Speaker 1: Welcomed Aaron Manky's Cabinet of Curiosities, a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio and Grim and Mild. Our world is full
Speaker 1: of the unexplainable, and if history is an open book,
Speaker 1: all of these amazing tales are right there on display,
Speaker 1: just waiting for us to explore. Welcome to the Cabinet
Speaker 1: of Curiosities. Comedy is often maligned as a lesser form
Speaker 1: of entertainment when compared with other genres, such as drama.
Speaker 1: The Office actor Steve Correll once said, I don't think
Speaker 1: about comedy and drama as separate genres. It's about trying
Speaker 1: to make it as truthful as you can. And to
Speaker 1: paraphrase the late Edmund Gwen who played Santa Claus in
Speaker 1: Miracle on thirty four Street, dying is easy, comedy is hard.
Speaker 1: Stand up can help us deal with difficult real world
Speaker 1: issues by showing them in a more humorous light. Sitcom's
Speaker 1: often depicted exaggerated but honest scenarios regarding parenting and marriage
Speaker 1: to show us that we're all going through the same
Speaker 1: things and just trying to get by. Parody is perfect
Speaker 1: for lampooning those at the top and knocking them down
Speaker 1: a peg or two, and when it comes to parody,
Speaker 1: one man stands above all of them weird. Al Yankovic
Speaker 1: born in Downey, California, in nineteen fifty nine. Alfred Matthew
Speaker 1: Yankovic was raised by parents who unwaveringly supported him in
Speaker 1: whatever he did. His father often said the key to
Speaker 1: success is doing for a living whatever makes you happy,
Speaker 1: and the young Yankovic took that to heart. He took
Speaker 1: his first accordion lesson on the eve of turning seven,
Speaker 1: after a door to door salesman stop by offering lessons
Speaker 1: at a nearby music school. As he got older and
Speaker 1: was stuck at home with little to do, Yankovic taught
Speaker 1: himself how to play popular hits of the nineteen seventies.
Speaker 1: But music was only half the equation. Al also had
Speaker 1: a passion for comedy, specifically parody. He'd been quoted as
Speaker 1: citing the likes of Alan Sherman and Tom Lahr as
Speaker 1: inspirations for him growing up. Their influences as clear as
Speaker 1: day on all of his albums. And where did he
Speaker 1: hear these artists? His parents certainly didn't introduce him to them. Instead,
Speaker 1: he listened to the comedic stylings of Dr Demento, who
Speaker 1: would play all sorts of comedy albums and songs on
Speaker 1: his syndicated radio show. In fact, in nineteen seventy six,
Speaker 1: Dr Demento came to Yankovic school to talk to the students,
Speaker 1: after which Al handed him a cassette tape of himself
Speaker 1: playing various parodies and original songs on the accordion. Dr
Speaker 1: Demento played it on his program almost immediately From there,
Speaker 1: Yankovic started performing at coffee shops and open mic nights,
Speaker 1: hauling his accordion up to the stage and blowing everyone's minds.
Speaker 1: I mean, who else would perform the theme from two
Speaker 1: thousand one of Space Odyssey on the accordion for a
Speaker 1: bunch of college students, Al Yankovic, That's who. His big break, however,
Speaker 1: came when Dr Demento played Al's homemade recording of My Bologna,
Speaker 1: a parody of the Knacks hit song My Sharona. The
Speaker 1: Knacks lead singer Doug Figer was so impressed with it
Speaker 1: he reached out to Capitol Records and suggested that they
Speaker 1: put it out as a single. From there came Another
Speaker 1: One Rides the Bus, set to Queen's Another One bites
Speaker 1: the dust, Eat It, a parody of Michael Jackson's hit
Speaker 1: beat It, and dozens of other clever takes on popular
Speaker 1: songs of their day. But one song did more than
Speaker 1: make people laugh and smile. It changed the face of
Speaker 1: television in the nineteen eighties and beyond. It was a
Speaker 1: send up of the song Jeopardy by the Greg Kin
Speaker 1: Band titled I Lost on Jeopardy, released in nineteen eighty four.
Speaker 1: The song told the story of how the singer was
Speaker 1: a contestant on the original iteration of Jeopardy, which ran
Speaker 1: from nineteen sixty four to nineteen seventy five, and lost
Speaker 1: to a plumber and an architect, both with a PhD.
Speaker 1: Before Alex Trebek, Jeopardy was hosted by Art Fleming with
Speaker 1: Don Pardo in announcer's chair. Pardau would go on to
Speaker 1: be the announcer for Saturday Night Live from nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: five until his death in two thousand fourteen. Both Fleming
Speaker 1: and Pardeaux made appearances in the music video for Yankovic song,
Speaker 1: as did Al's parents Dr Demento and Greg Kin, who
Speaker 1: wrote and sang the original song. I Lost on Jeopardy
Speaker 1: became a hit, reaching number eighty one on the US
Speaker 1: Hot one hundred charts. But what weird Al didn't know
Speaker 1: was that MERV Griffin, the creator of the original Jeopardy
Speaker 1: game show, was working on something new. His other program,
Speaker 1: Wheel of Fortune had become a smash, and he wanted
Speaker 1: another half hour quiz show to round out the one
Speaker 1: hour block each evening. He had filmed a test pilot
Speaker 1: with Alex Trebec as the host in nineteen eighty three,
Speaker 1: but reactions fell flat. Griffin, however, decided to move forward
Speaker 1: despite what the test audiences said. One year later, on
Speaker 1: June four night, Griffin and the rest of the Jeopardy
Speaker 1: crew got together to plan out the show. It was
Speaker 1: the same day that yankovic song was released, and Jeopardies
Speaker 1: had writer made sure that everyone in the room heard it.
Speaker 1: They initially thought that it was funny and cute, but
Speaker 1: when they started hearing it more and more on the radio,
Speaker 1: they got excited. Maybe there really was an audience out
Speaker 1: there for a new kind of Jeopardy. Griffin even invited
Speaker 1: weird Al onto his talk show to perform it later
Speaker 1: that summer. After the performance, Griffin told Yankovic that the
Speaker 1: success of I Lost on Jeopardy was partially responsible for
Speaker 1: the show making a comeback, and hinted that there might
Speaker 1: even be a hosting gig in it for him, with
Speaker 1: tongue firmly planted a cheek, of course. In September of
Speaker 1: Jeopardy made its triumphant return to the airwaves with Alex Trebek,
Speaker 1: not Weird al Yankovic as host, and although Mr Trebek
Speaker 1: sadly passed away from pancreatic cancer in the show he
Speaker 1: helped define for almost forty years, is still going strong today.
Speaker 1: As for Weird al Well, comedy came easy. Winning on Jeopardy, however,
Speaker 1: was hard. Sheriff Uriah S. Gregory knew he was headed
Speaker 1: for dangerous territory where he was unwelcome and likely to
Speaker 1: be met with resistance. Tensions between the northern and Southern
Speaker 1: States had been escalating for some time, and Gregory worried
Speaker 1: that it would soon boil over into violence. After all,
Speaker 1: a Missourian had recently crossed the Iowa border and cut
Speaker 1: down three b trees rich with honey, and that was
Speaker 1: practically a declaration of war. The Honey War between Iowa
Speaker 1: and Missouri officially started in eighteen thirty nine, but it
Speaker 1: had roots in a simple survey and assignment from twenty
Speaker 1: three years earlier. You see when the United States bought
Speaker 1: the territory from France during the Louisiana Purchase in eighteen
Speaker 1: oh three. It was the first major addition to the country.
Speaker 1: The territory was quickly joined by land wrestled from indigenous
Speaker 1: tribes through threats and unfair treaties. In the aftermath of
Speaker 1: the War of eighteen twelve, the new country finally had
Speaker 1: the time to define its boundaries. Something about their army
Speaker 1: getting badly beaten by the British for trying to steal
Speaker 1: British territory in Canada didn't sit well with the U. S. Government.
Speaker 1: In eighteen sixteen, they hired John C. Sullivan to survey
Speaker 1: the area. Now. Sullivan's task was to find the north
Speaker 1: south boundary of the United States. This would help distinguish
Speaker 1: what was and wasn't indigenous land. Eventually, it would separate
Speaker 1: southern states from northern states as well. The line was
Speaker 1: meant to start at the east bank of the Missouri
Speaker 1: River and end at the rapids of the Des Moines River. Later,
Speaker 1: Missourians wanted to extend their northern border just to touch north.
Speaker 1: This would give state residents access to rich, fertile land
Speaker 1: full of wild honey bees that had taken up residents
Speaker 1: in hollow tree trunks called b trees. Honey was a
Speaker 1: hot commodity on the frontier as a sweetener, and these
Speaker 1: be trees made that land incredibly valuable. But something unusual
Speaker 1: happened when J. C. Brown was or to redo the
Speaker 1: original line. As it turns out, Sullivan hadn't done a
Speaker 1: very good job of it the first time. The markers
Speaker 1: Sullivan was supposed to place along the way were nowhere
Speaker 1: to be found. He said that he had ended at
Speaker 1: the Des Moines River Rapids, when in reality he had
Speaker 1: stopped at the Mississippi River Rapids. Brown worked hard, but
Speaker 1: given the original materials, it's no surprise that his line
Speaker 1: was off. It stretched nine to thirteen miles further north
Speaker 1: than the Sullivan line. When Iowa split from Wisconsin in
Speaker 1: eighteen thirty eight and began campaigning for statehood, the border
Speaker 1: came into question. Although the federal government intervened, Missouri refused
Speaker 1: to give up the Brown line. Many of the residents
Speaker 1: in the new territory wanted nothing to do with slaveholding Missouri,
Speaker 1: as they were free staters through and through Missouri, however,
Speaker 1: didn't care and began sending state officials to collect taxes.
Speaker 1: To make matters worse, In the spring of eighteen thirty nine,
Speaker 1: a farmer from Missouri cut down three of the valuable
Speaker 1: be trees, infuriating the islands. He then sold the honey
Speaker 1: and wax without pain taxes, and then legged it to Missouri,
Speaker 1: which refused to turn him over to Iowan officials. Between
Speaker 1: this and the taxes, it was just too much. Iowan's
Speaker 1: in the disputed territory contacted their governor, Robert Lucas in
Speaker 1: July of eighteen thirty nine, who issued a proclamation stating
Speaker 1: that if any Missouri officials crossed the Sullivan line, they
Speaker 1: would be arrested. Having drawn the line in the sand,
Speaker 1: uh literally. Lucas was quite confident that he wouldn't be ignored,
Speaker 1: but it seems that he underestimated the indignation of the Missourians,
Speaker 1: who felt that their dignity and the honor of Missouri
Speaker 1: still needed to be protected. A month later, Missouri Governor
Speaker 1: Lilburn Boggs issued a proclamation of his own. He said
Speaker 1: that Missouri should continue to assert control over the land
Speaker 1: tension finally came to a head in October of that
Speaker 1: year when Sheriff Gregory entered the territory for the second
Speaker 1: time to collect taxes on behalf of Missouri. He was
Speaker 1: quickly surrounded by twelve hundred angry residents as well as
Speaker 1: iow was Sheriff Henry Heffliman, who promptly arrested him. Things
Speaker 1: quickly spiraled out of control from there. By December, both
Speaker 1: Missouri and Iowa had assembled their militia's about a thousand
Speaker 1: men armed with old flint locks and farming equipment. Fueled
Speaker 1: by whiskey and rage, they marched to the disputed territory,
Speaker 1: proudly flying a flag that read death to Pukes, Pukes
Speaker 1: being the nickname for anyone from Missouri. Now it could
Speaker 1: have ended very badly, but fortunately no one was adequately
Speaker 1: prepared for winter, and although plenty of the men had
Speaker 1: massed at the border, calmer heads would prevail. Delegations from
Speaker 1: both sides mets and traded messages, and most people didn't
Speaker 1: want an actual fight, except the governors, who weren't even there.
Speaker 1: In the end, the militia from Missouri was sent home,
Speaker 1: annoyed at the whole ridiculous ordeal. To show their displeasure,
Speaker 1: they strung up two chunks of venison that they had
Speaker 1: shot earlier and dubbed one Governor Boggs and the other
Speaker 1: Governor Lucas. According to the words of one de lighted
Speaker 1: militia man, we fired a few rounds at them until
Speaker 1: we considered them dead dead. The effigies were then buried
Speaker 1: with full military honors before the Missouri men returned to
Speaker 1: their camp. Sheriff Gregory was finally released, but the charges
Speaker 1: against him wouldn't be dropped for a few more years.
Speaker 1: The Governor's backed down and the U. S. Supreme Court
Speaker 1: decided that the boundary would be set along the original
Speaker 1: eighteen sixteen line, which would be resurveyed and corrected. It
Speaker 1: ran about halfway through the disputed territory. It was the
Speaker 1: perfect compromise and that nobody got exactly what they wanted
Speaker 1: and everyone was left unhappy. And to top it all off,
Speaker 1: the loss of all those be trees probably stun I
Speaker 1: hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of the Cabinet of Curiosities.
Speaker 1: Subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts, or learn more about
Speaker 1: the show by visiting Curiosities podcast dot com. The show
Speaker 1: was created by me, Aaron Manky and partnership with how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works. I make another award winning show called Lore
Speaker 1: which is a podcast, book series, and television show and
Speaker 1: you can learn all about it over at the World
Speaker 1: of Lore dot com. And until next time, stay curious, Yeah,