Latest / Ridiculous History / History's Weirdest Flexes, Part 2
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Yea,
- 0:27Speaker 1: and we're back. Thanks for tuning in. Welcome to part
- 0:30Speaker 1: two of Weird Historical Flexes, or, as we have come
- 0:34Speaker 1: to find, perhaps cruel historical Flexes. I'm Ben, I am Noel,
- 0:39Speaker 1: and that's our super producer Casey Pegram, who, to our knowledge,
- 0:43Speaker 1: has never eaten twenty tortoises. We are not venturing into
- 0:47Speaker 1: this alone, listeners. You recall from our previous episode we
- 0:51Speaker 1: had two of our favorite fellow podcasters on and they
- 0:55Speaker 1: decided to be kind enough to return for the second
- 0:58Speaker 1: part of this show. Let's well come the Daily Zeitgeist
- 1:01Speaker 1: Miles and Jack back on the air. WHOA. Thanks for
- 1:05Speaker 1: having to be told. They didn't really return so much
- 1:08Speaker 1: as just stayed in the same place, and we, you know,
- 1:11Speaker 1: the met through the magic of podcast, we didn't have
- 1:13Speaker 1: to go into a whole week. I'm so thirsty. Yeah,
- 1:16Speaker 1: we just sat in our seats on pause. Doesn't doesn't
- 1:19Speaker 1: Robert Evans have some like mountain dew that you guys
- 1:21Speaker 1: could have. Oh no, if if we touch his mountain dew,
- 1:25Speaker 1: we are in like we will actually be in harm's way. Okay,
- 1:28Speaker 1: sometimes don't touch we don't touch Evans is do ye.
- 1:32Speaker 1: Sometimes he sends me out of context text about that
- 1:36Speaker 1: and he's like, don't touch my mountain. And I didn't know.
- 1:39Speaker 1: I didn't know the number at first, so I was
- 1:41Speaker 1: very confused. No. One time I was driving with him
- 1:44Speaker 1: and we saw a person at a bus stop drinking
- 1:46Speaker 1: a mountain dew and he's like, rolled down your window,
- 1:48Speaker 1: roll down your window, and he stuck his head on
- 1:50Speaker 1: goes that's mine, and that person was so confused and
- 1:53Speaker 1: took it from and then drove off. So that's what
- 1:55Speaker 1: we're talking about when we can talk to talk about
- 1:58Speaker 1: Robert Evans uh what you call that his do do yeah,
- 2:03Speaker 1: Domnia do mania whatever you wan he uh yeah. Whenever
- 2:07Speaker 1: you're driving him somewhere, he never tells you when to stop.
- 2:09Speaker 1: He just rolls out of the car and like that
- 2:13Speaker 1: he's gone. It's it's it's crazy. It's funny that we're
- 2:15Speaker 1: talking about over and there's an open flapping door. That's
- 2:18Speaker 1: that's really dangerous for you and very disrespectful to your vehicle.
- 2:21Speaker 1: But you know, Robert is an interesting character. But speaking
- 2:25Speaker 1: of sugary beverages, I'm gonna do a sugary weird flex. Okay,
- 2:29Speaker 1: So when Ben first hit me to this one, it
- 2:32Speaker 1: was described in the article that I read in a
- 2:34Speaker 1: list on I O nine as displays of opulence in
- 2:38Speaker 1: the UK during the seventeen hundreds, being piles of sugar
- 2:46Speaker 1: just laying around the house like tony like like like
- 2:50Speaker 1: like scarface style, just like say, hey, check out my sugar.
- 2:53Speaker 1: This is how much money I have because I'm showing
- 2:56Speaker 1: you because I have piles of sugar all over the house.
- 2:59Speaker 1: And you know, we think of that in terms of
- 3:00Speaker 1: today that just means you're keeping a very messy kitchen.
- 3:03Speaker 1: But this was on display. But as it turns out,
- 3:06Speaker 1: it wasn't just piles of sugar, or it may have
- 3:08Speaker 1: been at first, but it actually evolved into these really
- 3:15Speaker 1: ostentatious sugar sculptures. Sweet get it, I do, Ben, I
- 3:20Speaker 1: do get it? Uh? And I said seven and actually
- 3:23Speaker 1: meant sixteen hundred. But what's a hundred? You know, what's
- 3:25Speaker 1: what's what's what's that between first drops in the bucket?
- 3:30Speaker 1: So here's the thing. Decorative sugar um was achieved by
- 3:34Speaker 1: using things like gum arabic and then it was mixed
- 3:37Speaker 1: into this kind of paste that you could sculpt into
- 3:40Speaker 1: these figures, and whether they were large sculptures that would
- 3:44Speaker 1: be on display constantly, or whether they were these kind
- 3:47Speaker 1: of small, little hardened, sugary baked confections that that could
- 3:52Speaker 1: then be eaten. And the most bizarre part of this
- 3:54Speaker 1: to me is the fact that they were called subtleties.
- 3:59Speaker 1: And they're not not subtle at all, right, that a
- 4:01Speaker 1: flex isn't meant to be subtle. A flexes, a flexuse,
- 4:04Speaker 1: it's in your face and like, check out this weird
- 4:05Speaker 1: thing that I'm doing, remark upon my wealth. But they
- 4:08Speaker 1: were called subtleties, and the smaller forms of them that
- 4:11Speaker 1: were these little creatures would be formed into things like
- 4:14Speaker 1: buildings or animals, and they were meant to be admired
- 4:18Speaker 1: before they were eaten. So they were eaten. They were eaten.
- 4:22Speaker 1: But here's the thing. It was all in the king class,
- 4:26Speaker 1: the nobles, nights and clergy, and you had to have
- 4:30Speaker 1: a whole lot of expendable sugar to make these things,
- 4:34Speaker 1: to be able to spare enough to actually kind of
- 4:36Speaker 1: like sacrifice them for these kind of weird little flexes
- 4:39Speaker 1: or giant flexes of the case might be um And
- 4:42Speaker 1: it was kind of this display of craftsmanship and also
- 4:47Speaker 1: culinary skills. But a lot of them actually were satirical
- 4:51Speaker 1: symbols or they had messages that were conveyed to the guests. UM.
- 4:56Speaker 1: And Henry the Five when he was when he received
- 5:00Speaker 1: his coronation ceremony, he did that very thing. Um. They
- 5:06Speaker 1: were symbols that kind of confirmed his privilege as the
- 5:10Speaker 1: basically a godlike power as the king, and also nights rights.
- 5:16Speaker 1: And it also highlighted the Um, this this whole concept
- 5:21Speaker 1: that you could it was almost this nihilistic idea that
- 5:23Speaker 1: you could take something that was artisanally created and that
- 5:27Speaker 1: was meant to be beautiful and you could remark on
- 5:29Speaker 1: it and then you know, admire it, but then devour it.
- 5:33Speaker 1: As It's very similar to your turtle story, Jack, where
- 5:37Speaker 1: it's like, Okay, we're gonna like note, you know, Darwin's
- 5:40Speaker 1: gonna make notes about how rare and beautiful these creatures
- 5:43Speaker 1: are and we should you know, take care of them.
- 5:44Speaker 1: And then I'm going to eat it just to show
- 5:46Speaker 1: that I am the master of my own destiny and
- 5:49Speaker 1: that no one is above me. Uh So that is
- 5:52Speaker 1: totally what happened here. Um. And then here's the thing
- 5:55Speaker 1: over time, UM, it became less of a completely upper
- 6:01Speaker 1: class thing because sugar became less expensive and it was
- 6:05Speaker 1: something that you know, lower class people could afford to.
- 6:09Speaker 1: But have you, guys ever heard of the artist Kara Walker. Yes,
- 6:13Speaker 1: actually you are the worst person. Now you're the best person,
- 6:17Speaker 1: next me. So, Kara Walker is a New York City artist,
- 6:19Speaker 1: m who does You may have seen some of her work.
- 6:22Speaker 1: They are silhouette stuff exactly, and they're depicting anti bellum
- 6:27Speaker 1: culture and just the brutal, the brutality of racism. They're uh,
- 6:32Speaker 1: simultaneously kind of grotesque and they're beautiful, and they're also
- 6:36Speaker 1: kind of darkly comic, where there are these kind of
- 6:38Speaker 1: shadow figures in profile doing all of these various things
- 6:42Speaker 1: that would have happened during those times. She did an
- 6:46Speaker 1: art installation in New York City in Brooklyn actually at
- 6:50Speaker 1: the former site of the Domino Sugar factory um and
- 6:54Speaker 1: it was called a Subtlety, and it was a giant
- 6:58Speaker 1: sphinx that was already five feet tall and was created
- 7:02Speaker 1: with just tons of this sugar paste and was molded
- 7:06Speaker 1: into a massive sphinx like sculpture with the face akin
- 7:12Speaker 1: to kind of the really really stereotypical image of like
- 7:17Speaker 1: uh ant Jemima or like the Mammy kind of trope,
- 7:22Speaker 1: utterly racist and with kind of like a bandana on,
- 7:26Speaker 1: and then throughout the factory or all of these some
- 7:28Speaker 1: like kind of like hidden messages talking about how you know,
- 7:33Speaker 1: black people were sort of commodified and to cut cane
- 7:36Speaker 1: and to participate in the sugar trade and all of that.
- 7:39Speaker 1: So it's sort of taking this like old, kind of forgotten,
- 7:43Speaker 1: weird flex this the subtleties, which again, since sugar was
- 7:47Speaker 1: so rare, it was saying like, hey, I've got so
- 7:50Speaker 1: much money that I can take my expensive sugar and
- 7:52Speaker 1: make it into these like frivolous things that are then
- 7:54Speaker 1: devoured by my guests and this exactly, and I think
- 8:00Speaker 1: it's it's not there anymore. But it attracted about four
- 8:03Speaker 1: thousand UM viewers when it first went on display, and
- 8:06Speaker 1: it was a very popular exhibition for for quite some time. Um.
- 8:11Speaker 1: But yeah, what do you guys think about that? There's
- 8:12Speaker 1: a lot of unpacked there. Yeah, just piles of sugar
- 8:16Speaker 1: just uh make me nervous. As someone who grew up
- 8:18Speaker 1: in California where ants up here out of nowhere. Um,
- 8:22Speaker 1: and I was always raised to like even rinse out
- 8:25Speaker 1: cans or juice boxes because ants would show up and
- 8:28Speaker 1: I was caused a lot of anxiety. But also but
- 8:32Speaker 1: also hearing about the Kara Walker piece is good too,
- 8:34Speaker 1: you know because reminding people that yes, you may have
- 8:36Speaker 1: these opulent displays in your homes, but at what cost?
- 8:39Speaker 1: Who were the people whose blood was spilled to even
- 8:42Speaker 1: get these things to your house? Um? But yeah, I
- 8:45Speaker 1: think just like you know, piling stuff up is I've
- 8:48Speaker 1: got to say, I'm not as impressed, you know, just
- 8:51Speaker 1: a pile of a thing, you know, like gold statues
- 8:54Speaker 1: are like gold piles, sugar piles, sugar statues. I mean,
- 8:57Speaker 1: I think we could go a little bit further than that,
- 8:59Speaker 1: but I'll rate that. I'll give it a solid five
- 9:03Speaker 1: on the flex chart out of out of ten. Yeah. Yeah,
- 9:06Speaker 1: that's a five out of ten. That's a five out
- 9:08Speaker 1: of ten for me to uh yeah. Do we think
- 9:11Speaker 1: that they called them like was this around the time
- 9:15Speaker 1: that sarcasm was invented? Because the calling them subtleties is like,
- 9:19Speaker 1: so that sounds like the sort of thing that would
- 9:23Speaker 1: be invented when someone was like, wow, that's subtle. Yeah,
- 9:26Speaker 1: I think almost even naming it a subtlety. That's actually
- 9:29Speaker 1: the flex. Yeah you really go, oh that that that
- 9:35Speaker 1: bit of subtlety there. I also I also love, I
- 9:38Speaker 1: love the notion of this idea, of the invention of sarcasm.
- 9:42Speaker 1: I think that's just like that, all of a sudden,
- 9:43Speaker 1: it just you know, poofed into existence. People were like
- 9:46Speaker 1: smartasses just overnight. Uh. I think it's fantastic. But no, yeah,
- 9:50Speaker 1: and I completely agree it is utterly snark to call
- 9:54Speaker 1: these things subtlety, and even more leaning in to that
- 9:57Speaker 1: opulent display. It's like, oh, it's not it's no big,
- 10:00Speaker 1: it's nothing, you know, it's just you know, my opulence
- 10:02Speaker 1: and absurd obscene wealth and terribly cruel because we have
- 10:06Speaker 1: to also remember, to your point, Miles, especially at that time,
- 10:11Speaker 1: in the age of the subtleties, this was highly likely
- 10:15Speaker 1: to be uh, slave created sugar, you know what I mean.
- 10:19Speaker 1: So that's I would say, that's even less weird flex
- 10:23Speaker 1: more of a brutal one. I will say this, there's
- 10:29Speaker 1: something I wanted to add a little later. In the
- 10:31Speaker 1: sixteen hundreds, Um, there's actually a cookbook from a royal
- 10:35Speaker 1: cook in the in the court named Robert May and
- 10:38Speaker 1: he describes even taking this to the next level, where
- 10:41Speaker 1: there would be, for example, a stag made of sugar,
- 10:44Speaker 1: full size that bleeds wine when an arrow is removed
- 10:49Speaker 1: from it. That's like sticking in there um or. Or
- 10:53Speaker 1: you've got like a castle that actually fires live artillery
- 10:57Speaker 1: rounds made of sugar. Or you have something like like
- 11:01Speaker 1: a giant pie made of sugar that's filled with live
- 11:05Speaker 1: birds that then fly out when they crack open the
- 11:07Speaker 1: sugary crust. So does that take it? Does take it
- 11:10Speaker 1: up to a six or seven? Can I have a
- 11:12Speaker 1: point back, please, gentlemen? Thank you? Oh yeah, no, no, no,
- 11:15Speaker 1: that the cannon firing sugar. That's an eight. That's an eight. Yes,
- 11:22Speaker 1: lest we start to think we're too superior to history. Again, guys,
- 11:28Speaker 1: I did this in the last episode. I have to
- 11:30Speaker 1: take it back to the two and three year old
- 11:32Speaker 1: birthday parties. Yeah, I frequent for just my personal fun
- 11:38Speaker 1: on the weekends, but uh no, I have a three
- 11:41Speaker 1: year old son. You do have to dunk on your
- 11:43Speaker 1: son so many parties this weekend. He's not invited. But
- 11:50Speaker 1: I was at a birthday party very recently where they
- 11:55Speaker 1: had a probably you know, it was probably the size
- 12:00Speaker 1: of it was bigger than any dollhouse I've ever seen.
- 12:04Speaker 1: It was a cake that was, you know, taller than
- 12:08Speaker 1: two people standing on each other's shoulders. Uh. That was
- 12:12Speaker 1: in the shape of like a castle. Also it was
- 12:15Speaker 1: a Disney castle, obviously, And I overheard one of the
- 12:20Speaker 1: moms say, oh, get my daughter out of here. I
- 12:23Speaker 1: don't want her to see that cake because she didn't
- 12:26Speaker 1: want the competition for like her daughter's birthday. I was like,
- 12:30Speaker 1: that's so funny where something is such a flex that
- 12:33Speaker 1: you have to shield people's eyes because they could forever
- 12:37Speaker 1: ruin them exactly. I can't let them think this is normal.
- 12:40Speaker 1: I can't let them think this is normal. So we're
- 12:43Speaker 1: still creating subtleties. They're just a giant rich kid birthday
- 12:48Speaker 1: party cakes. I guess that's the new one. That's the
- 12:50Speaker 1: new subtlety. And this Okay, So so we we've got
- 12:54Speaker 1: we've got a pretty good track record of strange flexes now,
- 12:59Speaker 1: but we've been building up two and especially and especially
- 13:03Speaker 1: weird flex that's gonna come from you, Miles, So everybody listening,
- 13:08Speaker 1: if this was a somewhat uninteresting, your lackluster show for
- 13:13Speaker 1: for so far, then happen. Why are you still listening
- 13:16Speaker 1: first because you believe in us, then you believe it
- 13:19Speaker 1: Miles and more importantly, Miles, no pressure. But literally everything
- 13:23Speaker 1: is writing on you, my friend. Yeah. Well, I mean
- 13:26Speaker 1: I when we were when we were discussing doing this,
- 13:28Speaker 1: I had a few ideas, but I wanted to really
- 13:30Speaker 1: bring it into the history thing because recently when I
- 13:34Speaker 1: was in England, I went to the you know, the
- 13:37Speaker 1: history museum there and saw all the stolen history that
- 13:41Speaker 1: is in there. And my first idea was like, man,
- 13:43Speaker 1: the English really know how to flex on the rest
- 13:46Speaker 1: of the world, because they were like, I'll take your
- 13:48Speaker 1: history and I'll keep it here and you can ask
- 13:51Speaker 1: for it back, but it doesn't mean I'm giving it back. Uh.
- 13:54Speaker 1: And then as I looked into it more, I was like, Okay,
- 13:56Speaker 1: so this obviously it's a theme with how gigantic the
- 13:59Speaker 1: British and higher it was at one time. Um. But
- 14:02Speaker 1: then I found out that in Victorian England, one of
- 14:06Speaker 1: the great flexes if you were a person of means,
- 14:09Speaker 1: was to obviously Egypt. Domania was was huge in England,
- 14:15Speaker 1: especially after the Napoleonic Wars and things like that. Um.
- 14:18Speaker 1: But then it turned into a thing where going to
- 14:22Speaker 1: watch somebody just fully desecrate a mummy's body. Uh, mummy
- 14:27Speaker 1: unwrappings were a huge flex if you had the money
- 14:31Speaker 1: to go to a live mummy unwrapping. Now what is
- 14:34Speaker 1: the mummy unwrapping? That was question. Yes, Thomas Pettigrew, Uh
- 14:39Speaker 1: he was you know, he was like this surgeon and
- 14:41Speaker 1: and and a man of science. But then eventually the
- 14:44Speaker 1: Egyptian bug. He got bit by the egypt bug and
- 14:47Speaker 1: started thinking like man, you know, like what's like, what's
- 14:50Speaker 1: really going on under all those raps? And he decided, yes,
- 14:53Speaker 1: here we go. This is something I can do. I
- 14:55Speaker 1: can combine many things science. I can come combine people's
- 14:59Speaker 1: just obsession with the darkness of Egypt or just the
- 15:02Speaker 1: sort of otherness of Egypt and get them and sell
- 15:05Speaker 1: some tickets at the same time. So he wasn't the
- 15:08Speaker 1: first person to unroll a mummy in front of an audience,
- 15:12Speaker 1: but he was. He was the guy who kind of
- 15:15Speaker 1: mainstreamed it as being like a performance where people would
- 15:17Speaker 1: buy tickets to go and just watch this thing happen
- 15:21Speaker 1: live and in person. And can I stop you real quick?
- 15:24Speaker 1: Did he do it? Like where he just like on
- 15:25Speaker 1: Scooby Doo or he just pulls the one string and
- 15:28Speaker 1: then the mummy just spins out like a car with
- 15:30Speaker 1: cartoon sound effects, and there's actually almost well what's funny
- 15:34Speaker 1: is there was someone in France who was doing something
- 15:37Speaker 1: similar to which is a little more performative than just uh,
- 15:40Speaker 1: you know, sort of taking the bandages off. In France,
- 15:43Speaker 1: there were moments where they would take a a mummy
- 15:46Speaker 1: that was going to be de mummified and put it
- 15:50Speaker 1: like on this you know machine essentially that made it
- 15:54Speaker 1: look like the corpse was dancing as the bandages were
- 15:57Speaker 1: just ripped off the body, and people were like, yo,
- 16:03Speaker 1: that's cool, uh, making it a real kind of freaky performance. Um.
- 16:07Speaker 1: But in England, you know, England is more about, as
- 16:09Speaker 1: we said, the subtleties. So there they took it a
- 16:13Speaker 1: little more seriously, a little more dramatic by you know
- 16:16Speaker 1: saying really, you know, just overly elaborate monologues while then
- 16:21Speaker 1: you know, cutting off all of the bandages to demommify it.
- 16:24Speaker 1: When these mummy I guess d rappings as they called them,
- 16:29Speaker 1: while we're happening, the man behind it, Thomas Pettigrew, had
- 16:32Speaker 1: a few kind of dark aims with doing this one
- 16:36Speaker 1: of the theories that people have suggested that he was
- 16:39Speaker 1: really also like through de mummifying these people, was trying
- 16:43Speaker 1: to prove that ancient Egyptians were actually Caucasian African origin
- 16:48Speaker 1: by using like physiognomy to like measure the cranium and
- 16:52Speaker 1: things like yeah, yeah, sorry, phrenology right, or just to
- 16:58Speaker 1: basically be like, yeah, this is this is my fake
- 17:00Speaker 1: science to prove that the this old ancient empire was
- 17:05Speaker 1: actually in fact a Caucasian one. UM. But again found
- 17:09Speaker 1: this way of everybody would come by watch the mummy
- 17:12Speaker 1: get de wrapped, and it was just like the biggest thing,
- 17:14Speaker 1: and it got so big that even there's even a
- 17:18Speaker 1: secondary flex to the de rappings. There was the Duke
- 17:21Speaker 1: of Hamilton's at the time in eighteen fifty two UM
- 17:25Speaker 1: when one of his dying wishes was to have Pettigrew
- 17:28Speaker 1: actually mammify him and put him in an ancient Egyptian sarcophagus,
- 17:34Speaker 1: and he got his wish in eighteen fifty two. So
- 17:37Speaker 1: now we actually we've gone from people just being like,
- 17:39Speaker 1: let's just disrespect this ancient body to now let me
- 17:43Speaker 1: kick this ancient body out of the sarcophagus. Now let
- 17:45Speaker 1: me appropriate, Mamma fying me and put me in the sarcophagus,
- 17:49Speaker 1: and that's what happened, and then he did a mummy
- 17:51Speaker 1: unwrapping and scared everybody. I'm good on my birthday. That's
- 18:00Speaker 1: like Bonnaroo costume level appropriation. It's beyond oh yeah, oh wait, Coachella.
- 18:07Speaker 1: That's the one yo. Yeah. Yeah, he'd be like, I
- 18:09Speaker 1: mean he acquired a like an actual legitimate, ancient sarcophagus,
- 18:14Speaker 1: and of like a princess who wasn't named, but was like,
- 18:17Speaker 1: that's that will be my final vessel to rest in.
- 18:20Speaker 1: I say more power to him. Go ahead and mummify yourself.
- 18:22Speaker 1: That's sort of like a like a different version of
- 18:24Speaker 1: like go f yourself. Yeah, but get your own vehicle. Absolutely,
- 18:27Speaker 1: do you make build your own sarcopha guy? Guy just do?
- 18:30Speaker 1: Oh yeah. And what's so funny is like he's actually
- 18:33Speaker 1: because he's mummified in a sarcophagus, he actually made it
- 18:36Speaker 1: into the Encyclopedia of Mummies. Oh yeah, which to me
- 18:40Speaker 1: feels like a little bit of a you know, sort
- 18:42Speaker 1: of backdoor entry to getting into college. Reminds me of
- 18:46Speaker 1: Operation Varsity Blues a little bit, like did you earn
- 18:48Speaker 1: it really a person of means who who was able
- 18:51Speaker 1: to buy their own sarcophagus and inflex on people like that.
- 18:53Speaker 1: People are always trying to buy their way into the
- 18:55Speaker 1: Encyclopedia Mummies. Yeah, exactly. I mean it was a big problem,
- 18:59Speaker 1: especially in the eight I'm gonna give that one. At first,
- 19:02Speaker 1: I was like, man, this is clearly eight or nine.
- 19:06Speaker 1: But making appropriating someone in death for your own death,
- 19:12Speaker 1: that knocks it to attend to me the hubris alone,
- 19:14Speaker 1: not to mention that it is uh tickets are being sold.
- 19:18Speaker 1: It's it's completely commodifying and appropriating some very sacred ritual
- 19:24Speaker 1: in someone's culture that you clearly do not understand or
- 19:27Speaker 1: care to understand. You're just using it for the amusement
- 19:31Speaker 1: of the public, and so then you're also playing into stereotypes.
- 19:35Speaker 1: Everything bad about this. So I think we should have
- 19:37Speaker 1: two scales. I think we should have the weird flex
- 19:39Speaker 1: scale and the cruelty scale. We have been going back
- 19:41Speaker 1: and forth. Well, I will say, on the upside, one
- 19:49Speaker 1: good thing about this horrifically tragic story is that, uh,
- 19:54Speaker 1: in comparison, it makes the four of us look pretty
- 19:57Speaker 1: good because we we haven't done that it's true. Yeah, yeah, right,
- 20:01Speaker 1: nothing I mean, but I mean, I'm not gonna lie.
- 20:04Speaker 1: I'm every night when I when I envisioned my future,
- 20:07Speaker 1: it's having so much wealth that I could also buy
- 20:11Speaker 1: a money and just unwrapid right, I'm gonna be honest.
- 20:13Speaker 1: I was gonna say, okay, so yes, this is what
- 20:16Speaker 1: we had instead of horror movies back then. But also
- 20:19Speaker 1: this is something I could totally see working as a
- 20:22Speaker 1: flex in the modern world. Like if I was at
- 20:24Speaker 1: a party and someone was doing that, I'd be like,
- 20:26Speaker 1: that makes sense, and I'm impressed. If they were like
- 20:30Speaker 1: defiling the historic object, it's like, I don't know, it's
- 20:34Speaker 1: still it's still just wildly insane and it's weird. We
- 20:39Speaker 1: also have unboxing videos, but I guess back then, right,
- 20:45Speaker 1: they didn't have the same sort of values where like
- 20:48Speaker 1: we should actually preserve history, like oh, y'all got to
- 20:50Speaker 1: see what I just stole from Egypt real quick watch
- 20:53Speaker 1: we unwrapped this money, whereas now it would be like,
- 20:56Speaker 1: because you're just merely destroying something of such value, It's
- 20:59Speaker 1: like it's like, look at this os from the Ming Dynasty.
- 21:01Speaker 1: I'm about to just toss off the freeway off ramp.
- 21:04Speaker 1: That would be pretty cool. I could see it at
- 21:06Speaker 1: a like Hollywood party of some like CIA agent or
- 21:10Speaker 1: something like that, somebody who's cartoonistly a terrible person. I'm
- 21:13Speaker 1: pretty sure, Like when they wanted to open that mummy
- 21:17Speaker 1: that sarcophagus like last year, and people like, what's the mummy?
- 21:20Speaker 1: What's the water in that sarcophag? People like, I want
- 21:23Speaker 1: to drink the mummy water that. I'm pretty sure Nick
- 21:26Speaker 1: Cage had a mummy at one point, so that's probably
- 21:29Speaker 1: available because I think he I think there's like a
- 21:31Speaker 1: serious Knick Cage garage sale going on, so surely he
- 21:36Speaker 1: had a mummy as well. I'm just conjecturing here, but
- 21:39Speaker 1: I'd like to believe that he's a He's a he's
- 21:43Speaker 1: an odd character. Um geez, guys, this was a lot
- 21:47Speaker 1: less fun than I thought it was gonna be. And
- 21:48Speaker 1: that is not on you. That is just on history itself. History. Yeah,
- 21:54Speaker 1: we think time, I mean yeah, no, no, I had
- 21:57Speaker 1: a great time. I had a great time. But these
- 21:59Speaker 1: stories were most of them were kind of bummers. I
- 22:02Speaker 1: would say the least bummery one was Ben's uh decorative
- 22:06Speaker 1: hobo story, and even that was pretty ornamental hermits. I'm sorry,
- 22:10Speaker 1: I'm sorry, decorative. You can't try to like appropriate what happened.
- 22:15Speaker 1: Don't you accuse appropriation, sir? I would never, I would never.
- 22:19Speaker 1: It all depends on what your flavor is a flex.
- 22:21Speaker 1: I mean, Jack's was about animal cruelty, reflexing on the animals. Yes,
- 22:26Speaker 1: subtlety is was about slavery. Uh, the mind was about colonialism,
- 22:32Speaker 1: empire and the desecration of people's cultures. Um, and then
- 22:36Speaker 1: the other one was about taking advantage of the destitute
- 22:39Speaker 1: you know, your bum son. Yeah, and I guess now,
- 22:43Speaker 1: I guess nowadays the flexes are better because now we're
- 22:45Speaker 1: just saying, like, yeah, I actually like I went to
- 22:48Speaker 1: high school with Chris Rocks kid and I beat him
- 22:51Speaker 1: in basketball. So there's that, all right. But okay, I'm
- 22:57Speaker 1: gonna tell people that's a true story about you. Now.
- 23:00Speaker 1: Are you cool with that? Just back me up if
- 23:01Speaker 1: it comes up in conversation. Oh yeah, it's one of
- 23:04Speaker 1: the many lies I do, so don't worry. It's well.
- 23:07Speaker 1: Despite despite being kind of depressed right now, I'm also
- 23:10Speaker 1: really happy we got to do this and I did
- 23:13Speaker 1: all things consider, have a really good time having you
- 23:15Speaker 1: guys on this show and maybe we can make this
- 23:17Speaker 1: a regular thing. I think there's obviously way more historical
- 23:20Speaker 1: weird flexes that we can dig into and and do
- 23:22Speaker 1: this again. Um, thank you guys so much. I'm gonna
- 23:25Speaker 1: do I got more in my back pocket right now,
- 23:28Speaker 1: let's do it. Yeah, I'm gonna I'm gonna actually take
- 23:31Speaker 1: it a step further and I'm gonna try to make
- 23:33Speaker 1: some new weird historical flexes for the future that will
- 23:36Speaker 1: hopefully not be as terrible as these four turned out
- 23:40Speaker 1: to be. But guys, I know everybody listening is saying, well, uh,
- 23:46Speaker 1: we enjoyed the hell out of hanging out with Jack
- 23:49Speaker 1: and Miles. Where can they find you before you come
- 23:52Speaker 1: back on this show? You, guys can find us at
- 23:54Speaker 1: The Daily Zeitgeist. It's a podcast that we do, as
- 23:58Speaker 1: the name would suggest, daily every weekday, Monday through Friday.
- 24:03Speaker 1: It's an hour rundown of just everything that's happened in
- 24:06Speaker 1: the zeitgeist, pop culture news. Uh, those are kind of
- 24:10Speaker 1: the two big ones. Politics, politics, you know, all of
- 24:15Speaker 1: all of it. Uh Yeah, And you can find me
- 24:17Speaker 1: on Twitter at Jack Underscore. O'Brien. You you can find
- 24:21Speaker 1: me on Twitter and Instagram at Miles of Gray g
- 24:23Speaker 1: r A Y and I want to give you guys
- 24:25Speaker 1: a shadow to uh to make sure that all our
- 24:28Speaker 1: listeners know this. You heard correct, folks. That's a daily podcast, uh,
- 24:35Speaker 1: Casey Nolan, I do this about two times a week.
- 24:38Speaker 1: So I I am beyond impressed that you guys not
- 24:42Speaker 1: only did your regular show but also came here to
- 24:45Speaker 1: do a show with us. So thank you. That's amazing pleasure.
- 24:49Speaker 1: We're big fans. We're thrilled to do it. Yeah, and
- 24:52Speaker 1: it's uh, you know, and our show isn't as thorough
- 24:54Speaker 1: as yours is. Again, we like to consider our show
- 24:57Speaker 1: a second rate, pot second podcast. Just do it a lot,
- 25:00Speaker 1: that's all. So so check out check out the guys
- 25:05Speaker 1: on Instagram and Twitter if you want a closer look
- 25:08Speaker 1: at the second best garden Gnome collection in East Los Angeles. Uh.
- 25:13Speaker 1: That that's a good callback if you listen to both episodes,
- 25:17Speaker 1: which you should in the mean type, we're calling it
- 25:19Speaker 1: a day. We want to give a very late thanks
- 25:21Speaker 1: and shout out to our super producer, Casey Pegrham. We'd
- 25:25Speaker 1: like to thank Alex Williams who composed our theme, Gabe Lozier,
- 25:29Speaker 1: who helps us out with research, and I'm just miss Christopher.
- 25:33Speaker 1: I'm gonna give him another shout out. Christopherrosciots, Jonathan Strickland,
- 25:36Speaker 1: the quister you Ben, I'd like to thank you for
- 25:39Speaker 1: being a friend and a confidante and all the things
- 25:41Speaker 1: that are in the Golden Girls theme song. And of
- 25:44Speaker 1: course thanks again to Miles and Jack. Thanks to everyone
- 25:48Speaker 1: for checking this out. Hey, you know what folks tell
- 25:50Speaker 1: us about your favorite weird historical flexes or even just
- 25:55Speaker 1: very very petty things committed by historical people of note.
- 26:00Speaker 1: And who knows, maybe this will be a running thing
- 26:02Speaker 1: and we can include some of them in a future episode.
- 26:05Speaker 1: Until then, we'll see you next time. For more podcasts
- 26:16Speaker 1: for my heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app,
- 26:18Speaker 1: Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.