Latest / Ridiculous History / CLASSIC - Did a Real-Life Rainmaker Almost Drown San Diego?

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CLASSIC - Did a Real-Life Rainmaker Almost Drown San Diego? · Ridiculous History

0:01
Speaker 1: Well, folks, we're going to do a classic today because
0:05
Speaker 1: one of us a gave me, as you can tell,
0:08
Speaker 1: has Batman voice that is somewhat under the weather. You know, Ben,
0:12
Speaker 1: you pull it off. Well. It was always my least
0:13
Speaker 1: favorite part of the Christian Bale Batman movies. Never really
0:16
Speaker 1: was able to take him seriously with that voice. So
0:19
Speaker 1: I respect your decision to to to take a beat,
0:21
Speaker 1: and I hate that you're not feeling well, my friend.
0:23
Speaker 1: But you know what, it's been a minute since we've
0:25
Speaker 1: published a classic and we've got a good one for
0:28
Speaker 1: you today about sort of a huckster slash potential believer.
0:33
Speaker 1: It's interesting. He's a Quaker named Charles Mallory or quicker
0:36
Speaker 1: born rather, who convinced the San Diego City Council to
0:41
Speaker 1: allow him to uh deploy a machine that he claimed
0:45
Speaker 1: could make it rain, but not in the like you
0:47
Speaker 1: know strip club parlance, more literally like because they were
0:51
Speaker 1: experiencing serious drought and he kind of had him over
0:54
Speaker 1: a barrel. And honestly, it's not a bad stop gap
0:57
Speaker 1: between our two part episode on Millery some because the
1:01
Speaker 1: question arises, did this guy really believe and practice what
1:05
Speaker 1: he was preaching? It's to be determined, and I think
1:08
Speaker 1: we addressed that within the episode. This is one of
1:10
Speaker 1: our earliest episodes of Ridiculous History, and honestly, I think
1:14
Speaker 1: it holds up. So feel better, my friend and Ridiculous
1:17
Speaker 1: Historians enjoy this classic episode, and then we will return
1:20
Speaker 1: to our regularly scheduled program on the next published day.
1:24
Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Into
1:52
Speaker 1: every episode of Ridiculous History, a little rain must fall high,
1:57
Speaker 1: I'm dead, I'm no. Well that was nice, Ben inks
2:00
Speaker 1: Man like changing it up a little bit for the
2:02
Speaker 1: for the opening, and uh. We are joined as always
2:05
Speaker 1: with our super producer, Casey Pegram. He's on the ones
2:10
Speaker 1: and the two's mainly just the ones. He just came.
2:13
Speaker 1: The two's just occasionally if he needs a little extra
2:15
Speaker 1: push over the cliff. Um, can I do you're reading? Yeah? Please,
2:20
Speaker 1: it's just just I love this. The first line in
2:23
Speaker 1: this article from How Stuff Works by the very talented
2:26
Speaker 1: Candice Gibson goes as such, I just think this is perfect.
2:32
Speaker 1: Quaker born Charles Mallory Hatfield tidy in appearance and straightforward,
2:37
Speaker 1: with a salesman's bearing and a farm boy's self assured
2:41
Speaker 1: nous made an eyebrow raising offer to the desperate city
2:44
Speaker 1: Council of San Diego in nineteen fifteen, and this is
2:50
Speaker 1: where our story begins. Let's give you a little bit
2:53
Speaker 1: of background about Charles Mallory Hatfield. Charles Mallory Hatfield was
2:59
Speaker 1: what he preferred to call a moisture accelerator, a PLU,
3:02
Speaker 1: the culturist. To the average person at the time, that
3:07
Speaker 1: meant he was a rainmaker, or we should say he
3:11
Speaker 1: was a self proclaimed rainmaker. And San Diego at the
3:15
Speaker 1: time was in a really tough arid spot. Yes, they
3:21
Speaker 1: were in desperate need of rain to help refill the
3:24
Speaker 1: city's dwindling Marina reservoir. So this meeting, as described by
3:30
Speaker 1: Candice Gibson, took place in which Charles Mallory Hatfield offered
3:35
Speaker 1: up his services to do just that, refill the city's reservoir.
3:40
Speaker 1: Mallory's fee ten grand ten grands seems low for the
3:45
Speaker 1: magical gift of rain, but back in those days it
3:48
Speaker 1: equated to around two d and thirty thousand dollars um
3:52
Speaker 1: and he would receive payment upon delivery of services. Right
3:57
Speaker 1: because they were understandably skeptical, you know, the question would
4:01
Speaker 1: be well, what's to stop us from giving you ten
4:04
Speaker 1: thousand dollars? And then just learning that you skipped down
4:07
Speaker 1: and he said pay on delivery. So that's I think
4:13
Speaker 1: that's what really convinced them. Total power move too, don't
4:16
Speaker 1: you think. So they accepted his offer, however, they accepted
4:21
Speaker 1: it verbally. Was a smile and a handshake, and no
4:25
Speaker 1: one signed anything on paper guaranteeing Mallory this ten large.
4:30
Speaker 1: But he went about his business nonetheless. Yeah, apparently he had,
4:35
Speaker 1: to his estimation, perfected a particular formula of cloud seating
4:41
Speaker 1: through seventeen other contracts with other known commercial organizations, as
4:47
Speaker 1: ranging for cotton growers in Texas to mine operators in Alaska.
4:51
Speaker 1: And what he developed was this technique. I guess it
4:54
Speaker 1: was an early form of cloud seating. Now, this wasn't
4:57
Speaker 1: the stuff of Kate Bush songs chronicling the eccentric pseudoscience
5:01
Speaker 1: of Wilhelm Reich's attempts to harness the weather using Oregon energy.
5:05
Speaker 1: Any can push fans in the house Reich, William Reich
5:11
Speaker 1: fans too. I'm yeah, but cloud busting daddy, Yeah, but no,
5:16
Speaker 1: it's not that. This is much more. There's a touch
5:19
Speaker 1: more actual science involved here, um so, as Lauren Ricketts,
5:23
Speaker 1: a broadcast meteorologist with NBC four in Washington, d C.
5:28
Speaker 1: Puts it, cloud seating is a form of weather modification
5:31
Speaker 1: in which we can enhance precipitation development by using certain
5:35
Speaker 1: chemicals to create an environment within clouds that it's conducive
5:39
Speaker 1: to forming precipitation, right, accelerating moisture almost. And this sounds
5:46
Speaker 1: like it's a little pseudoscience, right, But it turns out
5:51
Speaker 1: that there have been multiple experiments with the concept of
5:56
Speaker 1: affecting what the weather, specifically affecting clouds through the use
6:01
Speaker 1: of substances like silver, iodied or potassium. I died and
6:05
Speaker 1: dry ice. Mallory seventeen times before he had spoken with
6:11
Speaker 1: San Diego, had attempted to do something like this, and uh,
6:17
Speaker 1: he stood by his results. He had a cloud gathering
6:21
Speaker 1: formula that was comprised of twenty three substances. At this point,
6:27
Speaker 1: the exact ratios or the identity of those substances is
6:30
Speaker 1: unfortunately lost to history. He took it to his grave.
6:34
Speaker 1: By all accounts, whenever I hear somebody talking about, uh,
6:39
Speaker 1: secret ingredients, I always think of the current trade secret ingredients,
6:43
Speaker 1: like how the how Coca Cola has a secret recipe
6:48
Speaker 1: and the three people who know it are not allowed
6:50
Speaker 1: to be on an airplane at the same time, right,
6:52
Speaker 1: or like they maybe only one person carries a piece
6:55
Speaker 1: of the ingredients. You have to have all three of
6:58
Speaker 1: them in a room at the same time, and they
6:59
Speaker 1: also have to turn secret keys. And watched him many movies. Yeah,
7:03
Speaker 1: but this guy Mallory, he built this giant tower. Right,
7:06
Speaker 1: It's like a wooden tower that he used to um
7:09
Speaker 1: ionize the atmosphere. And I had a hard time finding
7:11
Speaker 1: details about like did he pump it up? Did he
7:15
Speaker 1: did he shoot it into? Yeah? What check this out? Okay,
7:18
Speaker 1: So he builds this twenty foot tower and it's in
7:21
Speaker 1: the woods east of town. And one study official this
7:25
Speaker 1: is my favorite part and this is the least proven
7:28
Speaker 1: part of this whole Shenanigan uh One city official said
7:32
Speaker 1: that Mallory recited an incantation aimed at ringing moisture from
7:38
Speaker 1: the air. Yeah. I didn't catch that detail. That's also
7:42
Speaker 1: it's you know, hearsay from a city official. And we'll
7:46
Speaker 1: learn why they may not be the most um objective
7:50
Speaker 1: witnesses in the story. We know that he put these
7:53
Speaker 1: troughs on top of the tower, and that's where he
7:57
Speaker 1: put his mixture, Like he poured it into these traws
8:00
Speaker 1: and ignited it, creating smoke that drifted upwards. And I
8:06
Speaker 1: was missing the delivery mechanism. And we talked about the
8:09
Speaker 1: makeup of what they think his concoction might have been. Well,
8:13
Speaker 1: we've just mentioned some of the operative ingredients in cloud seating,
8:17
Speaker 1: but we haven't. We haven't made any guesses about this.
8:21
Speaker 1: Do you think there was maybe gunpowder? And there was, Yeah,
8:23
Speaker 1: that was speculated that it was gunpowder and maybe hydrogen um.
8:26
Speaker 1: But whatever was in it, apparently the concoction it worked
8:31
Speaker 1: like like a lot, like a lot a lot. Yes, yes,
8:36
Speaker 1: whether by miracle or measurable quantitative science. It rained, it's poured.
8:41
Speaker 1: It was a biblical delusion. It occurred a few days.
8:44
Speaker 1: Were likely old men that snored right it uh. It
8:49
Speaker 1: occurred just a few days after Hatfield began his process.
8:54
Speaker 1: It was in January and early February of nineteen sixteen
8:58
Speaker 1: that thirty inches and estimated thirty inches of rain fell
9:03
Speaker 1: and Mission Valley flooded. The San Diego River overflowed entire
9:09
Speaker 1: farms and homes and bridges and businesses were swept away.
9:13
Speaker 1: Can you picture the city council just watching this from
9:17
Speaker 1: their offices and first being like high fiving each other,
9:20
Speaker 1: and then just gradually the realization setting in. It's like,
9:24
Speaker 1: what have we done? And I just picture Mallory rubbing
9:28
Speaker 1: his hands together in a Mr. Burns kind of fashion,
9:31
Speaker 1: doing like an evil villain. Like is he a real
9:35
Speaker 1: life weather modification supervillain or is he kind of like
9:39
Speaker 1: the Mickey Mouse Wizard and Fantasia who makes the you
9:42
Speaker 1: know animates that one mop You know, I like that
9:45
Speaker 1: a lot. I think I prefer to think of him
9:47
Speaker 1: as as the as the creepy guy watching from afar,
9:50
Speaker 1: as the chaos that he has unleashed devoured as the city.
9:53
Speaker 1: Uh maybe he had a big grudge against the city
9:56
Speaker 1: Council of San Diego. Maybe maybe his like high school
10:00
Speaker 1: sweetheart broke up with him and lived in San Diego.
10:03
Speaker 1: That's all pure speculation. I just I don't want people
10:07
Speaker 1: to be villains, so well, whatever his motivations, telephone lines
10:10
Speaker 1: snapped and washed away, the roads and railroad tracks cracked
10:14
Speaker 1: under the pressure of all of this water. But this
10:17
Speaker 1: was just the beginning, right, There's more it continued to
10:20
Speaker 1: just beat the hell out of drought parched county, which
10:25
Speaker 1: was I think in maxed out around thirty inches by
10:28
Speaker 1: the end of January, and the reservoir, you know, it
10:31
Speaker 1: was mission accomplished. The reservoir was full, but the Lower
10:34
Speaker 1: Ote Reservoir couldn't contain all of this water, and the
10:38
Speaker 1: dam broke and the waters killed nearby residents. Estimates put
10:42
Speaker 1: that number it around between a dozen to fifty deaths,
10:45
Speaker 1: and farm animals and homes were destroyed. I mean, you know, yeah,
10:53
Speaker 1: there was there was real and genuine loss of life. Unfortunately, Uh,
10:59
Speaker 1: this quickly becomes obviously a disaster. But Mallory and you
11:06
Speaker 1: have to you have to wonder how he broached this
11:09
Speaker 1: topic of conversation. So about that money. Yeah, so Mallory
11:15
Speaker 1: walks out and walks up to city council and says,
11:19
Speaker 1: will I, uh, I think my work here is done.
11:23
Speaker 1: And uh and they're they're saying, you know, people are dying.
11:26
Speaker 1: They're probably still like soaking wet themselves. What I'm saying
11:29
Speaker 1: that the city council people have looked at him with
11:31
Speaker 1: like just dead eyes, just like you know, you got
11:34
Speaker 1: some nerve turning up here. Buddy. So ordinarily a lot
11:45
Speaker 1: of rain, right if you if you're just guessing, it's
11:48
Speaker 1: understandable how we could think a lot of rain is
11:51
Speaker 1: good for a drought stricken area. But the problem that
11:53
Speaker 1: occurs is that when there is a drought and the
11:58
Speaker 1: soil itself is very dry, it won't be able to
12:02
Speaker 1: absorb the rains. And so this means that instead of
12:06
Speaker 1: going into the ground, it's going across the ground, and
12:10
Speaker 1: that's how those buildings end up washing away when the
12:13
Speaker 1: valley floods and the and the dams are broken, and this,
12:18
Speaker 1: you know, leads to the loss of human life. Without
12:21
Speaker 1: knowing the specifics of their conversation, it's fairly safe to
12:24
Speaker 1: say that the city council members said, what the hell
12:28
Speaker 1: are you thinking, you monster? No, we're not giving you
12:32
Speaker 1: ten thousand dollars. Uh. And they thought that if they
12:36
Speaker 1: paid Hatfield money for this first off, they'd be ridden
12:41
Speaker 1: out of office on a rail at minimum. Well, they
12:44
Speaker 1: look like they co signed the whole thing, and then
12:46
Speaker 1: they were complicit and they essentially pay the dude to
12:49
Speaker 1: like destroy their town, which is which would probably go
12:53
Speaker 1: on their permanent council member. Right, that's going on your
12:56
Speaker 1: permanent record the time you tried to drown the toy
13:00
Speaker 1: that like every point. Yeah, So Hatfield notices that people
13:05
Speaker 1: are infuriated and looking for someone to blame, right, and
13:10
Speaker 1: he ditches town. He lights out for the territories on
13:13
Speaker 1: his own, and then he waits for the waters to settle,
13:17
Speaker 1: for the water level to decrease. And after the water
13:20
Speaker 1: level decreases, get this, he tries to take San Diego
13:25
Speaker 1: to court and he says, I did what I said
13:27
Speaker 1: I would do. I should be paid for my services.
13:32
Speaker 1: And this court case goes on, It goes on for
13:36
Speaker 1: a year, goes on for five years, it goes on
13:40
Speaker 1: for twenty years. Eventually it's dismissed and he never got
13:47
Speaker 1: a dime. Poor guy. It's tough to call. It's a
13:50
Speaker 1: tough call to make. Like I said, I'm still kind
13:53
Speaker 1: of picturing him cackling, you know, in his secret underground layer.
13:59
Speaker 1: Here's the weird part, though, It's even more complicated when
14:03
Speaker 1: we think that, well, did he ruin his life because
14:06
Speaker 1: he underestimated the impact of his secret his secret concoction? Right? Well? Also,
14:15
Speaker 1: but like when I first saw this article, I was like,
14:18
Speaker 1: is that a thing? Is that can is you know,
14:21
Speaker 1: weather control. I thought, I thought we couldn't control the weather.
14:24
Speaker 1: It is, it is absolutely a thing, but it is
14:27
Speaker 1: not by any means of precise science. Think that's that's
14:30
Speaker 1: where my brain kind of like hit a wall with this. Okay,
14:33
Speaker 1: so he had some stones, right. He came back to
14:36
Speaker 1: the city council and said, hey, where is my check?
14:39
Speaker 1: And they laughed him out of the room. Court case
14:42
Speaker 1: drug on. Ultimately he got nothing, but he wasn't like
14:47
Speaker 1: lacking for work. I mean, it's kind of a big deal.
14:50
Speaker 1: Even though the city council didn't pay him or necessarily
14:53
Speaker 1: openly co sign his activities, everyone knew that he was
14:58
Speaker 1: what he was doing. I mean it was like, you know,
15:00
Speaker 1: kind of an odd thing that to have happened, and
15:02
Speaker 1: I think it certainly turned some heads, right, And so
15:06
Speaker 1: his reputation got around, and nations like Canada, Cuba and
15:11
Speaker 1: even Honduras helped, you know, sought him out for his
15:15
Speaker 1: you know, supposed expertise um and so this you know,
15:19
Speaker 1: catastrophe ultimately made a name for him and kind of
15:23
Speaker 1: boosted his career. Uh though his usefulness kind of dwindled
15:30
Speaker 1: as water storage technology became more of a thing. Oh,
15:34
Speaker 1: that's a good point. Yeah, I didn't consider that, because
15:37
Speaker 1: as we learn more about how to reuse, store, and
15:43
Speaker 1: collect water, maybe we don't need so many rainmakers in
15:49
Speaker 1: the world. But circumstances suggest that Hatfield probably made the
15:55
Speaker 1: made an error and probably wasn't taking in the droughts
15:59
Speaker 1: effect on the land and soil. He was probably so
16:02
Speaker 1: fixated on proving that his technology worked that he didn't
16:07
Speaker 1: think about the ramifications of his actions. So that's what
16:10
Speaker 1: I'm saying that if you really think it was he
16:12
Speaker 1: totally made this happen, no, no question. Yeah, I think
16:16
Speaker 1: I think, no question. Furthermore, I would go on to
16:18
Speaker 1: say that Hatfield's work paved the way for cloud seeing technology,
16:24
Speaker 1: but do you think we should explore a little bit
16:26
Speaker 1: of his successors in this field? Absolutely? Like I said,
16:31
Speaker 1: this is all kind of like really fascinating to me,
16:33
Speaker 1: And before looking into this story, I really did not
16:37
Speaker 1: think this was something that was was achievable by by humans.
16:40
Speaker 1: So there's a lot of debate about this stuff, not
16:44
Speaker 1: just in Hatfield's time, but in the modern day and
16:48
Speaker 1: several decades. Before going back to the meteorologists we mentioned earlier,
16:53
Speaker 1: Ricketts says that clouds that are seated are getting about
16:57
Speaker 1: a five to increase in precipitation, So there precipitation potential
17:05
Speaker 1: is being enhanced, not necessarily magnified. You know, it's not
17:08
Speaker 1: going to be a hud sure thing, but modern governments
17:15
Speaker 1: are using this technology. Uh. China creates about fifty five
17:20
Speaker 1: billion tons of what they would call artificial rain per year,
17:25
Speaker 1: and it costs about a hundred and sixty eight million
17:29
Speaker 1: dollars per year to do this, or one point five
17:32
Speaker 1: billion one as of January twent seventeen. We can use
17:37
Speaker 1: we being the human species, or I guess technically also you,
17:40
Speaker 1: Casey and myself. We can use cloud seating technology to
17:45
Speaker 1: influence the weather, but without being a meteorologist. I'm just
17:52
Speaker 1: reminded of every every sci fi horror movie where somebody
17:58
Speaker 1: pipes up and says, eddeling with things you cannot possibly comprehend.
18:02
Speaker 1: The world's weather system is so complex and interconnected that
18:06
Speaker 1: I feel like if you if you influence something in
18:10
Speaker 1: one area, you're inevitably influencing things in the other parts
18:15
Speaker 1: of the world. China famously used cloud seating technology in
18:21
Speaker 1: the two thousand eight Olympics. Yeah, I really do need
18:23
Speaker 1: to look into more of this stuff because this is
18:25
Speaker 1: so mystified. Apparently it's just the only a thing and
18:28
Speaker 1: everybody knows about it except little me. No. I I
18:30
Speaker 1: don't think a lot of people know about it because
18:32
Speaker 1: it sounds like science fiction. That's I think what it is.
18:35
Speaker 1: And the fact that there is sort of like a
18:37
Speaker 1: gray area, and like how do we get specific results
18:41
Speaker 1: or how or just like in the case of this,
18:44
Speaker 1: this story completely jack everything all to hell. The US
18:53
Speaker 1: also is attempting cloud seating and still in California. In
19:00
Speaker 1: two thousand and nine, in Sacramento, California, some people had
19:05
Speaker 1: set up a tall metal platform with a crude furnace
19:08
Speaker 1: and silver iodide solution that scientists were hoping would provide
19:13
Speaker 1: relief from a drought. And we can only hope that
19:18
Speaker 1: they had more reasonable results there. But according to Arlen Huggins,
19:23
Speaker 1: who is a research scientist at the Desert Research Institute
19:26
Speaker 1: in Reno, what's going on in the US concerning this
19:31
Speaker 1: sort of stuff is tiny in comparison. The Chinese government
19:36
Speaker 1: has been working with cloud seeing technology since nineteen fifty
19:39
Speaker 1: eight when it was given to them via the Russian government.
19:42
Speaker 1: That's fascinating. It's fascinating, but it's also kind of scary.
19:46
Speaker 1: You know, we also have experiments done by the US
19:51
Speaker 1: in foreign countries with weather modification. Do you think this
19:54
Speaker 1: could be potentially like used as a weapon, Absolutely, yeah,
19:58
Speaker 1: or attempted to right now. I don't. The thing about
20:02
Speaker 1: a weapon is you would want it to be able
20:03
Speaker 1: to be targeted. Is it like that movie Geo Storm
20:06
Speaker 1: that's coming out? Is Geo Store about that? Well, it's
20:09
Speaker 1: just about like a satellite that shoots the laser beam
20:12
Speaker 1: and makes the weather all crazy and you know it
20:14
Speaker 1: turns you know, like California into the ice age and
20:18
Speaker 1: it looks terrible, but you know, kind of fun. Yeah,
20:20
Speaker 1: is it? Are you gonna see it? I don't really
20:22
Speaker 1: go out for the big you know, the big blocks. Yeah. Well,
20:26
Speaker 1: especially like the disaster movies. It just doesn't seem like
20:28
Speaker 1: fun to me. Although I really enjoyed Independence Day when
20:30
Speaker 1: I was a kid. Here, maybe this is a good
20:32
Speaker 1: place for us to wrap up. This is something I
20:34
Speaker 1: didn't know about. And when you talked about, when you
20:38
Speaker 1: asked whether whether weather weather modification there we Go could
20:42
Speaker 1: be used as a weapon, I thought, no, you know,
20:47
Speaker 1: that's that's ridiculous. But the US government did not. During
20:53
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty seven through nineteen seventy two, UH, they had
20:58
Speaker 1: a weather modification program in Southeast Asia called Operation Popeye.
21:03
Speaker 1: This was during the Vietnam War and they were attempting
21:08
Speaker 1: to extend the monsoon season over areas of the Ho
21:13
Speaker 1: Chi Minh Trail, and they were hoping that this would
21:16
Speaker 1: support the efforts of the US government in the area.
21:22
Speaker 1: Their objectives were to soften road surfaces, cause landslides along roadways,
21:27
Speaker 1: wash out river crossings, and keep the soil saturated beyond
21:32
Speaker 1: the natural time span. Their slogan that the fifty four
21:36
Speaker 1: Weather Reconnaissance Squadron used was make mud not war. It's
21:43
Speaker 1: not as solid as that's still Yagi win from earlier Man,
21:46
Speaker 1: make mud not war. I think there is not a
21:48
Speaker 1: better place to wrap up than with that quote. However,
21:56
Speaker 1: we do have one more surprise and very high be
22:00
Speaker 1: uh to be with you here today, man, because this
22:04
Speaker 1: is a little bit of a milestone for us. Yeah, you,
22:07
Speaker 1: specifically you, Man. I'm happy to be here with you too, buddy.
22:11
Speaker 1: We're doing our first listener mail. In our first of
22:16
Speaker 1: two listener mails we received at the inbox, ridiculous at
22:21
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com. We've got one coming from Zachary,
22:24
Speaker 1: he says Nolan Ben. My favorite thing that has been
22:27
Speaker 1: repeated in history is the crazy amount of times people
22:30
Speaker 1: have tried and failed to invade via the Bakdung River
22:33
Speaker 1: in Vietnam. China failed to invade, and then in eight
22:38
Speaker 1: they tried and failed again. Both times they were easily
22:41
Speaker 1: beaten by Vietnamese forces placing spikes in the river during
22:44
Speaker 1: low tide, and then watching Chinese forces getting destroyed. Why
22:47
Speaker 1: am I laughing? This sounds horrendous, but it's pretty smart
22:50
Speaker 1: and pretty ridiculous, um, watching Chinese forces getting destroyed and
22:53
Speaker 1: then tried coming through in high tide. As for my
22:56
Speaker 1: favorite Chinese food, it's probably the amazing potato beef and
23:00
Speaker 1: rice dish I had when I studied abroad in chin China.
23:03
Speaker 1: But I'm also a huge fan of orange Chicken. I
23:06
Speaker 1: love the show, zach Um. I think orange chicken was
23:10
Speaker 1: my pick. I think I said mall orange chicken, Um.
23:12
Speaker 1: But I'm also all about more traditional dishes like the
23:15
Speaker 1: amazing potato beef and rice dish mentioned here in this email.
23:19
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for writing in dude. Yeah, thanks
23:21
Speaker 1: so much, zach Um. When I first when I first
23:24
Speaker 1: brought up range chicken, I was just sort of, uh,
23:27
Speaker 1: it was it was just sort of picturing what would
23:30
Speaker 1: be on almost every Chinese menu in the US at least.
23:36
Speaker 1: And then yeah, and when you pointed out mall orange chicken,
23:40
Speaker 1: it inspired me. I got really close to grabbing some recently,
23:45
Speaker 1: but I was I was way laid in New York,
23:49
Speaker 1: so I had some awesome hand pulled noodles. Did you
23:52
Speaker 1: go to Shann's Famous Foods? No? No, this, Yeah, I've
23:56
Speaker 1: been there before. Listeners, if you ever New York, if
23:58
Speaker 1: you live in New York, Shan's Famous. Who's they have these?
24:01
Speaker 1: The reason I brought it up be as the handful
24:02
Speaker 1: of noodles. Um. It is literally like in a bowl.
24:05
Speaker 1: It's like a single noodle, but it's insane, but it
24:07
Speaker 1: incorporates into this whole bowl of food. And they do
24:09
Speaker 1: like one with ground lamb and the spices. It's it's
24:12
Speaker 1: what's the I think, But it's like kind of kind
24:15
Speaker 1: of a different it's gotta it's it's almost got Indian
24:17
Speaker 1: qualities have Yeah, it's got almost a I would want
24:20
Speaker 1: to say western region of the continent. Absolutely right, it's
24:25
Speaker 1: totally what it has been. Uh so, thank you so much, Zach,
24:29
Speaker 1: and I would love to hear more about your time
24:32
Speaker 1: studying abroad. In the meantime, we have a second listener
24:38
Speaker 1: mail from our friend Tom W who says Ben Knell,
24:42
Speaker 1: Hello from the sunny city Berlin, Germany. I just found
24:46
Speaker 1: your podcast ridiculous history. Really enjoyed it. Thank you. He
24:50
Speaker 1: says he's gonna put it on his favorite list. He
24:53
Speaker 1: has a comment on the subject of butter tax and
24:56
Speaker 1: Germany as follows. I'm retired here, says Tom in Berlin.
25:00
Speaker 1: And then there are certain says I have experienced in
25:02
Speaker 1: German which I find very interesting. There's one saying that
25:05
Speaker 1: goes is alas butter and it translates to it's all
25:09
Speaker 1: in butter. I know it means it's all taken care of.
25:12
Speaker 1: But during Martin Luther's days, butter was transported in barrels,
25:15
Speaker 1: and to avoid paying the full tax on the butter,
25:18
Speaker 1: porcelain was pushed into the butter when it was stopped
25:20
Speaker 1: for inspection. The explanation for the butter was that it
25:23
Speaker 1: was packing material for safe transport of the porcelain. So
25:27
Speaker 1: it's like, oh, you can't tax the butter it's essentially
25:30
Speaker 1: like a styrofoam peanut thing. Uh. Speaking of the butter tax,
25:35
Speaker 1: as Tom, there are also some other strange food tricks.
25:38
Speaker 1: For example, a meatless days, the church reclassified the beaver
25:41
Speaker 1: as a fish because the beaver swam. Therefore, beaver could
25:45
Speaker 1: also be eaten on meatless days. With a clear conscience,
25:48
Speaker 1: people who had meat to eat started cooking meat on
25:51
Speaker 1: meatless days by wrapping the meat in dough. I believe
25:54
Speaker 1: they thought God could not see what was inside the dough.
25:57
Speaker 1: And this, says Tom, is how Rabbioli came about being popular.
26:01
Speaker 1: And Tom gets the prize for the most uses of
26:04
Speaker 1: the word meet in a single sentence. Uh. And Tom
26:07
Speaker 1: says one final thing. The monks dug thousands of ponds
26:10
Speaker 1: throughout Europe in order to raise KRP to be sold
26:12
Speaker 1: to the people. These ponds still exist today. All the best, Tom,
26:17
Speaker 1: Thank you so much. Right in Tom, I think I
26:19
Speaker 1: am going to launch It's all in butter as a
26:22
Speaker 1: catchphrase here in English and see how it goes. Wish
26:25
Speaker 1: me luck, you know what I say, Ben, don't tell
26:27
Speaker 1: me not to live just sitting putter, life's candy and
26:30
Speaker 1: the son's a ball of butter, don't bring around a
26:32
Speaker 1: cloud to rain on my ridiculous history parade. And this
26:37
Speaker 1: concludes our listener mail. But as my good friend Ben
26:40
Speaker 1: would say, but not our show, because we haven't been
26:43
Speaker 1: canceled yet. We're new. It's a new show. I think
26:45
Speaker 1: we're doing well. Thank you guys for listening and writing
26:48
Speaker 1: in and and not being too overly pedantic. I think
26:51
Speaker 1: we've only gotten one, uh punchable email. Um, but no,
26:55
Speaker 1: just the one, just the one. Everything else everyone else
26:57
Speaker 1: has been lovely and um, you know you guys, if
26:59
Speaker 1: you like the show, um, do to us a solid
27:01
Speaker 1: Go to iTunes and write a review, give us like
27:04
Speaker 1: all the stars, and you know, say that we're engaging
27:07
Speaker 1: and enjoyable to listen to or or or whatever. Tell
27:10
Speaker 1: you tell your friends we were good at jokes one time,
27:13
Speaker 1: the one time. Yeah, we we might get there one day. Uh.
27:16
Speaker 1: And in the meantime, while you're online, you can find
27:19
Speaker 1: us on Facebook. You can find us on Instagram, where
27:22
Speaker 1: you'll see all sorts of other equally ridiculous tidbits about
27:26
Speaker 1: human civilization. You can find our latest pony themed vision
27:29
Speaker 1: board on Pinterest. Not really, you can. You can find
27:34
Speaker 1: our latest reenactment of Martin Luther's feces on four Square?
27:42
Speaker 1: Is that a thing still four Square? Is that? Is
27:44
Speaker 1: that a like a like a Yelp kind of thing?
27:45
Speaker 1: It was one of those. It was one of the
27:47
Speaker 1: checond yes services that just had you check it, which
27:51
Speaker 1: we ever come with those that drove me crazy? Do
27:55
Speaker 1: I just essentially want to tell every criminal on the
27:57
Speaker 1: planet that I'm not at my house? Ben still has
28:00
Speaker 1: a live journal active, one of the only remaining users,
28:04
Speaker 1: so you can check him out there um or you
28:06
Speaker 1: can just write us an email at ridiculous at how
28:08
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com and you know, maybe we'll read
28:10
Speaker 1: your email on the show. Well, do you still have
28:13
Speaker 1: any MySpace or friends serve pages up? Kind of MySpace page?
28:17
Speaker 1: What do you think about the idea of whether modification
28:20
Speaker 1: or or cloud seeing you're so called rainmakers, have you
28:24
Speaker 1: had any experience with this? You can contact us we
28:28
Speaker 1: all the social media um my apartment only you're just named,
28:31
Speaker 1: or you can write to us directly at ridiculous at
28:34
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com. And most importantly, we really
28:38
Speaker 1: look forward to joining you again for the next episode
28:41
Speaker 1: of Ridiculous History. See you there for more podcasts from
28:56
Speaker 1: my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple podcasts,
28:59
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen into your favorite shows.