Speaker 1: The story I'm about to tell you is a cautionary tale.
Speaker 1: In October twenty four, I made an appearance on The
Speaker 1: Tonight Show with Jay Leno to promote my book on
Speaker 1: presidential paste about them Come out Here More Rocket lad.
Speaker 1: But it's not my appearance on the show that I regret.
Speaker 1: It's what happened next. After the taping, I went back
Speaker 1: to my hotel in Universal City. I hadn't eaten dinner,
Speaker 1: and the hotel restaurant was offering a seafood buffet. I
Speaker 1: can still see it now, a sort of banquet table
Speaker 1: with tears of crab legs. I'm pretty sure there were
Speaker 1: oysters and dominating the landscape, a mountain of shrimp, a
Speaker 1: glistening pink pyramid. How could I resist? By the time
Speaker 1: I was on that evening, that bounty of shrimp was
Speaker 1: less of a pyramid and more of a mound. The
Speaker 1: next morning, I flew back East, happy as a well clam,
Speaker 1: but somewhere over the Midwest I started experiencing turbulence and
Speaker 1: inner turbulence. The choppiness subsided only after thirty six hours
Speaker 1: in and out of bed, and I knew what was
Speaker 1: to blame for my condition until that point in my life,
Speaker 1: I was pro buffet, and I thought, I can't believe
Speaker 1: that I did that. Everyone was exhaling on the shrimp,
Speaker 1: and I don't want to eat other people's exhale.
Speaker 2: Right, But probably that came from bad shrimp, not a
Speaker 2: human breath.
Speaker 1: It could have been other shrimp's breath. It could have
Speaker 1: been other shrimp's breath. I mean, let's talk about that.
Speaker 1: Everyone can name something they'd like to see vanished from
Speaker 1: the earth. I'm guessing famine, disease, war top most lists.
Speaker 1: But what are the things just below those that you
Speaker 1: wish would disappear me? I have at least three, one
Speaker 1: of which made the list that very night in twenty
Speaker 1: oh four.
Speaker 2: That kind of buffet, the sticky tongs and the you know,
Speaker 2: you see somebody who just like dug around to the
Speaker 2: back of the macaroni and cheese try to get like
Speaker 2: the very best in the back, and then it's all
Speaker 2: kind of growed it out, and it's, oh yeah.
Speaker 1: The second thing on my list. Well, I've never complained
Speaker 1: when an audience has applauded me like they did that
Speaker 1: night on Leno, But there's a certain kind of intense,
Speaker 1: exaggerated reaction that over the last few years has become
Speaker 1: all but meaningless.
Speaker 3: Standing ovations are a bit like an avalanche. Fun person
Speaker 3: stands and then a few other people think, Oh, well,
Speaker 3: I guess we're standing.
Speaker 1: And please don't make me raise my voice to tell
Speaker 1: you about the third thing on my list that really
Speaker 1: works my nerves.
Speaker 2: It's a blight on any neighborhood. It's war without our permission.
Speaker 1: On this podcast, we've paid tribute to beloved entertainers and
Speaker 1: courageous change makers, sitcom characters gone without a trace, even
Speaker 1: iconic college campus trees, people and things that deserve to
Speaker 1: live on in the collective memory. But today I want
Speaker 1: to talk about three things that I really just wish
Speaker 1: would die already from CBS Sunday Morning and iHeart. I'm
Speaker 1: Morocca and this is mobituaries this moment things I wish
Speaker 1: would die Buffets, standing, ovation, and noise. I was looking
Speaker 1: at this video of a clan of hyenas feasting on
Speaker 1: an elephant carcass, and I thought, is there something in
Speaker 1: our nature that makes us want to gather around this
Speaker 1: trough of food and just go for it?
Speaker 2: Remind me not to go out to dinner with you?
Speaker 4: Mo.
Speaker 2: But is there an animalistic nature to eating at a buffet? Probably,
Speaker 2: certainly at some of the buffets I saw there is that.
Speaker 1: That's Kim Severson. She's a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist who
Speaker 1: writes about food and culture for The New York Times.
Speaker 1: She's written about the unexpected comeback of the buffet. Let
Speaker 1: me ask you, didn't we think the pandemic would kill buffets?
Speaker 2: Absolutely, that is absolutely the surprise of the post pandemic era.
Speaker 2: I just thought they would never come back.
Speaker 1: Buffets did get creamed early in the pandemic, but the
Speaker 1: Golden Corral chain says their business shot back up twenty
Speaker 1: percent between twenty twenty one and twenty twenty two.
Speaker 2: Maybe the fact that people had to be so distant
Speaker 2: from their food and other people, they've overcompensated by really
Speaker 2: going hardcore on the buffet. They're like, damn it, I
Speaker 2: just want to get my prime rib and my all
Speaker 2: you can eat crab.
Speaker 5: Oh.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I just don't want whooping cough with my
Speaker 1: Waldorf salad.
Speaker 6: Okay.
Speaker 1: I can hear a lot of you saying what is
Speaker 1: most problem with buffets? So let me be clear. What
Speaker 1: makes me uneasy? Are the entirely self served buffets. They're
Speaker 1: sometimes known as hot open food bars, where there is
Speaker 1: no one standing between the food and the mob, no
Speaker 1: food professionals on active duty. That irks me because, let's
Speaker 1: face it, people myself included, revert to our natural state
Speaker 1: when there's not a lady in a hairnet brandishing a
Speaker 1: ladle and glaring at us to mind our manners.
Speaker 2: And some people actually take little tastes along the way
Speaker 2: with their fingers. Oh they do. Oh, Oh, I'm so sorry.
Speaker 7: Do you need a minute?
Speaker 1: This is the only interview where I've needed a spit bucket.
Speaker 2: I'm so sorry.
Speaker 1: Am I being totally rational here? Of course I'm not.
Speaker 1: Plenty of full service restaurants, even very popular ones, have
Speaker 1: food safety issues. But when I'm holding a pair of
Speaker 1: sticky tongs that one hundred other strangers have touched and
Speaker 1: looking at a bin of gloopy mystery meat, I start
Speaker 1: imagining things. The look, that glistening look of congealed meat.
Speaker 1: It's not about the taste or even the smell, but
Speaker 1: it almost looks like what I imagine the La Brea
Speaker 1: tar pits look like.
Speaker 2: And this it's really just sells for a steak, But
Speaker 2: how do you know? You don't know.
Speaker 1: Of course, buffets are probably as old as those tar pets.
Speaker 1: When in human history, to self serve buffets emerge.
Speaker 2: We have to imagine that there have always been occasions
Speaker 2: in which a lot of food would be cooked and
Speaker 2: put out and people would eat it. But I think
Speaker 2: as a formal style of restaurant eating, we can go
Speaker 2: to Sweden and the Smorgasboard. Sweden hosted the Olympics in
Speaker 2: nineteen twelve, and everybody was so thrilled that they had
Speaker 2: this thing called Smorgasboard that you could just go and
Speaker 2: help yourself.
Speaker 1: Now, the Smorgas board wasn't for pegging out originally for
Speaker 1: the upper classes. It was more of a refined spread,
Speaker 1: typically composed of cheeses, cured meats, fish like herring, flatbreads,
Speaker 1: and sweets. You might remember us mentioning this Smorgas board
Speaker 1: earlier this season, in the Jim Thorpe episode he triumphed
Speaker 1: at those nineteen twelve games. You might also remember the
Speaker 1: Smorgas board from the Buppet show More Bizergh. They're going
Speaker 1: to get that Swedish chef someday. Who is the Smorgasboard
Speaker 1: of Hell? Anyway, the smorgasboard made a splash on American shores.
Speaker 1: At the nineteen thirty nine World's Fair in New York City.
Speaker 1: Visitors were reportedly spellbound by the vast rotating table festooned
Speaker 1: with Swedish delicacies. It was basically a giant lazy Susan.
Speaker 1: And who doesn't love a lazy Susan? But how did
Speaker 1: that evolve into the buffet as we know it today, Well,
Speaker 1: it takes rout as this will not come as a
Speaker 1: surprise to people. But in Las Vegas in the forties
Speaker 1: and there was this idea that somehow we've got to
Speaker 1: keep people inside the casino. The story goes that a
Speaker 1: man named Herb McDonald, the publicist for the l Rancho
Speaker 1: Vegas casino, was working late one night when he began
Speaker 1: feeling peckish. He grabbed some che es and cold cuts
Speaker 1: from the kitchen and laid them out on the bar
Speaker 1: to make a sandwich. When some hungry gamblers asked to partake,
Speaker 1: Herb had an idea, and in nineteen forty six he
Speaker 1: debuted his Bukaroo buffet and all you can eat buffet
Speaker 1: for one dollar.
Speaker 2: This idea that you could keep gamblers in your casino
Speaker 2: started off with just some sandwiches, and then it became
Speaker 2: all you can eat and everything you want and you
Speaker 2: never have to leave the casino. And they were very cheap.
Speaker 2: They were lost leaders and remained lost leaders in Vegas
Speaker 2: for a long time until the celebrity chef era happened.
Speaker 1: By the nineteen eighties, buffets had spread across the country.
Speaker 1: They were featured on cruise ships and in fast food
Speaker 1: chains like Pizza Hut.
Speaker 6: So if you want the whole hut and.
Speaker 1: Nothing but you know what to do. Fine dining restaurants
Speaker 1: embraced them. My first fancy buffet was at a hotel
Speaker 1: on Easter Sunday Fay. It turned out was a manifestation
Speaker 1: of American values.
Speaker 2: Americans love excess, right, we love big things. We love choice,
Speaker 2: and the buffets are the perfect example of that.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 1: You mentioned choice, and I want to play a piece
Speaker 1: of a promotional video for Sizzler that was produced in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety one.
Speaker 4: All across America, the song three Rings.
Speaker 6: The song is growing stronger every day.
Speaker 1: So this video is about five minutes long. It's heavy
Speaker 1: on Americana. There's a smiling construction worker, a little girl
Speaker 1: swinging a baseball bat, a golden retriever catching a frisbee.
Speaker 1: It feels like a campaign ad. Sizzler brings the choices
Speaker 1: that you've been looking for, giving you the right to choose.
Speaker 1: We're offering much more. And then the requisite key change
Speaker 1: as the jingles swells into a Sizzler an amney. There
Speaker 1: are golden, huge shots of couples and families dining. They
Speaker 1: aren't simply happy, they're in ecstasy. Some of them might
Speaker 1: actually be on ecstasy. A woman is maniacally licking her lips.
Speaker 1: A couple begins making out at the Sissler. That's what
Speaker 1: the freedom and choice of a buffet will do to you.
Speaker 2: Unbelievable. How fabulous is that?
Speaker 1: I keep thinking, like, oh my god, did I remember
Speaker 1: to register to vote? Like it feels very It's right,
Speaker 1: it's don't stop believing. But a buffet commercial. You know,
Speaker 1: the video may be over the top, but Kim points
Speaker 1: out that the buffet restaurant really is more than just
Speaker 1: a place to eat.
Speaker 2: I love them and I also can't stand them at
Speaker 2: the same time. But the buffet became such a piece
Speaker 2: of cultural currency for kids, and they can still remember
Speaker 2: when their families were going to celebrate something, they would
Speaker 2: all go to the hometown buffet because you could feel
Speaker 2: celebratory and it wasn't going to cost a lot of money.
Speaker 2: And also for kids who were second generation, their parents
Speaker 2: were immigrants, the buffet became kind of a roadmap for
Speaker 2: how to eat in America. And I think for those
Speaker 2: parents it was like, Okay, we're going to go learn
Speaker 2: to eat whatever the American food is. Here a good
Speaker 2: friend of mine whose parents came from Taiwana and she
Speaker 2: was raised in Ohio by these first gen immigrants. The
Speaker 2: day they all got their green cards, they went to
Speaker 2: the buffet to celebrate.
Speaker 1: Now I appreciate all of this, unless you, the listener,
Speaker 1: think I'm a killjoy or curmudgeon. I want to make
Speaker 1: one point very clear. I want to draw a distinction
Speaker 1: between cafeterias and buffets. I am very pro cafeteria.
Speaker 2: Really, Okay, okay, what's the difference to you? Then?
Speaker 1: A cafeteria to me, is where you have someone policing
Speaker 1: the situation. So I loved growing up there was I
Speaker 1: grew up in the Washington, DC area, there was something
Speaker 1: called hot Shops cafeteria, and at hot Shops we cook
Speaker 1: our chickens. So They're always tendered, juicy and delicious, and
Speaker 1: I have fond memories of grabbing my tray feeling so empowered,
Speaker 1: going along the line, the carving station with the side
Speaker 1: of roast beef, the individually plated slices of lemon meringue pie.
Speaker 1: I felt safe, and I felt secure because there were
Speaker 1: people with plastic gloves and hairnets on the other side,
Speaker 1: and even if I could grab something on my own,
Speaker 1: I knew that there was a watchful eye. And I
Speaker 1: feel like the buffet, on the other hand, is small
Speaker 1: de democracy brought to its extreme. I'm not saying that
Speaker 1: I want a cafeteria police state. I'm not saying that.
Speaker 1: I think the key to it with the cafeterias that
Speaker 1: everything was individually played. That's why I really respond to that.
Speaker 2: And there's a cleanliness factor for sure.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, I just don't want tuberculosis with my chicken tetrazini. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: I'm grateful to live at a time and in a
Speaker 1: country with buffets and cafeterias, because no one wants to
Speaker 1: be told what they can and can't eat.
Speaker 2: You're a perfect example of that in a way. Right
Speaker 2: you know what you want and what you don't want,
Speaker 2: and what you will eat and what you won't.
Speaker 1: Eat, And well, I know one thing I don't want,
Speaker 1: heppatitis with my hash Browns.
Speaker 2: I think that's fair. I think that's fair.
Speaker 1: A final word. The producer of this episode tells me
Speaker 1: she now has serious second thoughts about eating at her workplaces.
Speaker 1: Open food bar. You're welcome, Liz. On the other side
Speaker 1: of the break.
Speaker 8: Whoo whoo, sing the trolley song again, Yes, queen, Yes.
Speaker 1: Do you remember your first standing ovation? I'll never forget
Speaker 1: my first standing ovation. This is my friend Eric Meir.
Speaker 1: You might remember him from our episode on Fanny Brice.
Speaker 1: Eric's a culture critic with the Hudson Review, and he's
Speaker 1: back to talk about the second thing I wish would die,
Speaker 1: the obligatory standing ovation.
Speaker 3: It was e Liza Minellian concert at the Airy Crown
Speaker 3: Theater in Chicago around nineteen eighty. I was a teenager
Speaker 3: who had seen the movie Cabaret about six times, and
Speaker 3: at the end of the concert, everybody stood, and I
Speaker 3: thought to myself, oh my god, she was so amazing
Speaker 3: that she literally forced people onto their feet, as if
Speaker 3: she levitated them out of their seats. I had never
Speaker 3: seen something like that before.
Speaker 1: Okay, first of all, it's a parent that you were
Speaker 1: exactly the right person to bring in here to talk
Speaker 1: about this, because you have this memory from over forty
Speaker 1: years ago. So what was motivating you to stand up?
Speaker 1: Was it her performance or everybody else standing?
Speaker 3: It was everybody else standing because I didn't know that
Speaker 3: was a thing that you could do at the time.
Speaker 3: But I hadn't seen a lot of theater other than
Speaker 3: community theater and that kind of thing, and no one
Speaker 3: stood at the stagecoach players. But back in the seventies,
Speaker 3: people didn't really stand, even if they loved the show.
Speaker 3: There were exceptions, but it required a certain kind of
Speaker 3: performance and a certain kind of performer to get people
Speaker 3: on their feet.
Speaker 6: That, of course, is now all changed.
Speaker 1: It certainly has changed. Today. A standing ovation at the
Speaker 1: end of a theatrical performance or at an awards show
Speaker 1: has become almost routine. It wasn't so long ago that
Speaker 1: a standing ovation was extraordinary.
Speaker 4: And let it be said that number eight cal Ripkin
Speaker 4: Junior has reached the unreachable Star.
Speaker 1: The unreachable Star is a reference to the impossible dream
Speaker 1: from the musical Man of La Mancha. But this standing
Speaker 1: ovation in nineteen eighty five wasn't in a theater. It
Speaker 1: was in a ballpark. For Baltimore Orioles player Cal Ripkin Junior.
Speaker 1: He'd just broken Lou Garrigg's record for playing the most
Speaker 1: consecutive Major League Baseball games ever two thousand, one hundred
Speaker 1: and thirty one to be exact. I remember when this happened,
Speaker 1: and trust me, you don't have to be a baseball
Speaker 1: fan to watch tape of this and be moved by
Speaker 1: the show of respect and admiration for a man who'd
Speaker 1: shown such devotion to his livelihood. The ovation was completely organic,
Speaker 1: and at twenty two minutes yep, twenty two minutes, it
Speaker 1: was the longest known standing ovation in American public life.
Speaker 1: Contrast this with a standing ovation a decade later that
Speaker 1: matched the twenty two minute Rippken record. In twenty oh six,
Speaker 1: the audience at the can Film Festival in France applauded
Speaker 1: for about that long after a screening of the movie
Speaker 1: Pans Labyrinth, but the director, Guillermo del Toro seemed less
Speaker 1: flattered and more confused by the reaction.
Speaker 6: It lasted long enough that I didn't know what to do.
Speaker 1: This standing ovation, like so many, it can felt unfelt.
Speaker 3: So I think what happened to Ken is something that
Speaker 3: also we could maybe say has happened in the theater,
Speaker 3: and that is that there's a certain aspect of standing
Speaker 3: ovations that are performative, where the audience wants to prove
Speaker 3: to everyone around them that they are appreciating what's happening
Speaker 3: and are sort of part of the experience.
Speaker 1: No doubt, audiences of the past would be mystified by
Speaker 1: audiences of today, and vice versa.
Speaker 3: We would probably look at audience behavior one hundred and
Speaker 3: fifty or two hundred years ago, let alone five hundred
Speaker 3: or two thousand years ago, and not recognize what was
Speaker 3: being done.
Speaker 6: There's so much we don't know about.
Speaker 3: Greek theater, but we get a sense from contemporary descriptions
Speaker 3: that there was an intense identification between the audience and
Speaker 3: what was happening on stage. So there would be a
Speaker 3: lot of sort of expressive reaction, crying, wailing, shouting and
Speaker 3: so forth. Wailing and shouting, right, you know, because these
Speaker 3: were very tragic stories often being told or else riots
Speaker 3: laughter at the comedies. But we don't have any sense
Speaker 3: of whether people stood at the end or not. There's
Speaker 3: no document of that kind of thing. Remember, in Shakespeare's time,
Speaker 3: most of the audience stood for the entire performance, so
Speaker 3: a standing ovation would have been redundant.
Speaker 1: Goodness God, it's sort of crazy that I think. I mean,
Speaker 1: I know it would have been redundant. But you know
Speaker 1: that Julius Caesar didn't get a standing ovation, and the
Speaker 1: Gloria Estefan musical On your Feet got a standing ovation, which,
Speaker 1: by the way, I liked, I actually really liked it.
Speaker 1: Do you think they by the way, do you think
Speaker 1: they titled it on your Feet to get people on their.
Speaker 6: Eata and sort of a self fulfilling prophecy.
Speaker 1: It wasn't until the eighteenth century that audiences began even
Speaker 1: clapping in a theater. Around this time, in Italy, opera
Speaker 1: fans probably began standing for exceptional performances. Theater historians tend
Speaker 1: to agree that the standing ovation emerged in its current
Speaker 1: form on Broadway in the years after World War Two.
Speaker 3: So what happens in the nineteen sixties, and I have
Speaker 3: to reference our friend Ethan Warden here, who has written
Speaker 3: about this quite a bit. There's a new phenomenon of
Speaker 3: what we might call the big Lady shows, where musicals
Speaker 3: in particular are built around specific star performers, and the
Speaker 3: early examples of that are, of course shows like Hello
Speaker 3: Dolly or Mame, where we see a phenomenon of people
Speaker 3: buying tickets because you have to see Carl Channing and
Speaker 3: Hello Dolly, or you have to see Angela Lansbury in Maine.
Speaker 1: In the years before these big Lady shows, the curtain
Speaker 1: call that's when performers take their bows was short and
Speaker 1: to the point.
Speaker 3: Up through the nineteen fifties, even shows like My Fair
Speaker 3: Lady that were massive hits, there's about two and a
Speaker 3: half minutes of curtain call music, which means that everybody
Speaker 3: came on the leads, took a few solo bows, and
Speaker 3: everybody got off pretty quickly.
Speaker 1: There's not enough time to stand up for Julie Andrews
Speaker 1: and Richard Burton and Robert Gulay and correct Camelot exactly.
Speaker 3: But by the time you get to Hello Dolly, there's
Speaker 3: a fully staged curtain call. And this is something that
Speaker 3: the director, GOWERT. Champion, really wanted to do. It's not
Speaker 3: just everybody's shuffle on, bow bow, bow, shuffle off. It's
Speaker 3: a choreographed curtain call with music that is deliberately written
Speaker 3: to build the tension up until the moment that Caryl
Speaker 3: Channing comes down those stairs one more time for that
Speaker 3: final bow.
Speaker 1: Producers began doing what they could to guarantee a standing ovation.
Speaker 3: And I actually know this because we have a mutual friend, Bart,
Speaker 3: who was hired straight out of college by the producers
Speaker 3: of the Hello Dolly revival in nineteen ninety five with
Speaker 3: Carol Channing, with Carol Channing her final Dolly performances, to
Speaker 3: sit in the second row at every single performance and
Speaker 3: start the standing ovation.
Speaker 6: At the end.
Speaker 1: So he was a plant.
Speaker 6: He was a plant.
Speaker 3: He stood, and then it becomes a cascading phenomenon, which
Speaker 3: standing ovations are a bit like an avalanche quicksidebar.
Speaker 1: Along with ovation inflation has come a new way of
Speaker 1: vocalizing appreciation for a performance. No more Bravo or encore. Now,
Speaker 1: no matter what kind of show you're seeing, you're likely
Speaker 1: to hear woo.
Speaker 3: The WU is a fairly recent phenomenon.
Speaker 1: And it's horrible. I mean, it is just awful, the
Speaker 1: WU phenomenon. It's a scourge.
Speaker 3: I think the woof phenomenon is something that comes from
Speaker 3: audiences who attend as much pop music as they do
Speaker 3: theater these days, and they've brought that sensibility into the theater.
Speaker 1: Not long ago, Eric went to a performance of a
Speaker 1: small chamber musical serious in tone, and still.
Speaker 3: There was a significant portion of the audience and I'm
Speaker 3: gonna stereotype them as being people under the age of
Speaker 3: thirty who were wooing or even saying yes in the
Speaker 3: middle of the numbers, being performed like a yazz queen
Speaker 3: kind of thing, Right, yeah, or you know, saying it
Speaker 3: that kind of thing. You're kidding me, right, And let
Speaker 3: me clarify that I in no way endorse wooing during
Speaker 3: the performance of the song after the singer has finished.
Speaker 3: Wooing is acceptable to me. But wooing a high note
Speaker 3: to the middle of the song, I do find obnoxious.
Speaker 1: A wooing a high note. That's horrendous to do that. Now,
Speaker 1: let's venture beyond theater on television. The Oscars are handy
Speaker 1: barometer of how commonplace standing ovations have become. I still
Speaker 1: remember the nineteen eighty five Oscars telecast when Jack Lemon
Speaker 1: introduced Lord Lawrence Olivier to present the Best Picture winner.
Speaker 1: Olivier wasn't receiving an award, but his very presence brought
Speaker 1: the crowd to its feet. Olivier himself was overcome and
Speaker 1: forgot to name the nominees.
Speaker 7: And the winner for this is.
Speaker 6: I'm adeus.
Speaker 3: Nowadays, of course, it seems like there's usually about six
Speaker 3: or seven standing ovations at each Oscar ceremony.
Speaker 1: Will Smith got a standing ovation after he hit someone.
Speaker 3: That what he did indeed, and I sort of feel like,
Speaker 3: you know, the appreciation is the award. You don't need
Speaker 3: the standing ovation as well. You're holding an Oscar in
Speaker 3: your hand. That's the win to me.
Speaker 1: The corollary to the standing ovation is the exclamation point
Speaker 1: and the use of it.
Speaker 3: That is something that is certainly a factor of our
Speaker 3: digital age that I became really aware of how often
Speaker 3: I was using exclamation points in emails.
Speaker 1: But it's an arms race, and I don't like, you're great.
Speaker 1: Next time I email you, I don't want to not
Speaker 1: use an exclamation point because I would worry that you
Speaker 1: think I'm upset at you or for something.
Speaker 3: The exclamation point is the new period, and the double
Speaker 3: exclamation point is the new exclamation point. You have to
Speaker 3: use two or three now to indicate that you really
Speaker 3: are exclaiming this and not just stating it.
Speaker 1: What can we do about this?
Speaker 3: It's that rock has started to roll down the hill,
Speaker 3: and there's no way to get it to stop.
Speaker 1: I think likewise, there may be no standing up to
Speaker 1: the standing ovation.
Speaker 3: Times change, and the way we express appreciation evolves with time,
Speaker 3: and so we are at a stage now where the
Speaker 3: standing ovation is obligatory, and we can choose to fight
Speaker 3: that or just to accept it. And I've come to
Speaker 3: a place of acceptance. I don't love it in my heart,
Speaker 3: but I accept it with my brain.
Speaker 1: You've opened my mind, though, Okay, but I'll never be
Speaker 1: okay with wooing.
Speaker 6: No, this was amazing.
Speaker 1: Whoo coming up, it's gonna get a little loud. Hey
Speaker 1: there among the number two train headed uptown right now,
Speaker 1: I said, mail, which.
Speaker 7: I'm sure.
Speaker 1: It's no surprise that New York City, the city I
Speaker 1: call home, is a noisy place. This is my piece
Speaker 1: of work, so it should come as no surprise that
Speaker 1: the third thing I'd like to die is noise. Maybe
Speaker 1: it's getting older, maybe it's my tinatus that ringing in
Speaker 1: my ears, But more and more I value quiet. Honestly,
Speaker 1: if the library opened to a restaurant, I'd be the
Speaker 1: first to make a reservation. But I also realized that
Speaker 1: noise is subjective.
Speaker 7: I don't think there's a universal definition of noise. It
Speaker 7: depends on where you are, who you are, and when
Speaker 7: you're doing the listening.
Speaker 1: That's Mark Smith. He's a history professor at the University
Speaker 1: of South Carolina, where he specializes in something called sensory history.
Speaker 1: He teaches his students not just what the past looked like,
Speaker 1: but what it smelled, tasted, and sounded like. And oh,
Speaker 1: how I wish I'd been able to take his course
Speaker 1: when I was in college.
Speaker 7: Okay, so sound is often associated as a positive thing, right.
Speaker 7: Noise is considered to be sound out of time. That
Speaker 7: is to say, something that you could hear during the
Speaker 7: day happens at two o'clock in the morning and it
Speaker 7: suddenly becomes noise. And that's what noise ordinances are usually about.
Speaker 1: Now there's nothing about people grumbling about noise, and we've
Speaker 1: got seven decades of CBS news archives to prove it.
Speaker 1: There's the burglar alarm in Maryland that went off for
Speaker 1: five days.
Speaker 3: I'm taking eight hundred milligrams of motor and that puts
Speaker 3: me right to sleep because you hear it constantly.
Speaker 5: And the New Orleans jazz residents who sued their city
Speaker 5: for get this loud street jazz.
Speaker 1: Just imagine your own house if you wake up and
Speaker 1: there's a large brass band out there, and it's there
Speaker 1: every day, eight to ten hours a day, seven days
Speaker 1: a week. Back in the eighties, when boomboxes were booming,
Speaker 1: there was the campaign for radio free zones.
Speaker 6: In New York. There are fines for violators up to
Speaker 6: fifty dollars.
Speaker 1: I've been coming here every day, my radio man, my
Speaker 1: take Santana's greatest hits.
Speaker 6: You know it's a cave and play it.
Speaker 1: And later on the valiant fight against leaf blowers in
Speaker 1: northern California.
Speaker 2: It's a blight on any neighborhood. It's war without our permission.
Speaker 1: Quick aside, that voice you just heard is Julie Newmar
Speaker 1: TV's original Catwoman.
Speaker 2: This is my night to Howe back then, because tonight
Speaker 2: you are the mice and I am the cat.
Speaker 1: And then there's the Virginia dog who was sentenced to
Speaker 1: death for barking. They were just bark, bark, bark, bark, balks.
Speaker 6: I don't believe it.
Speaker 7: That's the CBS eving news for this Friday day and
Speaker 7: rather reporting from New York and hoping you have a
Speaker 7: good weekend.
Speaker 1: Don't worry. The ruling was overturned and backs went free.
Speaker 1: But what do we know about what kept people awake
Speaker 1: before sound recorded history?
Speaker 7: I suspect for most of human history, the loudest noise
Speaker 7: before the modern era that anybody would have heard would
Speaker 7: have been thunder.
Speaker 5: That's Mark Smith, again, our sensory historian. I asked him
Speaker 5: to take us back in time. What about the sounds
Speaker 5: that the early settlers in a manner America from Europe heard.
Speaker 7: So bells, for example, can be found in the earliest
Speaker 7: colonial villages, and those bells are marking Western civilization as
Speaker 7: they hear it onto this new world. But beyond the
Speaker 7: physical limits of that township or that village was a
Speaker 7: howling wilderness known as the rant. This is a place
Speaker 7: yet to be discovered. This is a place to be feared.
Speaker 7: This is a place to retreat from or impose your
Speaker 7: will over.
Speaker 1: Okay, well, the howling wilderness that you're describing sounds terrifying.
Speaker 1: It sounds like something out of Game of Thrones. First
Speaker 1: of all, they're just like that. This border territory between
Speaker 1: their very probably very small villages at this point and
Speaker 1: the vast unknown. Is it wind, is it animals? What
Speaker 1: is it that they're hearing?
Speaker 7: Well, it's all of the above. The topography of the
Speaker 7: place is quite different to many European countries. When you
Speaker 7: go to a place, you make comparisons, and that comparison
Speaker 7: is going to be inevitably hostage to the time that
Speaker 7: you make it. So, for example, tornadoes existed in colonial
Speaker 7: America right when these settlers were first arriving. But they
Speaker 7: couldn't possibly say that those tornadoes sounded like a freight train,
Speaker 7: could they did? They say it sounded like satan. It's demonic,
Speaker 7: but it could also be the wrath of God. It
Speaker 7: must have been absolutely nerving at a very deep emotional
Speaker 7: level to hear what America sounded like.
Speaker 1: When trains did begin crisscrossing the country in the eighteen
Speaker 1: twenties and thirties, the sounds were just as startling as thunder.
Speaker 7: People didn't quite know what to make of them. I mean,
Speaker 7: here you have a sound of movement cutting through the countryside,
Speaker 7: and it's terrifying at first for some people, Now what
Speaker 7: is that? And then when the whistle goes off. It's unnerving,
Speaker 7: but very quickly people begin to embrace that sound as
Speaker 7: a kind of progress. And then after that, the sound
Speaker 7: of the train becomes quickly incorporated into the fabric of
Speaker 7: American nostalgia, especially a steam engine.
Speaker 1: So it goes from scary to a sign of progress
Speaker 1: to something almost romantic.
Speaker 7: I think so. I think that's the point. Yes, this
Speaker 7: is an example of attaching meaning that changes over time.
Speaker 7: When we hear bells today, we think of them as quaint, right,
Speaker 7: They kind of rally people to church, But they didn't
Speaker 7: always sound quaint to certain people. And if you're an
Speaker 7: enslaved person on a southern plantation, a bell has nothing
Speaker 7: quaint about it. It is the sound of labor, it
Speaker 7: is the sound of obedience, it is the sound of
Speaker 7: There is no standard definition of the meaning of a bell.
Speaker 7: It's very much who you are.
Speaker 1: In the late eighteen nineties, urban development made cities very
Speaker 1: loud places. In response, a new progressive movement took shape.
Speaker 1: One of its targets, noise Reformers made to the case
Speaker 1: that loud noises were bad for the nervous system.
Speaker 7: I think probably the most powerful expression of this comes
Speaker 7: during the First World War, where you have people who
Speaker 7: are in fact, not just deafened, but psychologically damaged by
Speaker 7: not just what they see, not just what they smell,
Speaker 7: but what they hear in that war. And obviously it's
Speaker 7: the screams of your compatriots being shot, but it's also
Speaker 7: the unprecedented volume of munitions going off. Nobody had heard
Speaker 7: noises that loud before got.
Speaker 1: To be in a trench in World War One, and
Speaker 1: the sounds you must have heard.
Speaker 7: So you hear the shell before it hits, and that's
Speaker 7: what you're hearing is possible imminent death.
Speaker 1: The twentieth century gave rise to sounds that today we
Speaker 1: take for granted. The first automobiles were very noisy, and
Speaker 1: then we chok to the skies.
Speaker 4: The plane flying oh La area is a thing that
Speaker 4: people have gotten to a point.
Speaker 7: The way children wake up in the middle of the
Speaker 7: night's screaming.
Speaker 1: That's from a nineteen sixty two CBS News special host
Speaker 1: Walter Cronkite interviewed then Federal Aviation Chief Nijeeb Halliby.
Speaker 4: Would you say, mister Halliby, that we're just going to
Speaker 4: have to learn to live with the noise of the
Speaker 4: jet age? Well, you know, we've always learned to live
Speaker 4: with noise. The automobile, which was a frightening looking machine,
Speaker 4: making a terrible noise when it first appeared. Certainly, the
Speaker 4: construction noise of a pneumatic hammer is much higher than
Speaker 4: that of a distant jet airply in our helicopt So
Speaker 4: I think one of the prices of progress and power
Speaker 4: is going to be a level of noise. If it's
Speaker 4: dangerous to health and life, it should not be tolerated.
Speaker 4: But if it's just irritable, I'm afraid that's one of
Speaker 4: the prices of so called progress.
Speaker 1: The balance between progress and noise pollution was tested as
Speaker 1: never before by the introduction of the Concord. Writing on
Speaker 1: it was the height of luxury living under its flight
Speaker 1: path wasn't so pleasant? That sound you just heard is
Speaker 1: sonic boom we have in our archives. I only just
Speaker 1: watched it. A CBS news report from nineteen seventy from
Speaker 1: Wales about the Concord and the sonic boom of the
Speaker 1: Concord disturbs one elderly woman because it reminds her of
Speaker 1: the bombing during World War Two.
Speaker 7: It was like a bomb going off, a blast and
Speaker 7: it shook me up.
Speaker 1: I was very flattened because I was bombed.
Speaker 4: In the war.
Speaker 1: Then when a young woman she sounds like a teenager,
Speaker 1: actually a girl, is interviewed, she says it was a
Speaker 1: little scary first, and how she loves it because it's
Speaker 1: really really cool because it's associated, my god with a
Speaker 1: supersonic jet.
Speaker 7: I was only frightened the first time. I wasn't frightened
Speaker 7: the second time.
Speaker 4: Do you think the concord should go on flying over here?
Speaker 5: Yes?
Speaker 6: You like the concord? Yes, nice fast time.
Speaker 7: Yeah, that's a perfect example because the child doesn't have
Speaker 7: the memory of the war. If you experience the Second
Speaker 7: World War, how you understand sounds during it and after
Speaker 7: it are going to be really different as opposed to
Speaker 7: being born in the nineteen eighties or nineteen nineties.
Speaker 1: The US government limited concord service after cities issued numerous
Speaker 1: noise complaints. As for the sounds of today, any advice
Speaker 1: on how I should think about that jackhammer on the
Speaker 1: way to.
Speaker 7: Work, Let's imagine there are no jackhammers. Think about the
Speaker 7: state of your streets and your roads. Unless we develop
Speaker 7: a technology that's quieter to repair the roads, then you're
Speaker 7: going to have to deal with it. So mo I
Speaker 7: would say this, go around the block a different way perhaps,
Speaker 7: or just recognize that the street is better for that
Speaker 7: temporary engagement with noise that you had to endure, as
Speaker 7: unpleasant as it is.
Speaker 1: But there are certain sounds that are just noise. The
Speaker 1: dirt bikes, the illegal ATVs that roar up Sixth Avenue
Speaker 1: in the middle of the night and wake me up.
Speaker 1: I just I cannot find the upside. I can't find
Speaker 1: a way of redefining those noises.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I think most people would agree with you, and
Speaker 7: that's probably why there's a noise ordinance prohibiting it.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 7: However, for the person riding the ATV or the dirt bike,
Speaker 7: this is the sound of protest, This is the sound
Speaker 7: of youth, This is the sound of whatever they think
Speaker 7: it is. Now they might I've been a distinct minority.
Speaker 7: But that's kind of the point about the context, right,
Speaker 7: and who's doing the listening, and who has the authority
Speaker 7: to say no, that's noise.
Speaker 1: Jackhammer's good, illegal dirt bikes bad.
Speaker 7: That's fair enough.
Speaker 1: I get it. One person's noise is another person's music. Likewise,
Speaker 1: one person's steaming, gurgling bin of Cooties is another person's buffet,
Speaker 1: just as one person's.
Speaker 5: Coerced standing ovation is another person's inspired, authentic, and spontaneous
Speaker 5: woo fast. It's all about context and changing mores and look,
Speaker 5: I'm willing to go with the flow, So don't be
Speaker 5: surprised to see me as your favorite hard rocking all
Speaker 5: you can eat joint.
Speaker 1: I'll be the one wiping down the tongs. I certainly
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Speaker 1: Here are all new episodes of Mobituaries every Wednesday. Wherever
Speaker 1: you get your podcasts and check out Mobituaries. Great Lives
Speaker 1: Worth Reliving the New York Times best selling book, now
Speaker 1: available in paperback and audiobook. It includes plenty of stories
Speaker 1: not in the podcast. This episode of Mobituaries was produced
Speaker 1: by Liz Sanchez, who wishes hiking with loud music would die.
Speaker 1: Our team of producers also includes Chloe Chobol, who wishes
Speaker 1: the girl Boss mentality would die, and Me Morocca with
Speaker 1: engineering by Josh Han who wishes parachute pants would die.
Speaker 1: Our theme music is written by Daniel Hart. Our archival
Speaker 1: producer is Jamie Benson, who wishes gender reveal parties would die,
Speaker 1: and fact checking from Annie Cronenberg, who wish which is
Speaker 1: elaborate bachelorette trips would die. Mobituary's production company is Neon Hummedia.
Speaker 5: Indispensable support from Alan Pang, who wishes asparagus soda, Yes,
Speaker 5: asparagus soda would die, and everyone at CBS News Radio
Speaker 5: special thanks to Steve Razis, Rand Morrison, and Alberto Robina.
Speaker 5: Executive producers for Mobituaries include Megan Marcus, who wishes espresso
Speaker 5: martinis would die, Jonathan Hirsch, who wishes judging other people's
Speaker 5: vocal fry would die, and me Moroka.
Speaker 1: The series is
Speaker 5: Created by Yours Truly and well you already heard what
Speaker 5: I wish would die.