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Speaker 1: Fellow Ridiculous Historians. We're bringing in the end of the

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Speaker 1: year the beginning of the next with one of our

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Speaker 1: favorite classic series guys, George Washington.

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Speaker 2: Just so weird Gosh Washington.

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Speaker 3: Check out they wants you to know YouTube for some

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Speaker 3: amazing little sketches of a Ben dressed up as a

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Speaker 3: time traveling George Washington. While that may be fiction or

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Speaker 3: it may not entirely George Washington, the man did indeed

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Speaker 3: lead a very unexpectedly varied and fascinating and yes weird,

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Speaker 3: ridiculous life.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and so this is part one of our exploration

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Speaker 1: with none other than our special guest, our brother in arms,

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Speaker 1: longtime friend of the show, Christopher hasiotis Yeah Yeah's Rolling.

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Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of iHeart Read Deal. Welcome

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Speaker 1: to the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you for tuning in.

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Speaker 1: My name is Ben, My name is No.

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Speaker 2: This is an interesting, kind of traditional traditional way to

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Speaker 2: start the show. If you threw me for a loop there.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it took it hard. Somebody remembered you guys on

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Speaker 1: the internet recently referred to me as what's his name?

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Speaker 1: So I'm going to try to just play it straight

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Speaker 1: laced for a little while.

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Speaker 2: Ben, did they steal your thunder Have they robbed you

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Speaker 2: of your mojo?

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Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't want to feel thunderless.

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Speaker 2: How are we going to get your groove back?

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Speaker 1: Well, we're going to rely on the help of our

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Speaker 1: super producer, Casey Pegram as always.

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Speaker 2: And that sound always gets my groove right up.

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Speaker 1: So we have a pretty fascinating show for you today, folks,

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Speaker 1: because it came about through a somewhat circuitous fashion. And

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Speaker 1: who better to help us explain the story of how

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Speaker 1: we got to this episode for today than our returning

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Speaker 1: special guest friends and neighbors Christopher Hasiotis.

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Speaker 4: Hey everybody, Hey, Casey, Hey Nole? What's your name?

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Speaker 2: Too soon? Yeah? Yeah, come on, we've got a nurture, Ben,

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Speaker 2: do we we do? Okay?

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Speaker 4: Very my contract?

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Speaker 2: This is a safe space? Is a safe space? Fine?

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Speaker 4: Fine?

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Speaker 1: So we love having you on the show, Christopher, and

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Speaker 1: we always have a bang up time whenever you bless

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Speaker 1: us with some historical knowledge. But in our conversations off air,

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Speaker 1: the four of us were, you know, we were kicking

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Speaker 1: around ideas what should we explore on air today? And

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Speaker 1: you recently returned from a trip to Washington.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, that's Washington State. I was out in Seattle for

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Speaker 4: Podcon too, which is a podcast convention, podcast conference, so

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Speaker 4: kind of diving into the weird, strange, growing world of podcasting.

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Speaker 4: Headed out there was a very sort of DIY scene,

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Speaker 4: a lot of great creators, a lot of great podcasters.

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Speaker 4: Aaron Mankey, who's got some shows over here on our network.

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Speaker 4: He was out there, and it was my first time

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Speaker 4: in Seattle. And I know you've got your goal of

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Speaker 4: doing a show about every state. So I don't know

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Speaker 4: if this really counts that I was in Washington and

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Speaker 4: we're going to talk about what we're going to talk about.

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Speaker 4: I don't know that accounts for Washington, but that's up

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Speaker 4: to you. I don't make your rules. I just sit

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Speaker 4: in the back and judge from a distance. But yeah,

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Speaker 4: we were out there, and that trip to Seattle to

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Speaker 4: Washington State made me think, Hey, what's this place named after?

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Speaker 4: It's named after a guy.

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Speaker 2: Did you have a guess?

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Speaker 4: You know, it wasn't named after an apple, Okay, wasn't

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Speaker 4: named after a city on the other side of the nation.

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Speaker 1: And it wasn't named after George Washington Carver.

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Speaker 4: It wasn't no president numrouno. George Washington himself, he's our Yeah,

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Speaker 4: I thought there's a there's a lot of cool stuff

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Speaker 4: that we can talk about when it comes to George Washington.

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Speaker 4: He's a you know, revered statesman, our first president, a general,

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Speaker 4: super military commander. You may know him for his fake teeth,

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Speaker 4: his cherry tree. We can get into all of that

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Speaker 4: and whether that actually happens.

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Speaker 2: Quite a snappy dresser, well weren't, weren't they all sure?

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Speaker 2: I mean he had a particularly honed.

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Speaker 1: I mean during their paintings they did. Yeah, you don't

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Speaker 1: know what they wore on a regular Thursday.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean the paintings, the things that are on

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Speaker 4: the dollar bill. That's essentially like the Instagram of the time.

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Speaker 4: It's what they wanted to put forth. You know, you

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Speaker 4: can be looking at someone's Instagram feed and they're happy,

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Speaker 4: they're with their significant other, and you have no idea

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Speaker 4: that they're going through a financial troubles and dealing with

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Speaker 4: a mortgage and they're about to break up. Looks like

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Speaker 4: the life is great. So I think it's just got real.

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Speaker 4: Not speaking from personal experience here, but yeah, so maybe

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Speaker 4: you know, that's one of the nice things about paintings.

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Speaker 4: You can put the best foot forward, you can work

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Speaker 4: a lot of symbolism into it. All of a sudden,

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Speaker 4: we're talking art theory. But let's uh, let's get back

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Speaker 4: to George.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, let's get back to George. One thing I want

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Speaker 1: to mention that I think is a very classy aspect

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Speaker 1: of his character. He refused to become king. Right. There

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Speaker 1: were proposals early on in the days of the founding

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Speaker 1: of the nation. People said George, you're great, and He's like, well,

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Speaker 1: stop keep going, stop, no, keep going, And they said

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Speaker 1: you should be king, and he said, nah, I guys,

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Speaker 1: we're kind of missing the point. And that is, in

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Speaker 1: my opinion, something that speaks very highly to his character

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Speaker 1: and his reputation. But along the way, as we decided

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Speaker 1: to explore the life of George Washington, we also decided

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Speaker 1: to not do the basic origin story, life and times

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Speaker 1: and then death. We decided to look into some of

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Speaker 1: the strangest, weirdest things the average person might not know

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Speaker 1: about George Washington. Previously on the show, Noel, You and

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Speaker 1: I had bantered back and forth about the misconception surrounding

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Speaker 1: Washington's teeth or his allegedly wooden teeth.

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Speaker 2: Seahorse teeth. It was straight seahorse teeth. Bringing it back,

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Speaker 2: bring it back, No, but seriously, I mean, that was

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Speaker 2: a time where it was absolutely a thing to have

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Speaker 2: animal teeth as dentures. Also, I think the episode in

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Speaker 2: question was about using the teeth of fallen soldiers for dentures.

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Speaker 2: And then we discovered that seahorse teeth weren't actually the

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Speaker 2: teeth of tiny, tiny sea horses. That was just what

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Speaker 2: they called hippopotamus as they called them seahorses.

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Speaker 1: And Christopher, in case you missed it now, straight seahorse

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Speaker 1: teeth is one of our new catchphrases.

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Speaker 5: It's just like saying something dope, super dope, straight seahorse teeth.

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Speaker 1: Yeah mm hmm yeah, Okay, you picked it up so quickly,

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Speaker 1: super easy. Somehow it sounds like it sounds better when

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Speaker 1: you say.

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Speaker 4: It straight sea horse teeth, straight seahorse teeth.

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Speaker 2: It's hard to say. See, friend, you could not do it.

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Speaker 4: But no, that just means if I, if I had,

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Speaker 4: I would have conjured like a little demon seahorse right here.

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Speaker 4: That would have messed up the studio something fierce.

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Speaker 2: It's sort of a homunculus type, a bit of a

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Speaker 2: bit of a quistor.

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Speaker 1: Please don't kidding, kidding, kidding.

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Speaker 2: Have you ever been present for the quist?

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Speaker 4: I feel like he's here right now, Sorry, listeners, He's.

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Speaker 2: He usually is. He kind of does sort of that

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Speaker 2: extra sisty type thing, or he just sort of clings

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Speaker 2: to the ceiling or in his head rotates and looks

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Speaker 2: at us downward. It's a whole thing.

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Speaker 1: He's kind of the n essay of how stuff works.

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Speaker 1: You know, he's he's always around, but he would agree

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Speaker 1: with us. I hazard that George Washington is an amazing

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Speaker 1: guy who lived an astonishing life. We know the gist, Christopher.

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Speaker 1: I think you set it up quite nicely for us.

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Speaker 1: George Washington born February twenty second, seventeen thirty two, passed

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Speaker 1: away December fourteenth, seventeen ninety nine. But in that span

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Speaker 1: of time he lived quite a full life, and there

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Speaker 1: are so many facts about him. There are so many misconceptions.

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Speaker 1: He has moved from the realm of earthly creatures into

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Speaker 1: the world of myth in many ways. And we decided

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Speaker 1: to each find some lesser known aspects of George Washington's

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Speaker 1: life and times and share them with each other and

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Speaker 1: share them with you listening today?

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Speaker 2: When did you say his birthday was man.

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Speaker 1: February twenty second.

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Speaker 2: So apparently that in and of itself is a misconception.

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Speaker 1: Is that the case?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, according to this Mental Floss article twenty five things

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Speaker 2: he might not have known about George Washington, his actual

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Speaker 2: birthday was February eleventh. That's seventeen thirty one.

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Speaker 4: Well, but that's a calendar thing we're talking here, right.

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Speaker 2: This is true because it has to do with the

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Speaker 2: Gregorian calendar versus the Julian game. But it's just that,

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Speaker 2: and I just thought that was fine. That is it

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Speaker 2: is great. The man is shrouded.

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Speaker 1: Mystery calendars are weird anyway.

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Speaker 2: True.

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Speaker 1: So you're right, the colonies switched from the Gregorian calendar

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Speaker 1: to the Julian calendar, and his birthday was moved eleven days.

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Speaker 1: I wonder which of those answers is the acceptable answer

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Speaker 1: in a trivia game.

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Speaker 2: That's a good question.

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Speaker 4: I think it depends on the trivia host and how

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Speaker 4: deep into nertitude you want to get.

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Speaker 2: I was about to put a call out to any

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Speaker 2: trivia host in the audience. Is there a code amongst

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Speaker 2: trivia hosts as to this kind of thing. How pedantic

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Speaker 2: is too pedantic.

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Speaker 4: For some of the trivia games I've been to. It's

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Speaker 4: never too pedantic, that's fair, okay, And it depends on

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Speaker 4: how much beer you've had.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, oh, also true.

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Speaker 1: So February eleventh, seventeen thirty one, but then it changed

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Speaker 1: to February twenty second, seventeen thirty two, and actually also

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Speaker 1: changed in terms of the year. And as you said

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Speaker 1: and old, this is just the beginning of the of

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Speaker 1: the historical mysteries surrounding George Washington. We learned some fascinating

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Speaker 1: quick what off trivia things. You pointed out something interesting

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Speaker 1: about his name, Christopher.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, George Washington. That's his name. That's it. No middle name.

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Speaker 2: What are you saying?

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Speaker 4: No middle name? Just George.

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Speaker 2: That's that's illegal, Just George. That's not It's not okay,

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Speaker 2: George Washington. What happened?

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Speaker 4: What more do you need? That's he made a state.

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Speaker 4: You know, he's not prince, he's not Madonna. He's George Washington.

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Speaker 4: He is not George Steven Washington.

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Speaker 2: This begs the question of when did the middle name

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Speaker 2: start and why? Why? Why people get so hung up

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Speaker 2: on a middle name. Because my reaction there was very

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Speaker 2: real in visceral, But now I'm questioning it.

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Speaker 1: You know, there is another president who had a middle

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Speaker 1: name made up.

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Speaker 4: It was are we talking Truman's situation here?

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Speaker 1: It was, Yeah, it was a fake middle initial. Right.

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Speaker 4: Well, there's there's some dispute about Harry S. Truman, a

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Speaker 4: lot of and again this kind of gets back to

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Speaker 4: Nole's favorite pedantic trivia folks. But you know, people will

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Speaker 4: often claim Harry S. Truman, he did not have a

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Speaker 4: period after the S and his name, and that's the

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Speaker 4: way it is. And you know, it's the kind of

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Speaker 4: people who love to jump down your throat on the

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Speaker 4: Internet and say like, well, technically, actually, actually those.

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Speaker 2: Are our people.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, they can be, but those, you know, it can

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Speaker 4: be a little aggressive, It can be a little off

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Speaker 4: putting if you are always looking to correct other people

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Speaker 4: and to shape the world into the way you see

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Speaker 4: it in my opinion, So, yeah, Harry S. Truman sometimes

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Speaker 4: he signed his name with a period after the S.

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Speaker 4: So again it's one of those things that's not consistent

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Speaker 4: and left to the mysteries of the history.

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Speaker 2: And just to stay in keeping with the pedantry of

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Speaker 2: our of our people. Here, the middle name actually began

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Speaker 2: in the Middle Ages, and it had to do with

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Speaker 2: families not being able to decide whether to give their

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Speaker 2: kids a family name or a religious name, so they

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Speaker 2: were able to give them both.

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Speaker 1: And it's different in other cultures, right exactly. So not

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Speaker 1: to focus too much on on President Truman in our

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Speaker 1: George Washing episode, which we are endeavoring to get count

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Speaker 1: as our Washington State episode.

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Speaker 4: I don't know, you know what, let's go.

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Speaker 1: Let's give it a go.

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Speaker 2: Let's give it a go.

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Speaker 1: I think we can. We can always leave the door

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Speaker 1: open to do another Washington episode. But while we're filling

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Speaker 1: out our fifty.

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Speaker 2: I say, who's gonna stop us?

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Speaker 1: Who?

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Speaker 2: Not me?

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Speaker 4: Apparently?

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Speaker 1: Oh Chris So Harry S. Truman. According to the story,

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Speaker 1: when he was born in eighteen eighty four, his parents

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Speaker 1: couldn't decide on a middle name, so they went with

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Speaker 1: the letter S to honor his paternal grandfather and his

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Speaker 1: maternal grandfather, a Ship and a Solomon, respectively. When he

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Speaker 1: took the presidential oath of office, the Chief Justice Harlan F.

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Speaker 1: Stone said, I Harry Ship Truman, and the President replied,

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Speaker 1: I Harry S. Truman. So we've buttoned that up.

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Speaker 4: Well, does that mean he actually was never president, as

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Speaker 4: folks said about Obama when there was like a little

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Speaker 4: bit of a discrepancy during the swearing in. I don't know,

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Speaker 4: probably not, because cable news did not exist in a

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Speaker 4: day Twitter was not a thing. Thankfully for mister Harry S. Truman.

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Speaker 2: This is a good point you make.

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Speaker 1: And now we return to George Washington having solved the

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Speaker 1: case of Harry S. Truman's frankly fake presidency. Right, that's

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Speaker 1: not a sweeping statement.

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Speaker 2: We had to make an appearance. He just couldn't couldn't

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Speaker 2: leave well enough alone, Harry S. Truman.

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Speaker 1: He's the quist of He's the quister of American president.

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Speaker 2: Really, really is so, George Washington? Yeah, no, middle, I mean,

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Speaker 2: is there more behind the story or is that is

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Speaker 2: that where the story ends? There may be okay, and

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Speaker 2: I'll leave you with that. It'll be a cliffhanger, That's

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Speaker 2: what I know. I like it.

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Speaker 1: I like it, I like I like this mysterious air

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Speaker 1: we are we are creating in today's episode, but we

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Speaker 1: are not just going to present mysteries for the entirety

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Speaker 1: of the show. We do have some fascinating facts that

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Speaker 1: you may not have learned in your school years. And

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Speaker 1: I think that I think we're we're all on the

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Speaker 1: same page. But how do we want to start?

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Speaker 2: Guys? Oh, I thought we were. We were already off

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Speaker 2: to the races.

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Speaker 1: We'll off to the races.

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Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, let's was that your first one, Christopher?

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Speaker 4: There wasn't no, that had nothing to do that.

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Speaker 2: We're just bantering.

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Speaker 4: That is trivia.

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Speaker 1: This is just banters.

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Speaker 2: This is good. Oh, this is going to be a

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Speaker 2: good one. You guys, who wants to go first? I

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Speaker 2: propose that Christopher goes fair here I am yep.

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Speaker 5: All right.

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Speaker 4: Well, we started off talking about George Washington's birth, his

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Speaker 4: birth date and the change of that. So let's just

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Speaker 4: fast forward. Let's skip all the rest, and let's go

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Speaker 4: straight to the end of his life. So bummer, yeah, no,

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Speaker 4: I mean, he's not dead yet. He's not dead yet.

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Speaker 4: His twilight years, he's almost dead. He's not dead yet.

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Speaker 4: So in seventeen ninety seven, George Washington leaves the presidency,

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Speaker 4: what's he going to do with his life? He decides,

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Speaker 4: there's an actual quote from one of his biographers, George

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Speaker 4: Washington when he leaves the presidency, he wants his retirement

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Speaker 4: to be quote more tranquil and freer from cares end quote.

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Speaker 2: Yeah sounds nice. He wants to chill.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, more tranquil, freer from cares.

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Speaker 2: And because of course, doing this on his palatial estate,

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Speaker 2: Mount Vernon, right, well.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, Mount Vernon, which is it's south of where DC

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Speaker 4: is now. It's on the Virginia side of the Potomac River.

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Speaker 4: It's his estate of tens of thousands of acres. And

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Speaker 4: while there, in his final days he's retired, he is

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Speaker 4: a man managing the plantation, a Scottish immigrant named James Anderson.

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Speaker 4: Now this plantation manager had a background and a training

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Speaker 4: in distillation. He made booze. So Anderson suggests to Washington,

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Speaker 4: Hey Washington, Hey, George Washington, if you're going to use

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Speaker 4: the full name, why not start making some booze. So

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Speaker 4: we almost had George Washington whiskey, and the country did

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Speaker 4: for a long time. So George Washington died in seventeen

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Speaker 4: ninety nine. He'd left the presidency in seventeen ninety seven.

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Speaker 4: For those last couple two and a half years of

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Speaker 4: his life, he started a distillery in Mount Vernon. It

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Speaker 4: ended up being one of the largest distilleries in the

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Speaker 4: Americas at the time. By seventeen ninety eight, By early

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Speaker 4: seventeen ninety nine, which is the year he ended up dying,

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Speaker 4: at the end of that year, in December, they were

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Speaker 4: producing eleven thousand gallons of whiskey. Now, whiskey became really

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Speaker 4: popular because in the seventeen eighties and during the Revolutionary period,

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Speaker 4: rum was the drink of choice. Soldiers were given rations

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Speaker 4: of rum, sometimes whiskey, but essentially it became problematic importing

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Speaker 4: a lot of the sugar cane from the West Indies

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Speaker 4: to create rum. So this homegrown liquor whiskey became much

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Speaker 4: more popular. And yeah, there's a distillery right there that

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Speaker 4: Washington ran. His signature whiskey was made with sixty five

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Speaker 4: percent rye, thirty percent corn, and five percent barley.

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Speaker 2: And wasn't it considered an non aged rye.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, it was just it was it was distilled and

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Speaker 4: ready to go. It didn't last years and years. You

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Speaker 4: know a lot of the whiskeys you can buy now

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Speaker 4: in the rise they're aged in oak barrels. They're given

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Speaker 4: That's how it gets the color. Yeah, exactly, they're they

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Speaker 4: mature over a long period of time. They developed more flavor.

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Speaker 4: But no, I mean this stuff was distilled right away

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Speaker 4: and sold.

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Speaker 2: So doesn't that mean it was almost a little bit

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Speaker 2: closer to something like moonshine or wing.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, pretty much pretty much. And it was sold, but

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Speaker 4: it wasn't bottled. It wasn't sold in cans or pouches

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Speaker 4: or anything like that. It was just packaged in barrels

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Speaker 4: and pouches. Yeah. Well, I'm trying to think of how

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Speaker 4: you could have like a juice box, Yeah, exactly, whiskey pouch,

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Speaker 4: like a you know, one of those little foil capri

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Speaker 4: sun kind of things Washington. So it's the kind of

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Speaker 4: thing you could find it like the I don't know,

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Speaker 4: fire festival or something.

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Speaker 2: Too soon too soon. Yeah, how was it sold?

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Speaker 4: It was just sold in barrels straight straight to taverns.

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Speaker 4: They would buy a whole barrel of this of this whiskey.

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Speaker 4: They didn't just make whiskey though. They also made other

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Speaker 4: kinds of brandy on the side. There was a peach brandy,

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Speaker 4: and apple brandy, a per Simon brandy, and they would

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Speaker 4: also take the leavings of that and make vinegar. They

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Speaker 4: would take all the grains that had fermented and feed

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Speaker 4: those to the pigs that lived on Mount Vernon, So

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Speaker 4: it's a sort of cyclical, sustainable, good way to use

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Speaker 4: what you've grown. Also wildly successful. In his final days,

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Speaker 4: George Washington was becoming one of the pre eminent whiskey

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Speaker 4: barons in the United States. The only thing that really

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Speaker 4: derailed the company, and one of the reasons why we

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Speaker 4: don't have Washington Whiskey as a massive legacy institution in

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Speaker 4: the country today is he died in seventeen ninety nine.

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Speaker 4: So after he died, the distillery was passed to Martha,

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Speaker 4: his wife's granddaughter and her husband. But a fire in

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Speaker 4: eighteen fourteen burned down the distillery and that was pretty

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Speaker 4: much the end of the operation. So that really put

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Speaker 4: the final screw in the tombstone. It nail in the

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Speaker 4: coffin there you go.

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Speaker 2: I like screwing the tombstone.

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Speaker 1: I like screwing the tombstone. Sure it's more secure than

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Speaker 1: a nail.

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Speaker 4: It's one of those ikea tombstones, I think, and now correct.

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Speaker 2: Me if I'm wrong in this, or maybe you have

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Speaker 2: a better timeline. But they're back at it again at

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Speaker 2: Mount Vernon. They are.

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Speaker 4: They're back at it. Yeah, A couple of years ago.

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Speaker 4: Within the last ten years, they reopened the distillery at

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Speaker 4: his historic home. I don't know if they're using the

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Speaker 4: exact same techniques and methods, but it's in same place.

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Speaker 4: And yeah, the Washington distilleries up and running. Probably not

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Speaker 4: going to give some of the other notable names in

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Speaker 4: the whiskey world today a run for their money, but

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Speaker 4: if you go visit Washington's historic Mount Vernon, you can

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Speaker 4: definitely sample the whiskey.

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Speaker 1: Come for the history, stay for the whiskey.

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Speaker 4: I thought you were gonna say whiskery, whiskery.

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Speaker 2: I love pronouncing that hard age. According to Mount Vernon

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Speaker 2: dot org, you can buy a bottle of this stuff

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Speaker 2: for about ninety eight dollars, which right shade cheap, and

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Speaker 2: they refer to the recipe as the mash bill, which

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Speaker 2: must have been the old timy way of referring to

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Speaker 2: this whiskey recipe. And it is using the same recipe

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Speaker 2: that they found in the ledgers from the original distillery.

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Speaker 4: That's great. I would love to take a road trip

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Speaker 4: up there. I think it would be a lot of

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Speaker 4: fun if we could buy not just a bottle, you know,

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Speaker 4: because you couldn't buy a bottle then, so they're being

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Speaker 4: a little a historical. I would just love to just

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Speaker 4: load up a barrel.

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Speaker 1: And bring it back to the office.

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Speaker 2: Get a whole barrel.

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Speaker 4: That's what the studio is missing.

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Speaker 1: This would not be our first time sampling some tipple

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Speaker 1: from George Whiskey Pouch Washington. I believe we've mentioned on

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Speaker 1: previous episodes a good friend of ours, our coworker producer

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Speaker 1: Alex Williams, is known around how stuff works for making

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Speaker 1: toward the end of the year, making an historically accurate

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Speaker 1: version of George Washington's famous eggnog and just between us folks,

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Speaker 1: that stuff packs a punch.

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Speaker 2: Oh man, it's boozy. And the last little direction in

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Speaker 2: the recipe the best part. It says to let's set

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Speaker 2: in cool place for several days and taste frequently.

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Speaker 4: As one does with just about anything in your cool place.

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Speaker 2: There you go.

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Speaker 1: I think it would startle most of us in the

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Speaker 1: modern age to travel back in time to the days

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Speaker 1: of the Founding Fathers and see just how much and

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Speaker 1: how often they drank. Yeah, it's insane.

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Speaker 2: I would say, there was never a sober moment.

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Speaker 4: I'll point out though, that you know, we were talking

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Speaker 4: about George Washington's distillery and his recipes. Again, this was

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Speaker 4: a man who commanded an entire plantation, so he was

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Speaker 4: kind of up at the head. This wasn't Washington himself

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Speaker 4: sitting in there in the distilling room tinkering with the recipe,

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Speaker 4: coming up with what he most favored. This wasn't really

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Speaker 4: a passion project for him. It was a way for

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Speaker 4: him to make money at the end of his life.

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Speaker 4: He wasn't nearly as rich as some people may have

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Speaker 4: thought he was. He wrote to a nephew who was

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Speaker 4: asking him for money, Yeah, I'll give you this loan,

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Speaker 4: but I'm not made of money like most people think

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Speaker 4: I am. So this was really a project of James Anderson,

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Speaker 4: the plantation manager, as well as six enslaved Africans who

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Speaker 4: were the ones doing the actual hard labor of making

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Speaker 4: this distilled liquor.

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Speaker 1: Getting none of the credit.

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Speaker 4: No, and we'll get back to Washington's enslaved staff soon.

438
00:21:40,320 --> 00:21:45,160
Speaker 1: Yes, that's foreshadowing. Also, before we get too into the

439
00:21:45,320 --> 00:21:50,159
Speaker 1: disturbing facts of Washington's life, I have a proposal for

440
00:21:50,280 --> 00:21:53,679
Speaker 1: us on the show. Why don't we hunt for a

441
00:21:53,760 --> 00:21:56,920
Speaker 1: middle name for George Washington. In the course of this episode,

442
00:21:57,000 --> 00:21:59,880
Speaker 1: as we learned stuff. So right now we've got mash Bill,

443
00:22:00,040 --> 00:22:00,920
Speaker 1: which you think is great.

444
00:22:00,960 --> 00:22:03,320
Speaker 2: I'm a fan of seahorse Teeth, Sea horse Teeth.

445
00:22:03,440 --> 00:22:04,200
Speaker 1: I think that's great.

446
00:22:04,280 --> 00:22:06,720
Speaker 2: One word. Yeah, okay.

447
00:22:06,800 --> 00:22:11,000
Speaker 1: I also like whiskey Pouch just because it makes them

448
00:22:11,040 --> 00:22:12,359
Speaker 1: seem so disreputable.

449
00:22:12,359 --> 00:22:12,960
Speaker 2: It's very good.

450
00:22:13,480 --> 00:22:16,040
Speaker 4: Can I can I suggest George.

451
00:22:16,000 --> 00:22:17,160
Speaker 1: George George Washington.

452
00:22:17,480 --> 00:22:18,840
Speaker 2: That sounds like an eighties singer.

453
00:22:19,960 --> 00:22:24,160
Speaker 1: It's George George Washington. Uh yeah, let's see, let's see

454
00:22:24,200 --> 00:22:27,240
Speaker 1: what we find. These are all some great contenders, but

455
00:22:27,560 --> 00:22:31,560
Speaker 1: we are just setting off on our weird Washington journey.

456
00:22:31,960 --> 00:22:34,199
Speaker 1: What do you think? Do you have one? Do you

457
00:22:34,200 --> 00:22:34,520
Speaker 1: want to go?

458
00:22:34,560 --> 00:22:35,720
Speaker 2: Do you want to flip for it? You want to

459
00:22:35,760 --> 00:22:36,879
Speaker 2: Rochambeau for sure?

460
00:22:36,960 --> 00:22:39,520
Speaker 1: Okay, it's one, two, three go. We've got Christopher as

461
00:22:39,560 --> 00:22:41,720
Speaker 1: a witness. All right, ready? One?

462
00:22:46,400 --> 00:22:48,720
Speaker 4: Does that mean you get to choose what you do?

463
00:22:48,720 --> 00:22:50,639
Speaker 4: Does I mean you go that?

464
00:22:50,720 --> 00:22:52,840
Speaker 2: I think up to you, man, I'd like you to go.

465
00:22:52,960 --> 00:22:57,480
Speaker 1: Man, Okay, I have something that is a bit strange

466
00:22:57,520 --> 00:23:00,800
Speaker 1: but will be old beans to people who also were

467
00:23:00,840 --> 00:23:03,280
Speaker 1: fans of our other show stuff. They don't want you

468
00:23:03,359 --> 00:23:07,720
Speaker 1: to know. George Washington, you see, had any number of

469
00:23:07,760 --> 00:23:13,320
Speaker 1: extracurricular activities, one of which was freemasonry. George Washington became

470
00:23:13,359 --> 00:23:16,959
Speaker 1: a Master Mason in seventeen fifty three, and ever since

471
00:23:17,080 --> 00:23:22,239
Speaker 1: this has driven more fringe or conspiratorial researchers further and

472
00:23:22,359 --> 00:23:27,000
Speaker 1: further into the depths of speculation. He was a young

473
00:23:27,160 --> 00:23:33,120
Speaker 1: Virginia planter when he became a Master Mason in Fredericksburg, Virginia,

474
00:23:33,240 --> 00:23:37,160
Speaker 1: Masonic Lodge number four. He was only twenty one years old,

475
00:23:37,200 --> 00:23:40,800
Speaker 1: and soon he would command his first military operation as

476
00:23:40,840 --> 00:23:46,199
Speaker 1: a major in the Virginia Colonial Militia. We know, I

477
00:23:46,240 --> 00:23:50,879
Speaker 1: think basically what freemasonry is. It's evolved from the practices

478
00:23:50,920 --> 00:23:54,600
Speaker 1: and rituals of Stonemason's guilds in the Middle Ages, and

479
00:23:55,320 --> 00:24:01,160
Speaker 1: it was still a powerful force in America even during

480
00:24:01,200 --> 00:24:04,280
Speaker 1: the time of tension in the later in the War

481
00:24:04,320 --> 00:24:08,200
Speaker 1: for Independence against the British Empire. The first American Masonic

482
00:24:08,240 --> 00:24:13,159
Speaker 1: Lodge was founded in Philadelphia in seventeen thirty and do

483
00:24:13,200 --> 00:24:15,360
Speaker 1: you know who was a founding member of that.

484
00:24:15,440 --> 00:24:17,760
Speaker 6: It's pretty easy to guess, is it Old Benny Franks?

485
00:24:17,800 --> 00:24:23,439
Speaker 6: It is it is. It's the old Libertine himself. So

486
00:24:24,040 --> 00:24:28,520
Speaker 6: for a lot of people this association would seem to

487
00:24:28,680 --> 00:24:33,639
Speaker 6: indicate that there's something at work behind the behind the

488
00:24:33,680 --> 00:24:39,160
Speaker 6: screen of history, right, that Freemasonry was involved in the

489
00:24:39,200 --> 00:24:43,680
Speaker 6: American Revolution, or that people were acting under orders of

490
00:24:43,720 --> 00:24:49,119
Speaker 6: the Masonic organization. But really, for George Washington, joining the

491
00:24:49,160 --> 00:24:51,640
Speaker 6: Masons was a rite of passage, and it was sort

492
00:24:51,680 --> 00:24:55,240
Speaker 6: of an exercise of his civic responsibility. After he became

493
00:24:55,280 --> 00:24:57,360
Speaker 6: a master Mason again at the age of twenty one,

494
00:24:57,560 --> 00:25:00,159
Speaker 6: he had the option of passing through a number of

495
00:25:00,200 --> 00:25:03,080
Speaker 6: additional rights that would take him to higher degrees that

496
00:25:03,119 --> 00:25:06,320
Speaker 6: would place him higher in the hierarchy of Masonry. In

497
00:25:06,359 --> 00:25:09,480
Speaker 6: seventeen eighty eight, shortly before he became the first President

498
00:25:09,520 --> 00:25:13,840
Speaker 6: of the US, he was elected the first Worshipful Master

499
00:25:14,040 --> 00:25:18,399
Speaker 6: of Alexandria Lodge Number twenty two. And he was not

500
00:25:18,520 --> 00:25:21,199
Speaker 6: alone in this, as who pointed out Benjamin Franklin was

501
00:25:21,200 --> 00:25:25,520
Speaker 6: also a Mason. As where Paul Revere, John Hancock, the

502
00:25:25,560 --> 00:25:29,200
Speaker 6: Marquis de Lafayette of the Hamilton Musical Fame, and the

503
00:25:29,240 --> 00:25:34,440
Speaker 6: Boston Tea Party, saboteurs and Masonic rights were in play.

504
00:25:34,480 --> 00:25:38,399
Speaker 6: They were witnessed events like Washington's inauguration, the laying of

505
00:25:38,440 --> 00:25:41,480
Speaker 6: the cornerstone of the US Capitol Building in Washington, d C.

506
00:25:42,440 --> 00:25:45,359
Speaker 6: And DC again is a city supposedly designed with a

507
00:25:45,359 --> 00:25:47,920
Speaker 6: lot of Masonic symbols. In mind, you have to admit

508
00:25:48,240 --> 00:25:52,720
Speaker 6: the Washington Monument's pretty abstract, you know what I mean.

509
00:25:52,800 --> 00:25:56,000
Speaker 2: Itfinitely looms large in the horizon in a very sinister way.

510
00:25:56,040 --> 00:25:58,199
Speaker 2: If you're walking around on the mall at night, he

511
00:25:58,280 --> 00:26:00,159
Speaker 2: kind of gives me the creeps. To be honest, I.

512
00:26:00,560 --> 00:26:04,000
Speaker 4: Think the whole idea of conspiracy and the Masonic lodge

513
00:26:04,000 --> 00:26:06,359
Speaker 4: and all that, it doesn't really take into account the

514
00:26:06,400 --> 00:26:09,800
Speaker 4: reality of the situation at the time. Now in the

515
00:26:10,000 --> 00:26:12,640
Speaker 4: two thousands, it's easy to look back and think, oh

516
00:26:12,680 --> 00:26:14,840
Speaker 4: my gosh, all these people knew each other, they were

517
00:26:14,880 --> 00:26:18,360
Speaker 4: all part of the same organization. Everything ties into everything.

518
00:26:18,680 --> 00:26:22,239
Speaker 4: But the reality is the population of the colonies at

519
00:26:22,280 --> 00:26:26,400
Speaker 4: the time was so small compared to what we have today, right,

520
00:26:26,440 --> 00:26:28,840
Speaker 4: So I mean, essentially you're talking about a population in

521
00:26:28,920 --> 00:26:33,359
Speaker 4: terms of the landowners and the white European immigrants or settlers.

522
00:26:33,520 --> 00:26:36,320
Speaker 4: We're talking tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people. Essentially.

523
00:26:36,400 --> 00:26:39,600
Speaker 4: These are small towns or small cities, so everyone's going

524
00:26:39,680 --> 00:26:42,360
Speaker 4: to know everyone, especially if you're near the top of

525
00:26:41,560 --> 00:26:46,600
Speaker 4: the upper echelon of society. It's not quite as nefarious

526
00:26:47,160 --> 00:26:49,320
Speaker 4: cabal creating as it sounds.

527
00:26:49,400 --> 00:26:52,399
Speaker 1: Absolutely not. That's the thing. In many ways, it's a

528
00:26:52,560 --> 00:26:57,320
Speaker 1: social club. These people are sharing their interests. And do

529
00:26:57,359 --> 00:27:00,480
Speaker 1: they talk about things that they want to do? Do

530
00:27:00,520 --> 00:27:04,119
Speaker 1: they talk about political goals or business ideas? Of course

531
00:27:04,160 --> 00:27:06,400
Speaker 1: they do, because that's what friends do when they hang

532
00:27:06,440 --> 00:27:08,199
Speaker 1: out with each other, you know, they talk about the

533
00:27:08,200 --> 00:27:10,840
Speaker 1: things they care about and the things that they're working on.

534
00:27:11,440 --> 00:27:17,320
Speaker 1: I enjoy this theory, and I especially appreciate Christopher You're

535
00:27:17,400 --> 00:27:20,520
Speaker 1: pointing out that it's easy for us to look back

536
00:27:20,560 --> 00:27:25,400
Speaker 1: in retrospect and perhaps see patterns where none actually exist.

537
00:27:25,880 --> 00:27:28,560
Speaker 1: You know what I mean. A lot of history is coincidence.

538
00:27:29,119 --> 00:27:33,520
Speaker 1: The human species is not chock full of amazing planners

539
00:27:33,560 --> 00:27:35,120
Speaker 1: with very complicated schemes.

540
00:27:35,240 --> 00:27:38,960
Speaker 4: Now, everything in the past looks like it unfolded in

541
00:27:39,000 --> 00:27:40,639
Speaker 4: a way that it was meant to and in a

542
00:27:40,680 --> 00:27:43,560
Speaker 4: way that made sense. But that's because that's the way

543
00:27:43,560 --> 00:27:46,720
Speaker 4: we know how things unfolded. There are innumerable other ways

544
00:27:46,760 --> 00:27:48,919
Speaker 4: things could have happened, and other paths history could have

545
00:27:48,960 --> 00:27:52,960
Speaker 4: taken that if we travel down those timelines, would make

546
00:27:53,000 --> 00:27:55,600
Speaker 4: this one look particularly ridiculous or strange.

547
00:27:55,760 --> 00:27:59,000
Speaker 2: But guys, you're completely overlooking the blood magic rituals to

548
00:27:59,119 --> 00:28:01,640
Speaker 2: molok oh, I mean they did on the regular.

549
00:28:01,760 --> 00:28:03,920
Speaker 4: Yeah, but that's I mean, Oh, I think that I.

550
00:28:03,840 --> 00:28:05,359
Speaker 1: Thought you were talking about the one that I was

551
00:28:05,400 --> 00:28:06,119
Speaker 1: going to do later.

552
00:28:06,320 --> 00:28:09,719
Speaker 2: Oh oh, I didn't mean to blow up you all.

553
00:28:09,760 --> 00:28:11,000
Speaker 1: Spot you guys are coming right.

554
00:28:11,359 --> 00:28:12,639
Speaker 2: Well. I didn't get an invite.

555
00:28:12,720 --> 00:28:13,480
Speaker 1: I brought snacks.

556
00:28:14,119 --> 00:28:15,000
Speaker 2: I love a good snack.

557
00:28:15,400 --> 00:28:17,359
Speaker 1: I mean, come for the mullick, stay for the snacks.

558
00:28:17,359 --> 00:28:17,879
Speaker 2: That's what I'll do.

559
00:28:18,359 --> 00:28:22,800
Speaker 1: One last thing about freemasonry and George Washington in DC.

560
00:28:23,640 --> 00:28:28,919
Speaker 1: I have such a fun time imagining the pitch meeting

561
00:28:29,200 --> 00:28:32,800
Speaker 1: for building the Washington Monument and say, okay, we think

562
00:28:32,840 --> 00:28:35,880
Speaker 1: he's the greatest president, we think he's the first president.

563
00:28:36,080 --> 00:28:40,320
Speaker 1: We need something that really says this man, what's the

564
00:28:40,360 --> 00:28:43,000
Speaker 1: first president? And you know, they go back and forth

565
00:28:43,000 --> 00:28:45,080
Speaker 1: and someone says, well, maybe a statue of the guy.

566
00:28:45,280 --> 00:28:48,880
Speaker 1: And they go, ah, I like the idea of something

567
00:28:49,040 --> 00:28:53,720
Speaker 1: like a big structure. Okay, okay, maybe like he's on a.

568
00:28:53,640 --> 00:28:56,800
Speaker 2: Horse or as you like to say, Ben, No, let's get.

569
00:28:56,640 --> 00:28:59,040
Speaker 1: Weird with it. That's exactly it. Yeah, they said, let's

570
00:28:59,040 --> 00:29:03,280
Speaker 1: get let's get with it. Have you guys heard of obelisk?

571
00:29:03,720 --> 00:29:06,680
Speaker 1: And then you mean obelisks like a dude like in Egypt?

572
00:29:07,040 --> 00:29:10,240
Speaker 1: Right on? And that was history. I am mostly kidding

573
00:29:10,320 --> 00:29:13,440
Speaker 1: because if you look into the story of the Washington Monument,

574
00:29:13,640 --> 00:29:17,120
Speaker 1: which could be its own episode, they had much more

575
00:29:17,160 --> 00:29:22,200
Speaker 1: ambitious plans, and what we see today is essentially a

576
00:29:22,240 --> 00:29:23,840
Speaker 1: compromise in scaling down.

577
00:29:24,320 --> 00:29:26,200
Speaker 4: Again, the story of our nation and the story of

578
00:29:26,200 --> 00:29:30,440
Speaker 4: our history is compromises, half baked plans that in retrospect

579
00:29:30,480 --> 00:29:33,000
Speaker 4: look like what should have happened, but in reality we're

580
00:29:33,040 --> 00:29:36,200
Speaker 4: just thrown together at the time with no real idea

581
00:29:36,200 --> 00:29:39,720
Speaker 4: of what ramifications would come to pass decades down the line.

582
00:29:39,760 --> 00:29:42,440
Speaker 4: I mean, look at anything involving well, we don't need

583
00:29:42,480 --> 00:29:45,960
Speaker 4: to get into health insurance and tax law and all

584
00:29:46,000 --> 00:29:50,160
Speaker 4: sorts of compromises made in Congress. But yeah, we are

585
00:29:50,240 --> 00:29:54,160
Speaker 4: just a collection of mistakes and bumbles through the years.

586
00:29:54,000 --> 00:29:56,120
Speaker 2: Some of which have incredible staying power.

587
00:29:56,480 --> 00:29:58,960
Speaker 4: Yes, very much, so much like a monument itself to

588
00:29:59,000 --> 00:30:01,240
Speaker 4: our first president, I would argue, maybe they just want

589
00:30:01,280 --> 00:30:03,640
Speaker 4: were like, how are we going to remind people that

590
00:30:03,680 --> 00:30:06,400
Speaker 4: he was the first president? Let's this This looks like

591
00:30:06,440 --> 00:30:08,880
Speaker 4: a big number one giant number one.

592
00:30:14,120 --> 00:30:18,160
Speaker 1: So let's reset just a second here, because it occurs

593
00:30:18,200 --> 00:30:20,640
Speaker 1: to me that we may be well on the way

594
00:30:20,920 --> 00:30:23,800
Speaker 1: to making something that sounds like a hit piece on

595
00:30:23,840 --> 00:30:27,680
Speaker 1: George Washington. Because he's a whiskey tycoon, he's a freemason,

596
00:30:27,720 --> 00:30:29,920
Speaker 1: he's a slave owner. He's a slave owner. Yeah, we

597
00:30:29,960 --> 00:30:35,160
Speaker 1: can't forget that part. But it wasn't it wasn't all complicated, weird,

598
00:30:35,280 --> 00:30:39,040
Speaker 1: problematic stuff he had. He had some other notable wins.

599
00:30:39,080 --> 00:30:41,360
Speaker 1: And I don't think being a whiskey tycoon is that bad.

600
00:30:41,440 --> 00:30:42,320
Speaker 4: I have nothing wrong with that.

601
00:30:42,400 --> 00:30:45,120
Speaker 1: I think there was a slave labor. I think that

602
00:30:45,440 --> 00:30:45,960
Speaker 1: bothers me.

603
00:30:46,440 --> 00:30:48,320
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it's also one of those things where it's

604
00:30:49,080 --> 00:30:51,760
Speaker 2: I can't even fall behind the whole. It was just

605
00:30:51,800 --> 00:30:54,120
Speaker 2: how everyone was doing it. It was that was a

606
00:30:54,120 --> 00:30:54,760
Speaker 2: different time.

607
00:30:54,920 --> 00:30:55,200
Speaker 6: I mean.

608
00:30:55,600 --> 00:30:58,640
Speaker 2: The thing is, he also was a pretty forward thinking

609
00:30:58,680 --> 00:31:01,280
Speaker 2: individual in so many ways. In fact, he was so

610
00:31:01,400 --> 00:31:05,040
Speaker 2: influential in creating the structure that is very much still

611
00:31:05,040 --> 00:31:07,480
Speaker 2: a part of our military today that he was posthumously

612
00:31:07,520 --> 00:31:11,560
Speaker 2: given this title the General of the Armies of the

613
00:31:11,640 --> 00:31:14,880
Speaker 2: United States, that is forever un outrankable.

614
00:31:15,040 --> 00:31:17,520
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's total, total god mode. You know, you can't

615
00:31:18,320 --> 00:31:20,920
Speaker 4: let's say they create seven star generals, eight star generals,

616
00:31:21,000 --> 00:31:23,200
Speaker 4: nine star generals in the next couple of years, those

617
00:31:23,240 --> 00:31:25,640
Speaker 4: still will be underneath Washington.

618
00:31:25,920 --> 00:31:30,200
Speaker 1: Kind of similar in some ways to the Eternal President

619
00:31:30,360 --> 00:31:33,680
Speaker 1: of the DPRK Kim Il Sung, but we didn't call

620
00:31:33,760 --> 00:31:36,600
Speaker 1: him eternal President. We just called him General of Everything.

621
00:31:36,840 --> 00:31:39,200
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I think it's important to remember about Washington

622
00:31:39,200 --> 00:31:42,680
Speaker 4: that and most of the men back then, this was

623
00:31:42,760 --> 00:31:45,719
Speaker 4: the first time they were doing the He was setting

624
00:31:45,760 --> 00:31:47,960
Speaker 4: the precedent for the president.

625
00:31:47,720 --> 00:31:49,760
Speaker 2: The presidential president exactly.

626
00:31:49,840 --> 00:31:53,440
Speaker 4: And so yeah, the way he acted, the choices he made,

627
00:31:53,480 --> 00:31:56,520
Speaker 4: the statements he put forth, they set the stage for

628
00:31:56,560 --> 00:31:58,760
Speaker 4: what we have, what we've had over the past several

629
00:31:58,840 --> 00:32:01,760
Speaker 4: hundred years leading up to today. And it's important to

630
00:32:01,800 --> 00:32:04,160
Speaker 4: keep in mind that anyone who's given that sort of

631
00:32:04,320 --> 00:32:09,520
Speaker 4: authority carries weight. They embody what a country is moving forward.

632
00:32:09,600 --> 00:32:13,240
Speaker 4: And that actually played into some of the misconceptions about Washington,

633
00:32:13,240 --> 00:32:16,960
Speaker 4: because his biographers said, we don't need just a man,

634
00:32:17,040 --> 00:32:19,520
Speaker 4: we need a myth. So we're going to invent this

635
00:32:19,560 --> 00:32:21,960
Speaker 4: whole thing about the cherry tree. We're going to make

636
00:32:22,040 --> 00:32:23,680
Speaker 4: up some stories to make him larger than life.

637
00:32:23,760 --> 00:32:29,640
Speaker 5: That was his biographer weams beams, yeah, biographer slash mythologizers,

638
00:32:29,720 --> 00:32:33,560
Speaker 5: right absolutely, and just blatantly like made it up, not

639
00:32:34,600 --> 00:32:35,560
Speaker 5: fudged it a little bit.

640
00:32:35,560 --> 00:32:37,239
Speaker 4: Some of the stuff was just made up to make

641
00:32:37,280 --> 00:32:38,160
Speaker 4: him larger than life.

642
00:32:38,160 --> 00:32:42,600
Speaker 2: Oh absolutely. I mean, and I honestly, very very frequently

643
00:32:42,920 --> 00:32:46,840
Speaker 2: confuse the myth of the cherry tree with Abe Lincoln

644
00:32:46,880 --> 00:32:49,400
Speaker 2: because if everyone called him honest Abe, so I sometimes

645
00:32:49,480 --> 00:32:52,080
Speaker 2: conflate those stories because he also was a very larger

646
00:32:52,120 --> 00:32:54,880
Speaker 2: than my figure, who grew up poor in kind of

647
00:32:54,880 --> 00:32:56,160
Speaker 2: more of a rural setting.

648
00:32:56,400 --> 00:32:59,360
Speaker 1: And is also similar to Washington. He has a real

649
00:32:59,440 --> 00:33:05,800
Speaker 1: underdog story because Lincoln ran unsuccessfully for office right multiple times? Right,

650
00:33:05,880 --> 00:33:09,400
Speaker 1: you know, so people love to see some perseverance. Oh man,

651
00:33:09,800 --> 00:33:12,200
Speaker 1: I think we're doing pretty well here so far. We've

652
00:33:12,200 --> 00:33:14,960
Speaker 1: got we're drawing in Truman, we're drawing in Lincoln.

653
00:33:15,320 --> 00:33:18,040
Speaker 2: Well remember earlier, Christopher, when you were talking about how

654
00:33:18,040 --> 00:33:21,600
Speaker 2: the United States was sort of a agglomeration of half

655
00:33:21,640 --> 00:33:22,400
Speaker 2: baked ideas.

656
00:33:22,520 --> 00:33:25,800
Speaker 4: I remember that. I look forward to the emails.

657
00:33:25,520 --> 00:33:29,360
Speaker 2: Speaking of half baked ideas. Washington smoked a lot of weed.

658
00:33:30,000 --> 00:33:32,040
Speaker 2: No that's not true, but he grew a lot of hemp.

659
00:33:32,280 --> 00:33:33,000
Speaker 2: That is true.

660
00:33:33,040 --> 00:33:34,040
Speaker 1: That part is true.

661
00:33:34,240 --> 00:33:35,920
Speaker 2: I was waiting for that. I needed to do that.

662
00:33:35,960 --> 00:33:38,800
Speaker 2: Callback I had to do it. Thank you for supplying

663
00:33:38,840 --> 00:33:42,360
Speaker 2: me with that. No true. Hemp was one of his

664
00:33:42,560 --> 00:33:46,160
Speaker 2: main cash crops, well before he got into the whiskey trade.

665
00:33:46,320 --> 00:33:51,160
Speaker 2: On Mount Vernon, he grew copious amounts of hemp, which

666
00:33:51,320 --> 00:33:56,160
Speaker 2: is marijuana, but it is a slightly different strain of marijuana.

667
00:33:56,240 --> 00:34:01,200
Speaker 2: Doesn't contain the psychoactive substance thchc or it's very very

668
00:34:01,280 --> 00:34:07,120
Speaker 2: very low tetrahydro cannabinolls. And it was used historically for

669
00:34:07,360 --> 00:34:10,640
Speaker 2: making ropes. It was a fantastic fiber who used the

670
00:34:10,760 --> 00:34:14,120
Speaker 2: stem it had these They grew it so it would

671
00:34:14,160 --> 00:34:17,960
Speaker 2: have these elongated strands, these fibers in the stems, as

672
00:34:17,960 --> 00:34:22,040
Speaker 2: opposed to the plants that were grown to smoke, or

673
00:34:22,080 --> 00:34:23,640
Speaker 2: you would think of the ones that are grown today

674
00:34:23,640 --> 00:34:27,120
Speaker 2: to smoke are much shorter, less hardy plants. They look

675
00:34:27,120 --> 00:34:31,480
Speaker 2: a little more like little bushes. But he grew fields

676
00:34:31,480 --> 00:34:33,920
Speaker 2: of this stuff in an area on Mountain Vernon that

677
00:34:33,960 --> 00:34:36,799
Speaker 2: he called the muddy Hole, the muddy Hole, the muddy Hole,

678
00:34:37,160 --> 00:34:41,719
Speaker 2: and it was because it was a very sought after substance,

679
00:34:41,719 --> 00:34:43,719
Speaker 2: because it was used to make They even referred to

680
00:34:43,920 --> 00:34:46,200
Speaker 2: ropes in those days as hemps, they call them, like

681
00:34:46,239 --> 00:34:50,440
Speaker 2: sailing hemps, like for all the riggings in various types

682
00:34:50,480 --> 00:34:55,200
Speaker 2: of vessels. And he would have continued to grow it

683
00:34:55,560 --> 00:34:58,560
Speaker 2: if he hadn't have done some kind of shrewd calculations

684
00:34:58,880 --> 00:35:02,160
Speaker 2: and realized that act wheat was probably a more profitable

685
00:35:02,160 --> 00:35:05,759
Speaker 2: crop to use his land for. But yeah, he grew

686
00:35:05,800 --> 00:35:08,640
Speaker 2: it for quite some time. And as it turns out,

687
00:35:09,000 --> 00:35:11,839
Speaker 2: in the very same way that Mount Vernon is now

688
00:35:11,880 --> 00:35:16,640
Speaker 2: back to distilling whiskey. Mash bill, mash bill. Yeah, they're

689
00:35:16,680 --> 00:35:18,640
Speaker 2: also now growing hemp.

690
00:35:19,200 --> 00:35:22,640
Speaker 1: Yeah, as of twenty eighteen, right, right, they harvested their

691
00:35:23,160 --> 00:35:26,200
Speaker 1: first hemp crop in centuries, I believe.

692
00:35:26,400 --> 00:35:29,520
Speaker 2: And the interesting thing is is that hemp, even though

693
00:35:29,520 --> 00:35:33,960
Speaker 2: it doesn't contain very high levels of the psychoactive substance

694
00:35:34,000 --> 00:35:37,840
Speaker 2: at all, were outlawed and made a Schedule one drug

695
00:35:37,960 --> 00:35:43,600
Speaker 2: right alongside the more you know, trippy counterparts. So growing

696
00:35:43,719 --> 00:35:44,640
Speaker 2: hemp was outlawed.

697
00:35:44,680 --> 00:35:46,520
Speaker 4: But it's not the same thing, right, I mean, they're

698
00:35:46,680 --> 00:35:49,040
Speaker 4: if these plants are cousins, they're related. But that's like

699
00:35:49,719 --> 00:35:52,000
Speaker 4: if you had prohibition of alcohol and all of a

700
00:35:52,040 --> 00:35:55,919
Speaker 4: sudden you couldn't serve cough syrup at a drug store, right,

701
00:35:56,000 --> 00:35:58,080
Speaker 4: because just because it has a little bit of alcohol

702
00:35:58,120 --> 00:36:00,200
Speaker 4: in it, we're kind of on the same thing. People

703
00:36:00,200 --> 00:36:02,640
Speaker 4: are overreacting and bunching things together.

704
00:36:03,040 --> 00:36:05,239
Speaker 2: Very very very similar. But if you look at a

705
00:36:05,280 --> 00:36:07,680
Speaker 2: field of hemp, it looks like a field of marijuana plans.

706
00:36:07,920 --> 00:36:09,960
Speaker 2: I mean, they're very very similar. And in fact, so

707
00:36:10,040 --> 00:36:13,279
Speaker 2: what I was getting to is, in twenty fourteen, there

708
00:36:13,360 --> 00:36:17,680
Speaker 2: was a farm bill that passed that allowed research for

709
00:36:17,840 --> 00:36:23,840
Speaker 2: growing hemp, and some states have legalized essentially limited hemp farming,

710
00:36:23,960 --> 00:36:26,200
Speaker 2: and another bill that passed in the Senate in twenty

711
00:36:26,239 --> 00:36:29,960
Speaker 2: eighteen was going to allow for full legalization. I don't

712
00:36:30,040 --> 00:36:32,360
Speaker 2: know if that one has gone through yet or not.

713
00:36:32,440 --> 00:36:34,080
Speaker 2: I'll have to do a little more follow up on that,

714
00:36:34,320 --> 00:36:38,000
Speaker 2: But the point is you can get there's another substance

715
00:36:38,000 --> 00:36:41,280
Speaker 2: of compound that's in marijuana and hemp. It's called CBD,

716
00:36:41,680 --> 00:36:43,600
Speaker 2: which you may have read a lot of research about

717
00:36:43,640 --> 00:36:47,080
Speaker 2: people use it for anxiety. It can treat a lot

718
00:36:47,080 --> 00:36:49,840
Speaker 2: of different ailments and just kind of has become a

719
00:36:49,960 --> 00:36:53,200
Speaker 2: very popular kind of remedy that people are using. And

720
00:36:53,239 --> 00:36:56,560
Speaker 2: it is legal in states where marijuana is not legal

721
00:36:56,600 --> 00:36:59,680
Speaker 2: because you can get it from hemp. It's pretty interesting.

722
00:37:00,320 --> 00:37:02,719
Speaker 2: But yeah, now there's no evidence. A lot of other

723
00:37:02,760 --> 00:37:05,880
Speaker 2: Faunding fathers grew he too, like John Adams and Thomas Jefferson,

724
00:37:06,440 --> 00:37:08,480
Speaker 2: but there is no evidence showing that any of them

725
00:37:08,480 --> 00:37:09,640
Speaker 2: ever tried to smoke.

726
00:37:09,719 --> 00:37:12,200
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's a useful crop, and it might be a

727
00:37:12,200 --> 00:37:15,000
Speaker 4: disappointment to your stoner buddy out there who's saying, oh,

728
00:37:15,400 --> 00:37:17,279
Speaker 4: Washington and the founding Father's had hemp, we need to

729
00:37:17,360 --> 00:37:20,080
Speaker 4: legalize everything. It's not quite the same thing, but it

730
00:37:20,120 --> 00:37:24,720
Speaker 4: does argue for nuance, It argues for understanding the uses

731
00:37:24,760 --> 00:37:30,480
Speaker 4: of plants and that any one plant or one species

732
00:37:30,520 --> 00:37:32,160
Speaker 4: can have different applications.

733
00:37:33,120 --> 00:37:36,520
Speaker 1: Well said, and also just a soft historical note there.

734
00:37:36,960 --> 00:37:40,720
Speaker 1: I don't believe any form of cannabis was actually scheduled

735
00:37:40,719 --> 00:37:45,080
Speaker 1: one until the nineteen seventies, right, So it's relatively research.

736
00:37:44,719 --> 00:37:46,279
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, And I mean we are definitely in a

737
00:37:46,320 --> 00:37:49,839
Speaker 2: sea change of legalizations sweeping the nation right now, which

738
00:37:49,880 --> 00:37:52,279
Speaker 2: is pretty fascinating time to be around with so many

739
00:37:52,280 --> 00:37:54,760
Speaker 2: of these changes coming so quickly. There's actually a pretty

740
00:37:55,120 --> 00:37:58,719
Speaker 2: great quote in this article from the Smithsonian that talks

741
00:37:58,760 --> 00:38:02,080
Speaker 2: about the first hemp crop being harvested at Mount Vernon

742
00:38:02,120 --> 00:38:05,520
Speaker 2: recently from this fellow by the name of John Hughdack,

743
00:38:05,719 --> 00:38:07,440
Speaker 2: who says, I think where we're at right now is

744
00:38:07,520 --> 00:38:09,840
Speaker 2: a situation in which finally a lot of members of

745
00:38:09,880 --> 00:38:13,480
Speaker 2: Congress that finally stopped buying drug war era rhetoric, stopped

746
00:38:13,480 --> 00:38:16,279
Speaker 2: thinking about the cannabis plant in a very uniform way.

747
00:38:16,400 --> 00:38:20,400
Speaker 2: So very much sad supports your point, Christopher.

748
00:38:20,040 --> 00:38:24,160
Speaker 1: And fascinating for all of our listeners outside of the

749
00:38:24,280 --> 00:38:28,160
Speaker 1: US and my friends who live in different countries, it's

750
00:38:28,160 --> 00:38:30,960
Speaker 1: a weird process to explain to them that you can

751
00:38:30,960 --> 00:38:33,960
Speaker 1: be arrested for one thing in one state and it's

752
00:38:34,000 --> 00:38:37,360
Speaker 1: completely fine in another, and you can hop a flight

753
00:38:37,520 --> 00:38:39,960
Speaker 1: for a few hours and be in a place where

754
00:38:39,960 --> 00:38:42,160
Speaker 1: you're in the same country, but the laws are completely different.

755
00:38:42,160 --> 00:38:44,040
Speaker 2: And I kind of have a feeling that old George

756
00:38:44,080 --> 00:38:48,120
Speaker 2: Washington might have had issues with prohibition of any kind,

757
00:38:48,760 --> 00:38:50,759
Speaker 2: you know, being that he liked his whiskey and he

758
00:38:50,840 --> 00:38:53,480
Speaker 2: liked as himp and you know, seem like a you know,

759
00:38:53,680 --> 00:38:55,680
Speaker 2: civil liberties kind of fellow. You know, I don't know,

760
00:38:55,880 --> 00:38:57,400
Speaker 2: I wonder what he would have to say.

761
00:38:57,280 --> 00:38:59,440
Speaker 1: As long as it applied to white land owners.

762
00:38:59,560 --> 00:39:00,640
Speaker 2: Well, that's fair.

763
00:39:00,719 --> 00:39:04,040
Speaker 4: It was a different time Yeah, and there is historical

764
00:39:04,080 --> 00:39:08,200
Speaker 4: record of Washington complaining about soldiers who were drunkards, who

765
00:39:08,560 --> 00:39:11,879
Speaker 4: consumed too much, who overindulged. And that's been argued by

766
00:39:11,880 --> 00:39:14,880
Speaker 4: some that Washington was a little more uptight than you

767
00:39:14,960 --> 00:39:17,520
Speaker 4: might be led to believe. But to me, in reading

768
00:39:17,600 --> 00:39:19,520
Speaker 4: what he actually said and wrote, it looks more like

769
00:39:19,760 --> 00:39:22,640
Speaker 4: he was against the over indulgence, not the actual substance itself.

770
00:39:22,640 --> 00:39:26,719
Speaker 4: He didn't assign a moral value to alcohol or to

771
00:39:26,800 --> 00:39:27,880
Speaker 4: whatever might have been smoked.

772
00:39:28,080 --> 00:39:31,640
Speaker 2: You know what else was in evangelical He was actually

773
00:39:31,880 --> 00:39:34,560
Speaker 2: very a religious. He was a very moral man and

774
00:39:34,600 --> 00:39:36,319
Speaker 2: had a real code that he lived by. But he

775
00:39:36,400 --> 00:39:39,600
Speaker 2: was not a strict adherent to any form of religion.

776
00:39:39,719 --> 00:39:42,000
Speaker 2: That has been made clear in the record.

777
00:39:41,840 --> 00:39:47,400
Speaker 1: Which he had these sorts of beliefs placing rational morality

778
00:39:47,400 --> 00:39:51,320
Speaker 1: over spiritually motivated morality, in common with some other Founding

779
00:39:51,400 --> 00:39:55,040
Speaker 1: fathers like Jefferson and his famous Jefferson Bible where he

780
00:39:55,960 --> 00:40:00,480
Speaker 1: removes everything that he thought was remotely supernatural, which is

781
00:40:00,520 --> 00:40:06,400
Speaker 1: a story for another day. Okay, so we've painted a

782
00:40:06,600 --> 00:40:11,080
Speaker 1: pretty in depth picture right now, and just to recap,

783
00:40:11,160 --> 00:40:15,359
Speaker 1: we've got a whiskey tycoon who is also a freemason

784
00:40:15,880 --> 00:40:20,080
Speaker 1: who is also a hemp farmer hemp tycoon.

785
00:40:20,560 --> 00:40:22,640
Speaker 2: Is that fair? It seems like he was testing in

786
00:40:22,680 --> 00:40:24,279
Speaker 2: a little bit more and then he kind of like

787
00:40:24,320 --> 00:40:27,040
Speaker 2: switched over to grain. Yeah, but I don't know. He

788
00:40:27,080 --> 00:40:29,719
Speaker 2: definitely made some money. And it turns out too that

789
00:40:30,800 --> 00:40:34,319
Speaker 2: it became a very profitable export because the Brits really

790
00:40:34,320 --> 00:40:36,800
Speaker 2: relied on it. They were actually growing in a lot

791
00:40:37,080 --> 00:40:41,120
Speaker 2: when the colonies were still under British control, and they

792
00:40:41,160 --> 00:40:44,000
Speaker 2: relied on that from them. So when they split, they

793
00:40:44,480 --> 00:40:47,240
Speaker 2: turned it into a much more of a business like exchange.

794
00:40:47,400 --> 00:40:50,279
Speaker 1: Oh, hang on, guys, hang on, Casey, could we get

795
00:40:50,280 --> 00:40:52,560
Speaker 1: a like a game show out of time sound effect?

796
00:40:52,840 --> 00:40:55,640
Speaker 4: A perfect what's going on?

797
00:40:55,920 --> 00:40:58,759
Speaker 1: Well, it turns out, Christopher, that we have made a

798
00:40:58,760 --> 00:41:02,520
Speaker 1: game time decision. We are running low on times. We

799
00:41:02,600 --> 00:41:06,520
Speaker 1: want to give this topic the justice it deserves, which

800
00:41:06,560 --> 00:41:09,440
Speaker 1: means that we are in for a spontaneous two parter.

801
00:41:09,520 --> 00:41:10,200
Speaker 1: What do you guys say?

802
00:41:10,239 --> 00:41:12,560
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, I love it when you actually decide

803
00:41:12,560 --> 00:41:13,960
Speaker 2: it's going to be a two part or in real

804
00:41:14,000 --> 00:41:16,160
Speaker 2: time as opposed to post mortem.

805
00:41:16,239 --> 00:41:18,880
Speaker 4: You know, wait, Ben, what's going on? It sounds like

806
00:41:18,920 --> 00:41:20,200
Speaker 4: you've just got to get out of here. You don't

807
00:41:20,200 --> 00:41:21,920
Speaker 4: want to hang out with us for another couple of

808
00:41:21,920 --> 00:41:23,320
Speaker 4: hours and talk about George Washington.

809
00:41:23,800 --> 00:41:26,960
Speaker 1: I do, I do, And through the magic of editing,

810
00:41:27,200 --> 00:41:28,960
Speaker 1: we'll do that in a later episode.

811
00:41:29,040 --> 00:41:32,000
Speaker 2: Okay, okay, okay, Because as we know in the podcast world,

812
00:41:32,040 --> 00:41:35,160
Speaker 2: time is but an illusion, a flat circle.

813
00:41:35,200 --> 00:41:38,120
Speaker 4: Indeed, we've actually been here in the studio for about

814
00:41:38,239 --> 00:41:40,200
Speaker 4: twelve hours talking about George Washington.

815
00:41:40,239 --> 00:41:41,560
Speaker 2: I've always been here here.

816
00:41:41,600 --> 00:41:44,040
Speaker 1: We are check in anytime you like, but you can

817
00:41:44,120 --> 00:41:46,799
Speaker 1: never leave. We're kidding. This will mark the end of

818
00:41:46,920 --> 00:41:52,400
Speaker 1: part one of our George Washington and Washington State episode technically,

819
00:41:52,760 --> 00:41:55,240
Speaker 1: but this will not mark the end of the show.

820
00:41:55,320 --> 00:41:59,240
Speaker 1: Please tune in for our next episode, when we explore

821
00:41:59,400 --> 00:42:03,080
Speaker 1: even more strange, obscure facts about the first president of

822
00:42:03,120 --> 00:42:06,440
Speaker 1: the United States. In the meantime, you can say hello

823
00:42:06,520 --> 00:42:09,719
Speaker 1: to Casey, Noel, Christopher and myself on Instagram. You can

824
00:42:09,719 --> 00:42:11,720
Speaker 1: find us on Facebook. You can find us on Twitter.

825
00:42:11,840 --> 00:42:14,719
Speaker 1: Hit us up with your favorite strange historical facts, and

826
00:42:14,800 --> 00:42:16,799
Speaker 1: if you want to hang out with our favorite part

827
00:42:16,840 --> 00:42:19,440
Speaker 1: of the show, your fellow listeners, visit us on our

828
00:42:19,440 --> 00:42:22,240
Speaker 1: community page Ridiculous Historians on Facebook.

829
00:42:22,360 --> 00:42:25,439
Speaker 2: You want a little tiny peek into our relatively run

830
00:42:25,480 --> 00:42:27,000
Speaker 2: of the mill lives, but you know, we do some

831
00:42:27,000 --> 00:42:28,440
Speaker 2: cool things every now and then. You can check me

832
00:42:28,480 --> 00:42:31,160
Speaker 2: out at Embryonic Insider on Instagram.

833
00:42:30,800 --> 00:42:34,480
Speaker 1: And I am at Ben Bullen on Instagram. One hundred

834
00:42:34,480 --> 00:42:38,520
Speaker 1: percent molock free photo content so far, it's good to know.

835
00:42:38,760 --> 00:42:40,440
Speaker 4: Until the next episode comes out, I'm just going to

836
00:42:40,440 --> 00:42:42,640
Speaker 4: be sitting here pulling dollar bills out of my wallet,

837
00:42:43,200 --> 00:42:43,760
Speaker 4: very very.

838
00:42:43,600 --> 00:42:46,040
Speaker 2: Few dollar bills, two money bags.

839
00:42:45,880 --> 00:42:48,680
Speaker 4: Just staring at George. Staring at George, wanting to talk

840
00:42:48,680 --> 00:42:50,040
Speaker 4: about him with you guys again soon.

841
00:42:50,239 --> 00:42:51,920
Speaker 2: I can't wait. Do you have any plugs you'd like

842
00:42:51,920 --> 00:42:52,280
Speaker 2: to plug?

843
00:42:52,320 --> 00:42:53,759
Speaker 4: I do have some plugs. If you want to find

844
00:42:53,760 --> 00:42:58,560
Speaker 4: me on Instagram, I'm at Haciotis. That's Hassiotis, and we

845
00:42:58,600 --> 00:43:01,560
Speaker 4: all hang out on the Ridiculous System Facebook page. We'll

846
00:43:01,600 --> 00:43:02,040
Speaker 4: be there too.

847
00:43:02,320 --> 00:43:04,279
Speaker 1: In the meantime, we would like to think, of course,

848
00:43:04,320 --> 00:43:07,040
Speaker 1: our super producer, Casey Pegram. We would like to thank

849
00:43:07,080 --> 00:43:08,799
Speaker 1: Alex Williams, who composed our track.

850
00:43:08,880 --> 00:43:10,759
Speaker 2: We'd like to think our pal Gabe who helps us

851
00:43:10,800 --> 00:43:12,680
Speaker 2: out with research, and of course we'd like to thank

852
00:43:12,719 --> 00:43:16,600
Speaker 2: Christopher Haciotis, our incredible guest and lifelong pal.

853
00:43:16,800 --> 00:43:19,239
Speaker 4: No thank you Casey. Thanks and if one of you

854
00:43:19,239 --> 00:43:20,880
Speaker 4: guys would think what's his name over here for me,

855
00:43:21,000 --> 00:43:21,839
Speaker 4: I'd appreciate it.

856
00:43:22,760 --> 00:43:23,800
Speaker 1: We'll see you next time.

857
00:43:30,400 --> 00:43:34,200
Speaker 2: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

858
00:43:34,320 --> 00:43:36,440
Speaker 2: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.