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The Nature of Ephemera, with Alex Williams · 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. Thanks so much for tuning in.
0:31
Speaker 1: Peak Behind the curtain, it is officially summer in Atlanta.
0:35
Speaker 1: The humidity and the heat combined to drape the city
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Speaker 1: in soup. It feels like walking through soup. So I
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Speaker 1: am very, very glad to be here inside our air
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Speaker 1: conditioned studio. My name is bet, my name is not.
0:49
Speaker 1: The shipping container is icy cool today, and outside it
0:53
Speaker 1: is sort of there's this miasma, this sort of funk,
0:55
Speaker 1: this patina of awful hot, sweaty grossness that does kind
0:59
Speaker 1: of enveloped the city. And it happened overnight, didn't it.
1:02
Speaker 1: It just happened overnight. Yeah, it permeated, It permeated this
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Speaker 1: fair metropolis of ours. I always forget about how dire
1:10
Speaker 1: this situation becomes when we hit summer in Atlanta, And
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Speaker 1: you know, this may mean that we're in here recording
1:18
Speaker 1: uh more episodes. We do want to start the show
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Speaker 1: with a big shout out to our guest super producer
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Speaker 1: Ramsey Ram Jams Young, So everybody give him a fine hello.
1:29
Speaker 1: Do we get does he get a sound a sound effect? Yeah?
1:33
Speaker 1: That's kind of good. Yeah, it was very good. That's good.
1:36
Speaker 1: And of course this does not mean that we will
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Speaker 1: ever forget our wonderful are our third amigo, right, uh,
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Speaker 1: super producer Casey Pegram gone but not forgotten, gone, I say,
1:50
Speaker 1: but gone where ben Uh like that we were talking
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Speaker 1: about this. So I have a theory. Every year or so,
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Speaker 1: Casey disappears, and in France, someone else reappears, a very
2:03
Speaker 1: different person who happens to look a little bit like
2:05
Speaker 1: our dear friend Casey Pegrhum. Uh. This guy, we imagine,
2:08
Speaker 1: is a member of the criminal underbelly of Paris uh,
2:12
Speaker 1: known only by the name bush Yeah. And he dawns
2:16
Speaker 1: a completely different get up in the form of a
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Speaker 1: very slick looking leather jacket, a single dangly cross earring
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Speaker 1: on his left on his left ear, and sometimes he
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Speaker 1: wears fingerless gloves and rides around one of those cool
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Speaker 1: little mod motorbikes in the pictures. Yet, and uh, we
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Speaker 1: strongly suspect that he may have one or more secret families.
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Speaker 1: It's true. None of this. We can neither confirm nor
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Speaker 1: deny any of this. We are wildly speculated. It's all true.
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Speaker 1: They'll put the pieces together people. All Right, we're gonna
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Speaker 1: have to let a Casey have his day in court
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Speaker 1: here and defend himself. But you know, Casey's not here.
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Speaker 1: We're joining with Ramsey helping us pick up the slack here.
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Speaker 1: Casey's doing his double life. But that's not the only
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Speaker 1: person that we have on this show today, is it?
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Speaker 1: That's asolutely true? This is a special episode that I
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Speaker 1: know we were both very excited about. We have in
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Speaker 1: our network a brand new podcast that we're we're all
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Speaker 1: huge fans of, sincerely huge fans of, and it happens
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Speaker 1: to be created by one of our close friends who
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Speaker 1: you may have heard mentioned on our show or other
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Speaker 1: shows before. Folks, Let's give it up for Alex Williams,
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Speaker 1: the brains behind the podcast we call Aphemeral because that's
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Speaker 1: the name of the podcast. Hi, Alex makes us call
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Speaker 1: it that just by virtue of having titled in and
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Speaker 1: being a very good title and a very fine podcast.
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Speaker 1: Thank you for being here. What a flattering introducts. I'm
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Speaker 1: I'm I'm very happy to be here. Here's the thing.
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Speaker 1: We've been working with you for quite some time now.
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Speaker 1: We've kind of seen you grow and develop and become
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Speaker 1: more and more of a badass in with the pros
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Speaker 1: referred to as the podcast space and making wild gesticulating
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Speaker 1: quote fingers when I say that you really have to
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Speaker 1: but here's the thing. You really took it another level
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Speaker 1: in terms of making not only a history podcast, but
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Speaker 1: something that I I referred to and I describe it
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Speaker 1: to friends as something akin to like poetry meets sound,
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Speaker 1: collage meets some music, concrete meets history, And I think
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Speaker 1: it's just a really beautiful piece of work. And I'm
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Speaker 1: just beyond stoke that it's on our network and that
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Speaker 1: you're the guy behind him. So we'd like to ask you.
4:25
Speaker 1: That was such a good pitch. I don't know if
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Speaker 1: I could pull that up, but that was great. It's good. Well,
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Speaker 1: now it is your turn, so we'd like to ask
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Speaker 1: you some questions about if them, about your your inspiration
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Speaker 1: behind it. But first, yeah, with with that excellent description
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Speaker 1: that Nol just just decided, what, how would you describe it?
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Speaker 1: How do you describe it? When when someone's like, hey,
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Speaker 1: what's this thing you're working on? I start stammering and sweating,
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Speaker 1: and I try to make it as concise as possible.
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Speaker 1: I was thinking of a quick Pitch and Bed the
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Speaker 1: other night, it's uh, something like a show about fleeting
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Speaker 1: moments and the things they leave behind, because that's what
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Speaker 1: is right is is sort of a remnant of a
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Speaker 1: thing that no longer is around, I guess kind of
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Speaker 1: or the idea of things being ephemeral means that they're
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Speaker 1: fleeting or that they're here today gone tomorrow, but they
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Speaker 1: do leave behind some kind of residue if you know
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Speaker 1: where to look. Right. Yeah, So the word itself is
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Speaker 1: kind of tricky. In the textbook, ephemera might just mean paper, right, broadsides, tickets,
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Speaker 1: pamphlets for museums, basically anything printed, hand printed, you know,
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Speaker 1: printing press, computer printed that wasn't meant to be saved.
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Speaker 1: But then it gets into the issue of like how
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Speaker 1: do you determine whether something was meant to be saved
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Speaker 1: or not, right, Like, for instance, a train schedule from
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Speaker 1: the early nineteen hundreds. Now, the ones that are around
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Speaker 1: are considered things to be things that have historical value, right,
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Speaker 1: But when they were print did they were thought to
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Speaker 1: have a definitive and very short lifespan or span of utility.
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Speaker 1: One of the really classic examples is the stamp the
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Speaker 1: episode I'm working on that will come out on Monday.
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Speaker 1: Is about this, Well Monday, that might that might not
6:14
Speaker 1: be the monday it will come out on. It will
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Speaker 1: come out on a Monday. I don't know when this
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Speaker 1: will come out. But the stamp is a really classic example. Right.
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Speaker 1: So you've written a letter to your friend Noel, and
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Speaker 1: you've stamped, and you've put in the in the mailbox
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Speaker 1: and he gets it and he rips it open and
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Speaker 1: reads the letter and he's, you know, overwrought with emotion.
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Speaker 1: Whatever he throws out or hopefully recycles the and that's it.
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Speaker 1: But but Noel happens to have a great stamp collection,
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Speaker 1: and I've sent him, you know, uh, inverted Jenny stamp
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Speaker 1: from the nineteen thirties, and so he is overwrought with emotion,
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Speaker 1: not because of my great prose, but because this is
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Speaker 1: a great addition to his stamp collection, because he is
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Speaker 1: a philetist or philist is how it how it's pronounced
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Speaker 1: pH I l A t I s t. One who
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Speaker 1: likes stand what's the root word of Filettist could also
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Speaker 1: be one who filets, you know, That's what I would think,
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Speaker 1: because that's how the British pronounced filet they pronounced it,
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Speaker 1: fill it. They do a hard tea sound at the
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Speaker 1: end of it. I always find that very interesting because
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Speaker 1: sometimes the Brits seemed like they really own the word,
7:17
Speaker 1: and sometimes they just feel like they're mispronouncing it just
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Speaker 1: to be cute. Cute, sort of like aluminium, Like, that's
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Speaker 1: not the word, Brits. Come on, it's aluminium. You're adding
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Speaker 1: syllables there that don't belong the American English. To be fair,
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Speaker 1: we can't really criticize the people who are doing it first.
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Speaker 1: That's also fair. Ben. If they want to add an
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Speaker 1: extra p on shop, then that's kind of their call.
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Speaker 1: Uh yeah. To answer that question about etymology, it's interesting
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Speaker 1: because it comes from French and Greek, so uh telia
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Speaker 1: means exemption from payment. The French philo means loving, so
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Speaker 1: it's loving exemption from payment, which is right now. But
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Speaker 1: it's it makes sense, but done. I asked me to
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Speaker 1: explain it. Well, we can learn more about this. What
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Speaker 1: what did you what are you exploring on this episode
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Speaker 1: concerning stamps? Oh, well it's not. It's all over it
8:14
Speaker 1: so it's much worth than uh you know. One of
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Speaker 1: the things that we're doing is actually taking the word
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Speaker 1: apart in this in this episode, So if emera comes
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Speaker 1: from the root where it's epi meaning honor of, like epicurious,
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Speaker 1: epidermis uh and camera meaning day, it's like a Latin
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Speaker 1: Greek combination word. And so it starts being used by
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Speaker 1: people in uh, you know the age of Enlightenment, I guess, uh,
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Speaker 1: to describe things that only last for a day, the mayfly,
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Speaker 1: you know, certain species of plants that flower and wither
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Speaker 1: in a day. Uh. And then you know it becomes
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Speaker 1: with time more broadly used to describe things that don't
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Speaker 1: last a long time, you know, or fleeting. And that's
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Speaker 1: when we start getting into trouble because like in a
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Speaker 1: you know, the metrics of like a human life, maybe
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Speaker 1: like a hundred years at best, something that doesn't last
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Speaker 1: for long means something different than like geologically uh, like
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Speaker 1: melting polar ice caps or ephemeral At this point, or
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Speaker 1: was it who was that philosopher said all is ephemra?
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Speaker 1: How have I never heard that? I've never heard of that.
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Speaker 1: Maybe it's maybe it's a philosopher Marcus Aurelius. Okay, there
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Speaker 1: we go. Ephemeral, both what remembers and what is remembered,
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Speaker 1: there we go. How have I never used that quote
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Speaker 1: for something? Your tagline hang out on the show were often, Man,
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Speaker 1: I'm full of vaguely remembered one liners from ancient philosophers.
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Speaker 1: So I mean, I guess ephemeral. Ephemeral, by its nature
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Speaker 1: is sometimes a little hard to describe, as is the show.
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Speaker 1: It's not something that you can just encapsulate in a
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Speaker 1: quick elevator pitch. So I put forth that we listened
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Speaker 1: to a little bit of a clip that can then
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Speaker 1: set up a discussion. What do you say, Oh, sure,
10:01
Speaker 1: let's do the call your brothers, Yes, sir. As a
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Speaker 1: kid Franz Lids, his father would tell him scary stories
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Speaker 1: before bed. Only these stories were true. My father, or
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Speaker 1: the scientist, engineer, inventor, who had never really had much
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Speaker 1: use for fairy tales. He preferred real life grotesqueries to fiction,
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Speaker 1: and so at that time I would listen rapidly to
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Speaker 1: his urban horror stories. The most macabre tale was one
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Speaker 1: of the Callier brothers, the hermit hoarders of Harlem, in
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Speaker 1: their four story brownstone at the corner of Fifth Avenue,
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Speaker 1: and the brothers sealed themselves up through the Great depression,
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Speaker 1: both world wars and as Harlem shifted from a rich
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Speaker 1: white suburb to a poor black slum. It was there
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Speaker 1: in that brownstone that they amassed one of the world's
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Speaker 1: legendary collections of urban un and in the end, that
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Speaker 1: colored brothers had tons of junk stored in their brown stone.
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Speaker 1: And so I get this image of this horror house.
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Speaker 1: Things like pattered toys, Christmas trees, chandeliers, rusted bicycles, broken
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Speaker 1: baby carriages for moldering hope chests, fourteen pianos who added
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Speaker 1: babies and formaldehi and newspapers, hundreds of thousands of newspapers.
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Speaker 1: It was a collection so extraordinary that their accomplishment, such
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Speaker 1: as it was, confirms like a New yorkers worse nightmare,
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Speaker 1: that they're crumpled people living in the crumpled rooms, with
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Speaker 1: their crumpled possessions, the crowded chaos of the city refracted
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Speaker 1: in their homes. It's not that New Yorkers bored more
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Speaker 1: than other people, so they have less room to hold in.
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Speaker 1: So they call your brothers O L L y e
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Speaker 1: er were just as they're described in that clip right there,
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Speaker 1: what we would call compulsive hoarders. Yeah, I don't know
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Speaker 1: the history of the term hoarder, if if we're applying
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Speaker 1: a modern term and achronistically, but yes, Cords, I suppose
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Speaker 1: maybe it's like an older term, but hoarders certainly, could
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Speaker 1: you tell us a little bit more about these brothers.
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Speaker 1: So there's really one book on them, and it's it's
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Speaker 1: a by a fantastic, exquisite writer named Franz Lids who
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Speaker 1: grew up hearing you hear his voice in the clip.
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Speaker 1: He grew up hearing these stories from his father as
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Speaker 1: as bedtime stories, as scary stories that he wouldn't tell.
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Speaker 1: He would tell Franz these stories, but not not Franz's sister.
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Speaker 1: For whatever reason, I thought that was interesting, and so
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Speaker 1: when Franz grew up, he decided to learn everything that
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Speaker 1: he could because no one had really written anything, you know. Besides,
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Speaker 1: they were sort of part of the urban legends of
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Speaker 1: Harlem and of New York to the point where it
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Speaker 1: was almost a cautionary tale. Like even the the New
13:05
Speaker 1: York Fire Department would I believe. They had a term
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Speaker 1: that they used called Collier's mansion syndrome that referred to
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Speaker 1: extreme instances of extreme clutter in apartments that were fire hazards.
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Speaker 1: So it almost became, as the name of the book implies,
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Speaker 1: called ghost de men. These these guys almost cast kind
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Speaker 1: of a specter over this particular region to the point
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Speaker 1: where they were so embedded in the cultural and oral
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Speaker 1: tradition storytelling like ghost stories, that became this kind of
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Speaker 1: cautionary tale almost right. Yeah, there's also a there's also
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Speaker 1: a racial element to that too. The two brothers, Langley
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Speaker 1: and Homer moved with their parents from Manhattan to the
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Speaker 1: budding community of Harlem in the eight nineties sort of
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Speaker 1: an economic boom time, and Harlem is this new, rich,
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Speaker 1: fancy suburb for people that like want to get out
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Speaker 1: of dirty New York, you know, get out to racation. Basically, well,
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Speaker 1: it actually, uh, the economy crashes and there's there's a
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Speaker 1: big bust and all of these rich families like move
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Speaker 1: out and there's all these empty space in Harlem. And
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Speaker 1: then there was overtly racist practices taken on by the
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Speaker 1: landowners and Harlots literally things that were called like Negro surcharges,
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Speaker 1: and they would take these big, beautiful um brownstone mansions.
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Speaker 1: Like the Color Brothers lives in a four story brownstone
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Speaker 1: mansion and divide them up into you know, six seven,
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Speaker 1: eight nine rooms, fill them up, over charge African Americans
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Speaker 1: to live there. But so anyways, the Collier brothers were
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Speaker 1: some of the few white residents at that point too.
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Speaker 1: So legend is that neighborhood kids would chuck rocks at
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Speaker 1: their windows and stuff and call them ghosting men, both
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Speaker 1: referring to like they're sort of creepy hermit never come
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Speaker 1: out of the house. Is there's someone dead in there?
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Speaker 1: Sadly vibe and also you know, perhaps a racial connotation.
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Speaker 1: It's interesting too because the there's a parallel story this
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Speaker 1: reminds me of, which is the Masal's film Great Gardens,
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Speaker 1: where it's you know, this mother and daughter that live
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Speaker 1: in a very they come from affluence. They live in
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Speaker 1: this very similarly decrepit kind of mansion out in you know,
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Speaker 1: the burbs, away from New York City, and they're completely
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Speaker 1: kind of delusional and sort of exist in this strange
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Speaker 1: bubble together. And that's sort of what ended up happening
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Speaker 1: with the Collier brothers where they got to a point
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Speaker 1: I believe one of the homer I believe was like
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Speaker 1: a child prodigy and like ended up getting some advanced
15:42
Speaker 1: degrees and did really well for himself for a time,
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Speaker 1: and then they ended up just kind of withdrawing completely
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Speaker 1: from society. And that's when the extreme hoarding that we're
15:50
Speaker 1: talking about started to begin. And that's also where the
15:52
Speaker 1: legend stuff kind of comes in. Right. They really both
15:55
Speaker 1: were prodigies, had advanced degrees from Colombia and like admiralty
16:00
Speaker 1: law and like what even is that first? Is it
16:04
Speaker 1: like maritime stuff? I'm similar, yes, and uh I believe
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Speaker 1: also one of them was quite a talented pianist. Is
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Speaker 1: that Langley played at Carnegie Hall and was followed by
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Speaker 1: the the famous pianist at the time, Paderewski. But Paderewski
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Speaker 1: quote got better notices than hey, so he gave up
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Speaker 1: the piano. So, you know, it can always be discouraging
16:26
Speaker 1: to work that grind of the music industry, regardless of
16:29
Speaker 1: the era in which you live. Let's let's talk a
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Speaker 1: little bit about what, uh, what this timeline of degradation
16:41
Speaker 1: looks like. Because while they were infamous in their neighborhood,
16:45
Speaker 1: in their community, especially as things started to get worse
16:50
Speaker 1: and worse for them mentally, and uh, you know, Homer
16:53
Speaker 1: got a stroke, Uh, they they started becoming more and
16:56
Speaker 1: more reclusive. Right. They didn't reach national attention until nineteen
17:02
Speaker 1: thirty eight, when The New York Times reported a false
17:06
Speaker 1: story about them and said that they had turned down
17:09
Speaker 1: an offer of a hundred and twenty five grand for
17:11
Speaker 1: their house. Yeah, there's a lot of strange sort of
17:16
Speaker 1: tabloid Uh A New York had eleven newspapers in those days.
17:20
Speaker 1: There was lots of lots of things that sort of
17:22
Speaker 1: bounce around in an echo chamber, I suppose. So there's
17:24
Speaker 1: a lot of strange leads that you can follow with
17:26
Speaker 1: the Collier brothers that you never really get an answer too.
17:30
Speaker 1: I should say that Homer quits his job, Langley stops
17:32
Speaker 1: playing the piano. Their father has moved back to Manhattan.
17:35
Speaker 1: At some point, they stay in the house with their
17:37
Speaker 1: mother and really sort of start shuddering in in there,
17:40
Speaker 1: you know, in their sort of mid twenties. And then
17:42
Speaker 1: their mother passes away. She passes away and is buried
17:45
Speaker 1: in some sort of bizarre um kind of cult like ceremony,
17:49
Speaker 1: just whisked out of a window one night and taken
17:52
Speaker 1: to a sanitary that's very far away on foot. And uh,
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Speaker 1: it's never in the paper or anything. There's no obituary.
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Speaker 1: She's just she's just gone one day, and they wanted
18:02
Speaker 1: to keep it private. I suppose after that they more
18:06
Speaker 1: or less had no contact with the outside world. I
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Speaker 1: believe Homer lost his eyesight, became essentially legally blind, and
18:13
Speaker 1: he I'm gonna illustrate it for you here, Uh had
18:16
Speaker 1: rheumatism and was doubled up like this with his knees
18:19
Speaker 1: below his chin. So for the description, just since we're
18:22
Speaker 1: an audio show, Alex has assumed a somewhat fetal x
18:27
Speaker 1: position with both legs folded up against his chest and
18:32
Speaker 1: his arms folded around holding his legs. Oh, I mean
18:35
Speaker 1: this part, that's all you know. The arms is just me.
18:38
Speaker 1: That's that's my thing. But so poor the poor guy.
18:42
Speaker 1: And in his thirties this happened. I believe lost his eyesight.
18:46
Speaker 1: Langley became his brother's keeper, and I mean, I really
18:50
Speaker 1: do think they were. They loved each other and were
18:52
Speaker 1: very dutiful to each other. H Langley devise this scheme
18:57
Speaker 1: of feeding his brother a hundred oranges a day in
19:00
Speaker 1: orders who regained his eyesight. That's one of the poll
19:04
Speaker 1: quotes we have left of Langley Callier and U he
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Speaker 1: saved him newspapers, hundreds of thousands of newspapers when he
19:13
Speaker 1: could read again, when he could read again, which is
19:15
Speaker 1: heartbreaking and sweet. These newspapers obviously there yellowing, rotting there.
19:23
Speaker 1: You know, it's a four story, humongous mansion. Langley made
19:28
Speaker 1: them into arches and tunnels and made an inner framework
19:34
Speaker 1: for their mansion out of newspapers and all kinds of
19:37
Speaker 1: other to try this. I mean, there's really no I
19:40
Speaker 1: have incredibly long lists of this stuff that I've I've
19:43
Speaker 1: pulled from different stories. Oh yeah, let's see baby carriages,
19:47
Speaker 1: rusted bikes because because apparently Langley was so Homer never
19:54
Speaker 1: sought medical help for his rheumatism. Is that is that correct? Well,
19:58
Speaker 1: it's hard to say. It's hard to be slewed about anything.
20:00
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, like I said, we have the
20:02
Speaker 1: one book anything there. There's there's things that we just
20:05
Speaker 1: will never know we have for primary source because it
20:07
Speaker 1: sounds like a lot of the headlines of the time,
20:09
Speaker 1: the contemporary papers you mentioned, we're just reporting stuff that
20:13
Speaker 1: would sell papers. Uh, there was we don actually don't
20:16
Speaker 1: talk about this. In an episode, there's one reporter, Helen
20:19
Speaker 1: Warden is her name, Langley sort of took a liking
20:21
Speaker 1: to her. She was waiting outside of his apartment or
20:24
Speaker 1: outside of the brown stone. One day around midnight he
20:26
Speaker 1: came out to make his nightly rounds. He would walk
20:28
Speaker 1: around the city and just drag a cardboard box with
20:32
Speaker 1: a string behind him and fill it up with just
20:36
Speaker 1: whatever stuff he came across, all kinds of things. Uh.
20:41
Speaker 1: She met him out there one one night at the
20:44
Speaker 1: at the outside the brown stone, and he just sort
20:49
Speaker 1: of started unloading information on her. Uh. She made mention
20:54
Speaker 1: of maybe visiting inside the house one day, and he's
20:58
Speaker 1: and that's when he stopped and took off off. Yeah,
21:01
Speaker 1: and this is this is interesting because around this maybe
21:04
Speaker 1: around this is after the time when h. Langley began
21:09
Speaker 1: not going out until midnight, right and then returning home
21:12
Speaker 1: with junk. Uh So, one of the things that people
21:17
Speaker 1: familiar with this story probably always mentioned. It's certainly thing
21:21
Speaker 1: that I bet producers would mention when they're talking about
21:23
Speaker 1: fictional adaptations will be the booby traps. Where the booby
21:28
Speaker 1: traps real? That's a question people, They were very real.
21:31
Speaker 1: That's the big kicker. I mean talking about this labyrinthine
21:34
Speaker 1: infrastructure of garbage essentially, right. I mean it was like
21:38
Speaker 1: walled up kind of every window, every door full, and
21:42
Speaker 1: they rigged it so that things would literally if they
21:46
Speaker 1: were intruders or dare we say, some sort of like
21:48
Speaker 1: tomb Rader type situation, people would get got They just
21:53
Speaker 1: they really wanted to be left alone. I mean, there's
21:55
Speaker 1: certainly is some some paranoia and some fear built into
21:59
Speaker 1: that collection collecting habit. I heard that the booby traps
22:03
Speaker 1: were not a not a thing that they had just
22:06
Speaker 1: come up with out of the blue. I heard it
22:08
Speaker 1: was a reaction to a number of attempted burglaries on
22:12
Speaker 1: the house when people began to think that they were
22:15
Speaker 1: hoarding not only junk but also a financial fortune. So
22:19
Speaker 1: maybe there was some logic behind it. They were from
22:21
Speaker 1: a well to do family at some point they reportedly
22:24
Speaker 1: owned a large section of waterfront in New York. Actually
22:30
Speaker 1: their parents were like cousins and uh oh that well
22:33
Speaker 1: to do yeah, came over on the speedwell from England. Yes,
22:37
Speaker 1: So I don't know if anyone ever tried to actually
22:40
Speaker 1: burgle their house, but there's certainly you know, all their
22:42
Speaker 1: utilities got cut off one after the other, so people
22:46
Speaker 1: from the city would try to get in their house.
22:48
Speaker 1: Police officers absolutely, and uh, you know Langley would occasionally
22:53
Speaker 1: just sort of reach his head out the window and
22:55
Speaker 1: scream go away, or they would just say nothing to them. Uh.
23:00
Speaker 1: Sort of brings you right to this fateful day. Oh
23:03
Speaker 1: are you talking about in March one when police received
23:08
Speaker 1: an anonymous tip. That is the very uh, that's very
23:12
Speaker 1: damn talking about. You know, No, you're in this episode,
23:16
Speaker 1: in the recreation of this that we do. No, that's right.
23:19
Speaker 1: What did I do? I don't. It's been so long.
23:21
Speaker 1: You've been working on this for such a long time.
23:22
Speaker 1: You've been doing recreations. I have absolutely you will. Uh
23:28
Speaker 1: you and Chuck are you know? Maybe well, we'll leave
23:32
Speaker 1: it to the listeners. But this your voice and our
23:36
Speaker 1: our friend and colleague Chuck Bryant are intertwined in this.
23:40
Speaker 1: That's awesome. This is the one where the cops like
23:42
Speaker 1: yelling up at the window. I do remember this now, OK,
23:46
Speaker 1: no spoilers there, but yeah, definitely, uh there. That's the
23:49
Speaker 1: kind of stuff you can expect in this show. It's
23:50
Speaker 1: not only you know, it's not like this whereas me
23:53
Speaker 1: and Ben Gabbin about history. It's a real experiential thing,
23:56
Speaker 1: and it's got a lot of these kind of cool
23:58
Speaker 1: production touches that really make it spe But what happened
24:01
Speaker 1: that day, so this is what we said March seven,
24:04
Speaker 1: that fateful day, the police receive an anonymous phone call. Well,
24:10
Speaker 1: Charles Smith is the guy who gives the phone call.
24:12
Speaker 1: I've never don't We've never been able to fall up
24:14
Speaker 1: on Charles Smith did the air quotes there, so I
24:18
Speaker 1: forgot that doesn't come through. Charles Smith calls the police
24:21
Speaker 1: and reports a body at the call your residence. Police
24:24
Speaker 1: show up, police that have been there before, and no,
24:26
Speaker 1: this place is booby trapped, so they proceed with caution.
24:29
Speaker 1: But they do break down the door and it is
24:31
Speaker 1: walled up with junk. They can't get through. They start
24:35
Speaker 1: acting their way through and uh vapor of decay erupts
24:43
Speaker 1: out onto the street. Let see, very much like Atlanta
24:48
Speaker 1: in the summer, very much for basically a whole day,
24:54
Speaker 1: they're trying to get in different ways. It's all tunneled.
24:58
Speaker 1: They know that there's booby traps, things like feces and
25:02
Speaker 1: jars and bricks and nails and things like that. Really terrible,
25:07
Speaker 1: horrible things that could very much enter a person. Someone
25:11
Speaker 1: breaks through, takes a ladder up to the second story,
25:14
Speaker 1: breaks through window and finds Homer Callier. Uh, doubled up
25:19
Speaker 1: as he always is in the corner, but he's shriveled
25:21
Speaker 1: up and dead. How long had he been dead? Did
25:24
Speaker 1: it seem, for lack of a better word, fresh, or
25:27
Speaker 1: was the corpse like well it I'm not sure how
25:31
Speaker 1: soon they were able to determine it, but it had
25:32
Speaker 1: it had been a while. It had been a while.
25:35
Speaker 1: And then the real question was where's Langley as he
25:39
Speaker 1: killed his brother? Has he fled? And the search that
25:44
Speaker 1: went on took weeks to find Langley Callier. Did they
25:49
Speaker 1: search the city or the house? It was an international search. Yeah,
25:55
Speaker 1: like I said, eleven newspapers New York at the time.
25:57
Speaker 1: So that echo chamber is going crazy. Langley Callers are
26:01
Speaker 1: getting sighted everywhere in different cities in the Carolinas and
26:04
Speaker 1: Chicago on trains extra there's a moment where a guy
26:10
Speaker 1: there's a photograph that gets published in some paper of
26:12
Speaker 1: a guy literally holding a sign that says, I am
26:13
Speaker 1: not Langley call here because he's got kind of like
26:15
Speaker 1: a little beard and a little scruffed and uh, and
26:18
Speaker 1: maybe it looks a bit like one of the call
26:19
Speaker 1: Your brothers. So this is all clearly building to a
26:23
Speaker 1: conclusion of sorts. It turns out, however, that Langley call
26:30
Speaker 1: your has not crossed the Atlantic. He has not smuggled
26:35
Speaker 1: himself into Canada or Mexico. Where where, where exactly is he?
26:40
Speaker 1: It's very tragic. He's found ten feet from where his
26:43
Speaker 1: brother Homer was found, and it's a it's it's a
26:46
Speaker 1: number of weeks later. Uh, there was so much junk,
26:50
Speaker 1: and they'd spent all this time clean clearing, a police
26:53
Speaker 1: and firefighters clearing it. Then eventually professional cleaning cruise or
26:57
Speaker 1: clearing cruise rather just ten ft from his brother. He
27:01
Speaker 1: was coming to bring him food and caught one of
27:04
Speaker 1: his own booby traps. Died there, and Homer died of neglect.
27:10
Speaker 1: He hadn't been fed. And so you end up with this,
27:15
Speaker 1: like when Nol was talking about earlier, this sort of bizarre,
27:20
Speaker 1: stranger than fiction tale that's embedded in folklore, and it
27:28
Speaker 1: reads a bit like a morality tale. But then I
27:32
Speaker 1: don't know what it is that they call your brothers?
27:34
Speaker 1: Did that was so wrong? Like I think I say
27:36
Speaker 1: in the episode, I mean, probably they should have paid
27:38
Speaker 1: their taxes and stuff. But it's also a very distinctly
27:42
Speaker 1: New York kind of story where it's like you're surrounded
27:46
Speaker 1: by people. Being in New York, every inch, every scrap
27:50
Speaker 1: of space is used up, is you know, occupied, and
27:54
Speaker 1: you have no like there's no sense of freedom kind
27:57
Speaker 1: of when you're walking around New York. Like it's a
27:58
Speaker 1: beautiful place and there's a lot going on, but it
28:00
Speaker 1: does have this claustrophobic feeling to it anyway. So the
28:04
Speaker 1: idea that, especially now knowing we know about real estate
28:06
Speaker 1: prices and all that, that two men would just like
28:09
Speaker 1: own this quite opulent set up and just allow it
28:14
Speaker 1: to become this absolute nightmare in that way, and it
28:19
Speaker 1: speaks to kind of the cluttered feeling of New York
28:23
Speaker 1: as a city. I think it's a very interesting parallel there.
28:27
Speaker 1: And yes, is there anything wrong with being a hoarder
28:30
Speaker 1: or collecting things or any of that stuff. No, but
28:33
Speaker 1: this speaks to something I think a little bigger than that,
28:36
Speaker 1: and that paranoia and the fact that these two were
28:38
Speaker 1: all they had and they got into this like you know,
28:41
Speaker 1: kind of cycle of just not wanting anybody else to
28:45
Speaker 1: be in their lives at all. And yet they're living
28:47
Speaker 1: in the most populous place in the country. Whether it's
28:50
Speaker 1: so much culturally going on in such an interesting time
28:52
Speaker 1: and history to write, Franz Lids calls it a New
28:56
Speaker 1: Yorker's worst nightmare. Uh. You know this also calls to
29:01
Speaker 1: mind a documentary called Cropsy. Are you Familiar with Us?
29:06
Speaker 1: Cropsy is a documentary about an urban legend regarding a
29:12
Speaker 1: boogeyman like figure that stalks people in this in the
29:16
Speaker 1: area surrounding a place called the Willowbrook Mental Institution, which
29:20
Speaker 1: had been closed down and in the In the course
29:24
Speaker 1: of this documentary, they find that this boogeyman like figure,
29:28
Speaker 1: this modern urban legend, is based on fact, and there
29:31
Speaker 1: is a real uh, there is a a pearl of
29:37
Speaker 1: truth inside this this uh clamshael of scary urban folklore.
29:43
Speaker 1: We got there so uglier than a Joe Montana pass.
29:46
Speaker 1: I haven't seen that documentary, but I didn't remember it
29:49
Speaker 1: until you started talking about it. And it's good. It's
29:52
Speaker 1: a worthwhile documentary. I need to rewatch that. Now. You've
30:01
Speaker 1: heard us talk a little bit about the call your brothers, folks,
30:04
Speaker 1: But if you want to truly experience the story, which
30:08
Speaker 1: goes much deeper than what we've discussed here. We highly
30:11
Speaker 1: recommend that you get the too your favorite podcast app
30:15
Speaker 1: of choice started on the seventeenth of June to Talk
30:19
Speaker 1: Out to check out the Call your Brother's Story. However,
30:22
Speaker 1: there are other episodes of Ephemeral available now, Like, as
30:26
Speaker 1: you're listening to this, please listen to the rest of
30:29
Speaker 1: our show before you listen to the next one. But
30:31
Speaker 1: what are some what are some topics that really uh
30:34
Speaker 1: stuck out in your mind that you've published recently. Well,
30:37
Speaker 1: we've just published an episode uh with interviews uh Sarah Wasserman,
30:43
Speaker 1: who's a professor at the University of Delaware. It's basically
30:47
Speaker 1: and ephemer teacher. Oh wow, yeah, And so she's the
30:51
Speaker 1: people the person who can really answer some of the
30:53
Speaker 1: tough questions that we've brought up at the top of
30:55
Speaker 1: the show. The episode before that is a study of
31:01
Speaker 1: Ottoman American diaspora music. You might say, what immigrants from
31:07
Speaker 1: the collapsing Ottoman Empire in the early part of the the century,
31:11
Speaker 1: the teens, twenties, thirties, fleeing like people are from all
31:15
Speaker 1: over the world coming to America and recording heart stopping
31:22
Speaker 1: beautiful music in New York, mostly Chicago for big labels
31:27
Speaker 1: like Columbia Victor and then also some small independent labels too,
31:31
Speaker 1: So music and Greek and Arabic that has largely, almost
31:37
Speaker 1: entirely been forgotten, these records that were pressed in in
31:42
Speaker 1: in limited in limited quantities because of some sort of
31:46
Speaker 1: racist practices at time. That's astonishing. You know. Um, part
31:50
Speaker 1: of the area where I and one of our one
31:55
Speaker 1: of our colleagues, Dylan Fagan, is from in Tennessee is
31:59
Speaker 1: as a huge population of Lebanese immigrants who have left.
32:04
Speaker 1: I think Lebanon was at least in name ruled by
32:08
Speaker 1: the Ottoman Empire until that collapse from what post World
32:11
Speaker 1: War one. Ish. And I think I've heard some of
32:16
Speaker 1: I I have to listen to this. I think I've
32:18
Speaker 1: heard something that might qualify in this genre that's bizarre
32:22
Speaker 1: to me. And I mean there's all kinds it's not
32:25
Speaker 1: there's all kinds of music, and there's party songs, there
32:28
Speaker 1: are heart prick songs. Uh, and there's fantastic singing and
32:34
Speaker 1: food playing and things that you don't I don't really
32:38
Speaker 1: have the vernacular to describe, but we we interview in
32:42
Speaker 1: this episode, uh, and really where all of The inspiration
32:46
Speaker 1: for it came from is um, a gentleman named Iannagaski
32:49
Speaker 1: who is in Baltimore and does reissue records of this stuff,
32:53
Speaker 1: literally sometimes pulls them out of the trash. I've I've
32:58
Speaker 1: seen pictures of some of these records that they have
33:00
Speaker 1: so abused, and does everything he can two salvage them,
33:06
Speaker 1: to save them, to learn as much as he can
33:08
Speaker 1: about the performers. Sometimes you can't find anything. Sometimes you
33:12
Speaker 1: get lucky and spread the word about it. So it's
33:16
Speaker 1: it's a it's a fantastic interview that that's part of that.
33:19
Speaker 1: And the music and it is it's some of my
33:22
Speaker 1: favorite music now I would love to hear it and
33:24
Speaker 1: don't have to take our word for it. You can
33:26
Speaker 1: tune in and check out this music yourself. And that's
33:29
Speaker 1: the thing. Even what you're gonna get with this show
33:31
Speaker 1: is the the conceit of the show is such a
33:34
Speaker 1: cool one. But it also allows for such a broad
33:37
Speaker 1: range of topics, which I think is really important even
33:41
Speaker 1: for a show like what we do. Like our only
33:43
Speaker 1: lynch pin is that these stories are in some way bizarre, strange,
33:46
Speaker 1: or ridiculous or hilarious, and so that gives us like
33:49
Speaker 1: kind of carte blanche to go in all kinds of
33:51
Speaker 1: different directions. Similarly with your show, UM, very different show,
33:55
Speaker 1: but very similar heart in terms of just like being
33:58
Speaker 1: fascinated by things and want to get answers to why
34:01
Speaker 1: things play out the way they do in history, and
34:04
Speaker 1: just kind of I think anyone that is into this
34:05
Speaker 1: show even remotely is going to be very much into
34:08
Speaker 1: your show as well. To me, it's a it's a
34:11
Speaker 1: there's something about it, And please take this for the
34:14
Speaker 1: profound compliment it is that reminds me of the free
34:18
Speaker 1: associative nature of the film Waking Life, the way that
34:22
Speaker 1: it connects in this very very intentional but dream like state.
34:28
Speaker 1: You know what I mean? This is this is one
34:30
Speaker 1: of the podcasts that, UM, I hear a ton of shows,
34:35
Speaker 1: but this is one of the ones that comes with
34:37
Speaker 1: a very new and unique voice and and I mean
34:41
Speaker 1: that sincerely. You can compare me to Richard Linkletter anytime.
34:46
Speaker 1: So it looks like we're going to we're going to
34:50
Speaker 1: have to save our our our own explorations of things
34:54
Speaker 1: that came and went for another day. But shout out
34:57
Speaker 1: to Pizzeria Chips. I miss you. If you're listening if
35:00
Speaker 1: a big demo of our show is uh, ext sentient
35:05
Speaker 1: pizzeria chips, potato chips, terrified gained sapience. Yeah, I was
35:09
Speaker 1: gonna talk about Beta Max tapes that were only literally killed.
35:14
Speaker 1: Production was killed by Sony like in and I believe
35:18
Speaker 1: they stopped distributing the players and recorders of Beta Max
35:22
Speaker 1: tapes only a couple of years before that. But that
35:25
Speaker 1: used to be kind of the like go to for
35:27
Speaker 1: high resolution news footage and archiving. And now I actually
35:31
Speaker 1: have a stack of Beta maxes on my desk right
35:33
Speaker 1: now that I'm trying to find a place that can
35:35
Speaker 1: transfer them digitally, and there are folks that still have them,
35:39
Speaker 1: whether their news agencies or like companies that specialize and
35:43
Speaker 1: digitizing your family memories. That's big business now because of
35:46
Speaker 1: this nature of ephemera. And not only is the medium
35:50
Speaker 1: antiquated now, the way of playing it back is gone
35:53
Speaker 1: or much more scarce. And that's that you have a
35:56
Speaker 1: really great trailer for your show that's all about answering
35:58
Speaker 1: machine messages and how that used to be such a
36:00
Speaker 1: cultural thing that people would do and it was important
36:02
Speaker 1: to leave a really good message and just the idea
36:05
Speaker 1: of these things that kind of came and went left
36:07
Speaker 1: an impression, and now it's almost this kind of like
36:10
Speaker 1: specter that like hangs over society and it's really interesting
36:14
Speaker 1: and I'm looking forward to hearing more from Phemeral with
36:16
Speaker 1: Alex Williams. I'm going to I'm going to save that.
36:19
Speaker 1: I have this great list that I'm gonna save and
36:21
Speaker 1: post on our Facebook page later for Ridiculous Historians. Because
36:27
Speaker 1: I did an okay job just mentioning pizzeria's. It's really
36:30
Speaker 1: hard not to just immediately start talking about them. So
36:33
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna like mention some things that left and
36:36
Speaker 1: then we'll pick it up later. So check us out
36:39
Speaker 1: on our Facebook page, Ridiculous Historians. You should be able
36:41
Speaker 1: to find a Phemeral wherever you find your favorite podcast
36:46
Speaker 1: like Ridiculous History and so on. In the meantime, Alex,
36:49
Speaker 1: thank you so much for for coming on the show.
36:52
Speaker 1: Actually another started with a peek behind the Curtain. Let's
36:56
Speaker 1: end with one. Our office actually close to a few
36:59
Speaker 1: hours ago we were able to convince you to just
37:01
Speaker 1: stay over and take this strange journey with us. You know, before,
37:05
Speaker 1: I feel like I would be remiss to not mention
37:08
Speaker 1: that Ridiculous History was the first show that I helped make.
37:14
Speaker 1: At the very beginning it was it was the three
37:16
Speaker 1: of us at the very very beginning of it. And Alex,
37:19
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if you know this or not, You've
37:20
Speaker 1: got so much on your play. We thank you at
37:22
Speaker 1: the end of every episode for the wonderful theme that
37:25
Speaker 1: you composed. So now we can do our little thank yous,
37:28
Speaker 1: and we can do it in person. Thanks to Alex
37:30
Speaker 1: Williams who composed our theme and for being here today
37:33
Speaker 1: for an interview. I didn't know that you and I
37:35
Speaker 1: very much appreciate it. Yeah, we we are big fans
37:38
Speaker 1: of thanking people in this show. But also like to
37:41
Speaker 1: thank super producer Ramsey Ram Jams, you don't thank you
37:44
Speaker 1: so much for saving the show, Ramsey, Thanks for having me. Guys,
37:49
Speaker 1: absolutely our pleasure. Thanks to you, Super Producy, Casey Pegram
37:52
Speaker 1: here in spirit and not forgotten galvanting around Paris right
37:55
Speaker 1: now living his best second life. Um and thanks to
37:59
Speaker 1: Christopher Hasiotis you know, also here in spirit. Thanks to
38:03
Speaker 1: uh Jonathan Strickland a k a. The Quister, as well
38:06
Speaker 1: as our research associate Gabe l who desperately needs a nicknames.
38:11
Speaker 1: So send some suggestions our way. Ben, Thanks to you
38:14
Speaker 1: for always being a friend and a confidant down that
38:17
Speaker 1: road back again you know the drill? Yeah yeah, thanks
38:20
Speaker 1: to you as well. Noel. We are gone forward today.
38:24
Speaker 1: That sends our episode, but not our show. You can
38:27
Speaker 1: also find us on our aforementioned Facebook page. You can
38:29
Speaker 1: find us on Twitter. You can find us at Instagram.
38:32
Speaker 1: You can also find our weird personal Shenanigan's Misadventures and
38:38
Speaker 1: malarkey on our personal instagrams. I'm at Ben Bolan actually
38:42
Speaker 1: changed my handle, I am now at how now Noel Brown?
38:46
Speaker 1: And where can they check out? Ephemeral on the social
38:48
Speaker 1: media is Alex at Ephemeral Show. We'll see you next time,
38:51
Speaker 1: fols him. For more podcasts for my Heart Radio, visit
39:17
Speaker 1: the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you
39:19
Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows.