Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh,
Speaker 1: and there's Chuck and Cherry's here too, and we're just
Speaker 1: batching it on this episode of Stuff you Should Know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: uh So before we get going, my friend, we want
Speaker 1: to alert people we've got a little something special at
Speaker 1: the end of this episode. Our former colleague who was
Speaker 1: no longer with My Heart but dare I say, one
Speaker 1: of the best dudes ever and one of our most
Speaker 1: beloved colleagues, Man Guesh, had to condure he has is
Speaker 1: doing his own little uh like he calls it his
Speaker 1: own little podcast shingle, and he's making shows now and
Speaker 1: he has a great new show that he's launched called
Speaker 1: Obsessions Colan Wild Chocolate, hosted by Rowan Jacobson, And we're
Speaker 1: gonna play a preview that at the end of the EPISO. So,
Speaker 1: but we wanted to tell people what it was about, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's pretty awesome. Like they kind of call it the
Speaker 1: Indiana Jones of chocolate, where basically these people who are
Speaker 1: like really into chocolate, chocolate makers are like, yeah, all
Speaker 1: this cocao that we're finding is really good and sounds
Speaker 1: better than others. But we've heard legend that deep in
Speaker 1: the Amazon there's cocao that will knock your socks off
Speaker 1: and they go to find it, and Man Guesh made
Speaker 1: a podcast out of it. So it's really interesting stuff.
Speaker 1: It's really well made. Man Guest is really good and
Speaker 1: knows what he's doing with podcasting, so congratulations to him
Speaker 1: on his podcast company Kaleidoscope, and on Wild Chocolate too.
Speaker 1: That's right, so check it out Obsessions, Wild Chocolate. It's
Speaker 1: wherever you can get podcasts and stick around after listener
Speaker 1: mail where we're gonna have a little preview of it. Okay, Chuck,
Speaker 1: so we're back at it. Then that's right. A little
Speaker 1: c a here. This one's probably rated at least PG
Speaker 1: thirt I would say that, yeah, I mean it's not
Speaker 1: rated are necessarily, but you know there's it's about bachelor
Speaker 1: and bachelorette party. So I'm just gonna be talking about
Speaker 1: some stuff you want You do you really want your
Speaker 1: kid to learn about bachelor parties? No? I don't either.
Speaker 1: It's a fair warning. And if you are in other
Speaker 1: parts of the world and you're like a bachelor party,
Speaker 1: what's that we're talking about a stag party those of
Speaker 1: you in the UK, Ireland and Canada. In Australia, we're
Speaker 1: talking about the Bucks party for that was that was Boston.
Speaker 1: And by the way, have you seen Kevin kin f himself?
Speaker 1: Uh no, I have not. We got recommended that from
Speaker 1: a lot of people after the sitcoms up. It's yeah,
Speaker 1: it's good. That's why I picked it up too. I
Speaker 1: mean I was familiar with her, aware of it, but yeah,
Speaker 1: it's definitely definitely worth watching. Yeah right, I've only seen
Speaker 1: the first episode and I'm like, this is this has
Speaker 1: legs for sure? What does that have to do with
Speaker 1: Bucks parties in Australia. It's set in Worcester and the
Speaker 1: house from Boston, yes exactly. And a lead I don't
Speaker 1: know the actor's name, but she, you know, from um
Speaker 1: Ship's Creek, the daughter sister from Ship's Creek is an
Speaker 1: amazing like Boston accent without overdoing it. Like she's really good.
Speaker 1: So it's a good, good show. Chuck. Uh well, quickly then,
Speaker 1: while we're seguing or diverting, I was just in Boston
Speaker 1: and I just wanted to shout out. I went up
Speaker 1: there for a pavement show and from my hotel room.
Speaker 1: I looked out and what was sitting there but the
Speaker 1: Wilber Theater. Yeah, our Boston Live Performance Home, right outside
Speaker 1: my hotel window and right next door to the Whang
Speaker 1: Theater where Pavement played, And I probably bumped into seven
Speaker 1: different stuff you should know listeners cool who all came
Speaker 1: up and chatted it up, sat right next to a
Speaker 1: couple and promised them live showed freebees, which they need
Speaker 1: to email me. By the way, if you're out there
Speaker 1: and listening, it's the only way could happen. We'll probably
Speaker 1: be in Boston this year. Is a better than average
Speaker 1: chance when you say, I would say so. So just
Speaker 1: a big shout out to the Boston Nights because they're
Speaker 1: always super supportive and nice. And I think my friend
Speaker 1: from high school and his friends who were with us
Speaker 1: were like, jeezus, chuck that famous and Nights No, not
Speaker 1: at all, Like this is like this happens once every
Speaker 1: few months, not seven times in a night. Sure, I
Speaker 1: think the fact that it took place at a Pavement
Speaker 1: show kind of skewed the um in population. Yeah, they
Speaker 1: were probably on the lookout at any payment show I
Speaker 1: might be there. Yeah, So back to the content, Yeah,
Speaker 1: back to back to bachelor parties. What do they call
Speaker 1: him in France? Oh, in France, they have a great
Speaker 1: name for him, the entire Monte de vie de Gasson,
Speaker 1: which means the burial of the life as a boy heavy,
Speaker 1: Which makes a lot of sense because bachelor parties in
Speaker 1: particular started at a time like the late nineteenth century,
Speaker 1: uh is when they really started to become what we
Speaker 1: understand of them today. Um, at a time when, like
Speaker 1: you probably were, there's a higher than likely chance that
Speaker 1: you were going into marriage is a virgin, and so
Speaker 1: this was exposing you for one last time. You're one
Speaker 1: last opportunity to you know, um, how do I put
Speaker 1: this man? If? So, I guess, but without actually doing
Speaker 1: that more just like you know, seeing a naked woman
Speaker 1: doing a strip tease or something like that, like this
Speaker 1: was your chance to do that before you got married
Speaker 1: kind of thing. And so back then it actually made
Speaker 1: sense in a certain way, whereas today, because people are
Speaker 1: getting married later and later, the bachelor party makes less
Speaker 1: and less sense. But the same behavior from days of
Speaker 1: your is expected. So there's this weird tense juxtaposition between
Speaker 1: bachelor parties now and how people actually whether or not
Speaker 1: they enjoy bachelor parties today, you know what I mean? Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I mean I think we should just go ahead
Speaker 1: and say I can speak for you. Neither one of
Speaker 1: us are big on the traditional bachelor party. Uh, we're trying.
Speaker 1: We're going to try not to yuck the yums and
Speaker 1: get to judge. I went camping for my quote unquote
Speaker 1: bachelor party. Uh that's uh. Never been into strip clubs
Speaker 1: at all, Uh, much less for a bachelor party. Which
Speaker 1: is it? Just it makes me uncomfortable just thinking about it. Well, supposedly,
Speaker 1: Chuck like there's there was at least one ethnographic study. UM. Oh,
Speaker 1: I can't find it right now. We'll come across it
Speaker 1: later on. From two thousand sixteen. This uh, this ethnographic
Speaker 1: study basically followed UM bachelor parties to Bitha and like
Speaker 1: other places around Europe, and they interviewed UM like the
Speaker 1: people who were there just kind of candidly, and most
Speaker 1: of them were like, no, I really don't enjoy this
Speaker 1: at all. I'm not having that much fun. Like the
Speaker 1: time when we're hanging out back at the rented house
Speaker 1: drinking together, that's fun, but like being put on stage
Speaker 1: and you know, whipped by a stripper is not that fun.
Speaker 1: It's kind of humiliating, and no, it's not really enjoyable,
Speaker 1: but I feel like I have to go through it.
Speaker 1: So that's the tension that I was talking about, where
Speaker 1: it's like that kind of body raucous, you know, objectifying
Speaker 1: behavior that again kind of like maybe made sense in
Speaker 1: the fifties in a different time, it doesn't make sense today,
Speaker 1: but people still do it, and so it makes people
Speaker 1: deeply uncomfortable. Um as far as most I can't say
Speaker 1: most days, as far as plenty of studies who have
Speaker 1: actually looked at this thing and a lot of anecdotal
Speaker 1: evidence to say, yeah, I'm a full belief that the
Speaker 1: traditional hedonistic bachelor party thing is being driven still by
Speaker 1: like a small minority of guys that are like, go
Speaker 1: to do it, dude, that kind of guy. They are
Speaker 1: called you're desperate already married friend. Those are the ones
Speaker 1: that are trouble at a bachelor party. You have to
Speaker 1: look out for. Those are the ones that push everybody
Speaker 1: else to do dumb stuff that they wouldn't totally do
Speaker 1: and that they'll later regret. As a matter of fact,
Speaker 1: if you want to have a chill bachelor party. Do
Speaker 1: not invite me desperate already married friends. No, not at all,
Speaker 1: or hopefully if you're you know, get married a little
Speaker 1: later in life, then then everyone is sort of a
Speaker 1: little more on board with something chill. And that seems
Speaker 1: to have um caused bachelor parties to evolve into you
Speaker 1: know what they're becoming more and more today, which are
Speaker 1: basically like men's retreats to barbecue and like hike and
Speaker 1: stuff like that. And there are definitely plenty that go
Speaker 1: to Vegas or you know, go out of the country
Speaker 1: or something like that and just party hard, but there's
Speaker 1: a growing number of of ones that just do like
Speaker 1: you said, like go camping, you know, just hang out
Speaker 1: with your pals, which is ultimately what the points supposed
Speaker 1: to be. The point of a bachelor party, isn't it
Speaker 1: you umiliate the groom to be But that is a
Speaker 1: huge kind of through thread, uh in a lot of them.
Speaker 1: The point is to just like celebrate your time as
Speaker 1: an individual. I saw I put so perfectly. It was
Speaker 1: on a gay marriage website and they were talking about
Speaker 1: whether you should throw a bachelor party for both grooms
Speaker 1: or a combined one. And this website was saying one
Speaker 1: for each because what they're doing is going into a
Speaker 1: marriage and they're combining themselves. This is one of those
Speaker 1: times when they can be celebrated as individuals separately, distinctly,
Speaker 1: And that's ultimately what a bachelor party is supposed to
Speaker 1: be about. It's celebrating this individual before they basically become
Speaker 1: responsible and enter into a union with another person and
Speaker 1: become a couple. That's that's ideally what the bachelor party
Speaker 1: sentiment is supposed to be. That's right. Uh. And the
Speaker 1: only time I will get super judge is if you
Speaker 1: are one of those dudes that thinks it is okay
Speaker 1: or you should like have sex with one last girl
Speaker 1: before you get married. Make the worst decision you've ever made.
Speaker 1: You are cheating on them, and you will cheat on
Speaker 1: them again one day probably, and that is not right
Speaker 1: in any way, shape or form. So again this is
Speaker 1: anecdotal self reporting. But on George ta Kay's website, I
Speaker 1: don't know what he was doing. He hosted like a
Speaker 1: that was Jeffrey Tambor and George t Ka cross together?
Speaker 1: Yeah or Hank? What was hankstand? Hank? Yeah? Um? So
Speaker 1: On George t Kay's website, he had this this like
Speaker 1: list of like people who wrote in and said, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I was at this bachelor party and the wedding ended
Speaker 1: because the groom cheated on his fiance, like at the
Speaker 1: bachelor party the night before the wedding, and the you know,
Speaker 1: the fiance found out because her brothers there. That was
Speaker 1: part of the bachelor party. Um. And so apparently there
Speaker 1: have been again I didn't see like, you know, anything
Speaker 1: out of like Rutgers or m I T that was
Speaker 1: a study on this, but anecdotally, there have been marriages
Speaker 1: that have ended before they started because just terrible decisions
Speaker 1: were made at the bachelor party. That's right, And uh,
Speaker 1: ladies were not forgetting about you. The bachelorette party is
Speaker 1: a big thing. They also called them hind parties. Uh
Speaker 1: they called them early on, I think hind parties, but
Speaker 1: they came about much later, generally between the seventies and
Speaker 1: the nineties is when that kind of started. And we'll
Speaker 1: touch on both as we go along. But first, and Livia,
Speaker 1: God bless her. I feel bad for even putting her
Speaker 1: through this, but she helped us put this one together
Speaker 1: and did a really good job. And that she looked
Speaker 1: at a lot of other sort of pre wedding traditions,
Speaker 1: and you know, the bachelor and batchelrette parties are one thing,
Speaker 1: but there's a long, long history across every culture you
Speaker 1: can think of kind of since marriage was even a thing,
Speaker 1: that there is some sort of pre day before or week.
Speaker 1: But for rituals that different cultures partake in, yep, ritual bath,
Speaker 1: the mikvah and Jewish tradition, ancient Greece, women used to
Speaker 1: hang out and sacrifice things to the gods before the
Speaker 1: day before. There was one in Sweden I thought was
Speaker 1: pretty interesting. In seventeenth century Sweden. They celebrated the muck Verlaar,
Speaker 1: which is virgin nights, so they would bathe and feast
Speaker 1: and drink with their friends. And there was actually one
Speaker 1: town in sixty nine of Uppsala that said no more,
Speaker 1: like you're showing up so hungover on the wedding day,
Speaker 1: Like we can't do the muk vlaar here anymore. It's banned.
Speaker 1: That's another thing too, like there are a few bad
Speaker 1: ideas that have to do with marriage that are are
Speaker 1: worse than having a bachelor and or bachelor at party
Speaker 1: the night before the wedding. Not the time to it.
Speaker 1: That's when you have your rehearsal dinners and stuff. Usually, right,
Speaker 1: it's supposed to be like kind of chill and exciting,
Speaker 1: not not partying like that the day the night before
Speaker 1: the wedding. Like you have to be so bad at
Speaker 1: thinking things through to actually do that that it's just
Speaker 1: kind of mind boggling but also hilarious in a way. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's one in the northeastern Scotland, I think in rural
Speaker 1: Scotland that I think still happens. I'd love to hear
Speaker 1: from our friends there. But they will drive it's called
Speaker 1: the Blackening. They will get the bride and groom and
Speaker 1: kind of fake kidnaped them. And you'll see that happens
Speaker 1: a lot in a lot of these traditions. It's like
Speaker 1: what we've got you now, and they will cover them
Speaker 1: with disgusting sticky things, dog food, rotten eggs, does anything
Speaker 1: that'll kind of stick to your body and humiliate you,
Speaker 1: and they will drive you around in the back of
Speaker 1: a truck basically around town. And they basically said there
Speaker 1: are not many rules except that you're uncomfortable and embarrassed. Basically.
Speaker 1: One thing I saw was that, um, this is like
Speaker 1: a farming community, so that like manure doesn't actually work
Speaker 1: because everybody's so used to the smell of manure that
Speaker 1: if you smear it on somebody like whatever, it's not
Speaker 1: they're not close to the coast, so they'll actually drive
Speaker 1: to the coastal areas to get like fish guts and
Speaker 1: stuff because those people do find the particularly disgusting and
Speaker 1: offensive smelling. Wow. Yeah, it's kind of mean, but it
Speaker 1: actually evolved out of a tradition of washing the bride's
Speaker 1: feet and it ended up becoming bad in this little
Speaker 1: part of Skyland. But yeah, it still goes on from
Speaker 1: what I saw. So if you look at the US, uh,
Speaker 1: in the United States, we're talking about, like you said,
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century when these things kind of became a thing. Uh.
Speaker 1: There's a sociologist named Thomas Turnell read that did an
Speaker 1: article with Life Science and basically said, you know, when
Speaker 1: we became industrialized and we moved into the cities and
Speaker 1: started working in factories, new rituals came about. Now that
Speaker 1: you weren't in doing sort of the farming community rituals
Speaker 1: where if you had kind of any sort of promotion
Speaker 1: or anything to mark a rite of passage, people would
Speaker 1: maybe an apprenticeship would end or something. You would take
Speaker 1: people out and you would like to drink beer with them,
Speaker 1: maybe played practical jokes on them, maybe tarn feather there
Speaker 1: their jumpsuit for work or something like that. And this
Speaker 1: is what this sociologist thinks sort of led to this
Speaker 1: tradition of bachelor and bachelorette parties of getting the other
Speaker 1: drinking a lot. Maybe some practical jokes will get to
Speaker 1: those later, but those are still a thing apparently. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which makes sense. I think it's a pretty good argument
Speaker 1: because you have these these you know, new living situations,
Speaker 1: but still some of those old surviving traditions, so you
Speaker 1: have to come up with, you know, new customs around
Speaker 1: those traditions because the old living situation isn't around anymore.
Speaker 1: I totally buy that. I buy it too. Uh. And
Speaker 1: Livia also found this really cool story that sort of
Speaker 1: exposed a lot of um how the how the richies
Speaker 1: lived in Gilded Age in New York. It was exposed
Speaker 1: with something called the Awful Seely Dinner. And this was
Speaker 1: the Seely family in New York and this was these
Speaker 1: were relatives, I think, ancestors of P. T. Barnum, right,
Speaker 1: the descendants of P. T. Barnum. Yeah, the grandson. What's
Speaker 1: the difference. I always forget P. T. Barnum who came
Speaker 1: before was their ancestor descendants, right, So Um isn't one
Speaker 1: of your favorite movies, The Descendants it is, But I
Speaker 1: also called the ancestor sometimes so Herbert Barnum seely uh
Speaker 1: through this party for his brother Clinton. Um. Just I
Speaker 1: guess eleven days before he was to be married, and
Speaker 1: I guess did get married. And it was at a
Speaker 1: restaurant called Sherry's. At a time before there was like
Speaker 1: dining out was a thing, So this was really really expensive. Actually,
Speaker 1: you know what, dining out was a thing. I looked
Speaker 1: into this party a little bit more. But uh, if
Speaker 1: you were really a leat, as you'll see, you like
Speaker 1: a lot of privacy and you like to do some
Speaker 1: like nasty things sometimes. So there was this big private
Speaker 1: dining scene in New York at the time that was
Speaker 1: a really really big deal. Okay, potato potato, But so
Speaker 1: they were doing this private dining thing. Yeah, that actually
Speaker 1: makes a lot of sense because they they had very
Speaker 1: tight lipped wait staff help performers. When they were interviewed
Speaker 1: with the cops, all these people were like, it is
Speaker 1: not within our our social strata to inform on the
Speaker 1: people who hired. We just can't. And from what I understand,
Speaker 1: the cops were like, yeah, we we totally get it.
Speaker 1: We don't have a case, but we totally get it.
Speaker 1: And it wasn't until Herbert Barnum Seeley told the cops
Speaker 1: who some of the attendees were. The cops went and
Speaker 1: interviewed these incredibly rich people and stuff started to come out,
Speaker 1: and it was like, no, they actually did have a
Speaker 1: woman who did like this, who jumped naked out of
Speaker 1: a I guess a cream pie or something like that
Speaker 1: and danced on the table. Her name was Little Egit.
Speaker 1: She was kind of a famous dancer at the time.
Speaker 1: But this is a time where like, as far as
Speaker 1: society was concerned, you did not do this. This is
Speaker 1: like finding out that, you know, the wealthy have eyes
Speaker 1: wide shut parties. I think was was what it what
Speaker 1: it was like, but you know, times a million, because
Speaker 1: the the Victorian era was so genteel. Yeah, but here's
Speaker 1: the thing, they totally did this, which is why they
Speaker 1: had all those private dining events because they like to
Speaker 1: do stuff like this. So they were tipped off, but
Speaker 1: I think an agent of one of the dancers. The
Speaker 1: cops were tipped off that there was, you know, lurid
Speaker 1: things happening. So the cops show up and accidentally walk
Speaker 1: in on um a bunch of dancers changing, like you know,
Speaker 1: changing their outfits, and were embarrassed away basically away from
Speaker 1: the premises, said we you know, didn't see anything, and
Speaker 1: then the seelis it probably would have just kept quiet
Speaker 1: if it hadn't been for the Seelie's taking it back
Speaker 1: to the city and saying, you know what, what you wanna,
Speaker 1: we want these cops investigated, and so all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: they're dirty laundry is being dragged out. And it was
Speaker 1: quite the scandal of the New York court system because,
Speaker 1: like you said, these people didn't this quote unquote low society,
Speaker 1: didn't mix with the high society. And all of these
Speaker 1: people were brought through to testify in court, and apparently
Speaker 1: the people in court watching was everything from the high
Speaker 1: society person looking to get dirt or laugh at their
Speaker 1: you know, uh, their comrades or whatever, to the to
Speaker 1: the the guy on the street who was just looking
Speaker 1: for warmth in the courtroom. And so they were all
Speaker 1: kinds of people mixing in New York when you really
Speaker 1: never saw this happening. And you know, the the dancers,
Speaker 1: they had all their outfits rigged to either be snipped
Speaker 1: off with scissors or for their stockings to drop, and
Speaker 1: it was just for the time. Very lord stuff, big
Speaker 1: time embarrassment. There's a lot of fun um contemporary contemporaneous articles.
Speaker 1: There's one from the New Yorker that's really fun to
Speaker 1: read about the Awful Seely Party. Uh. And just a
Speaker 1: little quick side note about little egypt Um. She was
Speaker 1: quite the business lady. Apparently she was a real estate
Speaker 1: investor and died of very sadly died a couple of
Speaker 1: years later gas asphxiation and apartment, but died with in
Speaker 1: today's dollars, about a million bucks in the bank. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so she had it going on. Yeah. And apparently she
Speaker 1: was secretly married and her husband wouldn't claim her in public,
Speaker 1: but when she died he came forward immediately. It was like,
Speaker 1: that was my wife, that's my money. So um. The
Speaker 1: upshot of the Awful Seely Dinners, it was called it
Speaker 1: gave bachelor parties or bachelor dinners is what they were.
Speaker 1: Called at the time kind of a bad name because
Speaker 1: everybody had assumed that, yeah, there's some drinking and you know,
Speaker 1: they smoked maybe an extra cigar or something like that.
Speaker 1: This really exposed them, uh and and just just gave
Speaker 1: him bad reputation, it turns out, for like twenty five
Speaker 1: years tops, because no less than Emily Post in her
Speaker 1: book Etiquette in Society and Business, in Politics and at Home,
Speaker 1: wrote that the bachelor dinner is popularly supposed to have
Speaker 1: been a frightful orgy, but in reality it was a
Speaker 1: sheep in wolf's clothing. So her point was less than
Speaker 1: a quarter century after this awful Sealy dinner when it
Speaker 1: comes out that the rich at their bachelor parties higher
Speaker 1: like couples to perform sex shows in the middle of dinner.
Speaker 1: Um By by this time, Emily posted saying, no, that
Speaker 1: was all just hysterical. They're actually very staid events. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and she really I don't know if she didn't know
Speaker 1: what she's talking about, That's what I think. Probably, So
Speaker 1: I was just didn't know if she was trying to
Speaker 1: just make things seem a little more upstanding than they were.
Speaker 1: But yeah, she probably just didn't even know what was
Speaker 1: really going on, because Uh, I think it was that
Speaker 1: very same time period. There was a counterclaim, which I
Speaker 1: just called the reality of it all. Uh. There was
Speaker 1: an oral history gathered by the w p A, which
Speaker 1: is a Rhode Island French Canadian of a Rhode Island
Speaker 1: French Canadian tech stile worker named Henry Boucher, who described
Speaker 1: in first person his own stag party, and it was
Speaker 1: a raucous affair. Basically, they had a priest there that
Speaker 1: gave a speech about the duties of a married man
Speaker 1: and gave a toast. But then they basically said he
Speaker 1: had a good you know, the good sense to get
Speaker 1: out of there really quickly. Uh. And we were really
Speaker 1: relieved because you know, income the the strip tease acts
Speaker 1: and stuff like that, and we didn't want the priest here.
Speaker 1: So Emily Post had it all wrong. That's that's my
Speaker 1: take that she was just like, this isn't possible. My
Speaker 1: my brain won't comprehend what's actually going on at these
Speaker 1: bachelor dinners. So um, at the very least by the
Speaker 1: nineteenth late nineteenth century into the twenties, the bachelor party
Speaker 1: is really starting to evolve and take shape and reflect
Speaker 1: what we're seeing today. Right, and I say, something else
Speaker 1: that's evolving and taking shape is a ad break. Very nice, okay, Chuck.
Speaker 1: So the whole time that the bachelor party is evolving,
Speaker 1: starting in the late nineteenth century, there wasn't really anything
Speaker 1: that was um, what's the word I'm looking for, chunk,
Speaker 1: i't know. The bride didn't have anything quite similar to
Speaker 1: the bachelor party analogus, yes, thank you, um, but there
Speaker 1: was like a bridal shower. Those have been around since
Speaker 1: from what I saw, sixteenth century Belgium, and the origin
Speaker 1: story for those is really sweet. There was a wealthy
Speaker 1: girl who all in love with a poor I saw
Speaker 1: a miller's son, um, and her father was like, you
Speaker 1: can't marry him, and if you try to proceed, I'm
Speaker 1: I'm keeping your dowry and you guys will be broke,
Speaker 1: and so don't even try it. She said, I don't care, father,
Speaker 1: I'm marrying him anyway. And they got married anyway, and
Speaker 1: the town found out about this and was so moved
Speaker 1: by their love that they actually brought gifts to get
Speaker 1: This couple started in life too in in lieu of
Speaker 1: the dowry that I think the father finally relented him
Speaker 1: was like here fine, here's the dowry too. But they
Speaker 1: say that that's the origin story of the bridle shower,
Speaker 1: which was the bride and her friends and her future
Speaker 1: in laws and her mom and her future mother in law. Um,
Speaker 1: kind of hanging out having a very nice, um tasteful
Speaker 1: like luncheon or brunch and then getting you know, presents
Speaker 1: that were usually of like a household nature, that's right. Uh.
Speaker 1: And in the twentieth century, early twentieth century and Britain,
Speaker 1: women there started celebrating, uh, what was called ribbon girl traditions,
Speaker 1: and they would decorate the bride with ribbons and hearts
Speaker 1: and kitchen utensils and stuff like that, because of course
Speaker 1: this is a time where they're like get ready for
Speaker 1: a life of you know, domestic servitude, because that's what's
Speaker 1: coming your way. And yeah, and they would parade her
Speaker 1: around on the factory floor where she worked. Um. And
Speaker 1: then this sort of evolved over time, and then by
Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties is especially into the seventies, is when women,
Speaker 1: especially in the US, started saying, hey, you know, maybe
Speaker 1: these showers were throwing should be a little bit more
Speaker 1: like what these guys are doing, and um, this is
Speaker 1: kind of pre bacherette party still, but they would have
Speaker 1: what they would call a personal shower where all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, you're not getting a toaster or a spatula,
Speaker 1: but you might get you know, like a sex toy
Speaker 1: or something fun like that, right, and the future mother
Speaker 1: in law was typically not invited to that, typically unless
Speaker 1: you know she's fun and as a open mind. Sure,
Speaker 1: so that's the sixties, I guess I'm taking it as
Speaker 1: the late sixties. Within three decades, um, the early nineties,
Speaker 1: So within just a couple of decades actually, yeah, Um,
Speaker 1: it evolved at least in the UK into him parties,
Speaker 1: which became like boozy, raucous body events where the bachelor
Speaker 1: atte party that you might see at a club today
Speaker 1: really kind of finds its route from what I understand
Speaker 1: in the UK in the early nineties, Um, and there's
Speaker 1: I think they're still called him parties today, and then
Speaker 1: in the United States, Chuck. They attribute the rise of
Speaker 1: bachelorette parties not necessarily from people going over the UK
Speaker 1: for hem parties and coming back and saying like we
Speaker 1: gotta try this, but almost evolving independently thanks to the
Speaker 1: arrival of the Chippendale's review in Los Angeles in nine
Speaker 1: that that apparently kicked off the bachelorette industry, bachelorette party industry.
Speaker 1: I can only think of Chris Farley when I hear
Speaker 1: the word Shippendale's and Patrick Swayze, Yeah, what a great
Speaker 1: bit um And that look that Patrick Sayzy has where
Speaker 1: he's just like, I can't compete with this when he's
Speaker 1: watching Chris Farley, it was just priceless. I would like
Speaker 1: to equally shame the bachelorette parties because there are two
Speaker 1: words of advice. If you see a big, raucous bachelor
Speaker 1: party coming your way in a bar or a club,
Speaker 1: run the other way. If you see a bachelorette party
Speaker 1: headed your way at a club or a bar, run
Speaker 1: the other way. For you don't want to be swept
Speaker 1: up into any of these shenanigans. Uh. And I have
Speaker 1: unwittingly somehow been swept up in bachelorette party shenanigans more
Speaker 1: than once in my life because a lot of yeah,
Speaker 1: a lot of times there's a bacheltte parties will have
Speaker 1: a kind of um body scavenger hunt kind of thing
Speaker 1: where they're like, but they're all dares, like the bride
Speaker 1: has to go do whatever to whoever. And I've been
Speaker 1: that guy a couple of times somehow where they're like,
Speaker 1: she wants to do uh uh, I don't even know.
Speaker 1: It's just like a shot out of your belly button
Speaker 1: or something dumb. It wasn't that, but just it's it's
Speaker 1: always stuff like that. Take a shot from a stranger's beard.
Speaker 1: I think I still have a bachelor at in my
Speaker 1: beard somewhere. Uh. There might be like whip cream involved.
Speaker 1: Just just go away. You don't want to be a
Speaker 1: part of any of this stuff. It's true. At least
Speaker 1: I don't want to be. It's just embarrassing for me.
Speaker 1: You'll put a penis shaped straw in your mouth faster
Speaker 1: than you can say. You open your mouth to say,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, and there it goes. So Um chipping
Speaker 1: Dale show up in nineteen The word bachelorette party is
Speaker 1: um coined in a New York Times article. Um, and
Speaker 1: they're just talking basically about what you might think of
Speaker 1: is more of like a spa weekend today, not at
Speaker 1: the bachelor atte party like you just described. Um. That
Speaker 1: didn't come along until about the eighties or the nineties,
Speaker 1: and one of the reasons why, at least, I should say,
Speaker 1: in the United States, definitely in the early nineties. In
Speaker 1: the UK, some people say, no, it still wasn't even
Speaker 1: a thing in the early nineties in the US. But
Speaker 1: one of the reasons why they became bodier and body
Speaker 1: or and more and more extravagant and more and more
Speaker 1: out and proud. Basically proud is the wrong word, but
Speaker 1: you understand what I mean is because people started getting
Speaker 1: married later and later, and so they didn't have to
Speaker 1: go to their parents and be like, I need five
Speaker 1: thousand dollars to throw this party that you would not
Speaker 1: want me to have ever in a million years. They
Speaker 1: had their own money and their friends had their own
Speaker 1: money because they weren't. They weren't getting married at twenty
Speaker 1: one and then starting their professional life. They've been working
Speaker 1: for a decade already before. Now they're going to get hitched.
Speaker 1: And that changed everything. That was the big sea change
Speaker 1: for bachelor parties that in my opinion, made them no
Speaker 1: longer make sense in that context any longer, because peop
Speaker 1: we weren't getting married basically as children. They were getting
Speaker 1: married as grown adults now, and so it doesn't make
Speaker 1: sense to go back and behave like children the you know,
Speaker 1: a few days before you get married. That's that's what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. No, I'm with you. Um. And also as
Speaker 1: that sort of was in lock step with the rise
Speaker 1: of a party industry, that kind of you know, marched
Speaker 1: in lockstep with it. So people started having more money
Speaker 1: because they were getting married later, and all of a
Speaker 1: sudden there was this industry surrounding it where you know,
Speaker 1: you just have to call a company if you want to.
Speaker 1: You can also play in your own stuff, of course,
Speaker 1: and people still do that, but I mean Lyda gave
Speaker 1: one example. There was a scholar UH named Diane Tye
Speaker 1: who interviewed and of course this is all again that
Speaker 1: the Thankfully they don't do a lot of studies, like
Speaker 1: real studies on this stuff, but they did some. She
Speaker 1: did some interviews with UM, middle class Eastern Canadian middle
Speaker 1: class white women in the mid nineties, and then interviewed
Speaker 1: the same type of people UH in two thousand, seventeen
Speaker 1: and eighteen. And the big difference was in the mid
Speaker 1: nineties they were all just sort of planning the stuff
Speaker 1: from scratch, and by the time the two thousand tents
Speaker 1: came along, you would call a company up and there
Speaker 1: would be a script basically where you drink these you know,
Speaker 1: uh colored sugary drinks, and there was a penis cake
Speaker 1: and uh games, you know, pin the pin the penis
Speaker 1: on the Playboy, and there might be mail strippers and
Speaker 1: just a lot of phallic stuff happening. Yeah, but you know,
Speaker 1: it's like it's one thing to plan all that from scratch,
Speaker 1: Like that is your best friend who did that for you?
Speaker 1: And I think for your best friend to just like
Speaker 1: email a company and be like I need and I
Speaker 1: need this on this night and we'll show up and
Speaker 1: then that's it. You know, the soul's taken out of
Speaker 1: it a little bit. Oh No, I totally agree, because
Speaker 1: any any party you throw for someone should have that
Speaker 1: personal planning touch, I think, you know. Yeah, So hats
Speaker 1: off to the maids of honor from the early nineties.
Speaker 1: Out out to them, right, that's right. Uh, If you
Speaker 1: do any kind of research on bachelor and bachelotte parties,
Speaker 1: you will find a lot of articles kind of starting
Speaker 1: in the late nineties everywhere from like Vice to maxim
Speaker 1: to the New York Times. So they and they're all
Speaker 1: written a little mournfully and sadly where where they're saying, like,
Speaker 1: you know, the old days of the wild hedonistic bachelor
Speaker 1: parties are going the way of the dodo in These days,
Speaker 1: guys just want to go on a fly fishing trip
Speaker 1: and ladies just want a nice spa weekend with some
Speaker 1: good wine and prosecco. Uh. And isn't it a shame
Speaker 1: almost that that guys aren't going out and trying to
Speaker 1: have sex with one more lady before their wedding day? Right,
Speaker 1: They're very annoying to read to me. Yeah, no, it's
Speaker 1: true for sure, And like they always like interview somebody
Speaker 1: who's like, what's going on? This terrible? You know exactly.
Speaker 1: But the thing is, from from all appearances, the bachelor
Speaker 1: party is not actually going away anytime soon, the rowdy,
Speaker 1: raucous bachelor and bachelor atte parties again. Yes, more and
Speaker 1: more people are coming up with alternatives that suit them
Speaker 1: and their friends and their you know, demeanors much more.
Speaker 1: They're just like, I don't need to be publicly humiliated
Speaker 1: because this is some sort of right of passage that
Speaker 1: you know, my dad went through. My older brother, who cares.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to do that anymore. And I think
Speaker 1: that that sentiment has really kind of freed people quite
Speaker 1: a bit, but they're still I would say the vast
Speaker 1: majority of a bachelor and bachelorrette parties are of the
Speaker 1: very stereotypical kind that you imagine. Yeah, and you know what,
Speaker 1: I haven't even been to many of those uh my
Speaker 1: dude friends. I feel like a few of them had those,
Speaker 1: and I was out of town when they got married,
Speaker 1: so I was just around for the wedding. But I
Speaker 1: went to one of them, of one of my good
Speaker 1: friends who had kind of a stereotypical I mean there
Speaker 1: were no like sex acts, but you know, there were
Speaker 1: strip clubs and just to auchery, and I was so like,
Speaker 1: all that stuff just makes me. It's not even uncomfortable,
Speaker 1: but nervous, like, oh, I just I've seen too many
Speaker 1: movies and we'll get to the movies in a second,
Speaker 1: or just I don't know, just bad luck coming that.
Speaker 1: I just don't want to be super involved. And these
Speaker 1: are like close friends sometimes and so for for that one,
Speaker 1: I was the uh d' not putting myself up as
Speaker 1: some like saint or anything at all, but I just
Speaker 1: don't want to be involved in that level of of
Speaker 1: hard partying for the night. Um, and I was the driver.
Speaker 1: We rented a van and I sober drove everyone around,
Speaker 1: drove into all the places. We saw Snoop dog at
Speaker 1: a strip club in Atlanta, which was kind of fine. Uh,
Speaker 1: and he remarked that we all had sideburns. This was
Speaker 1: the nineties after all, so Snoop Dogg recognized us. He was, well,
Speaker 1: i'll tell you what he said later. Uh in private.
Speaker 1: But uh. As soon as I got them back to
Speaker 1: the rented hotel and everyone was, you know, going to
Speaker 1: be in one place, I said good night and I left.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, you're like, okay, you're all safe, goodbye things.
Speaker 1: That was it. And I heard the stories later and
Speaker 1: I was like, boy, am I glad I left? Right?
Speaker 1: And these are people that I love and I'm not
Speaker 1: judging them, but it's just never been my scene. I'm
Speaker 1: too nervous about that kind of thing. Yeah, but again,
Speaker 1: I think it's really cool that younger people today and
Speaker 1: I'm younger means I guess people in their thirties, even
Speaker 1: as far as we're concerned chuck um like that, they
Speaker 1: are comfortable saying I don't really want to do that. Everybody,
Speaker 1: do we have to do that, and everybody else is saying, no,
Speaker 1: we don't have to do that. Let's figure something else out,
Speaker 1: you know. Not. And again, if you're really really into
Speaker 1: bachelor parties and you're so psyched that your best friend
Speaker 1: is going to throw you just a rager of a
Speaker 1: bachelor party, man, hats off to you. Like, I don't
Speaker 1: think anything we're saying is meant to like like you said,
Speaker 1: yuck that yung. I just think that there's there's people
Speaker 1: are like, okay, cool, you know, let's do something different instead,
Speaker 1: and they feel comfortable doing that because it shows that
Speaker 1: America and the West is growing up. Let's take a break. Okay,
Speaker 1: we'll be right back. Stop. All right, we promised talk
Speaker 1: of movies. You can't talk about bachelor bachelorette parties without
Speaker 1: talking about movies, because there are movies called bachelor Party.
Speaker 1: There was one called The Bachelor Party from seven. I
Speaker 1: want to see this movie. I kind of do too.
Speaker 1: I was faced on an old stage. I'm sorry, TV play,
Speaker 1: but uh, this is sort of one of those things
Speaker 1: where goodness wins in the end because the newlywed, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, inevitably, it's revealed that his his home life
Speaker 1: is secure, quiet home life is much better then his
Speaker 1: playboy friends, who kind of plans this evening right, and
Speaker 1: the potential love interest is played by Mortisia Adams. Okay,
Speaker 1: Caroline Jones, I think was her name. I don't know
Speaker 1: if I've ever seen her, not in her Mortia get up.
Speaker 1: It's it's odd. You can tell it's her if you
Speaker 1: know that it's her, but it's just, you know, it
Speaker 1: just doesn't quite look like her. Um. And then there's
Speaker 1: like the hilarious typical boomer humor of How to Murder
Speaker 1: Your Wife, a n Jack Lemon movie, who who figures
Speaker 1: out that he married a a not great woman who
Speaker 1: was the person who jumped out of his friend's cake
Speaker 1: at the bachelor party the night before, which The Hangover
Speaker 1: totally stole. Yeah, it was married, Heather Graham. Sure, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know if we should jump forward to The
Speaker 1: Hangover yet because that was just such a monumental movie
Speaker 1: as far as the bachelor party genre goes Chuck that,
Speaker 1: I want to give it it's do. Yeah. Yeah, we'll
Speaker 1: wait on the uh because we have to parkt a
Speaker 1: bachelor party with Tom Hanks, who Olivia points out, like
Speaker 1: if you if you only know, sort of today's Tom
Speaker 1: Hanks and you haven't people in the airport to get
Speaker 1: away from his wife. Yeah, exactly. Uh, this is very
Speaker 1: off brand for him, um, but on brand for him back. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm not on brand. But you know, he did a
Speaker 1: lot of kind of uh different kind of comedies earlier
Speaker 1: in his career. And I used to love the movie
Speaker 1: Bachelor Party. I thought it was so funny. Uh looking
Speaker 1: back on it now, it is kind of an I mean,
Speaker 1: it's still funny in a lot of ways, but it
Speaker 1: also has you know, transphobia and uh casual racism here
Speaker 1: and there, and of course women are sexually objectified through
Speaker 1: the whole thing. There's a donkey that they almost get
Speaker 1: to have sex with a woman, but it's it's sort
Speaker 1: of a red heron because the donkey dies of a
Speaker 1: drug overdose before it couldn't happen. But I still love
Speaker 1: Bachelor Party. I'm just I haven't seen it in a
Speaker 1: long time, but that was one of my movies in college.
Speaker 1: Very Bad Things was a dark comedy where there was
Speaker 1: the accidental killing of a sex worker. That was such
Speaker 1: a terrible movie. I saw it back then. It was
Speaker 1: it wasn't good at all. No, and not like the
Speaker 1: acting is bad or the direction, but it's like just
Speaker 1: the concept of it. It was meant to be funny
Speaker 1: and it wasn't like it really missed the mark and
Speaker 1: just me, the whole thing just terrible. Totally. It was
Speaker 1: I'm like in my early twenties and I'm like, this
Speaker 1: is reprehensible. Yeah, you know. Uh, The Hangover finally came
Speaker 1: along two thousand nine, which took the place of Bachelor Party.
Speaker 1: I think it's sort of the quintessential, definitely bachelor party movie.
Speaker 1: And I'm still on record as thinking the first Hangover
Speaker 1: it was a very very funny movie. Okay, you didn't
Speaker 1: like it, right, I think we talked about this before.
Speaker 1: Not really. I mean, it's fine if I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: try to detract from mean, I know, it's like one
Speaker 1: of the most successful movies of all time. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: thought it was very fun me. I thought Zach Gallafanakis
Speaker 1: was great and uh, what's his name, Mike Tyson? No, well,
Speaker 1: I thought Ed Helms was great, and I thought Kenjong
Speaker 1: it was very very funny, and I just I thought
Speaker 1: it was very funny and the and the sequel is terrible.
Speaker 1: Wasn't the one in Thailand. Yeah, it wasn't good at all.
Speaker 1: I did not think Bradley Cooper was very good in
Speaker 1: the Hangover though he didn't have a good role written
Speaker 1: for him. He had play the straight man for everybody else.
Speaker 1: And of the jerk. Yeah. Yeah, but I love Zack
Speaker 1: and Ed and Ken John. I thought they were very funny. Yeah.
Speaker 1: What about Bride'smaids? Have you seen that? I have not
Speaker 1: seen that one. Oh, Bridesmaids is great. Yeah, it is
Speaker 1: really really funny. Yeah, I've heard nothing, but yeah, you
Speaker 1: should check out Bridemaids Kristen Wig. Just the plain scene
Speaker 1: with Kristen Wig is worth the admission price alone. Yeah.
Speaker 1: That one came out in two thousand and eleven, and
Speaker 1: there was like this kind of grassroots um a pro
Speaker 1: feminist social media movement around it saying like, go see it.
Speaker 1: It's like I saw it described as like a um
Speaker 1: like I can't remember the wording they used, but basically,
Speaker 1: if you're a feminist or you're for women's rights, you
Speaker 1: have to go see that movie. Basically that it was
Speaker 1: like that groundbreaking and monumental, and it basically said Okay,
Speaker 1: women can have the same kind of movies as men. Yeah, like,
Speaker 1: you know, the women's version of The Hangover in a
Speaker 1: lot of ways, at least as far as like genre
Speaker 1: stuff goes, I think it was more well written than
Speaker 1: The Hangover for sure. Yeah, it was funny. And then
Speaker 1: there was a movie that I don't know how I
Speaker 1: never heard of, this movie from seventeen called rough Night,
Speaker 1: and it was had Scarlett Johansson and a lot of
Speaker 1: Glazer and Zoe Kravitz and Kate McKinnon and Jillian Bell
Speaker 1: like huge cast. Never even heard of this movie. But
Speaker 1: it's sort of like a bachelorette party that goes wrong,
Speaker 1: sort of like very bad things. But it wasn't critically
Speaker 1: reviewed very well, but the filmmakers great, uh, because she
Speaker 1: does that along with her husband does that TV show Hacks,
Speaker 1: which is really really good. Oh yeah, so maybe the
Speaker 1: movie just missed the mark or maybe you know, I
Speaker 1: need to see it and judge it for itself. But
Speaker 1: not well reviewed. Okay, what else? That's it. That's all
Speaker 1: the movies I got. Okay, so um we I think
Speaker 1: we've talked quite a bit about the fact that humiliating
Speaker 1: the brider groom is like a thing, and part of
Speaker 1: that is kidnapping them so it's not just humiliation, it's
Speaker 1: domination too, and that typically comes through in um the
Speaker 1: idea that that the bride or the groom is kidnapped
Speaker 1: at some point they're taking against their will and they
Speaker 1: don't have any say in the planning, like this is
Speaker 1: done for them but also done to them. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: I can't imagine being scarier than going to a bachelor
Speaker 1: party that was planned without my knowledge. Right. So apparently
Speaker 1: in Australia, their bucks parties, all of them start with
Speaker 1: a kidnapping, and like a serious kidnapping, so much so
Speaker 1: that I saw an article about you know, um imaginative
Speaker 1: ways to kidnap the groom to be and they were saying,
Speaker 1: do not do it on the street in broad daylight
Speaker 1: like a vand because the cops will be called. But
Speaker 1: apparently that's how how seriously they take it that they
Speaker 1: need to actually tell people not to do that. They're like,
Speaker 1: how else you supposed to kidnap someone? Right? Uh? Yeah,
Speaker 1: And those can get out of hand with um. This
Speaker 1: is when the practical jokes come and play. There was
Speaker 1: one account from a journalist David Boyer and his book
Speaker 1: Bachelor Party Confidential, where and this is so wrong and
Speaker 1: mean where these friends quote unquote friends, um got this
Speaker 1: groom so drunk that he passed out and then they
Speaker 1: had his leg put in a full cast, uh and
Speaker 1: told him that he broke it and did not tell
Speaker 1: him until after his honeymoon. Yes, like not to not
Speaker 1: like the night before the wedding or even after the wedding.
Speaker 1: After the honeymoon, they finally told him that his leg
Speaker 1: wasn't actually broken into Not funny. I think it's funny.
Speaker 1: I think it's hilarious up until like the wedding and
Speaker 1: then you tell him and he's just watched. He's just
Speaker 1: washed over with relief, and that's hilarious to not tell
Speaker 1: him before the wedding, so he's up on crutches that
Speaker 1: he doesn't need. And then the honeymoon is the real clincher.
Speaker 1: I think then they it just that was just mean, Yeah,
Speaker 1: your expensive honeymoon. For sure, you can't go swimming in Fiji, right, Uh?
Speaker 1: I thought, great conception, poor execution. Yeah, like day before
Speaker 1: the wedding, they I'll take the hammer out and break
Speaker 1: the cast up. Yeah, that's a fun that's a fun scene.
Speaker 1: All right. Well, let's wrap it up with a little
Speaker 1: bit on money. Uh, these things are quite expensive, or
Speaker 1: can be quite expensive these days. There was a survey
Speaker 1: uh by Savings dot com, and we should point out
Speaker 1: that out of the five people they surveyed, they made
Speaker 1: um of them made over a hundred grand years, so
Speaker 1: these are well funded people. But they said the average
Speaker 1: costs for a man's bachelor party is about fifteen hundred
Speaker 1: bucks and a bacherette party was about nine hundred and
Speaker 1: said it was uh like a weekend event in sixties.
Speaker 1: Six percent it was a destination thing. Scent was international.
Speaker 1: So these things have gotten really expensive. And I think
Speaker 1: they interviewed about half the people very quietly said Hey,
Speaker 1: I think it's gotten a little too expensive and it's
Speaker 1: gotten a little out of hand, but I felt like
Speaker 1: I had to do it. I read that this was
Speaker 1: um not fully but largely attributable to the rise of Instagram. Uh.
Speaker 1: People are now trying to like, like their lives just
Speaker 1: look so amazing, you know, and like the bachelorrette and
Speaker 1: bachelor party is such a big part of like the
Speaker 1: life at that age that that was. That's definitely something
Speaker 1: they spend money on just Instagram. It basically I'm gonna
Speaker 1: start once a week, I should just start posting pictures
Speaker 1: of my bear beer belly. Okay, just to fight that
Speaker 1: whole notion that you know what I mean, what filter
Speaker 1: will you use? There is no filter? Oh my god, Chuck,
Speaker 1: that hasn't been invented yet. You've gone mad. Just I'm
Speaker 1: I'm going to Chuck the podcaster for some disgusting photos
Speaker 1: of me. Yeah right, doing hearth hands, sunset over your
Speaker 1: beer over my belly pledge. And that's my attempt to
Speaker 1: make the world a better place. I think that's a
Speaker 1: great idea, Chuck. I support that. I will like every
Speaker 1: single one of those posts. You're gonna hurt my stomach
Speaker 1: for sure. Uh you got anything else? No, thankfully. Now Okay,
Speaker 1: that's it for Bachelor and Bachelor at parties. I'm sure
Speaker 1: we could go on. There's more details, but you know,
Speaker 1: just go to a Bachelor bachelorrette part and see what
Speaker 1: you think. And since I said that, it's time for
Speaker 1: listener mail. Uh yeah, but before the listener mail, another
Speaker 1: reminder that after we read this, you can check out
Speaker 1: a preview of Obsessions Wild Chocolate, the great new show
Speaker 1: from our old friend Manesh. Excellent. I'm gonna call this.
Speaker 1: Oh and By the way, we need to shout out
Speaker 1: another listener mail real quick. We heard from Diarrhea Planet.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, did you see that email? No, I didn't
Speaker 1: see that. I gotta go check. Yep. We got an
Speaker 1: email from them and they said, hey, guys, we heard
Speaker 1: that you were talking about us again. Please and I'm
Speaker 1: sure you've heard that we have a reunion show coming
Speaker 1: up in Nashville. And then they said, if it sweetens
Speaker 1: the pot, you guys are our guests for the nights
Speaker 1: waituh and I really want to go, but it's in
Speaker 1: the two days of Thanksgiving week and Nashville and that's
Speaker 1: just a tall order diarrhea Planet to uh to talk
Speaker 1: my family into stay and like, Hey, I'm gonna leave
Speaker 1: Thanksgiving week for a night because see diarrhea Planet right
Speaker 1: at he's understanding, but that may draw that may be
Speaker 1: where the line is drawn. Yes, but regardless whether we
Speaker 1: make it or not, that was very very kind of
Speaker 1: Diarrhea Planet to offer. What I want them to do
Speaker 1: is come to Atlanta and do it another show, right,
Speaker 1: because you like chomping on a cigar, You're like, you
Speaker 1: come to make Yeah, come to me baby, all right.
Speaker 1: So I'm gonna call this. Thanks for the company. Hey guys,
Speaker 1: been listening stuff. You should know my drive to work
Speaker 1: For about three years. An old coworker introduced me to
Speaker 1: the show and I would look forward to our discussions
Speaker 1: on each episode every morning of our coffee. Recently had
Speaker 1: a baby girl, and my husband and I agreed, uh,
Speaker 1: that it was best that I stay home for a
Speaker 1: little while. After about four months in, I noticed I
Speaker 1: was showing some signs of postpartum depression and it hit
Speaker 1: me one morning but that what I really just missed
Speaker 1: was those morning chats in the office and the freak cofee.
Speaker 1: So I started an episode with you guys and began
Speaker 1: deep cleaning our home. Decluttering and organizing has always been
Speaker 1: something that made me feel better, and every day I
Speaker 1: continue to tune in and clean during naps, uh presumably
Speaker 1: your baby's naps, because that would be amazingly efficient if
Speaker 1: you can clean right. I now have those same discussions
Speaker 1: with my husband when he gets home from work, and
Speaker 1: I really just want to say thanks for the company,
Speaker 1: the memories and the new ones to come. And that
Speaker 1: is from Anonymous. Great thank you Anonymous. H. That was
Speaker 1: a wonderful email and I'm glad we could feel that
Speaker 1: little hole for you, right, Chuck totally. And if you
Speaker 1: want to let us know about something nice we did
Speaker 1: for you and we didn't even realize we did. We
Speaker 1: love hearing that stuff. You can send it to us
Speaker 1: in an email to stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com.
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of I Heart Radio.
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Speaker 1: I'm in the co pilot seat of the small Cessna
Speaker 1: plane and we're circling in the Bolivian Amazon. Beside me,
Speaker 1: pilot sweating because we're looking for a place to land
Speaker 1: and we can't find one. The weather was bad and
Speaker 1: and the pilot was nervous, and it was it was
Speaker 1: quite exciting behind me. Is this guy just been a
Speaker 1: day ago? This German caccau hunter named Volker Lahman. Volker
Speaker 1: looks a bit like the German director Werner Herzog. Sounds
Speaker 1: like him too. The more dangerous or tricky the situation
Speaker 1: dance with the Kalmar I get. It's two thousand ten,
Speaker 1: and Folker's letting me tag along. If you searches for
Speaker 1: a holy Grail wild cocoo, the tree that gives us chocolate.
Speaker 1: Cocao's native to the Amazon, and now it's farmed all
Speaker 1: over the tropics, mostly in Africa. A few years before
Speaker 1: our trip, Focus dumbled upon an incredible variety of wild
Speaker 1: cocao in Bolivia and he turned it into this mind
Speaker 1: blowing chocolate. So now there's a gold rush for these
Speaker 1: magic beans. And Volker's hope is to say, one step ahead.
Speaker 1: There's an indigenous group in the forest called the eurocare
Speaker 1: Rumor has it they have a ton of wildcata cell
Speaker 1: So the plan is fly in, find a landing strip,
Speaker 1: take a dugout canoe to the Eurokara village, strike a deal.
Speaker 1: Below us, the jungle looks otherworldly. The whole thing is steaming,
Speaker 1: miss rising to form these immense thunderheads, and the thunderheads
Speaker 1: are dropping ropes black rain back to the forest. At
Speaker 1: one point we punched through a storm and water comes
Speaker 1: spitting through the vents of the plain. I shoot a
Speaker 1: glance of the pilot, like what, but he just waves
Speaker 1: me off. It's getting hard to tell what to worry
Speaker 1: about and what not to worry about. For that, all
Speaker 1: I can do is counting vulgar because he's been navigating
Speaker 1: the Amazon for twenty years. This part of Olivia is
Speaker 1: all rainforests and grasslands. It's also a major cocaine flyaway.
Speaker 1: The rivers are dotted with these homemade landing strips and
Speaker 1: small planes swoop in, pick up the drugs, and head
Speaker 1: for Brazil. Those landing strips are super convenient if you
Speaker 1: need to get into the deep woods quickly, which we do,
Speaker 1: but it's also super dangerous. Hundreds of people get shot
Speaker 1: in the Amazon every year for all sorts of reasons.
Speaker 1: Just being an environmental activist is enough, but stumbling upon
Speaker 1: a cocaine lab that's one of the surest ways to
Speaker 1: make it happen. But when you need a landing strip,
Speaker 1: you need a landing strip. The problem is that is
Speaker 1: the rainy season and everything is flooded. The rivers have
Speaker 1: risen like thirty feet, the trees are in standing water,
Speaker 1: the ground is gleaming like a mirror. At last, there's
Speaker 1: a strip near a small cabin on the river, but
Speaker 1: it's really short. The rain swamped part of the landing strip,
Speaker 1: and the landing strip was homemade. No, it's not official
Speaker 1: landing strip. The pilot swoops down to get a closer look,
Speaker 1: and he doesn't like what he sees, and neither do I.
Speaker 1: He pulls back up and circles the area looking for alternatives.
Speaker 1: There are no alternatives. The pilot keeps circling back to
Speaker 1: that original strip. I think he's trying to psych himself up.
Speaker 1: And for all I know, we're running well on fuel.
Speaker 1: Get voltas still sitting there like another day in the park,
Speaker 1: and that is making me more nervous because I can
Speaker 1: tell that his appetite for risk is a lot higher
Speaker 1: than that. And then the pilot banks the plain that strip.
Speaker 1: For a second, I think, well, this must be another
Speaker 1: reconnaissance run, because nobody would. Oh no, he's going for
Speaker 1: it right now. The ground is rising in front of
Speaker 1: us fast, so I grabbed the handle above the door
Speaker 1: and tucked my head and grace and we hit actually
Speaker 1: hits the wrong word. It's super soft thanks to all
Speaker 1: that spongey ground. So we break hard and slammed with
Speaker 1: stopped spraying puddles, and I'm like, we made it. So
Speaker 1: I grabbed my back and hop out vulcans behind me
Speaker 1: and it's like, hello Amazon, it's a cathedral. When you're
Speaker 1: on the ground, there's these massive trees that are dripping
Speaker 1: thick vines. There's flocks of actual parrots screeching through the canopy.
Speaker 1: And then from that little cabin off ahead, four guys
Speaker 1: emerge and they're holding rifles. There were like one guy coming,
Speaker 1: and then the second, and the third and the fourth,
Speaker 1: and then they were surrounding us. And I was looking
Speaker 1: at the pilot and he said, I have to leave
Speaker 1: because of the weather, and you know, nobody said anything,
Speaker 1: and so he turned around this plane and off he
Speaker 1: off he went. And then I realized, oh, we are
Speaker 1: in the middle of some people we don't know. I
Speaker 1: was nervous. I am trying not to make any fast
Speaker 1: moves because these guys are twitchy, and everything they say
Speaker 1: confirms my worst fears. They're watching this place for their boss,
Speaker 1: who's a Columbian man, and we've just landed on his
Speaker 1: private runway without permission. And I've been in the Amazon
Speaker 1: for all five minutes, and I'm starting to wonder if
Speaker 1: maybe I'm not really cut out for this cacall anything.
Speaker 1: And all I can do is look over Vulgar and think,
Speaker 1: I hope you got this collide us soope, and I
Speaker 1: heart podcast. This is obsessions wild Chocolate. I'm rolland Jacobson.
Speaker 1: Chapter one, The Hunt