WEBVTT - Part One: Alan Lomax: How to Record Everything and Mostly Make the World Better in the Process 0:00:01.720 --> 0:00:02.880 Cool Zone Media. 0:00:05.280 --> 0:00:08.639 Hello, and welcome to cool People who had cool stuff. 0:00:08.680 --> 0:00:12.000 You're a weekly reminder that there's cool stuff happening, and 0:00:12.039 --> 0:00:14.400 it's often done by cool people. Although also it's your 0:00:14.440 --> 0:00:16.520 weekly reminder that people who seem really cool when you 0:00:16.520 --> 0:00:18.880 tell really short versions of their story, actually it become 0:00:18.960 --> 0:00:21.279 very complicated and real when you tell the longer versions 0:00:21.280 --> 0:00:24.600 of their story. Because nobody's perfect except our guest today 0:00:25.560 --> 0:00:27.720 and our producer today, Bridget Todd. 0:00:27.880 --> 0:00:28.600 Hi, how are you? 0:00:29.160 --> 0:00:29.960 Hi? Margaret? 0:00:30.080 --> 0:00:32.360 I like this idea that I'm perfect, you know what, 0:00:32.479 --> 0:00:33.560 I'm not going to push back. 0:00:33.600 --> 0:00:33.920 I am. 0:00:34.280 --> 0:00:36.479 Yeah, No, that's what I'm saying. And also perfect is 0:00:36.520 --> 0:00:41.519 Sophie our producer. Hi, Sophie, Hi, I am perfect. Bridget. 0:00:41.880 --> 0:00:45.040 You are the host of a podcast as a shameful 0:00:45.040 --> 0:00:45.519 thing to be. 0:00:46.520 --> 0:00:49.519 It is just a dirtbag podcaster life, you know. 0:00:49.600 --> 0:00:51.920 Well, yeah, you are the host of There Are No 0:00:52.000 --> 0:00:54.760 Girls on the Internet, which is a podcast that people 0:00:54.800 --> 0:00:56.920 can listen to, except it just took a break. Maybe 0:00:56.920 --> 0:00:57.480 what's going on? 0:00:57.680 --> 0:01:00.000 Yeah, we are taken in brief pause, but will be 0:01:00.240 --> 0:01:02.400 real soon. Folks'll check it out if you're interested in 0:01:02.680 --> 0:01:05.840 the intersection of identity and technology and social media and 0:01:05.880 --> 0:01:10.039 some of the wormiest little pieces of dung on the 0:01:10.080 --> 0:01:11.680 Internet and what they're up to you to make our 0:01:11.760 --> 0:01:12.560 lives miserable. 0:01:12.600 --> 0:01:13.800 Come check us out. 0:01:15.040 --> 0:01:17.200 You also have a book that's about to come out. 0:01:17.840 --> 0:01:18.600 That is right. 0:01:18.720 --> 0:01:20.920 Thank you for asking about the book. It is an 0:01:20.959 --> 0:01:24.480 audiobook with Simon and Schuster called Love at First Prompt 0:01:24.600 --> 0:01:27.880 AI and the Future of Intimacy, and it's all about 0:01:27.920 --> 0:01:31.720 folks who have intimate connections with AI. 0:01:32.760 --> 0:01:35.280 Okay, the two things that are interesting me about that immediately. One, 0:01:35.520 --> 0:01:37.199 I've never heard of an audio only book. 0:01:37.600 --> 0:01:40.880 I had not heard of it before making one either, 0:01:41.000 --> 0:01:43.000 So it is not a physical book. It is audio 0:01:43.040 --> 0:01:46.000 only for now. Somebody was like, oh, can you sign 0:01:46.080 --> 0:01:47.520 it for me? And I thought, well, would that be 0:01:47.560 --> 0:01:48.240 a voice note? 0:01:48.880 --> 0:01:55.200 Yeah, like a postcard? Like interesting? I mean I listened to, honestly, 0:01:55.240 --> 0:02:00.000 everything I'm not reading for work, I listened to audio 0:02:00.120 --> 0:02:02.200 books for so it actually makes perfect sense to me. 0:02:02.640 --> 0:02:04.040 Although I'm like, if I ever had to listen to 0:02:04.080 --> 0:02:05.480 it for work, I'd be really sad because then I 0:02:05.520 --> 0:02:08.480 have to listen to it, whereas I read very quickly 0:02:08.560 --> 0:02:10.880 for work. But when we were talking about this book 0:02:10.919 --> 0:02:13.720 before we started recording, you are presenting it in like 0:02:13.800 --> 0:02:15.880 kind of a more complicated way. I'm going to rudely 0:02:15.919 --> 0:02:18.560 guess most of the people who are listening are anti AI, 0:02:18.960 --> 0:02:21.560 and your whole thing is that we should shame people 0:02:22.000 --> 0:02:25.720 who are lonely by being really mad at them and 0:02:25.800 --> 0:02:28.400 not blaming structural problems. Is that the basis of. 0:02:28.360 --> 0:02:33.800 Your book basically, yes, only the opposite. Oh right, yeah, 0:02:33.840 --> 0:02:36.280 I mean, I don't think I'm giving anything away, no 0:02:36.400 --> 0:02:39.680 spoilers and saying that I'm not the most pro AI 0:02:39.840 --> 0:02:43.480 person out there. But the reality is a whole host 0:02:43.520 --> 0:02:47.919 of growing people are using AI for intimacy, whether that's 0:02:48.320 --> 0:02:52.960 you know, platonic connection, romantic connection, a lot of sexual 0:02:52.960 --> 0:02:54.919 connection through things like erotic role play. 0:02:55.400 --> 0:02:56.480 And I feel that. 0:02:56.600 --> 0:03:00.160 So much of the conversation about these people is demonizing 0:03:00.200 --> 0:03:00.800 and shaming. 0:03:00.919 --> 0:03:02.520 Right, look at these losers your insults. 0:03:02.840 --> 0:03:05.960 Yeah, look at these pathetic losers who are getting their 0:03:06.040 --> 0:03:08.960 jollys off to an AI girlfriend or AI porn or. 0:03:08.880 --> 0:03:09.440 What have you. 0:03:10.120 --> 0:03:15.359 I totally get that stance. But we're so busy gawking 0:03:15.400 --> 0:03:18.760 and finger pointing at the individual that the sam Altmans 0:03:18.800 --> 0:03:20.760 and the Elon Musks and the Mark Zuckerberg's of the 0:03:20.760 --> 0:03:23.360 world are like great, keep making fun of what you 0:03:23.400 --> 0:03:27.120 see as these pathetic losers will go continue to commodify 0:03:27.360 --> 0:03:30.600 and make money from, you know, people who might be 0:03:30.680 --> 0:03:33.000 vulnerable and the most intimate parts of what it means 0:03:33.040 --> 0:03:34.519 to be a human. And so I really want to 0:03:34.560 --> 0:03:38.520 shift the conversation away from just gawking at individuals and 0:03:38.560 --> 0:03:40.720 really put our scrutiny where I feel it belongs on 0:03:40.920 --> 0:03:43.080 AI companies and the people who run them, and how 0:03:43.080 --> 0:03:46.360 they are not really being good stewards of the increasingly 0:03:46.640 --> 0:03:50.240 intimate human spaces that they are trying to make money from. 0:03:50.600 --> 0:03:53.400 I appreciate that because I think when I imagine lonely people, 0:03:53.880 --> 0:03:56.680 I don't really imagine people who are like afraid of 0:03:56.720 --> 0:03:59.640 being made fun of. They probably hate being made fun of, 0:04:00.160 --> 0:04:02.920 like more likely to be kind of used to it, 0:04:03.400 --> 0:04:06.560 and like it doesn't seem like a very useful If 0:04:06.600 --> 0:04:09.800 mockery is ever a socially useful thing, it's only useful 0:04:09.800 --> 0:04:12.400 when it is presented in an upward fashion, you know, 0:04:12.600 --> 0:04:16.200 like mock the king, not the peasant, even if the 0:04:16.200 --> 0:04:19.120 peasant has a wayfoo. Why I don't know how to 0:04:19.240 --> 0:04:21.680 pronounce this A pillow that is a person you know, 0:04:22.400 --> 0:04:26.000 like you still don't mock them for like, and maybe 0:04:26.000 --> 0:04:28.560 I'm like overly empathy empathetic, but I'm like when people 0:04:28.560 --> 0:04:30.599 are like, this person married their pillow, and I'm like, 0:04:31.440 --> 0:04:33.680 I don't want to make fun of them. I feel 0:04:33.800 --> 0:04:36.560 sorry for them, and maybe that's just as bad to them. 0:04:36.800 --> 0:04:40.240 But so that's such an insightful point, and I think 0:04:40.320 --> 0:04:42.440 it really tells us a lot about what's going on 0:04:42.480 --> 0:04:45.119 when we talk about people who are having intimacy with AI. 0:04:45.640 --> 0:04:48.960 The people who have intimacy with AI, they actually from 0:04:48.960 --> 0:04:51.200 doing the research on the book, they can tell us 0:04:51.279 --> 0:04:55.279 a lot about what the impacts are from people who 0:04:55.520 --> 0:04:59.080 are in kind of increasingly intimate connections with AI. And 0:04:59.120 --> 0:05:01.159 even if you're somebody who was like, oh, I would 0:05:01.200 --> 0:05:04.080 never be friends with AI, I would never, you know, 0:05:04.120 --> 0:05:05.160 want to have sex with AI? 0:05:05.200 --> 0:05:07.719 What have you? I would put myself in that camp. 0:05:08.279 --> 0:05:11.479 Tech leaders like Mark Zuckerberg has been super clear that 0:05:11.600 --> 0:05:13.919 the future that he is designing is one where he 0:05:14.040 --> 0:05:17.479 thinks all of us, everybody listening, will want to have 0:05:17.560 --> 0:05:20.760 intimate AI connections. Now, whether that's true for you or not, 0:05:21.000 --> 0:05:23.960 that is the future that tech leaders have invested in 0:05:24.000 --> 0:05:25.840 and are busy building. And so I think it would 0:05:25.839 --> 0:05:29.000 be wove us to talk to the people who are 0:05:29.040 --> 0:05:32.400 currently having connection with AI in this way, listen to 0:05:32.400 --> 0:05:34.200 what they're saying, and sort of take away like, Okay, 0:05:34.240 --> 0:05:36.280 well what does this mean for the rest of us? 0:05:36.320 --> 0:05:38.200 But I think that when we're making fun of. 0:05:38.160 --> 0:05:42.200 Them and shaming them, we're actually not learning from them. 0:05:42.240 --> 0:05:44.520 We're not hearing what they say. And I guess for me, 0:05:44.720 --> 0:05:47.960 I'm just a curious cat. Like it's really tempting to 0:05:48.040 --> 0:05:51.760 shut these conversations down through things like, you know, looking 0:05:51.760 --> 0:05:53.920 down on them and making fun of them. I get it, 0:05:54.080 --> 0:05:56.320 but you don't learn when you're not being curious. And 0:05:56.360 --> 0:05:59.080 so I really tried to approach this conversation from a 0:05:59.120 --> 0:06:00.920 really a place of curiosity. 0:06:02.000 --> 0:06:05.360 I am really excited to listen to this now. I 0:06:05.400 --> 0:06:08.800 admit if I just read the tagline, I'm like, Heydai, 0:06:08.880 --> 0:06:11.400 why would I read this? But you just answered that right, 0:06:11.480 --> 0:06:13.440 and like, because I spend a lot of my time 0:06:13.440 --> 0:06:15.880 thinking about Like, but I love gadgets. I am obsessed 0:06:15.920 --> 0:06:19.120 with gadgets. I learned how to program in CUE Basic 0:06:19.320 --> 0:06:21.440 longer ago than a lot of the people listening to 0:06:21.480 --> 0:06:22.440 this were alive. 0:06:22.440 --> 0:06:24.680 It's such a nerd and I love it. So much, Margaret. 0:06:25.240 --> 0:06:29.920 But now I'm like age verification, I'm done. I'm like, nope, 0:06:30.000 --> 0:06:32.720 I don't want the government that should have nothing to 0:06:32.839 --> 0:06:35.440 I've become a grouchy old lady on a rocking chair 0:06:35.520 --> 0:06:40.760 in Appalachia kind of literally, and now just like, no 0:06:40.920 --> 0:06:42.680 get away from me. I never want to have a 0:06:42.680 --> 0:06:45.040 conversation with a chatbot. Every time I do, it's because 0:06:45.040 --> 0:06:46.960 I'm angrily trying to deal with customer service. 0:06:47.120 --> 0:06:47.320 Yep. 0:06:47.360 --> 0:06:49.560 And I even have mastered this is really important to 0:06:49.600 --> 0:06:52.000 our topic. It's completely unrelated to our topic. I've even 0:06:52.120 --> 0:06:54.480 kind of mastered the art of when I'm a human 0:06:54.920 --> 0:06:57.520 that I'm talking to in customer service and I'm very mad. 0:06:57.960 --> 0:07:01.159 I've gotten very good at being like, I am incredibly 0:07:01.160 --> 0:07:03.719 frustrated and not at you as a person. I recognize 0:07:03.720 --> 0:07:06.760 that you're doing your job. I am incredibly upset about 0:07:06.760 --> 0:07:09.280 the what's happening right now. But you can't do that 0:07:09.320 --> 0:07:12.320 with an AI. They have taken away my one skill, 0:07:12.680 --> 0:07:16.280 which was getting mad at people without getting mad at them, 0:07:17.120 --> 0:07:18.520 and I don't know what to do anymore. 0:07:19.240 --> 0:07:22.560 I'm so glad that you brought that up, because so like, 0:07:22.600 --> 0:07:25.000 even if you're somebody who you're like I avoid AI 0:07:25.200 --> 0:07:29.560 like the plague. There are times when you find yourself 0:07:29.600 --> 0:07:32.560 interacting with AI kind of against your will, and there 0:07:32.560 --> 0:07:36.120 are all these insidious, sneaky little ways that they design 0:07:36.160 --> 0:07:39.440 it to try to mimic intimacy, even when you are 0:07:39.480 --> 0:07:42.760 having what is essentially like a non consensual connection with AI, 0:07:43.000 --> 0:07:46.720 where when you're like, hey, Exminity Comcast, my internet is out. 0:07:47.200 --> 0:07:50.080 It's a problem, and their AI chatbot is like, oh, 0:07:50.120 --> 0:07:53.120 that must be so frustrating for you. I really hear 0:07:53.200 --> 0:07:55.440 what you're saying that that's so frustrating. Let me help you. 0:07:55.760 --> 0:07:57.680 I'm like, don't try to empathize with me. 0:07:57.760 --> 0:08:02.000 You're not a humane I'm so mad sneak intimacy into 0:08:02.040 --> 0:08:02.680 this interaction. 0:08:02.840 --> 0:08:04.480 Oh no, this is such an important point because I 0:08:04.480 --> 0:08:06.640 think about the other main interaction I have with AI 0:08:06.800 --> 0:08:09.120 is that I don't have a publicly available email, kind 0:08:09.160 --> 0:08:12.640 of by design because macgrassy old lady lives in, has 0:08:12.680 --> 0:08:15.120 a rocking chair and a shotgun. So it really just 0:08:15.160 --> 0:08:19.320 everyone's just stay away. I love people, but anyway people 0:08:19.360 --> 0:08:21.800 have figured out I assume if you ask an AI 0:08:21.880 --> 0:08:24.720 how to reach me, you get one of my publishers, 0:08:25.000 --> 0:08:27.120 And so I get these emails forwarded to me all 0:08:27.160 --> 0:08:29.800 the time that are people being like, hey, I really 0:08:29.840 --> 0:08:32.960 loved your book, and I particularly loved the themes of 0:08:33.080 --> 0:08:36.400 the following comma, the following comma and the following I 0:08:36.520 --> 0:08:39.679 also really like how the characters experienced as the following 0:08:39.840 --> 0:08:42.920 comma and the following and comma the following And we're 0:08:42.920 --> 0:08:44.760 trying to reach you to do X y Z. I 0:08:44.800 --> 0:08:46.600 don't even know what the scam is, but I've like, 0:08:46.760 --> 0:08:49.080 stop trying to appeal to me, to be like, I 0:08:49.160 --> 0:08:51.360 understand your book, so you should talk to me. 0:08:51.400 --> 0:08:53.040 I get those every five seconds. 0:08:53.160 --> 0:08:55.080 Oh my god, that's probably just your life. 0:08:54.960 --> 0:08:56.680 People trying to get booked on things. 0:08:57.080 --> 0:09:00.440 Yeah, and it's like, you know the person. First of all, 0:09:00.440 --> 0:09:02.800 you can tell it's written by aie. It's in personal, 0:09:03.080 --> 0:09:05.400 but it's written in such a way that it is 0:09:05.480 --> 0:09:08.679 meant to appeal to your like flattery. Like I'm super 0:09:08.679 --> 0:09:10.440 so I shouldn't even say this on my podcast, but 0:09:10.480 --> 0:09:13.640 I'm super susceptible to flattery. Somebody gives me a compliment, 0:09:13.679 --> 0:09:16.960 I'm like, oh, thank you for noticing. Well, you're so observant. 0:09:17.000 --> 0:09:19.920 Well, it's because you're empathic that you're susceptible. To flattery. 0:09:20.120 --> 0:09:22.040 That's what I've always You're very good at that. 0:09:22.559 --> 0:09:25.199 Thank you, Margaret. Oh wow, you're so insightful, Thanks Margaret. 0:09:25.360 --> 0:09:29.440 But like it's these AI generated please are meant to 0:09:30.280 --> 0:09:33.720 appeal to these like human qualities about us, you know, 0:09:33.800 --> 0:09:38.440 our ego are, you know, susceptibility to flattery, things like that. Yeah, 0:09:39.040 --> 0:09:42.160 but like once we put on our critical hats, we 0:09:42.200 --> 0:09:44.840 can see how empty and hollow they actually are. And 0:09:44.880 --> 0:09:47.240 so it's not like you're actually booking the person who 0:09:47.280 --> 0:09:50.200 sends you this email that's clearly AI generated. Oh I 0:09:50.240 --> 0:09:52.640 really liked X, Y and Z from your book. Yeah, 0:09:52.640 --> 0:09:56.480 but you know, I guess I would argue that companies 0:09:56.720 --> 0:09:59.480 know this, and they design, you know, AI to speak 0:09:59.520 --> 0:10:01.840 in this way to appeal to us in these ways 0:10:01.880 --> 0:10:04.200 that are playing on what I would argue you are 0:10:04.679 --> 0:10:08.360 the sort of human qualities that we all have. And 0:10:08.400 --> 0:10:10.319 I guess I just think, you know, even though I 0:10:10.360 --> 0:10:12.559 have a tech podcast, I consider myself a bit of 0:10:12.600 --> 0:10:15.920 a luttite, not in the sense that I don't like. 0:10:15.960 --> 0:10:17.320 Technology, I really do. 0:10:17.640 --> 0:10:21.720 I want to ask questions about who is benefiting from technology, right. 0:10:21.559 --> 0:10:22.959 Like that's what the lunites were all about. 0:10:23.040 --> 0:10:26.440 Yeah, yeah, yeah, No, they were like they wanted to 0:10:26.440 --> 0:10:28.360 be able to make stuff in a cottage instead of 0:10:28.400 --> 0:10:31.640 a factory. This is very reasonable. If they had succeeded, 0:10:32.000 --> 0:10:34.760 everyone's life would be better. There probably wouldn't have been 0:10:34.800 --> 0:10:39.360 a fucking British empire, like to the same degree. Like anyway, 0:10:39.840 --> 0:10:42.480 But I believe that by the end of this episode 0:10:42.559 --> 0:10:45.120 we will find a way to tie in that conversation 0:10:45.240 --> 0:10:50.319 to this topic. But this topic is entirely different. Bridget 0:10:50.679 --> 0:10:54.560 Have you ever heard of music? I think I have 0:10:54.720 --> 0:10:57.200 heard a little bit of music. Yeah, okay, what about 0:10:57.200 --> 0:10:58.040 American music? 0:10:58.840 --> 0:11:01.400 I am a little bit familiar. Americans make music? 0:11:01.480 --> 0:11:05.480 Sure, yeah, yeah, Well, whether you know it or not, 0:11:06.320 --> 0:11:09.520 your world has been shaped by a sickly white communist 0:11:09.520 --> 0:11:13.840 from Texas named Alan Lomax. You ever heard of Alan Lomax? 0:11:14.520 --> 0:11:17.800 I have heard of Alan Lomax? What am I thinking of? 0:11:18.040 --> 0:11:19.280 Oh Brother, We're Out Thou? 0:11:19.640 --> 0:11:21.000 Wait? Is he in that or something? 0:11:21.440 --> 0:11:21.880 I think? 0:11:21.960 --> 0:11:24.679 I think that's absolutely what his time period is. 0:11:25.080 --> 0:11:25.960 Fact check this. 0:11:26.320 --> 0:11:28.560 Yeah, I is he the guy who records them in 0:11:28.559 --> 0:11:29.000 that movie? 0:11:29.400 --> 0:11:31.520 I sound like such a nerd, but I have the 0:11:31.600 --> 0:11:34.320 soundtrack on CD to Oh Brother, We're Out Thou. 0:11:34.200 --> 0:11:35.720 And it kind of slaps, So don't come for me. 0:11:35.800 --> 0:11:36.960 Yeah, no, no, that's good music. 0:11:37.120 --> 0:11:39.560 He is involved in it, like his legacy is involved 0:11:39.559 --> 0:11:40.800 in that. Sound correct, That. 0:11:40.840 --> 0:11:44.520 Is what we will be talking about today. Oh brother, 0:11:44.559 --> 0:11:47.600 where art thou? Sinners? And there's one other movie that 0:11:47.679 --> 0:11:49.240 I was like thinking about while I was reading all 0:11:49.280 --> 0:11:50.559 this that I was like, Oh, this is just that, 0:11:51.000 --> 0:11:52.440 Like this is just what this is about. 0:11:52.640 --> 0:11:53.800 I'm so fucking excited. 0:11:53.960 --> 0:11:56.080 And actually Sinners is even the most what it's about, 0:11:56.080 --> 0:12:00.800 because it's also about this is a story that into 0:12:01.520 --> 0:12:06.080 colonization and racism and recording and what is and isn't 0:12:06.120 --> 0:12:10.360 our folk heritage as like people, and there's so much 0:12:10.360 --> 0:12:11.520 in this story. 0:12:11.520 --> 0:12:13.920 Did you pick this specifically because you thought it would 0:12:13.920 --> 0:12:14.320 be my shit? 0:12:14.360 --> 0:12:15.240 Because it very much is. 0:12:15.240 --> 0:12:17.280 My Oh I'm very excited it's your shit. No. What 0:12:17.400 --> 0:12:20.120 happened was this was going to be last week's episode, 0:12:20.640 --> 0:12:24.720 and then I learned what Alan Lomax's dad did to 0:12:24.840 --> 0:12:29.040 led Belly Huddy Ledbetter, which was do him real fucking dirty, 0:12:29.480 --> 0:12:32.240 and so I had to switch. And last week I 0:12:32.520 --> 0:12:36.679 just recorded about Huddy Led Better, but I couldn't get 0:12:36.679 --> 0:12:38.200 out of my head, and I thought you might be 0:12:38.280 --> 0:12:40.040 into this, so I'm very excited. 0:12:40.240 --> 0:12:42.640 You thought right, Magpie. 0:12:42.880 --> 0:12:48.120 So Alan Lomax did more than probably anybody in history 0:12:48.559 --> 0:12:50.520 anywhere in the world that I'm aware of. Whenever I 0:12:50.559 --> 0:12:53.120 say statements like that, I'm probably wrong. Did more than 0:12:53.160 --> 0:12:57.360 anyone in history to record folk music, the music of people, 0:12:58.320 --> 0:13:00.880 the people people. I don't know what you're capitalizing or 0:13:00.880 --> 0:13:03.000 putting the on front of it, however you do it. 0:13:03.440 --> 0:13:07.720 He was there across cultures and continents. Without him, people 0:13:07.760 --> 0:13:10.160 have made clear there would be no rock and roll. 0:13:10.600 --> 0:13:14.120 It's likely that without him an awful lot of blues, 0:13:14.280 --> 0:13:17.680 jazz and work songs would have simply died away. Also, 0:13:17.760 --> 0:13:21.520 a lot of like traditional voodoo music would possibly be gone. 0:13:21.559 --> 0:13:23.559 And it depends on how you know robust the oral 0:13:23.600 --> 0:13:26.839 tradition would be. But there's so many genres where we 0:13:26.920 --> 0:13:31.079 barely have any of their music. Anything that Helen Lomax 0:13:31.160 --> 0:13:36.600 showed up and cared about we know the songs also 0:13:37.760 --> 0:13:39.760 left out of the story always this is his wife Elizabeth, 0:13:39.800 --> 0:13:41.880 who did all of that work alongside him for twelve 0:13:41.920 --> 0:13:44.640 years and has been more or less written out of history, 0:13:44.679 --> 0:13:47.719 which is you're making your I'm not surprised face. 0:13:48.760 --> 0:13:53.000 I'm disappointed in myself, because that's always the story. Of course, 0:13:53.040 --> 0:13:55.840 there's a woman somewhere who didn't get her due, who 0:13:55.880 --> 0:13:56.920 was very involved. 0:13:56.960 --> 0:13:58.360 And I'm a. 0:13:58.320 --> 0:14:01.200 Little bit familiar with Lomax's work, but it never even 0:14:01.200 --> 0:14:04.120 occurred to me to think, like, well, was there a 0:14:04.160 --> 0:14:06.280 woman in the mix who is the reason why his 0:14:06.440 --> 0:14:08.959 work is, you know, has the status that it does. 0:14:09.480 --> 0:14:12.000 I like, I can say that they were married for 0:14:12.000 --> 0:14:15.240 twelve years, and they were traveling doing that work together 0:14:15.360 --> 0:14:18.439 most of that time. And he went on to continue 0:14:18.440 --> 0:14:20.160 to do it for decades and decades, and she went 0:14:20.200 --> 0:14:22.200 on to have a different career. So he's a little 0:14:22.200 --> 0:14:24.720 bit more of the driving force, but she did twelve 0:14:24.760 --> 0:14:27.800 years of this work, which is a lot of time, 0:14:28.640 --> 0:14:34.480 and like thousands of songs, you know, and they recorded 0:14:35.000 --> 0:14:38.800 thousands and thousands of folk musicians, the overwhelming majority of 0:14:38.800 --> 0:14:42.080 whom never saw any commercial success. So just like recording 0:14:42.080 --> 0:14:46.640 these songs, and it's a remarkably American story, and it's 0:14:46.640 --> 0:14:49.160 a story about how people came together to tell the 0:14:49.160 --> 0:14:52.960 American story. And because it's the American story, it's like 0:14:53.720 --> 0:14:57.120 cut through with racism and colonialism the whole goddamn time 0:14:57.720 --> 0:15:02.680 in ways that I wish it was, but it is because, 0:15:03.560 --> 0:15:06.320 unfortunately for all of us, the story of Alan Lomax 0:15:06.360 --> 0:15:09.160 begins with his father who did this work before him, 0:15:09.520 --> 0:15:14.800 named John Lomax. John Lomax, the technical word for him 0:15:15.080 --> 0:15:17.040 was that he was a racist, colonizing piece of shit, 0:15:17.640 --> 0:15:22.400 and he even came across a sort of progressive on 0:15:22.560 --> 0:15:26.760 racist US at his time. But he's like, we have 0:15:26.880 --> 0:15:29.440 his letters to his wife. He's just a racist. He's 0:15:29.480 --> 0:15:34.800 a horrible fucking racist, and like it's just left out 0:15:34.800 --> 0:15:37.920 of the histories. I found one book, it's about Howey 0:15:38.000 --> 0:15:40.800 Ledbetter that talks about all of this, and it completely 0:15:40.880 --> 0:15:44.440 disrupted everything. Like I was saying, I realized that a 0:15:44.520 --> 0:15:48.520 small detour around Howdy Ledbetter needed to become an entire 0:15:48.560 --> 0:15:51.880 two episodes, So last week we covered Hotty Ledbetter, better 0:15:51.920 --> 0:15:54.080 known by his stage name Led Belly, one of the 0:15:54.080 --> 0:15:57.240 finest blues musicians the world has ever seen. Led Belly 0:15:57.320 --> 0:16:00.440 persevered through just about everything. He was pretty big into 0:16:01.000 --> 0:16:03.280 self defense, so he went to jail a lot because 0:16:03.320 --> 0:16:06.520 it was a rough time to be a black Southern 0:16:06.560 --> 0:16:09.680 man who's into self defense in the Jim Crow South. 0:16:10.120 --> 0:16:13.480 He went to prison a lot. For anyone who didn't 0:16:13.480 --> 0:16:16.280 listen last week the first time hatt he led better 0:16:16.320 --> 0:16:18.480 got out of prison. He did it by just breaking 0:16:18.520 --> 0:16:21.760 out he was on a chain gang. And this is, oh, brother, 0:16:21.800 --> 0:16:23.840 we're art that moment in my mind. But I have 0:16:23.880 --> 0:16:25.680 to sell the same anecdote I told last time, which 0:16:25.680 --> 0:16:27.560 is that my grandfather was also on a chain gang 0:16:27.720 --> 0:16:30.600 in the nineteen thirties. He stole a car and then 0:16:30.600 --> 0:16:32.720 he didn't snitch out the people he stole a car with. 0:16:33.440 --> 0:16:35.920 And my family presents this. I never talked about my 0:16:35.920 --> 0:16:37.840 family on here. What am I doing? My family presents 0:16:37.880 --> 0:16:41.640 this as this like really wholesome story about how he 0:16:41.680 --> 0:16:45.080 takes responsibility for his crimes. And I'm like, n because 0:16:45.080 --> 0:16:45.760 he's no snitch. 0:16:46.360 --> 0:16:49.640 Yeah, is that like your family legacy is like we 0:16:49.720 --> 0:16:50.360 don't snitch. 0:16:50.480 --> 0:16:50.600 No. 0:16:51.640 --> 0:16:53.400 They take the wrong answer out of it, because like 0:16:53.480 --> 0:16:55.360 they see his like hobo days as kind of this 0:16:55.480 --> 0:16:58.720 like quaint aside and like focus more on his later work, right, 0:16:58.920 --> 0:17:02.560 and whereas I'm like, I've written freight trains. I want 0:17:02.600 --> 0:17:04.240 to talk to my grant. I can't or I can't 0:17:04.480 --> 0:17:06.639 only but he's dead, so it's a different version of 0:17:06.680 --> 0:17:09.399 talking anyway. Whatever. As soon as I found out I 0:17:09.400 --> 0:17:11.400 worked a changgang. I have no idea for how long. 0:17:12.760 --> 0:17:16.920 Whenever I read about changangs, I get really excited. Led 0:17:16.920 --> 0:17:19.560 Belly decided he didn't want to work on a chain gang, 0:17:19.840 --> 0:17:21.600 so they burned a hole in the floor of the 0:17:21.600 --> 0:17:26.080 wooden wagon and they just left and had no brother 0:17:26.119 --> 0:17:29.040 were at that Probably he changed his name. The second 0:17:29.080 --> 0:17:31.240 time he was in prison, he literally sang his Way 0:17:31.280 --> 0:17:33.600 to Freedom because the governor would come by and like 0:17:33.720 --> 0:17:35.919 check on the prisons, and he wrote a song that 0:17:36.040 --> 0:17:38.960 was like, oh, Governor, you should this is totally not 0:17:39.000 --> 0:17:41.960 the melody. You should release me. It would be the 0:17:42.040 --> 0:17:44.399 Christian thing to do. 0:17:44.440 --> 0:17:47.640 You know how convincing of a song. That song had 0:17:47.680 --> 0:17:49.440 to have slapped where it's like, all right, let. 0:17:49.440 --> 0:17:51.919 Him go now. They're actually are recordings and it's completely 0:17:51.920 --> 0:17:53.600 different than the way I just sang it. This man 0:17:53.760 --> 0:17:55.760 was called the King of the twelve string Guitar, which 0:17:55.840 --> 0:17:57.760 is actually interesting. He learned it. It was a Mexican 0:17:57.800 --> 0:18:00.720 instrument when he learned it in Dallas. So he sings 0:18:00.760 --> 0:18:02.960 his way to freedom. The third time he's in prison, 0:18:03.680 --> 0:18:07.560 he had the fortune and misfortune to meet John fucking Lomax. 0:18:08.640 --> 0:18:11.240 John Lomax didn't get him out of prison, but took 0:18:11.320 --> 0:18:15.600 credit for getting him out of prison. Haddy Ledbetter jailhouse 0:18:15.720 --> 0:18:20.120 lawyered himself out of prison by successfully connecting bureaucratic dots 0:18:20.160 --> 0:18:23.560 between Texas and Louisiana while imprisoned in the South in 0:18:23.640 --> 0:18:28.280 the nineteen thirties. Wow, and got himself out of prison. 0:18:29.359 --> 0:18:34.600 But John Lomax takes all the credit. After that, Huddy 0:18:34.680 --> 0:18:41.240 Ledbetter became the unpaid servant for John Lomax. And along 0:18:41.320 --> 0:18:43.680 the way to introduce a little bit, or we'll go 0:18:43.760 --> 0:18:47.280 back and start with Alan's story. Alan's seventeen and with 0:18:47.480 --> 0:18:50.320 his dad when all this happens. So some of Alan's 0:18:50.560 --> 0:18:56.359 formative moments of doing this work is this exploiting black 0:18:56.440 --> 0:18:59.720 man who just got out of prison. So once again, 0:19:00.520 --> 0:19:02.520 howe he Ledbetter had to find his way to freedom. 0:19:02.640 --> 0:19:04.840 It's not in prison, but he's trapped in this like 0:19:04.920 --> 0:19:07.080 really messed up contract where he's only getting a third 0:19:07.119 --> 0:19:09.720 of the money that he's producing. It's like almost like 0:19:10.280 --> 0:19:14.040 a model for like exploitative like how the music industry 0:19:14.080 --> 0:19:14.600 works today. 0:19:14.720 --> 0:19:17.200 You know, I was gonna say, it doesn't sound that 0:19:17.440 --> 0:19:20.480 different from my friends who are recording artists or musicians 0:19:20.600 --> 0:19:24.280 or entertainers. What they describe today, and it does come 0:19:24.400 --> 0:19:28.280 feel like a modern day colonialistic situation where it's like, Okay, 0:19:28.359 --> 0:19:30.359 so I do all the work, you get all the 0:19:30.440 --> 0:19:31.880 money and credit and that's. 0:19:31.760 --> 0:19:34.760 That and also the fucking copyright. And that was actually 0:19:34.800 --> 0:19:36.560 the thing because like I always sort of knew that 0:19:36.680 --> 0:19:40.280 record deals are often real bad, and like book deals 0:19:40.280 --> 0:19:43.480 are complicated because they're like often a similar low percentage 0:19:43.520 --> 0:19:45.640 of your work, but you usually still kind of own 0:19:45.720 --> 0:19:48.240 the work, and the contract is like more likely to 0:19:48.520 --> 0:19:50.719 have a like if we stop publishing this, you get 0:19:50.760 --> 0:19:54.560 your rights back. Like the book industry is bad, the 0:19:54.640 --> 0:19:57.080 music industry is worse. And it was so interesting to 0:19:57.160 --> 0:20:00.680 be like I can draw the connection. John his parents 0:20:00.840 --> 0:20:04.480 owned people, and they called themselves like everyone refers to 0:20:04.480 --> 0:20:06.800 them as basically bootstrapping their way up, and it's like 0:20:06.960 --> 0:20:08.560 left out that the reason that they did that is 0:20:08.560 --> 0:20:10.840 because they fucking owned a bunch of families of people, 0:20:10.920 --> 0:20:11.960 you know, because they're fucking. 0:20:12.040 --> 0:20:14.880 Strapping via owning enslaved people. 0:20:15.000 --> 0:20:18.359 Yeah, you know, like an owning essentially like enslaving people 0:20:18.600 --> 0:20:19.520 and taking their money. 0:20:19.800 --> 0:20:20.000 Yeah. 0:20:20.080 --> 0:20:22.320 Yeah, it's like, oh, we're making our own way yeah, 0:20:22.520 --> 0:20:23.920 through very fucked up mes. 0:20:24.119 --> 0:20:26.680 Yeah, left out of that basically every story. But so 0:20:26.840 --> 0:20:31.639 it's like I can draw a direct line to the 0:20:32.280 --> 0:20:35.200 music industry through that and how they you know. And 0:20:35.320 --> 0:20:37.800 so he's going around when John is going around to 0:20:37.880 --> 0:20:40.720 the South, he's going around and he's collecting folk songs 0:20:40.920 --> 0:20:46.280 and copywriting them like and not paying the musicians. And 0:20:46.440 --> 0:20:49.000 that's like the race. It's like a race between all 0:20:49.040 --> 0:20:52.200 these folk song collectors. So this is why I was like, 0:20:52.320 --> 0:20:54.800 I can't cover Alan Lomax yet. What if Alan Lomax 0:20:54.880 --> 0:20:57.440 is a piece of shit? He's not. He's actually really cool. 0:20:57.560 --> 0:20:59.840 He's genuinely a cool guy. But he grew up in 0:21:00.080 --> 0:21:03.440 this horrible industry of exploitation, you know. 0:21:04.200 --> 0:21:06.040 Can I ask a question? Yeah, I don't want to 0:21:06.480 --> 0:21:08.520 jump ahead, yea, And I don't know. 0:21:08.600 --> 0:21:12.200 The answer to this is cutting out the ownership and 0:21:12.520 --> 0:21:16.760 profit and copyright, you know, of the people who are 0:21:16.760 --> 0:21:17.800 actually making the thing. 0:21:18.200 --> 0:21:20.919 Do you think that is intentional, like we. 0:21:21.040 --> 0:21:24.320 Are taking the product from other people and benefiting ourselves 0:21:24.560 --> 0:21:26.960 or is it more sort of like it's just like 0:21:27.080 --> 0:21:28.800 not how people thought about it at the time. At 0:21:28.840 --> 0:21:32.040 the time, it's like, why would these people expect ownership 0:21:32.160 --> 0:21:34.320 or a profit from this thing that they are creating. 0:21:34.400 --> 0:21:35.080 Do you know what I'm asking? 0:21:35.240 --> 0:21:38.200 Yeah, no, totally. And what's interesting is I think the 0:21:38.320 --> 0:21:44.160 answer is literally in the colonization of say Africa. I've 0:21:44.200 --> 0:21:46.480 been listening to Behind the Bastard. It's like a terrible person. 0:21:46.840 --> 0:21:50.080 And same the recent episodes about Zimbabwe when it had 0:21:50.080 --> 0:21:52.960 a worse name, about how British people were like, look 0:21:53.000 --> 0:21:56.639 at this empty land. It's not being used. I am 0:21:56.760 --> 0:21:59.560 going to be the one to do something with this. 0:22:00.119 --> 0:22:04.399 I think it's that they literally don't see ownership or 0:22:04.520 --> 0:22:09.920 value produced by especially black people, but also just poor 0:22:09.960 --> 0:22:12.440 people in general. Because they're also doing this to hillbilly music, 0:22:12.480 --> 0:22:15.400 which is funny because black people weren't allowed to play 0:22:15.400 --> 0:22:17.600 it if they became commercially successful. Same with cowboy songs. 0:22:17.640 --> 0:22:20.400 Black people like Huddy Ledbetter was literally a cowboy from 0:22:20.440 --> 0:22:22.440 Texas and he wasn't allowed to play cowboy songs when 0:22:22.440 --> 0:22:25.080 he got big, you know, because that's white people music. 0:22:25.160 --> 0:22:29.720 He can't do that. But still overall, largely a racial 0:22:29.760 --> 0:22:32.200 component to this, and I think it's colonization. I think 0:22:32.240 --> 0:22:36.560 it's literally believing this is empty land. Okay, this is 0:22:36.600 --> 0:22:38.520 the best comparison I can come up with, and it's 0:22:38.560 --> 0:22:41.480 a weird one. Until I came out as trans I 0:22:41.560 --> 0:22:43.520 didn't know what size I was as a person, I 0:22:43.600 --> 0:22:46.640 had dysphoria. I would look in the mirror and see 0:22:46.720 --> 0:22:52.040 something different than everyone else saw, right. I think that 0:22:52.240 --> 0:22:58.040 white colonists are essentially insane. I'm not defending them. They're 0:22:58.040 --> 0:23:00.359 still criminally liable. They can't use it as a defense 0:23:00.400 --> 0:23:04.400 in court. But I think they genuinely were like, look 0:23:04.440 --> 0:23:07.119 at this empty land. Yeah, and you're like you're literally 0:23:07.240 --> 0:23:10.200 talking to a man in English about ownership of the 0:23:10.320 --> 0:23:13.160 land and buying it from him, and yet you don't 0:23:13.320 --> 0:23:16.480 see what's happening. That's my best guess ay. 0:23:16.680 --> 0:23:19.120 Almost in a kind of dysmorphia where you just can't 0:23:19.240 --> 0:23:21.080 see what's actually there. 0:23:21.320 --> 0:23:21.520 Yeah. 0:23:22.400 --> 0:23:22.880 Interesting. 0:23:23.440 --> 0:23:25.119 I don't even think that they were like, I mean, 0:23:25.160 --> 0:23:27.480 they were profit motivated, but like not like fuck, yeah, 0:23:27.480 --> 0:23:29.040 I'm gonna go exploit people today. 0:23:29.240 --> 0:23:29.440 You know. 0:23:30.040 --> 0:23:32.800 They were like I'm just gonna go collect the fruits 0:23:32.840 --> 0:23:35.439 of the wild and like, honestly, like when I talk 0:23:35.480 --> 0:23:37.760 about led Belly in the last episodes, like he wasn't 0:23:37.760 --> 0:23:40.600 even a circus act. He was a zoo act, you know, 0:23:41.119 --> 0:23:44.080 until he took charge found white lawyers who helped him 0:23:44.080 --> 0:23:46.160 get out of the contract, and he like fucking broke 0:23:46.240 --> 0:23:48.879 free and then had a career and then became a 0:23:49.400 --> 0:23:52.520 leftist labor singer and wrote anti fascist songs and was 0:23:52.600 --> 0:23:55.040 cool as fuck. But the last time he went to prison. 0:23:55.800 --> 0:23:58.320 Alan Lomax dropped out of grad school to help raise 0:23:58.400 --> 0:24:01.160 money to help get him out. So that was when 0:24:01.200 --> 0:24:04.800 I was like, all right, Alix is cool. 0:24:06.119 --> 0:24:08.640 That's pretty cool. That's first of all, as a grad 0:24:08.720 --> 0:24:11.399 school dropout. Dropping out of grad school's pretty cool just 0:24:11.560 --> 0:24:13.760 in general, but that's specifically very cool. 0:24:14.760 --> 0:24:18.159 Years later, students would ask advice, and he often was like, 0:24:18.280 --> 0:24:19.040 drop out of school. 0:24:19.760 --> 0:24:22.359 It's great advice. I've give that advice to anybody. 0:24:22.520 --> 0:24:23.880 I'm also a college drop out. 0:24:23.920 --> 0:24:26.000 Yet wouldn't you repeat that advice? If somebody was like, 0:24:26.040 --> 0:24:27.880 I'm in grad school and it sucks, I have no money, 0:24:27.920 --> 0:24:29.840 what should I do? It's like, how have you considered 0:24:29.920 --> 0:24:30.480 dropping out? 0:24:30.600 --> 0:24:32.639 I remember giving me to talk out of college, and 0:24:32.720 --> 0:24:35.760 this like person raised their hand, They're like I remember 0:24:35.800 --> 0:24:38.399 they like asked me how to handle certain things with college, 0:24:38.440 --> 0:24:41.760 and I was just like, look, I dropped out. Like 0:24:41.960 --> 0:24:43.480 now your school's paying me to talk to you. I 0:24:43.520 --> 0:24:46.680 don't know what to tell you I'm not encouraging that 0:24:46.800 --> 0:24:48.919 one way or the other. Everyone's conditions are very different 0:24:48.920 --> 0:24:51.040 from each other. But do you know what I can 0:24:51.440 --> 0:24:55.160 wholeheartedly recommend because I have personally added none of lay 0:24:55.200 --> 0:24:58.040 it on me the products and services that support this 0:24:58.160 --> 0:24:59.840 podcast of which I have no knowledge. 0:25:00.200 --> 0:25:02.359 It will never not pack me up. How y'all do 0:25:02.800 --> 0:25:05.119 your ad breaks. It is my favorite fucking thing in 0:25:05.160 --> 0:25:05.560 the world. 0:25:05.800 --> 0:25:09.280 I think they secretly know that anti advertising is still advertising, 0:25:09.560 --> 0:25:12.720 that's my best guess. Or they just don't listen, but 0:25:12.840 --> 0:25:19.840 you should listen or not here they are enter back. 0:25:21.480 --> 0:25:24.720 So this week I am mad at my sources. I 0:25:24.800 --> 0:25:26.879 am particularly mad. I have never talked shit on a 0:25:26.920 --> 0:25:29.640 specific source book before on the four or five years 0:25:29.680 --> 0:25:31.560 of been doing this show. I am mad at the 0:25:31.600 --> 0:25:34.320 biography Alan Lomax, the man who Recorded the World by 0:25:34.440 --> 0:25:38.480 John Zwd from twenty ten, because twenty ten is way 0:25:38.600 --> 0:25:41.640 too recent of a book to have such wild either 0:25:41.760 --> 0:25:46.679 apology of racism that's either conscious or just sure didn't 0:25:46.960 --> 0:25:50.959 look deep. Because this is a book about Alan Lomax. 0:25:51.000 --> 0:25:52.960 It's the book about Alan Lomax that I can find, 0:25:53.000 --> 0:25:54.560 and so it's my main source for a lot of 0:25:54.600 --> 0:25:59.280 this stuff. But because one of the most important things 0:25:59.359 --> 0:26:02.240 in Alan's early life and one of the main things 0:26:02.280 --> 0:26:04.200 that this book starts off talking about. This book just 0:26:04.240 --> 0:26:07.280 basically like gives the like John Lomax in his family 0:26:07.320 --> 0:26:09.840 bootstrap themselves, and here he is like off trying to 0:26:09.920 --> 0:26:12.720 care about people and doesn't mention any of the like 0:26:13.560 --> 0:26:16.040 it's just defending the contract that he traps. Howe he 0:26:16.080 --> 0:26:18.480 ledbetter and over and over and over again, even when 0:26:18.560 --> 0:26:21.520 like no one's asking, you know, it's like going out 0:26:21.560 --> 0:26:23.600 of the way to be like instead of saying something 0:26:23.640 --> 0:26:25.480 that might be fucked up and then defending it, it 0:26:25.600 --> 0:26:26.720 starts off by defending it. 0:26:27.720 --> 0:26:27.879 You know. 0:26:29.480 --> 0:26:32.080 It frames made to work morning till night as an 0:26:32.160 --> 0:26:35.000 unpaid servant as didn't charge him rent. 0:26:35.560 --> 0:26:39.200 Ah, and like, oh, like isn't that great for him? 0:26:39.280 --> 0:26:40.280 What a bargain? Right? 0:26:40.840 --> 0:26:43.600 Like literally, this man when they bring up I think 0:26:43.680 --> 0:26:46.480 Martha is her name, Huddy's wife to come stay with 0:26:46.480 --> 0:26:48.960 them in Connecticut while they're recording up from Texas or 0:26:49.000 --> 0:26:51.520 maybe Louisiana. It's been a moment. They're like, all right, 0:26:51.520 --> 0:26:53.800 we're gonna let your you know, girlfriend come up here 0:26:53.800 --> 0:26:57.880 and you get married. And it's presented as like reuniting 0:26:57.960 --> 0:27:02.200 the two. Literally, John Lomax was writing letters to his 0:27:02.280 --> 0:27:04.520 wife that were like, helly, and now I have two 0:27:04.600 --> 0:27:10.639 one paid servants like that being left out. I'm not 0:27:10.760 --> 0:27:14.440 a big lies biomission, girl, That's a fucking lie biomission. 0:27:15.480 --> 0:27:18.399 And it completely leaves out how they wrote a racist 0:27:18.440 --> 0:27:21.040 caricature of Ledbetter and then claimed that Ledbetter wrote it 0:27:21.119 --> 0:27:22.720 and then didn't give him any of the money for it, 0:27:23.320 --> 0:27:26.639 and it's just it's disinfuriating. I was so mad that 0:27:26.680 --> 0:27:28.400 I almost didn't do this episode, and then I kept 0:27:28.440 --> 0:27:30.399 reading and I was like, goddamn, Alan Lomax is actually 0:27:30.400 --> 0:27:32.320 really cool. His dad's a piece of shit. But I 0:27:32.400 --> 0:27:35.000 don't trust my source, so maybe he was also a 0:27:35.040 --> 0:27:37.399 piece of shit, and it's just not fucking mentioned. But 0:27:37.520 --> 0:27:39.200 I do have a lot of counterfactual I have a 0:27:39.240 --> 0:27:41.160 lot of like Alan Lomax being really cool. 0:27:41.200 --> 0:27:41.680 Okay, good. 0:27:42.280 --> 0:27:47.159 That is my long aside. I believe Alan Lomax was 0:27:47.240 --> 0:27:52.240 nothing like his father, and this story is maybe essential 0:27:52.280 --> 0:27:55.199 for understanding the construction of folk identity in America, an 0:27:55.200 --> 0:27:59.560 America's conception of its own music and literature. But Alan 0:27:59.640 --> 0:28:03.840 Lomack thirty minutes into our episode, that's actually honestly faster 0:28:04.000 --> 0:28:08.520 than sometimes for this show. Alan Lomax was born on 0:28:08.680 --> 0:28:11.680 January thirty first, in the Year of Our Lord, nineteen fifteen, 0:28:11.840 --> 0:28:14.920 in Austin, Texas. I believe he was the third child, 0:28:15.040 --> 0:28:17.920 and he was a sickly kid. He had asthma and earaches, 0:28:17.960 --> 0:28:20.320 and he struggled to put on weight. And this is 0:28:20.400 --> 0:28:21.960 going to follow him his whole life, that he just 0:28:22.160 --> 0:28:25.280 is a kind of likes getting sick. It's like a hobby. 0:28:27.320 --> 0:28:30.040 Their parents were overachievers who wanted their kids to be 0:28:30.119 --> 0:28:33.960 overachievers too, and all their kids were ranked against each other, 0:28:34.400 --> 0:28:37.440 like whenever a kid started reading, they were like, oh, well, 0:28:37.680 --> 0:28:39.720 Susie started reading at three and a half, what are 0:28:39.720 --> 0:28:42.240 you fucking doing at three and nine months, you fucking 0:28:42.360 --> 0:28:45.440 lazy asshole, you know. And they were all taught to 0:28:45.560 --> 0:28:48.600 sing and do math and just do all the overachiever shit, 0:28:49.160 --> 0:28:51.560 and they like would have been in competitive soccer leagues 0:28:51.560 --> 0:28:53.880 one hundred years later, but instead he's actually gonna end 0:28:53.920 --> 0:28:55.840 up being forced to play football even though he's a tiny, 0:28:55.880 --> 0:28:59.920 sickly child. Alan was pretty direct about how he felt 0:29:00.000 --> 0:29:02.840 about this period in his life. Quote, I was given 0:29:02.880 --> 0:29:05.880 an absurd notion of my capacities. I don't know how 0:29:05.920 --> 0:29:08.800 I survived. I was pushed ahead of my class although 0:29:08.840 --> 0:29:13.040 I wasn't brighter than anybody else, that made me like him. 0:29:13.080 --> 0:29:16.000 I was just like, oh, I like this guy. Alan 0:29:16.120 --> 0:29:18.720 grew up in a household that believed his own legend 0:29:18.840 --> 0:29:21.239 that there were all these like you know, bootstrappers who 0:29:21.480 --> 0:29:24.200 you know, would successfully get into Harvard and shit like that, 0:29:24.800 --> 0:29:29.720 and they demanded greatness of their kids. Alan got perfect grades, 0:29:30.040 --> 0:29:32.320 but he missed class because he was sick all the time. 0:29:32.880 --> 0:29:35.560 He went to the fanciest private school with tiny classes, 0:29:35.920 --> 0:29:38.760 but he could never truly impress his father despite getting 0:29:38.840 --> 0:29:41.360 all a's, because he wasn't a real Texas man's man. 0:29:42.480 --> 0:29:44.360 So he was signed up for football and he was 0:29:44.400 --> 0:29:46.760 shipped off during the summer to work on ranches that 0:29:46.840 --> 0:29:49.440 would like, you know, build him up or whatever he 0:29:49.560 --> 0:29:52.600 laid around sick, take him man, Yeah, yeah, exactly. He 0:29:52.640 --> 0:29:54.120 would just go to the ranches and then be like 0:29:54.280 --> 0:29:56.800 deathly ill in a ranch instead of at home, you know. 0:29:57.520 --> 0:30:00.440 And at one point he's at this ranch, he sends 0:30:00.520 --> 0:30:02.560 letters home to his family. He's probably fourteen or something 0:30:02.600 --> 0:30:05.200 at this point, because he goes off to school at fifteen, 0:30:05.720 --> 0:30:09.040 So he writes letters home to his family and he's like, 0:30:09.160 --> 0:30:11.040 I'm so sick that I think I'm going to die 0:30:11.080 --> 0:30:13.320 and I've made peace with it. And his dad wrote 0:30:13.360 --> 0:30:16.640 him back, and of course did naturally the one thing 0:30:16.680 --> 0:30:19.480 a father should do in the circumstance, which is chastise 0:30:19.560 --> 0:30:22.440 him for making spelling mistakes in the letter and tell 0:30:22.520 --> 0:30:24.560 him that he should be proofreading his letters before he 0:30:24.680 --> 0:30:25.120 sends them. 0:30:26.160 --> 0:30:28.560 His dad is a real son of a bitch. Yeah. 0:30:28.840 --> 0:30:31.040 No, it's just absolute fucking nightmare. 0:30:31.120 --> 0:30:31.280 Man. 0:30:31.760 --> 0:30:34.160 He's going to be woven into way too much of 0:30:34.240 --> 0:30:38.280 this story. His other older brother, John Junior, used to 0:30:38.280 --> 0:30:39.880 beat him up all the time, and their parents ignored 0:30:39.880 --> 0:30:43.160 it because they figure it it's sort itself out. Ironically, 0:30:43.760 --> 0:30:46.560 Alan is going to end up his dad's favorite, despite 0:30:46.640 --> 0:30:50.400 having screaming matches about politics their entire lives. 0:30:51.480 --> 0:30:52.160 I know that game. 0:30:52.680 --> 0:30:56.360 Possibly Dad is going Possibly, I've read two versions of this. 0:30:56.880 --> 0:30:58.960 Dad is going to turn him into the FBI for 0:30:59.080 --> 0:31:05.520 being a communist. But they're still the favorite. 0:31:12.440 --> 0:31:14.560 What are the other siblings like where it's like, yeah, 0:31:14.560 --> 0:31:17.400 I turned him into the FBI, but so I can better. 0:31:17.840 --> 0:31:20.520 It's because they both do the same work with folklore. 0:31:22.240 --> 0:31:25.960 I think I don't know, or like maybe dad knows 0:31:26.040 --> 0:31:28.120 that Dad's a piece of shit, and it's just like 0:31:28.800 --> 0:31:29.240 I don't know. 0:31:30.320 --> 0:31:31.920 Maybe it's like a I don't know, if you watched 0:31:31.960 --> 0:31:33.600 the show Succession, maybe. 0:31:33.440 --> 0:31:36.320 It's sort of like I got you what is it? 0:31:37.000 --> 0:31:38.920 You know, where it's like we don't get. 0:31:38.840 --> 0:31:41.520 Along, but I have a begrudging respect for the fact 0:31:41.520 --> 0:31:44.240 that you like go out on your own and you try. Yeah, 0:31:44.280 --> 0:31:46.400 maybe it's like that a little bit of a roy 0:31:46.520 --> 0:31:47.760 family dynamic. 0:31:47.640 --> 0:31:51.160 Like when Kendall like exposes his dad and his dad 0:31:51.520 --> 0:31:52.760 like secretly smile. 0:31:53.000 --> 0:31:54.720 Yeah, he's kind of into it because it's like, well, 0:31:54.840 --> 0:31:57.080 we don't get along, but I respect that you're like 0:31:57.200 --> 0:31:57.880 taking a shot. 0:31:58.280 --> 0:32:00.000 I love you, but you're not serious. 0:32:00.000 --> 0:32:00.680 Where's people? 0:32:03.680 --> 0:32:06.440 I actually think that is happening. And because even his 0:32:06.560 --> 0:32:08.160 whole life, Allan is going to be like I hate 0:32:08.160 --> 0:32:11.480 my father's politics. My father has done terrible things, but 0:32:11.600 --> 0:32:14.360 also he kind of refuses to be like fuck by dad. 0:32:14.520 --> 0:32:17.760 He's always a little bit like but I understand and 0:32:17.840 --> 0:32:20.720 respect him. It's kind of an interesting dynamic, and like, 0:32:21.320 --> 0:32:24.400 I don't know, if I had a piece of shit kid, 0:32:24.520 --> 0:32:26.040 like I don't know, it'd be so hard, right, like 0:32:26.080 --> 0:32:27.200 what have you had a kid in there? A piece 0:32:27.200 --> 0:32:29.080 of shit? Like what do you even do? I don't 0:32:29.160 --> 0:32:32.520 know anyway, so I have some respect for the respect 0:32:32.560 --> 0:32:36.320 for dad. At like fourteen or fifteen, he goes off 0:32:36.320 --> 0:32:38.920 to a finishing school in Connecticut on a full scholarship 0:32:38.960 --> 0:32:41.080 and he's off to New England to become a fancy person. 0:32:41.520 --> 0:32:43.960 But he doesn't have any money, like spending money, and 0:32:44.160 --> 0:32:46.880 his family pretty genuinely didn't have any spending money for 0:32:47.000 --> 0:32:50.160 him either. Dad was usually working for this or that university, 0:32:50.240 --> 0:32:52.640 but was unemployed a lot, and his work as a 0:32:52.720 --> 0:32:56.480 folklorist was often ignored. It's worth knowing that his dad's history. 0:32:56.840 --> 0:32:59.640 His dad loves cowboy songs and he wants it to 0:32:59.680 --> 0:33:03.360 be taken seriously in academia, and most people kind of 0:33:03.440 --> 0:33:06.640 just laugh at him about it. And so that's kind 0:33:06.680 --> 0:33:08.440 of why he started breaking into being like, well, what 0:33:08.520 --> 0:33:11.720 if I record black people instead? And people are like, oh, 0:33:11.800 --> 0:33:14.000 that sells people like the race music as it was 0:33:14.080 --> 0:33:16.320 called at the time, which is funny because like we 0:33:16.440 --> 0:33:18.160 call it like race music as if we're like so 0:33:18.280 --> 0:33:21.360 much more enlightened now, but like, yeah, it's the same 0:33:21.520 --> 0:33:26.040 concept truly can we sell this to white people? 0:33:26.960 --> 0:33:30.000 All of this sounds like it's so like, you know, 0:33:30.200 --> 0:33:33.160 back in the old days. It is actually very much 0:33:33.320 --> 0:33:36.480 still around. The legacy of all this is like very contemporary. 0:33:37.600 --> 0:33:39.160 I mean, fuck, I don't know how it works about 0:33:39.200 --> 0:33:41.680 people like walking around and finding people like freestyling on 0:33:41.720 --> 0:33:43.320 the street and then just being like, I'm gonna make 0:33:43.360 --> 0:33:46.440 you a stock kid, you know, stick with me. 0:33:46.560 --> 0:33:47.440 It goes straight to the town. 0:33:47.520 --> 0:33:52.440 Yeah, I do still run across people getting absolutely screwed 0:33:52.480 --> 0:33:53.400 by producers over that. 0:33:53.560 --> 0:33:53.720 You know. 0:33:55.120 --> 0:33:57.880 So young Alan, he's in Connecticut and he wants to 0:33:57.960 --> 0:34:00.720 go on a date, so he asks his parents for 0:34:00.840 --> 0:34:03.960 money to quote that book Alan Lomax, the manner recorded 0:34:04.000 --> 0:34:07.320 the world quote. His mother wrote a thirteen page letter 0:34:07.440 --> 0:34:09.120 that listed each of his cousins who had been a 0:34:09.160 --> 0:34:12.359 failure because of some girl or another and contrasted them 0:34:12.400 --> 0:34:15.200 with those like his older brother, who had succeeded because 0:34:15.200 --> 0:34:17.120 of their single minded devotion to their work. 0:34:20.880 --> 0:34:24.400 It's like Rick and Morty style, like, don't think about girls, 0:34:24.480 --> 0:34:27.399 just focus on side and then you know it'll yeah, 0:34:27.920 --> 0:34:29.800 it'll just confuse you and distract you. 0:34:31.040 --> 0:34:35.000 But Alan Lomax's clever as shit. This is like nineteen thirty, 0:34:35.040 --> 0:34:37.960 he's doing this. He writes back, basically, look, if you 0:34:38.000 --> 0:34:40.319 don't give me money to date this girl, I've been 0:34:40.360 --> 0:34:45.200 looking at boys a lot lately. Boys are kind of cute, 0:34:45.239 --> 0:34:53.640 am I right? Car, Yeah, he's already turning out very 0:34:53.680 --> 0:34:56.600 differently from his father. He spends his freshman year of 0:34:56.680 --> 0:34:59.880 college at the University of Texas, and he resigns from 0:34:59.880 --> 0:35:03.279 the school paper because he wants to publish. Okay, the 0:35:03.400 --> 0:35:08.080 pope says birth control is bad. Here's an encyclical about it, 0:35:08.680 --> 0:35:11.520 and so Alan writes a birth control is good, Fuck you, 0:35:11.640 --> 0:35:15.000 mister pope, and the school won't publish it. So he's like, 0:35:15.280 --> 0:35:18.200 then I quit. You won't listen to my pro birth 0:35:18.200 --> 0:35:21.200 control arguments, I'm fucking out of here. And his friend 0:35:21.239 --> 0:35:23.839 group was radical as fuck, including a guy who later 0:35:23.960 --> 0:35:26.920 became the lawyer who wrote the arguments used to desegregate 0:35:27.000 --> 0:35:29.640 schools in Brown versus the Board of Education. And then 0:35:29.680 --> 0:35:31.040 there are a whole bunch of other names that were 0:35:31.080 --> 0:35:32.759 listed that I was like, oh, I should look up. 0:35:33.120 --> 0:35:36.120 That's too many rabbit holes. A lot of his friends 0:35:36.160 --> 0:35:38.479 went on to go do civil rights shit in pretty 0:35:38.520 --> 0:35:42.040 cool ways. He was born to be a Bohemian, but 0:35:42.160 --> 0:35:44.719 not actually from Bohemia, because that's actually Bohemi is like 0:35:44.840 --> 0:35:47.879 in Bohemian as a concept, it's like an early Orientalism. 0:35:48.000 --> 0:35:50.719 Well it's about the same time as regular Orientalism, but 0:35:50.880 --> 0:35:53.319 like Bohemia is a place. It's in eastern Europe. It's 0:35:53.320 --> 0:35:55.799 like part of the Czech Republic now, right, But being 0:35:55.840 --> 0:35:58.840 a Bohemian is like I am exotic and different, you know, 0:36:00.640 --> 0:36:02.680 and we like let that one be, which is fine. 0:36:02.719 --> 0:36:05.720 I don't believe that Bohemians are ethnically oppressed, but anyway, 0:36:06.000 --> 0:36:07.920 he's born to be a Bohemian by the style of 0:36:08.000 --> 0:36:10.840 the time in the nineteen and thirties in America, he 0:36:11.000 --> 0:36:13.719 risks expulsion to go to a black music venue, like 0:36:13.800 --> 0:36:15.799 if a school finds out he's like going to where 0:36:15.840 --> 0:36:17.759 black people hang out, he can get expelled. He does 0:36:17.840 --> 0:36:22.920 it anyway, and his second year of college, his family 0:36:23.000 --> 0:36:25.480 manages to get him into Harvard on a scholarship to 0:36:25.560 --> 0:36:29.360 study philosophy. He goes there. He keeps a goldfish in 0:36:29.440 --> 0:36:31.960 a rat as pets I think, in his dorm room. 0:36:33.000 --> 0:36:35.359 He doesn't really make a lot of friends because all 0:36:35.400 --> 0:36:38.200 of his classmates are pretentious conservative assholes. 0:36:37.800 --> 0:36:39.800 And also the pet rat probably didn't know. Hello. 0:36:40.480 --> 0:36:43.040 Yeah, No, he's a weird kid. He is absolutely a 0:36:43.080 --> 0:36:43.560 weird kid. 0:36:44.120 --> 0:36:45.160 Hygiene my guy. 0:36:45.560 --> 0:36:45.799 Yeah. 0:36:46.480 --> 0:36:47.200 And he wrote his. 0:36:47.280 --> 0:36:51.000 Dad constantly, and his dad wanted letters about Harvard life, 0:36:51.080 --> 0:36:53.440 being like, ah, I want to live through you, Like 0:36:53.600 --> 0:36:56.319 what are you doing? What amazing learnings are you doing? 0:36:56.719 --> 0:37:01.680 And Alan sends him letters about communism, and he sends 0:37:01.719 --> 0:37:05.320 his dad letters about communism with a capital C that 0:37:05.480 --> 0:37:07.160 has flames coming out of it. 0:37:07.920 --> 0:37:11.360 Oh my god, this is big f you, dad, energy, 0:37:11.640 --> 0:37:12.400 which I'm here for. 0:37:13.120 --> 0:37:16.160 But it's also like he's like, Dad, I've discovered the 0:37:16.239 --> 0:37:21.719 most amazing thing you know. And Dad is having a 0:37:21.800 --> 0:37:24.520 hard time. He keeps losing his job, his health is declining, 0:37:24.520 --> 0:37:28.080 and his wife, Alan's mom dies and so he gets 0:37:28.160 --> 0:37:30.640 a lot out of corresponding with his weird communist son. 0:37:31.040 --> 0:37:32.799 So he's like writing these letters that are like you're 0:37:32.840 --> 0:37:35.000 my only human connection. Tell me about what's happening. And 0:37:35.120 --> 0:37:38.480 he's kids like have you ever heard of from each 0:37:38.480 --> 0:37:41.719 according to ability, to each according to need? 0:37:44.320 --> 0:37:46.879 I've drawing it with flames around. 0:37:46.600 --> 0:37:49.640 It for you. Here's the stucy esa or the coolest 0:37:49.760 --> 0:37:53.440 or whatever. I love it. It was just like a 0:37:53.560 --> 0:37:56.439 no one ever changes the moment to learn that he's drying. Yes, 0:37:56.680 --> 0:37:58.799 communism flames come out. 0:37:58.880 --> 0:38:02.880 It's up also sid iconic reference. 0:38:05.040 --> 0:38:06.840 I think now they're caught it coolest. But when I 0:38:06.920 --> 0:38:12.080 was in school, there's a Stuss and so he doesn't 0:38:12.280 --> 0:38:14.840 like Harvard and he writes and he's like, Dad, let 0:38:14.920 --> 0:38:17.160 me just like go around and collect music with you. Instead, 0:38:17.680 --> 0:38:19.840 he wants to go to the coal miner strike in 0:38:19.920 --> 0:38:22.520 Kentucky because that's where all the writers go to get 0:38:22.520 --> 0:38:25.360 it arrested, because there's no real free speech in America. 0:38:25.400 --> 0:38:27.719 And if you go right like pretty like famous people 0:38:27.760 --> 0:38:29.440 were going there to cover it, and we're getting interested 0:38:29.480 --> 0:38:32.520 for covering it. But he also is like he's a 0:38:32.560 --> 0:38:34.480 Sessi communist. So he's like, Dad, no, wait, I have 0:38:34.600 --> 0:38:36.720 new idea. You should put me on a ship somewhere 0:38:36.760 --> 0:38:38.759 in like the South Pacific, and I'm going to learn 0:38:38.800 --> 0:38:41.240 how to do stuff with my hands, be a sailor, 0:38:41.760 --> 0:38:44.759 you know which, like I don't know. I mean, I 0:38:44.840 --> 0:38:46.520 also want to learn that, but I actually don't want 0:38:46.560 --> 0:38:50.319 to do it in that style. And he's watching all 0:38:50.360 --> 0:38:53.000 these Soviet films which glorified the good worker and put 0:38:53.080 --> 0:38:55.680 down the intellectual and he knows that, despite being somewhat 0:38:55.719 --> 0:38:57.360 a poor text, and he's probably made fun of a 0:38:57.440 --> 0:39:01.360 lot for this, he is certainly the bourgeoisie. And I 0:39:01.640 --> 0:39:03.839 almost spelled that word correctly when I wrote it into 0:39:03.920 --> 0:39:07.680 my script, but I did not. I get to write. 0:39:07.680 --> 0:39:11.920 About half the time, he gets himself arrested for protesting 0:39:11.960 --> 0:39:15.640 the deportation of a Polish labor organizer, which surprised him 0:39:15.680 --> 0:39:17.440 because he hadn't actually broken the law. He had just 0:39:17.680 --> 0:39:20.040 spoken at a rally. So this was kind of his 0:39:20.200 --> 0:39:22.680 like Pikachu shock face that, like he's like, wait, but 0:39:22.800 --> 0:39:26.360 it's gonna happen to me, Like, hold on, I'm not 0:39:26.440 --> 0:39:29.000 a poor Polish worker or a Kentuckian minor, or like 0:39:29.040 --> 0:39:30.200 a black person from the South. 0:39:31.760 --> 0:39:33.560 Do they know of my affiliation with Harvard? 0:39:33.680 --> 0:39:33.839 Yeah? 0:39:34.160 --> 0:39:36.560 Well, fortunately the dean of Harvard bailed him out. 0:39:37.200 --> 0:39:37.640 Oh good. 0:39:43.000 --> 0:39:45.480 He only makes it one year at Harvard. Money is 0:39:45.560 --> 0:39:47.920 tight and his grades are shit because he's too distracted 0:39:47.960 --> 0:39:51.680 trying to be a Bohemian communist. And I'm not a 0:39:51.760 --> 0:39:53.720 communist at least not in the capital c with flaming 0:39:53.760 --> 0:39:56.320 letters kind of way. But honestly, this is still relatable 0:39:56.360 --> 0:39:59.319 to my art school dropout self and he heads back 0:39:59.320 --> 0:40:03.000 to the University of Texas. But school was never going 0:40:03.080 --> 0:40:05.520 to be where this man excelled. He is much better 0:40:05.600 --> 0:40:07.680 on the road doing the work he was born to do, 0:40:07.920 --> 0:40:11.560 which is record people's songs. He starts doing that during 0:40:11.640 --> 0:40:13.680 his next summer break, when he is all of seventeen 0:40:13.760 --> 0:40:16.000 years old. But do you know who else gets a break? 0:40:17.280 --> 0:40:20.080 Tell me, we get a very short break, and you, 0:40:20.280 --> 0:40:23.080 the listener, get either a short or long break, depending 0:40:23.160 --> 0:40:25.600 on whether or not you've discovered the skip Ford thirty 0:40:25.640 --> 0:40:32.480 seconds button. Here's a bunch of ads, and we're back. 0:40:33.680 --> 0:40:33.919 See. 0:40:34.360 --> 0:40:36.800 His dad had sold a book to McMillan, which is 0:40:36.880 --> 0:40:39.200 funny to me because I have also sold books to McMillan, 0:40:40.520 --> 0:40:43.000 saying that he would travel around the country recording and 0:40:43.080 --> 0:40:46.960 transcribing an anthology of American folk music, and the Library 0:40:47.000 --> 0:40:49.400 of Congress signed off on them working in a volunteer 0:40:49.520 --> 0:40:52.759 capacity on the project, which gives them like cred right, 0:40:53.000 --> 0:40:56.759 They're like, oh, we're working for McMillan and also the 0:40:57.080 --> 0:41:00.919 Library of Congress. So nineteen thirty two, father and son 0:41:01.000 --> 0:41:04.400 drove around the country, camping as they went and recording, 0:41:05.080 --> 0:41:06.880 and the timeline's a bit blurry to me, does this 0:41:06.960 --> 0:41:09.120 a couple summers in a row. I might acidently conflate 0:41:09.200 --> 0:41:13.239 some stuff. John is out there doing colonialism. He doesn't 0:41:13.280 --> 0:41:14.960 see it that way. He sees himself as a serious 0:41:14.960 --> 0:41:18.120 academic researcher. But he records people's music and then copyrights 0:41:18.120 --> 0:41:22.239 it and sells it. Alan learns there's something more to 0:41:22.440 --> 0:41:26.400 it right away. That first summer they recorded a singer 0:41:26.520 --> 0:41:30.120 named Blue, who sang the song stagger Lee, which I 0:41:30.239 --> 0:41:34.040 first heard with Nick Cave's stagger Lee because I learned 0:41:34.040 --> 0:41:37.000 it once a white Australian man saying it, and since 0:41:37.080 --> 0:41:40.239 Blue knew he was being recorded, Blue said on the 0:41:40.280 --> 0:41:44.080 recording quote, now, mister President, you just don't know how 0:41:44.160 --> 0:41:47.400 bad they're treating us folks down here. I'm singing to you, 0:41:47.640 --> 0:41:49.759 and I'm talking to you. So I hope you will 0:41:49.800 --> 0:41:52.280 come down here and do something for us poor folks 0:41:52.320 --> 0:41:57.320 in Texas. And so Alan heard in this the realization 0:41:57.440 --> 0:42:01.080 that folk recording could be part of social change, part 0:42:01.120 --> 0:42:04.440 of bringing people's voices directly to people with less mediation. 0:42:05.719 --> 0:42:09.239 But most people straight up wouldn't sing for these two 0:42:09.640 --> 0:42:13.440 white dudes, two white men driving around a car offering 0:42:13.520 --> 0:42:16.160 to record them and not paying them any money, no 0:42:16.360 --> 0:42:20.960 thank you. And one biographer was like that I read 0:42:21.000 --> 0:42:22.840 about this was like, yeah, that makes sense. People they 0:42:22.880 --> 0:42:25.840 want to be exploited. Well, the other one was like, 0:42:26.120 --> 0:42:30.359 I'm paraphrasing rudely here. Those silly superstitious savages. They didn't 0:42:30.400 --> 0:42:32.480 use that word, but they meant it. Didn't know what 0:42:32.640 --> 0:42:36.160 recording was all about. You're gonna make money on this, 0:42:36.239 --> 0:42:36.920 And I'm fucking not. 0:42:37.440 --> 0:42:40.120 Like, yeah, I'm glad to hear this, because I do 0:42:40.320 --> 0:42:43.600 think there's this attitude. I don't know, it just reminds 0:42:43.800 --> 0:42:48.319 me of how much savvy and asiency these folks actually had, 0:42:48.440 --> 0:42:50.560 because it's so easy to think of these folks as 0:42:50.680 --> 0:42:54.920 like not having savviness and agency and like them being like, oh, 0:42:54.960 --> 0:42:57.719 you want to record me and take my voice and 0:42:57.800 --> 0:43:00.799 I get no money, no thank you, continue about your way, 0:43:00.920 --> 0:43:04.480 like it's a good reminder that these folks were pretty. 0:43:04.200 --> 0:43:07.200 Savvy and like no one ever like they're traveling around 0:43:07.239 --> 0:43:10.680 with incredibly expensive equipment, no one's ever like robbing them. 0:43:10.800 --> 0:43:14.040 People are just like which I straight up wouldn't be 0:43:14.040 --> 0:43:17.480 mad if they did, honestly, but like everyone's just like not, 0:43:17.480 --> 0:43:20.000 I don't want anything to do with that one performer 0:43:20.040 --> 0:43:23.400 who didn't record put it clearly, it's like, look, if 0:43:23.440 --> 0:43:25.480 I record with you, actually this ties into AI in 0:43:25.520 --> 0:43:28.279 an interesting way. If I record with you, even if 0:43:28.320 --> 0:43:30.759 you pay me, who's going to hire me to play 0:43:30.800 --> 0:43:33.719 their bar anymore? If they can just put on a 0:43:33.840 --> 0:43:34.440 record of me. 0:43:35.480 --> 0:43:37.760 Margaret as a voice professional. 0:43:37.880 --> 0:43:38.040 Huh. 0:43:38.760 --> 0:43:42.240 I am having these same conversations today in twenty twenty 0:43:42.360 --> 0:43:45.200 six that this person that you just quoted was having 0:43:45.360 --> 0:43:48.640 back then. Not a damn thing change, my friends, not 0:43:48.760 --> 0:43:49.840 a damn thing change. 0:43:51.360 --> 0:43:53.400 And when they do find people who are willing to record, 0:43:54.120 --> 0:43:57.280 people are willing to record spirituals but not secular songs, 0:43:57.400 --> 0:43:59.880 not the sinful songs to use a way that they 0:44:00.040 --> 0:44:02.920 are sometimes called sometimes by the black folks and definitely 0:44:03.000 --> 0:44:05.319 by people trying to sell them to white folks, by 0:44:05.360 --> 0:44:07.280 white people trying to sell the songs who call them sinful. 0:44:07.800 --> 0:44:10.359 But people know they're not supposed to play those songs 0:44:10.360 --> 0:44:12.120 in mixed company, so they're not going to play it 0:44:12.160 --> 0:44:15.520 on a recording, so they're not getting the real authentic stuff, 0:44:16.040 --> 0:44:21.160 you know. And the whole time that they're driving around 0:44:21.320 --> 0:44:23.719 the South with five hundred pounds of recording equipment in 0:44:23.719 --> 0:44:26.680 the trunk literally two seventy five pound batteries. It's fucking 0:44:27.280 --> 0:44:30.040 wild because it's the two of them. They're just arguing 0:44:30.040 --> 0:44:32.560 about politics and about racism and like whether what they're 0:44:32.600 --> 0:44:35.440 doing is racism, and about prisons because they're also been 0:44:35.520 --> 0:44:38.160 going to prisons and recording people there, you know, which 0:44:38.239 --> 0:44:40.320 is funny because they're like, oh, I know, who was 0:44:40.440 --> 0:44:43.640 willing to sing for me, someone who is literally incarcerated 0:44:43.719 --> 0:44:44.359 and not free? 0:44:47.360 --> 0:44:50.719 I would I gotta say, though, I I want to 0:44:50.760 --> 0:44:54.320 be a fly on the dashboard of conversation. I know 0:44:55.040 --> 0:44:56.080 this would be a good movie. 0:44:56.600 --> 0:44:59.600 It really would. God yeah, Like, especially once they have 0:44:59.680 --> 0:45:04.279 led back are like yeah. And eventually they find Hote 0:45:04.280 --> 0:45:06.040 he led better in prison, and Huddy is smart and 0:45:06.080 --> 0:45:08.319 he realizes these two white guys might be his ticket out. 0:45:08.680 --> 0:45:11.200 He actually, you know, had done the jailhouse lawyery and 0:45:11.239 --> 0:45:13.360 to secure his own freedom, but that hadn't really gone 0:45:13.440 --> 0:45:16.320 through yet, and so he's like, one, I'm going to 0:45:16.400 --> 0:45:19.040 record and he sings that same song, the like hey Governor, 0:45:19.160 --> 0:45:21.000 let me go song. He's like, you got to give 0:45:21.040 --> 0:45:22.800 this to the governor. And it's unclear whether or not 0:45:22.840 --> 0:45:24.600 they ever do, but it's not what gets him out, 0:45:25.000 --> 0:45:28.279 but he's like, these two white guys might get me 0:45:28.360 --> 0:45:30.360 to New York. They might be my ticket to a 0:45:30.440 --> 0:45:33.239 real career once I get myself out of here. So 0:45:33.320 --> 0:45:35.319 when he gets out, they spend a couple months driving 0:45:35.360 --> 0:45:37.960 around the South, the three of them, and in last 0:45:37.960 --> 0:45:39.920 week's episodes they get into it in detail, but basically 0:45:39.960 --> 0:45:42.759 they didn't pay him a dime, they expected him to 0:45:42.880 --> 0:45:45.799 be their servant and also literally didn't let him leave 0:45:45.840 --> 0:45:48.880 when he wanted to. Alan is seventeen and probably doesn't 0:45:48.880 --> 0:45:51.840 have a lot of agency in this, but whatever, Like 0:45:52.000 --> 0:45:54.320 he's like, yeah, kind of shitty. Will you let me 0:45:54.360 --> 0:45:56.759 go home? Can you give me bus fare or let 0:45:56.840 --> 0:45:59.719 me borrow the car or drive me back? And they're like, 0:45:59.760 --> 0:46:03.760 ahh he'll get over it, you know. Yeah. John Lomax 0:46:03.840 --> 0:46:06.240 got Pikachu shock face when he found out that Huddy 0:46:06.360 --> 0:46:08.160 wasn't actually grateful and wanted to get out of the 0:46:08.200 --> 0:46:11.799 exploited of contract. But Alan really looked up to Houdey 0:46:12.000 --> 0:46:15.879 and the two eventually became friends, and eventually they became 0:46:15.960 --> 0:46:18.160 part of the same New York City leftist folk music 0:46:18.239 --> 0:46:21.279 scene that churned out about half the shit that became 0:46:21.360 --> 0:46:25.800 popular music of like just fucking every genre. And that 0:46:27.040 --> 0:46:28.480 is where we're gonna leave the story for now. 0:46:29.360 --> 0:46:32.120 WHOA, you could not have picked a story that I 0:46:32.239 --> 0:46:36.719 am more invested in. I'm on the edge of my seat. 0:46:36.800 --> 0:46:37.000 Mark. 0:46:37.480 --> 0:46:39.799 It's fun when I get to do related topics two 0:46:39.840 --> 0:46:41.239 weeks in a row, because then I get to be 0:46:41.360 --> 0:46:44.000 like extra obsessed with it and extra insufferable to everybody 0:46:44.040 --> 0:46:47.120 that is around me physically. But like, I kind of 0:46:47.239 --> 0:46:49.799 love the episodes that I have to rewrite so many 0:46:49.920 --> 0:46:52.920 times because I flip flop on how I feel about 0:46:52.920 --> 0:46:55.759 all of it because of some great reveal somewhere along 0:46:55.880 --> 0:46:57.919 the way. Although what was interesting is that the great 0:46:57.960 --> 0:47:00.279 reveal here was that, like, Allan's actually pretty fucking chill. 0:47:01.280 --> 0:47:03.839 Yeah. I was waiting. I was like, is Alan going 0:47:03.920 --> 0:47:06.279 to be a jerk? This whole time? 0:47:06.280 --> 0:47:08.400 I've been listening to the Oh Brother, We're out that soundstrack, 0:47:08.440 --> 0:47:10.120 and it's like, oh, actually he's not a cool guy. 0:47:10.400 --> 0:47:12.200 I'm happy to know that isn't really the case. 0:47:12.440 --> 0:47:13.560 Yeah, I wouldn't date him. 0:47:15.120 --> 0:47:17.279 Well, that's the threshold. You talk about a lot of 0:47:17.320 --> 0:47:20.680 cool people, some of them I would date. Wendy Carlos 0:47:20.840 --> 0:47:21.160 call me. 0:47:21.200 --> 0:47:27.320 If I think although okay, some people's problem is that 0:47:27.360 --> 0:47:29.880 they're terrible to the people that they date. And some 0:47:29.960 --> 0:47:33.560 people's problem is that polyamory hadn't hit yet. Yes, Yes, 0:47:33.920 --> 0:47:38.680 and Honey Ledbetter and Alan Lomax polyamory hadn't hit yet. Wow, 0:47:39.040 --> 0:47:41.880 they would have been fine. They would have been perfectly responsible. 0:47:41.920 --> 0:47:43.320 I think, I don't know. 0:47:44.040 --> 0:47:44.480 I like that. 0:47:44.600 --> 0:47:50.359 I think yeah. I like to imagine emotional responsibility can 0:47:50.400 --> 0:47:51.600 look like a lot of things and a lot of 0:47:51.600 --> 0:47:55.640 different types of relationships. Anyway, if people want to hear 0:47:56.320 --> 0:47:59.560 things that you're excited about. Besides this, is there a 0:47:59.600 --> 0:48:00.560 podcast they can listen to? 0:48:01.719 --> 0:48:04.440 There certainly is. You can listen to my podcast on 0:48:04.680 --> 0:48:06.840 iHeart called there Are No Girls on the Internet, and 0:48:06.880 --> 0:48:09.239 you can check out my audiobook which is available on 0:48:09.440 --> 0:48:12.799 July fourteenth, called Love at First prompt at Love Atfirsthprompt 0:48:12.840 --> 0:48:13.279 dot AI. 0:48:13.640 --> 0:48:15.719 And I'm really proud of myself for not making the 0:48:15.800 --> 0:48:17.560 joke I've made. I think every time you've been in 0:48:17.640 --> 0:48:20.759 a guest, which is that we're proving otherwise there are 0:48:20.840 --> 0:48:23.080 girls on the Internet. But I didn't make that joke. 0:48:23.200 --> 0:48:27.480 So you keep I apprecia takes a joke, keep making 0:48:27.560 --> 0:48:29.080 it all right? 0:48:29.200 --> 0:48:31.800 Well, we will see you all on whatever day of 0:48:31.800 --> 0:48:41.520 the other episode comes out Wednesday. Woo Cool People Who 0:48:41.600 --> 0:48:44.080 Did Cool Stuff is a production of pool Zone Media. 0:48:44.480 --> 0:48:47.280 The more podcasts and pool Zone Media, visit our website 0:48:47.440 --> 0:48:50.200 rule zonemedia dot com, or check us out on I 0:48:50.400 --> 0:48:53.920 Heard Radio, appp A Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.