Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - Jimmy Carter

Episode Date: September 6, 2021

Alex Schmidt is joined by comedian/podcaster Adam Tod Brown (‘Unpopular Opinion’ podcast network) and comedian/podcaster Jeff May (‘Jeff Has Cool Friends’ podcast) for a look at why Jimmy Carter is secretly incredibly fascinating. Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources, handy links, and this week's bonus episode.

Hey, it's me, Alex Schmidt, and I want to give you a note about Libro.fm because I've partnered this podcast with them because I think what they do is amazing. Libro.fm sells audiobooks. They also do it differently than the one giant audiobook company you've probably dealt with before. Because Libro.fm partners with more than 1,300 local bookstores in the U.S. and Canada and a few other countries. They sell those same audiobooks that you want, and then every time you buy an audiobook from Libro.fm, part of the money goes to the local bookstore near you. That helps them. That stays in your community. I think it's an amazing thing. I think it's how stuff should work from now on. And then on top of that, because I partnered with Libro.fm, I can offer you a deal. Use code SIFPOT at checkout to get two audiobook credits for the price of one. That's right, you get two books for the price of one. Credits never expire,

and credits can go toward any of more than 150,000 audiobooks in the Libro.fm catalog. By the way, if you particularly love this week's episode, you might like the audiobook version of his very best, Jimmy Carter Alife. That's a biography by Jonathan Alter that goes way in depth on Jimmy Carter. It's just amazing. Again, that deal is code SIFTPOD at checkout at their website, Libro.fm. And then one last thing, I always say it with a promotional message like this, patrons of Secretly Incredibly Fascinating do not have to hear these messages.

They go straight into the show. So if you'd like your episodes with no promotions, and you'd like tons of other benefits, and you'd like to be part of what makes this whole thing possible, please head to SifPod.fun and sign up. And in the meantime, please enjoy this new episode. Jimmy Carter. Known for one term.

Famous for nice. Nobody thinks much about him, so let's have some fun. Let's find out why Jimmy Carter is secretly incredibly fascinating. Hey there, folks. Welcome to a whole new podcast episode, a podcast all about why being alive is more interesting than people think it is. My name is Alex Schmidt, and I'm not alone. Adam Todd Brown and Jeff May are back for this episode. Adam Todd Brown is the creator, host, proprietor, all-knowing, all-seeing leader of the Unpopular Opinion Podcast Network. Host for Pride, our all-knowing, all-seeing leader of the Unpopular Opinion Podcast Network. Jeff May is a frequent guest and sometimes host there.

He also has his own wonderful podcast called Jeff Has Cool Friends. Also, you may know them from multiple episodes of this podcast about colors. Also, I've gathered all of our zip codes and used internet resources like native-land.ca to acknowledge that I recorded this on the traditional land of the Lenape people. Acknowledge Adam recorded this on the traditional land of the Gabrielino-Wartongva and Keech peoples. Acknowledge Jeff recorded this on the traditional land of the Gabrielino-Wartongva and Keech and Chumash and Fernandinho-Taraviam peoples. and acknowledge that in all of our locations, native people are very much still here. That feels worth doing on each episode. And today's episode is about Jimmy Carter. Also, I figure this goes without saying, but just in case it doesn't,

this is probably the first explicitly political episode of Secretly Incredibly Fascinating. Because I, you know, I think any topic can be political. Politics is about power and how it's used on people. But Jimmy Carter was a president. Jimmy Carter was also a governor and a state senator. And he's also a touchstone for how our politicians act. They'll get compared to Jimmy Carter, for better or for worse. And so, so yeah, talking about him will be political. That's just the nature of it. Also, the idea, as always, is to find what is secretly incredibly fascinating. So we're not going to focus on the couple of super famous parts of his biography, like the peanut farm, or that he's from Georgia, or that he served one term. We're going to get into things that are

much, much less known. By the way, some of those things are very, very positive. Some of those things are incredibly negative, in particular in the third takeaway out of four this week. It's a very negative story about him. So I hope you're comfortable with that because he's an elder statesman. He's also somebody that I wish people knew all the interesting things about. I believe Jimmy Carter is best known for pretty uninteresting things about him. And the most interesting things are what we talk about today, because I find them to be the title of the podcast. So let's get into it.

Please sit back or keep driving to the town of Plains, Georgia, because you decided to hear this in the most Jimmy Carter location. Good for you. Either way, here's this episode of Secretly Incredibly Fascinating with Adam Todd Brown and Jeff May. I'll be back after we wrap up. Talk to you then. Adam, Jeff, I'm so glad you're back. And either of you can start, but this non-color topic we have here, how do you feel about Jimmy Carter? It's my favorite color.

Yeah, my favorite shade of beige. Oh, yeah. Jimmy Carter is sort of the example. Jimmy Carter was the example i used to use after 9-11 when people are like we need a good kind of like we need a good and nice president and i'm like do we because we had that once it didn't go particularly well all the time there were some snags yeah i think people don't realize how obama like jimmy carter was because he came into office as as like the not young he obviously wasn't young but he like was kind of hip like he hung out with rock stars and listened to their music bob dylan was a big supporter terribly ineffective president and i

like had he had he not been replaced by reagan i i would not have uh cared that he only served one term jimmy carter is one of those things where you're just like yeah he's pretty rock and roll he's got a peanut farm that's rad as hell have a little peanut farm uh i always think that dan akroyd did like the worst like the presidential impressions of early saturday night live were absolutely abysmal yeah you should hear my dan akroyd impression i bet it pretty great i just did that on a podcast recently and it was bad times people are like who are you doing now dan akroyd like i'm doing guy from illinois just like dan akroyd right he's shilling crystal skull vodka welcome try to get my crystal crystal skull peanut butter that's the only peanut butter found in a crystal skull

you can find it you can find it across liquor stores all across georgia You can find it across liquor stores all across Georgia. Well, and I think I didn't know very much at all about Carter before doing this research, even though, like you guys kind of said, he's often a touchstone for recent presidents. We're taping this, what, August 30th. And I've been seeing a ton of tweets last few days about Biden and Afghanistan. And Jimmy Carter keeps coming up because people are like, ah, another ridiculous, potentially one term Democrat who can't do stuff. Yeah. And it's a good is the immediate go to in terms of crises. It's a good comparison. I don't

think what happened in Afghanistan is completely unlike the Iran hostage crisis. it's a big big problem it's it's also good to know that i think biden walked in saying he was going to be a one-term president oh yeah like i i think that was like kind of his thing he's like hey i'm just i'm just here to stop the bleeding yeah he said he was here to be a bridge to the progressives like pete budaj right famous progressive and it's like oh yeah great get another cia guy in office that'll be fun carter carter is unfortunately and to build off of what adam said carter is the keystone of what would lead to sort of the kind of decline of of american politics because his lack of effect is what kind of bought us reagan yeah and boy boy is that that's a whole last thing that you have to deal with after that because once reagan comes in there are that we start losing like the rules of how politics are

supposed to be yeah and i look like just looking at it from now, I was always surprised that like the Democrats didn't win several times after Nixon, you know, you would think everybody would be like, Oh, they did Nixon. Well, we can't vote for them ever again, but Nope. They came right back and were president most of the time, the Republicans. Yeah. I don't, I don't doubt that the country wasn't a whole lot different back then in that there was probably, you know, 40, 35, 40% of the country that was like, I don't care about Watergate.

Yeah. Nixon's my president. Yeah. Watergate does not bother me. Yeah. Does your conscience bother you? Now tell the truth. We were doing Sweet Home Alabama there.

That's a song. Check it out on the next episode is secretly incredibly fascinating the episode about leonard skinner's get her joe yeah yeah i mean they did survive a plane crash at least partially so that's impressive did they somewhat not the important members but some of them survived they played free bird uh they played free bird on a boom box as my cousin was being lowered into the ground oh wow okay yeah on like a little boom box how long did it take them to lower him to the ground jesus and i was sitting there and i was just like are we doing this like all right jeff when you said they lowered, I initially thought they meant the members of Lynyrd Skynyrd did.

Like, it's like, why were they there? Why didn't they play it themselves? I'm so confused. A very difficult to book funeral, if I may. Well, anyway, Jimmy Carter, founding member of Lynyrd Skynyrd. Right. It's true. He's from the South, probably.

Let's get into Jimmy Carter. And on every episode, our first fascinating thing about the topic is a quick set of fascinating numbers and statistics. This week, that's in a segment called... Baby, if you've ever numbered, numbered, whatever became of means. I'm statsing on the air in calculation calculating y equals mx plus b and that name was submitted macarena if you're at home jeff did the macarena because it is stuck in his head and so that's why

but uh that name was submitted by jonathan smookler thank you jonathan we have a new name every week please submit to sif pot on twitter or to sif pot at gmail.com and make them as silly and wacky and bad as possible i'm gonna start playing that game can i win that game yeah i don't i think one guest people be like is jeff may like, is Jeff May like... Christian Ramirez did it. Is Jeff May like a fan of the show? Anyway, you got some numbers and stats for us, Alex? Yeah. Can we get on with the podcast, please? Jeez, man.

Have a little concentration. The first number is 39. It's a simple one. Jimmy Carter was the 39th president of the United States, inaugurated in January 1977 and served one term. I'd like to check that fact. Are you sure? It doesn't sound right to me. That is pretty incredibly fascinating. And what a secret. Yeah. He's also probably most famous during his presidency for the Camp David Accords and the Iran hostage crisis. And then most famous for Habitat for Humanity during his presidency for the Camp David Accords and the Iran hostage crisis,

and then most famous for Habitat for Humanity after his presidency. So we're not going to talk much about any of those things, because they're pretty well known. There's other stuff to talk about. More interesting, more secret. You really hate talking about Habitat for Humanity, huh? Yeah. I try to bring it up every time on a podcast, and Alex is like, we will not be talking about this. Yeah, yeah. time on a podcast and alex is like we will not be talking about this yeah yeah every week the next number here is 97 because on october 1st this coming october 1st jimmy carter will turn 97 years old maybe that's too old i'm gonna be honest that's that's too old that's that is too that's deeply too old yeah it's old but that being said he's doing good stuff

oh yeah yeah like he's he's done like he's done consistently good things i'm surprised like it's funny that we've put like mr rogers up on a pedestal for being a good dude which he objectively was yeah and everyone's like you know jimmy car, too. Yeah. And has been for like his whole life, especially he is not only the longest lived president ever. He passed George H.W. Bush in 2019 after a little while after Bush's death. He's also the longest retired U.S. president ever. He passed Hoover in 2012 for that. He he this coming January, he will have been 41 years out of office. This coming January, he will have been 41 years out of office.

Side note, too, he killed George H.W. Bush. Which is secretly incredibly fascinating. He was like a Highlander. He wanted to be the only one. Yeah. Yeah. You know who? Doers do.

That's all I'm saying. That's true. That's true. Yeah. He also, he's very old james earl carter jr was born on october 1st of 1924 and according to a biography of carter by journalist jonathan alter it's titled his very best carter is the first u.s president who was ever born in a hospital wow which i know is like surprising but also just a reminder that we haven't been doing births in hospitals for that long.

Historically. Back in the day, man, people used to just be like, Oh, is this where we eat stew? Let's put a kid on there. Let's get a wet,

slick kid on there. Right. Oh, she's about to have a baby. Now I have to do the dishes was like life for a long time. Yeah. Yeah. Back in the day, they were always boiling sheets for some reason yeah quick boil some sheets i'm like is do mothers eat sheets what's happening here i don't understand the next number here we've got it's going to be a few different dates in a row that are very

interesting next one is july 15th of. And on that date, July 15th, 1979, Jimmy Carter gave a televised address that was popularly called the malaise speech. But there's an amazing JSTOR Daily article all about it. For one thing, he did not use the word malaise in it. He talked about a crisis of confidence in the United States, mainly due to the energy crisis. And then according to JSTOR Daily, 61% of the public, according to polls, said that it inspired further confidence. 72% said they were inspired to help solve the energy crisis. And Carter's approval rating went up 12 points. But in the narrative of Carter, this was like a failed speech that made him weak and ruined the presidency. But it didn't help Carter in the end because just everything still went wrong

with Iran and energy and everything else. I like that three quarters of the country is like, I'm going to do something about the energy crisis. Like they all went to school. It's very sweet. To become engineers. Just help drill more. What were they going to do to fix the energy crisis

go give opec the business yeah it turns out the answer is cocaine yeah that does sound like a group of people that are just really getting into cocaine they're just like yo man we gotta fix the energy crisis, man. Make our own gas. Yeah, we got to come up with like our very own fuel. It's not like controlled by the government. Speaking of energy, next number here is June 20th, 1979. So there's a few weeks before that speech.

That's when President Jimmy Carter unveiled the first ever White House solar panels carter put solar panels on the top of the white house and uh there's an amazing scientific tore them off that is exactly what happened reagan had them taken down in 1986 because he said they were yeah we need more more room for snipers. Well, and in June 1979, Carter gave a speech on the roof with the 32 solar panels they put in. He predicted they would still be there in the year 2000, providing cheap, efficient energy. The Reagan administration gutted all the budget for researching solar and had the panels thrown out in 1986. A Maine college administrator found them in like a storage thing and helped save them. And now there's one at the Carter Library, one at the Smithsonian, and also one on display at a science museum in China, partly because Bloomberg says as of 2021, Chinese

companies make about three quarters of the world's solar panels and so a chinese company endowed this exhibit and uh you know we because we basically stopped between carter and obama other countries do this now i like that you said china makes three quarters of the world's solar panels and i thought you were just gonna say stuff oh just um did you say like a main college administrator state of maine yeah from the state of maine what was he like where did he find those because like that's like are they like was it indiana jones oh the big the big warehouse of arcs and stuff yeah and and the and the kingdom of the shiny energy because that's like a weird thing because it's like were they stored in maine because that's a

big trip from from washington to maine that's that's you know he uh nine hour drive so it was in 1991 peter marbach was the development director at unity college in the state of maine and he saw a magazine photo of the panels in a government service warehouse in virginia i don't know why that was in a magazine, but from there he looked into having them saved and not thrown in a landfill, and that's why we still have some. What an everyman kind of thing to do. Yeah.

Just be like, to call up, excuse me, magazine? Let's save these panels. The next number here is another date, January 22nd, 1977. That is two days after Carter was inaugurated. And it is when he watched the movie All the President's Men in the White House. All the President's Men is about Woodward and Bernstein catching Nixon doing crimes that had come out many months before. And so the very first movie Carter screened there was that anti-Nixon movie. Pretty dope. I like it. And a couple months later, Star Wars comes out.

Also to Carter's credit. So the other fun thing we have, and this is a link for people to just comb through, writer Matt Novak over at Gizmodo went through Carter's daily journals, because apparently you can FOIA those. And he made a list of every movie Carter watched while president and which date. And so among other things, we know that he watched The Empire Strikes Back five days after it hit theaters. He watched that at the White House. Strikes Back five days after it hit theaters.

He watched that at the White House. And then on February 4th of 1978, he watched the first Star Wars at Camp David. And that was in the middle of the secret negotiations for the Camp David Accords. And apparently he watched it with Anwar Sadat, the president of Egypt. They just sat and watched Star Wars for a while. You want to watch Star Wars with me me i thought it's a great movie i do like that he waited five days to watch empire strikes back i'd be like stay off twitter jimmy carter yeah that movie will get ruined for you and there's a big ending to that flick yeah was it they must have been scurrying around the white house like

don't tell him darth vader is luke's father he hasn't seen it yet he might listen spoilers spoiler alert i can't wait to see what's going on with that horrible darth vader and carter was uh carter watched a ton of movies as president he watched midnight cowboy in the white house which is the first x-rated movie to win Best Picture and probably the first X-rated movie ever screened at the White House. And he got to see Apocalypse Now before it was in theaters with Francis Ford Coppola. You know, like he did cool movie stuff as president. We're sure Kennedy didn't screen any porns. He was making them.

That's true. Yeah, he was more of a doer. Time to watch another Porkin movie. I give this an honorary best picture. When the last number here, it brings us into the first takeaway for the main episode. The number is 27.

And 27 is the number of cases of guinea worm in the entire world as of 2020. And that number comes from the Carter Center. Let's go into takeaway number one. Jimmy Carter might have eradicated a parasitic disease. Yeah, guinea worm, it's a parasite in your stomach, right? Yeah, apparently it can get to lots of parts of your body. You get it by drinking infected water, but they'll like pull them out of patients' skin on their arms or legs or other locations. Yeah, they're wild

looking, man. Yeah, I had, I'm impressed because I'd fully never heard of this disease until researching President Jimmy Carter. So that's cool that you know about it. Uh, it's, it's kind of neat to, well, like,

cause like Jimmy Carter is an interesting person. Cause like his post presidential life is so much more interesting. There's a lot there. Like he's gotten some, yeah. Like he's, he's done some really cool stuff. Yeah.

I think that's most presidents though. Like after, cause being the president is kind of boring. Like it's not, you can't, really cool stuff yeah i think that's most presidents though like after because being the president is kind of boring like it's not you can't unless you're getting assassinated there's not a whole lot of deviation that is going to happen i would add a recent i would add a recent asterisk to that yeah i would still argue what trump's doing now is more interesting than when he was president he is literally trying to upend democracy now yeah and like nobody's really paying like nobody's paying attention and when i mean that i mean like people that matter aren't paying attention and we're like hey should we still keep an eye on this guy

it is yeah his carter's post-presidency we won't talk about all of it but i feel like like in researching him finding out about eradicating this disease is like i think the most interesting thing about him period i wish people knew about it it's not on the basic list of peanuts and one term and and hostages and stuff it's amazing well i'd say mostly because the list come the lists that you see compiled tend to be like what they did as a president and so you kind of don't and he's had you know as much time not being president as he has uh before being president you know more than all in there like yeah for the most part so like he's got a lot of time to figure some stuff out you're gonna solve a crisis in africa solve it yeah and he and his wife rosalyn

do all kinds of non-profit stuff including habitat for humanity but the the guinea worm is a parasitic tropical disease people and animals catch it by drinking contaminated drinking water and that leads to worms growing inside of their bodies. The worms cause lesions. And this is a disease with no vaccine, no pharmaceutical cure. The only prevention is to provide cleaner drinking water and then also to physically pull the worms out of people's skin, which is very slow, very painful. From what I understand, and correct me if I'm wrong,

or you might not know, but I believe like the way they figured out how to eradicate the guinea worm is cheesecloth. Like they were putting cheesecloth over like water and just kind of like using that as a simple filter. And it was keeping that out.'m not a hundred percent sure if it was that or a different disease, but that was like the real answer. It's sort of like, it's kind of like masks with droplets and stuff in the COVID era where it's just like, it's a,

a slightly permeable source that, that sort of catches what you need it to catch for the most part. I'm not going to let government nazis tell me i have to drink water that's not contaminated you can't tell me what to put in my body the irony of that pull my worms out i've named them so the the irony of that is how many times has the government tried to convince places to drink contaminated water oh yeah yeah yeah it's uh well especially in it's primarily africa and also parts of south asia where this disease exists and it's it's that thing of just trying to get trying to get people clean water and also education about how to tell if water is

clean or dirty is is a lot of the work um but also it's like you know with with covid uh even though we have the delta variant like it's been so miraculous that they're working vaccines for it and this is a disease the guinea worm where like drugs and pharmaceuticals don't do anything it's it's just purely cleaning water and then like taking tweezers and and other tools to unspool worms out of people's bodies in a very difficult way. Yeah, it's like, it's not a disease. It's a living... It's a parasite. It's an animal in you. It's a gosh darned animal that's just like,

I'm going to live in here and eat this thing alive. And it's not even the cool kind that helps you lose weight, like a tapeworm. It's just in there causing problems. you lose weight like a tapeworm it's just in there causing problems when and so the carter center they started their efforts to fight guinea worm in 1986 became the world leader of that effort it was sort of a just a neglected project in general and there's two main sources for this section vox and npr and npr says that in the 1980s more than 3 million people caught guinea worm annually. And by 2014, they had gotten the case count down to 126. So in less than 30 years, they went from millions to a little over 100 people.

Getting those is like being those people that catch plague now in like Arizona and stuff. now oh in like arizona and stuff because like plague is still like the yersinia pestis bacteria is still around in southwestern america and like colorado and stuff oh wow um and it's generally caught through feline or or prairie dog that like imagine being one of those 28 people and you're like yeah i got a i got plague yeah yeah like it's like me and nobody else i have this yeah yeah like like like if you're one of the people that catches guinea worm, you're kind of going to be like, look, guys, I do wash my hands and stuff. Like, that's not what happened. It was just a freak occurrence. Right. Yeah, and as far as, like, getting the number to zero, apparently experts think that the efforts of Jimmy and Rosalind Carter and their people working for him,

it will get us to zero, they think. It's just a matter of time. The main impediment is that there are a few places where it's just such an active war zone that the Carters can't send volunteers in there to help deal with this disease. That's the only limit. The guinea worms have taken up arms

in order to maintain their survival. And yeah, experts predict we will eradicate it. Vox says if we do that, it will be the first time humans have eradicated a parasite in world history. And the second disease ever eradicated after smallpox. And Jimmy Carter did that over the past 30, 35 years. That was just something he decided to do. We should pick some weak disease to try to just eliminate forever. Oh, yeah.

Something that's only like a real like, let's get rid of cowpox or something like that. And then it'll be like, how'd you do it? And be like, I don't know. We put in like weekends. Yeah. Yeah. Figured it out. That's it seems that simple, right? It's just like a side hustle hustle like you're writing a script yeah i'm just knocking out a very small very minor disease you know i'm just kind of

doing it on the side yeah yeah no one has restless leg in a small country anymore that's me yeah baby i did it yeah i did that that's going on the tinder bio i think from here we can get into takeaway number two for the show. Takeaway number two. Jimmy Carter basically invented the Iowa caucuses. And this is a pretty quick one, but he his successful run in 1976 is the main reason people pay attention to the Iowa caucuses now. He was the first one to like make something out of it well because he was like not a front runner for a while yeah he was like

12th place like no i i i think he was in like i think it was like 12th place at one point in time like i think he was behind george wallace yeah yeesh yeah our main sources here are an article from the atlantic by julian e zellizer and an article from the new yorker by jeffrey frank going into the 1976 presidential election carter had been the governor of georgia for one term and then like a georgia state senator before that when he he announced his campaign, the Atlanta Constitution covered it with the headline, Jimmy who is running for what? And that's his home state where he was the governor was like, No, this guy can't be the president. He's Jimmy Carter. That doesn't make any sense. Do we know what compelled Jimmy Carter to run for president?

Yeah, one kind of the main reason is that at the time, Georgia did not let governors run for reelection right away. They had to wait a term to do it again. And so he had just finished his term in 1974. And then he was like, well, I okay, what do I do now? Why don't I just take a shot at it? And the other reason is that there wasn't a super clear front runner. And it was as Nixon and Ford were happening. And it was kind of chaotic. super clear front runner and it was as nixon and ford were happening and it was kind of chaotic that was that was me after cracked i was like do i run for president do i start a podcast network how can i decide so i did both i opened a peanut farm yes after after adam got fired i ripped solar panels off the roof of my apartment i just ate just buckets of guinea worm. But yeah, and Carter, he decided to run. He was a huge underdog to multiple other candidates, such as Jerry Brown of California and George Wallace of Alabama. And so he was looking for a way to succeed. And then in the previous election, 1972, Iowa had moved up their caucus date by four months to make it

the first thing on the calendar. And McGovern had a little bit used it in 72, but Carter really, really used it in 1976. He spent heavily on staff and offices offices went door to door. His wife, Rosalyn drove from radio station to radio station saying my husband is running for president. And do you want to interview him on the on the air DJ here, like just random Iowa radio stations. And they also bought up seats at events like the Jefferson Jackson Day dinner, to just put people wearing Carter buttons in the seats. Like they basically said, if we invent a groundswell in Iowa, we can like get enough legitimacy to win this thing down the line. That was the goal.

Good for Iowa for finding one way to seem important. Weren't they one of the first states to legalize gay marriage? They were. Yeah. Yeah. They were way up there. Yeah. And they never overturned it either like california did for a while liberal california yeah people joke about massachusetts vermont california as being the places for that before it was legal everywhere but no iowa they

were way ahead yeah i was way early on you got a problem a problem with Massachusetts, Alex? Oh, I do. I do. I'll let Alex go first. It's where you're from. That's my problem with it. Oh, no, don't do that. Woo! Come on.

You got served. I thought I was amongst friends here, Alex. And when I say I root for the Sox, people think I mean the Red Sox. It's really frustrating. Yeah. Because they're way more famous and popular. Yeah. And better.

And just generally better. Yeah. Also, they're a major league team. They're not a minor league team. Oh, okay. Okay. Like the White Sox. But do they have a hardcore gambling black mark on their history?

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Right. No, just long term institutionalized racism. So the gambling of social life. Yeah. This brings us to our sponsors, FanDuel and DraftKings. Folks, the White Sox invented them.

And if you want to get in on gambling on sports, get yourself going. FanDuel and DraftKings. Are you a piece of trash fan duel and draft kings do you have money you don't need yeah draft kings do you want to bet on a sports thing that is going to happen within the next 10 seconds and then lose your money on that that's the thing you could do. We got a gambling website sponsorship on Unpops once, and I added the gambling addiction hotline number to the end of the ad read. Oh, good. They never paid me. Oh, wow. They were not impressed.

Hell yeah, dude. I mean, you did your job. I sure did. That's very good. But yeah, and if people were betting on the 76 primary, perfect segue. They would have given Carter very long odds. They would have said, no way. But he managed to just, like, exploit Iowa before anyone else had that way.

Also, according to The Atlantic, almost all of the other candidates literally ignored the state of Iowa, end quote. Almost all of the other candidates literally ignored the state of Iowa, end quote. And then according to New York Magazine editor Richard Reeves, there were more than 100 reporters in Iowa per polling place, if you like averaged it out. And they all just needed like something to write about. And so the only thing they had was Jimmy Carter in front of them. So they wrote about Jimmy Carter nationally. And also the other fun thing to me is that Carter did not win the caucus. He got 27% of the votes, finishing behind the top vote getter at 37%, which was uncommitted.

The top vote getter was nobody. But Jimmy Carter, finishing second to nobody and way ahead of the other actual candidates, got like the spark that launched the campaign. And from there, he eked out a win in the primary and the general and then was the president. Isn't the phrase second to none mean first, though? So like technically. Yeah, that's true. Very positive that way.

Off of that, we are going to a short break, followed by a whole new takeaway. I'm Jesse Thorne. I just don't want to leave a mess. This week on Bullseye, Dan Aykroyd talks to me about the Blues Brothers, Ghostbusters, and his very detailed plans about how he'll spend his afterlife. I think I'm going to roam in a few places, yes. I'm going to manifest and roam. All that and more on the next Bullseye from MaximumFun.org and NPR. Hello teachers and faculty. This is Janet Varney. I'm here to remind you that listening to my podcast, The JV Club with Janet Varney,

is part of the curriculum for the school year. Learning about the teenage years of such guests as Alison Brie, Vicki Peterson, John Hodgman, and so many more is a valuable and enriching experience. One you have no choice but to embrace because yes, listening is mandatory. The JV Club with Janet Varney is available every Thursday on Maximum Fun or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you. And remember, no running in the halls. Thank you.

And remember, no running in the halls. But yeah, we have we actually have two more takeaways because this is a loaded episode. We can get right into takeaway number three. Jimmy Carter ran two horrible campaigns to become the governor of Georgia. And this takeaway is going to be pretty hard on him he even by the standards of political campaigning did some like really terrible and racist stuff to win the seat of governor of georgia even though he's mainly known for being gentle you know wait a white man from the south in the 70s yes come on come on on. I know that he pursued in Georgia politics, progressivism didn't work, so he became a centrist. Yeah.

That was like essentially what he did. And a Georgia centrist is just a racist. Yeah. So there's like there's that element. And especially on basically all civil rights stuff before pretty much becoming president or even after president. He really steered toward the middle in Georgia, which is bad. So Jimmy Carter ran in 1966 and lost, but then he ran in 1970 and won the governorship of Georgia and ran a fully racist campaign like he he basically stopped short of using the n-word and other racial language but he used coded language to say he was opposed to civil

rights and would uphold segregation well he said it with an a instead of a hard r at the end so he was like i was just quoting rap lyrics like rap hasn't been invented yet yes it was they're working on it yeah yeah but uh but in the 1970 election carter's campaign used key phrases like georgia's heritage law and order local control of school busing he also described having quote respect for governor wallace and this was at the exact same time when governor Governor Wallace was running for re-election as governor of Alabama with campaign slogans such as Wake Up Alabama, Blacks Vow to Take Over Alabama. Jesus. So Jimmy Carter's going to hell.

That's cool. Why do you think he's been killing guinea worm? He's trying to get his. He named it that because he's racist it used to be called it used to be called the italian worm and then jimmy carter got a hold of it and let me tell you trouble just doing doing snl celebrity jeopardy sean connery racism with it like yeah it's a getting one yeah it's it's funny too because you're like he used coded racist language like law and order and it's like oh they're still doing that one big time yeah he would he would also be pretty much a modern

republican with this entire campaign but it's it's uh you know i think i think jimmy carr's reputation is like for being so kind and also so gentle. And in this 1970 campaign, he like went hard to win the seat no matter what. Let's make sure they stay off my peanut farm. Yeah. Keep them away. It's always funny to me whenever we assume any U.S. president is good. Like you can't be a good person and run the american government

that's those two things are completely incompatible we might have had one like in the 1800s early on would have been like yeah like one like maybe like john quincy adams or something like that it's just like generally like back there yeah like some some good very religious person but who's like a quaker in their religion you know like in that regard we need an amish president we just need a president with a beard just a president with a beard would be nice let's let's try that again you need to bring the beard back come on grant come back because people will bring up the idea of that idea of like, oh, every president was Machiavellian and dirty and brutal to become the president. And then I think if they reach for one that they don't think is that way, they reach for Jimmy Carter.

Yeah, I think it's fascinating to point out that, no, he like went for it to become governor of Georgia, which set up his run. Like he on top of all that stuff, one of his slogans in Georgia was our kind of man, our kind of governor. And that was cribbed from a George Wallace campaign. And then he also his 1970 campaign. And according to Jonathan Alter's biography, everybody around it said Carter was not told about it. There was just a secret department of his campaign he didn't know about. But it was called the Stink Tank. And their job was to do dirty tricks around race in the campaign. that guy would take votes from the more progressive Democrat that Carter was running against. They also invented a group called the Black Concern Committee, which was a total sock puppet to put out flyers that claimed to be from black people saying that the progressive Democrat didn't care enough about them and that it was like fake.

I mean, that happened in 2016 pretty heavily. We saw that kind of a lot. Yeah. And then the other stuff they did is they put out other flyers for white voters that criticized the progressive Democrat for attending Martin Luther King Jr.'s funeral a little bit earlier in time. And then... That's a critique, huh? Yes. Yeah.

And then probably... Can you believe this? Right. want to roll georgia in 1970 yeah it's it's all that stuff yeah i love that they were like um like a man's man it's like okay i get that but also jimmy carter's like 5 9 118 pounds it was very funny that he's being billed in that regard as like the stalwart. Yeah. But then the worst messaging they put out is they made a flyer also for white voters, which was just a photo of the more progressive Democrat. His name is Carl Sanders, was formerly the governor and had helped to bring the Atlanta Hawks basketball team to Atlanta.

And a colonel. Oh, and Colonel Sanders. And he was a colonel in the military. Yeah. People don't know that. But so the flyer they put out was just a photo. It was a real photo of an Atlanta Hawks playoff win celebration where a black player on the team named Lou Hudson was spraying champagne into the air

and it was getting on this progressive Democrat. Just celebrating, but they used it as like a he's too close with black people message. And Carter's Atlanta press secretary not only made the flyer, but also personally delivered a stack of them to a KKK rally. Jesus. And then just to keep it short about the other races in 1966, Carter jumped in the race super late as a spoiler, took votes from a progressive candidate,

and accidentally helped an explicit segregationist Democrat become the governor of Georgia. Wasn't his goal, but it's what happened. And throughout his Georgia political career, Carter would describe himself as a Dick Russell Democrat. Dick Russell was the longtime Democratic senator from Georgia, who was also a staunch segregationist. So everyone knew what he meant when he was saying that kind of thing. He was explicitly running against the Kennedy and LBJ more progressive Democrat records on civil rights. As Jonathan Alter's biography gets into all this, and again, it's not to like make everyone hate Jimmy Carter now. It's to point out that he, like every other president, went hard.

You know, like he really did stuff that was not great on the way up. More like Jimmy Harder. Yeah. And we have one more takeaway for the main episode here, and it's into some heroic Jimmy Carter stuff. Takeaway number four. Jimmy Carter stuff takeaway number four Jimmy Carter saved countless Canadian lives by going inside of a melting down

nuclear reactor Jimmy Carter one more time he saved countless Canadian lives by going inside of a melting down nuclear reactor did you just do like like politics mad libs yeah it's like a model un simulation like okay and this country has this problem uh yeah is that how is that how all the argo people got out of iran jimmy carter just walked into a nuclear reactor and iran was like oh man yeah send him

back he came back as the hulk it's like i thought you had to be endearing to become the hulk oh that's my secret cap i'm always endearing he hooks up and it's like it's the end of the hulk tv show where he's hitchhiking but he's doing a PSA for more transit. Like, as president, I will not have to hitchhike. Does he, like, absorb tachyons or something? Like, what is happening? Is that why the Iranians were afraid of him? Because he's just like, I'm now nuclear. Yeah, well, so part of another weird thing about Carter's reputation is that he is not tough but jimmy

carter was a u.s naval academy graduate joined the submarine service served for a long time and then he worked his way up to being a lieutenant who was serving under admiral hyman rickover who no one has heard of. It's a wild name. No, no, no. Say it again. Say it again. But Admiral Hyman Rickover was the architect of the U.S. nuclear submarine fleet, and many experts say that was a key part of winning the entire Cold War.

And so Jimmy Carter was heavily involved with submarines and nuclear engineering before he got into politics and moved back home to run the family business that was like I bet I could still kick his ass though I would obliterate him right now he's only 96 so maybe he still has something yeah I'd wear him out. Down goes Carter. Down goes Carter. He broke a hip. So in the early 1950s, Carter is a lieutenant in the Navy serving under a nuclear submarine guy.

And part of their job is to supervise military nuclear research. And the U.S. was doing some of its nuclear research in Canada. They had a facility called the Chalk River Laboratories, which was on the Ottawa River in northern Ontario. And it was upstream of Ottawa, their capital. And in December of 1952, human error flooded a reactor at the facility, which threatened to pollute and or destroy the entire area. Like they could have irradiated this river that goes into Canada's capital if it did not get fixed. You know what it would have irradiated?

Canadian guinea worms. Yep. Then they would have been giant. All hopped up on maple syrup. Worst kind of guinea worms. Sorry about infecting you, eh? They're just on little ice skates hello canadian listeners we're just two bits uh so so this is happening and admiral rickover says

jimmy carter you are in charge of a 24 man team to repair the reactor personally you need to fix this and carter and his team go to the facility. They build like a practice reactor outside so they can drill the exact things each person does in shifts in and out of the reactor. That's called Reactus. And so they, according to the experts, a human could be in there up to 90 seconds without adverse effects.

Carter's entire team did their tasks within 90 seconds. Carter was in one of the groups and was in there for 89 seconds doing repairs inside of a melting down nuclear reactor. And everybody got out, they fixed the reactor, and they studied these guys over the decades, and they have a similar probability to the general population of having cancer. So we think he safely ran a really elaborate nuclear reactor repair.

It feels like 90 seconds is a suggestion. Yeah, big time. Where it's like 89 seconds, he's like, oh, I didn't make it, and then all the cancer's like, ah, we were right there damn it you know next time it's very it's not like it's like indiana jones where he's like grabbing the hat out of the reactor with that last second yeah they definitely didn't actually measure the cancer you know what i mean like that's just a round number that they thought made sense but uh but i guess they were right. Because, yeah, people like like Carter has had cancer very late in life, but they don't

believe it has anything to do with this nuclear reactor time he spent. Like, it's just a coincidence. Yeah. I mean, when you get cancer late in life, it barely matters. Like, it's when you get it young. Like when you get it when you're old, that's just how you're going to die. Like, you're going to die somehow. Well, somehow yeah well yeah something's coming yeah there you go yeah like if there was something really fun right now out in the world and they were like you can enjoy it but it's gonna give

you cancer when you're like 95 or 96 i'd be like let's enjoy it that's that sounds like a fair bargain yeah let's ride the wave. Yeah, I'm not going to make it to 96 anyway. You crazy? But yeah, and Carter's team prevented us from blowing up part of Canada with our nuclear research. And no one knows about this. Okay, but what part again? What part was it?

It's northern Ontario on the Ottawa River. Yeah, I was going to say, if it's like Winnipeg or something. It's kind of a lateral move. We could have lost that. Yeah. Just joking, Winnipeg. Your city's great. Yeah, we love the Jets.

Yeah, they're like the... Winnipeg is the Jersey Turnpike of Canadian cities. It really is. And here's the thing. Most Canadians would agree with us, so it's fine. Most people in Winnipeg would agree. The main things I know about Winnipeg are from a couple listeners, but then from Adam going to concerts there when he lived in the Dakotas.

Is that accurate? Yeah, I saw Oasis there. And to get to Winnipeg from south dakota you get on i-29 that's it you're just on i-29 for six hours and it takes you anywhere you need to go in winnipeg and it takes you to 1976 where winnipeg and that's where winnipeg is. Yeah. Oh, the Carter years. Wow. Folks, that is the main episode for this week. My thanks to Adam Todd Brown and to Jeff May for helping me crack open the peanut shell of a guy who is way, way more than peanut farming. Anyway, I said that's the main episode because there is more secretly incredibly fascinating stuff available to you right now. If you support this show on

patreon.com, patrons get a bonus show every week where we explore one obviously incredibly fascinating story related to the main episode. This week's bonus topic is the astonishing Jimmy Carter family tree. It is packed with surprises and you truly don't know all the secretly incredibly fascinating Carter stuff without it. Visit sifpod.fun for that bonus show, for a library of almost five dozen other bonus shows, and to back this entire podcast operation. And thank you for exploring Jimmy Carter with us. Here is one more run through the big takeaways. Takeaway number one, Jimmy Carter might have eradicated a parasitic disease. Takeaway number two, Jimmy Carter basically invented the Iowa caucuses.

Takeaway number three, Jimmy Carter ran two horrible campaigns to become the governor of Georgia. And takeaway number four, Jimmy Carter saved countless Canadian lives by going inside of a melting down nuclear reactor. Those are the takeaways. Also, please follow my guests. They're great. Folks, you've got to check out the Unpopular Opinion Podcast Network. It is one of the best things in the world, especially for your ears. It will bring you so much Adam Todd Brown and a lot of Jeff May, too. Please check out Jeff May on Unpopular Opinion as well, also on the Gamefully Unemployed Network as co-host of Tom and Jeff Watch Batman with friend of the show Tom Ryman. And Jeff hosts his own podcast entitled Jeff Has Cool Friends that features guests such as Adam Todd Brown.

As Cool Friends, that features guests such as Adam Todd Brown. Many research sources this week. Here are some key ones. The biggest one is an incredible biography of Jimmy Carter. It came out last year. It's called His Very Best. It's by journalist Jonathan Alter. Beyond that biography, we got a great article from Vox.com titled The World Has Never Eradicated a Parasite,

But Jimmy Carter Is About To, and that is by Sarah Cliff and Estelle Caswell. Also great articles from NPR on that disease, from The Atlantic and The New Yorker on the Iowa caucuses, and so many more sources on the rest of Jimmy Carter's astonishing life. Find those sources and many more in this episode's links at sifpod.fun. And beyond all that, our theme music is unbroken, unshaven by the Budos Band. Our show logo is by artist Burton Durand. Special thanks to Chris Souza for audio mastering on this episode. Extra, extra special thanks go to our patrons. I hope you love this week's bonus show. And thank you to all our listeners. I hope you love this week's bonus show. And thank you to all our

listeners. I am thrilled to say we will be back next week with more secretly incredibly fascinating. So how about that? Talk to you then. Thank you.