Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: And welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, there's Chuck. Ben's
Speaker 2: here sitting in for Jerry. It's Ben h Week in
Speaker 2: the producer's chair, and this is stuff you should Know.
Speaker 3: I got a slide whistle in my Christmas stocking.
Speaker 2: Do you realize you got me this slide whistle?
Speaker 3: I know, but I got my own. Now.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, I thought we were talking about me.
Speaker 3: No, no, no, I guess you're still enjoying it. You
Speaker 3: brought it out, yes, yeah, I love it. Would you
Speaker 3: use it for with peanuts?
Speaker 2: I just thought it kind of fit the motif a
Speaker 2: little bit comics, you know, so sure, I've been looking
Speaker 2: for an opportunity to bust it out, and here we go.
Speaker 3: I thought you because not everyone knows this, and this
Speaker 3: almost never happens. We started to record. Josh said, hold
Speaker 3: on a second and left, and I was pretty convinced
Speaker 3: you were going to come back with a trombone and
Speaker 3: a plunger.
Speaker 2: It was close. That was close, man, that would have
Speaker 2: been something. Now I suddenly am ashamed of my slide whistle.
Speaker 3: Wah wah, wah, wah wah.
Speaker 2: Exactly that was a pretty good one.
Speaker 3: NICs.
Speaker 2: Hey, while we're on that, Chuck, what you're talking about
Speaker 2: is the adults in the Peanuts universe. You never see him.
Speaker 2: You saw him once and it was just strange. You
Speaker 2: can hear them off camera and they're discussed and talked about.
Speaker 2: You just don't see them. But in the specials when
Speaker 2: they talk, they talk like that, and it's a muted trombone,
Speaker 2: like you said, a plunger and a trombone. And that
Speaker 2: was the idea of Vince Giraldi, who was the guy
Speaker 2: who created the soundtrack for the Peanuts Christmas.
Speaker 3: Special, Dang Straight one of the I think that's a
Speaker 3: number two best selling jazz record of all time, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, after Miles Davis is kind of blue, of course. Yeah?
Speaker 3: Is it Giraldi? I thought it was Giraldi? Is it Giraldi?
Speaker 2: I think it's kind of like that whole Gift Jiff argument.
Speaker 2: The only person who can say is Vince Giraldi.
Speaker 3: That's about to say his families like, it's not like
Speaker 3: that at all.
Speaker 2: So we're talking today about Peanuts. In case you didn't know,
Speaker 2: it's funny. I was researching Peanuts and I came across
Speaker 2: at least a couple results that were actually about peanuts
Speaker 2: the food. It was a little confusing for a second,
Speaker 2: but for the most part, there's a lot of really
Speaker 2: interesting stuff out there that people have written about peanuts.
Speaker 2: And I think the reason why is because it's really cerebral,
Speaker 2: like surprisingly disarmingly cerebral, and people have gotten so much
Speaker 2: out of it over the five decades that it was around,
Speaker 2: or more than that by now almost seventy five years
Speaker 2: since it started, that everyone just kind of loves it
Speaker 2: and has some sort of emotional connection to it. So
Speaker 2: there's been a lot of like good written analysis about it,
Speaker 2: essays and odes and stuff like that.
Speaker 3: Totally, and you know, one thing that I'm sure you
Speaker 3: can verify, speaking for both of us, researching peanuts is
Speaker 3: a hard thing to stop doing.
Speaker 2: It really is.
Speaker 3: You can just it's just one of these topics you
Speaker 3: can just keep going and going and going, because it's
Speaker 3: all interesting beyond the nostalgic love. It's interesting as an
Speaker 3: adult to look back on some of this stuff, Yeah,
Speaker 3: because it's really has you know, the way it's framed
Speaker 3: in my mind at least, is a lot different now
Speaker 3: than it was when I was a kid. Yeah, just
Speaker 3: a landmark comic strip in every single way, one of,
Speaker 3: if not the biggest and best ever.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's a very deceptive comic in that all
Speaker 2: of the characters are kids, grade school kids. But it's
Speaker 2: not a kid's comic. It's a comic for adults. And
Speaker 2: I remember being a kid and like the extent that
Speaker 2: I appreciated it was, you know, Charlie Brown flying through
Speaker 2: the air, Lucy calling somebody a blockhead, or Snoopy doing
Speaker 2: his thing. That was it. I didn't get any of
Speaker 2: the existentialism associated with it. Nothing like that was totally
Speaker 2: lost to me, and I think that's the way it
Speaker 2: was meant to be. You know, sometimes people can create
Speaker 2: works like The Simpsons are a good idea or a
Speaker 2: good example where it can be enjoyed on multiple levels.
Speaker 2: And that's true of Peanuts too. But the proportions are off.
Speaker 2: It's not even like the adult enjoyment of Peanuts is
Speaker 2: far greater and deeper than the kids appreciation of Peanuts.
Speaker 2: You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I think it's definitely four kids. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I agree. I think it's just the proportions off.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's what I said.
Speaker 3: I know, but at the beginning you said it's not
Speaker 3: a comic for kids, it's for adults, and I disagree.
Speaker 3: I think it's for kids too, but I think adults
Speaker 3: can definitely gain more insight.
Speaker 2: You know what, I have to say that what Peanuts?
Speaker 3: All right, So you mentioned that Peanuts ran for almost
Speaker 3: fifty years. She said five decades, and I know math
Speaker 3: from October second, nineteen fifty to February thirteen, two thousand. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and for almost all of that that five decades, one
Speaker 3: Charles Schultz drew seven Peanuts comics a week. I think
Speaker 3: the Sunday started in nineteen fifty two for seventeen eight
Speaker 3: hundred ninety seven comic strips. And he didn't farm these out, No,
Speaker 3: he did them himself. And he found that one thing
Speaker 3: that was like he also generally did them in pen
Speaker 3: as well, because he was just so sort of decisive
Speaker 3: in his work.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I saw somebody say, like, the average comic artists couldn't.
Speaker 2: We would have trouble keeping up that level of dedication
Speaker 2: for a decade, let alone five. Yeah, Like, just the
Speaker 2: amount of dedication it takes to do that. Like, apparently
Speaker 2: Charles Schultz was completely cut out for that kind of thing.
Speaker 2: He wasn't a big fan of holidays because they got
Speaker 2: in the way of his work. Like that's what he
Speaker 2: was dedicated to. I saw one of his family members,
Speaker 2: either a widow, ex wife, or a child, I can't
Speaker 2: remember who said like, oh, I think it was one
Speaker 2: of his daughters who said, like, his family was not
Speaker 2: his everything, that the Peanuts comic strip was his everything.
Speaker 2: That was his life, and he built a life for
Speaker 2: himself and for his family outside of that. But I mean, like,
Speaker 2: that's what that guy's purpose on earth was, and he
Speaker 2: fulfilled it to the nines.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean, one thing I can relate to, I
Speaker 3: think both of us a little bit, is doing something
Speaker 3: with consistency over a great deal of time. We're in
Speaker 3: year sixteen, right, Can you imagine fifty years? No?
Speaker 2: I really can't. But we've said stuff like this before,
Speaker 2: so it's entirely possible we'll end up in year fifty.
Speaker 3: I won't be around my friend.
Speaker 2: That's not true. There's going to be all sorts of
Speaker 2: great breakthroughs in medicine in the next decade or two.
Speaker 3: I'm a ninety something year old podcaster. Than something went horribly.
Speaker 2: Wrong, So there's a glitch in the matrix.
Speaker 3: Huh, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: So one of the things about peanuts is that it's
Speaker 2: universally loved because it was basically available throughout the universe. Yeah,
Speaker 2: twenty six hundred newspapers. Is that it's peak, and it
Speaker 2: was at a peak pretty much from the seventies onward,
Speaker 2: twenty six hundred newspapers in seventy five countries and twenty
Speaker 2: one different languages, and its readership was about three hundred
Speaker 2: and fifty million people around the world. And I think
Speaker 2: one of the reasons why it was so so widespread
Speaker 2: is because the thing about peanuts, from all the research
Speaker 2: I did and just kind of coming to understand what
Speaker 2: the whole thing was about, is that it's about the
Speaker 2: universal human condition. It's not just about Americans and what
Speaker 2: Americans go through. It's not just about Canadians even and
Speaker 2: what Canadians go through. That's about what every human alive
Speaker 2: goes through. Its very basic human condition stuff. Is what
Speaker 2: they're actually talking about and what are behind a lot
Speaker 2: of the gags, And so that to me is pretty
Speaker 2: much the explanation right there for why it's so universally loved.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and the human condition thing generally with Peanuts, wasn't
Speaker 3: the thrill of victory but the agony of defeat. Yeah,
Speaker 3: time and time again. These characters suffer setbacks and failures
Speaker 3: over and over and over, and even when they're not
Speaker 3: doing that, there are very few grand victories at all.
Speaker 3: And it's amazing to look at it now that it was.
Speaker 3: I mean, I guess people do connect with that, but
Speaker 3: it's amazing to look at a comic strip in the
Speaker 3: funny papers about these kids with such pathos and with
Speaker 3: such failure and such, you know, sometimes clearly depression. It's
Speaker 3: just it's really a remarkable cultural staple I think.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's much easier to think of now because
Speaker 2: it's so widespread among comics. But at the time in
Speaker 2: nineteen fifty, yeah, this was There was nothing like it.
Speaker 2: I mean, there have been some stuff about little kids
Speaker 2: and kid groups that like comics that had focused on that,
Speaker 2: some of which inspired Charles Schultz, but it was just
Speaker 2: groundbreaking in every single way.
Speaker 3: Yeah, totally. So should we go to the man himself? Yeah,
Speaker 3: let's all right. So Charles M. Schultz was born in
Speaker 3: November twenty six, nineteen twenty two, in Saint Paul, Minnesota.
Speaker 3: He got the nickname Sparky when he was a kid,
Speaker 3: well when he was a baby in fact, because his
Speaker 3: uncle saw him and thought that he looked like this
Speaker 3: character from another cartoon called Barney Google named Sparky, so
Speaker 3: he nicknamed him Sparkplug. That became Sparky, and apparently everyone
Speaker 3: who knew him and was close to him in his
Speaker 3: life called him Sparky for his whole life.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and apparently he always wanted to draw comics, even
Speaker 2: from a young age. It was his aspiration that he
Speaker 2: got to fulfill and then some. But his dad, Carl,
Speaker 2: was a barber and he was I think a German immigrant.
Speaker 2: His mother, Dina, was a Norwegian immigrant, so Charles was
Speaker 2: a full first generation American kid. And he and his
Speaker 2: dad loved to read the funny papers together, so that
Speaker 2: was just kind of like his training came from just
Speaker 2: enjoying it with his father, which is pretty neat. And
Speaker 2: then his mother also, and this is fairly rare among
Speaker 2: Western European or Northern European immigrant families. His mother encouraged
Speaker 2: his drawing too. It wasn't looked at as just some dumb,
Speaker 2: idle thing that was a waste of time. Like he
Speaker 2: he was encouraged to follow his destiny.
Speaker 3: I guess yeah. I thought I was hanging there. I
Speaker 3: was wondering what was going to be dream destiny is perfect,
Speaker 3: you know, slide with. So he was drawing, like you
Speaker 3: said he was. He wanted to be a cartoonist from
Speaker 3: a very young age, so he was drawing from a
Speaker 3: very young age. He got published for the first time
Speaker 3: when he was fourteen, which is remarkable in a newspaper
Speaker 3: comic and a Ripley's Believe it or not comic. And
Speaker 3: it was an image of Spike, the family dog, not
Speaker 3: that Spike. We're going to get to Spike later. One
Speaker 3: of my favorite characters in the Peanuts Cannon.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, you like that, does Stash?
Speaker 3: I love Spike. He was a desert hippie, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he totally wasn't he.
Speaker 3: Was the best, But Spike was their family dog. It
Speaker 3: was signed drawn by Sparky, so that was like his
Speaker 3: first little cartoon signature was Sparky and Spike was a Pointer,
Speaker 3: not a beagle. This wasn't Snoopy yet, but it was
Speaker 3: the inspiration for Snoopy. I believe Spike was black and
Speaker 3: white but was a pointer.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so we've got like, this is a really good
Speaker 2: example of what Charles did. He drew from his life,
Speaker 2: sometimes drew people's names for the characters that he introduced.
Speaker 2: Sometimes he would base characters and like their looks or
Speaker 2: their demeanor on people he knew. And so Spike or
Speaker 2: Snoopy being based on Spike is like pretty much par
Speaker 2: for the course for what he did. And so fourteen
Speaker 2: he gets his first cartoon published and Ripley's Believe It
Speaker 2: or not, Believe it or not like you said. And
Speaker 2: then as a senior in high school, he took a
Speaker 2: correspondence drawing class from what was originally called the Federal
Speaker 2: School of Applied Cartooning, a division of the Bureau of Engraving,
Speaker 2: which happened to be located in Minneapolis, where he lived, essentially,
Speaker 2: and that later went on to become Art Instruction Schools, Inc.
Speaker 3: And for those of them, great name wise.
Speaker 2: No, but I know for a fact that you're familiar
Speaker 2: with this because you were a kid growing up in
Speaker 2: the late seventies and eighties.
Speaker 3: Oh, I know what's coming in those TV ads?
Speaker 2: Do you remember?
Speaker 3: Oh? I remember ads in magazines and comic books.
Speaker 2: You're slightly older, so my age group had the TV ads.
Speaker 3: We didn't have the picture box.
Speaker 2: This was what you're talking about, were like magazine ads
Speaker 2: that had Tippy the turtle, Tiny the mouse, or pirate
Speaker 2: and you could choose which one to draw, and you
Speaker 2: send it in and maybe you want a prize. But
Speaker 2: really what you were doing was inadvertently sending your information
Speaker 2: to art instruction schools who would try to recruit you
Speaker 2: for their art correspondence course. And this is in the eighties,
Speaker 2: I think they were still going into like the twenty tens.
Speaker 3: Essentially, wow, really.
Speaker 2: But that's where Charles Schultz received his initial training and
Speaker 2: the cost for that was about thirty eight hundred dollars
Speaker 2: in today's money. And don't forget like his dad's a barber.
Speaker 2: Like barber's have never been particularly rich, so it was
Speaker 2: like a big deal that his parents were helping him
Speaker 2: out with this, this this correspondence course so that he
Speaker 2: could go get formal training as a cartoonist.
Speaker 3: Totally. He graduated from there, saw it all the way through,
Speaker 3: went to work doing some various jobs here and there.
Speaker 3: He was, you know, drawing cartoons, drawing comics, submitting them
Speaker 3: ever he could. As you know, many stories like this goes.
Speaker 3: He was rejected by everybody. Basically, the night before he
Speaker 3: ships off for World War Two, his mother, Dina passes
Speaker 3: away from cervical cancer. And this was a real sort
Speaker 3: of lifelong scar for him. And you know, some people
Speaker 3: say that, you know, sort of the pathos and the
Speaker 3: deep loneliness that all the Peanuts gang felt was sort
Speaker 3: of him getting this out. And as we'll see, you know,
Speaker 3: everybody from his wife to people that have studied him
Speaker 3: have confirmed and even Charles Schultz himself that like, each
Speaker 3: of these characters is a little piece of him in
Speaker 3: some way.
Speaker 2: Right, So, yeah, he was he had to grab with
Speaker 2: like basically a one two punch of trauma because after
Speaker 2: his mom's death, like and he shipped out, he saw combat.
Speaker 2: He was in combat, so he's dealing with combat. Well
Speaker 2: he's also you know, dealing with the grief from the
Speaker 2: loss of his mom. Yeah, so that's I mean, that's
Speaker 2: gonna have a pretty big impact on anybody, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure. He makes it through the war, though
Speaker 3: obviously goes back to Minneapolis, goes back to the art
Speaker 3: school that he graduated from and got a job there.
Speaker 3: So he was an instructor there and for about five
Speaker 3: years he was still drawing still, I guess, looking at
Speaker 3: pictures of pirates and turtles and things, and he was,
Speaker 3: you know, he was getting his own style together. He
Speaker 3: was learning about comics and how it all worked and
Speaker 3: the business side of things. Right, and you said he
Speaker 3: often named people after people in his reel life. Three
Speaker 3: of his colleagues. There was one Charles Brown, a Linus Marr,
Speaker 3: and Freda Rich.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Freda was a minor character with curly red hair,
Speaker 2: but she wasn't the red haired girl that Charlie Brown
Speaker 2: had an endless crush on. That was based on another person,
Speaker 2: a woman named Donna Johnson, whom Charles Schultz dated when
Speaker 2: they both worked at the Art Instruction school, and she
Speaker 2: turned him down, and he forever, I guess, kind of
Speaker 2: pined or kept a flame or something for her. At
Speaker 2: the very least, she became the red haired girl that
Speaker 2: Charlie Brown could never have.
Speaker 3: Can you imagine being the inspiration for one of these characters.
Speaker 2: I know, it's pretty cool. The guy was like the
Speaker 2: Taylor Swift of his era.
Speaker 3: Hey, she's got heiress.
Speaker 2: And then also a little known fact that was a
Speaker 2: good one, by the way, Donna Johnson who turned down
Speaker 2: Charles Schultz and inspired the red haired girl went on
Speaker 2: to marry instead a firefighter named al Wald, and al
Speaker 2: Wald turned out to be the basis of the character
Speaker 2: Gargamel in Peyo's Smurf's cartoon.
Speaker 3: Amazing. So in nineteen forty seven he got his first
Speaker 3: big sort of career break when he had his cartoon
Speaker 3: litl Folks l i Apostrophel, which is weekly comic. He
Speaker 3: got it in the Saint Paul Pioneer Press, and then
Speaker 3: when he was twenty seven, in nineteen fifty, he got
Speaker 3: a syndication deal for Little Folks and seven newspapers, not
Speaker 3: one hundred. Yeah, and they had to change the name.
Speaker 3: There was already a Little Folks and there was also
Speaker 3: Lil Abner, and so they said, you know, we can't
Speaker 3: really do this. We got to change it. So they
Speaker 3: changed the name to Peanuts, reference to Howdie Duties Peanut Gallery.
Speaker 3: And Schultz evidently never liked that name, even though it's
Speaker 3: hard to imagine anything different now.
Speaker 2: Oh no way. Plus also he's like, Peanuts is too
Speaker 2: schmaltzy and sachrein give me Little Folks any day, right,
Speaker 2: But yeah, he carried that around the whole career. He
Speaker 2: hated the name Peanuts. He never came to like it,
Speaker 2: which is bizarre. And then I guess with that syndication deal,
Speaker 2: one of the really big things that happened was he
Speaker 2: moved from this space filler section on like the women's
Speaker 2: page in the Saint Paul Pioneer Press to the comics
Speaker 2: page in addition to getting like a huge bump and pay.
Speaker 2: So now he'd made it as a comic, his comic
Speaker 2: was now on the comics page, which was a huge
Speaker 2: deal to him.
Speaker 3: Yeah, huge bump and pay. So he went to like
Speaker 3: thirty dollars a week.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he had been making ten. And the editor of
Speaker 2: the Saint Paul Pioneer Press was like, I'm not giving
Speaker 2: you a dime more than that.
Speaker 3: So the first Peanuts comic strip came on October second,
Speaker 3: nineteen fifty and I think that is a pretty good
Speaker 3: place for our first break, eh.
Speaker 2: I think.
Speaker 3: So, all right, we'll be right.
Speaker 4: Back, softy jaw soff.
Speaker 3: All right, So the first Peanuts is October second, nineteen fifty.
Speaker 3: Snoopy the Dog appeared just two days later on October fourth,
Speaker 3: nineteen fifties, for Snoopy's first appearance. Snoopy on four legs.
Speaker 3: I don't think if you're not, you know, a big
Speaker 3: Peanuts officionado, you might not know that Snoopy started out
Speaker 3: much more dog like, and Charlie Brown would teach Snoopy
Speaker 3: to walk on two legs, and Snoopy's character really more
Speaker 3: than any other character in Peanuts changed over those fifty years. Yeah,
Speaker 3: for sure, even though a lot of them changed quite
Speaker 3: a bit. Because you know, like with anything with any
Speaker 3: even television sitcom, like the characters really grow, like you
Speaker 3: cast your cast, whether it's TV or it's a cartoon
Speaker 3: or a graphic novel, and then as you write, they've
Speaker 3: become real and they change, it evolved just like real people.
Speaker 3: And that's certainly what happened to Peanuts.
Speaker 2: Yah, that's pretty awesome. One of the other things about
Speaker 2: that's widely recognizes about Peanuts is the style of the drawing,
Speaker 2: of the writing, of the lettering, all that stuff. It's
Speaker 2: just immediately recognizable as Peanuts. And Schultz's style was described
Speaker 2: as a formal minimalism, and he had the four panel format.
Speaker 2: I guess foisted it on him at first. Wow, there's
Speaker 2: a lot of F's alliteration and he had to work
Speaker 2: within it. And a lot of times just being constrained
Speaker 2: by rules can actually produce the best art. You know,
Speaker 2: sometimes when you don't have any rules, it's tough to
Speaker 2: find your way or your direction where you're starting in
Speaker 2: a structure can help a lot, and he really thrived
Speaker 2: in that, even though he apparently didn't like having that
Speaker 2: foisted on him. But this minimal style and the proportions
Speaker 2: between the lettering, the like the the speech bubbles and
Speaker 2: the kids and the panels, there is a study that
Speaker 2: called it Schultze and symmetry, which makes a lot of sense,
Speaker 2: and that what Charles Schultz did first was draw the panels,
Speaker 2: then he wrote the dialogue, then he drew the characters.
Speaker 2: And there's a writer named Ivan Brutelli who wrote in
Speaker 2: the Parish Review that pointed out, like if you if
Speaker 2: you look at a Peanuts cartoon, you're on like eye
Speaker 2: level with them. You're not looking up, you're not looking down.
Speaker 2: You are on their level. And in that way, it
Speaker 2: draws you into the cartoon and you can imagine yourself
Speaker 2: like in there with them. It makes it that much
Speaker 2: more like it makes you part of that world and
Speaker 2: vice versa.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's the one thing I didn't get because that's
Speaker 3: in that comic in the world.
Speaker 2: Uh so before him, yes, now, before him, that was
Speaker 2: not the style.
Speaker 3: Did they draw like they were looking down on top
Speaker 3: of someone's head.
Speaker 2: They did whatever they wanted, and each one was giant
Speaker 2: and took up huge amounts of the newspaper, and they
Speaker 2: were masterpieces, like they were works of art, oftentimes really surreal.
Speaker 2: They were all over the place, all sorts of different perspectives.
Speaker 2: This was new, and it was part of that formal
Speaker 2: minimalism that it was this one that you looked at
Speaker 2: it the one way from the side, at the in
Speaker 2: these these specific proportions. It was it was something new
Speaker 2: that he introduced.
Speaker 3: Uh a little while ago, when you were saying that
Speaker 3: those constraints can really lead to great things, I thought
Speaker 3: you were going to say, unless it's family circus.
Speaker 2: Oh do you not like family circus?
Speaker 3: When was the last time you looked at family circus?
Speaker 2: Let's see age seven?
Speaker 3: Okay, it's terrible. Oh, I mean I loved that family
Speaker 3: because I was a little kid that read the comics
Speaker 3: like incessantly, but like humor in a family circus cone
Speaker 3: just a single square was like, you know, Jeffy tripped
Speaker 3: over the book.
Speaker 2: Poor Jeffy, Jeffy.
Speaker 3: The other good thing about getting Peanuts going was that
Speaker 3: it was known and marketed as a space saving comic,
Speaker 3: so those four panels could be arranged however you wanted.
Speaker 3: If you wanted to draw a square, you could, If
Speaker 3: you wanted them up and down, you could. So that was,
Speaker 3: you know, a real benefit to a newspaper who were
Speaker 3: when you do newspaper layout is a big part of
Speaker 3: putting together a newspaper, making everything fit on the page.
Speaker 3: So that was that was a big plus for him
Speaker 3: as having that flexibility. I imagine Family Circus even more
Speaker 3: flexible just the one square. But because of this minimalism,
Speaker 3: it really the character is what shown. Because it wasn't like,
Speaker 3: look at this outstanding art, it's art we grew to love,
Speaker 3: but it was look at these characters and look at
Speaker 3: these emotions that these characters are feeling, and how they're
Speaker 3: insecure and they're frustrated, right, and they're sad. But that's
Speaker 3: also coupled with the fact that they were also very smart.
Speaker 3: At times they were it could be very funny, but
Speaker 3: a lot of times it wasn't funny at all as
Speaker 3: far as just like you know, an lol type of funny.
Speaker 3: It was something meaningful, right, but there was always a
Speaker 3: lot of hope, I think, and you know, Dave helped
Speaker 3: put this together. And he points out which Gas and
Speaker 3: other people have pointed out that no matter how many
Speaker 3: times Lucy holds that football, Charlie's gonna try and kick it.
Speaker 3: And it's not because he's dumb.
Speaker 2: No, And that's I mean, that's part of a gag, right,
Speaker 2: that he's she's going to pull the football away at
Speaker 2: the last moment, he's going to go flying through the air.
Speaker 2: But the bigger part of the gag is that he's
Speaker 2: going to keep trying, and you know that she's not
Speaker 2: going to let him kick that football, and yet he's
Speaker 2: going to keep trying and trying. You know, Like that's
Speaker 2: the dual level that Peanuts exists on. It's a good
Speaker 2: example of that.
Speaker 3: Who was the uh? When Peanuts turned one hundred, there
Speaker 3: were some of the most major comics did tributes me
Speaker 3: and you sent along. Some of those was that Mark
Speaker 3: Trail who let him kick the football?
Speaker 2: Close?
Speaker 3: Who was this?
Speaker 2: It was Gil Thorpe.
Speaker 3: I did know Gil.
Speaker 2: Thorpe, so if you want to, I actually tears were
Speaker 2: brought to my eyes. I'm not gonna I was crying
Speaker 2: the If you want to just feel incredibly moved, wait
Speaker 2: until the end of this episode and then go look
Speaker 2: up the November twenty second, twenty twenty two comic strip
Speaker 2: of gil Thorpe and you will be moved. It's amazing.
Speaker 3: All the tributes were amazing. Yeah, and it was so
Speaker 3: cool to see Snoopy in a garfield and high and Lois,
Speaker 3: even though I didn't like them, go in for marriage
Speaker 3: counseling with Lucy, like, oh yeah, it's it was a surreal,
Speaker 3: like amazing tribute mash up and pretty wonderful thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah. It was part of this drive for basically every
Speaker 2: comic artist working at the time to create a tribute
Speaker 2: comic on November twenty six, twenty twenty two, which was,
Speaker 2: like you said, Charles Schultz one hundredth birthday, or would
Speaker 2: have been had he lived to one hundred.
Speaker 3: Family circus didn't do it.
Speaker 2: They did.
Speaker 3: No, they said, Jeffy's gotta flush his pencil down the
Speaker 3: toilet instead.
Speaker 2: No, they did something I don't remember, but it wasn't
Speaker 2: like it wasn't dead on. It was a little off.
Speaker 2: Now that you mentioned it, although so Family Circus has
Speaker 2: one of the sweetest single panel comics I've ever seen
Speaker 2: in my life, though I saw years ago when it
Speaker 2: came out, and still to this day, I think it's
Speaker 2: one of the sweetest things ever.
Speaker 3: It's did Jeffy's step in the Mud.
Speaker 2: No, Jeffy wasn't even in the panel, so you would
Speaker 2: have loved it. You know, jeff does the Family Circus Now?
Speaker 3: Oh, is he the real sign?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 3: I feel terrible.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is gonna because he's list to him. He's
Speaker 2: a huge stuff. You should know, faim So Little PJ.
Speaker 2: The baby, Yeah, is coming up. He's got a blanket
Speaker 2: with him. He's in his maybe Little Pj's or whatever,
Speaker 2: huge smile on his face and he's just gotten up
Speaker 2: from a nap. And it says the caption is here
Speaker 2: comes Sunshine.
Speaker 3: I love it. See I take it all back, Family Circus.
Speaker 3: I loved it. It was wonderful, it was wholesome, but
Speaker 3: as a kid who's into comedy, it didn't deliver the
Speaker 3: laughs that I needed.
Speaker 2: Sure, I'm trying to think of for me. The Far
Speaker 2: Side was the first comic that I ever like, genuinely
Speaker 2: laughed at.
Speaker 3: Oh see, that didn't come along until I was older.
Speaker 2: So yeah, same here. I mean like it was the
Speaker 2: mid eighties, so I was easily ten at least, and
Speaker 2: I'd just been sitting there dourly reading comics up to
Speaker 2: that point.
Speaker 3: Oh see, I was. I was laughing at all that stuff, Bay, And.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I loved all of them, like you said, Hi
Speaker 2: and Lois Hagar, the Horrible, all those. I don't think
Speaker 2: any of them ever made me laugh until Farside came along.
Speaker 2: All right, So wait, no, I want to talk more
Speaker 2: about that than that phenomenon.
Speaker 3: It didn't take long for Peanuts to become a really
Speaker 3: big deal. Just five years in, when he was thirty
Speaker 3: three years old, Peanuts, I'm sorry, Chultz was named Cartoonists
Speaker 3: of the Year.
Speaker 2: Yeah that's huge.
Speaker 3: So that's only five years in. And then ten years
Speaker 3: after that, Peanuts was on the cover of Time magazine.
Speaker 3: Pretty big, two huge, huge deal. I already mentioned sort
Speaker 3: of like you know, you're sort of like casting a
Speaker 3: player or a TV show, But Charles Schultz actually talked
Speaker 3: about that that writing a comic is like casting a
Speaker 3: drama company, and that these characters do grow and change
Speaker 3: over time, and before he knew it, humor started coming
Speaker 3: out of their little mouths, and he was almost like
Speaker 3: a conduit.
Speaker 2: It feels like, Yeah, he definitely was. And what's remarkable, though,
Speaker 2: is over fifty years he never seemed to have gotten
Speaker 2: all of it out. Because I think you said earlier,
Speaker 2: people widely consider the Peanuts characters to all be parts
Speaker 2: of Charles Schultz's Psyche. Essentially. Art Spiegelman, the guy who
Speaker 2: created Mouse, said that Peanuts was Shultz breaking himself up
Speaker 2: into child sized pieces and letting them go at each
Speaker 2: other for half a century. Yeah, and his widow Jeanie,
Speaker 2: said that specific characters were meaningful to Schultz himself as
Speaker 2: far as Psyche was concerned. He said that Charlie Brown's
Speaker 2: is wishy, washy and insecure side, Lucy's a smart Alex side,
Speaker 2: which he enjoyed having because apparently he wasn't particularly good
Speaker 2: at getting that out in person. Linus curious and thoughtful side,
Speaker 2: and then Snoopy, this is important to me. Snoopy is
Speaker 2: the way I would like to be, fearless, the life
Speaker 2: of the party, and brushing off Lucy's bad temper with
Speaker 2: a glance and kiss. And don't you think it's telling
Speaker 2: that he made the character that he aspires to be
Speaker 2: the most the dog.
Speaker 3: Telling in what sense.
Speaker 2: I think it just says a lot about him that, like,
Speaker 2: at the very least he thought of dogs.
Speaker 3: Oh, he loved his dogs, right, And I think.
Speaker 2: That's pretty difficult to dislike anybody who loves dogs like that.
Speaker 3: You know that Garfield guy hates cats?
Speaker 2: Uh yeah, he loathes them.
Speaker 3: I collected those books too. Actually, well, now they think
Speaker 3: about the first one. That really not the first one
Speaker 3: that made me laugh, but the first one that hit
Speaker 3: me on a second level was bloom County.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: I was huge into Garfield and bloom County.
Speaker 2: I loved Garfield. I had those books too. They were
Speaker 2: world class. The colors too in Garfield comics are really great.
Speaker 3: I still get a cat that he's Lasagna. I still
Speaker 3: got all those Bloom County books too. Those hold up?
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, you are you bequeathing them to Ruby?
Speaker 1: Uh?
Speaker 3: Boy? I mean she won't get him now, that was
Speaker 3: for no.
Speaker 2: No.
Speaker 3: I mean, oh sure she'll get everything. Yeah, good, But
Speaker 3: I want to like show her at some point when
Speaker 3: she's like twelve, You're like, hey, you should check out
Speaker 3: bloom County. There's a penguin who's friends with a a
Speaker 3: crazy street cat.
Speaker 2: She's gonna be like, So, let's talk about some of
Speaker 2: these everybody, that's the last time I'll do that.
Speaker 3: Oh no, we'll get emails that people like more slaveless.
Speaker 3: Let's talk about some of these main characters. Obviously, we
Speaker 3: can't hit them all, because there were more than seventy
Speaker 3: characters throughout Peanuts, but we're gonna hit the big EIA's
Speaker 3: of course, starting with Charlie Brown and that iconic shirt.
Speaker 3: That was another sort of thing with Peanuts is that
Speaker 3: they would change clothes some times. Oh yeah, but like
Speaker 3: Charlie Brown had that shirt on almost all the time.
Speaker 3: Lucy wore that blue dress for decades until they phased
Speaker 3: out the dress in the eighties and then completely stopped
Speaker 3: putting her in dresses in the nineties.
Speaker 2: Oh really, what does she wear?
Speaker 3: I haven't noticed, Just pants and a shirt, Like I
Speaker 3: think they changed with the time a little bit like
Speaker 3: why I put in nineties, two thousands Lucy in a
Speaker 3: little like eineteen fifties curly dress. Gotcha at least you
Speaker 3: know full time. But Schultz said that Charlie Brown, of
Speaker 3: Charlie Brown, we all know what it's like. To lose,
Speaker 3: but Charlie Brown kept losing outrageously. It's not that he's
Speaker 3: a loser. He's really a decent little sort. So I
Speaker 3: think that's a big point. Like Charlie Brown is constantly losing,
Speaker 3: but that's different than being a loser. Those are two
Speaker 3: different things.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And in that sense, you can consider him like
Speaker 2: the everyday person, especially if you're coming at Peanuts and
Speaker 2: life from the viewpoint that the general common thread in
Speaker 2: the human condition is not like winning and feeling happy,
Speaker 2: but feeling dissatisfied and losing pretty frequently. That that's the
Speaker 2: thing that all of us are equally accustomed to, and
Speaker 2: Charlie Brown exemplifies that more than anybody. Although if you
Speaker 2: really look at Peanuts, pretty much every character, with the
Speaker 2: exception of maybe what Stock and Snoopy, more often than
Speaker 2: not did not get what they wanted. They didn't win,
Speaker 2: they didn't get a good grade. They had trouble understanding
Speaker 2: things like if you look at Peppermint Patty, she was
Speaker 2: good at sports, terrible at school, and there were plenty
Speaker 2: of panels that had her not understanding what the teacher
Speaker 2: was saying or what she was even saying. Marcy, her
Speaker 2: friend really good at school, terrible socially, she was very awkward.
Speaker 2: I think Charles Schultz described her as a very strange
Speaker 2: little girl. So none of them were just like we're
Speaker 2: just like one dimensionally happy or winning in any way,
Speaker 2: shape or form. That's just not how Peanuts was or
Speaker 2: just one dimensional. No, And that's the other thing. First,
Speaker 2: there were plenty of like background stock characters for sure
Speaker 2: that weren't fully fleshed out, But the main characters that
Speaker 2: were talking about they were multi dimensional for sure.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure. So back to Charlie Brown. He was bald,
Speaker 3: which I always thought was very very strange. He had
Speaker 3: that big moon head and that little squiggle of hair
Speaker 3: up front that as a kid, I even remember thinking like,
Speaker 3: what is going on with this kid? I'll never understand it.
Speaker 3: Apparently he patterned that after his own quote bland face
Speaker 3: that he had when he was a baby. So that's
Speaker 3: Charlie Brown. Lucy van Pelt is probably, I mean I
Speaker 3: would call her the second lead probably, Okay, wouldn't you.
Speaker 2: I don't know this snoopy somehow in the mix there,
Speaker 2: and but I don't know if he'd be second lead lead. First,
Speaker 2: he's just like almost on his own trip off.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think Snoopy is almost his own thing. It
Speaker 3: was almost like a spin off within a cartoon. Weird,
Speaker 3: but Lucy had black hair again. She had that blue
Speaker 3: dress for many, many years. She was born, or at
Speaker 3: least born in the comic on March third, nineteen fifty two,
Speaker 3: and she was a toddler at first, but she quickly
Speaker 3: grew up. He didn't. I think he realized that there
Speaker 3: wouldn't many dimensions with a toddler character. She's kind of
Speaker 3: annoying and just crying and stuff. So by fifty three,
Speaker 3: like just a year later, she was the wonderful fuss
Speaker 3: budget we all know as Lucy. And this is a
Speaker 3: good example of a character being different, like through adult eyes.
Speaker 3: When I was a kid, I was like, Lucy is
Speaker 3: really mean.
Speaker 2: She's a pos she is.
Speaker 3: She's a real jerk. She's super vain. She's always asking
Speaker 3: people how she looks, and if they don't say she's
Speaker 3: pretty enough, she gets really upset. But now that I'm
Speaker 3: an adult, I look at Lucy and I realize that
Speaker 3: Lucy is a young girl who is deeply insecure and
Speaker 3: who has no idea how to express her emotions in
Speaker 3: a productive way. And these are like adult things that
Speaker 3: you realize once you get to be an adult. But
Speaker 3: Lucy was mean. She was really really mean to line us.
Speaker 2: He's just maybe insecure, Chuck, because I was thinking, how
Speaker 2: compassionate of you that does. But apparently that's just the
Speaker 2: grown up view of Lucy, which I haven't attained yet. Still,
Speaker 2: I think she's awful.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, maybe having an eight year old daughter too
Speaker 3: and seeing insecurities and stuff like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but everything you just said are all the reasons
Speaker 2: why Lucy is the last character in the Peanuts universe
Speaker 2: who should put out a shingle for psychiatric help, right,
Speaker 2: and instead of a lemonade stand offer psychiatric help to
Speaker 2: anybody for five cents. And that's what, Yeah, it is.
Speaker 2: It is a wonderful bit in and of itself. And
Speaker 2: then also it's a great bit in that, even though
Speaker 2: she's terrible at it and she has her own insecurities
Speaker 2: and is just an awful person in a lot of ways,
Speaker 2: at least on the surface herself, she's also maybe the
Speaker 2: one that's in the best position to give out psychological advice,
Speaker 2: not with any kind of spoonful of sugar, but telling, yeah,
Speaker 2: telling things as it is and like not not even
Speaker 2: you a sugarcoat of version of reality, but saying like
Speaker 2: you need to just do this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, for sure. One of my favorite panels that I
Speaker 3: was or strips that I was kind of looking through
Speaker 3: over the last few days, was because Schultz has talked
Speaker 3: about every character has their own weakness, and he said
Speaker 3: hers is Schroeder. Yeah, she could be sentimental with him.
Speaker 3: And there was one panel where she asked him why
Speaker 3: he never gave her flowers and he said, because I
Speaker 3: don't like you. She said, well, the flowers wouldn't care.
Speaker 3: So she had her moments like she was super mean
Speaker 3: to linas she would. One of the running bits was
Speaker 3: trying to get rid of his little Woody, his security blanket,
Speaker 3: like she buried it, she burned it, she cut it
Speaker 3: up into little pieces. In one storyline, she made it
Speaker 3: into a kite and let go of it and it
Speaker 3: flew all over the world and the Air Force rescued
Speaker 3: it over the ocean nice and brought it back. So
Speaker 3: she was really mean to Linus. But there was one
Speaker 3: comic where she said she demanded to know from Linus
Speaker 3: what she has to be grateful for, and he said,
Speaker 3: you have a brother, who loves you, and she busts
Speaker 3: out crying and hugs him.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's very sweet.
Speaker 3: So again it's a little girl who's just insecure and
Speaker 3: doesn't know how to deal with emotion.
Speaker 2: Okay, all right, fine, fine, he's great love Lucy about
Speaker 2: Shorter though, So Shorder's the kid with the piano who
Speaker 2: plays Beethoven.
Speaker 3: Worship's Beethoven virtuoso.
Speaker 2: If you look at the ones where he's playing the
Speaker 2: piano and those panels, there is like musical scales and
Speaker 2: notes like instead of dialogue bubbles at the top of
Speaker 2: the panel.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, those were all hand drawn in hand lettered by
Speaker 2: Charles Schultz. He found it very tedious but important because
Speaker 2: they were accurate. They were accurate transcriptions of snatches of
Speaker 2: Beethoven's music. So if you know how to play the piano,
Speaker 2: and you looked at that Peanuts comic, you could play, Hey,
Speaker 2: what Schroeder was playing at that time?
Speaker 3: Amazing?
Speaker 2: Isn't that amazing? That's serious accuracy.
Speaker 3: All right, Hey, listen, I got something to pitch. What
Speaker 3: this thing is going to be way long? Yeah, So
Speaker 3: I say we make this a two parter. Let's take
Speaker 3: a break and then maybe come back and talk about
Speaker 3: Linus and Snoopy.
Speaker 2: I say, we save Snoopy for part two.
Speaker 3: All Right, we'll take a break, we'll come back, we'll
Speaker 3: talk a little bit about Linus, and then I'm sorry everyone,
Speaker 3: this is just too robust. We're gonna make this a
Speaker 3: two parter, so we'll be right back.
Speaker 4: Softy jaw.
Speaker 2: Soft, Okay, Chuck, we're back. We were talking about Lucy.
Speaker 2: You said she was super mean to Linus, and I
Speaker 2: would say that's in part because Linus was Lucy's little brother.
Speaker 2: Is Lucy's little brother. I don't know why I'm talking
Speaker 2: about them in past tense. They're still very much alive.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, for sure. I mean it nails like so
Speaker 3: many sibling dynamics. I think while there are older sisters
Speaker 3: who are very caring and loving for their youngers, there
Speaker 3: are some who are in older siblings period who did
Speaker 3: not want that baby around. And from the beginning, Lucy
Speaker 3: didn't want a little brother. And in fact, when Sally
Speaker 3: Brown came along, Charlie's little sister, Lucy was very jealous
Speaker 3: because she said that she wanted a little sister. Oh yeah,
Speaker 3: and I'm just like poor Linus, poor guy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, poor rerun too. They both had a younger brother,
Speaker 2: even younger than Linus, named Rerun.
Speaker 3: I wouldn't round for Rerun. When did he come around?
Speaker 2: I don't know. I wish you hadn't asked me that,
Speaker 2: But he was around for a while, Okay.
Speaker 3: I think that was maybe after I stopped reading the comic.
Speaker 2: So let's talk about Linus for a second, because a
Speaker 2: lot of people consider him some sort of genius or
Speaker 2: at least precociously intelligent.
Speaker 3: For sure.
Speaker 2: One of the reasons why is because he frequently cites philosophers.
Speaker 2: He's just clearly well read. He loves school. His teacher,
Speaker 2: Miss Othmar. He's quoted as saying that she's a gem
Speaker 2: among gems, and he can't imagine that she would ever
Speaker 2: accept money for teaching because she's just such a purist
Speaker 2: and is so talented at being a teacher.
Speaker 3: Like what kids says?
Speaker 2: That right? So yeah. And at the same time, though,
Speaker 2: one of the contradictions in terms of Linus is that
Speaker 2: he also is far and away the firmest believer in
Speaker 2: the Great Pumpkin. And there's a really great strip with
Speaker 2: him writing a letter to the Great Pumpkin asking him
Speaker 2: to bring him some toys and then at the end
Speaker 2: of the letter he says, and by the way, if
Speaker 2: you not real, don't tell me because I don't want
Speaker 2: to know.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, it is very sweet that this kid who
Speaker 3: talks about philosophy and like the high arts is a
Speaker 3: believer in the Great Pumpkin and also very sensitive. He's
Speaker 3: he's easily the most sensitive, like kind of purest character
Speaker 3: in the Peanuts catalog. I think. Yeah, he's got that
Speaker 3: security blanket. And apparently Charles Schultz, if he didn't coin
Speaker 3: that term security blanket, he he made it what it
Speaker 3: was and popularized it as such as a as something
Speaker 3: a child will have, yeah, which is pretty amazing.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So the original security blanket was an actual blanket
Speaker 2: that you pinned to the crib or the bed so
Speaker 2: that your kid couldn't move.
Speaker 3: Yeah. It's called super dangerous.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and also like torture I think is another word
Speaker 2: for it. And then the military and defense sector picked
Speaker 2: it up and used it as a metaphor for the
Speaker 2: measure and lengths you went to to keep state secret secret.
Speaker 2: But it was Charles Schultz who's like, no, this has
Speaker 2: has to do with angst and anxiety, and yeah, that's
Speaker 2: that's it. Was Lionis who spread the gospel to the
Speaker 2: world about security blankets.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I called it a woobye earlier, and that is
Speaker 3: stolen directly from mister mom Oh, yeah, who I think
Speaker 3: originated that term.
Speaker 2: Yeah, wooby's a great, great word for it too.
Speaker 3: Yeah, or binkie. I'm not sure who who made that
Speaker 3: one up, but binkie's a big one.
Speaker 2: I don't either. I can't even hazard a guess, but
Speaker 2: I've heard that one too before. Did you have a blanky?
Speaker 2: I had a blanky?
Speaker 3: You had a blanky?
Speaker 2: Yes? Man, that thing was scattered by the time I
Speaker 2: gave that up.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I had a pillow. I don't remember if I
Speaker 3: had a name for it. But it was this little
Speaker 3: kind of like a hand pillow if that's the thing.
Speaker 3: It wasn't like a full sized pillow. And I would uh, man,
Speaker 3: this is just coming back to me. I would rub
Speaker 3: it between my fingers, like over the finger and then
Speaker 3: down the little valley between the fingers, over and over
Speaker 3: and over. And I will also stick it in my ear.
Speaker 3: And I remember this was a white pillow. And this
Speaker 3: thing was so disgusting by the time I got rid
Speaker 3: of it from like earwax and finger gook that. I
Speaker 3: don't mean. My mom certainly would have never said like
Speaker 3: it's time for that to leave, but it may have just,
Speaker 3: you know, disappeared.
Speaker 2: I don't remember I went to go live on a farm.
Speaker 3: Yeah exactly. No, Yeah, with my goat, that's exactly what happened.
Speaker 2: What else you got?
Speaker 3: Well? Nothing, I mean, that's all I got online? Is
Speaker 3: I think that's a good robust part one.
Speaker 2: I think so too, So let's start part two in
Speaker 2: a minute.
Speaker 3: Okay, sure, reminder to everyone to go out and get
Speaker 3: tickets for our live show this year. Yeah, there won't
Speaker 3: be any listener mail, so we'll just go in a
Speaker 3: live show tour plug. How about that?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so go to stuff youshould know dot com or
Speaker 2: link tree, slash sysk and you can get info and tickets.
Speaker 2: Yeah that's a great idea, chuck.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so don't wrap up an email and spank it
Speaker 3: on the bottom. Yet you got to wait, right.
Speaker 2: Not yet? Here's the awkward non clapping transition for a
Speaker 2: very special two parter.
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