Stuff You Should Know - Selects: How the Pony Express Worked

Episode Date: September 3, 2022

For as long a shadow as it casts across the history of the Old West, the Pony Express was a failed business venture, doomed from the start, that only lasted 18 months. But since the last rider headed out with his bag of mail, its legend has only grown. Learn all about it in this classic episode.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey everybody, when you're staying at an Airbnb, you might be like me wondering, could my place be an Airbnb? And if it could, what could it earn? So I was pretty surprised to hear about Lauren in Nova Scotia who realized she could Airbnb her cozy backyard treehouse and the extra income helps cover her bills and pays for her travel. So yeah, you might not realize it, but you might have an Airbnb too. Find out what your place could be earning at Airbnb.ca.host.

This season on Running the Break with CJ and Alex. For Meek Mill, so obviously huge ties to Philly was at a Sixers game recently. And in what seemed like a real life curb your enthusiasm as an episode, he accidentally tripped a ref sitting courtside as the ref was running back up court. You know what CJ? I gotta say, I feel like that should be a technical foul, one free throw for the opposing team. Yes, if you rep your town and your team as much as you do Meek Mill, he's a Sixer, right?

So the opposing team's got to take free throws or unless, you know, if we're going off of the curb episode, does Meek have the discography of that compares to like Seinfeld tapes that he could bring to the ref's, you know, hospital bed, shout out to curb. That was one of the greatest episodes ever. Listen to Running the Break with CJ and Alex on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by FanDuel, make every moment more with FanDuel Sportsbook, an official partner of the NBA.

Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. There's Jerry over there, and we're bringing you all the news fast as lightning in this episode on Pony Express. Hey, you resurrected the don't be dumb, Josh, for a moment, and then you're also standing on your head in your chair.

This is like the end of Primal Fear Man, the don't be dumb, Josh, never went away. There's nothing but the don't be dumb, Josh. I hope I didn't ruin that for anybody just now. Yeah. I probably did, but come on. That was the 80s. Yeah, there was a bit of a discussion about on the movie crush Facebook page about me spoiling things that are old movies.

Jaws, like the shark dies. A bunch of people came to my defense, they're like, you know, there's a limit on spoilers. Like if you're talking about a 10-year-old and older movie, like come on. Who was it that chose Jaws? Was it Roman Mars? Yeah, Roman Mars. He's got great taste, man. I watched that movie twice in the last two weeks.

It's so good. The first time it was on mute and I was still engrossed by it, then I recently watched it from start to finish for the first time in well over a decade and I was like, oh my God. Perfect movie. It is basically perfect. Yep. Everything about it.

It's just enjoyable. It's beautifully shot. The characters are great. It's just wonderful. Here's to swimming with bow-legged women. Yeah. Man, he's quite a character. Robert Shaw is so good in that movie and Dreyfus, man.

Yeah. All of them. It's just so great. Yeah. Even Roy Scheider. Yeah. My favorite moment in that whole movie, I think. Well, gosh, there's so many.

Don't spoil it. It's when that real moment like Spielberg peppers in these moments that just make it such a richer film like when he's sitting there with his kid before Dreyfus comes over for dinner that night. Uh-huh. He just has that moment with his son. We're asking for a kiss and it's just leaving in just little tidbits like that make the movie so much more rich.

Yeah. Love it. That's our Spielberg. I have a question for you. Uh-huh. Has there ever been more attention paid to a utter failure of a business that was only open for about 19 months than the Pony Express? Trying to think.

Trying to think. It's really remarkable. Yeah. It's like the new Coke of mail service. Because when you said this topic, I was like, oh, hot diggity dog, this is going to be great. And it's an interesting story, but it's like, wow, the Pony Express was a big fat failure. Yeah. Really?

So one of the articles we're working from is called the Pony Express colon writers of destiny in parentheses couldn't resist that Christopher Corbett and he basically makes the case that the most interesting thing about the Pony Express is the fact that we remember it at all. Yeah. That that's the real story behind it because you're absolutely right. It was a big stinking failure business-wise. It was a success as an actual mail service, but as a business, it was terrible.

The timing was terrible. The whole structure of it was just a bad idea. It was just dumb, but it was as far as a service goes. If you're looking at the very definition of the word service, it was invaluable for a lot of people. Yeah. So just to set the table real quick, if you don't know what we're talking about, the Pony Express was a mail delivery system when the transcontinental, well, I guess, pre-transcontinental

telegram, when it only went, how far east did that go at the time? St. Joe, Missouri. Okay. St. Joe, Missouri, and then it went west as far as Sacramento. And the idea was to join those two lines so you would have a true transcontinental telegram telegraph service. But before that happened, there were three entrepreneurs who said, we can close this gap because it takes weeks or months to get mail from east to west these days.

And we can do that. We want to be able to do that in like a week to 10 days. Yeah. Which was enormously ambitious because if you sent mail overland, right? From, you know, between Missouri and California, maybe 25 days was a good thing to expect for the mail to get there, right? That's Missouri. And that's one way.

Okay? Yeah. If you wanted to send it by ship months, a couple months before the person ever got the mail. Yeah. Because you got to dig a river from Missouri to Sacramento. You got to flood it, and then you got to run the ship down that channel. And then when you get to the other side, you have to drain it and fill it back in and start

over the next time. It was a terrible idea. There was this back when America was full of just complete idiots. But nowadays we know what we're doing. We've got the internet and Twitter and all that stuff, right? So there was this idea where if you were in California, which by this time was a state and the reason California was a state before so much of the other parts of the country was because of the gold rush of 1849 brought a lot of people out west and they started

to build and create these cities and California was a state. So you had Americans living in a state that was geographically isolated from the rest of the country. So they wanted news. They wanted newspapers. They wanted news of America back East. They wanted all this stuff. And again, the telegraph lines weren't connected.

Also they set up this mail service to run in between them, Fast as Lightning and Fast as Lightning was about 10 days, like you said, and the whole route from St. Joseph's, Missouri to Sacramento took them about 1800 miles, which is a really long way. But the way that they did it, Chuck, in just 10 days was through a stroke of genius. Is that where I come in? I just set you up. Yeah, they had about, and they don't have great records and we'll get into that. But as far as we can tell, and there's a boy, there's a lot of misinformation out there

from over the years and legend and lore and tall tales. But they had about 80 horseback riders, young, wiry young men who they compared to like a modern day jockey. These were little guys. And by all accounts, they could haul butt on horses though. They had about 80 of these dudes and they had about four or 500 horses and several dozen, what they called, weigh stations or these stations in between where you would ride, ride, ride, ride to a station, either switch riders or switch horses or both and get a fresh horse

or if you were worn out, you would hand the mail off and we'll get to how that worked as well. Okay. And then they would go and it was just a point to point thing where you would just move this mail as fast as you could ride a horse basically. Yep. And so the horses would last for 10 to 15 miles depending on how rough the terrain was in between weigh stations and then at the waste, the next way station, the rider would

jump from one horse to another horse with this mail bag called a mochila, which could hold about 20 pounds of mail and would ride on to the next way station and switch horses again. And so the horses would go 10 to 15 miles and the riders would go about 75 miles from what I've seen. Yeah. And this whole operation was from a business called the Central Overland, California and Pikes Peak Express Company that was run by three gentlemen, Russell's Majors in Waddell,

William Hepburn Russell, Alexander Majors and William Bradford Waddell, who had already been in the freight hauling business for military outposts, which you think would be a great money-making venture, but apparently when they started the Pony Express, all accounts say that their business probably wasn't doing very well when they even started. Right. So they said, well, let's see, what is a money pit we can sink our remaining money into? What makes no sense financially? They said, oh, the Pony Express.

Yeah. Because you said, I mean, there's a lot of reasons why it failed, which we'll get to, but you said that they held up to 20 pounds of mail in these saddlebags. Yeah. Again, by all accounts, they rarely had that much mail. Sometimes they would have eight or 10 letters and that's just not, you know, if you're in the shipping business, you're not maximizing your load. No, I did some, a little bit of math.

It wasn't hard, but I'm still proud of it. Okay. So they charged $5 per half gram. Yeah. At first. And so the Mochilla could hold 20 pounds. So 20 pounds times 32 is $640, or times $5, the $640. And in today's money, that's about 16,640 bucks.

It's not bad. It's not too bad, but apparently it was way more to maintain this line than that. And like you said, plenty of these things only had a couple dozen letters in them at any given time. And the people who would use the Pony Express would write these letters on tissue paper to cut down on costs because, you know, they charged by the half gram. Yeah. And it was generally not just regular American people.

Like apparently it was mostly like government and military and, you know, you couldn't, just generally people couldn't afford to send a letter by Pony Express. Right. Right. So newspapers would send cables to other newspapers, or yeah, like you said, government. Although the government never officially granted a contract to the central overland, they would use them, but there was no official contract, and I get the impression that had they ever landed a government contract, they might have, they might have actually made

money, although I don't think it would have ultimately kept them from their fate. But they, the fact that they didn't have a wide customer base, they didn't have a government contract, and then this was just such an expensive venture, and they couldn't possibly make their money back from it. It was, I don't know if we've gotten the point across yet or not. This is a terrible business venture. Yeah. And what made matters worse, I mean, they were likely doomed, I mean, maybe we should

hold off the final nail in the coffin until later, even though it's pretty obvious if you're paying attention. But one thing that hurt them along the way for sure was the Pyramid Lake War. Yeah. Or the Paiute War. Yeah. I even looked it up. That's what Emma Sayng says it was.

That was in Nevada and Utah, mainly, and that was a war that took a great toll on, especially these waystations. And if you were a waystation dude, you fared much worse than pony express riders as far as activity and attack from Native Americans, because you were sitting duck basically in a station that seems to be no more than just like four walls and a dirt floor and maybe a horse corral and a thing to put water in. Yeah. On the open prairie.

Yeah. You're sitting out there. Yeah. And during the Pyramid Lake War, hostilities between the Paiute and Shoshonees who'd banded together with the Pyramid Lake tribe, those three groups rose up together against these settlers, the Euro-American settlers who've been coming out there and just basically encroaching on their land. The thing that the straw that broke the camel's back was a pair of brothers, Euro-American

brothers kidnapped a couple of Paiute, I think, 12-year-old girls and raped them and kept them hidden at one of these little towns, these little frontier towns. And the Paiute Indians got wind of this and went and found them, killed a couple of the people, burned the town down and then started going from town to town, but also a way station to way station, just like massacring people there, burning down way stations, just basically like torching all of these places, right? And at first the cavalry was called in and grossly underestimated what the Paiute and Shoshone and Pyramid group was capable of and just got whooped, basically.

And then the further reinforcements that got called in were basically able to bring it to a standoff, but this whole thing just raised tensions from simmering below the surface to an outright what you would call a war between these tribes and the Americans who were pressing into their land. So from that moment on, it got way more difficult and scarier to be a Pony Express rider. And as per Pony Express history, this happened like 10 weeks after the first rider disembarked. Yeah. So they, I mean, not only did it cost them men, but it cost them about 75 grand.

And this is an $1860. It's like two something million today. Yeah. I mean, that was a huge loss. When they started, they ramped up their operation to try and make up for that. And all of a sudden they were delivering twice a week instead of once a week. And they eventually tried to lower their prices too, but it just, none of it worked. And financially it was a mess.

Like I said earlier, they didn't really keep a lot of records. They either didn't keep them or they may have destroyed them to avoid creditors, because these guys were not the greatest, well, I don't know if they weren't the greatest businessman, but they surely didn't fare well in this case. Well, one of them was supposedly an outright con man, Russell. Oh yeah? Yeah. He was supposedly, he was the, the spokesperson for this business venture and he was good

at that, but he was not, not a great standup guy as far as business is concerned. So the image that you get in your head of Pony Express are these guys riding full bore on these horses, being chased by Native Americans and Desperados and apparently all the, you know, many of the books over the years, even ones that sound super official, a lot of times were just made up stories. And we'll talk a little bit about who finally got in touch with a lot of these riders, but apparently when they were officially on record, they didn't talk a lot about fighting the Native Americans or anyone.

They talked about the weather stinking, about being ripped off and not being paid, sort of like normal business complaints. And it wasn't like the thing that you see at the Wells Fargo bank, like yeah, we rode horses fast, but it kind of sucked. Right. But the thing is, is like this, this was a legend in its own time is how I've seen it put. We'll, we'll talk about that after a break.

How about that? Yeah, let's do it. Okay. Hey, friends, when you're staying at an Airbnb, you might be like me wondering, could my place be an Airbnb? And if it could, what could it earn? So I was pretty surprised to hear about Lisa in Manitoba, who got the idea to Airbnb the backyard guest house over childhood home, now the extra income helps pay her mortgage.

So yeah, you might not realize it, but you might have an Airbnb too. Find out what your place could be earning at airbnb.ca slash host. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay. I see what you're doing. If you think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give

me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael, um, hey, that's me.

Yeah, we know that Michael and a different hot, sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life step by step, not another one, kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever

you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangesh Atikular and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology, but from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention because maybe there is magic in the stars if you're willing to look for it.

So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, Major League Baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. And just when I thought I had to handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too.

There's a skyline drive in the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. So Chuck, we said that the Pony Express was a legend in some time and that is absolutely true. And it was, again, in part of William Russell's superior spokesperson ship, I think is a word. Newspapers wrote about it in Sacramento. They called it our friend, the pony. I think they weren't referring to drugs.

I think they were talking about the Pony Express. But people love the Pony Express. It was just hugely innovative and the idea that these guys were out there riding as fast as they can for scores of miles with bandits on their tails just to bring us the mail. People fell in love with this thing. Even though at the end of the day, the thing lasted like 18 months. Like the Pony Express, it is huge legend that we think of. It was an 18 month business venture that ultimately failed, right?

But it was a legend. And one of the reasons it was a legend is because there were a, I mean, there were real deal exploits going on on the trail. There were some writers who were just amazing. Like one guy was called, what was Pony Bob's last name? Haslam. Yeah. Right?

Pony Bob Haslam. He was one of the writers for the Pony Express who ironically wasn't as legendary as he should have been because he was the actual real deal. But he ended up being forgotten because I get the impression he wasn't much of a self-promoter. Yeah, he made a legendary documented journey of 380 miles without relief at one point where he basically rode to, rode and rode and rode, went to his station to switch riders. And the guy there was like, well, I'm not going. Like there's Indians out there trying to kill me.

And so he was like, all right, I'm going to keep going. And he kept going and delivered the mail and eventually made his way back and ended up being a 380 mile round trip. And he's, like I said, there's not a lot of great documentation, but even though he's been lost to history, he was very well documented as an expert rider. Yeah, he definitely was. There was another one called Billy Fisher who had a pretty interesting claim to fame. He was out riding on the trail and it was during a snowstorm.

So this is another thing too. You said that the riders complained about things like the terrible weather. Sure. They were carrying mail from let's see, Missouri to Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, California. That's some tough weather. Especially say like in January, you're going to run into some terrible snowstorms, right? And Billy Fisher found himself in one of these snowstorms and he just dismounted it.

He's like, I just got to go over here and go to sleep for a little while in a blizzard. And he started to fall asleep and he woke up to something licking his face. And it was a jackrabbit who had basically licked his face till he woke up. I didn't know they licked. I think this may have been his spirit animal actually. And the rabbit like startled Billy Fisher and Billy Fisher startled the rabbit and the rabbit ran off. But it woke Billy Fisher up and he said, if that rabbit hadn't licked my face and woke

me up, I never would have woken up. I would have just frozen to death out there in this blizzard. But he was woken up enough and realized the gravity of the situation enough that he got back on his horse and kept riding to safety. It sounds like legend. Yeah. And to top it off, his great-great-grandson is William Fisher, who was one of the US astronauts who flew the space shuttle.

Oh. How about that? So legend. And these stories are like going around and like being circulated in newspapers and among people while the Pony Express is going on. Yeah. And very bad, not exploitive, sensationalist books written over the years. And then there was also a couple of real legitimate dudes, Captain Sir Richard Burton, the famous

British explorer and one Samuel Clemens, 25-year-old future Mark Twain. They both individually kind of spent some time out there documenting the Pony Express. And it seems like Burton didn't have a good time out there. He didn't like the West. No, he didn't. He always complained about the flies and the fleas and just the filth and just the people. He just was not a fan. But he still gave a fairly accurate account of like the day-to-day of a Pony Express rider.

Clemens, Mr. Future Mark Twain, seemed to have a good time. And you know, in his true fashion, wrote some of the, some really flowery eyewitness testimony about seeing these horsemen coming across the tundra or the planes. It's pretty cool. You're going to read that? No, it's too long. Okay. Well, everybody go read that.

It's in Roughing It, which is his book about traveling the U.S. and he surfs in it. Did you know that? I didn't. He goes to Hawaii and tries surfing when they used to surf on like 10-foot-long wooden boards. That's just head clean off. You'll read that quote in your best Hal Holbrook impression. That's nice.

Really? Good way to do it. I'm more a Val Kilmer Mark Twain guy. Oh, God, that's right. I forgot he did that. Everyone did, Chuck. Man. So you had Mark Twain and Captain Sir Richard Burton providing like contemporary accounts.

But that's like, that is virtually it, right? There were, again, this is a failed business venture. Let's go ahead and tell them what happened, why it was a failed business venture, Chuck. Why it ultimately died? Well, they finally hooked up the tooth. They finally closed that gap on the telegraph. They're like, well, we can go coast to coast now. So you're sort of immediately, literally immediately out of business.

Yeah. Like two days later, they closed. The first rider headed out on April 3rd, 1860, and it was October 26th of 1861 where the last one headed out from St. Joe's. And some people will say, well, it didn't actually stop in October. It was actually November because those Mochilas didn't end up in Sacramento until November. That's fine, whatever. It was like 18 months, 70 something weeks of operation.

And people loved it at the time, but as with most things, once the new, better, greater thing came along the telegram, they forgot about it pretty quick. And we really honestly would not have any recollection of the Pony Express. It would be a footnote to a footnote in history if it weren't for one guy named Buffalo Bill Cody, who actually is the reason why we all remember the Pony Express. He had a soft spot in his heart for not just the Pony Express itself, but one of the founders. I think it was Alexander Majors, right? Yeah, I think so.

Who gave him a job when he was a kid. Gave him a job when he was a kid. And while Bill would go on, or Buffalo Bill would go on to say, well, I was actually a Pony Express rider, all historical evidence suggests that that is not actually the case, but he definitely did work for Alexander Majors, who was one of the owners of the Pony Express. As a horseback messenger, just not a Pony Express rider, which if you're talking about Pony Express legend, that's a major distinction. Yeah.

And Buffalo Bill would also go on to say, she's a great big fat girl. Sorry. Is he called Buffalo Bill? Yeah. Okay. I always, for some reason, I thought it was a playoff of Buffalo Bill, like Buffalo Bob or something like that. No, it was Buffalo Bill because he skinned his victims.

I remember. Should we take a break? Geez. Okay. Sure. All right. Let's take a break and we'll talk a little bit more about Buffalo Bill right after this.

Hey, everybody, when you're staying at an Airbnb, you might be like me wondering, could my place be an Airbnb? And if it could, what could it earn? So I was pretty surprised to hear about Lauren and Nova Scotia, who realized she could Airbnb her cozy backyard treehouse and the extra income helps cover her bills and pays for her travel. So yeah, you might not realize it, but you might have an Airbnb too. Find out what your place could be earning at airbnb.ca slash host.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay. I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy band give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help.

This I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep.

We know that Michael and a different hot sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life step by step, not another one, kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever

you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangesh Atikular and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology, but from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life in India. It's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention because maybe there is magic in the stars if you're willing to look for it.

So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, major league baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had a handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too.

Find the Skyline Drive and the iHeart Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right. So Buffalo Bill's Wild West, I want to always want to say Wild West extravaganza. You can call it that. But it was really Buffalo Bill's Wild West. That was a name of his big show that he took all over the country, delighting people with sharp shooting and horseback riding and all sorts of cool stuff, enchanting America with

the Old West. Not just America, the world. Well, yeah. And that's a solid point. I mean, he went all over Europe and this article points out, that's why to this day, you can go to like a Pony Express themed club in Germany because back then he performed in front of Queen Victoria and Kaiser Wilhelm and the Pope in Rome. And basically kind of, he always seemed to have at least one reported or purported Pony

Express rider in the show. It was like one of the main segments of his show. Yeah. So at one point he did have, who was the good rider? Bronco Charlie Miller? No, no, no. Well, he had him. Oh, Pony Bob Haslam.

Yeah, Pony Bob worked for him for a little while and he is a definite legit rider. The other guy, what's his name, Bronco Billy? Bronco Charlie Miller. Oh, no, that was Clint Eastwood. Bronco Charlie Miller claimed to have been a Pony Express rider. A lot of men claim to have been over the years that were not. And they traced his timeline back and he would have been 10 or 11, which is really stretching it.

It is possible. It is. It's possible because they did go as low as like 13 and 14, but it was never super confirmed that this guy actually rode for the Pony Express, but it kind of doesn't matter because apparently everyone loved him. Yeah. And so the reason why it's stretching it, but still in the realm of possibility is because, so like when William Russell would talk about the Pony Express and his company, he would

say like, these men have to take an oath not to drink or fight. Which still happened, of course. Yeah. We have like 80 people in the saddle and in reality, yeah, they were all drunk around like at all the way stations and on the trail. And the impression is that you, if you needed a rider and there was somebody who said, I'll go, you were a Pony Express rider right then. So the idea that an 11 year old kid said, I'll go and they said, all right, fine, go.

That could have possibly happened. So it's possible. Yeah. Bronco Charlie Miller did ride. And he said, he was just such a great like old West archetype. He's like a relic, yeah. They were like, whatever, we'll believe anything you say. Yeah.

So through the years, like we said, a lot of bad information, a lot of legend, everything from movies like 1953, a Paramount film called the Pony Express, with Charlton Heston as Buffalo Bill. In the movie, Buffalo Bill teams up with Wild Bill Hickok to start the Pony Express. And as this author said, there is not a shard of fact in the entire film. I don't know if he meant shred. Shard. All right.

He could have said shred though. It works. And then this, the, if you read this, it sounds super cool. Like a notice in the St. Louis and San Francisco newspaper that said, wanted young skinny, wiry fellows, not over 18, must be expert riders willing to risk death daily. Orphans preferred, wages $25 per week. And that seems like, man, what a great job listing for the Pony Express. Orphans preferred.

That was written in the 20th century by a journalist in the Sunset magazine. So that probably wasn't even true. No, no, that's so like, again, there was, it was forgotten. Like I think Alexander Majors wrote his memoirs. Remember he was one of the three guys who owned the Pony Express. He wrote his memoirs like 30, 40 years after the Pony Express's last ride. So, and by this time, most people had forgotten it. And again, it was Buffalo Bill who came along, actually paid a visit to Alexander Majors

and found him in a fairly sorry state. He was very broke. He was in poor health and said, you gave me my first job when I was 11, after my father died and I want to repay you by taking care of you. So he put him in a show. He let him stay at his old Scouts restaurant in Nebraska, just basically took care of him. But he also was like, we've got to publish this book. So he got Rand McNally to actually publish this book about his life as a freight, old

West freight legend guy, including the Pony Express. And that was some of the earliest documentation about it, but it also kicked off like this history of terrible documentation of just surrounding the whole thing with tall tales and embellishments. And it just very quickly became, it's very tough to root fact from fiction, even today, even at some of these places that are like, this museum is a Pony Express way station. May not be the case. They're not entirely certain what the trail was any longer.

They think that there's some pristine segments that aren't covered over by tracks of some sort that they're actually like, this is the course that the Pony Express took, but they're not 100% sure. It just got lost in time. Yeah, I don't even think we mentioned that Buffalo Bill, that job he got was as a horseback delivery rider for the initial freight company, but he never rode for the Pony Express though. Did he outright claim to or just kind of let people listen to that? No, in his, in the notes for the Buffalo Bill's Wild West show, it talked about how he was

and then it would say you should buy his autobiography, it shows even more. And then they would talk in depth about how he rode for the Pony Express for sure. If you were from the old West at this time, you were basically expected to just lie constantly about some of the things you've done and same, not just with Buffalo Bill, Wild Bill Hickock said the same thing. He said he worked for the Pony Express too and he did, but he was one of those guys who ran a way station and tended to the horses. Lame.

Well, he was bigger and older, so he couldn't ride, you know, it wasn't his fault. He's a victim of circumstances. Yeah, there was a series of last living Pony Express riders throughout the years. Various newspapers, even sometimes multiple times in the same newspaper over the years, would print articles claiming that the last Pony Express rider has just died. So we don't know if any of them were or not or if they were the last or not. And it finally took a woman named a poet, apparently not a very good one, named Mabel Loving, who said, why don't, you know, why doesn't someone actually write letters and

get in touch with some of these people and get the true dirt? And she did that. She apparently wrote letters and had some correspondence with the surviving Pony Express riders as an amateur poet and said, this is right before World War One. And apparently that is some of the only like real documentation we have from some of the real riders that she eventually published in something called the Pony Express Rides On exclamation point, which apparently can still buy if you have a lot of money. Yeah.

It's like a collectible, I'm sure. Yeah, I think. And supposedly the printers lost a couple of the chapters. So like even if you buy a copy, it's not in its intact form because nobody took it very seriously. I think probably because of the exclamation point. It's never a good idea. No.

You got anything else? Well, I mean, I guess the post script is after this telegraph, like I said, two days after it was hooked up, they realized that they were done for because they were already in bad financial straits. So Waddell went home to Missouri. He was broke and in debt. He sold his home to his son for a dollar and still live there. And apparently he died in April of 1872, never worked again.

Russell, who was only 48, went to New York, failed as a stockbroker. Apparently no one trusted him. He filed for bankruptcy in 1865 and this was what, just five years after it shut down. Sold off his assets to pay his creditors, went back to Missouri finally because of poor health and died in 1872. And then majors lived the longest and we know his story. Like you said, Buffalo Bill helped him publish his book. And if Bronco Charlie Miller really was a Pony Express writer, he definitely by far

was the last one to die. He died at 105 in 1955 and years before that in age 82, he rode from New York to California on horseback to bring attention back to the Pony Express and the glory of it. Wow. Pony Express. So final facts, they ended up losing about 200 grand in that day's money, which is millions of dollars now. The personal best delivery time apparently was when they carried Abraham Lincoln's inaugural

address. They got it to California in seven days, 17 hours. Not bad. And in the end, they delivered about 35,000 pieces of mail over that 18 or 19 months. And I think it wasn't only one mail shipment, didn't only one fail to make it. That's what I understand. Yeah. It's pretty good track record for a failed business.

It's not bad at all. They wrote a combined half a million miles in that time. Pretty great. And again, that's the Pony Express, totally different than what you thought about, huh? But also sort of the same, I just didn't know that it was such a flop. Gotcha. Just bad timing. Terrible timing, man.

Well, if you want to know more about the Pony Express, well, get on out there in the trail, you varmint, and check it out yourself. And since I said varmint, it's time for listener mail. Oh, no, it's not. Oh boy. It's time for... Administrative detail. All right.

Okay. For the uninitiated, this is where Josh and I and Jerry, by way of our voices, thank you for the nice things that you have sent us in the mail. Thank you. Gifts, tokens, crafts, books, postcards, letters. Yep. By the way. Booze.

We have all the postcards and letters. That can be tough. It can be tough. How about a blanket? Thank you to everyone who's sent us postcards and letters. It's great. Thank you. All right.

Dan Kent, thank you big time for sending us Pliny the Elder beer and t-shirts. Yes. Thanks to the Bar Fight Supply Company for all the awesome leather goods, including the moleskin holder, which I use a lot. Oh, yeah, yeah. The business card holders, all that jam. Thank you very much, guys. Kelly Somsky of Two Little Elves, she sent us, or sent me, a painted rock in memory of

the wizard my cat who passed. That is very sweet. That was very sweet and very sad to get, but in a good way. Yeah. Good, sad. Bittersweet. Chris Walzak sent us beer from Hamburg, New York and IPA. Thank you, Chris.

Mandy Kruger, you sent me a ween t-shirt that I wear all the time, including on stage in Atlanta. Yeah, me and myself. Yep. Anodyne Coffee, they sent us some coffee from Milwaukee. Thanks, Anodyne. Jeremiah and Mason Brandrick, oh, I remember this. They sent us the F5 IPA, which is a beer I had when I spent some time in Tulsa.

Mm-hmm. I think it's Tulsa beer, and some beer in Stein beer shirts. Right. Soaked in cologne. Seemingly soaked in cologne. They're like here. Huh? You look like you smell.

We're going to make you pretty. It was interesting. Julie sent us handmade personalized Christmas ornaments, which it's been a while since we did this. Sure. For Jerry, Yumi, Emily, and the kids. Yeah. Yeah.

Very nice. Those are great, actually. Yeah. That was on my tree. Yeah, my dog Niko, some pet treats. Nice. Pet treater. Very nice.

Lindsay Lundstrom sent us some wonderful bottle keycap, or bottle cap key chains. Oh, those are awesome. Yeah. There was a SYSK one, a Don't Be Dumb one, Last Chance Garage, Mama's, Jerry, Red Dragon, and she's out of Etsy and Facebook at Red Dragon Handcrafts. Check them out. You're going to love them. Yeah.

That's good stuff. I sent me a library copy of a book, my children's book, that I was so fond of as a kid, The Great Christmas Kidnapping Caper. I'm really excited to read this to my daughter, Becca. So thank you so much for sending that. Kelly Butler Olson sent Murder by Death, a copy of Murder by Death, arguably one of the greatest spoof movies of all time, one of my favorites. So thank you, Kelly.

KBO. Yeah. Miller Stonehawker sent a lovely Christmas card and handmade caramels, which were delish. And Nick Stiglich sent us some Stroopwafels, those amazing things that you put over your coffee to heat up. Yeah. We've got more than one Stroopwafel. So if you also sent Stroopwafels, many thanks.

And just send them again. Nathan Falazzo, he's actually Australian. He's an artist and he sent us, these are great, a variety of bookmarks, magnets, coloring books, all that are animals with their bodies made of flowers and plants. Yeah. It's amazing. It's really nice. So you should check this out.

It's online at marinifalazzo.au, M-A-R-I-N-I-F-E-R-L-A-Z-Z-O.A-U. And a portion of these sales go to Wildlife Conservation. So gorgeous and well-funded. Speaking of gorgeous, Aidan Dale sent us Metal Sculpture Orchids and you can find them at Aidan-A-I-D-E-N Dale-D-A-L-E dot com. Thank you, Aidan. Just a few more here, folks. Elias Pagerco sent honey from their three colony apiary.

That's pretty great. Thanks, Elias. Elias, that was awesome. Robin sent us beer and mead from Wisconsin and it was well appreciated and didn't last very long. Robin, thank you. Thank you for that drink, Wisconsinbly. Robin, that was great.

That's a t-shirt I didn't make it up. Bonnie Bowden sent us Mulderamas guitars, which I think got from Third Man Records in Nashville. I think she also sent the Willis Tower one, which I was like, what the heck is the Willis Tower? And I was like, oh, that's the Sears Tower. Well, and we got actually more than one person sent us Mulderamas. Yeah, like Luke and David Scherzko, father and son, they sent us Elephant Mulderamas from Warechuck.

Toledo Zoo. Bam, which has probably the largest selection of Mulderamas outside of the Chicago land area. That's right. You grew up right there in the guerrilla cage. That's right. Nathan sent us his band CD, EP, Missouri Loves Company. Or Missouri.

Or Missouri. Missouri Loves Company. Philip Le Palme, great name, sent Robert Shaw Jaws Christmas card to Chuck. That's right. And then finally, just a couple of weeks ago, I got sent some guitar picks from Forever Pick. And apparently these picks have like better sustain and better performance. And I have not yet plucked with them, but I can't wait to use my Forever picks.

That is fantastic. Do you have some more? Yeah, we've got just a couple more, Chuck, if you'll bear with me. Take us home, brother. Josh Jones sent us Catfish Head Vodka. Oh, yeah. Thanks a lot, Josh. Doug sent us an amazing poster congratulating us for a thousand episodes.

And Olaf and Millie, the shop dog, sent us the amazing railroad spike bottle openers. Remember those? Oh, yeah. You can go to churchmouseforge.com. And dude, I want to say Ian Newton, who founded the Baltimore Whiskey Company, Ian has been sending us stuff like this shot-tower gin, it's kind of like a malty gin that I love. Oh, yeah. Sent that bourbon that you love.

Just has been sending us some pretty great stuff. So first of all, Ian, thank you. Second of all, Ian, keep it coming. And third, everybody else who's not Ian, go check out Baltimore Whiskey Company's stuff, the Baltimore Spirits Company. They have just amazing booze that's locally made in Baltimore. And you can tell it's like craft distilled stuff. You're going to love it.

Delish. So thank you to everybody who sent us anything ever. And if you sent us something in between the last administrative details in this one, and we didn't say your name, first of all, we apologize. Secondly, get in touch with us and let us know because we do want to thank you and it's just an oversight. We're not actually mad at you, okay? Please do.

And I have even more. I want to thank Doug Sashary. I know how to pronounce the name now. I don't know if you guys remember or not, but I mispronounced Tony Cachery's seasoning, Creole seasoning. It turns out it's Tony Sashary's. And Doug, let me know by sending me tons of Tony Sashary's products and they're awesome. So thank you, Doug.

I also want to thank another Doug, Doug Dixon, the CEO of Jolt Cola, who sent us some Jolt Cola care packages. And then every once in a while, people bring us stuff to our live shows. So thank you to Ron from Dundee, Michigan for giving me the complete DVD set of Thundar, the Barbarian, which I'd never seen all the way through because of swimming lessons. And a very nice person gave us gooey cakes at the St. Louis show. Our friend Dale from Australia sent us a care package of Australian candy to acclimate us to Australian candy for our Australia tour.

And then John from Capistrano Beach, who sent us a giant puzzle wheel that I have yet to begin to even try to figure out. So thank you, John, for this madness. If you want to get in touch with us, whether to send us something or just to say hi, you can go on to our website, StuffPodcast at HowStuffWorks.com. Check out our t-shirt store at tepublic.com. Or you can just send us a good old-fashioned email to StuffPodcast at HowStuffWorks.com. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio.

For more podcasts on my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody, about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll

never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Munga Chauticular and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to believe. You can find it in Major League Baseball, International Banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable

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