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CLASSIC: Dr. Seuss Wrote His Most Famous Book On A Bet · Ridiculous History

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Well, folks, we have a classic episode for you this week.
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: It's one of our favorite guys, commonly called Doctor Seuss,
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: and we think you will like it.
• 0:12
  Speaker 2: On a log, we think you will like it. With
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: a frog, we think you will like it. Next to
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: a goose. We think you will like it writing on
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: a moose. We hope that you'd like it. We hope
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: it's your jam. You can eat it gluten free or
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: with ham.
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: This is the story of Doctor Seuss's most famous book,
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: Green Eggs and Ham. By twenty sixteen, it had sold
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: over eight million copies. Buddy wrote it on a bet.
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, try it, you might like it. Jump right in.
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome to the
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: show Ridiculous Historians. As always, thank you for tuning in.
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: I am pumped about today's episode.
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: Are we gonna do it in a box? Are we
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: going to do it about a fox? Are we gonna
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: do it while eating some locks? Are we going to
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: do it in a basement beneath Fort Knox? Well, that
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: sounds like the plot of National Treasure right right?
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: Well, this is this is a show that's giving us
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: an excuse to talk about I don't know about you,
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: my friend. But one of my favorite authors when I
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: was growing up is just a we Ben Bowlin. I
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: love Shel Silverstein, Doctor Seuss and Stephen King.
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: Wow, that's explained so much about how you've turned out.
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: Thanks man, Hey, who are you? I'm Noel. It's good
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: to see and I'm gonna do it in a hole,
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: possibly while eating cereal from a bowl. I'm not as
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: good at this as Theodora Seuss Geisel. That's right, that's right.
• 2:13
  Speaker 3: You know.
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: We have to also ask super producer Casey Pegram did
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: you read Doctor Seuss as a child?
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: Casey, absolutely I did. Yeah, what were some of your
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: favorite books?
• 2:27
  Speaker 3: I'm terrible at remembering anything childhood related. It kind of
• 2:31
  Speaker 3: all flew out of my brain at some point. But
• 2:33
  Speaker 3: I know I did. I know I had the books around.
• 2:35
  Speaker 3: I could not tell you titles. I would probably be
• 2:38
  Speaker 3: able to identify them if I went and looked at
• 2:40
  Speaker 3: covers online, but that'd be about it.
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: The covers are a big giveaway that that's what gets
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: burned into my memory. I don't remember the titles very
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: much either, Casey, but lately I've been kind of exploring them,
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: especially during this research, and it was a real nostalgia
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: blast from the past. That's redundant. That was good the
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: nostalgia blast. Nostalgia blast is already a blast from.
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: The well if it was a nostalgia blast that happened
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: in the past. If you're remembering a time nostalgia blast
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: hit you, so like even if it was just twenty
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: minutes ago, it still worked.
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: That's a good point, Ben, Thank you for saving me.
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: No No, I got asked before we go any further.
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: Did you have one book by Seuss that really like
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: stuck out in your brain?
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: I do. It was One Fish, Two Fish, Redfish, Bluefish,
• 3:21
  Speaker 2: because I distinctly remember that being the first thing where
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: I was aware of the fact that I could read.
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: Oh that's metacognition, yeut, there, But it really is.
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: It really is.
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: And I might be manufacturing that memory, but it stuck
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: with me. I remember being very proud of myself that
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: I could read. But I also think it might have
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: been some combination of memorization as well, because it was
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: read to me, and I think I may have been
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: looking at it and reading it from memory and thinking
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: that I was actually reading the worst Because I was
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: very very little. This is a very early memory.
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: And you also have a stunning innate sense of rhythm
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: and cadence.
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: As does doctor Theodor Suth Keizel, Yes, Geisel, Geisel.
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: For the record, my favorite for a long time was
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: The butter Battle Book. I thought that thing was an
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: epic tale of like tragedy and heartbreak and the human condition.
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: Well, that's the thing that's neat about this guy's books
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: is they kind of have these big, lofty themes, like
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: the Lora Acts, for example, which is sort of an
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: environmentalist look on conservation and like saving the forests and
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: how man is like raping and pillaging Mother Earth and
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: all that stuff, but not in a particularly heavy handed
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: or pedantic way, and in a way that's pretty approachable
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: to you know, youngsters or whatever, but still has some
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: pretty important messages.
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I think that's a great point. And one thing,
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: one thing that a lot of kids don't know when
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: we're growing up and reading Doctor Seuss books is that
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: Theodor himself was allegedly not the biggest fan of children,
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: but he was a really interesting guy. And I think
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: you and I probably had a similar moment later in
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: life where we realized that his family originally pronounced the
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: name Seuss, as Zoyce like zo Icee yikes, which I
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: think is a great word. Zeikes is what I would say. Yeah,
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: he's interesting for a lot of reasons. He got his
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: start working in like advertising as a cartoonist, and there's
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: actually some rarely problematic cartoons you can dig up that
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: he did for It's like a mosquito spray called like
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: ze or something like that, or like bleep, I don't know,
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: but it's it's like all of these kind of like
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: African jungle scenes with his very recognizable elephant. It looks
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: like something out of one of his books, only it's
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: got a lot of like natives depicted in that horrible
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: way that you see in early you know, Disney animations
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: or Warner Brothers cartoons that are now considered completely embarrassing
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: to those companies that are responsible for all this, like
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: classic children's entertainment.
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: The same was true for Guys Soul, and he also
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: did some propaganda around the Japanese with some pretty nasty
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: depictions of those folks during war during World War two exactly.
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he was nothing if not prolific, But we did
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: feel would be remiss on our part if we did
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: not include the less than wonderful, whimsical aspects of his life.
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: You know what I mean.
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: He was a great cartoonist and a great writer, but
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: still a person, and you might be surprised to learn
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: the process that he used to write a lot of
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: these books. The guy was so prolific. He has what
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: over forty children's books. Yeah, and that's not counting any
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: of his advertisement stuff. That's not counting the short lived
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: comic strip he did before called Hedgy I believe. But
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: the weird thing is, while we all kind of, I
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: think naturally want to have this romanticized idea of a
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: guy who just wakes up in a very bright, pastel
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: cartoony house and says, what wonderful lessons will I teach
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: children today, that's not the case. In fact, there was
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: a lot of calculation that went into the way he
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: wrote books. His first successful children's book was called Cat
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: and the Hat. And the story about Cat and the
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: Hat is really surprising. It starts with a guy named
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: John Hershey who was a big time journalist and in
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: nineteen fifty four, when writing in Life magazine, he put
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: out an article called why do students bog down?
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: On first r?
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: A local committee sheds light on national problem colon reading
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: that was colon the punctuation mark, not reading.
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: Colon's And is that the one that was kind of
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: a backlash against those super dull Dick and Jane primer books. Yes,
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: just the same, which is like see Dick walk, see
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: Jane walk too. Yeah, there is a dog. It is
• 7:55
  Speaker 2: spot watch Spot walk to Jane. Uh huh, stuff like that.
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, because they had a more rigid system of introducing
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: vocabulary words to children. And after reading this article, the
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: director of Houghton Mifflin, the publishing company, the director of
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: Houghton Mifflin's educational division, a guy named William Spaulding, got
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: Theodore Geisel in the room and he said, look, I
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: need you to write a story that first graders actually like.
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: The actual quote is I need you to write a
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: story that first graders can't put down. And then he
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: put on some weird restrictions.
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: I love this.
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, this part was really interesting to me too. So
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  Speaker 1: there was a list that Spaulding had, which I guess
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: came from the Educational Division, of three hundred and forty
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: eight words that were selected from a standard first grader's
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: vocabulary list, and Spalding said Okay, THEO, you've got to
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: write this book, but you can only use words from
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: this list, and you can't use them all. You can
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: only use what two hundred and twenty five exactly.
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think originally he wanted the story to
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: be about like a queen cat and a king cat. Yeah,
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: but queen wasn't on the list, so he had to
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: like adjust, and then he realized that hat rhymed with
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  Speaker 2: cat and that was a good starting point and the
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: rest is history.
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: Which, yeah, it took him nine months to write this book, primarily,
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  Speaker 1: I believe because of that word restriction, and according to
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: the story, he didn't quite hit two twenty five.
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: It was still a little bit longer, right, Yeah, I
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  Speaker 2: think he, you know, if we're going to call that
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: a bet, then he sort of failed the exact parameters
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: that were given to him, but he came damn close.
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, two hundred and thirty six words. And I get
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: the feeling this was almost more of a mandate from
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: his boss. I love thinking about what the original story
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: with the king cat and the Queen cat would have been,
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: because now I see this picture of Theodore Geisel like
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: pulling his hair out, gnashing his teeth and trying to
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: figure out how to depict this cat as somehow regal
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: or kingly, and then the best he to come up
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: with is all right, he's got a hat because we
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: can't use crown.
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I feel like that's what happened. That's probably true.
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: That's a good point. And of course, you know when
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: I say the rest is history, I mean like literary history.
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: It's sold a million copies, like right off the rip,
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: I think in the first couple of years, and it
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: was out in print, right yeah, and he was able
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: to quit his day job as an ad guy an admin,
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: you know, and went on to become a whimsical children's
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: book writer full time. Zeyce, that's my new exclamation. Loved it.
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: That's quite good.
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: I also like, what was the name of that pesticide company?
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: Was his z to or was it something you know?
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: I actually looked at it. It's called flit flit. Yeah,
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: like you know bugs, they flipped and this is what
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: you scored at him to make them stop flitting forever.
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: Stop the flit.
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: I don't know why I'm feeling these catchphrases so much,
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: my friend, but we know that a lot of people
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: love the way Zeyce wrote, and so you know what,
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: I'm just gonna call him doctor Seuss for this show
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: for our purposes here. Yeah, yeah, that's fair. Okay, it
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: just feels more comfortable, you know what I mean.
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: We all know who doctor Zeus say is right, but
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: this doctor Zeis guy. Yeah, it sounds like some sort
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: of mad scientists. So he does.
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: So this guy's career takes off. He becomes a prolific
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: author of children's books that are loved around the world,
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: especially the English speaking world obviously. And then in nineteen sixty,
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: just about three years after Cat and the Hats come out,
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: he has a strange conversation with a guy named Bennett Surf,
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: the co founder of Random House.
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: He does it very similar to the conversation he had
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: with mister Hershey that kicked off his career, you know,
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: in such a huge way. With Kat and the Hat.
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: This guy really ups the Annie here in terms of
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: what that first bet I guess or challenge would have been.
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: And he challenges SEUs to write a children's book that
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: uses fifty unique words or less unique being individual.
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: Words, which sounds like if you're just thinking about this
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: initially at first, blush, This could sound like, hey, that's
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: enough words for a children's book, it's not, because what
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: they mean by unique words is that let's say if
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: you had a word that was just I'll pick one admiral, sure, right,
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: then you can use that one word as many times
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: as you would like.
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: Right. It's like that vocabulary list we talked about earlier,
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: and I think you know it was around two hundred
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: and sixty words for cat and the hat. So that's
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: and that's a pretty relatively straightforward, sing songy, kind of
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: like simple language book. So that this is like really
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: taking it to the next level, because to use fifty
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: words and still have it ay tell a story and
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: not just be completely just see Dick Rudd right exactly.
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: So he took this as a challenge and he delivered.
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: I propose that we play a game with the listeners,
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: nol because we have this list. We did the fifty words, okay,
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: so let's let's read out some of these words, not
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: not all fifty, and let's like skip the ones that
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: automatically give it away, and let's see if you can
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: guess which book this is. Okay, are you ready, folks?
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: R A am and anywhere? Are b boat box car
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: could dark do eat here house? I if in let like,
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: I think that's pretty hard to guess. We didn't have
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: any really juicy.
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: And there You're not going to finish? Is that it? Oh? No,
• 13:39
  Speaker 2: do you want to do? You want to do the
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: rest of them? Are you skipping the word green? Is
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: that in there? Oh? Yeah, casey on the case Wow, spoiler,
• 13:49
  Speaker 2: I love it. No, we hadn't gotten there yet, but yes,
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: in fact, green eggs and ham are all in this list.
• 13:57
  Speaker 2: And that's ham like the food, not ham like hard
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: as am off.
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: Right. That was a little bit before Susan's time, or
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: maybe that was part of his uncollected work.
• 14:07
  Speaker 2: I actually read somewhere that he coined the word crunk,
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: did he? But it didn't mean the same thing as
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: it means in the parlance of today. Oh that's so cool.
• 14:13
  Speaker 2: But it appeared first in print in a doctor Seys's book.
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: This book that he wrote on a bet is known
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: today as green eggs and ham. And I was thinking,
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: there's a there's a neat coincidence here when he has
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: this conversation with Ben at Surf when they make that
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: bet for what fifty dollars? Right, it works out to
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: a dollar a word which I thought was I don't
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: know if that's on purpose, but it's pretty neat.
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: And I think a fifty dollars bet back then would
• 14:46
  Speaker 2: have been a couple hundred bucks now, right, three hundred
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: bucks maybe.
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, a little close, maybe a little closer to four
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: oh okay, but yeah, so it's it's still a significant
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: amount of money, but to this guy who's a best
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: selling off now, it's not like a make or break
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: thing as far as his bank accounts can do.
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: We know where this falls in the Doctor Seuss bibliography.
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: Is this sort of mid career.
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: This was since nineteen sixty when the bet occurs, So
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: that's right after that's three years after Cat and the Hat.
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: Oh okay, this is relatively early lat koreer Y's for sure.
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: And so when he writes this book, we can only
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: imagine that it's a little less of a laborious process
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: because he's already been through it before with Cat in
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: the Hat.
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, except this is like a little bit more challenging. Right,
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: This has been a parent like, you know, even limiting
• 15:32
  Speaker 2: his verbal palette even more. Right.
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, So we mentioned that this has a One of
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: the brilliant things about this book is it does actually
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: have a plot that you can follow, you know what
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: I mean, there's some tension in there. What's the plot.
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: Our protagonist is named Sam i Am.
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: He is Sam Sam he is well yeah, and then
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: there's him right, and then there's this other character who
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: is who goes nameless and he's sort of the sad
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: sack kind of fellow who Sam keeps trying to force
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: him to eat green eggs and ham. And he proceeds
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: to go through these various scenarios. As our buddy the
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: quizzer would say, there we go, and the guy just
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: keeps he's like running away from him. It's actually kind
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: of a stalker situation because the nameless character is literally
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: trying to escape this Sam i Am who keeps popping
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: up with green eggs and ham, you know. And then
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: he's like, you know, would you do it on a house,
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: a car, a tree, with all these different things with
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: a mouse? Would a mouse change the scene? And exactly exactly,
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: And at the end of the day, there there's you know,
• 16:41
  Speaker 2: they're surrounded by the carnage that's been caused by this
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: dude literally trying to run for his life from this
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: psychotic Sam i am character. I mean really is if
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: you look back up the book now, Sam I am
• 16:51
  Speaker 2: is very sinister. He goes hard on, he goes am,
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: yeah he really does. Yeah, and green eggs. And at
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: the end the moral of the story is the nameless
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: grumpy dude eats the green eggs and ham and he
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: likes it.
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: Right, Sam, if you will let me be, I will
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: try them. You will see. And then he tries them
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: and say, I like green eggs and ham.
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: I do.
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: I like them, Sam, i am. And then it goes
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: on the refrain flips and now he's talking, I want
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: to do it in all those places. Bring the mouse, please?
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: A fox? You say, probably this green eggs and ham
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: with anything, But I know you can only be a
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: fox and mouse. And what else a goat? A goat?
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's weird because if you look at the way.
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: One thing that's really impressive about this is if you
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: look at just the lyrics or the poetry itself typed out,
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: it's four pages long, which surprised me because it's four
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: pages fifty words.
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: It's tough. It's all about placement. It's like a comic book.
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: I mean a lot of these things are like graphic novels,
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: and the text is very much incorporated into the design.
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: And you know, let's not forget Sus wrote the text
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: and he drew all the images, and he's single handedly
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: responsible for creating these worlds which are very uniquely him.
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: You know, I think he's a pretty interesting artist, kind
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: of a renaissance man in that way. I also think
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: it's funny that both Ham and Goat both have modern
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: day acronym equivalents. And krunk, you know, I think he
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: was onto something. I think he was too.
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: We should do a deep dive read into the works
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: of doctor Seuss. We should also mention, by the way
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: that yes, doctor Seuss did succeed. This wasn't like a
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: cat and a hat thing where he went a little
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: over his word count. He managed to make a coherent
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: story with only fifty words. He turned it around really quickly.
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: It was published on August twelfth, nineteen sixty, and it
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: became his best selling book. You know, it's purposely meant
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: for beginning readers, right, But there is one one twist
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: to the story that I find hilarious just because of
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: its petty nature.
• 18:59
  Speaker 2: There's a couple of good twists I want to hear yours. Okay, Well,
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: here's one. I think.
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: This is the question that's on a lot of our
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: minds right now. What happened to the bet? It turns
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: out Bennett Sarah didn't pay up at all.
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: What a jerk. And he was a co founder of
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: Random House. It's not like he was hurting for the scratch.
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: Did they publish the book? Yes, yes they did, old
• 19:18
  Speaker 2: Random House and the Living Books Company. So it stands
• 19:21
  Speaker 2: to reason that this dude not only didn't pay up,
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: he benefited from it. So he's the double cheapskate. Yeah,
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: massive benefits. What's one of your twists. There's a couple
• 19:29
  Speaker 2: of other good ones. One of them is that there
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: were some pretty bad reviews for this book, specifically from
• 19:36
  Speaker 2: some children's librarians. The New York Public Library actually had
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: a card catalog of hand typed children's book reviews by
• 19:45
  Speaker 2: their librarian staff. And here is a choice exerpt from
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: one of these reviews. Sam I am won't eat green
• 19:53
  Speaker 2: eggs and ham until after many pages of learning words,
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: he tries them. Book is typical of Seus's late period,
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: and his output, being as prolific as it is. It's
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: alarming to think of the onslaught that can ensue if
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: these books are continually added to the collection. This is
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: the best line. There must be better ways of teaching
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: a child to read than this not recommended.
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: I saw that one too. It was it was strange
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: because we see this kind of harsh reviewing repeated. It's
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: a cyclical thing in children's literature, right, like Cloudy with
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: a Chance of Meatballs also got some shade thrown at it.
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: I think there was an issue with it being like
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: not vegan friendly. I it's like more of like our
• 20:32
  Speaker 2: PC police kind of situation that we're living in right now.
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: There's a good one here, Ben, that you told me
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: about where a federal judge actually referenced this work in
• 20:44
  Speaker 2: an opinion, an official judicial opinion. Yes it's true.
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: In two thousand and seven, a US District court judge
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: named James Muirhead received a hard boiled egg in the
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: mail from an inmate, and the inmate was sending this
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: hard oiled egg through the post to protest his diet
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: while he was incarcerated. The judge ordered the egg destroyed
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: with the following with the following language in his court order,
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: I do not like eggs in the file. I do
• 21:16
  Speaker 1: not like them in any style. I will not take
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: them fried or boiled. I will not take them poached
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: or broiled. I will not take them soft or scrambled.
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: Despite an argument, well rambled, no fan, I am of
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: the egg at hand. Destroy that egg today, today, today,
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: I say, without delay, this judge must have had.
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: A long week. He's a real character. You know what.
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: We could also do an episode on bizarre judge rulings,
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: because there have been judges who respond with poetry, sometimes
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: in very serious situations, and there have been judges who,
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: because they have complete jurisdiction, have imposed some really weird,
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: unorthodox penalties for crimes.
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Remember that Curb Your Enthusiasm episode where Larry has
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: to wear the sandwich board with the like I steal
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: forks from restaurants or whatever, a scarlet letter punishment. They
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: call that. That's a thing. Yeah. Yeah.
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: And this is just one aspect of the tremendous influence
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: that Green eggs and ham specifically has had on modern culture.
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: I think now it's in sixty different formats. It's in
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: a multitude of languages, which confuses me because surely there
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: would be some languages where it's more difficult to do
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: that story just because of sentence structure or something.
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: Right, Oh yeah, it does seem that way. Well, still
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: they pulled it off.
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: I would love to have a copy of Green Eggs
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: and Ham in a different language because it would help
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: me learn that language pretty easily, right, or.
• 22:49
  Speaker 2: Fifty words of it at least? Yeah, wow, Yeah, you
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: would have the like a first grader's grasp perhaps, now
• 22:56
  Speaker 2: last kindergarten maybe. And if you so desired, you could
• 23:01
  Speaker 2: potentially use the works of Doctor Zeus to learn Latin,
• 23:05
  Speaker 2: even though it's sort of incorrectly said that Latin is
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: a dead language. But you can definitely find different books
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: that are translated into Latin. But here's the thing. It's
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: hard to translate this kind of stylized writing like Doctor
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: Seuss into a language like that, isn't that. Yeah?
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: According to Terrence Tunberg, who's been teaching Latin for decades
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: and decades, green Eggs and Ham was very difficult to translate.
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: He and his spouse Jennifer, had already translated several children's
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: books into Latin, and they tackled Green Eggs and Ham
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: with the title being can you help me out with
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: the Latin here?
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: And oh boy, uh, variant ova verant parana with lots
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: of exclamation marks. Yeah.
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: The Tunbergs have also translated other Doctor Seuss books specific
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: but they said this wouldn't was one of the toughest
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: because of the simplified language and the short length. But
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: it's worth doing because it gives Latin a more contemporary
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: feel and it feels less like a dead language exactly.
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: And that is the story of Green Eggs and Ham
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: so far. However, that is not the end of these
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: Doctor Seuss facts. We found several. Some of them are darker,
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: some of them are just kind of hilarious. Yeah, Like
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: did you hear about how he's traumatized by Teddy Roosevelt?
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it did. Ben. I had to do with some
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: money he got from his grandfather, isn't that right? Yeah?
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: World War One was in full swing and Doctor Seuss
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: was a boy scout and he went door to door
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: and eventually, because his grandfather bought one thousand dollars worth
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: of war bonds, he became one of the most successful
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: war bond salesmen in his town. And they were brought
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: on stage, him and nine other boy scouts to the
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: municipal auditorium. And who was there to present the award.
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: Theodore Roosevelt himself, the President of the United States.
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he was there to officiate this ceremony to pana
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: metal on these plucky young lads and old Teddy Seuss
• 25:22
  Speaker 2: was the last one in line to receive this major award.
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: But it turns out that they didn't have enough medals.
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: And then Roosevelt gets to him and he doesn't have anything.
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: He just looks over at the people on stage. It's like,
• 25:34
  Speaker 2: who the hell is this kid? Get him out of here,
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: and they trundle him off stage and he gets nothing.
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: It's like Willie Walker style. Man. Wow.
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: For the rest of his life he had a crippling
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: fear of crowds, and he actually skipped a lot of
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: speaking engagements when he was a famous author because he
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: was terrified they would be publicly humiliated.
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: Again. Well, there's also not a lot of interviews with him,
• 25:57
  Speaker 2: like video interviews with him that you can even find.
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: Right, let's see what else is. His first book was
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: The Complete and Unabridged pocket Book of Boners.
• 26:07
  Speaker 2: Wow, is it just like a visual compendium of different boners.
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: It was.
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: This is back when a boner just meant an error,
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: Like that was a real bone. Oh okay, okay, So
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: the book was it was a compilation, but it was
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: a compilation of lists of silly, incorrect answers to questions
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: given by children. It did have a bunch of risque
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: jokes and illustrations. He knew the other meaning of boners.
• 26:34
  Speaker 2: You know, he did.
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: He was a bodie boy. He was, he was, And
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: I guess you could find a copy of that. It
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: first published in nineteen thirty one, and New York Times
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: called it hilarious.
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: I love sixcinct. New York Times reviews like that. They
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: usually so overly verbose. Have you ever seen Halloweens Grinch Night, Ben, Yeah,
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: I love it. It's so trippy, it's so cool. It's awesome,
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: and it's very psychedelic and hetty and strange. So if
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: you haven't seen that one, it's a quick one to
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: watch around Halloween time. It's actually pretty spooky. This little
• 27:08
  Speaker 2: kid and there's all these creatures, and Halloween is Grench
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: nine and the hacking sacks are yowling. We din't even
• 27:13
  Speaker 2: talk about that. He invents such great creature names. I love.
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: I'm glad you mentioned this because I have a little
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: bit of a bone to pick with this. I love
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: Halloween is Grench Knight. However, I think in some recent
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: years Doctor Seuss's good name has been besmirched with terrible
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: film adaptations such as The Cat and the Hat. Oh
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: with Mike Myers. Yeah, gross, grown, I know, And I
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: used to love Mike Myers when I was a kid.
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: You probably did too. With Wayne's World Sired Live all
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: that stuff, Austin Powers. But apparently behind the scenes, and
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: we have n't. I haven't met the guy at least,
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: so I can't confirm or deny this, But apparently behind
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: the scenes story is he's a real pill to work.
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: I have heard this. You've heard it him, especially like
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: on Trek or whatever, like, yeah, yeah, no, I've definitely
• 28:00
  Speaker 2: heard that, which is a shame. You know what else
• 28:03
  Speaker 2: is quite bad? What's that how the Grinch Stole Christmas?
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: It was like a short little little book and a
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: short little cartoon and they try to stretch it into
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: like a two hour movie. It was a great cartoon also,
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: you know what I mean? I don't know, It's just
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: I wish they would stop.
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: Are we Does this mean that we're getting old? Isn't
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: there another Grinch? Reboot coming out there as we're recording this.
• 28:22
  Speaker 2: Well, I think it's animator. It's like it's like, you know,
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: CGI or whatever. Oh. He also invented the word nerd. Yep,
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: didn't he he did.
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: This guy is a real wordsmith. So one last thing
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: I would like to contribute. I want to see your
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: opinion on this nool and we want to hear your opinion.
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: Ridiculous historians. Apparently doctor Seuss had dabbled in erotica. Excuse me, erotica?
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: Oh what I thought you said?
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: He had contributed art to something called The Bedroom Companion
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: that had a comic showing. Uh.
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: Well, let's just say he contributed to that to that book,
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: and as a condition of his contract later on in life,
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: he said, Okay, i'll write children's books for you only
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: if you let me write an adult book first. The
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: Seven Lady Godivas a story about seven naked women.
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and they're writing on one of his you know,
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: like signature, kind of nondescript beasts, like it's not it's
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: not a horse, it's not a hippo. I don't know,
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: it's it's got traits of all of those.
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: It's probably got a name like a barkernof or something exactly.
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: There you go, Ben, and it is, you know, a stride.
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: This creature is uh two three four sixty seven naked
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: women of all shapes and sizes. Yeah, in his defense
• 29:47
  Speaker 2: of all shapes and sizes. Here's the thing, Why do
• 29:49
  Speaker 2: we need to defend them? This is this is delightful.
• 29:51
  Speaker 1: Well, the book flopped and he was kind of uh,
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: he was kind of peet about it because he had
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: to settle for a career as a children's writer. This
• 29:59
  Speaker 1: is a quote from doctor Seuss. Okay, it's not us say,
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: it's a quote from him. He said, I tried to
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: draw the sexiest babes I could, but they came out
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: looking absurd.
• 30:08
  Speaker 2: Well, what the what is it? They look like doctor
• 30:11
  Speaker 2: Seus's characters? What did he think? There's nothing sexy about them.
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: They've all got like who hair, they're all hooviy and
• 30:18
  Speaker 2: yeah big time. Well you can't say the guy wasn't interesting.
• 30:22
  Speaker 2: When did he pass? Ben?
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: Doctor Zeuss actually lived a very long time. He did
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: not pass away until September twenty fourth, nineteen ninety one.
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: He was eighty seven years old.
• 30:33
  Speaker 2: I remember that, I remember when it happened. I mean
• 30:35
  Speaker 2: I was very young, but I definitely distinctly remember the
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: death of doctor Zeuss.
• 30:39
  Speaker 1: You know who else another personal legend of ours who
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: passed away recently, stan Lee. It's true, all right, p
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: stan You know it's it's strange because I'm sure that
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: he'll still be in cameos for a few more movies
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: because they must have filmed a bunch of I.
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: Guess they would have had to. Yeah, it makes sense
• 30:56
  Speaker 2: doing a batch.
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: And this reminds me he was in his nineties, right, Yeah,
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: he did look great and he also growing up as
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: a kid who didn't have a ton of friends, I
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: think stan Lee taught me a ton about reading and
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: really added to my vocabulary, you know what I mean.
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: He's the guy who brought back excelsior.
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I keep saying that. I don't know what that means.
• 31:18
  Speaker 2: It's like excellent, Oh okay, got it. There were a
• 31:21
  Speaker 2: lot of tributes to him when he passed away, and
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: everyone was saying excelsior. I thought it was some sort
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: of stomach medicine it's used to.
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: I guess it means that something is of superior quality,
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: got it? Like a little more flashy way of saying
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: grade a number one. But the reason I'm bringing up
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: stan Lee here, Noel, is because you and I made
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: a mandate and we we got a kind of a
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: bumpy start. Our mandate was to recommend comic books. Remember,
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: we did do that.
• 31:52
  Speaker 2: We did do that, We did say that, and we
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: kind of you know, this is a perfect episode to
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: do that in because I would argue that Sus is
• 31:58
  Speaker 2: kind of a graphic novel in some ways. I would agree,
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: I would agree. What do you dig in these days?
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: These days? I'm digging some.
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: Okay, I've been really into some horror comics because you know,
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: it's always kind of Halloween in my heart. And there's
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: a comic called Regression, which is terrifying, not for children,
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: it's about reincarnation. And then there's another comic series that's
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: complete called The Clean Room, which is about aliens. Or
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: maybe something different to say anymore would be to do
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: you a disservice coold.
• 32:37
  Speaker 2: Have you had a chance to check out Nameless? Nameless? Yes? Yeah,
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: yeah yeah. Nameless was the one shot four issues right, yes,
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: by Grant Morrison, who I'm always in love with everything
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: he does. I'm just really trippy out there, existential dread
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: almost he kind of veers into love crafty and territory,
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: and this one is no exception. This one's about like
• 32:57
  Speaker 2: space madness and just like demonic possession and narcissism and
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: all kinds of crazy stuff doorways to other dimensions. But
• 33:07
  Speaker 2: it's a tight little story and the art is insane,
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: insanely not for the feint of heart.
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, not only is not for children, I would say
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: it's not for you if you're already feeling a little bit,
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: you know, less than good.
• 33:21
  Speaker 2: It's agreed. It's a bit of a bummer. I'm so
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: glad you read that one man.
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: That's one of those that I keep buying copies of
• 33:28
  Speaker 1: and I keep giving them away.
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I have a hardcover of it. And just the
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: art is just alone is fantastic. So we have met
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: our mandate for this episode. We talked about a crazy,
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: weird children's book, Guy recommended some comics, had a good
• 33:42
  Speaker 2: time learning the origins of the word crunk, and.
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: Nerd invented a new phrase to yell out and exclamation
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: zoice soice.
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: It's also kind of like noise noise choice noy soyce.
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: And we hope that you enjoyed this episode even half
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: as much as as we enjoyed exploring this story with you.
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: That's all for today. Stay tuned for our next episode,
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: when we examine beer, A lot of beer, A whole
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: lot of beer, like a dangerous amounts of beer.
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: In the meantime, thanks of course to our super producer
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: Casey Pegram, Thanks to our research associate Gabe, Thanks.
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: To Alex Williams our Pal who composed our theme, and
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: thanks to you Ben for being a dapper and intelligent
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: co host.
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: As always, thanks man, I recently did my laundry. That's
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: probably probably way it smell fresh and clean, my man.
• 34:37
  Speaker 2: Thank you. No, you're welcome. Goodbye. Everyone. For more podcasts
• 34:51
  Speaker 2: from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
• 34:55
  Speaker 2: you listen to your favorite shows.