1
00:00:00,760 --> 00:00:04,840
Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, we are coming to a town ostensibly near you,

2
00:00:04,880 --> 00:00:06,360
Speaker 1: so putatively see us.

3
00:00:06,559 --> 00:00:10,520
Speaker 2: That's right, May twenty ninth will be in Boston, really Medford, Massachusetts.

4
00:00:10,680 --> 00:00:13,319
Speaker 2: The next night we're gonna go down to Washington, DC,

5
00:00:13,760 --> 00:00:16,040
Speaker 2: and then scooch back up to New York City at

6
00:00:16,040 --> 00:00:17,760
Speaker 2: Town Hall on May thirty first.

7
00:00:18,200 --> 00:00:19,760
Speaker 1: Yeah, and if you're one of those people who likes

8
00:00:19,760 --> 00:00:21,720
Speaker 1: to plan way far in advance, then you can go

9
00:00:21,720 --> 00:00:24,160
Speaker 1: ahead and get tickets for our shows in August. We're

10
00:00:24,200 --> 00:00:25,560
Speaker 1: gonna start out where Chuck.

11
00:00:25,720 --> 00:00:28,720
Speaker 2: We're gonna be in Chicago August seventh, Minneapolis August eighth,

12
00:00:29,040 --> 00:00:31,880
Speaker 2: then Indianapolis for the very first time on August ninth,

13
00:00:32,040 --> 00:00:34,400
Speaker 2: and then we're gonna wrap it up in Durham, North Carolina,

14
00:00:34,440 --> 00:00:35,880
Speaker 2: and right here in Atlanta.

15
00:00:35,600 --> 00:00:37,640
Speaker 3: On September fifth and September seventh.

16
00:00:38,000 --> 00:00:39,880
Speaker 1: Yep. So you can get all the info you need

17
00:00:39,920 --> 00:00:42,159
Speaker 1: and all the ticket links you need by going to

18
00:00:42,320 --> 00:00:44,920
Speaker 1: stuff youshould know dot com and hitting that tour button,

19
00:00:45,360 --> 00:00:49,400
Speaker 1: or you can also go to linktree slash SYSK Live.

20
00:00:49,920 --> 00:00:51,320
Speaker 1: We'll see you guys this year.

21
00:00:53,760 --> 00:00:59,440
Speaker 4: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

22
00:01:03,400 --> 00:01:05,920
Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to the podcast I'm Josh, and there's

23
00:01:06,040 --> 00:01:08,600
Speaker 1: Chuck and Jerry's here too, and we're just making it

24
00:01:08,720 --> 00:01:13,199
Speaker 1: our own way, grooving on down the road. E'sn on down,

25
00:01:13,800 --> 00:01:17,880
Speaker 1: e'sn on down the road out yep, with our thumbs

26
00:01:17,920 --> 00:01:23,560
Speaker 1: out and our chest puffed and are I don't know,

27
00:01:23,680 --> 00:01:26,800
Speaker 1: standing on our tippy toes. That all makes this stuff?

28
00:01:26,800 --> 00:01:27,720
Speaker 1: You should know, by the way.

29
00:01:28,480 --> 00:01:28,840
Speaker 4: Uh?

30
00:01:28,920 --> 00:01:31,800
Speaker 2: Yeah, can we shout out that great book that a

31
00:01:31,800 --> 00:01:34,200
Speaker 2: lot of this is culled from.

32
00:01:34,440 --> 00:01:36,040
Speaker 1: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

33
00:01:36,760 --> 00:01:38,120
Speaker 3: Yeah?

34
00:01:38,400 --> 00:01:38,880
Speaker 1: What great?

35
00:01:40,120 --> 00:01:46,959
Speaker 2: Jack Reid wrote a book called Roadside America's colon the

36
00:01:47,040 --> 00:01:51,200
Speaker 2: Rise and Fall of Hitchhiking in a Changing Nation. Uh,

37
00:01:51,240 --> 00:01:54,080
Speaker 2: and about an e book. I actually read a lot

38
00:01:54,080 --> 00:01:54,480
Speaker 2: of that thing.

39
00:01:54,960 --> 00:01:57,360
Speaker 1: Yeah, how is it?

40
00:01:57,360 --> 00:01:58,040
Speaker 3: It's really good.

41
00:01:58,120 --> 00:02:00,600
Speaker 2: I mean it seems like the book on hitchhiking in

42
00:02:00,640 --> 00:02:01,400
Speaker 2: the United States.

43
00:02:02,000 --> 00:02:04,360
Speaker 1: That's really great because I ran across a lot of

44
00:02:04,360 --> 00:02:06,680
Speaker 1: other stuff, not books, but articles that had been written

45
00:02:06,680 --> 00:02:11,160
Speaker 1: over the decades. In like, there's some really interesting, helpful,

46
00:02:11,280 --> 00:02:15,480
Speaker 1: authoritative writings on hitchhiking out there. So I'm sure that

47
00:02:15,520 --> 00:02:18,760
Speaker 1: guy had the nerve to write an entire book about

48
00:02:18,800 --> 00:02:20,000
Speaker 1: it. It was probably pretty good.

49
00:02:20,400 --> 00:02:22,280
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was good, and I guess we should say

50
00:02:22,440 --> 00:02:26,040
Speaker 2: that hitchhiking is. This feels like one of those where

51
00:02:26,040 --> 00:02:29,200
Speaker 2: we would just breeze right into it. Yeah, but we

52
00:02:29,200 --> 00:02:32,800
Speaker 2: should say that hitchhiking is. When you stand on the

53
00:02:32,840 --> 00:02:36,360
Speaker 2: side of a road. You may hold a sign that

54
00:02:36,440 --> 00:02:41,080
Speaker 2: says you know, Akron or bust but the traditional and

55
00:02:41,120 --> 00:02:44,480
Speaker 2: we'll talk about the thumb in a minute, but traditional

56
00:02:44,520 --> 00:02:47,840
Speaker 2: ways to hold the old thumb out. Then someone eases

57
00:02:47,880 --> 00:02:50,440
Speaker 2: off and says where your head, and buddy, you say

58
00:02:50,480 --> 00:02:52,360
Speaker 2: I'm heading to Akron. You go on that way and

59
00:02:52,360 --> 00:02:56,440
Speaker 2: he says no, but hop in and then you get killed.

60
00:02:57,320 --> 00:02:59,400
Speaker 1: It's pretty much a part for the course. Yeah.

61
00:02:59,720 --> 00:03:02,040
Speaker 2: Yeah, shitching a ride, it's grabbing a ride to figure.

62
00:03:02,080 --> 00:03:03,600
Speaker 2: Everyone knew that, but you never know.

63
00:03:04,120 --> 00:03:07,240
Speaker 1: Yep, there was one flaw in your story, Chuck. No

64
00:03:07,240 --> 00:03:11,160
Speaker 1: one's headed to Akron. Everybody's leaving Akron. Oh, if you

65
00:03:11,200 --> 00:03:13,040
Speaker 1: wanted to ride out of Akron, I'm sure it would

66
00:03:13,040 --> 00:03:14,280
Speaker 1: be very easy to catch.

67
00:03:14,040 --> 00:03:16,679
Speaker 3: One ouch, So then your sign would just say anywhere

68
00:03:17,160 --> 00:03:20,360
Speaker 3: anywhere but here, oh man or Akron.

69
00:03:20,800 --> 00:03:23,320
Speaker 1: We should talk about the origin of the term hitchhiking too,

70
00:03:23,360 --> 00:03:27,160
Speaker 1: because there's a lot of competing stories for where the

71
00:03:27,240 --> 00:03:29,880
Speaker 1: term hitchhiking came from, and I think I found the

72
00:03:29,960 --> 00:03:31,200
Speaker 1: real one.

73
00:03:31,400 --> 00:03:33,040
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm not so sure about that, but go ahead.

74
00:03:33,520 --> 00:03:35,520
Speaker 1: Well, let's start with the first one. There was a

75
00:03:35,600 --> 00:03:41,000
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy eight American Motorist magazine article that said, everybody's

76
00:03:41,000 --> 00:03:43,640
Speaker 1: shut up. It all dates back to the Old West,

77
00:03:43,760 --> 00:03:47,240
Speaker 1: and hitchhiking was a technique of method for two people

78
00:03:47,320 --> 00:03:52,520
Speaker 1: to share one horse. And it went like such, Yeah,

79
00:03:53,000 --> 00:03:54,600
Speaker 1: I haven't explained it yet. I just set you up

80
00:03:54,640 --> 00:03:55,320
Speaker 1: to explain it.

81
00:03:55,960 --> 00:03:58,360
Speaker 2: No, No, I mean, I'm happy for you to explain this part.

82
00:03:58,720 --> 00:04:01,280
Speaker 1: Well, I was gonna make it make a horse walking

83
00:04:01,320 --> 00:04:05,000
Speaker 1: sound while you explain it. But okay, So basically, you

84
00:04:05,080 --> 00:04:07,800
Speaker 1: have two people with one horse. One person rides the horse,

85
00:04:08,160 --> 00:04:11,440
Speaker 1: They take it to a predetermined spot and tie it up,

86
00:04:11,480 --> 00:04:14,200
Speaker 1: and they start walking, and eventually the other person, who

87
00:04:14,280 --> 00:04:16,960
Speaker 1: started walking from the same spot that the other person

88
00:04:17,080 --> 00:04:20,080
Speaker 1: started riding from, comes upon the horse that's tied up.

89
00:04:20,320 --> 00:04:22,400
Speaker 1: They get on the horse and they start riding to

90
00:04:22,440 --> 00:04:25,640
Speaker 1: the next predetermined spot, probably passing the person walking on

91
00:04:25,680 --> 00:04:28,880
Speaker 1: the way, and then the person walking catches up to

92
00:04:28,920 --> 00:04:32,039
Speaker 1: the horse, and so on and so forth. And what's

93
00:04:32,279 --> 00:04:34,479
Speaker 1: the beauty of it too, is the horse gets to

94
00:04:34,560 --> 00:04:37,760
Speaker 1: rest in between rides as well. It sounds like a great,

95
00:04:38,000 --> 00:04:43,039
Speaker 1: great idea, and I guess hitching the horse to a

96
00:04:43,080 --> 00:04:46,080
Speaker 1: tree or something. That's where the term hitchhike came from.

97
00:04:46,080 --> 00:04:47,760
Speaker 1: Not convinced by this one, but I think it's a

98
00:04:47,760 --> 00:04:48,360
Speaker 1: great story.

99
00:04:48,839 --> 00:04:51,000
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm not either. That sounds like some sort of

100
00:04:51,040 --> 00:04:52,279
Speaker 2: demented relay race.

101
00:04:54,360 --> 00:04:55,680
Speaker 1: All right, you want to move on to the one

102
00:04:55,720 --> 00:04:56,360
Speaker 1: I think it is.

103
00:04:57,520 --> 00:04:59,480
Speaker 3: I go ahead, because I'm not so sure about this either.

104
00:05:00,160 --> 00:05:03,160
Speaker 1: I think it was a nineteen sixty six Sports Illustrated

105
00:05:03,680 --> 00:05:07,120
Speaker 1: long form article on hitchhiking that was written by Janet Graham,

106
00:05:07,240 --> 00:05:12,080
Speaker 1: a veteran season hitchhiker, and she made an offhanded reference

107
00:05:12,440 --> 00:05:16,200
Speaker 1: jokingly about how people look down on hitchhikers so much

108
00:05:16,240 --> 00:05:22,159
Speaker 1: so that the definition of hitching is to move with jerks,

109
00:05:22,800 --> 00:05:26,680
Speaker 1: making it sound like you're traveling along with other hitchhikers.

110
00:05:27,080 --> 00:05:30,080
Speaker 1: But there's like a kernel of truth in there. The

111
00:05:30,960 --> 00:05:34,440
Speaker 1: word hitch to hitch means to move along in short,

112
00:05:34,480 --> 00:05:37,120
Speaker 1: sudden movements, kind of like how you scoot a chair

113
00:05:37,200 --> 00:05:41,239
Speaker 1: up to a table, right, So you're moving by jerks,

114
00:05:41,520 --> 00:05:44,200
Speaker 1: and jerks are short sudden movements, So that's hitching, And

115
00:05:44,279 --> 00:05:46,360
Speaker 1: it makes sense if you look at the entire ride

116
00:05:46,520 --> 00:05:49,880
Speaker 1: you're hiking. That's the that's the whole walk, but in

117
00:05:49,920 --> 00:05:53,960
Speaker 1: between it's punctuated by short periods in a car that

118
00:05:54,040 --> 00:05:56,280
Speaker 1: kind of get you further along the hitch part. So

119
00:05:56,320 --> 00:05:57,640
Speaker 1: you're hitch hiking.

120
00:05:58,640 --> 00:05:59,600
Speaker 3: Another great story.

121
00:06:00,040 --> 00:06:03,920
Speaker 1: Well, okay, mister smarty pants, what's the word hitchhiking from?

122
00:06:04,320 --> 00:06:05,080
Speaker 3: I'm not really sure.

123
00:06:05,360 --> 00:06:07,359
Speaker 2: I just know that I go with the Oxford English

124
00:06:07,400 --> 00:06:13,280
Speaker 2: Dictionary because I think they are superior researchers, and they

125
00:06:13,279 --> 00:06:15,000
Speaker 2: have it dated back to the term at least in

126
00:06:15,080 --> 00:06:18,400
Speaker 2: nineteen twenty three, even though obviously people were hitchhiking before

127
00:06:18,480 --> 00:06:19,320
Speaker 2: nineteen twenty three.

128
00:06:19,640 --> 00:06:20,760
Speaker 3: Yeah, but.

129
00:06:22,320 --> 00:06:26,520
Speaker 2: The whole thumb thing in nineteen twenty seven at least,

130
00:06:26,600 --> 00:06:30,239
Speaker 2: or at least that far back. They called hitchhikers thumb pointers,

131
00:06:30,279 --> 00:06:31,360
Speaker 2: which I think is pretty fun.

132
00:06:32,160 --> 00:06:35,960
Speaker 1: But note that it's in parentheses or not parenthes quotes,

133
00:06:36,400 --> 00:06:39,960
Speaker 1: which indicates that the writer did not believe that the

134
00:06:40,120 --> 00:06:43,279
Speaker 1: proven reader would know what they were talking about.

135
00:06:44,160 --> 00:06:44,880
Speaker 3: Yeah. Probably so.

136
00:06:45,320 --> 00:06:48,520
Speaker 2: Yeah, but it's interesting, like the history of hitchhiking, because

137
00:06:48,520 --> 00:06:52,320
Speaker 2: it's the people that hitchhiked and why they did it

138
00:06:52,360 --> 00:06:54,640
Speaker 2: and how it was viewed has really kind of morphed

139
00:06:54,680 --> 00:06:58,520
Speaker 2: a lot over the decades in the United States, and

140
00:06:58,640 --> 00:07:02,400
Speaker 2: in the nineteen twenties when when it kind of first

141
00:07:02,440 --> 00:07:06,559
Speaker 2: got going, it was it was not like hitchhiking today.

142
00:07:06,560 --> 00:07:09,680
Speaker 2: It was a lot of like sometimes affluent young people,

143
00:07:09,760 --> 00:07:12,360
Speaker 2: like college students who would be like, I want to

144
00:07:12,400 --> 00:07:14,119
Speaker 2: go down to Palm Beach and I go to school

145
00:07:14,200 --> 00:07:17,360
Speaker 2: in Syracuse, and so I can just put my thumb

146
00:07:17,400 --> 00:07:20,840
Speaker 2: out and get a ride. And it was it was

147
00:07:20,920 --> 00:07:22,960
Speaker 2: a pretty safe thing to do for a long time.

148
00:07:23,080 --> 00:07:25,760
Speaker 2: Even though you know it was safe, though, there were

149
00:07:25,760 --> 00:07:28,920
Speaker 2: people from the very beginning that were like, maybe you

150
00:07:28,920 --> 00:07:32,880
Speaker 2: shouldn't do this, and early reasons, you know, were less

151
00:07:32,920 --> 00:07:35,560
Speaker 2: like it's dangerous for you and more like, hey, if

152
00:07:35,600 --> 00:07:38,280
Speaker 2: you pick someone up, you might get sued or something,

153
00:07:39,160 --> 00:07:41,000
Speaker 2: or at least be responsible if you, like you get

154
00:07:41,000 --> 00:07:42,720
Speaker 2: in a wreck with someone in your car that you

155
00:07:42,760 --> 00:07:43,120
Speaker 2: don't know.

156
00:07:43,400 --> 00:07:46,720
Speaker 1: Yeah, And apparently trucking companies eventually by mid century had

157
00:07:46,840 --> 00:07:49,720
Speaker 1: banned their drivers from picking up hitchhikers for that very reason,

158
00:07:49,760 --> 00:07:53,200
Speaker 1: because they were on the hook totally. Yeah, but it

159
00:07:53,200 --> 00:07:56,600
Speaker 1: makes sense that hitchhiking really started around the twenties because

160
00:07:56,600 --> 00:07:59,080
Speaker 1: that's the very beginning of the time when people started

161
00:07:59,080 --> 00:08:02,119
Speaker 1: to have cars. So the whole kind of idea behind

162
00:08:02,120 --> 00:08:04,560
Speaker 1: it was like, Hey, I'm being adventurous and young, you

163
00:08:04,560 --> 00:08:06,600
Speaker 1: have a car, give me a ride for a little bit.

164
00:08:06,720 --> 00:08:09,160
Speaker 1: And there was like just the novelty of the whole

165
00:08:09,200 --> 00:08:12,040
Speaker 1: thing of having a car and then also picking up

166
00:08:12,080 --> 00:08:14,600
Speaker 1: just some random person. It kind of went well together

167
00:08:14,600 --> 00:08:16,200
Speaker 1: because the whole thing was fairly new.

168
00:08:16,800 --> 00:08:20,000
Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure, the idea of like the original warnings

169
00:08:20,040 --> 00:08:24,160
Speaker 2: be being more about like the the legalities of being

170
00:08:24,240 --> 00:08:29,320
Speaker 2: the driver. There was also talk of like, hey, you know,

171
00:08:30,040 --> 00:08:32,520
Speaker 2: if you start doing this next thing, you know it's

172
00:08:32,520 --> 00:08:35,959
Speaker 2: that slippery slope thing you're going to be, it'll lead

173
00:08:35,960 --> 00:08:38,200
Speaker 2: to a life of crime or something, or you know,

174
00:08:38,240 --> 00:08:40,319
Speaker 2: it's sort of and you'll see that this is a

175
00:08:41,800 --> 00:08:44,960
Speaker 2: big argument from certain people in this country ever since

176
00:08:45,040 --> 00:08:48,600
Speaker 2: hitchhiking started, was like this is just one step away

177
00:08:48,600 --> 00:08:52,080
Speaker 2: from like begging you for money and living on the street.

178
00:08:51,960 --> 00:08:55,480
Speaker 1: Yeah, and smoking marijuana cigarettes and becoming a pop fiend.

179
00:08:56,000 --> 00:08:57,040
Speaker 3: Yeah jazz cigarettes.

180
00:08:57,320 --> 00:09:02,120
Speaker 1: Right, So that was, like you said, the original version

181
00:09:02,320 --> 00:09:05,560
Speaker 1: was this kind of adventurous and novel and usually kind

182
00:09:05,600 --> 00:09:10,600
Speaker 1: of young, white middle class, typically in the twenties in

183
00:09:10,679 --> 00:09:13,960
Speaker 1: the thirties, hitchhiking, which had already been established as a thing,

184
00:09:14,520 --> 00:09:20,079
Speaker 1: became like a viable method of transportation for people who

185
00:09:20,080 --> 00:09:22,360
Speaker 1: are down on their luck, and because so many people

186
00:09:22,440 --> 00:09:25,959
Speaker 1: were down on their luck, hitchhiking actually kind of gained

187
00:09:26,000 --> 00:09:29,440
Speaker 1: a measure of respectability during that period because there was

188
00:09:29,440 --> 00:09:32,640
Speaker 1: this whole idea of people who were fortunate enough to

189
00:09:32,640 --> 00:09:35,560
Speaker 1: own a car helping out the less fortunate, because we're

190
00:09:35,559 --> 00:09:38,400
Speaker 1: all going through this together, right. The thing is is

191
00:09:38,440 --> 00:09:42,240
Speaker 1: there were also plenty of people that were considered hobos

192
00:09:42,280 --> 00:09:46,400
Speaker 1: and tramps who were viewed by the public at large

193
00:09:46,440 --> 00:09:49,280
Speaker 1: is not really wanting to work. So if you were

194
00:09:49,320 --> 00:09:52,040
Speaker 1: a hitchhiker and you were trying to move to the

195
00:09:52,080 --> 00:09:55,240
Speaker 1: next town to look for work, you were generally considered

196
00:09:55,280 --> 00:09:58,080
Speaker 1: like an upstanding person trying to do whatever they could

197
00:09:58,120 --> 00:10:02,040
Speaker 1: to make an honest living. But you had to differentiate yourself,

198
00:10:02,080 --> 00:10:05,240
Speaker 1: and oftentimes you would dress as clean cut, maybe wearing

199
00:10:05,280 --> 00:10:07,679
Speaker 1: a suit and a hat, anything you could to basically

200
00:10:07,720 --> 00:10:10,479
Speaker 1: stand out and say like, I'm not like these scumbags.

201
00:10:10,480 --> 00:10:11,679
Speaker 1: I actually want a job.

202
00:10:13,440 --> 00:10:16,600
Speaker 2: You know that expression, dressed for the job you want,

203
00:10:16,880 --> 00:10:19,840
Speaker 2: not for the job you have. Yes, I think that

204
00:10:19,960 --> 00:10:21,640
Speaker 2: was like dress for the ride you want and not

205
00:10:21,679 --> 00:10:24,320
Speaker 2: for the ride you have, which is zero rides exactly.

206
00:10:24,400 --> 00:10:26,080
Speaker 1: I think you're one hundred percent right with that.

207
00:10:26,800 --> 00:10:27,160
Speaker 3: Yeah.

208
00:10:27,480 --> 00:10:32,880
Speaker 2: So that era the nineteen thirties, like you said, society,

209
00:10:33,440 --> 00:10:35,200
Speaker 2: you know, didn't look down upon it so much. There

210
00:10:35,320 --> 00:10:37,800
Speaker 2: was even a pole in nineteen thirty eight by the

211
00:10:37,880 --> 00:10:41,400
Speaker 2: Institute of Public Opinion that said forty three percent of

212
00:10:41,400 --> 00:10:47,000
Speaker 2: Americans viewed hitchhiking favorably, and Mike, if you were to

213
00:10:47,000 --> 00:10:49,839
Speaker 2: take that poll today, I can't imagine how low that

214
00:10:49,920 --> 00:10:50,439
Speaker 2: number would be.

215
00:10:50,640 --> 00:10:53,480
Speaker 1: The latest I saw was a UK number and it

216
00:10:53,520 --> 00:10:55,640
Speaker 1: was in the twenty tens and it was down to

217
00:10:55,720 --> 00:10:56,320
Speaker 1: nine percent.

218
00:10:57,240 --> 00:10:59,440
Speaker 3: No, they never liked it over there though, No.

219
00:10:59,360 --> 00:11:01,920
Speaker 1: But it was still it's really popular, even though publicly

220
00:11:01,960 --> 00:11:06,040
Speaker 1: people claimed it to dislike it as a whole, like

221
00:11:06,120 --> 00:11:08,120
Speaker 1: bollocks to that, right, that's what they said.

222
00:11:09,360 --> 00:11:12,880
Speaker 2: So once you got to World War Two, another thing happened,

223
00:11:12,920 --> 00:11:16,400
Speaker 2: which was American serviceman you know that would go on

224
00:11:16,520 --> 00:11:19,679
Speaker 2: leave and you know, people in the army or whatever

225
00:11:19,720 --> 00:11:22,720
Speaker 2: would sometimes hitchhike to where they wanted to go. And

226
00:11:22,800 --> 00:11:25,559
Speaker 2: if you stopped and picked up a service person who

227
00:11:25,600 --> 00:11:28,040
Speaker 2: was hitchhiking, then that means that you were doing your

228
00:11:28,080 --> 00:11:31,160
Speaker 2: patriotic duty by giving you know, a fine young citizen

229
00:11:31,160 --> 00:11:31,800
Speaker 2: a ride somewhere.

230
00:11:31,880 --> 00:11:35,400
Speaker 1: Yeah, so in like twenty years, hitchhiking went from a fun, thrilling,

231
00:11:36,240 --> 00:11:39,320
Speaker 1: relatively safe thing for college kids to do to a

232
00:11:39,360 --> 00:11:41,680
Speaker 1: necessity for people who were moving from town to town

233
00:11:41,720 --> 00:11:45,400
Speaker 1: looking for work, to a patriotic duty to stop and

234
00:11:45,440 --> 00:11:49,560
Speaker 1: pick up a serviceman hitchhiking on their way maybe back

235
00:11:49,600 --> 00:11:52,000
Speaker 1: to base or out on leave away from.

236
00:11:51,840 --> 00:11:53,680
Speaker 3: Base, away from Akron.

237
00:11:53,760 --> 00:11:56,959
Speaker 1: If you were a fat like a right exactly, If

238
00:11:57,000 --> 00:12:02,280
Speaker 1: you were a factory worker and a woman, you also were,

239
00:12:02,320 --> 00:12:04,440
Speaker 1: people were expected to pick you up as well, to

240
00:12:04,440 --> 00:12:06,319
Speaker 1: give you a lift to the factory. You were just

241
00:12:06,320 --> 00:12:09,679
Speaker 1: supposed to like hold out your credentials for you know,

242
00:12:09,720 --> 00:12:13,960
Speaker 1: whatever defense factory or whatever you worked in, just to

243
00:12:14,040 --> 00:12:16,240
Speaker 1: make sure no one got the wrong idea.

244
00:12:16,520 --> 00:12:18,360
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you had to have on that Rosie the

245
00:12:18,440 --> 00:12:22,000
Speaker 2: riveter bandana right tied in the front. That was your

246
00:12:22,040 --> 00:12:22,720
Speaker 2: credential right now.

247
00:12:22,880 --> 00:12:25,960
Speaker 1: That definitely gave it away for sure. And then there

248
00:12:26,000 --> 00:12:28,640
Speaker 1: was there's something else to mention about hitchhikers during this time,

249
00:12:28,679 --> 00:12:32,760
Speaker 1: and it actually is, It's true. Throughout the entire time

250
00:12:33,280 --> 00:12:36,840
Speaker 1: of people picking up hitchhikers. But it started at this time,

251
00:12:36,840 --> 00:12:40,040
Speaker 1: which was it wasn't that the hitchhikers were just mooching.

252
00:12:40,280 --> 00:12:44,840
Speaker 1: They actually provide and provided back then a service as well.

253
00:12:45,000 --> 00:12:46,520
Speaker 1: Like a lot of times people would pick up a

254
00:12:46,600 --> 00:12:49,240
Speaker 1: hitchhiker at night because they were getting sleepy and they

255
00:12:49,280 --> 00:12:52,040
Speaker 1: needed somebody awaken alert to be like, hey, hey, wake up,

256
00:12:52,240 --> 00:12:55,000
Speaker 1: don't fall asleep at the wheel. Other people just were

257
00:12:55,000 --> 00:12:57,960
Speaker 1: looking for interesting conversation to distract them from a boring

258
00:12:58,040 --> 00:13:00,520
Speaker 1: road trip. And then I saw a poem from very

259
00:13:00,520 --> 00:13:03,640
Speaker 1: early days of hitchhiking where the guy references that he's

260
00:13:03,720 --> 00:13:06,840
Speaker 1: essentially a counterweight to the driver in the car so

261
00:13:06,880 --> 00:13:09,040
Speaker 1: that the car doesn't tip over, because that's how flimsy

262
00:13:09,040 --> 00:13:10,520
Speaker 1: of the original cars were.

263
00:13:11,800 --> 00:13:12,199
Speaker 3: Interesting.

264
00:13:12,240 --> 00:13:14,559
Speaker 1: I thought so too. So it's not like anyone was

265
00:13:14,679 --> 00:13:18,520
Speaker 1: viewing these people as just completely mooching. That came later on.

266
00:13:19,720 --> 00:13:22,600
Speaker 2: Yeah, and back to World War Two. If you were

267
00:13:23,440 --> 00:13:28,360
Speaker 2: a hitchhiking army army person that's what they call him, sure,

268
00:13:29,400 --> 00:13:32,640
Speaker 2: a soldier, you could It depends on where you are,

269
00:13:32,679 --> 00:13:36,720
Speaker 2: but you could reasonably wait in a shelter. There were

270
00:13:36,720 --> 00:13:39,040
Speaker 2: certain towns who would say, like, hitchhiking is such a

271
00:13:39,080 --> 00:13:41,839
Speaker 2: thing that we're gonna build shelters like this was in

272
00:13:41,880 --> 00:13:45,160
Speaker 2: the nineteen sort of early nineteen forties, and a couple

273
00:13:45,520 --> 00:13:48,280
Speaker 2: of examples in California where they would build, you know,

274
00:13:48,280 --> 00:13:49,560
Speaker 2: and I get the feeling it's sort of like a

275
00:13:49,600 --> 00:13:51,520
Speaker 2: bus stop kind of thing where you could just sort

276
00:13:51,520 --> 00:13:53,679
Speaker 2: of get out of the rain or wind while you

277
00:13:53,760 --> 00:13:55,320
Speaker 2: thunder ride, which is pretty cool.

278
00:13:55,440 --> 00:14:01,040
Speaker 1: Yes, And hitchhiking. I guess it's spread overseas Europe in particular,

279
00:14:02,440 --> 00:14:05,760
Speaker 1: I guess by the nineteen thirties, but it definitely wasn't widespread.

280
00:14:06,040 --> 00:14:10,760
Speaker 1: It became widespread through American servicemen who did the same

281
00:14:10,800 --> 00:14:13,360
Speaker 1: thing over in Europe that they did in America, and

282
00:14:13,440 --> 00:14:16,880
Speaker 1: the practice started to catch on after World War Two,

283
00:14:17,280 --> 00:14:20,680
Speaker 1: where it was kind of like a introduced widely during

284
00:14:20,720 --> 00:14:21,400
Speaker 1: World War Two.

285
00:14:23,040 --> 00:14:24,360
Speaker 3: You think that's a good place for a break.

286
00:14:24,920 --> 00:14:27,160
Speaker 1: Sure, I wouldn't call it a cliffhanger, but do they

287
00:14:27,200 --> 00:14:27,920
Speaker 1: all have to be?

288
00:14:28,960 --> 00:14:32,040
Speaker 2: I mean, we said the war was over, right exactly.

289
00:14:32,200 --> 00:14:34,080
Speaker 2: I think everyone knows what happened next.

290
00:14:34,160 --> 00:14:38,480
Speaker 1: No cliffhanger, right, Okay, so we'll take a break then starting.

291
00:14:39,760 --> 00:14:52,560
Speaker 5: Now stop shut.

292
00:15:01,800 --> 00:15:02,160
Speaker 3: All right.

293
00:15:02,200 --> 00:15:04,880
Speaker 2: Now we're in the nineteen fifties and this was sort

294
00:15:04,920 --> 00:15:08,360
Speaker 2: of the first real push. Well that's not true actually,

295
00:15:08,360 --> 00:15:10,640
Speaker 2: because I read in the book there were sort of

296
00:15:10,800 --> 00:15:14,120
Speaker 2: anti hitchhiking pushes from the very beginning, but it was

297
00:15:14,160 --> 00:15:16,480
Speaker 2: sort of here and there, depending on what town you're

298
00:15:16,520 --> 00:15:18,520
Speaker 2: in or what state you were in. But the first

299
00:15:18,600 --> 00:15:22,320
Speaker 2: kind of national push came thanks to Jay Edgar Hoover,

300
00:15:22,600 --> 00:15:25,720
Speaker 2: of course, who basically was one of the first guys

301
00:15:25,800 --> 00:15:29,200
Speaker 2: to put out the idea that this could be really

302
00:15:29,280 --> 00:15:32,920
Speaker 2: dangerous for you, like the next, you know, the next

303
00:15:33,040 --> 00:15:35,760
Speaker 2: murderer that you hear about on the news could be

304
00:15:35,800 --> 00:15:38,280
Speaker 2: the person that's getting in your car right now. And

305
00:15:38,360 --> 00:15:41,640
Speaker 2: of course there were government I mean, I guess propaganda

306
00:15:41,720 --> 00:15:45,360
Speaker 2: or at least warning posters that sort of indicated that.

307
00:15:45,600 --> 00:15:49,560
Speaker 2: One of them said death and disguise, and you know,

308
00:15:49,600 --> 00:15:52,600
Speaker 2: it had like an all American family basically stopping to

309
00:15:52,640 --> 00:15:56,320
Speaker 2: pick up what looks like a clean cut hitchhiker death

310
00:15:56,360 --> 00:15:56,920
Speaker 2: and disguise.

311
00:15:57,040 --> 00:16:00,160
Speaker 3: Is he a happy vacationer or an escaping krima.

312
00:16:00,360 --> 00:16:03,760
Speaker 1: Yeah, a pleasant companion or a sex maniac? That's what

313
00:16:03,800 --> 00:16:05,280
Speaker 1: else it said, Thank.

314
00:16:05,200 --> 00:16:06,040
Speaker 3: You Jaugar Hoover.

315
00:16:06,280 --> 00:16:10,080
Speaker 1: Yeah, Jaegar Hoover considered hitchhiking a menace. I think that

316
00:16:10,120 --> 00:16:13,360
Speaker 1: guy considered everything he didn't like a menace to America, right,

317
00:16:13,840 --> 00:16:17,920
Speaker 1: But it's really revealing what the social attitudes were toward hitchhiking.

318
00:16:18,240 --> 00:16:22,440
Speaker 1: In this nineteen fifty seven FBI bulletin that included a

319
00:16:22,520 --> 00:16:25,520
Speaker 1: letter that he personally wrote about how terrible hitchhiking was

320
00:16:25,520 --> 00:16:28,120
Speaker 1: and we needed to stamp it out. He was pointed

321
00:16:28,160 --> 00:16:31,960
Speaker 1: out that what law enforcement was up against was changing

322
00:16:32,080 --> 00:16:35,800
Speaker 1: the minds of the public. That against the idea that

323
00:16:35,840 --> 00:16:39,200
Speaker 1: the courtesy of the road demands that a driver give

324
00:16:39,280 --> 00:16:42,120
Speaker 1: a hitchhiker a lift if they're able to so. At

325
00:16:42,120 --> 00:16:44,800
Speaker 1: that time, by the mid fifties, that's what people thought

326
00:16:44,840 --> 00:16:46,840
Speaker 1: like if you saw some guy walking down the road

327
00:16:47,800 --> 00:16:51,680
Speaker 1: or gal and they had their thumb out, you were

328
00:16:51,720 --> 00:16:53,600
Speaker 1: basically obligated to stop.

329
00:16:54,800 --> 00:16:58,320
Speaker 2: Yeah, there were a couple of high profile murders in

330
00:16:58,360 --> 00:17:02,160
Speaker 2: the nineteen fifties dealing with hitchhikers though, and that of

331
00:17:02,200 --> 00:17:02,920
Speaker 2: course is going to.

332
00:17:03,160 --> 00:17:04,640
Speaker 3: Help ssuade the public opinion.

333
00:17:04,800 --> 00:17:06,840
Speaker 2: Yes, And of course is something that Hoover is going

334
00:17:06,920 --> 00:17:10,040
Speaker 2: to jump on and sort of highlight, as you know,

335
00:17:10,080 --> 00:17:12,760
Speaker 2: one of the big dangers the crime rate and like

336
00:17:13,720 --> 00:17:16,000
Speaker 2: the United States was, you know, at one of the

337
00:17:16,040 --> 00:17:19,280
Speaker 2: all time lows in American history and hitch hiking certainly

338
00:17:19,320 --> 00:17:22,160
Speaker 2: didn't like ramp it up or anything. But it's not

339
00:17:22,240 --> 00:17:26,080
Speaker 2: like it was a big like statistical analysis that was presented.

340
00:17:26,119 --> 00:17:28,000
Speaker 2: It was just like, hey, this big murder happened, and

341
00:17:28,480 --> 00:17:30,440
Speaker 2: you know, it's one of those alarmist things where if

342
00:17:30,480 --> 00:17:33,080
Speaker 2: it can happen one time, then is it really worth

343
00:17:33,080 --> 00:17:35,720
Speaker 2: the risk for you to pick up that hitchhiker.

344
00:17:35,840 --> 00:17:41,760
Speaker 1: Yeah, that became the premise in non Hitchhiking America. And

345
00:17:42,240 --> 00:17:44,479
Speaker 1: it was just the same thing as like stranger danger.

346
00:17:44,560 --> 00:17:46,720
Speaker 1: It was a moral panic, right, Like, yeah, for sure,

347
00:17:46,720 --> 00:17:53,000
Speaker 1: something so vile happened a handful of times, statistical anomaly essentially,

348
00:17:53,359 --> 00:17:56,919
Speaker 1: but was well publicized and so horrific, like murders of

349
00:17:57,520 --> 00:18:00,720
Speaker 1: entire families. There was a guy named Billy Guy Cook

350
00:18:00,960 --> 00:18:03,720
Speaker 1: who killed a family of five, including the three kids

351
00:18:03,760 --> 00:18:06,919
Speaker 1: ages seven, five, and three, and the family dog because

352
00:18:06,960 --> 00:18:09,240
Speaker 1: they just made the mistake of kindly picking him up

353
00:18:09,280 --> 00:18:14,080
Speaker 1: while he was hitchhiking. Like, news like that spread And yes,

354
00:18:14,440 --> 00:18:16,720
Speaker 1: I watched that for research last night.

355
00:18:16,840 --> 00:18:17,440
Speaker 3: Did you really?

356
00:18:17,600 --> 00:18:17,840
Speaker 1: Yeah?

357
00:18:18,119 --> 00:18:19,679
Speaker 2: I actually saw it a couple of years ago, and

358
00:18:19,760 --> 00:18:20,960
Speaker 2: I think it holds up pretty good.

359
00:18:21,880 --> 00:18:24,479
Speaker 1: Yeah, It definitely had like a modernish feel to it.

360
00:18:24,480 --> 00:18:27,320
Speaker 1: It didn't feel like stuck in the mid eighties, and

361
00:18:27,600 --> 00:18:29,879
Speaker 1: I feel like it really captured the spirit of like

362
00:18:29,920 --> 00:18:32,080
Speaker 1: the average hitchhiking interaction.

363
00:18:32,960 --> 00:18:37,119
Speaker 2: Yeah, where you ate fingers as French fries.

364
00:18:37,240 --> 00:18:40,000
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was nuts, but yeah, I liked it. I

365
00:18:40,000 --> 00:18:43,560
Speaker 1: thought it was very long, overly long, but yeah, it

366
00:18:43,880 --> 00:18:44,400
Speaker 1: was a good Yeah.

367
00:18:44,400 --> 00:18:45,480
Speaker 3: I know that's so funny.

368
00:18:45,480 --> 00:18:47,680
Speaker 2: I don't remember why I watched it, other than it

369
00:18:47,800 --> 00:18:50,720
Speaker 2: might I doubt if it was on a plane. That

370
00:18:50,800 --> 00:18:52,320
Speaker 2: feels like something I would do on a plane.

371
00:18:52,640 --> 00:18:55,320
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know. It's enough of a classic that

372
00:18:55,359 --> 00:18:57,280
Speaker 1: I could see it being on like a hip airline.

373
00:18:57,320 --> 00:18:59,639
Speaker 1: Was it Virgin? Were you flying Virgin that you saw it?

374
00:19:00,119 --> 00:19:02,400
Speaker 3: No? No, no, no, I don't. I only fly one airline.

375
00:19:02,680 --> 00:19:07,000
Speaker 1: So there were like those. I think that Billy Cockye

376
00:19:07,080 --> 00:19:09,639
Speaker 1: Cook killing Spree came in nineteen fifty one, just in

377
00:19:09,720 --> 00:19:13,080
Speaker 1: time for people to start freaking out. As we'll see,

378
00:19:13,119 --> 00:19:15,919
Speaker 1: movies are made about these kind of things. The FBI's

379
00:19:16,119 --> 00:19:18,600
Speaker 1: beating the drum against this kind of stuff, and so

380
00:19:18,800 --> 00:19:22,119
Speaker 1: it gets kind of a bad rap, and that's a

381
00:19:23,359 --> 00:19:27,840
Speaker 1: trajectory that it's followed over the decades. Every decade or so,

382
00:19:27,880 --> 00:19:31,639
Speaker 1: they'll be like a handful of highly publicized, really horrific

383
00:19:31,760 --> 00:19:35,560
Speaker 1: murders that took place because somebody hitchhiked. But if you

384
00:19:35,600 --> 00:19:38,920
Speaker 1: look at it statistically, it just it's like a blip

385
00:19:38,960 --> 00:19:39,639
Speaker 1: on the radar.

386
00:19:40,040 --> 00:19:40,280
Speaker 3: Yeah.

387
00:19:40,320 --> 00:19:43,119
Speaker 1: Sure, but it scared everybody enough that, like parents were like,

388
00:19:43,160 --> 00:19:46,920
Speaker 1: you do not hitchhike. Like I would never ever hitchhike

389
00:19:47,000 --> 00:19:49,920
Speaker 1: because my mom scared me so thoroughly as a kid

390
00:19:50,200 --> 00:19:53,040
Speaker 1: that it's just not gonna I'm just not gonna do it. Sorry.

391
00:19:53,960 --> 00:19:57,760
Speaker 2: Oh, interesting, So the danger that was drilled into you

392
00:19:57,920 --> 00:20:03,119
Speaker 2: is more hiking than picking up a hitchhiker either one.

393
00:20:03,280 --> 00:20:06,480
Speaker 1: No, either one for sure? Okay for sure? Like, yes,

394
00:20:06,880 --> 00:20:11,320
Speaker 1: I was in grave danger, almost one hundred percent guaranteed

395
00:20:11,359 --> 00:20:13,880
Speaker 1: to be murdered horribly if I did either one. That's

396
00:20:13,920 --> 00:20:15,520
Speaker 1: basically what got drummed into my head.

397
00:20:16,080 --> 00:20:18,480
Speaker 2: I guess technically I did hitchhike one time, now that

398
00:20:18,560 --> 00:20:22,240
Speaker 2: I think about it, I got lost one time camping

399
00:20:23,200 --> 00:20:24,760
Speaker 2: with some friends. I like kind of went off to

400
00:20:24,840 --> 00:20:26,840
Speaker 2: hike on my own, Like we had set up camp

401
00:20:27,440 --> 00:20:29,280
Speaker 2: and we were fishing or something, and I went off

402
00:20:29,320 --> 00:20:31,280
Speaker 2: to hike on my own, and I got lost and

403
00:20:31,520 --> 00:20:34,399
Speaker 2: ended up miles and miles down the road and found

404
00:20:34,400 --> 00:20:37,119
Speaker 2: a road, thankfully, and I got a ride.

405
00:20:37,280 --> 00:20:38,800
Speaker 3: I remember now, like I.

406
00:20:38,720 --> 00:20:41,280
Speaker 2: Don't know if I put my thumb out or if

407
00:20:41,359 --> 00:20:43,600
Speaker 2: I just looked like, you know, maybe I had a

408
00:20:43,600 --> 00:20:45,400
Speaker 2: fishing pole or something, and they were like, this guy

409
00:20:45,560 --> 00:20:50,000
Speaker 2: needs hand, clearly. But I definitely remember, like I got

410
00:20:50,040 --> 00:20:52,200
Speaker 2: a ride from a stranger and they took me back

411
00:20:52,240 --> 00:20:54,159
Speaker 2: to the you know kind of the area where I

412
00:20:54,160 --> 00:20:55,200
Speaker 2: could hike back to the camp.

413
00:20:55,520 --> 00:20:56,639
Speaker 1: Wow, and you weren't murdered.

414
00:20:57,480 --> 00:20:59,200
Speaker 3: No, And I would hitch.

415
00:20:59,520 --> 00:21:02,080
Speaker 2: I mean I would now just because you know, I

416
00:21:02,080 --> 00:21:04,199
Speaker 2: don't need to and I'm older and I have a family.

417
00:21:04,280 --> 00:21:07,240
Speaker 2: But then not too distant past, I would. I would

418
00:21:07,320 --> 00:21:15,080
Speaker 2: have considered hitching a ride way more than picking up somebody. Really, yeah,

419
00:21:15,080 --> 00:21:17,320
Speaker 2: because I like, what are the chances that someone that

420
00:21:17,359 --> 00:21:20,280
Speaker 2: pulls over to give you a ride as a serial

421
00:21:20,359 --> 00:21:21,159
Speaker 2: killer or something.

422
00:21:21,280 --> 00:21:24,920
Speaker 1: True. Okay, that's really smart, But.

423
00:21:23,960 --> 00:21:26,040
Speaker 3: But picking someone up Ooh, I don't know about that.

424
00:21:26,400 --> 00:21:29,160
Speaker 1: Okay, that is really smart, for sure. That's a great,

425
00:21:29,280 --> 00:21:32,840
Speaker 1: great point. But there were some of those really high profile,

426
00:21:32,920 --> 00:21:38,600
Speaker 1: publicized horrible murders. Serial killings typically did involve people being

427
00:21:39,280 --> 00:21:41,320
Speaker 1: like they were hitchhikers and they were picked up by

428
00:21:41,320 --> 00:21:43,640
Speaker 1: serial killers who were out looking for hitchhikers.

429
00:21:44,000 --> 00:21:48,240
Speaker 2: Well, I think what's his name picked up hitchhikers, right, Bundy.

430
00:21:48,960 --> 00:21:51,120
Speaker 1: If I'm not mistaken, Probably that would have been during

431
00:21:51,320 --> 00:21:52,960
Speaker 1: a time where hitchhiking was a thing.

432
00:21:53,040 --> 00:21:56,439
Speaker 2: Still, yeah, I'm pretty sure that was something that happened,

433
00:21:56,440 --> 00:21:58,680
Speaker 2: and I think he might have killed some of them.

434
00:21:58,800 --> 00:22:01,880
Speaker 1: Yeah, there were I mean overseas that happened too. There

435
00:22:01,880 --> 00:22:06,119
Speaker 1: were some famous murders in Australia that Australian backpacker murders

436
00:22:06,119 --> 00:22:08,720
Speaker 1: from like I think the late eighties even like, it

437
00:22:09,080 --> 00:22:11,399
Speaker 1: just happens from time to time and it's so scary

438
00:22:11,400 --> 00:22:14,160
Speaker 1: and you feel so badly for those people. Your mind

439
00:22:14,200 --> 00:22:16,800
Speaker 1: just kind of goes to how horrible a way that

440
00:22:16,840 --> 00:22:18,080
Speaker 1: would be to die that You're like.

441
00:22:18,560 --> 00:22:19,920
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm not gonna hitchhike.

442
00:22:20,920 --> 00:22:23,199
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally see Thomas hal I mean he put the

443
00:22:23,200 --> 00:22:23,919
Speaker 2: fear of God in me.

444
00:22:24,359 --> 00:22:27,440
Speaker 3: Yeah, Jo No, he was pretty good.

445
00:22:27,960 --> 00:22:30,560
Speaker 2: So moving forward to the sixties, this is when it

446
00:22:30,600 --> 00:22:32,920
Speaker 2: got like really popular again. Of course because of the

447
00:22:33,000 --> 00:22:37,240
Speaker 2: hippie movement. It became a big thing for hippies to

448
00:22:37,280 --> 00:22:40,879
Speaker 2: do because not only could they get around and like

449
00:22:40,960 --> 00:22:43,560
Speaker 2: you know, kind of travel the world doing so it

450
00:22:43,640 --> 00:22:46,320
Speaker 2: was really like it just sort of fit the hippie

451
00:22:46,359 --> 00:22:51,920
Speaker 2: ethos of trusting one another, and it's counterculture. It's anti

452
00:22:52,400 --> 00:22:55,840
Speaker 2: like you know, owning a car and sort of anti consumerism,

453
00:22:55,880 --> 00:22:58,879
Speaker 2: and it's a little bit rebellious, and it really just

454
00:22:59,040 --> 00:23:01,359
Speaker 2: jibed with the whole hippie thing. So there was a

455
00:23:01,359 --> 00:23:02,880
Speaker 2: lot of hitchhiking in the sixties.

456
00:23:03,000 --> 00:23:08,040
Speaker 1: Yeah, harkened back to that original kind of ethos of hitchhiking,

457
00:23:08,080 --> 00:23:10,320
Speaker 1: which was you know, people just helping other people out

458
00:23:10,359 --> 00:23:12,800
Speaker 1: and like you know, yeah, man being rewarded with some

459
00:23:12,840 --> 00:23:15,879
Speaker 1: great conversation and maybe even making a friend and just

460
00:23:16,000 --> 00:23:19,479
Speaker 1: shooing what happened. Yeah, totally worked with that. But it

461
00:23:19,560 --> 00:23:24,080
Speaker 1: also provided very practically a way for people who were

462
00:23:24,119 --> 00:23:27,040
Speaker 1: living the hippie life and didn't have money to go

463
00:23:27,119 --> 00:23:29,560
Speaker 1: see the world. Like if you could make it to Europe,

464
00:23:29,640 --> 00:23:34,199
Speaker 1: you could literally see Europe in Eurasia and Africa if

465
00:23:34,240 --> 00:23:36,960
Speaker 1: you could make it down there just by hitchhiking on

466
00:23:37,040 --> 00:23:39,080
Speaker 1: a couple of dollars a day. Because this is also

467
00:23:39,119 --> 00:23:41,440
Speaker 1: a time when youth hostels had really kind of taken

468
00:23:41,480 --> 00:23:44,119
Speaker 1: hold and spread, so you could if you could make

469
00:23:44,160 --> 00:23:46,080
Speaker 1: it over to Europe, you were set for a vacation

470
00:23:46,200 --> 00:23:47,000
Speaker 1: of a lifetime.

471
00:23:47,480 --> 00:23:49,120
Speaker 3: Yeah.

472
00:23:49,160 --> 00:23:52,600
Speaker 2: Into the nineteen seventies, it remained pretty popular, at least

473
00:23:52,600 --> 00:23:55,360
Speaker 2: early on. There was a poll in nineteen seventy three,

474
00:23:55,440 --> 00:23:57,640
Speaker 2: and this is just a sort of a little RinkyDink

475
00:23:57,800 --> 00:24:00,800
Speaker 2: poll from a high school, but it was two hundred

476
00:24:00,800 --> 00:24:03,960
Speaker 2: and seventy two junior and I guess junior high and

477
00:24:04,040 --> 00:24:06,760
Speaker 2: high school students said that more than twenty five percent

478
00:24:06,760 --> 00:24:11,359
Speaker 2: of them hitchhiked, either regularly or occasionally. So it was

479
00:24:11,520 --> 00:24:15,560
Speaker 2: still going strong among the utes of America, and most

480
00:24:15,640 --> 00:24:18,480
Speaker 2: in that same poll I said they were I don't

481
00:24:18,480 --> 00:24:22,160
Speaker 2: think they were too worried about dangers. And one kid

482
00:24:22,200 --> 00:24:24,959
Speaker 2: even said, I think there were more nuts walking around

483
00:24:25,880 --> 00:24:26,600
Speaker 2: than in cars.

484
00:24:27,280 --> 00:24:27,919
Speaker 1: Pretty smart.

485
00:24:28,880 --> 00:24:30,360
Speaker 3: I guess he's probably right.

486
00:24:31,040 --> 00:24:33,880
Speaker 1: Probably, I mean, that's your that's your take on it, right,

487
00:24:35,200 --> 00:24:37,240
Speaker 1: That's why you wouldn't pick up a hitchhiker. That's why

488
00:24:37,240 --> 00:24:40,000
Speaker 1: you but you would hitchhike because there's more nuts walking

489
00:24:40,080 --> 00:24:40,760
Speaker 1: than in cars.

490
00:24:40,840 --> 00:24:42,600
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think I think that jibes.

491
00:24:44,359 --> 00:24:47,240
Speaker 1: So another teenager in one of those polls said was

492
00:24:47,320 --> 00:24:49,159
Speaker 1: asked like, why do you hitchhike? And they're like to

493
00:24:49,160 --> 00:24:50,639
Speaker 1: get to where you're going, of course.

494
00:24:51,000 --> 00:24:51,200
Speaker 3: Yeah.

495
00:24:51,240 --> 00:24:55,000
Speaker 1: And in the sixties and seventies, in particular, hitchhiking among

496
00:24:55,160 --> 00:24:58,040
Speaker 1: kids who weren't of driving age yet or couldn't afford

497
00:24:58,040 --> 00:25:01,760
Speaker 1: a car. That was a thing, like you would hitchhike

498
00:25:01,800 --> 00:25:03,760
Speaker 1: home from school rather than take the bus to ride

499
00:25:03,800 --> 00:25:07,879
Speaker 1: your bike. You would hitchhike across town to go buy

500
00:25:07,920 --> 00:25:12,760
Speaker 1: something from Eddie's trick shop, like a new magic illusion trick.

501
00:25:13,040 --> 00:25:14,480
Speaker 3: Sure, yeah, did you go there?

502
00:25:15,720 --> 00:25:17,800
Speaker 1: No, I guess I know that name from you telling

503
00:25:17,800 --> 00:25:19,880
Speaker 1: me I don't remember the name of the one in Toledo,

504
00:25:20,320 --> 00:25:22,440
Speaker 1: the magic shop that I used to go to. But

505
00:25:22,520 --> 00:25:24,800
Speaker 1: it never even dawned on me, like I want to

506
00:25:24,840 --> 00:25:27,200
Speaker 1: go buy some mad magazines, I'll just hitchhike over there.

507
00:25:27,600 --> 00:25:32,359
Speaker 1: Like it's like our generation, like our age group was

508
00:25:32,400 --> 00:25:33,959
Speaker 1: one of the last ones to be able to just

509
00:25:34,000 --> 00:25:36,719
Speaker 1: like run around the neighborhood like wild animals and then

510
00:25:36,760 --> 00:25:39,560
Speaker 1: come home in time for dinner. This was like that,

511
00:25:40,200 --> 00:25:43,959
Speaker 1: plus like you would just get in a car with

512
00:25:43,960 --> 00:25:46,399
Speaker 1: the stranger to go buy a comic book because it

513
00:25:46,440 --> 00:25:47,920
Speaker 1: was too far to walk or you didn't feel like

514
00:25:48,000 --> 00:25:50,720
Speaker 1: riding your bike. For us, it was or for me

515
00:25:50,760 --> 00:25:52,919
Speaker 1: at least. It was like, if your parents wouldn't take you,

516
00:25:52,920 --> 00:25:54,200
Speaker 1: you just didn't get to do it.

517
00:25:54,760 --> 00:25:55,600
Speaker 3: Yeah, shame here.

518
00:25:55,800 --> 00:25:57,680
Speaker 1: Yeah, so that's what kids were doing though in the

519
00:25:57,720 --> 00:25:59,680
Speaker 1: sixties and seventies. They were just hitchhiking. It was just

520
00:25:59,760 --> 00:26:02,200
Speaker 1: kind of thing that they did, and they weren't necessarily

521
00:26:02,240 --> 00:26:04,439
Speaker 1: doing it to be rebellious or to be part of

522
00:26:04,440 --> 00:26:06,760
Speaker 1: the counterculture. They were doing it because they didn't have

523
00:26:07,000 --> 00:26:08,480
Speaker 1: a way to drive themselves.

524
00:26:08,840 --> 00:26:09,040
Speaker 3: Yeah.

525
00:26:09,080 --> 00:26:11,200
Speaker 2: I wonder if some of that was more prevalent and

526
00:26:12,000 --> 00:26:17,159
Speaker 2: more trusted small town America than like the main streets

527
00:26:17,160 --> 00:26:21,280
Speaker 2: of Dolino and Stone Mountain where we grew up. Yeah, yeah,

528
00:26:21,320 --> 00:26:23,119
Speaker 2: what am I talking about? Like I was some urban

529
00:26:23,280 --> 00:26:25,120
Speaker 2: you know, tough right.

530
00:26:25,240 --> 00:26:27,960
Speaker 1: Yeah, you used to play kick the can with Harvey Kitel.

531
00:26:29,359 --> 00:26:33,840
Speaker 2: So hitchhiking, like I said, was doing pretty well into

532
00:26:33,840 --> 00:26:38,240
Speaker 2: the seventies, but it started that's when the decline that

533
00:26:38,480 --> 00:26:40,679
Speaker 2: we're at today basically kind of started, was in the

534
00:26:40,680 --> 00:26:44,600
Speaker 2: early to mid seventies. You know, reputationally, it started to go.

535
00:26:44,600 --> 00:26:47,200
Speaker 3: Down by the end of the eighties.

536
00:26:47,240 --> 00:26:50,200
Speaker 2: It was there was one journalist who said, basically it's

537
00:26:50,240 --> 00:26:52,800
Speaker 2: all but dead and that jobs are just my memory.

538
00:26:52,840 --> 00:26:54,920
Speaker 3: I said, jibe three times a day. Four Now.

539
00:26:56,200 --> 00:26:59,400
Speaker 2: That reconciles with my own memories of and I'm sure

540
00:26:59,400 --> 00:27:02,080
Speaker 2: yours of growing up of kind of seeing it, you know,

541
00:27:02,200 --> 00:27:04,480
Speaker 2: be because I remember seeing it some when I was

542
00:27:04,480 --> 00:27:07,040
Speaker 2: a kid, but just less and less over the years.

543
00:27:07,160 --> 00:27:10,760
Speaker 2: And a lot of that had to do with car ownership.

544
00:27:11,520 --> 00:27:14,760
Speaker 2: In the forties. About half of Americans owned a car

545
00:27:14,800 --> 00:27:17,639
Speaker 2: in nineteen forty one. Less than twenty years later that

546
00:27:17,760 --> 00:27:20,920
Speaker 2: was at eighty percent. And then into the seventies and eighties,

547
00:27:21,040 --> 00:27:24,800
Speaker 2: you saw the deal like was in my family and

548
00:27:24,800 --> 00:27:26,679
Speaker 2: a lot of other even you know, sort of regular

549
00:27:26,720 --> 00:27:30,000
Speaker 2: middle class families where you ended up with an extra

550
00:27:30,080 --> 00:27:33,520
Speaker 2: car for the sixteen year old to drive because that's

551
00:27:33,520 --> 00:27:36,480
Speaker 2: the one that mom aged out of or whatever. So

552
00:27:36,920 --> 00:27:39,840
Speaker 2: in our family, it was the VW Beetle that my

553
00:27:39,920 --> 00:27:42,720
Speaker 2: mom drove, you know, from nineteen sixty eight to the

554
00:27:43,600 --> 00:27:47,080
Speaker 2: I guess till my sister. I'm not sure if my

555
00:27:47,119 --> 00:27:49,080
Speaker 2: sister drove it or not, but I ended up driving

556
00:27:49,119 --> 00:27:51,600
Speaker 2: that Beetle because that was the extra car. And there

557
00:27:51,600 --> 00:27:54,680
Speaker 2: were extra cars in American households kind of for the

558
00:27:54,760 --> 00:27:58,080
Speaker 2: first time, and so all of a sudden, teenagers had wheels,

559
00:27:58,520 --> 00:28:00,760
Speaker 2: usually some old car like eight beetle.

560
00:28:01,160 --> 00:28:04,560
Speaker 1: Yeah, So I just found that fascinating. It wasn't just

561
00:28:04,640 --> 00:28:08,879
Speaker 1: that people were scared out of hitchhiking. Even kids in

562
00:28:09,119 --> 00:28:11,520
Speaker 1: those early seventies Poles were aware of the dangers, but

563
00:28:11,560 --> 00:28:14,199
Speaker 1: they weren't afraid of it enough to not hitchhike. It was,

564
00:28:14,440 --> 00:28:17,200
Speaker 1: at least in part that whole group of people who

565
00:28:17,320 --> 00:28:20,440
Speaker 1: hitchhike because they were trying to get from point A

566
00:28:20,480 --> 00:28:22,760
Speaker 1: to point B didn't have to do that any longer

567
00:28:22,800 --> 00:28:26,400
Speaker 1: because they had more and more expanded access to cars. Right,

568
00:28:26,600 --> 00:28:28,960
Speaker 1: Because even if your parents didn't have a car, you

569
00:28:29,040 --> 00:28:30,879
Speaker 1: might have a friend now that had a car and

570
00:28:30,960 --> 00:28:33,399
Speaker 1: would come pick you up. Right, that's a big one.

571
00:28:33,440 --> 00:28:34,960
Speaker 3: There's always a friend that had the car.

572
00:28:35,320 --> 00:28:39,600
Speaker 1: Another thing that seems to have changed things for hitchhiking

573
00:28:40,040 --> 00:28:44,400
Speaker 1: is the spread of interstate travel in the US and

574
00:28:44,440 --> 00:28:48,760
Speaker 1: in Europe. There's plenty of laws these days that basically

575
00:28:49,440 --> 00:28:53,880
Speaker 1: prevent people from hitchhiking on the Highway in particular, but

576
00:28:54,000 --> 00:28:58,960
Speaker 1: even in places where it's not prohibited. Just the practicality

577
00:28:59,000 --> 00:29:01,520
Speaker 1: of getting somebody going eighty miles an hour to slow

578
00:29:01,560 --> 00:29:04,280
Speaker 1: down and pull over and not be a mile and

579
00:29:04,280 --> 00:29:06,880
Speaker 1: a half ahead a point that you have to trot

580
00:29:06,880 --> 00:29:09,880
Speaker 1: to that far to get in the car. It just

581
00:29:10,240 --> 00:29:13,840
Speaker 1: it's not conducive to hitchhiking at all. So as interstate

582
00:29:13,880 --> 00:29:17,960
Speaker 1: travel spread, hitchhiking just became a little bit harder, although

583
00:29:17,960 --> 00:29:22,800
Speaker 1: people started just standing on entrance ramps or right apparently

584
00:29:22,800 --> 00:29:25,160
Speaker 1: on the Autobahn. You know, if you go to Europe,

585
00:29:25,320 --> 00:29:27,440
Speaker 1: they have like those gas stations that you just it's

586
00:29:27,480 --> 00:29:29,760
Speaker 1: like an exit and then the gas station and then

587
00:29:29,760 --> 00:29:32,720
Speaker 1: the entrance ramp right back onto the highway. You know

588
00:29:32,720 --> 00:29:35,960
Speaker 1: what I'm talking about. Yeah, I think so, So they

589
00:29:35,960 --> 00:29:38,320
Speaker 1: have those, and people would just go from gas station

590
00:29:38,400 --> 00:29:39,920
Speaker 1: to gas station, like you could get a ride at

591
00:29:39,920 --> 00:29:42,120
Speaker 1: a gas station and still do interstate travel. So there's

592
00:29:42,120 --> 00:29:44,440
Speaker 1: ways around it, but it's still put a crimp in

593
00:29:44,480 --> 00:29:46,480
Speaker 1: the whole idea. You could just pull over to the

594
00:29:46,520 --> 00:29:49,080
Speaker 1: side of the road and pick somebody up pretty easily

595
00:29:49,120 --> 00:29:50,880
Speaker 1: like you could before the interstates.

596
00:29:51,360 --> 00:29:54,040
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the I mean they were always sort of

597
00:29:54,600 --> 00:29:56,719
Speaker 2: depending on where you are in the United States or

598
00:29:56,760 --> 00:30:00,680
Speaker 2: anti hitchhiking laws. Maybe in some districts or regions or

599
00:30:00,720 --> 00:30:03,160
Speaker 2: towns that weren't too keen on it. And this goes

600
00:30:03,200 --> 00:30:05,880
Speaker 2: back to the very beginning, but it wasn't the kind

601
00:30:05,880 --> 00:30:08,040
Speaker 2: of thing that was like super It may have been

602
00:30:08,040 --> 00:30:11,520
Speaker 2: on the books, but it wasn't super enforced. Some more

603
00:30:11,560 --> 00:30:15,400
Speaker 2: conservative towns may have enforced it more obviously, you know,

604
00:30:15,680 --> 00:30:17,640
Speaker 2: kind of the elephant in the room is if you

605
00:30:17,720 --> 00:30:21,120
Speaker 2: were demographically, like you said, it was a lot of

606
00:30:21,160 --> 00:30:24,640
Speaker 2: sort of middle class white men earlier on, you had

607
00:30:24,640 --> 00:30:26,680
Speaker 2: a much harder time getting right. If you were a

608
00:30:26,680 --> 00:30:31,240
Speaker 2: person of color, you had a lot of times. You

609
00:30:31,280 --> 00:30:33,240
Speaker 2: would have an easier time if you're a woman. But

610
00:30:33,280 --> 00:30:36,240
Speaker 2: they were discouraged from doing it more for I guess,

611
00:30:36,400 --> 00:30:38,840
Speaker 2: you know, the dangers that they thought a woman could

612
00:30:38,840 --> 00:30:42,640
Speaker 2: face versus a man. But it was just sort of

613
00:30:42,720 --> 00:30:45,160
Speaker 2: lucy goosey as far as you know, who a cop

614
00:30:45,200 --> 00:30:46,320
Speaker 2: decided to hassle.

615
00:30:46,400 --> 00:30:49,880
Speaker 1: Interestingly about that sexism thing. I saw it also go

616
00:30:50,280 --> 00:30:53,080
Speaker 1: in a different direction too that I think that nineteen

617
00:30:53,160 --> 00:30:57,360
Speaker 1: sixty six Sports Illustrated article by Janet Graham, she basically

618
00:30:57,360 --> 00:31:00,480
Speaker 1: talks about that how you like you want to dress

619
00:31:02,400 --> 00:31:05,640
Speaker 1: enough to catch people's attention, but you don't want to

620
00:31:05,960 --> 00:31:08,240
Speaker 1: like throw out a sign like hey, come pick me up,

621
00:31:08,280 --> 00:31:11,880
Speaker 1: because you might attract the wrong kind of guy, or conversely,

622
00:31:11,920 --> 00:31:13,719
Speaker 1: you might also just get passed by by some guy

623
00:31:13,760 --> 00:31:15,440
Speaker 1: who doesn't trust you because of how you're dressed.

624
00:31:16,160 --> 00:31:18,880
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's interesting. Sports Illustrade used to do lots of

625
00:31:18,880 --> 00:31:20,000
Speaker 2: weird articles like that.

626
00:31:20,160 --> 00:31:23,560
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is a really long article with great illustrations.

627
00:31:23,640 --> 00:31:25,720
Speaker 1: Like Sports Illustrated lived up to its name. Had a

628
00:31:25,760 --> 00:31:28,520
Speaker 1: lot of illustrations in this article, and it's it's definitely

629
00:31:28,520 --> 00:31:33,520
Speaker 1: worth looking up. It's a great artis not really well,

630
00:31:33,560 --> 00:31:38,840
Speaker 1: apparently they did have like, I don't know what you

631
00:31:38,880 --> 00:31:42,080
Speaker 1: call them, but basically speed trials. A bunch of hitchhikers

632
00:31:42,080 --> 00:31:43,960
Speaker 1: would all get picked up in the same town and

633
00:31:43,960 --> 00:31:46,560
Speaker 1: try to make it to this pre arranged destination. See

634
00:31:46,560 --> 00:31:47,640
Speaker 1: who got their fastest.

635
00:31:48,160 --> 00:31:49,360
Speaker 3: All right, that's a sport.

636
00:31:49,840 --> 00:31:52,520
Speaker 1: There's another thing that seems to have led to a

637
00:31:52,600 --> 00:31:55,800
Speaker 1: decline in hitchhiking too, and that is that as fewer

638
00:31:55,840 --> 00:32:00,000
Speaker 1: people actually needed to hitchhike, the people who were left over,

639
00:32:00,160 --> 00:32:03,000
Speaker 1: who still needed to hitchhike because they couldn't, say, afford

640
00:32:03,000 --> 00:32:07,480
Speaker 1: a car or something like that, were viewed less and

641
00:32:07,560 --> 00:32:10,480
Speaker 1: less favorably or sympathetically.

642
00:32:11,160 --> 00:32:11,400
Speaker 3: Yeah.

643
00:32:11,440 --> 00:32:14,240
Speaker 2: That was the real change, I think is when it

644
00:32:14,280 --> 00:32:16,400
Speaker 2: got to the point where they're like, oh, well, if

645
00:32:16,400 --> 00:32:19,680
Speaker 2: that person can't even afford a car, and this is

646
00:32:19,720 --> 00:32:22,040
Speaker 2: when you could buy a used car that ran for

647
00:32:22,200 --> 00:32:24,720
Speaker 2: you know, a couple of grand or something. So it

648
00:32:24,800 --> 00:32:27,720
Speaker 2: was like, if they can't afford that, then they're bad news, right.

649
00:32:27,600 --> 00:32:29,840
Speaker 1: So they're downtrodden, So I'm going to look down upon them.

650
00:32:29,840 --> 00:32:33,360
Speaker 1: And that means that hitchhiking itself by association came to

651
00:32:33,400 --> 00:32:36,640
Speaker 1: get a bad name, which further meant that anybody who

652
00:32:36,760 --> 00:32:39,480
Speaker 1: hitchhiked couldn't had to be bad news. And so this

653
00:32:39,560 --> 00:32:43,680
Speaker 1: feedback loop started and it was I think still to

654
00:32:43,720 --> 00:32:46,480
Speaker 1: this day that hitchhiking has that image because of that

655
00:32:46,600 --> 00:32:47,440
Speaker 1: change in perception.

656
00:32:47,640 --> 00:32:52,080
Speaker 2: Sadly, yeah, and of course because of the the Reagan

657
00:32:52,200 --> 00:32:55,840
Speaker 2: years and the Thatcher years, that was a big sort

658
00:32:55,840 --> 00:32:58,600
Speaker 2: of I don't know about a sea change, but at

659
00:32:58,680 --> 00:33:04,040
Speaker 2: least a very public view that like you're lazy if

660
00:33:04,040 --> 00:33:07,200
Speaker 2: you're hitch hiking, just like you're lazy if you're on

661
00:33:07,280 --> 00:33:09,960
Speaker 2: food stamps, and if you're out of work and you

662
00:33:10,000 --> 00:33:12,840
Speaker 2: can't afford a car, then that means you're sort of

663
00:33:12,920 --> 00:33:17,080
Speaker 2: sort of derelict. And was it was sort of a

664
00:33:17,120 --> 00:33:21,680
Speaker 2: conservative movement in two ways, Like politically conservative, it was

665
00:33:21,800 --> 00:33:24,680
Speaker 2: looked down upon by them, but also just the word

666
00:33:24,720 --> 00:33:28,480
Speaker 2: conservative in its true definition, just like risk averse, people

667
00:33:28,520 --> 00:33:31,440
Speaker 2: became a little more conservative as as far as like

668
00:33:31,560 --> 00:33:34,120
Speaker 2: what kind of risk they were willing to undertake by

669
00:33:34,120 --> 00:33:36,360
Speaker 2: picking up a hitchhiker or I guess hitchhiking.

670
00:33:36,480 --> 00:33:36,640
Speaker 5: Yeah.

671
00:33:36,680 --> 00:33:41,240
Speaker 1: And then also during that time, transactional society kind of developed,

672
00:33:41,240 --> 00:33:44,240
Speaker 1: where everything had a price, nothing was free, and anything

673
00:33:44,280 --> 00:33:47,320
Speaker 1: that was free as communist, right, that's what communists are into.

674
00:33:48,080 --> 00:33:51,000
Speaker 1: But there's this guy named Joe Moran who's a historian

675
00:33:51,040 --> 00:33:56,160
Speaker 1: who wrote in the Guardian. He wrote about the gift relationship,

676
00:33:56,280 --> 00:33:59,560
Speaker 1: the kinds of exchanges based on trust and goodwill that

677
00:33:59,600 --> 00:34:02,480
Speaker 1: bring intangible benefits to everyone but are the hardest to

678
00:34:02,520 --> 00:34:05,360
Speaker 1: retrieve when they're gone. Those kind of got stamped out

679
00:34:05,400 --> 00:34:08,880
Speaker 1: in that transactional economy that Thatcher and Reagan brought. And

680
00:34:08,960 --> 00:34:12,080
Speaker 1: I think it's just fascinating. You can blame basically everything

681
00:34:12,680 --> 00:34:16,360
Speaker 1: on Thatcher and Reagan and probably be right the vast

682
00:34:16,400 --> 00:34:19,120
Speaker 1: majority of the time. So I think the upshot of

683
00:34:19,160 --> 00:34:21,920
Speaker 1: the whole thing, Chuck, is that the the ethos of

684
00:34:22,560 --> 00:34:24,680
Speaker 1: I have a car, you don't, I'm gonna help you

685
00:34:24,760 --> 00:34:29,600
Speaker 1: out converted into my car's mine, So ts for you

686
00:34:29,760 --> 00:34:33,160
Speaker 1: loser is kind of what that that change over happened.

687
00:34:33,520 --> 00:34:35,320
Speaker 3: All right, that's a good place for a break.

688
00:34:35,360 --> 00:34:39,239
Speaker 2: So so angry people can compose emails and we'll be

689
00:34:39,320 --> 00:34:42,880
Speaker 2: right back and we'll talk about some notable famous hitchhikers

690
00:34:42,920 --> 00:34:54,560
Speaker 2: over the years.

691
00:34:44,880 --> 00:34:55,840
Speaker 4: Shut stop you shut.

692
00:35:05,239 --> 00:35:08,400
Speaker 1: Okay, chuck, So we're back. We'd have gotten a lot

693
00:35:08,440 --> 00:35:11,399
Speaker 1: of angry emails in the interim, but that's okay.

694
00:35:11,400 --> 00:35:12,040
Speaker 3: They're in.

695
00:35:13,840 --> 00:35:16,120
Speaker 1: Let's talk a little bit about demographics, because you kind

696
00:35:16,120 --> 00:35:19,680
Speaker 1: of hit on how it's easier in some cases for

697
00:35:19,719 --> 00:35:22,080
Speaker 1: some people to catch a rye than it is for others.

698
00:35:22,640 --> 00:35:26,560
Speaker 1: But the main demographic I could see when you look

699
00:35:26,600 --> 00:35:31,000
Speaker 1: at just the differences in hitchhiking experiences, seem to be

700
00:35:31,040 --> 00:35:33,920
Speaker 1: pretty much just divided between men and women. And I

701
00:35:33,920 --> 00:35:35,600
Speaker 1: think one of the things that you see is that

702
00:35:35,840 --> 00:35:39,120
Speaker 1: this whole sexist idea that if a woman hitchhikes and

703
00:35:39,200 --> 00:35:41,520
Speaker 1: something happens to her, she was just basically asking for it.

704
00:35:41,560 --> 00:35:44,360
Speaker 1: She put herself in unnecessary danger, which is a terrible

705
00:35:44,400 --> 00:35:47,440
Speaker 1: way to look at a crime against an innocent person

706
00:35:48,640 --> 00:35:52,760
Speaker 1: under any circumstances. But there was there's a reader's digest

707
00:35:52,920 --> 00:35:54,760
Speaker 1: like that that was just a whole thread of thinking.

708
00:35:55,000 --> 00:35:57,880
Speaker 1: There's a Reader's Digest article from nineteen seventy three that

709
00:35:57,960 --> 00:36:01,480
Speaker 1: said that in the case of girl who hitchhikes, the

710
00:36:01,480 --> 00:36:05,719
Speaker 1: odds against her reaching her destination unmolested are today literally

711
00:36:05,760 --> 00:36:08,799
Speaker 1: no better than if she played Russian Roulette, which from

712
00:36:08,840 --> 00:36:12,520
Speaker 1: what I've read, is totally made up. And that there

713
00:36:12,600 --> 00:36:15,839
Speaker 1: was also two girls that conducted a science experiment in

714
00:36:15,920 --> 00:36:22,440
Speaker 1: San Diego in nineteen seventy seven, and they solicited three

715
00:36:22,560 --> 00:36:25,160
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty six rides, and they were either wearing

716
00:36:25,160 --> 00:36:28,600
Speaker 1: a control costume of like pretty conservative clothing or a

717
00:36:28,680 --> 00:36:33,080
Speaker 1: revealing costume, and they found that the revealing costume far

718
00:36:33,120 --> 00:36:36,280
Speaker 1: and away attracted more rides, mostly from men.

719
00:36:36,400 --> 00:36:40,640
Speaker 2: All Right, we promised talk of notable hitchhikers, and you know,

720
00:36:41,280 --> 00:36:43,719
Speaker 2: we could go on all day listing famous people who

721
00:36:44,120 --> 00:36:47,600
Speaker 2: at one point or another hitchhiked. For me, John Waters

722
00:36:47,640 --> 00:36:51,160
Speaker 2: is a pretty fun one because he hitchhiked and enjoyed

723
00:36:51,160 --> 00:36:54,320
Speaker 2: it as a kid and then eventually wrote a book.

724
00:36:54,360 --> 00:36:57,839
Speaker 2: He hitchhiked as a sixty eight year old grown man

725
00:36:58,400 --> 00:37:02,160
Speaker 2: in the like twenty thirteen from his home in Baltimore

726
00:37:02,280 --> 00:37:05,200
Speaker 2: to his other home in San Francisco and wrote a

727
00:37:05,239 --> 00:37:07,360
Speaker 2: book about it called Carsick.

728
00:37:07,680 --> 00:37:10,080
Speaker 3: John Waters hitchhikes across America.

729
00:37:10,640 --> 00:37:12,480
Speaker 2: And this one's kind of fun because the whole first

730
00:37:12,480 --> 00:37:15,759
Speaker 2: half of the book is just fiction. It's like fun

731
00:37:15,800 --> 00:37:18,600
Speaker 2: stories he wrote about, like who could pick him up

732
00:37:18,600 --> 00:37:20,640
Speaker 2: and what that could lead to, whether it was a

733
00:37:20,680 --> 00:37:24,600
Speaker 2: serial killer or you know, something a little more fun.

734
00:37:26,120 --> 00:37:28,080
Speaker 2: But the second half of the book I think is

735
00:37:28,120 --> 00:37:30,920
Speaker 2: about like his real journey hitchhiking, and he made it

736
00:37:30,960 --> 00:37:31,359
Speaker 2: all the way.

737
00:37:32,440 --> 00:37:35,200
Speaker 1: That's great. I mean, I'm glad John Waters survived because

738
00:37:35,239 --> 00:37:36,840
Speaker 1: he's a national treasure.

739
00:37:37,440 --> 00:37:37,919
Speaker 3: Who else?

740
00:37:38,840 --> 00:37:41,160
Speaker 1: Hitchbot is the other one I want to cover.

741
00:37:42,360 --> 00:37:44,400
Speaker 3: I'd never heard of Hitchbot. Is that a famous person?

742
00:37:44,880 --> 00:37:47,240
Speaker 1: You have? We talked about hitchbot and I think Internet

743
00:37:47,360 --> 00:37:50,680
Speaker 1: roundup or something like that. Oh really, Back in twenty fifteen,

744
00:37:50,719 --> 00:37:56,000
Speaker 1: there was a robot. It was very like basic in design.

745
00:37:56,680 --> 00:37:59,440
Speaker 1: It was a social experiment more than anything. They want

746
00:37:59,480 --> 00:38:02,880
Speaker 1: to see how people responded to a robot. And they

747
00:38:02,920 --> 00:38:07,040
Speaker 1: sent this kluegy junkie cartoonish looking robot all the way

748
00:38:07,080 --> 00:38:09,920
Speaker 1: across Germany, all the way across to the Netherlands, all

749
00:38:09,960 --> 00:38:12,080
Speaker 1: the way across Canada, and they finally said, okay, it's

750
00:38:12,120 --> 00:38:14,919
Speaker 1: time for America. We're going to set this guy out

751
00:38:14,920 --> 00:38:17,600
Speaker 1: on the road in Salem, Massachusetts and see if he

752
00:38:17,640 --> 00:38:20,920
Speaker 1: can make it to San Francisco's destination. He made it

753
00:38:21,000 --> 00:38:23,879
Speaker 1: to Boston, he made it to New York, he made Philadelphia,

754
00:38:23,920 --> 00:38:26,560
Speaker 1: and he didn't get out of Philadelphia alive. He was

755
00:38:26,600 --> 00:38:31,160
Speaker 1: dismembered and completely taken apart by some jerk vandal somewhere

756
00:38:31,200 --> 00:38:35,120
Speaker 1: who was caught on video wearing a football shirt, like

757
00:38:35,160 --> 00:38:37,920
Speaker 1: a football jersey. I can only imagine it was an

758
00:38:37,960 --> 00:38:42,560
Speaker 1: Eagles jersey. And so this robot made it through three

759
00:38:42,600 --> 00:38:47,120
Speaker 1: countries and didn't even get past Philadelphia in the United States, which,

760
00:38:47,400 --> 00:38:50,680
Speaker 1: you know, kind of sad. I remember being sad about

761
00:38:50,719 --> 00:38:53,160
Speaker 1: it at the time. But we definitely talked about Hitchbot.

762
00:38:53,160 --> 00:38:56,160
Speaker 1: But he's a very famous hitchhiker as well. He had

763
00:38:56,160 --> 00:38:58,359
Speaker 1: a real positive spirit. He like tweeted the whole time

764
00:38:58,400 --> 00:39:00,080
Speaker 1: about however, everything.

765
00:38:59,880 --> 00:39:03,919
Speaker 2: Was, Yeah, let me see what do we got here?

766
00:39:04,200 --> 00:39:06,040
Speaker 3: I don't want to talk about Dave Matthews.

767
00:39:06,040 --> 00:39:07,120
Speaker 1: Do we no?

768
00:39:08,560 --> 00:39:10,640
Speaker 2: He hitchhiked one time to a concert. I guess we

769
00:39:10,680 --> 00:39:12,440
Speaker 2: can say that at least, you know, we should cover

770
00:39:12,520 --> 00:39:13,240
Speaker 2: on a short stuff.

771
00:39:13,280 --> 00:39:19,520
Speaker 3: Is that Dave Matthews poop Bridge incident? Do you hear?

772
00:39:20,560 --> 00:39:20,840
Speaker 1: No?

773
00:39:21,840 --> 00:39:23,200
Speaker 3: Well, we'll talk about it a short stuff.

774
00:39:23,200 --> 00:39:26,640
Speaker 2: It's when his tour bus dumped the contents of their

775
00:39:27,520 --> 00:39:29,520
Speaker 2: Oh I did hear that thing like off a bridge

776
00:39:29,560 --> 00:39:31,560
Speaker 2: on two people, or it was on a boat or

777
00:39:31,560 --> 00:39:32,640
Speaker 2: something that.

778
00:39:32,760 --> 00:39:35,800
Speaker 3: Was bellowed the bridge. My god, they got in trouble

779
00:39:35,840 --> 00:39:36,040
Speaker 3: for it.

780
00:39:36,480 --> 00:39:38,520
Speaker 1: Let's talk about movies instead, what about that?

781
00:39:38,800 --> 00:39:41,560
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, you know, in media in general, Like

782
00:39:41,680 --> 00:39:44,680
Speaker 2: you know, there are some very famous, famous books and

783
00:39:44,719 --> 00:39:47,040
Speaker 2: movies that were kind of centered around hitchhiking, whether it's

784
00:39:47,880 --> 00:39:50,240
Speaker 2: obviously Jack Kerouac's On the Road is a big one,

785
00:39:50,840 --> 00:39:55,360
Speaker 2: or Tom Robbins, even Cowgirls Get the Blues, the Gus

786
00:39:55,400 --> 00:39:58,759
Speaker 2: Van's ant movie Sissy, the main character was born with

787
00:39:58,800 --> 00:40:03,480
Speaker 2: a abnormally large thumb, so you know, she obviously had

788
00:40:03,480 --> 00:40:05,160
Speaker 2: a talent as a hitchhiker. And that's kind of one

789
00:40:05,160 --> 00:40:08,720
Speaker 2: of the subplots of the of the book and film.

790
00:40:08,520 --> 00:40:12,799
Speaker 1: Right, and yeah, hitchhiking It depends on the film, but

791
00:40:12,920 --> 00:40:15,680
Speaker 1: it can be depicted as like a cautionary tale where

792
00:40:15,840 --> 00:40:18,440
Speaker 1: you know, it just goes so off the rails bad

793
00:40:19,239 --> 00:40:22,280
Speaker 1: that no one should ever hitchhike ever, like in Hitcher,

794
00:40:22,400 --> 00:40:25,600
Speaker 1: like we were talking about with see Thomas Allen Rucker Howard. Yeah,

795
00:40:26,040 --> 00:40:31,160
Speaker 1: that that Billy Cockye Cook murder Spree got turned into

796
00:40:31,280 --> 00:40:36,160
Speaker 1: a movie two years after, called The Hitchhiker. It was

797
00:40:36,160 --> 00:40:40,359
Speaker 1: supposedly pretty good and yeah, so throughout from from the

798
00:40:40,360 --> 00:40:46,080
Speaker 1: fifties onward, hitchhikers could be depicted as murderous people or

799
00:40:46,200 --> 00:40:49,520
Speaker 1: people picking up hitchhikers could be depicted as murderous. Right,

800
00:40:49,880 --> 00:40:54,000
Speaker 1: but there was also like hitchhiking made appearances as mcguffins

801
00:40:54,000 --> 00:40:55,840
Speaker 1: and a lot of films as just kind of a

802
00:40:55,880 --> 00:40:59,080
Speaker 1: funny like little side thing like Pee Wee Herman getting

803
00:40:59,120 --> 00:41:02,080
Speaker 1: picked up by Large Marge and PE's Big Adventure, What

804
00:41:03,040 --> 00:41:05,520
Speaker 1: Big Bird and follow that Bird did a lot of

805
00:41:05,600 --> 00:41:09,160
Speaker 1: hitchhiking in that movie. Yeah, have you ever seen I

806
00:41:09,200 --> 00:41:09,800
Speaker 1: Saw the Devil?

807
00:41:11,160 --> 00:41:15,000
Speaker 2: I don't think so. That's Rob Zombie right.

808
00:41:15,480 --> 00:41:20,080
Speaker 1: No, it's a Korean film, a Korean serial killer film.

809
00:41:20,200 --> 00:41:24,239
Speaker 1: I can't remember the guy's name who directed it, but

810
00:41:24,360 --> 00:41:26,600
Speaker 1: it's really good. But there's this one scene in there

811
00:41:27,000 --> 00:41:30,279
Speaker 1: where the main character, the antagonist I guess is a

812
00:41:30,320 --> 00:41:33,640
Speaker 1: serial killer, but they follow him so much he's basically

813
00:41:33,680 --> 00:41:36,880
Speaker 1: the main character. He hitchhikes gets picked up by a

814
00:41:36,960 --> 00:41:39,000
Speaker 1: car that's being driven by a guy who had already

815
00:41:39,000 --> 00:41:42,040
Speaker 1: picked up another hitchhiker. So now there's two guys including

816
00:41:42,120 --> 00:41:44,799
Speaker 1: him in the car being driven by a third guy,

817
00:41:45,000 --> 00:41:47,319
Speaker 1: and they all turn out to be serial killers, and

818
00:41:47,360 --> 00:41:50,200
Speaker 1: they get in this fight driving down the road, a

819
00:41:50,239 --> 00:41:52,759
Speaker 1: fight to the death. It's like a really interesting just

820
00:41:52,880 --> 00:41:54,600
Speaker 1: kind of like a side scene that they could have

821
00:41:54,600 --> 00:41:57,640
Speaker 1: easily edited out, but it's so good. It's it's nuts.

822
00:41:57,960 --> 00:42:00,960
Speaker 2: That sounds really familiar. I might have seen actually.

823
00:42:00,960 --> 00:42:03,040
Speaker 1: It came out in twenty ten. I think.

824
00:42:03,440 --> 00:42:04,719
Speaker 3: Yeah, the mcguffin thing is big.

825
00:42:04,719 --> 00:42:10,200
Speaker 2: Though, I feel like most times, if hitchhiking isn't a

826
00:42:10,200 --> 00:42:12,840
Speaker 2: plot that's like turns out to be really bad or

827
00:42:12,880 --> 00:42:15,400
Speaker 2: something that you're supposed to think it is, at least

828
00:42:15,920 --> 00:42:19,000
Speaker 2: like very few times, I feel like it's just a

829
00:42:19,040 --> 00:42:21,480
Speaker 2: scene where someone hitchhikes and is no big deal, unless

830
00:42:21,480 --> 00:42:23,720
Speaker 2: it's like a period thing, you know, from the sixties

831
00:42:23,800 --> 00:42:24,200
Speaker 2: or whatever.

832
00:42:24,760 --> 00:42:29,440
Speaker 1: Yes, a good example of that is Dumb and Dumber,

833
00:42:29,680 --> 00:42:33,000
Speaker 1: where Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels pick up the guy

834
00:42:33,040 --> 00:42:36,280
Speaker 1: who's trying to assassinate them and he ends up dying

835
00:42:36,880 --> 00:42:40,439
Speaker 1: because of the hot sauce burger they trick him into eating. Yeah,

836
00:42:41,120 --> 00:42:43,640
Speaker 1: that's a good one that was a good movie and

837
00:42:43,680 --> 00:42:46,200
Speaker 1: then apparently I've never seen it, but like the definitive

838
00:42:46,480 --> 00:42:51,319
Speaker 1: earliest hitchhiking scene is from It Happened One Night with

839
00:42:51,400 --> 00:42:57,280
Speaker 1: Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert. It's very cute scene. Oh yeah, Yeah,

840
00:42:57,320 --> 00:43:00,480
Speaker 1: he's basically being a man teaching her how it's all

841
00:43:00,480 --> 00:43:02,080
Speaker 1: in the thumb. It's all in the thumb, that's how

842
00:43:02,080 --> 00:43:04,400
Speaker 1: you hitchhike. And he's getting nowhere with it, and she

843
00:43:04,560 --> 00:43:06,359
Speaker 1: like leans down and kind of sticks her leg out

844
00:43:06,400 --> 00:43:08,960
Speaker 1: and adjusts her stocking, and a car just comes like

845
00:43:09,000 --> 00:43:11,040
Speaker 1: to a screeching halt to pick them both up.

846
00:43:11,280 --> 00:43:13,640
Speaker 2: Yeah, and she's like, stick that thumb where the sun

847
00:43:13,680 --> 00:43:14,200
Speaker 2: don't shine.

848
00:43:14,400 --> 00:43:17,160
Speaker 3: Exactly if you were in Europe.

849
00:43:17,400 --> 00:43:19,040
Speaker 2: We kind of mentioned kind of how it was going

850
00:43:19,080 --> 00:43:22,319
Speaker 2: post World War Two, but throughout the years it's kind

851
00:43:22,320 --> 00:43:24,520
Speaker 2: of ebbed and flowed in Europe. But it seems to

852
00:43:24,560 --> 00:43:30,239
Speaker 2: be more popular and doable depending on what country you're

853
00:43:30,280 --> 00:43:33,319
Speaker 2: in in Europe today, Like I think the Netherlands is

854
00:43:33,840 --> 00:43:35,799
Speaker 2: still sort of very well known as a country where

855
00:43:35,800 --> 00:43:40,719
Speaker 2: you can pretty safely hitchhike. I think Germany, at least

856
00:43:40,719 --> 00:43:44,280
Speaker 2: for a while it was pretty popular. Always generally frowned

857
00:43:44,320 --> 00:43:46,520
Speaker 2: upon in the UK, but.

858
00:43:46,480 --> 00:43:50,040
Speaker 1: People still didn't apparently still today, if you're around Glastonbury,

859
00:43:50,080 --> 00:43:53,440
Speaker 1: you're probably going to get hit up. Oh ride at

860
00:43:53,480 --> 00:43:54,520
Speaker 1: festival time.

861
00:43:54,680 --> 00:43:55,880
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that kind of thing.

862
00:43:55,920 --> 00:43:57,800
Speaker 2: Of course, there's always somebody on the side of the

863
00:43:57,840 --> 00:44:01,160
Speaker 2: road trying to go see some big music festival, probably

864
00:44:01,239 --> 00:44:04,520
Speaker 2: Dave Matthews or I'm sure, what's a burning man. I

865
00:44:04,560 --> 00:44:05,880
Speaker 2: bet that's half hitch hiking.

866
00:44:06,160 --> 00:44:09,040
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, I'm sure any of the big festivals

867
00:44:09,040 --> 00:44:10,880
Speaker 1: there's probably a lot of people hitching there.

868
00:44:11,440 --> 00:44:15,280
Speaker 2: We have to mention Cuba because it is a pretty

869
00:44:15,320 --> 00:44:19,520
Speaker 2: singularly unique country in terms of hitch hiking, in that

870
00:44:21,000 --> 00:44:24,600
Speaker 2: after the Berlin Wall fell, the oil from the Soviets

871
00:44:24,640 --> 00:44:27,319
Speaker 2: really dried up, and that I can't remember what the

872
00:44:27,360 --> 00:44:29,560
Speaker 2: period it was called, like the Special period or something

873
00:44:29,600 --> 00:44:34,799
Speaker 2: like that, where basically the national bus system and transportation

874
00:44:34,920 --> 00:44:38,960
Speaker 2: public transport system kind of stopped, it slowed down, then

875
00:44:39,000 --> 00:44:42,200
Speaker 2: eventually just went away, and then they nationalized it. In

876
00:44:42,239 --> 00:44:46,960
Speaker 2: that if you are a government I think it was

877
00:44:47,080 --> 00:44:49,840
Speaker 2: only until twenty fourteen, like you had to have a

878
00:44:49,880 --> 00:44:53,759
Speaker 2: special government license to even have a private car, but

879
00:44:53,880 --> 00:44:57,880
Speaker 2: if you are a government car, you are required supposedly

880
00:44:57,960 --> 00:45:01,120
Speaker 2: to pick up hitchhikers, and from what I read, I

881
00:45:01,120 --> 00:45:04,360
Speaker 2: read a few articles about it, like hitchhiking is public

882
00:45:04,400 --> 00:45:05,640
Speaker 2: transportation in Cuba.

883
00:45:05,719 --> 00:45:07,799
Speaker 3: Now, wow, it's kind of set up.

884
00:45:07,800 --> 00:45:10,360
Speaker 2: They're called yellow points where you stop at a certain

885
00:45:10,400 --> 00:45:13,520
Speaker 2: place if you're a government car, like if you're an

886
00:45:13,560 --> 00:45:17,000
Speaker 2: agricultural truck or whatever carrying something, you know, from province

887
00:45:17,000 --> 00:45:21,399
Speaker 2: to province, you're required to stop pick people up. They

888
00:45:21,440 --> 00:45:24,040
Speaker 2: pay you if it's within province, like a penny an

889
00:45:24,080 --> 00:45:28,000
Speaker 2: American dollars or I think eleven cents if it's trans provincial.

890
00:45:28,080 --> 00:45:31,959
Speaker 2: But really really interesting, and it's all on the hitch

891
00:45:31,960 --> 00:45:34,760
Speaker 2: wiki website. Of course, there's all kinds of great websites

892
00:45:34,760 --> 00:45:36,359
Speaker 2: now where you can really kind of find out where

893
00:45:36,520 --> 00:45:38,680
Speaker 2: it's good and not, because it's still a thing that

894
00:45:39,080 --> 00:45:41,000
Speaker 2: like a culture that a lot of people embrace. But

895
00:45:41,400 --> 00:45:44,920
Speaker 2: hitchwiki said that everybody hitchhikes in Cuba.

896
00:45:45,280 --> 00:45:46,920
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's just a way of life.

897
00:45:47,160 --> 00:45:49,840
Speaker 1: I was reading about Poland in the Cold War, I

898
00:45:49,840 --> 00:45:54,080
Speaker 1: think the fifties or sixties, where they essentially nationalized it

899
00:45:54,120 --> 00:45:56,440
Speaker 1: by I think they passed some regulations saying you basically

900
00:45:56,480 --> 00:46:00,720
Speaker 1: have to stop if you see a hitchhiker, private citizen

901
00:46:00,760 --> 00:46:03,080
Speaker 1: have to pick up hitchhikers. Now we're going to sweeten

902
00:46:03,120 --> 00:46:05,200
Speaker 1: the pot. We're going to sell these books of vouchers

903
00:46:05,200 --> 00:46:08,080
Speaker 1: that hitchhikers buy for very cheap, and then they give

904
00:46:08,120 --> 00:46:10,560
Speaker 1: you a voucher for picking them up, and then you,

905
00:46:10,840 --> 00:46:14,200
Speaker 1: the driver, hand it in and get a lottery ticket

906
00:46:14,239 --> 00:46:17,080
Speaker 1: in exchange, so you could win big bucks. But apparently

907
00:46:17,120 --> 00:46:19,600
Speaker 1: even still the Polish people were like, we don't like

908
00:46:19,680 --> 00:46:21,759
Speaker 1: being told that we have to pick up strangers if

909
00:46:21,760 --> 00:46:24,000
Speaker 1: we don't want to, and it kind of it was

910
00:46:24,040 --> 00:46:26,200
Speaker 1: never popular and it went away, but it's sounded like

911
00:46:26,239 --> 00:46:27,400
Speaker 1: an interesting experiment.

912
00:46:27,840 --> 00:46:30,520
Speaker 2: There's two lotteries, and there's the lottery of if you

913
00:46:30,600 --> 00:46:33,600
Speaker 2: have a serial killer that you've picked up, right, and

914
00:46:33,640 --> 00:46:36,600
Speaker 2: then there's a second lottery. I did forget one thing

915
00:46:36,600 --> 00:46:39,359
Speaker 2: about Cuba, and I thought was interesting. They call it

916
00:46:39,800 --> 00:46:42,760
Speaker 2: ear cone la botella, which means going with a bottle.

917
00:46:42,800 --> 00:46:45,480
Speaker 2: That's what they call it there because apparently they think

918
00:46:45,520 --> 00:46:48,319
Speaker 2: when you like stick your thumb up like that, it's

919
00:46:48,480 --> 00:46:51,440
Speaker 2: resembling you like holding something and taking a drink.

920
00:46:51,680 --> 00:46:56,040
Speaker 1: Awesome. Yeah, And then speaking of today, also, like you said,

921
00:46:56,080 --> 00:46:59,600
Speaker 1: there's a lot of sights that kind of trade info

922
00:46:59,640 --> 00:47:01,719
Speaker 1: and best places to get picked up and where to

923
00:47:01,760 --> 00:47:04,359
Speaker 1: avoid and all that stuff. That's a huge deal that

924
00:47:04,440 --> 00:47:08,560
Speaker 1: people even out on the road are connected. And I

925
00:47:08,560 --> 00:47:10,879
Speaker 1: saw that that actually you can make a really good

926
00:47:10,920 --> 00:47:15,200
Speaker 1: case that that's morphed into a combination between that whole

927
00:47:15,840 --> 00:47:19,680
Speaker 1: free spirit, freedom of the road, environmental thing, like it's

928
00:47:19,920 --> 00:47:23,200
Speaker 1: less environmentally impactful than not drive yourself, but to hitch instead,

929
00:47:24,640 --> 00:47:30,359
Speaker 1: combined with that transactional nature of our society. And now

930
00:47:30,360 --> 00:47:33,240
Speaker 1: we have ride share apps essentially the same thing, except

931
00:47:33,239 --> 00:47:36,080
Speaker 1: you're paying somebody to come get you rather than standing

932
00:47:36,080 --> 00:47:38,359
Speaker 1: out there relying on someone else's good will.

933
00:47:38,920 --> 00:47:42,200
Speaker 2: Well, there are also hitchhiking apps that are essentially ride

934
00:47:42,200 --> 00:47:44,560
Speaker 2: share apps that you don't pay for m h. And

935
00:47:44,600 --> 00:47:47,800
Speaker 2: I think it's just a way of connecting the hitchhiker

936
00:47:47,840 --> 00:47:51,279
Speaker 2: culture to like potentially ride supposedly.

937
00:47:51,320 --> 00:47:53,919
Speaker 1: Also one more thing in DC still to this day,

938
00:47:54,000 --> 00:47:57,000
Speaker 1: from what I read, there's something called slugging, and every

939
00:47:57,040 --> 00:47:59,000
Speaker 1: morning people who want to ride in the carpool but

940
00:47:59,040 --> 00:48:02,920
Speaker 1: are driving to work by there's like these pre determined

941
00:48:02,960 --> 00:48:05,240
Speaker 1: spots where people just line up and you just stop

942
00:48:05,280 --> 00:48:07,000
Speaker 1: and somebody gets in your car and you take them

943
00:48:07,000 --> 00:48:09,520
Speaker 1: into DC with you on your commute so you can

944
00:48:09,600 --> 00:48:10,719
Speaker 1: ride in the carpool lane.

945
00:48:11,239 --> 00:48:14,880
Speaker 2: That's like when Larry David picked up a sex worker

946
00:48:15,680 --> 00:48:18,600
Speaker 2: so he could get to the Dodger game quicker and

947
00:48:18,640 --> 00:48:20,680
Speaker 2: he ended up having to take her to the game

948
00:48:20,719 --> 00:48:23,719
Speaker 2: and all, oh, yeah, I had you know.

949
00:48:24,000 --> 00:48:25,719
Speaker 3: That's classic curb. Yeah.

950
00:48:25,840 --> 00:48:29,920
Speaker 1: So I would strongly recommend people read that nineteen sixty

951
00:48:29,960 --> 00:48:33,400
Speaker 1: six Sports Illustrated article by Janet Graham. It's called rule

952
00:48:33,480 --> 00:48:35,799
Speaker 1: of Thumb for the Open Road. And there's another one

953
00:48:35,840 --> 00:48:38,760
Speaker 1: from the under review of books by Mike j called

954
00:48:38,760 --> 00:48:42,800
Speaker 1: that Old Thumb. Both of them are just excellent. I

955
00:48:42,840 --> 00:48:45,400
Speaker 1: guess chronicles on hitchhiking over the decades.

956
00:48:45,640 --> 00:48:46,719
Speaker 3: Yeah, and that book's great.

957
00:48:47,920 --> 00:48:51,120
Speaker 1: Okay, well, chucks it. That book's great and we don't

958
00:48:51,120 --> 00:48:53,000
Speaker 1: have anything else to say about hitchhiking. So I think

959
00:48:53,000 --> 00:48:55,560
Speaker 1: that means everybody, it's time for a listener mail.

960
00:48:59,160 --> 00:49:02,480
Speaker 2: I'm gonna call this that Brook is great because this

961
00:49:02,560 --> 00:49:03,120
Speaker 2: is from Brook.

962
00:49:03,560 --> 00:49:05,000
Speaker 1: Okay, you like how did that?

963
00:49:05,440 --> 00:49:07,000
Speaker 3: Hey, guys, my name is Brook. I love listening to

964
00:49:07,080 --> 00:49:08,239
Speaker 3: your show now.

965
00:49:08,280 --> 00:49:11,440
Speaker 2: In the latest episode, Peanuts Part two, you stated that

966
00:49:11,480 --> 00:49:14,440
Speaker 2: the comic strip setting is unknown. We were wrong, my

967
00:49:14,520 --> 00:49:17,440
Speaker 2: friend on behalf of Minnesota I had to mention that

968
00:49:17,520 --> 00:49:20,960
Speaker 2: Hennepin County, Minnesota, was actually stated to be the setting

969
00:49:21,040 --> 00:49:22,880
Speaker 2: in a nineteen fifty seven strip.

970
00:49:23,360 --> 00:49:25,400
Speaker 1: Okay, I don't like this email. I don't want to

971
00:49:25,440 --> 00:49:25,799
Speaker 1: know this.

972
00:49:26,840 --> 00:49:30,120
Speaker 2: Minnesota's are especially obsessed with Peanuts and Snoopy. Minnesota is

973
00:49:30,160 --> 00:49:34,120
Speaker 2: over five hundred five foot Peanuts statues scattered across the state,

974
00:49:34,560 --> 00:49:37,600
Speaker 2: with more than one hundred of them being in Saint Paul.

975
00:49:38,320 --> 00:49:40,759
Speaker 2: They also used to be a Peanuts theme park in

976
00:49:40,800 --> 00:49:43,120
Speaker 2: the Mall of America called Camp Snoopy.

977
00:49:43,360 --> 00:49:44,759
Speaker 3: Sadly, Camp Snoopy.

978
00:49:44,400 --> 00:49:47,480
Speaker 2: Would later become Nickelodeon Park in two thousand and eight.

979
00:49:48,239 --> 00:49:52,160
Speaker 2: Even still, statues of the Peanuts gang are scattered far

980
00:49:52,200 --> 00:49:55,640
Speaker 2: and wide, including a Linus statue at the Minnesota State Fair.

981
00:49:56,320 --> 00:49:58,480
Speaker 2: Even my uncle had a Linu statue in his yard.

982
00:49:59,360 --> 00:50:02,200
Speaker 2: Had no idea. Thanks so much for the show. I

983
00:50:02,280 --> 00:50:06,040
Speaker 2: listen while I am trail skating thirty plus miles for

984
00:50:06,280 --> 00:50:08,000
Speaker 2: marathon skate training.

985
00:50:08,239 --> 00:50:10,000
Speaker 3: Wow, do you know that was the thing.

986
00:50:11,160 --> 00:50:14,560
Speaker 1: No, I'm taking that to mean like rollerblading.

987
00:50:14,719 --> 00:50:18,400
Speaker 2: I guess, or roller skates for whatever thirty something miles.

988
00:50:18,560 --> 00:50:21,960
Speaker 1: I'll bet Brooke has extraordinarily strong thighs at this point

989
00:50:22,719 --> 00:50:24,120
Speaker 1: I can't imagine.

990
00:50:23,719 --> 00:50:26,680
Speaker 2: Dude, gabs and feet and big toes and little toes.

991
00:50:26,680 --> 00:50:29,319
Speaker 2: I bet it's all very strong. You guys definitely helped

992
00:50:29,320 --> 00:50:30,880
Speaker 2: me get through it. I love all the little jokes

993
00:50:31,360 --> 00:50:33,279
Speaker 2: in side comments. I hope you have a great day.

994
00:50:33,880 --> 00:50:37,280
Speaker 1: Thanks a lot, Brook. That was a quintessential Minnesota. Nice

995
00:50:37,680 --> 00:50:40,840
Speaker 1: sign off too, By the way, thank you. Totally great email,

996
00:50:41,120 --> 00:50:44,080
Speaker 1: and even though I it contained information I didn't really

997
00:50:44,120 --> 00:50:46,200
Speaker 1: want to hear, I still must off my hat to

998
00:50:46,239 --> 00:50:48,600
Speaker 1: you for that oneft. If you want to be like

999
00:50:48,600 --> 00:50:50,760
Speaker 1: Brook and get in touch with us with some information

1000
00:50:50,880 --> 00:50:53,720
Speaker 1: we don't necessarily want to hear, we prefer you didn't

1001
00:50:53,719 --> 00:50:57,360
Speaker 1: do that. Otherwise, you can email us at stuff podcast

1002
00:50:57,440 --> 00:51:03,279
Speaker 1: at iHeartRadio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a

1003
00:51:03,320 --> 00:51:04,600
Speaker 1: production of iHeartRadio.

1004
00:51:05,080 --> 00:51:08,280
Speaker 3: For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,

1005
00:51:08,480 --> 00:51:11,400
Speaker 3: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.