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Thunderclappers and Hornets: The Strange Places History Survives · Plausibly Live - The Dave Bowman Show Podcast

• 0:01
  From the On Air Across America Newsroom, this is your Morning
• 0:04
  News update. A television advertisement
• 0:07
  promoting President Trump's policies and repeating themes
• 0:10
  from this month's Republican convention says it was paid for
• 0:13
  by the United States government. AD Impact estimates the airtime
• 0:17
  cost $14,000. The White House calls the
• 0:20
  advertisement an educational and patriotic public service
• 0:24
  announcement. It does not explicitly endorse
• 0:27
  Republican candidates, but the administration has not
• 0:30
  identified the federal agency or appropriation that paid for it.
• 0:34
  Lawmakers from both parties are questioning the use of taxpayer
• 0:38
  money. California's Supreme Court has
• 0:41
  ordered Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco to return
• 0:44
  approximately 650,000 ballots he seized while investigating
• 0:48
  alleged discrepancies in a 2025 election.
• 0:51
  The court ruled that state law requires ballots to remain under
• 0:55
  the control of election officials.
• 0:57
  Bianco says he disagrees but will comply.
• 1:00
  No election fraud has been established.
• 1:02
  President Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping discussed
• 1:05
  trade, Taiwan, Iran and artificial intelligence
• 1:08
  Thursday. Their governments extended the
• 1:10
  current tariff truce until January 10th but announced no
• 1:13
  comprehensive agreement. And Seahawks quarterback Sam
• 1:16
  Darnold has practiced for two consecutive days.
• 1:19
  His status for Sunday remains undecided.
• 1:22
  For the On Air Across America network, I'm Alex Ross.
• 2:10
  Bugs and a British general don't touch that Dow.
• 2:15
  Just try to hear me out for a little while.
• 2:17
  So yeah, I am fascinated with some history and I'm fascinated
• 2:22
  with the way history interacts with us today and going to get
• 2:26
  into some of that today. Do you apologize for this being
• 2:29
  late? I know I told you yesterday I
• 2:31
  may not be here. Well, I am, but it took a lot
• 2:36
  longer than it should have. There's a reason for that.
• 2:40
  The reason is finally got the last piece of gear in place for
• 2:45
  the studio. Yes, I finally broke down and
• 2:49
  bought a new computer and it is Jai freaking Normas.
• 2:57
  It is the biggest personal computer I've ever physically
• 3:01
  it's the biggest one. It's not the biggest.
• 3:03
  I mean it doesn't have any more memory or anything than other
• 3:05
  computers that, but it's Gen. enormous and I literally have no
• 3:09
  place to put it. So now I'm trying.
• 3:12
  I'm trying to figure out where to put all this stuff in here.
• 3:15
  Anyway. A low qui conizio.
• 3:17
  Stand up, tell those who oppose liberty, don't tread on me.
• 3:37
  So what I realized was yesterday was that my old computer had
• 3:43
  become carnivorous. I guess.
• 3:47
  I mean, I literally, I, I have a I don't even know what all was
• 3:53
  plugged into it. I mean, there were so many cords
• 3:56
  and so many look, these, these are the cords that I
• 3:58
  disconnected from the old computer that I didn't need for
• 4:01
  the new computer. It's insane.
• 4:05
  So I not everything is in place yet.
• 4:07
  I still don't have the, the arm back for the microphone and I'm
• 4:10
  going to have to move it because I can't have it here now.
• 4:13
  It's got to be over there. And so I'm using the anyway you
• 4:18
  don't care, But the bottom line is we're making progress and
• 4:23
  pretty soon this is going to be an AJ Squared away studio for
• 4:29
  for stuff. So pretty excited about that.
• 4:31
  I will tell you though that I, I started working on this about
• 4:36
  3:00 yesterday afternoon, worked until probably 11:00 at night.
• 4:42
  And just the clean up of the old machine, just getting everything
• 4:45
  out of the play way so that I can put the new computer
• 4:48
  somewhere. And right now it's actually
• 4:50
  sitting on a small table just off to my right.
• 4:56
  That took five hours and then got, you know, to the point
• 5:01
  where I could unbox that, put that in place.
• 5:03
  Found out the old speakers just weren't I, I had a set of
• 5:07
  speakers that were Bluetooth that I hated.
• 5:10
  So then I was going to replace them with a pair of speakers
• 5:13
  that I've had downstairs for years.
• 5:14
  They don't work anymore. So I went and had to go buy new
• 5:17
  speakers. I didn't spend a lot on those,
• 5:20
  but but you know, you got to have what you got to have.
• 5:22
  So and then I discovered very quickly that even though I'm
• 5:27
  constantly pinging on my son about make sure you're writing
• 5:30
  down your passwords and you know, you got all the stuff
• 5:33
  stored. And I do backups, folks.
• 5:34
  I did all the backups and everything else on it.
• 5:37
  But what I discovered was reinstalling software is a
• 5:45
  nightmare and discovering that at least two of the programs
• 5:48
  that I use every single day not only are out of date, out of
• 5:54
  whatever the company that made them doesn't even exist anymore.
• 6:00
  And so now I've got to figure out how I'm going to do those
• 6:02
  two functions because those are necessary functions.
• 6:06
  But you know, what are you going to do?
• 6:07
  So in the meantime, moving on into history because that's what
• 6:11
  I love. I am fascinated with the what is
• 6:13
  known as the Lewis and Clark expedition.
• 6:15
  You've probably heard me talk about it.
• 6:16
  We did a bill Bill Dave does history on Bill make live a few
• 6:21
  weeks ago about the the Lewis and Clark expedition.
• 6:24
  I have driven across this country back and forth probably
• 6:28
  20 times in my life and it takes a while to drive across.
• 6:34
  And that what I've discovered is the older I get, the longer it
• 6:36
  takes. That said, Can you imagine
• 6:40
  walking halfway across this country from basically Saint
• 6:43
  Louis to the West Coast? We're just South of where we are
• 6:48
  here. Ocean shores and then back
• 6:50
  again. Holy crap.
• 6:53
  I mean that this is a voyage. A journey that is just amazing
• 6:59
  to me. And this book that I've had for
• 7:01
  for some time is the day by day account.
• 7:05
  This is actually the book that the tour guides at the National
• 7:09
  Park use and it's a day by day accounting.
• 7:11
  What happened? It's a fascinating book.
• 7:13
  I'm, I'm only halfway through it, as you can tell.
• 7:15
  I, I, it's just something that I read on occasion.
• 7:21
  You know, something's going on and nothing's going on.
• 7:24
  I'll sit down and go, OK, what is today and then pick the date
• 7:27
  and read what happened. It just continues to amaze me.
• 7:33
  It's one of those historical stories that works on multiple
• 7:35
  levels. You've got exploration, you've
• 7:38
  got geography. And and keep in mind the
• 7:40
  geography isn't what we have today.
• 7:42
  They didn't know things that we know today.
• 7:45
  There's diplomacy. We talked about, you know,
• 7:48
  Sacagawea meeting her brother and those sorts of things.
• 7:50
  Survival, natural science, national ambition, and just
• 7:55
  plain out human endurance. When President Jefferson sent
• 8:00
  the Corps of Discovery, and that was its official name, the Corps
• 8:03
  of Discovery West in eighteen O 4 after Louisiana Purchase, he
• 8:07
  gave it some practical objectives.
• 8:10
  Investigate the territory. Find a usable route to the
• 8:14
  Pacific Ocean. Document what's there.
• 8:17
  Strengthen the American claim to the region.
• 8:20
  Here we are two centuries later, though, and historians are still
• 8:24
  exactly trying to answer a question that we still don't
• 8:27
  actually know the answers to in every case.
• 8:29
  Which is where exactly were they we We don't necessarily know
• 8:34
  exactly where they went. They tried to keep extensive
• 8:38
  journals, and they did, but written descriptions don't
• 8:43
  necessarily translate neatly onto a modern map.
• 8:47
  Rivers move, landscapes change, settlements appear and
• 8:52
  disappears, land gets cultivated.
• 8:54
  And recently it's been noted that despite the journals,
• 8:58
  archaeologists have had surprisingly little success
• 9:02
  conclusively identifying each individual campsite.
• 9:06
  Which led us to one of the strangest archaeological
• 9:09
  tracking systems that you can possibly imagine.
• 9:15
  Doctor Benjamin Rush was one of the founders of this nation
• 9:20
  signed the Declaration of Independence.
• 9:22
  He was a prominent physician, a doctor in the the revolutionary
• 9:27
  and early American era. Before the expedition, Mr. Clark
• 9:33
  went to Philadelphia. There he met with Doctor Rush
• 9:38
  and he received what were called, I'm not making this up,
• 9:43
  50 dozen of Doctor Rush's bilious pills.
• 9:51
  Now the bilious pills are were actually nicknamed more commonly
• 9:56
  known as Dun Dun Dun Thunder clappers.
• 10:03
  I'm not making this up, folks. That's what they called the
• 10:06
  pills, Thunder clappers. Now, the reason that Lewis and
• 10:10
  Clark would need these pills was the core, the expedition core
• 10:14
  lived on a astonishingly meat heavy diet.
• 10:17
  They ate a lot of meat. 9 lbs of meat per man per day.
• 10:23
  That's a lot of meat, £9 a day of meat.
• 10:28
  I like beef jerk. I like beef jerk and I don't eat
• 10:30
  that much. It was supplemented by flour,
• 10:34
  salt, coffee, dried pork and lard.
• 10:38
  Lot of protein, not much fiber. You see where this is going?
• 10:46
  Doctor rushes bilious pills, you add in untreated river water,
• 10:52
  the gastrointestinal situation becomes, well, pretty
• 10:57
  predictable. Russia's pills contained
• 11:01
  something called calomel, which is more commonly referred to
• 11:05
  chemically as mercury chloride. And they are essentially a very,
• 11:11
  very, very powerful laxatives, hence the nickname Thunder
• 11:19
  clappers. Of course modern medicine is
• 11:23
  going to say, hey, good doc, you know, mercury is poisonous.
• 11:27
  But in that era they just said, well, here, take two.
• 11:32
  Which leads us then to this fascinating story that I came
• 11:36
  across this week about the latrines that were dug at each
• 11:43
  of the campsites across the the country because the members of
• 11:50
  the expedition corps were taking Doctor Rush's bilious Thunder
• 11:56
  crap clap Thunder crappers. Well, that's what they were
• 11:59
  Thunder clappers, which contained mercury in them.
• 12:04
  Each of these latrine sites accumulated unusually high
• 12:08
  mercury concentrations. Mercury remains in the soil and
• 12:13
  gives the archaeologist something to measure. 2
• 12:16
  centuries after the fact. Imagine that two centuries after
• 12:23
  the fact, we're going to have a trail based on crap.
• 12:31
  It literally crap. Not not metaphysically crap, you
• 12:34
  know, trash or whatever. Literally crap.
• 12:40
  Lewis and Clark were meticulously recording their
• 12:43
  journey for posterity, but one of the most durable records they
• 12:46
  left behind isn't writing. It isn't maps.
• 12:48
  It's not, you know, observations.
• 12:51
  It's the latrines. According to this article from
• 12:58
  the National National Park Service, it has helped confirm
• 13:04
  the Traveler's Rep rest campsite near Missoula, Mt, where mercury
• 13:08
  concentrations distinguished the expeditions latrine from
• 13:12
  ordinary animal Burrows or agricultural disturbances.
• 13:18
  History, folks, isn't just merely documents, OK?
• 13:23
  I mean, it's it's it's not just what was written down, what was
• 13:28
  said, what was heard. Sometimes history is even more
• 13:33
  than that. It's not just speeches.
• 13:34
  Presidents, generals, Admirals, dates, archaeology can recover
• 13:39
  the ordinary physical existence of a people who became
• 13:41
  historical figures. Lewis and Clark became more
• 13:45
  human when we remember that they were cold, wet, hungry,
• 13:53
  exhausted, sometimes sick, and almost continuously for two
• 14:00
  years walking across this country, severely constipated.
• 14:10
  They were men trying to walk across this country, and
• 14:14
  sometimes a significant less seemingly insignificant thing
• 14:18
  becomes the evidence of their survival.
• 14:22
  Speaking of strange things that survived for centuries, well,
• 14:27
  you ever wonder how the Charlotte Hornets got their name
• 14:32
  'cause that is history too. Welcome back.
• 17:36
  It's my, it's me, Dave. You want to join me?
• 17:38
  Two 09565 Dave is the text number and the telephone number
• 17:41
  209565 3283. e-mail Dave at the Dave bowmanshow.com.
• 17:47
  Sorry, my brain just shorted out there.
• 17:48
  It's been a long time. I was going to say something,
• 17:55
  but I don't know what it was. It's gone.
• 17:59
  I don't know. Back in 1974, and some of you
• 18:02
  will be old enough to remember this, many of us were excited
• 18:06
  about the fact that there was a competition in existence for the
• 18:11
  for the National Football League.
• 18:12
  Now, when I was much younger, there were two professional
• 18:17
  football leagues, the American Football League, which we were
• 18:20
  fans of because we lived in Denver.
• 18:22
  The National Football League, which had been old and
• 18:23
  established since the 1920s and was stodgy and boring and likes
• 18:29
  that. And the two leagues merged in
• 18:31
  1968 and you got Super Bowl and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 18:36
  So in 74 along came another league called the World Football
• 18:40
  League. And this was exciting because
• 18:42
  this was going to be yet another challenge to the, to the NFL
• 18:46
  now. And it's just started raiding
• 18:48
  NFL players and the likes of that and even the, the Miami
• 18:53
  Dolphins were the ones that really got hammered by that.
• 18:56
  But the the World Football League, you probably haven't, if
• 18:59
  you're not old enough, you probably don't remember it.
• 19:02
  I, I remember we were in a slumber party, slumber party, an
• 19:05
  overnight party for boys, for the church kids the night of the
• 19:11
  first WFL championship game. I don't remember who won or even
• 19:14
  who was playing, but I remember the game going on.
• 19:18
  There were a lot of teams in there and a lot of them had
• 19:20
  strange names and weird helmets. And they, it's, it's when the
• 19:25
  name thing started. I don't have time to get into
• 19:28
  all that, but the bottom line is there was a team in Charlotte,
• 19:32
  NC much as there is today. There is an NBA team and an NFL
• 19:36
  team, but an NBA team in Charlotte.
• 19:40
  It's, it's the second one, right?
• 19:43
  I think they had a team and left and got a new team.
• 19:46
  Anyway, both of these teams were were named the Charlotte
• 19:50
  Hornets. So the football team had this
• 19:53
  really ugly yellowish color to it.
• 19:56
  The Charlotte Hornets have the the the basketball team has the
• 19:59
  teal in black, which I just hate.
• 20:01
  I don't, I don't understand why people in in sports think that's
• 20:05
  a good combination. It's not, but boy, they're just
• 20:09
  sold on it. The basketball team name is
• 20:11
  probably familiar to you. The older WFL team, probably
• 20:14
  not. But the question is why does
• 20:19
  Charlotte? Have these teams called the
• 20:23
  Hornets? I mean, I've been to Charlotte,
• 20:26
  NC, and while the Hornet makes a good mascot, I'm sure there's,
• 20:32
  there's some element to that. But but really, who?
• 20:36
  Who came up with that and why? What, what were they thinking to
• 20:40
  make these teams called the Charlotte Hornets as opposed to,
• 20:45
  I don't know, the Charlotte Carolinians or whatever?
• 20:51
  Today is there. The tomorrow actually is the
• 20:53
  anniversary. September 26th, 1780, Major
• 20:57
  General Charles Lord Cornwallis marched into Charlotte, NC.
• 21:04
  Now you know the name Cornwallis.
• 21:05
  Cornwallis is the guy that's going to be in charge in a few
• 21:09
  months from 1780. About a year, 13 months later,
• 21:14
  he's going to surrender to Washington at Yorktown.
• 21:17
  He's the, the, the guy that you, you know, from that the war, the
• 21:23
  American Revolutionary War had moved into the South.
• 21:25
  The British Southern strategy depended on establishing
• 21:28
  complete control over the Carolinas.
• 21:30
  And so part of that strategy was they occupied the town of
• 21:34
  Charlotte, NC Now militarily, you know, there's an old saying,
• 21:40
  conquest is easy, control is not.
• 21:43
  I think I heard that from Captain Kirk Once Upon a time.
• 21:46
  The British actually marched into Charlotte and took over
• 21:48
  Charlotte, NC. But taking Charlotte and
• 21:52
  controlling Charlotte are totally different things.
• 21:57
  Colonel William Richardson Davie has approximately 150 mounted
• 22:02
  militia, Calvary, and they are fighting the British advance all
• 22:06
  the way through Charlotte. Then they withdraw rather than
• 22:10
  allowing themselves to be destroyed in a conventional
• 22:13
  battle on the 26th of September, 1780.
• 22:17
  And that sets up a real problem. Cornwallis now has Charlotte.
• 22:21
  He controls it, but now he's got to live there.
• 22:27
  You know, Charlotte's a nice town today.
• 22:29
  It's not where I want to go, but it's an OK place.
• 22:33
  The Patriot Irregulars militia continue to operate around the
• 22:37
  British. They constantly harass the
• 22:41
  foraging parties that that the Brits have set up there.
• 22:44
  They're constantly threatening and capturing supply wagons.
• 22:48
  And probably the thing that they do that just annoys the British
• 22:51
  the most is they just keep sniping at British troops.
• 22:54
  See, we've been doing this since Lexington.
• 22:56
  You'd think they've learned by now, but they haven't.
• 22:59
  Cornwallis occupies the town of Charlotte, but maintaining the
• 23:02
  army becomes increasingly difficult because he can't
• 23:05
  control those surrounding roads, the countryside.
• 23:08
  And you know, you can't feed your army if you can't forge.
• 23:13
  And every time they can't send the whole army out to forge.
• 23:16
  You got to send forging parties out.
• 23:18
  But every time they go out, they get attacked.
• 23:20
  This isn't this isn't working. Capturing territory isn't
• 23:25
  necessarily the same thing as controlling it.
• 23:27
  Davies militia doesn't need to defeat Cornwallis in a in a
• 23:32
  European style. You know, let's just line up and
• 23:34
  shoot each other from 50 yards apart.
• 23:37
  That's, you know, we're not falling for that.
• 23:41
  All Davy has to do is make Charlotte more trouble than it's
• 23:45
  worth, and that's what he managed us to do.
• 23:48
  Cornwallis is a he's traditionally associated with
• 23:53
  making a statement. He's so frustrated by what's
• 23:56
  going on here. He's so angry about the fact
• 23:59
  that these people just won't cooperate.
• 24:04
  Even in town. His soldiers are harassed,
• 24:08
  criticized, everything short of actually attacked because, you
• 24:13
  know, the people don't want to get 2 weeks, 2 weeks.
• 24:17
  That's how long he lasts in Charlotte, NC.
• 24:21
  And he refers to it in a, in a letter.
• 24:24
  He refers to Charlotte, the people, the city, the whole
• 24:29
  area. He refers to it as, quote, a
• 24:32
  veritable nest of Hornets. Sudden quote.
• 24:37
  To this day, if you go to Charlotte, Mecklenburg area in
• 24:41
  North Carolina, people will be proud of the fact that Once Upon
• 24:45
  a time the British called them called them Hornets.
• 24:49
  The hornet's nest eventually becomes part of Mecklenburg
• 24:52
  County's civic symbolism, and then, two centuries later, the
• 24:56
  sports teams inherit the imagery.
• 24:59
  Now those team names make sense, don't they?
• 25:02
  The WFL Charlotte Hornets weren't simply choosing an
• 25:05
  aggressive instinct, you know, to to be about football or
• 25:08
  whatever. The Charlotte Hornets aren't
• 25:10
  looking for a colorful mascot and then going with teal and
• 25:12
  black anyway. They're actually drawing upon
• 25:15
  the local identity rooted in the Revolutionary War, and Charlotte
• 25:20
  as a place where occupying forces discovered that the
• 25:23
  population could make itself extraordinarily unpleasant.
• 25:29
  That's two different ways. Now we've seen that history
• 25:33
  leaves tracks. Lewis and Clark pooped, and
• 25:38
  we're taking mercury pills. Cornwallis leaves Charlotte, a
• 25:41
  nickname. Both stories demonstrate
• 25:43
  something I really love about history.
• 25:45
  The past survives in places that we don't necessarily recognize
• 25:49
  as historical evidence. A patch of contaminated soil
• 25:53
  outside Missoula can preserve the passage of the core of
• 25:56
  discovery. A basketball team name can
• 25:59
  preserve the memory of militia resistance during the American
• 26:04
  Revolution. And sometimes history is just
• 26:08
  sitting in an archive. Sometimes it's hidden underneath
• 26:11
  the ground, and sometimes it's printed on the front of a
• 26:16
  Basketball Jersey. I'm not a huge NBA fan, but I
• 26:20
  think next season I'm going to follow the Charlotte Hornets
• 26:23
  because they were the ones that were fighting the American
• 26:26
  Revolution. Stay with us, we'll be right
• 26:27
  back. It's me, Dave.
• 27:08
  It's a long day, folks, and I realized that I said I wasn't
• 27:11
  going to be here, but quick check in the mailbag.
• 27:16
  You can e-mail the show Dave at the Dave bowmanshow.com, even
• 27:18
  comment on the Facebook page on theactualwebsite@possiblylive.com
• 27:24
  or the Dave bowmanshow.com. It's the same page.
• 27:26
  It's just two different URLs. So I got a comment yesterday
• 27:30
  about really love the song about my wife and the cats and hoping
• 27:36
  that I actually do turn it into a musical.
• 27:39
  And, and, and I plan to, I mean, that's, that's my goal is to
• 27:41
  actually finish that. Don't know when I'm going to do
• 27:44
  it. And it's the way this computer
• 27:46
  thing is taking up time. Who knows?
• 27:50
  And then asked me to, to, to, to do it so that it can be done by
• 27:54
  Star Trek characters. That's been done in opera.
• 28:01
  There is an opera, there is a Star Trek opera out there.
• 28:05
  It might, I'm trying to remember if it's in Klingon or not.
• 28:08
  I, it's been a long time since I've seen it, but, but it's been
• 28:12
  done. I don't know.
• 28:13
  I'm, I'm trying to figure out what I want to do with it, how I
• 28:15
  want it to the sound, how I want it to feel.
• 28:20
  I haven't, haven't even played it for my wife yet, so I'm not
• 28:23
  even sure how she's going to react to it when she hears it.
• 28:26
  But I have 3 or 4 of the songs done.
• 28:28
  I, I, and for an experiment, I actually did some in Italian
• 28:33
  just to see what it would sound like.
• 28:34
  And, and really, if you didn't know, you were sitting in the
• 28:37
  audience at a, at a Mozart opera performance of, you know,
• 28:41
  deflator miles, not deflator miles.
• 28:43
  That's not Mozart, that's Strauss.
• 28:45
  You know, the Magic Flute or whatever you would, you might
• 28:49
  not, you might not know it was it's, it's actually going very
• 28:52
  well, but I don't have time to, I don't have the time to put
• 28:56
  into it that I wish I did along the way.
• 28:58
  But thank you for the response that I'm glad you enjoyed it.
• 29:02
  Obviously, I want to do more of that kind of stuff as we've done
• 29:05
  today and in the future we will continue to do those sorts of
• 29:09
  things as well, because I really enjoy it.
• 29:12
  It's part of what I am. It's part of who I am and it's
• 29:16
  part of what makes me me and this show what it is.
• 29:18
  OK, Take the time right now. Tell the people that matter in
• 29:21
  your life you love them very much.
• 29:22
  You'd miss them if they weren't there.
• 29:24
  So don't pass up those opportunities.
• 29:25
  You don't want to have that regret.
• 29:28
  Just don't possibly live. I'm Dave Bowman.
• 29:31
  This is my show, The Dave Bowman Show, right here on the On Air
• 29:34
  Across America podcast network, which will be growing hopefully
• 29:37
  next. Week.
• 29:39
  By at least one, if not two. I'll see you on Sunday for what?
• 29:42
  The frock? We'll be back on Monday for the
• 29:45
  Dave