Speaker 1: Fellow Ridiculous Historians. Have you ever been in a situation
Speaker 1: where you say, Hey, I've got to ask an unfamiliar
Speaker 1: person for a favor.
Speaker 2: H You know I have, and it's awkward, But when
Speaker 2: you're desperate, you do what's got to be done. Yes,
Speaker 2: this classic episode is about our friends in West Virginia
Speaker 2: who once upon a time begged the USSR for foreign
Speaker 2: aid at the height of the Cold War.
Speaker 3: Yeah, let's go ahead and roll the tape.
Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Hello, Hi, how
Speaker 1: are you? Thank you for tuning into Ridiculous History. Several
Speaker 1: of us listening today will be familiar with an area
Speaker 1: of the world known as Appalachia, the Appalachians, the Appalachian Mountains, Right,
Speaker 1: I've got I've got some past there. And the thing
Speaker 1: that's interesting about it is, even if you live in
Speaker 1: the US, odds are that you have not been there
Speaker 1: because it's quite a rural area. But it's where today's
Speaker 1: story takes place. My name's Ben.
Speaker 3: My name is no Ben. Have you did you know
Speaker 3: that if you hike certain parts of the Appalachian Trail
Speaker 3: you get little rings on your walking stick or there's
Speaker 3: some kind of merit badge you're supposed to get where
Speaker 3: you can show unequivocally that you have hiked the entire
Speaker 3: Appalachian Trail. I have exactly zero of those.
Speaker 1: I also well have hiked parts of the trail. I
Speaker 1: have not hiked the entire thing. It's a heck of
Speaker 1: a commitment, but it's a no thing to do. Almost
Speaker 1: as noble as being the producer on shows like Ridiculous History,
Speaker 1: which reminds me we should shout out our super producer,
Speaker 1: Casey Pegrip. So nol, you have never hiked the trail,
Speaker 1: but you've been to the Appalachians yet I.
Speaker 3: Have, and I have been on parts of the trail.
Speaker 3: That's where I found out about the medallion system, where
Speaker 3: it's these little kind of curved metal pieces that indicate
Speaker 3: which parts of the trail you successfully completed. And if
Speaker 3: you're like a real ball or a real Appalachian trailhead,
Speaker 3: you have a stick that's just like you know, covered
Speaker 3: in these things.
Speaker 1: Right right, just lousy with them. One of the most
Speaker 1: interesting things about exploring this area of the world is
Speaker 1: that you'll run into places where time seems to have
Speaker 1: slowed down or things go at their own relatively isolated pace.
Speaker 1: And in today's episode, we're going to explore a tiny
Speaker 1: community that is, in its own way, very isolated. It's
Speaker 1: called Vulcan in the western edge of West Virginia.
Speaker 3: That's about as west as it gets, my friend, right, Okay,
Speaker 3: that's that's actually not entirely true, but it's as west
Speaker 3: as it gets in West Virginia.
Speaker 1: Right, it's a Virginia wise, this is the westest Vulcan.
Speaker 1: West Virginia is an interesting case. It's located along the
Speaker 1: Tug Fork, which is, you know, part of the Tug River,
Speaker 1: and this is often called one of the US's most
Speaker 1: storied waterways. Vulcan is named after, you know, spoiler alert,
Speaker 1: the god of fire and Roman mythology, Vulcan, and this
Speaker 1: is something we had talked about off air. Vulcan makes
Speaker 1: an appearance in a fantastic novel and set of TV
Speaker 1: adaptations called American Gods by Neil Gayman. You saw that, right.
Speaker 3: I did a season two out yet been either.
Speaker 1: Or it's about to come out. Yeah, I'm excited. That's
Speaker 1: one of those shows where I don't know about everybody else,
Speaker 1: but I made the decision a while back that if
Speaker 1: I really enjoy a show I want to wait until
Speaker 1: the entire season is out before watching it because Netflix
Speaker 1: ruined me. Man. I just I can't watch something and
Speaker 1: wait for a week and hope it shows up next week.
Speaker 1: It just it triggers all kinds of you know, abandonment
Speaker 1: issues and patients.
Speaker 3: You know, I'll tell you, I actually kind of I
Speaker 3: like it in a different way. I like being able
Speaker 3: to binge, but I also like the old school cliffhanger
Speaker 3: having to wait a week mentality of traditional television release.
Speaker 1: I'll do that with maybe Game of Thrones.
Speaker 3: Game of Thrones did it with True Detective, you know,
Speaker 3: the ones that are real edge of your seaters.
Speaker 1: I halfway did it with True Detective season three. Watched
Speaker 1: the first four episodes and I said, I'll wait.
Speaker 3: Then you took a couple of weeks off, and then
Speaker 3: you had some little bingeable episodes for you.
Speaker 1: Yep. In the case of Vulcan, West Virginia, we find
Speaker 1: a town that is very much isolated by geography more
Speaker 1: so than say culture. Right, Can we talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about where Vulcan is? We said, it's in this
Speaker 1: very southwestern corner of West Virginia. But what's it around?
Speaker 3: Well, it's I mean, it's kind of its own weird
Speaker 3: little island in some ways in that there's no connection
Speaker 3: to the surrounding areas except through a little footbridge. The
Speaker 3: Norfolk and Western Railway runs through the middle of the town,
Speaker 3: and that separates the two sides of the town from
Speaker 3: one being located on the river bank. And then there
Speaker 3: are ones that are up more inland on a hill
Speaker 3: that is very near to a cemetery called Vulcan Hill.
Speaker 3: And here's the thing. I mean, even to get out
Speaker 3: of the city, out of this little hamlet, you would
Speaker 3: have to sometimes cross underneath parked railway cars. Kids school
Speaker 3: kids had to catch the bus on the Kentucky side
Speaker 3: in order to get there. They had to go to
Speaker 3: some pretty perilous ends to catch the bus, and some
Speaker 3: kids have even been injured. And I believe there was
Speaker 3: the case of a child losing a leg in such
Speaker 3: a situation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's absolutely true. So we're looking at mountains, rivers,
Speaker 1: terrain that is very difficult to traverse, so much so
Speaker 1: that had coal not been discovered in the general vicinity here,
Speaker 1: you could make a fairly strong argument that no one
Speaker 1: would be living there at all. You know, maybe some
Speaker 1: guy decades and decades ago would have hit a moonshine
Speaker 1: still out there, but even that would be pretty arduous.
Speaker 1: It'd still be a lot of work to get there. However,
Speaker 1: when coal was discovered in this area the very beginning
Speaker 1: of the twentieth century, a mining camp was constructed, and
Speaker 1: this would later grow into what we recognize as Vulcan
Speaker 1: West Virginia. But the thing is, when the mining camp
Speaker 1: was first constructed, when coal was first discovered there, the
Speaker 1: miners who lived in the area had to row across
Speaker 1: the river every day just to go to work.
Speaker 3: That's right. And it wasn't until that mining company created
Speaker 3: this very narrow wooden foot bridge that folks could actually
Speaker 3: get in and out of town without having to get wet.
Speaker 3: So the thing I was talking about with the kids
Speaker 3: and the railway cars, that was a little bit later.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that was a little bit later, but it's
Speaker 1: an excellent example of the importance of this bridge and
Speaker 1: the problems with this bridge. Picture this. If we're going
Speaker 1: to do a rod Serling intro picture this town. There's
Speaker 1: one way in, there's one way out, and that's when
Speaker 1: the bridge is. It drives straight into the Vulcan zone.
Speaker 1: So the I'm freestyling here. So over the years, the
Speaker 1: people who lived in this community, realizing the key nature
Speaker 1: of this bridge, they took great care to maintain it.
Speaker 1: And when automobiles arrived, when they became a thing in
Speaker 1: this part of the world, the people of Vulcan took
Speaker 1: upon themselves to expand this bridge so that they could
Speaker 1: drive these vehicles across. However, to your point, Noel, when
Speaker 1: we say expanding, we mean that they just barely made
Speaker 1: it big enough for one car to drive across.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and this was diy ingenuity at its finest, because
Speaker 3: they didn't have somebody swooping in to help them with infrastructure.
Speaker 3: It was literally an effort of the townspeople to solve
Speaker 3: a problem they needed solved and to cross that bridge,
Speaker 3: a swinging foot bridge on a car. Good Lord, that
Speaker 3: sounds like the was terrifying experience ever of all time. No, no,
Speaker 3: thank you, sir or madam.
Speaker 1: The way that The New York Times described this bridge
Speaker 1: in an article on December sixteenth, nineteen seventy eight, by
Speaker 1: an author named Gregory James, was that there was no
Speaker 1: more than a quote thumb length margin for error on
Speaker 1: either side have you ever driven around in the mountain snow?
Speaker 3: Yeah, with the crazy switchbacks and like where you're right
Speaker 3: off the edge of the cliff. You were so close,
Speaker 3: especially when you can't see what's in front of you,
Speaker 3: and you were just trusting that around that turn, you're
Speaker 3: not just going to plummet to your death.
Speaker 1: Oh and you know what this makes me remember when
Speaker 1: we did an epic road rally car trip. Casey you
Speaker 1: were there, and Noel you were there, and I was
Speaker 1: there as well as my good friend Scott Benjamin. We
Speaker 1: had to drive through parts of West Virginia that were
Speaker 1: exactly like this, switchbacks and all.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's where that's where my main memories of it
Speaker 3: come from. Is that very sketchy leg of that trip.
Speaker 3: And Scott. I don't know if you know this about Scott, folks,
Speaker 3: but he is a bit of a speed demon.
Speaker 1: He's got a lead foot.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he was not. He was taking those curbs like
Speaker 3: Steve McQueen and leaving us kind of clutch at least
Speaker 3: me personally clutching my pearls.
Speaker 1: That's that's why I pressured him to switch switch to
Speaker 1: the wheel and ride shotgun for a while and let
Speaker 1: me drive. But if you've ever been not just in
Speaker 1: the Appalachian area, but if you've ever been in a
Speaker 1: mountainous area in general in the car, you know what
Speaker 1: we're talking about. These very narrow roads and lanes that
Speaker 1: hug the side of the incline with maybe maybe some
Speaker 1: wooden railing, maybe nothing, And it can be very disconcerting
Speaker 1: if you're a person who doesn't drive there every day,
Speaker 1: because people who drive there every day this is a
Speaker 1: normal experience to them, so they think that they'll think
Speaker 1: that you are driving like, you know, like an elderly person,
Speaker 1: right whereas we'll think they're driving like lunatics. This is
Speaker 1: one of those bridges, but it's not just in a
Speaker 1: mountainous area. It's over water, there's not much margin for error.
Speaker 1: And then throughout the decades, right they're taking care of
Speaker 1: this bridge. It's a key artery of the town. But
Speaker 1: as we know, as recent history is shown, coal mining
Speaker 1: doesn't last forever. Toward the nineteen sixties or so, the
Speaker 1: coal resources begin to dry up and the town feels
Speaker 1: like it's entering an economic decline. It feels like there's trouble,
Speaker 1: but they still have the bridge, at least that is
Speaker 1: until July nineteen seventy five.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's when, you know, despite their best efforts to
Speaker 3: keep it up. I mean, they're not professional bridge caretakers,
Speaker 3: and you know, understandably they've got work to do down
Speaker 3: in those other dangerous part of town, being the mines.
Speaker 3: So the bridge collapses, it crumbles, and it leaves them
Speaker 3: pretty much for all intents and purposes in an automobile
Speaker 3: based society at this point, cut off from the outside world. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and in desperate need of some assistance.
Speaker 1: So even though things had never been particularly opulent in
Speaker 1: the town of Vulcan, West Virginia, now things seemed increasingly desperate.
Speaker 1: One person in the town described it as living at
Speaker 1: the tail end of nothing. They knew that this situation
Speaker 1: was unsustainable. The town depended upon this bridge. Around the
Speaker 1: time of the bridge collapse, a woman named Nelly Holly
Speaker 1: had ordered a living room suitep from upstate further up
Speaker 1: in West Virginia, and the truck arrived with the furniture,
Speaker 1: but the driver refused to bring the goods to the
Speaker 1: Holly household because the driver learned that the only road
Speaker 1: into Vulcan was this How is it described a ribbon
Speaker 1: of gravel and it was an even public property, right.
Speaker 3: No, it belonged to the railway. It was more of
Speaker 3: a more or less an access road, not intended for
Speaker 3: this kind of use, and kind of in a similar
Speaker 3: situation we were talking about, and that it was very narrow,
Speaker 3: very dangerous, and you'd be putting yourself at risk, and
Speaker 3: especially since it would technically be trespassing on private property.
Speaker 1: And so now we introduce you to a fascinating character,
Speaker 1: one John Robinette, who had lived in the area for
Speaker 1: his entire life. He worked as a notary public, a
Speaker 1: car mechanic, a carnival barker. That's something that happens in
Speaker 1: a lot of small towns. There will be people who
Speaker 1: have multiple different types of occupation depending upon the service
Speaker 1: needed at any given day. You know. So the person
Speaker 1: who runs the grocery store might also be the person
Speaker 1: who hosts the annual harvest festival or something. Right, the
Speaker 1: person who's the dentist might also be the youth pastor.
Speaker 3: Yeah, sort of the way that football coaches don't often
Speaker 3: teach history in high school.
Speaker 1: Right, oddly, or social studies. Also, sure, that's the other one.
Speaker 1: So this guy, John Robinette, he is so sad that
Speaker 1: Miss Holly is not getting her living room sweet. It
Speaker 1: moves him on an emotional level, and he says, so
Speaker 1: I up and appointed myself mayor and set out to
Speaker 1: get us a bridge. Because the bridge had obviously collapsed.
Speaker 1: Miss Holly was seventy four years old, she had to
Speaker 1: hire herself a boy to go fetch a few sticks
Speaker 1: of furniture and haul it on back against the law
Speaker 1: on railroad property private property. And so he made it
Speaker 1: his mission as self appointed mayor to prosecute for the
Speaker 1: construction of this new bridge and talk to regional politicians,
Speaker 1: area politicians. He eventually gets as far as speaking to
Speaker 1: the office of former Governor Arch Moore. However, it's a
Speaker 1: close but no cigar situation, a close but no bridge situation, and.
Speaker 3: Just for a little bit of contact. This article from
Speaker 3: the New York Times that you can find online is
Speaker 3: from nineteen seventy eight, so this is a very contemporary
Speaker 3: account of this problem. So what happens is Phyllis Blankenship,
Speaker 3: who ran the sixteen post office Box post office in Vulcan,
Speaker 3: recounts the story like this. He the person who appointed
Speaker 3: himself mayor, mister Robinette, got on the phone got on
Speaker 3: the horn with the governor and demanded a bridge be builds,
Speaker 3: demanded satisfaction and close but no cigar. So you know
Speaker 3: what's the obvious next step. He's been turned down by
Speaker 3: the government of his own city, abandoned, left in the cold.
Speaker 3: You know, they're doing this this town based around the
Speaker 3: very dangerous occupation contributing to the economy of the state.
Speaker 3: And the governor says, no, thank you. You are forgotten.
Speaker 3: You are marooned and forgotten. So mister Robinette comes up
Speaker 3: with what I would say is one of the most
Speaker 3: brilliant uses of like pr blackmail.
Speaker 1: Almost yeah, yeah, So it's nineteen seventy six. They've just
Speaker 1: been stonewalled every time, every time they ask for a
Speaker 1: little bit of help. Again, the bridge that collapsed was
Speaker 1: the only legal way in and out of the town.
Speaker 1: People were having to drive illegally on this flimsy ribbon
Speaker 1: of gravel that the train company owned. They every time
Speaker 1: they asked, they were told there was no money. There's
Speaker 1: no money available to spend on the bridge, according to
Speaker 1: reports from the West Virginia Gazette. So this is what
Speaker 1: Robinette does. Mayor Robinette rights to not the local paper
Speaker 1: he's already done that, not the New York Times, any
Speaker 1: paper of note. Instead, he writes directly to the USSR,
Speaker 1: the Soviet Union, and he says, Hi, I'm the mayor
Speaker 1: of Vulcan, West Virginia, a small town here in the
Speaker 1: United States, and we are our town is going to
Speaker 1: die if we don't get this bridge. The state is
Speaker 1: not going to fund us. And in my opinion, dear Russians,
Speaker 1: I don't think Uncle Sam cares one wit about us.
Speaker 1: He sends this letter to the Soviet Embassy in Washington, DC,
Speaker 1: and at first, you know, at first it's like, well,
Speaker 1: is this joke? Is this just a prank, a little
Speaker 1: bit of trolling? And the Soviet government doesn't immediately answer
Speaker 1: until that is Robinette is contacted directly by a journalist
Speaker 1: named Iona Andronov, a Soviet reporter who won to hear
Speaker 1: this story in person.
Speaker 3: So in December of nineteen seventy seven, this reporter Andronov
Speaker 3: touches down in Vulcan and starts making the rounds, getting
Speaker 3: the scoop, pounding the pavement or the gravel, I guess,
Speaker 3: and asking questions of the residents and broadcasting it to
Speaker 3: the rest of the world right right.
Speaker 1: So Endrov works for a publication in Moscow called Litterata
Speaker 1: Naval Gazeta, and this is solid gold, platinum level ammunition
Speaker 1: for the propaganda war that's going on between the USSR
Speaker 1: and the US. The problem is from Uncle Sam's side
Speaker 1: that US papers also know a good headline when they
Speaker 1: see it, and the US based publications pick it up
Speaker 1: as well, so in a way they are disseminating Russian
Speaker 1: propaganda for the USSR. The Spokane and Daily Chronicle rites
Speaker 1: about this in seventy seven with the following quote Soviet officials. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm used today by reports that the small town of
Speaker 1: Olk in West Virginia has appealed to the Kremlin for
Speaker 1: four and eight. The town, with a population of two hundred,
Speaker 1: asked the Soviet government for financial help to build a
Speaker 1: bridge after the town was turned down by the US
Speaker 1: and West Virginia governments.
Speaker 3: It's crazy that newsmen still talked like that in the
Speaker 3: late seventies.
Speaker 1: Especially since it was a printed paper and not a
Speaker 1: radio announcement.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, sometimes they have to dictate, you know.
Speaker 1: So this is this is also during the not the
Speaker 1: height of the Red Scare, Communist panic but this is
Speaker 1: still a time and place where people would accuse you
Speaker 1: of being a communist as an insult or ask you
Speaker 1: if you were a card carrying communists. Someone did ask
Speaker 1: Endanov and he said, yes, actually.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's sort of our thing. Yeah. It got so
Speaker 3: far as to for there being rumors circulating in the
Speaker 3: community that there would be bomb attacks on any bridge
Speaker 3: that was built with communist cash. So you know, it
Speaker 3: really created a hubbub, and that those headlines really were disseminated.
Speaker 3: Because this is quite a juicy story. So of course,
Speaker 3: all of a sudden, the good old us of a as
Speaker 3: we don't like we don't like to be made fun of,
Speaker 3: we don't like to be made to seem cheap, even
Speaker 3: though we kind of are a lot of the time
Speaker 3: acquiesced and was like, okay, okay, we can do this.
Speaker 3: We can we can muster the money that we need.
Speaker 3: Now that you've put our nose to the fire, we'll
Speaker 3: give you one point three million and we'll get you
Speaker 3: your little bridge. Because here's the thing, though, it like
Speaker 3: it was really not. The families that stayed behind after
Speaker 3: the coal industry crumbled were kind of these holdouts. They
Speaker 3: didn't have anywhere else to go. They couldn't afford to
Speaker 3: move perhaps, and they you know, this was their home.
Speaker 3: And it was only like in the dozens of families
Speaker 3: that lived in this very small area.
Speaker 1: Right, it was less than it was less than one
Speaker 1: hundred families, maybe maybe fifty families. But this is okay. This,
Speaker 1: this is where the story divides. This is where there
Speaker 1: are two different versions of the story, two different narratives
Speaker 1: that persist in the modern day. So yes, the West
Speaker 1: Virginian government does agree to build this bridge, or at
Speaker 1: least provide the funds to build a bridge, but they
Speaker 1: do it like within hours after Andronov actually gets into Vulcan.
Speaker 1: They do it so quickly. So let's kick through two
Speaker 1: different versions of this story. As The New York Times
Speaker 1: puts it, whether by coincidence or design, the state of
Speaker 1: West Virginia announced on the same day of Andronov's visit
Speaker 1: that Vulcan would get this bridge they like the same
Speaker 1: day he was there, he announced.
Speaker 3: I wonder if that was because of some intelligence gathering.
Speaker 1: Maybe yes, So the papers have been the US papers
Speaker 1: and the Moscow papers were aware of this too, and
Speaker 1: that means certainly the intelligence apparatus was also cognizant. But
Speaker 1: from the official US government perspective, the explanation of this.
Speaker 1: West Virginia's explanation is that they just they were just
Speaker 1: in the approval process for months and months. It just
Speaker 1: takes a long time to approve that much money and
Speaker 1: the West Virginian government. But to the people of Vulcan,
Speaker 1: and if we're being honest, to most of the people
Speaker 1: reading this story from the outside, it seemed like they
Speaker 1: only reacted this way because it was an international embarrassment
Speaker 1: because Mayor John Robinette had just brought a Russian person
Speaker 1: down there and he said Also Robinette, for his part,
Speaker 1: said he doesn't he doesn't care where the money comes from. No,
Speaker 1: he just wants the bridge built.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 1: He just wants Miss Holly to get her living room
Speaker 1: suite with some dignity.
Speaker 3: It really tied the room together. It was really important
Speaker 3: for her to have that living room suite. But here's
Speaker 3: the thing. I mean it it just goes to show
Speaker 3: how sometimes a little weaponized pr move is exactly what
Speaker 3: it takes to get those in power to act. It's
Speaker 3: never doing the right thing, or often not, it's much
Speaker 3: more about holding their feet of the fire and making
Speaker 3: them fear the potential of looking.
Speaker 1: Foolish, right, and in this case it worked. Two years later,
Speaker 1: two years after this hubbub and Bujaha, on July fourth,
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty, the bridge opened. It cost a little over
Speaker 1: one million dollars, and the price was ultimately split between
Speaker 1: the governments of West Virginia and Kentucky. The residents of
Speaker 1: Vulcans celebrated the opening of what they called the bridge
Speaker 1: the Russians almost built, with an American flag waving in
Speaker 1: the breeze and a cartoonishly large amount of illegally imported vodka.
Speaker 3: Now here's the PostScript of the story, or at least
Speaker 3: the fictionalized PostScript, the part where the US government, in
Speaker 3: a blatant act of revenge, poisons all the remaining inhabitants,
Speaker 3: you know, in their sleep. Because you don't mess with
Speaker 3: you know, you mess with the bull, you get the horns. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I don't know, that's not true. But I would be pissed.
Speaker 3: Wouldn't you be pissed if you were Uncle Sam.
Speaker 1: It depends on the different levels, you know, on a
Speaker 1: federal level, I probably would be more irritated with the
Speaker 1: with the state government, like were I president at the time,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't be irritated with the residents of vulcan I
Speaker 1: wouldn't even be that irritated with the Soviets. I'd be
Speaker 1: irritated with the governor of West Virginia. That's a good point,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, Maybe he got.
Speaker 3: A talking to.
Speaker 1: It rolls downhill, my friend, it really does. So this
Speaker 1: this is fascinating, and this stunt was successful. We have
Speaker 1: to wonder whether something like this could be replicated somewhere
Speaker 1: else in the world, and we're working with our research associate,
Speaker 1: Christopher Hasiotis. One thing we found was that there are
Speaker 1: plenty of other examples of foreign aid being given to
Speaker 1: the US or other countries attempting to give foreign aid
Speaker 1: to the US, like famously, the Massi in Kenya after
Speaker 1: the tragedy of nine to eleven on September eleventh, two
Speaker 1: thousand and one, the attack on the World Trade Center,
Speaker 1: the Massill donated cattle to the US. Did you do
Speaker 1: you remember this story?
Speaker 3: I do not.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Y's heartwarmings. So the Massill live in a relatively
Speaker 1: rural area of Kenya, but when they learned what happened
Speaker 1: in New York on September eleventh. They were they were
Speaker 1: so horrified and sad. They felt like they needed to
Speaker 1: do something. So they blessed fourteen cows in a pretty
Speaker 1: solemn ceremony and then gave these cows to the Deputy
Speaker 1: Chief of Mission at the US Embassy and Nairobi, a
Speaker 1: guy named William Brankick, and they said, here, please bring
Speaker 1: these to the people of New York and let them know,
Speaker 1: you know that they are in our thoughts. And I
Speaker 1: thought that was hard warming, because that's not propaganda at all.
Speaker 1: That's just being very human, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: So I want to I'm bringing that example up because
Speaker 1: I do want to point out that not every foreign
Speaker 1: act of charity is a propaganda move. The Russian one was, though,
Speaker 1: totally the record. That was one.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And now you can, I think, still visit this
Speaker 3: area through that very bridge that was constructed, the bridge
Speaker 3: that the Russians almost built, which is now a single small,
Speaker 3: two lane road bridge over the Tug which is just
Speaker 3: a single lane tunnel bridge that is covered in graffiti,
Speaker 3: which I love that in and it's almost like its
Speaker 3: own little mini Berlin wall.
Speaker 1: And this is where our story ends today. However, never
Speaker 1: fear it's not the end of our show. We will
Speaker 1: be back with more strange dare we say, ridiculous tales
Speaker 1: of people, places, and events throughout this the weird experiment
Speaker 1: that we call human civilization. In the meantime, we want
Speaker 1: to hear from you, folks. Do you have any stories
Speaker 1: from it? I in particular will be personally fascinated by
Speaker 1: any stories of the Appalachian Mountains. But regardless of where
Speaker 1: you live in the world, do you have any stories
Speaker 1: like this, any very isolated towns that had to use
Speaker 1: unorthodox means to for survival?
Speaker 3: Yeah, any bridge related stories? And hey, if you're a
Speaker 3: New Yorker, are you a bridge or a tunnel person?
Speaker 3: What do you prefer? Let us nice? It really is.
Speaker 3: Cab drivers are often after that, and I'm like, I
Speaker 3: don't know which everyone's best.
Speaker 1: I think part of it is, you know, the cab
Speaker 1: drivers will present it in terms of what's better given
Speaker 1: traffic patterns. But a lot of people do have crippling
Speaker 1: fears of either going on bridges, like my mother hates bridges,
Speaker 1: or they have a fear of going into the ground,
Speaker 1: you know. So it's really is a polite way to
Speaker 1: ask which terrifies you least.
Speaker 3: That's a really interesting way of looking at it, and
Speaker 3: I never thought of that, So let us know which
Speaker 3: terrifies you most or least. You can write to us
Speaker 3: at Ridiculous at HowStuffWorks dot com. You can check out
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Speaker 1: Fun, and you can follow us both personally. We have
Speaker 1: our very own instagrams nol you've got one, Yeah, it's.
Speaker 3: At Embryonic Insider and.
Speaker 1: I'm at ben Boland Thinks as always to our super producer,
Speaker 1: Casey Pegram thanks to we're research associate. Friend of the show,
Speaker 1: Christopher hasiotis who we're overdue to have a guest appearance.
Speaker 3: We really are.
Speaker 1: He's always the best.
Speaker 3: In fact sometimes on the One thing you have to
Speaker 3: do to join Ridiculous Stories on Facebook is say who
Speaker 3: name one of us as the host and occasionally some
Speaker 3: whole named Christopher, which I appreciate because he appears so infrequently,
Speaker 3: his appearances must really make an impact.
Speaker 1: I love all the guests that we have on our show,
Speaker 1: and you know, it gets weird, but always weird in
Speaker 1: a good Way. Thanks also to Alex Williams who composed
Speaker 1: our track, to our research associate Gabe and Noel. Thanks
Speaker 1: to the people of West Virginia.
Speaker 3: Really, they are resilient people and they know how to
Speaker 3: get stuff done. We'll see you next time, folks. For
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