Citation Needed - John "Mad Jack" Mytton

Episode Date: March 23, 2022

John "Mad Jack" Mytton (30 September 1796 – 29 March 1834) was a British eccentric and rake of the Regency period who was briefly a Tory Member of Parliament.

So Tom and C-Soul wrote that book, but they don't want to promote it on the show. Exactly. Why not? I don't know. I think it's like a pride thing for them. Okay, but people who listen to this show would want to hear about the book. Of course they would. Yeah.

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It's so good. Oh my god. Nice. This week's episode is It's so good. Oh my God. Nice. This week's episode is about horse jumping, horse jumping. Kind of, it's about an eccentric millionaire, John Mad Jack Mitten. And he participated in a surprising amount of horse pranks. Nice, exactly. But where's Noah?

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Good. So you guys wrote a book? Stop it. Hello and welcome! The citation needed, the podcast where we choose a subject, read a single article about it on Wikipedia and pretend we're experts. Because this is the internet, and that's how it works now. I'm Eli and I'll be leading this parade but I'll need some parrump of pumbums. What the f- Just what was I like?

That's great! That's great! Get for you! First up, two men smashing their way onto the Amazon best sellers list just like they did into your hearts. Todd and Cecil. Okay, in a game of smash or pass, I don't have a lot of need for pass. Yeah, pass. Got no back.

All right, unfortunately no one won't be joining us tonight. When he heard he was no longer the only published author on this show, he flew into a murderous rage and ripped off heat speed. Yeah, so I don't. So I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.

I don't know. It's weird. Yeah. Also joining us tonight is a man who gets his dick ripped off no matter who's absent from the pod. He fans. Right. I like philosophy. I read a lot of philosophy is getting into biking.

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And with that out of the way, tell us, he, what person, place, think, concept, phenomenon, or event, will you be talking about today? I'm gonna be talking about John Mad Jack Mitten. Ooh, and who was John Mitten? John Mitten was a British aristocrat during the early 1800s. He was a member of Parliament as a Tory, not great. And he's arguably the most ridiculous eccentric millionaire of his time.

And he's a perfect example of why it should be really fucking hard to become extremely wealthy, and even more importantly, why it should be really, really fucking hard to stay extremely wealthy, like generation to generation. If the argument for a very large estate tax was a human being, it's John Mad Jack Mitten. This guy's parents could have never had the chance to give him money and power, and they would probably agree with that at this point. Their son wasn't,. The history of rich people needs a lot more stories that just end in no. No, yes, it does. See, and this is why I treat my life like a never-ending replay of Brewster's Miller. The point of money is to spend it.

If I leave even one penny to my kids at death, it's only because I got caught off the chair. The idea of dumb inside of Brewster's Mill, it's perfect. That's so, I said all the same. Okay, it's more like Brewster's thousands, but still, it's like Brewster's thousands. Okay, that's fun. Brewster's thousand. Alamoney.

All right, I think 58% right? I need to get married two more times. That is seriously the best way to be Brewster's millions though. It's just like get married and then divorce several times and it's like Xenos Parade, I got one of the kids. I got one of the kids. There you go. So that's good, right?

All right, well apparently British history is full of ridiculous eccentric millionaires. That's like their thing. So before we get to the life of Mad Jack Mitten, we're going to do a little warm-up with a couple of others who deserve at least a quick honorable mention. I'm going to start with George Sitwell. He was born into medium-level royalty, I think. His father was Sir Sitwell, Redder's B, Sitwell, Third Barronet, and his mother was Luisa, Lucy Hutchinson, daughter of the honorable Henry Helly Hutchinson. So he sounds pretty legit, they have weird naming stuff there.

And George became a conservative politician, he was a member of Parliament for 10 years, but the best part of his life was the inventing. He created a musical toothbrush, he created a food item called a sit well egg that had a yolk made of smoked meat on the inside surrounded the side with rice on the outside. Awesome, amazing. I know, it sounds great. Apparently it never caught on.

So that's great, right? Yeah, absolutely. Like says, his version like an orange, and here's my favorite part. George sit well created a tiny little pistol or the dedicated purpose of shooting wasps in his garden. Finally a gun we can all get behind. Doesn't matter the wasp either. Okay, I'm gonna play the role of Heath in the commentating section with Fun Fact as a young man.

This is true though. As a young man, I used to shoot wasps off of their nests with my BB gun for target practice. That makes them very angry. You have to run immediately indoors. Also my kids have all had musical toothbrushes that sing a song that times how long they should brush their teeth. Okay. I did all this without even being rich like a fucking sucker.

What song did they play? I actually don't remember to be honest with. No, I don't remember, but they, yeah, you buy toothbrushes to sing a two minute long song. I don't remember the song. Bird lines. Okay. Oh, it's good for kids.

Yeah. Yeah, just go ahead and put that tooth based on Nice and Robin thick. You know, this is coming. Sealo green. Growing. One other detail about George sit well, he had a sign on the front of his estate that said,

I must ask anyone entering the house never to contradict me or differ from me in any way as it interferes with the functioning of my gastric juices prevents me from sleeping at night. Yeah, we usually take that phrase to know us back like a kick me sign, but it's more for other people's protection than for his. If you disagree with me, I'm going to pout and get acid reflux. It's the origin of the heart, Bernie, bro. I thought Florida just passed this as a law. They did. They did.

They did. They did. They did. You can't make anybody feel bad. You know, I'll run a Santa's, yelling at some kids to take their opinions off. That brings us to my ridiculous British eccentric, runner up, William Buckland. He was a paleontologist, wrote the first account of a dinosaur fossil, and also a theologian who became the dean of Westminster Abbey.

So I don't know, you might be wondering, does the paleontology thing fuck up the Christian theologian thing? Yes, it does, very much, those kinds of questions. We got around that problem by subscribing to the Gap Creationism theory. This reconciles the six days of creation from Genesis with the super old rocks of geology and paleontology by saying it was six literal days of making stuff that God did, just like in the book.

But then, it's time out of something like 4.6 billion years between Genesis 1, 1 and Genesis 1, 2. And God just forgot to mention that 4.6 billion years to describe who did the Bible or whoever was. Okay, to be fair, it doesn't say how long he rested for on the 6th day. Yeah, I get that. It's like when you oversleep and you feel like, you know, oh fuck, wasted my whole Saturday and you feel guilty. It's like that, but for 4.6 billion euros. So yeah. So reconciled.

Bucklin actually did do a bunch of good science despite the religion thing. And perhaps his biggest contribution was identifying fossilized dinosaur shit. He coined the term coprolite to describe the really old feces that became his object of fascination, and the field of coprology was born. Thanks to him, Oklin amassed a giant collection of these coprolites, and he made himself a dining room table inlaid with coprolites.

The original tabletop is actually on display right now at the Lyme Regist Museum in England. He worked as a geology professor at Oxford, where he was known for extremely dramatic lectures. This was the early 1800s, and there was no requirement to study natural sciences at Oxford at that point. So we decided to get extra attention from the students by doing loud, aggressive, physical impressions of how

dinosaurs moved and communicated in his imagination. That's amazing. Yeah. So he would just, like a bunch, I'm sure a bunch of crazy noises like Maria Bamford being a professor. One more time. It was, like that would be, I don't know, I had it the first time, but like a philosophy of that.

I would imagine. so did he. So he did that. He also always wore his academic robes all the time to the lectures as I understand it, but he also insisted on wearing those same robes while he was doing paleontology fieldwork, like out and about. He would wear these rub. So like the one guy dressed like a fucking wizard at the dig site for no reason. And everybody's just like, you're the first. You show up at the dig site.

I'm sorry. Uh, which one of these people is the guy so obsessed with shit? He made his dining room table out of it. Oh, uh, the guy dressed as a wizard. Yeah. The guy dressed as a wizard. Sure. Sure.

I hope that he like lifted his arms when he was doing a tarot dactyl so he could have the wings and make the sound at the same time. That's like whlapping his way around the stage. Right, flapping around. That would be amazing. Hey, professors, can you just stop it with the wizard costume thing? No, we have some professors listening. Why do you do that?

Just get rid of everybody hates you enough as it is. Don't rid of the wizard thing. No, get into it more or more. Yeah, get into it more. Have everybody doesn't or nobody does it. Yeah, either do magic or don't wear the wizard thing. Come on. Listen to the normace. Wherever you want. You let's just bad because he's not a wizard guy. He doesn't get that. I was a wizard professor. little wizard adjunct. You don't get out in Hagrid's hut. You don't get the ropes, right?

You don't. Yeah. Yeah. I'll give the same HR training to the ropes. Yeah, don't get paid time off as an adjunct. It's a good fun. I'll trade the ropes for a fucking sick day. Yeah.

All right. Well, Rob guy on top of being an old shit enthusiast. And again, the asshole who won't take off the ridiculous hat and robes in a matter where he goes. And it is all that stuff. Buckland decided he was gonna eat every single animal like in the world. He claimed he eventually ate his way

through the entire animal kingdom. He did not, that's dumb. Of course he didn't do that, but he claimed he did. But he tried a bunch terrible stuff along the way. He did a bunch. He said the worst thing he ever tasted was blue bottle fly. He also tried crocodile, mole, panther, and possibly human being.

According to a famous storyteller at the time, named August Hare, Buckland and a group of friends were looking at the preserved heart of Louis XIV in a silver casket at a museum, and Buckland just grabbed that heart and ate the whole thing. Okay, you guys laughed, but there are two members of this podcast who I would not trust around an open platter of King's heart. Only I think it's more than two. Yeah, what? I think which two is it? We are you and you don't think Cesar would eat the heart of the Cesar Frickus say it. He's going to get a an out. He's got I would ask for a table side. What asked for a table side? What happened?

Definitely. Oh, I got another fun fact. It actually wasn't just William though. William's son Francis was all sanatoriums for eating. We're trying to eat every living thing that he could. And Francis actually may have even eaten more of the animal kingdom than his father. Okay. Though both of them shared a particular fondness for eating mice on toast.

That's fucking nice. You've actually been on my maybe I'll write a citation needed about these nut bags list for a long time. It's weird that they were like, but on toast, guys, like we put it on toast. We're never ridiculous. Yeah. Don't want to be weird. Yeah. Toast doesn't that's not going gonna like change the flavor of stuff. That's just, that's how you really like. Then why do we have toast? That's what. Toast is to present something and not change the flavor.

They were into mice. Maybe it was in a fun, gamey flavor that they liked on mice. I don't know. Anyway, that was the honorable mention. That brings us to John Madjack Mitten. His career started when he was two years old, his father died. And since his mother and sisters weren't people, as is the time, he inherited about 5 million

pounds worth of property in today's value, along with an annual income of about a million pounds. And that was plenty of money to earn himself a spot at the prestigious West Minster School as a young boy. But when he showed up, he was like, what up nerds, I'm rich, gonna punch somebody in the face because it can. And he did a bunch of that.

Apparently the first person he chose was the headmaster. So he got expelled pretty much right away. You think with someone, you think someone with the title headmaster, even the dodge with that part of the body part? That's not like that. Well, like I had amateur, if you ask me, you know? He gets home and his mom's like,

no, honey, find the biggest guy and kick his ass as advice for prison. For instance. Yeah, he's not gonna remember that advice correctly. So the family sent him to another rich people school called Harrow at this point. And this time, he made it three entire terms before getting expelled.

Lots of punch, here's 100 pounds, you're welcome. That worked for a while, but eventually he got thrown out and he spent the rest of his childhood being privately tutored. John became a bit more mature during this period. And instead of face punching, he would terrorize the tutors with very elaborate pranks often horse-based pranks he liked to involve horses this includes one time when a tutor was sleeping and john brought a horse into the bedroom made really loud scary noise and woke up the tutor and scared the shit out of the horse. So the panicked horse was just smashing the room apart as this guy woke up. Oh, that's really the godfather of all pranks. Cause the horse had, because the horse had.

Given the stellar education record, I just mentioned. And of course, some water polo paintings that he faked, mitten earned his way into Cambridge University. In order to make sure he'd be able to focus, he brought a full supply of his ADHD medication at that time called Port Wine, to say to him for a full term, that was 2,000 bottles of Port Wine. He did not graduate.

Does you see the port is the only thing that keeps me from horse-pranking? Oh, I'm not drinking. I'm thinking of horse-pranks. He thinks, how many days are there in a term or semester in school? Great question. I'm assuming when they say they meant like half a year,

a semester, so a hundred and change days 2000 bottle support, oh that seems reasonable. Yeah, I was I was gonna say that was a little ridiculous But no, no, no, it all clicked. It was also brandy by the way. There was like a it was like a smaller number So I didn't include it, but it's two thousand dollars of support plus brandy. I'm pretty sure Didn't graduate didn't make it So what do you do after you fail out of Cambridge because of 2000 miles of port? If you're rich, you take a grand tour of Europe.

And that's not a general term. Apparently it's grand tour capitalized, and that's a thing. When a super rich kid reached about 20 years old, they'd take a gap year during which they'd learn about art and music, and they'd do that while they were eating, drinking, and fucking their way around the continent. The gap was a separation between eating, drinking, and fucking your way around the continent

as a teenager, and then doing the exact same thing for the rest of your life as an adult, fun times. The rich kid was usually accompanied by Valais, Coachman, a team of private cooks, and a guide called a cissaron. Okay. I feel like we've moved away from making fun of this guide. It was just being deeply, deeply jealous. Yeah, possibly be the only one that's so jealous. I didn't do a grand tour after college. I went right to work at my dad's mine. I'll tell you that. I did not have a grand tour after college. I went right there work at my dad's mine. I'll tell you that

I Did not have a sister own. I know it's I know it's spelled sister home, but it's pronounced something Italian Following the grand tour capitalized Mitt and bottom self the rank of captain in the British army that they sell those back in the day. He was in charge of a large group of soldiers with weapons, the guy I've been describing so far. Luckily for everybody involved, the Napoleonic Wars had just ended, so he didn't really have anything to do. He ended up in France, which was already occupied, so he mostly just gambled and got drunk all the time. And probably a good amount of punching French guys in the face and then handing them money. So that's fun. But that

got boring eventually. And he resigned his military post. So I literally don't understand how that would ever get boring. I could see it going for a while. I think it did go long for a while. Actually, it's like a weirdly long amount of time that the war was over and he's just like punching guys and making the hellsays out. So he went back to the family estate after he resigned. That's in England. And he did squire stuff in preparation for getting his full inheritance at age 21. So I didn't really get what that means.

See, so you have a squire, right? What does a squire do? Well, Keith, it's your job to set him straight. And once they are, you can call him a T-Squire. Oh, BOO! T-Squire. How dare you? Right, angle. So while he was back in England, John Mitten got married. That ended two years later when his wife died. I'm assuming from something

really stupid that was John's fault. I couldn't find out exactly what it was, but I have to imagine it was something dumb that he did. Then he got married again, and it lasted for 10 years this time, until the second wife ran away. So he went back to the British Army at this point and explained, hey, I was a captain 12 years ago. I want my job back as captain. And they said, no, that's dumb when I'm doing that. But they let him reenlist at a lower rank. That went pretty badly, so he quit the army again and decided to run for parliament.

And he won by using a pretty amazing strategy. He handed out literal cash. He gave out 10 pound notes to every voter he could find in this town. This cost him the equivalent of about $1.4 million in today's money. Basically, he went around town handing out $1,000 bills if it was now in a town of about 2,000 votes. It's the first green party can. Nowadays they walk around the town square demanding money and being like Eli, your donation is more important than ever.

And you have was in our door by midnight tonight. So act now. The career didn't go very well. After winning a seat in parliament, Mittens spent exactly 30 minutes in the House of Commons in June of 1819, and then he got bored and left. He walked out, he was out there with 30 minutes of them doing their debates, he's like, this is stupid.

I don't like this. Apparently he was like, early, too. You think he would invest, He would invest in something. He researched a little better than that. He made it through a Simpsons episode worth of parliament. It was one thing got brought up. Rabbo rabbo rabbo, this sucks, and he left. And he just walked right.

So great. Absolutely what happened. Apparently he was going deaf at the time, so he couldn't even really hear the debates. So that made it worse. He left. That parliament got dissolved the next year and he did not run from parliament again. Instead, he started up a career in horse racing and gambling.

Some of that was normal, like betting on the outcome of a horse race and putting horses into races that he owned. But he was also a big fan of weird proposition gambling. In 1826, he won a bet by riding a horse into a really fancy hotel, up the grand staircase onto the balcony and then jumping that horse while he's sitting on it over a restaurant full of people and out through a window.

No, I got hurt. Uh, as rich people go, he's still less annoying Neil on Musk. We'll have to say that. That's great. All right, well, before we find out about Mittens award-winning stage play Jack of the Ass, let's take a quick break for a little

after a Poe of Nothing. Get in here! Ooh, if Headmaster! Look, Middner will be blunt with you, your behavior of late has made you a bit of a pariah around the academy. Really, Headmaster? How so? Take, for instance, the episode in your chemistry class, poor Professor Wilkins was terrified. Just a bit of schoolboy Tom Foulery, Headmaster? I-you shot him in his face. A prank, a jape, some swift and roguy. in his face. A prank, a jape, some swift and rocky.

Okay, very well, but surely calling the French army to invade your morning class yesterday, that must have been a bridge too far, even for you. Oh, just a bit of simple pimple. Can a youth not indulge in a little slith-bloth apple sauce, Professor? Hmm, pretty sure you're just making up those last two. No, Professor, I'm not the easiest lad to manage.

I know that, but perhaps this will help. This is a big bag of money. Big bag of money, yes it is, Professor. That will be quite good, Mitten. I put a bomb in your office. A money bomb? I mean it costs money. Okay.

And we're back. When we left off, we were reminiscing on the bygone days when wealth made people behave bad. That happened right to me. Ah, ah, ah, ah. So, Mittain was also known for holding extremely dangerous contests for local children. So, if it was charming so far, this is what you're supposed to hate him. This is a great example of why.

One of his favorite contests for children that was extremely dangerous was very similar to the Cooper's Hill cheese rolling race that we talked about during the insane sporting events episode that we did. So for anyone who missed it, that's the annual race near Loster England, where hundreds of people chase a very large wheel of cheese down a very steep hill and they mangle themselves on the way, like horribly, horribly injure themselves. Well apparently Mad Jack Mitten would give out prize money to any kid who rolled all the way down the hill called Moily Dinos in Wales.

The article I read called that a hill, but I looked it up. It's a terrifying mountain. It's a mountain. A website for hiking in the UK called mud and routes.com, which is just only the best sources for you. Now website described it as a mountain summit and it's 182 meters high. That's 597 feet. Kids 100% died trying to get the like half-bagini hayfarthing penny or whatever the fuck it was giving away for a prize. Okay, so when he

wasn't winning strange bets on horseback or running fucking squid games with orphans, Mittens spent lots of his time hunting and his hunting attire was very important to him. He owned 150 pairs of hunting breaches, I think that's pants that are dedicated to hunting. He owned 700 pairs of handmade hunting boots, 1,000 hats, and... Wow. 3,000 shirts.

But despite all those options, he was known for hunting completely naked. This would often happen in the snow in the middle of winter. He'd wake up in the middle of the night, run out onto a frozen lake, completely naked, to ambush some ducks. He'd empty his gun at the ducks, and then he'd go back to bed. And then he'd wake up like a half hour later,

and do the exact same thing. This is like a common thing for him to do throughout the course of the night. Yeah, nowadays we call that behavior ramy winning. So I want to be so rich I can live out my anxiety dreams too. If you replace the ducks, that's essentially going hunting with Dick chain. If you replace the ducks, that's essentially going hunting with Dick Chene. Ha ha ha ha ha. So, Dick's out. So, Mitt was awesome for having about 2000 dogs.

And that seems like a lot. That's the dream for me. That really. And his favorite dogs got steak and champagne. And that's also the dream for me, being fed steak and champagne because I'm the favorite. But everything else about his dog, sorry, is your dream to have two thousand dogs? It's both, I want to have two thousand dogs, but I want somebody to have me in some sense and feed me the champagne because you just want to be a wrist lord.

I want to be the favorite. That's what you want to do. You want to be a golden retriever who is the favorite one, the favorite one, and I like Stake and Chimin. Anyway, I like your odds, man. Okay, you're fucking out. So moving on, I feel like we keep getting onto my weird, it's not, moving on.

Everything else about Mittens' dog situation was terrible besides the fact that he had 2,000 dogs, which sounds pretty cool. A bunch of those dogs. So many dogs. Yeah, it's probably too many. And for him, definitely, because he was breeding a bunch of them to be in dog fights, so fucking terrible.

And he'd train them personally by fighting the dogs, like him, a human, what versus the dog? He would fight the dogs. What? Yes, he would. This included actually biting them to make them tougher. He was like, what?

I'm fighting a dog, they bite. I will bite. He would bite the dogs. This was one of several terrifying moments in Mittens' life that was captured by his personal painter. And I've pasted painting or the illustration here. This is from his biography. Him biting one of the dogs. It. Him biting one of the dogs.

It's like hanging one of the dogs. Yeah, that's really terrifying. This is actually just the first ever man bites dog story and journalist and story answer this. So another big hobby from Mad Check, Mittain was crashing stuff, according to his biographer. Not only did Mittain not mind accidents, he

positively loved accidents. So he'd ride around on a gig, that's the little two-wheel horse-drawn Rick Shaw thing. He'd intentionally go way too fast on the gig and flip it over for fun. One time, he decided to check if a horse pulling a gig would be able to hurtle a toll gate. And no, it would not. Obviously, just intuitively it would not. He checked. No, it would not. Evidentially.

This moment was also captured by the painter. So I get to see. I get to see. Did he get his painter on Groupon? All right. Here's the, what you paid, I'll paint you, but only what an asshole you are. First moment. There's actually no flattering painting the other guy.

He's the worst. Here's another incident of him being the paint your life guy. Just hands in his resignation. I'm sorry. I can't do this. I didn't mean your life, Mitt. So here's another incident. How many discount codes did that?

Of being the worst. Mittens biographer named, named Rod, by the way, that's the pen name of the biographer. He remembered this moment fondly. This is the time that Mittens decided to prank everyone at the dinner party he was hosting. He waited until everybody arrived, and then he ran into the old dining room riding

on the back of a bear. Apparently you can physically do that somehow. And the prank, it was going great until Mitton jammed his stirrups into the bear trying to get the bear to run faster to make the prank more impactful. and the bear got angry, obviously, and bid off a chunk of Mittens calf. And once again, there is a painting of this. Yeah. So I posted that before. The bear just enjoyed its Mittens shop a little rare.

That's all. Fuck, man. When a literal Nimrod is painting you looking like an asshole. You might be the asshole. So, another prank that Mitten enjoyed pulling on his dinner guests was doing a fake robbery on them. He'd see them out at the end of the night, hilarious. And then he'd run inside and put on his highway robber costume that he had. And he'd cast his work party on his horse using secret shortcuts on his property and then he'd fire guns over their heads and yell, stand in

the liver, your money or your life, scare the shit out of them and then he'd be like, God, this is vulgar, it's me, the prank war. I guess what we're learning from this week's essay is if you think about it, I'm downright aim. You guys, right? Aim. I guess what I'm learning is there is literally no point in being rich if you are not going to be this exact person.

This is a, this case, it wasn't clear. I once snake it in the snow and rides on the back of a bear and pays little kids to roll down a terrifying mountain for his personal enjoyment, he's drunk the whole time, his, like, every waking moment. And he's constantly spending way too much money on the lavish dinner parties and the gambling and the elaborate pranks and the drinking. So over the course of 15 years, he spent his entire inheritance and then some. Eventually, he had to sell off his estate land, but he still ended up in very serious debt. So in 1831,

he fled to France with whatever cash he had left to hide from his creditors. And on the way, he met a woman named Susan, and he hired her to be his companion employee for a salary of 500 pounds a year. Ooh, companion employee is a much better title than child ride Jeffrey Epstein take note. Gosh, I'm setting. So Mittens on the Lamb in France, and this is where the story starts getting really sad.

He still has some money to spend, and he's clearly his son. Just hoping. Yeah, it's actually happier than I think, starts getting really sad. He still has some money to spend, and he's clearly... That is sad. Just hoping. Yeah. It's actually happier than anything. The only thing about it, he sucks. So it gets sad for him.

So he's hoping he'll die somehow before the money runs out. And he almost got his wish one day when you got a really bad case of the hiccups. His biographer was actually there for this whole thing, so we get a detailed account. Mitton was at that point when the hiccups are actually like blocking your words and messing up your breathing. I've been there, I hate it so much.

And you know, you're like yelling at it and then the yelling gets blocked by a hiccup and you get even more angry because you were trying to yell and you're frustrated about how your yell didn't go well like you wanted it to. So he decides to scare away the hiccups by lighting his shirt on fire.

He's wearing a cotton shirt, and he holds a lid candle to it, and he's immediately enveloped in a giant ball of flame. His servant beats out the fire, and Mitt was like, I'm very, oh hey! The hiccups are gone, nailed it, nice. And he smiles, and he strips completely naked,

and he falls into bed. The biographer buddy came back the next day to visit and he described Mittin in his bed as not only shirtless, but sheetless with the skin of his breast shoulders and knees of the same color as a newly singed bacon hug. The bear is just looking at him and he's like, nah, it's overcooked for me. I just, I like it wrong.

I'm sorry. He's standing there next to the bear. I like a synch guy. I don't. I do not. Oh, you're a brown bear. I didn't mean that in an offensive way. I'm into biking now.

I just like, next time one of my kids gets to hiccups, Brown bear I didn't mean that in an offensive way I'm into biking now Just like next time one of my kids gets the hiccups. I'm just gonna like Stick an apple in their mouth and trust up their legs and pop them under the trailer for a bit What kind of fucking solution is this to the Mountain that's fucking scary The cash ran out pretty soon after the hiccups fire. Sure. And Mitten had to go back to England in hopes of finding some maybe extended family that might help them out.

But that didn't happen. And the creditors caught up with him. So he ended up in debtors prison. And that's where he died in 1834 at the age of 38. And according to nothing, according to the citation needed needed he coined the phrase light come light go which we now say as easy come easy go that was I was him according to citation needed. I hate to break it to you But if you need to ride a bear into a dinner party and light yourself on fire to get rid of your wealth it did not go easily Well despite having no more money or a state left at the time of his death, he still

had about 3,000 people attend his funeral. And his legacy lives on in several ways. That includes a 72 mile trail for Madcap long distance horse riding that's named after him. There's also a pub and a hotel with his name. But most importantly, the University of Minnesota hosted the Jack Mitten Run, an annual naked streaking event across the campus on the first day of class after spring break. They did it for 10 years from 1999 to 2009.

Sadly, they stopped in 2009 because the campus police made them stop. And if anybody wants to read about some other ridiculous eccentric British people throughout history, because they are delightful, check out a book called English Accentrics written by Dame Edith Sitwell. And yes, that's the same Sitwell family name from the Honorable mention, George Sitwell. Dame Edith is the daughter of that guy, George Sitwell, and she hates all the eccentric bullshit. It's fun to see a Dame of the Realm doing a very hateful roast

in the form of a book that's like weirdly polite and informative at the same time as a roast. Well, with a book after the Grand Unified Theory of Bullshit to purchase, if you had to summarize what you've learned in one sentence, what would it be? Okay, I guess when that's your dad trying to murder wasps with a gun instead of being a good parent,

it's way less charming when you have to deal with no. Heep that in mind, Tom. All right, heep, are you ready for the quiz? I'm ready for the quiz. Heep, what pranks would I pull on my fellow cast members if I had a billion dollars? Hey, place a full page ad in the New York Times offering one million dollars to anyone

that could get you to consensually buy that one of their fingers. That's a bleep. You heard it, right? Be by every house in C-Sosoon neighborhood. So that technically, I can only local print your down to it. So that technically, I think it's only local brand you're down to, right? You're on set.

You're on it. See, make Tom the head of Facebook and Twitter. No. Or D, go to space. Both because it appears to be a thing billionaires need to do. And also it would torture Noah. So that one's to go.

No, I kill you. No, I kill you. No, I kill you. The only one I heard was D D go to space, I think. So that is correct. Yes. When I got down, I would tell him I didn't see anything because I was on TikTok whole time.

Oh, yeah. Jesus Christ. I was on a soundstage with Stanley Kubrick. It's all right. He, Francis Buckland, the ever hungry, I'm never a son of William Buckland, was also known for what other accent dressing. Okay.

Okay. A, he had a bear cub named TIG who he dressed in an Oxford cap and gown and who would attend wine parties with him, get drunk and then wander around town begging for a day. Okay. You're telling me one of these is going to be a fun fact. One of these is true. The fun fact. The X Fun Fact.

B, he had several monkeys, which he took to parties and which he regularly got drunk on board. Those monkeys died. Okay. C, my mom also had a monkey. She used to get drunk. Name a gill again. And that monkey also died.

Okay. I, what I want to be true is that it's almost all the above, but like you changed the name of your mom's monkey from something to Gilly. I think it's D all the above though. They are all the above, you got it. You got it. Interesting.

What kind of monkey did mom have? Small, I don't know. What the scare me? I don't like monkeys, man. Like I know people like them. They fucking scare the shit out of me. They're terror animals. Hey, if your parent was getting their monkey drunk instead of fucking parenting you,

you don't turn around. Yeah, you know, this is a compouchion, right? Yeah, that's called music. I'm a trauma. Tom, that's called trauma. He's doing whatever he asks. He's our hilarious story of my childhood. I know it's good. It's fun. All right. He'd john like to take bites out of uncooked canine. What was his favorite preparation? A sushi, soup, and crew Joe, see untosted everything beagle chocolate chip cookie dough brimman raw dog okay it feels like it's got to be e-raw dog but I'm a big I like

food show oh I am sorry It was untosted everything. It was the beagle. Oh, it was the beagle. All right. Well, see you have stopped our ss which means you are this week's winner. Oh, right. Let's get Tom up in here. Yeah. No, what? Yes. Hmm. All right. Well, for Tom Noah Cecil and Keith Ami Libosnik. Thank you for hanging out with the sting. We'll be back next week. And by then, Tom will be an expert on something else. Between now and then, you can grab your copy of the grand unify theory of bullshit where fine books are sold. That's it.

That's all Amazon. Yeah, Amazon. Maybe you can give us some money on Patreon. Or leave us a five star review everywhere you can. If you'd like to get in touch with us, check out past episodes, connect with us on social media, or check the show notes. Be sure to check out citationpod.com. And then I said to him, that if you're not interested, what if I buy the city you

live in? What'd he say? Well, he was much more than meanable, let me tell you. Men, did you order a school attack by the British Navy? Did I do that? Mitten!