Speaker 1: Fellow Ridiculous Historians. This week's classic episode is incredibly special
Speaker 1: to us. Back in twenty nineteen or thereabouts, our good
Speaker 1: good friend of the show, a brother in arms to
Speaker 1: all of us, a guy named Alex Williams co created
Speaker 1: with his own brother, our super producer, Max Williams, a
Speaker 1: show called.
Speaker 2: Ephemera Indeed, And on this episode, we talked to Alex,
Speaker 2: the creator of Ephemeral, on the nature of his podcast,
Speaker 2: which is out there for you to enjoy, as well
Speaker 2: as a story about the Collier Brothers.
Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome to the show,
Speaker 1: Ridiculous Historians, Thanks so much for tuning in. Peak Behind
Speaker 1: the Curtain, it is officially summer in Atlanta. The humidity
Speaker 1: and the heat combined to drape the city in soup.
Speaker 1: It feels like walking through soup. So I am very,
Speaker 1: very glad to be here inside our air conditioned studio.
Speaker 1: My name is Ben, my name is Noah.
Speaker 2: The shipping container is icy cool today, and outside it
Speaker 2: is sort of there's this miasma, this sort of funk,
Speaker 2: this patina of awful hot, sweaty grossness that does kind
Speaker 2: of envelop the city and it happened overnight, didn't it.
Speaker 1: It just happened overnight. Yeah, it permeated, It permeated this
Speaker 1: fair metropolis of ours. I always forget about how dire
Speaker 1: this situation becomes when we hit summer in Atlanta, and
Speaker 1: you know this may mean that we're in here recording
Speaker 1: more episodes. We do want to start the show with
Speaker 1: a big shout out to our guest super producer Ramsey
Speaker 1: ram jams Yunt, So everybody give him a fine hello.
Speaker 2: Do we get does he get a sound effect.
Speaker 1: That sounded good?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: It was very good. Good. I like it. And of
Speaker 1: course this does not mean that we will ever forget
Speaker 1: our wonderful our third amigo, right, super producer Casey Pegram.
Speaker 2: Gone, but not forgotten, gone, I say, but gone where Ben?
Speaker 1: We were talking about this? So I have a theory.
Speaker 1: Every year or so, Casey disappears and in France, someone
Speaker 1: else reappears, a very different person who happens to look
Speaker 1: a little bit like our dear friend Casey Pegram. This guy,
Speaker 1: we imagine, is a member of the criminal underbelly of Paris,
Speaker 1: known only by the name.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and he dons a completely different get up in
Speaker 2: the form of a very slick looking leather jacket, a
Speaker 2: single dangly cross earring on his left on his left ear,
Speaker 2: and sometimes he wears fingerless gloves and rides around one
Speaker 2: of those cool little mod motorbikes in the pictures.
Speaker 1: Yet, and we strongly suspect that he may have one
Speaker 1: or more secret families. It's true.
Speaker 3: None of this.
Speaker 2: We can neither confirm nor deny any of this. We
Speaker 2: are wildly speculated.
Speaker 1: It's all true, though. Put the pieces together, people.
Speaker 2: All right, we're gonna have to let Casey have his
Speaker 2: day in court here and defend himself. But you know,
Speaker 2: Casey's not here. We're joined with Ramsey helping us to
Speaker 2: pick up the slack. Here. Casey's doing his double life.
Speaker 2: But that's not the only person that we have on
Speaker 2: the show today, is it.
Speaker 4: Man.
Speaker 1: That's absolutely true. This is a special episode that I
Speaker 1: know we were both very excited about. We have in
Speaker 1: our network a brand new podcast that we're we're all
Speaker 1: huge fans of, since you really huge fans of, and
Speaker 1: it happens to be created by one of our close
Speaker 1: friends who you may have heard mentioned on our show
Speaker 1: or other shows before. Folks, Let's give it up for
Speaker 1: Alex Williams, the brains behind the podcast. We call a
Speaker 1: femeral because that's the name of the podcast.
Speaker 2: Hi Alex makes us call it then, just by virtue
Speaker 2: of having titled it and being a very good title
Speaker 2: and a very fine podcast.
Speaker 1: Thank you for being here.
Speaker 3: What a flattering introduction. I'm very happy to be here.
Speaker 2: Well, here's the thing. We've been working with you for
Speaker 2: quite some time now. We've kind of seen you grow
Speaker 2: and develop and become more and more of a badass
Speaker 2: in what the pros referred to as the podcast space
Speaker 2: and making wild gesticulating quote fingers when I say that.
Speaker 1: You really have to. But here's the thing.
Speaker 2: You really took another level in terms of making not
Speaker 2: only a history podcast, but something that I've referred to
Speaker 2: when I describe it to friends as something akin to
Speaker 2: like poetry meets sound, collage meets some music, concrete meets history,
Speaker 2: And I think it's just a really beautiful piece of work.
Speaker 2: And I'm just beyond stoke that it's on our network
Speaker 2: and that you're the guy behind him.
Speaker 1: So we'd like to ask you.
Speaker 3: That was such a good pitch. I don't know if
Speaker 3: I could pull that up, but that was great.
Speaker 1: He's good. Well, now it is your turn, so we'd
Speaker 1: like to ask you some questions about ephemeral, about your
Speaker 1: your inspiration behind it. But first, yeah, with that excellent
Speaker 1: description that Noel just just recited, what how would you
Speaker 1: describe it? How do you describe it when when someone's like, hey,
Speaker 1: what's this thing you're working on?
Speaker 3: I start stammering and sweating, and I try to make
Speaker 3: it as concise as possible as thinking of a quick
Speaker 3: pitch in bed the other night. It's something like a
Speaker 3: show about fleeting moments and the things they leave behind.
Speaker 1: M I like that because that's what epemera is, right.
Speaker 2: Epemera is sort of a remnant of a thing that
Speaker 2: no longer is around, I guess kind of or the
Speaker 2: idea of things being ephemeral means that they're fleeting or
Speaker 2: that they're here today, gone tomorrow, but they do leave
Speaker 2: behind some kind of residue if you know where to look.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So the word itself is kind of tricky. In
Speaker 3: the textbook, epemera might just mean paper.
Speaker 1: Right, broadsides, tickets, pamphlets for museums.
Speaker 3: Basically anything printed, hand printed, you know, printing press, computer printed.
Speaker 3: That wasn't meant to be saved. But then it gets
Speaker 3: into the issue of like, how do you determine whether
Speaker 3: something was meant to be saved or not?
Speaker 1: Right, Like, for instance, a train schedule from the early
Speaker 1: nineteen hundreds. Now, the ones that are around are considered
Speaker 1: thing to be things that of historical value, right, But
Speaker 1: when they were printed, they were thought to have a
Speaker 1: definitive and very short lifespan or span of utility.
Speaker 3: One of the really classic examples is the stamp. The
Speaker 3: episode I'm working on that will come up. Mondays about this,
Speaker 3: well Monday, that might that might not be the Monday.
Speaker 3: It'll come out on an it'll come out on a Monday.
Speaker 3: I don't know when this will come out. But a
Speaker 3: stamp is a really classic example.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: So you've written a letter to your friend Noel, and
Speaker 3: you've stamped it, and you've put in the mailbox and
Speaker 3: he gets it and he rips it open and reads
Speaker 3: the letter and he's, you know, overwrought with emotion. Whatever
Speaker 3: he throws out or hopefully recycles the uh, and that's it.
Speaker 3: But Noel happens to have a great stamp collection, right,
Speaker 3: and I've sent him, you know, uh inverted Jenny stamp
Speaker 3: from the nineteen thirties, and so he is overwrought with emotion,
Speaker 3: not because of my great pros, but because this is
Speaker 3: a great addition to his stamp collection.
Speaker 1: Because he is a philetist or philitist?
Speaker 3: Is that it is?
Speaker 1: How's it? How it's pronounced? You a p h I
Speaker 1: L A T I s t one who collects stamps.
Speaker 3: What's the root word of philetist?
Speaker 2: Sorry, it could also be one who filets, you know,
Speaker 2: That's what I would think, because that's how the British
Speaker 2: pronounced fil a. They pronounce it phill it really they
Speaker 2: do a hard t stund at the end of it.
Speaker 2: I always find that very interesting because sometimes the Brits
Speaker 2: seem like they really own the word, and sometimes they
Speaker 2: just feel like they're mispronouncing and just to be cute,
Speaker 2: cute sort of like aluminium, Like that's not the word, Brits.
Speaker 2: Come on, it's illuminum. You're adding syllables in there that
Speaker 2: don't belong.
Speaker 1: Place the American English. To be fair, we can't really
Speaker 1: criticize the people who are doing it. First. That's also fair.
Speaker 1: Ben If they want to add an extra pe on shop,
Speaker 1: then that's kind of their call. Uh yeah, to answer
Speaker 1: that question about etymology. It's interesting because it comes from
Speaker 1: French and Greek. So uh itelia means exemption from payment.
Speaker 1: The French philo means loving, so it's loving exemption from payment,
Speaker 1: which is weird, right.
Speaker 3: No, but it's it makes sense, But don't ask me
Speaker 3: to explain it.
Speaker 1: Well, we can learn more about this. What what did
Speaker 1: you what are you exploring on this episode concerning stamps?
Speaker 3: Oh, well, it's not it's all over. It's much more
Speaker 3: than you know. One of the things that we're doing
Speaker 3: is actually taking the word apart in this in this episode,
Speaker 3: so ef eemera comes from the root words epi meaning
Speaker 3: honor of, like epicurius, epidermis, and hemera meaning day. It's
Speaker 3: like a Latin Greek combination word. And so it starts
Speaker 3: being used by people in you know, the Age of Enlightenment,
Speaker 3: I guess, to describe things that only last for a day,
Speaker 3: that may fly, you know, a certain species of plants
Speaker 3: that flower and wither in a day. And then you know,
Speaker 3: it becomes with time more broadly used to describe things
Speaker 3: that don't last a long time, you know, or fleeting.
Speaker 3: And that's where you start getting into trouble because like
Speaker 3: in in a you know, the metrics of like a
Speaker 3: human life. You know, maybe like one hundred years at best.
Speaker 3: Something that doesn't last for long means something different than
Speaker 3: like geologically right, like melting polar ice caps or ephemeral
Speaker 3: At this point.
Speaker 1: Or was it? Who was that philosopher said all as ephemera?
Speaker 3: How have I never heard that? I've never heard of that.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's maybe it's a philosopher Marcus Aurelius.
Speaker 2: Okay, there we go, all this ephemeral, both what remembers
Speaker 2: and what is remembered.
Speaker 1: There we go.
Speaker 3: How have I never used that quote for something?
Speaker 1: Your tagline, ye should hang out on the show more often. Man,
Speaker 1: I'm full of vaguely remembered one liners from ancient philosophers.
Speaker 2: So I mean, I guess ephemeral ephemerah, by its nature
Speaker 2: is sometimes a little hard to describe, as is the show.
Speaker 2: It's not something that you can just encapsulate in a
Speaker 2: quick elevator pitch. So I put forth that we listened
Speaker 2: to a little bit of a clip that can then
Speaker 2: set up a discussion.
Speaker 3: What do you say, Oh?
Speaker 1: Sure, Oh, let's do the call your brothers, Yes, sir?
Speaker 3: As a kid, Franz Litz's father would tell him scary
Speaker 3: stories before bed. Only these stories were true.
Speaker 4: My father was a scientists engine inventor who had never
Speaker 4: really had much use for fairy tales. He preferred real
Speaker 4: life grotesqueries to fiction, and so at bed time I
Speaker 4: would listen raptly to his urban horror stories. The most
Speaker 4: macabre tale was one of the Collier Brothers, the hermit
Speaker 4: hoarders of Harlem.
Speaker 3: There in their four story brownstone at the corner of
Speaker 3: Fifth Avenue one hundred and twenty eighth Street, the brothers
Speaker 3: sealed themselves up through the Great Depression, both world wars,
Speaker 3: and as Harlem shifted from a rich white suburb to
Speaker 3: a poor black slum.
Speaker 4: It was there in that brownstone that they amassed one
Speaker 4: of the world's legendary collections of urban junk. And in
Speaker 4: the end, the Collier brothers had one hundred and eighty
Speaker 4: tons of junk stored in their brownstone. And so I
Speaker 4: got this image of this horror house. Things like pattered toysmis, trees, chandeliers,
Speaker 4: rusted bicycles, broken baby carriages, ford model t moldering oak chess,
Speaker 4: fourteen pianos who added babies and fromaldehyde.
Speaker 3: And newspapers, hundreds of thousands of newspapers.
Speaker 4: It was a collection so extraordinary that their accomplishment, such
Speaker 4: as it was, confirms like a New yorkers worse nightmare,
Speaker 4: that they're crumpled people living in crumpled rooms where they're
Speaker 4: crumpled possessions, the crowded chaos of the city refracted in
Speaker 4: their homes. It's not that New Yorkers hoard more than
Speaker 4: other people, so they have less room to hoard in.
Speaker 1: So the call your brothers c. L. L. Ye Er
Speaker 1: were just as they're described in that clip, right, they're
Speaker 1: what we would call compulsive hoarders.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I don't know the history of the term hoarder
Speaker 3: if we're applying a modern term and acariness, but yes,
Speaker 3: hacrats I suppose maybe is like an older term. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but horder's certainly.
Speaker 1: Could you tell us a little bit more about these brothers.
Speaker 3: So there's really one book on them, and it's by
Speaker 3: a fantastic, exquisite writer named Franz Lids who grew up
Speaker 3: hearing you hear his voice in the clip. He grew
Speaker 3: up hearing these stories from his father as bedtime stories,
Speaker 3: as scary stories that he wouldn't tell. He would tell
Speaker 3: Franz these stories, but not Franz's sister. For whatever reason,
Speaker 3: I thought that was interesting, and so when Franz grew up,
Speaker 3: he decided to learn everything that he could because no
Speaker 3: one had really written anything, you know. Besides, they were
Speaker 3: sort of part of the urban legends of Harlem and
Speaker 3: of New York.
Speaker 2: To the point where it was almost a cautionary tale,
Speaker 2: like even the New York Fire Department would I believe.
Speaker 2: They had a term that they used called Collier's mansion
Speaker 2: syndrome that referred to extra instances of extreme clutter in
Speaker 2: apartments that were fire hazards. So it almost became, as
Speaker 2: the name of the book implies, called ghost y men.
Speaker 2: These these guys almost cast kind of a specter over
Speaker 2: this particular region to the point where they were so
Speaker 2: embedded in the cultural and oral tradition storytelling like ghost stories,
Speaker 2: that became this kind of cautionary tale almost right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's there's also a racial element to that too.
Speaker 3: The two brothers, Langley and Homer, moved with their parents
Speaker 3: from Manhattan to the budding community of Harlem in the
Speaker 3: eighteen nineties sort of an economic boom time, and Harlem
Speaker 3: is this new, rich, fancy suburb for people that want
Speaker 3: to get out of dirty New York, you know, get
Speaker 3: out to gentrification basically. Yeah, well those oldest time well
Speaker 3: it actually the economy crashes and there's a big bust
Speaker 3: and all of these rich families like move out, and
Speaker 3: there's all this empty space in Harlem. And then and
Speaker 3: there was overtly racist practices taken on by the landowners
Speaker 3: and harlve lifelines. Sure literally things that were called like
Speaker 3: Negro surcharges, I see. And they would take these big,
Speaker 3: beautiful brownstone mansions, like the Collier brothers lives in a
Speaker 3: four story brownstone mansion and divide them up into you know, six, seven,
Speaker 3: eight nine rooms, fill them up, overcharge African Americans to
Speaker 3: live there. But so anyways, the Collier Brothers were some
Speaker 3: of the few white residents at that point too. So
Speaker 3: legend is that neighborhood kids would chuck rocks at their
Speaker 3: windows and stuff and call them ghosty men, both referring
Speaker 3: to like their sort of creepy hermit never come out
Speaker 3: of the house. Is there someone dead in there?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: And also you know, perhaps a racial connotation.
Speaker 2: It's interesting too because there's a parallel story reminds me of,
Speaker 2: which is the Masols film Gray Gardens, where it's you know,
Speaker 2: this mother and daughter that live in a very they
Speaker 2: come from affluence. They live in this very similarly decrepit
Speaker 2: kind of mansion out in you know, the burbs, away
Speaker 2: from New York City, and they're completely kind of delusional
Speaker 2: and sort of exist in this strange bubble together. And
Speaker 2: that sort of what ended up happening with the Collier brothers,
Speaker 2: where they got to a point I believe one of
Speaker 2: the Homer I believe was like a child prodigy and
Speaker 2: like ended up getting some advanced degrees and did really
Speaker 2: well for himself for a time, and then they ended
Speaker 2: up just kind of withdrawing completely from society. And that's
Speaker 2: when the extreme hoarding that we're talking about started to begin.
Speaker 2: And that's also where the legend stuff kind of comes in, Right.
Speaker 3: They really both were prodigies. Romer had advanced degrees from
Speaker 3: Colombia and like admiralty law.
Speaker 1: And what even is that? First of all, is it
Speaker 1: like maritime stuff are similar? Yes, And I believe also
Speaker 1: one of them was quite a talented pianist.
Speaker 3: Is Langley played at Carnegie Hall and was followed by
Speaker 3: the famous pianists at the time, Padrewski, but Paaterewski quote
Speaker 3: got better notices than Hey, so he gave up the piano.
Speaker 1: So, you know, it can always be discouraging to work
Speaker 1: that grind of the music industry, regardless of the era
Speaker 1: in which you live. Let's talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: what this timeline of degradation looks like. Because while they
Speaker 1: were infamous in their neighborhood and their community, especially as
Speaker 1: things started to get worse and worse for them mentally
Speaker 1: and you know, Homer got a stroke, they started becoming
Speaker 1: more and more reclusive. Right. They didn't reach national attention
Speaker 1: until nineteen thirty eight, when the New York Times reported
Speaker 1: a false story about them and said that they had
Speaker 1: turned down an offer of one hundred and twenty five
Speaker 1: grand for their house.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's a lot of strange sort of tabloid a.
Speaker 3: New York had eleven newspapers in those days. There was
Speaker 3: lots of lots of things that sort of bounce around
Speaker 3: in an echo chamber, I suppose. So there's a lot
Speaker 3: of strange leads that you can follow with the Collier
Speaker 3: brothers that you never really get an answer to. I
Speaker 3: should say that Homer quits his job, Langley stops playing
Speaker 3: the piano, their father has moved back to Manhattan. At
Speaker 3: some point, they stay in the house with their mother
Speaker 3: and really sort of start shuddering in in their you know,
Speaker 3: in their sort of mid twenties.
Speaker 1: And then their mother passes away.
Speaker 3: She passes away and is buried in some sort of
Speaker 3: bizarre kind of cult like ceremony. She just whisked out
Speaker 3: of a window one night and taken to a seminary
Speaker 3: that's very far away on foot. And it's never in
Speaker 3: the paper or anything. There's no obituary. She's she's just
Speaker 3: gone one day, and they wanted to keep it private.
Speaker 3: I suppose after that they more or less had no
Speaker 3: contact with the outside world.
Speaker 2: I believe Homer lost his eyesight and became essentially legally blind, you.
Speaker 3: Know, and he I'm gonna illustrate it for you here,
Speaker 3: had rheumatism and was doubled up like this with his
Speaker 3: knees below his chin.
Speaker 1: So for the description, just since we're an audio show,
Speaker 1: Alex has assumed a somewhat fetal esque position with both
Speaker 1: legs folded up against his chest and his arms folded
Speaker 1: around holding his legs.
Speaker 3: Oh I made this part, that's all you. No, the
Speaker 3: arms is just me, that's my thing. But so the
Speaker 3: poor guy. Yeah, and in his thirties this happened. I
Speaker 3: believe lost his eyesight. Langley became his brother's keeper, and
Speaker 3: I mean, I really do think they were. They loved
Speaker 3: each other and were very dutiful to each other. Langley
Speaker 3: devised this scheme of feeding his brother one hundred oranges
Speaker 3: a day in orders who regained his eyesight. That's one
Speaker 3: of the poll quotes we have left of Langley Collier.
Speaker 3: And he saved him newspapers, hundreds of thousands of newspapers
Speaker 3: when he could read again, when he could read again,
Speaker 3: which is heartbreaking and sweet. These newspapers obviously are yellowing, rotting.
Speaker 3: Sure they're you know, it's a four story, humongous mansion.
Speaker 3: Langley made them into arches and tunnels and made an
Speaker 3: inner framework for their mansion out of newspapers and all
Speaker 3: kinds of other to tris. I mean, there's really no
Speaker 3: I have incredibly long lists of this stuff that I've
Speaker 3: I've pulled from different sources.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, let's see baby carriages, rusted bikes, Because apparently
Speaker 1: Langley was so Homer never sought medical help for his rheumatism.
Speaker 1: Is that correct?
Speaker 3: Well, it's hard to say. It's hard to be absolute
Speaker 3: about anything. I mean, you know, like I said, we
Speaker 3: have the one book and either there there's there's things
Speaker 3: that we just want to never know.
Speaker 1: Best we have for primary source because it sounds like
Speaker 1: a lot of the headlines of the time, the contemporary
Speaker 1: papers you mentioned were just reporting stuff that would sell papers.
Speaker 3: Uh, there was we don't actually don't talk about this
Speaker 3: in the episode, but there's one reporter, Helen Warden is
Speaker 3: her name. Langley sort of took a liking to her.
Speaker 3: She was waiting outside of his apartment or outside of
Speaker 3: the brownstone one day around midnight he came out to
Speaker 3: make his nightly rounds. He would walk around the city
Speaker 3: and just drag a cardboard box with a string behind him, Yeah,
Speaker 3: and fill it up with just whatever stuff he came across,
Speaker 3: all kinds of things. She met him out there one
Speaker 3: one night at the at the outside the brownstone, and
Speaker 3: he just sort of started unloading information on her. She
Speaker 3: made mention of maybe visiting inside the house one day,
Speaker 3: and he's and that's when he stopped and took off.
Speaker 1: Oh, Wow. Yeah, and this is this is interesting because
Speaker 1: around this maybe around this is after the time when
Speaker 1: Langley began not going out until midnight, right, and then
Speaker 1: returning home with junk. I So one of the things
Speaker 1: that people familiar with this story probably always mentioned. It's
Speaker 1: certainly a thing that I bet producers would mention when
Speaker 1: they're talking about fictional adaptations, will be the booby traps.
Speaker 1: Were the booby traps real? That's a question people.
Speaker 3: They were very real.
Speaker 1: That's the big kicker.
Speaker 2: I mean talking about this labyrinthine infrastructure of garbage essentially, right.
Speaker 1: I mean it was like walled up kind.
Speaker 3: Of every window, every door full.
Speaker 2: And they rigged it so that things would literally, if
Speaker 2: they were intruders or dare we say, some sort of
Speaker 2: like tomb raider type situation, people would get got.
Speaker 3: They just they really wanted to be left alone. I mean,
Speaker 3: there certainly is some paranoia and some fear built into
Speaker 3: that collection collecting habit.
Speaker 1: I heard that the booby traps were not not a
Speaker 1: thing that they had just come up with out of
Speaker 1: the blue. I heard it was a reaction to a
Speaker 1: number of attempted burglaries on the house. When people began
Speaker 1: to think that they were hoarding not only junk but
Speaker 1: also a financial fortune, so maybe there was some logic
Speaker 1: behind it.
Speaker 3: They were from a well to do family. At some
Speaker 3: point they reportedly owned a large section of waterfront in
Speaker 3: New York. Oh wow, Actually their parents were like cousins
Speaker 3: and oh.
Speaker 1: That well to do.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it came over on the speed well from England. Yes,
Speaker 3: so I don't know if anyone ever tried to actually
Speaker 3: burgle their house, but there's certainly you know, all their
Speaker 3: utilities got cut off one after the other, so people
Speaker 3: from the city would try to get in their house.
Speaker 3: Police officers absolutely, and you know Langley would occasionally just
Speaker 3: sort of reach his head out the window and scream
Speaker 3: go away, or they would just say nothing to them.
Speaker 3: It sort of brings you right to this fateful day.
Speaker 1: Oh are you talking about in nineteen forty seven, March
Speaker 1: twenty first, when police received an anonymous tip.
Speaker 3: That is the very that's very damn talking about.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: No, you're in this episode, in the recreation of this
Speaker 3: that we do. Oh, that's right, what did I do?
Speaker 2: It's been so long.
Speaker 1: You've been working on this for such a long time.
Speaker 1: You've been doing recreations. I have don't get it.
Speaker 3: Absolutely you will you and Chuck are you know, maybe
Speaker 3: we'll leave it to the listeners, fair to go seek
Speaker 3: it out with this. Your voice and our friend and
Speaker 3: colleague Chuck Bryant are intertwined in this.
Speaker 1: That's awesome.
Speaker 2: This is the one where the cops like yelling up
Speaker 2: at the window. I do remember this now, Okay, that's
Speaker 2: ringing a bell. I'm no spoilers there, but yeah, definitely
Speaker 2: that's the kind of stuff you can expect in this show.
Speaker 2: It's not only you know, it's not like this whereas
Speaker 2: me and Ben Gavin about history. It's a real experiential
Speaker 2: thing and it's got a lot of these kind of
Speaker 2: cool production touches that really make it special.
Speaker 3: But what happened that day? So this is what we're said.
Speaker 3: March twenty first, nineteen forty seven, that faithful day, the
Speaker 3: police receive an anonymous phone call. Well, Charles Smith is
Speaker 3: the guy who gives the phone call. Never we've never
Speaker 3: been able to fall up and Charles Smith.
Speaker 1: So Alex did the air quotes there.
Speaker 3: So I forgot that doesn't come through. Charle Smith calls
Speaker 3: the police and reports a body at the Collier Residence.
Speaker 3: Police show up. Police that have been there before know
Speaker 3: this place is booby trapped, so they proceed with caution.
Speaker 3: But they do break down the door and it is
Speaker 3: walled up with junk. They can't get through. They start
Speaker 3: axing their way through, and vapor of decay erupts out
Speaker 3: onto the street.
Speaker 1: Miasthma may see very much.
Speaker 2: It's sort of like Atlanta in the summer. It's all
Speaker 2: coming very much, so for.
Speaker 3: Basically a whole day, they're trying to get in different ways.
Speaker 3: It's all tunneled. They know that there's booby traps, things
Speaker 3: like feces and jars and bricks and nails and things
Speaker 3: like that, really terrible, horrible things that could very much
Speaker 3: injure a person. Someone breaks through, takes a letter up
Speaker 3: to the second story, breaks through a window and finds
Speaker 3: Homer Callier doubled up as he always is in the corner,
Speaker 3: but he's shriveled up and dead.
Speaker 1: How long had he been dead? Did it seem, for
Speaker 1: lack of a better word, fresh, or was the corpse.
Speaker 3: Like well, I'm not sure how soon they were able
Speaker 3: to determine it, but it had been a while. Oh wow,
Speaker 3: it had been a while. And then the real question
Speaker 3: was where's Langley? Has he killed his brother? Has he fled?
Speaker 3: And the search that went on took weeks to find
Speaker 3: Langley Collier.
Speaker 1: Did they search the city or the house?
Speaker 3: It was an international search. Oh wow, yeah, like I said,
Speaker 3: eleven newspapers New York at the time. So that echo
Speaker 3: chamber is going crazy. Langley Colliers are getting cited everywhere
Speaker 3: in different cities in the Carolinas and Chicago on trains,
Speaker 3: extra extra There's a moment where a guy there's a
Speaker 3: photograph that gets published in some paper of a guy
Speaker 3: literally holding a sign that says, I am not Langley
Speaker 3: because he's got kind of like a little beard and
Speaker 3: a little scruffy and maybe looks a bit like one
Speaker 3: of the Caller brothers.
Speaker 1: So this is all clearly building to a conclusion of sorts.
Speaker 1: It turns out, however, that Langley Caller has not crossed
Speaker 1: the Atlantic, he has not smuggled himself into Canada or Mexico.
Speaker 1: Where exactly is he.
Speaker 3: It's very tragic. He's found ten feet from where his
Speaker 3: brother Homer was found. And it's a number of weeks later.
Speaker 3: There was so much junk, and they'd spent all this
Speaker 3: time clearing it, police and firefighters clearing it, then eventually
Speaker 3: professional cleaning crews or clearing crews rather just ten feet
Speaker 3: from his brother, he was coming to bring him food
Speaker 3: and caught one of his own booby traps. Oh no
Speaker 3: died there, and Homer died of neglect. He hadn't been fed.
Speaker 3: And so you end up with this, like what Noel
Speaker 3: was talking about earlier, this sort of bizarre, stranger than
Speaker 3: fiction tale that's embedded in folklore, and it reads a
Speaker 3: bit like a morality tale. But then I don't know
Speaker 3: what it is that the Caller brothers did that was
Speaker 3: so wrong, Like I think I say in the episode,
Speaker 3: I mean, probably they should have paid their taxes and stuff.
Speaker 3: But it's also a.
Speaker 2: Very distinctly New York kind of story where it's like
Speaker 2: you're surrounded by people. Being in New York, every inch,
Speaker 2: every scrap of space is used up, is you know, occupied,
Speaker 2: and you have no like there's no sense of freedom
Speaker 2: kind of when you're walking around New York, like it's
Speaker 2: a beautiful place and there's a lot going on, but
Speaker 2: it does have this claustrophobic feeling to it. Anyway, So
Speaker 2: the idea that especially now knowing we know about real
Speaker 2: estate prices and all that that two men would just
Speaker 2: like own this quite opulent setup and just allow it
Speaker 2: to become this absolute nightmare in that way, and it
Speaker 2: speaks to kind of the cluttered feeling of New York
Speaker 2: as a city. I think it's a very interesting parallel there.
Speaker 2: And yes, is there anything wrong with being a hoarder
Speaker 2: or collecting things or any of that stuff. No, but
Speaker 2: this speaks to something I think a little bigger than that,
Speaker 2: and that paranoia and the fact that these two were
Speaker 2: all they had and they got into this, like, you know,
Speaker 2: kind of cycle of just not wanting anybody else to
Speaker 2: be in their lives at all, and yet they're living
Speaker 2: in the most populous place in the country where there's
Speaker 2: so much culturally going on in such an interesting time
Speaker 2: and history too.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: Franz Lids calls it a New Yorker's worst nightmare.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know. For me, this also calls to mind
Speaker 1: a documentary called Cropsy. Are You Familiar with Us? Cropsy
Speaker 1: is a documentary about an urban legend regarding a boogeyman
Speaker 1: like figure that's stall people in this in the area
Speaker 1: surrounding a place called the Willowbrook Mental Institution. Which had
Speaker 1: been closed down and in the in the course of
Speaker 1: this documentary, they find that this boogeyman like figure, this
Speaker 1: modern urban legend, is based on fact, and there is
Speaker 1: a real uh, there is a a pearl of truth
Speaker 1: inside this this lambjel of scary urban folklore. We got
Speaker 1: there so uglier than a Joe Montana pass.
Speaker 3: I have seen that documentary, but I didn't remember it
Speaker 3: until you start talking about it. It's good. Yeah, it's
Speaker 3: a worthwhile documentary. I need to rewatch that.
Speaker 1: Now you've heard us talk a little bit about the
Speaker 1: Caller Brothers, folks, but if you want to truly experience
Speaker 1: the story, which goes much deeper than what we've discussed here,
Speaker 1: we highly recommend that you get thee too your favorite
Speaker 1: podcast app of choice story on the seventeenth of June
Speaker 1: to talk out to check out the call your Brother's Story. However,
Speaker 1: there are other episodes of Ephemeral available now. Like, as
Speaker 1: you're listening to this, please listen to the rest of
Speaker 1: our show before you listen to the next one. But
Speaker 1: what are some topics that really stuck out in your
Speaker 1: mind that you've published recently.
Speaker 3: Well, we've just published an episode with interviews Sarah Wasserman,
Speaker 3: who's a professor at the University of Delaware, is basically
Speaker 3: an ephemera teacher. Oh wow, yeah, and so she's the
Speaker 3: person who can really answer some of the tough questions
Speaker 3: that we brought up at the top of the show.
Speaker 3: The episode before that is a study of Ottoman American
Speaker 3: diaspora music. You might say, what immigrants from the collapsing
Speaker 3: Ottoman Empire in the early part of the twentieth century,
Speaker 3: the teens, twenties, thirties, fleeing like people are from all
Speaker 3: over the world coming to America and recording heart stopping
Speaker 3: beautiful music in New York, mostly Chicago for big labels
Speaker 3: like Columbia Victor and then also some small independent labels too.
Speaker 3: So music in Greek and Arabic that has largely, almost
Speaker 3: entirely been forgotten, These records that were pressed in limited
Speaker 3: quantities because of some sort of racist practices at that time.
Speaker 1: That's astonishing. You know, part of the area where I
Speaker 1: and one of our colleagues, Dylan Fakean is from in
Speaker 1: Tennessee is has a huge population of Lebanese immigrants who
Speaker 1: have left. I think Lebanon was, at least in name
Speaker 1: ruled by the Ottoman Empire until that collapse from what
Speaker 1: post World War One nineteen eighteen ish. And I think
Speaker 1: I've heard some of I have to listen to this.
Speaker 1: I think I've heard something that might qualify in this
Speaker 1: genre that's bizarre to me.
Speaker 3: And I mean there's all kinds it's not. There's all
Speaker 3: kinds of music in it. There's party songs, there are
Speaker 3: heartbreak songs, and there's fantastic singing and ood playing and
Speaker 3: things that I don't really have the vernacular to describe.
Speaker 3: But we interview in this episode, and really where all
Speaker 3: of the inspiration for it came from is a gentleman
Speaker 3: named Ian Nagoski who is in Baltimore and does reissue
Speaker 3: records of this stuff, literally sometimes pulls them out of
Speaker 3: the trash. I've seen pictures of some of these records
Speaker 3: that they have that are so abused, and does everything
Speaker 3: he can to salvage them, to save them, to learn
Speaker 3: as much as he can about the performers. Sometimes you
Speaker 3: can't find anything. Sometimes you get lucky and to spread
Speaker 3: the word about it. So it's a fantastic interview that
Speaker 3: that's part of that and the music and it is
Speaker 3: it's some of my favorite music now I.
Speaker 1: Would love to hear it, and don't have to take
Speaker 1: our word for it. You can tune in and check
Speaker 1: out this music yourself.
Speaker 2: And that's the thing what you're gonna get with this
Speaker 2: show is the conceit of the show is such a
Speaker 2: cool one, but it also allows for such a broad
Speaker 2: range of topics, which I think is really important even
Speaker 2: for a show like what we do. Like our only
Speaker 2: lynchpin is that these stories are in some way bizarre, strange,
Speaker 2: or ridiculous or hilarious, and so that gives us like
Speaker 2: kind of carte blanche to let go in all kinds
Speaker 2: of different directions. Similarly with your show. Very different show,
Speaker 2: but very similar heart in terms of just like being
Speaker 2: fascinated by things and wanting to get answers to why
Speaker 2: things play out the way they do in history, and
Speaker 2: just kind of I think anyone that is into this
Speaker 2: show even remotely is going to be very much into
Speaker 2: your show as well.
Speaker 1: To me, it's a there's something about it, and please
Speaker 1: take this for the profound compliment it is that reminds
Speaker 1: me of the free associative nature of the film Waking Life,
Speaker 1: the way that it connects in this very very intentional
Speaker 1: but a dreamlike state. You know what I mean? This
Speaker 1: is this is one of the podcasts that I hear
Speaker 1: a ton of shows, but this is one of the
Speaker 1: ones that comes with a very new and unique voice.
Speaker 1: And I mean that sincerely.
Speaker 3: You can compare me to Richard Linkletter anytime. I'm fine
Speaker 3: with that.
Speaker 1: So it looks like we're going to We're going to
Speaker 1: have to save our our own explorations of things that
Speaker 1: came and went for another day. But shout out to
Speaker 1: Pizzeria Chips. I miss you if you're listening. If a
Speaker 1: big demo of our show is extinct.
Speaker 2: Sentient pizzeria chips. Yeah, extinct potato chips terrifying. I gained satpiens.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I was going to talk about Beta Max tapes that
Speaker 2: were only literally killed. Production was killed by Sony like
Speaker 2: in twenty sixteen, and I believe they stopped distributing the
Speaker 2: players and recorders of Beta max tapes only a couple
Speaker 2: of years before that. But that used to be kind
Speaker 2: of the like go to for high resolution news footage
Speaker 2: and archiving. And now I actually have a stack of
Speaker 2: Beta max is on my desk right now that I'm
Speaker 2: trying to find a place that can transfer them digitally,
Speaker 2: and there are folks that still have them, whether they're
Speaker 2: news agencies or like companies that specialize in digitizing your
Speaker 2: family memories. That's big business now because of this nature
Speaker 2: of epemera. And not only is the medium antiquated now,
Speaker 2: the way of playing it back is gone or much
Speaker 2: more scarce. And that says that you have a really
Speaker 2: great trailer for your show that's all about answering machine
Speaker 2: messages and how that used to be such a cultural
Speaker 2: thing that people would do and it was important to
Speaker 2: leave a really good message and just the idea of
Speaker 2: these things that kind of came and went left an impression,
Speaker 2: and now it's almost this kind of like specter that
Speaker 2: like hangs over society and it's really interesting looking forward
Speaker 2: to hearing more from a femoral with Alex Williams.
Speaker 1: I'm going to I'm going to save that. I have
Speaker 1: this great list that I'm going to save and post
Speaker 1: on our Facebook page later for ridiculous historians. Because I
Speaker 1: did an okay job just mentioning pizzerias. It's really hard
Speaker 1: not to just immediately start talking about them. So I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna like mention some things that left and then
Speaker 1: we'll pick it up later. So check us out on
Speaker 1: our Facebook page, Ridiculous Historians. You should be able to
Speaker 1: find a femeral wherever you find your favorite podcast like
Speaker 1: Ridiculous History and so on. In the meantime, Alex, thank
Speaker 1: you so much for coming on the show. Actually another
Speaker 1: started with a peak behind the curtain. Let's end with one.
Speaker 1: Our office actually closed a few hours ago and we
Speaker 1: were able to convince you to stay over and take
Speaker 1: this strange journey with us.
Speaker 3: You know before, I feel like i'd be remiss to
Speaker 3: not mention that Ridiculous History was the first show that
Speaker 3: I helped make. That's very beginning it was. It was
Speaker 3: the three of us at the very very beginning of it.
Speaker 2: And Alex, I'm not sure if you know this or not.
Speaker 2: You've got so much on your play. We thank you
Speaker 2: at the end of every episode for the wonderful theme
Speaker 2: that you composed. So now we can do our little
Speaker 2: thank yous, and we can do it in person. Thanks
Speaker 2: to Alex Williams who composed our theme and for being
Speaker 2: here today for an interview.
Speaker 3: I did know that you've thought and I very much
Speaker 3: appreciate it. Yeah, thank you.
Speaker 1: We are big fans of thanking people in this show.
Speaker 1: I'd also like to thank super producer Ramsey, ram Jams
Speaker 1: you owns, thank you so much for saving the show. Ramsey,
Speaker 1: thanks for having me. Guys, absolutely our pleasure.
Speaker 2: Thanks to super Producey Casey Pegrim here in spirit, not forgotten,
Speaker 2: gallavanting around Paris right now living his best second life.
Speaker 2: And thanks to Christopher Haciotis you know, also here in spirit.
Speaker 1: Thanks to Jonathan Strickland aka the Quiztor, as well as
Speaker 1: our research associate gabe El, who desperately needs a nickname,
Speaker 1: so send some suggestions our way.
Speaker 2: Ben, Thanks to you for always being a friend and
Speaker 2: a confidant down that road back again you know the drill.
Speaker 1: Yeah, thanks to you as well. Noel. We are gone
Speaker 1: for today. This ends our episode, but not our show.
Speaker 1: You can also find us on our aforementioned Facebook page.
Speaker 1: You can find us on Twitter. You can find us
Speaker 1: at Instagram. You can also find our weird personal Shenanigans,
Speaker 1: misadventures and malarkey on our personal instagrams. I am at
Speaker 1: Ben Bolin.
Speaker 2: I actually has changed my handle. I am now at
Speaker 2: how now Noel Brown and where can they check out
Speaker 2: ephemeral on the social media's alex at ephemeral show.
Speaker 1: We'll see you next time, folks Hi.
Speaker 2: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 2: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.