Latest / Ridiculous History / A Teetotaling Preacher Basically Invented Modern Tourism

Transcript

A Teetotaling Preacher Basically Invented Modern Tourism · Ridiculous History

0:00
Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
0:27
Speaker 1: back to the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
0:30
Speaker 1: so much for tuning in. Let's give it up for
0:33
Speaker 1: our one and only super producer, Mr Max Williams. They
0:38
Speaker 1: called me Ben. Depending on where I'm traveling at the time,
0:42
Speaker 1: I've been known to use some personas and uh, Noel,
0:45
Speaker 1: I think you love traveling as well. Yeah, and maybe
0:48
Speaker 1: not so much under pseudonyms. But maybe I'll take a
0:50
Speaker 1: cue from from from you, sir, and then then go
0:53
Speaker 1: down that road. What is one of yours astronaut with
0:56
Speaker 1: a secret? Is that one of them that I make
0:57
Speaker 1: that up? Oh? Max Power, astronaut with a secret? Yes,
1:02
Speaker 1: Uh see, Max, you're getting it. You're you're intrigued already, right, Yeah,
1:08
Speaker 1: I got away with it too. Uh and then the
1:11
Speaker 1: I patch situation, remember that one, of course I forget
1:17
Speaker 1: and uh So the point is that you know, we're
1:20
Speaker 1: all big fans of travel here at Ridiculous History, and
1:25
Speaker 1: you know, before we hopped on air, super producer Max
1:28
Speaker 1: Williams and I were talking a little bit about his
1:30
Speaker 1: possible summer vacation plans. You just got back from a
1:34
Speaker 1: lovely trip in Berlin Noll and we have we have
1:37
Speaker 1: traveled often for work, but we also love to travel,
1:42
Speaker 1: uh just for funzies, for personal enrichment, to see the world.
1:46
Speaker 1: And that's something that is relatively new in the story
1:51
Speaker 1: of human history, right, I mean, do you remember there
1:54
Speaker 1: There had to have been a time or even just
1:56
Speaker 1: the phrase see the world was an enticing tagline for
2:01
Speaker 1: a brand new industry, a whole new world of leisure travel. Because,
2:06
Speaker 1: as we've talked about many times throughout the course of
2:08
Speaker 1: the show, depending on what era you're you're you're discussing,
2:11
Speaker 1: I mean, travel was not a luxurious thing at all,
2:16
Speaker 1: and it was really only reserved for the super wealthy
2:19
Speaker 1: who had a damn good reason for traveling a certain distance.
2:22
Speaker 1: Otherwise it could be met with incredible hardships if you
2:25
Speaker 1: were doing it on foot or by horse during you know,
2:28
Speaker 1: through rough terrain and weather and all of that good stuff.
2:31
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, even the super wealthy had to
2:33
Speaker 1: travel in these like carriages or litters or whatever, and
2:37
Speaker 1: lots of opportunities for things to go wrong. You know,
2:39
Speaker 1: wheels could get damage, they could be met with bandits,
2:43
Speaker 1: brigands on the on the on the highway, and all
2:45
Speaker 1: that good stuff. But it wasn't until the eighteen hundreds, uh,
2:50
Speaker 1: mid to late eighteen hundreds that the idea of travel
2:55
Speaker 1: for funzies, as you said, ben, really became a thing,
2:58
Speaker 1: really took off, and it was kind of by accidents.
3:01
Speaker 1: It was one of those things where an industry sprang
3:03
Speaker 1: up entirely on its own as a result of somebody
3:07
Speaker 1: trying to do something completely different. Yeah. Yeah, it's sort
3:11
Speaker 1: of like how the experiments of early alchemists led to
3:14
Speaker 1: what we understand his chemistry today. It's it's fascinating. It
3:19
Speaker 1: is a really it is a really strange and relatively
3:23
Speaker 1: recent situation. As you described, only back in the day,
3:27
Speaker 1: when people were traveling long distances and they were either
3:31
Speaker 1: super wealthy, or something very bad had happened, they had
3:34
Speaker 1: driven out of their home by war or famine. They
3:37
Speaker 1: were just off to check out, you know, the ruins
3:41
Speaker 1: of ancient Rome. Or it could have been a diplomatic trip,
3:44
Speaker 1: something really necessary required an in person visit to deal
3:48
Speaker 1: with or treat with some other high powered individual right right,
3:53
Speaker 1: or a trade route. But in both of those cases
3:56
Speaker 1: we just mentioned, uh, the odds were dangerously high that
4:02
Speaker 1: these people would run into some sort of disaster themselves.
4:05
Speaker 1: You know, being a diplomat didn't guarantee your safety and
4:08
Speaker 1: foreign lands, uh, the way that it theoretically does today.
4:12
Speaker 1: But here's what happened. The Industrial Revolution comes about late
4:17
Speaker 1: eighteenth century England. People are moving from an agrarian lifestyle
4:22
Speaker 1: to cities. We see the emergence of a genuine middle
4:25
Speaker 1: class in Western Europe. In the US, all of a sudden,
4:28
Speaker 1: a certain type of person had a little bit of
4:30
Speaker 1: scratch and they wanted to see the world too. They
4:35
Speaker 1: wanted to, you know, maybe buy books. They wanted to
4:38
Speaker 1: have some of the finer things in life. They wanted
4:41
Speaker 1: to live like the royals. Shout out to Lord h
4:45
Speaker 1: so with an e, so like the Lord. You know,
4:49
Speaker 1: the Lord's the Lord of the dance. Perhaps perhaps I
4:54
Speaker 1: played that character one time. It's very weird anyway. So
4:58
Speaker 1: this is where we meet our protag Guinness and uh no,
5:01
Speaker 1: you set this up so beautifully. So there's a guy
5:05
Speaker 1: named Thomas Cook. And Thomas Cook is a religious figure.
5:12
Speaker 1: He's a pastor. He does not like the idea of
5:15
Speaker 1: people drinking boots. That's one of his main things. He's
5:19
Speaker 1: super against it. He's a teetotaler, and so he uh
5:23
Speaker 1: takes his message to the people. He's been doing this
5:26
Speaker 1: since the eighteen twenties and thirties. He's walking on foot
5:29
Speaker 1: throughout throughout England, throughout the countryside, talks to people. He says,
5:34
Speaker 1: don't drink. Folks if and you know, hold speeches impromptu
5:38
Speaker 1: whenever they'll listen to them if they won't, and he's
5:40
Speaker 1: basically throwing pamphlets at them to read later. Who is it.
5:45
Speaker 1: I think it's Mitch Headburger got his joke ritside. Every
5:47
Speaker 1: time someone hands me a flyer, it's like they're saying, hey,
5:50
Speaker 1: you throw this away with with with pamplets. But this
5:55
Speaker 1: guy is basically like a Johnny apple Seed of finger
5:57
Speaker 1: wagging and pamphleting. You know, He's basically is distributing trash
6:01
Speaker 1: across everywhere he steps. And I'm sure that he converted
6:04
Speaker 1: some folks, you know, to his way of thinking that
6:07
Speaker 1: booze was the devil's nectar and all of that good stuff. Um.
6:10
Speaker 1: But somewhere along the way he realized that there was
6:14
Speaker 1: a very big opportunity for him in Egypt because at
6:18
Speaker 1: this time something called the Suez Canal was nearing completion
6:24
Speaker 1: and was going to cause it was already causing a
6:27
Speaker 1: massive boom there in Egypt in the capital city of Cairo,
6:31
Speaker 1: or hotel proprietors were you know, making money hand over fist,
6:36
Speaker 1: and it was really becoming a place that the super rich,
6:39
Speaker 1: you know, from Europe and even America wanted to check
6:42
Speaker 1: out because of the egypt craze. Right, the idea of
6:45
Speaker 1: like the pyramids and you know, mummies and all that
6:48
Speaker 1: stuff that really kind of, uh, frankly, was somewhat disrespectful,
6:53
Speaker 1: if not entirely disrespectful to the actual culture and religious
6:56
Speaker 1: practices of the Egyptian people. Um. And it continued on
7:01
Speaker 1: throughout pop culture and history and movies like The Mummy
7:03
Speaker 1: and all of that, even had the Three Stooges hanging
7:06
Speaker 1: out with the Mummy. Uh. It really was kind of
7:08
Speaker 1: a weird bastardization of something that was very sacred and holy,
7:12
Speaker 1: but it was fascinating to Western minds, and it was
7:15
Speaker 1: really starting to become something that was attracting a lot
7:18
Speaker 1: of dollars. Yeah, and he had been building to this
7:22
Speaker 1: for a while because when he was just straight up walking,
7:25
Speaker 1: when he was the uh pamphlet peddling teetotaling pedestrian pastor.
7:31
Speaker 1: He wasn't really touching a lot of hearts and minds.
7:34
Speaker 1: It wasn't until the world's first railway network opened up
7:39
Speaker 1: that he realized he could take his message. He could
7:44
Speaker 1: expand his message, or is the Simpsons saying big in
7:47
Speaker 1: his message in a way he never had before. He
7:50
Speaker 1: would bring other temperance fans with him two rallies across
7:56
Speaker 1: the Kingdom, and then telegraph wires came into play and
8:00
Speaker 1: he was able to direct his temperest tours. He started
8:05
Speaker 1: to call them from a remote location and he realized quickly,
8:12
Speaker 1: this is this is what we're talking about, the accidental stuff.
8:14
Speaker 1: At first he realized this mass transit would allow him
8:20
Speaker 1: to spread the message of teetotally or teetotalism, whichever you
8:25
Speaker 1: think is more fun to say folks. At first he thought,
8:28
Speaker 1: you know, this would be a good way to expand that.
8:30
Speaker 1: But then he realized he can make a buck with this,
8:33
Speaker 1: and so he put his missionary work on hold for
8:36
Speaker 1: just a second, he told himself, and started organizing sightseeing tours.
8:47
Speaker 1: In eighteen fifty five, he went over the English Channel
8:51
Speaker 1: to France, then took some folks to Switzerland. As soon
8:54
Speaker 1: as the American Civil War ended, he took some of
8:58
Speaker 1: you know, the English middle class across the Atlantic to
9:01
Speaker 1: New York and then he would crowdsource the expense. He
9:05
Speaker 1: became the world's first travel agent when he was saying, Okay,
9:09
Speaker 1: if you traveled together, I will be able to get
9:12
Speaker 1: you discounts and I'll cover all your travel and all
9:15
Speaker 1: your transit and alcohol. This is where he starts to
9:18
Speaker 1: betray his old ideals. Alcohol isn't banned on these trips,
9:22
Speaker 1: it just comes at a really heavy additional cost. That's
9:26
Speaker 1: where he that's when he realizes the Suez Canal is
9:31
Speaker 1: the go to place. People are nuts. Like you said
9:34
Speaker 1: about mummies. Uh, they're having mummy on wrapping parties. They're
9:38
Speaker 1: using them as cordwood or firewood. They're even people are
9:41
Speaker 1: eating mummy ashes. It's wild. But everybody in Europe is
9:45
Speaker 1: all about mummies, especially when the that French scholar deciphers
9:51
Speaker 1: the hieroglyphics on the Rosetta stone. Cook cannot keep up
9:56
Speaker 1: with the demand. Business is good, yeah, exactly, and he's
10:00
Speaker 1: really stumbled his way into a burgeoning new industry. The
10:04
Speaker 1: term by the way that I was trying to think
10:05
Speaker 1: of earlier was Egypt Domania, which was a thing, like,
10:09
Speaker 1: you know, in the same way that like Beatlemania was
10:11
Speaker 1: a thing, or or list Domania if you know, uh,
10:14
Speaker 1: Franz List was like the original rock Star with um
10:19
Speaker 1: ladies throwing their lacy garments at him whilst he played
10:23
Speaker 1: the piano and all of that. Shout out pix Phoenix,
10:26
Speaker 1: one of my favorite pants. So this service that Cook
10:29
Speaker 1: was offering was pretty revolutionary. He essentially had this these packages,
10:36
Speaker 1: these all inclusive kind of deals that today seems super
10:41
Speaker 1: super obvious because we've seen a million times sort of
10:44
Speaker 1: a proto carnival cruise kind of situation, but at the
10:47
Speaker 1: time it was something that nobody had ever really seen before,
10:50
Speaker 1: at least folks who were not seasoned travelers. Uh. And
10:54
Speaker 1: we're mainly dealing with Europeans at this point of course.
10:57
Speaker 1: So he was not referring to himself as a tra
11:00
Speaker 1: i will guide per se. But as Andrew Humphries wrote
11:03
Speaker 1: in his book on the Nile in the Golden Age
11:05
Speaker 1: of Travel, Cook referred to himself as a travel chaperone
11:11
Speaker 1: because this was a time where women were not meant
11:15
Speaker 1: to be out in the world on their own without
11:19
Speaker 1: the care of a proper chaperone. So that's the term
11:22
Speaker 1: that they we're using because it kind of gave an
11:24
Speaker 1: air of safety and upstanding nous, right, I mean, he
11:28
Speaker 1: was definitely like still, you know, at heart a teetotaler,
11:31
Speaker 1: and he was still I think trying for that sort
11:34
Speaker 1: of influence. So I think maybe that that that affected
11:37
Speaker 1: his choice of terms there. But this allowed a lot
11:40
Speaker 1: of women, you know, in the same way that remember
11:43
Speaker 1: what was it seaweed? Gathering seaweed and making seaweed collages
11:47
Speaker 1: really opened up women to like the outdoors exactly because
11:51
Speaker 1: at the time, uh similar era, if I'm not mistaken,
11:55
Speaker 1: women there were certain things they just weren't supposed to
11:57
Speaker 1: do because they were unladylike. So this all out women
12:00
Speaker 1: to kind of venture out into the word again, I'm
12:02
Speaker 1: just I'm just describing the times. I think this is
12:04
Speaker 1: all absurd obviously, and women should be able to do
12:07
Speaker 1: whatever they wanted, but it was a patriarchal society, so
12:10
Speaker 1: they had to go stepping stones at a time in
12:12
Speaker 1: order to get to a place where they could be
12:14
Speaker 1: fully able to do whatever they wanted. But Cook did,
12:18
Speaker 1: for what's worth, create a situation that allowed women to
12:21
Speaker 1: travel without fear of being you know, molested by mashers
12:24
Speaker 1: or what have you. And I just want to jump
12:26
Speaker 1: in and say something real quick. I love how much
12:29
Speaker 1: we like maligned to the Seaweed episode. Before we did it,
12:32
Speaker 1: we talked about how hard it was for us to
12:34
Speaker 1: actually make it, and I think that's like the most
12:36
Speaker 1: brought up episode we have in like all of our episodes.
12:39
Speaker 1: Now just so far, so far. And yes, that's a
12:55
Speaker 1: good point, Max, I would argue if you haven't listened
12:58
Speaker 1: to the episode yet. One of the really impressive things
13:01
Speaker 1: is how it allowed female identifying people entry into serious science.
13:08
Speaker 1: Right the misogyny was such at the time that they
13:10
Speaker 1: were not allowed to do so. But this also I
13:13
Speaker 1: wanna I want to give a shout out to Peter
13:15
Speaker 1: Schwartztein over at Smithsonian, who wrote the great article how
13:20
Speaker 1: an alcohol hating English preacher founded global tourism. And yes,
13:24
Speaker 1: I used the phrase pastor a couple of times, but
13:27
Speaker 1: that was that was just me freestyle, and he's a preacher.
13:30
Speaker 1: So look, this is there are some important points we
13:33
Speaker 1: gotta hit here first. This also kind of feeds into
13:36
Speaker 1: that middle class ambition to travel like a wealthy person.
13:41
Speaker 1: Now you have a chaperone, you have an entourage, just
13:44
Speaker 1: a sort of valet, and they did enjoy these tours.
13:51
Speaker 1: He definitely he being cooked, definitely was becoming more and
13:56
Speaker 1: more disassociated from his roots. As he was pioneering this business.
14:03
Speaker 1: He wanted to embrace every new technology that would help
14:07
Speaker 1: him out with this. He founded a city, which we're
14:10
Speaker 1: gonna get to in a second. This is one of
14:12
Speaker 1: the coolest parts of the story. Uh, he kind of
14:15
Speaker 1: found it. Slash took over a city. He had also
14:17
Speaker 1: gotten into um the monopolization or vertical horizontal integration game.
14:24
Speaker 1: He started renting cargo steamships. In the past when very
14:29
Speaker 1: wealthy people were cruising the Nile, they were on sailing boats.
14:32
Speaker 1: So he got steamships. He subdivided them in these tiny
14:35
Speaker 1: little rooms, and he packed his passengers in like sardines
14:40
Speaker 1: in a can, and took them on these three week
14:42
Speaker 1: tours of various historic sites. And then other people saw
14:47
Speaker 1: that this was a good I don't want to call
14:49
Speaker 1: the grift. Other people saw this was a good business,
14:51
Speaker 1: right uh, And no one cared how disrespectful it was
14:54
Speaker 1: to actual Egyptian culture people. So is American German rivals
14:59
Speaker 1: hit the scene in Yeah. He also I mean like
15:02
Speaker 1: spread a lot of nasty rumors about Egyptians, like saying
15:06
Speaker 1: they were diseased and you know, not touch them or
15:10
Speaker 1: share your opera glasses with them unless you get a
15:14
Speaker 1: disease of the eye or something. I don't know. It's again,
15:18
Speaker 1: he wasn't respectful of the culture at all, And there
15:21
Speaker 1: was a lot of capitalizing on this idea of exoticism
15:25
Speaker 1: and all of these like bizarre magical rituals and dark
15:29
Speaker 1: magic and all of this stuff. Because he really was
15:32
Speaker 1: kind of a grifter at heart. Even if he started
15:35
Speaker 1: off with this um intention of spreading the good word
15:39
Speaker 1: and and preaching temperance and all that stuff far and wide,
15:42
Speaker 1: he really couldn't resist a good grift. He kind of
15:45
Speaker 1: reminds me of like I've been sorry. I'm deep in
15:48
Speaker 1: in Better call Saul Rewatch and and watching the new episodes,
15:52
Speaker 1: and that's a slipping Jimmy. You know, he tries to
15:56
Speaker 1: be good, he tries to do good, but at the
15:58
Speaker 1: end of the day, he's always called back to the grift.
16:01
Speaker 1: He's addicted to the grift, and that's kind of what
16:03
Speaker 1: this guy is too. But he you know, the idea
16:06
Speaker 1: of creating these like compartmentalizing literally they're called compartments, I
16:10
Speaker 1: think are apartments, um cabins, I guess in these steamships.
16:14
Speaker 1: That was revolutionary and it's something that we still see
16:16
Speaker 1: to this day. I think finally the cruise industry is
16:19
Speaker 1: maybe getting a little bit back up and running. Remember
16:22
Speaker 1: all those like there's more cruise ships when COVID hit
16:26
Speaker 1: or they wouldn't let anybody off because everyone had COVID,
16:29
Speaker 1: and it was like they had to sit there, you know,
16:31
Speaker 1: until they were They didn't even know what the incubation
16:34
Speaker 1: period was or how long it would be before they
16:35
Speaker 1: were safe, and they had to feed them through like
16:37
Speaker 1: slots in the door. It was just really a bad
16:40
Speaker 1: look for the industry. But not much has changed, is
16:43
Speaker 1: all I'm getting at. Like they they still are these
16:46
Speaker 1: massive ships that are divided into these tiny little compartments
16:48
Speaker 1: and everyone eats at the same time. It really is
16:51
Speaker 1: kind of like a brilliant business model that this dude
16:54
Speaker 1: Cooks sort of haphazardly stumbled upon. Yeah. Yeah, And it's
16:59
Speaker 1: interesting because he was creating a lot of these innovations
17:03
Speaker 1: in response to competitors, right, So he he didn't ever
17:07
Speaker 1: start out with this map of his grand plan to
17:11
Speaker 1: start the travel industry. When his rivals come on the scene,
17:16
Speaker 1: he hasn't waste much time. He says, Look, why am
17:18
Speaker 1: I gonna bother renting rooms on cargo ships. I've got
17:22
Speaker 1: the cash. Now I'm going to construct my own fleet
17:25
Speaker 1: of new steamships to stay ahead of the game. That's
17:29
Speaker 1: why I always think of this guy's kind of he
17:31
Speaker 1: becomes a combination of Citizen Kane and Rick Steve's in
17:36
Speaker 1: a non drinking way, because he never he never betrayed
17:39
Speaker 1: his values to the point where he started tippling as well.
17:43
Speaker 1: But the thing is he also had a lot of
17:45
Speaker 1: personal connections and nepotism helped him out to the British
17:50
Speaker 1: Empire was expanding up the Nile, and he was pretty
17:55
Speaker 1: tight with the armed forces, particularly when they occupied Egypt
18:00
Speaker 1: in the early eighteen eighties, and then he did favors
18:03
Speaker 1: for them. His son John was mainly running the Thomas
18:08
Speaker 1: Cook Company by this time, and John was given the
18:12
Speaker 1: job of transporting hundreds of British troops up river in
18:16
Speaker 1: his steamship to try to control Sudan, and according to Humphreys,
18:21
Speaker 1: this is the only occasion on which the British Army
18:24
Speaker 1: has gone to war conveyed by private transport, so this
18:29
Speaker 1: is a lot of positive press. This also means that,
18:33
Speaker 1: weirdly enough, later on in life, veterans and officers might
18:36
Speaker 1: take a Thomas Cook tour out of nostalgia. Business is booming,
18:40
Speaker 1: so he's gone from just to recap this. He's gone
18:44
Speaker 1: from walking on foot talked about how he shouldn't drink two,
18:48
Speaker 1: organizing temperance rallies using railroad and telegraph, to taking people
18:53
Speaker 1: on tours via boats, to renting steamships, to building his
18:59
Speaker 1: own steamship, to helping fight a war, to now building
19:04
Speaker 1: his own city. He can't and he didn't. I mean
19:07
Speaker 1: he didn't really build lux Or, but he definitely made it.
19:11
Speaker 1: Set it on the path that's on today. Yeah, there
19:14
Speaker 1: was a little cluster of homes in um A, a
19:18
Speaker 1: sandy area surrounded by some little temples. And he saw
19:23
Speaker 1: this and saw opportunity. He thought it was situated neatly
19:27
Speaker 1: near some of the ruins of Karnak that were a
19:31
Speaker 1: popular tourist destination. So he figured what the hell, and
19:34
Speaker 1: he dubbed this little region lux Or. He built a
19:38
Speaker 1: boardwalk or it was referred to as a corniche. It
19:42
Speaker 1: was not not familiar with that term. I like it though.
19:44
Speaker 1: It sounds like a tiny pickle as a cornish or
19:48
Speaker 1: I don't never mind. Um and he populish cornish game
19:51
Speaker 1: hens are also delicious. Uh, this is fancy food, you know,
19:56
Speaker 1: tiny pickles and and game hens. Gotta have a fancy
19:58
Speaker 1: name for something that's more basics, and then boardwalk will
20:01
Speaker 1: not do. It's got to be a corniche. Um. But
20:03
Speaker 1: he you know, he parked a lot of his steamships there.
20:08
Speaker 1: They were allowed to unload their cargo. He had a
20:11
Speaker 1: few hotels built, one of which is still standing today.
20:14
Speaker 1: The Winter Palace, Uh sounds like something that you'd hear,
20:17
Speaker 1: you you'd see. This is like almost like a mini
20:19
Speaker 1: Atlantic city kind of vibe. You know, it really is
20:22
Speaker 1: like a city. Uh that's designed for tourism. You know,
20:26
Speaker 1: it's like there's people are like locals there. It's it's
20:28
Speaker 1: designed for these out of towners. It's because they're vacationing
20:32
Speaker 1: during the winter season in Europe. So now it's that's
20:36
Speaker 1: why they call it the Winter Palace. And a corniche
20:38
Speaker 1: is like a road along the coast or road cut
20:41
Speaker 1: into a cliff. Um. I personally prefer the hens and
20:46
Speaker 1: the pickles, but but yeah, it's a it's a road.
20:48
Speaker 1: It's great. You're you're right. He made a boardwalk kind
20:51
Speaker 1: of he made He made like the ancestor of the
20:53
Speaker 1: boardwalk in uh, what's the other one? Coney Island for instance,
20:57
Speaker 1: being an example on par with Atlantic City. He is
21:01
Speaker 1: building this into an empire. It's already empire at this point.
21:04
Speaker 1: They lean into the tourism aspect. It's where you want
21:07
Speaker 1: to be and be seen if you are a European tourist.
21:12
Speaker 1: Of note, this is where the discovery of King Tut's
21:15
Speaker 1: tomb is announced, right when they're opening this. They announced
21:19
Speaker 1: it in the winter Palace. Sometimes people will stay on
21:23
Speaker 1: the boats. Sometimes they'll stay on the river bank intents.
21:27
Speaker 1: Sometimes they'll even stay inside the ancient tombs because just
21:30
Speaker 1: like the cruise companies that would later emulate them their
21:33
Speaker 1: tears and pricing, there are options, you know what I mean.
21:36
Speaker 1: You want to room with a window, it's gonna cost
21:38
Speaker 1: you a little extra. Yeah. From the very start, he
21:40
Speaker 1: was doing these package deals, you know, and it was
21:43
Speaker 1: all that kind of tiered package deals, all inclusive, but
21:46
Speaker 1: not inclusive of all. If you know what I'm saying, right,
21:56
Speaker 1: his rick stevishness takes him to the fights of business success.
22:02
Speaker 1: He passes away in two like like I said, his
22:06
Speaker 1: son John had been running the business for a while,
22:08
Speaker 1: but the business doesn't end with him. It continues on.
22:13
Speaker 1: The family survives, and the business survives through World War One.
22:18
Speaker 1: A lot of their boats get used as troop transports.
22:22
Speaker 1: His grandsons ultimately sell the Thomas Cook business in at
22:31
Speaker 1: the edge of the Great Depression, right before the world's
22:34
Speaker 1: economic collapse would cripple the tourism industry, and throughout the
22:39
Speaker 1: thirties and the forties, the tourism scene in Egypt particularly crumbles.
22:46
Speaker 1: For a while, his fancy Cook boats are just floating
22:49
Speaker 1: hostels basically for archaeologists. But maybe we can talk a
22:53
Speaker 1: little bit about doing talk a little bit about Thomas
22:57
Speaker 1: Cook's tours. The business is still around. Maybe we can
23:00
Speaker 1: talk about lux or do you guys ever read wiki travel?
23:03
Speaker 1: Do you know what? Do you read wiki travel? No?
23:06
Speaker 1: I'm sure it's come up in in in my googles,
23:09
Speaker 1: but it doesn't ring a bell directly. WICKI there's a
23:11
Speaker 1: Wicky wi He's about anything why shouldn't there be one
23:14
Speaker 1: for travel? Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's it's a fun way
23:17
Speaker 1: to learn about a place you've never visited. It's also
23:23
Speaker 1: a fun way to check the accuracy of any of
23:26
Speaker 1: these wiki travel articles. But I was looking up lux
23:29
Speaker 1: Or on wiki travel. Wiki travel is designed entirely like
23:33
Speaker 1: it's a crowdsourced thing for any perspective traveler, and it's
23:37
Speaker 1: meant to be written by people who have firsthand experience.
23:42
Speaker 1: Sometimes also you can tell when it's written by people
23:45
Speaker 1: who live there and work in the tourists and tourism industry,
23:48
Speaker 1: you know where they'll say stuff like bells is not
23:51
Speaker 1: as dangerous as the media would have You'll believe we'll
23:55
Speaker 1: have a ton of percent American stop. It's a you know,
23:58
Speaker 1: stuff like that. I would I would love American style
24:02
Speaker 1: pizza isn't pizza Italian? What does Americans? It isn't that
24:05
Speaker 1: crappy pizza? You don't want American style style? Yeah, that's why,
24:10
Speaker 1: that's why that comment sticks in my memory. But you
24:13
Speaker 1: can see it laid out, is like stay safe, where
24:16
Speaker 1: to sleep, what to eat, how to get in, how
24:18
Speaker 1: to get out, the language, the culture. It's a great
24:20
Speaker 1: read and It's amazing that this guy entirely stumbled into
24:28
Speaker 1: what is now even even after surviving COVID, It's now
24:31
Speaker 1: still a billion dollar industry. Right, Egyptian tourism is, you know,
24:37
Speaker 1: kind of an ebb. It's it hasn't returned to the
24:39
Speaker 1: days of Egyptomania, but the Thomas Cook group is still around.
24:44
Speaker 1: I didn't know this. They're an airline. What do you
24:47
Speaker 1: think Thomas Cooke would feel like if you saw that. Oh,
24:50
Speaker 1: sure he'd be stoked. He seemed like he was a
24:52
Speaker 1: relatively forward thinking guy. But surely it's like a tiny,
24:55
Speaker 1: little bespoke air line that on leave as little puddle
24:58
Speaker 1: jumper type type flights. Right, I've I've never heard of it.
25:01
Speaker 1: Two destinations, it's a lot, huh. They're all in New Jersey.
25:09
Speaker 1: But they are a publicly listed airline, like you said,
25:11
Speaker 1: sort of a miniaire. I mean, that's that's a Brits
25:13
Speaker 1: impressive for an airline that I literally had never heard
25:16
Speaker 1: of until researching for this story. But also they continue
25:19
Speaker 1: to operate tours, and we mentioned that because of some
25:24
Speaker 1: of the political and social uprising in Egypt, not nearly
25:29
Speaker 1: as popular a tourist destination and that's a relatively recent development.
25:33
Speaker 1: In two thousand eleven, the Thomas Cook group halted flights
25:36
Speaker 1: to lux Or, which is still relatively you know, serves
25:40
Speaker 1: the same purpose as it did from the start in
25:43
Speaker 1: two thousand eleven when that revolution um kicked off. But
25:47
Speaker 1: today you've got about a hundred of the Remember those uh,
25:50
Speaker 1: those cruise liners um that were there moored along the
25:53
Speaker 1: river banks in lux Or. Well today we've got about
25:56
Speaker 1: a three hundred of them just kind of gathering dust
25:59
Speaker 1: and sand, um, waiting for a resurgence in the tourist
26:04
Speaker 1: industry there in Egypt, which may or may not come.
26:07
Speaker 1: I hope it does. I'd love to go, but it's
26:08
Speaker 1: certainly not like top of my list, and I don't
26:11
Speaker 1: think it's it's it's nearly the same, you know, you know,
26:14
Speaker 1: I mean, I always forget how closely situated Europe is
26:17
Speaker 1: to Africa, but you always hear about Europeans going to Morocco,
26:21
Speaker 1: which I think is a little more stable and uh
26:24
Speaker 1: and a little more seen as the kind of luxurious
26:26
Speaker 1: tourist destination that maybe at one point Egypt was, but
26:30
Speaker 1: but no longer. Yeah, I'm going to uh going to Morocco.
26:34
Speaker 1: Actually depending. I just keep waiting on COVID. Yeah, it's
26:37
Speaker 1: gonna be fine. I want to I want to eat
26:39
Speaker 1: some food in a tajin, you know. But we do
26:41
Speaker 1: want to give you a quick contemporary update because William
26:44
Speaker 1: Faulter was correct when he said the past isn't past.
26:49
Speaker 1: History is still with us. The Thomas Cook Company declared
26:53
Speaker 1: bankruptcy in nineteen. It was a hundred and seventy eight
26:58
Speaker 1: years old when it collapsed, and along the way, uh,
27:03
Speaker 1: it made a lot of history. We also want to
27:06
Speaker 1: give a shout out to Christopher Rose from fifteen Minute History,
27:11
Speaker 1: who talks, who has a great story about the curious
27:14
Speaker 1: case of the Thomas Cook Hospital in lux Or. So
27:18
Speaker 1: that's a story for another day. But we we do
27:21
Speaker 1: hope you enjoy it. We hope you enjoyed this. I
27:23
Speaker 1: don't know where's your dream travel man? Oh man, I'm down.
27:27
Speaker 1: I'm definitely down with morocco Um. When I was when
27:29
Speaker 1: I went to when I went to Paris not too
27:31
Speaker 1: terribly long ago. The folks sitting next to me on
27:33
Speaker 1: one of the flights, we're talking about going to morocco
27:37
Speaker 1: Um after hanging out in Paris for a while. So
27:39
Speaker 1: it's just a little bit of of a of a
27:41
Speaker 1: Hoppita jump. I do want to add though, because I've
27:43
Speaker 1: really been interested in recent months in the idea of
27:47
Speaker 1: train spotting. And you know, there's a movie of course
27:49
Speaker 1: about hero Attics and in Scotland with you and McGregor
27:53
Speaker 1: really in a boil movie. This is the way thing
27:55
Speaker 1: that it is what they're sort of what the movie
27:57
Speaker 1: is about. They don't really do too much of it.
27:59
Speaker 1: It's sort of one of those absurdist kind of titles
28:01
Speaker 1: that really doesn't have much bearing on the actual plot.
28:04
Speaker 1: But there is this dude on TikTok and uh Instagram
28:07
Speaker 1: who I love. He goes by the name um oh gosh,
28:11
Speaker 1: it's like Thomas Bourgeoisie or something Bourgeoisie uh, and he
28:16
Speaker 1: is a train spotter and he just gets such joy
28:19
Speaker 1: out of watching these trains. He knows all about the
28:22
Speaker 1: different models and different engines and he describes the different
28:25
Speaker 1: stations and it's a huge deal, you know, in in
28:27
Speaker 1: in the UK and Europe and um he is probably
28:30
Speaker 1: very familiar with something called the Thomas Cook European rail Timetable,
28:35
Speaker 1: which is often referred to as the rail Bible, which
28:38
Speaker 1: has UH schedules for fifty thousand train, bus and ferry
28:44
Speaker 1: connections to around five thousand locations. It stopped publishing in
28:49
Speaker 1: because of issues within the company, of course, corporate downsizing
28:53
Speaker 1: the lay after being published for one hundred and forty years.
28:57
Speaker 1: So I am guarantee this is something train spotters would
29:01
Speaker 1: be super familiar with. But John Potter, who used to
29:03
Speaker 1: work for the Thomas Cook editorial team, because they branched out,
29:08
Speaker 1: they did these travel guides, you know, all kinds of stuff.
29:10
Speaker 1: I mean, this guy really did create a legacy of
29:13
Speaker 1: of tourism um and they capitalized on it for many years.
29:17
Speaker 1: This guy, John Potter, actually put out a second mortgage
29:19
Speaker 1: on his house to buy the rights to that information
29:23
Speaker 1: which was proprietary. It was that he bought the rights
29:26
Speaker 1: to the timetable and this proprietary software that was used
29:29
Speaker 1: to gather it all up. And now he personally publishes
29:33
Speaker 1: a new edition of of this information that you can
29:36
Speaker 1: get from his website. So if you're interested in that
29:39
Speaker 1: at all, check out European timetable dot eu where you
29:43
Speaker 1: can get all kinds of European train travel guides and
29:48
Speaker 1: timetables and all of that stuff. And this comes from
29:51
Speaker 1: a great little mental flass article, although I disagree with
29:54
Speaker 1: the title eleven men with extremely boring hobbies. You can
29:59
Speaker 1: find that online today and learn more about it. And
30:02
Speaker 1: if you'd like a bit of subterfuge mystery at the
30:05
Speaker 1: very end of today's show, if you want to travel
30:08
Speaker 1: the rails in a very different way, you're going to
30:12
Speaker 1: want something in the US called the Crew Change Guide.
30:16
Speaker 1: It's a book that's beyond band It's a secret book
30:19
Speaker 1: for a secret group of people. If you want to
30:22
Speaker 1: learn more about that, feel free to write to me
30:24
Speaker 1: on the internet. You can find me on Twitter where
30:27
Speaker 1: I'm at be in Bowling h W. You can find
30:29
Speaker 1: me on Instagram where I'm at ben Bowling bo w
30:32
Speaker 1: l I N And Noel you're on Instagram too, right,
30:36
Speaker 1: that's right, I'm on Instagram at how now Noel Brown.
30:38
Speaker 1: You can check out my adventures and dipping my toe
30:42
Speaker 1: in the world of train spotting there and I'm just
30:43
Speaker 1: kidding back, Yeah, maybe one day could be a cool hobby.
30:47
Speaker 1: Francis Bourgeoisie, by the way, is his name. Check out
30:49
Speaker 1: that guy. He's a delight. He wears this dorky like
30:51
Speaker 1: head warn camera when the trains come by. It's one
30:54
Speaker 1: of those ones that like makes your head look really
30:56
Speaker 1: big on top of a tiny body, and it makes
30:58
Speaker 1: his eyes look really big and wide up and far apart.
31:00
Speaker 1: I think he does it for effect. But he's gotten
31:03
Speaker 1: really really popular. He's like friends with Harry Styles and
31:06
Speaker 1: Rosaliah and all these like big UK pop stars and
31:09
Speaker 1: they just love him. And he just embraced the nerd
31:12
Speaker 1: in him that he was there all along. And then
31:14
Speaker 1: during COVID he really decided to make a thing of this.
31:17
Speaker 1: That is something that he was bullied about during school.
31:19
Speaker 1: But Francis bouge wise, Max Williams, where can folks find
31:23
Speaker 1: your Internet likeness? Sir? Yeah, they can find me on Twitter.
31:26
Speaker 1: I stay off the Instagram, start gonna avoid my nemesis,
31:28
Speaker 1: Mr Noel Brown, But you can find me at at
31:31
Speaker 1: at L Underscore Max Williams where you know you just
31:33
Speaker 1: see me posting about you know, sports star trek, trolling,
31:36
Speaker 1: Ben Bull and bores. I know you're into spores. Oh yes,
31:40
Speaker 1: uh mycologist, so uh yeah, and thank you of course,
31:45
Speaker 1: the one and only super producer, Max Williams. Thanks to
31:47
Speaker 1: Casey Pegraham, Thanks to Ease Jeff Coach, Thanks to Uh,
31:51
Speaker 1: thanks to Jonathan Strickland, our own uh armchair Egyptologists. I
31:58
Speaker 1: feel like Jonathan listen to these and that's gonna that's
32:01
Speaker 1: gonna stick with him for a while. So Jonathan, wake up.
32:04
Speaker 1: If you woke up at three and you heard that,
32:06
Speaker 1: just stay awaken it. Uh. That's that's it for us today.
32:10
Speaker 1: Tuned in soon when we are going to talk about
32:13
Speaker 1: a really classy apology and maybe not. I don't think
32:17
Speaker 1: that spoils too much at all, but it's really classy,
32:20
Speaker 1: weird apology, one of the classiest. We'll see you next time, folks.
32:30
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the I
32:32
Speaker 1: Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
32:35
Speaker 1: your favorite shows.