Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know from how Stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh
Speaker 1: Clark with Charles W. Chuck Bryant with Jerry. We're eating
Speaker 1: barbecue style. Actually it's not true. This is I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna fess up. We don't have any barbecue in front
Speaker 1: of listening. It sucks. Yeah, you're right, Uh, vegetarians and
Speaker 1: vegans may not be interested in this one. It's still interesting.
Speaker 1: I would never encourage someone to tune out, but um,
Speaker 1: I have I do all the time. Do you sure
Speaker 1: some jerk rights? And it's like, oh, how sounds like
Speaker 1: you're still going on Caney all the time, Like, don't
Speaker 1: go listen to something else? Pal okay, I see what
Speaker 1: you mean. I mean before we record a podcast. On
Speaker 1: the podcast, as we record a podcast at the beginning
Speaker 1: of the oh gotcha, I don't say like, hey, you
Speaker 1: might not want to listen to this, but um, yeah,
Speaker 1: you might not want to listen to this. But I
Speaker 1: imagine if a vegan saw how Barbecue Works probably be like, yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll just wait. Yeah, they're probably not going to fall
Speaker 1: for it, wait for the Tofu episode, which we owe them.
Speaker 1: Now after doing this one I had fried tofu and
Speaker 1: uh Chicago, No no, no. In Toronto at our recent
Speaker 1: show there it was. It was one of those sushi
Speaker 1: places where they bring you out a little piece of
Speaker 1: fried tofu. Yeah. Oh man, I can't believe I'm blanking,
Speaker 1: but yes, I know what you mean. Is that like
Speaker 1: a there's your name for it, like the custom of
Speaker 1: it or no, the dish the piece of fried tofu
Speaker 1: with a little maybe Ponzi sauce on it and some
Speaker 1: scaions delicious. This one was okay, but it was that
Speaker 1: it was one of the worst sushi meals I've ever
Speaker 1: had in my life. I just chose wrong, like bad
Speaker 1: sushi or bad rest, bad everything I walked in And
Speaker 1: it's hard to tell because no, no, no, I won't
Speaker 1: name it. I don't even remember that. No no, that's
Speaker 1: the name of the dish. Oh yeah. Um. Like in
Speaker 1: l A, some of the best sushi are these strip
Speaker 1: mall holes in the wall. Sometimes sometimes it's not the case,
Speaker 1: though sometimes it is though, Like literally, some of the
Speaker 1: best sushi that you don't have to go to some
Speaker 1: fancy place and spend four are these you know, small
Speaker 1: family run run by Japanese people. Um. This one in Toronto.
Speaker 1: I looked up afterward and they were like, oh, it's
Speaker 1: one of those. Apparently Toronto has a lot of Chinese
Speaker 1: run sushi places which get knocked on Yelp and by reviewers,
Speaker 1: and um. You could also make the case that um
Speaker 1: places that serve sushi and Thai food knocked on as well. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I don't usually order sushi, but at a Thai restaurant,
Speaker 1: if I go to a tie place, I want a
Speaker 1: good tie dish. Sure you want like a curry, put
Speaker 1: some peanuts in there or something there some peanuts on there.
Speaker 1: But anyway, I chose wrong, and this was a hole
Speaker 1: in the wall place. So when I walked in, my
Speaker 1: instinct was like, oh no, but I thought no, no,
Speaker 1: no Los Angeles, Hollywood. Really good stuff at the holes
Speaker 1: in the wall, not the case bad fish, bad taste.
Speaker 1: What was just it skive to me? And like if
Speaker 1: you're skiveed eating sushi, yeah that's put down the chopsticks
Speaker 1: and just ask for the check, maybe spit up into
Speaker 1: your nap walk away. Anyway, I don't know why I
Speaker 1: went off on that. What we're talking about barbecue, all right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're talking barbecue. Barbecue. This one made me hungry, dude,
Speaker 1: same here. Um. One of the things that I really
Speaker 1: opened my eyes about though, was the idea that like
Speaker 1: people think of barbecue as about as American as it gets,
Speaker 1: even though Australians have their own word for the bobby
Speaker 1: and that pretty good. And it turns out there's barbecue
Speaker 1: like all around the world. But when you think of barbecue,
Speaker 1: especially like barbecued pork with barbecue sauce on like two
Speaker 1: slices of plain old Dixie Girl white bread, that's about
Speaker 1: as American as it gets. So not just American like
Speaker 1: Southern American barbecue. There's actually a strip of land known
Speaker 1: as the barbecue Belt in the United States basically goes
Speaker 1: from Virginia down into the southeast and then over across
Speaker 1: Kansas and then into Texas. That's the barbecue Belt in
Speaker 1: the US. Correct, But barbecue is now every city in
Speaker 1: the country tries to do their their own hand at barbecue.
Speaker 1: Like I mean, if you go to New York City,
Speaker 1: you can go eat at a barbecue joint. Uh, and
Speaker 1: they're trying to do it. You know that they're trying
Speaker 1: to Yeah, which is fine, they're but they're trying to
Speaker 1: not co opt because that sounds like it's like shady
Speaker 1: or something. But you know, you go to New York
Speaker 1: now and you can get like you can go to
Speaker 1: and get fried chicken and biscuits and barbecue and all
Speaker 1: these people that are like, come to New York City
Speaker 1: and eat this good old southern home cooking. Have you
Speaker 1: eaten a Fatty Queue in New York that's very good
Speaker 1: barbecue for New York joint? Yeah, And I just I
Speaker 1: don't do that because when I'm in New York, why
Speaker 1: would I get what I is literally surrounding me here.
Speaker 1: I want to go to New York and I want
Speaker 1: to go get go to the Mama Fuco or something.
Speaker 1: I don't have that here. It's steam bun while you
Speaker 1: can get steam buns here. Yeah. But I mean, you
Speaker 1: can make the case that you should be going to
Speaker 1: Korea for steam buns. But it is true. And there's
Speaker 1: nothing wrong with if somebody opening a good barbecue joint
Speaker 1: outside of the barbecue belt, it's just for it. In
Speaker 1: the barbecue belt, they don't even think about it. It's
Speaker 1: just part of the fabric of life. But I guarantee
Speaker 1: you if you go to San Francisco to a barbecue joint.
Speaker 1: You're not going to be the same. It's going to
Speaker 1: be different. They'll like a Chinese sushi place. There you go.
Speaker 1: That's the point of my story. So UM. The point
Speaker 1: ultimately is that when you think of America having a
Speaker 1: barbecue belt, you think a barbecue as profoundly American. Sure,
Speaker 1: but it turns out that since you were talking about
Speaker 1: cultural appropriation, UM, that the European settlers who came to
Speaker 1: the New World um actually appropriated. They got the idea
Speaker 1: for a barbecue from the indigenous groups they encountered there,
Speaker 1: and specifically, to start from what I understand, the whole
Speaker 1: thing started on Hispaniola, where Columbus first landed Um with
Speaker 1: the Tano Indians. Yeah, I mean cooking. I guess if
Speaker 1: you want to talk barbecue, there's a couple of ways
Speaker 1: to approach it. There is the noun barbecue, which here
Speaker 1: in the South in America we think of is like
Speaker 1: you said, pulled pork, maybe brisket, smoked wings, and then
Speaker 1: side dishes like cold slaw, baked beans, mac and cheese,
Speaker 1: brunswick ste man so good. Maybe if you're getting a
Speaker 1: little wild, maybe like collared greens or fried okra and
Speaker 1: monkey eyes that sort of starts to there's a bit
Speaker 1: of an overlap between Southern meat and three cooking and barbecue,
Speaker 1: especially when it comes to the sides um, and I
Speaker 1: think all that actually grow to church picnics originally. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I did some good eating growing up at my church
Speaker 1: and meet and three for those of you that don't
Speaker 1: understand in other countries, that means um, a little small
Speaker 1: family run restaurant, usually in the South, that you get
Speaker 1: to meat and then three sides, generally served on like
Speaker 1: a cafeteria tray. And we're talking stuff like fried pork
Speaker 1: chops or fried chicken, or chicken, fried chicken, chicken, fried chicken, chicken,
Speaker 1: fried steak, chicken, fried steak, steak, fried chicken, fried steak,
Speaker 1: fried chicken, fried monkey eyes, and then all these various
Speaker 1: sides will be the three. But there's a little bit
Speaker 1: over that lap with barbecue. But barbecue, the distinction is
Speaker 1: you're talking about meats that are cooked over a low heat,
Speaker 1: generally over a long long period of time. Yeah, hours
Speaker 1: and hours, hours and hours. We'll get in it all
Speaker 1: the subtleties of this, but that's what barbecue really is,
Speaker 1: right and normally, if you really if you're a purist um.
Speaker 1: You're it's specifically pig. Anything else outside of pig is
Speaker 1: not barbecue, whether it's chickens, sausage, whether it's shrimp, whether
Speaker 1: it's brisket. If it's not pig, it's not barbecue. Say
Speaker 1: a substantial portion of barbecue enthusiasts. Yeah, I say you
Speaker 1: can just take that and uh then run away with it.
Speaker 1: Take that, take that pig and shove it. Well, the
Speaker 1: reason it's actually that that whole thing kind of is
Speaker 1: the crux that is found in a nine Esquire article
Speaker 1: called My Pig Beats Your Cow, which basically argues that
Speaker 1: if it's not pig, it's not barbecue. And the reason
Speaker 1: that that would be the cases because barbecue is it
Speaker 1: came out of the American South as far back as
Speaker 1: the beginning of the eighteenth century, and the stuff that
Speaker 1: they were originally cooking was pig. And the reason why
Speaker 1: they were cooking pig was because that's what they had
Speaker 1: available to them. And there was a specific reason for
Speaker 1: cooking pig, like you said, low and slow, very long
Speaker 1: time over a lowish heat. It's because the pigs that
Speaker 1: they were originally cooking were had been turned out to
Speaker 1: feed fend for themselves out in the woods. Because if
Speaker 1: you are running low on food, because you know you're
Speaker 1: a colonist to a new place where you have no
Speaker 1: idea what you're doing. You one thing you can do
Speaker 1: with pigs and say, just go out in the woods
Speaker 1: and eat some truffles and then will come kill you
Speaker 1: later and eat you. Well. As they're doing that, they're
Speaker 1: becoming like kind of like wood ready and like their leaner.
Speaker 1: Their meat is tougher, there's less fat. So to cook
Speaker 1: that kind of food and make it tender, you have
Speaker 1: to cook it over low heat for a very long time.
Speaker 1: And that's where barbecuing pig in the South originally came from.
Speaker 1: That's the origin of barbecue. Yeah. And what's so cool
Speaker 1: to me is um from the oranges, oranges from the origins,
Speaker 1: whether or not it's uh. I think. In two thousand seven,
Speaker 1: Israeli archaeologists found um a two hundred thousand year old
Speaker 1: evidence of barbecuing, essentially barbecuing wild cattle and gazelle. Whether
Speaker 1: it's that or Hispaniola like you were talking about, or
Speaker 1: in the fifteen hundreds uh in Spain, Um or the
Speaker 1: earliest native Americans. What's so cool to me is that
Speaker 1: they learned they first learned cooked meat good, and then
Speaker 1: they learned, oh, but very slow cooked heat meat over
Speaker 1: low heat better. Yeah, you know, like early early on
Speaker 1: they found evidence that and these recipes that they cooked
Speaker 1: slow and low, they actually learned the subtle difference between
Speaker 1: this is charred meat, it will sustain me, it's it
Speaker 1: will last a little bit longer and preserve it. And
Speaker 1: they learned the subtleties that no, it's tender and juicy
Speaker 1: and delicious, but do it this way. Yeah, it's just
Speaker 1: amazing to me. Yeah, and again we've known it for
Speaker 1: hundreds of thousands of years at least. There's actually a
Speaker 1: theory that says that the intelligence explosion in humans came
Speaker 1: about from cooking our food, especially meat, because it requires
Speaker 1: less energy to digest, which meant we could take a
Speaker 1: lot of that digestive energy and directed upward to our brains,
Speaker 1: and so our brains got bigger, and hence we got
Speaker 1: smarter things to cooking our food. Yeah, and there's something
Speaker 1: to uh, And they talk about this in the beginning
Speaker 1: of our article here um being the antithesis of fast food.
Speaker 1: There's something about investing, something about getting up at three
Speaker 1: in the morning to put your your meat on your
Speaker 1: smoker so you can have it ready by midday, and
Speaker 1: tending to it every hour and checking that thermometer and
Speaker 1: the whole time that's starting at three am, um or
Speaker 1: continuing from two am. Yeah, that's that makes sometimes for
Speaker 1: a messy barbecue. But there's just something to that. I
Speaker 1: think it's I think that's one of the big draws
Speaker 1: for people. Is it is Uh. It's not something you
Speaker 1: slap on the grill and served fifteen minutes later. It's
Speaker 1: nuanced and and that's how you build that flavor. Uh.
Speaker 1: And it's an investment in time and you can have
Speaker 1: the conversations around that fire. And this one writer put it,
Speaker 1: really Robert Moss, to trace the history of barbecue is
Speaker 1: to trace the very threat of American history. And there's
Speaker 1: been books written about it, not just recipes, but about
Speaker 1: it as a cultural staple in this country. Really really neat. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm hungry. You want to take a break? So hungry?
Speaker 1: M alright, So we're back, man. I mean that was delicious.
Speaker 1: That's the sound of me flicking sauce off my fingers. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we uh took one of Jerry's legs barbecue, Arie do lean,
Speaker 1: she would make good barbecue. Well, no, that's why you
Speaker 1: want a barbecue slowing. So Um, like you said, there's
Speaker 1: evidence of us barbecuing is back as far back as
Speaker 1: two hundred thousand years the ancient Greeks um really advanced barbecuing,
Speaker 1: which sure, it's really just it's a sub type of
Speaker 1: of roasting meat. And it's not like if you're like,
Speaker 1: well wait a minute, people have been like creating this forever.
Speaker 1: How can you say barbecuing as American. It's kind of
Speaker 1: like ketchup, Like remember Ketchup, where you think of Ketchup
Speaker 1: as American, but it actually has its origins and a
Speaker 1: Chinese fish sauce. This is very similar. But like barbecuing
Speaker 1: wouldn't have come about had humans not been doing this
Speaker 1: for two hundred thousand years already. This is just a
Speaker 1: kind of a nuanced version of it, right. Um. So
Speaker 1: around the world people roast meat in various ways, like,
Speaker 1: for example, um, in medieval England they found evidence they
Speaker 1: actually have a taxidermy um sample of of this breed
Speaker 1: of dog called the turnspit, and um no, no, it
Speaker 1: was really cute. So this small dogs they look kind
Speaker 1: of dock Sundy were bred to run on treadmills or
Speaker 1: little hamster wheels too. That was connected by a chain
Speaker 1: to the spit. So it turned this huge piece of
Speaker 1: meat in the fire. Dog though they were small dogs,
Speaker 1: but they were stout. Oh they were turning the huge dog. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're like better him than me. Um, And that was
Speaker 1: in medieval England. Well, you can make a really good
Speaker 1: case that turning a hunk of meat on a spit
Speaker 1: very slowly off an indirect flame that's barbecuing. But it's
Speaker 1: not barbecue because it didn't come out of the American
Speaker 1: South cooking pork specifically. But um, the lot of people
Speaker 1: from the south and west of England ended up in
Speaker 1: the American South, and that's kind of one of the
Speaker 1: ways that it started to grow there. Yeah, so let's
Speaker 1: let's just quit billy dallying de Soto. Well, first Columbus
Speaker 1: shows up encounters the Tano Indians on Hispaniola, who are
Speaker 1: would have been related to um, the Haitians and the
Speaker 1: Dominicans today. Uh, and I believe people in Puerto Rico
Speaker 1: to um. So the Tano Indians had this method of
Speaker 1: cooking meat where they used green wood like fresh saplings,
Speaker 1: so that it wouldn't catch fire and therefore wouldn't char
Speaker 1: the meat either, and they cooked meat like probably goats
Speaker 1: or something like that over this this low heat for
Speaker 1: a very long time. So I think Columbus encountered it,
Speaker 1: but definitely Hernando de Soto did as well when he
Speaker 1: arrived in North America, and supposedly the first European attended
Speaker 1: barbecue took place outside of what's today Tupelo, Mississippi, in
Speaker 1: fifteen forty with De Soto, who is the guy who
Speaker 1: brought pigs to the New World. Could have been my family.
Speaker 1: So it was a roasted pig, Chuck's family, her Nando
Speaker 1: de Soto, and the Chickasaw tribe who lived around there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was the first, the first barbecue in North America
Speaker 1: featuring pig. Yeah. And as you'll see as we go,
Speaker 1: barbecue is very social experience that has weaved its way
Speaker 1: through churches and gatherings and civic groups and American politics,
Speaker 1: and we'll get into all that, but it's it's it's
Speaker 1: not surprising that there's evidence of a group of people
Speaker 1: getting together like any shared meal, but with barbecue, it's
Speaker 1: just gonna be longer. Well, yeah, and supposedly that arose
Speaker 1: out of the slaughtering of a pig was a big deal.
Speaker 1: You had a lot of meat on your hands. They
Speaker 1: used everything from the snout to the tail of the pig,
Speaker 1: so you had a lot of stuff and it was
Speaker 1: way more than your family was going to eat. So
Speaker 1: it was an occasion for the whole community, or at
Speaker 1: least all the neighbors, to be invited over to share
Speaker 1: in this wonderful food. And that's where barbecues being a
Speaker 1: social gathering came out of that. During the colonial era, Uh,
Speaker 1: eating a pig was a very communal affair. Well, and
Speaker 1: we've we've talked before about um I just kind of
Speaker 1: remembered about fire, about the theories that language of all
Speaker 1: because of fire, because for the first time, people gathered
Speaker 1: round after the sun went down to talk about their day.
Speaker 1: So this is kind of along the same lines. Like
Speaker 1: where you have a fire going, you're gonna have people
Speaker 1: hanging out. There's some meat on a spit several feet up.
Speaker 1: You've got some tasty food. Can yourself a turnspit dog?
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, because he wants to crank that thing. Turnspit dog.
Speaker 1: That's what they were bred to do so Native Americans here,
Speaker 1: they kind of improve things over time. They eventually would
Speaker 1: make these wooden frames that they would put the meat on.
Speaker 1: And then in a man named Elsworth, his warrior, patented
Speaker 1: the charcoal briquette, which started being mass produced about twenty
Speaker 1: three years later. You didn't know by whom, Well, I
Speaker 1: would imagine, uh uh, what's the big one now? Kingsford.
Speaker 1: Kingsford was Henry Johnny match like. Kingsford was Henry Ford's
Speaker 1: cousin in law. And Henry Ford was looking for a
Speaker 1: way to use all of these stumps and sawdust that
Speaker 1: was left over from the boards that were produced for
Speaker 1: like the running boards and the dashboards for his model
Speaker 1: T because he wanted he had all this waste and
Speaker 1: he wanted to put it to good use. So he
Speaker 1: started mass producing charcoal briquettes. Yeah, and we're talking about
Speaker 1: wood briquettes. Yeah. Briquette is basically coal, tar, sawdust, sometimes
Speaker 1: corn starch. That's like a that's a wood briquette. Yeah,
Speaker 1: or now the wood briquettes. A lot of times it's
Speaker 1: just real wood, like chunks of wood, like if you're
Speaker 1: a real barbecue enthusiast. You're not gonna be buying these
Speaker 1: submit briquettes. Sure you buy some of those, get some
Speaker 1: open pit barbecue sauce, and you've done. Let's go back
Speaker 1: to bed Um. Nineteen fifties. A man named George Stephen,
Speaker 1: he's a metalworker. He got half attached some legs to
Speaker 1: a half of a spherical nautical booie was the other
Speaker 1: half of the lid. He said, I'm gonna call this
Speaker 1: the Webber kettle grill. I don't know where he got
Speaker 1: the name. I don't either. Did you notice there's a
Speaker 1: webber grill restaurant in Chicago? Really, we saw it walking around.
Speaker 1: You know, they have a giant webber grill outside. It's amazing.
Speaker 1: I have a giant webber grill in my deck. So
Speaker 1: I thought it was weird to point this out because
Speaker 1: he was far from the first person to invent the
Speaker 1: portable backyard grill. Oh really, yeah, been around for a
Speaker 1: long time. Well maybe it was just the kettle Girl.
Speaker 1: He definitely invented the kettle girl, but he was. It's
Speaker 1: just weird that they chose him to point out because
Speaker 1: the backyard portable grill had been around a while. Well,
Speaker 1: maybe it was. This article is underwritten by Weber maybe,
Speaker 1: and I just like Buzz marketed them as owning one Webber,
Speaker 1: I don't too whoa I know, right. So the smoke
Speaker 1: is really I mean slow and low is what we're
Speaker 1: talking about, temperature wise, And we'll get into the specifics
Speaker 1: of that in a minute. But what you're really doing
Speaker 1: is you're you're getting the smoke from whatever type of
Speaker 1: wood or would briquette that you were using in the fire. Um.
Speaker 1: And we're gonna talk about those flavors now. But my advice,
Speaker 1: if you're new to this, you've never done it, go
Speaker 1: out and get some different samples of these various woods.
Speaker 1: And you don't even need to cook with them at first.
Speaker 1: Just light them and smell the smoke and see what
Speaker 1: you like, and then whatever you're drawn to use. That
Speaker 1: good advice, But starting out, if you want to talk barbecue, Um,
Speaker 1: Hickory in the South was widely used, and most of
Speaker 1: these regionally were used because that obviously was the wood
Speaker 1: they had near there. So hickory was abundant in the South.
Speaker 1: A little sweet, very rich, good for good for everything,
Speaker 1: especially monkey guys mesquite uh Texas. Uh. This is where
Speaker 1: you get the more mesquite flavor. And apparently the mesquite
Speaker 1: would was sort of a nuisance. But in Texas they
Speaker 1: got on the beef train obviously and said the stuff
Speaker 1: mesquite wood is really good for beef. Yeah what else? Um,
Speaker 1: apparently fruit wood is good for things like chicken and seafood.
Speaker 1: Does think of bacon when I think apple would apple
Speaker 1: would smoke bacon? Yeah, that's the thing. Um, But yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's good advice. Just whatever you like, it's
Speaker 1: was what you should use. Yeah. And if you don't
Speaker 1: have time to invest in a um would burning briquette,
Speaker 1: like if you have a propane stove, Um, you can
Speaker 1: always I know it's not gonna be is authentic. You
Speaker 1: can always just cheep out and get a one of
Speaker 1: those pans that you can keep the the wood on
Speaker 1: and soak it and that'll that'll give you some extra flavor.
Speaker 1: But it's not gonna be anything like you know, twelve
Speaker 1: hours over a fire, right like a wood fire. You know. Now,
Speaker 1: and if you're if you're starting to get the impression
Speaker 1: that there's a certain level of purity, Yes, so the
Speaker 1: idea of barbecuing, Yes, you you're absolutely correct, and I'm
Speaker 1: not a purist. I'm an amateur. Like I don't have
Speaker 1: a smoker at this point. So at this point maybe
Speaker 1: Webber will send you. At some point I should I
Speaker 1: should probably get one for free. Um. So one of
Speaker 1: the other things that really distinguishes different types of barbecue,
Speaker 1: especially regionally, is or even down to like the individual
Speaker 1: chef or pit masters. We'll see they're called um although
Speaker 1: I guess I just spoiled. That is how you get
Speaker 1: the meat ready to cook. So there's there's really a
Speaker 1: lot of differences in that you're you're getting the meat
Speaker 1: ready to cook, and then what you do to the
Speaker 1: meat afterward. Two is huge as well. But to get
Speaker 1: it ready, there's one of two things you're gonna do
Speaker 1: the meat. You're going to either hit it with a
Speaker 1: dry rub or you're gonna hit it with a wet rub.
Speaker 1: You're gonna do something ahead of time, and you're gonna
Speaker 1: talk to it nicely sure while you spank and um
Speaker 1: with the dry rub. In particular, supposedly there's four s
Speaker 1: is there is are you ready for this? Okay? Sweetness,
Speaker 1: sugar or honey, typically savory like say, garlic, spices and herbs,
Speaker 1: and spicy sensations like pepper or something or ginger. That's
Speaker 1: way more ses than four, especially if you count all
Speaker 1: the pluralization s. Yeah, have you ever made a rub? No?
Speaker 1: Not really? You into this at all? To barbecue? No,
Speaker 1: I I don't barbecue, but um into eating barbecue. You
Speaker 1: You get into this stuff now with cooking, Like I
Speaker 1: could see you smoking a brisket one day and being like, Wow,
Speaker 1: that was rewarding. Give it a shot, okay. Um. Also,
Speaker 1: you also strike me as a type that would be like,
Speaker 1: I don't have time to it's into a grill for
Speaker 1: twelve hours. Well, I mean if there's if if Yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe let's pick the right day. Yeah, I could study
Speaker 1: for the podcast while I'm tending to the fire. So
Speaker 1: I have made dry rubs, and I don't know what
Speaker 1: I'm doing. I just will look at recipes and just
Speaker 1: kind of do my own thing with it. Um. But
Speaker 1: it really makes all the difference if you rub this
Speaker 1: meat down real good, get in all the crevices and
Speaker 1: and nooks and crannies and and let it let it
Speaker 1: just sit with itself for a while. Um. I don't
Speaker 1: add any wetness to it. But you can't add vinegar.
Speaker 1: You can add oil. Um, if you've never done it,
Speaker 1: like I said, get online. There's a million different ways
Speaker 1: you can tackle this beast. Yeah, if you be careful,
Speaker 1: because that's what they call a rabbit hole. Yeah, you're
Speaker 1: going to fall down it when you start just looking
Speaker 1: into rubs. I'm sure that will lead you to this
Speaker 1: and that. Well actually I'm kind of into the Memphis
Speaker 1: style and that kind of thing. So um, after after
Speaker 1: you also want to make sure that you're aware of
Speaker 1: this to start that. Barbecue sauce is the stuff you
Speaker 1: put on right before serving or while you're eating, depending.
Speaker 1: Um all, if you're not into it, sure, some people
Speaker 1: just eat like dry, dryer, wet, rubbed like barbecue. Um,
Speaker 1: I love it with sauce. It just seems wrong to
Speaker 1: eat it without sauce. But yes, some people are into
Speaker 1: it like that. Um, but that's not what a rub is,
Speaker 1: dry or wet. That's that's the sauce that's different. We'll
Speaker 1: talk about that in a little bit. And you kind
Speaker 1: of gave a little um distinction between you gave a
Speaker 1: definition of barbecuing, right, and I said that that like
Speaker 1: roasting meat is basically barbecue any type of roasting meat.
Speaker 1: But there's there's slight definitions. One of the things that
Speaker 1: comes up is the difference between barbecuing and grilling. And
Speaker 1: this one's actually kind of easy. The distinction is it's
Speaker 1: based on time and temperature. Yeah. So with with the barbecue,
Speaker 1: you do that slow and low thing where you're roasting
Speaker 1: for several hours over a relatively low heat. Uh. This
Speaker 1: article says to two fifty, I wonder if that's cannon. Uh. Well,
Speaker 1: I mean it depends definitely. In the low two hundreds
Speaker 1: is a good idea. I think to fifty seems a
Speaker 1: little high. But um, I'm no expert, but grilling is
Speaker 1: hotter and faster. Yeah. And with grilling, I mean there
Speaker 1: are a couple of ways you can grill too. You
Speaker 1: can uh direct grill, which is just really high heat
Speaker 1: if you want to um, sira steak or something, but
Speaker 1: that's not barbecue. Um. And then indirect grilling when it's
Speaker 1: on the grill around three fifty but you've just got
Speaker 1: the coals kind of on one side and then your
Speaker 1: meat on the other. And that's it's kind of the
Speaker 1: middle ground. But the verb barbecue, it's very highly regionalized
Speaker 1: as to what terminology you're gonna use and like, I
Speaker 1: don't say I'm gonna barbecue today, Like I say I'm
Speaker 1: gonna grill out. Do you want to come over? I'm
Speaker 1: grilling out. I don't say we're barbecuing. Some people might
Speaker 1: say smoke instead of barbecue. Yeah, we're gonna smoke out.
Speaker 1: We're gonna we're gonna smoke some meat or something like that. Um.
Speaker 1: But I I think of barbecue as the noun, like
Speaker 1: we'll go get some barbecue or cook some barbecue by
Speaker 1: grilling out. Yeah, it's always out because you don't grow inside.
Speaker 1: That's a bad idea. Um. And then afterwards, so we've
Speaker 1: done preparation, the cooking, and now the thing's ready, but
Speaker 1: it's not ready quite yet because you've got the sauce.
Speaker 1: If you're into sauces, and depending on where you are
Speaker 1: in the country, uh, you're going to use different types
Speaker 1: of sauce. And what I found interesting was that with
Speaker 1: American barbecue, the the Europeans who came in appropriated the
Speaker 1: barbecuing process brought their own tastes to the fold, and
Speaker 1: depending on where they settled, that's that area developed a
Speaker 1: specific type of barbecue sauce. Starting with the Carolinas. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this kind of reminds me of the accents. Thing was
Speaker 1: like the trail that, uh, the accents as the accents
Speaker 1: developed as where people settled, Like food was kind of
Speaker 1: secondary to that or hand in hand with that. Uh yeah,
Speaker 1: North Carolina in Virginia, these were British colonists mainly, and
Speaker 1: they liked tart tarti things, So you're gonna find more
Speaker 1: vinegar based sauces there until you get the South Carolina
Speaker 1: where you have the french Ins and Germans who liked mustard,
Speaker 1: so they have the mustard based sauce. I don't think
Speaker 1: I've ever had that. Uh yeah, I'm not a fan.
Speaker 1: I mean I don't not like it, but it's never
Speaker 1: gonna be my first choice. What was do you remember
Speaker 1: when we hosted that locust thing on Science Channel and
Speaker 1: I went to the barbecue place. It was like a
Speaker 1: legendary barbecue place in South no Greensboro, North Carolina. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was really neat. Yeah, so they had like the
Speaker 1: good vinegar sauce. Yeah, just seeing the inner machinations of
Speaker 1: how a big barbecue place works, right, Yeah, they took
Speaker 1: us back to where the fire was. Yeah, it was
Speaker 1: pretty good and hot. Uh. If you go a little
Speaker 1: further west, a little about as far west as you
Speaker 1: can to the other end of the barbecue belt, you're
Speaker 1: in Texas, West Texas to be specific. Apparently in East
Speaker 1: Texas they eat basically like Kansas City barbecue or Memphis maybe,
Speaker 1: but in West Texas they get their own And like
Speaker 1: you said, they're not even using pork, it's beef. They're
Speaker 1: cooking brisket over mesquite. That's Texas cowboys style barbecue, which
Speaker 1: some people would argue is not actually barbecue. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: that's because the German immigrants who raised all in the west,
Speaker 1: in West Texas. Um, I love brisket, so yeah, I've
Speaker 1: got no problems with brisket and pulled pork, and me
Speaker 1: I like them both. Like when I woulder like a
Speaker 1: catered if I'm having like a big party or something,
Speaker 1: I would er a catered barbecue, I get one of each.
Speaker 1: The one. Yeah. The one thing I'm not crazy about
Speaker 1: is barbecue chicken. I like it. I mean I make
Speaker 1: it at home because that's a quicker, easier thing to do,
Speaker 1: just like for dinner. Um, but I don't ever order
Speaker 1: that in a barbecue restaurant. I just didn't know what
Speaker 1: a waste. Yeah, I do that home cooking. Sure. Uh,
Speaker 1: Memphis style. Um, they were a port town because of
Speaker 1: the Mississippi River right there, and so they could get
Speaker 1: molasses more readily. So that's why Memphis has a very
Speaker 1: sweet tomato base sauce. Yeah, delicious. Which and then have
Speaker 1: you heard of Alabama barbecue before? I had not, so
Speaker 1: the way that this article puts it, it's a lesser
Speaker 1: known style from northern Alabama, involving a white sauce made
Speaker 1: with mayonnaise, vinegar, and lemon juice. For some reason, that
Speaker 1: use of the word involving makes it sound like they're
Speaker 1: talking about some unpleasant business. It's just hilarious. It doesn't
Speaker 1: sound very good, but I would try it. I've had
Speaker 1: that white sauce. I don't think I knew it was
Speaker 1: Alabama specific. Oh yeah, but I've had it before. So
Speaker 1: perhaps you can answer this one for me. What is
Speaker 1: Georgia barbecue? Is it just basically like a rip off
Speaker 1: of North Carolina? I don't know, man Like, Well, we'll
Speaker 1: get slayd for this because we live in Georgian iight
Speaker 1: at barbecue places all over town. Yeah, I guess it's
Speaker 1: its own thing, but it doesn't seem it's it's a tart.
Speaker 1: It's a tart vinegary based sauce, but sweet as well. Well.
Speaker 1: There can most of the places I see in Atlanta
Speaker 1: have both. I have the vinegar sauce or the or
Speaker 1: the sweet sauce, like the really thick And I think
Speaker 1: Kansas City is barbecue is sort of known. Um Henry
Speaker 1: Perry settled there and opened up one of the first
Speaker 1: barbecue restaurant, and I think they kind of pulled from
Speaker 1: Memphis a little bit. I think they drew influences from
Speaker 1: all over because they were last and but I think
Speaker 1: in the city is generally known for that kind of
Speaker 1: sweet and tangy sauce. But but once in Atlanta, I've
Speaker 1: seen kind of have all kinds, but it's typically pork,
Speaker 1: although they'll have brisket on the menu. But most people
Speaker 1: when they think of barbecue in the South or in Georgia,
Speaker 1: think of pulled pork. I think people think of both.
Speaker 1: Or maybe I'm just saying that because I do Well,
Speaker 1: I don't know, there's a lot of transplants in Atlanta,
Speaker 1: So maybe what what's your favorite place in Atlanta? Uh,
Speaker 1: it depends on what you're looking for because the ribs
Speaker 1: obviously Fat Matt's Rib Shack is the real deal. Um
Speaker 1: wings chicken Fox Brothers obviously. Okay, yeah, their wings are
Speaker 1: good and their sauce is good too. And then for
Speaker 1: pulled pork. There's a place on Peachtree Industrial and it
Speaker 1: doesn't even have a name. It just says like brick
Speaker 1: pit Barbecue. But it's not even the name of the place.
Speaker 1: They're just saying like they have a brick pit barbecue it'
Speaker 1: and um, you can tell like that same fire has
Speaker 1: been going since the late sixties and it is just
Speaker 1: amazing just for like a regular old pulled pork sandwich
Speaker 1: with like really good Brunswick's too, and then like that
Speaker 1: plain white hamburger bun perfect. What about yours? I like
Speaker 1: Fox Brothers. Okay, Um, it's good. Um My favorite barbecue
Speaker 1: is Community Barbecue. Um yeah, I've never heard of that.
Speaker 1: It's really good. I mean, I guess you call that Decatur.
Speaker 1: It's in that shopping center with it's kind of the
Speaker 1: best food restaurant shopping center in Atlanta because it's got
Speaker 1: a tie place, an Italian place, a barbecue joint, a
Speaker 1: an Indian restaurant, that's not true. I have eaten there.
Speaker 1: It is good. So it's got like seven restaurants and
Speaker 1: all of them are different ethnicity, um, which obviously wasn't
Speaker 1: an accident. I don't know who owns that, but like,
Speaker 1: kudos to them, hats all. But Community Barbecue is just
Speaker 1: the best. Their brisket is unbelievable, and they're mac and
Speaker 1: cheese is indescribably good. It's that's really saying something because
Speaker 1: usually mac and cheese is terrible at a restaurant. Stuff
Speaker 1: is so good. You see him making it sometimes, and
Speaker 1: like if you walk to go to the restroom, you'll
Speaker 1: see in the kitchen they're making these pans of mac
Speaker 1: and cheese. I don't know how much cheese goes into
Speaker 1: it or the different kinds. And they have cream and
Speaker 1: stuff every cream, but it's just ungodly the amount of cheese.
Speaker 1: Everybody on this side that makes it good. They don't
Speaker 1: call it macin some cheese. All right, let's take a
Speaker 1: break and we're going to talk about sides and uh
Speaker 1: a little bit about politics and barbecue around the world.
Speaker 1: Finish up, let's take it home, Chuck. All right, we
Speaker 1: gotta talk about sides for a minute. We we got
Speaker 1: literally watery in the mouth talking about mac and cheese
Speaker 1: at community. Um. But typical sides are, like I said earlier,
Speaker 1: maybe some cold slaw, which will also vary by region. Um,
Speaker 1: Brunswick stew, which is set in here. It was originally
Speaker 1: squirrel meat, but chicken will do. I've only had pork
Speaker 1: here Brunswick stew, never had squirrel Brunswick stew. Not into that.
Speaker 1: It sounds like a Mike Huckaby dish. Um. Baked beans, Sure,
Speaker 1: I make really good baked beans. That sort of the
Speaker 1: dish I will volunteer to bring to any cookout or
Speaker 1: spake beans. That's ironic because I make a good FARTI
Speaker 1: sound with my armpit. That's what you bring to barbecue. Um.
Speaker 1: What else, well, French fries. Uh, it depends on the restaurant,
Speaker 1: but the usually be some kind of like French fries
Speaker 1: or something like that. To me, if you can, if
Speaker 1: you can wolf down anything besides the barbecue, they're not
Speaker 1: giving you enough barbecue. Like, yes, it's nice to have
Speaker 1: some sides or whatever, but like it's the barbecue that's
Speaker 1: the point. Sure, And I think you should be able
Speaker 1: to get full just off of the barbecue, that's my opinion.
Speaker 1: Do you like it chopped or oh, I guess you're
Speaker 1: doing the pork, so it's see brisket, they'll slice it.
Speaker 1: But I like it chopped for a sandwich. Um, and
Speaker 1: I do like to mix the brist choppers, get up
Speaker 1: with the sauce. Yeah, so good. Oh man, I'm really
Speaker 1: and I ate lunch and I'm still just like super hungry.
Speaker 1: That's good stuff. Um. Politics has often has long been
Speaker 1: linked to barbecue. Way back in the old days of
Speaker 1: the colonies and the early days of American politics, they
Speaker 1: found a good way to get a lot of people
Speaker 1: together talk to him about stuff was to promise them food. Well, no,
Speaker 1: I remember. It grew out of this tradition of we
Speaker 1: just killed a pig, so everybody came gather around, we're
Speaker 1: gonna cook it. Needed together, And then politicians started showing
Speaker 1: up at these things or holding them themselves. But yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a long tradition of of politics and barbecues. And apparently, um,
Speaker 1: Fourth of July, which you think of as barbecue like
Speaker 1: holiday here in the States. Um, that's long been a
Speaker 1: barbecue holiday. That's nothing new. And apparently they used to
Speaker 1: get drunk and barbecue and read the fourth the Declaration
Speaker 1: of Independence. That was the big, the big, the big
Speaker 1: fourth thing. Uhties they m they were such a big
Speaker 1: hit in the South. They started kind of spreading out
Speaker 1: politically in eight thirty six. That was Daniel Webster, U
Speaker 1: S Senator. He was a wig. We should do something
Speaker 1: on the wigs. I like those dudes. Um. He gave
Speaker 1: a two hour speech at a barbecue in St. Louis.
Speaker 1: So did uh candidate William Henry Harrison. It just became
Speaker 1: a tool, you know, at these rallies to get folks
Speaker 1: together and feed him almost bribe them both food and booze.
Speaker 1: What was it called applying the planters with bumbo or something? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was from the Bars episode. Yeah, but yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's it's like, here, you eat these ribs and drink
Speaker 1: all of this uh bourbon. Yeah, and uh don't yeah exactly.
Speaker 1: And throughout the years of many many presidents have thrown big,
Speaker 1: big barbecues, from Linda Johnson to the bushes. Um, I'm
Speaker 1: not sure what's going on today. Trump didn't struck me
Speaker 1: as a hitmaster, No, but Johnson apparently had something called
Speaker 1: barbecue diplomacy out on his ranch in Texas. He throw
Speaker 1: huge barbecues, invite uh V I P s and say hey,
Speaker 1: I want you to sign this bill. Okay, I'm melb J.
Speaker 1: That's that's nothing like I think it does. It was obviously,
Speaker 1: uh Slavery in the United States played a big part
Speaker 1: because UM part of the sort of facade of treating
Speaker 1: slaves to a big barbecue as a reward for being slaves.
Speaker 1: UM was something that happened on plantations. But on the
Speaker 1: flip side, UM slaves would also have barbecues and go
Speaker 1: over plans for a rebellion. I think the Nat Turner
Speaker 1: rebellion was planned over barbecue or escape via the underground railroad.
Speaker 1: And in the Civil rights movement in the nineteen fifties
Speaker 1: and sixties was barbecue was a lot of times these
Speaker 1: barbecue restaurants in the South were sort of the meeting
Speaker 1: places and headquarters. Yeah. What's weird, especially in the Jim
Speaker 1: Crow era, was that barbecue places were segregated. UM, so
Speaker 1: you'd have like, um, black owned barbecue joint, white owned
Speaker 1: barbecue joints. UM. But the thing about barbecue is that
Speaker 1: it kind of transcends race and class in that like
Speaker 1: everybody in the South loves barbecue right um. And apparently
Speaker 1: during the Jim Crow era, white people would sneak over
Speaker 1: to black owned barbecue joints that had superior barbecue and
Speaker 1: get their take out and go um. And the reason
Speaker 1: they were able to do this is because at the
Speaker 1: time and still in some places today, but at the time,
Speaker 1: barbecue joints were almost exclusively take out. And the reason
Speaker 1: they were take out was because they were the evolution
Speaker 1: of a barbecue pit. And the pit master role, especially
Speaker 1: in the Annabellum uh South, usually went to a slave.
Speaker 1: So you if you were a slave who was the
Speaker 1: pit master on a whole plantation, you know how to
Speaker 1: cook some meat and you know how to cook it
Speaker 1: really well for a lot of people, both um enslaved
Speaker 1: and not. You probably didn't care about running a restaurant. No,
Speaker 1: but after after reconstruction, for during reconstruction after the Civil War,
Speaker 1: all of a sudden you found yourself with extremely unique talent.
Speaker 1: And so maybe like during the week you would go
Speaker 1: to work, maybe as a sharecropper, and then on the
Speaker 1: weekend maybe you would be the pit master for your church.
Speaker 1: And then people would say this is so good, you
Speaker 1: should you know, you should sell this, So all of
Speaker 1: a sudden you build a shack around your pit, and
Speaker 1: all of a sudden you have a bit of a joint.
Speaker 1: So you put up a couple of stools, and people
Speaker 1: come and you have a window, and they get their
Speaker 1: take out and go, and then the car comes along,
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, your barbecue joint is like
Speaker 1: a destination that people are going to on their road trips.
Speaker 1: And then that's how the barbecue joints developed. Yeah, I think,
Speaker 1: I mean, that's one of the coolest things about it
Speaker 1: to me in the South is that despite our very
Speaker 1: checkered in dark past um and uh, even though a
Speaker 1: lot of that racism obviously is still around. Um, if
Speaker 1: you go into a barbecue joint in Atlanta, you're gonna
Speaker 1: find all stripes of people, all classes of people, um,
Speaker 1: sitting side by side, enjoying food together and being really
Speaker 1: friendly to one another and talking about the food. Um.
Speaker 1: Like you know, you'll see some like Wall Street dude
Speaker 1: with his tie flipped over so he didn't get it dirty,
Speaker 1: next to a guy that's um just come back. You know.
Speaker 1: Fishing with a bunch of catfishing is cooler, uh, feeding
Speaker 1: each other, drinking sweet tea. Um, it's just like, I
Speaker 1: don't know, it's cool, man, go to like a a
Speaker 1: tailgate at the Falcons game sometime if you think, like
Speaker 1: the South is so divided still and you'll see people
Speaker 1: getting along for the most part. In that case, the
Speaker 1: only losers the pig who are way smarter than we
Speaker 1: tend to think. That is probably a T shirt at
Speaker 1: some barbecue restaurant. The only loser here is the pig,
Speaker 1: which and this has struck me for a very long time.
Speaker 1: Using a pig as a mascot for a barbecue places
Speaker 1: so sad. It's so sad. That's like if McDonald's instead
Speaker 1: of the Golden Arches had just a big cow. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a cow serving a platter of hamburgers. That's what they do.
Speaker 1: Were the ones that have wings because they're dead because
Speaker 1: you're eating them? Uh, it's talking about civil rights movement though. Um.
Speaker 1: In Atlanta, we had a very famous restaurant here that
Speaker 1: was uh kind of one of the headquarters for Reverend
Speaker 1: Martin Luther King Jr. Yeah, have you heard of that place? Yeah,
Speaker 1: alex A. L. E. C. K. Barbecue Heaven was legendary
Speaker 1: Atlanta place that. Um is this still around well? No,
Speaker 1: I want to know what it is now. No, I don't.
Speaker 1: Imminent domain came in and took it over and it's
Speaker 1: now a Walmart. I know. It's like you literally couldn't
Speaker 1: have written a worse outcome. I don't know. They could
Speaker 1: have put up a Texas barbecue place instead. Wow, that's true. Uh.
Speaker 1: And here's the thing, though, they had a for many
Speaker 1: years after uh, doctor King died that was a I'm
Speaker 1: sort of a shrine to him in this restaurant still,
Speaker 1: like this is kind of where they met and that
Speaker 1: is where it happened. And um, for many years that
Speaker 1: was maintained and maintained and I think uh and Walmart.
Speaker 1: Originally they had that was in the middle of Boys Apparel.
Speaker 1: I don't know where it was, but I think they
Speaker 1: actually reference at or had photos commemorating that or something
Speaker 1: for a little while, but then took it out because they, man,
Speaker 1: what was the quote. They didn't think it represented the
Speaker 1: brand in in the right way or something. I need
Speaker 1: to look it up. I wish i'd been there. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a Walmart. It's right over sort of in the
Speaker 1: Atlantic University Center near kind of right near downtown. Okay. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like right next to uh, Morris Brown and Clark at
Speaker 1: Land and come on, I know, Uh, do you got
Speaker 1: anything else? No, I mean we hit a little bit
Speaker 1: on barbecue around the world. Um, we're not gonna get
Speaker 1: too much into it, but obviously if you've had jerk
Speaker 1: chicken or um barbeca or yeah, or Korean style barbecue,
Speaker 1: which supposedly we should say. Barbeca is the word that
Speaker 1: De Soto reported back to Europe about barbecuing, and they
Speaker 1: think it's a corrupted Tano word, but they don't have
Speaker 1: any tano Anyans to ask because the Europeans killed them
Speaker 1: all off, so no one thought to ask them first
Speaker 1: before they all died. That's said, yeah, yeah, I got
Speaker 1: nothing else. Okay, Well, if you want to know more
Speaker 1: about Martin Luther King Jr. The Tano, Indians, pigs, barbecue, Texas,
Speaker 1: all that stuff, you can type those words in the
Speaker 1: search bar how stuff works dot Com. Since I said
Speaker 1: search bar's time for listener mail. Hey guys, just wanted
Speaker 1: to share with both of you a Vice News short
Speaker 1: documentary that came out tonight. It includes lots of great
Speaker 1: footage and first hand accounts of the streets of Charlottesville.
Speaker 1: He's this is in real time where the events in Charlotte'sville,
Speaker 1: Virginia have just happened. Um, he sent, Have you seen
Speaker 1: this documentary yet? No, I haven't. By this time it
Speaker 1: will have aired on HBO on The Vice Show. But
Speaker 1: it's out online now. And I encourage everybody who's Chuck
Speaker 1: speaking it. Yeah, it's only twenty minutes long, sit through
Speaker 1: it all. It's extremely hard to watch, very very upsetting. Uh.
Speaker 1: And I'll watch it just before we came in here
Speaker 1: to record, which is a big mistake. Is it sensationalized
Speaker 1: or true true life? No, I mean it's it's They
Speaker 1: got a camera and a young woman to report kind
Speaker 1: of right in the middle of it all. So she
Speaker 1: interviews white nationalists, She interviews people um fighting back against
Speaker 1: white nationalists. It's um just in their own words, basically, like,
Speaker 1: here's a microphone. What do you have to say? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not uh not fun. Racism and ignorance back to
Speaker 1: the mail, Racism and ignorance on this scope are abhorrent
Speaker 1: and things that just h need to be widely denounced
Speaker 1: in American discourse. As the uv A alum, I just
Speaker 1: want to say this rally does not represent the feelings
Speaker 1: and attitudes of the university or surrounding city, which is
Speaker 1: actually garnered a reputation as a refugee city in recent years.
Speaker 1: And I think most people know that this. These people
Speaker 1: came from all over the country and other countries. These
Speaker 1: white nationalists, well, the whole reason they came is because
Speaker 1: Charlotte feels taking down their Confederate memorial right to Robert E.
Speaker 1: Lee that that was the uh the guys under which
Speaker 1: they met, but it was clearly much more than that.
Speaker 1: That's where they met up, at least with their yeah,
Speaker 1: Walmart tiki torches, which as hysterical and said, I have
Speaker 1: been avidly listening to your podcast for about a year now,
Speaker 1: and sarendipitously enough, I happened to find your episode on
Speaker 1: free speeches Friday of the protest on campus. I'm not
Speaker 1: one to strike down American liberty by liberties by any means,
Speaker 1: but it does make me wonder how things might be
Speaker 1: different in our society. We did have some kind of
Speaker 1: restrictions on things like hate speech in broadcasting certifiably false
Speaker 1: information just as a thought experiment. While I have been
Speaker 1: an open advocate for environmental protection at many times in
Speaker 1: my life. It's the first time in my life that
Speaker 1: I've openly posted for a cause involving racism and bigotry.
Speaker 1: I shared both the Vice News video and your Free
Speaker 1: Speech podcast all my Facebook prints, and I seek to
Speaker 1: be more more public advocate for equality from here on out.
Speaker 1: Keep on doing great things. You're empty humor and curiosity
Speaker 1: or greatly appreciated. This is from John Uh in Washington,
Speaker 1: d C. Nice John, Thank you very much, and I
Speaker 1: encourage everyone just google Vice News Charlottesville watch that twenty minutes,
Speaker 1: and I would really be interested if anyone can write
Speaker 1: in and defend anything that was going on there. Uh
Speaker 1: And if, like John, you want to let us know
Speaker 1: about something you think we should see, We're always down
Speaker 1: for that. You can tweet to us at s y
Speaker 1: s K podcast or Josham Clark can hang out with
Speaker 1: us at Facebook dot com, slash stuff you Should Know
Speaker 1: or slash Charles W. Chuck Bryant. You can send us
Speaker 1: an email to Stuff Podcast to how stuff Works dot
Speaker 1: com is always join us at our home on the
Speaker 1: web Stuff you Should Know dot com for more on
Speaker 1: this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff
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