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Did People Really Throw Tar And Feathers On Each Other? · Ridiculous History

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Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
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Speaker 1: to the show Ridiculous Historians. As always, thank you so
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Speaker 1: much for tuning. In today's episode, ask A, ask a
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Speaker 1: couple of interesting questions. One I think one good place
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Speaker 1: to start here would be the court of public opinion.
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Speaker 1: Here today in social media, we know that people are
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Speaker 1: often I don't know, what would you say, punished by
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Speaker 1: the court of public opinion before they get to you know,
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Speaker 1: a court of law. Um canceled, canceled, Yeah, canceled. Well,
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Speaker 1: what would you what would you say? Is the is
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Speaker 1: the most um enduring public humiliation that happens today? Hi,
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Speaker 1: I'm bed Hi, I'm no public spankings really well, you know,
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Speaker 1: anything that happens in the stockade, because they can just
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Speaker 1: do with you what they will. So, you know, they've
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Speaker 1: got you all prone and strapped up, and people can
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Speaker 1: publicly spank you if they wish. I guess you could
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Speaker 1: kick them or something. But they also throw vegetables at
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Speaker 1: that one and pilloried is that what they call that
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Speaker 1: when they just kind of have you out in the square. Yeah,
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Speaker 1: that's a nasty one. But the subject of today's episode
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Speaker 1: is a much more nasty one. In terms of just
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Speaker 1: like bodily harm. Um. You know, this one is what
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Speaker 1: I would call adding insult to injury, and it's the
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Speaker 1: idea of tarring and feathering, which it's origin story, Like
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Speaker 1: a lot of things we talked about on the show,
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Speaker 1: goes back way farther than I realized. Yeah, agreed. And
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Speaker 1: to your point about canceling superproducer Casey Pegram, you know,
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Speaker 1: I would say the most um embarrassing form of public
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Speaker 1: humiliation currently is probably just just in levels of pettiness.
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Speaker 1: The most uh humiliating form currently is when someone non
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Speaker 1: consensually turns you into an embarrassing meme. Uh. That's you know,
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Speaker 1: that'll stay with you, but it won't physically harm you
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Speaker 1: the way that you would imagine tarring and feathering might
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Speaker 1: harm people. Now nowadays, we use it almost as a
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Speaker 1: figure of speech, right, we're saying, like so and so
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Speaker 1: was tarred and feathered on Twitter for their opinion about um,
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Speaker 1: I don't know, like a movie that hasn't aged well,
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Speaker 1: or for a line from an interview where they said
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Speaker 1: something horrible like when uh, whenever an actor turns out
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Speaker 1: not to be as good of a person as the
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Speaker 1: characters they portrayed. But as you said, no, tarring and
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Speaker 1: feathering was a real thing. This is a ancient well,
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Speaker 1: this is a very old punishment that used to be
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Speaker 1: dished out in real life. Uh what are we talking
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Speaker 1: about that when we say how old it is? I
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Speaker 1: think a lot of us associated with what the time
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Speaker 1: of the US colonies. I think of as as like
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Speaker 1: frontier justice, you know, running someone out of town on
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Speaker 1: or rail, you know, uh, tarn and feathering them and
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Speaker 1: and and parading them through the square. You know what
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Speaker 1: I mean. That's what I think of. But it turns
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Speaker 1: out it goes back to you have to correct me
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Speaker 1: if I'm wrong here, man, I didn't do my due diligence.
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Speaker 1: But uh, Richard the Lion Heart was the first royal
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Speaker 1: ever known to um take up the practice of tarring
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Speaker 1: and feathering. And wasn't either Robin Hood King. Wasn't he
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Speaker 1: the good King? That was like away on holiday or
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Speaker 1: some something fighting in the Crusades, If I'm not mistaken,
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Speaker 1: Robin Hood Prince of Thieves. Yeah, that's right, Richard the
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Speaker 1: Lion hurt played by Sean Connery. I think it's right.
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Speaker 1: He was only in it for a minute. It was
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Speaker 1: Sean Connery, you got there? Or you know what else
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Speaker 1: Sean Connery is in that you make a reference to
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Speaker 1: all the time then that I had never seen, which
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Speaker 1: is any history buff should watch this because it's absurd. Highlander?
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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, it's It is a ridiculous movie on so
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Speaker 1: many levels. But the historical reenactment parts, I would say
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Speaker 1: rival Braveheart in their elaborateness and also probably in their
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Speaker 1: historical inaccuracies. Well, there's one thing about Highlander. There's a
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Speaker 1: there's a fatal flaw in Highlander, which is this, how
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Speaker 1: can you make how can you build a universe where
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Speaker 1: the entire point of everything is that there can be
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Speaker 1: only one and there's like five and then make a franchise? Yeah, exactly.
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Speaker 1: I don't understand what it is. Maybe you can explain.
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Speaker 1: I'm sorry to go off on a tangent, but there's
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Speaker 1: no listen to me. What is it? What is is
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Speaker 1: the Highlander the thing? Or is he just the Highlander
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Speaker 1: because he lives in the Scottish Islands? What is the thing?
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Speaker 1: What is the quickening? I don't understand any of it. Okay,
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Speaker 1: so the main spoilers count down three to one spoilers,
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Speaker 1: So The main thing is that the Highlanders the protagonist
5:09
Speaker 1: because he comes from the Highlands, but he is one
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Speaker 1: of several ultimately extraterrestrial entities, uh, and they have to
5:19
Speaker 1: compete with one another for the ultimate prize, which I
5:25
Speaker 1: sort of forgot now that I got, you know what,
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Speaker 1: I got like two thirds of the way through the
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Speaker 1: elevator pitch for this. I don't remember why. I don't
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Speaker 1: remember what happens at the end. The quickening, though, is
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Speaker 1: where they get all the knowledge of the person they killed.
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Speaker 1: So it's sort of like if you ate something, if
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Speaker 1: you you know, if you're a meat eater and you
5:44
Speaker 1: ate chicken sandwich and you were you know Highlander rules,
5:48
Speaker 1: then you would know all the experiences that chicken had
5:51
Speaker 1: when when you consumed it. Are like Kirby and Super
5:54
Speaker 1: Smash Brothers, where we eat your opponent, you absorbed their powers. Well,
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Speaker 1: I think the takeaway here is that it's a completely
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Speaker 1: nonsensical film that has a lot of fun, has some
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Speaker 1: really ridiculous accents. Because he got Sean Connery, He's supposed
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Speaker 1: to put the only reason I brother up because Sean Connery,
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Speaker 1: Richard Leonard, I swear to got ready to get back
6:10
Speaker 1: to the topic. Sean Connery is supposed to be a
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Speaker 1: Spaniard clearly sounds like Sean Connery. Christopher Lambert is supposed
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Speaker 1: to be Scottish. Has this a morphous like you know,
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Speaker 1: Swiss accent. That's all I'm gonna say about wonderful movie. Though, well,
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Speaker 1: you know, Sean Connery's character has this infuriating little ear ring.
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Speaker 1: I don't know why it bugs me, but anyhow, Yes,
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Speaker 1: Sean Connery is uh has created a lot of great rules.
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Speaker 1: The best part of robin Hood Prince of Thieves is
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Speaker 1: the first ten minutes. I'll stick to my guns on
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Speaker 1: that one. Uh. It's it's the only part I still
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Speaker 1: keep watching. But that was during the age of Kevin Costner,
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Speaker 1: and as anyone can tell you, robin Hood Prince of
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Speaker 1: Thieves very much not historically accurate, and the crusades of
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Speaker 1: their own bag of badgers. But you're right, Richard the
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Speaker 1: Lionheart did in real life. He did have a written
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Speaker 1: proclamation about tarring and feathering. It's one of the first
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Speaker 1: written mentions of it. He says, very specific I love this, Yeah,
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Speaker 1: he says, uh. Any thief who's discovered on his uh
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Speaker 1: on his ships on his sea vessels during the crusades.
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Speaker 1: He says, this will happen to them. He shall first
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Speaker 1: be shaved, then boiling pitch shall be poured upon his head,
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Speaker 1: and a pustion of feathers shook over it, so that
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Speaker 1: he may be publicly known. And at the first land,
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Speaker 1: whether ship's putting, he should be cast on the shawl.
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Speaker 1: M shaved. Sorry, that's the part that goving the specificity
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Speaker 1: of that. Yeah, And you know it's the whole thing
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Speaker 1: about tarring and feathering. We know it was never meant
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Speaker 1: to be a death sentence. It was just meant to
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Speaker 1: burn a little and you know it'd be humiliating, and
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Speaker 1: you know you'd be naked and covered in black goo
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Speaker 1: and feathers. How absurd looking they must have been, right,
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Speaker 1: and then paraded through town or or put off on
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Speaker 1: the next board of call um. But we also know
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Speaker 1: that there were a lot of different methods for how
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Speaker 1: this practice was carried out, and depending on the type
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Speaker 1: of materials that were used, absolutely could be deadly and
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Speaker 1: people could get really really severe burns, and he wouldn't
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Speaker 1: die from the burns themselves. But as we know, we
8:33
Speaker 1: talked about World War One and things like you know,
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Speaker 1: dying from your injuries because of infection and sepsis. That
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Speaker 1: was absolutely on the table here. Um, your skin would
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Speaker 1: burn and blister. And after the you know, the humiliation,
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Speaker 1: the parading and all of that. Uh, it's not like
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Speaker 1: they had like a nurse on call to take care
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Speaker 1: of you, right, Yes, So this is the thing we
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Speaker 1: have to bust. A couple of myths about tar. I
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Speaker 1: think a lot of us nowadays when we hear the phrase,
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Speaker 1: we think that it is immediately fatal. It's obviously dangerous.
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Speaker 1: Don't tar and feather your friends as a prank. But
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Speaker 1: the tar that Richard the Lionheart is talking about, and
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Speaker 1: the tar that was used in pioneer days was overwhelmingly
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Speaker 1: most likely to be a less fatal version of tar,
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Speaker 1: because I think when we are thinking about tar nowadays,
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Speaker 1: we're thinking about stuff that would be used with asphalts
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Speaker 1: and pavement, right. Uh, these public humiliation tactics used a
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Speaker 1: different kind of tar. Maybe, no, maybe we can talk
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Speaker 1: a little bit about those different kinds. Because let's see,
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Speaker 1: there's tar, there's pine tar, and then there's pitch right
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Speaker 1: exactly exactly. Um, And you know when you think of
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Speaker 1: pine tar, that's sort of that Carolina tar Heels type
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Speaker 1: situation that's made from boiling down tar rich pine trees.
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Speaker 1: And that's where the name of their sports sports ball
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Speaker 1: team came from. Which one is it basketball? I think
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Speaker 1: it's basketball the tar Heels. It's a college thing. And
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Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure it's water polo. Man, that's real big
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Speaker 1: in the Carolina's water Marco polo competitive marco polo. To
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Speaker 1: keep it historically sound, um. But eventually these wood tars
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Speaker 1: were replaced by petroleum based selts that are super tough
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Speaker 1: and you know their oil base, and they take a
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Speaker 1: very long time to change shape. They hold their shape.
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Speaker 1: In fact, there was a thing that the Guinness Book
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Speaker 1: of World Records did called the Pitch Drop Experiment, which
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Speaker 1: is one of the longest running lab experiments in the
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Speaker 1: history of the publication. Uh. They've been tracking a cone
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Speaker 1: of unheeded pitch over time as it's been slowly forming
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Speaker 1: and releasing droplets since nineteen thirty for over eighty five years. Uh.
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Speaker 1: And that there's a really great Mental Floss article talking
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Speaker 1: about this very subject, the sticky history of tarring and feathering.
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Speaker 1: But Ben I must ask you, I mean, we talked
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Speaker 1: about how It certainly was possible to die from this
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Speaker 1: because of largely from not being treated if it lay
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Speaker 1: stayed on for too long, or if it heated up
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Speaker 1: to too high a temperature. But we know that most
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Speaker 1: people didn't die from this, and it certainly wasn't intended
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Speaker 1: to kill you. So why what gives? How did they
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Speaker 1: not die? Right? Right? That's the that's the weirdest revelation
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Speaker 1: when we learned about this practice. So in most cases,
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Speaker 1: tarring and feathering was not meant to kill people. We
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Speaker 1: have to understand that, uh that if someone wanted to
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Speaker 1: kill somebody at this point in time, they would just
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Speaker 1: kill them. They would stone them to death, they would
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Speaker 1: have you know, horses tear them apart, they would behead them.
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Speaker 1: Tarring and feathering was meant to humiliate, and because it
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Speaker 1: was meant most times to be non fatal, they would
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Speaker 1: use pine tar. The weird thing about pine tart is
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Speaker 1: that it has a low melting point around a hundred
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Speaker 1: and thirty degrees to forty degrees fahrenheit, or for everybody
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Speaker 1: in the rest of the world outside of the United States,
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Speaker 1: that's fifty five to sixty degrees celsius. This is hot, right,
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Speaker 1: This is definitely enough to make you uncomfortable. It can
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Speaker 1: give you burns, but it's not It's nowhere near the
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Speaker 1: threat level of melting oil or petroleum based tar. And
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Speaker 1: it's interesting because there was also I didn't know this,
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Speaker 1: there was also a sort of spectrum of tarring and feathering,
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Speaker 1: Like if they didn't really want to hurt the person,
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Speaker 1: they might have just heated up the tar a little
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Speaker 1: bit and then rubbed it on the individual, just rubbed
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Speaker 1: it on their skin to get enough of adhesive space
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Speaker 1: for feathers to stick. So it would still hurt, and
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Speaker 1: of course your public reputation would never, never fully recover,
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Speaker 1: but you wouldn't be covered with burns like that guy
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Speaker 1: in that movie dark Man. Do you guys remember dark Man?
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Speaker 1: You know, the thing I always remember about dark Man
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Speaker 1: was they triggered the bomb with that little drinking bird situation.
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Speaker 1: You know, the drinking bird. What do you call that?
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Speaker 1: There's a name for it. And it also demonstrates a
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Speaker 1: scientific principle is a capillary action. I'm no bird scientist here, obviously,
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Speaker 1: but yeah, definitely remember dark Man. It was Sam Raimi movie.
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Speaker 1: He was sort of like a weird kind of noir
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Speaker 1: superhero vigilante Batman esque figure with burns and bandages. He
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Speaker 1: could make fake uh fake face mask, but they would
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Speaker 1: wear off after a certain amount of time. I can't
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Speaker 1: remember what the time limit was. Uh, yeah, it's dark Man.
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Speaker 1: I wonder if that aged well, Casey, I would defer
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Speaker 1: to you on that. Did you ever see Dark Man?
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Speaker 1: I don't remember if I actually thought or not. I
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Speaker 1: definitely remember the movie from when I was a kid. Um.
13:58
Speaker 1: I probably caught part of it on cable at some
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Speaker 1: point or something, but it definitely feels like one of
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Speaker 1: the less um talked about Sam Raimi movies to have
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Speaker 1: come out of that period, which was indeed, wasn't it. Uh,
14:08
Speaker 1: it's famous guy. It's a certain set of skills, yeah,
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Speaker 1: Liam Neeson, Yeah that's the one. Yeah. Well Liam, if
14:15
Speaker 1: you're listening, we thought you did a pretty swell job
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Speaker 1: in dark Man. Favorite recent Liam Neeson's story, by the way,
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Speaker 1: is that he was somewhere and he was filming a
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Speaker 1: movie and there was a horse that appeared on on
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Speaker 1: the set of this film, and he said the horse
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Speaker 1: recognized him from another movie. And to me, that's hilarious
14:35
Speaker 1: because I have this picture of Liam Neeson walking onto
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Speaker 1: the set and the horse going what up. That's pretty
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Speaker 1: much the perfect movie star thing to say, I think, Yeah,
14:45
Speaker 1: but yeah, sure, Liam Neeson has fans. You know everywhere
14:49
Speaker 1: there were a lot of fans of tarring and feathering.
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Speaker 1: But we you know, let's go back to the spectrum idea, right, no,
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Speaker 1: because we know that alan on one end, on the
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Speaker 1: very light end of the spectrum, you would basically have
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Speaker 1: somebody held down and a group of people would rub
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Speaker 1: pine tar on them and then throw feathers on them,
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Speaker 1: assumedly leering and jeering and and making horrible faces the
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Speaker 1: entire time. You know, I'm picturing it like the camera
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Speaker 1: perspective of this shot in the movie where it's from
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Speaker 1: the perspective of the one being tart and feathered, and
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Speaker 1: all these people are just like leering over them, and
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Speaker 1: they have to be making horrible what's the word looking
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Speaker 1: for kind of sinister faces while they're doing I'm just
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Speaker 1: putting that out there. Oh yeah, and they're making they're
15:35
Speaker 1: they're making weird chance that probably don't make sense outside
15:39
Speaker 1: of the context. You know, they're liked did Dodd do?
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Speaker 1: And Uh, that's like a very hurtful thing to say.
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Speaker 1: I guess because back because back then everyone's talked like
15:51
Speaker 1: Andy Bernard so, but but we know that there was
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Speaker 1: another side where someone would say, we want to cause
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Speaker 1: people perman injury or even kill them, and then they
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Speaker 1: would use a different type of tar. Yes, just so Ben,
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Speaker 1: like we were talking about cold tar, any of these
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Speaker 1: petroleum based tars, Uh, we're going to heat up too much,
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Speaker 1: much higher temperatures to cause excruciating pain, not like the
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Speaker 1: light touch of the of the pine tar. This would potentially,
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Speaker 1: you know, really cause you some horrible, horrible torture and
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Speaker 1: uh cause you to get infected because that the burns
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Speaker 1: would be so severe. But overall the survival rates were okay. Um,
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Speaker 1: and we do have some records to back that up. Uh,
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Speaker 1: it would seem that typically tarring and feathering was survivable,
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Speaker 1: if humiliating process and that and that was in the
16:48
Speaker 1: olden days, Zoe. We actually are gonna take tarring and
16:50
Speaker 1: feathering into more contemporary times, which is kind of where
16:53
Speaker 1: I thought it originated. But I guess now that I'm
16:56
Speaker 1: thinking back in my mind, I'm picturing that kind of
16:59
Speaker 1: medieval tarring and feathering too, you know. Yeah, yeah, I
17:04
Speaker 1: do want to point out though this This is an
17:06
Speaker 1: interesting thing about tarring and feathering. Sometimes if someone just
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Speaker 1: needed to be publicly shamed, but for some reason, the
17:16
Speaker 1: mob this is mob rule. For some reason the mob
17:19
Speaker 1: didn't really want to hurt them. Then you might get
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Speaker 1: a deal where someone would just put the tar gently
17:24
Speaker 1: over your clothes. You would not actually be naked anyhow,
17:28
Speaker 1: You're right. Tarring took off. It eventually went global for
17:33
Speaker 1: a couple of interesting reasons. Uh, you know, we know
17:37
Speaker 1: that hundreds of years after Richard the lion Heart wrote
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Speaker 1: this proclamation to tar and feather thieves, it was being
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Speaker 1: used across Europe for any kind of social social violation, right,
17:51
Speaker 1: any kind of stepping outside of status quo or or
17:54
Speaker 1: the various morays of the time. And one of the
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Speaker 1: reasons it's spread around the world, it makes sense when
18:01
Speaker 1: you think about it, is because tar and pitch were
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Speaker 1: ubiquitous on ocean going vessels and they were docks and shipyards.
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Speaker 1: That stuff was just getting transported across the globe, as
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Speaker 1: was the idea. We know that this was Richard the
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Speaker 1: Lionheart who more or less came up with this, or
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Speaker 1: I don't know if he came up with it maybe
18:20
Speaker 1: he saw it being done elsewhere at his travels. We
18:23
Speaker 1: don't have very specific details on that. We do know
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Speaker 1: that he was the one that popularized it, and that
18:28
Speaker 1: came from surprise surprises time at sea. So exactly right, then,
18:32
Speaker 1: all of what the feathers I guess for betting they
18:35
Speaker 1: would have the feathers for like stuffing pillows and uh
18:38
Speaker 1: and and duvets or what. I just don't picture them
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Speaker 1: like living in the level of comfort on a ship
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Speaker 1: to have like a nice comfy down pillow or duvet,
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Speaker 1: you know, and nobody thinks about the source of the feathers.
18:50
Speaker 1: You're right, those poor chickens because they think of when
18:54
Speaker 1: they think of tarring and feathering, they probably just think
18:57
Speaker 1: of the fact that they're getting plucked because some other
19:00
Speaker 1: jerk did something wrong. That's not that's true. Well, to
19:03
Speaker 1: be fair, Ben, let's okay, we're kind of having a
19:05
Speaker 1: cyclical little thought process here. But let's think about this.
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Speaker 1: If they're eating chickens, you gotta pluck the chickens, and
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Speaker 1: you might as well save the feathers and do something
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Speaker 1: with it. Why not, you know, paste them all over
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Speaker 1: some poor sap with boiling you know, hot sticky liquid. True?
19:19
Speaker 1: Why not? Plus you know you have a lot of
19:22
Speaker 1: time to think on a ship, right, That's how you
19:24
Speaker 1: come up with this kind of stuff. Eventually all the
19:26
Speaker 1: potatoes get peeled. Like, have you guys ever heard of bastinado.
19:30
Speaker 1: It's a very specific type of punishment or torture where
19:35
Speaker 1: someone is prone and then someone take you basically whipped
19:39
Speaker 1: the bottom of people's feet, just the bottom of their feet,
19:43
Speaker 1: because it means like they can't walk. It's I think
19:47
Speaker 1: it's probably more dangerous than tarring and feathering. Yeah, if
19:50
Speaker 1: I'm not mistaken, isn't that what Saddam Hussein, one of
19:52
Speaker 1: his psychotic sons did to that soccer team? Uh that
19:56
Speaker 1: when they lost? I think he whipped, had had them whipped,
20:00
Speaker 1: had them whipped about the bottoms of their feet. Are
20:01
Speaker 1: you talking about the notorious sociopath. I wouldn't be surprised,
20:07
Speaker 1: but uh, you know, tarring and feathering. I'm just saying,
20:12
Speaker 1: if it seems oddly specific, it's one of very many
20:15
Speaker 1: oddly specific forms of punishment. Totally. So let's go to
20:24
Speaker 1: the American colonies in our chronology, because no, I think
20:27
Speaker 1: your initial thought was that this was something from pioneer days.
20:32
Speaker 1: My initial thought was that this was something with like
20:35
Speaker 1: the thirteen US colonies. While the practice maybe older than that,
20:41
Speaker 1: we know it was definitely in play during both of
20:44
Speaker 1: those eras. Maybe we could talk a little bit about
20:48
Speaker 1: tarring and feathering during the colonies. I mean, it's surprised
20:52
Speaker 1: it was common enough that it's surprising it wasn't mentioned
20:55
Speaker 1: in Hamilton's. I was about to say the same thing, man,
20:58
Speaker 1: Everyone's uh, Hamilton's is of mind right now, and I
21:01
Speaker 1: proposed that we replaced the national anthem with just the
21:03
Speaker 1: entire soundtrack for Hamilton's. It'll take a while, but you know,
21:07
Speaker 1: I think it would be a little more on than
21:09
Speaker 1: the current one, with that secret racist verse that no
21:12
Speaker 1: one talks about, or I guess they're talking about it now,
21:15
Speaker 1: but yeah, Francis Scott Key apparently not the best dude. Surprise, surprise,
21:19
Speaker 1: But yes, it's true. Ben it became kind of a
21:22
Speaker 1: form of political retaliation for poorer classes. Um In sixteen
21:27
Speaker 1: nineties six, a historian by the name of Benjamin h
21:31
Speaker 1: Irvin pointed out this, saying that quote an angry crowd
21:35
Speaker 1: imposed the punishment upon a London bailiff who attempted to
21:39
Speaker 1: arrest a debtor. Um. And this was all about you know,
21:42
Speaker 1: during the American Revolution or the kind of fervor that
21:45
Speaker 1: led up to the American Revolution. Um. And this was
21:49
Speaker 1: patriots that were acting out against their you know, oppressors
21:54
Speaker 1: in the form of of English um. You know, representatives
21:58
Speaker 1: that we're supposed to be over seeing these colonies, and
22:01
Speaker 1: they weren't having it. Yeah, there's there's an interesting thing
22:04
Speaker 1: here too. Uh So you might have heard the old
22:08
Speaker 1: Yankee Doodle song, right, but if you live in the US,
22:11
Speaker 1: you definitely heard it where they have the line calling
22:14
Speaker 1: something macaroni. You guys remember that, Yeah, a feather in
22:17
Speaker 1: his hat right right, and called it macaroni. It's an
22:20
Speaker 1: intensely confusing line nowadays. But macaroni was like a somewhat
22:28
Speaker 1: tongue in cheek pejorative term, the same way that people
22:31
Speaker 1: would call each other or others hipsters nowadays. Macaroni was
22:36
Speaker 1: a term for people who were thought to be hyper fancy.
22:41
Speaker 1: They were like, you know, uh, they they had high
22:45
Speaker 1: flies manners, Yeah, Dandy's exactly, and they they had they
22:51
Speaker 1: liked macaroni. That's where the name came from because it
22:53
Speaker 1: was seen as an exotic Italian dish. So a lot
22:56
Speaker 1: of British folks in the colonies were seeing as UH
23:01
Speaker 1: being quote unquote macaroni. There were too fancy and you
23:05
Speaker 1: had to tar and feather them to teach them a
23:07
Speaker 1: lesson and take them down a notch. But it wasn't
23:10
Speaker 1: one side or the other of this conflict that were
23:13
Speaker 1: more prone to tarring and feathering during the American Revolution.
23:16
Speaker 1: It was actually these uh you know, angry mobs on
23:19
Speaker 1: both sides of the issue, whether it was pro British
23:23
Speaker 1: or Patriots that were very fond of tarring and feathering
23:27
Speaker 1: people they did not agree with. It became this very
23:31
Speaker 1: go to sort of humiliation slash punishment slash torture. I
23:36
Speaker 1: guess during these times because of all of that pine
23:39
Speaker 1: tar that was available because of the ships in the shipyards,
23:43
Speaker 1: and especially like in New York City, which we know
23:45
Speaker 1: as a harbor, is a port city, So it makes
23:48
Speaker 1: perfect sense that patriots and British UH supporters alike were
23:53
Speaker 1: inspired to carry this out on each other um and
23:57
Speaker 1: sort of out tar and feather one another. And like
24:00
Speaker 1: we said before, it was a way of humiliating these
24:03
Speaker 1: British tax collectors because as we know, that was one
24:06
Speaker 1: of the biggest impetus is for the American Revolution was
24:09
Speaker 1: no taxation with our representation these uh you know, this
24:13
Speaker 1: is like the equivalent of shooting the messenger without actually
24:15
Speaker 1: killing them. When these British laisons would come, you know,
24:20
Speaker 1: to make their collections and we're like no, no, no, no,
24:24
Speaker 1: We're gonna drag you through the streets, cover you and
24:26
Speaker 1: pitch and pour chicken feathers all over you just to
24:29
Speaker 1: make you look like a jerk. And speaking of insult
24:32
Speaker 1: to injury, what if you were going to get tarred
24:36
Speaker 1: and feathered by the local bullies or politicians or mob
24:40
Speaker 1: of your town, but they didn't have tar and they
24:43
Speaker 1: didn't have feathers. What if you got the off brand
24:47
Speaker 1: you know, like uh, the no name generic version of
24:51
Speaker 1: tar it and feathery. That actually happened in the eighteen
24:55
Speaker 1: hundreds as the practice spread away from the coast and
24:59
Speaker 1: into the interior of the United States. Uh, people would
25:04
Speaker 1: get tarred and feathered quote unquote with easier to find materials.
25:08
Speaker 1: If you weren't by a shipyard and you didn't have
25:10
Speaker 1: wood tar, for instance, you might end up tarring and
25:13
Speaker 1: feathering someone with syrup and cat tails. Imagine, imagine not
25:19
Speaker 1: not being good enough for the name brand tarring and feathering,
25:23
Speaker 1: the plucky younger brother of tarring and feathering syrup and
25:26
Speaker 1: cat tails that just seems sticky and gross. Does this?
25:31
Speaker 1: I don't see where like they heat the syrup like
25:33
Speaker 1: like like like you would for like a nice pancake
25:35
Speaker 1: breakfast like. Uh, Well, if you heat anything, uh to
25:40
Speaker 1: a high enough temperature, it's going to be dangerous. It
25:42
Speaker 1: doesn't matter what the material is. But we do know
25:46
Speaker 1: that there was another danger with tarring and feathering. So
25:49
Speaker 1: tarring and feathering definitely has an upsetting, disturbing history. So
25:54
Speaker 1: we're we're taking a little bit of a turn. We're
25:56
Speaker 1: having fun with this, but we do need to mention
26:00
Speaker 1: some real life terrible things about tarring and feathering. First off,
26:04
Speaker 1: most of the time, tarring and feathering, at least in
26:08
Speaker 1: the US, was not something handed down to uh, to
26:12
Speaker 1: a defendant in a court of law. It was something
26:15
Speaker 1: that was meted out by angry mobs, which means they
26:20
Speaker 1: frequently in addition to tarring and feathering, someone beat the
26:25
Speaker 1: ever loving snot out of them, you know, breaking their
26:29
Speaker 1: limbs and stuff man's par for the course. You're not
26:32
Speaker 1: gonna get tar and feather without getting knocked around a
26:35
Speaker 1: little bit, you know, it just goes with the territory.
26:37
Speaker 1: But here's a story that I didn't know anything about
26:40
Speaker 1: that I found really interesting. Joseph Smith, as we know
26:43
Speaker 1: as the founder of Mormonism. He um, oh gosh, I
26:47
Speaker 1: always get the details of the of the story a
26:49
Speaker 1: little incorrect. But he received some tablets from an angel.
26:54
Speaker 1: I'm not mistaken. Um. And then he uh used that
26:59
Speaker 1: did he receive the tablets or he wrote the town?
27:01
Speaker 1: He wrote them? He wrote the tenants of Mormonism. There
27:04
Speaker 1: are gold plates. Uh. This is Joseph Smith in the
27:09
Speaker 1: religion of the Latter day Saints. He received Uh. He
27:13
Speaker 1: received these golden plates and had to translate them to
27:17
Speaker 1: a to a language that people could understand. This came
27:20
Speaker 1: from the direction of an angel called moroney. Are you
27:24
Speaker 1: sure it was a macaroni? Yeah? Yeah, just kidding. It's bad.
27:29
Speaker 1: I apologize. Please please don't tar and feather me from
27:31
Speaker 1: my horrible dad joke game today. But yeah, Joseph Smith
27:34
Speaker 1: had a bit of a brush with feathers and tar. Gosh,
27:38
Speaker 1: I'm gonna roll downhill? Is the way that this is
27:40
Speaker 1: rolling um, because a Mormon minister named Sydney rigged in
27:46
Speaker 1: and a friend of his, who was in fact Joseph Smith,
27:49
Speaker 1: were actually almost killed, almost murdered by an angry mob
27:53
Speaker 1: who literally pulled them from their homes uh in the
27:57
Speaker 1: middle of the night as they slept, beat the living
28:00
Speaker 1: crap out of them, also tried to force feed them acid.
28:04
Speaker 1: I'm assuming it's not the fun kind of asset. It
28:06
Speaker 1: would be like the kind of asset that would like
28:08
Speaker 1: burn your esophagus. I want to know more about this,
28:11
Speaker 1: I see it saying tried to assume they failed because
28:16
Speaker 1: we don't know of any stories of Joseph Smith, like
28:19
Speaker 1: not having a face. Um. But yeah, and then they
28:23
Speaker 1: hard and feathered them and left them for dead. This mob, also,
28:27
Speaker 1: by the way, UH, may have attempted to castrate Joseph Smith. There.
28:33
Speaker 1: There's still conflicting accounts about that, but we have in
28:37
Speaker 1: writing his own description of what happened to him. Apparently,
28:44
Speaker 1: they tore every article of clothing off his body except
28:47
Speaker 1: for his shirt collar and then the tar that was
28:52
Speaker 1: put on and made him look like he was covered
28:55
Speaker 1: in blood. He said his wife fainted when she saw
28:59
Speaker 1: him because as she thought that he had had such
29:01
Speaker 1: grievous injuries. Um. And he he says he had to
29:08
Speaker 1: spend the night scraping and removing tar and washing himself
29:12
Speaker 1: over and over again with the help of his friends,
29:15
Speaker 1: like it wasn't a one man job. And in the
29:18
Speaker 1: morning he was able to put clothes on, but he
29:20
Speaker 1: was so coated with tar that he literally couldn't not
29:24
Speaker 1: be naked. Not to be a complete bummer, but it
29:26
Speaker 1: reminds me of like you know, when when there's oil
29:29
Speaker 1: spills and you see penguins or other you know, aquatic
29:32
Speaker 1: creatures covered in petroleum. Even if it's not heated to
29:36
Speaker 1: boiling temperatures, that stuff still is is really difficult to
29:40
Speaker 1: get off. Um. So yeah, that would be it would
29:43
Speaker 1: be a real, a real to do. Yeah. If we
29:52
Speaker 1: move further up in the timeline, uh, we have to
29:56
Speaker 1: realize that not only is tarring and feathering older than
29:59
Speaker 1: men people believe, it was also around longer than a
30:03
Speaker 1: lot of people might like to think, right, we know that, Uh,
30:09
Speaker 1: in the US even in the twentie century, in the
30:12
Speaker 1: nineteen hundreds, people were still touring and feathering. Folks they
30:16
Speaker 1: disagreed with, Yeah, and It's interesting how stuff like this
30:20
Speaker 1: does tend to evolve a little bit over time, but
30:22
Speaker 1: this one stayed largely the same in the United States
30:25
Speaker 1: as a form of mob justice in the twentieth century,
30:28
Speaker 1: even um, in the anti Bellum days. Here we are,
30:31
Speaker 1: this is where my mind went. It wasn't see, it
30:33
Speaker 1: wasn't it wasn't the medieval days. It wasn't the American Revolution.
30:38
Speaker 1: It was this kind of kind of you know, town
30:41
Speaker 1: square mob justice situation that my mind always went to
30:45
Speaker 1: in picturing this with a little bit of a redneck
30:48
Speaker 1: e twang to it. Just gonna put that out there.
30:50
Speaker 1: Um So yeah, in the anti Bellum days, um, a
30:53
Speaker 1: lot of African African Americans and civil rights activists were tartan.
30:57
Speaker 1: That's why. That's exactly why, uh, I feel bad for
31:01
Speaker 1: even remotely being light about this. It's true. A particularly
31:06
Speaker 1: famous case involved a gentleman named John Minz, who was
31:09
Speaker 1: a German American farmer. In nineteen eighteen, he was dragged
31:13
Speaker 1: from his home in Minnesota, UM. He was whipped and
31:17
Speaker 1: and terrorized with weapons, and then tarred and feathered and
31:21
Speaker 1: forced to march across the border to South Dakota, UM
31:25
Speaker 1: and he was you know, warned if he ever returned,
31:27
Speaker 1: he would be killed. And in this case he was
31:30
Speaker 1: exclusively being you know, punished because he was a German
31:33
Speaker 1: American and it was during World War One. He was
31:36
Speaker 1: told he would never be allowed to come back. If
31:38
Speaker 1: he returned, he would be killed. He tried to sue
31:41
Speaker 1: them in who did this to him? Um, only to
31:43
Speaker 1: have the jury declared them completely innocent of all charges.
31:48
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, what was the deal with the judge
31:51
Speaker 1: to ben Then there's some tricky stuff there. So what
31:54
Speaker 1: a kangaroo court? The judge in this case, a real
31:58
Speaker 1: winner named wilbur fo you told the jury in this
32:03
Speaker 1: in this court, he told the jury that they should
32:05
Speaker 1: consider this guy disloyal to the US when they were
32:10
Speaker 1: thinking about the verdict. So basically, the judge said, now
32:14
Speaker 1: before you reach your conclusion, members of the jury, remember
32:20
Speaker 1: that this guy's German and that's super messed up from
32:25
Speaker 1: from where we're coming from. So yeah, so it wasn't fair.
32:29
Speaker 1: He later got a new trial, uh, and ended up
32:33
Speaker 1: settling out of court for the equivalent of about eighty
32:35
Speaker 1: four grand today. So that's the price for getting tarred
32:39
Speaker 1: and feathered. Currently, we also know in Europe during World
32:43
Speaker 1: War Two or after shortly after World War Two, women
32:46
Speaker 1: who had had intimate relationships with invading German soldiers were
32:52
Speaker 1: sometimes subjected to taring and feathering, which is an absolute
32:57
Speaker 1: travesty of course. Um. Yeah. Continue. In two thousand and seven,
33:02
Speaker 1: a guy in Ireland and Belfast was tarred and feathered
33:06
Speaker 1: like this. This is still kind of going on. People
33:09
Speaker 1: are still occasionally getting covered with tar and feathers. Yeah.
33:13
Speaker 1: And as recently as the eighties, an Alabama woman went
33:17
Speaker 1: to court for the tarring and feathering of her ex
33:20
Speaker 1: husband's uh fiancee at the time, um, using a tar
33:24
Speaker 1: like material that you would use to like weather proof
33:28
Speaker 1: your house or like steal your roof or whatever. Um.
33:31
Speaker 1: And and she she described her act of vigilante justice
33:35
Speaker 1: as standing up for a sense of community decency. Um,
33:39
Speaker 1: you know, because this was she considered this person, uh
33:44
Speaker 1: home wrecker of some sort. So yeah, there's definitely a
33:47
Speaker 1: historical precedent for this type of behavior. And you know,
33:51
Speaker 1: even though she you know, kind of claimed this historical
33:54
Speaker 1: president and president and tried to make some sort of
33:58
Speaker 1: grandstanding gesture to the court, she was convicted. And this
34:01
Speaker 1: is also from that lovely mental phloss article on the
34:04
Speaker 1: history of tarring and feathering. We have another case as
34:07
Speaker 1: recently as seventeen when protesters not with a person tard
34:11
Speaker 1: and feathered a monument of Jefferson Davis in Arizona, UM
34:16
Speaker 1: and this was after the Charlottesville Virginia UM Neo Nazi
34:21
Speaker 1: marches are white supremacist marches, so we're seeing a lot
34:24
Speaker 1: of that. I'd be surprised if we don't see more
34:27
Speaker 1: tarring and feathering of some of these racist monuments across
34:30
Speaker 1: the country. So there you have it, folks, taring and feathering.
34:34
Speaker 1: It started because the materials were easily available and authorities
34:42
Speaker 1: centuries ago decided it would be uh more appropriate to
34:47
Speaker 1: humiliate someone than to murder them. However, tarring and feathering
34:53
Speaker 1: uh evolved over the great game of telephone that is
34:56
Speaker 1: human history, and it was at times fa a doll.
35:00
Speaker 1: The big takeaway from this incredibly cartoonishly specific form of
35:06
Speaker 1: public humiliation and punishment is I would say, it's just this.
35:11
Speaker 1: If you have objections with people, or you have problems
35:15
Speaker 1: with people, why not talk it out with them? Why
35:19
Speaker 1: not take them to court? Why not? Uh, why not
35:23
Speaker 1: find another less dangerous way of canceling them. I don't know,
35:30
Speaker 1: I like, I don't it's harding and feathering someone just
35:33
Speaker 1: seems so extra, you know what I mean, it really is,
35:37
Speaker 1: um And you you know, it's you talked about the
35:38
Speaker 1: specificity and some of the kind of creative flare that
35:41
Speaker 1: goes into some of these punishments and tortures throughout the years,
35:44
Speaker 1: and this is one that really has kind of stood
35:46
Speaker 1: the test of time. And I'm fascinated by that. Um.
35:49
Speaker 1: I guess maybe because it is typically not that lethal. Uh,
35:53
Speaker 1: And it's mobile. You can kind of parade people around,
35:56
Speaker 1: whereas the stock caves people have to come to you
35:58
Speaker 1: to humiliate you, which I would see as being interesting
36:01
Speaker 1: because then you've got like a place to go, you know,
36:03
Speaker 1: let's go throw you know, rotten vegetables at the bad
36:07
Speaker 1: man in the square. Um. But yeah, we don't see
36:10
Speaker 1: that one anymore either, except at the Renaissance Fair. Rotten vegetables.
36:13
Speaker 1: Oh that's that's a good one. I think that's cool. Yeah, yeah,
36:17
Speaker 1: well it's you know, it's again it's like you gotta
36:19
Speaker 1: you know, you use all the feathers that you have
36:21
Speaker 1: on the ship. You gotta use those rotten vegetables somewhere,
36:23
Speaker 1: so you might as well throw them at an adulterer
36:25
Speaker 1: or something. Well, I'm thinking, you know, before I sound
36:28
Speaker 1: to uh glib or whimsical about it, I guess you
36:34
Speaker 1: would want to. I'm such a softy. I don't. I
36:37
Speaker 1: don't want to seriously hurt people. I would want really
36:39
Speaker 1: ripe vegetables, right, so they smell bad, but they're not
36:42
Speaker 1: hard enough to hurt someone, you know what I mean,
36:46
Speaker 1: A good splatter you wanted. Yeah, yeah, so you get it.
36:50
Speaker 1: You get it anyway. That's our show, folks. Thanks so
36:54
Speaker 1: much for tuning in. Before we bid you do, we
36:59
Speaker 1: have to ask or I have to ask Casey, what's
37:02
Speaker 1: what's your take on on Tar and Feathering? Did you
37:05
Speaker 1: was this episode interesting to you or did you already
37:07
Speaker 1: know about all this? No, A lot of this was
37:09
Speaker 1: new to me. Um. I kind of associated it more
37:12
Speaker 1: like the whole wild West thing, So to find out
37:14
Speaker 1: that it had a whole life before then was really interesting.
37:17
Speaker 1: And the fact that it still happens here and there
37:20
Speaker 1: is uh disturbing Casey on the case. Thanks as always
37:25
Speaker 1: to you, super producer, Casey Pegram. Thanks as always to
37:28
Speaker 1: our peer podcast or Eve's Jeff Coat. Check out her
37:32
Speaker 1: show This State in History when you have the chance.
37:35
Speaker 1: Thanks also to what I describe as our magnetic north
37:40
Speaker 1: of the show, a guy we will never tar and feather,
37:43
Speaker 1: our research associate, Gaye Bluesier. Thanks to Alex Williams, who
37:46
Speaker 1: composed our theme. Christopher hasciotes here in spirit anyone else
37:50
Speaker 1: that I forgot? My mom? Your dad? Isn't his birthday today? Ben?
37:53
Speaker 1: Or was that yesterday? I was yesterday? That's so kind
37:55
Speaker 1: of you to remember, Yes, Happy birthday, Happy birthday to
37:59
Speaker 1: the kind is? Can I call him to colonel? Is? That?
38:01
Speaker 1: Isn't that something we say? Yeah? I mean you can.
38:04
Speaker 1: He's the kind of guy. His joke would be like
38:06
Speaker 1: you can call me anything but late to debt or
38:09
Speaker 1: very good. Yeah, he's the emperor of dad jokes. But yeah,
38:12
Speaker 1: yeah yeah. And also no, thanks to you for taking
38:14
Speaker 1: this strange journey today. I am super glad to be
38:18
Speaker 1: able to say that the three of us have a
38:22
Speaker 1: record so far of not being tarred or feather. Indeed,
38:26
Speaker 1: we'll see you next time, folks. For more podcasts from
38:36
Speaker 1: my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
38:39
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,