Bittersweet Infamy - #113 - The Twelve Days of Infamy

Episode Date: December 24, 2024

Holiday special! Taylor tells Josie one infamous story for each of the Twelve Days of Christmas—from the drummer the Beatles drummed out of the band, to a Partridge naked on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine.

This holiday season, surprise everyone on your list with the best gifts, tickets to see their favorite artists live. Choose from thousands of concerts and comedy shows, including Mariah Carey, Mary J. Blige, Matt Matthews, Metallica, Thomas Rhett, Trans-Siberian Orchestra, Sarah Silverman, and so many more. Share a memory together, or give a gift they'll never forget. Find the most exciting gift for every fan at LiveNation.com slash gifts. That's LiveNation.com slash gifts. Fifty years ago a young woman named Karen Silkwood got into her car alone. She was reportedly on her way to deliver sensitive documents to a New York Times reporter. She never made it and those documents she'd agreed to carry were never found.

Do you think somebody killed her? There's no question in my mind, if someone killed her that night, I think they were trying to stop her in order to get the documents. A new investigation into the life and death of America's first nuclear whistleblower. Listen to Radioactive,

the Karen Silkwood mystery from ABC audio. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Bitter Sweet Infamy. I'm Taylor Basso and I'm Josie Mitchell. On this podcast, we share the stories that live on in inf me. The strange and the familiar, the tragic and the comic, the bitter and the sweet. Merry Christmas, Taylor. Thank you, Josie. Merry Christmas to you too. What character in Dickens?

I'm not sure. I think it's a Muppet. I was going to say that's Rumbelshank the Chimney Suite, but I think that might've I think it's a Muppet. I love Muppets. I was gonna say that's Rumbleshank, the chimney sweep, but I think that might have been a cat's character. Yeah, that feels like Cat's musical. Yeah. Yeah. Well, Merry Christmas regardless, and Happy Hanukkah. Christmas and Hanukkah this year, the start, Hanukkah day one, same day.

Oh, cute. That's right. I remember looking that up a long time ago. And if you don't happen to celebrate either of those, we welcome you under our non-denominational paper chain. Happy Winter Solstice. The seasonal depression stops here, we promise. Uh-huh. The days are only gonna get longer. It's a blessing and a curse. How you been this holiday season, Josie? How you feeling?

Oh, good. Good. a blessing and a curse. How you been this holiday season, Josie? How you feeling? Oh, good, good. Got family coming into town. That's true. You're doing sort of the classic national lampoon. The family's coming in to visit and you gotta chop down the big tree and put up the lights and baste the turkey and whatnot.

We did get a tree for the first time. We've had like little like rosemary shrubs and that kind of like little baby. Oh, you had millennial trees before. Now you got a boomer tree. Well, yeah, I guess. But we went kind of late, so it's a bit scraggly. Gen X tree. Got it.

Yeah, yeah. We're not going full boomer. It doesn't hit the ceiling. We don't have the money for that, yeah. We all low ceilings, but it don't hit the ceilings, yeah. Ha ha ha ha ha. In one part, it's really fun. It's like, oh, yay, this is fun. Like, get the house decorated for people to come

and think of things for them to do. And then on the other hand, it's just like, what? Oh, my God, I gotta clean the shower? How about you? How about your Christmas festivities? Uh, nothing special. Why don't we just... No, I'm kidding. Okay. Ah, Christmas with the fam as usual. All my gifts have come.

Because Canada Post, they're on big strike now. I know. I don't know if your gift is gonna come to you in time. Oh, thank you. Well, I haven't bought it yet, so... That's... You fucking mind bitch. I mean, like, it's in the horrors, you know. Oh, my God. The check isn't even in the mail, but I'm thinking about writing the check.

I can picture the check background I'm gonna use. No, I feel that. I feel that. I hooked Mitchell and Josie and Batman up with their Christmas gifts. That was fun. It was so, so fun. Uh, Taylor got Mitchell a melodica. I did. I did. A pink one. So rad. Yeah. It's really pretty.

You're welcome for that. Every fucking night, it sounds like the French Riviera in your fucking house now, I'm sure. I love it. It's helpful that Mitchell's really good at nearly all instruments, because there's no like, oh, learning curve on that one. No, he understands the fundamentals of how instruments work and how to make them

make the sounds that he wants to make. Yeah. So it relieves a lot of the pressure of a new instrument in the house. Also children use them, so there's that. Yeah. Yeah. I didn't realize the melodica is kind of akin to a recorder. Or like a kazoo or something. Yeah. One thing that's interesting about it that kind of distinguishes it in terms of its capabilities from like other reed type instruments is that apparently you can hold and sustain multiple different notes at the same time, which you can't really do other and other

similar instruments. It's like a keyboard and harmonica kind of accordion. It's a real mud of an instrument, but I'm glad Mitchell's enjoying his. Good get. Very good get. Taylor's a very good gift giver. Thank you, love. You are too. You are too. When they arrive. When they are purchased. When they're purchased. Yeah, exactly. How's the old American political scene going

since the last time we spoke? You know, it took a turn. Took a turn, a right-ward turn. Yeah, yeah. How you hanging in? It's a thing. The appointees rolling in. I want to offer an unofficial, because I don't think Josie will cosign this one.

So this is an unauthorized, bittersweet infamy, hats off to Linda McMahon, Secretary of Education, Linda McMahon, Vince McMahon's fucking failure wife, who could not win a fucking election in the state of Connecticut to save her life, no matter how much vanity money got poured into it. But she made friends with the right narcissist, Despitt. And this too be your dream too

can come true. Yeah, that was a sad one. Dr. Oz, friend of the podcast or enemy of the podcast, I don't know, a featured podcast. I know, that's an unofficial friend of the podcast. -♪ PAULA LAUGHS. -♪ PAULA LAUGHS. Christmas, we stretch the budget, now we're giving out bootlegs is what's happening here.

Tomorrow, Christmas Day. What day is it, sir? It's Christmas Day! That's Mr. Crumble Shanks again. What day is it, sir? It's Christmas Day! That's Mr. Crumble Shanks again. A muppet, to be clear. A muppet and possibly a muppet from the musical Cats. We're not sure. But from the imagination of Charles Dickens, to be clear.

It's all one big bad morphine dream, really, is what's going on. He hit the laudanum hard before bed. On Christmas Day, we're gonna be dropping over at coffee. K-O-F-N-F-I dot com slash bittersweet. And for me, for free, you don't even need to become a subscriber for this one. Anyone can go and listen. It's our annual gift to you.

It is the Bittersweet Mixtape, volume three. Y'all, these are good. They're weird and they're good. If you liked the vibe of the Maltese episode 100, we do a similar thing on the mix tape, where it's just like unhinged drama. Because it has Christmas flavorings, which is like unhinged drama is a very distinct Christmas flavor.

It's like peppermint, hot chocolate. Yeah, yeah. Your mother-in-law's disapproval. Yeah, and unhinged, off the wall chaos. Unsolicited political opinions, which we've already offered you. You're welcome. Yeah, yeah.

We're just like checking off the fucking advent calendar of Christmas, of showways. And our big number 25, the last thing that we're unboxing in that advent calendar is the Bittersweet mixtape. That's over at coffee. That's tomorrow and that's for free. We'd love to, uh, we'd love for you to join us.

That's K-O-F-I.com slash Bittersweet Infamy. Babies. Not the babies, just Bittersweet Infamy. No, you're the babies. Yeah. Hi, babies. Just Google it. Alright. And we should probably also say, uh, while you're there,

there is the chess extravaganza 2024. You got to become a subscriber, like our new subscriber Terry McCann to access that though. You want to watch some really good chess? So high quality chess. You join us over at coffee.com. Give us a little Christmas gift and let us give you one back. Or if you want to come and have the free milk and cookies that is the bittersweet

mixtape, well, we can't stop you and we hope that you enjoy. It's the holiday season, baby. Two of the majors on one day this year. You can't beat it. How many? Ten. Do you want to lock in on ten? I don't know what I'm locking in on. No, that's the mystery. It's mystery box. It's big mystery Christmas box.

A little mystery painting. Yeah, ten. Okay, dude, a propeller. Look at how we spoil you, a propeller heads reference. Shirley Bassey, Dame Shirley Bassey, everyone. All right. So Josie, you're now on the hook to name 10 of the gift items from the 12 days of Christmas song.

Oh, well, I'm glad I didn't say more than 12. I hadn't optimized for that possibility. What are the items in the 12 days of Christmas? You know, you've heard of this Christmas Carol. On the 12 days of Christmas, my true love gave to me five golden rings. That's what we'll take that. Two turtle doves, three French hens and a partridge in a pear tree. So you've got four. I got four. Three frankshens and a partridge in a pear tree.

So you've got four. I got four. Is there like some milk maids in there? Or maids? I will, maids and milking. Maids and milking. Eight maids and milking as a matter of fact. Okay, okay.

Seven shooby shooby, is shooby? Depends what translation you're using, not in the original, not in the original German. Okay, okay, okay. Five golden rings is really sitting with me. Well, it's cuz it's the only one that isn't a fucking bird. Oh, okay Oh, there's a lot. It's they're not all birds, but there's a lot of birds. Can I phone a friend? Do you want to get Mitchell? Yeah, cuz you know that he knows this well, then no that's calling a fucking ringer Then no, you can't get Mitchell. Okay, Merry Christmas. you're spending Christmas apart. It's Christmas, he belongs to me.

I'm golden ring. Do you want me to tell you? Okay. On the 12th day of Christmas, this is a cumulative song. In fact, its Wikipedia article identifies it as a classic example of a cumulative song. Classic. And it builds and builds and builds. So by the end, by the last day of Christmas, your true love will have given to you... 12 drummers drumming.

Oh, they're drumming. 11 pipers piping. Oh, piping hot, baby. 10 lords a leaping. Well, that one, no one was gonna get that one. Oh, see, I think that's a quite distinctive one. Much more distinctive than nine ladies dancing. Yeah, okay, I see that.

Eight maids a milking, you know all about them. Now we're getting, like like really into bird territory here. Okay. Seven swans swimming. Okay. Six geese allaying. Geese. Five golden rings.

Oh, I forgot about that, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I was on the tip of your tongue. Four calling birds. Oh, that's general. Yeah, no, we'll get there. Three French hens, two turtle does, and a partridge and a pear tree. Yeah, OK, OK, OK.

Yeah, I see how we kind of flew into bird area there. This originates as a, or I don't know if it originates, but we sort of, the first documented instance of these lyrics or something like them is in a 1780 children's book called The Mirth Without Mischief. So this is like good clean fun, you know what I mean? Mm-hmm.

Fine holiday fun for the entire family. Yeah. This guy, Frederick Austin, makes the familiar melody for it in 1909. I like it because of its sense of abundance. I like it because of the impracticality of the gifts. Mm-hmm. Oh, yeah. It's not something that one would want, these items. I like it because of the impracticality of the gifts. Mm-hmm. Oh, yeah.

It's not something that one would want, these items. Lot of care, a lot of watering, these birds. Yeah. A mess, a fucking mess. Yeah. And that's just the birds. Give me more of those golden rings. How about that? Yeah. Yeah.

You know what I mean? And I like that it's a little bit of a flex in it. Like, if you want to be competitive, you can, like, know this song really well, you know? They're set into that. SHANNON COFFEY LAUGHS Like, if you ruled out to me and you said, do you know all the 12 days of Christmas?

And I said yes, and I riled them off, a little bit impressive, no? Yes. OK, come on. It's Christmas. Yes. Yes. Thank you. Thank you.

Yes and, yes and, here's Christmas. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Yes and yes and here's more Golden Rings. Yeah. Josie, I like to spoil you. So... Are you giving me 12 little Christmasy stories? I've given you one gift, one infamous story for each of the 12 days of Christmas. Oh, my gosh. I'm calling it the 12 days of infamy.

Actually, we're recording today on the Virgin's Saint Day. It's La Vergen de Guadalupe's Saint Day. What does that mean? The church down the street from us goes off, and they have services all night long. And there's a big, like, festival and, like, shops and stuff that's open all night. It's all night. It's like, they probably started at, like, 4 p.m.

and they'll go until, like, 10 a.m. tomorrow. Dude, can I say that, like, 80% of what we do as humans is short-sighted, misguided, vapid, meaningless bullshit, but I love festivals. We killed it with festivals. We really got that right, yeah. Food star, fireworks, mini game. Fuck yeah, I love a festival. Music, dancing, a little more food.

Yeah, seated dancing. Lights. Oh, god, absolutely. Old ladies fanning themselves. What's not to like? Oh, that's so true. So yeah, I thought that I would do a little tackle a prompt and hopefully lavish you with many, at least 12, at least 12 gifts.

At least. I've only brought you one gift. So I haven't brought you 12 drummers drumming, for example. I brought you one. I hope that's okay. Oh, shit, doggy. Oh, I thought you were just bringing me like 12 little, like little stories, but you were bringing me like... No, one for each lyric of the song.

Oh, my jeeeps. What? The drummer one is drumming themed. The piper one is piping themed. The Lord's a Leaping one is Lord's a Leaping theme. My Taylor Mitchell Basso. I wanted to get you something nice for Christmas. The boy loves the prompts.

He loved 12 of them. 12 prompts, 12 prompts. So this one is live, folks. This one could fall apart in midair. Let's go. You might have noticed no Minfamous this time. That's why. Let's go.

Oh yeah, baby. All right. So for 12 drummers drumming, this is, we're counting down to the partridge. I went pretty literal in interpreting this prompt. I brought you a drummer and specifically I brought you a drummer, and specifically, I brought you a man often known as the Fifth Beetle, Pete Best. OK.

Do you know this name? Very distantly. Very, I, so distantly, I'm going to say no. Ha ha ha. The brief is, when the Beatles were just kind of blowing up in Europe, Pete Best was their drummer. were just kind of blowing up in Europe. Pete Best was their drummer. It was Paul, John, George, and Pete.

No Ringo. No Ringo, Ringo didn't need any babies. Who, that was both of our fault. That was no one's fault. We did that together, Merry Christmas. That was no one's fault, Merry Christmas. Yeah. He is someone who is best known for getting fired

10 seconds before the Beatles became gigantic worldwide superstars who would go on to make a million billion, jillion dollars and become incredibly famous. Oh no, oh no. So it's not a complete picture of who he is as a person. And it's kind of an unfair thing to get distilled into, but it is how he is remembered, right? Because infamy takes no prisoners.

And it's... she's a cruel, cruel mistress. What a shame to have people think of you and think, what a shame. Yes, yeah. Yeah, that is a shame. It's a shame feedback loop, really. So let me tell you a little bit about our guy Pete Bester, our 12 drummer drumming. Okay. There's a few other guys who are known as the Fifth Beetle, either because they played with the Beatles. There's a guy named Ken Brown.

There's a bass player named Stuart Sutcliffe, who is poised to do good things with the band, but then decided to go to art school and died like really young of a brain hemorrhage, like 21. Really sad story. But Pete Best is the person to whom the term the Fifth Beetle is most often applied. He's born 1941 in British India, grew up in Liverpool,

started learning guitar as was, I guess, quite common at the time, doesn't like it, switches to drums. His mom, Mona Best, runs a coffee club called the Casbah Club and a coffee club is like, imagine like a bar nightclub with like performance, but they don't serve alcohol, they serve coffee instead. And like teenagers can come and have like, I guess like...

It's an early prototype coffee house. Yeah, yeah, but like specifically like targeting like young, cool 16-year-olds kind of thing. And it's something for them to do without nominally getting trashed. Although like, if I know Liverpool, they found a way. The opening night, August 29th, 1959, at the Casbah Club, huge hit, lines out the door, or as the Beatles might say, oh god, Q's down the Poth. Q's down the Poth. We found it Josie, the accent I can't do.

Yeah, oh wow, just lean in. Q's down the Poth. down the pond. So that's my Liverpool. Liverpool. Oh, no. Oh, no. Sorry. Sorry. Oh, no. So the Beatles get their start in the Casbah Club in 1960, 1962. They're known as the Quarrymen at first, and then eventually they changed their name to the Beatles.

And they need a drummer, so they put out... They basically, they know Pete best because his mom owns the club. He can drum, great, come on in. So he kind of gets to know the band a little bit as friends before they actually start to perform together. Yeah. He joins them to play for the first time in Hamburg, Germany.

He's a hit, he's popular, he's like, he's actually kind of the hottie of the group. Like, he's like a good looking, kind of brooding. He doesn't do his hair the way they're at. Cause at first they're like, before they kind of get packaged with the haircuts and the suits, they kind of just wear like sweaters and like leather jackets.

They're like kind of cool guys. And the mod thing kind of ends up defining them. But that's like very much a marketing thing that gets introduced later. Okay. That checks out. I'm sure this is like Beatles 101 kind of entry level, Beatles fandom stuff, but this was brand new to me, a lot of this stuff. Are you a Beatles fan?

You know, I... There was a time in high school when I was... You're across the universe era? Yeah, yeah, I was in... I was into it. And, uh, you know, listening to the White Album, and that was... that was fun. And then at a certain point, I was in to it and, uh, you know, listening to the White Album and that was, that was fun. And then at a certain point, I was just like, there's so much more music out there. And I see, like, it just, everybody wants to, like,

come back and, like, focus on The Beatles. That's the canon though, isn't it? Yeah. That's like, oh, wow, the canon, like, I can't wait until I know the things from the canon, then you read the canon and then you read other things. You're like, damn, a lot of this is better than the canon. Or a lot of this is, if not better or more influential than at the very least, like more to my specific tastes.

Right. Yeah. A little more interesting to me. So yeah, I think I kept kind of, kind of doing that. Yeah. Chelsea, my friend Chelsea has this thing where she hates the fucking beetles. She likes the beach boys. She hates the beetles. Picking up good vibrations, but not putting them out. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Not putting them out. It's just another bad vibrations for the Beatles. Yeah.

I don't subscribe to that same viewpoint, but I understand it. I'm not like at all... Does she hate the Beatles or is she contrary? Because I like, and I don't, I say that with no judgment. There's a lot of times when I'm like, hearing that people love something on mass, I'll kick start some instinct in my brain to be like, well, it can't be that good. You know what I mean?

It may have started that way, but I think it's pretty... It's blossomed. It's blossomed. Oh, that's nice. It's nice when our, our, our passions mature. So also passionate about the Beatles, FK, the Quarrymen was Europe. They loved it. passionate about the Beatles, FK the Quarrymen was Europe. They loved it. JADE The continent of Europe, yes. TITO And then the Quarrymen signed with Polydor, German label, become the Beatles. They have representation in Germany now. They return

to Liverpool, continue to make a splash. They track the attention of Brian Epstein, their manager. He takes on the band, puts them in suits, gives them those fucking haircuts. And this is a stroke of genius, right? Because I say those fucking haircuts and you know exactly which haircuts I mean. And, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep. They record some demos and get an English recording contract with EMI when they go to record with EMI, where it gets back that someone is not happy

with the quality of Pete Best's drumming. Oh. There's talk about replacing him with a session drummer for the album, but, oh, we really love your sound live. And then in 1962, the morning after a concert at the Cavern Club, a regular haunt distinct from the Casbah Club, but same basic place, Pete Best gets invited to Brian Epstein's office. Oh. Quote, quoting Pete Best gets invited to Brian Epstein's office. Quote, quoting Pete Best.

And I'm not gonna, for his sake, I won't do the voice. Yeah. We talked around the subject for a while, and then he said, Pete, I really don't know how to tell you this, but the boys want you out. He said, it's already been arranged. And I think that was the key phrase.

Mmm. When I was confronted with it, to be quite honest, my brain scrambled and I was standing there gasping for air, trying to get my brain to work. I said, well, what's the reason for it? The reason that was given was that I wasn't a good enough drummer. They felt Ringo was better.

They had played a couple shows with Ringo Starr at this point as like a sub-out drummer. Okay, yeah. They felt Ringo was better and I've always disputed that. A lot of people who have seen me play then and since have all said it's a matter of personal choice but at that time I was reputed to be one of the best drummers in the world. So that not good enough thing didn't hold water. It didn't make sense but at that moment nothing made sense.

Well, because at that point too it is just a matter of taste, right? It's like not that haircut, Sunny. You know, like... Yeah. Ugh, but that does suck so bad. Could it be that it's more than that? Could it be, as Best has claimed before, any combination of jealousy, personality clash,

him turning down a romantic advance from Brian Epstein? There are rumors that there were already plans to axe Pete, the band having fallen in love with Ringo. In the Beatles anthology, George Harrison insinuates Pete was let go for missing shows, which Pete disputes, at the Beatles' first performance at one of their main haunts, the Cavern Club. The Incense Crowd chants,

Pete forever, Ringo never. Whoa. Says George, a few... the incense crowd chants, Pete forever, Ringo never. Whoa. Says George, a few, I can't do it. I can't do it to him. Ha ha ha ha. Says George Harrison, a few people shouted, Ringo never, Pete best forever.

And after about half an hour I said, oh bugger off or something. The cavern had three tunnels and we stepped out of the dressing room into what was this dark tunnel. And some guy just like butted me right in the eye. That was a bad day. Oh, my gosh. Lenny, McCartney, and Harrison all later stated

that they regretted the manner in which Best was sacked. Lenny admitted that we were cowards when we sacked him, we made Brian do it. McCartney stated, I do feel sorry for him because of what he could have been onto. Harrison said, we weren't very good at telling Pete he had to go, and historically, it may look like we did something nasty to Pete, and it may have been that we could have handled it better.

I have a theory that George is the one specifically who didn't like Pete. Oh, he's really trying to, like, cover his butt. No, the opposite. Oh. Everyone else is trying to be like, you know, it's really sad what happened with Pete, and George is like, Pete missed shows. So...

Right. I get that. Well, and okay, that paints a little bit of a different picture for me because I was just thinking it was, like, production decision. It could have been. But if it was, it seems like from what they're saying that they had a choice in it too. I don't know.

P for ever, Ringo never. That's what I say. Yeah. That's what I think. Yeah. I've heard you say that many a time. I had no idea what you were talking about. Muddering it under my breath as I feverishly wash my hands.

The Beatles never got back in touch with Pete Best or vice versa. Although Pete Best's mother, Mona, remained a Beatles fan and supporter, even donating the military medals John Lennon wore on the cover of the Sgt. Pepper album. Holy shit. Wow. Yeah. She's so good. She apparently adored the Beatles. Pete Best struggled with mental health issues

and took a variety of musical jobs before returning to private life and taking a 20-year break from professional music, became a civil servant. with mental health issues and took a variety of musical jobs before returning to private life and taking a 20-year break from professional music, became a civil servant. In 1988, he formed a new musical group, the Pete Best Band, which toured worldwide into the first decade of the 2000s. And they seem to have done okay for themselves.

Oh, wow. Yeah. In the 1990s, the Beatles Anthology Project was released, including unreleased tracks. This is the Beatles releasing their, like, archives of material. Yeah. For his involvement in these songs, Best received royalties for his role in the Beatles for the first time. So he finally got,

because they released some of the recordings from one of their failed attempts at getting a label. And Pete was the drummer on it. So he got his residuals finally. Well, that's good, that's good. Says Pete Best in a franking quote, I assembled from other quotes to close this telling. I switched off from thinking about the whys,

the wherefores, what ifs, hows, could have beens and maybes. I moved on from all that years ago. I stopped looking back because there's more to life. It's about today and tomorrow and what's gonna happen in the future. I think once I got that out of my system, I was fine. You're always going to get people come up and say, ah, you know something you haven't talked about.

Well, maybe I have, because there are bound to be a few secrets people keep, isn't there? I've had 60 great years of being Pete as well as being a beetle. It's part of your life. It's lovely to be associated with it. But life goes on. That's a very healthy way to view it. He's had a long time to come to that conclusion, but some people don't.

You're right. It is very healthy. A long time is just a longer time to stew. That's true. Pete is still alive at the age of 83. Good work. He inherited the Casbah Club, where the Quarrymen played their early shows after his mom passed. Cute. He's turned the club and the adjoining residence into early shows after his mom passed. Cute.

He's turned the club and the adjoining residence into a B&B, which you can stay at yourself. The Sweets are named after Paul, John, George, Pete, and original bass player, Stuart Sutcliffe. But not Ringo. No Ringo. No Ringo. Pete forever. Ringo never. Josie, you like bagpipes?

No. I mean, yes. I don't know. See, this is a kombucha face. I got you. Do you think that there is an instrument, a musical instrument, more polarizing than the bagpipes? I can't actually think of a polarizing musical instrument other than the bagpipes.

Yeah. Kazoo? Most people aren't around kazoo's enough. I guess you're not around, but like, they have a really distinctive sound. If you've got pitch issues, good night, nurse, because these things can go high and squealy. I like bagpipes.

Extremely loud. They are loud as hell. Extremely loud. They are loud as hell. I like them. Oh, they're sad though, aren't they? They're the plaintiff whales of death, but I like them. They're very, you know, like, You use bagpipes for like a teenage boy

who's died, you know what I mean? Yeah, that checks out. That's when you get the bagpipes out. Yeah. Also, bagpipes noted as weapons of war. They themselves are weapons or they accompany soldiers on the battlefield? They themselves are classified as weapons of war.

I did not know this. And it's not because they suck. It's because of their long history of being used to rally the troops. So like a bugle or what, I don't know, whatever. They're like the br-br-br, wake up in the morning. We're in harmony. We're doing synchronizing. We're, you know what I mean? So you might think, why is he putting such a fine point

on this phrase, weapon of war? That's because that is like a defined category, and it has been determined that bagpipes fit in them, and there is a reason. So, Jacobite Rising of 1745. You know how I'll never shut up about the Jacobite Rising of 1745 on this podcast while we're back? Always and forever.

Of every episode. That's how we got started. Of the first 112 episodes, yes. Charles Edward Stuart, aka Bonnie Prince Charlie, attempts a coup on the British throne in the Scottish Highlands. The attempt fails at the Battle of Culloden on April 16th, 1746,

whereafter everyone is put on trial for treason, including Piper James Reed. Okay. Piper's in piping, as in bagpipes. Yeah, Plan the Reed, baby. Plan the Reed, he tries to argue that because he was only carrying a bagpipe, he was a non-combatant. So this is his loophole that he's gonna try to get through here.

Not a bad loophole. And the commission disagrees on the ground that a bagpipe with all its motivating power constitutes an instrument of war. Reed is convicted of treason in hand. So we have precedent. This is a weapon of war. Oh, my goodness. Yeah. But James Reed isn't the bagpipe in James. I'm here to tell you about, let's talk about James Cleland Richardson.

Okay. Better known as Jimmy, born in Scotland in 1895. Okay, okay, okay. Home of bagpipes. We're keeping to the British Isles, I see. Don't get too cozy there. We're about to take on a big move when James is a wee one.

The family moves from Scotland to British Columbia at First Vancouver and then Chilliwack. Look at that. Local boy. Look, he's from Vancouver, ya know. YVR, kiddo. Yeah. One of our own, 1914. Jimmy distinguishes himself while working at a false creek factory by attempting to save a boy who's drowning nearby.

Unfortunately, the boy drowns, but Jimmy apparently gave it hell, trying to prevent that from happening, and it was noted kind of thing. Yeah, okay, okay. Good on you, Jimmy. Same year, July 1st, Jimmy wins three first place prizes in the bagpipe competition at the Scottish Sports Day event in Victoria, BC.

Oh, okay. Okay. So as you might have figured out by our timeframe, 1914-ish, World War I breaks out, Jimmy enlists and becomes part of the 16th Battalion, which isn't like an all Scottish immigrant battalion because we ethnically segregated the military battalions at the time. STACEY Fun. JAY As was in style in that era. He serves in Belgium and France as a soldier, a cook, and a piper. And specifically, he's like known to be like a very bang up motivational piper

who like he won three bagpipe competitions... in one day. He's leaning in, yeah. Yeah. He's got this, yeah. Uh, and on October 8, 1916, Jimmy Richardson earns a Victoria Cross for his actions in the Battle of the Somme. Successfully rallying his company

as they rushed over the top of a trench through barbed wire and enemy fire. And it is noted specifically that his incredible coolness rushed over the top of a trench through barbed wire and enemy fire. And it is noted specifically that his incredible coolness in playing the pipes is what motivated the troops. And I take that to mean like he was very calm, but I like to think that they mean that he was so fucking cool, you know?

Yeah, he had like shades on. Shades on, he was playing Never Gonna Give You Up by Rick Astley and no one could resist. They stormed out barbed wire. Yeah, yeah. He sagged into Gloria Estefan Conga somehow, and none of us knew what was happening. It was crazy.

That guy's fucking cool. Yeah, incredible coolness. Later that same day, so we've got to bring it down because it gets unfortunate in the way that our stories do. Later that same day, he's assisting a wounded comrade in escorting enemy prisoners when he realizes that he left his bagpipes behind. Oh, shit. Can't have that. He goes back to retrieve them and never returns. Oh, my good... Oh, that's sad. Very sad and like, a really common story

for young men of that generation in a way that never escapes me, and in a way that I often think about at Christmas, I guess, maybe because of the truce. Yeah, last year, that was your story, yeah. I go to World War, and specifically World War I, a lot during Christmas maybe because I'm just grateful for family around this time of year, and I think of like people who are not so privileged.

After his death at only 20 years old, Jimmy is buried at Adanac Military Cemetery, France, which is Canada spelled backwards, which I think is so stupid, but it's a military cemetery, so it's okay. It's also the bike route in Vancouver. I think that's what I first noticed and thought it was stupid,

because Canada backwards. It's like, you know, anyway, I didn't think it first about a military cemetery folks. I thought it first about a bike route. No one usually does. So it's okay. Don't worry. Meanwhile, those fateful discarded bagpipes are found muddy, covered in blood and punctured by bullets. That's wild that they were found. It's crazy. Oh, yeah, totally, totally.

Found by a military chaplain and put on display in a private school in Scotland. In the year 2000, some 75 years later, a parent becomes curious about the source of the tartan on the bag, because of course, tartans are very specific things with specific meanings. So, the school sends out an email and we're able to make the connection that the tartan belongs to the 16th Battalion. These are Jimmy Richardson's bagpipes.

In 2006, those bagpipes are repatriated to BC where they remain on display in our legislature building in Victoria. Whoa, that's so cool. I've never seen him, but if I'm ever there, I'll keep a look out, and that's, uh, that's Jimmy Richardson. You have a pick, why don't you? Three-time bagpiper of the year, 1914. And, uh, and, uh, our 11 pipers piping. Wow, that's, I love how they were on display for so long

until someone was like, huh, I wonder. And then it was probably Facebook, wasn't it? Well, it was 2000. So like, it was an email thing. Okay, yeah. It was a AOL thing. It was a you've got mail, truly. You've got mail.

Don't make me do Liverpool, I'm comfy in Scotland, okay? That's right, that's right. I'm comfy with AOL in Scotland. ["Toronto Star Theme"] Climate change, a problem so huge, how could I ever make a difference? I'm Marko Ciarnoved, climate reporter for the Toronto Star.

I meet a lot of smart people doing really inspiring things in this space all the time. Small things that add up to big climate benefits. Small things, big climate, wherever you get your favorite podcasts. The Climate Solutions podcast is brought to you by SmartFlow from Enbridge Sustain. In the dry states of the Southwest,

there's a group that's been denied a basic human right. In the Navajo Nation today, a third of our households don't have running water. But that's not something they chose for themselves. Can the Navajo people reclaim their right to water and contend with the government's legacy of control and neglect? Our water, our beauty. our water, our beauty.

That's in the next season of Reclaimed, the lifeblood of Navajo Nation. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts. Ah. Josie. Yeah, because we've got... Ten more gifts. We got ten more gifts. You can't breathe that big sigh, like...

Okay, let's see if I remember. Ten... uh, maids of milking. Ten for me to breathe a sigh. No. Eight maids of milking. Ten, Lord's a Leaping. Lord's a Leaping. That's right. You're right. That is quite specific. And Josie, when we think of Lord's a Leaping, inevitably, we think of the Lord of the Dance, Michael Flatley.

Now that you say it, I can't unthink it. It's true. It's true. What is he if not a Lord of the Dance, Michael Flatley. Now that you say it, I can't unthink it. It's true. It's true. What is he if not a Lord of Leaping? He's the Lord of Leaping. He's nine of them, smashed together, 10 in fact. Born in 1958 to an Irish immigrant family with a long history of excellence in step dancing.

American dancer and choreographer, Michael Flatley grew up in Chicago. Not Irish. Big disappointment. I mean, he is Irish. Irish-American. Yeah, okay. Don't email us. Michael echoes those talents and pursues Irish dancing,

as well as Golden Gloves boxing as a teen. He ultimately decides to make the former his career to great critical acclaim. He's specifically noted for revolutionizing and modernizing the Irish dance forms by introducing exotic new aspects like upper body movement. Ooh, so ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, like that. You know what I mean? Whereas before, you had to go, like,

stiff as a board, and it was just nothing but leg, baby. Nothing, flail those gams around mama, but don't crack a smile and don't move your hands. And then Michael showed up and it was just dab, dab, dab. And Michael said, what if we brought the hands into it? They're there. They're there. They're just hanging there. Yeah, let's dab with them.

And in honor of Ireland hosting the 1994 Eurovision Song Contest, Michael Flatley, by then already an established dancer and choreographer, is contracted to help create a seven-minute intermission program called... Riverdance. Riverdance. I love it. Yeah. Riverdance. It is a hit, birthing a mid-90s mini-boom around Irish dance culture,

as well as the touring show Riverdance. All the PE teachers in North America delighted. Delighted. They said, this and that swing dancing gap commercial, sign me up. -♪ GIGGLING. -♪ GIGGLING. This shit writes itself, the Macarena coming down the pipe. -♪ Hey, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh uh uh uh I am Levin dancing I don't need a teaching certificate for this After disagreements with the higher ups at Riverdance, Flatly goes his own way, starting touring shows The Lord of the Dance, his best known one

Amen, brother Feet of Flames Lovat Didn't know that, but I love that And in 2005, Celtic Tiger Live Well that is just jamming words together No, he's, Celtic Tiger Live. Well, that is just jamming words together. No, he's the Celtic Tiger. He's the Celtic Tiger. I see, I see. Okay, okay. There's a poetry line break.

Absolutely. In the program for which, Michael Flatley writes, I will be a dancer until the day I die. Sure enough, in November 2006, just before some planned performances, Flatley is admitted to a London hospital with a viral infection. He is discharged two weeks later, but has to cancel the tour, but he's fine.

He's still alive. Oh, oh, oh, I thought you were going to say Flatley Flatline. Michael Flatley, death, fake out, he's still alive. I thought we had a nice Flatline joke in there. Oh, Michael Flatline, god, now he can't die. Michael Flatley is informed, that was the't die. Michael Flatley is in form... That was the most tasteless tease in Bittersweet Infamy history.

Is Michael Flatley still alive? Come back after the break to find out. (*LAUGHTER*) Michael Flatley is informally retired from dancing, so he didn't end up dancing until he died, which is probably for the best. But still alive at 66, having announced in 2023 that he's in remission from cancer, to which we say, congrats.

Yeah. Now, this is all well and good, but it's not quite infamous. No. Let me tell you about a small independent film with an appropriate name for our bird heavy theme today. OK. Blackbird is a sexy spy thriller in the vein of a James Bond film.

I see that, yeah. It is a Michael Flatley production, directed by Michael Flatley, based on a screenplay by Michael Flatley. Uh-huh. And our leading man, Josie, it's only the Michael Flatley. Oh, Michael Flatley. He was our first choice, he couldn't make it,

so we got Michael Flatley. Okay. As the dashing retired spy, Victor Flatley. He was our first choice. He couldn't make it, so we got Michael Flatley. Okay. As the dashing retired spy, Victor Blackley. Michael Flatley, Victor Blackley? You know how in the office, Michael Scott has his own, like, screenplay where he's Michael Scarn? Yeah, yes, yes. Uh-huh. It's called Threat Level Midnight.

I am not the one to make that comparison. I saw that comparison made a lot here, like by others. Yes. I do want to note, I'm not against a vanity project. Sometimes you've got an idea and you just want to do it, and why not give yourself the best role? Who's going to do it but you? You know what I mean? Do it. Go and try.

So I don't come to this scornful. I would say that this movie, Blackbird, which I watched, of course this scornful. I would say that this movie, Blackbird, which I watched, of course... Oh, wow. ...didn't quite reach the promised meme status. We got some good sound bites from film critics. Mark Cremote said the film was one of the worst films

I've ever seen and it's not a vanity project, but an insanity project. Oh, put it. Honestly, it's not as bad as all that. The cinematography and camera work are amazing. The settings are lush. Supposedly a mix of flatly's properties as bad as all that. The cinematography and camera work are amazing. The settings are lush. Supposedly a mix of flat-leased properties in Ireland and Barbados.

The plot is muddy and kind of boring, but not completely incoherent. Okay, okay. Honestly, in terms of entertainment, the film's biggest weaknesses are that it's way too talky and it needs a few more gunfights and chase scenes to break it up and that it is entirely derivative of other better, mostly James Bond movies.

I didn't write this into my script here, but I would also add that it has like a dismal view of women. I think that's part of it too. Oh, yeah, that's a little... This is not a film that passes the Becketil test, I would say. Women are without exception hot, scantily clad, and here to throw themselves at Victor Blackley

and like remark upon his brilliance kind of thing. Yes, okay. Plot, Victor Blackley retired from being a super spy after his fiance was killed. Now he runs a swanky club in Barbados. Glamorous name from Blackley's past shows up. So does our supervillain, Eric Roberts, the hardest working man in Hollywood.

Cue the MacGuffin, cue the henchman. Throughout the film, characters are constantly remarking how amazing and wonderful and handsome and capable Victor Blackley is. Says one character to Blackley, I wonder what you love more, women, money, or playing God. I would say that this is a pretty derivative movie. Like I said, it's everything's kind of sourced from other better things.

And specifically, the highlight for me, and easily the most derivative thing in the movie, but a highlight nonetheless because it lets our lead actors, Michael Flatley from Riverdance and Eric Roberts, kind of monologue at each other across a poker table. Because you need that kind of classic Casino Royale, like poker allows you to psychologize your opponent and da-da-da-da-da.

Well, we've got one of those. Josie, would you like to be Eric Roberts as the supervillain, or would you like to be Michael Flatley as hot superagent Victor Blackley? ERIC ROBERTS, SUPERVILLAGE, PLEASE. To bring us in, Josie as Eric Roberts is a supervillain who has invited Victor Blackley to come and play cards with him.

And in the process, they're kind of trying to mind fuck each other over a plot that doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. You can tell a lot about a man by the way he plays his cards. Go ahead. Well, I can tell by the way you hold your cards you're a neat man, very neat man. And the pressure you apply to your cards? I can tell you're not very trusting. I'm inclined to comment on the cleanliness of your attire and the smell. The smell of the fresh polish on your shoes. All of the above does rather make a question of the nature of your vocation."

And then, you know, he raises or does something else kind of metaphorically appropriate. Throw in, yeah, blah, blah, blah, yeah. And then, Victor Blackley responds, all right then, since you're so keen on telling me what you observe, you clearly wish to be seen as intelligent, which would denote a rather narcissistic personality. Given that this game was by your invitation, I'd say you want to know more about me

and what I'm going to do about the current situation. Unfortunately for you, who I am is none of your concern, and what I do is out of your control. I'm gonna use that more often. What I do is out of your control. Not your monkeys, not your circus, bitch. It's very threat level midnight kind of stuff, you know what I mean?

Yeah, I love Michael Flackley playing Victor... Victor Blackley. Victor... What is it? Victor Blackley. Victor Blackley. It's a name that you have to struggle to remember because it's so close to Michael Flatley. Just Michael Flatley is not gonna leave your brain. Yeah.

Yeah. Amazing. He's the Blackbird, man. Victor Blackley, the Blackbird. So was the idea that he would create multiples like James Bond? Well, it sort of became a bit infamous, I gather, because it premiered and then, like, kind of vanished and no one could, like, get a trailer of this thing or no one could get a, like...

A lot of buzz built around, like, is this the next room? You know, that sort of thing. Oh, that's not great press, but press. No, no, but I would say it's not. So, the room is, like, infamously, quote-unquote, no, but I would say it's not. So the room is like a infamously quote unquote bad, although we've had our conversations about is there such a thing as bad art?

You know, what does that mean? In this instance, I would say it doesn't quite live up to that hype, but like if you want to watch a kind of confused, not very interesting, shockingly well shot, I guess like spy thriller, there's not enough like kind of gunfight stuff. I don't know. It needed maybe like a creative writing workshop. You know what? If me and Michael Flatley sat down together,

I think we could do it. That would have saved it. You would have saved it. I think we could do it. And I would have gotten a trip to Barbados, which is mainly what I'm angling for. Oh, right, yeah. It looks like he has a nice place, dude, honestly. Those Riverdance royalties, they pay well. Yeah. All those PE teachers has a nice place, dude, honestly. Those Riverdance... I know. ...Roralties, they pay well.

Yeah. All those PE teachers using it. Come on. Anyway, the movie kind of ends with the textbook big final showdown, Happily Ever After. Original ending track by none other than bittersweet infamy Hall of Fame or Sinead O'Connor, cash in a check. What's that about? That's, yeah, that Irish connection.

Maybe she was like, he did good things for Ireland. Yeah. That's wild. But yeah, that's the story of dancing Lord Michael Flatley's infamous leap into independent film. Self-directed, self-starred, self-funding, a dance-lord production. 10 lords a leaping, baby. 10 lords a leaping.

I know what you're thinking, always, but in this instance specifically too. I'm like Santa. I see when you're sleeping and I know what you're thinking, always, but in this instance specifically too. I'm like Santa. I see when you're sleeping and I know when you're awake, and I know what you're thinking. On the count of three, we'll say what I'm thinking. One, two, three, Beyonce. Flawn. What'd you say?

Beyonce? I said flawn. So we're still working on the psychic lake. Was Beyonce eating a flawn? No, I know what you're thinking. Taylor, there's no way you could get me a better gift than that used DVD copy of Michael Flatley's passion project, Blackbird. But I have.

Oh, shit. It's nine ladies dancing, or at least one. Okay. Okay. Okay. I want you to imagine a beautiful Argentine tango. Okay. On a March night in Buenos Aires, a woman has been called up on stage to imagine a beautiful Argentine tango. OK.

On a March night in Buenos Aires, a woman has been called up on stage at the Rojo Tango Show. She's on stage with the main dancer of this event, and he's given her a rose to bring her up from the audience. She's a beautiful woman. She's in a golden dress and silver heels. She's got a little cropped, like, blonde pixie cut. Josie, it's Katy Perry.

JOSIE Oh. Well, yeah, now that you've described... TITUS That's her haircut, yeah. JOSIE...gold dress, silver heels, dyed pixie. TITUS Bubblegum, hot princess, Katy Perry of last Friday night TGIF fame. JOSIE Yeah, get me a ginger ale. It's Katy Perry. No epic fails here, just tangos, baby.

She's in town for the South American leg of her witness tour. Oh. She's just enjoying a fabulous night at the Rojo Tango. A little bit of a celeb guest spot. Fabulous, wonderful. Gets commemorated the next day by the following Daily Mail headline. Oh shit. Katy Perry tangos the night away in Buenos Aires dot dot dot.

Hours after none at Center of Pop Stars convent legal battle dies in court. Oh, dies in court? Is that what you said? As ice cold as that headline is, it's perhaps more charitable than this even crueler update, courtesy of The Washington Post. Katy Perry, please stop, begged a nun, then she collapsed and died. Oh, my God.

Oh, my God. So, yes, you did hear right, she died in court. Katy Perry's evidently murdered a nun with her bare hands. What happened? What? Yeah, what is hap- I remember actually like a cease and desist. Like, I wrote that song, California Girls, so you need to stop singing it. No, what was it?

I hate to invoke Hamlet on the fly like this, but get thee to a nunnery. It's about a convent. Oh, okay. Yes, yes. The sweeping estate on Waverly Drive in Los Feliz, which I hate to pronounce that way, but I'm not gonna say Los Feliz, so what am I doing here? Los Angeles, que coño pasa? Los Feliz.

Was gifted in 1971 to the sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, who ran it for 40 years. This is like a Hollywood set designer's kind of mansion that's been converted into a convent. OK, OK. As the sisterhood dwindled after 40 years of running the show at the Immaculate Heart of Mary, the diocese looked for someone else to buy it. Enter Katy Perry of I Kissed a Girl fame. Yeah.

Often associated with the severity of a nun. Yes, yes. Yes, yes. When I think of nuns, I think of can cannons in your tits that shoot out whipped cream. KERA LAUGHS Naturally, naturally. Naturally, naturally. Said sister Rita Callahan in 2015,

quote, I found her videos and if it's all right to say, I wasn't happy with any of it. What a way to put that, that's nice, yeah. The sisters in,, in, seemingly potentially motivated by, like, their opinions on the content of Katy Perry's music and public persona, are motivated to look for other buyers. They claim they, not the diocese, owned the property,

and they sold it separately to restaurateur Dana Hollister, who promised to keep it open to the public as a boutique hotel for a million dollars more than Katy Perry's price of $14.5 million. So the nuns said, we got someone of better moral character who will keep the... Well, they didn't say this, but that was sort of the writing between the lines, who will keep the convent open so that it can be visited, albeit in a different form, and they're giving us

a million more dollars than Katy Perry has agreed to give the diocese. That seems like you choose that buyer, yeah. Well, the Archdiocese, they said these sisters are twisted and they took them to court. They said, you can't sell this fucking building that we own to someone else underneath of us, even if it is under more favorable circumstances,

allegedly, because like, who knows if restaurateur Dana Hollister is good for 15 million, right? There's all kinds of, I'm sure, due diligence that we have no scope on. Point being, the archdiocese beats the sisters in court, they win the right to sell the convent to Katy Perry. STACEY Wow. That's pretty intense that the archdiocese and the nuns are having this conflict too. That seems not churchly. Well, they're old.

They're on their way out anyway. Yeah, okay. And to wit, on Friday, March 9th, 2018... Last Friday night, if you will. It was her last Friday night ever. Sisters Rita Callahan and Catherine Rose Holtzman do an interview with Fox 11 Los Angeles where Catherine Rose Holtzman pleads for Katy Perry to stop her diabolical antics. They accompany the rest toward a bankruptcy court where Catherine

Rose Holtzman 89 collapses and dies. Sister Rita told the New York Post that Sister Holtzman's last words were, Katy Perry, please stop. She added that Perry had blood on her hands over Holtzman's death. So these aren't fun nuds. You think you've seen Sister Akk? Well, these ain't those nuds. Yeah. Uh-uh. Uh-uh. You had a good time with Sound of Music? No, no, no. These nuds have rulers in those pockets. Yeah.

Damn. In the end, even though they won the right to sell the convent to Katy Perry, the diocese couldn't get the nuns out in time, so Perry never went through with the purchase of the property. Either way, it sounds like Dane Hollister and the Los Feliz Nuns learned the hard way that California girls are unforgettable. Find fresh fears, they got it on lock. That's Our Lady dancing.

It's Katy Perry tangling the night away as a nun collapses and dies. Do you want to milk some maids? Oh shit! It's your fave. You've been excited for these milk maids. I knew about them. Drip in with milk. Yeah.

Josie, I'm going to tell you about a spy. Ooh, I'm a spy. Have you ever heard of Virginia Hall? No tell you about a spy. Ooh, I'm a spy. Have you ever heard of Virginia Hall? No, she's a spy. I would never have heard of her. She would hate that I led with that, because she really liked to keep that shit on the low. This is not how my story needs to be told! No one should ever find out I'm a spy, ever,

under any circumstances. And actually, that's kind of interesting, because that ends up becoming a contributing factor to her becoming something of an anonymous figure until after her death at which point like kind of more stuff about her legacy ends up coming out. This holiday season surprise everyone on your list with the best gifts, tickets to see their favorite artists live, choose from thousands of concerts and comedy shows including Mariah Carey, Mary J. Blige, Matt Matthews, Metallica, Thomas Rhett, Trans-Siberian Orchestra, Sarah Silverman, and so many more. Share a memory together or give a gift they'll never forget.

Find the most exciting gift for every fan at LiveNation.com slash gifts. That's LiveNation.com slash gifts. Fifty years ago, a young woman named Karen Silkwood got into her car alone. She was reportedly on her way to deliver sensitive documents to a New York Times reporter. She never made it, and those documents she'd agreed to carry were never found. Do you think somebody killed her? There's no question in my mind. Someone killed her that night.

I think they were trying to stop her in order to get the documents. A new investigation into the life and death of America's first nuclear whistleblower. Listen to Radioactive, the Karen Silkwood Mystery from ABC Audio. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts. There's a book by Sonia Purnell, it's called A Woman of No Importance, The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II.

And this is a book that if you want the long form of this legitimately, this, of all those things that I picked here, this is the one that could most be its own episode, but you're getting it in kind of bite-sized Christmas form instead. Okay, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, Virginia Hall, born in Baltimore, always has big dreams of adventure at a time

when girls were like not seen or heard, really. By contrast, as a teenager, she's said to have worn a bracelet made of live snakes to school. It's like a lark. Damn, girl. Eccentric, willing to expose us to venom. A laugh. She really wanted to be an ambassador.

She learned five languages, had a big dream of like... Wow. Her mom, Mrs. Hall, wanted her to be like a debutante, you know what I mean? So... Yeah. To her, great horror, her daughter was something of a libertine in her thinking. Yes, yes. But she would give her all this training

and da-da-da so that she could marry well or whatever, yeah. Yeah, exactly. Like, elocution lessons in comportment, in other words, that you don't need to know the meaning of, because thank god that shit's over. She blew off her leg hunting at 27. Oh! Which was not good.

No! Bad accidental discharge of a gun into her own leg. Oh my god! Ends up having to be amputated and replaced with a prosthetic. She thinks her life is over, but it is kinda only just beginning really as you'll learn. Damn dude, yes. She's applying for the State Department. They deny her enrollment in the Foreign Service as an ambassador three times.

They always give excuses, oh you're handicapped, oh this or that. Worth noting, at the time, 1500 diplomats, six of them are women. Oh, wow. Yeah. So really, really, really ahead of her time in that regard. Yeah. She can't get into the State Department

as like an ambassador, but they offer her like an admin role in Europe. And it's just like a boring... Secretary. Yeah, she's a secretary, basically. Yeah. It doesn't suit her. She's got like big aspirations and a big zest for life and sitting around typing.

It's not for her. I get it. So in 1939, she decides she's going to support the French in World War II. Now mind you, this is 1939. The USA is not taking part in World War II yet. But she's there. She's like, fuck it. I want to drive an ambulance

for the French army, and they need everyone they can get, so they're like, waa, s'il vous plaît. So she ends up driving the ambulances, taking injured soldiers from the battlefield to the hospital. She's right in the thick of things. Damn. By chance, as she's doing this, she bumps into an undercover British agent at the train station.

And I don't know how they suss each other out, but somehow this relationship develops to the point where she's able to get the phone number of the SOE, which is also known as Churchill's Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare. It's the Special Operations Executive, and it was specifically formed to conduct espionage and sabotage in German-occupied Europe. So infiltrate and fuck things up from the inside. And apparently, like, for six months, they've been trying to get someone to do this, and she's like, I'll do it.

They basically just drop her. She's disguised as a New York Post journalist covering the war in Lyon. OK. In central France in September 1941. So, right, it's a fic of things, right? Occupied by the Vichy government, who are Nazi collaborators.

They're encouraging citizens to denounce each other for money. It's a bad scene. Can I shock ya? Occupied France in fucking 1941. Bad scene. Not a fun place to be. Okay. Not a fun place to be. So, she gets plunked right into the millist. There's not a welcoming party for her. No she gets plunked right into the millist. There's not a welcoming

party for her. No contacts, no... She is like person one. No onboarding, no orientation. She is starting the resistance. Damn. There is no resistance currently. It is up to her to like start it from like the seed. She is the seed. But she's able to find sympathizers. She's able to secure safe houses, weapons. She enlists some

nuns, our friends the nuns, right? These are good nuns. She adopts the convent there as a safe house, and then she's able to go the other way from the nuns and she gets the brothel madam on board. And her, the brothel madam and her girls would spy on German clients, they would drug them and steal their documents. They would deliberately give them gonorrhea and syphilis, kind of like virus bombs. So, like, they would go to the doctors who were also collaborators in the resistance, who would give them cards that falsely said

that they were clean. They'd go spread VD to all the German soldiers, and then they'd come back and, like, get treated just in time for them, kind of thing. Oh, my God, amazing. I love that. Wow! Biological warfare, early biological warfare, right? Yeah, essentially, yeah. They're communicating back to England via coded wires.

The police chiefs get in on it, so now we've got fake IDs, we get government workers in so we can forge papers. Eventually, she becomes known as Marie of Lyon. This mysterious figure who can like, you need papers, Marie of Lyon can get you sorted. You know what I mean? Who is she? No one knows her name. She's like the wind kind of thing. Nice. With one leg. The wind with one leg. Another name for her is the limping lady.

Once they've figured out that she's a lady who limps, once they've got that intel on her, they put up all these posters. The Gestapo put up all these posters, like, we must find and destroy the limping lady. a reward for whoever gets the limping lady. They also call her like privately, her code name is Artemis because they're hunting her down and Artemis is the Greek goddess of hunting and she's like the ultimate game for them. STACEY Oh, what? GIGI Eventually, the Gestapo and the Nazis close

in on her enough that she has to get out of town basically like it Shits too hot here. You've got to escape. Yeah on foot and reminder. That's one. Yeah over the Pyrenees in November Those are mountains and chilly chilly mountains. This is an extremely blizzardy ass fucking winter, too So when she's getting over there... Where is the milking? I am ready! I'm milking it. Good, good.

So she has to get over the Pyrenees, on foot, in a blizzard. Her wooden leg is a custom affair. Is wooden? It's wooden, it's hollow and full of purloined documents as good spy legs are, and she calls it Cuthbert. So her wooden leg, Cuthbert, has a secret component for spy documents. Yes. As is perfect.

But he's not regulation wooden leg, he won't bend, so she's kind of got to climb this mountain sideways. There's blood pouring from her stump, but she can't let her guides know that she's like flagging in any way. Oh my god. So she just has to like constantly disguise and clean it. Because like the second you're a liability, like, you ever been a spy, Josie? They'll leave you there.

It's been a while. At one point, she is able to get a word back to London that Cuthbert is being tiresome. Like, her wooden leg is giving her trouble. Yeah. But whoever receives the transmission seems to think that Cuthbert is like a person and responds, if Cuthbert tiresome, have him eliminated.

Oh, no. It's like, no, dog. She's like, this guy's annoying me. And they're like, bullet, can't risk it. Can't risk killing the vibe, dude. Pyrenees? Oh, no. It's like, no, dog. She's like, this guy's annoying me, and they're like, bullet, can't risk it. Can't risk killing the vibe, dude. Pyrenees, oh, that's tough. You're gonna want to kill him if he's dire. So they are actually able to get out of the reach of the Gestapo.

She's outside of France, but she's like very unhappily, so she wants to get back in the mix, because she lives for this, right? She's good at it, and she likes it. In 1941, this is like right before, we're not at Pearl Harbor yet, but we're getting there. And FDR is figuring out that we're going to need to enter the war at some point. Yeah.

He appoints a guy named Wild Bill Donovan to operate the USS Operation of Strategic Services, which is sort of a similar operation, right? Like, let's implant people within and destroy from the inside out. This is the thing, by the way, if you ever hear people talking about how Julia Child was a spy, this is what they're talking about. The OSS is like 13,000 people with all different kinds of talents and hobbies and angles of approach, and one of them was Julia Child, and one of them is Virginia Hall.

The UK won't put her back in the mix because she's brûlée. She's cooked, which means she's compromised. They all know what she looks like. She's able to convince the OSS. She's like, listen, you haven't heard of my genius idea. They're not gonna see Maria Vlea. They're not gonna see the limping lady, Virginia Hall. They're gonna see a humble milkmaid.

Here we go. So she dyes her hair gray. She gets a dentist to kind of fuck up her teeth so they're not as nice. So they're like kind of peasant teeth. Whoa. She's in it. She's a spy dude. She's the spy.

She puts on these thick skirts to hide her limp and hide her pistol. And she moves in as a humble milkmaid who lives south of town, who comes to sell cheese and if I happen to overhear anything that the German soldiers are saying, well that's all the better. She's able to get critical intel that leads to the Allies liberating Paris. Um, you know, she's a milkmaid, but you could say that the Germans provided the tea. Nice. Thank you. Basically, her intel ends up being really, really crucial, and this milkmaid thing is

like a rousing success. Oh wow. So there's her milkmaid inter is like, arousing success. Oh, wow. So there's our milkmaid interlude, but not done yet for our girl Virginia Hall. She gets sent to O'Luar. She's there to help a group of refugees called the Mackie. It's like a space that's like, occupied by German soldiers, with a bunch of like, very vulnerable refugees there, and she's basically able to sneak in and make a militia out of them. She teaches them on guerrilla warfare, they cut all the phone lines, they ambush

and disrupt all the convoys, they're listening on the wire so when the Germans are all panicked being like, zut alors! That's not right. Garten Himmel! There we go. They basically fight for five days, they kill 150 Germans, they take a,000 prisoners, and finally, the German major surrenders with 600 men ahead of the American army's arrival in September 1944. Okay, okay. This was a massive victory. She's revered there. She's known there as the Madonna of the Mountain.

Wow. Fuelle noitloire. Paul had met and fallen in love with an OSS lieutenant, Paul Guaulau, who worked with her in 1957. Couple marries after living together on and off for years. She is given the Distinguished Service Cross by President Harry Truman, but refuses a public ceremony because she wants to go on being a secret agent. She's like, I don't want to be in public because I want to continue doing this.

She specifically wanted to be a part of the newly developed CIA. Oh, okay. Yeah. And she was. She finished her career there. She rocked a desk job till she was mandatory retired at 60 in 1966, according to Sonia Purnell in the book A Woman of No Importance. In the secret CIA report on Hall's career, the CIA admitted that her fellow officers felt she had been sidelined, shunted into backwater accounts because she had so much experience that she overshadowed her male colleagues who felt threatened by her and that her experience and abilities were never properly utilized during her time at the CIA.

She shooed him in the head with the fucking CIA. She was like, can I fuck up my teeth again? Let's go, I'll take out an eye. Yeah, yeah. Let me cook. Do you want me to cut off the other leg? Let's go. She died at 76 in 1982, never having returned to her true passion of milk mating. That's the story of Virginia Hall, her mate of milking. But no time to stop and meditate on that. Finish your milk, because we got to go swimming with seven swans. We're talking about some of the great kind kind of, I would say feminist icons because we

moved from Virginia Hall, our kick-ass lady spy, to Stephanie Meyer, the author of the YA Vampire Series Twilight. And truly, no one wanted the return of Twilight protagonist Bella Swan to go more swimmingly than her. Uh, I see what you did there. It's not hard to spot, honestly. The iconic YA vampire series Twilight has sold more than 160 million novels and earned more than three bu-b-billion dollars at the cinematic box office, all told.

Damn, dude. We talked a little bit about the series and its origins with Amandor Tees back in episode 84 self-insert if you want to find out a little bit more about the whole thing. Go back there, but it's a franchise with which many of you will be familiar, Episode 84 self-insert if you want to find out a little bit more. That's right. That's right. Go back there. But it's a franchise with which many of you will be familiar because like I said, those numbers don't lie. You can, you can hate her, but you're hating her as she cashes her checks, right?

Yeah. Yeah. It's that's a fact. That's true. The series seemed to reach its narrative climax with 2008's Breaking Dawn in which Bella and her vampire lover Edward Cullen have their beautiful half-vamp baby, Renesmee. But Stephanie was not quite done with the universe of the Cullens, or not quite done making money from it, as later that year she announced the sixth book in the series, Midnight

Sun, which retells the events of the first book from the perspective of Edward Cullen. But as if the Volturi themselves had swept into town, this attempt at the new book ended in tragedy as the first twelve chapters were leaked onto the internet. In cents on August 28th, 2008, Stephanie Meyer announced that she had halted work on the book. Quote, If I tried to write Midnight Sun now in my current frame of mind, James the villain would probably win and all the Cullens would die, which wouldn't dovetail too well with the original story.

In any case, I feel too sad about what has happened to continue working on Midnight Sun, and so it is on hold indefinitely. This mystery, by the way, of who leaked this book has never been solved. We still don't know. She let Robert Pattinson look at some of it while he was filming Twilight, and he's famously very lukewarm on the whole thing. I bet Robert Pattinson leaked these pages. I'm just saying. I can't prove that.

That's not an accusation. It's just a thought. See, what I'm thinking is it sounds, and maybe it's just like, where my brain is or the angle of which the story is told, but like, I'm like, she leaked it herself, because she... Didn't want to write this anymore. Yeah, she's like, ah, God, this is a mistake. I don't want to do this.

And if so, it's not a bad plan. Mm-hmm. It's not a bad plan. That was the book. She was writing. She was cooking. She was writing. But it just wasn't the book. Yeah. I would imagine it's really hard to rewrite a book that you already wrote from another perspective

and still stay interested in it the same way that you were when you were writing an entirely new narrative. Yeah. And to know that it's not just like an exercise to deepen your understanding, you know, like, to know that it would be published. It's a commercial product. I mean, I think that would be kind of hard. It feels double hard when you've already, like,

dipped the quill in that inkwell, you know? See what I did there? That midnight black inkwell for your midnight sun. Speaking to Entertainment Weekly, Stephanie Meyer told Karen Valby, I do not feel alone with the manuscript, and I cannot write when I don't feel alone. So my goal is to go for like, I don't know,

two years without ever hearing the words midnight sun. And once I'm pretty sure that everyone's forgotten about it, I think I'll be able to get to the place where I'm alone with it again. Then I'll be able to sneak in and work on it again. In 2015, she resumed the work again, only to find out about the imminent publication of Grey. 50 Shades of Grey is told by Christian.

There we go, there we go. Okay, okay. Stephanie Meyer allegedly called it a literal flip the table moment. Midnight Sun is shelved again. She's just pissed. Ah, man. In May 2020, Meyer finally announced that Midnight Sun would be released later that year and it was to no particular fanfare.

Reviewing the Peaceful Guardian, L. Hunt said, this plotting retelling of the first book from Edward's perspective is a 750 page exercise in toothless tedium. That's a lot of pages. Fans of Midnight Sun should not expect a continuation as Meyer states on her website's FAQ, I do not plan to ever rewrite another novel from a different perspective. Writing Midnight Sun was a very frustrating and slow, so incredibly slow process, and I felt like my hands were always tied by the existing story. I only enjoy writing when I'm creating something new, so I will only write new things from now on.

Okay, Steph. What did she do in the meantime instead of Midnight Sun? Well, in 2015, she released Life and Death. Here's a little blurbski for ya. Ooh, bler-er-oney. You know Bella and Edward. Now, get to know Bo and Edith. Jesus. When Beaufort Swan moves to the gloomy town of Forks and meets the mysterious, alluring Edith Cullen, his life takes a thrilling and terrifying turn. With her porcelain skin, golden eyes, mesmerizing voice, and supernatural gifts, Edith is both

irresistible and enigmatic. What Bo doesn't realize is the closer he gets to her, the more he's putting himself and those around him at risk. And it might be too late to turn back. It might be too late to write a whole new book? Like what the fuck, Steph? You just rewrote Twilight and just changed the sexes of the main characters.

GIGI BELLAMYRDADO So yes, Stephanie Meyer did burn daylight between Breaking Dawn and Midnight Sun by working on a gender-swapped version of the original Twilight novel, control-effing all the Bellas into bows and all the Hiss into hers. There are other changes than just that. I've sourced them from reviewer Literary Elephant, good name, who says that the remake is just as fond

of its gender tropes as the original. Quote, in a scene where Bella is reading Jane Austen, Bo is reading 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea instead. He might be gay if he's reading Jane Austen, right? Yeah, yeah. In a scene where Edward tells some classmates that he's taking Bella to dinner, Edith tells the classmates that she's making Bo take her to dinner.

Uh-huh. And anytime Bella would have hugged someone, apparently there are a lot of, quote, one-armed bro hugs with Bo. Oh, God. Oh, God. Josie, seems to me like these remake swans might just be ugly ducklings. Ooh, yes, indeed-ly. Yes, indeed-ly. So there you go, seven swans are swimming.

I give you the Joddy remakes. One from Edward's POV, one with the gender switched of Twilight. Oh, I've never read those books. I cannot comment. You should only read the gender swapped one. And not the original. You should make very clear that that's your stance. You should be like, yeah, I only read the ones where Bella's a guy and Edward's a girl instead. Bo and Edith, that's your stance. So you should be like, yeah, I only read the ones where Bella's a guy and Edward's a girl instead.

Bo and Edith, that's for me. Give me some geese-a-land. I made the swan not really a swan, because I know we're getting into birdland here, folks. I hope you like birds. I got you birds. Josie, have you ever had a bad encounter with a Canada goose? No, but you have.

Oh yeah, I've seen geese attack dogs many times. Once I saw a goose attack a dog, and then another time I saw a goose that was like, we were walking along the seawall, and it was two Canada geese and their baby, and that's what makes them fucking fire up is the goddamn babies. Oh. And so everyone's trying to cut a wide berth around this thing. And I said to the person I was with, I think it might have been Fallow, I don't remember who it was, I turned to the person I was with and I was like, dude, I saw a fucking Canada

Goose attack a dog once. And then immediately after I said that, friendly golden retriever, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,

blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, He knows to cut a white berth like the rest of us, like any good kid. Do you know of, like, the Canada Goose reputation? They're just very mean. They're very mean. They're pricks. They're fucking rude pricks. And they're a protected species. You can't even kick them. You can't even punt that thing like a fucking feathery football. No, they're not very Canadian. That's true. It's a good point.

But they're also, like, seen as quintessentially Canadian. According to Tom Jokinen for the Walrus, probably pronounced Jokinen. That seems like a good like Finnish name or something. He wrote a story, How to Make Peace with Canada Geese, sort of inspecting this like the fraught relationship between Canadians and the geese that we so claim to love. It's a difference between urban and rural experiences because I think that like in a rural context when you can kind of like leave the geese be, then you just kind of hear their kind of nice like... Overhead you see the bee.

Just try to avoid their shit. But I mean, that's life, isn't it? Just walking around the shit. That's fine. In cities, they're frequently in the way and they're very aggressive, especially about protecting their nests. The wing protuberance that a canine has is really important. It's important to know that you're not going to be able to get a good shot of the

bird. And it's important to know that you're not going to be able to get a good shot of the bird. And it's important to know that you're not going to be able to get a good shot of the bird. And it's important to know that you're not going to be able to get a good shot around the shed. That's fine. In cities, they're frequently in the way and they're very aggressive, especially about protecting their nests. The wing protuberance that a Canada goose has is called an alula. It's something like their elbow, and it can strike like a mallet. So they can just like really do damage with their wings. Also, the average adult goose, which can weigh anywhere between three and nine kilograms, produces one kilogram of droppings a day, which Yohkana three and nine kilograms, produces one kilogram

of droppings a day, which Yohkinen notes is the weight of a cabbage, and that's one unit of droppings every 10 to 20 minutes. So they're mean, they're territorial, and they shit everywhere. They're shitty. They're shitty. They're shitty roommates. Yeah. They're shitty roommates.

They need to not have roommates. Well, why do geese live in cities if they need to not have roommates? They end up providing ideal living and breeding spaces says L James Shapiro who taught animal behavior at University of Manitoba cities provide ideal living and breeding spaces quote if you're a goose flying overhead and looking down you see this big city with many retention ponds and less green lawns the retention ponds protect them from lawns. The retention ponds protect them from predators, the lawns provide food, and the Migratory Birds Convention Act in 1994, which is a Canadian federal law, prohibits the disturbance of migratory bird eggs and

nests without a permit from the Canadian Wildlife Service. So unless you get a permit, you can't disturb the nest. Yeah, yeah. There are ways around it. You can't move the eggs, but there permit, you can't disturb the nest. Yeah, yeah. There are ways around it. You can't move the eggs, but there are things you can do to the eggs without moving them. Ottawa scrambles, they shake them until the embryo is dead, but they leave them in the nest.

Oh my God! Ottawa! Yeah, sorry, trigger warning, dead geese. Okay, yeah. In Hamilton, they have coated the eggs with oil, which sort of suffocates them because they can't breathe in through the membrane or whatever. This sounds maybe less nice than just killing them, to be honest. I'm about to propose you with an alternate solution,

and I'm gonna check back in with you if you still feel that way after I tell you about what the University of Manitoba did when it hired a private contractor in 2017. They had the permit to destroy these eggs, but it's the way that they went about it. It kind of didn't end well. Quoting Yohkinen, Alexia Ruiz was a 20-year-old design student at the time. In an email she says, she saw, through a window in the basement of the environmental design studio, two pairs of boots walking toward the goose nest that we had all been monitoring

throughout the spring. Oh. Two men with baseball bats swung the bats aggressively at the eggs in the nest. It was horrific and shocking. Oh my God. And local media at the time elaborated that the men were apparently also carrying open umbrellas,

which we imagine is to fend off unhappy adult geese. Oh yeah. So we have someone bashing the nests apart with a baseball bat and another person, I guess with an umbrella, in case any of the large geese— SHIELDING THEM OFF— —decide to come square up. Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh uhhhhh uhhhhh uhhhhh uhhhhh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh The university decided to clean up its act. It established a Goose Education and Awareness Committee in 2018 and launched a program called

Respect the Goose. It now deals with geese by changing human behavior via means like fences. Quoting U of M Director of Operations and Maintenance Stephen Cumstie, we are not going to do population control here at the university. We will live with the geese, cohabitate with them, and make it work the best we can. Whoa. So if you're a six-geese-a-layan, sounds like U of M is a pretty good place to start, because they've capitulated. Get yourself to Manitoba!

They turned the keys over to the geese. Wow. The geese. You can shit wherever you want now. The geese are making the rules. Five golden rings. Golden rings. Well, when you think about five rings, what do you think of?

The Olympics. The Olympics. So, why don't we make them golden via the Golden Arches, McDonald's? Oh, I see. I like this. This is good. Thank you. This is just enough on theme, right?

Yeah. I think the fact that there were five rings kind of saved me. I got most of it. I got 66% of it. Layers. It's a very delicate pastry. Gift-giving is an art. And this one's interesting because it actually ties into the Cold War and, like, U.S.-Russian relations, Soviet at the time relations.

And I really regret specifically that I didn't bring it to the Minfamous that I did all the way back in episode 22, Elena Mukina. Oh, wow. I did a minfamous on infamous fast food promotions. And this one is an infamous fast food promotion that ties into the Cold War, but I forgot it. Time site is 2020, my friend.

And I've been kicking myself about not including this in that roundup, because it would have been so perfect. And here it is. Here we go. Here we go. Perfection. In 1984, after many years of being a money loser, Vote not including this in that roundup because it would have been so perfect. And here it is. Here we go. Here we go. Perfection. In 1984, after many years of being a money loser, the Olympics finally turned a profit

by bringing on corporate sponsors, including McDonald's, who ran a promotion called, When the U.S. Wins, You Win. Basically, diners at American McDonald's were given free food for Team USA Olympic wins, with a gold medal nelling you a free Big Mac, fries for a silver, and a Coke for bronze if you had the card corresponding to the relevant event. Biathlon, 100 meter dash, break dancing, et cetera. The card though, where did you just wanna get the card?

Eat at McDonald's, we'll give you a card. Oh, I see. We'll give you a card that says fencing, and you watch fencing. And it kinda gives viewers an incentive to root along from home. Yeah, that makes sense, I see. We'll give you a card that says fencing, and you watch fencing. And it kind of gives viewers an incentive to root along from home. Yeah, that makes sense. I get it. The restaurant did a similar promotion in 1976 when the U.S. meddled third, trailing a pair of communist powerhouses, the Soviet Union and East Germany.

In 1980, the U.S. boycotted the games, which took place in Moscow, so no promo. That's right. In 1984, the Olympics took place in Los Angeles, California, birthplace of the Animaniacs. I can't see. You missed my break dancing joke, by the way. I just slid a ray gun reference by you there. Oh, no, I didn't. Well, I'm glad we're recording.

It's too late. No looking back. Only looking forwards. Yeah, sure, sure. You can hear it on the rerun. And Josie, if the Americans boycotted the 1980 Soviet games in Moscow, how do you think the Kremlin respond to the 1984 American games in Los Angeles? Boycott?

Boycotted right back, as did 13 other Eastern bloc countries, including East Germany. And of course, with America's two largest competitors for Olympic gold removed from the game board, the free food economy of the 1984 McDonald's Olympic promotion essentially exploded. Off the chain, yes, alright. I can imagine, yes. Quoting Tim Loak, writing for LAist, while the Americans had secured 94 medals at the 1976 Summer Olympics, 34 golds,

this is the last time they ran the promotion at McDonald's, they'd end up scoring a whopping 174 medals in 1984, with 83 of them being first place finishes. Oh, that's a lot of whopper. Not whopper. Big Macs. It's a whopper of a Big Mac situation, to be certain, to be sure. This is also something that I read apocryphally, and I couldn't confirm this, to take it with a grain of salt,

or however many salt you need to coat all the free fries you're getting. But apparently, you could kind of chain them together. So, like, say you got your free Big Mac, that came with another card, and you could just open it, and it was an event that already happened, and when you got golden, you just give it right back and be like, give me another one. And that would come with a free card.

And that would come with a free card. And that would come... So you could, like, really eat for a long time. A family could eat on this promotion for a long time. A family could eat on this promotion. Yes. Yes. Girl, she ate. Yes. And she did, truly. Everyone did. But it seems like why not just put like one per customer per day, you know, like keep

it easy, keep it simple. Not in America. Not in America. Not in America. We'll sue over that. We're fine. That's why you put in the fine prank, baby. We're fine prank country. That's true, a fine prank country that can't fucking read. Thanks Linda McMahon.

That's true. Scroll right on by, ladies. Hit accept. You won it. Yes. Click yes. So depending who you ask, this promotion is a colossal success or a colossal disaster for McDonald's.

Entertainment, as well as engagement, were extremely high, to the point where rumors spread of Big Mac shortages among certain vendors, but surely it can't be a financial boon to give out three times the amount of free product you're expecting, right? However, while the event has gone down in infamy as a blunder, Darren Hovel ran the numbers for Collect and found that McDonald's grew 10% in gross sales and 13.4% in profit that year, consistent with their regular growth around that era. Okay, okay. It's possible that this is yet another case of infamy getting it wrong, a story that's

maybe too good to be true. Oh. That maybe this was actually like a really good thing for them because it just got people in the restaurant buying higher markup items or something. Who knows? Yeah. McDonald's was and is tight-lipped about the actual figures of the 1984 Olympic promotion. The Olympics returned to LA in 2028,

but alas for those hoping to cash in on some pro bono Big Macs and fries au gratis, McDonald's ended its Olympic sponsorship deal in 2017. It seems there is no longer any such thing as a free lunch. Not in this economy. Not under Sleepy Joe, baby. Thank God Donald Trump will fucking fix it. Smote that joint, light that fucker up.

-♪ TURTLE DOVES THEME SONG PLAYING -♪ Four turtle doves, three French hens, two... That's the turtle doves. Okay, what's the four? Four? Four is the most ignominious of all of them. Four, I bet that if you go to like the 12 Days of Christmas Sporkle, this is the one people...

Maybe not because it occurs relatively early in the song, but who the fuck cares about four calling birds? There we go. It's so vague. Well, let's break that down. Why is it so fucking vague? What's a calling bird? Isn't any bird a calling bird? You're trying to think of an entirely mute bird and you can't get there, ergo, it's

just any bird. Well, that's because this is something that seems to have evolved over the years into this line, calling birds. What it really seems to have been originally was calli birds, c-o-l-l-Y or C-O-L-L-E-Y. Oh my God. And that cawley means similar to cole. So what we're really saying is... Blackbird.

For blackbirds. So our friend Victor Blackley. Yes. Back again. AKA Michael Flatley. AKA Michael Flatley. Oh my, see this is why you start a podcast and do it for five years.

So you can get to this point in time where you learn that four calling birds was actually four collie birds, derivative of cold black birds. As you well know, Josie, there are many fascinating species of birds calling collie or otherwise native to the island nation of New Zealand. JANELLE This is true. It's a big bird, a bird, a lot of birds. CRAIG It's a big bird. That's why they call it a kiwi.

JANELLE No. There's all these very cool birds that are, yeah, just native to New Zealand and nowhere else. CRAIG Do you have any particular memories of birds spotting on your honeymoon? Because I would imagine it's the kind of... Especially on the South Island where you were, where it's a little bit more wilderness-y,

I would imagine it's like a great place to be an accidental birdwatcher. You're like a birdwatcher whether you want to be or not, to a degree. Yeah, that's true. We happened on to like a rehabilitation center that was a lot... It looked a lot like a zoo, but it was just open to the public. And we saw... But it was also a rehab, so it was for like birds that need to kick the habit.

Kiwis who need to get juiced. Yeah. And that's when we ran into that cute little dog who was so excited by the takehe. And the dog was just like running around the enclosure. Yes, you did talk about this. What a cute little dog. On your travels in New Zealand, did you happen to see a Weka at any point? A Weka?

A Weka. Not that I know of. Maybe I did, but I didn't know it. I'll say that. It's a species of brown flightless rail, quoting Fan Wang for the BBC. An iconic large flightless bird, the Weka is famous for its feisty and curious personality.

It has become extinct over large tracts of the mainland as a result of changing climatic conditions and rising predator numbers. Sad. The New Zealand Department of Conservation website describes Weka as, usually heard, not seen, although some birds, usually those living in your farms or tramping huts, get a—what the fuck is a tramping hut? That's very New Zealand. It's like a—I think it's like a hiking—yeah, like a hut that you can stay in on long hikes.

Josie knows everyone. It's a hiking shelter. They get a reputation for pilfering crops, food, and other small objects. Well, you can hunt the weka in the Chatham Islands. It is broadly across New Zealand a protected species. And in New Zealand, the penalty for killing protected wildlife under the Wildlife Act of 1953, quoting a lot of different wildlife acts. These damn birds.

These damn endangered birds I keep bringing you. The penalty is up to two years in prison or a fine of $100,000 New Zealand dollars, about 58 grand American Canadians. You know how to do that in your head by now, I'm sure. So imagine, Josie, the feathers that were ruffled in 2024, when Spencer Corey Jones, an American rafting guide, killed and ate a weka while participating in a reality show. Oh, shit, he did it on camera?

It wasn't on camera, but it was during a taped competition. So basically, he was participating in a show called Race to Survive New Zealand, which is what it sounds like. It's like a survival type race. It's a USA Network show. You can watch it on Peacock now if you want, if you're in America. Speaking of birds. Speaking of birds, damn, watch out overhead. Put up an umbrella. I guess not for Peacock.

Peacock's probably done. And a Weka too. You're fine, just watch your step. The gimmick is, it seems to me, one of the more extreme survival type shows, not quite as bad as A Naked and Afraid, but probably more of a starvation and endurance thing than something like Survivor. I think Survivor, the idea is that you can probably be

a relatively physically fit everyday person, and that's part of it. Whereas on this show, the teams of two are like, river rafting guides, endurance athletes, rough necks on oil rigs, you know, like, superman people. Yeah, hearty. Hearty folk.

And Cory's there with his partner, Oliver Dev, who's a fellow river rafting guide. So it says justinsmithforealityt.com, it seemed like the show intentionally tried to avoid the grisly details of this incident, but they've mentioned Weka birds multiple times throughout the show, the edited program. They've made a point to tell us in previous episodes

that they were off limits. You can't hunt them or eat them, but they've been scurrying around survival camp all season long. We've seen them causing chaos and tempting everyone with their big, juicy bodies. KORI LAUGHS Same. Same. In episodeha-ha! Same. In episode four, Cory joked that they look like

they would make a good sandwich, and I watched the episode where they get, spoiler, they end up getting disqualified from the show. It is a DQ to kill and eat a protected species. Oh. Well, you know, yeah. When in New Zealand, don't kill and eat a protected bird species. As they write on the asses of the sweatpants, right? And it is true. It seems like it was a pretty tough survival situation.

They did it like when the cameras were down, but one of the other teams kind of narc'd on them. And it's a shame, because it seems like they were doing quite well in the competition. They were like coming in first in a lot of the things. Well, how many wekka do you think they ate? Do you think that was it? I hope for their pocketbook's sake that it was just the one.

Okay, yeah, true, very true. If we're talking 60 grand American or two years in prison per Weka... Yeah, oof. ...that's not good. And apparently it was just this one guy, Cory, the other Oliver, he ends up getting DQ'd too, but it's sort of like an unfortunate happenstance of something his partner did.

Although he noted, I don't harbor a singlance of a little toward Cory, this of something his partner did. Yeah. Although he noted, I don't harbor a single ounce of ill will toward Cory. This doesn't change anything about our relationship. Cory himself said, I knew it was breaking a rule, but that's not important when you're hungry. What I did disrespected New Zealand, and I'm sorry. That's the only reply. And I think that like, that is part of what makes the New Zealand Conservation Department end up issuing a statement

saying that in this instance, quote, the unique set of circumstances cast members were fatigued and suffering from significant hunger and in an unusual group dynamic situation meant we felt a warning letter was prudent. So no action is going to be taken against this guy. We have an international incident here, but it seems like it's been forgiven given the circumstances, and, you know, hopefully he's learned a lesson about killing and eating a protected species in New Zealand, yeah. SHANNON Right, yeah. Well, and maybe the press from the show

also was helpful, because people were, like, learning about the weka and learning... JOSEPH I didn't know what a weka was. SHANNON Yeah, and learning not to kill and eat them, even if there's cameras, you know, not trained on you. In an interview with the USA Network, which airs the show, Jones was asked whether he would ever compete again. It's a question we get asked a lot, he said.

Obviously, ending in this way has been super, super difficult. If Oliver would have me back as a partner, and if this opportunity presented itself again, and it wasn't in New Zealand, I would probably say yes. Let's hope for the sake of the menagerie of birds that I'm gifting you as we speak, that old Kojo doesn't come by our tape in tonight hungry for Christmas num nums,

because when you're real hungry, those birds, they just call right out to you. Kali kali birds. Four of them, in fact. Calling con birds. Whoa. So nobody asked him what they tasted like? JARED They were supposed to taste like shit. I saw an aphorism online that said something that's commonly said in the area is the way to make weca soup is you put a weca and a stone in a pot of boiling water and then you

throw away the weca in the water and you eat the stone. STACEY Okay, yeah. JARED Because it'll probably do a little bit water and you eat the stone. Okay, yeah. Because it'll probably do a little bit better for you. Oh, man. So yeah, weka's not good eats, but when you're in episode eight of Race to Survive New Zealand, it must have been Kentucky Fried Wekan.

Yeah, yeah, totally, totally. Oh, man, that's wek-ed. That's... Oh, stop! Defying gravity with that one over here. Which a weka can't do because they can't fly. In the dry states of the southwest, there's a group that's been denied a basic human right. In the Navajo Nation today, a third of our households don't have running water. But that's not something they chose for themselves. Can the Navajo people reclaim their right to water and contend with the government's

legacy of control and neglect? Our water, our beauty. That's in the next season of Reclaimed, the lifeblood of Navajo Nation. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts. Jossie, you ready for three French hens? Lame on me. Sweet. Well, I tell a lie, I couldn't find you a hen. I called up France.

Uh-huh. 1-800-SACRE-BLUE. And I asked them to source me their finest French hens for the finest person I know, my podcast co-host, Josie. That's me. And they told me that with calling a little too close to Chris, honestly, I kind of called them an hour before. We paped here.

And they told me they were this close to Christmas. Mon dieu, they said. So close to Christmas. Oh, dear. Oh, dear. That's Scottish. We're sticking with Scottish, right? Okay, okay. So they said,. We're sticking with Scottish, right. Okay, okay. So, they said, let me check in the back of France.

Went and checked in the back, came back and they said, have we got a deal for you? We have a French rooster and... Okay, okay. It actually seemed like kind of a fire sale situation. Josie, they could not wait to get this dirty French cock off their hands. Oh, you love that, Julie. You love it. Josie, they could not wait to get this dirty French cock off their hands. JOSIE LAUGHS Oh, you love that, Julie. You love it. You love it. So do you. So we have that in common.

JOSIE LAUGHS Let me tell you about Maurice, the loud-ass French rooster. Oh, wow. So loud, in fact, that his owner, Corinne Fassot, was sued by a retired couple with a second home on scenic Ile de Baran in the Bay of Biscay. Whoa. The couple complained that Maurice, who hatched in July 2017, would crow at 6.30 each morning.

They demanded that Maurice be relocated or silenced. And you can kind of imagine what's implied by silence there. We're not talking a cute little ball gag. A silencer on a gun. Yeah, exactly. The big silence, right? The everlasting silence.

Fesso said no, and the couple took it to the courts. This ended up creating a wave of public discourse in France around whether urban transplants in rural areas had the right to complain about the accompanying noises, and a larger conversation about urban encroachment on rural spaces generally. Ooh, interesting. Very interesting, yeah. Maurice then became something of an icon of France's rural communities with t-shirts in his likeness.

I know, put him on a flag, yeah. Put that cock on my shirt, right? Uh-huh. There was a Je suis Maurice social media campaign. Anytime anything happens in French, it's just be someone, right? Maurice was a stand-in for other disputes between vacationers and farmers.

For example, in the Dordogne, a couple was sued because the frogs in their pond were too loud. What the fuck in hell? In Provence, vacationers apparently suggested to the mayor of Le Bosse that the cicadas in town be killed because they're too loud. What the fuck in hell? In Provence, vacationers apparently suggested to the mayor of Libosay that the cicadas in town be killed because they're too noisy. Oh my gosh. So just like it becomes this sort of microcosm for the perceived slash clearly somewhat a

little valid problem of idiots from the city buying big country estates and then trying to like sue the often much poorer rural folks who actually live in this rural land because their rural animals are being too loud or early kind of thing. Yeah, well, the frogs and emsucatus kind of get to me too because it's like they don't own the... These are wild animals. You know what I mean? You don't own frogs, man.

Frogs own themselves, dude. Good, I'm glad you do. That is basically what you're saying. I just said it in a really stoned voice, but the point is valid, I agree. It's true. Okay, thank you, thank you, thank you. And you know who else agreed is the fucking judge. The court eventually ruled that Maurice was situated in his natural surroundings and was therefore not expected to conform to any sensibilities but his own.

This rooster was not a wild animal, but a wild animal. It was a wild animal. It was a wild animal. It was a wild animal. It was a wild animal. It was a wild animal. It was a wild animal. It was a wild animal.

It was a wild animal. It was a wild animal. It was a wild animal. It was a wild animal. It was a wild animal. It was a wild animal. It was a wild animal. It was a wild animal. It was a wild animal. The court eventually ruled that Maurice was situated in his natural surroundings and was therefore not expected to conform to any sensibilities but his own. This rooster was not being unbearable, says Maurice's lawyer, Julian Papineau. He was just being himself. Oh my god, Maurice!

I love that. Don't conform. Don't conform to the man, dude. Fuck the man. Say it loud at 630 in the morning, every day. Cock a fuckin' do man, dude. Fuck the man. Say it loud at 6.30 in the morning every day. Cock a fuckin' doodle, dude. No, what do French roosters say? Chante-clair!

I know in Spanish it's kiki-diki, because when you have a cowlick, or at least when I have a cowlick, that's what my mom and grandma would call it, a kiki-diki, because it's like little roosters come. Aww. Victorious in court, Maurice and Corinne Fassot were awarded a thousand euros in damages.

Sadly, even legends die, Maurice died of what I think is pronounced cariza, C-O-R-Y-Z-A, a respiratory infection common among chickens during the coronavirus lockdown. So he had like chicken COVID, basically, poor guy. He was six years old, always a heartbreaking moment when a legendary cock finally goes limp. Moment of silence for Maurice.

Christmas moment of silence for Maurice. One of them doves? Two of them, please. Turtle. Two turtle doves. That's the old man from Home Alone 2. That was the pigeon woman. There's a lot of birds in that movie. It's the old man from Home Alone 2. KITTY But it was the pigeon woman. TITUS There's a lot of birds in that movie.

It's a bird heavy time Christmas. We're cooking them, we're thinking about them, we're singing about them. There's birds in the air. I was aware that this was a very bird forward menu. And I've been pretty good at writing to themes so far. So I decided to emphasize the turtle part rather than the dove part. I went turtle, infamy. Okay.

Have you ever used one of those shitty biodegradable paper straws that decomposes right there in your Dr. Diet Pepper? Yes. Yes, I have. How's that experience for you? It's not great. I'm just not gonna use a straw. Wouldn't that be the easiest answer? The worst part is when you stick them in the lid,

if you get a plastic lid, extra plastic, right? And you stick them in there and then it pinches it and then it melts at the joint. JARED Right. Josie, I hadn't even thought about it, but you're exactly right. That is the number one thing, actually, now that I think about it. That tends to be the pain point. That pinch right there is the pain point.

JOSIE Uh-huh. Uh-huh. JARED Well, if you looked up to the heavens, crushing that pain point, that pinch in your mushy straw, you have Texas A&M Marine biologist, Christine Figener to thank for your plight. Although you might have to speak up over the legions of sea turtles and other marine life, gratefully thanking her for her good deed on their behalves. Save the turtles! See, Christine Figener is the one who in 2015 posted a graphic eight-minute long viral video of her and her colleagues extracting a plastic drinking straw from the nose of

an olive ridley turtle during a research trip to Costa Rica. Do you know of this video? No, I don't know the video. No. This video and other versions of it have received over 150 million views and global news coverage raising awareness of the issue around single-use plastics and specifically plastic straw pollution. Yeah. Says Figener, just looking at tons of plastic floating in the ocean can be a bit abstract. It's not the same as feeling the pain of another creature. You carry the message to non-scientists showing what statistics about plastic actually mean.

Yeah. So this was a really big video. There are organizations like the Last Plastic Straw that have been particularly focused on this issue of, like, microplastic pollution in the ocean, because this breaks down into smaller units that are equally hard to kind of deal with. Yeah. What year was this video again?

2015. But it kind of... I think it kind of spiked in relevance around 2018, because there's also a documentary that comes out around then called Straws that kind of tells the backstory of this video. I think that documentary called Straws, that kind of tells the backstory of this video. I think that documentary, Straws, plus especially this video of them pulling a straw out of this poor, sad sea turtle's nose, are the reason that so many cities, to include Vancouver, to include Seattle, have done away with single-use plastics entirely. It was like a hugely influential online video.

I'm too scared to watch it. That just seems, I can't do it before bed. I saw a stills of it from this and I understand why it was so effective. Yeah. I did not watch it then and I could not watch it now. Yeah. And it's a genuine thing of like,

she's there with her research team. They're kind of doing research on turtles the same way that you imagine people do on lobsters or whatever where they kind of like tag them and stand in the back and then they come back in a year kind of thing. Yeah. And this turtle is something that's kind of obstructing its airway, and they figure out that it's a plastic straw and it's, they have to pull the whole thing out and it's really awful, right?

And it's really upsetting to people and it sparks a lot of activism. Yeah. The modern single-use straw has its beginnings in 1888. Marvin Stone notices that his straws that are made of wheat or rye, like some kind of grain, they would give drinks a grassy taste and they would disintegrate in your drink, so he invents the paper straw. That catches on at drinking fountains in the turn of the 20th century,

because previously, apparently back in the day, when you went to a drinking fountain, you would use what was called the Universal Cup, and it was just this metal cup that was there that everybody used. All fucking everybody putting their lips on it. All of them on the roof. Do you think they were doing waterfalls? Probably like, here, here, one for you, one for me,

one for you, one for me. Random person you don't know. No, whoa. Like legit, legit. And so it ends up being like a real like public health thing that comes into view. Yeah. That like, there's like comics of the Universal Cup

with like a skeleton on it. Like it's a skull. Yeah. That like, there's like comics of the Universal Cup with like a skeleton on it. Like it's a skull. Yeah. That makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. So drinking straws become useful in this context. We start bringing our drinking straws to the drinking fountain.

In the 1930s, Joseph Friedman invents the Bendy Straw for hospital use. With fast food boom in the mid-century, we're now interested in disposable dinnerware, hence the plastic straw. And really, that's the technology to present day. Yeah. The plastic straw, however, is resource heavy to produce and distribute, and its materials and shape make it difficult to recycle, with folks using 35,000 or more plastic straws in their lifetimes,

and fast food giants going through a billion or more per year. Whoa. I heard people say that, like, every year, it's enough to go around the globe twice or something like that. That's a lot of plastic waste, much of which ends up in ocean gyres waiting to be broken down into microplastics and consumed by unsuspecting wildlife like our turtle friend, Cuthbert, we'll call him. ALIHA Yeah. He's hollow inside, filled with spy documents. Drinking straws. One 2015 study found that 90% of all seabirds had eaten plastic when in 1960 that number was less than 5%. We've really fucked it up everyone.

Wow, yeah, that's pretty bad dude. With the renewed wave of activism around plastic straws from 2015 to 18 came sweeping changes as corporations like Starbucks and Alaskan Airlines ditched single-use straws. In 2018, Vancouver became the first major Canadian city to ban single-use plastic. We miss it every day. It's not worth what it does to the environment, but God, I miss Safeway bags and fucking...

Not those straws. Seattle took the milestone for the U.S. shortly afterwards. Since then, single-use plastics have been banned nationwide in Canada, England the same, Mexico City has a straw ban. Ohhhh. It's picked up a lot of traction as a small step societies can take toward renewability, and although the usual suspects complained that the whole thing was mere liberal virtue signaling, paper straws have somehow managed to avoid getting too swept up in the culture

wars for making drinks woke. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's true. That is very true. There's, you know, some sniping here and there on Twitter, but otherwise, you know. The straw ban isn't universally popular. Reusable straws made from materials like bamboo and stainless steel haven't quite caught on, which is a shame. We're still waiting on a biodegradable single-use solution that matches up to the plastic one,

and people with certain disabilities complain that the replacement straws aren't as effective as accessibility tools. Right, yeah. Even compostable straws are costlier for the consumer and aren't effective if you don't have the appropriate municipal composting facilities, then they're just more garbage. But it's hard to deny the ban's effectiveness as far as reducing the amount of straws in the ocean. A 2023 report by a non-profit Ocean Conservancy states that in previous years, plastic straws consistently topped the list of items collected during their annual international coastal cleanups. By 2023, plastic straws had dropped to tenths.

Oh wow. Meanwhile, the United Nations is working toward eliminating plastic pollution from the oceans by 2040. Knock on wood. Coming up. Figuner says straws are just a start. Even in 2015, they made up only 4% of the 9 million tons of annual plastic pollution dirtying the world's oceans and shorelines. I'm of course happy, Figener told Time, but I don't want the corporations to feel like they're getting off easily just by eliminating plastic straws. I hope

this is the first step. As for the turtle, in 2018, Christine Figenner encountered him again as part of her research. He was part of a mating couple. Quote, he seems to be doing just fine and doing his thing, she says. Hopefully he's kicked that nasty coke habit. We can't keep digging these plastic straws out of there. No. No, no, no. It makes for horrible videos. And that's my turtle. Hold the dove. Okay. Yeah, yeah. Silent on the dove. Okay, yeah, yeah, silent on the dove.

Silent on the dove. Don't drop that dove. It'll slip out of your hands. And a partridge in a pear tree. Tree. Sorry, pear tree. There we go. It just sounds like you're singing pantry now.

And a partridge in a pear tree. Sorry. Pantry. There we go. Pantry. There we go. It just sounds like you're singing pantry now. And a partridge in a pantry. Pantry. Ha ha ha. Are you going to tell me a story of a bird in a pantry? A bird trapped in a pantry?

No, I wish. I'm fresh out of birds. I'm fresh out of birds. Oh, are we going to the pear? We are staying on the partridge. We are staying on the partridge. We are staying on the partridge. OK. I went a little obvious on this one.

I did a partridge family adjacent story. I don't think that's too obvious, but I like it. To me, that was such an obvious angle, and I kind of thought it was hacky, even, but I was. Once you've done 11 of these, you're not being fussy anymore. You know what? I'm surprised. I'm still delighted.

Let's go. Potritch family. The last of our biggest ever omnibus, our 12 Minfamous episode. Deep, deep dive. All from one, all from you. I love to do a flip. I love to be like, look what I can do with the format. So here we are. It was a gift for me, or it was a gift for you. I wasn't even thinking about you, honestly.

I was mostly just making bird puns. Anyway, Partridge in a Pear Tree. I'm going to tell you a story about an infamous Rolling Stone interview conducted by David Cassidy, aka teen heartthrob Keith Partridge of the Partridge family at the height of his fame. That was sort of his big... You know how, like, Bangers was Miley Cyrus's I'm Not a Little Girl Anymore, Britney Spears had her I'm Not a Little Girl Anymore.

This was his, like, I'm not my squeaky clean television image. Tale is old this time. This guy was like the teen heart throb of his era. I'm a bad boy. And this was his like big fuck. He's naked on the cover of Rolling Stone. You can't see anything. It's from The Waist Up. It's like a black and white shot by Annie Leibovitz.

Oh, okay. Classy. And he's got his like arms above his head and it's called Naked Lunchbox. Because Naked Lunch is a popular movie of the time, and Baby Cassidy is well known for being on everybody's lunchbox, like little girls' lunchboxes. At least that's how I did it. And there's a lot of nudity in this article.

There's a lot of, like, nakedly languishing around. There's like, um, he has this, like, friend, Sam Hyman, who's been his buddy since, like, high school. And now he, like, lives in the outbuilding on his, like, um, he has this like friend, Sam Hyman, who's been his buddy since like high school. And now he like lives in the outbuilding on his like sprawling Encino property and like lays around naked and just kind of philosophizes to Rolling Stone when he comes around. I have to say, so this article, to just get right into it, this article, Naked Lunchbox, the story of singer, actor and songwriter, Beyond Keith Partridge by Robin Green comes out in 1972. I can't recommend this article enough.

It's like a beautifully written hatchet job. Oh! It's a portrait of like a somewhat vapid seeming teen idol at seemingly the height of his relevance. But there's also a subplot about how it's somewhat openly acknowledged in industry circles. He doesn't draw as well as the monkeys. Yeah. And he's on his way out, and next month,

Donny Osmond is gonna be the guy. That checks out, yeah. That's specifically it. I'll recap this article for you, because it's kind of a masterpiece, but I encourage everyone to go and read this article. Okay, ooh, cool. So, little gistola of it, little background.

David Bruce Cassidy is born April 12, 1950, in Englewood, New Jersey. Parents are Broadway actors, Evelyn Ward and Jack Cassidy. They divorced when he's five. Oh, I didn't know that either. That sucks. Yeah. I can't believe you didn't know when David Cassidy's parents divorced.

You call yourself a fan? No, but I still feel bad. Fair enough. Fair enough. Divorce is sucks. Divorce is sex. Divorce is art. So they end up moving to Hollywood, and it seems like David Cassidy did a bunch of drugs,

which he discloses at length in this article. Like, if he wanted to torch the I'm squeaky cleaving... Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Just lick that match, run to the gas station. GIGI What else is being naked on the cover of Rolling Stone for? HEHEHE, yeah. Just lick that match. Run to the gas station. What else is being naked on the cover of Rolling Stone for? It's true. Quote, I didn't know who I was, and I did a lot of fucking around, experimenting, not smack, but grass and speed and psychedelics.

Very specifically, be like, well, I did do smack, but I did do speed, like, kind of like breaking it down a bit. Appers not downers. He decides that he kind of wants to get into acting, started the Partridge family, he's 20 years old. Whoa. He kind of ends up getting that role He decides that he kinda wants to get into acting, start the Partridge family, he's 20 years old. Whoa. He kinda ends up getting that role

after a string of well-received kind of TV appearances, like our girl Shannon Doherty, right? Yeah. Start on the little guest roles and build up. He ends up being cast as Keith Partridge, the teen son in a family of four children who live in the suburbs and make their living as a rock and roll band in the Partridge family.

Oh. Only two years before the show, as producers, as I alluded, had created The Monkees and this Hey Hey We're The Monkees, right? Like, the monkeys were fucking huge. Yeah, yeah. They were also on lunchboxes. Just sort of bring it back around from our original teen heartthrobs, The Beatles, right? A lot of this is just a response to that.

A lot of like, you like four hot guys together, four non-threateningly hot brown-haired guys together, we can do that. Yeah. We got a warehouse of them. Are we ever on it? Boom, boom, boom. There we go. Here we go.

With the Parchish family, they plan to dub the singing when the band performed, but to everyone's surprise and delight, David can sing. Great. We've got a star. Oh. Oh. Done and done. He's like the non-threatening pretty waif boy of all time. Like I say, he's like very early 20s, playing about 16, and doing a great job because he does not look like he has a hair on his dick.

Although I'm sure he does, and he'll tell you in Rolling Stone about it. Yeah. In the first years of Partridge Family, David Cassidy accomplishes six and a half million LPs, albums and singles sold, 44 television program appearances, David Cassidy lunchboxishes, Six and a Half Million LPs, Albums and Singles Sold, 44 Television, Provo Appearances, David Cassidy Lunchboxes, Bubble Gum, Coloring Books, Pens, Millions of Teen Magazines, Stickers, Photo Albums.

Like, you think of like the teen idol treatment, right? Yeah, that totally makes sense, yeah. And one of the early ones in that era, where like, that kind of American bandstand era, where I feel like it must have been such a fun trip to just be a teenage girl and just scream mindlessly at the first guy that you ever wanted to fuck because he could play the guitar. God, that must have been fun. No?

Um... You see these girls go to the airport to see the Beatles then and they just scream until they pass out and they have to be taken to like accident and fucking emergency. And then they like wake up and that was the best moment. They'll... I'll never have an emotional peak like that. Okay, I see where you're coming from. I see where you're coming from. I don't want anything that much.

SHANNON LAUGHS Passion can be a cruel mistress. Yeah. Hormones. You need the hormones too. That's part of it. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And so that's sort of where this Rolling Stone article finds him, is sort of he's doing this tour, and we follow him at this tour,

and we see him, like, interacting with his fans. And I'm not gonna say that he comes off badly. OK. But I'm gonna give you some quotes. Uh-oh. And you tell me if you think... You just tell me what you think. I'll tell you what I think.

There's this one song I do. I woke up in love this morning and I find a little place where I can sort of point to them, and they each think I mean them. And I do. This is so... They each think I mean them. And I do. And I do. Pop idol is all things to all...

Dude, who's better than the pop idol? Who? They each think I mean them and I do. Yeah. That's profound. Yeah, yeah. Taylor Swift can do that. They each think I mean them and I do. That's profound. Yeah, yeah. Taylor Swift can do that. They each think I mean them and I do. Taylor Swift can do that. I bet.

Really well. That's true. Yeah, yeah. It's a skill. It's definitely a skill that these folks have. Yeah. It's fascinating. Rebecca Black was good at it when I saw her.

I felt very like personally seen by her and then I caught her doing it to other people. I was like, oh, you're just work to me. That was good. Yeah, yeah. So here's another one. This is David Cassidy himself, 21 or 22. So like forgive him for what he's about to say. Okay. And I really want you to reach into your heart and remember that it's Christmas.

Okay. Okay. And forgive him. Okay. This is the Christmas special. So. This is very filthy, but when the hall empties out after one of my concerts, those girls leave behind them thousands of sticky seats.

It's Christmas. Remember, it's Christmas. You're right. I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to do that. but when the hall empties out after one of my concerts, those girls leave behind them thousands of sticky seats.

It's Christmas. Remember, it's Christmas. You agree that you're gonna forgive David Cassidy? He knows not what he says. He's a 21-year-old straight boy. He doesn't know what he's saying. Okay, a little Christmas spirit. That's all. That's all we need today. And sort of contrasted with that, we get a girl who's watching backstage on a TV screen.

She's identified as Jill, she's 24, and her connection to David Cassidy is that she banged him last night. And as she's watching, she sort of meezes, it's so weird. Last night, he was really nice, he was a really good fuck. But seeing him doing his act, I can't believe it's the same person. This act is so Las Vegas, He's like a male Anne Margaret. Yeah.

So he has like kind of like a cheesy like... Right. Yeah. Yeah. A little like wink and a swish of the hip. Huncha. And hopefully the piano gets a little, you do a little run on the piano while you wink kind of thing. Yeah. That's so... And the girls scream. Bye. Yeah. There's an anecdote that I'll abbreviate for time, but basically, paparazzi figure out kind of thing, you know? Yeah. That's so funny. And the girls scream. Yeah.

There's an anecdote that I'll abbreviate for time, but basically, paparazzi figure out that the way to get photos with David Cassidy is you need to catch him when he's changing, trying on different shirts. Because if you take photos of him in different shirts, you can like, that's a different day, right? Like, you don't have David Cassidy orange shirt. You have David Cassidy blue shirt. The girls are going to scream have David Cassidy orange shirt. You have David Cassidy blue shirt. The girls are gonna scream over David Cassidy orange shirt.

So they would just, like, send him a bunch of shirts, free shirts. So he would try them on in front of them. And if he didn't want to cooperate with that, he was into photography, so they bought him a camera and they just started buying him a lens every time they wanted to take a picture with David Cassidy, because he was like, I'm bored of this. I don't want to do this. These free shirts are boring me.

Oh, my gosh, wow. He tells a story about how he got away from this Cassidy and about how he got away from the fangirls using moves that he learned from the monkeys, where you have to like drop to the ground on your knees and like basically they kind of army crawl out of there. Quote, see, what they want is your hair. They want to grab your hair. And my scalp is so sensitive, I, what they want is your hair. They want to grab your

hair. And my scalp is so sensitive, I get crazy when anyone grabs my hair. I can just cry. I can cry very easily. He's so sensitive, Taylor. But like, also, I feel that. That's when they want to grab your hair and your hair is very sensitive. Like, I understand where he's coming from here. We still don't have good boundaries with our celebrities, but to be like this kind of teen idol in this way at that time must have been very hard. So I want to be clear. I'm not like coming at him. He makes me laugh.

If he hadn't said the thing about the sticky seats, we probably really wouldn't have a problem. SHANNON LAUGHS That's something I might joke about, but I wouldn't mean it, and I wouldn't say it to Rolling Stone. SHANNON No, uh-uh. TITUS Here's another one. This is just him kind of on a run.

You have to pay dues for everything, whatever you do. I must have signed 80,000 autographs. In the beginning I do 2,000 at once, some publicity thing at a supermarket. Every time I get asked I think I'm gonna scream. Please don't ask me again, my hand is falling off. The thing that irritates me is they never want it for themselves. It's never, I really like you, I'd like your autograph. It's always, my daughter would never forgive me. Also, my friend Joe needs two for his kids,

or they won't let him in the house. I'd dig it if someone would come up and just say, sign. I always do it though. I mean, I can't say, you motherfucker, you're the 8,000th today. To him, it's a big thing. Obviously, I bring him some joy. All right. Here's another one.

They asked him about his politics. He doesn't have them. Oh. Quote, I don't listen to news or read the newspapers. I don't know what's going on in this world or why I should vote for George McGovern or Richard Nixon, friend of the podcast, George McGovern. Oh, God. I don't have enough time. I read in one fan magazine that I was very self-centered, and I am.

I work for me 18 hours a day. It's my gig. So I don't have time to get a point of view. How do you feel about the war in Vietnam? I'm so tired of answering that question. Or being as you have an influence on young folks today, what advice do you have for them about drugs? Ah, shit, man, take drugs. Hey. Okay, the Vietnam thing, I'm like, oh, sir, you're gonna get drafted.

He's carrying it off. For as many ignorant things as he's saying it, I'm kinda like, okay. Yeah. He's gonna get back to a good one, and then he does, I'm like, yeah, okay, he's gonna get back to a good one and then he does and like, yeah man, cook, and then he hits another shitty one and you're like, oh, okay, I don't know about that. Let's see where else you go. Okay, yeah, let's all do drugs. That's good. That's good. Yeah, shit man, take drugs.

Then we get a lot of financial specifics. Like we get a lot of nitty gritty, like here's how much he turned over last year and it's like six figures in a time when six figures was like seven figures now. Yeah, yeah. That's what he did in quarter one, kind of deal. Oh, God. Wow. So he's really, really Aaron out his money. We get him, like, kind of like being mean to these, like, fangirls who are trying to

fuck him, and then it resolves itself. Yeah, it kind of resolves itself on this note of, like, actually, like, we've just had this whole thing of, like, look at this, like, young rock god in the prime of his, like, stardom. And then the punchline is like, honestly, he's kind of been dwindling for a while, Bonnie Osmond, that's the real real. Oh, no. That's the next big thing. Yeah, I guess that's part of it is you're a bit disposable.

You're not unlike a single-use straw. Deck up a turtle's nose. This was kind of his big, like, breaking away from his, like, young public image moment. There's the perception that his career didn't recover from it. If anything, I think his career changed in the way that it was inevitably going to. Every child star, if you want to call it that, although he was, like, older than a child playing a child,

but every child star has that moment of, like, surprise, I'm an adult who loves sex and filth! Just as, like, a way of being like, surprise, I'm an adult who loves sex and filth. Just as like a way of being like, no, I'm not this weird, eunuch TV character that you have perceived me as. I shave my face sometimes. I fart. You know what I mean? Right, yeah. And I do a lot of drugs and maybe you should too.

I'm a complex human. Yeah. And fuck Vietnam. Am I do a lot of drugs and maybe you should too. I'm a complex human. Yeah. And fuck Vietnam. Am I right? Guys? Guys? He had a well-publicized battle with drugs and alcohol. Despite all this, he continued to record music and act and tour his show. Unfortunately, he ended up running into trouble with dementia and then liver and kidney failure. He died at 67, so quite young.

In 2017, Annie Leibovitz, who took the kind of iconic photo of him naked on the cover of Rolling Stone, ran into him later. And she said that he thanked her and he was like, okay with how it went. He did this thing he really shouldn't have done and got into deep trouble for it. In retrospect, I feel sad. But since the shoot, I've seen him on a couple of occasions and he thanked me because he said it moved him on. He desperately wanted to get off the show, and he sort of committed professional suicide

to get out of his contract. That ended one period of his career. Just one period, and we all contain multitudes and nobody's just Keith Partridge, right? Yeah. After Cassidy passed away in 2017, Robin Green, the Rolling Stone interviewer, recalled the interview and claimed, it was a very conscious decision to shed his image

and become hip. And what's hipper than that? Naked on the cover of Rolling Stone, right? Like, mission succeeded even if I'm not going to you for, like, humanitarian advice. Right, yeah, yeah. Pubes out, let's do drugs. Pubes out, let's do drugs. Pubes out, let's do drugs.

That's what I always say. I want to give one last shout out to the almost subject of this section, but I couldn't find an angle in. Uh, Danny Bonaducci, the younger Partridge brother. He had his own kind of troubled, troubled kind of past. And the reason that I shout him out here is because I want to end on this note. What a pair. Brother, what a pair. Well, on an episode of Sabrina the Teenage Witch Bonaduchi

appeared in a pear tree as a comic visual reference to the partridge name. He joked about it on Twitter saying that he's taken part in that visual metaphor for paid guest appearances 100 times. So when I said that I felt like it was kind of obvious I was right, it's kind of obvious. It's a partridge in a pear tree. The partridges can apparently make tidy banks showing up in pear trees for like cameo requests. So Josie, I brought you Pete Best. Yeah.

I brought you our piper piping Jimmy Richardson, local boy from BC. Yeah. I brought you the ultimate Lord of Leaping, Michael Flatley as Victor Blackley in the independent film Blackbird. I brought you our ninth lady dancing, Katy Perry tangoing on a nun's grave. That's right, yes.

I forgot about that. I brought you our eighth maid of milking Virginia Hall super spy. Yes, she's, I'm gonna look her up. I brought you seven swans swimming, the shitty money grab versions of Twilight by Stephanie Meyer. Yes! I brought you six geese allaying our fraught relationship

with Canada geese and how the University of Manitoba went at it with a bat. I brought you five golden rings, the Golden Arches Olympics promotion that may or may not have cost them a fuckton of money. They'll never say. I brought you four calling birds. The bird that called to Corey Jones' tummy was the Weka, and he ate it and created an international incident

and got himself disqualified from a reality show. He was apparently quite well-positioned to win. Don't worry. I brought you, rather than three French hens, I brought you a French cock, Maurice the Rooster, who wouldn't shut up and became a folk icon. Two turtle doves, I brought you the turtle with the straw on its nose that kicked off a wave of change and of course, our partridge in a pear tree, David Cassidy naked on the cover of Rolling Stone for the Naked Lunchbox article.

Delicious. 12 bangers, right? 12 bangers. Oops, 12 bangers. 12 fucking bangers. Oops, 12 bangers. Bird bangers, bird box, the bang bird, look right at it. This isn't like bird box. We want you to look right at it. Reaching in deep into the Christmas stocking,

just all the way to the toe, just grabbing David Cassidy's little naked body. Pulling it up. Beautiful. We hope that you enjoyed spending some time with us. We enjoyed spending some time with you this Christmas and First Day of Hanukkah. We so did enjoy it. Yes, happy holidays.

Happy holidays. We'll see you on Christmas First Day of Hanukkah with the Bittersweet Mixtape. Won't that be fun? That's true. Oh, yeah. It's going gonna be good. Gifts upon gifts upon gifts upon gifts.

Twelve of them reaching deep. Twelve gifts! And five golden rings. Thanks for listening. If you want more infamy, we've got plenty more episodes at bittersweetinfamy.com or wherever you listen to podcasts. If you want to support the podcast, shoot us a few bucks via our Ko-fi account at ko-fi.com forward slash bittersweetinfamy.

But no pressure, bittersweet Infamy is free, baby. You can always support us by liking, rating, subscribing, leaving a review, following us on Instagram at Bitter Sweet Infamy, or just pass the podcast along to a friend who you think would dig it. Stay sweet! For general info on the 12 Days of Christmas, I scanned the Wikipedia article for the 12 Days of Christmas, I scanned the Wikipedia article for the 12 Days of Christmas. For my 12 Drummers drumming info, I read

When the Beatles fired Pete Best, Ringo offered to join on Saturday and George got a black eye on Sunday by SB for rocking in the New Orleans September 7th, 2024. Beatles fans can eat, sleep and party in Liverpool Club turned into B&B by original member Pete Best. By Shingi Mararike for Sky News August 22nd, 2024, and I read the Pete Best article on Britannica.com. For my Eleven Pipers piping info, I read Bagpipes Used to be Classified as Weapons of War by Miguel Ortiz for We Are the Mighty, updated August 30th, 2023, how bagpipes motivated troops in war and kindered bagpipes in reeds, and I watched Canada's most famous bagpipes come home from CBC News 2006.

For my Ten Lords of Leaping Info, I read the Wikipedia pages for Michael Flatley and Blackbird 2018 film, and I watched the 2018 film Blackbird on YouTube. You can find that on the YouTube channel MH22. For my Nine Ladies Dancing Info, I read Katy Perry tangos the night away in Buenos Aires, hours after none, at 3 of the Smithsonian Side Door podcast, The Milkmaid Spy, posted April 1, 2020. I got information from Sonia Purnell's 2019 book, A Woman of No Importance, The Untold Story of the American Spy Who Helped Win World War II, and I read the Wikipedia article for

Virginia Hall. For my Seven Swans and Swimming information, I read the frequently asked questions for Midnight Sun on Stepney Meyer's website. I read Stepney Meyer Talks Twilight by Karen Balby for Entertainment Weekly November 5, 2008. I read the Wikipedia for Midnight Sun Meyer novel and I read the Literary Elephant Blog Life and Death December 17, 2020. For my sixth Geese Allaying info, I read How to Make Peace with Canada Geese and the Walrus

by Tom Yocan in February 8, 2023. For my five Golden Rings info, I read Advertising Big Macs Olympic Giveaway by Pamela G. Hawley for the New York Times August 10th, 1984 and McDonald's Actually Struck Gold with 1984 Olympics Giveaway by Darren Roval and Collect May 8th, 2024. From my 4 Calling Birds information I read What Are the 4 Calling Birds? Probably Not What You Think by Matthew L. Miller for Cool Green Science December 14th, 2021. Is it four calling birds or four collie birds? A 12 days of Christmas debate posted December 21st, 2016 in the Library of Congress blog

by Peter Armenti. U.S. Rally show Kells and Eats Protected Bird on New Zealand film, TV show, and ABC News by Caitlin Rawling July 23rd, 2024. Rally TV contestant apologizes for killing an eating protected New Zealand bird by Helen Sullivan for The Guardian July 24th, 2024. Race to survive, New Zealand, Episode 8 recap. Rules weren't meant to be broken, July 8th, 2024. Bye, Justin Smith, for Reality-T. From my 3FrenchHands info, I read,

France's Maurice The Rooster faces noise complaints in court by Jake Rosson for mental floss September 6th, 2019. Maurice The Noisy Rooster can keep crowing court rules in and The Guardian by Kim Willisher September 5th, 2019 French rooster Maurice wins battle over noise with neighbours BBC September 5th, 2019 Maurice the Noisy French Rooster dies age 6 and The Guardian via the Agence France-Presse June 19th, 2020 For my Two Turtle Doves info, I watched Straw's 2017 documentary by Linda Booker on Canopy. I read the Bloody Turtle video that sparked a plastic straw revolution by Carla Roche for BBC April 9th, 2024. She recorded that

heartbreaking turtle video. Here's what she wants companies like Starbucks to know about plastic straws by Sophia Rosenbaum for Time, July 17th, 2018. History of straws from invention regulation and footprint April 20th, 2022, and how the plastic straw ban became the biggest trend of 2018 in Eater by Brenna Houck December 27th 2018. Lastly for My Partridge in a Peretree and Fire by David Cassidy, Naked Lunchbox by Robin Green and Rolling Stone Mail out of 1972 and David Cassidy's Singer and Partridge Family Teen Idol Dead at 67 in Rolling Stone by Daniel Kreps November 22nd 2017. The little bit of Danny Bonaduce info came from the untold chief of Danny Bonaduce by parasol for grand july

19 2022 if you want more bittersweet content go over to kofi That's k-o-h-i-f-i dot com slash bittersweet infamy and become a subscriber like Terry McCann Jonathan Lizzie D. Erica Joe's so Dylan and satchel your monthly donation makes you a member of the bittersweet film club You can get that monthly bonus content in January. We're gonna be returning with Battlefield Earth. But tomorrow Christmas Day, we are returning with the Bittersweet Mixtape Volume 3. It's a corker, you're gonna wanna listen.

Bittersweet Infamy is a proud member of the 604 Podcast Network. This episode was edited by Alexey Johnson and Alex McCarthy. The song you are currently listening to is Tea Street by Brian Steele. Happy holidays, everyone. See you on coffee tomorrow. 50 years ago a young woman named Karen Silkwood got into her car alone. She was reportedly on her way to deliver sensitive documents to a New York Times reporter. She never made it and those documents she'd agreed to carry were never found.

Do you think somebody killed her? There's no question in my mind someone killed her that night. I think they were trying to stop her in order to get the documents. A new investigation into the life and death of America's first nuclear whistleblower. Listen to Radioactive, the Karen Silkwood mystery from ABC Audio. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts.