Futility Closet - 273-Alice Ramsey's Historic Drive

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to the Futility Closet podcast, forgotten stories from the pages of history. Visit us online to sample more than 10,000 quirky curiosities from a hat expedient to an unusable slate. This is episode 273. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. In 1909, 22-year-old Alice Hilo Ramsey set out to become the first woman to drive across the United States. In an era of imperfect cars and atrocious roads, she would have to find her own way and undertake her own repairs across 3,800 miles of rugged, poorly mapped terrain. In today's show, we'll

Starting point is 00:00:46 follow Ramsey on her historic journey. We'll also ponder the limits of free speech and puzzle over some banned candy. In 1909, horseless carriages were becoming popular in the United States, but they were still very rare. In a nation of 80 million people, only 155,000 owned cars. The nation's manufacturers wanted to appeal to new drivers, and one promising group was women. Up to this point, it had been assumed that men would do all the driving. Women were thought to be incapable of driving even around the block. One doctor at the time wrote that, quote, driving even around the block. One doctor at the time wrote that, quote, a speed of 15 or 20 miles an hour in a motor car causes women acute mental suffering, nervous excitement, and circulatory

Starting point is 00:01:30 disturbances, extending into the night and causing insomnia. One new customer who completely exploded that prejudice was 22-year-old Alice Heiler Ramsey. The daughter of a steam launch captain who had encouraged her interest in machines, she'd left Vassar after two years to marry a New Jersey attorney, John Rathbone Ramsey, whom she called Bone. After a scare in which a passing auto had spooked her horse, Bone had decided she'd be safer with an automobile of her own and bought her a red Maxwell Roadster. She learned to drive in two lessons, and during her first summer behind the wheel, she covered 6,000 miles, mostly around New Jersey. After six months, she entered a 150-mile endurance run the length of Long Island and got a perfect score. There, she was approached by Carl Kelsey, the sales manager of the Maxwell Briscoe

Starting point is 00:02:15 Automobile Company. He said, I think you're the greatest natural woman driver I've yet seen, and he offered to sponsor her on a trip across the country from New York to San Francisco. She later said she was flabbergasted. She wrote, I was numb all over. He might as well have said I would fly to the moon the following week. He explained what he had in mind. The Maxwell Briscoe Company would provide the automobile and pay the expenses, and it would instruct its agents along the way to keep tires, gas, and spare parts on hand for her, and it would arrange for pilot cars on stretches of road that hadn't yet been mapped. In return, the company would get publicity and promote women drivers

Starting point is 00:02:49 and long-distance travel. If she succeeded, Ramsey would become the first woman to drive across the United States from coast to coast. She wrote, this was a challenge if I ever had one. It sounded like a magnificent adventure, and I liked it. It's often said that it was Ramsey's husband who suggested that his two sisters, Nettie and Maggie, go along on the trip. But in fact, the three of them were already planning this on the way back from Long Island. Nettie asked Alice if she wanted to do it, and she said, why not? If Bone wouldn't object to my going, it's been done by men, and as long as they have been able to accomplish it, why shouldn't I? Bone supported her, and she set about preparing.

Starting point is 00:03:23 Planning well was essential. She wrote later, There were few garages, and one had to be able to do many things oneself to keep going. No self-starters, no electric lights, no mechanics within reach. And don't run out of gas or you walk many miles. For help with the car, she invited her regular mechanician, 19-year-old Hermina Jans, to join them, making a foursome. They started on June 9, 1909, at the Maxwell Company sales room at 1930 Broadway, across from the current site of Lincoln Center. It was pouring rain, but a crowd of newspapermen, photographers, friends,

Starting point is 00:03:53 and spectators gathered around them. People asked, where are your guns, and don't you have any pillows? Someone from the Hackensack Elks Lodge pressed a bouquet of pink carnations into her hands. She bore this as long as she could, then cranked the engine to life, kissed her husband goodbye, waved to the throng, and set off. The first day's driving went well. They covered 76 miles, stopping for hot chocolate in Tarrytown and roast beef sandwiches near Sing Sing. They were driving a forest green Maxwell DA five-passenger touring car

Starting point is 00:04:21 that the company had fitted with a 20-gallon fuel tank, some extra tires, and a picnic hamper. In the rain, they slipped all morning on the road and at one point almost ran into a bridge support. Tires in those days were built with a canvas foundation and the surface exposed to the road was entirely smooth, so on wet clay it was easy to slide into a ditch. But they arrived safely in Albany, where they met their advance man, J.D. Murphy, the automobile editor of the Boston Herald. He would keep ahead of them, traveling by train to each new city and arranging for hotel accommodations, supplies, and publicity. He also published daily newspaper dispatches so that readers could follow their progress.

Starting point is 00:04:56 As they passed on toward Buffalo, the rain began to lessen, and they reached Amsterdam that night, having covered slightly more than 100 miles. reached Amsterdam that night, having covered slightly more than 100 miles. The biggest challenge in crossing the United States in 1909 was the roads themselves, which were in terrible shape. Of the 3,800 miles they hoped to cross, only 152 were paved, and the rest varied from gravel and sand to cow paths and dry riverbeds. Numbered highways didn't yet exist, so to cross a long distance you had to pick your way through a network of local roads. East of the Mississippi, they could follow the so-called Blue Book, a publication that listed the distances between towns and gave printed directions explaining where to turn. But the Blue Book couldn't warn them about the changing state of the roads or predict car trouble, so each day was a new challenge.

Starting point is 00:05:38 On their best day, they covered 198 miles. On their worst, they covered four. In Auburn, New York, the car wouldn't start, and they had to have it towed back to the hotel. A crowd gathered to see what was wrong, and a boy yelled, get a horse, which is what you yelled cleverly at disabled motorists in 1909. A repairman brought a new coil, which solved the problem, but they got a late start and had to drive through the night to Buffalo by the unaccustomed light of the car's brass headlamps, which eerily illuminated everything from cat's eyes to milk cans. From Buffalo, they stole time to visit Niagara Falls and then headed

Starting point is 00:06:09 for the Midwest. As they skirted the shore of Lake Erie, the Blue Book told them to turn left at a yellow house, and they couldn't find one. Finally, they asked a woman working in her front yard, and she said that the man in the yellow house was against automobiles and had painted his house green to spite them. She said he'll be all right when he gets one himself. They retraced their steps and found the road to Cleveland and then Chicago, where a passing Cadillac dented their hubcap, their first experience with a hit-and-run driver. Michigan Avenue was gloriously paved with asphalt, a luxury that they hadn't seen since the start of their journey and wouldn't see again till the end. After 14 days, they were already a third of the way across the continent, but the most daunting

Starting point is 00:06:48 part still lay ahead of them. The Blue Book service stopped at the Mississippi, and the roads beyond would be much worse. They equipped themselves with a towing rope, a block and tackle, and a shovel, and headed into the farm country to the west, where a tire promptly went flat. They were still accompanied by a car full of men who offered to repair it for her, but Ramsey insisted on doing it on her own. She told her companions, I can't let them do that. I'm supposed to do things like that myself. She wrote that the men, quote, stood around feeling a little foolish and inept, no doubt, but respected my point of view on the matter. She did let them pump up the tire. After a night in Rochelle, Illinois, they crossed

Starting point is 00:07:23 the Mississippi River. They were still not halfway across the country in terms of distance, but she felt they'd now entered the West. Unfortunately, Iowa was a mess. They had arrived in the rainy season, and the whole state was a sea of mud. As they crept along in low gear, the car overheated three times, and they had to replenish the radiator with water from the roadside using cut glass jars that they'd brought along for toothbrushes. In the midst of this, they came upon a lone woman in a sun bonnet sitting at a crossroads. She said, are you the women who were driving from New York to San Francisco? They said yes, and she told them she'd read about them in the paper and had come six miles to see them. She'd been waiting at the crossroads for some time. Ramsey wrote, that little event gave us a special thrill to think anyone

Starting point is 00:08:01 would take that much trouble to see us go by. But in Boone, they received the depressing news that the roads would remain muddy for another hundred miles. The locals suggested just putting the Maxwell on a flat car and shipping it to Omaha by rail, but Ramsey decided that this would be cheating. She said, I'll drive every inch of the way if it kills me. After some discussion, though, she put her three companions aboard the train, along with their luggage and two spare springs, in order to lighten the load. J.D. Murphy rode along with her. As they toiled westward, the land grew more hilly. They were congratulating themselves on finally rising above the mud when they arrived at the alarmingly named Danger Hill, which cars had to climb in reverse gear because

Starting point is 00:08:38 early automobiles had no fuel pumps. The gas was fed to the carburetor by gravity. Going up the steep slope backward was precarious, but Ramsey managed it so well that she was even able to tow another car over the top. They endured a broken axle on the way to Sioux City, but the whole party eventually reunited, and they drove with some relief out of Iowa. It had taken them 13 days to cover 360 miles. Alas, Nebraska wasn't much better. They had to be towed out of two holes in the space of one mile, both by the same of one mile, both by the same farmer's son, who charged them twice as much for the second hole,

Starting point is 00:09:12 and some well diggers had to pull them up a particularly slippery hill. When a passing mail carrier told them he'd rather keep to his route than travel across the country, it was hard to tell which fate would be worse. Throughout all this, Ramsey applied her skill and resourcefulness to keeping them going, cleaning spark plugs, adjusting the magneto, and repairing the brake pedal. At one point, when the linkage between the engine and the accelerator lost a bolt, she replaced it with a hairpin until they could find a replacement. And generally, the roads improved as they got their distance from the Missouri River. After laboring along for miles in first and second, they began to advance into higher gears.

Starting point is 00:09:41 As they advanced into Wyoming, the country took on a more Western character. They approached Cheyenne on the old Overland Stagecoach route, and Ramsey wrote, we could not help thinking how much slower was their travel than ours. In some ways, the Old West was still alive here. Cheyenne was still a true frontier town, with frame buildings lining dirt roads, and many of the paths they followed were mere wagon tracks and horse trails. It was easy to get lost, so for most of the way across the state, they followed pilot cars driven by local residents, and even they sometimes got lost. Much of their journey now was a continual ascent toward the Continental Divide, and they had to stop occasionally to cool the engine. In Laramie, a road bridge had washed away and Ramsey had to cross the Platte River on a trestle of the Union Pacific Railroad,

Starting point is 00:10:21 hoping that a train didn't arrive when she was midway across. Recalling these adventures in 1961, Ramsey wrote, It is difficult to give one living in the present perfection of roads and signposts a true idea of how completely lacking these were in most of the western states. In fact, when they came to a fork in the road, they often had to choose a path by looking up to see which line of telegraph poles carried the most wires. In Utah, they stopped at Salt Lake City to pick up their mail and to prepare the car for the hottest, steepest part of the journey. That started terribly. They ran into a prairie dog hole with such force that a bolt left a tie rod

Starting point is 00:10:54 and the entire front end collapsed. Ramsey managed to bind up the axle with wire, and a blacksmith repaired it in the next town. In Nevada, they struggled through loose sand past the ruined stations of the Pony Express and Overland Stagecoach. It was a surprise to come upon a town of sparks situated in a hollow and brilliantly lighted with electricity. That was a signal that they were approaching the finish, and in Reno, they were greeted by Maxwell representatives who had come to escort them

Starting point is 00:11:18 to San Francisco. As they approached the Sierra Nevada on an old wagon trail, Ramsey marveled at the sturdiness of the Maxwell engine, which had served them so well through mud, sand, and heat. When they reached Lake Tahoe and passed into California, evergreens began to appear beside the road, and at Stockton they acquired a little parade of encouraging automobiles cheering their progress. They spent their final evening in Hayward, and on August 7, 1909, they took the ferry across the bay to the destination they'd been struggling toward for nearly two months. They rolled into a crowd of automobiles that sounded their horns in greeting and were waved and cheered up Market Street to the St. James Hotel, where they held court among a gaggle of reporters and photographers. They had covered 3,800 miles in 59 days, of which 41 had been spent driving.

Starting point is 00:12:01 The San Francisco Chronicle carried the headline, Pretty Women Motorists Arrive After Trip Across Continent. It said that the trip had been made, quote, largely for pleasure and to see the country, and the exclusion of men was largely just to show that they are not at all necessary, even for a trip of such magnitude. With the accomplishment behind her, Alice Ramsey went back to New Jersey, but this was only the start of a long life behind the wheel. She repeated the cross-country journey 30 times, taking more than 25 people with her, including her son and daughter, in 1919. In a driving career that lasted 75 years, she owned 25 cars, never had an accident, and got just one ticket for a U-turn. She turned in her driver's license in 1982 at age 95 after taking

Starting point is 00:12:42 a driving test to prove to herself that she could still pass it. In 1961, she wrote, Always I am thrilled and amazed that modern road improvements have not only shortened considerably the 3,800 miles of rough going, but that the distance which then consumed 41 days can now be easily and comfortably traversed in a week, more or less, depending on speed and the length of one's driving day. Of her historic trip, she told an interviewer in 1975, I did it because it was a challenge and because I knew it would be fun. Good driving has nothing to do with sex. It's all above the collar.

Starting point is 00:13:22 The main story in episode 267 was about the Murchison murders, where Australian workers appeared to have been killed in a manner very similar to that described in a crime novel. Alan Ricks let us know that that story got me thinking about Rage, the 1977 novel by Stephen King, which was about a student killing his teachers and classmates in a mass shooting. After at least four school shootings or attempted shootings were tied to the novel, King had it pulled from publication and has refused to ever republish it again on the chance it could potentially influence students to carry out the fictional killings. Rage is a psychological thriller first written by King in 1965 when he was still in high school himself and first published in 1977 under the pseudonym

Starting point is 00:14:06 Richard Bachman. It involves a troubled high school student who shoots some of the school's teachers and then holds a classroom of students hostage for several hours. The other students begin increasingly identifying with their captor and are pushed to start telling embarrassing secrets about themselves and each other. Eventually, the whole class turns on a particularly popular student and ends up brutally assaulting him. A 2014 article in Business Insider notes that King has said that when he wrote the novel, the world was a rather different place than it is today, and quotes him as saying, I suppose if it had been written today and some high school English teacher had seen it, he would have rushed the manuscript to the guidance counselor,

Starting point is 00:14:46 and I would have found myself in therapy post-haste. But 1965 was a different world, one where you didn't have to take off your shoes before boarding a plane, and there were no metal detectors at the entrances to high schools. Perhaps it seemed more unthinkable in the 1960s and 70s that a teenager would actually behave like Rage's main character did. But starting in 1988, there were several incidents that occurred over the next nine years where students did appear to be inspired by the book to either hold classmates

Starting point is 00:15:15 hostage and or open fire on students or teachers. In four of these cases, the novel was found among the students' possessions or the student was known to have read the book. After the last of these incidents in 1997, King asked his publisher to remove the book from publication. Business Insider reports that King has said that he didn't consider Rage to be great literature, given how young he was when he wrote it, but that he did think it was an honest portrayal of some of the emotions and horrors that students, including King himself, It was an honest portrayal of some of the emotions and horrors that students, including King himself, experience in high school. And he said, the book told unpleasant truths. In a 1999 speech that King gave at the Vermont Library Conference, he said with regard to the book,

Starting point is 00:15:58 I remember high school as a time of misery and resentment. And he likened it to an Iroquois trial of manhood, where naked young men have to run through a gauntlet of older men who would swing clubs and jab at them with the butt end of spears. He said, In high school, the goal is graduation day instead of a manhood feather, and the weapons are replaced by insults, slights, and epithets, but I imagine the feelings are about the same. In his speech, King said that he didn't think that the book alone would provoke a student to shoot someone, but he did feel that the novel could act as an accelerant on a troubled mind, and thus should be pulled from publication. The Business Insider article reports that an Amazon review of the book, written soon after it was removed from print, said, Still, it must be chilling to write something that you regard as fiction. Yes.

Starting point is 00:16:58 And see the world sort of move in that direction. Yes. And in some cases, at least one case, a student even said that he'd been inspired by the book. And I imagine that would be pretty unpleasant as an author to hear something like that. So while no one seemed to be directly blaming King for having written Rage, Dan Fingerman let us know about a case where a book was successfully blamed for subsequent crimes by a reader named James Perry. Dan wrote, Hi, Greg, Sharon, and Sasha. Episode 267 on the Murchison murders reminds me of a set of murders in the United States that were allegedly based

Starting point is 00:17:31 on the book Hitman, a technical manual for independent contractors. The case of Rice v. Paladin Enterprises is taught in many law school First Amendment courses. For non-U.S. listeners, the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects the rights of free speech and free press. Hitman was originally written as a crime novel, but the format was changed later to an instruction manual. The author was a housewife who reportedly had no domain knowledge and based her book on information from movies and mystery novels. Predictably, murders were committed that were similar to the book's instructions. Less predictably, the publisher was successfully sued by victims' families for aiding and abetting the murders. In Rice v. Paladin Enterprises, the court ruled that Hitman was not protected by the First Amendment,

Starting point is 00:18:15 so the publisher could be held liable for the murders in a wrongful death suit. The court wrote, A jury likewise could reasonably find that Perry was encouraged in his murderous acts by Paladin's book. Hitman does not merely detail how to commit murder and murder for hire. Through powerful prose in the second person and imperative voice, it encourages its readers in their specific acts of murder. It reassures those contemplating the crime that they may proceed with their plans without fear of either personal failure or punishment. and at every point where the would-be murderer might yield to either reason or to reservations, Hitman emboldens the killer, confirming not only that he should proceed,

Starting point is 00:18:55 but that he must proceed if he is to establish his manhood. The book is so effectively written that its protagonist seems actually to be present at the planning, commission, and cover-up of the murders the book inspires. So this was a rather interesting case, and thank you, Dan, for sending a link to the court opinion on it, as I don't know if I would have found that on my own. Hitman, a technical manual for independent contractors, was written by an author with the pseudonym Rex Ferrell and published in 1983 by Paladin Press, a mail order publishing company. According to the Washington Post, an ad for the book in Paladin's catalog read, Rex Ferrell kills for hire. Some consider him a criminal. Others think him a hero. In truth, he is a lethal weapon aimed at those he hunts. The book is written as a detailed how-to manual

Starting point is 00:19:42 for contract killing by an experienced assassin and describes itself as an instruction book on murder. Apparently, it was actually written by a mother of two children who had intended it to be a crime novel, but was asked by Paladin Press to change the format to be more in line with the publisher's other nonfiction books on topics such as weapons, military tactics, self-defense, and survivalism. books on topics such as weapons, military tactics, self-defense, and survivalism. The Washington Post quotes a letter written by the author where she states that she got her ideas for the book from books, television, movies, newspapers, police officers, my karate instructor, and a good friend who is an attorney. The book really does give explicit step-by-step instructions on how to

Starting point is 00:20:22 arrange for a contract to kill someone and then how exactly to commit the crime and get away with it. It tells you, for example, what kind of gloves to use and how best to use them. It offers advice about different potential weapons, such as what type of knife to use and how to use it most effectively, or how to build a silencer for a gun and how to remove the gun's serial number. It directs you to steal an out-of-state license plate and affix that to a rental car to use during the crime, and there are gruesome instructions on different ways

Starting point is 00:20:50 to dispose of a corpse. There is even advice on how you will feel afterward and warnings about learning to control your ego so you don't end up being tempted to brag about what you've done. The instructions are quite specific and detailed, such as, to test your guns and ammunition, set up a sheet of quarter-inch plywood at distances of 2 to 7 yards maximum for your pistol and 20 to 60 yards maximum for your rifle. Check for penetration of bullets at each range. Quarter-inch plywood is only a little stronger than the human skull. In 1993, a mother, her disabled 8-year-old son, and the son's nurse were murdered in Silver Spring, Maryland, and police traced the crime to the woman's ex-husband, who would stand to inherit the $2 million that his son had received as a settlement for his injuries.

Starting point is 00:21:36 The father had hired Perry to commit the murders, and when police searched Perry's home, they found the copy of Hitman that he had ordered from Paladin Press, and it was pretty clear that Perry had followed many of the instructions laid out in the book. Both the father and Perry eventually received life sentences for the murders, but the victims' families also filed a wrongful death suit against Paladin Press for aiding and abetting Perry. The publisher's defense was that the First Amendment acted as a bar to the plaintiff's claims. A district court found for the publisher, saying that the First Amendment did entitle Paladin Press to immunity,

Starting point is 00:22:09 has hit me on top murder but did not incite or encourage it. However, in 1997, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed that decision, stating that actually preparing people for committing crimes is not protected speech. This case marked the first time that a U.S. book publisher had been held liable for a crime committed by a reader, and the verdict allowed a court case against Paladin to proceed. When the Supreme Court declined to consider an appeal for Paladin, the publisher's insurance company decided that it didn't want to risk the scheduled jury trial, and in 1999, Paladin Press ended up agreeing to a multi-million dollar settlement and a cease publication of the book. This case was seen as potentially having a lot of implications for some First Amendment

Starting point is 00:22:50 protections. A number of publishers signed a brief in support of Paladin Press early in the case, concerned that if Hitman was not considered to be protected speech, then that could open the door to lawsuits for a lot of other content, including memoirs, novels, music, and movies. However, unlike many other crime novels or violent movies, Hitman wasn't marketed as entertainment. Marketing for the book included wording such as, Ferrell reveals how to get in, do the job, and get out without getting caught. Howard Siegel, the plaintiff's attorney, was quoted in the Post as saying, It's not a book, it's a recipe. Just like a recipe for cookies, the author intends that you follow the recipe and make the cookies.

Starting point is 00:23:30 When you give a recipe for murder and you market and advertise that's what you're doing, then that information is being used exactly as the author intended and the publisher intended. And indeed, the appeals court opinion said in part, The extraordinary comprehensiveness, detail, and clarity of Hitman's instructions for criminal activity and murder in particular, the boldness of its palpable exhortation to murder, the alarming power and effectiveness of its peculiar form of instruction, the notable absence from its text of the kind of ideas for the protection of which the First Amendment exists, and the book's evident lack of any even arguably legitimate purpose beyond the promotion and teaching of murder render this case unique in the law. And the book really is distinct in its tone and message. For example, it says,

Starting point is 00:24:17 A woman recently asked how I could, in good conscience, write an instruction book on murder. How can you live with yourself if someone uses what you write to go out and take a human life, Another section reads, if my advice and the proven methods in this book are followed, certainly no one will ever know. Another section reads, After you have arrived home, the events that took place take on a dream-like quality. You don't dwell on them. You don't worry. You don't have nightmares. You don't fear ghosts. When thoughts of the hit go through your mind, it's almost as though you are recalling some show you saw on television. By the time you collect the balance of your contract fee, the doubts and fears of discovery have faded. Those feelings have been replaced by cockiness,

Starting point is 00:25:11 a feeling of superiority, a new independence and self-assurance. The people around you have suddenly become so aggravatingly ordinary. You start to view them as an irritating herd of pathetic sheep, doing as they are told, doing what is expected, following someone, anyone, blindly. You can't believe how dumb your friends have become, and your respect diminishes for people you once held in awe. Another aspect of the case that increased its uniqueness was that Paladin Press seemed to feel that their strongest defense would lie in First Amendment protections,

Starting point is 00:25:42 and for the purposes of receiving a summary judgment on whether the amendment did shield them from this kind of liability, the publisher had actually stipulated that they indeed had aided and abetted Perry in his murders, and that in marketing the book they intended to attract and assist criminals and would-be criminals who desire information and instructions on how to commit crimes, and that they knew that Hitman would be used upon receipt by criminals and would-be criminals to plan and execute the crime of murder for hire. Despite the rather singular aspects of this case, there are those who predicted that by denying Paladin Press First Amendment protections, the door was being opened to many more lawsuits, though I am not aware that it did set the kind of broad precedent that was feared at the time. For example, a Louisiana appeals court did cite the Paladin case as a

Starting point is 00:26:30 basis for allowing a lawsuit to proceed against filmmaker Oliver Stone, after a teenage couple said that Stone's 1994 movie Natural Born Killers had inspired them to shoot people themselves. However, that case was thrown out in 2001, when a judge ruled that there was no evidence that Stone had actually intended to incite violence. On the other hand, Paladin Press was sued again in 2001 by the victims of an attempted contract killing, and although this time the publisher did not make the same stipulations that they had in the earlier case, an Oregon federal court allowed the case to go forward, ruling again that Hitman's content and marketing made it clear that Paladin had intended the book to be used in the commission of these kinds of crimes. That case was also settled out of court.

Starting point is 00:27:13 But a thoroughly vile book. I'm still just goggling at your description of it. I mean, I guess I'm glad the First Amendment protections go as far as they do, but I'm also glad there's a limit. I mean, that just sounds reprehensible. Yeah. I mean, I guess it's unclear what Paladin Press was thinking and if they truly, truly intended this to be used by criminals, but I think they wanted people to at least maybe pretend that they were going to become an assassin.

Starting point is 00:27:38 I don't know. But it just seems like there's nothing redeeming whatsoever in there. Yeah, that's awful. What I don't know is how the author of that book feels and one last footnote that i'll add on the paladin press case comes from the washington post 1998 article on the original suit against the publisher which said hitman was never a big seller but the family's lawsuit has helped. After the case was filed in 1996, sales quadrupled to 4,000 copies a year. Wow. Yeah. Thanks so much to everyone who writes in to us. We really appreciate your

Starting point is 00:28:13 comments and follow-ups, so please send any that you have to podcast at futilitycloset.com. It's my turn to try to solve a lateral thinking puzzle. Greg is going to give me a strange-sounding situation, and I have to work out what's going on, asking yes or no questions. This is from listener Simone and her dad. In the contract writer for their 1982 world tour, the rock band Van Halen included a provision that required each venue to provide, quote, M&M's, warning, absolutely no brown ones. Rumor had it that this gave them the legal excuse to

Starting point is 00:28:50 cancel a show without notice and even to trash the venue. But there was a sensible reason for the no brown M&M's rule. What was it? Was it the case that there were, no, that there were brown M&M's, weren't there? Because I was going to say, if there were no brown M&Ms, then they would know they were like counterfeit candy or something. No, that wasn't it. There were brown M&Ms. But there was a sensible reason that Van Halen wanted no brown M&Ms. Yes. Do brown M&Ms look like something else?

Starting point is 00:29:22 No. Is there something about the dye that's used? Somebody was allergic to the dye that's used to make a brown M&M? No. See, I think all the M&Ms taste the same. So I'm assuming there's nothing to do with taste here? No. Okay.

Starting point is 00:29:40 Is there something to do with the visual aspects of a brown M&M? Do they stain differently? No. Okay. Did this reason for not wanting brown M&Ms, did it apply to everybody in the group? As opposed to like one or two particular members? That's immaterial. It doesn't matter.

Starting point is 00:30:03 It would still be a useful provision even if nobody ate any M&Ms. Did they get it carried out, like places would provide them M&Ms and pick out all the brown ones? Some did and some didn't. Does it matter what the consequences were for the places that didn't follow this provision? Yes. Was it so that they knew that the whole contract had been read? Yes. Oh. You jumped right to that.

Starting point is 00:30:34 I couldn't think of any other rational reason. I don't know how you do that. That's exactly it. Van Halen was one of the first bands to take a large production into third-level markets, which were often inexperienced in putting on such a large show. The contract rider contained important requirements regarding electrical ratings, floor strength, and other provisions that, if neglected, could lead to property damage or even loss of life. The M&M requirement gave the band a quick way to see whether the contract was being followed.

Starting point is 00:30:59 If there were brown M&Ms in the dressing room, that meant the venue hadn't read the rider and that all its requirements would need to be checked. Wow. See, but that would be a lot of work to pick out all the brown ones because my memory is that I haven't had M&Ms in a few years, but my memory is there were a lot of brown ones. I guess it was worthwhile. Thanks, Simone. Thank you, Simone and her dad. And if anybody else has a puzzle they'd like to send in for us to try, please send it to podcast at futilitycloset.com. send in for us to try, please send it to podcast at futilitycloset.com. That's our show for today. If you'd like to become one of the wonderful patrons who help support this show and get bonus content like outtakes, extralateral thinking puzzles,

Starting point is 00:31:38 more discussion on some of the stories and peeks behind the scenes of the show, please see our Patreon page at patreon.com slash futility closet, or the support a section of the website at futilitycloset.com. While you're at the site, you can also graze through Greg's collection of over 10,000 quirky curiosities. Check out the Futility Closet store, learn about the Futility Closet books, and see the show notes for the podcast with links and references for the topics we've covered. If you have any questions or comments for us, you can email us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. All the music in our shows was written and performed by Greg's phenomenal brother, Doug Ross. Thanks for listening, and we'll talk to you next week.

Futility Closet - 273-Alice Ramsey's Historic Drive

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