
49:08
SPEAKER_01: Obsolete, yeah.
49:09
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
49:10
SPEAKER_01: Well, so so what why did you pick him for this particular episode?
49:16
SPEAKER_02: Well, first, like you said earlier, the Christmas tie-in.
49:20
SPEAKER_02: That was immediately I was when I was thinking of something that was kind of like you wanted to do Harry Houdini for Halloween, and I thought, well, who would be a good Christmas person that's not too on the nose?
49:32
SPEAKER_02: I didn't want to really do St.
49:34
SPEAKER_02: Nicholas.
49:35
SPEAKER_02: Um, I was thinking about you know Bane Crosby and Irving Berlin and some of those um people.
49:43
SPEAKER_02: We haven't really hit a lot of musicians yet.
49:45
SPEAKER_02: Um, so I I was thinking that this is a pretty good Christmas uh adjacent person that um I knew that you would know, right?
49:56
SPEAKER_02: So that would it would be somebody we both be able to identify with, like we've already talked about, not just when we were kids, but having kids, I think you have a you have a renewed relationship with Dr.
50:07
SPEAKER_02: Seuss once you have kids.
50:08
SPEAKER_02: So I thought it would just be kind of somebody that would be good for us to both talk about.
50:12
SPEAKER_01: So, so in in kind of closing out his legacy, um unfortunately his wife committed suicide, and I think she was suffering from cancer, and you know, I I don't don't know any circumstances behind it, other than um she she was suffering, and so he remarried.
50:30
SPEAKER_01: Uh his wife Helen Palmer passed away and he remarried a woman named Audrey Diamond, and I think she um she managed his estate after he died, and now she's passed away as well, right?
50:42
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, relatively recently, too.
50:44
SPEAKER_02: I think um so now I think uh somebody else manages uh his estate.
50:49
SPEAKER_02: I don't, I might think it's family, but he never had any kids, so um, so but is it's uh I think they take good care of his estate, and uh I think the people that are entrusted with it, just because I remember of this all this controversial stuff that the people take him very seriously, kind of like the Fred Rogers estate is they're entrusted with this this uh legacy that they have to protect.
51:12
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, he um he didn't do quite as good a job of of having a perfect uh untarnished record as Mr.
51:22
SPEAKER_01: Rogers did, but um, but he did he did a lot of good in the world, and people feel like they are, like you said, entrusted to not let that become something negative or canceled or whatever people want to say.
51:35
SPEAKER_01: You know, don't don't weaponize Mr.
51:36
SPEAKER_01: Rogers, don't weaponize Dr.
51:38
SPEAKER_01: Seuss.
51:38
SPEAKER_01: That's that's not don't politicize them, don't weaponize them, make them there, they were they were meant to be uh sort of humanity and not you know red or blue or left, right, or whatever.
51:50
SPEAKER_02: I wonder what kind of relationship they had with each other.
51:53
SPEAKER_02: You knew they were contemporaries, true, both really um present in most children's life, but kind of seems like they kind of had different ideas about what kids were, and and um I think it'd be interesting.
52:08
SPEAKER_02: I don't know if they ever met, but I I'm not even sure they came at it from the same um perspective about children.
52:15
SPEAKER_02: It'd be interesting to see if they've ever ever had a conversation.
52:18
SPEAKER_01: Well, I think I think that would make some great fan fiction.
52:23
SPEAKER_02: By the way, I uh I did look at that, uh take a second look at the uh Colonel Sanders uh Chef Boy RD.
52:31
SPEAKER_02: Uh I called it fanfiction before.
52:32
SPEAKER_02: It was actually worse than that.
52:33
SPEAKER_02: It was actually a a video game.
52:36
SPEAKER_02: It was actually a video game that was produced by KFC, uh, and uh Chef Boy RD was in there somehow.
52:44
SPEAKER_02: And nice uh again, again, I couldn't watch it.
52:46
SPEAKER_02: I I tried to watch it, and it was just me watching uh kind of like a Twitch video of a guy playing the game, and I just couldn't do it.
52:54
SPEAKER_02: I have a present for you.
52:55
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
52:56
SPEAKER_02: Wrapping if we want to wrap this up.
52:58
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
52:59
SPEAKER_02: I I'm always up for that.
53:01
SPEAKER_02: So I was really trying to figure out what about the poetry of uh of Dr.
53:08
SPEAKER_02: Seuss that was appealing, you know, the the rhythm, what that rhythm was, and um I tried to see if I could uh uh uh duplicate uh Dr.
53:19
SPEAKER_02: Seuss.
53:20
SPEAKER_02: So I've written a poem to kick off the end of season one of uh Dirt Nap City in the style of Dr.
53:26
SPEAKER_02: Seuss, and I hope you like it.
53:28
SPEAKER_01: You want me to beatbox while you say it?
53:31
SPEAKER_02: Please don't.
53:33
SPEAKER_00: You ready?
53:34
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, let's hear it.
53:35
SPEAKER_00: A little nervous, Kelly.
53:36
SPEAKER_00: I I I'm excited.
53:39
SPEAKER_00: Here we go.
53:41
SPEAKER_02: Eleanor Roosevelt wasn't so pretty.
53:43
SPEAKER_02: I heard that today on Dirt Knap City.
53:46
SPEAKER_02: What's Dirt Knap City, you ask?
53:48
SPEAKER_02: Well, I suggest it's a place where dead people are here to impress.
53:52
SPEAKER_02: Gather round all my friends, come one and come all.
53:55
SPEAKER_02: Hurry up, watch your step, and please don't fall.
53:58
SPEAKER_02: Watch your legs, watch your arms, watch your butt, watch your head.
54:01
SPEAKER_02: We're here for interesting folks who are clinically dead.
54:05
SPEAKER_02: We will start over here.
54:06
SPEAKER_02: He's first but not least.
54:08
SPEAKER_02: By the name of Andre, he's really a beast.
54:11
SPEAKER_02: He's a giant, they say, over seven feet tall, lived in North Carolina, but didn't talk with a draw.
54:16
SPEAKER_02: Because he was French, yes he was, like a fry, don't you see?
54:20
SPEAKER_02: You might even know him from the WWE.
54:23
SPEAKER_02: Look over there in the white coat and the beard.
54:26
SPEAKER_02: I'm finding this podcast awfully weird.
54:28
SPEAKER_02: He's a chicken man who has trouble with math.
54:31
SPEAKER_02: You'll find his restaurants on every path.
54:34
SPEAKER_02: Now I wouldn't say that the colonel had class, but if I dissed him too hard, he put a cap in my ass.
54:40
SPEAKER_02: And hey everyone, it's our favorite magician.
54:43
SPEAKER_02: He's in handcuffs.
54:44
SPEAKER_02: You might say it's his favorite position.
54:46
SPEAKER_02: When he died, he was said to have bled, bled, bled, bled from the punch of one Monsieur Joshelin Whitehead.
54:54
SPEAKER_02: And if you think that appendicitis is bad, you've never been hanging out on the launch pad with evil Kinevil when he's about to break every bone in his body in the river of snakes.
55:05
SPEAKER_02: He was a badass in every sense of the word, out on his Harley, where he soared like a bird.
55:10
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, he drank, then he smoked, then he was always breaking his spine, but he lived pretty hard till he was sixty-nine.
55:16
SPEAKER_02: Mr.
55:17
SPEAKER_02: Rogers used to be fat Freddy, you see.
55:19
SPEAKER_02: He kept his weight at 143.
55:22
SPEAKER_02: A wonderful man who we didn't deserve, so his songs and his shows we will have to preserve.
55:27
SPEAKER_02: And the pilgrims, well, it's all complicated, and to tell you the truth, a little dated.
55:32
SPEAKER_02: But suffice it to say, there's a man overboard, and if he hadn't made it, well, praise the Lord that he did, because me and two million other civilians wouldn't be here now, simply just chilling.
55:44
SPEAKER_02: Am I done?
55:45
SPEAKER_02: Oh no, I forgot about Boy RD.
55:47
SPEAKER_02: Not the liquor, you have him confused with Bacardi, who as a child, well, he played with a whisk and as an adult cooked tomato bisque.
55:56
SPEAKER_02: What'd he do?
55:56
SPEAKER_02: Well, he made forkable food.
55:58
SPEAKER_02: I guess you can say he's a notable dude.
56:01
SPEAKER_02: Which brings us right back to our Dr.
56:03
SPEAKER_02: Seuss, who kind of seems like a sillier goose than most of the folks that we've seen come and go on Kelly's and My Little Internet Show.
56:12
SPEAKER_02: The city is littered with interesting folks.
56:14
SPEAKER_02: Some have been shot and some have been choked.
56:17
SPEAKER_02: And some of them run over by cars, but all of them live up by the stars.
56:22
SPEAKER_02: And we hear your requests calm down, Alfred, you hoss.
56:26
SPEAKER_02: Eventually we will get to your precious Bob Ross.
56:29
SPEAKER_02: And we may even one day do Conway Twitty.
56:32
SPEAKER_02: Stay tuned for season two of Dirt Nose.
56:35
unknown: Yes.
56:37
SPEAKER_01: Wow.
56:38
SPEAKER_01: Holy moly.
56:39
SPEAKER_01: That is that is a work of art.
56:41
SPEAKER_01: I think that's our trailer.
56:43
SPEAKER_01: That's the show trailer right there.
56:45
SPEAKER_01: A little collage.
56:47
SPEAKER_01: Dude, thank you.
56:48
SPEAKER_01: That is the best Christmas present I have received so far this year on December, whatever it is.
56:53
SPEAKER_01: I I really appreciate it.
56:54
SPEAKER_01: And Alex, I appreciate you.
56:56
SPEAKER_01: This has been fun.
56:57
SPEAKER_01: Guys, this is our last episode for season one.
57:00
SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna start rhyming.
57:02
SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna start caring.
57:04
SPEAKER_01: And uh Alex and I next year will be sharing some more little stories about the dirt nap and the people who live there.
57:12
SPEAKER_01: We won't take any crap, but we will give you some.
57:16
SPEAKER_01: I don't know where I'm going with this.
57:17
SPEAKER_01: You're trying to freestyle this?
57:18
SPEAKER_01: I'm trying to freestyle it.
57:20
SPEAKER_01: Uh guys, season one has been a blast.
57:22
SPEAKER_01: All nine episodes are available.
57:24
SPEAKER_01: Tell your friends, tell your family.
57:27
SPEAKER_01: Um, we'll have t-shirts soon.
57:29
SPEAKER_01: And also, I've been trying to come up with a common email address for the two of us.
57:34
SPEAKER_01: Now, I have actually received some real legit emails, uh, one particularly from a guy in Austin who happened to have found us and uh wrote a very kind email.
57:45
SPEAKER_01: Uh, but I want to come up with an email that we both get.
57:48
SPEAKER_01: Um, and here's what I was thinking.
57:50
SPEAKER_01: What do you think about not yet at DirtNap City?
57:56
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
57:57
SPEAKER_02: Not yet.
57:58
SPEAKER_02: What's the thinking behind that?
58:00
SPEAKER_01: Not yet at Dirt Knap City.
58:02
SPEAKER_02: Not yet.
58:03
SPEAKER_02: What why not yet?
58:04
SPEAKER_01: Because we're still alive.
58:06
SPEAKER_01: Uh at Dirt Knap City.
58:08
SPEAKER_02: Not yet at Dirtnap City, yeah.
58:11
SPEAKER_02: The uh guy in Austin, was his name Alfred?
58:14
SPEAKER_01: No, no, it was actually it was a second fan of the show.
58:18
SPEAKER_01: Um I uh it's it's a legit email.
58:20
SPEAKER_01: I'll I'll forward it to you.
58:22
SPEAKER_02: I don't know why you keep saying legit emails.
58:23
SPEAKER_02: All the emails that we've been reading have been legit.
58:26
SPEAKER_01: Well, Alfred's like a super fan, so you know we get emails from him all the time.
58:30
SPEAKER_01: But uh yes, Alfred, we will get to Bob Ross.
58:33
SPEAKER_01: Uh, funny enough, I was actually with Alfred uh at a um concert on Monday night.
58:38
SPEAKER_01: We went to see Modest Mouse, and he was with uh he was with a friend of his he's known a long time, and I was with a friend of mine I've known a long time.
58:46
SPEAKER_01: The four of us went, and we were talking about Dirt Knap City, and he very quickly said, It's a great show, but they don't take requests.
58:55
SPEAKER_02: That's right.
58:56
SPEAKER_02: That's right.
58:56
SPEAKER_02: That's right.
58:57
SPEAKER_01: So, Alex, thank you very much.
58:59
SPEAKER_01: Guys, we will be publishing uh first episode of season two in January.
59:05
SPEAKER_01: I'm pretty confident that one won't be a double.
59:08
SPEAKER_01: Um, but this is pretty amazing that we both picked the same person, although I kind of see how we got there.
59:13
SPEAKER_01: I think our thinking was the same.
59:14
SPEAKER_01: Like I didn't, like you said, I didn't want to be too literal or too spot on for Christmas.
59:19
SPEAKER_01: But I do wish you all a Merry Christmas, happy Hanukkah, whatever you celebrate this time of year.
59:24
SPEAKER_02: We'll be back in January with uh a double episode of Martin Luther King.
59:29
unknown: Right.
59:30
SPEAKER_01: Well, thank you all again.
59:31
SPEAKER_01: And uh, Alex, thank you.
59:33
SPEAKER_01: I hope you have a great holiday, and I'm looking forward to season two.
59:37
SPEAKER_01: Everyone be sure to tune in to our favorite city in the world.
59:42
SPEAKER_01: It's not in the world.