Latest / Ridiculous History / The Story of Max, South Africa's Famous, Crime-fighting Gorilla

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The Story of Max, South Africa's Famous, Crime-fighting Gorilla · Ridiculous History

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Speaker 1: Ye, Welcome to the show, fellow ridiculous historians, friends and neighbors,
0:29
Speaker 1: US residents and citizens of the world alike. We are
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Speaker 1: going on a journey today to a different part of
0:38
Speaker 1: the world, and what better way to get into it
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Speaker 1: than to open with a question, nol, have you ever
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Speaker 1: seen a guerrilla in real life? Yes, at the Columbia
0:48
Speaker 1: Zoo in Columbia, South Carolina, they have. They have a
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Speaker 1: guerrilla situation there, a guerrilla situation. Have a guerrilla sitch?
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Speaker 1: Now over backs? I believe, Oh, and I'm ben. Oh,
1:00
Speaker 1: of course you are. And we have to, of course
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Speaker 1: give a shout out to our long suffering super producer,
1:05
Speaker 1: Casey Pegram. He's still in the wind, but he's here
1:10
Speaker 1: in spirit. In fact, today we are kind of producerless
1:14
Speaker 1: and peek behind the curtain. It is Memorial Day and
1:17
Speaker 1: we are here in the office making this episode just
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Speaker 1: for you, just for you, specifically you. Yes, if you're listening,
1:24
Speaker 1: you're thinking we're talking about a general do you know
1:27
Speaker 1: we don't do that. No, it's specifically you. And what
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Speaker 1: better way to start, we thought today than to talk
1:34
Speaker 1: a little bit about gorillas. These are amazing creatures they
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Speaker 1: are and and and they are majestic and also um
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Speaker 1: quite powerful. Oh yeah, a lot of upper body strength.
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Speaker 1: They got those big old four arms and those tiny
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Speaker 1: little back legs. But man, I would not want to
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Speaker 1: run into one in a dark alley or you know,
1:55
Speaker 1: accidentally end up flung into its pen. Yeah. They're the
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Speaker 1: largest living price mate. Males are about twice the size
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Speaker 1: of females, so a male gorilla can weigh up the
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Speaker 1: four hundred pounds. And they're they have opposable thumbs just
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Speaker 1: like us, right, so they can manipulate, hold and carry things.
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Speaker 1: They're also really really smart and they are uh fun fact,
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Speaker 1: although they look like they might be ferocious carnivores, they're not.
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Speaker 1: Remember cocomm cocoa, the sign language guerilla, right, heartwarming story.
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Speaker 1: There still still a little controversial in the science. But
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Speaker 1: I don't know, man, that that stuff can break your
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Speaker 1: heart because it feels like it's having very human, self aware,
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Speaker 1: sapient interactions. If you want the men to double down
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Speaker 1: on the heartbreak, then there's actually a picture of Robin
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Speaker 1: Williams kicking it with Coco and it will jerk some
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Speaker 1: tears right out of your eye holes if you look
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Speaker 1: at that one eye holes. Oh, the Rick and Morty
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Speaker 1: reference that we're just gonna leave there. What is it?
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Speaker 1: Terry flaps? Yeah, texted me. But on the way up,
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Speaker 1: you're downstairs and you you asked me if I wanted
3:02
Speaker 1: to touch your terry flaps. Yes, that is a that
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Speaker 1: is a reference. Don't go calling hr on us, folks.
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Speaker 1: That is a reference to Rick and Morty. But but
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Speaker 1: the statement of eiholes, Yeah, it's it's true. It will
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Speaker 1: hurt your eye holes and your hearth holes. To see
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Speaker 1: Robin Williams with that, that lovely gorilla. Now, Coco has
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Speaker 1: something in common with our with our protagonist or a
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Speaker 1: tragic hero of today's story, because Coco is a type
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Speaker 1: of gorilla called a Western Lowland gorilla. Western lowland gorillas
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Speaker 1: are the primary type of gorilla that you will see
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Speaker 1: in a zoo across the world. There are some exceptions.
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Speaker 1: There's an Eastern Lowland gorilla that lives at the Antwerp Zoo,
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Speaker 1: and there are some mountain gorillas that live in the
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Speaker 1: Democratic Republic of the Congo. And I mean zoo gorillas,
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Speaker 1: not gorillas in the wild. So typically, if you are
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Speaker 1: imagining a gorilla exhibit, you have seen or a preservation
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Speaker 1: you've seen here in the States, then it is going
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Speaker 1: to be Uh, it's going to be a home to
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Speaker 1: western lowland gorillas. They're generally lighter colored than Eastern guerrillas,
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Speaker 1: but in terms of behavior, they're still the same. They're
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Speaker 1: they're very intelligent, they're tremendously strong, they're calm until they're
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Speaker 1: not well. They're they're highly territorial. They will protect their
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Speaker 1: turf and their own If you come up upon them
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Speaker 1: and oppose a threat, they will go to great length
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Speaker 1: to defend themselves and their loved ones. And occasionally these
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Speaker 1: stories pop up in the news like Harambee, the gorilla
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Speaker 1: who was tragically put to death. A little kid fell
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Speaker 1: in the pen. When a kid a human child something
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Speaker 1: sounds so creepy and David Bowie esque and Labyrinth saying
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Speaker 1: human child. Well, a kid fell in and as a result,
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Speaker 1: Rombe was put to sleep. Yeah. Uh. And today's story
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Speaker 1: centers on a humane man, a human man, yes it
5:12
Speaker 1: was once a human child, and a gorilla named Max
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Speaker 1: who lived at the Johannesburg Zoo. So, as the story goes,
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Speaker 1: a guy was fleeing the police. He had he had
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Speaker 1: robbed some houses. He was on the lamb. He was
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Speaker 1: on the run, and uh, he vaulted offense. I'm trying
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Speaker 1: to picture how this happened, Like, did he know what
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Speaker 1: he was getting into? Was He's like, that's cool, I'll
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Speaker 1: figure this out. Anyway, vaulted defence, running from the cops,
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Speaker 1: ended up inside Max's guerrilla pit, yeah, that he shared
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Speaker 1: with his um life partner Lisa, his mate, his better half.
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Speaker 1: So this guy, this criminal Isaac Mofo Keng, jumps into
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Speaker 1: the zoo as as you said, Noel, and Max, as
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Speaker 1: we had established Elier being a gorilla, is thinking, who
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Speaker 1: the heck is this? This is not a zookeeper. This
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Speaker 1: is not one of the people that I know, and
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Speaker 1: so he defends his territory. What we mean by that
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Speaker 1: is he displays signs of intimidation and he moves toward
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Speaker 1: Isaac Mofo King and Mofo King. Unfortunately for Max was
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Speaker 1: armed and he put a few slugs and an ald
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Speaker 1: Max didn't. He shot him in the chest, but that
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Speaker 1: was not enough to stop a four pounds angry gorilla.
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Speaker 1: So Max bites Isaac and you know, we try to
6:46
Speaker 1: be a family show, but bites him in the butt essentially,
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Speaker 1: and It sounds hilarious now, but that is a grievous wound.
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Speaker 1: So he has Isaac Mofo Ken bitten in the buttocks.
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Speaker 1: He's pinned him against the wall. This man is about
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Speaker 1: to die. Police intervene and in the process of rescuing Isaac,
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Speaker 1: the police officers, at least two of them are also injured.
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Speaker 1: By Max, He's not having it well. I mean, you know,
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Speaker 1: he can't differentiate at this point between friend or foe.
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Speaker 1: He's he's already been threatened. And then these other schmos
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Speaker 1: show up trying to apprehend the suspect, and to Max,
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Speaker 1: they're just another part of the problem. They are trespassing
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Speaker 1: on his land and he's been shot. He got he
7:30
Speaker 1: got shot in the chest and then in the neck,
7:32
Speaker 1: right through the neck um. But I think the one
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Speaker 1: in the neck passed right through. I want to say, luckily,
7:39
Speaker 1: the one in the chest was not a mortal wound, thankfully,
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Speaker 1: And in fact, I think they actually left it in.
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Speaker 1: They left the bullet in because it would have been
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Speaker 1: more traumatic for Max if they had had to dig
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Speaker 1: around and do surgery to get it out. And they
7:51
Speaker 1: put him down, yeah, under anesthetic rather. But we are
7:55
Speaker 1: getting ahead of ourselves. We are getting a little bit
7:58
Speaker 1: ahead of ourselves. There's just a there's just a bit
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Speaker 1: more color we should add to the story here, because
8:05
Speaker 1: in many other countries and many other points in time,
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Speaker 1: this may have been a story that you hear as
8:14
Speaker 1: a three to four minute piece on your evening news
8:16
Speaker 1: right you turn it, you tune into channel eleven whatever,
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Speaker 1: and people are saying, strange story from a local Columbia
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Speaker 1: zoo or something. However, this was Johannesburg, South Africa in
8:30
Speaker 1: the late nineties. People were tremendously concerned about crime in
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Speaker 1: the city and so Max became um became famous for this. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: something of a symbol you know of I don't know,
8:44
Speaker 1: maybe rule of laws not the right term, and just
8:46
Speaker 1: the idea of pushing back against criminals that were just everywhere.
8:51
Speaker 1: The wave of chrime was just awful. And you know,
8:53
Speaker 1: we're gonna get a little more into this, but we
8:55
Speaker 1: also haven't really talked about the fact that this is
8:57
Speaker 1: the nineties and our show is called ridiculou This history
9:01
Speaker 1: and the notion of the of not the nineties seems
9:04
Speaker 1: a little off even for us. We're like, is this
9:06
Speaker 1: really historical? But man, was at a different time. It
9:10
Speaker 1: was a very different time. And the way that we
9:13
Speaker 1: decided to approach this was to look at what we
9:18
Speaker 1: would call a cutoff date, right, like, at what point
9:21
Speaker 1: does something become history even though we're creating it every
9:24
Speaker 1: single second of our lives. I think we can all
9:27
Speaker 1: agree that right now two thousand and eight would still
9:31
Speaker 1: be a little too recent, right, but nineteen nine, not
9:34
Speaker 1: to mention the history surrounding this time in Johannesburg and
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Speaker 1: South African in general, we forget, I certainly forgot that apartheid.
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Speaker 1: This this this institutionalized racist government that owned South Africa
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Speaker 1: for decades, had only just ended and there was severe
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Speaker 1: fall out. You know, they had democracy for the first
10:00
Speaker 1: time after the end of apartheid. This um again institutionalized
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Speaker 1: um segregation of the majority black population of the country
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Speaker 1: and by the minority white government of the country. We
10:15
Speaker 1: can get in a little bit more specifics about that
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Speaker 1: in a minute, but that's the call. That's the atmosphere
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Speaker 1: here in the crime. You know, the non political violence
10:24
Speaker 1: is there's no rule of law. It's like a free
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Speaker 1: for all industry. Absolutely as a total powder key and
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Speaker 1: this idea of max I think it could be argued
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Speaker 1: it was sort of a beacon of hope that was
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Speaker 1: very quickly latched onto by the community. Yeah. Yeah. One
10:42
Speaker 1: thing that may be useful by way of comparison for
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Speaker 1: our American listeners is to think of McGruff the crime Dog.
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Speaker 1: Do you remember mcguffe? I do, and he but he
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Speaker 1: was a cartoon and he was pretty inspiring just as
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Speaker 1: a cartoon. This was a real life guerrilla that had
10:57
Speaker 1: weathered this chaotic environment. And the reason the reason I
11:01
Speaker 1: bring up the McGruff comparison is because Max becomes this
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Speaker 1: very useful symbol for the police, as we said, and
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Speaker 1: he has merchandise that comes out. We've got stuffed Max
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Speaker 1: dolls and McGruff would take a bite out of crime.
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Speaker 1: Max took a bite out of the butt of crime. Yes,
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Speaker 1: and Max was also as as you had said, Max
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Speaker 1: was real. This was a real incident. But he didn't
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Speaker 1: just get stuffed animals made in his likeness. He became
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Speaker 1: a celebrity. And I don't know if you had ever
11:38
Speaker 1: heard this word, but this was my first time reading
11:40
Speaker 1: the word spokes beast. Was he a pan sexual, non
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Speaker 1: threatening spokes thing? Remember that for Mr show Pat Yeah, Yeah, yeah,
11:49
Speaker 1: spokes beast. He was, um the spokesbeast for La Bombo
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Speaker 1: Bananas and he actually got paid with a year's supply
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Speaker 1: of free bananas. They literally made it rain bananas on
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Speaker 1: Max Catching. A computer company hired him to pose in
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Speaker 1: ads for its new software. Yeah. I wonder what the
12:09
Speaker 1: software was called. I couldn't. I couldn't find any specifics
12:12
Speaker 1: about that, but it was, um, yeah, you have a
12:14
Speaker 1: gorilla kind of shilling your software for you. That's that's interesting.
12:18
Speaker 1: He must have really been beloved. Um. There was. There
12:21
Speaker 1: was a drink, an energy drink which I love the
12:24
Speaker 1: name of its just called Energade or inner Gate. I
12:26
Speaker 1: was wondering, is the inner Gate or energy as well?
12:29
Speaker 1: It's sort of like a Gatorade equivalent. I guess. Um.
12:33
Speaker 1: They they signed up Max after they learned that that
12:37
Speaker 1: was Max's favorite drink for taking antibiotics. At the zoo,
12:41
Speaker 1: the zookeepers would slip his meds into, um, a nice
12:45
Speaker 1: refreshing bottle of Energade, and so he thought he was
12:47
Speaker 1: having a juice party, which you know that I can
12:51
Speaker 1: easily see that happen because if inner Gate or Energade
12:54
Speaker 1: is anything like gatorade or power aide. Then it's probably
12:59
Speaker 1: very sugary. Right. So a bank and a construction company
13:04
Speaker 1: also sponsored Max, meaning that they contributed money to the
13:08
Speaker 1: zoo for his upkeep, medical bills, feeding, et cetera. Yeah,
13:12
Speaker 1: like upgrading his pen, things like that, the infrastructure. Because
13:16
Speaker 1: again he was like a local. He was in a
13:19
Speaker 1: national treasure, you know, a local hero. We got to
13:21
Speaker 1: tell the newspaper story. This is great. Yeah, the Saturday
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Speaker 1: Star Um paid Bucks for a photo or I guess
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Speaker 1: for a photo shoot where Max was browsing the paper
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Speaker 1: and they got the photos. After they got the photos,
13:35
Speaker 1: because Max clearly as a professional at this point, after
13:38
Speaker 1: they got the photos, he went ahead and ate every
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Speaker 1: page of the paper. He was a fan. He was
13:44
Speaker 1: a fan. He was trying to take it all in
13:46
Speaker 1: through osmosis. It's similar to uh, what Maurice Sendak called
13:50
Speaker 1: the highest praise he had ever received, the children's author
13:53
Speaker 1: of Where the Wild Things Are Uh. He said he
13:56
Speaker 1: received a note from a fan who that they enjoyed
14:01
Speaker 1: his book, reading it, and they also wanted to eat it.
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Speaker 1: My girlfriend asked me the strangest question the other day.
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Speaker 1: She said, have you ever eaten paper? To keep someone
14:10
Speaker 1: from getting it, like like a note. And at first
14:14
Speaker 1: I was like, what do you talk? What do you mean?
14:15
Speaker 1: And she just you know, I mean, like, if you
14:17
Speaker 1: have a teacher caught you passing a note in class,
14:20
Speaker 1: rather than having her confiscated and see what horrid things
14:23
Speaker 1: you were writing, just eat it. Yeah, I'm like, that
14:27
Speaker 1: is baller. That sounds like something people should not admit
14:31
Speaker 1: to doing. Well, I'm sorry for throwing her under the bus,
14:33
Speaker 1: but you guys don't know did she did? She admitted,
14:36
Speaker 1: She admitted it. Yeah, I mean it's resourceful. I think
14:39
Speaker 1: so too. But what was she possibly writing that would
14:42
Speaker 1: have been like worth consuming right there in front of
14:45
Speaker 1: the teacher. Overthrow the teacher. The revolution is now, I
14:48
Speaker 1: think so. Speaking of which, yes, speaking of which, we
14:52
Speaker 1: could go on to list some of nax's sponsorships, but
14:56
Speaker 1: it's more important, we feel too, explore why this occurred,
15:02
Speaker 1: whence this came? So we mentioned, we mentioned apartheid, We
15:07
Speaker 1: we mentioned uh, the distinction between political and non political crime,
15:14
Speaker 1: and unfortunately we could do an entirely different show on
15:18
Speaker 1: the systemic causes of apartheid, the process of combating it,
15:24
Speaker 1: and the ramifications of apartheid that remain in Johannesburg in
15:30
Speaker 1: the modern day. But we feel the cultural ecology from
15:37
Speaker 1: from which Max's celebrity arises is as important as the
15:42
Speaker 1: details of that that moment in the zoo, oh for sure,
15:45
Speaker 1: dare we say much more important. But Max being like
15:49
Speaker 1: almost like a batman esque figure like and in Johannesburg,
15:52
Speaker 1: in South Africa being the Gotham city, everyone needs a
15:55
Speaker 1: hero they can look to, that they can believe, they
15:58
Speaker 1: can believe in. And as silly as that sound ounds, uh,
16:00
Speaker 1: And you know we're editorializing a little bit here, but
16:03
Speaker 1: I can't help but think that's what caused this guerrilla
16:07
Speaker 1: to reach such heights of of celebrity. You know, Um,
16:11
Speaker 1: just a bit of background, because I I did not
16:13
Speaker 1: know quite how far back this stretched. Apartheid became law
16:18
Speaker 1: in South Africa in nineteen fifty. Um, things like marriages
16:24
Speaker 1: between um, white people and black people were forbidden, any
16:29
Speaker 1: kind of sexual relations. The idea was to separate not
16:33
Speaker 1: only black people from white people, but black people from
16:36
Speaker 1: each other and like sectionalize them into different uh. They
16:40
Speaker 1: called them, you know, tribal factions or whatever, and it
16:44
Speaker 1: kept them from organizing and kept them from fighting back
16:47
Speaker 1: and having political power. Right Um, they had to carry papers.
16:52
Speaker 1: It was like Nazi Germany, I mean, and and this again,
16:55
Speaker 1: this did not really fully come to an end, at
16:58
Speaker 1: least on the books until right. Yeah. This, this process
17:04
Speaker 1: of setting aside territory and for black inhabitants of South
17:09
Speaker 1: Africa at the time was the things that we're making
17:13
Speaker 1: were known as Bantu stands, and ten of them were
17:17
Speaker 1: established in South Africa to concentrate members of certain ethnic groups,
17:23
Speaker 1: making those groups, in the opinion of the ruling party,
17:27
Speaker 1: ethically homogeneous and making them nation states. But it also
17:33
Speaker 1: it also, as you said, had the clear effect of
17:37
Speaker 1: removing or or stymying the ability of people to band
17:41
Speaker 1: together in a larger force to combat apartheid. Apartheid was
17:46
Speaker 1: based on the principle known as boss cop. Now neither
17:51
Speaker 1: no nor I speak this language, but boss cop with
17:55
Speaker 1: two a's to s is was this. It's this concept
17:59
Speaker 1: that translates from Afrikaans to something like boss ship, like
18:05
Speaker 1: being the boss or domination. It's it's essentially it's white supremacy.
18:09
Speaker 1: And the idea of the National Party at this time
18:16
Speaker 1: was very much solidly based in the old concepts of colonialism,
18:24
Speaker 1: the idea that there is some sort of a stature,
18:29
Speaker 1: there's some sort of inborn superiority, depending on how one
18:35
Speaker 1: defines a race or whatever. And we must also point
18:38
Speaker 1: out that these kinds of concepts, this white supremacy stuff
18:43
Speaker 1: is not is not a just a general all white
18:48
Speaker 1: people are better, because there are also levels in their
18:51
Speaker 1: white supremacists ideas that certain white people are you know,
18:54
Speaker 1: somehow better than other white people, etcetera. And these concepts
18:59
Speaker 1: go back to the very founding of South Africa as
19:02
Speaker 1: an independent nation. In nineteen thirteen, this thing called the
19:06
Speaker 1: Land Act was passed um that began this segregation um
19:11
Speaker 1: of Black Africans and the minority whites, and also deprived
19:17
Speaker 1: Black Africans of the ability to work as sharecroppers and
19:22
Speaker 1: they were you know, denied away a means of of
19:26
Speaker 1: an income essentially. Yeah. Absolutely, And this again, this applied
19:30
Speaker 1: not just to people that the governing forces characterized as black.
19:36
Speaker 1: It applied to people that they characterized as non white
19:40
Speaker 1: in any ways. So this also included what would be
19:42
Speaker 1: described as South Asians or people they would have called
19:45
Speaker 1: Indians at the time, and it would split up families
19:48
Speaker 1: because a mother, for example, could be considered um black
19:52
Speaker 1: or Bantu, and then um A, a child or a
19:57
Speaker 1: spouse could be classified different, and it would literally break
20:01
Speaker 1: up these families. Yeah, yeah, that's spot on. Through the
20:06
Speaker 1: dual use of bureaucracy and brutality, they attempted to and
20:11
Speaker 1: in some spheres succeeded in taking this insane notion and
20:18
Speaker 1: enforcing it or or bringing it to uh, horrific reality
20:24
Speaker 1: on innocent people. These are not you know, it's not
20:27
Speaker 1: like a weird punishment they made up for soldiers. These
20:31
Speaker 1: are civilians. These are children, and we see already an
20:37
Speaker 1: unsustainable situation. Things like what we see historically. What we
20:42
Speaker 1: find is that in cases of discrimination, which always always exists,
20:49
Speaker 1: in cases where this sort of execrable suppression and oppression
20:55
Speaker 1: of people occurs, there is almost always going to be
21:00
Speaker 1: a backlash. Yeah, instant opposition in the form of the
21:05
Speaker 1: African National Congress as early as the nineteen thirteen Land Act,
21:09
Speaker 1: that controversial law that was passed. Um. And this is
21:13
Speaker 1: the party that would be like like, if we're talking
21:18
Speaker 1: rebels versus you know, the empire, these are the rebels, right,
21:23
Speaker 1: We're in Star Wars parlance here, Um and it wasn't
21:25
Speaker 1: until the late forties that the idea of apartheid actually began.
21:31
Speaker 1: Um the Afrikaan or National Party actually won an election
21:36
Speaker 1: using this is the first time you started seeing this
21:38
Speaker 1: word apartheid, which means separateness. There's as a fantastic rundown
21:43
Speaker 1: um of of all of this in the timeline of
21:45
Speaker 1: Apartheid on history dot com um that I that I
21:47
Speaker 1: recommend checking out for sure. It gives you a pretty
21:50
Speaker 1: deep dive into some of this, and we're not going
21:52
Speaker 1: to go into the minutia of all of it, because
21:53
Speaker 1: it's a whole, like you said, been a whole story
21:56
Speaker 1: unto itself. But from the very start you have this
21:59
Speaker 1: opposition and a culture of violence, a culture of war essentially. Yeah,
22:06
Speaker 1: So the precedence for these racist beliefs existed for a
22:11
Speaker 1: long long time. They were codified in the late forties.
22:16
Speaker 1: But the history of the African National Congress, as as
22:20
Speaker 1: you said, doesn't start just there in the forties. The
22:24
Speaker 1: origins go back. You'll you'll hear people report that the
22:29
Speaker 1: African National Congress really starts or it's the first inklings
22:34
Speaker 1: of this begin and when a fellow named Pixley caa
22:38
Speaker 1: Osaka Semi says in nineteen eleven, forget all the past
22:42
Speaker 1: differences among Africans and unite in one national organization. It's
22:47
Speaker 1: also really important to say this that during the times
22:49
Speaker 1: of colonialism, many of the borders that were established in
22:54
Speaker 1: the modern states now were created to purposefully divide existing communities.
23:02
Speaker 1: So now it doesn't matter if for time immemorial, you
23:06
Speaker 1: and you and this the rest of your community have
23:10
Speaker 1: lived in this one area. Right the once the national
23:13
Speaker 1: lines are drawn by these European powers, all of a sudden,
23:17
Speaker 1: you are different states. It's almost like a more extreme
23:21
Speaker 1: version of something like jerrymandering, where you're sort of um
23:25
Speaker 1: rigging the game against people to ensure that they have
23:28
Speaker 1: no voice politically. Right from the perspective of the pro
23:39
Speaker 1: apartheid National Party, the activities of the National Congress are
23:46
Speaker 1: terrorism essentially. That's that's what they're that's what they are
23:50
Speaker 1: perceiving it as. That's what they're portraying it as in
23:53
Speaker 1: the international media. But you gotta fight fire with fireban
23:56
Speaker 1: I mean, these these uh it's essentially a fascist regime,
24:01
Speaker 1: you know, that is that is trying to um utterly
24:04
Speaker 1: crush any kind of resistance with violence, and the only
24:08
Speaker 1: way to fight back against that is with more violence,
24:11
Speaker 1: and unfortunately a lot of the time. I mean, that's
24:13
Speaker 1: the thing. The history of this country is is so
24:17
Speaker 1: rooted in conflict, just constant conflict from the beginning until
24:22
Speaker 1: apartheid came to an end in the early nineties. Well,
24:26
Speaker 1: the conflicts change, perhaps, that's what I'm saying, Like the
24:29
Speaker 1: notion of it coming to an end in them establishing
24:32
Speaker 1: real democracy. That does not happen overnight, especially when you've
24:35
Speaker 1: just had constant struggle for decades and decades, it becomes ingrained.
24:39
Speaker 1: You know. In nineteen sixty seventy black demonstrators are killed
24:44
Speaker 1: in Sharpeville and the African National Congress is officially banned.
24:49
Speaker 1: So just just like ten years after the government comes
24:54
Speaker 1: to power, they classify everybody by race. Oh, they also
24:58
Speaker 1: banned the commun This Party as well in nineteen fifty.
25:03
Speaker 1: Let me go back for a second. In nineteen fifty,
25:05
Speaker 1: Nelson Mandela is responding to the banning of the Communist Party,
25:10
Speaker 1: these racial classifications and such by launching a campaign of
25:15
Speaker 1: civil disobedience. But when the A and C is officially
25:19
Speaker 1: banned in nineteen sixty one, year later, Nelson Mandela in
25:24
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty one heads the African National Congress's new military wing,
25:30
Speaker 1: which launches sabotage campaigns, and these become, you know, these
25:35
Speaker 1: become on the ground operations. So no more civil disobedience.
25:39
Speaker 1: These are acts too meant to purposely in some way
25:44
Speaker 1: cripple the function of the government. Absolutely, I mean, they
25:47
Speaker 1: are in open rebellion. And Nelson Mandela, after many of
25:52
Speaker 1: the leaders of the movement were jailed or executed, Mandela
25:57
Speaker 1: um was imprisoned as as as you know, for quite
26:00
Speaker 1: a long time, from nineteen sixty three until I believe
26:04
Speaker 1: just nineteen ninety and they kind of bounced him all
26:07
Speaker 1: over town, didn't they been, Yeah, yeah, he was. He
26:10
Speaker 1: was originally jailed in Marshall Square Prison in Johannesburg. He,
26:16
Speaker 1: along with his codefendants, admitted that they had committed acts
26:22
Speaker 1: of sabotage, but denied that they were waging guerilla war
26:27
Speaker 1: against the government. Of course, their sentenced to life in prison,
26:30
Speaker 1: although the prosecutor demanded the death sentence. Mandela is eventually
26:35
Speaker 1: transferred to Robin Island, where he is forced to live
26:40
Speaker 1: for the next eighteen years, and at this point he's thinking,
26:44
Speaker 1: you know, I may be in jail for the rest
26:47
Speaker 1: of my natural life. Uh. He gets transferred to a
26:51
Speaker 1: couple of different prisons. There is also a free Mandela
26:57
Speaker 1: protests taking place at that time. The politics still stop
27:00
Speaker 1: because he is imprisoned, and he in many ways becomes
27:03
Speaker 1: a symbol for the fight against apartheid. He gets transferred
27:08
Speaker 1: to a prison in Cape Town called polls More Prison,
27:12
Speaker 1: and the conditions they're a little better than they are
27:15
Speaker 1: at Robin Island. But then he gets transferred to Victor
27:19
Speaker 1: Verster Prison. You're a place called part uh. And he
27:23
Speaker 1: eventually going back to what what you said. No, He
27:27
Speaker 1: eventually in nineteen is freed. He is freed, and he
27:32
Speaker 1: am in league with the current president FW de Clerk,
27:37
Speaker 1: who was the head of the government at the time.
27:40
Speaker 1: They worked together to repeal many of these apartheid laws
27:46
Speaker 1: that have been on the books for so long and
27:48
Speaker 1: established a new constitution which gave African black citizens the
27:55
Speaker 1: right to vote democratically and other racial groups that we're
28:00
Speaker 1: also discriminated against, as you mentioned, non whites, and all
28:04
Speaker 1: of this went into play in they started free elections
28:10
Speaker 1: and essentially laid the groundwork for having a free and
28:15
Speaker 1: democratic society right. The a n C campaigns to their
28:19
Speaker 1: slogan is a better life for all and there's a
28:23
Speaker 1: focus on development. This is around the time that the
28:28
Speaker 1: the world, much of which was already against the pre
28:33
Speaker 1: existing system of apartheid. This is when the world also
28:37
Speaker 1: starts to actively support Nelson Mandela in the a n
28:41
Speaker 1: C through the soft diplomacy of international accolades and awards,
28:46
Speaker 1: most particularly the Nobel Prize. He shared that with the
28:50
Speaker 1: Clerk and the the campaign was meant to not just
28:58
Speaker 1: break the system, but to build a better one. They
29:02
Speaker 1: had and continue to pursue as we're going to find
29:05
Speaker 1: uh noble goals. One such would be the idea of
29:08
Speaker 1: building a million houses in five years, free education, access
29:14
Speaker 1: to water and electricity because many people went without it.
29:17
Speaker 1: And this constitution was insanely forward thinking, had so many
29:23
Speaker 1: protections built into the language. UM, protections UM that we
29:28
Speaker 1: don't have on the books that we fight for daily
29:32
Speaker 1: in this country, protection for gays and lesbians, leading to
29:36
Speaker 1: the being called the Rainbow Nation. The Rainbow nation exactly. UM.
29:39
Speaker 1: Not only that some of those very progressive ideas of
29:42
Speaker 1: how to establish good housing for the poor, UM, the
29:46
Speaker 1: idea of basic human rights to education, to healthcare, UM,
29:52
Speaker 1: workers rights, UM, access to information um again, women, gays
29:59
Speaker 1: and lesbians, children, environmental protections UM. And then there's this
30:04
Speaker 1: thing that I thought was so cool. It's called the
30:06
Speaker 1: principle of the ratchet and this was language built into
30:10
Speaker 1: this constitution that said, essentially, even if the government can't
30:14
Speaker 1: with the resources currently available, give all of these things
30:17
Speaker 1: like schools, housing, clean water to every community all at once,
30:22
Speaker 1: it has to convince the courts that they are working
30:26
Speaker 1: towards it in a fundamentally real way, which is fantastic
30:31
Speaker 1: because it's a baked in accountability. Right. And while we
30:36
Speaker 1: are rightly praising the a n C for doing a
30:40
Speaker 1: thing that many people around the world once thought was impossible,
30:45
Speaker 1: we do also have to acknowledge that the way they
30:48
Speaker 1: got there, uh did involve what you know did did
30:53
Speaker 1: involve more than non violence and more than sabotage of
30:58
Speaker 1: industrial stuff in There's an article in The New York
31:02
Speaker 1: Times from that examines how senior officials of the African
31:08
Speaker 1: National Congress later after taking powers, said that they had,
31:16
Speaker 1: if not actively participating in some of the guerrilla violence
31:23
Speaker 1: that Mandela had been accused of and his co defendants.
31:26
Speaker 1: They could have at the very least done something to
31:30
Speaker 1: stop it. They were tacitly aiding people who were perpetrating
31:34
Speaker 1: these events. Again, not all on, not all on just
31:38
Speaker 1: you know, soldiers of the pro apartheid side, but again men,
31:41
Speaker 1: women and children. The line becomes so blurred because so
31:44
Speaker 1: many of these groups are are a little independent offshoots um,
31:48
Speaker 1: independent rebel groups, militias that are armed, because apparently in
31:53
Speaker 1: you could buy an A K forty seven on the
31:56
Speaker 1: black market for what would equate to about fifteen dollars America.
32:00
Speaker 1: In UM, there's this incredibly moving and disturbing article in
32:04
Speaker 1: The New Republic from called South Africa's Violent Road to
32:09
Speaker 1: Real Democracy and it mentioned some of these statistics about
32:12
Speaker 1: in the a K forty and how supposedly at the
32:15
Speaker 1: time you could order a hit for that same amount
32:19
Speaker 1: fifty rand. And this article centers, at least in the
32:23
Speaker 1: early part of it, around this hospital called Bara go
32:25
Speaker 1: on Off Hospital shortened to the Bara, which is in
32:29
Speaker 1: the Sowheeto township of Johannesburg and UM it just shows
32:34
Speaker 1: a lot of the comings and goings and interviews a
32:36
Speaker 1: lot of the doctors and it just you know, you're
32:38
Speaker 1: you're seeing stabbing victims coming through people with these um
32:43
Speaker 1: very telltale wounds from a particular weapon called a panga,
32:48
Speaker 1: which is like a machete um that the members of
32:51
Speaker 1: the Zulu faction would carry um. And it just the
32:57
Speaker 1: sense of desperation that comes across. In this article, they
33:00
Speaker 1: refer to the doctor's trauma ward as the pit and
33:05
Speaker 1: it it just I can't imagine the chaos. And it
33:08
Speaker 1: does a really good job of kind of differentiating between
33:11
Speaker 1: the political violence that had a death toll of more
33:14
Speaker 1: than fifteen thousand over a span of four years, but
33:19
Speaker 1: the majority of the violence that outshined even that insane
33:23
Speaker 1: number was just criminal violence, right, yeah, And I'm glad
33:28
Speaker 1: you're bringing this up, although it is a it is
33:31
Speaker 1: a disturbing thing. In two thousand and seven, the South
33:34
Speaker 1: African government contacted the Center for the Study of Violence
33:38
Speaker 1: and Reconciliation two figure out why this crime occurs or
33:42
Speaker 1: what the tone of it is, the systemic causes, and
33:46
Speaker 1: one of the things they found was that the courts
33:49
Speaker 1: were inefficient and that violence had become normalized. So this
33:56
Speaker 1: was expected and this is uh, this is also tying
34:00
Speaker 1: in of course, the vulnerability of young people, high levels
34:03
Speaker 1: of inequality. From these various factors, we see hard numbers arise.
34:10
Speaker 1: I think in the same article you mentioned uh IT sites.
34:16
Speaker 1: At least in that time, South Africa's murder rate was
34:18
Speaker 1: ten times that of the United States, which you know
34:22
Speaker 1: has a national image of a country with a cartoonist
34:25
Speaker 1: murder rate here at the US. And of course you
34:27
Speaker 1: know with this chaos um the African National Congress was
34:32
Speaker 1: constantly at war with the police and their goal, according
34:37
Speaker 1: to this article and everything else we've seen, was to
34:39
Speaker 1: make these various areas, these townships ungovernable is the word
34:43
Speaker 1: they use here. And so you're dealing with this um.
34:47
Speaker 1: This just decades long struggle that never comes quite comes
34:51
Speaker 1: to an end even after apartheid ends. You can't just
34:54
Speaker 1: turn that off with the passage of a law. Right,
34:59
Speaker 1: it's very difficult to address all of the contributing factors,
35:05
Speaker 1: the old enmities, because we can't forget that many of
35:09
Speaker 1: the pro apartheid individuals that were active in the government
35:14
Speaker 1: were also tremendously financially influential, right or socially influential. So
35:21
Speaker 1: some of those means of not to sound like a
35:24
Speaker 1: banned Communist party member. But many of those means of
35:27
Speaker 1: production we're still owned by the forces of apartheid or
35:33
Speaker 1: propartipe people allow money to be made with constant conflicts,
35:37
Speaker 1: right and this we know that this sounds like disturbing stuff.
35:42
Speaker 1: But while we're painting this picture, we don't want to
35:46
Speaker 1: gloss over the fact that South Africa as a nation
35:51
Speaker 1: has made tremendous progress. But that progress still continues today. Uh,
35:58
Speaker 1: South Africa as recently as had been characterized by British
36:04
Speaker 1: papers like The Guardian, as a country at war. There
36:08
Speaker 1: were uh the murder rate sword to nearly forty nine
36:13
Speaker 1: people a day in in South Africa overall, and of
36:17
Speaker 1: course that's not going to be evenly distributed. A lot
36:20
Speaker 1: of that happens in the urban centers. But despite all
36:26
Speaker 1: of that, this this progress continues, the legacy of the
36:32
Speaker 1: African National Congress continues. It's interesting though, because Johannesburg is
36:37
Speaker 1: subject to something that we are seeing quite a lot
36:40
Speaker 1: of here in Atlanta, which is rapid gentrification. A lot
36:44
Speaker 1: of these um formerly uninhabitable or very very highly dangerous places,
36:51
Speaker 1: um burnt out buildings, abandoned locations, have now been cleared
36:55
Speaker 1: out of squatters, you know, very low income homeless people
36:59
Speaker 1: that that are living there illegally. They have all been
37:02
Speaker 1: cleared out to make way for developers. Um. There is
37:07
Speaker 1: an area, as an article on CNN called Johannesburg's crime
37:10
Speaker 1: hotspot transformed to hipster hangout. Um, that's very familiar to
37:15
Speaker 1: where we're sitting right here in a place called Pont
37:17
Speaker 1: City Market in Atlanta, on a street called Pots to
37:19
Speaker 1: lay On that used to be very dangerous and a
37:23
Speaker 1: lot of crime, and now it's kind of a lot
37:26
Speaker 1: of that's been swept away and replaced by bougie hipster malls,
37:30
Speaker 1: and that same thing as happening in Johannesburg. Activists are
37:34
Speaker 1: referring to this as spatial apartheid and calling for occupations
37:41
Speaker 1: of Cape Town. Uh. There's there's another article from The Guardian,
37:45
Speaker 1: whom I found had a lot of great reporting on
37:48
Speaker 1: this by Alice McCool that examines how these housing activists
37:54
Speaker 1: are taking over nurses home a hospital and attempting to
37:58
Speaker 1: gain national and international recognition of the housing problem, both
38:05
Speaker 1: in terms of affordability, in terms of gentrification, and in
38:09
Speaker 1: terms of historical land theft, which is you know what happens. Well,
38:13
Speaker 1: of course, I saw a thing in this article from
38:15
Speaker 1: CNN about how these developers are now looking at Johannesburg
38:20
Speaker 1: as a a super hot spot for buying up real estate.
38:24
Speaker 1: One developer in particular, UM, who is doing a project
38:28
Speaker 1: called Arts on Maine in a precinct called the Mobile
38:32
Speaker 1: Nang which means place of Light. UM talks about these stats.
38:36
Speaker 1: He says, it's paid off financially, but it will pay
38:38
Speaker 1: off more in the medium to long term. UM. And
38:41
Speaker 1: this is a developer by the name of Jonathan Liebman
38:44
Speaker 1: who is kind of making this his a big project
38:46
Speaker 1: of his. UM. Apparently apartments now you can get one
38:50
Speaker 1: between the range of two and eighty thousand RAN or
38:53
Speaker 1: about twenty eight thousand dollars American to three million RAN,
38:56
Speaker 1: which is about three hundred thousand and Liebman says that
39:00
Speaker 1: these prices in Johannesburg are skyrocketing so he can buy
39:04
Speaker 1: up buildings. He said he used to be pay a
39:06
Speaker 1: hundred euros a square meter for a building, and now
39:10
Speaker 1: because of the efforts of guys like him, the prices
39:12
Speaker 1: are going through the roof. And in two thousand and eleven,
39:16
Speaker 1: the government tried to combat this by ruling that local
39:21
Speaker 1: councils local governments essentially are required to house anyone evicted
39:26
Speaker 1: to make room for a private or public development. But
39:29
Speaker 1: the problem is, according to activists, that the authorities who
39:32
Speaker 1: are charged with this responsibility only provide overcrowded blocks where
39:37
Speaker 1: families are still forcibly split up or uh squalid slums essentially,
39:43
Speaker 1: and even though it was only meet a fraction of
39:46
Speaker 1: the demand. So we can see with this, with the
39:51
Speaker 1: ecology the environment in which these events occur, we can
39:56
Speaker 1: see how injustice becomes a daily part of almost every
40:01
Speaker 1: human beings life, right at least for that time. And
40:05
Speaker 1: so of course there is something tremendously powerful and cathartic
40:09
Speaker 1: about seeing justice done both for both For oddly enough
40:15
Speaker 1: in speculation, but both the pro apartheid racist forces, the
40:19
Speaker 1: authoritarians or the empire from your earlier comparison, and the
40:24
Speaker 1: rebel forces or the people fighting for equality both saw
40:28
Speaker 1: something in Max the gorilla because they saw rule of law. Right.
40:33
Speaker 1: If you're if you're pro police, you're seeing like, oh look,
40:37
Speaker 1: rule of law the authorities one. If you're anti police,
40:42
Speaker 1: you're saying, oh look, finally, someone who can do the job.
40:47
Speaker 1: And because of this, for a time, Max becomes this
40:53
Speaker 1: universally lauded figure, and Isaac the unfortunate Isaac Moco cut
41:01
Speaker 1: who goes to goes to jail. He is captured forty
41:04
Speaker 1: years sentence, got a forty years sentence. Judge referred to
41:07
Speaker 1: him as an unguided missile, a loose cannon time bomb,
41:12
Speaker 1: because he had you know, had just a rap sheet, um,
41:15
Speaker 1: a very thick one, let's say that. Yeah, and he
41:18
Speaker 1: eventually passed away in a psychiatric hospital. But you and
41:23
Speaker 1: I were talking to off air about this knoll uh,
41:25
Speaker 1: there were some suspicious circumstances to his death. Yeah. Supposedly
41:29
Speaker 1: his sister got a call and believe he was a
41:31
Speaker 1: sister from somebody from the facility, saying that he had
41:35
Speaker 1: passed away after vomiting and collapsing. But then when they
41:39
Speaker 1: got to the hospital, the story changed to this idea
41:43
Speaker 1: that he had um stolen a fistful of another patient's
41:47
Speaker 1: medication when they come around with those trays, I guess
41:50
Speaker 1: with the pills and the cups and gobbled them down. Um,
41:53
Speaker 1: attempting suicide and succeeding. But the circumstances are a little
41:57
Speaker 1: murky and it's this The whole story is a little strange. Yeah,
42:01
Speaker 1: and you have to put yourself in the family's position.
42:04
Speaker 1: How how else can you react but with suspicion when
42:08
Speaker 1: someone tells you one story about your loved ones death
42:11
Speaker 1: and then they tell you a completely different story. So
42:15
Speaker 1: there remains uh from that family's perspective and unsolved mystery
42:20
Speaker 1: regarding the shooter of Max the Gorilla. Regarding Isaac m
42:30
Speaker 1: we should also say Max's story doesn't end when he
42:33
Speaker 1: gets those endorsements. We have more news about Max the
42:36
Speaker 1: Gorilla Well, he was voted Newsmaker of the Year for
42:40
Speaker 1: South Africa for the Johannesburg Press Club. Um. He was
42:44
Speaker 1: twenty six years old at the time. We should mention
42:46
Speaker 1: named this national guerilla hero, It's newsmaker of and they
42:52
Speaker 1: presented him a giant trophy a meter high made of
42:55
Speaker 1: cake and fruit that he devoured on camera like proudly right,
43:00
Speaker 1: super good photo of Max went on to live at
43:03
Speaker 1: the Johannesburg Zoo as a symbol of justice, a symbol
43:08
Speaker 1: that something could be right in the world, until the
43:11
Speaker 1: age of thirty four, which is pretty good for a gorilla,
43:16
Speaker 1: where he passed away in his sleep in two thousand four.
43:21
Speaker 1: I want to say, yeah, I believe it was from
43:22
Speaker 1: cardiac arrest um, which is apparently a pretty common way
43:25
Speaker 1: for elderly guerillas to go. And we did find a
43:28
Speaker 1: funny story about his love life. Do you think we
43:30
Speaker 1: got time to throw that in? Toss it in? Okay? Okay?
43:33
Speaker 1: So so Max the Gorilla did show up in the
43:37
Speaker 1: news for at least one non crime related thing, non
43:41
Speaker 1: advertisement related thing. We've we found a story about about
43:48
Speaker 1: his love life that has there's some pretty interesting language
43:52
Speaker 1: in here. But Max's partner Lisa, who he who he
43:56
Speaker 1: was protecting, was protecting from Isaac. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Max
44:00
Speaker 1: and Lisa were still together. This was a long running
44:03
Speaker 1: relationship and uh, some journalists believed that they had perhaps
44:09
Speaker 1: lost the spark because Max stopped being interested in intimacy
44:15
Speaker 1: with Lisa. Yeah. There's an article from Independent Online, Max
44:19
Speaker 1: the Guerrilla Refuses to Mate where they talk about this
44:23
Speaker 1: issue and how the guerrilla scientists there at the Johannesburg
44:28
Speaker 1: Zoo because that's a job. UM even considered dosing old Max,
44:31
Speaker 1: possibly in a gatorade equivalent to drink with UM. Some
44:35
Speaker 1: viagraergate ener innergate energade. Let us know right, it's any
44:39
Speaker 1: South African listeners, let us know how to pronounce you.
44:43
Speaker 1: But apparently guerrillas in general don't really they're not really
44:48
Speaker 1: that into sex in the first place. So once the
44:51
Speaker 1: spark is gone, the thrill is gone, my friend, it
44:53
Speaker 1: it's gone for good. Yeah. And then Max, as we said,
44:59
Speaker 1: passed away p fully in his sleep. That's a happy
45:01
Speaker 1: ending for him. Uh and his widow than Lisa continued
45:08
Speaker 1: on for about two years. She had another partner, UH,
45:13
Speaker 1: nineteen year old named Macco young Buck young Buck the
45:17
Speaker 1: boy toy. Uh and Lisa passed away in two thousand
45:21
Speaker 1: and six at the age of thirty five. She had
45:26
Speaker 1: during a surgery to determine whether or not she had
45:29
Speaker 1: a cancer scrowth. Yeah, but neither of them died of
45:34
Speaker 1: gunshot wounds. That's very true. And to this day, there
45:37
Speaker 1: is a statue commemorating Max the Gorilla at the Johannesburg
45:42
Speaker 1: Zoo that you can go visit in his honor. And
45:45
Speaker 1: thus concludes our story of Max the Gorilla. We found
45:50
Speaker 1: so many other amazing things. I had a really tough
45:55
Speaker 1: time not putting in more stories. Of animals doing heroic
46:00
Speaker 1: stuff with humans. I know there's a lot there, but
46:02
Speaker 1: you know, we kind of we took a pretty dark
46:04
Speaker 1: turn in this one, and uh really needed that context
46:07
Speaker 1: and that background, and I'm glad we did. It's it's
46:10
Speaker 1: it's a little intense, but it also shows that the
46:12
Speaker 1: nineties totally historical time, my friend, Yeah, for more reasons
46:17
Speaker 1: than just like traffer keepers and stuff across the world,
46:20
Speaker 1: Guatemal in civil war for instance. You know, so, we
46:24
Speaker 1: would like to thank you so much for spending some
46:26
Speaker 1: time with us today. We know this episode went a
46:28
Speaker 1: little bit long, but we wanted to. We wanted to
46:31
Speaker 1: explore as much as we could, the story behind the story,
46:34
Speaker 1: which too often gets uh forgotten or relegated to a
46:38
Speaker 1: footnote in a history book. And we of course would
46:42
Speaker 1: like to hear from you. You can find NOL, super producer,
46:46
Speaker 1: Casey and I all over the internet. Were on Instagram,
46:50
Speaker 1: We're on Facebook. Check us out at Ridiculous Historians, where
46:53
Speaker 1: you can you can find us hanging out in the forums,
46:56
Speaker 1: posing and answering very strange questions. We also might be
47:00
Speaker 1: posing as other um users creeping Oh really, I have
47:06
Speaker 1: a pseudo account. Yeah, did you start one. I'm not
47:09
Speaker 1: cann tell you the name though, because they you'll know
47:10
Speaker 1: it's me. How's your Pinterest board coming, Ben? Oh? Yeah,
47:14
Speaker 1: well I had a vision board. Sorry, excuse me. How's
47:18
Speaker 1: your vision board coming? Thank you? It's it's a it
47:21
Speaker 1: just keeps getting bigger. Yeah, you got a lot of
47:24
Speaker 1: vision It's yeah, and it's it's it's an ongoing effort.
47:27
Speaker 1: I think a ridiculous historians. Facebook is a big part
47:30
Speaker 1: of it. The Facebook group. I've got a picture of
47:32
Speaker 1: the Facebook group. I've got a picture of you and
47:35
Speaker 1: I in a helicopter, which I think could be really
47:38
Speaker 1: cool at some point. So we'd like to hear from you.
47:43
Speaker 1: What are some other examples that you remember from your
47:46
Speaker 1: neck of the Global woods involving an animal doing something heroic.
47:50
Speaker 1: Possibly in the nineties, possibly in the nineties, yes, uh,
47:55
Speaker 1: bonus points in the nineties. But we will be interested
47:58
Speaker 1: in any time period, and it may end up on
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Speaker 1: a future episode because I think we can make a
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Speaker 1: really fascinating thing. It might have to be a list
48:06
Speaker 1: because there's so many, you know what, I've gotta I
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Speaker 1: gotta get out of here. I've got a trimmed down
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Speaker 1: my list. I found like thirty. It's awesome Memorial Day. Man.
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Speaker 1: We should probably le go to the lake or something.
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Speaker 1: Get on a boat, take a helicopter to a boat. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: oh man, let's take the ridiculous history copter, the Ridica copter.
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Speaker 1: We have a helipad on the on the roof here
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Speaker 1: upon city Market. That is a true story, right next
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Speaker 1: to the mini golf course, text to the mini golf
48:31
Speaker 1: course and the fancy hot dog stand. Yes, so we
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Speaker 1: are going to get out of here. As always, thank
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Speaker 1: you so much to our super producer, Casey Pegram, Thank
48:40
Speaker 1: you to Alex Williams who composed the track, and huge
48:43
Speaker 1: thanks as always to our top notch grade A one
48:47
Speaker 1: of a kind researcher Christopher Hasciotis, who hipped us to
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Speaker 1: the harrowing story of Max the Gorilla. See you next time, folks,