1
00:00:00,240 --> 00:00:27,320
Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome

2
00:00:27,320 --> 00:00:30,440
Speaker 1: back to the show Ridiculous Historians. As always, thank you

3
00:00:30,600 --> 00:00:34,560
Speaker 1: so much for tuning in. Quick note, this is part

4
00:00:34,640 --> 00:00:37,000
Speaker 1: two of a two part series, so if you have

5
00:00:37,200 --> 00:00:40,200
Speaker 1: not listened to part one on the Life and Times

6
00:00:40,200 --> 00:00:43,440
Speaker 1: of Louis Wayne, please pause and come back to see

7
00:00:43,520 --> 00:00:46,559
Speaker 1: us in part two. We'll give you a second. That

8
00:00:46,680 --> 00:00:49,240
Speaker 1: was a second welcome back high. I'm bad. We are

9
00:00:49,320 --> 00:00:52,839
Speaker 1: working in podcast time, which is basically an infinity. We

10
00:00:52,840 --> 00:00:55,720
Speaker 1: were just talking about how we have lost all sense

11
00:00:55,840 --> 00:00:58,640
Speaker 1: of time and space as pertains to how many of

12
00:00:58,680 --> 00:01:02,280
Speaker 1: these episodes we've done, quarantine, how many of these episodes

13
00:01:02,280 --> 00:01:05,240
Speaker 1: we've done in general, and that was all because of

14
00:01:05,240 --> 00:01:08,839
Speaker 1: our amazing special guests today. Uh and on our previous episode,

15
00:01:09,080 --> 00:01:13,160
Speaker 1: Gabe Luizier research associate here not only in spirit but

16
00:01:13,280 --> 00:01:16,680
Speaker 1: in the virtual flesh. That sounds like some David Cronenberg

17
00:01:16,720 --> 00:01:18,560
Speaker 1: stuff right there. I'm no all, by the way, and

18
00:01:18,640 --> 00:01:22,200
Speaker 1: your Gabe, I am Gabe, Yeah, and I'm thrilled to

19
00:01:22,280 --> 00:01:24,399
Speaker 1: be back talking Lewis Wayne. I think we're all in

20
00:01:24,440 --> 00:01:28,400
Speaker 1: the right headspace for the next part of this story

21
00:01:28,480 --> 00:01:30,840
Speaker 1: and where it's going to go, because it does get

22
00:01:30,880 --> 00:01:34,399
Speaker 1: a little strange from here. Yeah. You know, one thing earlier,

23
00:01:34,440 --> 00:01:37,800
Speaker 1: when we're talking about this episode, as we were doing

24
00:01:37,840 --> 00:01:40,000
Speaker 1: some research and we're getting ready to go on air, uh,

25
00:01:40,240 --> 00:01:46,640
Speaker 1: super producer Casey pegrom was, I would say, dare say

26
00:01:46,760 --> 00:01:52,720
Speaker 1: super enthusiastic about the the art the Casey, what's the

27
00:01:52,720 --> 00:02:05,040
Speaker 1: French word the OUVOI? Yes, of the uber Yes, the

28
00:02:05,080 --> 00:02:09,480
Speaker 1: body of work. Uh. And so we all are, I

29
00:02:09,480 --> 00:02:13,160
Speaker 1: would say, in an appropriate headspace. So uh. Previously in

30
00:02:13,200 --> 00:02:17,520
Speaker 1: part one we talked about the origin and and the

31
00:02:17,560 --> 00:02:23,080
Speaker 1: growth of Wayne Lewis Wayne and his career. But you

32
00:02:23,160 --> 00:02:27,040
Speaker 1: may have noticed there were a couple of threads sinking

33
00:02:27,120 --> 00:02:30,600
Speaker 1: in there, a couple of maybe discordant notes to this

34
00:02:30,880 --> 00:02:36,760
Speaker 1: artistic symphony. And when we left, we left Mr Wayne. Uh,

35
00:02:36,840 --> 00:02:42,920
Speaker 1: he was known as this uh the last word in

36
00:02:43,480 --> 00:02:48,920
Speaker 1: drawing fanciful drawings of felines and these cats, these depictions,

37
00:02:49,000 --> 00:02:53,960
Speaker 1: they became more and more action packed, they became more

38
00:02:54,160 --> 00:02:59,560
Speaker 1: and more surreal, absurd isst. And now we're at a

39
00:02:59,639 --> 00:03:02,840
Speaker 1: point Wayne's life where people are making an assumption that

40
00:03:02,919 --> 00:03:05,880
Speaker 1: seems weird but feels very logical for them at the time,

41
00:03:06,120 --> 00:03:08,640
Speaker 1: where they're like, look, he draws so many cats he

42
00:03:08,720 --> 00:03:11,440
Speaker 1: loves them so much. He's not just an artist, right,

43
00:03:11,480 --> 00:03:15,800
Speaker 1: He's got to be like a cat expert, a cat spert. Yeah. Yeah.

44
00:03:15,840 --> 00:03:18,440
Speaker 1: I think people just kind of looked at his body

45
00:03:18,480 --> 00:03:20,280
Speaker 1: of work and we're like, oh, this guy knows cats.

46
00:03:20,360 --> 00:03:22,880
Speaker 1: Yeah he must, he must know everything about him. And

47
00:03:22,960 --> 00:03:27,040
Speaker 1: so he was actually elected president of the National Cat

48
00:03:27,120 --> 00:03:30,520
Speaker 1: Club in eight nine, um, and from there he went

49
00:03:30,520 --> 00:03:33,960
Speaker 1: on to host It's It's annual Cat Show in London. Uh.

50
00:03:33,960 --> 00:03:36,640
Speaker 1: He served as president for five years, but you know,

51
00:03:36,680 --> 00:03:39,160
Speaker 1: he was on the committee for for much longer than that,

52
00:03:39,720 --> 00:03:42,360
Speaker 1: and all of this, you know, despite the fact that

53
00:03:42,400 --> 00:03:46,400
Speaker 1: he really didn't know anything about cats. I mean, he

54
00:03:46,520 --> 00:03:48,640
Speaker 1: had a couple of his own, and he was obviously

55
00:03:48,680 --> 00:03:51,200
Speaker 1: a fan. But even if you look at his artwork,

56
00:03:51,280 --> 00:03:54,920
Speaker 1: he uh, he did not really keep in mind their anatomy.

57
00:03:55,160 --> 00:03:57,840
Speaker 1: He wasn't really hemmed in by, you know, the logistics

58
00:03:57,840 --> 00:04:01,000
Speaker 1: of actual cats. He's sort of had them do whatever

59
00:04:01,000 --> 00:04:05,960
Speaker 1: he wanted, and he had some pretty outlandish ideas about them,

60
00:04:06,040 --> 00:04:08,920
Speaker 1: you know, what they were capable of. He uh, he

61
00:04:09,000 --> 00:04:13,360
Speaker 1: actually had some some strange theories about striped tabby cats.

62
00:04:13,400 --> 00:04:16,480
Speaker 1: In particular, he thought there was something going on with

63
00:04:16,520 --> 00:04:20,359
Speaker 1: their bodies. In terms of magnetism. He once wrote on

64
00:04:20,400 --> 00:04:24,359
Speaker 1: the subject quote, strangely enough, I once had the impression

65
00:04:24,400 --> 00:04:27,560
Speaker 1: that a cat's tendency was to travel north and to

66
00:04:28,440 --> 00:04:31,760
Speaker 1: face north, as a magnet does, and that this tendency

67
00:04:31,839 --> 00:04:36,520
Speaker 1: had some intimate association with the electrical strength of its fur.

68
00:04:37,160 --> 00:04:40,279
Speaker 1: That is a reach right there, my friend. Yeah, a

69
00:04:40,320 --> 00:04:43,200
Speaker 1: little bit right. And yeah, but you know, people kind

70
00:04:43,200 --> 00:04:45,560
Speaker 1: of took it at face value. This guy knows cats,

71
00:04:45,600 --> 00:04:48,159
Speaker 1: let's put him in charge of the cat club. And uh, yeah,

72
00:04:48,480 --> 00:04:50,640
Speaker 1: it just kind of went from there quick aside, Gabe,

73
00:04:50,800 --> 00:04:53,440
Speaker 1: sorry to cut you off. Does that mean in theory,

74
00:04:53,480 --> 00:04:55,840
Speaker 1: based on this theory of Waynes, that you could use

75
00:04:55,839 --> 00:04:58,400
Speaker 1: a cat like as a compass to find true north,

76
00:04:58,520 --> 00:05:00,880
Speaker 1: just like hold it out like a divine rod and

77
00:05:00,960 --> 00:05:03,760
Speaker 1: see where it takes you. I do believe it does. Yes.

78
00:05:04,480 --> 00:05:08,119
Speaker 1: And also, according to uh to Wayne, if you wanted

79
00:05:08,160 --> 00:05:10,440
Speaker 1: to keep a cot away, all you had to do

80
00:05:10,480 --> 00:05:14,720
Speaker 1: was sprinkle some orange peels around. Um. According to him,

81
00:05:14,760 --> 00:05:17,880
Speaker 1: cats detested the smell of oranges and would just steer

82
00:05:17,960 --> 00:05:20,599
Speaker 1: clear if you If you laid a continuous line of

83
00:05:20,680 --> 00:05:25,000
Speaker 1: peel across your garden wall, the cat would not cross it. Okay,

84
00:05:25,000 --> 00:05:28,880
Speaker 1: So so he's like, he's like the predecessor of Charlie

85
00:05:29,040 --> 00:05:33,960
Speaker 1: Day and it's always sunny in Philadelphia with his cat theories. Okay,

86
00:05:34,000 --> 00:05:37,160
Speaker 1: there you have it. Uh FX, we've mentioned our our

87
00:05:37,279 --> 00:05:41,760
Speaker 1: requisite quota of one always funny reference per per season.

88
00:05:41,960 --> 00:05:43,800
Speaker 1: Do you think he was just making this stuff up

89
00:05:43,839 --> 00:05:46,520
Speaker 1: because they were casting him as a cat expert that

90
00:05:46,600 --> 00:05:48,680
Speaker 1: he felt like he needed to weigh in on some

91
00:05:48,720 --> 00:05:50,560
Speaker 1: stuff that no one else would be able to know

92
00:05:50,800 --> 00:05:53,640
Speaker 1: or verify. Yeah, I mean, you know, people kept asking,

93
00:05:53,720 --> 00:05:56,400
Speaker 1: so he gave him good answers, I guess, or at

94
00:05:56,440 --> 00:05:59,760
Speaker 1: least entertaining ones. Um, and nobody really questioned it because

95
00:05:59,800 --> 00:06:03,920
Speaker 1: he kind of had become this beloved public figure. His

96
00:06:04,000 --> 00:06:06,800
Speaker 1: work was everywhere. It was on those you know, thousands

97
00:06:06,839 --> 00:06:09,440
Speaker 1: of postcards that I mentioned, but you know they were

98
00:06:09,480 --> 00:06:12,800
Speaker 1: also selling posters of his art. Um. He was appearing

99
00:06:12,839 --> 00:06:17,080
Speaker 1: in and illustrated children's books, um, on billboards advertising te

100
00:06:17,640 --> 00:06:21,640
Speaker 1: jigsaw puzzles. The guy was everywhere, you know, way more

101
00:06:21,839 --> 00:06:24,080
Speaker 1: of fame for you know, a cat artist at the

102
00:06:24,080 --> 00:06:26,640
Speaker 1: time than you know anybody else had. And the other

103
00:06:26,680 --> 00:06:29,159
Speaker 1: thing that really, you know, took off for his career

104
00:06:29,240 --> 00:06:33,440
Speaker 1: was he started publishing these annual magazines, and so this

105
00:06:33,480 --> 00:06:35,960
Speaker 1: would be you know a collection of his illustrations along

106
00:06:36,000 --> 00:06:39,920
Speaker 1: with short stories and essays from him as well as

107
00:06:39,920 --> 00:06:42,560
Speaker 1: other you know, writers of the era, and it kind

108
00:06:42,600 --> 00:06:46,799
Speaker 1: of just became a public fixture. Everybody. Wayne's art was everywhere,

109
00:06:47,200 --> 00:06:50,039
Speaker 1: and and they were also you know, it's strange because

110
00:06:50,080 --> 00:06:52,919
Speaker 1: we have the benefit of retrospect, right, we can we

111
00:06:52,960 --> 00:06:56,560
Speaker 1: can look back at some of his statements and say, hey,

112
00:06:56,600 --> 00:07:00,440
Speaker 1: this might have been uh, you know, not maybe red flag,

113
00:07:00,520 --> 00:07:03,280
Speaker 1: but maybe a yellow card. You know, as far as

114
00:07:03,320 --> 00:07:06,719
Speaker 1: the state of his mind where he would say those things,

115
00:07:06,920 --> 00:07:09,159
Speaker 1: you know, like you pointed out noll And and like

116
00:07:09,600 --> 00:07:13,360
Speaker 1: you contextualized Gabe, he would say stuff on record to

117
00:07:13,560 --> 00:07:19,680
Speaker 1: papers and publications of note that uh sounded extraordinary, and

118
00:07:20,440 --> 00:07:23,320
Speaker 1: it sounded like it sounded like something maybe you would

119
00:07:23,320 --> 00:07:25,360
Speaker 1: say if you had a tim and eric sense of humor.

120
00:07:25,640 --> 00:07:28,720
Speaker 1: But he was, as we found, very serious, like he

121
00:07:28,800 --> 00:07:32,920
Speaker 1: believed this stuff he's and still people ate it up.

122
00:07:32,960 --> 00:07:37,720
Speaker 1: They loved this eccentric cat expert, uh, this you know,

123
00:07:37,840 --> 00:07:40,880
Speaker 1: this master of all things feline. Uh. And they went

124
00:07:40,920 --> 00:07:44,520
Speaker 1: to him for this advice. And people love these annuals

125
00:07:44,520 --> 00:07:47,480
Speaker 1: and they had essays right from people of note Uh,

126
00:07:47,560 --> 00:07:50,840
Speaker 1: he is blowing up. Eventually he leaves and he crosses

127
00:07:50,880 --> 00:07:54,960
Speaker 1: the Atlantic and he comes here to the US. Yeah,

128
00:07:55,040 --> 00:07:57,680
Speaker 1: that's right. He got a job working for the Hearst

129
00:07:57,720 --> 00:08:01,160
Speaker 1: newspapers in uh in New York's any and he stayed

130
00:08:01,160 --> 00:08:05,040
Speaker 1: there doing comic strips for three years actually, and um,

131
00:08:05,040 --> 00:08:07,960
Speaker 1: he actually only came back to London because his mother

132
00:08:08,080 --> 00:08:11,440
Speaker 1: passed away, and uh yeah, he again had to kind

133
00:08:11,440 --> 00:08:14,120
Speaker 1: of fill that role of breadwinner for for his sisters.

134
00:08:14,680 --> 00:08:18,600
Speaker 1: It's crazy, though, man, because the guy was absurdly talented

135
00:08:19,760 --> 00:08:22,679
Speaker 1: in an extreme way. He you know, was a lefty,

136
00:08:22,840 --> 00:08:26,160
Speaker 1: but he could use both hands for for drawing, and

137
00:08:26,240 --> 00:08:29,800
Speaker 1: he could perform tricks like he could like right backwards

138
00:08:29,880 --> 00:08:33,600
Speaker 1: like right mirror images. Um. And he also could pump

139
00:08:33,600 --> 00:08:37,200
Speaker 1: out as many as a hundred and fifty cat drawings

140
00:08:37,240 --> 00:08:40,560
Speaker 1: in a single hour. You know, understandably wouldn't be like

141
00:08:40,600 --> 00:08:42,960
Speaker 1: the super high detail ones that you would see like

142
00:08:42,960 --> 00:08:46,400
Speaker 1: in some of these high profile publications. But he wasn't

143
00:08:46,440 --> 00:08:49,080
Speaker 1: just limited to one particular medium, as you're gonna see

144
00:08:49,120 --> 00:08:52,600
Speaker 1: as his career progresses. He would do crayon or watercolor,

145
00:08:52,679 --> 00:08:55,319
Speaker 1: oil paints, pen and ink. I mean, he was absolutely

146
00:08:55,440 --> 00:08:58,920
Speaker 1: kind of a renaissance man of cat painting. Yeah, yeah,

147
00:08:58,960 --> 00:09:03,960
Speaker 1: that's that's like, that's a crazy point. He even his

148
00:09:03,960 --> 00:09:07,600
Speaker 1: his musical uh, creative drive never fully left him either.

149
00:09:07,920 --> 00:09:11,760
Speaker 1: He even wrote an opera. He you know, was the

150
00:09:11,880 --> 00:09:15,440
Speaker 1: king of the Emperor of postcards. Uh for a while.

151
00:09:15,720 --> 00:09:19,240
Speaker 1: Um Wallace Stevens should have written something about that. But

152
00:09:19,360 --> 00:09:22,160
Speaker 1: this is that's besides the point. I just like the

153
00:09:22,160 --> 00:09:25,560
Speaker 1: Emperor of ice creams. But but uh, you know, we

154
00:09:25,720 --> 00:09:28,920
Speaker 1: see that his career is blossoming. But the guy was

155
00:09:29,040 --> 00:09:33,960
Speaker 1: so talented and so driven that he would have probably

156
00:09:34,000 --> 00:09:35,760
Speaker 1: there's an argument we could make that he would have

157
00:09:35,800 --> 00:09:40,120
Speaker 1: probably been this prolific had he not been selling stuff right,

158
00:09:40,200 --> 00:09:44,040
Speaker 1: and and there were so many sets of things out there,

159
00:09:44,080 --> 00:09:49,840
Speaker 1: millions and millions of sets, and later observers or an

160
00:09:49,840 --> 00:09:56,520
Speaker 1: analysts and critics uh say that he invented different iconic postcards.

161
00:09:56,800 --> 00:09:59,840
Speaker 1: I think they specifically point out the striped cat, sp

162
00:10:00,160 --> 00:10:03,319
Speaker 1: the cat, the cats you know, caught in the midst

163
00:10:03,320 --> 00:10:08,680
Speaker 1: of sport. Uh. And let's see, he didn't just crank

164
00:10:08,720 --> 00:10:12,520
Speaker 1: out sketches. He also did like full on paintings, and

165
00:10:12,559 --> 00:10:15,640
Speaker 1: the paintings were copied. It reminds me a little bit

166
00:10:15,720 --> 00:10:20,480
Speaker 1: of a cooler Thomas Kincaid. You guys remember Thomas Kincaid, right,

167
00:10:20,559 --> 00:10:24,679
Speaker 1: the artist, Yeah, definitely the painter of light. Yeah. You

168
00:10:24,679 --> 00:10:29,080
Speaker 1: know with Thomas Kincaid, you know that that guy's paintings

169
00:10:29,440 --> 00:10:32,840
Speaker 1: have been copied more and more often right there everywhere.

170
00:10:33,120 --> 00:10:37,240
Speaker 1: But Kincaid actually doesn't make most of those. Now he's

171
00:10:37,240 --> 00:10:40,199
Speaker 1: sort of a brand name. But from what I understand,

172
00:10:40,720 --> 00:10:45,040
Speaker 1: Wayne was always making the original works, correct, He was

173
00:10:45,080 --> 00:10:47,560
Speaker 1: just making tons and tons of them. Yeah, that's right.

174
00:10:47,679 --> 00:10:51,000
Speaker 1: And unfortunately, you know, he was handling the sale of

175
00:10:51,080 --> 00:10:53,880
Speaker 1: those all on his own. He never had an agent

176
00:10:54,600 --> 00:10:58,080
Speaker 1: or anybody to kind of negotiate fees for him with publishers.

177
00:10:58,559 --> 00:11:00,640
Speaker 1: And you know, as a result all to that, you

178
00:11:00,679 --> 00:11:03,800
Speaker 1: know the fact that he was just kind of this shy,

179
00:11:03,880 --> 00:11:06,880
Speaker 1: kind of soft spoken businessman, kind of on his own

180
00:11:07,280 --> 00:11:09,880
Speaker 1: drawing cats, which, like you said, he probably would have

181
00:11:09,880 --> 00:11:12,439
Speaker 1: been doing anyway, even if he hadn't been being paid

182
00:11:12,480 --> 00:11:15,280
Speaker 1: for this when he was selling his work. He really

183
00:11:15,360 --> 00:11:19,920
Speaker 1: kind of um didn't stand up for himself, didn't negotiate fees. Uh.

184
00:11:19,920 --> 00:11:22,960
Speaker 1: He actually never even retained the copyright to the work

185
00:11:23,000 --> 00:11:25,600
Speaker 1: that he was selling, so once it was out there,

186
00:11:25,880 --> 00:11:28,959
Speaker 1: people were free to kind of reuse this as they wished,

187
00:11:29,080 --> 00:11:32,559
Speaker 1: and and they did. He kind of became really overexposed

188
00:11:32,600 --> 00:11:35,440
Speaker 1: because of it. His artwork was just being reproduced for

189
00:11:35,480 --> 00:11:38,240
Speaker 1: magazines that you know, he wasn't being paid for. I

190
00:11:38,280 --> 00:11:40,440
Speaker 1: was going to ask about that, because even in those days,

191
00:11:40,480 --> 00:11:43,040
Speaker 1: I mean, the idea of intellectual property was certainly not

192
00:11:43,160 --> 00:11:47,120
Speaker 1: as iron clad as it is today. And honestly, yes,

193
00:11:47,200 --> 00:11:50,760
Speaker 1: he absolutely had a style. But anyone can draw cats

194
00:11:50,800 --> 00:11:54,360
Speaker 1: doing cute stuff, can't they. Yeah, well, not like Louis

195
00:11:54,400 --> 00:11:57,160
Speaker 1: Wayne could, but fair but what what what I guess

196
00:11:57,200 --> 00:11:59,680
Speaker 1: what I'm getting at is like this could have I

197
00:11:59,720 --> 00:12:04,600
Speaker 1: am agen lead to copycats and uh but you know,

198
00:12:04,679 --> 00:12:07,640
Speaker 1: I mean, especially if he didn't own you know, he

199
00:12:07,679 --> 00:12:11,040
Speaker 1: had no trademark behind his brand, that would make it

200
00:12:11,040 --> 00:12:13,640
Speaker 1: even easier to do this. But again, his thing really

201
00:12:13,720 --> 00:12:17,160
Speaker 1: is just kind of cats, maybe wearing pants, doing kind

202
00:12:17,160 --> 00:12:20,280
Speaker 1: of humany things, and that became maybe eventually more the

203
00:12:20,320 --> 00:12:23,120
Speaker 1: recognizable thing than him as a name or as like,

204
00:12:23,200 --> 00:12:25,520
Speaker 1: you know, the person behind it. I'm just spitballing here,

205
00:12:25,520 --> 00:12:27,959
Speaker 1: I'm asking you game, No, that that sounds right. I

206
00:12:27,960 --> 00:12:31,800
Speaker 1: would imagine there were definitely copycat artists, and people probably

207
00:12:31,840 --> 00:12:33,760
Speaker 1: looked at it and thought, oh, that's a Lewis Wayne,

208
00:12:33,800 --> 00:12:36,520
Speaker 1: you know at it again? Yeah, I mean, how would

209
00:12:36,520 --> 00:12:41,040
Speaker 1: you like, how could you put a patent on a

210
00:12:41,080 --> 00:12:45,160
Speaker 1: concept like that that's so open to interpretation? And this

211
00:12:45,559 --> 00:12:49,360
Speaker 1: the problem is that Wayne's lack of maybe business sense

212
00:12:49,440 --> 00:12:53,960
Speaker 1: or financial acumen didn't stop at copyrights for style, Like

213
00:12:54,000 --> 00:12:56,640
Speaker 1: you could say, maybe he's a little too trusting. I'm

214
00:12:56,679 --> 00:13:00,800
Speaker 1: sure many of us listening today know how awkward, uh

215
00:13:00,840 --> 00:13:06,880
Speaker 1: and and um irritated, sometimes painful negotiating anything can be. Uh.

216
00:13:06,920 --> 00:13:09,320
Speaker 1: So he probably wanted to get back to what he

217
00:13:09,320 --> 00:13:12,599
Speaker 1: actually liked, which was drawing these cats, making these paintings.

218
00:13:12,640 --> 00:13:16,840
Speaker 1: But we see that, like a couple of different times,

219
00:13:16,880 --> 00:13:21,199
Speaker 1: he tried to branch out into investments of sorts. And

220
00:13:21,720 --> 00:13:26,240
Speaker 1: just like Mark Twain, who was also a terrible, terrible investor, Uh,

221
00:13:26,440 --> 00:13:29,960
Speaker 1: he didn't have much luck. I think when his mother

222
00:13:30,040 --> 00:13:32,720
Speaker 1: passed he had put some He put a lot of

223
00:13:32,760 --> 00:13:36,160
Speaker 1: money into an unsuccessful patent for a lamp or something

224
00:13:36,200 --> 00:13:39,560
Speaker 1: like that. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, he he patented a

225
00:13:39,600 --> 00:13:42,319
Speaker 1: few inventions, nothing really ever came of them. It's it's

226
00:13:42,360 --> 00:13:45,080
Speaker 1: kind of like with the opera. The opera has been

227
00:13:45,120 --> 00:13:48,200
Speaker 1: lost to time and uh kind of the patents as well.

228
00:13:48,480 --> 00:13:52,439
Speaker 1: There's uh documentation of him talking about this, and yeah,

229
00:13:52,480 --> 00:13:55,720
Speaker 1: he evidently dumped a lot of money into the development

230
00:13:55,760 --> 00:13:59,679
Speaker 1: of it, but it never really went anywhere. He basically,

231
00:13:59,760 --> 00:14:02,040
Speaker 1: you know, he had fame from his work, but he

232
00:14:02,080 --> 00:14:05,240
Speaker 1: did not have fortune. And uh, yeah, like you said,

233
00:14:05,240 --> 00:14:07,720
Speaker 1: that comes down to his his lack of business sense.

234
00:14:08,200 --> 00:14:10,640
Speaker 1: He would basically give this stuff away. He would even

235
00:14:10,679 --> 00:14:14,000
Speaker 1: take commissions from well to do families, you know, people

236
00:14:14,000 --> 00:14:16,679
Speaker 1: who had the money to pay for this, but he

237
00:14:16,720 --> 00:14:19,640
Speaker 1: just didn't ask for any money and it never came up.

238
00:14:19,680 --> 00:14:21,960
Speaker 1: So he would do a lot of work just for free.

239
00:14:22,360 --> 00:14:25,800
Speaker 1: And then again he is as you guys said, he

240
00:14:26,000 --> 00:14:32,200
Speaker 1: is saturated, oversaturated the whimsical cat drawing market, which he

241
00:14:32,240 --> 00:14:35,640
Speaker 1: created to be fair. Uh and more and more people

242
00:14:35,640 --> 00:14:39,200
Speaker 1: were saying, well, I've got I've got your annuals. You know,

243
00:14:39,400 --> 00:14:41,600
Speaker 1: I've got plenty of postcards. Don't get me wrong, I

244
00:14:41,640 --> 00:14:44,560
Speaker 1: love them, but I can only have so many pictures

245
00:14:44,600 --> 00:14:49,440
Speaker 1: of fanciful cats. And then World War two is on

246
00:14:49,480 --> 00:14:53,560
Speaker 1: the horizon, you know this nineteen oh seven. Uh, his

247
00:14:53,880 --> 00:14:58,600
Speaker 1: he meets this sort of cavalcade of terrible personal events.

248
00:14:59,120 --> 00:15:02,400
Speaker 1: His mother passes way as you mentioned, one of his

249
00:15:02,520 --> 00:15:08,440
Speaker 1: sisters passes away after having spent uh several years institutionalized

250
00:15:08,560 --> 00:15:13,080
Speaker 1: in an asylum, and then his other sister passes away

251
00:15:13,160 --> 00:15:17,800
Speaker 1: like his first sister passes away institutionalized nineteen. Another sister

252
00:15:17,880 --> 00:15:22,440
Speaker 1: passes away in nineteen fifteen during an epidemic of the flu.

253
00:15:23,120 --> 00:15:25,800
Speaker 1: And we want to be sensitive about this, but his

254
00:15:26,240 --> 00:15:31,960
Speaker 1: own mental state appears to to start declining around this time. Yeah.

255
00:15:32,000 --> 00:15:35,800
Speaker 1: I mean, we we know now that things like schizophrenia

256
00:15:36,120 --> 00:15:40,640
Speaker 1: are passed down, you know, through generations. Um, and it

257
00:15:40,680 --> 00:15:43,400
Speaker 1: would appear and and it's interesting too when you look

258
00:15:43,440 --> 00:15:48,120
Speaker 1: at the progression of his work, they get more and

259
00:15:48,160 --> 00:15:53,560
Speaker 1: more kind of I mean psychedelic is the word really,

260
00:15:53,720 --> 00:15:59,960
Speaker 1: but uh, it does paint a picture of a deteriorating

261
00:16:00,120 --> 00:16:02,200
Speaker 1: mental state, let's put it that way. Uh And and

262
00:16:02,400 --> 00:16:06,040
Speaker 1: I don't I don't mean that to say that's you know,

263
00:16:06,160 --> 00:16:10,200
Speaker 1: psychedelic style always points to that, but uh, you know,

264
00:16:10,240 --> 00:16:12,600
Speaker 1: he started off much more formal, and then as his

265
00:16:12,640 --> 00:16:16,120
Speaker 1: work progressed, it got way more just kind of out there,

266
00:16:16,200 --> 00:16:18,400
Speaker 1: and like you could really see it as kind of

267
00:16:18,480 --> 00:16:23,080
Speaker 1: a visual representation of what was happening to him, Um, psychologically,

268
00:16:23,120 --> 00:16:26,360
Speaker 1: I would That's just my opinion yeah. I mean there's

269
00:16:26,520 --> 00:16:28,200
Speaker 1: you know, it's tough to talk about this stuff and

270
00:16:28,240 --> 00:16:30,680
Speaker 1: say for shirt and you know, with any kind of certainty,

271
00:16:30,760 --> 00:16:33,360
Speaker 1: but it seems to me like, yeah, this condition was

272
00:16:33,440 --> 00:16:36,200
Speaker 1: something that was kind of you know, latent within him

273
00:16:36,240 --> 00:16:39,720
Speaker 1: for his whole life, and probably was masked to a

274
00:16:39,720 --> 00:16:42,680
Speaker 1: fair degree by just kind of his reputation for being

275
00:16:42,760 --> 00:16:46,120
Speaker 1: so eccentric and you know, such a strange guy. People's

276
00:16:46,160 --> 00:16:50,280
Speaker 1: maybe overlooked some of those telltale signs. But uh, I

277
00:16:50,600 --> 00:16:52,880
Speaker 1: ultimately I think yeah, it was it was after he

278
00:16:52,880 --> 00:16:55,680
Speaker 1: had to return home after his mother's death and kind of,

279
00:16:55,920 --> 00:17:00,000
Speaker 1: you know, take on all those domestic responsibilities again, especially

280
00:17:00,040 --> 00:17:01,920
Speaker 1: at a time when his career was kind of in

281
00:17:01,920 --> 00:17:05,399
Speaker 1: a decline. The money wasn't coming in, and meanwhile, you know,

282
00:17:05,440 --> 00:17:07,560
Speaker 1: you can you can hear the sounds of World War

283
00:17:07,640 --> 00:17:11,399
Speaker 1: One like constantly right across the channel. I think he

284
00:17:11,480 --> 00:17:13,840
Speaker 1: was under a lot of pressure and it it finally

285
00:17:13,880 --> 00:17:16,199
Speaker 1: got the better of him. The thing that kind of

286
00:17:16,240 --> 00:17:20,200
Speaker 1: really made his friends and family suspicious was he started

287
00:17:20,280 --> 00:17:23,920
Speaker 1: kind of soliciting their help for this non existent cat

288
00:17:24,040 --> 00:17:28,480
Speaker 1: show that he claimed to be organizing, and talking about this, uh,

289
00:17:28,840 --> 00:17:34,199
Speaker 1: the scheme he had to breed spotted cats. I don't know,

290
00:17:34,280 --> 00:17:36,360
Speaker 1: you know, the details of it, but it was enough

291
00:17:36,400 --> 00:17:40,200
Speaker 1: to kind of alarm the people close to him, and

292
00:17:40,359 --> 00:17:44,040
Speaker 1: things just kind of gotten more sinister from there. He started, uh,

293
00:17:44,400 --> 00:17:48,240
Speaker 1: believing that his surviving sisters were actually the ones responsible

294
00:17:48,320 --> 00:17:51,720
Speaker 1: for his other sister's death. He thought they were stealing

295
00:17:51,760 --> 00:17:56,159
Speaker 1: money from him, hiding his possessions. Um. And he also

296
00:17:56,600 --> 00:18:00,240
Speaker 1: kind of towards the end of this period started um

297
00:18:00,240 --> 00:18:05,000
Speaker 1: claiming the groups of spirits were projecting electrical currents so

298
00:18:05,080 --> 00:18:08,560
Speaker 1: that he would become full of electricity, and you know,

299
00:18:08,640 --> 00:18:10,480
Speaker 1: to hide from that, he kind of shut himself in

300
00:18:10,560 --> 00:18:13,600
Speaker 1: his room and was writing all of these theories out.

301
00:18:14,040 --> 00:18:18,520
Speaker 1: He began moving furniture around endlessly, just kind of rearranging

302
00:18:18,560 --> 00:18:21,600
Speaker 1: it um And I guess that was in his mind,

303
00:18:21,720 --> 00:18:23,639
Speaker 1: you know, he thought that doing that would keep his

304
00:18:23,720 --> 00:18:26,280
Speaker 1: sisters from taking the furniture and selling it out from

305
00:18:26,359 --> 00:18:33,120
Speaker 1: under him. And unfortunately, these tendencies eventually turned violent. Uh.

306
00:18:33,200 --> 00:18:37,080
Speaker 1: He started to attack his sisters and they just kind

307
00:18:37,080 --> 00:18:39,679
Speaker 1: of had to call the doctor one day, and on

308
00:18:39,800 --> 00:18:45,600
Speaker 1: June six, ninety four, Louis Wayne was certified insane. At

309
00:18:45,640 --> 00:18:47,800
Speaker 1: the time, that was you know, the wording they used

310
00:18:47,840 --> 00:18:51,840
Speaker 1: and Uh, he was admitted to the Pauper's Ward of

311
00:18:51,920 --> 00:18:57,000
Speaker 1: the Springfield uh mental Hospital. Let's just remember too that

312
00:18:57,160 --> 00:19:02,040
Speaker 1: this was not a good time for mental health. There

313
00:19:02,119 --> 00:19:05,440
Speaker 1: was stigma surrounding it, the treatment of folks going through

314
00:19:05,440 --> 00:19:10,040
Speaker 1: these situations where barbaric, to say the least um and

315
00:19:10,040 --> 00:19:12,159
Speaker 1: and you know, as evidenced by the notion of a

316
00:19:12,240 --> 00:19:16,560
Speaker 1: Popper's wing of a quote unquote insane asylum. Right, no, exactly,

317
00:19:16,880 --> 00:19:20,480
Speaker 1: And uh yeah, there were you know, kind of upstanding

318
00:19:20,480 --> 00:19:24,399
Speaker 1: institutions at the time, you know, sanatoriums, but this was

319
00:19:24,440 --> 00:19:26,880
Speaker 1: not one of those. Yeah, at the at this point

320
00:19:26,920 --> 00:19:29,320
Speaker 1: he was broke. So yeah, he went to the Pauper's

321
00:19:29,320 --> 00:19:33,200
Speaker 1: Wing and probably didn't get the best of treatment. Thankfully,

322
00:19:33,440 --> 00:19:36,280
Speaker 1: he was not there long. He was there about a

323
00:19:36,359 --> 00:19:40,560
Speaker 1: year before somebody actually kind of stumbled upon him there,

324
00:19:40,720 --> 00:19:43,239
Speaker 1: you know, the great Lewis Wayne and uh, it's it's

325
00:19:43,280 --> 00:19:48,120
Speaker 1: a pretty great story. Um it's actually this bookseller, a publicist,

326
00:19:48,240 --> 00:19:49,919
Speaker 1: and I had never heard of this, but he was

327
00:19:50,080 --> 00:19:53,639
Speaker 1: a Fabian, which is actually like a kind of a

328
00:19:53,800 --> 00:19:57,840
Speaker 1: socialist reform group. Yeah there's there's still around now, there's

329
00:19:57,840 --> 00:20:01,600
Speaker 1: still around now, the Fabian Society. Yeah, yeah, yeah, they've

330
00:20:01,640 --> 00:20:04,480
Speaker 1: actually been. One of their more recent fights is to

331
00:20:04,560 --> 00:20:07,280
Speaker 1: get the British press to stop using the word chav

332
00:20:07,600 --> 00:20:12,360
Speaker 1: as often because it has seen as stereotyping and derogatory

333
00:20:12,960 --> 00:20:15,600
Speaker 1: towards the working class. I was just reading about the

334
00:20:15,600 --> 00:20:18,480
Speaker 1: Fabian Society. But yeah, they're they're fighting the good fight,

335
00:20:18,600 --> 00:20:21,760
Speaker 1: and they took up this it took up this flag.

336
00:20:21,800 --> 00:20:23,680
Speaker 1: I want to step back just a couple of couple

337
00:20:23,680 --> 00:20:25,639
Speaker 1: of points. Noly, you took the words out of my

338
00:20:25,680 --> 00:20:28,600
Speaker 1: mouth for the asylum, and thank you for doing so.

339
00:20:28,880 --> 00:20:32,439
Speaker 1: There's some fantastic books about the horrors that went on

340
00:20:32,560 --> 00:20:34,840
Speaker 1: there that'd be glad to recommend if anybody wants to

341
00:20:34,840 --> 00:20:39,520
Speaker 1: reach out online. Uh and the uh, the stuff about

342
00:20:39,520 --> 00:20:43,200
Speaker 1: electricity that you mentioned, Gabe, I would say you can

343
00:20:43,240 --> 00:20:46,360
Speaker 1: see some of that reflected in how he's drawing these cats.

344
00:20:46,960 --> 00:20:49,400
Speaker 1: So just want to make sure that we established those

345
00:20:49,400 --> 00:20:58,040
Speaker 1: two points, and don't don't forget those with the Fabian Society.

346
00:20:58,320 --> 00:21:03,600
Speaker 1: I believe you're intured do seeing a a a savior

347
00:21:04,240 --> 00:21:07,560
Speaker 1: of Wayne and that's uh, that's Dan Ryder, right, Yeah,

348
00:21:07,680 --> 00:21:10,399
Speaker 1: that's right. Yeah, Dan Ryder. He he was touring the

349
00:21:10,440 --> 00:21:14,040
Speaker 1: hospital where Wayne was committed and he kind of just

350
00:21:14,320 --> 00:21:16,840
Speaker 1: stumbled across him. He says he wrote that he wrote

351
00:21:16,840 --> 00:21:19,760
Speaker 1: this down later in his memoirs. He said, I was

352
00:21:19,800 --> 00:21:22,720
Speaker 1: on a committee that had to visit asylums. During one

353
00:21:22,720 --> 00:21:25,080
Speaker 1: of those visits, I was passing up and down a

354
00:21:25,119 --> 00:21:28,639
Speaker 1: corridor when I noticed a quiet little man drawing cats.

355
00:21:29,119 --> 00:21:31,080
Speaker 1: Can we do? Uh? You you want to do a

356
00:21:31,160 --> 00:21:35,080
Speaker 1: re enactment? Uh? Gave? How about you? How about you

357
00:21:35,200 --> 00:21:38,120
Speaker 1: be the narrator? Noel? Do you want to be Dan

358
00:21:38,240 --> 00:21:40,480
Speaker 1: Ryder or do you want to be Wayne? I could

359
00:21:40,480 --> 00:21:43,560
Speaker 1: be I'll be writer. Okay, okay, yeah, of course, okay,

360
00:21:43,720 --> 00:21:48,160
Speaker 1: take it away, all right? Good lord man, you draw

361
00:21:48,320 --> 00:21:53,840
Speaker 1: like Louis Wayne. Hey, I'm Wayne, replied the patient. You're not,

362
00:21:54,160 --> 00:21:58,959
Speaker 1: you know, I exclaimed, But I am, said the artist,

363
00:21:59,359 --> 00:22:02,919
Speaker 1: and he was. I think that was worth it? Was

364
00:22:02,920 --> 00:22:09,080
Speaker 1: that worth it? And this this blue writer's mind because

365
00:22:09,080 --> 00:22:12,880
Speaker 1: at first he didn't fully believe it, but then he

366
00:22:13,840 --> 00:22:16,880
Speaker 1: kind of became an advocate for getting him the hell

367
00:22:16,920 --> 00:22:21,800
Speaker 1: out of this situation. Yeah, he actually spearheaded this public campaign. Um,

368
00:22:21,840 --> 00:22:24,520
Speaker 1: he got noted writers of the time, He got H. G.

369
00:22:24,720 --> 00:22:28,280
Speaker 1: Wells on board. Um. H. G. Wells actually had a

370
00:22:28,320 --> 00:22:32,119
Speaker 1: great quote that he said on radio. He said, Lewis

371
00:22:32,280 --> 00:22:35,480
Speaker 1: made the cat his own. He invented a cat style,

372
00:22:35,640 --> 00:22:40,199
Speaker 1: a cat's society, a whole cat world. British cats that

373
00:22:40,280 --> 00:22:43,959
Speaker 1: do not look and live like Lewis cats are ashamed

374
00:22:44,000 --> 00:22:48,600
Speaker 1: of themselves. Do you think that this would have predated T. S.

375
00:22:48,640 --> 00:22:52,760
Speaker 1: Eliot's you know, stories about cats and all of those poems,

376
00:22:52,840 --> 00:22:55,000
Speaker 1: and do you think that was influenced by this? Sure

377
00:22:55,040 --> 00:22:56,920
Speaker 1: seems like it to me. I don't know. I think

378
00:22:56,920 --> 00:23:00,320
Speaker 1: that's a great observation. Uh. T. S. Eliott, you know,

379
00:23:00,880 --> 00:23:05,720
Speaker 1: despite what he wanted everyone to believe, was not himself British,

380
00:23:05,800 --> 00:23:08,760
Speaker 1: it was just an anglophile. That guy was born in Missouri.

381
00:23:09,119 --> 00:23:12,439
Speaker 1: Uh he wrote Old Possums Book of Practical Cats in

382
00:23:12,560 --> 00:23:16,440
Speaker 1: ninety nine. So the timeline definitely matches up. I think

383
00:23:16,480 --> 00:23:19,400
Speaker 1: that's a really good catch. Um. I just also want

384
00:23:19,400 --> 00:23:21,840
Speaker 1: to point out that there's pretty solid evidence H. G.

385
00:23:22,000 --> 00:23:24,800
Speaker 1: Wells plagiarized the heck out of stuff, but he did

386
00:23:24,840 --> 00:23:28,160
Speaker 1: not plagiarize that quotation that is verified, that was from

387
00:23:28,160 --> 00:23:31,920
Speaker 1: the heart. That was from the heart. So so this

388
00:23:31,920 --> 00:23:35,119
Speaker 1: this feels like maybe you know, we're we're in a

389
00:23:35,160 --> 00:23:39,040
Speaker 1: better place hopefully right, We've got we've kind of followed

390
00:23:39,080 --> 00:23:42,720
Speaker 1: a Joseph Campbell esque heroes journey. Uh, we've we've gone

391
00:23:42,720 --> 00:23:46,159
Speaker 1: to the dark night of the soul. He's been rescued

392
00:23:46,400 --> 00:23:49,960
Speaker 1: by a fan and everybody else thought he was dead.

393
00:23:50,560 --> 00:23:54,560
Speaker 1: He gets moved to a better psychiatric hospital at first,

394
00:23:54,840 --> 00:23:57,399
Speaker 1: right yeah, And I have to throw in there that

395
00:23:57,480 --> 00:24:00,520
Speaker 1: even the Prime Minister of the time got on board

396
00:24:00,560 --> 00:24:04,320
Speaker 1: this effort to kind of rescue Wayne. He was, you know,

397
00:24:04,440 --> 00:24:07,679
Speaker 1: such a cultural figure at the time. The Prime Minister

398
00:24:07,720 --> 00:24:10,719
Speaker 1: actually went on the air and said, Louis Wayne was

399
00:24:10,760 --> 00:24:13,480
Speaker 1: on all of our walls fifteen to twenty years ago.

400
00:24:13,680 --> 00:24:16,560
Speaker 1: Probably no artist has given a greater number of young

401
00:24:16,640 --> 00:24:20,160
Speaker 1: people pleasure than he has, and that really did strike

402
00:24:20,200 --> 00:24:22,760
Speaker 1: a chord with the with the public. The this appeal

403
00:24:22,840 --> 00:24:26,800
Speaker 1: raised twenty three hundred pounds, which of course quite quite

404
00:24:26,800 --> 00:24:29,399
Speaker 1: a bit more today. I think it's somewhere around you know,

405
00:24:29,600 --> 00:24:32,920
Speaker 1: over a hundred thousand dollars for sure, And uh yeah,

406
00:24:33,080 --> 00:24:35,800
Speaker 1: so that's you know, the effort worked. He got transferred

407
00:24:35,840 --> 00:24:40,640
Speaker 1: to a better facility, Bethlem Psychiatric Hospital in London, and

408
00:24:40,920 --> 00:24:45,000
Speaker 1: then five years after that he was transferred again. And

409
00:24:45,080 --> 00:24:48,080
Speaker 1: where did he end up. He ended up at Knapsberry Hospital,

410
00:24:48,680 --> 00:24:51,040
Speaker 1: which apparently had you know, this was a much better

411
00:24:51,080 --> 00:24:53,280
Speaker 1: fit for him. There were a lot of gardens, a

412
00:24:53,280 --> 00:24:57,560
Speaker 1: lot of outdoor space and cats and a lot of cats. Yeah,

413
00:24:57,640 --> 00:24:59,920
Speaker 1: that's right. The garden provided you know access, so he

414
00:25:00,000 --> 00:25:03,800
Speaker 1: had some feline visitors. Uh, you know, he started drawing again,

415
00:25:04,520 --> 00:25:08,280
Speaker 1: and um, I think it's strange to say, but in

416
00:25:08,320 --> 00:25:12,040
Speaker 1: the end, it really was kind of an upgrade for him.

417
00:25:12,080 --> 00:25:14,560
Speaker 1: Like he was free from these you know, the domestic

418
00:25:14,600 --> 00:25:18,440
Speaker 1: responsibilities we talked about, from his creditors and debtors, uh,

419
00:25:18,440 --> 00:25:19,760
Speaker 1: you know, and trying to just kind of be the

420
00:25:19,800 --> 00:25:23,200
Speaker 1: breadwinner for his family, and he really just kind of

421
00:25:23,280 --> 00:25:25,760
Speaker 1: got to let go and do what he loved, which,

422
00:25:25,960 --> 00:25:29,000
Speaker 1: as we know, was draw cats. And so there's there's

423
00:25:29,040 --> 00:25:33,439
Speaker 1: this beautiful yet bitter sweet note here because you know,

424
00:25:33,480 --> 00:25:36,680
Speaker 1: a guy who never really cared, uh to a mass

425
00:25:36,720 --> 00:25:39,560
Speaker 1: of fortune, who just loved his own art, is able

426
00:25:39,600 --> 00:25:42,320
Speaker 1: to as you said, as you said, Gabe, he's able

427
00:25:42,400 --> 00:25:46,600
Speaker 1: to reach a kind of peace, and he lives this

428
00:25:46,680 --> 00:25:51,960
Speaker 1: way drawing, drawing art that he loves until he passes.

429
00:25:52,280 --> 00:25:56,440
Speaker 1: He passes from this mortal plane on July four, nineteen

430
00:25:56,960 --> 00:26:01,040
Speaker 1: thirty nine, and on the way, his art is still evolving.

431
00:26:01,119 --> 00:26:05,000
Speaker 1: By the way, it's becoming increasingly Um, what would you say, abstract?

432
00:26:05,080 --> 00:26:07,399
Speaker 1: Do we want to talk about this? We should definitely

433
00:26:07,440 --> 00:26:11,040
Speaker 1: talk about this. Yeah. Um that he isn't making work anymore,

434
00:26:11,200 --> 00:26:13,760
Speaker 1: you know, for publication, he's not trying to sell anything.

435
00:26:13,880 --> 00:26:17,640
Speaker 1: There's no you know, requests or deadlines or anything like that.

436
00:26:17,720 --> 00:26:21,879
Speaker 1: He's really free to kind of flex his creative muscles

437
00:26:21,960 --> 00:26:24,719
Speaker 1: and go where he wants with this, and and he

438
00:26:24,760 --> 00:26:27,560
Speaker 1: takes it to all kinds of different places. Um. One

439
00:26:27,560 --> 00:26:30,520
Speaker 1: in particular, the more on the more psychedelic end of things,

440
00:26:30,920 --> 00:26:33,400
Speaker 1: he starts doing what's kind of referred to now as

441
00:26:33,440 --> 00:26:37,960
Speaker 1: wallpaper cats. And that's because these are really elaborate patterns,

442
00:26:38,480 --> 00:26:42,520
Speaker 1: a lot of symmetrical, colorful patterns, almost like fractal kind

443
00:26:42,560 --> 00:26:44,800
Speaker 1: of looking in a way. Yeah, Yeah, similar to stuff

444
00:26:44,840 --> 00:26:48,919
Speaker 1: you'd find on wallpapers or Turkish rugs. And you know,

445
00:26:49,000 --> 00:26:51,679
Speaker 1: so it all kind of comes back. A lot of

446
00:26:51,680 --> 00:26:55,480
Speaker 1: of art historians are kind of, you know, suggesting that

447
00:26:55,560 --> 00:26:58,000
Speaker 1: a lot of the influence was, yeah, memories of the

448
00:26:58,600 --> 00:27:02,760
Speaker 1: patterns that his mother worked on in his youth wall papers,

449
00:27:02,800 --> 00:27:04,919
Speaker 1: you know, that that had been in their house, and

450
00:27:04,920 --> 00:27:06,960
Speaker 1: that he was kind of just all channeling that into

451
00:27:07,040 --> 00:27:12,040
Speaker 1: his art and mixing in cats too, and yeah, it's uh,

452
00:27:12,080 --> 00:27:14,399
Speaker 1: you know, there's a case that's been made over the

453
00:27:14,480 --> 00:27:17,720
Speaker 1: years that you can kind of trace the deterioration of

454
00:27:17,840 --> 00:27:20,800
Speaker 1: his mind. Uh, you know, in the progression of this

455
00:27:21,040 --> 00:27:24,119
Speaker 1: art um the way things do get more abstract and

456
00:27:24,160 --> 00:27:26,760
Speaker 1: the cats kind of you know, become these sort of

457
00:27:27,080 --> 00:27:29,639
Speaker 1: cosmic I mean, it really is trippy stuff if you

458
00:27:29,640 --> 00:27:32,240
Speaker 1: look at it. But it's incredible and it's you know,

459
00:27:32,240 --> 00:27:35,359
Speaker 1: there is sort of a silver lining in this that

460
00:27:35,440 --> 00:27:38,880
Speaker 1: he you know, obviously was was rescued from that Popper's

461
00:27:38,920 --> 00:27:43,200
Speaker 1: ward and was quite beloved at Napsbury, where he spent

462
00:27:43,560 --> 00:27:46,040
Speaker 1: the last years of his life and where his art

463
00:27:46,119 --> 00:27:51,000
Speaker 1: began to progress into those kind of fractal psychedelic tapestries, right, Yeah,

464
00:27:51,040 --> 00:27:52,800
Speaker 1: just to jump in real quick, Yeah, I mean they

465
00:27:52,840 --> 00:27:54,879
Speaker 1: loved him there. He would he would even decorate the

466
00:27:54,960 --> 00:27:58,320
Speaker 1: words um where he where he stayed. Every every Christmas

467
00:27:58,400 --> 00:28:00,840
Speaker 1: he would do a big new design for the walls,

468
00:28:00,880 --> 00:28:03,679
Speaker 1: and of course it was always cats. It's strange because

469
00:28:03,920 --> 00:28:07,240
Speaker 1: when he passes away and I think, maybe not to

470
00:28:07,280 --> 00:28:09,720
Speaker 1: read your minds, guys, but I think maybe that's something

471
00:28:09,880 --> 00:28:12,320
Speaker 1: you might have been going toward as well. No, uh,

472
00:28:12,400 --> 00:28:16,399
Speaker 1: when he passes away, he is so beloved that people

473
00:28:16,680 --> 00:28:22,520
Speaker 1: organize for a posthumous showing of his work, and people

474
00:28:22,560 --> 00:28:29,480
Speaker 1: are celebrating him, their memorializing him. However, his death, everybody

475
00:28:29,480 --> 00:28:32,760
Speaker 1: who heard that, who heard that date knows what's coming up.

476
00:28:33,119 --> 00:28:37,720
Speaker 1: His death on occurred on July four nine. He died

477
00:28:37,760 --> 00:28:41,200
Speaker 1: in the UK. That's that's the same time that Britain

478
00:28:41,440 --> 00:28:47,200
Speaker 1: enters World War two, and so for for a while,

479
00:28:48,200 --> 00:28:51,640
Speaker 1: he you know, understandably is fading out of the headlines

480
00:28:51,960 --> 00:28:55,240
Speaker 1: while monsters like Adolph Hitler are taking up more and

481
00:28:55,280 --> 00:28:58,400
Speaker 1: more space in the broadsheet. So, yeah, after he passed away,

482
00:28:58,440 --> 00:29:01,120
Speaker 1: there was you know, there's been a couple reinventions or

483
00:29:01,200 --> 00:29:04,600
Speaker 1: kind of you know, reinvigorations of interest in Wayne over

484
00:29:04,600 --> 00:29:07,520
Speaker 1: the years, and one of them started when a guy

485
00:29:07,600 --> 00:29:12,800
Speaker 1: named Dr Walter McClay found eight of Wayne's works from

486
00:29:12,800 --> 00:29:16,440
Speaker 1: his kind of asylum years at a junk shop. And

487
00:29:16,600 --> 00:29:19,280
Speaker 1: this is something that would eventually become known as the

488
00:29:19,360 --> 00:29:23,960
Speaker 1: Famous series, and you know, it's it's again it's held

489
00:29:24,040 --> 00:29:26,360
Speaker 1: up as kind of you can see the deterioration of

490
00:29:26,440 --> 00:29:30,080
Speaker 1: his mind through the way that he depicted cats in

491
00:29:30,080 --> 00:29:33,080
Speaker 1: this series of eight different paintings and you know, the

492
00:29:33,160 --> 00:29:38,320
Speaker 1: first two are fairly realistic. They've been described as disney

493
00:29:38,400 --> 00:29:43,120
Speaker 1: Ish affairs, so you know, big round cutesie features a

494
00:29:43,160 --> 00:29:47,160
Speaker 1: lot of fluff. The third cat in the series is uh,

495
00:29:47,200 --> 00:29:50,640
Speaker 1: you know, recognizable as a cat, but we get some

496
00:29:50,680 --> 00:29:53,760
Speaker 1: of that kind of radiating outlines that we that we

497
00:29:53,800 --> 00:29:56,960
Speaker 1: talked about earlier, you know, the electricity or the ether

498
00:29:57,160 --> 00:30:00,200
Speaker 1: and the air um. And then the five draw things

499
00:30:00,320 --> 00:30:04,600
Speaker 1: after that are really kind of uh, I don't know

500
00:30:04,600 --> 00:30:06,320
Speaker 1: how you would describe them, but there are more and

501
00:30:06,360 --> 00:30:08,760
Speaker 1: more abstract as you go along. The cat kind of

502
00:30:08,800 --> 00:30:12,280
Speaker 1: blurs out of focus um, and instead you get kind

503
00:30:12,280 --> 00:30:15,360
Speaker 1: of just these colorful shapes and fractals, you know, like

504
00:30:15,440 --> 00:30:17,600
Speaker 1: kind of like you're looking at a cat's face through

505
00:30:17,640 --> 00:30:21,120
Speaker 1: a kaleidoscope. It's interesting too, because McClay was actually a

506
00:30:21,160 --> 00:30:24,520
Speaker 1: psychiatrist um who just happened to be you know, a

507
00:30:24,520 --> 00:30:27,120
Speaker 1: fan of like, you know, digging around junk shops for

508
00:30:27,240 --> 00:30:30,160
Speaker 1: art and you know, collecting art. I just think it's

509
00:30:30,160 --> 00:30:34,040
Speaker 1: really interesting that it happened to be someone who would

510
00:30:34,080 --> 00:30:37,360
Speaker 1: have been familiar with this kind of diagnosis of mental

511
00:30:37,400 --> 00:30:39,960
Speaker 1: illness that ended up kind of you know, finding this

512
00:30:40,040 --> 00:30:42,240
Speaker 1: stuff and being able to kind of you know, apply

513
00:30:42,440 --> 00:30:45,600
Speaker 1: that level of understanding to maybe what he was seeing

514
00:30:45,640 --> 00:30:48,600
Speaker 1: in that progression. You know, yeah, definitely, And and others

515
00:30:48,640 --> 00:30:50,880
Speaker 1: in his field really kind of ran with this and

516
00:30:50,920 --> 00:30:54,960
Speaker 1: took that famous series you know as um kind of

517
00:30:54,960 --> 00:30:57,760
Speaker 1: a case study in you know, the deterioration of the

518
00:30:57,800 --> 00:31:01,320
Speaker 1: mind when faced with something like skitz a frenya, and

519
00:31:01,680 --> 00:31:03,920
Speaker 1: that went on for decades. It was accepted. That's actually

520
00:31:04,000 --> 00:31:07,440
Speaker 1: the first place that I came across Lewis Wayne's work.

521
00:31:07,920 --> 00:31:10,880
Speaker 1: I think it was a Time magazine special or something

522
00:31:11,400 --> 00:31:14,080
Speaker 1: from the seventies or eighties, this series they put out

523
00:31:14,120 --> 00:31:17,880
Speaker 1: on the Mind, and inside that was this famous series

524
00:31:17,880 --> 00:31:20,920
Speaker 1: and it was you know, in the chapter about mental illness.

525
00:31:21,480 --> 00:31:24,280
Speaker 1: But there's more to the story there. And you know,

526
00:31:24,360 --> 00:31:27,120
Speaker 1: whether or not this is actually grounded in any kind

527
00:31:27,160 --> 00:31:33,280
Speaker 1: of legitimate science, yes, yeah, and uh gave you had

528
00:31:33,520 --> 00:31:36,200
Speaker 1: delved into a couple of different books here. This is

529
00:31:36,280 --> 00:31:37,920
Speaker 1: one of the things we set up when we said

530
00:31:37,960 --> 00:31:42,480
Speaker 1: we want to be sensitive about this, because it's it's

531
00:31:42,560 --> 00:31:46,640
Speaker 1: so devilishly easy to hear something or see something and

532
00:31:46,680 --> 00:31:48,560
Speaker 1: you just say, oh, that makes sense, like I see

533
00:31:48,560 --> 00:31:53,480
Speaker 1: a progression. So clearly this is what the experts say.

534
00:31:53,520 --> 00:31:59,280
Speaker 1: It is, But you're right. Upon revisiting some of this work.

535
00:31:59,720 --> 00:32:03,000
Speaker 1: There's one writer we should bring into the reappraisal here.

536
00:32:03,040 --> 00:32:07,360
Speaker 1: His name is Rodney Dale. Uh. He had purchased a

537
00:32:07,440 --> 00:32:11,320
Speaker 1: Wayne illustration from he was living in Cambridge and he

538
00:32:11,360 --> 00:32:14,720
Speaker 1: and he was lucky enough to get an original illustration

539
00:32:14,760 --> 00:32:17,520
Speaker 1: of Wayne's. And he said, you know, this is amazing.

540
00:32:17,800 --> 00:32:21,120
Speaker 1: I want to learn more about this guy. And I've

541
00:32:21,120 --> 00:32:25,000
Speaker 1: got to investigate this, so I want more information about him. Uh,

542
00:32:25,080 --> 00:32:27,760
Speaker 1: and this is sort of the mid late sixties. Uh.

543
00:32:27,800 --> 00:32:30,720
Speaker 1: He eventually learns as much as he can, and he

544
00:32:30,760 --> 00:32:34,440
Speaker 1: finds a cash of artwork that's been stashed somewhere and

545
00:32:34,480 --> 00:32:37,800
Speaker 1: forgotten under a bed, and then he publishes the book

546
00:32:38,000 --> 00:32:41,600
Speaker 1: Lewis Wayne, The Man Who Drew Cats. But it starts

547
00:32:42,600 --> 00:32:50,720
Speaker 1: challenging mcclay's earlier conclusions because you know, the timeline doesn't

548
00:32:50,760 --> 00:32:56,720
Speaker 1: really match up, Like there's there's no chronological there's no

549
00:32:56,880 --> 00:32:59,320
Speaker 1: like chain of command, for lack of a better phrase,

550
00:32:59,800 --> 00:33:02,800
Speaker 1: a out where and how these were made? They we

551
00:33:02,920 --> 00:33:06,360
Speaker 1: just have eight that seemed to illustrate something. But we

552
00:33:06,400 --> 00:33:09,280
Speaker 1: don't know the gap between the paintings, you know, between

553
00:33:09,280 --> 00:33:12,880
Speaker 1: like painting three or painting for etcetera. So it it draw,

554
00:33:13,000 --> 00:33:15,840
Speaker 1: it pokes some holes in that in mcclay's theory. That's

555
00:33:15,880 --> 00:33:18,400
Speaker 1: really interesting because I honestly I feel kind of like

556
00:33:18,440 --> 00:33:21,120
Speaker 1: a heel because I looked at it in the same way,

557
00:33:21,320 --> 00:33:24,040
Speaker 1: just just from you know, an observational Obviously I'm not

558
00:33:24,520 --> 00:33:27,760
Speaker 1: you know, a school in psych psychology or psychiatry, but

559
00:33:28,120 --> 00:33:31,320
Speaker 1: that is how I interpreted as well. So really interesting.

560
00:33:31,360 --> 00:33:35,680
Speaker 1: We know that psychology, uh and psychiatry were evolving fields,

561
00:33:35,680 --> 00:33:38,560
Speaker 1: and especially when we talk about the way um mentally

562
00:33:38,560 --> 00:33:42,120
Speaker 1: ill individuals were treated in those you know, horrific asylum

563
00:33:42,160 --> 00:33:46,479
Speaker 1: conditions in uh in Wayne's early days, um when he

564
00:33:46,560 --> 00:33:50,000
Speaker 1: was committed. Uh, these things evolved and they continue to evolve,

565
00:33:50,040 --> 00:33:51,520
Speaker 1: and that's kind of what we're seeing here in this

566
00:33:51,920 --> 00:33:54,960
Speaker 1: reinterpretation of this stuff in the sixties. Yeah, that's right.

567
00:33:55,000 --> 00:33:57,959
Speaker 1: I mean, eventually what came to light was that, you know,

568
00:33:58,160 --> 00:34:02,480
Speaker 1: the connections that McClay made between these paintings were really

569
00:34:02,520 --> 00:34:05,600
Speaker 1: just of his own invention. Uh. He just you know,

570
00:34:05,640 --> 00:34:09,000
Speaker 1: he stumbled across these eight images and placed them in

571
00:34:09,040 --> 00:34:11,640
Speaker 1: an order that made sense to him and kind of

572
00:34:11,680 --> 00:34:15,000
Speaker 1: fit the narrative that maybe he already had arrived at

573
00:34:15,120 --> 00:34:18,680
Speaker 1: you know, the conclusion, and yeah, there's just no evidence

574
00:34:18,719 --> 00:34:22,440
Speaker 1: that you know, these eight images follow a timeline, you know,

575
00:34:22,520 --> 00:34:25,520
Speaker 1: that progression of his disease that you know, the one

576
00:34:25,560 --> 00:34:28,720
Speaker 1: that's more realistic was made you know before the last

577
00:34:28,760 --> 00:34:31,840
Speaker 1: one in the series that's really abstract. There's nothing to

578
00:34:31,880 --> 00:34:34,120
Speaker 1: support that. And in fact, if you look at the

579
00:34:34,160 --> 00:34:37,680
Speaker 1: work from those asylum years, yeah, there's a lot of

580
00:34:37,680 --> 00:34:41,440
Speaker 1: those wallpaper cats and you know, fractals and really psychedelic stuff,

581
00:34:41,480 --> 00:34:44,520
Speaker 1: but there's also things that harkened back to his earlier

582
00:34:44,560 --> 00:34:47,279
Speaker 1: work where it's just kind of you know, these tableaus

583
00:34:47,360 --> 00:34:51,520
Speaker 1: of cats playing croquet or shooting pool, tug of war,

584
00:34:51,960 --> 00:34:54,000
Speaker 1: a lot of activities that he would have been taking

585
00:34:54,040 --> 00:34:58,680
Speaker 1: part in himself at that kind of nicer, higher end asylum. So,

586
00:34:58,960 --> 00:35:01,839
Speaker 1: you know, the conclu lucians that McClay we're drawing just

587
00:35:02,000 --> 00:35:05,520
Speaker 1: don't really pass the smell test all too often. The

588
00:35:05,560 --> 00:35:11,239
Speaker 1: truth with UH with surprisingly convenient science. You know, he

589
00:35:11,320 --> 00:35:14,680
Speaker 1: doesn't automatically make it schizophrenia, right, it could have been something,

590
00:35:14,960 --> 00:35:17,960
Speaker 1: but he could have just been continually evolving as an artist.

591
00:35:18,120 --> 00:35:20,640
Speaker 1: There's also this idea that they had to have been

592
00:35:21,400 --> 00:35:24,800
Speaker 1: UH done in progression because they were all the same size,

593
00:35:25,360 --> 00:35:27,000
Speaker 1: But that really was just a product of the fact

594
00:35:27,040 --> 00:35:29,960
Speaker 1: that he was getting his art supplies from the hospital

595
00:35:30,280 --> 00:35:33,880
Speaker 1: and they had standardized you know, paper and art supplies

596
00:35:33,880 --> 00:35:35,960
Speaker 1: and crafting stuff that they would give him. So if

597
00:35:36,000 --> 00:35:42,959
Speaker 1: that's why they were all the same size. And there's

598
00:35:43,000 --> 00:35:46,560
Speaker 1: there's one other interesting thing here. Now, now we're entering

599
00:35:46,600 --> 00:35:49,200
Speaker 1: a bit of the realm of speculation, but we're not

600
00:35:49,239 --> 00:35:53,120
Speaker 1: gonna do your dirty the way that McClay did. And uh,

601
00:35:53,280 --> 00:35:56,439
Speaker 1: and can make a conclusion. You have a little speculation here.

602
00:35:56,840 --> 00:36:00,560
Speaker 1: If there was, if there was a man to issue

603
00:36:00,600 --> 00:36:04,000
Speaker 1: that he was grappling with, it does not necessarily mean

604
00:36:04,400 --> 00:36:08,600
Speaker 1: that mental issue was schizophrenia. One thing that was really

605
00:36:08,640 --> 00:36:13,600
Speaker 1: fascinating to me about this is good this Maybe uh,

606
00:36:13,760 --> 00:36:17,279
Speaker 1: maybe we can file this is under anti cat propaganda,

607
00:36:17,360 --> 00:36:20,560
Speaker 1: but this will be interesting to every cat lover out there. Uh.

608
00:36:21,360 --> 00:36:26,960
Speaker 1: There have been some unsubstantiated guesses that perhaps Wayne was

609
00:36:27,480 --> 00:36:33,760
Speaker 1: affected with something called toxoplasmosis gandhi. Toxoplasmosis gandhi. Uh. If

610
00:36:33,800 --> 00:36:36,560
Speaker 1: if it did, if he did have schizophrenia, if he

611
00:36:36,600 --> 00:36:39,360
Speaker 1: did have a mental issue, it could have been caused

612
00:36:39,480 --> 00:36:43,080
Speaker 1: by his love of cats. It's possible, if not probable,

613
00:36:43,120 --> 00:36:47,760
Speaker 1: it's possible. Uh, this this parasite moves from feline host

614
00:36:48,040 --> 00:36:51,800
Speaker 1: to humans. Most people don't have any symptoms. It usually

615
00:36:51,840 --> 00:36:54,000
Speaker 1: causes like a mild you feel like you kind of

616
00:36:54,000 --> 00:36:56,600
Speaker 1: have the fluid. You get better, but it can cause

617
00:36:57,000 --> 00:37:00,360
Speaker 1: some severe symptoms in a certain part of the pop relation.

618
00:37:00,880 --> 00:37:05,399
Speaker 1: Some people can have their mental functions in pair. A

619
00:37:05,440 --> 00:37:08,040
Speaker 1: fact that made me think of our own La Bush

620
00:37:08,440 --> 00:37:13,600
Speaker 1: Close associated superproducer Casey Pegram is that toxoplasmosis is very

621
00:37:13,600 --> 00:37:17,239
Speaker 1: common in some parts of the world. About fifty of

622
00:37:17,239 --> 00:37:21,000
Speaker 1: the adult population of France is infected as we record today.

623
00:37:21,080 --> 00:37:23,480
Speaker 1: I'm probably oversimplifying this, but isn't that also the thing

624
00:37:23,480 --> 00:37:27,200
Speaker 1: that kind of makes you a little more into cats? Yes,

625
00:37:27,320 --> 00:37:31,279
Speaker 1: I think you're right, those worms in your brain. Yeah, yeah,

626
00:37:31,280 --> 00:37:34,080
Speaker 1: it's it's interesting, you know, to kind of theorize about

627
00:37:34,120 --> 00:37:37,080
Speaker 1: that kind of thing, the connection with cats. They definitely

628
00:37:37,160 --> 00:37:41,080
Speaker 1: pop up, you know often through his life. There's there's

629
00:37:41,120 --> 00:37:44,839
Speaker 1: a few good anecdotes I've come across. Uh. One was that,

630
00:37:44,880 --> 00:37:47,239
Speaker 1: you know, despite what happened to him later in life

631
00:37:47,239 --> 00:37:49,640
Speaker 1: health wise, he was actually in pretty good health for

632
00:37:49,719 --> 00:37:51,880
Speaker 1: most of his life and and never really had to

633
00:37:51,920 --> 00:37:57,000
Speaker 1: go to the hospital. Except on one occasion, um in En,

634
00:37:57,520 --> 00:38:01,360
Speaker 1: he actually fell off of a bus on Bond Street

635
00:38:01,400 --> 00:38:04,600
Speaker 1: and spent the next two weeks in the hospital, and

636
00:38:04,760 --> 00:38:06,560
Speaker 1: this was reported on he was still kind of a

637
00:38:06,560 --> 00:38:09,200
Speaker 1: public figure at the time, and the legend was that

638
00:38:09,239 --> 00:38:11,920
Speaker 1: he had fallen off because the bus was swerving to

639
00:38:12,080 --> 00:38:16,320
Speaker 1: avoid a cat. Wait a minute, so just just to clarify,

640
00:38:16,320 --> 00:38:18,400
Speaker 1: when you say falling off of a bus, do you

641
00:38:18,440 --> 00:38:21,200
Speaker 1: mean like out the door or like was he like

642
00:38:21,640 --> 00:38:24,080
Speaker 1: bus surfing or something? How does one fall off of

643
00:38:24,080 --> 00:38:27,280
Speaker 1: a bus? I'm picturing it's a double decker bus because

644
00:38:27,280 --> 00:38:30,200
Speaker 1: he's in he's in London. I don't know the timeline

645
00:38:30,200 --> 00:38:32,239
Speaker 1: of that exactly if those were around, but that makes

646
00:38:32,280 --> 00:38:34,279
Speaker 1: the most sense to me. So I'm gonna go with that.

647
00:38:34,520 --> 00:38:37,000
Speaker 1: Checks out. So he's gonna you know, he's hanging off

648
00:38:37,040 --> 00:38:40,279
Speaker 1: the way that the cool kids ride those double decker busses, right,

649
00:38:40,320 --> 00:38:44,040
Speaker 1: He's hanging off the rail maybe wave into cats. Uh.

650
00:38:44,200 --> 00:38:47,440
Speaker 1: This is fascinating because we've we've done a lot of

651
00:38:47,480 --> 00:38:51,000
Speaker 1: stuff in in this episode. We have we've busted a

652
00:38:51,040 --> 00:38:53,359
Speaker 1: little bit of a myth. And you know, Noel, don't

653
00:38:53,400 --> 00:38:55,680
Speaker 1: feel bad because when I when I saw those things,

654
00:38:55,719 --> 00:38:58,399
Speaker 1: I made the same assumptions. I don't think we're wrong

655
00:38:58,480 --> 00:39:02,960
Speaker 1: to make those assumptions about the progression of quote unquote

656
00:39:02,960 --> 00:39:08,719
Speaker 1: mental illness there because they came from a psychiatrist, right

657
00:39:08,880 --> 00:39:14,200
Speaker 1: from a learned professional who should have done their due

658
00:39:14,239 --> 00:39:17,720
Speaker 1: diligence and established that. So it's not it's not entirely

659
00:39:17,840 --> 00:39:20,759
Speaker 1: on us for falling for it. But we've busted that myth.

660
00:39:21,160 --> 00:39:25,160
Speaker 1: We've learned a lot about this guy's life and and

661
00:39:25,239 --> 00:39:27,360
Speaker 1: I don't know, you know, I'm grateful to him. I

662
00:39:27,400 --> 00:39:31,200
Speaker 1: am grateful to Lewis Wayne. Absolutely. I think you know

663
00:39:31,280 --> 00:39:33,719
Speaker 1: you're saying that that's that really hits the nail on

664
00:39:33,760 --> 00:39:37,359
Speaker 1: the head in that memorial exhibition that with that posthumus

665
00:39:37,360 --> 00:39:39,840
Speaker 1: won shortly after he died, and and before you know,

666
00:39:39,920 --> 00:39:43,360
Speaker 1: World War two kicked off. In earnest Uh there was

667
00:39:43,680 --> 00:39:46,359
Speaker 1: the art critic at the Times of London. He kind

668
00:39:46,400 --> 00:39:49,839
Speaker 1: of wrote what sort of works as Wayne's epitaph? He said,

669
00:39:49,920 --> 00:39:52,799
Speaker 1: and it's very simple, but quote as a man who

670
00:39:52,840 --> 00:39:57,080
Speaker 1: gave simple pleasure to thousands, Mr Wayne deserves to be remembered,

671
00:39:57,600 --> 00:39:59,680
Speaker 1: and you know, for a long time he wasn't. But

672
00:40:00,360 --> 00:40:02,279
Speaker 1: I don't know, I mean, one reason I really wanted

673
00:40:02,320 --> 00:40:05,120
Speaker 1: to talk about. You know, this topic was especially now,

674
00:40:05,239 --> 00:40:07,640
Speaker 1: you know, at this time with everybody kind of hunkered

675
00:40:07,680 --> 00:40:11,080
Speaker 1: down and finding you know, little joys throughout the day

676
00:40:11,080 --> 00:40:14,520
Speaker 1: wherever you can um it. Kinda yeah, it makes me

677
00:40:14,600 --> 00:40:17,840
Speaker 1: really kind of re evaluate the importance of of people

678
00:40:17,920 --> 00:40:21,200
Speaker 1: like that who just give you small little pleasures, little

679
00:40:21,360 --> 00:40:24,040
Speaker 1: you know, smiles through you know, a silly cat picture

680
00:40:24,239 --> 00:40:27,040
Speaker 1: or whatever. Uh, that really keeps you going. And I

681
00:40:27,080 --> 00:40:29,920
Speaker 1: gotta say, I am a huge fan of people that

682
00:40:30,040 --> 00:40:32,719
Speaker 1: just pick a thing and run with it, and that

683
00:40:32,880 --> 00:40:35,920
Speaker 1: is absolutely what this gentleman did. So there you have it.

684
00:40:36,440 --> 00:40:40,880
Speaker 1: Ridiculous historians, Uh, this is the life and times of

685
00:40:41,040 --> 00:40:45,200
Speaker 1: Lewis Wayne, the man who is uh more or less

686
00:40:45,239 --> 00:40:49,959
Speaker 1: directly responsible for all of those top notch cat memes

687
00:40:49,960 --> 00:40:53,200
Speaker 1: that have brightened your day in the past and will

688
00:40:53,239 --> 00:40:57,760
Speaker 1: continue hopefully to do so in the future. Thanks as

689
00:40:57,920 --> 00:41:01,840
Speaker 1: always too. Gay Gabe, I I feel like you're in

690
00:41:01,920 --> 00:41:05,920
Speaker 1: a we could just be on a first name basis now. Uh,

691
00:41:05,960 --> 00:41:09,520
Speaker 1: this is so weird, Like it's so weird to have this.

692
00:41:09,719 --> 00:41:12,640
Speaker 1: Uh Okay, I'll call I'll say the R word for

693
00:41:12,719 --> 00:41:15,520
Speaker 1: us to have this relationship with you and have this

694
00:41:15,719 --> 00:41:18,200
Speaker 1: first this to be the first time we've talked and

695
00:41:18,239 --> 00:41:20,919
Speaker 1: been able to see each other's faces before, it's only

696
00:41:20,960 --> 00:41:23,200
Speaker 1: been on the phone. How was it for you? Gave?

697
00:41:23,280 --> 00:41:27,399
Speaker 1: Make an assessment? I mean, this was fantastic. You guys

698
00:41:27,480 --> 00:41:29,680
Speaker 1: let me come on and just you know, ramble on

699
00:41:29,800 --> 00:41:33,960
Speaker 1: about one of my favorite artists. Um, yeah, it's been

700
00:41:34,000 --> 00:41:36,440
Speaker 1: oblast I definitely feel like you know, this is a

701
00:41:36,480 --> 00:41:40,200
Speaker 1: milestone in our relationship. And uh, I hope we can

702
00:41:40,200 --> 00:41:42,319
Speaker 1: continue from here. I'd love to come back some time

703
00:41:42,360 --> 00:41:44,319
Speaker 1: and talk about something else weird. Oh, I think we're

704
00:41:44,320 --> 00:41:47,000
Speaker 1: absolutely going to hold you to that offer because I

705
00:41:47,040 --> 00:41:49,640
Speaker 1: think we both had a fantastic time as well. Yeah,

706
00:41:49,719 --> 00:41:53,319
Speaker 1: and uh that that depends on our our last and

707
00:41:53,400 --> 00:41:57,440
Speaker 1: deciding vote. Check it in with you, Casey, what what?

708
00:41:57,440 --> 00:42:00,239
Speaker 1: What's what's the verdict? The verdict is, I believe you've

709
00:42:00,920 --> 00:42:03,839
Speaker 1: Gave needs to come back talk to us about more

710
00:42:03,960 --> 00:42:10,480
Speaker 1: cool stuff. I'm in Casey on the case rendering judgment.

711
00:42:11,040 --> 00:42:14,279
Speaker 1: I love it. I really liked that verdict. Yes, yes,

712
00:42:14,440 --> 00:42:17,719
Speaker 1: the I retract my earlier statements about this being a

713
00:42:17,800 --> 00:42:22,919
Speaker 1: kangaroo court. So, oh, Gave, you're stumbling into some some

714
00:42:23,200 --> 00:42:25,600
Speaker 1: weird long standing I don't know even know if they're

715
00:42:25,640 --> 00:42:28,080
Speaker 1: in jokes now they're they're just how we hang out.

716
00:42:28,080 --> 00:42:31,360
Speaker 1: But yes, thank you so much. Um. Perhaps at some

717
00:42:31,480 --> 00:42:34,480
Speaker 1: time you may even meet Jonathan Strickland, a k a.

718
00:42:34,680 --> 00:42:38,000
Speaker 1: The quizter Reluctant thanks to him, Thanks to Alex Williams,

719
00:42:38,000 --> 00:42:40,880
Speaker 1: who composed this slapping track. You here at the beginning

720
00:42:40,880 --> 00:42:44,239
Speaker 1: of every show always huge, thanks to super producer Casey Pegram,

721
00:42:44,320 --> 00:42:48,560
Speaker 1: Christopher hasiotis here in spirit Eves Jeff Coats check out

722
00:42:48,600 --> 00:42:51,320
Speaker 1: every cool thing that she's doing on the podcast network.

723
00:42:51,520 --> 00:42:54,239
Speaker 1: And thanks to you, Ben, this was a fun This

724
00:42:54,280 --> 00:42:57,319
Speaker 1: was quite a rop. I really enjoyed myself today, a

725
00:42:57,520 --> 00:43:01,960
Speaker 1: rump of whimsy. Indeed, Yes, thanks so much to you

726
00:43:01,960 --> 00:43:05,800
Speaker 1: know and as always, most importantly, thanks to you ridiculous historians.

727
00:43:06,120 --> 00:43:09,360
Speaker 1: Let us know more strange stories of artists you would

728
00:43:09,360 --> 00:43:11,479
Speaker 1: like us to explore in the future. You can find

729
00:43:11,560 --> 00:43:16,000
Speaker 1: us all over the internet, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Still working

730
00:43:16,040 --> 00:43:19,880
Speaker 1: on that Pinterest page, but maybe we'll maybe we'll invest

731
00:43:19,920 --> 00:43:22,400
Speaker 1: in my Space. I don't know. It's a long weekend

732
00:43:22,480 --> 00:43:25,399
Speaker 1: coming up, but we we can't wait to hear from you.

733
00:43:25,400 --> 00:43:28,240
Speaker 1: You can also find us as individuals if the spirit

734
00:43:28,320 --> 00:43:31,040
Speaker 1: so moves you. I am at Ben Bowling on Instagram

735
00:43:31,040 --> 00:43:33,719
Speaker 1: and at ben Bowling hs W on Twitter. You can

736
00:43:33,719 --> 00:43:36,239
Speaker 1: find me exclusively on Instagram where I am at how

737
00:43:36,400 --> 00:43:40,280
Speaker 1: Now Noel Brown uh and please please join our Facebook

738
00:43:40,280 --> 00:43:43,640
Speaker 1: group Ridiculous Historians, where you can interact with your fellow

739
00:43:43,719 --> 00:43:46,520
Speaker 1: listeners and and us so because we pop in there

740
00:43:46,560 --> 00:43:49,160
Speaker 1: from time to time as well. You can also send

741
00:43:49,239 --> 00:43:52,000
Speaker 1: us an email at ridiculous at iHeart radio dot com

742
00:43:52,040 --> 00:43:54,840
Speaker 1: and I think that covers it. We'll see you next time, folks.

743
00:44:01,640 --> 00:44:05,480
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

744
00:44:05,520 --> 00:44:07,680
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows