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Dr. Seuss Wrote His Most Famous Book On A Bet · Ridiculous History

• 0:23
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the show Ridiculous Historians. As always, thank you
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: for tuning in. I am pumped about today's episode. Are
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: we going to do it in a box? Are we
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: going to do it about a fox? Are we gonna
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: do it while eating some locks? Are we going to
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: do it in a basement beneath Fort Knox? Well that
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: sounds like the plot of National Treasure, right right? Well? Uh,
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: this is uh, this is this show that's giving us
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: an excuse to talk about I don't know about you,
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: my friend, but one of my favorite authors when I
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: was growing up is just a wee Ben Bolan. I
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: loved Shell Silverstein, Dr SEUs and Stephen King. Wow, that's
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: explained so much about you've turned out. Thanks man, Hey,
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: who are you? I'm no, And I'm going to do
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: it in a hole? Uh? Possibly while eating cereal from
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: a bowl. Um. I'm not as good at this as
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: as Theodora Suss Geisel. That's right, that's right, you know.
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: I We have to also ask, uh, super producer Casey Pegram,
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: did you read Dr. Seuss as a child? Casey absolutely
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: I did. Yeah, what what were some of your favorite books?
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: I'm terrible at remembering anything childhood related. It kind of
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: all flew out of my brain at some point. But
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: I know I did. I know I had the books around.
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: I could not tell you titles. I would probably be
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: old to identify them if I went and looked at
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: covers online, but that'd be about it. The covers are
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: a big giveaway that that's what gets burned into my memory.
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: I don't remember that the titles very much either, Casey,
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: but lately I've been kind of exploring them, especially during
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: this research it. And it was a real nostalgia blast
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: from the past. That's redundant. That was good nostalgia blast.
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: Nostalgia blast is already a blast from the past. Well
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: if it was an nostalgia blast that happened in the past.
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: If you're remembering a time nostalgia blast hit you so
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: like even if it was just twenty minutes ago, it's
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: still work. That's a good point, Ben, Thank you for
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: saving me. No, No, I got to ask before we
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: go any further. Did you have one book by SEUs
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: that really like stuck out in your brain? I do.
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: It was One Fish to Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish,
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: because I distinctly remember that being the first thing where
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: I was aware of the fact that I could read. Oh,
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: that's metacognition. It really is, it really is. I mean
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: and and and it might be manufacturing that memory, but
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: it's stuck with me. Um. I remember being very proud
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: of myself that I could read. But I also think
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: it might have been some combination of memorization as well,
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: because it was read to me, and I think I
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: may have been looking at it and reading it from
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: memory and thinking that I was actually reading the words,
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: because that was very very little. This is a very
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: early memory. And you also have a studying innate sense
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: of rhythm and cadence, as does Dr Theodore si Yes
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: Geisel Geisel for the record, my favorite for a long
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: time was The butter Battle Book. I thought that thing
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: was an epic tale of like tragedy and heartbreak and
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: the human condition. Well, that's the thing that's neat about
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: this guy's books is they kind of have these big,
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: lofty themes, like the Lorax, for example, which is sort
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: of environmentalist look on conservation and like saving the forest
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: and how man is like raping and pillaging mother Earth
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: and all that stuff, but not in a particularly heavy
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: handed or pedantic way, and in a way that's pretty
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: approachable to you know, youngsters or whatever, but still has
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: some pretty important messages. Yeah. I think that's a great point.
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: And one thing, one thing that a lot of kids
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: don't know when we're growing up and reading Dr. Seuss
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: books is that Theodore himself was is allegedly not the
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: biggest fan of children, but he was a really interesting guy.
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: And I think you and I probably had a similar
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: moment later in life where we realized that his family
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: originally pronounced the name SEUs as zois like zo I
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: see yikes, which I think is a great word. Zoix
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: is what I would say. Um, he's interesting for a
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: lot of reasons. He got his start working in like
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: advertising as a cartoonist, and there's actually some rarely problematic
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: cartoons you can dig up that he did. For It's
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: like a mosquito spray called like ZiT or something like that,
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: or like bleep, I don't know, but it's it's like
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: all of these kind of like African jungle scenes with
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: his very recognizable elephant. It looks like something out of
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: one of his books, only it's got a lot of
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: like natives depicted in that horrible way that you see
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: in early you know, Disney animations or Warner Brothers cartoons.
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: Uh that are now consider they're completely embarrassing to those
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: companies that are responsible for all this, like Classic Children's Entertainment.
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: The same was true for for for Geistil and he
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: also did some propaganda around, you know, the Japanese with
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: some pretty nasty depictions of those folks during World War
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: during World War two exactly. Yeah, he was nothing if
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: not prolific, But we did feel it would be remiss
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: on our part if we did not include the less
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: than wonderful, whimsical aspects of his life. You know what
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: I mean. He was a great cartoonist and a great writer,
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: but still a person, and you might be surprised to
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: learn the process that he used to write a lot
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: of these books. The guy was so prolific as what
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: over forty children's books, and that's not counting any of
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: his advertisement stuff. That's not counting the short lived comic
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: strip he did before called Heggie, I believe. But the
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: weird thing is, while we all kind of, I think
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: naturally want to have this romanticized idea of a guy
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: who just wakes up in a very bright pastel cartoony
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  Speaker 1: house and says what wonderful lessons would I teach children today?
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  Speaker 1: That's not the case. In fact, there was a lot
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: of calculation that went into the way he wrote books.
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: His first successful children's book was called Cat in the Hat.
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: And the story about Cat in the Hat is really surprising.
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: It starts with a guy named John Hershey, who was
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: a big time journalist, and in nineteen fifty four, when
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: writing and Life magazine, he put out an article called,
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: why do students bogged down on first? Are? A local
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: committee sheds light on national problem? Colon reading? That was
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: colon the punctuation mark, not reading Colin's And is that
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: the one that was kind of a backlash against the
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: super dull Dick and Jane Primer books just the same,
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: which is like see Dick talk, see Jane walked to
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: there is a dog? It is spot watch spot walk
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: to Jane. Stuff like that, right, yeah, Because they had
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: a more rigid system of introducing vocabulary words to children.
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: And after reading this article, the director of Hoton Mifflin,
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: the publishing company, the director of Hoton Mifflin's educational division,
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: a guy named William Spaulding, got Theodore Geisel in the
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: room and he said, look, I need you to write
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: a story that first graders actually like. The actual quote is,
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: I need you to write a story that first graders
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: can't put down. And then he put on some weird restrictions. Yeah,
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: this part was really interesting to me too. So there
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: was a list that Spalding had, which I guess came
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: from the Educational Division, of three hundred and forty eight
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  Speaker 1: words that were selected from a standard first graders vocabulary list.
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  Speaker 1: And Spalding said, okay, THEO you've how to write this book,
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  Speaker 1: but you can only use words from this list, and
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: you can't use them all. You can only use what Yeah,
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: and I think originally he wanted the story to be
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: about like a queen cat and a king cat, but
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: queen wasn't on the list, so he had to like adjust,
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: and then he realized that hat rhymed with cat and
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: that was a good starting point and the rest is history. Which, yeah,
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: it took of nine months to write this book, primarily,
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  Speaker 1: I believe because of that word restriction. And according to
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: the story, he didn't quite hit two. It was still
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: a little bit longer, right, Yeah, I think he you know,
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: if we're going to call that a bat, then he
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: sort of failed the exact parameters that were given to him,
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: but he came damn close. Yeah, two thirty six words,
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  Speaker 1: and I get the feeling this was almost more of
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: a mandate from his boss. I love thinking about what
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: the original story with the king cat and the Queen
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: Cat would have been, because now I see this picture
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: of Theodore Geisel like pulling his hair out and gnashing
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: his teeth and trying to figure out how to depict
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  Speaker 1: this cat as somehow regal or kingly, and then the
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: best to come up with his Alright, he's got a
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  Speaker 1: hat because we can't use crown. Yeah, I feel like
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: that's what happened. That's probably true. That's a good point, um.
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  Speaker 1: And of course, you know when I say the rest
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: is history, I mean like literary history. It's it's sold
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: a million copies, like right off the rip, I think
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: in the first couple of years that it was out
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: in print, right, and he was able to quit his
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: day job as an ad guy and admin, you know,
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: and went on to become a whimsical children's book writer
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  Speaker 1: full time. Zoe Zoie. That's good man, that's quite good. Also, like,
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: what was the name of that pesticide company was a
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: z or was it something that you know I actually
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: looked at. It's called flit flit. Yeah, like you know bugs,
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: they flipped and this is what you scored at him
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: to make them stop flitting forever, Stop the flit. I
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: don't know why I'm feeling these catchphrases so much, my friend,
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: but we know that a lot of people love the
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: way Zoie wrote. And so you know what, I'm just
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: gonna call him Dr Seuss for this show for our
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: purposes here. Yeah, that's fair, Okay, it just feels more comfortable,
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: you know what I mean. We all know who Dr Seuss, right,
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: but this doctor's voice guy, it sounds like some sort
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: of mad scientists. So he does. So this guy's career
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: takes off. He's becomes a prolific author of children's books
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: that are loved around the world, especially the English speaking
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: world obviously. And then in nineteen sixty, just about three
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: years after Cat and the Hats come out, he has
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: a strange conversation with a guy named Bennett Surf, the
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: co founder of Random House. He does it's very similar
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: to the conversation you had with Mr Hershey that kicked
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: off his career, you know, in such a huge way
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: with Cat in the Hat. This guy really ups the
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: annie here in terms of what that first bet, I
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: guess our challenge would have been. And he challenges SEUs
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: to write a children's book that uses fifty unique words
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: or less unique being individual words, which sounds like if you,
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: if you're just thinking about this initially at first, blush,
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: this could sound like, hey, that's enough words for a
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: children's book. It's not, because what they mean by unique
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: words is that, let's see, if you had a word
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: that was and just I'll pick one admiral, right, then
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: you can use that one word as many times as
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: you would like. Right. It's it's like that vocabulary list
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: we talked about earlier, and I think you know it
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: was around two sixty words for Cat in the Hat.
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  Speaker 1: So that's and that's a pretty relatively straightforward, sing songy
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: kind of like simple language book. So that this is
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: like really taking it to the next level, because to
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: use fifty words and still have it a tell a
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: story and not just be completely just see Dick run
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: right exactly. So he took this as a challenge and
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: he delivered. I propose that we play a game with
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: the listeners knowll because we have this list we did words. Okay,
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: So let's let's read out some of these words, not
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: not all fifty, and let's like skip the ones that
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: automatically give it away. And let's see if you can
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: guess which book this is. Okay, are you ready? Folks?
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: A am and anywhere? Are b boat? Box car? Could
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: dart do eat here? House? I if in let like,
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: I think it's pretty hard to guess. We didn't have
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: any really juicy in there. You're not going to finish?
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: Oh do you want to do? You want to do
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: the rest of them? Are you skipping the word greens
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: that in there? Casey on the case spoil? I love it.
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: We haven't gotten there yet. But yes, in fact, green,
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: eggs and ham are all in this list. And that's
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: ham like the food, not ham like. Hearts him off right.
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: That was a little bit before uh seuss time, or
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: maybe that was part of his uncollected work. I actually
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: read somewhere that he coined the word crunk, but it
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: didn't mean the same thing as it means in the
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: parlance of today. That it appeared first in print in
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: a doctor so I book, This book that he wrote
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: on a bet is known today as green Eggs in
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: a hand, And I was thinking, there's a there's a
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: neat coincidence here when he has this conversation with Bennett
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: surf Um, when they make that bet for what fifty dollars? Right,
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: it works out to a dollar or a word, which
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: I thought was, I don't know if that's on purpose.
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: It's pretty neat, And I think a fifty dollar bet
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: back then would have been a couple of hundred bucks now, right,
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: maybe yeah, a little close, maybe a little closer to four.
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: But but yeah, so it's it's still a significant amount
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: of money, but to this guy who's a best selling author, now,
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: it's not like a make or break thing as far
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: as his bank accounts. So we know where where this
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: falls in the in the doctor Seus's bibliography, this sort
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: of mid career. This was his nineteen sixty when the
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: bed occurs, so that's right after that's three years after
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: Cat in the Hat is relatively earlier, and so when
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: he writes this book, we can only imagine that it's
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: a little less of a laborious process because he's already
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: been through it before with Cat in the Hat. Yeah,
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: except this is like a little bit more challenging. Right,
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: this is really a parent like you know, even limiting
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: his his verbal palette even more. Right. Yeah, so we
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: mentioned that this has a one of the brilliant things
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: about this book is it does actually have a plot
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: that you can follow, you know what I mean, there's
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: some tension in there. What what's the plot? Our protagonist
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: is named Sam. I him, he is Sam Sam, he
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: is well, um yeah, and then there's him, right, and
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: then there's uh, this other character who is who goes
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: nameless and he's sort of a sad sack kind of
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: fellow who Sam keeps trying to force him to eat
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: green eggs and ham. And he proceeds to go through
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: these various scenarios. As our buddy the Quister would say,
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: um and uh, the guy just keeps he's like running
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: away from It's actually kind of a stalker situation because
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: the nameless character is literally trying to escape this Sam
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: I am who keeps popping up with green eggs and ham,
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: you know. And then he's like, you know, what would
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: you do it on a house, a car, a tree,
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: with all these different things with a mouse? Would a
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: mouse change the scene? And exactly exactly, uh, and at
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: the end of the day there there's you know, they're
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: surrounded by the carnage that's been caused by this dude
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: literally trying to run for for his life from the
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: psychotic sam i Am character. I mean, really is if
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: you look back at the book, now Sam i Am
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: is very sinister. He goes hard on, he goes Ham. Yeah,
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: he really does. Yeah. And and green eggs uh. And
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: at the end, the moral of the story is the
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: nameless grumpy dude eats the green eggs in Ham and
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: he likes it, right, Sam, if you will let me be,
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: I will try them. You will see. And then he
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: tries them and say, I like green eggs in Ham?
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: I do? I like them, Sam i Am. And then
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: it goes on the refrain flips and now he's want
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: to do it in all those places. Bring the mouse, please,
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: a fox, you say, like this green eggs in Ham
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: with anything, But I know you can only be a
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: fox of mouse and use a goat a goat. Yeah,
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: that's weird because if you look at the way. One
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: thing is really impressive about this is if you look
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: at just the lyrics or the poetry itself typed out,
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: it's four pages long, which surprised me because we're pages
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: fifty words. It's all about placement. It's like a comic book.
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: I mean a lot of these things are like graphic novels,
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: and the text is very much incorporated into the design.
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: And you know, let's not forget SEUs wrote this text
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: and he drew all the images, and he's single handedly
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: responsible for creating these worlds which are very uniquely him.
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: You know, I think he's he's a pretty interesting artists,
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: kind of a renaissance man in that way. I also
• 17:23
  Speaker 1: think it's funny that both Ham and Goat both have
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: modern day acronym equivalents. And krunk, you know, I think
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: he was onto something. I think he was too. We
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: should we should do a deep dive read into the
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: works of Dr Seuss. We should also mention, by the
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: way that yes, Dr SEUs did succeed. This wasn't like
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: a cat and a hat thing where he went a
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: little over his word count. He managed to make a
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: coherent story with only fifty words. He turned it around
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: really quickly. It was published on August twelfth, nineteen sixty,
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: and it became his best selling book. You know, it's
• 17:59
  Speaker 1: purposely meant for beginning readers, right, But there is one
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: one twist to the story that I find hilarious just
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: because of its petty nature. There's a couple of good twists. Okay,
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: well here's one, and I think this is the question
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: that's on a lot of our minds right now. What
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: happened to the bet? It turns out Bennetts Seraph didn't
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: pay up at all. What a jerk. And he was
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: a co founder a Random House. It's not like he
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: was hurting for the scratch. Did they publish the book? Yes, yes,
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: they did, old Random House and the Living Books Company,
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: So it stands to reason that this dude not only
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: didn't pay up, he benefited from it. So he's the
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: double cheap skate. Yeah, massive benefits. What's one of your twists.
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: There's a couple of other good ones. One of them
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: is that there were some pretty bad reviews for this book,
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: specifically from some children's librarians. Um. The New York Public
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: Library actually had a card catalog of hand typed children's
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: book reviews by their librarian staff. And here is a
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: choice exerpt from one of these reviews is uh, Sam
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: I am won't eat green eggs and ham until after
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: many pages of learning words, he tries them. Book is
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: typical of sus Slate period and his output being as
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: prolific as it is. It's alarming to think of the
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: onslaugh that can ensue if these books are continually out
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: of the collection. This is the best line. There must
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: be better ways of teaching a child to read than
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: this not recommended. I saw that too. It was it
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: was strange because we see this kind of UM harsh
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: reviewing repeated. It's a cyclical thing in children's literature, right,
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: like Cloudy with the Chance of Meatballs also got some
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: shade thrown out. I think there was an issue with
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: it being like not vegan friendly. I think it's like
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: more of like our PC police kind of situation that
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: we're living in right now. Uh, there's a good one here,
• 19:46
  Speaker 1: Ben that you told me about, UM where a federal
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: judge actually um referenced this work in in an opinion,
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: an official judicial opinion. Yes it's true. In two thousand
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: and seven U. S. District Court judge named James muir
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: Head received a hard boiled egg in the mail from
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: an inmate, and the inmate was sending this hard boiled
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: egg through the post to protest his diet while he
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: was incarcerating. The judge ordered the egg destroyed with the
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: following UH with the following language in his UH court order,
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: I do not like eggs in the file. I do
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: not like them in any style. I will not take
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: them fried or boiled. I will not take them poached
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: or broiled. I will not take them soft or scrambled.
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: Despite an argument well rambled, no fan, I am of
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: the egg at hand. Destroy that egg today, today, today,
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: I say, without delay, this judge must have had a
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: long week. He's a real character, is well. You know what?
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: We could also do an episode on bizarre judge rulings,
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: because there have been judges who respond with poetry, sometimes
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: in very serious situations. And there have been judges who,
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: because they have complete jurisdiction, have imposed some really weird,
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: unorthodox penalties for a small crimes. Yeah. Remember that Crib
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: Your Enthusiasm episode where Larry has to wear the sandwich
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: board with the like I steal forks from restaurants or whatever,
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: a scarlet letter punishment like all that. That's a thing. Yeah,
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: and uh, this is just one aspect of the tremendous
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: influence that Green Eggs and Ham specifically has had on
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: modern culture. I think now it's in sixty different formats.
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: It's in a multitude of languages, which confuses me because
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: surely there would be some languages where it's more difficult
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: to do that story just because the sentence structure or something, right,
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: it does seem that way. Well, still, they pulled it off.
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: I would I would love to have a copy of Cream,
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: Eggs and Ham in a different language because it would
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: help me learn that language pretty easily, right, or fifty
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: words of it atly, Yeah, you would have the like
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: a like a first grader's grasp, perhaps no, less kindergarten
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: maybe maybe. And if you so desired, you could potentially
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: use the works of Doctor Zeus to learn Latin, even
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: though it's sort of incorrectly said that Latin is a
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: dead language. But you can definitely find different books that
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: are translated into Latin. But here's the thing. It's hard
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: to translate this kind of stylized writing like Dr Seuss
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: into a language like that, isn't that? Yeah, According to
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: Terrence Tunberg, who's been teaching Latin for decades and decades,
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: Green Eggs and Ham was very difficult to translate. He
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: and his spouse Jennifer, had already translated uh several children's
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: books into Latin, and they tackled Green Eggs and ham
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: with the title being can you help me out with
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: the Latin here? And all? Oh boy, uh vern't over
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: vert Parana with lots of exclamation marks, yeah the uh.
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: The tun Bergs have also translated other Dr Seuss books specifically,
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: but they said this wouldn't was one of the toughest
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: because of the simplified language and the short length. But
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: it's worth doing because it gives Latin a more contemporary
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: feel and it feels less like a dead language. And
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: that is the story of Green Eggs and Hams so far. However,
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: that is not the end of these Doctors Seuss facts.
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: We found several. Some of them are darker, some of
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: them are just kind of hilarious, Like did you hear
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: about how he's traumatized by Teddy Roosevelt? Yeah? I did.
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: Ben I had to do with uh some money he
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: got from his grandfather's in there, right. Yeah. World War
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: one was in full swing and Dr Seuss was a
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: boy scout and he went door to door and eventually,
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: because his his grandfather one thousand dollars worth war bonds.
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: He became one of the most successful war bonds salesman
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: in his town. And they were brought on stage, him
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: and nine other boy scouts to the municipal auditorium. And
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: who was there to present the award Theodore Roosevelt himself,
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: the President of the United States. Yeah, he was there
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: to officiate this ceremony to you know, pin a metal
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: on these plucky young lads. Uh and and and old
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: Teddy Seuss was the last one in line um to
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: receive this major award. And but it turns out that
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: they didn't have enough medals, and the Roosevelt gets to
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: him and he doesn't have anything. He just looks over
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: at the people off stage. It's like, who the hell
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: is this kid? Get him out of here, and they
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: trundle him off stage and he gets nothing. It's like
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: Willie Walker style man. For the rest of his life,
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: he had a crippling fear of crowds, and he actually
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: skipped a lot of speaking engagements when he was a
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: famous author because he was terrified they would be publicly humiliated. Again. Well,
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: there's also not a lot of interviews with him, like
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: video interviews with him that you can even find. Right,
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: let's see what else his uh, His first book was
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: The Complete and Unabridged pocket Book of Boners. Is it
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: just like a visual compendium of different boners. It was, Uh,
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: this is back when a boner just meant an error
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: like that was a real bone. So the book was
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: it was a compilation, but it was a compilation of
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: lists of silly, incorrect answers to questions given by children.
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: It did have a bunch of risk ay jokes and illustrations.
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: He knew the other meaning of boners, and you know
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: he did. He was a body boy was he was? Uh?
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: And I guess you could find a copy of that
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: first published nineteen thirty one, and New York Times called
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: it hilarious. I love sixcinct New York Times reviews like
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: them usually so overly rebose. Have you ever seen Halloween
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: is Grinch Night? Ben? Yeah, I love it. It's so trippy,
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: it's so cool, it's awesome, and it's very psychedelic and
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: uh hetty and strange. So if you haven't seen that one,
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: it's a quick one to watch around Halloween time. It's
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: actually pretty spooky. Was a little kid, And there's all
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: these creatures and Halloween is grinch Night in the Hackensacks
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: or Yowling, and we even talk about that. He invents
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: such a great creature names I love. I'm glad you
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: mentioned this because I have a little bit of a
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: bone to pick with this. I love Halloween is grinch Night. However,
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: I think in some recent years Dr. Seuss's good name
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: has been besmirched with terrible film adaptations such as The
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: Cat in the Hat with Mike Myers. Gross grown, I know,
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: and I used to love Mike Myers when I was
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: a kid. You probably did too, with Wayne's World Side
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: Live all that stuff. Austin Powers. But apparently behind the
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: scenes and we haven't I haven't met the guy at least,
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: so I can't confirm or deny this. But apparently behind
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: the scenes story is he's a real pill to work.
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: I've heard this. You've heard it very much, especially like
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: on track or whatever, like yeah, yeah, I've definitely heard that,
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: which is a shame. Um. You know what else is
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: quite bad? What's up? How the Grinch still Christmas? It
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: was like a short little little book and a short
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: little cartoon and they try to stretch it into like
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: a to our movie. It was a great cartoon all,
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: you know what I mean. It's just I wish they
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: would stop, are we? Does this mean that we're getting old?
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: Isn't there another Grinch reboot coming out there as we're
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: recording this? But I think it's animated or it's like
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: it's like you know, C G I or whatever. Oh.
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: He also invented the word nerd, didn't he did? This
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: guy is a real word smith. So one last thing
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: I would like to contribute. I want to see your
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: opinion on this. No, and we want to hear your opinion.
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: Ridiculous historians. Apparently Dr Seuss had dabbled in erotica. Excuse me, erotica,
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: that's what I thought you said. He had contributed art
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: to something called The Bedroom Companion that had a comic
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: showing Uh. Well, let's just say he contributed to that
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: to that book, and as a condition of his contract
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: later on in life, he said, Okay, I'll write children's
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: books for you only if you let me write an
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: adult book first. The Seven Lady Goodivas a story about
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: seven naked women. Yeah, and they're writing on one of
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: his um you know, like signature, kind of nondescriptive beasts like,
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: it's not it's not a horse, it's not a hippo.
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: I don't know what a dusky. It's it's its own thing.
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: It's got traits of all of those. It's probably got
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: a name like a Barkernof or something exactly. There you go, Ben,
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: and it is, you know, a stride. This uh creature
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: is uh two three or four, six, seven naked women
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: of all shapes and sizes. Yeah, in his defense of
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: all stripes and sizes. Here's the thing, why do we
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: need to defend them? This is this is delightful. Well,
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: the book flopped and he was kind of uh, he
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: was kind of pot about it because he had to
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: settle for a career as a children's writer. This is
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: a quote from Dr SEUs. Okay, that's not us say
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: it's a quote from him. He said, I tried to
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: draw the sexiest babes I could, but they came out
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: looking absurd. Well, what the what do they look like?
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: Dr Seuss characters? What did you think? There's nothing sexy
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: about them. They've all got like who hair? Yes, they're
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: all Hoovian yeah, big time. Wow, you can't say the
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: guy wasn't interesting. When did he pass ben. Dr SEUs
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: actually lived a very long time. He did not pass
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: away until September. He was eight seven years old. I
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: remember that. I remember when it happened. I mean I
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: was very young, but I definitely distinctly remember the death
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: of Dr Seuss. You know who else another personal legend
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: of ours who passed away recently, Stanley. You know, it's
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: it's strange because I'm sure that he'll still be in
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: Cammy for a few more movies because they must have
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: filmed a bunch. I guess they would have had to. Yeah,
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: it makes sense to do it in a batch. And
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: this reminds me in nineties. Yeah, he did look great,
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: and he also growing up as a kid who didn't
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: have a ton of friends, I think stan Lee taught
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: me a ton about reading and really added to my vocabulary.
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: You know what I mean. He's he's the guy who
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: brought back excelsior. Yeah. I keep saying that. I don't
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: know what that means. It's like excellent, Oh, okay, got it.
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: There were a lot of tributes to him when he
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: passed away, and everyone was saying excelsior. I thought it
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: was some sort of stomach medicine. It's it's used to
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: I guess it means that something is of superior quality.
• 30:42
  Speaker 1: Got it like a little more flashy way of saying
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: grade A number one. But this the reason I'm bringing
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: up Stanley here, Noel, is because you and I made
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: a mandate and we we got a kind of a
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: bumpy start. Our mandate was to recommend comic book. Remember
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: we did do that. We did do we did say that,
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: and we kind of you know, this is a perfect
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: episode to do that in because I would I would
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: argue that SEUs is kind of a graphic novelist in
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: some ways. I would agree, I would agree. What do
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: you what are you digging these days? These days? I'm
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: digging some Okay, I've been really into some horror comics
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: because you know, it's always kind of Halloween in my heart.
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: And uh, there's a comic called Regression, which is terrifying,
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: not for children, it's about reincarnation. And then there's another
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: comic series that's complete called The Clean Room, which is
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: about aliens or maybe something different to say anymore would be,
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: uh to do a disservice. Have you have have you
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: had a chance to check out Nameless? Nameless? Yes? Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: Nameless was the one shot four issues right, yes, by
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: Grant Morrison, who I'm always in love with everything he does.
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: I'm just really trippy out there, existent chill, dread almost
• 32:01
  Speaker 1: he kind of veers into love crafty and territory and
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: this one is no exception. This one's about like space
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: madness and just like demonic possession and asticism and all
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: kinds of crazy stuff doorways to other dimensions. But it's
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: a tight little story and the art is insane, insanely
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: not for the faint of heart. Yeah, not only is
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: not for children, I would say it's not for you
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: if you're already feeling a little bit, you know, less
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: than good. It's agreed. It's a bit of a bummer.
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: I'm so glad you read that one, man. I Um,
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: that's one of those that I keep buying copies of
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: and they keep giving them away. Yeah. I have a
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: hardcover of it, and it just the art is just
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: alone is fantastic. So we have met our mandate. For
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: this episode, we talked about a crazy, weird children's book
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: Guy recommended some comics, had a good time, learned the
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: origins of the word crunk and nerd invented a new
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: uh phrase to yell out an exclamation zoi zoie. It's
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: also kind of like noise noise zice noy soyce and
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: we hope that you enjoyed this episode even half as
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: much as we enjoyed exploring this story with you. That's
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: all for today. Stay tuned for our next episode, when
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: we examine beer, a lot of beer, a whole lot
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: of beer, like a dangerous amount of beer. Yeah. In
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: the meantime, thanks of course to our super producer Casey Pegrum,
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: Thanks to our research associate Gabe, Thanks to Alex Williams
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: our Pal who composed our theme. And thanks to you
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: Ben for being a dapper and intelligent co host. As always,
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: thanks man, I recently did my laundry. That's probably smell
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: fresh and clean, my man. Thank you. You're welcome. Goodbye, everyone,