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Speaker 1: Welcomed Aaron Manky's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of I

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Speaker 1: Heart Radio and Grim and Mild. Our world is full

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Speaker 1: of the unexplainable, and if history is an open book,

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Speaker 1: all of these amazing tales are right there on display,

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Speaker 1: just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet

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Speaker 1: of Curiosities. Comedy is often maligned as a lesser form

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Speaker 1: of entertainment when compared with other genres, such as drama.

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Speaker 1: The Office actor Steve Correll once said, I don't think

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Speaker 1: about comedy and drama as separate genres. It's about trying

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Speaker 1: to make it as truthful as you can. And to

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Speaker 1: paraphrase the late Edmund Gwen who played Santa Claus in

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Speaker 1: Miracle on thirty four Street, dying is easy, comedy is hard.

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Speaker 1: Stand up can help us deal with difficult real world

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Speaker 1: issues by showing them in a more humorous light. Sitcom's

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Speaker 1: often depicted exaggerated but honest scenarios regarding parenting and marriage

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Speaker 1: to show us that we're all going through the same

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Speaker 1: things and just trying to get by. Parody is perfect

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Speaker 1: for lampooning those at the top and knocking them down

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Speaker 1: a peg or two, and when it comes to parody,

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Speaker 1: one man stands above all of them weird. Al Yankovic

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Speaker 1: born in Downey, California, in nineteen fifty nine. Alfred Matthew

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Speaker 1: Yankovic was raised by parents who unwaveringly supported him in

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Speaker 1: whatever he did. His father often said the key to

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Speaker 1: success is doing for a living whatever makes you happy,

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Speaker 1: and the young Yankovic took that to heart. He took

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Speaker 1: his first accordion lesson on the eve of turning seven,

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Speaker 1: after a door to door salesman stop by offering lessons

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Speaker 1: at a nearby music school. As he got older and

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Speaker 1: was stuck at home with little to do, Yankovic taught

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Speaker 1: himself how to play popular hits of the nineteen seventies.

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Speaker 1: But music was only half the equation. Al also had

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Speaker 1: a passion for comedy, specifically parody. He'd been quoted as

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Speaker 1: citing the likes of Alan Sherman and Tom Lahr as

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Speaker 1: inspirations for him growing up. Their influences as clear as

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Speaker 1: day on all of his albums. And where did he

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Speaker 1: hear these artists? His parents certainly didn't introduce him to them. Instead,

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Speaker 1: he listened to the comedic stylings of Dr Demento, who

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Speaker 1: would play all sorts of comedy albums and songs on

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Speaker 1: his syndicated radio show. In fact, in nineteen seventy six,

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Speaker 1: Dr Demento came to Yankovic school to talk to the students,

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Speaker 1: after which Al handed him a cassette tape of himself

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Speaker 1: playing various parodies and original songs on the accordion. Dr

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Speaker 1: Demento played it on his program almost immediately From there,

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Speaker 1: Yankovic started performing at coffee shops and open mic nights,

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Speaker 1: hauling his accordion up to the stage and blowing everyone's minds.

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Speaker 1: I mean, who else would perform the theme from two

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Speaker 1: thousand one of Space Odyssey on the accordion for a

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Speaker 1: bunch of college students, Al Yankovic, That's who. His big break, however,

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Speaker 1: came when Dr Demento played Al's homemade recording of My Bologna,

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Speaker 1: a parody of the Knacks hit song My Sharona. The

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Speaker 1: Knacks lead singer Doug Figer was so impressed with it

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Speaker 1: he reached out to Capitol Records and suggested that they

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Speaker 1: put it out as a single. From there came Another

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Speaker 1: One Rides the Bus, set to Queen's Another One bites

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Speaker 1: the dust, Eat It, a parody of Michael Jackson's hit

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Speaker 1: beat It, and dozens of other clever takes on popular

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Speaker 1: songs of their day. But one song did more than

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Speaker 1: make people laugh and smile. It changed the face of

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Speaker 1: television in the nineteen eighties and beyond. It was a

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Speaker 1: send up of the song Jeopardy by the Greg Kin

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Speaker 1: Band titled I Lost on Jeopardy, released in nineteen eighty four.

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Speaker 1: The song told the story of how the singer was

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Speaker 1: a contestant on the original iteration of Jeopardy, which ran

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Speaker 1: from nineteen sixty four to nineteen seventy five, and lost

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Speaker 1: to a plumber and an architect, both with a PhD.

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Speaker 1: Before Alex Trebek, Jeopardy was hosted by Art Fleming with

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Speaker 1: Don Pardo in announcer's chair. Pardau would go on to

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Speaker 1: be the announcer for Saturday Night Live from nineteen seventy

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Speaker 1: five until his death in two thousand fourteen. Both Fleming

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Speaker 1: and Pardeaux made appearances in the music video for Yankovic song,

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Speaker 1: as did Al's parents Dr Demento and Greg Kin, who

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Speaker 1: wrote and sang the original song. I Lost on Jeopardy

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Speaker 1: became a hit, reaching number eighty one on the US

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Speaker 1: Hot one hundred charts. But what weird Al didn't know

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Speaker 1: was that MERV Griffin, the creator of the original Jeopardy

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Speaker 1: game show, was working on something new. His other program,

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Speaker 1: Wheel of Fortune had become a smash, and he wanted

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Speaker 1: another half hour quiz show to round out the one

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Speaker 1: hour block each evening. He had filmed a test pilot

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Speaker 1: with Alex Trebec as the host in nineteen eighty three,

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Speaker 1: but reactions fell flat. Griffin, however, decided to move forward

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Speaker 1: despite what the test audiences said. One year later, on

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Speaker 1: June four night, Griffin and the rest of the Jeopardy

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Speaker 1: crew got together to plan out the show. It was

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Speaker 1: the same day that yankovic song was released, and Jeopardies

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Speaker 1: had writer made sure that everyone in the room heard it.

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Speaker 1: They initially thought that it was funny and cute, but

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Speaker 1: when they started hearing it more and more on the radio,

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Speaker 1: they got excited. Maybe there really was an audience out

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Speaker 1: there for a new kind of Jeopardy. Griffin even invited

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Speaker 1: weird Al onto his talk show to perform it later

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Speaker 1: that summer. After the performance, Griffin told Yankovic that the

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Speaker 1: success of I Lost on Jeopardy was partially responsible for

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Speaker 1: the show making a comeback, and hinted that there might

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Speaker 1: even be a hosting gig in it for him, with

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Speaker 1: tongue firmly planted a cheek, of course. In September of

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Speaker 1: Jeopardy made its triumphant return to the airwaves with Alex Trebek,

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Speaker 1: not Weird al Yankovic as host, and although Mr Trebek

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Speaker 1: sadly passed away from pancreatic cancer in the show he

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Speaker 1: helped define for almost forty years, is still going strong today.

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Speaker 1: As for Weird al Well, comedy came easy. Winning on Jeopardy, however,

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Speaker 1: was hard. Sheriff Uriah S. Gregory knew he was headed

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Speaker 1: for dangerous territory where he was unwelcome and likely to

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Speaker 1: be met with resistance. Tensions between the northern and Southern

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Speaker 1: States had been escalating for some time, and Gregory worried

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Speaker 1: that it would soon boil over into violence. After all,

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Speaker 1: a Missourian had recently crossed the Iowa border and cut

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Speaker 1: down three b trees rich with honey, and that was

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Speaker 1: practically a declaration of war. The Honey War between Iowa

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Speaker 1: and Missouri officially started in eighteen thirty nine, but it

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Speaker 1: had roots in a simple survey and assignment from twenty

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Speaker 1: three years earlier. You see when the United States bought

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Speaker 1: the territory from France during the Louisiana Purchase in eighteen

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Speaker 1: oh three. It was the first major addition to the country.

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Speaker 1: The territory was quickly joined by land wrestled from indigenous

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Speaker 1: tribes through threats and unfair treaties. In the aftermath of

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Speaker 1: the War of eighteen twelve, the new country finally had

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Speaker 1: the time to define its boundaries. Something about their army

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Speaker 1: getting badly beaten by the British for trying to steal

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Speaker 1: British territory in Canada didn't sit well with the U. S. Government.

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Speaker 1: In eighteen sixteen, they hired John C. Sullivan to survey

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Speaker 1: the area. Now. Sullivan's task was to find the north

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Speaker 1: south boundary of the United States. This would help distinguish

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Speaker 1: what was and wasn't indigenous land. Eventually, it would separate

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Speaker 1: southern states from northern states as well. The line was

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Speaker 1: meant to start at the east bank of the Missouri

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Speaker 1: River and end at the rapids of the Des Moines River. Later,

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Speaker 1: Missourians wanted to extend their northern border just to touch north.

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Speaker 1: This would give state residents access to rich, fertile land

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Speaker 1: full of wild honey bees that had taken up residents

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Speaker 1: in hollow tree trunks called b trees. Honey was a

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Speaker 1: hot commodity on the frontier as a sweetener, and these

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Speaker 1: be trees made that land incredibly valuable. But something unusual

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Speaker 1: happened when J. C. Brown was or to redo the

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Speaker 1: original line. As it turns out, Sullivan hadn't done a

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Speaker 1: very good job of it the first time. The markers

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Speaker 1: Sullivan was supposed to place along the way were nowhere

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Speaker 1: to be found. He said that he had ended at

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Speaker 1: the Des Moines River Rapids, when in reality he had

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Speaker 1: stopped at the Mississippi River Rapids. Brown worked hard, but

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Speaker 1: given the original materials, it's no surprise that his line

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Speaker 1: was off. It stretched nine to thirteen miles further north

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Speaker 1: than the Sullivan line. When Iowa split from Wisconsin in

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Speaker 1: eighteen thirty eight and began campaigning for statehood, the border

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Speaker 1: came into question. Although the federal government intervened, Missouri refused

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Speaker 1: to give up the Brown line. Many of the residents

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Speaker 1: in the new territory wanted nothing to do with slaveholding Missouri,

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Speaker 1: as they were free staters through and through Missouri, however,

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Speaker 1: didn't care and began sending state officials to collect taxes.

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Speaker 1: To make matters worse, In the spring of eighteen thirty nine,

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Speaker 1: a farmer from Missouri cut down three of the valuable

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Speaker 1: be trees, infuriating the islands. He then sold the honey

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Speaker 1: and wax without pain taxes, and then legged it to Missouri,

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Speaker 1: which refused to turn him over to Iowan officials. Between

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Speaker 1: this and the taxes, it was just too much. Iowan's

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Speaker 1: in the disputed territory contacted their governor, Robert Lucas in

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Speaker 1: July of eighteen thirty nine, who issued a proclamation stating

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Speaker 1: that if any Missouri officials crossed the Sullivan line, they

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Speaker 1: would be arrested. Having drawn the line in the sand,

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Speaker 1: uh literally. Lucas was quite confident that he wouldn't be ignored,

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Speaker 1: but it seems that he underestimated the indignation of the Missourians,

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Speaker 1: who felt that their dignity and the honor of Missouri

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Speaker 1: still needed to be protected. A month later, Missouri Governor

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Speaker 1: Lilburn Boggs issued a proclamation of his own. He said

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Speaker 1: that Missouri should continue to assert control over the land

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Speaker 1: tension finally came to a head in October of that

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Speaker 1: year when Sheriff Gregory entered the territory for the second

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Speaker 1: time to collect taxes on behalf of Missouri. He was

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Speaker 1: quickly surrounded by twelve hundred angry residents as well as

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Speaker 1: iow was Sheriff Henry Heffliman, who promptly arrested him. Things

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Speaker 1: quickly spiraled out of control from there. By December, both

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Speaker 1: Missouri and Iowa had assembled their militia's about a thousand

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Speaker 1: men armed with old flint locks and farming equipment. Fueled

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Speaker 1: by whiskey and rage, they marched to the disputed territory,

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Speaker 1: proudly flying a flag that read death to Pukes, Pukes

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Speaker 1: being the nickname for anyone from Missouri. Now it could

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Speaker 1: have ended very badly, but fortunately no one was adequately

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Speaker 1: prepared for winter, and although plenty of the men had

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Speaker 1: massed at the border, calmer heads would prevail. Delegations from

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Speaker 1: both sides mets and traded messages, and most people didn't

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Speaker 1: want an actual fight, except the governors, who weren't even there.

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Speaker 1: In the end, the militia from Missouri was sent home,

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Speaker 1: annoyed at the whole ridiculous ordeal. To show their displeasure,

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Speaker 1: they strung up two chunks of venison that they had

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Speaker 1: shot earlier and dubbed one Governor Boggs and the other

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Speaker 1: Governor Lucas. According to the words of one de lighted

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Speaker 1: militia man, we fired a few rounds at them until

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Speaker 1: we considered them dead dead. The effigies were then buried

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Speaker 1: with full military honors before the Missouri men returned to

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Speaker 1: their camp. Sheriff Gregory was finally released, but the charges

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Speaker 1: against him wouldn't be dropped for a few more years.

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Speaker 1: The Governor's backed down and the U. S. Supreme Court

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Speaker 1: decided that the boundary would be set along the original

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Speaker 1: eighteen sixteen line, which would be resurveyed and corrected. It

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Speaker 1: ran about halfway through the disputed territory. It was the

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Speaker 1: perfect compromise and that nobody got exactly what they wanted

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Speaker 1: and everyone was left unhappy. And to top it all off,

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Speaker 1: the loss of all those be trees probably stun I

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Speaker 1: hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities.

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Speaker 1: Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about

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Speaker 1: the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show

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Speaker 1: was created by me, Aaron Manky and partnership with how

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Speaker 1: Stuff Works. I make another award winning show called Lore

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Speaker 1: which is a podcast, book series, and television show and

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Speaker 1: you can learn all about it over at the World

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Speaker 1: of Lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious, Yeah,