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World War I and the Rise of the Peat Moss Bandage · Ridiculous History

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Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
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Speaker 1: to the show Ridiculous Historians. As always, thank you so
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Speaker 1: my name is Ben. My name is No. Yeah, it's
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Speaker 1: the best best things going on? Best left to unpacked
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Speaker 1: two others. But needless to say, it has been. I
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Speaker 1: think Ben described it as like a year long week
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Speaker 1: or something like that, which I would completely agree with.
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Speaker 1: There's a quote from Lenin he says there are decades
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Speaker 1: where nothing happens, and weeks where decades happen. I feel
1:30
Speaker 1: like that's kind of where we are right now. And
1:32
Speaker 1: who was it who said that any uh, any society
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Speaker 1: is uh seven days without food from a revolution? I'll
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Speaker 1: find I'll find that and post it. Uh. Today we're
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Speaker 1: exploring a story that a lot of people don't know about.
1:48
Speaker 1: M For mcgever fans in the audience, you are going
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Speaker 1: to enjoy this one. I'll always remember when I learned
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Speaker 1: about all all the improvised medical procedures that uh people
2:05
Speaker 1: created or invented out of necessity, like you know, using
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Speaker 1: glue to seal up a wound, or duct tape or
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Speaker 1: something like that. And you hear some of that become
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Speaker 1: modern medical practice. Uh, but where does this come from?
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Speaker 1: We we found some older practices, old enough that they
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Speaker 1: might surprise you in today's episode. Yeah, do you mind
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Speaker 1: if I have very quickly just read an exerpt from
2:28
Speaker 1: a poem about this the very topic of our show today.
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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, please. I love poetry by all means. I'm
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Speaker 1: I'm wondering if I know which one it is too.
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Speaker 1: I want to see. This is a new one to me. Um,
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Speaker 1: and I'm just going it's it's got like three sections.
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Speaker 1: I'm not gonna read the whole Thing's gonna read the
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Speaker 1: last section. This is some cathedral to die in sunlight
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Speaker 1: on stained glass arched cloisters like a real cathedral. There's
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Speaker 1: a Catholic priest and a black three peaked hat ci laison,
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Speaker 1: stench of gang green and piss. A nurse in a
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Speaker 1: white apron replaces his drench dressing with dog tooths phagnum moss.
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Speaker 1: It's magic, she says, magic to sweeten you as you go.
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Speaker 1: And that's a poem by an anonymous poet um specifically
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Speaker 1: talking about the use of sphagnum moss as a wound
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Speaker 1: dressing during World War One. And it occurs in three chapters,
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Speaker 1: with the first one being about a young couple kind
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Speaker 1: of back at home and then the man being sent
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Speaker 1: off to war, and then in the third one, he
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Speaker 1: you know, was laying laying dying in a cathedral um
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Speaker 1: overseas and is attended to by uh, you know what
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Speaker 1: could only really be described it's like a guardian angel
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Speaker 1: type situation, dressing the wound in this moss. Uh. And
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Speaker 1: that might sound weird, the idea of of packing a
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Speaker 1: wound with moss, but it turns out, um, it was
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Speaker 1: a much more are available and efficient uh dressing than
4:05
Speaker 1: even something like cotton or gauze. Yeah, this sounds weird
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Speaker 1: to phrase it this way, but there's a there's a
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Speaker 1: morbid and fascinating thing about war, and that's war leads
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Speaker 1: to great invention. Uh, you know, a lot of a
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Speaker 1: lot of things that we take for granted nowadays were
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Speaker 1: discovered in war related research, and medicine made huge advances
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Speaker 1: in World War One, right where that anonymous poem takes place,
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Speaker 1: nineteen sixteen. I believe you said, that's right. This. You know,
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Speaker 1: we don't want to we don't want to ignore the
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Speaker 1: fact that World War One is often called the first
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Speaker 1: mass killing of the twenty century, with like around ten
4:50
Speaker 1: million military deaths alone. Again, that's just ten million military deaths,
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Speaker 1: but but we also see an inspiring story of doctors
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Speaker 1: who were doing everything they could to help soldiers survive
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Speaker 1: these new dangerous weapons of war. Yeah, and it's not
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Speaker 1: it wasn't even the weapons of war that always resulted
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Speaker 1: in their deaths. It was, you know, complications because of
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Speaker 1: any number of injuries, like a small injury left untreated
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Speaker 1: on the battlefield could result incepsis or gas gang green um.
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Speaker 1: And that early in World War One that had been
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Speaker 1: a huge problem because of the conditions and the trenches.
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Speaker 1: We know that the cleanliness of these kind of foxhole
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Speaker 1: trench kind of situations were not up to snuff for sure.
5:37
Speaker 1: I mean they were like digging with trains in the ground,
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Speaker 1: and there was like human waste everywhere and possibly even
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Speaker 1: decaying bodies, and you know, just any number of unsanitary conditions. Uh.
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Speaker 1: And that means that you know, and not to mention
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Speaker 1: the lack of ability to bathe or change clothes and
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Speaker 1: all of that. So there would be like bodily kind
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Speaker 1: of filth residue, like all of our clothes litterally across
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Speaker 1: the battlefield. And this can get into these wounds, even
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Speaker 1: a small wound, and cause sepsis, which is a condition
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Speaker 1: that results from an infection and can absolutely lead to
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Speaker 1: to death. You know, that's an important fact to hit
6:14
Speaker 1: as well. Even surviving an initial wound, your immune system
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Speaker 1: might be so compromised already, you might have pre existing injuries.
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Speaker 1: You are in a very very filthy place. Uh. So
6:27
Speaker 1: people would tend to die from things that maybe didn't
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Speaker 1: seem like the initial major causes of death one might
6:34
Speaker 1: imagine war, and that's why we see so many advances
6:39
Speaker 1: in the field of medicine at this time. Ambulances weren't
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Speaker 1: really a thing until World War One, or antiseptic even right,
6:46
Speaker 1: like sepsis septic Like you point out all uh anesthesia,
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Speaker 1: Thank goodness, none of us were alive before nineteen sixteen.
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Speaker 1: I'm a woss on any medical operation. Oh God, even
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Speaker 1: the thought of it gives me makes me squeamish. But
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Speaker 1: you know, it makes you think about like you know,
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Speaker 1: someone's pulling a bullet out or something like that, or
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Speaker 1: dressing a wound or stitching up a wound and they
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Speaker 1: give you like a leather belt to bite down on.
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Speaker 1: That was like the equivalent of of anesthesia at the time.
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Speaker 1: And it was because of the horrific conditions and all
7:15
Speaker 1: of the suffering that went into the early days of
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Speaker 1: World War One that these things were in fact developed.
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Speaker 1: But there's a guy by the name of Charles cath
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Speaker 1: Kart who was an army surgeon in nineteen fifteen. He
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Speaker 1: has also a bit of a history buff, and he
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Speaker 1: knew that UH using bog bosses UH known as svagnum
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Speaker 1: had been something that was very successful in ancient times
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Speaker 1: um even for dressing like really egregious wounds. UH. And
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Speaker 1: so he decided to run some tests and established a program.
7:51
Speaker 1: It kind of reminds me of that corporation that sort
7:54
Speaker 1: of enlisted like school kids to capture fireflies for their
7:58
Speaker 1: industrial product. What was it, Yeah, the Sigma Firefly Scientists Club,
8:04
Speaker 1: that's what they called themselves. They were based in Missouri.
8:08
Speaker 1: This company wanted kids to hunt firebugs, fireflies because they
8:13
Speaker 1: could use the bioluminescent, the juice stuff. Yeah. The reason
8:18
Speaker 1: there buds glow I think called lucifer race. Uh, to
8:22
Speaker 1: detect life forms. They built life detecting kids with them.
8:25
Speaker 1: Oh that's right. Yeah, yeah, Well this is you know
8:27
Speaker 1: that that was obviously for profit. And of course, as
8:30
Speaker 1: we talked about, war does a couple of things. It
8:33
Speaker 1: causes technological advancement and also makes certain sectors of the
8:36
Speaker 1: economy a hell of a lot of money. UM, So
8:40
Speaker 1: you know, well it's not all entirely altruistic. Uh. This
8:44
Speaker 1: certainly was something that Charles kathkar Um spearheaded in order
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Speaker 1: to kind of figure out how to you know, create
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Speaker 1: a repeatable dressing that would be really helpful in the battlefield.
8:55
Speaker 1: So he got people um across the UK. He started
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Speaker 1: a program uh to collect these bog mosses, and it
9:02
Speaker 1: would ultimately become the most widely used field dressing in
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Speaker 1: the United Kingdom and uh in the Imperial Land Forces. Um.
9:12
Speaker 1: And it became like a part of their kit that
9:14
Speaker 1: they carried or even it was I believe sewn into
9:16
Speaker 1: the inside of their uniforms. Uh. In the event that
9:19
Speaker 1: they were injured, they could actually like you know, stuff
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Speaker 1: it with this uh, this material until they were able
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Speaker 1: to get more you know, direct medical attention. And so
9:27
Speaker 1: there are these swamps or bogs that you hear about
9:30
Speaker 1: all across the UK, UH, something like bodmin more Um
9:34
Speaker 1: that's in the north of Shetland. Uh. And Stagnum moss
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Speaker 1: has some really interesting qualities beyond just you know us
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Speaker 1: as a as a field dressing. UH. It retains much
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Speaker 1: more liquid than cotton. Like I think you can hold
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Speaker 1: like three times its own weight in liquid or something
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Speaker 1: like that, and it distributes it more evenly. It's also
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Speaker 1: cooler and softer, and weirdly, it being an organic material
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Speaker 1: that exists in swamps doesn't irritate the skin as much
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Speaker 1: as cotton. That that blows my mind. And it could
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Speaker 1: be gathered very cheaply and quickly. You know. One thing
10:09
Speaker 1: I love about these kind of stories is it shows
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Speaker 1: that even now in the modern day or in our
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Speaker 1: modern age, the technology that we as humans create often
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Speaker 1: pales in comparison to the natural stuff that was already around.
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Speaker 1: Like we you know, some of our biggest scientific breakthroughs
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Speaker 1: have been things where we learned to mimic forms and
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Speaker 1: functions that existed in nature already. And you know, I
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Speaker 1: think also we should point out that part of this
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Speaker 1: Pete Moss decision or part of this people most discovery
10:45
Speaker 1: came from a a desperate mcgever attempts. People didn't you know,
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Speaker 1: do sedate research into Pete Moss and then say oh, okay, yeah,
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Speaker 1: why don't we try it out? We got all this
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Speaker 1: moss Instead, they were they were searching for an alternative
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Speaker 1: to bandages, which were in very short supply because tons,
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Speaker 1: literal tons of people were being injured. Yeah, there was
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Speaker 1: this guy named w Watson Shane UM of the Royal
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Speaker 1: College of Surgeons in England, and he was one of
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Speaker 1: the first people that realized the sepsis was a real
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Speaker 1: issue UM and kind of helped try to get the
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Speaker 1: ground swell going to Um come up with a solution,
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Speaker 1: like you said, and that was everything from using like
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Speaker 1: chlorine solutions to spray down these wounds to coming up
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Speaker 1: with alternatives to um, you know, creating bandages that had
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Speaker 1: like carbolic acid or formalde hide or even mercury chloride
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Speaker 1: and all this this is these are not things you
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Speaker 1: hear about. These obviously were failed experiments and you know,
11:47
Speaker 1: mainly none of them works. And uh it was truly
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Speaker 1: to your point, Ben, because of a shortage of cotton
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Speaker 1: um that this really became an issue and they were
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Speaker 1: kind of at a loss. And that's when the British
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Speaker 1: Army surgeon Charles Cathcart uh really saved the day because,
12:04
Speaker 1: like I said, he kind of knew about some of
12:07
Speaker 1: the stuff from antiquity. Uh. The notion of using these
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Speaker 1: um these mosses too stuff wounds um and they kind
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Speaker 1: of took that and ran with it. Yeah, peat moss. Also,
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Speaker 1: you know street names spagnum, which I can't decide whether
12:22
Speaker 1: that's my least favorite word of the of the day
12:25
Speaker 1: or my most favorite word of the day. But anyway, spagnum,
12:29
Speaker 1: which sounds like a very strange sort of spaghetti, is
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Speaker 1: common in that area you described in Shetland, and it
12:37
Speaker 1: basically thrives in cold, damp climates. By itself, it doesn't
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Speaker 1: look really impressive. It's tiny, it's a little star shaped plant.
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Speaker 1: But for thousands and thousands of years, people in the
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Speaker 1: region have been preserving bog bodies. They're called in in
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Speaker 1: peat moss in the peat, and it's also been used
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Speaker 1: as fuel. Cathcart is kind of reapplying something that ancient
13:04
Speaker 1: people knew about. We found that there are some sources
13:09
Speaker 1: from the Gaelic record who said that people fighting in
13:12
Speaker 1: the ancient Battle of Clontarf were documented doing the same thing. Well,
13:17
Speaker 1: it's sort of the same thing. They were packing their
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Speaker 1: wounds with moss. I believe it's also something that was
13:22
Speaker 1: used by Native Americans um as absorbent material to align
13:27
Speaker 1: their children's cradles with um and and used as kind
13:31
Speaker 1: of like a naturally occurring diaper because of those absorbing qualities.
13:35
Speaker 1: They were even using the Napoleonic and Franco Prussian Wars.
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Speaker 1: But it wasn't really until this you know, need came
13:43
Speaker 1: about in World War One with these men just you know,
13:46
Speaker 1: suffering in agony and then dying left and right, that
13:49
Speaker 1: they realized, Okay, we've kind of got something on our
13:52
Speaker 1: hands here, and it was very readily available in the UK. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
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Speaker 1: and our guy Cathcart teams up with a botanist named
13:59
Speaker 1: is Bailey Balfour, and they're looking into this moss, right
14:04
Speaker 1: because pete moss. This happens pretty often with plants, right.
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Speaker 1: Pete moss is sort of a group name describing several
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Speaker 1: different species. They found two species in particular that seemed
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Speaker 1: like they would be able to function as natural bandages,
14:22
Speaker 1: and they wrote an article about it in the Scotsman's
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Speaker 1: Science and Nature section where they were basically pitching moss
14:29
Speaker 1: to the crowd, you know, not quite snake oil level,
14:32
Speaker 1: but they were like, look, we're I'm a botanist, I'm
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Speaker 1: I'm a doctor. We know our stuff, and you know,
14:37
Speaker 1: we agree moss is for the right thing for you.
14:40
Speaker 1: They also said something that was pretty hardcore. This is
14:44
Speaker 1: in the article fossest at a host. It is right
14:49
Speaker 1: to be taught even by the enemy. That was that's
14:52
Speaker 1: movie level, man, that's good. Is that French or is
14:55
Speaker 1: that like Latin? I think it's French Latin, I believe, ah, yes, uh,
14:59
Speaker 1: And it pretty quickly started developing some level of consensus.
15:02
Speaker 1: Um some other field surgeons started to chime in. The
15:05
Speaker 1: Lieutenant Colonel ep sewell Um, who worked at the General
15:09
Speaker 1: hospital in Alexandria responded to the article saying, yeah, it's
15:13
Speaker 1: it's absorbent far more than cotton wools, and and also
15:16
Speaker 1: something we haven't mentioned, has a remarkable deodorizing property. Because
15:20
Speaker 1: let's not forget if your gangernous or if you're like,
15:23
Speaker 1: you know, wounds smell that that that can be a
15:26
Speaker 1: real issue. Um. So this was helping that side of
15:29
Speaker 1: it too. Um. And they started doing some kind of
15:33
Speaker 1: I don't know call them clinical trials, I guess for
15:34
Speaker 1: lack of a better term, but they started kind of
15:37
Speaker 1: seeing that, uh, these these things were absolutely true and
15:40
Speaker 1: could be measured. It's phagnum. Moss could hold up to
15:42
Speaker 1: twenty two times its own weight in liquid. I said
15:45
Speaker 1: at the top of the show something like five times.
15:46
Speaker 1: That was totally off, crazy, twenty two times its own
15:49
Speaker 1: weight in liquid. Uh so it is absolutely um twice
15:53
Speaker 1: as absorbent as cotton and cath Kart was quoted in
15:57
Speaker 1: some of his research saying, whereas a path of absorbing
16:01
Speaker 1: cotton allows san yes discharges to penetrate and pass beyond
16:04
Speaker 1: to the bedclothes, a pan of sphagnum absorbs and holds
16:09
Speaker 1: up the discharges. In other words, it wouldn't leak out
16:12
Speaker 1: onto your you know, your bad and your mattress, you
16:15
Speaker 1: know your your sheets. Yeah, and I want to shout
16:18
Speaker 1: out sandy us as um. You know, forget what I
16:21
Speaker 1: said about spactum. Uh, Sannius is probably my favorite word,
16:26
Speaker 1: So sphagnum, you're officially my least favorite words. Sorry about that.
16:29
Speaker 1: This was a new word for me. Sandius sounds like
16:33
Speaker 1: maybe it means something clean because of that, you know
16:36
Speaker 1: that commonality with sanitary, But it means quite the opposite.
16:40
Speaker 1: Sanius means something consisting of a thin mixture of serum
16:44
Speaker 1: and pus with a slight bloody tinge. So it's super
16:49
Speaker 1: appetizing stuff. Now, with the benefit of modern science, we
17:00
Speaker 1: we've drilled down into the nuts and bolts of what
17:04
Speaker 1: makes sphagnum this this moss so good at being an
17:10
Speaker 1: improvised bandage. Yeah, and it's really interesting stuff. Um. It's
17:14
Speaker 1: all about the cellular structure of the moss. And there
17:17
Speaker 1: is a researcher at Sunni Environmental Science and Forestry UH
17:21
Speaker 1: named Robin Kimmerer who has done extensive research on moss,
17:26
Speaker 1: which seems, you know, on the surface like the world's
17:28
Speaker 1: most boring scientists, but it's pretty fascinating stuff. So you
17:32
Speaker 1: wrote a book called Gathering Moss, a Natural and Cultural
17:35
Speaker 1: History of Mosses. I'm sorry, I can't help but just
17:39
Speaker 1: say that does sound like the most boring book ever
17:41
Speaker 1: of all time. But not to be the case, because
17:44
Speaker 1: it turns out that Sphagnum is really fascinating stuff is uh,
17:47
Speaker 1: it's dead, which I thought was fascinating because you know,
17:52
Speaker 1: you think of plants having healing properties. You think it
17:55
Speaker 1: has something to do with like them being imbued with
17:57
Speaker 1: some kind of life giving power. And know, the stuff
18:00
Speaker 1: is dead and that's important because it's empty. It needs
18:04
Speaker 1: to be that way so that it can be filled
18:06
Speaker 1: with water. That's how it functions in the bog and
18:09
Speaker 1: keeping the east ecosystem a certain level of acidic, I
18:12
Speaker 1: believe is what it is um and that's what allows
18:15
Speaker 1: it to soak up blood and all of that. What
18:18
Speaker 1: is it sandius fluids? Ben Yeah, sanius fluids. It also
18:22
Speaker 1: has antiseptic properties, as we mentioned, we know how those work.
18:27
Speaker 1: So thanks again to professor camera here, the cell walls
18:33
Speaker 1: of these plants have a particular sugar molecule that creates
18:39
Speaker 1: quote camera here creates an electrochemical halo around all of
18:43
Speaker 1: the cells, and this means that the cell walls end
18:47
Speaker 1: up being negatively charged. Then why are you talking about
18:52
Speaker 1: electrochemical stuff. We're talking about antiseptic stuff. Just walk with
18:56
Speaker 1: us here. These negative charges make it such that positively
19:00
Speaker 1: charged nutrient ions those are things like sodium or potassium,
19:05
Speaker 1: get attracted to the spectrum and as the moss soaps
19:10
Speaker 1: up all the negatively charged nutrients and soil, it releases
19:15
Speaker 1: positively charged ions. This basically long story short, this makes
19:20
Speaker 1: the environment around the moss kind of like you said,
19:24
Speaker 1: it makes it acidic, and that's part of the reason
19:28
Speaker 1: that bog bodies are so creepily well preserved even when
19:32
Speaker 1: they're thousands and thousands of years old. So back to
19:35
Speaker 1: the war, the Great War, the first what is it
19:38
Speaker 1: mass killing of the twentieth century. Um, it continued to
19:43
Speaker 1: rage and and was awful uh and continued to produce many,
19:48
Speaker 1: many deaths and and horrible injuries that needed to be dressed.
19:51
Speaker 1: And so the need for bantages just kept going up
19:53
Speaker 1: and up and up, and sphagnum really was crucial because
19:58
Speaker 1: it provided this raw material that could be gathered. Um.
20:01
Speaker 1: The Canadian Red Cross Society Ontario in nineteen sixteen got
20:05
Speaker 1: in on it and started providing dressings using sphagnum, over
20:10
Speaker 1: one million of them UM and nearly two million um
20:14
Speaker 1: more like padded compresses and a million UM pads. And
20:19
Speaker 1: it was all with moss that was collected in British
20:22
Speaker 1: Columbia and Nova Scotia, which has very similar kind of
20:26
Speaker 1: bog like coastal regions. And by nineteen eighteen you were
20:31
Speaker 1: seeing more than a million of these dressings a month
20:35
Speaker 1: being sent out in Britain to hospitals all over Europe,
20:40
Speaker 1: also even as far as Mesopotamia or Egypt. Yeah, and
20:45
Speaker 1: people started taking collective action around the United Kingdom and
20:49
Speaker 1: in Canada and the US as well. Of folks got
20:53
Speaker 1: together and they organized basically moss hunts to try to
20:56
Speaker 1: scare up bandage alternatives. But they called them drives, you know,
21:01
Speaker 1: like a fun drive or something, and local papers would
21:04
Speaker 1: announce them. A lot of adult men were off fighting
21:07
Speaker 1: in the war or candidly already died, so many, you know,
21:12
Speaker 1: a great deal of the volunteers here were women and children,
21:16
Speaker 1: and they get these weird instructions. One that sounds kind
21:20
Speaker 1: of kind of fun, uh, there was a there was
21:23
Speaker 1: an announcement in the UK that told people, when you
21:26
Speaker 1: get your moss, fill the sack up your moss sack
21:31
Speaker 1: not all the way up like maybe seventy and then
21:35
Speaker 1: drag it to any kind of hard ground and then
21:38
Speaker 1: just dance on it for a while. I mean, there
21:41
Speaker 1: was a reason we should put that part in. Uh.
21:44
Speaker 1: They wanted to. It was kind of like crushing grapes
21:47
Speaker 1: or something. They were they were stomping on this stuff
21:51
Speaker 1: to get as much water out as they could. Yeah,
21:54
Speaker 1: and kind of distributed a little bit. And exactly and
21:57
Speaker 1: on the other side of the war, Germany was really
21:59
Speaker 1: into using the stuff to um. And you know they
22:02
Speaker 1: have again also like Canada and and and the UK uh,
22:06
Speaker 1: similar climates uh and terrains that are very conducive to
22:12
Speaker 1: this kind of moss growing. Um. So they have a
22:14
Speaker 1: lot of bogs in northeastern Germany and in Bavaria that
22:17
Speaker 1: they would just you know, pillage for the stuff. Uh.
22:20
Speaker 1: And very similarly, um, they only maybe a little less
22:25
Speaker 1: like hey, go team Uh. They actually used Allied prisoners
22:29
Speaker 1: of war to go out and gather these these bog mosses.
22:34
Speaker 1: There was even like a headline about a gentleman who
22:36
Speaker 1: walked over a thousand miles to collect mosses. Uh. And
22:41
Speaker 1: you know the ones that weren't like, you know, basically
22:45
Speaker 1: POWs that were forced to do it. We're almost always volunteers. Um,
22:50
Speaker 1: and it really did seem to make a huge difference.
22:52
Speaker 1: It obviously wasn't the same as some sort of life
22:55
Speaker 1: saving uh you know, serum or you know, antiseptic or anesthetic,
23:00
Speaker 1: but it definitely kept people in the in a pinch
23:04
Speaker 1: from getting you know, sept sepsis and and dying on
23:07
Speaker 1: the battlefield before they had a chance to actually have
23:09
Speaker 1: their wounds properly looked at. Because you have to remember, too,
23:12
Speaker 1: this is like the first line of defense if you
23:14
Speaker 1: get shot or winged on the battlefield and you need
23:17
Speaker 1: to you know, bide some time. This is what you
23:20
Speaker 1: have sewn into the lining of your uniform, and you
23:23
Speaker 1: you know, rip it out and cover your wound so
23:25
Speaker 1: it doesn't get any crap in it that's gonna make
23:28
Speaker 1: it get infected, and then you're able to kind of
23:30
Speaker 1: live to fight another day, or at least to get
23:33
Speaker 1: a proper medic to look at you. I feel like
23:35
Speaker 1: I'm almost going into infomercial mode here because but wait,
23:39
Speaker 1: there's more. There was one country that still had a
23:43
Speaker 1: lot of cotton, and that was the United States. The
23:47
Speaker 1: United States had quite a bit of cotton, and they
23:50
Speaker 1: understood that these they understood, you know, these bandages, these
23:54
Speaker 1: plant based bandages were making a big splash right in society.
23:59
Speaker 1: And they ended up trading gas mask parts with other
24:03
Speaker 1: countries so that they could get a moss supply because
24:08
Speaker 1: they found out spagnum bandages weren't just an alternative, they
24:13
Speaker 1: were better than the cotton bandages that everyone once had
24:17
Speaker 1: been so worried about. They also people also, um kind
24:22
Speaker 1: of like when you see a recipe forums and people
24:25
Speaker 1: start arguing about the best way to you know, cook
24:28
Speaker 1: a steak or to uh, you know, bake a cake.
24:32
Speaker 1: It seems like different countries and institutions started arguing about
24:37
Speaker 1: how best how they preferred to do their bandages. And
24:40
Speaker 1: and also, let's not forgether, this was a renewable resource. Um,
24:43
Speaker 1: they could you know, gather this stuff, uh, and as
24:47
Speaker 1: long as they didn't mess with the layer of pete underneath.
24:50
Speaker 1: They call it pete moss because it grows in pete.
24:53
Speaker 1: What is pete again? Ben I think of it in
24:55
Speaker 1: terms of like peated whiskey. It's a material that can
24:58
Speaker 1: be burned to make a matic smoke that is used
25:02
Speaker 1: in the in the distilling process of certain scotch whiskey's um.
25:06
Speaker 1: But it occurs organically, and I believe it's a very
25:08
Speaker 1: nutrient rich material. But what what is it exactly? It's
25:12
Speaker 1: it's essentially partially decayed vegetable matter. So you'll see it
25:19
Speaker 1: called a brown deposit. It's not quite like soil like
25:23
Speaker 1: you've heard of people cutting peat and stuff like that
25:25
Speaker 1: to burn it. It's it's gunky okay checks out. So yeah,
25:29
Speaker 1: you wouldn't want to disturb that layer because that's what's
25:32
Speaker 1: going to cause it to be able to continue to regrow.
25:35
Speaker 1: But uh M, that botton, as we mentioned, did say
25:39
Speaker 1: that you know, when you have folks coming out and
25:41
Speaker 1: trumping through these bogs all the time getting the stuff,
25:45
Speaker 1: uh there is going to be some kind of collateral
25:47
Speaker 1: damage to the peat layers. And that is why it's
25:50
Speaker 1: a good thing that we don't use pete as bandages anymore.
25:54
Speaker 1: Cotton is much more readily available now, of course, and
25:57
Speaker 1: it works just fine. Um. If we continued to forage
26:02
Speaker 1: for this pete it could potentially damage those ecosystems significantly.
26:08
Speaker 1: They're called pete lands, and they're full of this phagnum
26:11
Speaker 1: and other types of mosses that have been accumulating carbon
26:16
Speaker 1: um for thousands of years in these underground layers of
26:19
Speaker 1: pete um. And if you start clearing away the top
26:24
Speaker 1: layers and those bottom layers are eventually going to dry out,
26:28
Speaker 1: and then that carbon can leak out into the atmosphere,
26:31
Speaker 1: and that could be a problem because peat lands actually
26:34
Speaker 1: play a role in uh global climate change. Um pete
26:39
Speaker 1: can be used as biofuel and pete lands are very
26:43
Speaker 1: rich ecosystems on their own that support a lot of
26:47
Speaker 1: rare species of plants, carnivorous plants, I believe. Yeah, that
26:51
Speaker 1: was a new one for me to know, the carnivorous
26:54
Speaker 1: plants of of the bog lands, which sounds like, you know,
26:59
Speaker 1: it sounds like a story you would read in scary
27:01
Speaker 1: stories to tell in the dark or something. But this
27:04
Speaker 1: is this is true, you know. The professor Camera argues
27:08
Speaker 1: that the same things that make this moss great for
27:11
Speaker 1: bandaging are the same things that make it great for
27:16
Speaker 1: creating and perpetuating bogs, and now you know, there's a
27:20
Speaker 1: lot of development in the United Kingdom right in general.
27:25
Speaker 1: So if we take that particular example, uh sphagnum, these
27:29
Speaker 1: peat lands and these bogs are actually these incredibly bio
27:34
Speaker 1: diverse pockets of the region because you know, given the
27:38
Speaker 1: acidity involved here, the plants that live in the bogs
27:44
Speaker 1: are highly adapted to a very strange and unique environment.
27:48
Speaker 1: So there are a lot of distinct creatures that live here. Um.
27:52
Speaker 1: But you know, if if you still, if you're like,
27:55
Speaker 1: forget it, guys, I am convinced. No more cotton bandages
28:00
Speaker 1: for me. Um. I believe a while back, some people
28:05
Speaker 1: in the U s we're experimenting with using this moss
28:08
Speaker 1: for other sanitary supplies. They called it phag Nikins doesn't
28:14
Speaker 1: roll off the tongue exactly. Ben earlier, when you were
28:16
Speaker 1: talking about how Sphagnum creates acidity, it made me think
28:21
Speaker 1: of how it has a really strong pH sphagnum. Okay,
28:28
Speaker 1: I'm done, I'm here. I'm here all week, or at
28:32
Speaker 1: least for the rest of the afternoon. This is one
28:39
Speaker 1: of those stories that doesn't get the attention it deserves. Obviously,
28:44
Speaker 1: you know, Um, I think I speak for all three
28:47
Speaker 1: of us when I say we love people who are
28:51
Speaker 1: experts at incredibly specific things. If you are a firefly expert,
28:56
Speaker 1: if you are what are the anti experts, mrmacologists, you're
29:00
Speaker 1: one of those, or the country's foremost expert in underwater explosions. Oh, yes,
29:05
Speaker 1: that's right, yes, Dr Rachel Lance. Oh, if you're listening, Rachel,
29:12
Speaker 1: you ruined action movie explosions for us. But you did
29:15
Speaker 1: the right thing. Thank you so much for doing that.
29:18
Speaker 1: Oh that was that was a great interview. Um. I
29:21
Speaker 1: do want to leave us with you know, we started
29:25
Speaker 1: today's episode on the quotation from Poets world War One,
29:30
Speaker 1: and Poets world War One had a lot of important
29:34
Speaker 1: things to say, right, and many of them died very,
29:37
Speaker 1: very young. There's one poem that, uh, if you guys
29:41
Speaker 1: are okay with I'd like to read a little excerpt
29:43
Speaker 1: from Awesome. This one I think gives a good picture
29:46
Speaker 1: of what the situation was on the ground. It's just
29:49
Speaker 1: the very end of it. If in some smothering dreams,
29:53
Speaker 1: you two could face behind the wagon that we flung
29:57
Speaker 1: him in and watched the white eyes writhing in his face,
30:00
Speaker 1: his hanging face like a devil's sick of sin. If
30:03
Speaker 1: you could hear at every jolt the blood come gargling
30:07
Speaker 1: from the froth corrupted lungs, obscene as cancer, bitter as
30:11
Speaker 1: the cud of vile and curable sores on innocent tongues.
30:15
Speaker 1: My friends, you would not tell with such high zest
30:19
Speaker 1: to children ardent for some desperate glory, that old lie
30:23
Speaker 1: dulce at ducora mest pro patria mori, which is Latin
30:28
Speaker 1: for it is sweet and fitting to die for one's country.
30:31
Speaker 1: Heavy man, heavy stuff. Sorry, it's like my favorite poem
30:35
Speaker 1: from that time. That's good, dude, it's good. What was it? Oh, guys,
30:39
Speaker 1: we're sorry. Was the froth thing something that was the
30:42
Speaker 1: first part? Froth corrupted lungs? It's a very corrupted, No,
30:47
Speaker 1: it is. The images is palpable. It's going to haunt me, ben.
30:51
Speaker 1: But yeah, I like a poem at the top and
30:53
Speaker 1: a poem at the bottom. Maybe we should endeavor to
30:55
Speaker 1: do that with every episode of ridiculous history. What do
30:57
Speaker 1: you think I think we give it, you know, I like,
31:00
Speaker 1: let's give it the old college shot. Uh, maybe it
31:02
Speaker 1: will be like our souf John Stevens esque quest to
31:06
Speaker 1: have a story about every state. Um, I think at
31:08
Speaker 1: one time I was like, I'm gonna recommend comic books
31:11
Speaker 1: every single episode, but you know, we come and go
31:14
Speaker 1: with these. Or that time where we said we were
31:16
Speaker 1: gonna read our bad iTunes reviews and we did it
31:19
Speaker 1: like once and it hurt our feelings too bad, so
31:21
Speaker 1: we never did it again. Did you have one that
31:25
Speaker 1: you wanted to reach? I did bad? I did. I
31:27
Speaker 1: like it. I don't quite get the reference because I've
31:30
Speaker 1: only seen the movie, but this is from the headline
31:34
Speaker 1: is Boring one star by super Nice Broad. Okay, I
31:38
Speaker 1: would disagree with that. That Moniker there, I've ever seen
31:42
Speaker 1: the show what we do in the shadows. These two
31:44
Speaker 1: guys are like Colin. They bore you almost to death.
31:48
Speaker 1: Seems like a cool podcast when you read about it,
31:51
Speaker 1: but it's not at all. I tried and tried again.
31:55
Speaker 1: Now I'm done. Well, we will miss you, super Nice Broad,
31:58
Speaker 1: and you know, speaking of that, folks, we certainly hope
32:02
Speaker 1: that you enjoyed being Bored two Tears today. If you
32:05
Speaker 1: are inspired, why not leave us a review. You can
32:08
Speaker 1: find us on Apple podcast, any really any podcast platform,
32:13
Speaker 1: and we would also love to hear from you on
32:16
Speaker 1: other parts of the internet. We're on Facebook, We're on Twitter,
32:19
Speaker 1: We're on Instagram. Um, we're not on We're not on
32:25
Speaker 1: the Rooms to Go website yet if you ordered any
32:28
Speaker 1: furniture from Rooms to Go been I toyed with the idea,
32:30
Speaker 1: but I don't know. I ended up going with Wayfair instead.
32:33
Speaker 1: We're not sponsored by any of these brands, by the way,
32:35
Speaker 1: nor are we sponsored by what we do in the Shadows.
32:38
Speaker 1: But I will say this in our next press release.
32:40
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have a pull quote. I'm gonna say, compared
32:43
Speaker 1: favorably to what we do in the Shadows, here we go.
32:48
Speaker 1: That's that's the spirit. Let's let's uh, you know, like
32:52
Speaker 1: doctors and their discoveries during times of war, let's try
32:55
Speaker 1: to make something good from something hilarious but bad. How
33:00
Speaker 1: about that? Totally agree? And if you want to make
33:02
Speaker 1: something good at something hilarious and or bad, um, you
33:05
Speaker 1: can do it on our Facebook group Ridiculous Historians. You
33:08
Speaker 1: can find this as individuals. Uh. You know, you can
33:11
Speaker 1: find us as a show on Instagram and all that stuff,
33:13
Speaker 1: but it's not super interesting. I would just go with
33:15
Speaker 1: us as individuals. You can find me. I am only
33:18
Speaker 1: on Instagram, I'm on Twitter, but I just kind of
33:20
Speaker 1: learned and really use it. My Instagram is at how
33:22
Speaker 1: Now Noel Brown. You can find me uh many different
33:26
Speaker 1: places crossroads at midnight at Ben Bowling hs W on Twitter,
33:30
Speaker 1: at Ben Bowling on Instagram. Thanks as always to super
33:36
Speaker 1: producer Casey. Everything is fine, Pegram and uh, I still
33:42
Speaker 1: it's a movie. I know we can't see this all
33:44
Speaker 1: because we're, you know, an audio podcast, but I cannot
33:47
Speaker 1: emphasize enough the backgrounds moving. I like that it's animated.
33:52
Speaker 1: But yes, thank you Casey, and thanks, of course there's
33:55
Speaker 1: always to Alex Williams, who composed our banging track. It
33:58
Speaker 1: is a bit, it's a bob because what the kids
34:00
Speaker 1: call it these days. Thanks to Christopher Oscoda is here
34:03
Speaker 1: in spirit. Jonathan Stricklin, a k. The Quister. I believe
34:05
Speaker 1: we're due for him to zoom bomb us any day now.
34:08
Speaker 1: I can't wait, and I'm not being sarcastic at all
34:11
Speaker 1: when I say that I I look forward to going
34:14
Speaker 1: tet tet once more with the Quister. You'll have to
34:17
Speaker 1: remind me of where our balance is in terms of
34:19
Speaker 1: like point spread. Uh. That was a very convolute way
34:23
Speaker 1: of saying are we ahead or behind? Um in the
34:26
Speaker 1: Great game of dueling with the quister, which is no
34:30
Speaker 1: small task. Ah. Yes, Jonathan Strickland DK the Quister. Is
34:35
Speaker 1: he a one of our dear friends, be our Cheryl
34:39
Speaker 1: Crew level nemesis or see all of the above. The
34:44
Speaker 1: answer is up to history. Follow your heart's folks, We'll
34:48
Speaker 1: see you next time. For more podcasts from My Heart Radio,
34:59
Speaker 1: visit the I Heart radi you app, Apple podcast, or
35:01
Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite shows.