Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome to cool People who had cool stuff.
Speaker 2: You're a weekly reminder that there's cool stuff happening, and
Speaker 2: it's often done by cool people. Although also it's your
Speaker 2: weekly reminder that people who seem really cool when you
Speaker 2: tell really short versions of their story, actually it become
Speaker 2: very complicated and real when you tell the longer versions
Speaker 2: of their story. Because nobody's perfect except our guest today
Speaker 2: and our producer today, Bridget Todd.
Speaker 1: Hi, how are you?
Speaker 3: Hi? Margaret?
Speaker 4: I like this idea that I'm perfect, you know what,
Speaker 4: I'm not going to push back.
Speaker 3: I am.
Speaker 1: Yeah, No, that's what I'm saying. And also perfect is
Speaker 1: Sophie our producer. Hi, Sophie, Hi, I am perfect. Bridget.
Speaker 1: You are the host of a podcast as a shameful
Speaker 1: thing to be.
Speaker 3: It is just a dirtbag podcaster life, you know.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, you are the host of There Are No
Speaker 1: Girls on the Internet, which is a podcast that people
Speaker 1: can listen to, except it just took a break. Maybe
Speaker 1: what's going on?
Speaker 4: Yeah, we are taken in brief pause, but will be
Speaker 4: real soon. Folks'll check it out if you're interested in
Speaker 4: the intersection of identity and technology and social media and
Speaker 4: some of the wormiest little pieces of dung on the
Speaker 4: Internet and what they're up to you to make our
Speaker 4: lives miserable.
Speaker 3: Come check us out.
Speaker 1: You also have a book that's about to come out.
Speaker 3: That is right.
Speaker 4: Thank you for asking about the book. It is an
Speaker 4: audiobook with Simon and Schuster called Love at First Prompt
Speaker 4: AI and the Future of Intimacy, and it's all about
Speaker 4: folks who have intimate connections with AI.
Speaker 1: Okay, the two things that are interesting me about that immediately. One,
Speaker 1: I've never heard of an audio only book.
Speaker 4: I had not heard of it before making one either,
Speaker 4: So it is not a physical book. It is audio
Speaker 4: only for now. Somebody was like, oh, can you sign
Speaker 4: it for me? And I thought, well, would that be
Speaker 4: a voice note?
Speaker 1: Yeah, like a postcard? Like interesting? I mean I listened to, honestly,
Speaker 1: everything I'm not reading for work, I listened to audio
Speaker 1: books for so it actually makes perfect sense to me.
Speaker 1: Although I'm like, if I ever had to listen to
Speaker 1: it for work, I'd be really sad because then I
Speaker 1: have to listen to it, whereas I read very quickly
Speaker 1: for work. But when we were talking about this book
Speaker 1: before we started recording, you are presenting it in like
Speaker 1: kind of a more complicated way. I'm going to rudely
Speaker 1: guess most of the people who are listening are anti AI,
Speaker 1: and your whole thing is that we should shame people
Speaker 1: who are lonely by being really mad at them and
Speaker 1: not blaming structural problems. Is that the basis of.
Speaker 4: Your book basically, yes, only the opposite. Oh right, yeah,
Speaker 4: I mean, I don't think I'm giving anything away, no
Speaker 4: spoilers and saying that I'm not the most pro AI
Speaker 4: person out there. But the reality is a whole host
Speaker 4: of growing people are using AI for intimacy, whether that's
Speaker 4: you know, platonic connection, romantic connection, a lot of sexual
Speaker 4: connection through things like erotic role play.
Speaker 3: And I feel that.
Speaker 4: So much of the conversation about these people is demonizing
Speaker 4: and shaming.
Speaker 1: Right, look at these losers your insults.
Speaker 4: Yeah, look at these pathetic losers who are getting their
Speaker 4: jollys off to an AI girlfriend or AI porn or.
Speaker 3: What have you.
Speaker 4: I totally get that stance. But we're so busy gawking
Speaker 4: and finger pointing at the individual that the sam Altmans
Speaker 4: and the Elon Musks and the Mark Zuckerberg's of the
Speaker 4: world are like great, keep making fun of what you
Speaker 4: see as these pathetic losers will go continue to commodify
Speaker 4: and make money from, you know, people who might be
Speaker 4: vulnerable and the most intimate parts of what it means
Speaker 4: to be a human. And so I really want to
Speaker 4: shift the conversation away from just gawking at individuals and
Speaker 4: really put our scrutiny where I feel it belongs on
Speaker 4: AI companies and the people who run them, and how
Speaker 4: they are not really being good stewards of the increasingly
Speaker 4: intimate human spaces that they are trying to make money from.
Speaker 1: I appreciate that because I think when I imagine lonely people,
Speaker 1: I don't really imagine people who are like afraid of
Speaker 1: being made fun of. They probably hate being made fun of,
Speaker 1: like more likely to be kind of used to it,
Speaker 1: and like it doesn't seem like a very useful If
Speaker 1: mockery is ever a socially useful thing, it's only useful
Speaker 1: when it is presented in an upward fashion, you know,
Speaker 1: like mock the king, not the peasant, even if the
Speaker 1: peasant has a wayfoo. Why I don't know how to
Speaker 1: pronounce this A pillow that is a person you know,
Speaker 1: like you still don't mock them for like, and maybe
Speaker 1: I'm like overly empathy empathetic, but I'm like when people
Speaker 1: are like, this person married their pillow, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: I don't want to make fun of them. I feel
Speaker 1: sorry for them, and maybe that's just as bad to them.
Speaker 4: But so that's such an insightful point, and I think
Speaker 4: it really tells us a lot about what's going on
Speaker 4: when we talk about people who are having intimacy with AI.
Speaker 4: The people who have intimacy with AI, they actually from
Speaker 4: doing the research on the book, they can tell us
Speaker 4: a lot about what the impacts are from people who
Speaker 4: are in kind of increasingly intimate connections with AI. And
Speaker 4: even if you're somebody who was like, oh, I would
Speaker 4: never be friends with AI, I would never, you know,
Speaker 4: want to have sex with AI?
Speaker 3: What have you? I would put myself in that camp.
Speaker 4: Tech leaders like Mark Zuckerberg has been super clear that
Speaker 4: the future that he is designing is one where he
Speaker 4: thinks all of us, everybody listening, will want to have
Speaker 4: intimate AI connections. Now, whether that's true for you or not,
Speaker 4: that is the future that tech leaders have invested in
Speaker 4: and are busy building. And so I think it would
Speaker 4: be wove us to talk to the people who are
Speaker 4: currently having connection with AI in this way, listen to
Speaker 4: what they're saying, and sort of take away like, Okay,
Speaker 4: well what does this mean for the rest of us?
Speaker 4: But I think that when we're making fun of.
Speaker 3: Them and shaming them, we're actually not learning from them.
Speaker 4: We're not hearing what they say. And I guess for me,
Speaker 4: I'm just a curious cat. Like it's really tempting to
Speaker 4: shut these conversations down through things like, you know, looking
Speaker 4: down on them and making fun of them. I get it,
Speaker 4: but you don't learn when you're not being curious. And
Speaker 4: so I really tried to approach this conversation from a
Speaker 4: really a place of curiosity.
Speaker 1: I am really excited to listen to this now. I
Speaker 1: admit if I just read the tagline, I'm like, Heydai,
Speaker 1: why would I read this? But you just answered that right,
Speaker 1: and like, because I spend a lot of my time
Speaker 1: thinking about Like, but I love gadgets. I am obsessed
Speaker 1: with gadgets. I learned how to program in CUE Basic
Speaker 1: longer ago than a lot of the people listening to
Speaker 1: this were alive.
Speaker 3: It's such a nerd and I love it. So much, Margaret.
Speaker 1: But now I'm like age verification, I'm done. I'm like, nope,
Speaker 1: I don't want the government that should have nothing to
Speaker 1: I've become a grouchy old lady on a rocking chair
Speaker 1: in Appalachia kind of literally, and now just like, no
Speaker 1: get away from me. I never want to have a
Speaker 1: conversation with a chatbot. Every time I do, it's because
Speaker 1: I'm angrily trying to deal with customer service.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 1: And I even have mastered this is really important to
Speaker 1: our topic. It's completely unrelated to our topic. I've even
Speaker 1: kind of mastered the art of when I'm a human
Speaker 1: that I'm talking to in customer service and I'm very mad.
Speaker 1: I've gotten very good at being like, I am incredibly
Speaker 1: frustrated and not at you as a person. I recognize
Speaker 1: that you're doing your job. I am incredibly upset about
Speaker 1: the what's happening right now. But you can't do that
Speaker 1: with an AI. They have taken away my one skill,
Speaker 1: which was getting mad at people without getting mad at them,
Speaker 1: and I don't know what to do anymore.
Speaker 4: I'm so glad that you brought that up, because so like,
Speaker 4: even if you're somebody who you're like I avoid AI
Speaker 4: like the plague. There are times when you find yourself
Speaker 4: interacting with AI kind of against your will, and there
Speaker 4: are all these insidious, sneaky little ways that they design
Speaker 4: it to try to mimic intimacy, even when you are
Speaker 4: having what is essentially like a non consensual connection with AI,
Speaker 4: where when you're like, hey, Exminity Comcast, my internet is out.
Speaker 4: It's a problem, and their AI chatbot is like, oh,
Speaker 4: that must be so frustrating for you. I really hear
Speaker 4: what you're saying that that's so frustrating. Let me help you.
Speaker 4: I'm like, don't try to empathize with me.
Speaker 3: You're not a humane I'm so mad sneak intimacy into
Speaker 3: this interaction.
Speaker 1: Oh no, this is such an important point because I
Speaker 1: think about the other main interaction I have with AI
Speaker 1: is that I don't have a publicly available email, kind
Speaker 1: of by design because macgrassy old lady lives in, has
Speaker 1: a rocking chair and a shotgun. So it really just
Speaker 1: everyone's just stay away. I love people, but anyway people
Speaker 1: have figured out I assume if you ask an AI
Speaker 1: how to reach me, you get one of my publishers,
Speaker 1: And so I get these emails forwarded to me all
Speaker 1: the time that are people being like, hey, I really
Speaker 1: loved your book, and I particularly loved the themes of
Speaker 1: the following comma, the following comma and the following I
Speaker 1: also really like how the characters experienced as the following
Speaker 1: comma and the following and comma the following And we're
Speaker 1: trying to reach you to do X y Z. I
Speaker 1: don't even know what the scam is, but I've like,
Speaker 1: stop trying to appeal to me, to be like, I
Speaker 1: understand your book, so you should talk to me.
Speaker 3: I get those every five seconds.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, that's probably just your life.
Speaker 3: People trying to get booked on things.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and it's like, you know the person. First of all,
Speaker 4: you can tell it's written by aie. It's in personal,
Speaker 4: but it's written in such a way that it is
Speaker 4: meant to appeal to your like flattery. Like I'm super
Speaker 4: so I shouldn't even say this on my podcast, but
Speaker 4: I'm super susceptible to flattery. Somebody gives me a compliment,
Speaker 4: I'm like, oh, thank you for noticing. Well, you're so observant.
Speaker 1: Well, it's because you're empathic that you're susceptible. To flattery.
Speaker 1: That's what I've always You're very good at that.
Speaker 4: Thank you, Margaret. Oh wow, you're so insightful, Thanks Margaret.
Speaker 4: But like it's these AI generated please are meant to
Speaker 4: appeal to these like human qualities about us, you know,
Speaker 4: our ego are, you know, susceptibility to flattery, things like that. Yeah,
Speaker 4: but like once we put on our critical hats, we
Speaker 4: can see how empty and hollow they actually are. And
Speaker 4: so it's not like you're actually booking the person who
Speaker 4: sends you this email that's clearly AI generated. Oh I
Speaker 4: really liked X, Y and Z from your book. Yeah,
Speaker 4: but you know, I guess I would argue that companies
Speaker 4: know this, and they design, you know, AI to speak
Speaker 4: in this way to appeal to us in these ways
Speaker 4: that are playing on what I would argue you are
Speaker 4: the sort of human qualities that we all have. And
Speaker 4: I guess I just think, you know, even though I
Speaker 4: have a tech podcast, I consider myself a bit of
Speaker 4: a luttite, not in the sense that I don't like.
Speaker 3: Technology, I really do.
Speaker 4: I want to ask questions about who is benefiting from technology, right.
Speaker 3: Like that's what the lunites were all about.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, No, they were like they wanted to
Speaker 1: be able to make stuff in a cottage instead of
Speaker 1: a factory. This is very reasonable. If they had succeeded,
Speaker 1: everyone's life would be better. There probably wouldn't have been
Speaker 1: a fucking British empire, like to the same degree. Like anyway,
Speaker 1: But I believe that by the end of this episode
Speaker 1: we will find a way to tie in that conversation
Speaker 1: to this topic. But this topic is entirely different. Bridget
Speaker 1: Have you ever heard of music? I think I have
Speaker 1: heard a little bit of music. Yeah, okay, what about
Speaker 1: American music?
Speaker 3: I am a little bit familiar. Americans make music?
Speaker 1: Sure, yeah, yeah, Well, whether you know it or not,
Speaker 1: your world has been shaped by a sickly white communist
Speaker 1: from Texas named Alan Lomax. You ever heard of Alan Lomax?
Speaker 3: I have heard of Alan Lomax? What am I thinking of?
Speaker 3: Oh Brother, We're Out Thou?
Speaker 1: Wait? Is he in that or something?
Speaker 3: I think?
Speaker 1: I think that's absolutely what his time period is.
Speaker 3: Fact check this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I is he the guy who records them in
Speaker 1: that movie?
Speaker 4: I sound like such a nerd, but I have the
Speaker 4: soundtrack on CD to Oh Brother, We're Out Thou.
Speaker 3: And it kind of slaps, So don't come for me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, no, that's good music.
Speaker 3: He is involved in it, like his legacy is involved
Speaker 3: in that. Sound correct, That.
Speaker 1: Is what we will be talking about today. Oh brother,
Speaker 1: where art thou? Sinners? And there's one other movie that
Speaker 1: I was like thinking about while I was reading all
Speaker 1: this that I was like, Oh, this is just that,
Speaker 1: Like this is just what this is about.
Speaker 3: I'm so fucking excited.
Speaker 1: And actually Sinners is even the most what it's about,
Speaker 1: because it's also about this is a story that into
Speaker 1: colonization and racism and recording and what is and isn't
Speaker 1: our folk heritage as like people, and there's so much
Speaker 1: in this story.
Speaker 4: Did you pick this specifically because you thought it would
Speaker 4: be my shit?
Speaker 3: Because it very much is.
Speaker 1: My Oh I'm very excited it's your shit. No. What
Speaker 1: happened was this was going to be last week's episode,
Speaker 1: and then I learned what Alan Lomax's dad did to
Speaker 1: led Belly Huddy Ledbetter, which was do him real fucking dirty,
Speaker 1: and so I had to switch. And last week I
Speaker 1: just recorded about Huddy Led Better, but I couldn't get
Speaker 1: out of my head, and I thought you might be
Speaker 1: into this, so I'm very excited.
Speaker 3: You thought right, Magpie.
Speaker 1: So Alan Lomax did more than probably anybody in history
Speaker 1: anywhere in the world that I'm aware of. Whenever I
Speaker 1: say statements like that, I'm probably wrong. Did more than
Speaker 1: anyone in history to record folk music, the music of people,
Speaker 1: the people people. I don't know what you're capitalizing or
Speaker 1: putting the on front of it, however you do it.
Speaker 1: He was there across cultures and continents. Without him, people
Speaker 1: have made clear there would be no rock and roll.
Speaker 1: It's likely that without him an awful lot of blues,
Speaker 1: jazz and work songs would have simply died away. Also,
Speaker 1: a lot of like traditional voodoo music would possibly be gone.
Speaker 1: And it depends on how you know robust the oral
Speaker 1: tradition would be. But there's so many genres where we
Speaker 1: barely have any of their music. Anything that Helen Lomax
Speaker 1: showed up and cared about we know the songs also
Speaker 1: left out of the story always this is his wife Elizabeth,
Speaker 1: who did all of that work alongside him for twelve
Speaker 1: years and has been more or less written out of history,
Speaker 1: which is you're making your I'm not surprised face.
Speaker 4: I'm disappointed in myself, because that's always the story. Of course,
Speaker 4: there's a woman somewhere who didn't get her due, who
Speaker 4: was very involved.
Speaker 3: And I'm a.
Speaker 4: Little bit familiar with Lomax's work, but it never even
Speaker 4: occurred to me to think, like, well, was there a
Speaker 4: woman in the mix who is the reason why his
Speaker 4: work is, you know, has the status that it does.
Speaker 1: I like, I can say that they were married for
Speaker 1: twelve years, and they were traveling doing that work together
Speaker 1: most of that time. And he went on to continue
Speaker 1: to do it for decades and decades, and she went
Speaker 1: on to have a different career. So he's a little
Speaker 1: bit more of the driving force, but she did twelve
Speaker 1: years of this work, which is a lot of time,
Speaker 1: and like thousands of songs, you know, and they recorded
Speaker 1: thousands and thousands of folk musicians, the overwhelming majority of
Speaker 1: whom never saw any commercial success. So just like recording
Speaker 1: these songs, and it's a remarkably American story, and it's
Speaker 1: a story about how people came together to tell the
Speaker 1: American story. And because it's the American story, it's like
Speaker 1: cut through with racism and colonialism the whole goddamn time
Speaker 1: in ways that I wish it was, but it is because,
Speaker 1: unfortunately for all of us, the story of Alan Lomax
Speaker 1: begins with his father who did this work before him,
Speaker 1: named John Lomax. John Lomax, the technical word for him
Speaker 1: was that he was a racist, colonizing piece of shit,
Speaker 1: and he even came across a sort of progressive on
Speaker 1: racist US at his time. But he's like, we have
Speaker 1: his letters to his wife. He's just a racist. He's
Speaker 1: a horrible fucking racist, and like it's just left out
Speaker 1: of the histories. I found one book, it's about Howey
Speaker 1: Ledbetter that talks about all of this, and it completely
Speaker 1: disrupted everything. Like I was saying, I realized that a
Speaker 1: small detour around Howdy Ledbetter needed to become an entire
Speaker 1: two episodes, So last week we covered Hotty Ledbetter, better
Speaker 1: known by his stage name Led Belly, one of the
Speaker 1: finest blues musicians the world has ever seen. Led Belly
Speaker 1: persevered through just about everything. He was pretty big into
Speaker 1: self defense, so he went to jail a lot because
Speaker 1: it was a rough time to be a black Southern
Speaker 1: man who's into self defense in the Jim Crow South.
Speaker 1: He went to prison a lot. For anyone who didn't
Speaker 1: listen last week the first time hatt he led better
Speaker 1: got out of prison. He did it by just breaking
Speaker 1: out he was on a chain gang. And this is, oh, brother,
Speaker 1: we're art that moment in my mind. But I have
Speaker 1: to sell the same anecdote I told last time, which
Speaker 1: is that my grandfather was also on a chain gang
Speaker 1: in the nineteen thirties. He stole a car and then
Speaker 1: he didn't snitch out the people he stole a car with.
Speaker 1: And my family presents this. I never talked about my
Speaker 1: family on here. What am I doing? My family presents
Speaker 1: this as this like really wholesome story about how he
Speaker 1: takes responsibility for his crimes. And I'm like, n because
Speaker 1: he's no snitch.
Speaker 4: Yeah, is that like your family legacy is like we
Speaker 4: don't snitch.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 1: They take the wrong answer out of it, because like
Speaker 1: they see his like hobo days as kind of this
Speaker 1: like quaint aside and like focus more on his later work, right,
Speaker 1: and whereas I'm like, I've written freight trains. I want
Speaker 1: to talk to my grant. I can't or I can't
Speaker 1: only but he's dead, so it's a different version of
Speaker 1: talking anyway. Whatever. As soon as I found out I
Speaker 1: worked a changgang. I have no idea for how long.
Speaker 1: Whenever I read about changangs, I get really excited. Led
Speaker 1: Belly decided he didn't want to work on a chain gang,
Speaker 1: so they burned a hole in the floor of the
Speaker 1: wooden wagon and they just left and had no brother
Speaker 1: were at that Probably he changed his name. The second
Speaker 1: time he was in prison, he literally sang his Way
Speaker 1: to Freedom because the governor would come by and like
Speaker 1: check on the prisons, and he wrote a song that
Speaker 1: was like, oh, Governor, you should this is totally not
Speaker 1: the melody. You should release me. It would be the
Speaker 1: Christian thing to do.
Speaker 4: You know how convincing of a song. That song had
Speaker 4: to have slapped where it's like, all right, let.
Speaker 1: Him go now. They're actually are recordings and it's completely
Speaker 1: different than the way I just sang it. This man
Speaker 1: was called the King of the twelve string Guitar, which
Speaker 1: is actually interesting. He learned it. It was a Mexican
Speaker 1: instrument when he learned it in Dallas. So he sings
Speaker 1: his way to freedom. The third time he's in prison,
Speaker 1: he had the fortune and misfortune to meet John fucking Lomax.
Speaker 1: John Lomax didn't get him out of prison, but took
Speaker 1: credit for getting him out of prison. Haddy Ledbetter jailhouse
Speaker 1: lawyered himself out of prison by successfully connecting bureaucratic dots
Speaker 1: between Texas and Louisiana while imprisoned in the South in
Speaker 1: the nineteen thirties. Wow, and got himself out of prison.
Speaker 1: But John Lomax takes all the credit. After that, Huddy
Speaker 1: Ledbetter became the unpaid servant for John Lomax. And along
Speaker 1: the way to introduce a little bit, or we'll go
Speaker 1: back and start with Alan's story. Alan's seventeen and with
Speaker 1: his dad when all this happens. So some of Alan's
Speaker 1: formative moments of doing this work is this exploiting black
Speaker 1: man who just got out of prison. So once again,
Speaker 1: howe he Ledbetter had to find his way to freedom.
Speaker 1: It's not in prison, but he's trapped in this like
Speaker 1: really messed up contract where he's only getting a third
Speaker 1: of the money that he's producing. It's like almost like
Speaker 1: a model for like exploitative like how the music industry
Speaker 1: works today.
Speaker 4: You know, I was gonna say, it doesn't sound that
Speaker 4: different from my friends who are recording artists or musicians
Speaker 4: or entertainers. What they describe today, and it does come
Speaker 4: feel like a modern day colonialistic situation where it's like, Okay,
Speaker 4: so I do all the work, you get all the
Speaker 4: money and credit and that's.
Speaker 1: That and also the fucking copyright. And that was actually
Speaker 1: the thing because like I always sort of knew that
Speaker 1: record deals are often real bad, and like book deals
Speaker 1: are complicated because they're like often a similar low percentage
Speaker 1: of your work, but you usually still kind of own
Speaker 1: the work, and the contract is like more likely to
Speaker 1: have a like if we stop publishing this, you get
Speaker 1: your rights back. Like the book industry is bad, the
Speaker 1: music industry is worse. And it was so interesting to
Speaker 1: be like I can draw the connection. John his parents
Speaker 1: owned people, and they called themselves like everyone refers to
Speaker 1: them as basically bootstrapping their way up, and it's like
Speaker 1: left out that the reason that they did that is
Speaker 1: because they fucking owned a bunch of families of people,
Speaker 1: you know, because they're fucking.
Speaker 3: Strapping via owning enslaved people.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, like an owning essentially like enslaving people
Speaker 4: and taking their money.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's like, oh, we're making our own way yeah,
Speaker 4: through very fucked up mes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, left out of that basically every story. But so
Speaker 1: it's like I can draw a direct line to the
Speaker 1: music industry through that and how they you know. And
Speaker 1: so he's going around when John is going around to
Speaker 1: the South, he's going around and he's collecting folk songs
Speaker 1: and copywriting them like and not paying the musicians. And
Speaker 1: that's like the race. It's like a race between all
Speaker 1: these folk song collectors. So this is why I was like,
Speaker 1: I can't cover Alan Lomax yet. What if Alan Lomax
Speaker 1: is a piece of shit? He's not. He's actually really cool.
Speaker 1: He's genuinely a cool guy. But he grew up in
Speaker 1: this horrible industry of exploitation, you know.
Speaker 3: Can I ask a question? Yeah, I don't want to
Speaker 3: jump ahead, yea, And I don't know.
Speaker 4: The answer to this is cutting out the ownership and
Speaker 4: profit and copyright, you know, of the people who are
Speaker 4: actually making the thing.
Speaker 3: Do you think that is intentional, like we.
Speaker 4: Are taking the product from other people and benefiting ourselves
Speaker 4: or is it more sort of like it's just like
Speaker 4: not how people thought about it at the time. At
Speaker 4: the time, it's like, why would these people expect ownership
Speaker 4: or a profit from this thing that they are creating.
Speaker 3: Do you know what I'm asking?
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, totally. And what's interesting is I think the
Speaker 1: answer is literally in the colonization of say Africa. I've
Speaker 1: been listening to Behind the Bastard. It's like a terrible person.
Speaker 1: And same the recent episodes about Zimbabwe when it had
Speaker 1: a worse name, about how British people were like, look
Speaker 1: at this empty land. It's not being used. I am
Speaker 1: going to be the one to do something with this.
Speaker 1: I think it's that they literally don't see ownership or
Speaker 1: value produced by especially black people, but also just poor
Speaker 1: people in general. Because they're also doing this to hillbilly music,
Speaker 1: which is funny because black people weren't allowed to play
Speaker 1: it if they became commercially successful. Same with cowboy songs.
Speaker 1: Black people like Huddy Ledbetter was literally a cowboy from
Speaker 1: Texas and he wasn't allowed to play cowboy songs when
Speaker 1: he got big, you know, because that's white people music.
Speaker 1: He can't do that. But still overall, largely a racial
Speaker 1: component to this, and I think it's colonization. I think
Speaker 1: it's literally believing this is empty land. Okay, this is
Speaker 1: the best comparison I can come up with, and it's
Speaker 1: a weird one. Until I came out as trans I
Speaker 1: didn't know what size I was as a person, I
Speaker 1: had dysphoria. I would look in the mirror and see
Speaker 1: something different than everyone else saw, right. I think that
Speaker 1: white colonists are essentially insane. I'm not defending them. They're
Speaker 1: still criminally liable. They can't use it as a defense
Speaker 1: in court. But I think they genuinely were like, look
Speaker 1: at this empty land. Yeah, and you're like you're literally
Speaker 1: talking to a man in English about ownership of the
Speaker 1: land and buying it from him, and yet you don't
Speaker 1: see what's happening. That's my best guess ay.
Speaker 3: Almost in a kind of dysmorphia where you just can't
Speaker 3: see what's actually there.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Interesting.
Speaker 1: I don't even think that they were like, I mean,
Speaker 1: they were profit motivated, but like not like fuck, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go exploit people today.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: They were like I'm just gonna go collect the fruits
Speaker 1: of the wild and like, honestly, like when I talk
Speaker 1: about led Belly in the last episodes, like he wasn't
Speaker 1: even a circus act. He was a zoo act, you know,
Speaker 1: until he took charge found white lawyers who helped him
Speaker 1: get out of the contract, and he like fucking broke
Speaker 1: free and then had a career and then became a
Speaker 1: leftist labor singer and wrote anti fascist songs and was
Speaker 1: cool as fuck. But the last time he went to prison.
Speaker 1: Alan Lomax dropped out of grad school to help raise
Speaker 1: money to help get him out. So that was when
Speaker 1: I was like, all right, Alix is cool.
Speaker 3: That's pretty cool. That's first of all, as a grad
Speaker 3: school dropout. Dropping out of grad school's pretty cool just
Speaker 3: in general, but that's specifically very cool.
Speaker 1: Years later, students would ask advice, and he often was like,
Speaker 1: drop out of school.
Speaker 3: It's great advice. I've give that advice to anybody.
Speaker 1: I'm also a college drop out.
Speaker 4: Yet wouldn't you repeat that advice? If somebody was like,
Speaker 4: I'm in grad school and it sucks, I have no money,
Speaker 4: what should I do? It's like, how have you considered
Speaker 4: dropping out?
Speaker 1: I remember giving me to talk out of college, and
Speaker 1: this like person raised their hand, They're like I remember
Speaker 1: they like asked me how to handle certain things with college,
Speaker 1: and I was just like, look, I dropped out. Like
Speaker 1: now your school's paying me to talk to you. I
Speaker 1: don't know what to tell you I'm not encouraging that
Speaker 1: one way or the other. Everyone's conditions are very different
Speaker 1: from each other. But do you know what I can
Speaker 1: wholeheartedly recommend because I have personally added none of lay
Speaker 1: it on me the products and services that support this
Speaker 1: podcast of which I have no knowledge.
Speaker 4: It will never not pack me up. How y'all do
Speaker 4: your ad breaks. It is my favorite fucking thing in
Speaker 4: the world.
Speaker 1: I think they secretly know that anti advertising is still advertising,
Speaker 1: that's my best guess. Or they just don't listen, but
Speaker 1: you should listen or not here they are enter back.
Speaker 1: So this week I am mad at my sources. I
Speaker 1: am particularly mad. I have never talked shit on a
Speaker 1: specific source book before on the four or five years
Speaker 1: of been doing this show. I am mad at the
Speaker 1: biography Alan Lomax, the man who Recorded the World by
Speaker 1: John Zwd from twenty ten, because twenty ten is way
Speaker 1: too recent of a book to have such wild either
Speaker 1: apology of racism that's either conscious or just sure didn't
Speaker 1: look deep. Because this is a book about Alan Lomax.
Speaker 1: It's the book about Alan Lomax that I can find,
Speaker 1: and so it's my main source for a lot of
Speaker 1: this stuff. But because one of the most important things
Speaker 1: in Alan's early life and one of the main things
Speaker 1: that this book starts off talking about. This book just
Speaker 1: basically like gives the like John Lomax in his family
Speaker 1: bootstrap themselves, and here he is like off trying to
Speaker 1: care about people and doesn't mention any of the like
Speaker 1: it's just defending the contract that he traps. Howe he
Speaker 1: ledbetter and over and over and over again, even when
Speaker 1: like no one's asking, you know, it's like going out
Speaker 1: of the way to be like instead of saying something
Speaker 1: that might be fucked up and then defending it, it
Speaker 1: starts off by defending it.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 1: It frames made to work morning till night as an
Speaker 1: unpaid servant as didn't charge him rent.
Speaker 3: Ah, and like, oh, like isn't that great for him?
Speaker 3: What a bargain? Right?
Speaker 1: Like literally, this man when they bring up I think
Speaker 1: Martha is her name, Huddy's wife to come stay with
Speaker 1: them in Connecticut while they're recording up from Texas or
Speaker 1: maybe Louisiana. It's been a moment. They're like, all right,
Speaker 1: we're gonna let your you know, girlfriend come up here
Speaker 1: and you get married. And it's presented as like reuniting
Speaker 1: the two. Literally, John Lomax was writing letters to his
Speaker 1: wife that were like, helly, and now I have two
Speaker 1: one paid servants like that being left out. I'm not
Speaker 1: a big lies biomission, girl, That's a fucking lie biomission.
Speaker 1: And it completely leaves out how they wrote a racist
Speaker 1: caricature of Ledbetter and then claimed that Ledbetter wrote it
Speaker 1: and then didn't give him any of the money for it,
Speaker 1: and it's just it's disinfuriating. I was so mad that
Speaker 1: I almost didn't do this episode, and then I kept
Speaker 1: reading and I was like, goddamn, Alan Lomax is actually
Speaker 1: really cool. His dad's a piece of shit. But I
Speaker 1: don't trust my source, so maybe he was also a
Speaker 1: piece of shit, and it's just not fucking mentioned. But
Speaker 1: I do have a lot of counterfactual I have a
Speaker 1: lot of like Alan Lomax being really cool.
Speaker 3: Okay, good.
Speaker 1: That is my long aside. I believe Alan Lomax was
Speaker 1: nothing like his father, and this story is maybe essential
Speaker 1: for understanding the construction of folk identity in America, an
Speaker 1: America's conception of its own music and literature. But Alan
Speaker 1: Lomack thirty minutes into our episode, that's actually honestly faster
Speaker 1: than sometimes for this show. Alan Lomax was born on
Speaker 1: January thirty first, in the Year of Our Lord, nineteen fifteen,
Speaker 1: in Austin, Texas. I believe he was the third child,
Speaker 1: and he was a sickly kid. He had asthma and earaches,
Speaker 1: and he struggled to put on weight. And this is
Speaker 1: going to follow him his whole life, that he just
Speaker 1: is a kind of likes getting sick. It's like a hobby.
Speaker 1: Their parents were overachievers who wanted their kids to be
Speaker 1: overachievers too, and all their kids were ranked against each other,
Speaker 1: like whenever a kid started reading, they were like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: Susie started reading at three and a half, what are
Speaker 1: you fucking doing at three and nine months, you fucking
Speaker 1: lazy asshole, you know. And they were all taught to
Speaker 1: sing and do math and just do all the overachiever shit,
Speaker 1: and they like would have been in competitive soccer leagues
Speaker 1: one hundred years later, but instead he's actually gonna end
Speaker 1: up being forced to play football even though he's a tiny,
Speaker 1: sickly child. Alan was pretty direct about how he felt
Speaker 1: about this period in his life. Quote, I was given
Speaker 1: an absurd notion of my capacities. I don't know how
Speaker 1: I survived. I was pushed ahead of my class although
Speaker 1: I wasn't brighter than anybody else, that made me like him.
Speaker 1: I was just like, oh, I like this guy. Alan
Speaker 1: grew up in a household that believed his own legend
Speaker 1: that there were all these like you know, bootstrappers who
Speaker 1: you know, would successfully get into Harvard and shit like that,
Speaker 1: and they demanded greatness of their kids. Alan got perfect grades,
Speaker 1: but he missed class because he was sick all the time.
Speaker 1: He went to the fanciest private school with tiny classes,
Speaker 1: but he could never truly impress his father despite getting
Speaker 1: all a's, because he wasn't a real Texas man's man.
Speaker 1: So he was signed up for football and he was
Speaker 1: shipped off during the summer to work on ranches that
Speaker 1: would like, you know, build him up or whatever he
Speaker 1: laid around sick, take him man, Yeah, yeah, exactly. He
Speaker 1: would just go to the ranches and then be like
Speaker 1: deathly ill in a ranch instead of at home, you know.
Speaker 1: And at one point he's at this ranch, he sends
Speaker 1: letters home to his family. He's probably fourteen or something
Speaker 1: at this point, because he goes off to school at fifteen,
Speaker 1: So he writes letters home to his family and he's like,
Speaker 1: I'm so sick that I think I'm going to die
Speaker 1: and I've made peace with it. And his dad wrote
Speaker 1: him back, and of course did naturally the one thing
Speaker 1: a father should do in the circumstance, which is chastise
Speaker 1: him for making spelling mistakes in the letter and tell
Speaker 1: him that he should be proofreading his letters before he
Speaker 1: sends them.
Speaker 3: His dad is a real son of a bitch. Yeah.
Speaker 1: No, it's just absolute fucking nightmare.
Speaker 2: Man.
Speaker 1: He's going to be woven into way too much of
Speaker 1: this story. His other older brother, John Junior, used to
Speaker 1: beat him up all the time, and their parents ignored
Speaker 1: it because they figure it it's sort itself out. Ironically,
Speaker 1: Alan is going to end up his dad's favorite, despite
Speaker 1: having screaming matches about politics their entire lives.
Speaker 3: I know that game.
Speaker 1: Possibly Dad is going Possibly, I've read two versions of this.
Speaker 1: Dad is going to turn him into the FBI for
Speaker 1: being a communist. But they're still the favorite.
Speaker 4: What are the other siblings like where it's like, yeah,
Speaker 4: I turned him into the FBI, but so I can better.
Speaker 1: It's because they both do the same work with folklore.
Speaker 1: I think I don't know, or like maybe dad knows
Speaker 1: that Dad's a piece of shit, and it's just like
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 4: Maybe it's like a I don't know, if you watched
Speaker 4: the show Succession, maybe.
Speaker 1: It's sort of like I got you what is it?
Speaker 3: You know, where it's like we don't get.
Speaker 4: Along, but I have a begrudging respect for the fact
Speaker 4: that you like go out on your own and you try. Yeah,
Speaker 4: maybe it's like that a little bit of a roy
Speaker 4: family dynamic.
Speaker 1: Like when Kendall like exposes his dad and his dad
Speaker 1: like secretly smile.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's kind of into it because it's like, well,
Speaker 3: we don't get along, but I respect that you're like
Speaker 3: taking a shot.
Speaker 1: I love you, but you're not serious.
Speaker 3: Where's people?
Speaker 1: I actually think that is happening. And because even his
Speaker 1: whole life, Allan is going to be like I hate
Speaker 1: my father's politics. My father has done terrible things, but
Speaker 1: also he kind of refuses to be like fuck by dad.
Speaker 1: He's always a little bit like but I understand and
Speaker 1: respect him. It's kind of an interesting dynamic, and like,
Speaker 1: I don't know, if I had a piece of shit kid,
Speaker 1: like I don't know, it'd be so hard, right, like
Speaker 1: what have you had a kid in there? A piece
Speaker 1: of shit? Like what do you even do? I don't
Speaker 1: know anyway, so I have some respect for the respect
Speaker 1: for dad. At like fourteen or fifteen, he goes off
Speaker 1: to a finishing school in Connecticut on a full scholarship
Speaker 1: and he's off to New England to become a fancy person.
Speaker 1: But he doesn't have any money, like spending money, and
Speaker 1: his family pretty genuinely didn't have any spending money for
Speaker 1: him either. Dad was usually working for this or that university,
Speaker 1: but was unemployed a lot, and his work as a
Speaker 1: folklorist was often ignored. It's worth knowing that his dad's history.
Speaker 1: His dad loves cowboy songs and he wants it to
Speaker 1: be taken seriously in academia, and most people kind of
Speaker 1: just laugh at him about it. And so that's kind
Speaker 1: of why he started breaking into being like, well, what
Speaker 1: if I record black people instead? And people are like, oh,
Speaker 1: that sells people like the race music as it was
Speaker 1: called at the time, which is funny because like we
Speaker 1: call it like race music as if we're like so
Speaker 1: much more enlightened now, but like, yeah, it's the same
Speaker 1: concept truly can we sell this to white people?
Speaker 4: All of this sounds like it's so like, you know,
Speaker 4: back in the old days. It is actually very much
Speaker 4: still around. The legacy of all this is like very contemporary.
Speaker 1: I mean, fuck, I don't know how it works about
Speaker 1: people like walking around and finding people like freestyling on
Speaker 1: the street and then just being like, I'm gonna make
Speaker 1: you a stock kid, you know, stick with me.
Speaker 3: It goes straight to the town.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I do still run across people getting absolutely screwed
Speaker 1: by producers over that.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: So young Alan, he's in Connecticut and he wants to
Speaker 1: go on a date, so he asks his parents for
Speaker 1: money to quote that book Alan Lomax, the manner recorded
Speaker 1: the world quote. His mother wrote a thirteen page letter
Speaker 1: that listed each of his cousins who had been a
Speaker 1: failure because of some girl or another and contrasted them
Speaker 1: with those like his older brother, who had succeeded because
Speaker 1: of their single minded devotion to their work.
Speaker 4: It's like Rick and Morty style, like, don't think about girls,
Speaker 4: just focus on side and then you know it'll yeah,
Speaker 4: it'll just confuse you and distract you.
Speaker 1: But Alan Lomax's clever as shit. This is like nineteen thirty,
Speaker 1: he's doing this. He writes back, basically, look, if you
Speaker 1: don't give me money to date this girl, I've been
Speaker 1: looking at boys a lot lately. Boys are kind of cute,
Speaker 1: am I right? Car, Yeah, he's already turning out very
Speaker 1: differently from his father. He spends his freshman year of
Speaker 1: college at the University of Texas, and he resigns from
Speaker 1: the school paper because he wants to publish. Okay, the
Speaker 1: pope says birth control is bad. Here's an encyclical about it,
Speaker 1: and so Alan writes a birth control is good, Fuck you,
Speaker 1: mister pope, and the school won't publish it. So he's like,
Speaker 1: then I quit. You won't listen to my pro birth
Speaker 1: control arguments, I'm fucking out of here. And his friend
Speaker 1: group was radical as fuck, including a guy who later
Speaker 1: became the lawyer who wrote the arguments used to desegregate
Speaker 1: schools in Brown versus the Board of Education. And then
Speaker 1: there are a whole bunch of other names that were
Speaker 1: listed that I was like, oh, I should look up.
Speaker 1: That's too many rabbit holes. A lot of his friends
Speaker 1: went on to go do civil rights shit in pretty
Speaker 1: cool ways. He was born to be a Bohemian, but
Speaker 1: not actually from Bohemia, because that's actually Bohemi is like
Speaker 1: in Bohemian as a concept, it's like an early Orientalism.
Speaker 1: Well it's about the same time as regular Orientalism, but
Speaker 1: like Bohemia is a place. It's in eastern Europe. It's
Speaker 1: like part of the Czech Republic now, right, But being
Speaker 1: a Bohemian is like I am exotic and different, you know,
Speaker 1: and we like let that one be, which is fine.
Speaker 1: I don't believe that Bohemians are ethnically oppressed, but anyway,
Speaker 1: he's born to be a Bohemian by the style of
Speaker 1: the time in the nineteen and thirties in America, he
Speaker 1: risks expulsion to go to a black music venue, like
Speaker 1: if a school finds out he's like going to where
Speaker 1: black people hang out, he can get expelled. He does
Speaker 1: it anyway, and his second year of college, his family
Speaker 1: manages to get him into Harvard on a scholarship to
Speaker 1: study philosophy. He goes there. He keeps a goldfish in
Speaker 1: a rat as pets I think, in his dorm room.
Speaker 1: He doesn't really make a lot of friends because all
Speaker 1: of his classmates are pretentious conservative assholes.
Speaker 3: And also the pet rat probably didn't know. Hello.
Speaker 1: Yeah, No, he's a weird kid. He is absolutely a
Speaker 1: weird kid.
Speaker 3: Hygiene my guy.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And he wrote his.
Speaker 1: Dad constantly, and his dad wanted letters about Harvard life,
Speaker 1: being like, ah, I want to live through you, Like
Speaker 1: what are you doing? What amazing learnings are you doing?
Speaker 1: And Alan sends him letters about communism, and he sends
Speaker 1: his dad letters about communism with a capital C that
Speaker 1: has flames coming out of it.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, this is big f you, dad, energy,
Speaker 3: which I'm here for.
Speaker 1: But it's also like he's like, Dad, I've discovered the
Speaker 1: most amazing thing you know. And Dad is having a
Speaker 1: hard time. He keeps losing his job, his health is declining,
Speaker 1: and his wife, Alan's mom dies and so he gets
Speaker 1: a lot out of corresponding with his weird communist son.
Speaker 1: So he's like writing these letters that are like you're
Speaker 1: my only human connection. Tell me about what's happening. And
Speaker 1: he's kids like have you ever heard of from each
Speaker 1: according to ability, to each according to need?
Speaker 3: I've drawing it with flames around.
Speaker 1: It for you. Here's the stucy esa or the coolest
Speaker 1: or whatever. I love it. It was just like a
Speaker 1: no one ever changes the moment to learn that he's drying. Yes,
Speaker 1: communism flames come out.
Speaker 3: It's up also sid iconic reference.
Speaker 1: I think now they're caught it coolest. But when I
Speaker 1: was in school, there's a Stuss and so he doesn't
Speaker 1: like Harvard and he writes and he's like, Dad, let
Speaker 1: me just like go around and collect music with you. Instead,
Speaker 1: he wants to go to the coal miner strike in
Speaker 1: Kentucky because that's where all the writers go to get
Speaker 1: it arrested, because there's no real free speech in America.
Speaker 1: And if you go right like pretty like famous people
Speaker 1: were going there to cover it, and we're getting interested
Speaker 1: for covering it. But he also is like he's a
Speaker 1: Sessi communist. So he's like, Dad, no, wait, I have
Speaker 1: new idea. You should put me on a ship somewhere
Speaker 1: in like the South Pacific, and I'm going to learn
Speaker 1: how to do stuff with my hands, be a sailor,
Speaker 1: you know which, like I don't know. I mean, I
Speaker 1: also want to learn that, but I actually don't want
Speaker 1: to do it in that style. And he's watching all
Speaker 1: these Soviet films which glorified the good worker and put
Speaker 1: down the intellectual and he knows that, despite being somewhat
Speaker 1: a poor text, and he's probably made fun of a
Speaker 1: lot for this, he is certainly the bourgeoisie. And I
Speaker 1: almost spelled that word correctly when I wrote it into
Speaker 1: my script, but I did not. I get to write.
Speaker 1: About half the time, he gets himself arrested for protesting
Speaker 1: the deportation of a Polish labor organizer, which surprised him
Speaker 1: because he hadn't actually broken the law. He had just
Speaker 1: spoken at a rally. So this was kind of his
Speaker 1: like Pikachu shock face that, like he's like, wait, but
Speaker 1: it's gonna happen to me, Like, hold on, I'm not
Speaker 1: a poor Polish worker or a Kentuckian minor, or like
Speaker 1: a black person from the South.
Speaker 3: Do they know of my affiliation with Harvard?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Well, fortunately the dean of Harvard bailed him out.
Speaker 3: Oh good.
Speaker 1: He only makes it one year at Harvard. Money is
Speaker 1: tight and his grades are shit because he's too distracted
Speaker 1: trying to be a Bohemian communist. And I'm not a
Speaker 1: communist at least not in the capital c with flaming
Speaker 1: letters kind of way. But honestly, this is still relatable
Speaker 1: to my art school dropout self and he heads back
Speaker 1: to the University of Texas. But school was never going
Speaker 1: to be where this man excelled. He is much better
Speaker 1: on the road doing the work he was born to do,
Speaker 1: which is record people's songs. He starts doing that during
Speaker 1: his next summer break, when he is all of seventeen
Speaker 1: years old. But do you know who else gets a break?
Speaker 1: Tell me, we get a very short break, and you,
Speaker 1: the listener, get either a short or long break, depending
Speaker 1: on whether or not you've discovered the skip Ford thirty
Speaker 1: seconds button. Here's a bunch of ads, and we're back.
Speaker 3: See.
Speaker 1: His dad had sold a book to McMillan, which is
Speaker 1: funny to me because I have also sold books to McMillan,
Speaker 1: saying that he would travel around the country recording and
Speaker 1: transcribing an anthology of American folk music, and the Library
Speaker 1: of Congress signed off on them working in a volunteer
Speaker 1: capacity on the project, which gives them like cred right,
Speaker 1: They're like, oh, we're working for McMillan and also the
Speaker 1: Library of Congress. So nineteen thirty two, father and son
Speaker 1: drove around the country, camping as they went and recording,
Speaker 1: and the timeline's a bit blurry to me, does this
Speaker 1: a couple summers in a row. I might acidently conflate
Speaker 1: some stuff. John is out there doing colonialism. He doesn't
Speaker 1: see it that way. He sees himself as a serious
Speaker 1: academic researcher. But he records people's music and then copyrights
Speaker 1: it and sells it. Alan learns there's something more to
Speaker 1: it right away. That first summer they recorded a singer
Speaker 1: named Blue, who sang the song stagger Lee, which I
Speaker 1: first heard with Nick Cave's stagger Lee because I learned
Speaker 1: it once a white Australian man saying it, and since
Speaker 1: Blue knew he was being recorded, Blue said on the
Speaker 1: recording quote, now, mister President, you just don't know how
Speaker 1: bad they're treating us folks down here. I'm singing to you,
Speaker 1: and I'm talking to you. So I hope you will
Speaker 1: come down here and do something for us poor folks
Speaker 1: in Texas. And so Alan heard in this the realization
Speaker 1: that folk recording could be part of social change, part
Speaker 1: of bringing people's voices directly to people with less mediation.
Speaker 1: But most people straight up wouldn't sing for these two
Speaker 1: white dudes, two white men driving around a car offering
Speaker 1: to record them and not paying them any money, no
Speaker 1: thank you. And one biographer was like that I read
Speaker 1: about this was like, yeah, that makes sense. People they
Speaker 1: want to be exploited. Well, the other one was like,
Speaker 1: I'm paraphrasing rudely here. Those silly superstitious savages. They didn't
Speaker 1: use that word, but they meant it. Didn't know what
Speaker 1: recording was all about. You're gonna make money on this,
Speaker 1: And I'm fucking not.
Speaker 4: Like, yeah, I'm glad to hear this, because I do
Speaker 4: think there's this attitude. I don't know, it just reminds
Speaker 4: me of how much savvy and asiency these folks actually had,
Speaker 4: because it's so easy to think of these folks as
Speaker 4: like not having savviness and agency and like them being like, oh,
Speaker 4: you want to record me and take my voice and
Speaker 4: I get no money, no thank you, continue about your way,
Speaker 4: like it's a good reminder that these folks were pretty.
Speaker 1: Savvy and like no one ever like they're traveling around
Speaker 1: with incredibly expensive equipment, no one's ever like robbing them.
Speaker 1: People are just like which I straight up wouldn't be
Speaker 1: mad if they did, honestly, but like everyone's just like not,
Speaker 1: I don't want anything to do with that one performer
Speaker 1: who didn't record put it clearly, it's like, look, if
Speaker 1: I record with you, actually this ties into AI in
Speaker 1: an interesting way. If I record with you, even if
Speaker 1: you pay me, who's going to hire me to play
Speaker 1: their bar anymore? If they can just put on a
Speaker 1: record of me.
Speaker 3: Margaret as a voice professional.
Speaker 1: Huh.
Speaker 4: I am having these same conversations today in twenty twenty
Speaker 4: six that this person that you just quoted was having
Speaker 4: back then. Not a damn thing change, my friends, not
Speaker 4: a damn thing change.
Speaker 1: And when they do find people who are willing to record,
Speaker 1: people are willing to record spirituals but not secular songs,
Speaker 1: not the sinful songs to use a way that they
Speaker 1: are sometimes called sometimes by the black folks and definitely
Speaker 1: by people trying to sell them to white folks, by
Speaker 1: white people trying to sell the songs who call them sinful.
Speaker 1: But people know they're not supposed to play those songs
Speaker 1: in mixed company, so they're not going to play it
Speaker 1: on a recording, so they're not getting the real authentic stuff,
Speaker 1: you know. And the whole time that they're driving around
Speaker 1: the South with five hundred pounds of recording equipment in
Speaker 1: the trunk literally two seventy five pound batteries. It's fucking
Speaker 1: wild because it's the two of them. They're just arguing
Speaker 1: about politics and about racism and like whether what they're
Speaker 1: doing is racism, and about prisons because they're also been
Speaker 1: going to prisons and recording people there, you know, which
Speaker 1: is funny because they're like, oh, I know, who was
Speaker 1: willing to sing for me, someone who is literally incarcerated
Speaker 1: and not free?
Speaker 3: I would I gotta say, though, I I want to
Speaker 3: be a fly on the dashboard of conversation. I know
Speaker 3: this would be a good movie.
Speaker 1: It really would. God yeah, Like, especially once they have
Speaker 1: led back are like yeah. And eventually they find Hote
Speaker 1: he led better in prison, and Huddy is smart and
Speaker 1: he realizes these two white guys might be his ticket out.
Speaker 1: He actually, you know, had done the jailhouse lawyery and
Speaker 1: to secure his own freedom, but that hadn't really gone
Speaker 1: through yet, and so he's like, one, I'm going to
Speaker 1: record and he sings that same song, the like hey Governor,
Speaker 1: let me go song. He's like, you got to give
Speaker 1: this to the governor. And it's unclear whether or not
Speaker 1: they ever do, but it's not what gets him out,
Speaker 1: but he's like, these two white guys might get me
Speaker 1: to New York. They might be my ticket to a
Speaker 1: real career once I get myself out of here. So
Speaker 1: when he gets out, they spend a couple months driving
Speaker 1: around the South, the three of them, and in last
Speaker 1: week's episodes they get into it in detail, but basically
Speaker 1: they didn't pay him a dime, they expected him to
Speaker 1: be their servant and also literally didn't let him leave
Speaker 1: when he wanted to. Alan is seventeen and probably doesn't
Speaker 1: have a lot of agency in this, but whatever, Like
Speaker 1: he's like, yeah, kind of shitty. Will you let me
Speaker 1: go home? Can you give me bus fare or let
Speaker 1: me borrow the car or drive me back? And they're like,
Speaker 1: ahh he'll get over it, you know. Yeah. John Lomax
Speaker 1: got Pikachu shock face when he found out that Huddy
Speaker 1: wasn't actually grateful and wanted to get out of the
Speaker 1: exploited of contract. But Alan really looked up to Houdey
Speaker 1: and the two eventually became friends, and eventually they became
Speaker 1: part of the same New York City leftist folk music
Speaker 1: scene that churned out about half the shit that became
Speaker 1: popular music of like just fucking every genre. And that
Speaker 1: is where we're gonna leave the story for now.
Speaker 3: WHOA, you could not have picked a story that I
Speaker 3: am more invested in. I'm on the edge of my seat.
Speaker 4: Mark.
Speaker 1: It's fun when I get to do related topics two
Speaker 1: weeks in a row, because then I get to be
Speaker 1: like extra obsessed with it and extra insufferable to everybody
Speaker 1: that is around me physically. But like, I kind of
Speaker 1: love the episodes that I have to rewrite so many
Speaker 1: times because I flip flop on how I feel about
Speaker 1: all of it because of some great reveal somewhere along
Speaker 1: the way. Although what was interesting is that the great
Speaker 1: reveal here was that, like, Allan's actually pretty fucking chill.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I was waiting. I was like, is Alan going
Speaker 3: to be a jerk? This whole time?
Speaker 4: I've been listening to the Oh Brother, We're out that soundstrack,
Speaker 4: and it's like, oh, actually he's not a cool guy.
Speaker 4: I'm happy to know that isn't really the case.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I wouldn't date him.
Speaker 4: Well, that's the threshold. You talk about a lot of
Speaker 4: cool people, some of them I would date. Wendy Carlos
Speaker 4: call me.
Speaker 1: If I think although okay, some people's problem is that
Speaker 1: they're terrible to the people that they date. And some
Speaker 1: people's problem is that polyamory hadn't hit yet. Yes, Yes,
Speaker 1: and Honey Ledbetter and Alan Lomax polyamory hadn't hit yet. Wow,
Speaker 1: they would have been fine. They would have been perfectly responsible.
Speaker 1: I think, I don't know.
Speaker 3: I like that.
Speaker 1: I think yeah. I like to imagine emotional responsibility can
Speaker 1: look like a lot of things and a lot of
Speaker 1: different types of relationships. Anyway, if people want to hear
Speaker 1: things that you're excited about. Besides this, is there a
Speaker 1: podcast they can listen to?
Speaker 4: There certainly is. You can listen to my podcast on
Speaker 4: iHeart called there Are No Girls on the Internet, and
Speaker 4: you can check out my audiobook which is available on
Speaker 4: July fourteenth, called Love at First prompt at Love Atfirsthprompt
Speaker 4: dot AI.
Speaker 1: And I'm really proud of myself for not making the
Speaker 1: joke I've made. I think every time you've been in
Speaker 1: a guest, which is that we're proving otherwise there are
Speaker 1: girls on the Internet. But I didn't make that joke.
Speaker 3: So you keep I apprecia takes a joke, keep making
Speaker 3: it all right?
Speaker 1: Well, we will see you all on whatever day of
Speaker 1: the other episode comes out Wednesday. Woo Cool People Who
Speaker 1: Did Cool Stuff is a production of pool Zone Media.
Speaker 1: The more podcasts and pool Zone Media, visit our website
Speaker 1: rule zonemedia dot com, or check us out on I
Speaker 1: Heard Radio, appp A Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.