Latest / Ridiculous History / Mastodons and 'Murica, with Lauren Vogelbaum, Part Two: A Grudge Match with the French

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Mastodons and 'Murica, with Lauren Vogelbaum, Part Two: A Grudge Match with the French · Ridiculous History

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: the show, fellow Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: much for tuning in. That's our super producer, mister Max Williams,
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: Noel Brown, Ben Bollen. This is part two of a
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: crazy exploration of Thomas Jefferson, who gets a nickname in
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: this series, and Mastertons and.
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: A real history mystery.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, big, big teeth. We couldn't do it without our
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: special guest, returning guest friend of the show, dear friend
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: of ours, Lauren Vogel bam.
• 0:58
  Speaker 3: Oh, thanks for having me.
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: Jeez, guys, can we just jump into the show already
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: in progress?
• 1:09
  Speaker 3: Buffone knows that that Tommy is beefing with him about
• 1:13
  Speaker 3: this whole thing a little bit, and he invites him
• 1:15
  Speaker 3: over to dinner in Paris because both of them are
• 1:18
  Speaker 3: hanging out in Paris at the time, and everyone thinks
• 1:21
  Speaker 3: that this is going to be you know, I don't know,
• 1:24
  Speaker 3: like like maybe maybe they're going to make peace, maybe
• 1:27
  Speaker 3: they're going to fight it out once and for all.
• 1:29
  Speaker 3: Neither of those things happen, partially because over dinner, someone
• 1:34
  Speaker 3: mentions the existence of Moose and Buffoone confidently says that
• 1:42
  Speaker 3: no such thing could possibly exist, that it has to
• 1:46
  Speaker 3: be a tall tale of like a reindeer or something,
• 1:50
  Speaker 3: and Jefferson later recalled he wrote down that he said this.
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  Speaker 3: He was like, the reindeer could walk under the belly
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  Speaker 3: of our.
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  Speaker 1: Moose, turning into such a dick swinging context, a real
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: peepee contest, it really is.
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: He's like, as men say, he's like.
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: I'm a I'm a big deal. And you know what,
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: to be honest, folks, for anybody who has not seeing
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: a moose in person, no matter how many photos you
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: look at, they are bigger than you think.
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  Speaker 2: They are beefy legs, yeah exactly. I mean they are
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: long legs, like almost camel esque length legs, and you could, like,
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: you know, totally maybe drive a very small clown car
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: underneath them.
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah probably.
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  Speaker 3: Not, probably not a reindeer.
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: But yeah, maybe it's like a baby reindeer.
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: But sure.
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: But they're they're they're gangly, they're huge. They actually even
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: now ruin Halloween throughout parts of Alaska because they love
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: eating jack lanterns and no one can stop them. That
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: is true, you know.
• 2:51
  Speaker 3: Good for them, Halloween power, big Halloween. So Jefferson is like, no, no, no, no, no, no,
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  Speaker 3: we can prove, we can prove a moose to you.
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  Speaker 3: He gets on the line with with another buddy, the
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  Speaker 3: governor of New Hampshire. He's like, hey, I know you
• 3:10
  Speaker 3: guys got moose. Send send me a moose. I need
• 3:14
  Speaker 3: a moose now, stat It was like a dead one. Well,
• 3:18
  Speaker 3: I mean, you can't send someone a live moose. That's insane.
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  Speaker 2: You could, you know, you could pack it up in
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: some sort of caravan. Perhaps did he put it in
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: the guy's bed like Godfather style? Like what are we talking?
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  Speaker 2: It seems a little threaten'd towards.
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  Speaker 3: It's I think he was really trying to He was
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  Speaker 3: being as polite about sending a dude a dead moose.
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  Speaker 1: He got ahead of us, I did.
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  Speaker 3: He certainly did not. Yeah, because he sent this. He
• 3:45
  Speaker 3: sent the pone a moose to his house in Paris.
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  Speaker 3: It was an ex moose. It was. This was not
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  Speaker 3: living moose. It was so much worse for the travel,
• 3:54
  Speaker 3: like most of the fur had rubbed off. It was
• 3:56
  Speaker 3: wearing a different set of antlers because the original antlers
• 3:59
  Speaker 3: had gotten lost along the way.
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: Like what like this is Buffalo bill type stuff, man,
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  Speaker 2: this is gnarly smell grat I'm.
• 4:07
  Speaker 3: Sure it did not, because it was not stuffed before
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  Speaker 3: it got sent overseas. This was a moose corpse. This
• 4:12
  Speaker 3: was the corpse of a moose, and it had right
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  Speaker 3: like like like you know, like in The Grinch. It
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  Speaker 3: had like a little different antlers stapled to his head.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, like they actually sent three different pairs, so like
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  Speaker 3: Jefferson could just mix and match however he wanted.
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  Speaker 2: Oh wow, Well, his thinking was probably that if he
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  Speaker 2: taxidermied it, that that bouffant would claim shenanigans.
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  Speaker 1: That's not that's not bad, sort of like the Beast
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  Speaker 1: of Gadon in Brotherhood of the Wolf.
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  Speaker 2: Right.
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  Speaker 1: But okay, so we also we know this had to
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  Speaker 1: happen the governor of New Hampshire. Here's this bizarrely specific request.
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  Speaker 1: It probably reaches out to Tommy's buddies and they're like, look, man,
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  Speaker 1: it'll just be easier if you say yes.
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  Speaker 2: This is also the kind of thing you could probably
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  Speaker 2: only do if you you were a guy like Thomas Jeffers.
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  Speaker 2: Don't know that they would allow you to send a
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  Speaker 2: moose through the post otherwise. Yeah, again, not clear exactly,
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  Speaker 2: I'm sure he didn't use the post, but you get them,
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  Speaker 2: you get the meaning, you get.
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  Speaker 3: My yeah yeah, fun aside. Uh, it's not clear whether
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  Speaker 3: Buffone ever actually personally received this moose.
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  Speaker 2: It went to a poor assistant, to some sort of
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  Speaker 2: some underling who opened that one before.
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  Speaker 3: Was like getting on in his ears. He wasn't really
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  Speaker 3: doing I think he was out of Paris at the
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  Speaker 3: time when the thing arrived. Jefferson did apologize for the
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  Speaker 3: state of the moose and his like note when he
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  Speaker 3: when he left it with this poor assistant, and insisted
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  Speaker 3: later that Buffon had received it and was very impressed
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  Speaker 3: and was going to issue a correction but just happened
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  Speaker 3: to die before he got around to it.
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  Speaker 1: There we go, There we go. Unfortunate Lord, how accurate
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  Speaker 1: do we think Tommy's claim is here?
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  Speaker 3: One on one to ten? That's uh no, okay, that's
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  Speaker 3: living with the under fence.
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  Speaker 1: Okay, there we go. Okay, So at best we could
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  Speaker 1: say that maybe Thomas Jefferson believed that to be the case.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, snope, says probably not unlikely.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, underpants, underfants, Yeah.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, all right, but okay, so yeah, so moose aside aside, Uh,
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  Speaker 3: Thomas Jefferson did wind up winning this one. There was
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  Speaker 3: all of his evidence, partially about weasel taints, that got
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  Speaker 3: published in Jefferson's Notes on the State of Virginia in
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  Speaker 3: seventeen eighty five. So with mounting evidence against Pafollone's theory,
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  Speaker 3: it fell apart, like the corpse of a moose arriving
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  Speaker 3: in Paris a year after its untimely and a continent away.
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  Speaker 1: Loves to it's very well done.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's my sweaty ball's voice. That's a shadows.
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  Speaker 1: So this sounds like it might be the end of
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  Speaker 1: the tail. But asute ridiculous historians, you'll realize that we
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  Speaker 1: planted a few scenes, right, We sewed a few threads
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  Speaker 1: here that we have to get to because, as you
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  Speaker 1: find in your research, you're Lauren H. Thomas, Jefferson is
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  Speaker 1: not the only person excited, right, He's not the only
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  Speaker 1: polymath or learned, learned character who gets an obsession with
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  Speaker 1: these bones.
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  Speaker 2: Can I just say it's it's it's It may be
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  Speaker 2: the end of the tail, but it's just the beginning
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  Speaker 2: of the taint.
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  Speaker 1: There we go, There we go.
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  Speaker 3: I need a T shirt with that one. Yeah, No,
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  Speaker 3: certainly not, because because the excitement about these fossils was
• 7:56
  Speaker 3: was still brewing outside of this one extremely specific grudge match. So, okay,
• 8:02
  Speaker 3: if y'all are unfamiliar with a fellow by the name
• 8:04
  Speaker 3: of Charles Wilson Peel was Charlie. Yeah, yeah, Chuck yeah.
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  Speaker 3: He was this artist and another polymathia who famously had
• 8:14
  Speaker 3: painted portraits of like a lot of the figures of
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  Speaker 3: the American Revolution. He later opened one of the first
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  Speaker 3: museums in the United States in Philadelphia, and by early
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  Speaker 3: eighteen oh one his museum was housed in the same
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  Speaker 3: building as the American Philosophical Society, which was then helmed
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  Speaker 3: by Thomas Jefferson. So they were like keen on these
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  Speaker 3: fossil digs, and when they got word of this spectacular
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  Speaker 3: find in the Hudson River Valley in eighteen oh one,
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  Speaker 3: they funded Peel to put together this complex excavation, and
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  Speaker 3: he wound up bringing back two partial master don skeletons,
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  Speaker 3: and him and his team set to work compiling a
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  Speaker 3: single standing model for them. The team, by the way,
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  Speaker 3: included one Moses Williams, an enslaved man who was himself
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  Speaker 3: a talented artist and the first known black museum professional
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  Speaker 3: in the country, but so with their work. By on
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  Speaker 3: Christmas Eve of that year, they opened this display of
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  Speaker 3: a near complete fossil model of what they called at
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  Speaker 3: the time of Mammoth. It was the second ever fossil
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  Speaker 3: skeleton to be assembled in the world, and it was
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  Speaker 3: a spulash. It was really impressive. Like they used basically
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  Speaker 3: like for missing bones, they used bilateral symmetry and best
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  Speaker 3: guesses from extant animals to carve replacements from wood. That's
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  Speaker 3: basically what we still do today. The model was eleven
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  Speaker 3: feet tall.
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  Speaker 2: It was cool.
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  Speaker 3: They did still have the tusks turned around the wrong
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  Speaker 3: way because they still thought this thing was a carnivore.
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  Speaker 3: But you know, like no one had ever seen anything
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  Speaker 3: like this before, and people felt a sense of like
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  Speaker 3: nationalistic pride about this huge American beast.
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  Speaker 1: Only in America. Baby.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah.
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  Speaker 1: Question for the class, did they have a trunk?
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  Speaker 3: Oh no, no, no, no, it was it was just
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  Speaker 3: the it was just the fossil model, So they didn't
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  Speaker 3: they didn't have they fled it out, They didn't build
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  Speaker 3: out any flush on it or anything like that.
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  Speaker 2: So can we just do a quick reminder that I
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  Speaker 2: believe it was Bouffa who had made the assertion that
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  Speaker 2: no such creature could ever possibly flourish in the swampy
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  Speaker 2: uh you know, garbage, United States. They really did become
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  Speaker 2: a point of pride. We can make big, big boys too.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah.
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  Speaker 3: And so, of course, with all of this like mounting excitement,
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  Speaker 3: uh you know, when Jefferson got elected president and made
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  Speaker 3: the Louisiana purchase and sent Lewis and Clark out to
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  Speaker 3: survey this newly acquired land. A couple of years later
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  Speaker 3: in eighteen oh three, he was like, yo, Lewis and Clark,
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  Speaker 3: make sure you're on the lookout for living mammoths.
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  Speaker 1: Because nothing ever dies permanently.
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  Speaker 3: Because they still did not believe in extinction.
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  Speaker 2: So I'm curious about like where this sort of it
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  Speaker 2: seems like it's almost a philosophical divide, Like surely there
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  Speaker 2: were people suggesting that this was possible, not entirely, no, really.
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  Speaker 3: Okay, like like like even to naturalists who were the
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  Speaker 3: most keyed in to all of this kind of stuff.
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  Speaker 3: Like the basic idea from what I understand about it
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  Speaker 3: is that that was floating around at the time is
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  Speaker 3: that assuming that the Earth is a divine and perfect creation,
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  Speaker 3: if that is true, then no part of it can
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  Speaker 3: ever truly perish.
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  Speaker 4: Okay, So still following from from from scripture, like God
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  Speaker 4: has great ideas, and so if God ever went back
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  Speaker 4: on one of those ideas, like a flood or something,
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  Speaker 4: we would know about it from our book.
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  Speaker 2: Which is fascinating considering that war and famine and you know,
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: horrific things were happening all over the place, and somehow
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  Speaker 2: that doesn't fly in the world.
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  Speaker 3: But that's humanity's well fair, humanity is pross realiser.
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  Speaker 2: One natural problem.
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  Speaker 1: Is there heretical? It is to say that the for instance,
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  Speaker 1: the cow was created and now and the cow was
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  Speaker 1: created by divinity, and therefore the cow is as perfect
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  Speaker 1: as a cow can be, So why would it be
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  Speaker 1: gone from the world? Right? Think about that?
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  Speaker 2: That must have been a real philosophical divirus. Yes, all
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  Speaker 2: the evils of man arise from Satan and all of that,
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  Speaker 2: but the animal kingdom and the natural world is not
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  Speaker 2: subject to that.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, some of these people didn't have a literal belief
• 12:33
  Speaker 3: in the Bible anymore, but there was a belief in
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  Speaker 3: like a great chain of being. There was still a
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  Speaker 3: concept that that right, that that nature is all encompassing
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  Speaker 3: and knows what it's doing.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, like the Watchmaker God, Jefferson's very into that the
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: deism there is a thing that or the deistic aspect,
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: there is a thing that happened that created everything, and
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: now it's just sort of like how Lord Michaels doesn't
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: often appear on camera on Saturday Night Live like he
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: made the thing. He definitely made it, or they definitely
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: made it, but now is not a super active participant.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah.
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  Speaker 3: So the belief at the time was that, you know,
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  Speaker 3: anything that they were finding remains of must still be
• 13:21
  Speaker 3: running around somewhere in some yet unexplored corner of the world.
• 13:26
  Speaker 3: And again racistly, they were like, oh, the North American
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  Speaker 3: West is totally unexplored. No people have ever been.
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: There because we haven't seen it yet.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, spoiler alert, Lewis and Clark did not find any
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  Speaker 3: living mamoths.
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  Speaker 1: Boo Ben.
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: Remember that was is it? It called manifest Destiny that
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: Comico series. I never really dug into it past the
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: first couple issues. But isn't that sort of like a
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: world where Lewis and Clark discover like weird stuff at
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: it's a great I thought you'd like it. They reminded
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: me of like what we what they were hoping to
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: find in some way.
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a great read. I think I've got the
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: trades if if you want to, if you want to
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: check about. But that's a great call out there, nol.
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: And indeed, the real story of the Lewis and Clark
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: expedition is full of larger than life stuff. They didn't
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: find any living mammoths, but they they got they found
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: a lot of other stuff, and they got into a
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: lot of well check out our earlier episodes while this
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: is taking place. We got we got to go back
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  Speaker 1: to France. As you said, the noble Buffore has passed
• 14:40
  Speaker 1: away by this.
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  Speaker 3: Point, he has, he was gone by the turn of
• 14:44
  Speaker 3: the eighteen hundreds. But there were other naturalists, and even
• 14:48
  Speaker 3: at this point an anatomist, this French anatomist by the
• 14:52
  Speaker 3: name of George Cuvier. He had been pouring over these
• 14:57
  Speaker 3: different samples of extant elephants and elephant like fossils that
• 15:03
  Speaker 3: had been collected in Paris, and in eighteen oh six
• 15:07
  Speaker 3: he published the study that was remarkable in a number
• 15:11
  Speaker 3: of ways. First, he determined that the incognitum was in
• 15:16
  Speaker 3: fact a separate species from the mammoths. He was like different,
• 15:20
  Speaker 3: different dudes, we can put that one to rest. And
• 15:23
  Speaker 3: he named it. He named the incognitum mastadante.
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: This is my favorite part, by the way.
• 15:30
  Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, So the reason that it's called mastadante, you know,
• 15:35
  Speaker 3: I had always looked at that word mastadon and assumed
• 15:39
  Speaker 3: that it was like masked is in like masticate and
• 15:44
  Speaker 3: don is in tooth. But it turns out it's masked
• 15:47
  Speaker 3: as in breast because because this heck in French dude
• 15:54
  Speaker 3: looked at those aforementioned knobby cusps on these big old
• 15:58
  Speaker 3: molars and thought they reminded him of boobs.
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: Ah the French.
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: I want to read whatever love poetry, he wrote to
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: his paravores. Ah, my dear your teeth the breastwit no, no.
• 16:13
  Speaker 2: No, wait, giant nuggets of cream.
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: I got Ben before you got on the call.
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: It was me, Nolan and Lauren, and somehow we got
• 16:23
  Speaker 2: into the note of James Joyce Love Letters and I
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: read next.
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: You are reading, Ben. Lauren had not heard it. It
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: was disturbing.
• 16:31
  Speaker 2: It was like you happened to pick a passage. He
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: just went on, Dude, it went on.
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: It was like I read a sentence and the sentence
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: was short. I'm like, okay, I'll read one more sentence.
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: The next sentence was like seven lines lost.
• 16:41
  Speaker 3: No, it's just very yeah, very style. Yeah, but also
• 16:47
  Speaker 3: really about farts.
• 16:48
  Speaker 2: So, guys, speaking of pros. When I first heard Master Dante,
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: I just immediately it's maybe it's also what's going on.
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: I went to Masta Dante's Inferno. I thought maybe there
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: was some connection to that.
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: It'd be sick to do a version of Dante's Inferno
• 17:03
  Speaker 2: where all where it was just all animals. How has
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: that not been done? I'm sure somebody it's like, well
• 17:07
  Speaker 2: it's Zotopia fiant.
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, and so okay, Cufier here is our Despite
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: his parent predilections for names, he is again a credible
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: scientist in his field. And this is where we pay
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: off on our note about extinction, because isn't he the
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: guy who said there's probably no more of these Yeah?
• 17:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah?
• 17:34
  Speaker 3: He uh, Using all of this this research that he
• 17:38
  Speaker 3: had done into these bones and these fossils, he presented
• 17:43
  Speaker 3: this at the time truly shocking hypothesis that both mammos
• 17:48
  Speaker 3: and mastodons were extinct, that they were too different from
• 17:52
  Speaker 3: living elephants to be the same creatures as living elephants,
• 17:55
  Speaker 3: and furthermore, that there was no evidence that they were
• 17:58
  Speaker 3: still roaming the earth.
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: And he doesn't stop there, right, he goes. He says, further,
• 18:04
  Speaker 1: extinction is not just some elephantine phenomena, right.
• 18:09
  Speaker 3: No, No, He laid out this concept that throughout history
• 18:14
  Speaker 3: there had been like periodic catastrophic die offs, after which
• 18:19
  Speaker 3: he thought that new species had supernaturally arisen and that
• 18:22
  Speaker 3: the cycle continues.
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: So you're almost there.
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: But right there, guys, guys, I'm just sorry, really quickly.
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: How come credible means to be believed and incredible means awesome.
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: Incredible means Now, in American English we use it to
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: say something is so good as to be nigh unbelievable.
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: Seems like incredible would mean not credible.
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: What I'm saying, Yeah, yeah, it's it's it's a weird language, man,
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: because then you got canny and uncanny, and then you
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: have oh gosh, there's uh oh, I have a list
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: of these all right, different show different, But yes, you're right.
• 19:02
  Speaker 3: Let's let's circle back about that etymology show that we've
• 19:04
  Speaker 3: been meaning to get around.
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: How many how many decades has that been the on
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: the docket.
• 19:10
  Speaker 3: I don't like to think about that one.
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: Old we're just seasoned to be fair.
• 19:16
  Speaker 3: I don't know what time is anymore so here who does?
• 19:21
  Speaker 3: But yeah, so so he did not have a concept
• 19:23
  Speaker 3: of evolution yet, Like we wouldn't get into that until
• 19:26
  Speaker 3: another half century later with Charles Darwin's work. Also, Coovier
• 19:30
  Speaker 3: was again really racist, like he believed in like like
• 19:34
  Speaker 3: like structural racism in terms of like body types and
• 19:38
  Speaker 3: stuff like that.
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: But forehead and walk.
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 19:45
  Speaker 3: But but this thing was basically when the like wide
• 19:50
  Speaker 3: European scientific community started taking the idea of extinction seriously.
• 19:55
  Speaker 3: And it's all thanks to elephants and mammoths and mastodonts.
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: This is peak ridiculous history. This is a story that
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: I think none of the three of us knew in full.
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: And we have just some follow up facts we have
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: to add in here on behalf of all our ridiculous
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: historians who are thinking back to about an hour ago
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: when a huge tooth rolled down a hill and a
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: farmer found.
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: It, a six pound moler, right right, So on their.
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: Behalf we have to ask you, where's the tooth? What
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: happened to the tooth?
• 20:42
  Speaker 3: Well, it wound up in the hands of New York's
• 20:46
  Speaker 3: governor at the time, one Lord Cornberry, who sent.
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: It back Lord Cornbury.
• 20:52
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I know, right who? And he was only styled
• 20:56
  Speaker 3: as such for I think about seven years. I could
• 21:00
  Speaker 3: be I could be wrong. This This was an interesting
• 21:02
  Speaker 3: dude in his own right. His enemies wrote about him
• 21:06
  Speaker 3: cross dressing all the time. No one is sure whether
• 21:09
  Speaker 3: that's true or not. But anyway, he sent it back
• 21:14
  Speaker 3: to London labeled a giant's tooth.
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: He might have just meant a giantth No, no, he
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: meant he met the tooth of a giant.
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: Okay from the Bible the benefit of the doubt. Yes, yes,
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: we we also had a couple of other threads. Probably
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: the one that's going to interest a lot of us
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: is we know Cotton Mather saw himself as a pious
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: witch hunter. But Lauren, could you tell us a little
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: bit more about that less well known fact about his uh,
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: his work against smallpox? Yeah?
• 21:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah, okay. So Mather was able to offer a form
• 21:58
  Speaker 3: of inoculation to Bostonia during this seventeen twenty smallpox epidemic
• 22:03
  Speaker 3: because a man he enslaved explained to him how inoculation works.
• 22:08
  Speaker 2: Well, he stole the idea from an enslaved man charged wow, yeah.
• 22:14
  Speaker 3: Yeah, we don't even know the dude's given name. Mather
• 22:18
  Speaker 3: called him Anisimus. And this guy's society back in Africa
• 22:23
  Speaker 3: had developed variolation, which is a form of inoculation. It's
• 22:27
  Speaker 3: the deliberate infection of a patient with a disease in
• 22:31
  Speaker 3: order to treat a bit immunity from it, right right,
• 22:33
  Speaker 3: And he even said, like, you can tell who's had
• 22:35
  Speaker 3: it because of the little scar on their arm.
• 22:37
  Speaker 2: You know what's interesting that I had never that, I
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: had no idea that that was something discovered in that fashion,
• 22:42
  Speaker 2: But it does make sense in the same way you
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: take a little bit of snake venom to get immune
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: to snake venom.
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, make the antidote, yeah yeah.
• 22:50
  Speaker 3: And so lots of Bostonians at the time thought this
• 22:53
  Speaker 3: was real silly, But two hundred and forty two people
• 22:56
  Speaker 3: wound up volunteering for this inoculation crusade, and only two
• 23:01
  Speaker 3: percent of those people died during that small pox outbreak,
• 23:05
  Speaker 3: compared to fourteen percent of the general population.
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: So pretty good, pretty good. These sound brutal, but folks,
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: you got to realize those are great numbers. Oh sure,
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: I sounded a little great numbers. It's a great.
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: Especially without doing Bernie Sanders.
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: No, exactly right, it's crazy.
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: So just to be clear, they would inject blood or
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: oh yeah.
• 23:37
  Speaker 3: They just take like a little scraping like like a
• 23:38
  Speaker 3: little bit of blood or like a little bit of
• 23:40
  Speaker 3: like tissue sample or something and just kind of like
• 23:42
  Speaker 3: poke it into your arc. Yes, just grinded in there.
• 23:45
  Speaker 3: And he Smith's wound up buying his freedom around seventeen sixteen,
• 23:49
  Speaker 3: so before all of this really went down, and we
• 23:52
  Speaker 3: know so much about him, relatively because Mather was obsessed
• 23:58
  Speaker 3: with converting him to christian and wrote about him a lot.
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: Okay, okay, So he has a diary on how after
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: he took this guy's idea he I guess maybe he
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: saw it as trading ideas and he said, here, I'll
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: give you Christianity in return. But you guys think in
• 24:17
  Speaker 1: this Mather dude not a good guy. He's not my favorite.
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: He's no Increase Math.
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: The more I learn about him, the less I like,
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: which is true.
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: He's related to a guide him Increase Mather talking about
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: an ambitious name. It's it's no anesmis, but it is
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: I think awesome that this guy found emancipation, even though
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: it's an incredibly crappy way. Yeah, it is a happy ending,
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: and we have to We've been talking about something Lauren
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: that is right up your alley if you haven't seen
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: it yet, Life Larry and the Pursuit of Unhappiness. No,
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: the new Larry David History a historical reenactment.
• 24:58
  Speaker 2: It's like he's does like an alternate history version of
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: the you know, creation of the Constitution, and he has
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: all these grievances and you know, the Declaration of Independence,
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: and his character who supposedly wrote the first draft, wants
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: to include things like it's illegal to stroke one's beard
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: and to share an umbrella and.
• 25:18
  Speaker 3: And Larry Davis.
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's kind of bad, but also kind of it's
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: good bad, you.
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: Know what I mean.
• 25:25
  Speaker 3: Larry David's gig is a little bit a little.
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's I mean, it's it's it's sketch comedy, so
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: it's inherently going to be it's sketch. There we go.
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: That's a perfect way to say it. So, as we've
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: mentioned in the past, one thing that we always want
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: to do is connect these tales to the present day
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: when possible for everybody who is wondering what happened to
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: the tooth. We also have some good news about what
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: happened to the mastodont.
• 25:56
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that first the peel Master John, that first one
• 26:00
  Speaker 3: that was put together, is now housed at a museum
• 26:02
  Speaker 3: in Germany. And I'm willing to try bad French. I
• 26:06
  Speaker 3: feel with the last name Fogelbaum, I should not try
• 26:09
  Speaker 3: bad German. But you can. You can like search like
• 26:12
  Speaker 3: peel mastered on Museum Germany. It'll come up.
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: Are you talking about the one of the hesi kish
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: landa museum Domstadt.
• 26:18
  Speaker 3: That's the one.
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: Thank you, you know, I was once a small German boy.
• 26:25
  Speaker 3: Yes, Oh you're still a small German boy, thanks so much. Yeah,
• 26:30
  Speaker 3: And there are some of the other fossils that have
• 26:33
  Speaker 3: been taken from Big Bone Lick have wound up all
• 26:37
  Speaker 3: over the world, but also at a museum on site
• 26:41
  Speaker 3: because Big Bone Lick is now incorporated into a state
• 26:44
  Speaker 3: park in Kentucky.
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: So yeah, you get Big Bone Lick sound like it
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: would be like a Pearl Jam offshoot band, you know,
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: or some kind of.
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: Feels like an ac DC song.
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: That's also true where I think I'm thinking of Mother
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: Love Bone which was a a Pearl Jama Jason Bamba
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: Big Bone Lick feels like it qualifies, but it is
• 27:04
  Speaker 2: a little more metal coded.
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: Sorry, Laura, I didn't mean to cut you.
• 27:06
  Speaker 3: Oh no, no, no, no, no, no no. Now I'm
• 27:08
  Speaker 3: picturing like something where everyone's wearing like cavemen costumes. I
• 27:11
  Speaker 3: think it's I think it's going to be a good video.
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: It's going to be at least a good video. I've
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: thought it a.
• 27:16
  Speaker 3: Bad song, but a good video.
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: There we go, and we also knew. We also know
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: there is a reason we were given Tommy Big Something
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: Jefferson a lot of guff about his passion project because
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: we're doing this for fun in twenty twenty six, but
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: it appears a lot of other people in his lifetime
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: we're kind of giving him some grief about it as well.
• 27:45
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, so you know, like I don't know, it's
• 27:50
  Speaker 3: hard for me to say, right because I'm I'm a
• 27:52
  Speaker 3: nerd too. Me and Big Something have that in common.
• 27:57
  Speaker 3: But you know, like, but I love a natural history museum.
• 27:59
  Speaker 3: I love going and looking at the big old fossils
• 28:02
  Speaker 3: or models or whatever it is that they are at
• 28:04
  Speaker 3: the time. You know, like it was like forty years.
• 28:08
  Speaker 3: It was like the eighteen forties before dinosaurs were recognized
• 28:12
  Speaker 3: for what they are and started to catch the world's imagination.
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: So fascination was seen as a little kooky.
• 28:18
  Speaker 3: Well yeah, so people were like, what are you talking about?
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: The whom?
• 28:24
  Speaker 3: And like during the presidential race of eighteen hundred, his
• 28:29
  Speaker 3: political opponents mocked his love of fossils so much they
• 28:34
  Speaker 3: were like, what, what why.
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: I'll show you one day. Proud, well, believe me, proud
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: people of this new nation. We stand together in the
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: belief that Tobby Jefferson is just a weird nerd folks,
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: just a weird little fossil boy. He's like Gollumn with fossils,
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: which will make sense later when a guy named Tolkien
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: and writes some books.
• 29:02
  Speaker 3: Yeah no, no one really understood it at the time.
• 29:04
  Speaker 3: It was very niche.
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: It was also brutal, like we hear so often, especially
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: in recent decades, about the lack of civility in the
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: political sphere and how people are becoming mud slingers and
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: so on. But folks, you have you may have no
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: idea how much crazier it was back in the day.
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: Right we talked about the accusations of a governor being
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: being said to dress in women's clothing. But every time
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: there was a presidential race in the eighteen hundreds, it
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: got dirty so quickly people were.
• 29:41
  Speaker 2: Something like nothing like the way it is today, everyone's
• 29:45
  Speaker 2: so cordial, courteous.
• 29:47
  Speaker 3: Well, I mean, at least you know, like like now
• 29:49
  Speaker 3: it's just clips on the tiktoks or whatever it is,
• 29:53
  Speaker 3: like like at the time, this was you know, like
• 29:55
  Speaker 3: a several page essay that would be just a complete takedown.
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: Awesome in the union. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, And through the
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: magic of editing, we went off the air for a
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: second to read parts of these this political takedown, this
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: takedown piece. It is long, it is very in depth.
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: It is worth your time checking out. And Lauren, we
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: can't thank you enough for joining us and sharing this
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: story with us in a two part series. Dude, where
• 30:31
  Speaker 1: can people go to learn more about your work?
• 30:34
  Speaker 3: Oh goodness. So the show that I currently have running
• 30:37
  Speaker 3: is called brain Stuff. That's one word. It can be
• 30:41
  Speaker 3: found wherever you get your podcasts. Again. Yeah, it's just
• 30:44
  Speaker 3: a little short form science and history.
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: Show and multiple installments a week, right, yes, yes, an
• 30:50
  Speaker 2: insane catalog.
• 30:51
  Speaker 3: Oh my goodness, Yeah, I think that we hit two
• 30:55
  Speaker 3: thousand new episode like like original episodes recently. I'm not
• 31:01
  Speaker 3: sure though, that could be a made up number. It's
• 31:03
  Speaker 3: been running for a long time.
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: All numbers for me, that's accurate.
• 31:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah, no, I've been doing it about as long as
• 31:10
  Speaker 3: y'all have been doing Ridiculous History. There were other hosts
• 31:14
  Speaker 3: before that, but I'm better but no, no, no, no,
• 31:18
  Speaker 3: no no no, much much respect to uh, to Christian
• 31:21
  Speaker 3: Seger and also Marcial Brain. But yeah, that's that's the
• 31:25
  Speaker 3: one that I'm working on right now. If you want
• 31:28
  Speaker 3: to listen to me, do that Schweaty Ball's voice. American
• 31:31
  Speaker 3: Shadows is a great show I was doing with Aaron
• 31:35
  Speaker 3: Menke's team that gets into dark little corners of American history.
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: Like which trials types stot.
• 31:42
  Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely, absolutely, yeah yeah. And other than that, I
• 31:46
  Speaker 3: don't know. Find me on the internets, my hand my
• 31:50
  Speaker 3: my handle on Blue Sky and Instagram is vogel Bomb
• 31:57
  Speaker 3: b O m B v.
• 31:58
  Speaker 5: O g E l B O m B A lot
• 32:00
  Speaker 5: that one down had the luck and UH and folks,
• 32:03
  Speaker 5: please stay tuned for future episodes of Ridiculous History, where
• 32:07
  Speaker 5: we will have Lauren Vogelbaum returning.
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: Hopefully we won't have to wait nine years. We'll give
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: you five.
• 32:15
  Speaker 3: We'll talk about it.
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: It's all scheduling. Big, big thanks to our super producer,
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: mister Max Williams. Big thanks to A. J. Bahamas Jacobs,
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: doctor Rachel Big, Spinach Lance and who else whose.
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: Well jeez Ben Christopher Osciotis and he's Jeff Coats here
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: in Spira. Jonathan Strickland, Lauren's former co host on Tech Stuff,
• 32:33
  Speaker 2: which has evolved, and we'll think oswall Oshan. Why don't
• 32:37
  Speaker 2: want the current host of tech Stuff? It's another show
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: you did for a long time. Sorry to let the
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: cant of the bag?
• 32:44
  Speaker 1: Where does that come from? Anyway? How how often were
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: people putting cats and bags? Sorry for a different day.
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: They think they would like drown kittens in the.
• 32:54
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: We've got to keep going, big, big thanks to the
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: rude dudes of ridiculous crime. If you dig us, you
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: love them, of course, one more time, just for safety's sake,
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: superproducer mister Max Williams. And big thanks to everybody who
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: found a weird bone and said I should look into
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: this and I should maybe put it into my pinow.
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: We'll see you next time, folks, for more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: to your favorite shows.