Latest / Stuff You Should Know / The Strange Story of the 1904 Olympic Marathon
Transcript
- 0:01Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
- 0:11Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's
- 0:13Speaker 2: Chuck and Jerry's here too, and we're on a sprint
- 0:16Speaker 2: to retirement. You're on Stuff you should Know a marathon sprint. Yeah, unfortunately,
- 0:24Speaker 2: marathon so never ending, ceaseless ultrathon marathon of all time.
- 0:31Speaker 1: You know, this was another listener suggestion. I feel like
- 0:33Speaker 1: those have been rolling in lately with a lot of
- 0:37Speaker 1: good suggestions, and this was something I had not heard of,
- 0:41Speaker 1: the story of the nineteen oh four marathon. And this
- 0:44Speaker 1: comes to us from Peter Fitzgibbon.
- 0:46Speaker 2: Yeah, and thanks today for helping us out with this
- 0:48Speaker 2: one too. Yeah, thanks all around, Peter Fitzgibbon, what a
- 0:52Speaker 2: great name. Agreed, So thanks a lot, Peter, because this
- 0:56Speaker 2: is a really interesting story and I hadn't heard anything
- 0:59Speaker 2: about it either, But there was what's widely considered as
- 1:03Speaker 2: the hardest, worst, most difficult marathon ever run. Marathon, not ultrathon.
- 1:10Speaker 2: No again, I'm just specifically talking about marathons, and the
- 1:15Speaker 2: mind bending part of it is it wasn't even an
- 1:17Speaker 2: official marathon link. It was two miles shorter than what
- 1:21Speaker 2: we consider marathons today, and this is still considered the hardest.
- 1:25Speaker 2: And it wasn't because some racing genius came up with
- 1:29Speaker 2: the perfect difficult marathon course. No, it was because the
- 1:34Speaker 2: people involved had no idea what they were doing. Yeah,
- 1:36Speaker 2: and this was one of the first marathons in the
- 1:39Speaker 2: modern era, in the modern Olympics, it was actually the
- 1:42Speaker 2: third one.
- 1:43Speaker 3: That's right.
- 1:44Speaker 1: If you know, there was no marathon in the the
- 1:47Speaker 1: og Ancient Games. I think a lot of people think
- 1:50Speaker 1: that maybe there was because of the great story of
- 1:53Speaker 1: how the marathon came to be, but that would happen
- 1:56Speaker 1: much later. There was a gentleman named Mishe Brielle, who
- 2:01Speaker 1: is a nineteenth century French linguist, and he loved Greek mythology.
- 2:07Speaker 1: Happened to be good friends with the founder of the
- 2:10Speaker 1: modern Olympics, a guy named Baron Pierre de Corbetin, and
- 2:16Speaker 1: he went to that first IOC meeting braille did, and
- 2:18Speaker 1: he said, hey, guys, we've all heard the story of
- 2:22Speaker 1: the Battle of Marathon in four ninety PC, when the
- 2:26Speaker 1: Greeks fought the Persians and the Greeks won, and very
- 2:29Speaker 1: famously sent Fidipites the messenger to run twenty four miles
- 2:35Speaker 1: back to Athens to say we won. We won, And
- 2:38Speaker 1: then when he did that, immediately dropped dead, like we
- 2:42Speaker 1: should commemorate that race by making people run that far
- 2:48Speaker 1: in these modern Olympics.
- 2:50Speaker 2: Yes, and the IOC said, I don't think anyone even
- 2:54Speaker 2: invited you. Who are you? And he said the same
- 2:58Speaker 2: thing again, almost very it was creepy, and they were
- 3:01Speaker 2: finally like, well, a good idea is a good.
- 3:03Speaker 3: Idea, he says, I'm friends with the baron.
- 3:05Speaker 2: So they decided to include the Olympic marathon in the
- 3:10Speaker 2: inaugural Games in Athens eighteen ninety six, the first modern Olympics,
- 3:15Speaker 2: and because it was an Athens they were actually able
- 3:18Speaker 2: to make a legit marathon from Marathon to Athens, just
- 3:22Speaker 2: like the original version.
- 3:24Speaker 3: Right yeah.
- 3:25Speaker 2: Their goal was for no one to drop dead when
- 3:28Speaker 2: they got back, and fortunately no one did. Into the
- 3:31Speaker 2: Greek's great delight, Greek runners took the top three spots,
- 3:36Speaker 2: the winner being spirit On lewis not the Greek ist
- 3:39Speaker 2: last name, but his first name definitely screamed Greek.
- 3:42Speaker 3: Did you say, unfortunately no one died?
- 3:45Speaker 2: Or and fortunately I said, and what kind of a
- 3:48Speaker 2: monster do you think?
- 3:49Speaker 1: I am Hey, I knew it, but I just wanted
- 3:51Speaker 1: to clear that up for people.
- 3:54Speaker 2: Oh thank you, you're looking out for me.
- 3:56Speaker 3: I was looking out for you.
- 3:57Speaker 2: Thank you, my friend.
- 3:59Speaker 1: So nineteen oh four was the third Olympic Games, the
- 4:04Speaker 1: first one in the US, just as a little bit
- 4:07Speaker 1: of a backdrop because it ties in a bit to
- 4:10Speaker 1: what happened in Saint Louis. But the nineteen hundred Games
- 4:13Speaker 1: in Paris were a bit of a flop because it
- 4:16Speaker 1: was overshadowed by the Paris Exposition that was held at
- 4:20Speaker 1: the same time, and the same thing basically happened in
- 4:24Speaker 1: Saint Louis. It coincided with their World's Fair aka the
- 4:29Speaker 1: Louisiana Purchase Centennial Exhibition, and it was, you know, just
- 4:34Speaker 1: sort of overshadow At world's fairs were very big deals.
- 4:36Speaker 1: The Olympics at the time weren't that big of a deal,
- 4:40Speaker 1: in fact, because it wasn't like a big city like
- 4:42Speaker 1: New York or Chicago or something. A lot of American
- 4:44Speaker 1: athletes didn't even come, so we maybe didn't necessarily field
- 4:48Speaker 1: our best. But one noteworthy thing was this was the
- 4:51Speaker 1: first Olympics to debut all three metal colors or I
- 4:57Speaker 1: Guesstal medals.
- 4:58Speaker 2: Yeah, gold, silver, bronze. Right, I don't mean to be pedantic, Chuck,
- 5:02Speaker 2: I'm sorry in advance, but it's my understanding that it
- 5:06Speaker 2: wasn't until the seventies people called it Saint Louis. I
- 5:09Speaker 2: think up to that point it was Saint Louis.
- 5:11Speaker 3: Okay, I'm glad you puted that out.
- 5:15Speaker 2: So one of the cool things about the Saint Louis
- 5:18Speaker 2: Olympics is that there was a guy named George iSER
- 5:21Speaker 2: who I read a little bit about. He had a
- 5:23Speaker 2: wooden leg, and this is a nineteen oh four wooden leg.
- 5:26Speaker 2: He won six medals I think in one day as
- 5:30Speaker 2: an American gymnast.
- 5:32Speaker 3: Did he win leg throwing?
- 5:35Speaker 2: Did he win?
- 5:36Speaker 3: What? Leg throwing?
- 5:38Speaker 2: I didn't know that that was an event. I think
- 5:40Speaker 2: you're thinking of the strongest lumberjack event.
- 5:42Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah, okay, that are the Highland Games. Sure.
- 5:45Speaker 3: So he won.
- 5:49Speaker 1: Gymnastic medals with the wooden leg.
- 5:52Speaker 2: Yeah, that's amazing, pretty impressive, six of them.
- 5:54Speaker 3: Yeah.
- 5:55Speaker 2: So this is actually a pretty sweet mashup of our
- 5:59Speaker 2: marathon episode in our Human Zoos episode. They kind of
- 6:02Speaker 2: collide here in this episode, the nineteen oh four marathon
- 6:05Speaker 2: and the reason why is because in nineteen oh four,
- 6:09Speaker 2: there's a guy named James E. Sullivan, and he was
- 6:13Speaker 2: essentially the guy who ran amateur sports in America, and
- 6:16Speaker 2: he was also on the International Olympic Committee representing America.
- 6:20Speaker 2: He had a lot to do with amateur sports, right. Yeah,
- 6:24Speaker 2: he was selected as the organizer of the nineteen oh
- 6:27Speaker 2: four Games in Saint Louis. And he's also one of
- 6:31Speaker 2: the reasons why there was such a thing as the
- 6:35Speaker 2: human Zoo at the World's Fair that year too.
- 6:40Speaker 3: Yeah.
- 6:40Speaker 1: He was, by all accounts a pretty xenophobic, racist kind
- 6:46Speaker 1: of guy. One of the things he did later on
- 6:50Speaker 1: famous I say, legendary athlete Jim Thorpe, Indigenous American Jim
- 6:57Speaker 1: Thorpe at his metal strip because Sullivan made a push
- 7:01Speaker 1: to do so because they found out that he played
- 7:03Speaker 1: minor league baseball. Very briefly, I want to do a
- 7:06Speaker 1: thing on a show on Jim Thorpe, by.
- 7:08Speaker 2: The way, Yeah, I agree, we should definitely do an
- 7:11Speaker 2: episode on him, because in addition to him being such
- 7:13Speaker 2: an amazing athlete, he really apparently got screwed over, not
- 7:19Speaker 2: just by the people taking his medals back, but by
- 7:21Speaker 2: people around him he trusted who basically sold him out
- 7:24Speaker 2: to cover their own hides.
- 7:27Speaker 1: So back to Sullivan, before we get to his human
- 7:31Speaker 1: zoo experience that he cultivated at this World's Fair, just
- 7:36Speaker 1: want to also point out that he was pretty much
- 7:39Speaker 1: exclusively into white men participating in sports, because not only
- 7:43Speaker 1: did he have a bone to pick with Jim Thorpe,
- 7:47Speaker 1: but he did not like black athletes participating. He did
- 7:50Speaker 1: not like women participating. In nineteen oh eight, at the
- 7:53Speaker 1: Olympics in London, they finally said, hey, you know what,
- 7:56Speaker 1: we should have women in here swimming and running, and
- 7:59Speaker 1: Sullivan refused to let the United States field a women's team.
- 8:03Speaker 2: Right, And like you also said, the World's Fair was
- 8:05Speaker 2: going on at the same time as the Olympics, and
- 8:08Speaker 2: part of the World's Fair, as was profiled more closely
- 8:11Speaker 2: in our Human Zoos episode, was essentially just a bunch
- 8:15Speaker 2: of indigenous villages from around the world that where the
- 8:21Speaker 2: actual people, like actual indigenous people from the Philippines, from Congo,
- 8:25Speaker 2: from all sorts of other countries at the time, were
- 8:29Speaker 2: brought to be in these living exhibits, essentially to show
- 8:33Speaker 2: just how superior white America and white Europe was to
- 8:38Speaker 2: these people. They were basically paid under contract to act
- 8:42Speaker 2: as native and indigenous as they possibly could, and that
- 8:46Speaker 2: was a big central feature of the nineteen oh four
- 8:49Speaker 2: World's Fair, and being the head of the Department of
- 8:54Speaker 2: Physical Culture for the World's Fair, Sullivan kind of did
- 8:58Speaker 2: a mash up between the World's Fair and their human
- 9:02Speaker 2: zoos and the Olympic Games that he was organizing and
- 9:05Speaker 2: came up with what were called the Anthropology Games, whereas
- 9:08Speaker 2: he also called them the Special Olympics.
- 9:10Speaker 3: That's right.
- 9:11Speaker 1: These were athletic contests where they would get white Americans
- 9:16Speaker 1: and pit them against indigenous people people of color. In
- 9:21Speaker 1: the newspaper there in Saint Louis, you know, things like
- 9:24Speaker 1: barbarians meet in athletic games, and it was, you know,
- 9:28Speaker 1: it was like an exhibition again of like to try
- 9:31Speaker 1: and show the superiority of white athletes for this World's Fair,
- 9:37Speaker 1: and isn't everyone gonna love it?
- 9:39Speaker 2: Yeah, So they came up with the shot put, the
- 9:42Speaker 2: long jump, the high jump, the mile run. And I'm
- 9:45Speaker 2: pretty sure we talked about this in the Humans News episode,
- 9:48Speaker 2: but the indigenous people who were recruited to participate on
- 9:53Speaker 2: the indigenous side essentially weren't really told the rules they
- 9:59Speaker 2: were just told go do this essentially, and so of
- 10:01Speaker 2: course they lost. It was super lopsided, and so I guess,
- 10:05Speaker 2: just to be fair, they came up with some indigenous
- 10:08Speaker 2: type events. I made scare quotes everybody, tree climbing, archery, javelin,
- 10:16Speaker 2: and yes, essentially the white athletes mopped the floor with
- 10:21Speaker 2: the indigenous athletes, proving to Sullivan and the rest of
- 10:24Speaker 2: the white people assembled to watch this stuff that whites
- 10:27Speaker 2: were inherently superior for another while longer.
- 10:31Speaker 1: So Sullivan was also the guy that was in charge
- 10:34Speaker 1: of designing this race, even though he probably shouldn't have
- 10:38Speaker 1: been because he did a very poor job designing this course.
- 10:43Speaker 1: He had a theory and it wasn't his idea, but
- 10:46Speaker 1: there was a theory at the time where something called
- 10:50Speaker 1: purposeful dehydration was the way forward for endurance athletes. That is,
- 10:55Speaker 1: don't drink it much, don't eat much, because that'll just
- 10:58Speaker 1: upset your stomach and it'll not help you in your race.
- 11:03Speaker 1: So he said, hey, why don't we try this out
- 11:05Speaker 1: here and we'll just put one water station close to
- 11:09Speaker 1: the twelve mile mark and not let them drink any
- 11:11Speaker 1: water aside from that, and we'll see how it shakes out.
- 11:14Speaker 2: Yeah, from what I can tell, it was you would
- 11:16Speaker 2: be disqualified if you were caught drinking water other than
- 11:19Speaker 2: at that station. So yeah, I know that. So the
- 11:23Speaker 2: runners involved had support teams who were basically helping them
- 11:27Speaker 2: along with like, you know, keeping their spirits up or whatever,
- 11:30Speaker 2: but one of the things they were absolutely forbidden from
- 11:33Speaker 2: doing is giving their athlete water their runner water.
- 11:36Speaker 3: Yeah.
- 11:36Speaker 2: So it sounds nuts purposeful dehydration, but if you stop
- 11:40Speaker 2: and think about, you know, it's also not a good
- 11:42Speaker 2: idea to eat a bunch of stuff and then go
- 11:44Speaker 2: out and run today. I think this is people just
- 11:47Speaker 2: mistakenly thought that about water at the time too.
- 11:50Speaker 3: Yeah.
- 11:51Speaker 1: The other bad idea was they started this thing at
- 11:53Speaker 1: three in the afternoon in August, and Saint Louis, which
- 11:57Speaker 1: is hot and humid, it was ninety degrees that late afternoon,
- 12:02Speaker 1: you know, into early evening is most times the hottest
- 12:05Speaker 1: part of the day. And not only that, but he said, hey,
- 12:09Speaker 1: let's run it out there on the dirt road, which
- 12:12Speaker 1: may have been okay if it was just these what
- 12:15Speaker 1: was it, thirty two runners running, but they had a
- 12:18Speaker 1: team of horses running in front of them to try
- 12:21Speaker 1: and like clear the road and lead the way along
- 12:24Speaker 1: with doctors and race officials and journalists. So they're just
- 12:29Speaker 1: kicking up like clouds of dust that you know, reportedly
- 12:33Speaker 1: you couldn't even see through at times that they're having
- 12:36Speaker 1: to run through and breathe this stuff in.
- 12:38Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, basically the whole time they're just choking on
- 12:42Speaker 2: dust apparently. Also, I think that there were regular cars
- 12:46Speaker 2: just using the road too at the time, so it
- 12:48Speaker 2: was not it was just a poorly designed, poorly planned,
- 12:51Speaker 2: poorly executed thing altogether.
- 12:53Speaker 3: Yeah.
- 12:54Speaker 2: There was one other thing about it too that I
- 12:55Speaker 2: think most marathons would be, like what there were seven
- 12:58Speaker 2: hill climbs. They range from one hundred feet to three
- 13:02Speaker 2: hundred feet, and a three hundred foot hill is as
- 13:05Speaker 2: tall as a twenty to thirty story building. I'm sure
- 13:08Speaker 2: it's not nearly as steep as climbing up a thirty
- 13:10Speaker 2: story building, but still you're walking up a substantial or
- 13:14Speaker 2: running up a substantial incline to a substantial height and
- 13:17Speaker 2: then back down seven times. That's on top of everything else.
- 13:23Speaker 2: That just is everything that's set up this race to
- 13:26Speaker 2: be just legendary. I mean, we're talking about one hundred
- 13:29Speaker 2: and twenty years later, you.
- 13:30Speaker 3: Know, yeah, Heartbreak Kill.
- 13:32Speaker 1: Just to compare, if you don't know what kind of
- 13:34Speaker 1: elevation rise that is for a marathon. For the Boston Marathon,
- 13:38Speaker 1: I think it's about ninety feet well, and I'm not
- 13:42Speaker 1: sure of the actual you know, I think it's I
- 13:44Speaker 1: think it's about a half mile for Heartbreak Hill. But
- 13:47Speaker 1: again I'm not really sure how far that three hundred
- 13:49Speaker 1: feet was, but it's more than three times, so it
- 13:51Speaker 1: couldn't have been fun.
- 13:53Speaker 2: Are you are you in a marathon? Are you going
- 13:54Speaker 2: to run a marathon?
- 13:55Speaker 1: Am I into marathons? I've never run more than two
- 14:01Speaker 1: miles in my life.
- 14:03Speaker 2: Well, I mean, hey, they say the journey toward a
- 14:07Speaker 2: marathon starts with a two mile run. No, no, no.
- 14:10Speaker 1: My line that I always use is I don't even
- 14:12Speaker 1: like to drive twenty six miles.
- 14:15Speaker 2: That's a good line.
- 14:15Speaker 3: Man. Not not into it.
- 14:18Speaker 2: I say, we take a break and come back and
- 14:20Speaker 2: start talking about some of the runners that were in
- 14:22Speaker 2: this thing.
- 14:22Speaker 3: Okay, all right, we'll be right back. All right.
- 14:47Speaker 1: So I mentioned that thirty two people participated in this
- 14:50Speaker 1: race in nineteen oh four, fourteen would end up finishing
- 14:54Speaker 1: the race, which is by far the fewest ever in
- 14:57Speaker 1: Olympic history still to this day. But you know, we'll
- 15:01Speaker 1: kind of go through some of the runners here, because
- 15:03Speaker 1: some were more experienced than others, some were wackier than others.
- 15:07Speaker 1: Three had won the Boston Marathon, so they were you know,
- 15:11Speaker 1: there were some legit experienced marathoners in there, but there
- 15:14Speaker 1: were definitely some dudes running this race that and again
- 15:19Speaker 1: in nineteen oh four. Running marathons wasn't you know nowadays,
- 15:22Speaker 1: if you do that kind of thing, that's your full
- 15:24Speaker 1: time job basically, you know, if you're competitive, that is
- 15:28Speaker 1: like at an Olympic level. But back then it was
- 15:32Speaker 1: just like, hey, I do this. I run a bakery
- 15:35Speaker 1: or I'm a professional clown. But I'm pretty good. You know,
- 15:39Speaker 1: I can run a long way, so I'm in the Olympics.
- 15:42Speaker 2: Right. There was a guy named Fred Lowers who was
- 15:45Speaker 2: a brick player, and he had won a five mile
- 15:48Speaker 2: race sponsored by Sullivan's Amateur Athletic Union. Goodness, yeah, sure,
- 15:55Speaker 2: five miles marathon. What's the difference. There's a guy named
- 15:58Speaker 2: Albert Corey. He worked at Slaughterhouse in Chicago. He was
- 16:02Speaker 2: from France, so I guess Albert Carrier Corey, I blew
- 16:07Speaker 2: up in my face. And then there was one of
- 16:10Speaker 2: the best known non professional or non one of the
- 16:15Speaker 2: best known walk ons I guess you could call him
- 16:18Speaker 2: same was Felix Carvea Hall and he was from Cuba.
- 16:22Speaker 2: He was five feet one inch and he was one
- 16:24Speaker 2: hundred percent awesome.
- 16:26Speaker 1: He was he was He had a big personality. He
- 16:30Speaker 1: was quite a character according to all accounts. At various
- 16:34Speaker 1: time during the race, he would he would stop just
- 16:37Speaker 1: to chat it up with people who were cheering him on.
- 16:40Speaker 1: He would playfully like steal peaches out of their hands
- 16:43Speaker 1: as he was running. He showed up in long sleeves
- 16:47Speaker 1: and long pants and everyone was like, dude, you got
- 16:50Speaker 1: to cut those pants down at least and luckily enough
- 16:52Speaker 1: there was a someone there with a knife and cut
- 16:56Speaker 1: them off at the knees for him, like right before
- 16:58Speaker 1: the race started.
- 16:59Speaker 2: Yeah, he was no stranger to running or moving long distances.
- 17:05Speaker 2: His nickname was Anderene the Walker, and he was well
- 17:09Speaker 2: known in Cuba already because he had walked the length
- 17:12Speaker 2: of Cuba and back at least once. I saw it
- 17:15Speaker 2: twice in one source, that's seven hundred and seventy seven
- 17:18Speaker 2: miles and He just did it because he wanted to.
- 17:22Speaker 2: I saw him compared to the turn of the century
- 17:25Speaker 2: Cuban Forrest Gump.
- 17:28Speaker 3: I wonder how he liked his shrimp.
- 17:30Speaker 2: That's a great question. He probably liked it free because
- 17:33Speaker 2: he very frequently didn't have any money.
- 17:37Speaker 3: Yeah.
- 17:37Speaker 1: He was also a messenger, supposedly ran thirty miles a
- 17:41Speaker 1: day as part of his job. When he and this
- 17:45Speaker 1: is where it gets really kind of fun. They didn't
- 17:48Speaker 1: They weren't going to pay his way. Cuba was like sorry.
- 17:51Speaker 1: I think the mayor of Evan was like, you know,
- 17:53Speaker 1: we're not going to pay your way to go there.
- 17:55Speaker 1: You're welcome to race, but we're not supporting this financially.
- 17:58Speaker 1: He started running around hall in circles in protest and
- 18:02Speaker 1: got so many supporters. They said, all right, here's the
- 18:05Speaker 1: money book, your passage on a steamship, which he took
- 18:09Speaker 1: to New Orleans and supposedly was lost his money gambling
- 18:14Speaker 1: and had a hitchhike close to seven hundred miles to
- 18:17Speaker 1: Saint Louis from there.
- 18:18Speaker 2: Yeah, he hitchhiked and walked, And I saw that by
- 18:22Speaker 2: the time he arrived in Saint Louis for the race,
- 18:25Speaker 2: he hadn't eaten in two days, so he ran that
- 18:28Speaker 2: marathon without having eaten the last two days.
- 18:31Speaker 3: Yeah.
- 18:32Speaker 2: You also said that he liked to joke around with
- 18:34Speaker 2: people and stop and chat with spectators and stuff. Apparently
- 18:38Speaker 2: he didn't speak English, and I also saw they didn't
- 18:40Speaker 2: really speak Spanish, that he spoke some strange slangy dialect
- 18:44Speaker 2: of Cuban or from Cuba, and that people didn't necessarily
- 18:49Speaker 2: know what he was talking about. Yeah, well, I could
- 18:51Speaker 2: tell he was so animated. You were just engrossed in
- 18:54Speaker 2: what he was saying, and maybe kind of got what
- 18:56Speaker 2: he was saying, the general broad strokes of what he
- 18:59Speaker 2: was trying to get cross, or at the very least
- 19:01Speaker 2: you get a laugh out of you. That's that's how
- 19:03Speaker 2: I kind of took all that.
- 19:04Speaker 3: Yeah.
- 19:04Speaker 1: I know I've said this before, but when I first
- 19:07Speaker 1: traveled through Europe in the mid nineties, I spent an
- 19:13Speaker 1: entire night at a German brew house with my friend
- 19:18Speaker 1: that I was traveling with, hanging out with this old
- 19:21Speaker 1: German guy.
- 19:21Speaker 3: I mean old.
- 19:22Speaker 1: He was probably in his forties, but we were in
- 19:23Speaker 1: our early twenties. Old he seemed ancient. But yeah, hung
- 19:27Speaker 1: out with this guy drinking with him for probably five hours.
- 19:30Speaker 1: He didn't speak a word of English and I spoke
- 19:32Speaker 1: very bad German, but we communicated all night long.
- 19:36Speaker 2: It's the international language of beer.
- 19:39Speaker 3: I exactly ed love.
- 19:42Speaker 2: We kissed later on, very nice after drinking for five hours.
- 19:45Speaker 3: Yeah, imagine that.
- 19:47Speaker 2: So carve Hal is again the biggest personality to emerge
- 19:53Speaker 2: out of this, but he was far from the only
- 19:55Speaker 2: kind of character. I guess. There were two guys and
- 19:58Speaker 2: it's awesome. There's a picture of them together, Leneyu Yanni
- 20:04Speaker 2: and I don't know if it's Yan or John, but
- 20:06Speaker 2: Yan Masciani. They were both from South Africa and they
- 20:11Speaker 2: were from the Swana tribe Dswana, and they were at
- 20:15Speaker 2: the World's Fair because they were some of the indigenous
- 20:18Speaker 2: people who've been imported to really kind of play up
- 20:22Speaker 2: their indigenousness and also to reenact the Boer War between
- 20:26Speaker 2: the Dutch and the English that had just concluded, and
- 20:30Speaker 2: they in the war. They had been messengers for the Boers,
- 20:34Speaker 2: so they were kind of recreating this on the daily.
- 20:36Speaker 2: They were also involved in I think they ran a
- 20:39Speaker 2: marathon in the Anthropology Games. I have no idea how
- 20:44Speaker 2: they were actually brought into the actual Olympic Marathon. The
- 20:50Speaker 2: main one, the closest explanation that I saw is that
- 20:54Speaker 2: there was not a lot of internationality among the participants. Again,
- 20:59Speaker 2: like you said, people just weren't coming. I think d
- 21:03Speaker 2: kouber Tan, the guy who founded the modern Olympics, didn't
- 21:06Speaker 2: even bother to show up. That was that poorly attended
- 21:08Speaker 2: in that klue Ge, Right, So they needed to make
- 21:14Speaker 2: it more international, and so they had too on Yani
- 21:19Speaker 2: and Mashiani run in this marathon. That's the best explanation
- 21:23Speaker 2: I could see of how two black athletes ended up
- 21:25Speaker 2: running in the Olympic Mathon they would actually become the
- 21:28Speaker 2: first black African athletes in Olympic history of any event
- 21:32Speaker 2: of any sport. Yeah, and the first or the last
- 21:36Speaker 2: to represent South Africa for another eighty six years until
- 21:39Speaker 2: apartheid was taken down taken apart Wow. And then there's
- 21:44Speaker 2: one other thing about tu Yani to on Yani, he
- 21:48Speaker 2: was a mailman, which will come into play in just
- 21:51Speaker 2: a little bit.
- 21:52Speaker 3: Yeah.
- 21:52Speaker 1: I love the picture of those guys, like you mentioned,
- 21:54Speaker 1: it's the look on their faces a little bit like
- 21:58Speaker 1: we're gonna.
- 21:58Speaker 2: Do what it's like studiously avoiding looking perplexed, but I
- 22:04Speaker 2: think they're kind of perplexed.
- 22:05Speaker 3: Yeah, it's we're gonna do what slash we got this.
- 22:09Speaker 2: Yeah, it's kind of got that feel for sure.
- 22:11Speaker 3: Because spoiler they finished the race.
- 22:13Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, you spoiled it for me, all right.
- 22:19Speaker 1: So the first thing that they did is they ran
- 22:22Speaker 1: five laps around the Olympic Stadium. You know, I think
- 22:25Speaker 1: they still do something like that now where they you know,
- 22:28Speaker 1: where their spectators are to watch before they get out
- 22:31Speaker 1: on that dirt road. And before they left the stadium,
- 22:36Speaker 1: John Lorden Boston Marathon Winter started vomiting and quit the race.
- 22:42Speaker 2: Yeah. It was really surprising because he was a favorite.
- 22:44Speaker 3: Five laps in less than five.
- 22:47Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, So that was the first guy. Once they
- 22:51Speaker 2: made it out of the stadium and onto the dirt roads,
- 22:53Speaker 2: they were immediately confronted with the problem of the thick dust.
- 22:57Speaker 2: So in addition to running, they're also coughing, breathing shallowly,
- 23:01Speaker 2: I'm sure, And about ten miles in things really started
- 23:06Speaker 2: to fall apart. And that's I mean, that's a significant
- 23:09Speaker 2: distance considering what they were having to put up with.
- 23:11Speaker 2: And again, this is a ninety degree day in the afternoon,
- 23:15Speaker 2: in August. Right, Yeah, So what happened first after John
- 23:20Speaker 2: Lorden was out.
- 23:22Speaker 1: Well, they're getting dehydrated. They're choking on the dust and
- 23:26Speaker 1: dirt everywhere. About the ten mile mark, our buddy Fred
- 23:30Speaker 1: Laure's the brick layer, said.
- 23:33Speaker 3: I'm tapping out.
- 23:34Speaker 1: He called on his little satellite phone and seid, I'm
- 23:36Speaker 1: officially withdrawing, and they got a helicopter and there flew
- 23:39Speaker 1: him out.
- 23:41Speaker 3: He actually didn't.
- 23:42Speaker 1: He said he couldn't continue, and then he flagged down
- 23:45Speaker 1: a car and jumped in the car and was like,
- 23:48Speaker 1: I'll just ride with you guys, because you're heading back
- 23:50Speaker 1: to the Olympic Stadium. But I'm out, and they said sure,
- 23:55Speaker 1: no problem. So just kind of put that in your
- 23:57Speaker 1: back pocket.
- 23:57Speaker 2: I saw somewhere also that it was his court team
- 24:01Speaker 2: slash coach that had been riding along with him. Yeah,
- 24:04Speaker 2: like next to him. Yeah, car yeah, so carve Hall.
- 24:08Speaker 2: He doesn't have anybody there. He's totally on his own.
- 24:11Speaker 2: He doesn't have a support team. And remember he hasn't
- 24:14Speaker 2: eaten in two days. So part of the course ran
- 24:17Speaker 2: past an apple orchard and he decided to stop and
- 24:20Speaker 2: eat some apples, and depending on who you ask, either
- 24:23Speaker 2: he ate too many apples because he was very hungry.
- 24:25Speaker 2: The apples he ate were rotten, or didn't he eat
- 24:28Speaker 2: apples at all, and he just ate a bunch of
- 24:30Speaker 2: peaches like you said that he'd snatched from some spectators.
- 24:33Speaker 2: Either way, he ended up with stomach cramps from either
- 24:36Speaker 2: the apples or the peaches or both. And so carve
- 24:39Speaker 2: Hall did what any Olympic marathon or would do face
- 24:42Speaker 2: with that situation. He found a shady place to lay
- 24:44Speaker 2: down and took a nap in the middle of the marathon.
- 24:49Speaker 1: That's right, which is hysterical. So one guy's in a car,
- 24:54Speaker 1: one guy that the favorite had had puked and stopped
- 24:57Speaker 1: before they left the stadium. Fun Cuban friend is napping
- 25:02Speaker 1: in the orchard. One of the South African runners is
- 25:05Speaker 1: chased a mile off course by a stray dog. So
- 25:09Speaker 1: that ends up adding I mean, I guess a couple
- 25:12Speaker 1: of miles if he had to get back right, yeah,
- 25:16Speaker 1: and so he ran like a real marathon.
- 25:18Speaker 2: Then yeah, exactly, yeah, because this is about two miles shorter.
- 25:22Speaker 2: So yeah too. On Yanni was the only one to
- 25:24Speaker 2: run a real marathon. And the reason I mentioned that
- 25:27Speaker 2: he was a mailman is because yes, he was chased
- 25:29Speaker 2: by a dog while he was running the marathon. Little cliche,
- 25:33Speaker 2: but it's it's true. I've seen dogs chase mail carriers before.
- 25:37Speaker 2: It's not a pretty sight.
- 25:38Speaker 1: And now ask a mail carrier, they will say that
- 25:40Speaker 1: it's a trope for a reason.
- 25:43Speaker 2: So all the way at mile sixteen, Sam Meller, who
- 25:47Speaker 2: was another favorite, he started to cramp up from dehydration,
- 25:52Speaker 2: and there's an account that says that he got lost.
- 25:57Speaker 2: Actually he was kind of disoriented from dehydration and exhaustion
- 26:02Speaker 2: and trying to find his way back to the course.
- 26:05Speaker 2: He wore himself out and eventually he was just like,
- 26:08Speaker 2: I can't do this anymore. I'm out, all.
- 26:10Speaker 3: Right, So Maloria's now out.
- 26:12Speaker 1: And then we've got the worst case of them all,
- 26:15Speaker 1: which was a guy from California named William Garcia Billy
- 26:19Speaker 1: Garcia a mile nineteen starts coughing up blood. He passes
- 26:23Speaker 1: out on the road and has rushed to the hospital
- 26:26Speaker 1: and has to have emergency surgery because his esophagus was
- 26:31Speaker 1: so caked with dust and dirt and he was swallowing
- 26:34Speaker 1: so much of this stuff it tore his stomach lining,
- 26:37Speaker 1: so he could have literally died yeah.
- 26:40Speaker 2: And imagine. I mean, like this guy just started breathing
- 26:42Speaker 2: this dust just a couple hours before, so I mean
- 26:46Speaker 2: it had a really pronounced effect. There was some really
- 26:48Speaker 2: nasty dusts.
- 26:49Speaker 3: I guess should we take up a break.
- 26:52Speaker 2: Yeah, we're gonna take a break, and we're gonna start
- 26:54Speaker 2: closing in on that finish line after we get back.
- 26:57Speaker 2: How about that.
- 26:57Speaker 3: All right, We'll be right back.
- 27:21Speaker 1: So I mentioned earlier, you might have thought I was
- 27:24Speaker 1: kidding when I said some people, you know, might work
- 27:27Speaker 1: as a professional clown but can run far. That was
- 27:30Speaker 1: the case with Thomas Hicks. He was a clown, but
- 27:34Speaker 1: he was also a clown that suffered from dehydration because
- 27:37Speaker 1: he was not allowed to drink. Right at mile ten,
- 27:41Speaker 1: was like, you've got to give me water, you know,
- 27:43Speaker 1: dust flying out of his mouth, and they said no, no, no,
- 27:46Speaker 1: you have to run two more miles to get that water.
- 27:49Speaker 1: They sponged him down with some warm, distilled water, which
- 27:53Speaker 1: must have been quite a relief, wiped his back and
- 27:56Speaker 1: shoulders off a little bit. Eventually he would get that water.
- 27:59Speaker 1: But then on the other side of that break at
- 28:02Speaker 1: the seven mile mark, was like, by the way, I'm
- 28:05Speaker 1: thirsty again.
- 28:06Speaker 3: That didn't satisfy me for the rest of the race.
- 28:09Speaker 1: They said, here, drink this, and he said, what is
- 28:12Speaker 1: it and they said his egg whites and strychnine down
- 28:15Speaker 1: the hatch.
- 28:16Speaker 2: Yeah, and apparently that that was like giving Popeye spinach,
- 28:21Speaker 2: because you definitely put a little peppin in step. And
- 28:23Speaker 2: the reason why is because strick nine, in very small doses,
- 28:27Speaker 2: I saw something like one milligram acts as a stimulant,
- 28:31Speaker 2: so much so that there was a bronze medalist from
- 28:34Speaker 2: Kazakhstan in weightlifting name Isat Artikov who had his metal
- 28:38Speaker 2: strip because he tested positive for stryck nine in twenty sixteen. Yeah,
- 28:42Speaker 2: and it's enough of an effective stimulant that it's a
- 28:45Speaker 2: banned substance. At the time, there weren't any banned substances
- 28:50Speaker 2: apparently except water in the Olympics or in the marathon. Right,
- 28:54Speaker 2: so they were able to give them this little boost
- 28:56Speaker 2: with strychnine. I don't know what the purpose of the
- 28:59Speaker 2: egg whites were, but I'm sure he was like, I
- 29:01Speaker 2: don't care. It's there's some percentage of this this water
- 29:03Speaker 2: and I'll take it.
- 29:05Speaker 3: Right.
- 29:05Speaker 1: Water was a performance enhancing drug, but stri thinks, yeah,
- 29:08Speaker 1: exactly all right, So back to Fred Lawres. Remember this
- 29:12Speaker 1: guy's kicking it in his doctor's car. He's riding around
- 29:16Speaker 1: the AC's blaring, he's listening to run DMC in the
- 29:20Speaker 1: back of that limo, and they, you know, they get
- 29:23Speaker 1: close to the finish line. Back at the stadium about
- 29:27Speaker 1: four miles out. He was like, this will be hysterical.
- 29:30Speaker 1: I'm feeling pretty good now after being in the car
- 29:32Speaker 1: for so long. Yeah, I'm going to pretend like I'm
- 29:36Speaker 1: still in this race. Got out of the car, ran
- 29:39Speaker 1: into the stadium. The crowd roars because he's in the lead,
- 29:43Speaker 1: and crosses the finish line at three hours and thirteen
- 29:46Speaker 1: minutes and was being handed basically the Brial Cup named
- 29:52Speaker 1: for Brial who invented this thing from Alice Roosevelt, daughter
- 29:57Speaker 1: of Teddy, and someone in this stands says, wait a minute,
- 30:01Speaker 1: that guy was in a car. I'm not sure how
- 30:03Speaker 1: they found this out, but someone in the stands clued
- 30:06Speaker 1: them in that he was cheating, and despite him saying like, hey,
- 30:09Speaker 1: this is just a joke, they're like, no, no, no, my friend,
- 30:12Speaker 1: you were about to take that cup your band for life.
- 30:15Speaker 2: Yeah. I imagine that person like shouting out that he
- 30:18Speaker 2: was a cheater, being kind of like Princess Buttercup getting
- 30:21Speaker 2: booed in the Princess Bride. Everybody's cheering, and there's that
- 30:24Speaker 2: one old woman going boo. Yeah, that's kind of exactly
- 30:29Speaker 2: how it happened, to tell you the truth, now I
- 30:31Speaker 2: think about it. So Laws was disqualified and Hicks, Thomas Hicks,
- 30:37Speaker 2: the professional clown, was far enough back that his team
- 30:41Speaker 2: received word like, hey, this guy is just disqualified. The
- 30:46Speaker 2: first place is now opened again. And Thomas Hicks is like, Okay,
- 30:50Speaker 2: I'm gonna try hit me with some more strychnine and
- 30:53Speaker 2: egg whites, and you got any brandy on you, because
- 30:57Speaker 2: I think it's brandy time. And they did. They gave
- 30:59Speaker 2: him concoction of those three things, and he drank it down,
- 31:03Speaker 2: and they said, wait a minute, champ, we got something
- 31:05Speaker 2: even better for you. We're gonna give you another warm
- 31:08Speaker 2: sponge bath.
- 31:09Speaker 3: Right, I'll get out there and chafe.
- 31:12Speaker 2: And so he kept running. And as he kept running,
- 31:15Speaker 2: remember he had apparently a mile twelve. With that water station,
- 31:18Speaker 2: they were allowed one cup of water.
- 31:20Speaker 3: That's it.
- 31:21Speaker 2: They couldn't just sit there and pound water. So this
- 31:23Speaker 2: guy was nearing the end of a twenty four mile
- 31:27Speaker 2: run with one cup of water on, two doses of
- 31:30Speaker 2: Strych nine, a bunch of egg whites, and some brandy,
- 31:34Speaker 2: and he is just barely hopping along. Toward the end,
- 31:37Speaker 2: he was kind of engaging in like a shuffling jog
- 31:42Speaker 2: into a walk and then back into a shuffling jog.
- 31:44Speaker 2: And he seemed to as far as the I think
- 31:47Speaker 2: the race officials said, he was basically out of it,
- 31:50Speaker 2: just totally out of it, not even in his body anymore.
- 31:54Speaker 1: Can you imagine the pasty glue like quality of the
- 32:01Speaker 1: inside of his mouth and the sweaters on his teeth, Yeah,
- 32:03Speaker 1: for sure, and his breath. Frankly, yeah, at least they.
- 32:08Speaker 2: Didn't gi him yokes, but yes, it would still be
- 32:10Speaker 2: pretty bad.
- 32:12Speaker 1: Yeah, there was one quote about the last couple of
- 32:15Speaker 1: miles there his eyes. Almost want to read this as
- 32:18Speaker 1: Quint from Jaws, because that's what it sounds like. His
- 32:21Speaker 1: eyes were dull, lustreless, the ashen color of his face
- 32:24Speaker 1: and skin had deepened. His arms appeared as weights well
- 32:28Speaker 1: tied down. He could scarcely lift his legs while his
- 32:31Speaker 1: knees were almost stiff.
- 32:33Speaker 2: Yeah, he's walking around like Molly Shannon on the episode
- 32:36Speaker 2: of Seinfeld where she doesn't move her arms when she walks. Right,
- 32:39Speaker 2: That's how this guy was running his marathon toward the end. Yeah, totally, Yeah,
- 32:45Speaker 2: making meringue in his mouth. Oh god, So he started
- 32:49Speaker 2: to hallucinate as the report that Thomas Hicks was like,
- 32:53Speaker 2: the finish line is still twenty miles away. Can you
- 32:55Speaker 2: imagine just the sense of dread. Oh my god, that
- 32:58Speaker 2: would run over you if you suddenly start believing that.
- 33:00Speaker 2: And I guess his support team was like, no, no, buddy,
- 33:03Speaker 2: we're almost there. We're right there. And as he started
- 33:06Speaker 2: to cross the finish line, his trainers helped him. This
- 33:09Speaker 2: was a kind of something that plagued early marathons that
- 33:13Speaker 2: the trainers of supports staff were totally fine with essentially
- 33:16Speaker 2: carrying you across the finish line.
- 33:19Speaker 3: Yeah.
- 33:19Speaker 2: I don't know if it was this one or the
- 33:21Speaker 2: guy from the nineteen oh eight Olympic Marathon, but one
- 33:25Speaker 2: of the two were so carried across the finish line
- 33:29Speaker 2: that their feet were still moving in mid air as
- 33:32Speaker 2: if they were still making their way, you know, cartoon
- 33:38Speaker 2: pretty much. Yeah, so he was very much helped across
- 33:40Speaker 2: the finish line. But this thing was so exhaustive and
- 33:43Speaker 2: just so brutal that he's still one first place. But
- 33:48Speaker 2: even as he was crossing the finish line, there was
- 33:50Speaker 2: the Saint Louis Dispatch wrote about how he looked and
- 33:53Speaker 2: how he was behaving, which was even worse than what
- 33:56Speaker 2: the race official wrote earlier.
- 33:58Speaker 3: Do you't me to read it? Yeah? You want me
- 34:01Speaker 3: to read like quint.
- 34:03Speaker 2: Well, Either that or like a nineteen oh four Saint
- 34:05Speaker 2: Louis writer.
- 34:07Speaker 3: Oh, I'll just read it Sammy Davis.
- 34:10Speaker 2: Okay, all right, no, no, come on.
- 34:12Speaker 3: No, it's too long.
- 34:14Speaker 1: I'll read the last bit. He must have heard the
- 34:17Speaker 1: uproar around him, but he betrayed no sign of it.
- 34:19Speaker 1: He was past that. He did look up once, when
- 34:21Speaker 1: the din was at its height. He was within a
- 34:24Speaker 1: few yards of the finish.
- 34:26Speaker 3: Did you hear that?
- 34:28Speaker 2: Did something blow up?
- 34:29Speaker 3: No, it's bad thunder.
- 34:30Speaker 1: Let's leave it in there and here come Sammy to
- 34:33Speaker 1: finish up his lower job. Man was hanging as an imbecility.
- 34:38Speaker 1: His eyes stared blankly bab but his pitiful expression didn't change.
- 34:43Speaker 3: Man.
- 34:44Speaker 2: I think the best thing that ever happened in this
- 34:47Speaker 2: podcast was everyone, including me, discovering that you can do
- 34:51Speaker 2: a great Sammy Davis Junior.
- 34:52Speaker 1: Oh, I mean it all goes to Billy Crystala just
- 34:55Speaker 1: stole his impression from SNL.
- 34:57Speaker 2: I'm not I reject that.
- 34:59Speaker 3: Okay, Yeah, so he was in worse shape than we thought.
- 35:02Speaker 3: Even he didn't even know what was going on.
- 35:05Speaker 2: What was his time?
- 35:07Speaker 1: Three hours, twenty eight minutes, the worst time in history
- 35:10Speaker 1: of the Olympics.
- 35:12Speaker 2: So apparently by thirty minutes, it was the slowest gold
- 35:15Speaker 2: medal time in the Olympic marathon by thirty full minutes.
- 35:19Speaker 2: And keep in mind, starting at the next Olympics in
- 35:22Speaker 2: nineteen oh eight, the marathon began to be run as
- 35:25Speaker 2: a twenty six point two mile race, so this was
- 35:28Speaker 2: two miles shorter and still slower by thirty minutes. So
- 35:31Speaker 2: technically he was probably about forty minutes slower than the
- 35:35Speaker 2: next worst time in Olympic history. There was one other
- 35:39Speaker 2: really significant thing about all this. It had the greatest
- 35:42Speaker 2: number of did not finishes. Something like fifty six percent
- 35:46Speaker 2: of the people did not complete the race. Only fourteen
- 35:51Speaker 2: of the original thirty two runners completed this race. That
- 35:54Speaker 2: is abysmal. I think the next worse percentage was like
- 36:00Speaker 2: twenty eight percent. In Tokyo a few years back. This
- 36:04Speaker 2: is like, no, nothing has ever been run like this
- 36:06Speaker 2: before and hasn't been since.
- 36:08Speaker 1: Yeah, our friends from South Africa both finished, like I
- 36:12Speaker 1: said earlier. One came in twelfth place, so beat two people,
- 36:16Speaker 1: and one of them came in ninth place, so you know,
- 36:18Speaker 1: ninth out of fifteen. And these guys had never run
- 36:21Speaker 1: marathons before.
- 36:22Speaker 2: No, and one of them I think we left out.
- 36:24Speaker 2: If you look at that photo, one of them's wearing
- 36:26Speaker 2: boots and the other one's barefoot, so it's pretty impressive. Carvall,
- 36:31Speaker 2: Carve Hall, I just I keep thinking of the ice
- 36:35Speaker 2: cream cake in it. Message. Yeah, Carve Hall. He finished fourth,
- 36:40Speaker 2: and don't forget he took a nap in the middle
- 36:42Speaker 2: of this, hadn't eaten in two days, and still finished fourth.
- 36:46Speaker 2: So there's no telling what he could have done had
- 36:48Speaker 2: he been wrested and fed and hadn't eaten a bunch
- 36:52Speaker 2: of apples that gave him stomach cramps. So Carve Hall
- 36:55Speaker 2: won in my opinion.
- 36:56Speaker 3: Yeah, I agree.
- 36:58Speaker 1: You would think that James Sullivan learned his lesson, and
- 37:01Speaker 1: I was like, well, I guess we proved that water
- 37:05Speaker 1: drinking is probably something you should do, because you know,
- 37:09Speaker 1: less than half of these guys finished. Not. So he
- 37:12Speaker 1: actually wrote a book in nineteen oh nine called Marathon Running,
- 37:16Speaker 1: where he said, don't get into the habit of drinking
- 37:19Speaker 1: and eating in a marathon race.
- 37:20Speaker 3: Some prominent runners do, but it is not beneficial. Smart
- 37:25Speaker 3: smart guy.
- 37:26Speaker 2: So he did also say that there was that the
- 37:30Speaker 2: marathon was essentially indefensible and that I asked too much
- 37:34Speaker 2: of human endurance. So he kind of turned his back
- 37:36Speaker 2: on it. But other people are like, no, we like
- 37:38Speaker 2: the marathon. He's like, really, okay, yeah, the marathon's great, right,
- 37:42Speaker 2: And like I said, the nineteen oh eight Olympic Marathon
- 37:44Speaker 2: was the first where it was run as twenty six
- 37:47Speaker 2: point two miles, And the lore goes that that extra
- 37:52Speaker 2: point two miles was because the distance from the actual
- 37:56Speaker 2: finish line at twenty six miles to the box where
- 37:59Speaker 2: the royal were sitting watching the race was point two miles,
- 38:03Speaker 2: so they had to add point two miles onto that
- 38:05Speaker 2: twenty six miles so that the royals could be sitting
- 38:08Speaker 2: there at the finish line. That's the lore, and I'm.
- 38:10Speaker 3: Pressing it's true. Yeahs not totally buy that.
- 38:14Speaker 2: Sure you got anything else.
- 38:17Speaker 3: I got nothing else. This was a good one. Thank
- 38:18Speaker 3: you to Peter Pittsgibbon.
- 38:21Speaker 2: Thanks Peter. If you want to be like Peter and
- 38:24Speaker 2: send us an email, we would love that. We always
- 38:27Speaker 2: are happy to get good ideas. We'll add them to
- 38:30Speaker 2: the pile. And since I said that and got confused
- 38:33Speaker 2: for a second thinking that I was wrapping up the show,
- 38:35Speaker 2: it's time for listener mail.
- 38:41Speaker 1: I'm going to call this short and suite on phone
- 38:42Speaker 1: freaking And this is from Kathy with a K. Hey, guys,
- 38:46Speaker 1: when you mentioned long distance calls and how people got
- 38:48Speaker 1: around the high rates, reminded me of when I was
- 38:50Speaker 1: a teenager and we'll go out of town with friends
- 38:53Speaker 1: skiing or to the beach at a system where they
- 38:55Speaker 1: would arrive at our destination. We would call home person
- 38:59Speaker 1: to person asking to speak to buddy, who was their dog,
- 39:05Speaker 1: and that was the little clue there. My parents would
- 39:08Speaker 1: say he was not at home, and they would know
- 39:10Speaker 1: that we'd arrived safely.
- 39:12Speaker 2: Nice.
- 39:13Speaker 1: That's from Kathy with a K. So it's a nice
- 39:15Speaker 1: little workaround hack parents knew when someone called asking for
- 39:18Speaker 1: the dog, that just meant they were there safely.
- 39:21Speaker 3: Fair charges.
- 39:22Speaker 2: Anytime I hear Kathy with the K. It makes me
- 39:24Speaker 2: wonder if it's one of our Stuff you Should Know
- 39:26Speaker 2: Army members Kathy with the K from Arizona who gave
- 39:29Speaker 2: us the lastos to learn how to steer with.
- 39:32Speaker 3: I don't think it's at Kathy, but I've still got
- 39:34Speaker 3: that rope. I keep it at the camp same here.
- 39:36Speaker 3: I hope to rope a bear one day.
- 39:38Speaker 2: That would be great. I hope you get it on
- 39:39Speaker 2: video if you do. Yeah, Well, if you want to
- 39:42Speaker 2: be like Kathy and send us a cute little anecdote
- 39:44Speaker 2: about something we talked about, we love that too, and
- 39:46Speaker 2: you can send that as well to Stuff podcast at
- 39:49Speaker 2: iHeartRadio dot com.
- 39:54Speaker 3: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
- 39:57Speaker 3: more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
- 40:01Speaker 3: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows