Noble Blood - The Venetian Doge Condemned in Memory

Episode Date: February 6, 2024

Along the walls of the Chamber of the Great Council in the Doge's Palace in Venice, there are portraits—one after another—of the Republic's doges. Each man has his likeness, and a description of some of his accomplishments. But there's a gap in the parade -- one man was painted over, and covered with a painted black veil. A man who committed a crime against the Republic so great, that he was "condemned in memory." Support Noble Blood: — Bonus episodes, stickers, and scripts on Patreon — Noble Blood Merch — Order Dana's book, 'Anatomy: A Love Story' and its sequel 'Immortality: A Love Story'See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Will Ferrell's Big Money Players and IHart Podcast presents soccer moms. So I'm Leanne. Yeah. This is my best friend, Janet. Hey. And we have been joined at the hips since high school.

Absolutely. A redacted amount of years later, we're still joined at the hip. Just a little bit bigger hips. This is a podcast. We're recording it as we tailgate our youth soccer games in the back of my Honda Odyssey. With all the snacks and drinks. Why did you get hard seltzer instead of beer? Oh, they hit a bogo. Well, then you got it. Listen to soccer moms on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of IHeart Radio and Grimm and Mild from Aaron Manky. Listener discretion advised. Last year, I was lucky enough to go on my honeymoon to Italy. We began our trip in Venice, and after shaking off the jet lag and enjoying our first Italian espresso, we set off to the iconic. Piazza San Marco or St. Mark's Square for a tour of the Doge's palace. First built in 1340, it was the seat of the government of the Venetian Republic and the residents of the Doge himself for hundreds of years. But it's far from your typical medieval palace. Its relatively simple rectangular structure is balanced by a delicate pattern of pink and white bricks, with intricate stonework elements and plenty of arches along the balcony and arcade below.

Along with the basilica attached to it, the palace dominates the eastern end of Piazza San Marco, Venice's largest and most iconic square that for centuries was the center of civic and religious life in the city. The palace became a museum in 1923. Each room in the palace, from those making up the Doge's apartments to the institutional chambers for the republic's many governing bodies, is adorned to an almost absurd extent. There are hand-carved furnishings, gilded accents, and on nearly every wall and ceiling, a mural painted by someone famous. Though our tour guide did note a few murals that were recreations, Napoleon having stolen the originals. Even the bridge from the main palace to the now defunct prison has a breathtaking view of the lagoon. That bridge is aptly called the

bridge of size, because famously that was the sound reportedly heard over the centuries, from prisoners taking one last look at the outside world before they were locked up. But perhaps the most splendid room in the palace is the Chamber of the Great Council. It's one of the largest rooms in Europe, a fun fact that you might not think much of until you're actually inside of it. It is massive and imposing, almost 175 feet long, and over 80 feet wide, with 15-foot ceilings, and nearly every surface is covered either in ornate gold,

dramatic, dark wood, or an intricate, gigantic, painted mural. It's easy to get overwhelmed by the dizzying amount of art in the chamber. You could strain your neck trying to take in the 21 murals that grace the walls alone, featuring work by the wall. the likes of Tintoretto, Palma the Younger, and Veronese. But if you can tear your eyes away from the big ticket art, right along the top of the walls, going all the way around the room, are a series of smaller portrait freezes, all quite similar and easy to miss if you aren't careful. The portraits, all painted in the 16th century,

immortalize the likenesses of 76 doges who reigned in Venice from 804 to 1556. The portraits depict each doge in his regalia, each holding an obnoxiously long and wavy piece of parchment, bearing his greatest achievements during his reign. That is, except for one. There's a break in the parade of dogey. Instead of a portrait, there's just a painting of a black drape, as if to protect viewers from laying their eyes upon some great shame, and to deny the fallen doge the honor of being remembered. In 1355, the doge in power decided that just being the head of a republic wasn't enough, and he attempted to stage a coup that would prove a disdainful.

disastrous and tragic failure. In a room otherwise filled with color and detail and glittering odes to the Serene Republic, the blacked-out portrait certainly makes it clear that this doge had made some fatal error. But as if a big old black box weren't signal enough that he screwed up, the drape also has an inscription painted in bold, gold, gold, letters that leaves no doubt as to the Doja's fate. It reads in Latin, Hecest Locus Marini Fletro di Capititi Po Craminibus. This is the place of Marino Faglio Folliero, beheaded for his crimes. I'm Dana Schwartz, and this is Noble Blood. The early history of Venice is a blend of myth and reality, bolstens.

by a lack of historical records and an abundance of dramatic flair. Tradition has it that Venice was founded on March 25th in the year 421 CE at exactly the stroke of noon. Three consuls from nearby Padua were said to have founded the city that would become an empire with the establishment of a trading post on the islands of the Rialto and the consecration. of a church dedicated to St. James. The mainland making up the coast of the Venetian lagoon, which the Venetians would come to call the Terraferma, was likely settled in the second century

by Roman refugees from what is now northern Italy, who ran to the coast as they were fleeing Germanic and Hun invaders. Successive invasions over the course of several hundred years continue to push them further. Finally, after the invasion of the Lombards in 568, we begin to see references in documents to the Incoli Lacunae, or the lagoon dwellers, those who had not only begun to take refuge on the islands in the lagoon,

but had fashioned them to their benefit by building embankments, allowing them to thrive in what had previously been an uninhabitable environment. According to legend, the lagoon dwellers elected their first doge in 697, but the first doge for whom we have historical evidence was elected by the 12 major families of Venice a few decades later, in 726 or 727. But unlike most of the Dukes that you know, who tend to be. to either answer to a king or rule an area as sovereign, the Venetian doge from the very beginning

was intended as the head of a republic. The doge was the head of state, but a great deal of political power rested in the hands of the Concho, the People's Assembly, which consisted originally of all male citizens and patricians, that is, nobles, of Venice. The Contrable, of Venice. The Conchurches, initially had the responsibility of appointing the Doge. The Doge wasn't a hereditary position, but an elected one. The same went for the members of the Great Council, a group of so-called wise men appointed by the Concho to assist the Doge in governance. All this to say, the history of Venice, and more importantly, Venetian's idea of the history of Venice, was ever present as the Republic continued to grow and change into the Middle Ages and far beyond.

Central to the Venetian civic identity was this traditional story of a group of people coming together to collectively defend themselves against a common enemy and to build their city literally from the ground up together. It was this steadfast commitment to the idea of the Republic and what it stood for that earned Venice its nickname, La Serenissimo, meaning the most serene. However, contrary to this self-given moniker, medieval Venice was not without its rumblings. Marino Folliero was born in 1274, and by that time Venice had seen a number of significant political shifts. as the city wrestled between its Republican ideals and the hunger of a growing elite class who wanted more power.

We know very little, if anything, about Marino Folliero's early life. He was the son of Yacopo Follero and Bariola Loredan, and was one of three sons. He had an uncle who shared his name, which has led to some confusion over the years in the historical record. We know the Folliero family was patrician, which was particularly important given that in 1297, when Folliero was 23, the nobles of Venice orchestrated what came to be known as the Great Lockout. The Great Council moved to make membership in its ranks hereditary rather than elected, essentially stripping the concho of its power, including the power to elect the dode. and creating a closed noble class in the city.

Venice continued to call itself a republic, but it was now very much an oligarchy. Despite our sparse history of his early life, we do know that Folliero's early political career was defined by dealing with the aftermath of that lockout. His first documented appearance in the historical record finds him rising in these, now close. ranks. On October 10th, 1315, at 41 years old, he was on the newly formed Council of

Ten, an inquisitorial arm of the Venetian government when it decided to reward the man who had killed Niccolo Corini, who had played an instrumental role in an attempted coup that had taken place a few years prior. That conspiracy had happened in 1310 when Niccolo Corini Bayamonte, Tiepolo, and other conspirators had attempted to overthrow the Venetian government in order to restore the power of the Concho. For a number of reasons, including poor planning and bad weather, their plan failed. The Council of Ten, which Bollierra was on, was originally formed to deal with the aftermath of that conspiracy, instituting the election of, you guessed it, 10 noble men who were tasked with prosecuting crimes against the state.

When Tiepolo surrendered, the 10 exiled him and sentenced him to be, quote, condemned in memory. This was a legal punishment at the time that could be pretty wide-ranging in what it actually looked like, but the intended effect was to remove a person from official accounts or public memory. The punishment of being condemned in memory was not really about complete erasure, though. It was more symbolic than anything else, meant mostly as a social punishment to a person's descendants and associates, and a cautionary tale to anyone who would dare challenge the nobility's power. So think less 1984 and more burn from the musical Hamilton.

Eliza knows that her burning her letters won't mean that no one will ever know who her husband was in the future, but without those letters, the story that we tell about him will be different. Forgive the musical theater reference, but it seemed fitting. For Tiepolo, being condemned in memory meant that his house was demolished, and in its place a so-called column of infamy was erected. The column, which a henchman of Tiepoloz would later lose his eyes and a hand for attempting to destroy, read, roughly translated, This land belonged to Bayamante, and now for his inquisitous betrayal,

this has been placed to frighten others and to show these words to everyone forever. If all this sounds a little, I don't know, familiar, hold that thought. Marino Foliere remained on the Council of Ten for another five years after his first appearance in its records. Over the following decades, Folliero continued to be appointed to various government positions that saw him accumulate a good deal of power and a great deal of respect. He would actually go on to serve on the Council of Ten several more times, occasionally at its head, interspersed with stints, engaging in mercantile trade, serving on a tribunal mediating disputes between commoners, captaining a galley ship, and representing Venice abroad as a diplomat.

In 1343, he was in the running for Doge, but in a shocking upset, 37-year-old Andrea Dandolo was elected instead. The position of Doge, although elected, was traditionally given to the eldest and most experienced member of the patriciate, and Folliero outranked Dandolo in both regards. It must have been a real blow to the older man's ego, but if it was, he never let on. Folliero continued to serve Venice faithfully. By September 7, 1354, when Dandolo died at only 48 years old, Marino Follero was in Avignon, serving as the ambassador of Venice to Pope Innocent the 6th. Meanwhile, Venice buried the Doge, and then the Great Council began the comically complicated process of selecting his successor.

Put in place to attempt to prevent any one noble from making a power grab, the process began with the convening of the Council, and now bear with me for a system that seems almost insanely baroque and complex. So, once the Great Council had convened, the youngest, counselor present would be sent outside the palace to choose a random eight to 10 year old child off the street who would serve essentially as the Vanna White of the Dojel election. This random child was responsible for drawing smooth metal balls called Balote, where the word ballot comes from, with the names of counselors written on them. Thirty council members would be chosen this way, and then from those 30 30s, the child would choose nine names. Those nine counselors would choose, of their own volition,

40 counselors. And then out of those 40, the random street child would choose 12. The 12 would then choose 25 counselors. And then from those, the child would draw nine. Those nine would choose 45, and the child of those 45 would randomly draw 11. And then those 11 would choose. choose 41, and then those 41 people would elect the Doge. And of those 41 electors, 35 this time around voted for Marino Fagliaro, one of the oldest and most honorable members of the Venetian nobility, who had given decades of service to the republic. A messenger was soon sent to Avignon to retrieve him, and a group of 12 ambassadors met him in Verona to formally. give him the good news. He was 80 years old, but Marino Folliero was finally, finally, the doge of Venice.

He had reached the pinnacle, the ultimate goal of any noble Venetian. How victorious he must have felt on that boat coming into his city, watching Venice emerge slowly over the water as if to welcome him home. But perhaps his serenity, like the Republic whose honorific he now shared, also had the sense that something else was bubbling under the surface. Marino Felyero returned to Venice in October 1354 as the ruler of a city in turmoil. The Republic had been at war with Genoa again, and barely two months into Faliero's tenure as Doge, Venice faced an embarrassing naval defeat against Genoa in the Battle of Portolongo, the result of poor strategy on the part of the Venetian naval forces. While Genoa gathered power in the wake of its victory, the Venetian people grew restless. Resentment against the nobility had been brewing since the great lockout, but it seemed now to be.

reaching a boiling point. It was in this environment of tension, with the threat of the Genoese on the horizon, that things began to take a turn toward the treasonous for Marino Fagliaro, almost immediately after his reign as Doge began. There is much we do not know for sure about the lead-up to what has been termed the Folliero coup. There is uncertainty even about why he did it at all. At first, glance, it seems at odds with Folliero's character and history. How could this man, who had seemingly spent decades in service of Venice, without causing any trouble, turn on his beloved republic so suddenly? In classic Venetian fashion, there is a traditional story on one hand, and a less

interesting, more complicated, but ultimately more likely theory on the other. We'll start with the Juicy story, obviously. Not long into Folliero's reign, it seems early 1355, Folliero married a woman named Alquina Gradenigo, the daughter of a former Doge, Pietro Gradenigo. This was not Folliero's first marriage, but we don't know much about his first wife. She may have been named Tomasina Contorini, and it seems that they had two daughters, Lucia and Pignola. In any case, Alquina at 45 years old was much younger than her husband, only slightly more than half of Folliero's age. The truth is we know pretty little about her, too, but the story tends to paint her as a 14th century gold digger, beautiful, vivacious, and most of all, licentious.

According to the story, she was rumored to have been engaging in affairs with numerous members of these. patrician class. During a carnival celebration at the Doge's Palace in 1555, it is said that Doge Folliero observed one of these nobles, the 24-year-old Michel Steno, flirting with the Doge Ressa, or possibly flirting with one of her ladies in waiting. Either way, incensed at the disrespectful actions of the young noble, Folliero kicked Steno out of the festivities. The incident would have certainly rankled the aging doge to see his beautiful younger wife receiving attention from a much younger man. But the real kicker came reportedly hours later when Steno snuck back into the palace under cover of night and carved an insult into Folliero's chair in the chamber of the great council. It got right to the heart of the matter.

quote, Marino Fagero with the beautiful wife, he maintains her and others enjoy her. For this act, the story goes, Steno was arrested, but still Folliero wasn't satisfied. He wasn't just angry at Steno, but at the entire patrician. After his decades of service, this was how they repaid him, by sleeping with his wife and defacing the symbols of his office? He thought of the other city-states of Italy, whose dukes commanded almost absolute power in comparison to his. They would never have been humiliated in that way, and if they were, the punishment would have surely been more severe. Well, maybe it could be.

Of course, there isn't really much actual historical evidence to support this salacious revenge story, and it seems to have begun spreading much later, which is generally a good historical indicator that the story didn't really happen. It's more likely that Folliero's quarrels with the nobility were political in nature and bolstered by the class tensions brought on by the lockout and stoked by the war with Genoa.

If indeed he looked to the other city-states and to the absolute power wielded, by their dukes, Folliero was probably thinking less about punishing his personal enemies, and more about how a singular, powerful doge might benefit Venice. We also can't discount simple greed or hunger for power. At his trial, Folliero seemed to regret the coup, and framed it more as a crime of passion than a calculated political scheme, never mentioning any belief that absolute rulership would benefit Venice. It's possible he simply saw an opportunity to have it all and tried to take it. Whatever the reason, it seems that the conspiracy began to take shape in the

early spring of 1355. It was then that Folliero connected with Bertuccio Isorello and Felipe Calendario, two men who were among the class of Venetians who were respected and wealthy, but still excluded from the closed noble class. We don't know much about Isorello, but Calendario was an architect and was in fact among the designers of the Doge's palace that you can still see today. The plot had less the air of a popular revolution and more the air of a pyramid scheme. The idea was that Folliero and Isorello would each recruit 20 men to their cause and each of those men were going to recruit a another 40. After that, though, the plot becomes very, very simple. In a manner of speaking,

kill all the nobles and their families. The plan was to wait until April 15th at dawn, attacking at the stroke of the bells from San Marco. Without the nobility, power in Venice would shift back to where it belonged to the people, or perhaps more accurately, to the one noble who wouldn't be killed, the Doge leading the people. Things started off well enough. The conspirators found sympathy, especially with those working in maritime trade, who were particularly resentful of the nobility in the wake of the Battle of Portolungo. The best part was that, given the recruitment structure of the coup, the Doge's involvement was really only known to the inner circle of a few trusted men.

It was that lack of transparency, though, that would ultimately prove to be Folliero's downfall. On the night before the coup was set to take place, one conspirator who had been roped into the pyramid scheme, a man named Beltrame, attempted to warn the procurator of San Marco, Niccolo Leon, of the impending danger. Beltrame had no knowledge of Folliero's involvement, and so Leon, of course, went straight to the doad. with his concerns. When Folliero dismissed them, however, suspicion began to set in. Beltrame seemed to have his information on good authority. Why did the doge just brush them off? Leon brought his concerns to a few trusted members of the great council. It turned out that Beltrame was not the only conspirator who had squealed, and several other nobles had also been warned of the plot. It was becoming clear that something was very, very wrong, and that

Folliero may have had something to do with it. Within hours, the Council of Ten was convened, along with every major magistracy in the Republic, except the Doge. As nobles filed into the Piazza San Marco, armed to the teeth and awaiting reinforcements, Colombo Calendario and Bertucci Isarello were arrested. Under interrogation and likely torture, they revealed the names of many of their fellow conspirators, including that of Marino Valliero, the Doge of Venice. On April 15th, the day that would have changed Venetian history forever,

nine of the conspirators, including Calendario and Isarello, were hanged from the arches of the Dio. Doge's palace. Legend has it that they were hanged with bits in their mouths so that they couldn't use their last words to shout to the crowd watching from the square below and stir up even more anti-patrician sentiment. Several other conspirators were sentenced to life imprisonment. With that done, the nobles had to turn their attention to their greatest betrayal, the Doge himself. The Council of Ten, the very council from which Fagliaro himself had prosecuted a similar conspiracy just 40 years earlier, presided over the trial, along with the minor council and the Zonta, which were all tasked with mitigating the Doja's authority. The trial was quick and somber, and by the next day a verdict had been reached.

The Doge's fate was sealed. on April 17, 1355, after fewer than seven months in office, and just two days after he thought he would be the Lord of Venice, Marino Folliero was sentenced to death. This would not be a public execution. If Venetians knew anything, it was how to spin a story, and they knew the difference between a traitor and a martyr is often a matter of optics. They had made a display of the commoners they executed. It was also important to show the might of the Republic against those who would destroy it. But a Doge who had turned on his own government was another matter entirely. There would be no opportunity for Marino Folliero to become a popular hero in death. Instead, the sentence would be carried out in Folliero's own home, in the courtyard of the Doge's palace.

Despite its privacy, however, the execution was very much a performance. In the presence of the entire nobility, the men with whom Folliero had worked with for decades, and then betrayed, the fallen Doge was led by procession into the courtyard. Members of the Council of Ten stripped him of his royal regalia before he was beheaded with a sword. To complete the story, and likely also to satisfy Curellors, commoners. Once the deed was done, one of the ten leaned out of a balcony with a bloody sword in one hand and Folliero's head in the other. He announced their victory. Look, justice has been done to the traitor. On that day in 1355, Marino Folliero's new legacy was cemented,

but his punishment was far from over. Like Bayamante Tiappolo before him, Folliero was sent to Dominoe Memoria, being condemned in memory. In addition to his removal from official records, the day of his conviction, April 16th, would be marked every year, and subsequent doges would hold a procession and ceremony in Piazza San Marco to remember Folliero's tragic betrayal and inevitable defeat.

Legend has it that all of the coinage from Folliero's reign, which would have borne his likeness, was melted down, although it's more likely that given how short his reign was, it simply hadn't been minted yet. But Marino Folliero's sentence wouldn't really be complete until 11 years later, in 1366, when the Council of Ten decreed that his portrait in the Chamber of the Great Council should be painted over,

and an inscription placed in its stead. Hick-Fuittlocis, Ser Marina Feletri, decapitati pro-crimine pro-dittionis. This was the place of Sir Marino Faliari, beheaded for the crime of treason. You may have noticed that that's not quite the inscription I read at the beginning of this episode. That's because in 1577,

over 200 years after Marino Feliari's execution, a fire destroyed. significant portions of the Doge's Palace, including the Chamber of the Great Council. When it was rebuilt, new paintings had to be commissioned to replace the old, including the set of portraits and the portrait that had been painted over that had been present in the previous iteration of the chamber. Instead of simply omitting his portrait, the Venetian government chose to keep the spirit of Folliero's condemnation, commissioning the black drape

with the inscription, as you can still see today. There's no portrait under the new painting, however. With the fire, the last vestiges of the memory of who Marino Fagliaro had been before the coup, devoted politician, defender of Venice, long and faithful servant to the Republic, had finally been erased. leaving only Marino Feliari the traitor and his punishment in his place.

That's the story of Marino Folliero's ill-fated conspiracy, but stick around after a brief sponsor break to hear about how an unexpected historical figure helped to resurrect his memory. Will Ferrell's Big Money Players and IHeart Podcast presents soccer moms. So I'm Leanne. Yeah. This is my best friend Janet. Hey. And we have been joined at the hip-haired.

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Listen to soccer moms on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. A few months after spending a couple of rainy days writing scary stories with his fellow romantics at Villa Diodati, the famed poet and noble blood favorite, Lord Byron, found himself in Venice for the first time. It was the winter of 1816. The abdication of the last doge of Venice, who had capitulated to Napoleon, had happened not quite ten years prior. Although the city's millennium or so long tenure as a serene republic was well and truly over, the memory of its glittering, powerful past was still very much alive.

Byron didn't intend to stay in Venice for too long, but on brand as ever, he met a girl. Several girls, actually, all of them married, and that's a same. story for another episode, maybe, but because of his illicit romantic pursuits, Byron ended up staying in Venice longer than planned, three years, in fact, and it ended up having a significant impact on his work. Between swimming at the beach on Lido, learning Armenian from a community of monks, and, of course, charming married women in their fancy Venetian palazzo's, Byron had the opportunity to spend some time in the Doge's Palace, which at the time still housed some administrative and cultural offices.

It's clear that the palace stuck with him. In fact, it was Byron who gave the Bridge of Size, translated from the Italian Pontide Sopire, its famed English moniker, when he wrote about it in his verse poem, Child Herald's pilgrimage. I stood in Venice on a bridge of size, a palace and a prison on each hand. But something else in the Doge's palace struck our dear Byron, the black veil painted in the chamber of the Great Council. He would later write that seeing Marino Folliero's absent portraits, along with the great staircase, leading into the courtyard where the Doge had been executed, had, quote, struck forcibly upon his imagination, so much so that, in fact, in 1820,

he published a tragic play, dramatizing Marino Folliero's strange and tragic story. To Byron, who had spent time reading Venetian chronicles, hunting for the Doge's grave, and learning everything he could about Venetian history, Marino Faglio was, quote, a man of talent and courage, but also a, quote, fiery character plagued by an ungovernable temper. A failure as a ruler, perhaps, but as a compelling, dramatic figure, Byron could think of no one better suited to the position. Byron's play, Marino Follero, Doja Venice, was meant mostly to be read, and it was, but it was also performed in London shortly after its publication in 1821, two middling reviews.

Byron maintained that critics who disliked the play were just disappointed there wasn't a romance plot in it. Nevertheless, the play was influential. The painter Eugene Delacro's gruesome depiction of Folliero's beheading on the giant staircase, completed in 1825 or 26, was drawn from Byron's writing. A later performance of Byron's play in 1829 would also inspire the playwright Casimir Delavine to offer his own spin on the Folliero story, which would in turn inspire Gatano Donizetti's opera Marino Folliero, which premiered in Paris in 1835. Byron's curiosity and the play that came of it restored some piece of Marino Follero's life and legacy. Though certainly not the paragon of historical accuracy, it allowed generations of people to think beyond the blacked-out portrait and the boogeyman story of the evil doge who almost destroyed Venice.

What we've been left with, funnily enough, is a figure who is elusive and dramatic, part fiction and part fact. In other words, unmistakably Venetian. Noble Blood is a production of IHeart Radio and Grim and Mild from Aaron Manky. Noble Blood is created and hosted by me, Dana Schwartz, with additional writing and researching by Hannah Johnston, Hannah Zwick, Mira Hayward, Courtney Sender, and Lori Goodman. The show is edited and produced by Noamie Griffin and Rima Il-Ka Ali, with supervising producer Josh Thane,

and executive producers Aaron Manky, Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick. For more podcasts from IHeart Radio, visit the IHart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Will Ferrell's Big Money Players and IHart Podcasts presents Soccer Boms. So I'm Leanne. Yeah. This is my best friend, Janet. And we have been joined at the hips since high school.

Absolutely. A redacted amount of years later, we're still joined at the hip. Just a little bit bigger hips. This is a podcast we're recording it as we tailgate our youth soccer games in the back of my Honda Odyssey With all the snacks and drinks Why did you get hard seltzer instead of beer? They hit a bogo.

Well, then you got it. Listen to soccer moms on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.