Stuff You Should Know - Peanuts (the comic) Part II

Episode Date: March 21, 2024

Today is part II of our tribute to one of the most iconic pieces of American culture.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, I'm Bruce Bozzi. In the last season of Table for Two, we had some good times with some of the best guests you could possibly ask for. Table for Two is a bit different from other interview shows. We sit down at a great restaurant for a meal and the stories start flowing. We're back for a second season. We'll be breaking bread with Colin Jost, Michael Mann, Devine Joy Randolph, just to name a few.

Listen and subscribe to Table for Two on the I heart radio app Apple podcast Or wherever you get your podcasts I'm Scott Barry Kaufman host of the psychology podcast I'm a cognitive scientist and I've written 10 books and hundreds of articles on topics such as intelligence introversion and education The psychology podcast is a place where we investigate the different ways in which we can unlock human potential and where I get to interview some of the most extraordinary and fascinating people. And we have real conversations about what it means to achieve success and what it means to be human. Listen to the Psychology

Podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey, and welcome to the Peanuts cast. I'm Josh. There's Chuck, Ben sitting in, and this is part two of Two, the Deuce, as we call it sometimes, about Stuff call it sometimes, about stuff you should know about peanuts. That's right. If you remember where we left off,

Charlie Brown had just murdered Snoopy and was on the run from the law. No, of course not. We had made up, and surely no one's gonna listen to this one first, but just to catch you up, we covered most of Charles Schulz's early life, the of peanuts and we had gotten up to Snoopy character-wise and here we go With that little black and white beagle that is probably the weirdest comic character of all time Yeah, and we said before he was based on

Schulz's dog Spike who apparently could eat razor blades without getting sick, he had another dog. How did they know that? I guess Spike ate razor blades once. By accident. And they were like, oh, okay, he's good. That's what he was in Ripley's Believe It or Not for. Eating razor blades.

Yeah, and not getting sick. He had another dog named Snooki, and then just like the Jersey Shore character, and then apparently his mom suggested that, as she was dying, that if the family ever got another dog, they should name it Snoopy, like S-N-U-P-I, which apparently is a term of endearment in Norwegian. So you put all those together, you mix them up,

put them in a blender, blend it, and then regret that immediately, you've got Snoopy. Yes. Snoopy was a black and white beagle who slept on top of a doghouse. Yeah. Apparently, that came around in 58 for the first few years. Snoopy actually slept in the house. If you wonder why Snoopy was on top of the house, it's so you can see Snoopy.

Right. It'd be very weird to have a cartoon drawn inside of a dog house. So it was just sort of a utilitarian decision. Snoopy was, like I said, one of the weirdest character in comics I think because Snoopy had, and my favorite thing about Snoopy was this weird fantasy life that Snoopy lived where he had these alter egos. I think there were more than a hundred Snoopy alter egos that range from being a world famous,

it was always world famous usually. World famous tennis star, he was a world famous surgeon, an attorney. The Fierce Vulture is one of my favorite alter egos. A world famous author. Joe Cool was one I wasn't super into actually. It was probably my least favorite alter. That's funny. My grandma called me Joe Cool because I sent her a card once as a kid and identified myself.

I think I signed it as Joe Cool. So she always called me Joe Cool from that moment on. But the really weird one was the flying ace alter ego in which Snoopy was an airplane fighter pilot from World War II that had an ongoing, I was about to say beef, but just ongoing battle with the Red Baron fighter pilot from Germany, and that became a big hit song in 1966. It was a novelty song by the Royal Guardsmen

that hit number two in the United States. Which is, I mean, I had this 45. It was a time, and we've talked about some famous novelty songs in the past, but it was a time when a novelty song could be like a legit number one hit. Yeah, or number two at least. Yeah.

So that flying ace thing, one of the things that Peanuts is known for is it was generally not political. It was much more universal than that. It wasn't so narrow as to like discourse on politics. Right. But during the Vietnam war and Charles Schultz, remember he was a veteran of World War II, very proud veteran, but, and during the Vietnam war,

he, he gave official approval for the Air Force to use Snoopy as a mascot in Vietnam. And at the same time, as it became clear that, that the United States strategy and involvement in Vietnam was just a catastrophe and disastrous and being led by people who were completely amoral, even Charles Schulz became dissatisfied or against the Vietnam War. And he used the World War I flying ace to comment on the Vietnam War. Like there was, it went as, it became as overt as there's one where Snoopy, as World War I flying ace,

has cursed this stupid war. And eventually it even spilled out from the flying ace. There's strips where Linus and Charlie Brown are discussing the prospect of being drafted. I mean, like, he got pretty anti-war, as a matter of fact, during the Vietnam era, which was really out of character for not just him, but also for peanuts. But, like, that's, I think that just kind of goes to show how unpopular the Vietnam War was, that even Charles Schulz, this conservative, Methodist, World War II veteran,

was speaking out against it through his characters. Yeah, I think Franklin's dad was in Vietnam during the comic strip. Exactly, yeah. And by the way, I think it said World War II instead of World War I, so in show correction. Oh, did you say two? I'm sorry I didn't correct you. I really loathe that I missed the chance. Hey, you mentioned Joe Cool. There was an offshoot of Joe Cool from the 90s, wasn't there? I don't know, was there? Yeah, you gotta mention Joe Grunge.

I wouldn't run for Joe Grunge. I wasn't either, but I mean, I'm aware he existed. I wasn't aware he existed. Well, now you know. That's good. It sounds like he rolled with the times. where he existed. I wasn't aware he existed. Well now you know. That's good. Sounds like he rolled with the times. So Snoopy had a family.

We mentioned Spike. He had a whole litter that he was born with. Spike, Belle, marbles. Olaf, Andy, Molly and Rover. And Spike was the one that I loved. Spike became, he became like arguably a main character in the in the 90s basically, but he debuted in 1975 and was you know he always had that hat on and he had those whiskers that sort of looked like a little beatnik mustache. Yeah. And he lived alone in the California desert and he was usually by

by his big cactus and it was just he was he was sort of an altar of Snoopy like in demeanor Yeah, yeah for sure, but Snoopy. It's not like Snoopy was high strong or uptight He was he was diff they were very different though, but I'm not sure how one was a foil of the other I think they were just different, you know, oh, I don't think there were foils. I think yeah, and I think Snoopy I Mean I think he was precocious, but again, it almost felt like a spinoff within the old thing, within the, within its own thing, because he and Woodstock were commonly, you know, he would interact with the other characters, but he was often doing his own thing. Right. Yeah, like you said, with Woodstock. Do you, I have a question for you.

When you were growing up, did you have the Snoopy Snowcone machine? I did. You lucky kid. I'm pretty sure either that or a friend did. I can't remember. That stuff was addictive. Those flavorings. Yeah, same here.

I had access to one, but I had to like go play at somebody's house to get a Snoopy Snowcone. Yeah, I don't think, maybe I didn't have one. Or if it was, it was a hand-me-down. I know one thing for sure, my parents didn't go out and buy me that thing new. Right? They got it at a hard sale,

and it hadn't been washed out from the last time? Probably so. Um, there's, I got one other little piece of Snoopy trivia. All right. Snoop Dogg. Uh, he was nicknamed by his mom because she thought that he looked like Snoopy as. All right. Snoop Dogg, he was nicknamed by his mom because she thought that he looked like Snoopy as a young man.

I could see that. Totally, once you hear it, you're like, oh my God, he does kind of look like Snoopy. Yeah, that's very cute. Yep, I agree. And Snoopy the dog loved smoking some weed. I don't know, I think that might have been Woodstock, who I say we talk about real quick.

You want to? Sure, I mean Woodstock, we talked a little bit about Woodstock in the Woodstock episode, because Woodstock was named for Woodstock, because June 22nd, 1970 is when Woodstock the Bird got its name, I think it, he was around in the cartoon before that, but didn't have a name. And there were other birds in the cartoon that preceded Woodstock.

Yeah. And when they finally debuted Woodstock's name, it's Snoopy hanging out on the roof. And I guess Woodstock had been around for a while. And he said, or he thinks, I finally found out what that stupid bird's name is, you'll never believe it. And apparently it was absolutely based on Woodstock. And there is a an author named Michelle Abate who wrote a book on Charlie Brown and like analyzing Charlie Brown, Blockhead's Beagles and Sweet Baboos, New Perspectives on Charles M. Schultz Pean peanuts, where Michelle says, um, like, Woodstock represented the younger generation,

like hippies, like straight-up hippies. That's what Woodstock represented. They were, Woodstock was, uh, like, innocent and naive, and just kind of childlike and having fun and doing, doing their own thing. And then, like, even more, um, arcane-ly, the fact that when Woodstock spoke, the only person that could understand Woodstock

was Snoopy, and the reader can't. It's just these little kind of chicken scratch lines. You remember that? Yeah, or Woodstock scratch. So, Michelle Abate makes the case that, that Charles Schulz in some way, shape, or form is making commentary on how the older generation can't understand the younger generation.

But for him, that was this kind of like an unusual, an unusual nod, a kind nod to the younger generation who a lot of people his age and from his political bent didn't think very highly of, but apparently he did. All right. That's one of those, that's like when I was taking English classes in college, when I was like, hm, okay.

Yeah. If you say so. It's analysis, it's interpretation. Like, yeah. I love all that stuff. You can make a pretty good case for it. You can also, you can also say like, it's almost like a fan theory.

Yeah, well, I think it for sure is, but that's just what commentary is, right? I think, well, it's a fan theory in an academic book form. Yeah, exactly. That's the only thing that separates fan theory from just printing it in a book or typing it in the internet. Right, right. But supposedly there's one other thing. More than once, Snoopy refers to Woodstock as a hippie bird. Yeah. Did that persuade you even further? No, no, no.

I didn't think he wasn't non-hippie, but the whole like the generational chicken scratch representing, like I'm just not sure about that. Okay, I gotcha. But I love it. I love talking about that. Okay, I gotcha, but but but I love it I love talking about that stuff. I do too So do you like talking about peppermint patty and Marcy? Love it. A lot of people love it because a lot of people

It sort of you know has become one of these Burton Ernie things where they're like, hey listen Peppermint patty and Marcy are clearly gay young girls who just maybe don't know it yet. And there's always been, you know, fan speculation about that. And I think, you know, that's fine. That's all well and good. Charles Schultz himself was interviewed in 1997

and said that, you know, he understood that people talk a lot about that, but he said sexuality to him just wasn't relevant to the comic because they were just children. And that's not to say that a child, you know, can't be gay, but he was like it just, it was the kind of thing that didn't enter his mind. I don't think he was like offended or thought it was weird that people would speculate about that, but it doesn't sound like that was his bent when he drew this very sort of classic tomboy character. He was very good in athletics, who was called Sir by Marcy,

which was always very funny to me. But either way, two great characters. One of the favorite things for me with Peppermint Patty was how she would invert names. She called Charlie Brown Chuck. She did the opposite for Lucy. She called Lucy Lucille. I think at one point, maybe it's Schroeder,

calls her Patricia. Oh yeah. Which was a little spin on that. But that's just a fun little character thing that I've always really enjoyed. I always loved Peppermint Patty's voice in the TV specials. Yeah, same. It was perfect.

Yeah. So there was a little strip, um, or a little period of strips where, um, Charles Schultz, who had by this time befriended Billie Jean King, uh, as title nine was being, um, passed or was being discussed, whether it should be passed or not, which allowed equal or demanded equal funding for women's sports in I guess just college, right? I'm pretty sure it was just college and there was more to it, but I think it was about equal opportunities and funding for college athletics. Right.

Which is nuts because we're talking about the 19 late 1970s. Isn't that crazy? But anyway, Billie Jean King, who was a champion tennis star, was also a champion of title nine. And being her friend and supporter, Charles Schultz drew some peanut strips, basically using peppermint patty as a stand in.

And a lot of people are like, see, Billie Jean King was gay. She came out in 1981. So of course Peppermint Patty was, and that's what Charles Schultz meant. But no, he was using her as a stand-in for a woman athlete, as Billie Jean King was. And in that strip, they're talking about how Peppermint Patty is gonna show all the men

that she can do anything they can do and maybe even better and she's great at sports. And then I think somebody asks Lucy, who's standing there, what she's gonna do because she's no good at sports. And Lucy goes, speak out! So loud that Charlie Brown is doing like a somersault midair.

That was just perfect, because you had Peppermint Patty, Lucy doing her thing, and then you had Charlie Brown kind of standing in for the bystanding rest of us who are now going to be moved by the arguments in favor of Title IX. Pretty cool. Amazing. So, some more Peppermint Patty stuff. She was one of three characters who did not go to the same school as the rest of the Peanuts gang. Peppermint Patty and Marcy and Franklin lived,

unquote, at the other side of town. So they sort of represented, they never came out and said it, but they represented, not poor children, but it was definitely the other side of town type of situation. Like they had broken homes. They were, they didn't get to go to the same school.

I remember when Franklin visits, visits Charlie Brown's neighborhood for the first time. He sees the psych booth. He sees Snoopy on the house. And the great pumpkin is talked about. And he leaves the neighborhood and and saying to go home and said This neighborhood has me shook. So it was definitely like a Demarcation line for Marcy and Franklin and peppermint patty and also peppermint patty

Her mom was I guess dead like they never said, but she said, my mom's not around. Oh, really? She lived, yeah, she lived with her father only. Huh. Which was a very different thing for a comic back then. Right. And one of my favorite things is, even though we never hear parents speaking to things,

there are references to things parents say, and Peppermint Patty's father always called her a rare gem, which I thought was very sweet. That is sweet. Because she wasn't very smart. So, yeah, Peppermint Patty's father always called her a rare gem, which I thought was very sweet. That is sweet. Because she wasn't very smart. So yeah, Peppermint Patty was, um, she was groundbreaking in a lot of ways in that. So yeah, she was a tomboy.

She, um, uh, her, she was the daughter of a single parent, her child of a single parent. And then, um, on top of that, she was one of the first comic strip females who made her own way. She didn't need a man, she wasn't there to support the man, like Blondie did to Dagwood or anything like that. She was just her own person making her own way by her own terms.

That was another groundbreaking thing. I think she came along in 1966 and people hadn't done that before. Yeah, she had a crush on Charlie Brown, as did Marcy. Marcy was very soft-spoken and shy. She was very smart. In fact, she's the one I think that points out, like, I feel kind of bad for Pepper and Patty because she was written so unintelligently. Like, her teacher gave her a plaque at one point for being in the D-minus Hall of Fame. Yeah.

And she didn't realize Snoopy was even a dog until 1974. What? When Marcy pointed out, she used to say he was a funny looking kid with a big nose. So they write her as really like not very intelligent. And I always felt bad for Pepper and Patty. But Marcy was always her loyalist friend. I don't know if I said, but also had a crush on Charlie Brown. And my favorite cute thing ever, because Marcy was the opposite of Peppermint Patty.

You know, she was smart and she was not good at sports, whereas Peppermint Patty was the jock. And Marcy called the Super Bowl in one comic, the Splendid Bowl, which I just loved. She is pretty great. She didn't have a last name. Peppermint Patty's last name was Rikard. Um, Marcy never had a last name. And some people said that, um, the reason why is because that allowed her to be just kind of this, whatever Charles Schultz needed her to be or say or do.

Charles Schulz needed her to be or say or do, but I think very quickly Marcy's character took over and probably constrained Charles Schulz in a lot of ways because she was just a weird little kid who had just her own set of understanding of the world that didn't really fit with anybody else's. It was just totally hers. And like I said, Charles Schulz was once asked, like,

why does Marcy call Patty, Peppermint Patty sir? And apparently his response was, I have no idea. Marcy's a very strange little girl. Again, he's a conduit. I mean, it wouldn't surprise me if that just popped into his head. Yeah, for sure. And I hadn't realized this,

but a lot of Asian American kids took Marcy to be Asian American. Yeah, for sure. And I hadn't realized this, but a lot of Asian American kids took Marcy to be Asian American. Weird, why? I don't know. I'm not sure, I guess. I don't know. Maybe I don't know. I have no idea.

But I saw that in several places. All right. Well, that feels like a good time for a break. Oh yeah. Yeah? Sure. All right, well, we'll come back and pick up with Franklin, one of my favorite characters, right after this. I Heart podcast update this week on your free I Heart radio app in retrospect revisit pop

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Listen to Fodor's Guide to Espionage on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Learning stuff with Joshua and Charles. Stuff you should know. All right, we mentioned Franklin before as being one of the only three that didn't go to the same school, lived in a different neighborhood. Franklin is very famous, obviously, for being

the first black peanuts character. And that happened for a very purposeful reason. In 1968, there was an LA school teacher named Harriet Glickman who wrote a letter to Charles Shultz. This was just after Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated. And she said, you know, we need to overcome a quote, the vast sea of misunderstanding, fear, hate and violence. And I think you should, you should draw a black character for peanuts. I think that would be a big, a big step forward and a big move. And Shultz initially declined, and it wasn't because he didn't want to, but he said that he thought it might be sort of too patronizing a

move, but then thought the better of it after, you know, a little bit more thought and some advice from Glickman's neighbor, who was a black man. His name was Kenneth Kelly. And he said, you know what, I see what he's saying about being patronizing, so if you're gonna do it, just do it in a very casual way. Don't make it some big revolutionary stand, just all of a sudden have this black kid in there,

and that's what he did. Yeah, and doing that like that would have this twofold effect. One, it would keep Charles Schulz from having to make like a big social statement. But two, it would also just show how utterly normal black kids and white kids co-mingling was. There wasn't even any commentary about it. It's just this new character who Charlie Brown met happened to be black. That was it.

And that's how it happened. They met at the beach when Charlie Brown was on vacation with his family. And, um... Can I read the comic strip? Yeah, go ahead. All right. Four panels. Charlie Brown's on the beach when Charlie Brown was on vacation with his family. And, um, can I read the comic strip? Yeah, go ahead. All right. It's four panels. Charlie Brown's on the beach. I'll act shirt off.

He's got a shirt off. You got to take your shirt off. It was already off. Oh, okay. So Franklin comes up with a beach ball and says, is this your beach ball? Second panel, Charlie says, Hey, yeah, thank you very much. And Franklin says, I was swimming out there and it came floating by third panel. My silly sister threw it in the water. And Franklin says, I see you're making a sandcastle.

And it's kind of a crooked tower. And in the last panel, Franklin says, it looks kind of crooked. And Charlie said, I guess maybe it is. Where I come from, I'm not famous for doing things right. Just quintessential Charlie Brown. I acted all that out by the way, you guys just couldn't see it. It was great, but it was a very sweet way to

meet and then Charlie invited Franklin over to his side of town and that's where Franklin got shook. These are the strips that we learned Franklin's dad is off fighting in Vietnam. Yeah. And Charlie Brown, we learned Charlie Brown's dad is a barber. I don't know if that was the first time or not, but he mentions this in response to Franklin talking about his dad, which if you'll remember, Charles Schulz's dad was a barber,

so I think that's pretty sweet. I love it. And you know what, at the end, I admit at the beginning to read the very first ever strip, but let's save that for the end. Okay. Sadly, as we can attest when you do the right thing and promote social unity and harmony,

oftentimes ugly people will say ugly things about it. And Charles Schulz was no exception. He got, he said he didn't get like a huge amount of hate mail, but it was very vehement. And that included some of the editors of the papers that his column was syndicated in. He could have lost a significant amount of money had the wrong vibe been struck

and a push against him been really kind of founded and carried out among especially Southern newspapers. He was getting letters from editors saying things like, I don't appreciate seeing black kids and white kids being portrayed in the same school. What universe do you live in essentially? Like where are you getting these kind of far out ideas? And he just basically, he just shook it off. He was like, whatever, some people are gonna,

they're gonna hate it at first, but they're gonna get used to it because I'm not stopping. And he didn't. And he was... He's looked at two different ways for this. One, that Franklin was never fully fleshed out to the satisfaction of a lot of readers. And then there's another vein where Charles Schulz is looked at

as really putting his reputation in his Entire comic on the line by doing this because he thought it was the right thing and that it was groundbreaking and opened the gates for other Comic strip artists particularly black ones to follow in his footsteps Yeah, he threatened to quit at one point. There were some papers that said they were gonna either not run those strips or have them redone. And he said, you're going to print my comics as drawn or I'm done or you lose me for everything. And this was to the actual syndication company. And so they backed down and allowed them to keep going.

But one of the cartoonists that was certainly inspired by him that you mentioned was a guy named Rob Armstrong who did the comic strip Jumpstart. And we mentioned that Marcy didn't have a last name. Franklin was another character that didn't have a last name for a while and eventually got the last name Armstrong named after Rob Armstrong, the cartoonist, which is just a great tribute. Schultz came to him, they became friends, and he said, he asked him first, you know, if you don't mind, can I use your last name?

And of course Armstrong, what do you say to that? You're just floored. And was very, very touched and honored that he became his last name. Yeah, for sure. It's a great story. And by the way, there's a great article about Harry Glickman and her neighbor, Kenneth Kelly. There's a great article in LAist just from a few years ago about this story, and it shows them still friends today,

hanging out, and there's a great picture of them with a little Franklin, holding a Franklin stuffie. That's sweet. I think Harry Glickman passed in the last couple years, but that's sweet that they were friends till the end. Yeah, yeah, this was in 2020. Gotcha. Very, very cute.

So who else, can we talk a little bit about a couple more slightly minor characters I still think are worth mentioning? Yeah, I mean, we definitely need to mention Pigpen, who is a very beloved character, even though he almost does nothing. Yeah, he was another kid who had a great, perfect voice in the TV specials.

It was kind of raspy. And yeah, I can't describe it any other way, but raspy, but it fit him perfectly. Yeah, always dirty, always had the flies and the dust around him. And I think everyone, especially these days kids are cleaner, but I remember in the 70s there were I remember the dirty kids It just always seemed to be covered in filth Yeah, and there was a strip so he was introduced in a series of strips starting in 1954. So pretty early on

And he says that he hasn't got a name. He says, people just call me things. Real insulting things. And I guess they never changed that. Like his name is always Pigpen. But in one of the strips, somebody's like, you know, they just presume that he hates baths. And he goes, no, I really like baths. I just like getting dirty more. So he's like a cool little kid who also,

I've seen him described as like maybe the most, the one that's closest to like self fulfillment and satisfaction and contentment of any of the characters is Pigpen, which is pretty great. He seems like he's never pining for something like the rest of them are. No, he just goes and does it, or gets it, or whatever. And he was in, Dave Did the Math,

.55% of the comic strips featured Pigpen. Yeah. A little over 100 out of almost 18,000. Right. There's also that Grateful Dead connection. One of the founding members of the Grateful Dead was Ron McNairnan, whose nickname was Pigpen, apparently, because he was a little smelly himself.

Is that why you got the name? Yeah. And then Sally, man. We gotta talk about Charlie Brown's little sister Sally. Yeah, with her naturally curly hair. She was always proud of that hair. Like I mentioned earlier, or it might have been the previous episode, Lucy was always jealous because Sally, Charlie got this sweet little sister, and she wanted a little sister, not Linus.

They all had little crushes, which is sweet. You know, we mentioned Lucy and Schroeder, but Sally had a big crush on Linus, which is very sweet. Yeah, and one of the other things about Sally that was great was that she, when she was upset, she would go talk to the school building. Yeah. And it would talk back. Yeah, it would have thought bubbles, just like Snoopy does in response to her stuff like she one time she I can't remember what she was talking Oh, she said she was scolded by her teacher for talking in class, but the teacher was mistaken She hadn't been talking at all and she was really upset about this and the school thinks poor sweet, baby

Yeah, just yeah stuff like that like Sally just kind of attracted that kind of thing well and the school thing kind of brings up the fact, and I know we talked a little bit about the minimalist style in the first episode, but so many of his panels were just them in front of a brick wall, or them at that psychiatrist stand, or Snoopy's doghouse, or just the pitcher's mound. Right.

It was all just very sort of Spartan, sparse stuff. Yeah, but it worked. Yeah. I saw it described as that universe is, it's bounded by those four panels and connected by the gutters, the spaces between the four panels, but somehow it just seems like boundless.

There's no geography to it. You just don't know where that moment is taking place. But you couldn't possibly imagine the Peanuts universe in some mapped out way. Yeah. I wonder if that's why it never occurred to me to wonder where they were from. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, have you ever thought about like, where was Peanuts based? Like I've never even wondered that. I never thought that or wondered that, but I saw in a number of the essays that they presumed that it was in the Midwest because the seasons.

Right. Like there were definite seasons in peanuts, and I think as a kid, that was one of the things that really got to me, because I love the seasons too. So to see the peanuts gang like hanging out in a pile of leaves or ice skating or something like that. Yeah, yeah. Or it was summer and there was like an apple on

the tree or something like that. Even like you said, even though it's minimalist and you can't even begin to imagine where they're from, it would evoke like how those kids were feeling. Like it added an extra layer to the dialogue or the action or something like that. Because you as a kid knew how you felt

when you were standing next to a pile of leaves and it was chilly out and Thanksgiving and Christmas were just coming right down the pike. So we know it's not, peanuts is anywhere USA except Florida, Southern California, and Hawaii. Yeah, and I think we said, right, Charles Schulz is from the Minneapolis-St. Paul area. Yeah, I'm sure it was just sort of that.

Yeah, so, I mean, that's generally where it was set. He eventually, I think not too long after getting married the first time, moved to Santa Rosa, California, or Northern California. Santa Rosa is where the Charles Schultz Museum is. And never looked back, but even still, he never, the Peanuts Gang never suddenly ended up in California. Like they were still where they were, you know? That's funny. All right, let's do our final break

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iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Learning stuff with Joshua and Charles. Stuff you should know. So, Chuck, if I can remember all the way back to part one, the first episode in this pairing. An hour and 20 minutes ago. I think I mentioned, how do you know that? I got a little ticker on my, I got a timer. I want one of those.

I got an egg timer. Is it a Snoopy egg timer? It is. So I mentioned that there's no adults in the peanut world and that if an adult is around, they're either being mentioned, like a real life adult, or an adult is around, they're either being mentioned, like a real life adult, or an adult in the Peanuts universe, like somebody's parent, or in the TV specials,

you can hear them, but they're off camera. You don't see them. And the only way you hear them is that muted trombone sound effect, right? Yeah. There is one strip in the Peanuts pantheon, in the 18,000 comic strips, there's one where adults are shown and even then it's just their legs.

Yeah, and even that, I think kind of, like Franklin was shook, I think Peanuts people were shook. For sure, for a number of reasons. One, this whole series where Lucy is participating in an adult golf tournament for some weird reason. There's way more scenery, way more stuff going on in all the panels, right?

Yeah, I mean, yeah, it's not a four panel. Was it from one of the books? I don't know. It's from 1954, so no, it would have been before the books. All right, no, it's a Sunday strip. So the Sundays were more than four panels from May 16th, 1954. And in that, they're playing golf and stuff.

She and Charlie Brown are. Lucy was famously a bad athlete as well because she was always screwing up in center field or in right field. But Charlie said she played center field for some reason. Oh yeah. And in the last panel, it shows them with three or four pair of adult legs standing around. And it's just, it's almost surreal and disconcerting

to see human legs and peanuts. Yeah. It's just odd to see. It is, they're wearing pants with creases of them and everything. It's just, it's not, it ain't right. pants with creases of them and everything. It's just It's not it ain't right and I guess it ain't right Charles Schultz realized immediately that it ain't right I can't believe it even got out, you know, but he never did it again Yeah, he got death threats. I'm sure how dare you show legs exactly. Yeah, it was a very weird thing

I mean, I remember one thing I remember was, because I was close to my one grandfather, my mom's dad. That's sweet. Before he died, and Charlie Brown and Franklin are always talking about their granddads, which I always thought was really great. Yeah. That is very sweet.

We did mention the movie, the TV specials. We went in depth into the Charlie Brown Christmas special in, do you remember what year it was, what Christmas episode that was? It was either December 5th or 9th, 1965 when it first started. No, no, I meant hours. When we recorded our Christmas special where we talked in detail about the Christmas special.

Yeah, December 5th or 9th, 1965. We had a podcast in 1965? Yeah. We have the way back machine. They're all over the place. We have an episode from 720 CE. Oh, wow. Goodie Clark and Goodie Bryant. Yeah, that was a wild ride.

I don't remember which Christmas special we had it in, but in one of them we detail a Charlie Brown Christmas. So we don't have to go over here, but the one sort of surprising thing, if you didn't listen to that up Was that they thought it was going to be a big failure, right? Yeah, so there was no laugh track, but this is a cartoon featuring kids Ostensibly for kids and there's no laugh track to the jokes. How are the dumb little kids gonna know when to laugh?

and then it has like um Like one of the best jazz soundtracks of all time. But that's not exactly like what the eight-year-olds are into in 1965, right? So yeah, the TV executives were like, this is gonna go nowhere and boy were they wrong. Oh man, I mean there aren't many more iconic Christmas records than that one. No. And not just Christmas records, the great Pumpkin Waltz is in there, which is just, for my money, the best one of the whole album. And that whole album is great from the first note to the last.

I shouldn't restrict that to Christmas listening. No. I don't know if I can though, it'd be weird. But I mean, I probably listen to that full record at least 20 times over the month of December. Yeah. Maybe more, probably more than once a day if I'm thinking about it. I'm really almost religious about it because I don't ever want to get sick of it, so I'm

really careful like how often I listen to it. Oh, I just pound it, I never get to do it. It also has a song that has nothing to do with Christmas, Linus and Lucy, which is what most people who are generally aware of peanuts and aren't like hardcore fans consider like the peanuts theme. Oh, interesting. Yeah, and the cultural icon that is the Charlie Brown Christmas tree, and that's become part of the lexicon for a sad little Christmas tree.

Yeah, and you can buy a Charlie Brown Christmas tree, too, and put it on your tabletop, which we've done. Oh, like a recreation or just a sad little tree? It's a, well, you could do that and just call your sad little tree a Charlie Brown Christmas tree, but you can buy one and it's like, Yeah, it's got like a wooden X that it connects to. It's got, it has like a little blue blanket, Linus's blanket that you put around the bottom

like he does. It comes with a single red ornament. It's wonderful. You know what, buddy? I know what you're getting for Christmas. Oh, I could put it next to the leg lamp. Yeah, that'd be perfect actually. Wow, that's great.

All right, I mean, geez, we can sit around and talk about peanuts all day long if we're not careful, but we should wrap it up and talk a little bit about the end of peanuts, sadly. Schulz said he was retiring, announced it in December of 1999. He was diagnosed with terminal colon cancer. I don't even think we mentioned that he had a disease throughout most of his career, right?

That like had hand tremors? Yes. So in 1981, he was diagnosed with essential tremor, which is a tremor that affects you when you try to do something with your hands most specifically and he... Like drawing. Yeah, like drawing seven comic strips a week, every week. And you can actually see very clearly, it's a progressive illness as well, progressive neurological disorder.

So it just gets worse with time. And you can see through the progression of peanuts, the lines started getting much more squiggly. But if you look at tests of people with hand tremors, I think the most prevalent test is, it's like draw like a circle from the inside out. What the hell is that called? Spiral? A spiral, thank you.

You start at the center and go outward with the spiral and they'll put that next to somebody who doesn't have an essential tremor and what that looks like and it's just like night and day. So the fact that he can even continue on for 20 years is amazing. Yeah. Geez, unbelievable.

So yeah, 99 diagnosed with cancer. He had a big backlog of comic strips that he had drawn. So they were able to keep publishing through his illness until the day after he died actually. February 12th, 2000, he was 77. Isn't that remarkable? Like they both died at the same time or they both expired at the same time,

Peanuts and Charles Schultz. Like he had that many backlogs that it just worked out like that. Yeah, and he had that many days left Yeah, pretty amazing unless the family was like there were a hundred more and they just shoved him in a drawer Said it's really kind of a great story this way. I'm hoping that's not the case Me too. His family was smart though because they said you know what? We don't think anyone else should ever draw this like peanuts should should stop because he's not around anymore.

And that's what happened. That syndication company, unbelievably almost, honored that request. When you see new Peanuts stuff now, whether it's like movies and, you know, the brand is still a thing. But those comic strips, if you see them, are all reprinted. Yeah, supposedly it's a billion dollar brand. I believe it. And I read a quote from Bill Watterson from Calvin and Hobbes, who basically was like,

like merchandising cartoons and stuff. You can thank Charles Schultz for that. Amazing. Yeah. And then we mentioned one more thing before we finish, that there was a tribute to Charles Schultz and Peanuts among basically all the working comic strip artists on November 26, 2022. Very emotional.

Yeah, and you can go to the Charles Schultz Museum website, and they have links to all of them. And just some of them are amazing. But a few stood out to me. We talked about the Gil Thorpe one, which now that you've heard these two episodes, go look up that Gil Thorpe November 26, 2022 comic strip tribute to peanuts.

Because finally Charlie Brown gets to kick the football and it's just the sweetest thing. I can't believe that they thought of doing that. It was just so perfect. So great, yeah. it was just so perfect. So great, yeah. There was one from Curtis, remember we talked about how a lot of black comic strip artists credited

Charles Shultz with introducing Franklin, as kind of breaking that ceiling for them? Sure. Curtis has one where Curtis, the comic strip character, asks Charlie Brown to hang out, or he goes, hey Charlie Brown, what you doing? Charlie Brown goes, just chilling homie Charlie Brown to hang out. Or he goes, hey Charlie Brown, what you doing? Charlie Brown goes, just chilling homie, let's hang out. And as they're walking away, Curtis turns to you,

the viewer, and is like, that Charlie Brown's a lot cooler than you'd think when he's away from that peanut strip. Yeah, that's pretty funny. Garfield has Snoopy bringing out like a hundred year birthday cake. Yeah, that one's surreal looking. And then to me, it is. To me, the one...

I give it like the most appropriately, awkwardly formal award, Mary Worth. Was that Mary Worth? Okay, I thought it was. So Mary Worth is like the most bone dry soap opera-y comic strip around to begin with. And just in total Mary Worth style, Mary Worth is sitting on the couch and it just explains how this is Charles Shultz's 100th birthday and they're all celebrating it. So happy 100th birthday Charles Shultz. It's just so, just dry.

It was very, yeah, it was very dry. And then Family Circle, I think Jeffy tripped over Snoopy's dead body. That's right. Which Charlie Brown was on the run from. So I promised I'd read that very first comic strip because it's really emblematic of like what Charles Schulz was going after.

Like his debut comic strip for his baby was this. And it's very, a little more crudely drawn, obviously. But panel one, these two kids are sitting on the sidewalk, and you see Charlie Brown in the distance walking up. And the kid on the sidewalk goes, well, here comes old Charlie Brown. And then Charlie Brown is kind of walking in front of them. Good old Charlie Brown, yes, sir.

And then he walks by, and they're watching him pass, and he goes, good old Charlie Brown. And then the kid on the sidewalk in the last panel says, how I hate him. That was the debut to the world. That's really amazing. Pretty amazing, everybody. That was a great way to end it, Chuck.

Hey, thanks. If you wanna know more about Peanuts, just go start reading Peanuts comic strips. Even if you didn't appreciate them, you'll probably learn to like them more just by forcing yourself to. And since I said that, it's time for listener mail. Short and sweet one here. Hey guys, hope you're well. Your podcast has been a steady presence in my life. For almost four years, it's got me through one mini

study sessions and kitchen cleaning weekends over the years. My friend and our partner introduced me to your show and I'm so thankful she did. Being long-distance it's nice to have something to talk about and learn a few things along the way. Of course whenever we do see each other we make it a habit to put on an episode and listen together. So I just wanted to say thank you guys for everything you do. You make learning about the common to the obscure exciting and fun and I look forward to many more years listening to you. Have a wonderful day. This is a course for my Canadian. Our new friend Olivia C. in Ottawa, Ontario. Canada, North America, planet Earth. Very nice. Thanks Olivia. That was very kind of you. What a

great one to add to the peanuts episode, Chuck. Yeah. Yeah. Well, if you want to be like Olivia and get in touch with us and just say that you appreciate us, we really love to hear that kind of thing once in a while. You can wrap it up, gently caress it on the bottom, and send it off to StuffPodcast at iHeartRadio.com. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.com. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeart Radio.

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