Stuff You Should Know - The Cliffs Notes on Cliffs Notes

Episode Date: May 15, 2025

When a man named Cliff packaged book summaries in yellow and black booklets he changed the way kids learned. But was he just creating a cheat code?See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You're listening to an iHeart podcast. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too. And this is the brief overview of Cliff Notes. We're not gonna do the exhaustive encyclopedic documentary length, Cliff's Notes episode. Nope. We are doing the brief overview of Cliff's Notes.

I said it wrong the first time. It's never been Cliff Notes. It's Cliff's Notes. Yeah, I mean, the first thing we should probably say, because Jerry and the pre-show banter even got it wrong, even though I said, Jerry, we're doing an episode on Cliff's notes. She said, I used to get Cliff notes. It's not Cliff notes.

I used to say Cliff notes too in high school, but it is Cliff's notes, as in the person's name was Cliff, as we'll soon find out. It used to have an apostrophe. Then it just became Cliff's two words, notes, without an apostrophe. Then it became Cliff's notes, all one word,

but with that N capitalized. So stylish. But it has never been Cliff notes. No, but everyone basically in the world calls it Cliff notes. Right, and we should tell everyone what this is. If you don't know, I do know that they went in the world calls it Cliff Notes. Right, and we should tell everyone what this is. If you don't know, I do know that they went around the world a little bit, but it feels like a very American thing.

It is a study aid. It's basically sort of, I was about to say a Cliff Notes version of the book, because it's so in the lexicon now. It's like, if you went to read a book in high school in the 80s, like The Scarlet Letter, and you're like, oh, god, do I really have to read The Scarlet Letter?

You would go to a store, and you would buy this yellow and black very thin pamphlet. I don't remember how much they were then. They're only about $8.99 now. And it would contextualize the work. It would summarize the work, give you character descriptions, basically everything you needed to know the night before to pass the test or write the paper.

Yeah, and like you said, it's entered the lexicon. Most people can recognize it just from that yellow and black cover. It looks like a Men at Work album cover. Yeah, or Striper. Striper, yes. Very nice. Maybe that's where Striper got it. Maybe. And then, yeah, most people in America know what we're talking about. I do wonder how well known it is around the world though. I mean, I think it ended up

going to 39 countries, but it just feels like a very lazy American thing, especially for Gen Xers to be like, I'll just get that and that's fine. Yeah, because it's been long, basically from the outset, criticized for being this thing that students read and use instead of actually reading the material, the book that they're supposed to read. That actually ran a foul, I guess, of what the guy who invented these things' intent was.

He always said, no, this is not what that's for. You're supposed to read the regular book. You're supposed to read the Scarlet Letter Chuck, and whether you like it or not doesn't matter. And then you get the Cliffs notes and you understand it that much more fully. That was the point. That's right. And of course, we're talking about Keith Hillegas. Oh, I'm kidding.

Clifton Heath Hillegas. His name was Cliff. A gentleman was a true corn husker, as we'll see. He was born in 1918 out in the rural sticks of Nebraska. His father was a mail carrier. And he was a very smart kid and I would assume a smart adult because he studied physics and math at Midland Lutheran College and then was going to grad school for physics and geology at the University of Nebraska, go Cornhuskers, but dropped out in 1939 to marry a classmate named Catherine Galbraith, at which time he got a job at Long's College Books as a clerk. And that company would later become the Nebraska Book Company. Yeah.

So long story short, Cliff Hillegas was a very smart guy. I saw that he was said to read five books a week basically his whole life. Or did he just read five quick summaries? I don't know. I just don't know. Because he's dead now and we can't ask him. That's right. But he worked at the NBC, Nebraska book company

up until World War II when he went to the Army. He was a meteorologist for the Army Air Corps, so again, pretty smart dude. Ended up a captain and his wife Catherine worked as a clerk for the Manhattan Project. So she was sharp as a tack as well Yeah, also, I want to give big ups Are we still saying big ups?

Heck yeah, man. We're we're old people. We can say whatever we want I want to give big ups to Olivia who helped us out with this because there is not a lot of information on Cliffs Notes out there Yeah, it's like it's just not out there. You can get like the the like appropriately enough the brief overview of Cliff Notes and its history but to really dig in and get the details you got to get out there so thanks to her for that. She did it. I think she she broke into the estate of the Hillegas estate and stole a diary. I think so. Yeah and then also I want to give big ups to Mental Floss too because they did some really good reporting on it too, some good digging.

Yeah, for sure. All right, so back to Cliff Hillegas. He was in the Army then after the war. He went back to his old job at the Nebraska Book Company. He said, we knew you'd be crawling back. Yeah. And he helped transform them into a wholesale textbook distributor. And he ended up sort of traveling all over the country, buying and selling used textbooks, when a little trip to Toronto, Canada ended up being quite a good thing for the course of his life, right?

Yeah, depending on who you're talking about. It wasn't that good of a thing for a guy named Jack Cole, the guy who we had dinner with in Toronto, who was a bookstore owner. And Jack Cole was like, hey, man, I'm going to let you in on this business opportunity. I have these condensed pamphlets that basically are analysis of Shakespeare's plays.

I publish 16 of them. And I think the quote from Cliff Hillegast was, whew, Jack Hall said, yes, I know. He said, I want you to be the American distributor of these pamphlets, which I call Cole's Notes. And Clifton Hillegast said, all right, I'll give it a shot and started selling these things, publishing them,

and selling them in America. And what happened from Cole's notes, Chuck? Well, first thing we should say is he took great risk, and I'm not like, you know, weighing in one way or the other of the ethics of any of this, but Hillegas did take upon great financial risk. He got a loan for $4,000 to make this happen, close to 50 grand today,

and printed up 33,000 copies of these Coles notes himself, and he and his wife Catherine and their three young kids packed and shipped these things in their house, out of their home for a little while, and were selling pretty good. And then what happened, Josh? Well, yeah, so they were paying royalties to Jack Cole. That was the setup.

And within the first year, I guess, Hillegas was like, nuts to that. I'm just gonna rename these things Cliff Notes. Cliff's Notes. So they went from Cole's Notes to Cliff's Notes. I think Cole was heard to say, and Cliff was like, I can't hear you. I'm down in Nebraska. So I just see people gloss over this all the time.

Like it's, I just don't understand why it's not at all controversial because he clearly just took, he just lifted the intellectual property of Jack Cole and took it as his own. He just lifted the intellectual property of Jack Cole and took it as his own. To be fair, he rewrote and phased out the Cole's Note stuff, but the whole concept and even basically the name was the same. Yeah, I would argue that maybe the name

is intellectual property, but I think in a court of law, a judge would say, like, you can't can't claim like doing a condensed version of a book as like an original idea that no one else can do. Because there were summaries before this. They didn't invent the idea of a literary summary. You know what I'm saying? Yeah, but if law and order has taught me anything, it's that you can't predict what a judge is going to rule.

No, that's true. But, and I do, I'm not like going to bat for Cliff. I'm just saying that I don't think that's one of those ideas you can say like, I hold the idea for condensing a long novel into a shorter version. No, I understand. And I'm not trying to like gun him down. I just hadn't gotten my gotcha today. So that was... Right. I do feel bad for Cole though, if it helps. I do too. And I saw nowhere what his reaction was or what he Right. I do feel bad for Cole though, if it helps. I do too, and I saw it nowhere, what his reaction was or what he did.

I made up his quote of, um, that was a joke. Right. But yeah, everybody just walks right past that stuff. Yeah, yeah, for sure. And I refuse to. Well, people, I feel like everyone is called out online for doing something like this,

but old Cliff gets a pass, I guess, because everyone got through school because of him. Yeah, that's the thing. So yeah, this is not to paint him as a bad guy. If you want to know about him, he treasured letters that he got from students thanking him for helping them get through school, which you and I can attest getting a letter

and email like that is really great. So I guess that makes us really great too if I'm saying that that makes him a good guy. That's wonderful, that really worked out. Yeah, he sold a lot of these pretty quickly though. I do like how Olivia put it, he gradually phased out the original material. It seemed like that happened within that first year.

But he was, I also couldn't find when he stopped paying the royalties. Was that during the first year too? I'm guessing when it became Clif's notes, he stopped paying royalty. Probably right. But nevertheless, between the start of when he started doing that in August of 1958

and just yet six months later at the end of that year, he had sold 58,000 copies of these book summaries and pamphlets. And by 1964, but six years later, he was doing all this on the side from the Nebraska Book Company. He was able to quit that job by 64. And just the 60s were a big decade period. He quit that job in 64. He changed the name in the 60s from

Cliff's Notes without the apostrophe to Cliff's Notes. Big, big deal. And then he got divorced in 1966 and got remarried. Yeah, later on he got remarried to a woman named Mary. And I guess he adopted her two kids. Another thing that shows he's a standup guy. Really the only blemish on his entire lifetime is how he treated Jack Cole. That's true, but did those kids, the biological father, get royalties? No.

On those children? He named them Cliff's kids. They were originally Jack Cole's because he stole his wife, Mary. Oh, man. And everyone just glosses right over that. Yep. Should we take a break?

Sure. All right, we'll take an early break here because this one's probably a little bit shorter and we'll talk about the early days of that company right after this. ["Stuff Gives Shudder"] We learned so much stuff from Josh and Chuck, stuff you should know. So we should say, despite legendarily reading five books a week, Hillygast didn't write

any of the Cliffs Notes. He was more like the business guy. He had the idea, you would put in scare quotes, and he was running the whole operation. He had the vision for it, right? So he hired other people, and initially hired literature teachers, like hardcore, like hardcore, like they have crew cuts and wear like army boots

and stuff like that kind of lit teacher. But he realized something very quickly that I'm sure developed. A hardcore lit teacher who's been teaching the same books, been teaching a scarlet letter for, I think we should not mention a single other book besides the scarlet letter in this episode. What do you think?

All right, let's give it a shot. These hardcore lit teachers who have been teaching a scarlet letter, the scarlet letter, sorry, for 20 years. Technically, I just named another book, Chuck. For 20 years, these people know too much. They understand the book too well. They know all the details that they just get mired down

when they're writing a synopsis or something. It's just too intense for the audience, which is high school and college readers, usually undergrad readers. Yeah, he was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, pump your brakes. I'm trying to sell these to lazy kids. Exactly. Like, broad overview, please. He ended up with grad students, mainly, saying that they did the best work, which makes sense. Sure, they work for free, too. That's right. But we mentioned the iconic yellow and black design. That was something Cliff thought of himself. I remember the mountain cliffs even being on the

editions I had when I was, you know, a student in the 80s. I don't think they have that anymore, but they have these yellow and black stripes that just, it looks, I mean, it's a genius branding move just to do that simple little thing because Cliff's notes were so identifiable from across a bookstore the night before a test or something, you could zoom over to that spinning rack of yellow and black pamphlets. Yeah, you'd walk in the bookstore

and they'd call to you, Don't bother come by. Yeah exactly So one of the big things I didn't know this but one of the big reasons CliffsNotes became the brand that it is today Which is to say iconic is because they advertise a lot in the 60s and they very wisely Went to where their readership was they advertised in 17 they advertised in Playboy. They advertised in Seventeen, they advertised in Playboy, they advertised in, well, the Scholastic Journal. I don't know how much of a return on investment they got on that, but they also advertise in college newspapers.

Bingo. Yeah, and so like if you're going to high schoolers and college kids and saying, hey, we have something that you, it's going to keep you from having to read a scarlet letter, the scarlet letter. Like, don't you want that? And they say, yes, I want that so bad. Like, it just rooted that business

and simultaneously made it take off like a rocket. That's right, and you would open up the scarlet letter, Cliff's Notes, and it would say, the letter is A, the end. That's why I keep calling it a scarlet letter. Yeah, probably, because it is literally A. A for awesome. Oh, not quite.

One thing Cliff had in his corner was all his work for the Nebraska Book Company and being a traveling salesperson and all these relationships he had with bookstores because he owned the market for this. Eighty percent of the market for guides to literature belonged to Cliff because that was just it. I mean, I think for a long time, I mean, competitors would come along and we'll talk about that, but I think he had a number of years, maybe even decades, where everyone was just like, well no, there's already Cliff's Notes.

Like, why even bother? He owns it. Right. That wasn't enough to keep people from coming along as competitors, but it does seem like they really didn't start to emerge until much, much later in history. Yeah.

Like decades and decades on. Yeah, for sure. One of the things that CliffsNotes have long been criticized for though, is like they write the book on the Scarlet Letter, and that's that. Like what you are reading could have been written by a grad student in 1968.

Yeah, for sure. Even though you just bought this thing like last week. could have been written by a grad student in 1968. Even though you just bought this thing like last week. That's not the case any longer. It's changed hands and as it's changed hands several times, they've definitely been dusted off and brushed up and all those idioms. But for a very long time it was like, this is really old fashioned stuff. Especially like the language they use, the points they're making.

A lot of, one of the things that Cliff's Notes was known for is putting works of literature, specifically the Scarlet Letter, into a historical context. And that can change as people understand history more, but if you don't go update it, it's the understanding of it in 1968. Yeah, for sure.

We mentioned the 60s, you just mentioned 68 for crying out loud. Yeah. Being kind of a big decade for the business, it was toward the end of that decade that things got a little rocky. It was around 1969 that a couple of things happened to sort of dampen the business, I

guess, a little bit. And this is something I didn't know, but apparently, starting in 1969 and through the first bit of the 70s, the classics, people are like, hey, all these new teachers came along. They're like, hey, we don't need to read the Scarlet Letter anymore. We're going to read another unnamed book that's a little more current. And so the classics kind of fell off a little bit and apparently a lot of high schools and colleges started the pass-fail thing. So a kid wasn't as incentivized to ace a test,

they were just incentivized to pass a test. So they're like, I don't even need the Cliff Notes, I can just kind of fake my way through and pass this thing. As a result, they dropped about a million bucks a year in sales up until like the mid-70s when they were like, oh my God, what were we thinking? We got to put the Scarlet Letter back on the reading list and we have to grade these kids according to their grade.

This pass fail thing is not doing anyone any favors. It's chaos. It's chaos. Yeah, not only did they drop a million in sales, they dropped a million units in the mid 70s. Oh, I thought that was sales. No, like the number of sales that they made dropped from 2.8 million to 1.8 million.

Oh, I was pretty sure that was dollars, but. And I'm sure. If you're positive that it's units, we'll move on. I'm 78% positive. Oh, okay, well that tracks, because I was 22% positive. Oh, okay, well that tracks, because I was 22% positive. Okay, good. Yeah, and Cliff Hillegas was like, you hippies,

for that huge loss in sales for the mid-70s. Yeah. So there was another stumble that they made, Cliff's cassettes, which was a good idea, if you ask me. Totally. It was Cliff's notes, but in a cassette version that kids could pop into their Walkman and walk around listening to.

Wanna be lazier? Yeah, exactly. You don't even have to walk around. You can lay there and listen to this stuff with your eyes closed and your hands soaking in palm olive. If you don't wanna read the Scarlet Letter and you don't wanna read the 47 page summary, how about you just pop in that cassette

and lay on your bed and smoke some grass? Yeah, and listen to Ed Asner tell you what the scarlet letter means. Oh boy, was that planned or did you just come up with that? I just came up with that. Oh, that's so great. This was only about a six month thing. It did not go over well despite being a pretty good idea.

That got me thinking about just audiobooks or books on tape and when that was a thing. Apparently that started in 1932. Oh yeah? Yeah, the American Foundation for the Blind opened up a recording studio. So it was a thing, but I feel like it didn't really take off until much, much, much later.

Until the Walkman. Did you have a Walkman, by the way? Yeah, of course I did. Nice I did too. I associate it specifically with my cassette of Huey Lewis and the News Sports. Yeah one of the great records of all time. Yeah it is really good. I don't think I ever had a Discman. I didn't either. I think I went straight from Walkman to, jeez, I guess iPod as far as walking around. Oh, yeah. I never had an iPod. I went from Walkman to iPhone, I guess. I had the first iPod.

Wow. So, yeah, I had the first, not Steve Jobs' iPod, but the first edition. I still have it, it still works. Oh, do you really? Wow, that's really saying something. Yeah, I put pictures of it on my Instagram not too long ago actually, because I found it, charged it,

and I just put up the opening screen, because the first Walkman had everything in alphabetical order just on the screen when he opened it. Right, yeah. And boy, it was eight or nine bands locked in time from I guess like 2000 or something, whatever that was. That's awesome. Yeah, I didn't have one of those.

No, I'm sorry. I'm gonna get you a, maybe a nano. No need. Those things were tiny though. They were like the size of a thumb of steak. Yeah, or a square of chocolate actually. Yeah, there you go. Yeah.

We'll keep going, right? Yeah, I mentioned Hillagras was a true corn husker. He kept that company in Nebraska. He felt very strongly about that and donated 10% of its profits to Nebraska organizations. Was a big curator of the arts, so the Museum of Nebraska Art was a big one that benefited from his stealing that idea from Cole.

And they have, if you've ever looked up, like hey, what does this guy look like anyway, you might see a bronze statue of him, and that is from that Museum of Nebraska Art. Yeah, he's standing up in some bushes like a creep with a book open. What else? What happened in 1983? He, this is, this, I think this also kind of puts a certain, like, it paints a picture of this guy. That's what I'm trying to say. At age 65, on the dot, he retires. Okay? Yeah. Like

that's just the kind of guy he was, but he didn't actually retire. He just stepped down from company president to the head of the board of directors. Yeah. And he still went into the office every day. Yeah and he's instead of calling him Mr. Hillegasse, they said you can call me Cliff. Right. He would show up in like a smoking jacket and an ascot after he retired. Exactly. But he still called the shots. Right. But that's just, I mean, I can totally, because don't forget, he was trained in geology, math, physics. He had a certain way of looking at things for sure. Yeah. A couple of years later in 1985, there was a Chicago Tribune article.

So this is mid-'80s. They had a staff of about 25 people, and they had published 225 guidebooks, or book guides rather, 60 million copies in circulation, and yes, I nailed it, 39 countries in circulation. And apparently there were some countries that used them to help teach American English in different countries. Sure, especially the English used by Americans in 1968. That's right, by the end of the 80s, they were taking in about 11 million bucks a year,

which is pretty good scratch. It's about 28 today. 28 million? Yeah, that's even better scratch. And by the end of the millennium, in 1999, at the age of 81, he sold it off. He was like, all right, I'm 81, I wanna live out my remaining years as a super rich guy and not just a medium rich guy.

So he sold to IDG Books, who was a publisher of the four dummies guides that everyone knows. And he sold for only 14 million, which kind of surprises me, fully retired and sadly died a couple of years later at 83 from complications of stroke. I've always wondered what that is.

Like, guys in particular retiring and then dying like very soon after that, it's kind of a thing. And even if you don't die, you can, like a lot of people just get like really sick for a while afterward. And I don't know if it's like you've been running on adrenaline the last five years or what the deal is, but it's like when you finally, your body finally resets,

like I don't have to go to work anymore, something happens to you. Are you saying this personally to me so I Yep. can consider this as I weigh my future. Don't even think of retiring Chuck. It was bought and sold a few more times though. In 2001, John Wiley & Sons bought the brand.

They changed the name this time. This is when they squashed it together as Cliff's Notes with the capital N. Then Houghton Mifflin Harcourt bought it in 2012 and then Coarse Hero bought it in 21. Yeah, yeah, well that makes sense too. Course Hero's a online tutor, essentially. They have courses, and they're heroes for it.

And one final thing before we take the break is, it is, I think the New York Times and the early Aughts did a report, and they found that it's not just lazy high school kids that are buying these books. They found out it's lazy adults in book clubs that just wanna, they wanna participate in a book club, but they maybe don't have the time to read the Scarlet Letter.

So they'll get the Cliffs Notes so they can go and have some wine and talk about the Abridged version. Right, and you can tell the ones that read the Cliffs Notes of the Scarlet Letter, because they're the ones who thought it was really good. That's right, and it's also the yellow who thought it was really good. That's right. And it's also the yellow and black

is sticking out from their fanny pack. Right. They have a little piece of it in their teeth. Right. All right. Shall we take our second break? Yes. All right.

We'll be back and pick up on where we are today with Cliff and his notes. Alright, as promised, we're're gonna talk about Cliff's notes today. You can still buy these pamphlets. Like I said, I looked up online. If you want to buy the Scarlet Letter and hold it in your hand, I think it was $8.99, somewhere a little less, but they're kind of in that ballpark. Aren't they used though? They're not newly printed.

I don't know. I mean, they sell them on Amazon. That still could be used, I guess. That was my take that they're used, but who knows? Maybe. I do know that their main source of income now is the website that offers most of this stuff for free, which is weird that they also have a fee model attached. Yeah, so you can subscribe to Cliff's Notes today for I think $9 a month or 36 bucks a year. And you get all of the free stuff,

but you can also download it as a PDF. So if you learn better by like reading on print or on paper, you would need to do that. But they also have other stuff too. There's much more in-depth guides and analysis and stuff like that behind their paywall. So it's not like you're just a total sucker for paying for free Cliff's Notes,

because they have a bunch of stuff that's not just free. Yeah, and we're not gonna go through this list, but Livia was kind enough, I think, because she needed to fill a word count, to list out what you get in the actual free version of, let's say, the Scarlet Letter. And my take is that you get a pretty good summary and chapter by chapter thing and character analysis

and all that stuff, but it's just even a lesser version than the more robust paid monthly. Right. And I mean, it's even more, like there's pretty good detail in it, like for their analysis of the Scarlet Letter, they talk about how the Scarlet Letter fits into dystopian fiction in general,

or how Big Brother in the Scarlet Letter can be compared to Hitler or Stalin, or when Hester Prynne develops news speak, what all that means. Yeah, exactly. And a biography of George Orwell, the writer of the Scarlet letter. That's right. Yeah. Th there's a bunch of stuff I went in and poked around and it is a lot of free stuff. Like you could write numerous really good slam dunk papers

on the Scarlet Letter just from the free stuff that they have available. So I'm a little curious too what their business model is because it doesn't really make sense to me unless it's a portal to Course Hero now that I think about it. I'll bet it is. I'll bet they get you with the free stuff

and then they get you into course hero and they turn you upside down and shake you by your ankles until all the change falls out of your pockets. Do you want to be a better student for nine bucks a month? Yeah. So we should talk a little bit more about the elephant in the room, which is that this is just a way for kids to cheat.

I mean, the other elephant is we haven't discussed our own Cliff Notes, Cliff's Notes use. I will volunteer my own, you don't have to answer. I've never used them. Okay, well go ahead and just make me look bad right before I say that I leaned on them. No, worse than that, I never, I didn't even bother to use the Cliff's Notes.

I didn't read the material either. Oh. I was just a really, really lame high school student in high school. I was not good at all. I didn't blossom until college. Okay, I do remember that now, but you were setting me up to look like a chump.

No, I swooped in and saved you. Thank you. Like Hester Brand did in the Scarlet Letter. That's right. I did use Cliffs notes, not exclusively. I was always a believer, and this is not right, kids, of I love to read, I was an English major for heaven's sake. I know.

So I loved to read, but I wanted to read what I wanted to read. Emily still sort of challenges me, not on just reading, but like, Chuck only does what he wants to do, that kind of thing. still sort of challenges me, not on just reading, but like Chuck only does what he wants to do, that kind of thing. That's not the best trade everybody. You should not be like Chuck. But I wanted to read what I wanted to read.

I didn't want to read the Scarlet Letter, so I got the Cliffs Notes. And you know, probably peruse the Scarlet Letter. The books that I was like like I totally want to read that I can't think of another book title like the scarlet letter Yeah, I would read that scarlet letter. I wouldn't read the one they assigned to me So I did use Cliff's notes I did that was in high school did not use them in college as an English major because I felt like

It was time to get a little more serious and I chose that major willingly So I should probably do the work. Right. And that was the only work in college I really, really enjoyed was reading and writing. So I didn't use them in college, but all that to say, the elephant in the room is like, is this just for lazy kids? And you mentioned that Hillegas was like, no,

but how would he enforce that? Or encourage that, rather? With a stern note. Yeah. At the beginning of every copy of Clift Notes. He had a little note. His signature was next to it too. He said that, a thorough appreciation of literature allows no shortcuts,

and students who use them to avoid reading the actual material or having to go into class for discussion groups about the material are denying themselves the very education that they are presumably giving their most vital years to achieve. And I feel like he took a bit of an approach, a utopian approach to how he viewed his customers, but surely there was some out there. I do wonder if there was a single CliffsNotes buyer who read that note and was like,

you know what, I'm gonna change my ways. I'm abusing these things. I doubt it, but I'm sure there were students, like I did at times, where a book was a little over their head and they used the CliffsNotes as intended to help with the book. I saw also that some teachers did that. They actually suggested CliffsNotes as intended to help with the book. I saw also that some teachers did that. They actually suggested CliffsNotes for some students,

which meant that your teacher thought you were a dipstick. Well, teachers also were on record as using it for lesson planning sometimes, because they didn't want to read the Scarlet Letter either. That's really hilarious. That's so Mrs. Krabappel. It totally is. And then a lot of them actually use Cliff's Notes for the opposite reasons.

They would know, like if you're a high school English teacher, there's a handful of the Scarlet Letters that you've assigned during the year, and you assign the same Scarlet Let over and over again, year after year. So you probably know the Cliffs notes on those things by heart. So you can very easily pick out when somebody is not only using the, the Cliffs notes, but way worse than that is actually plagiarizing the Cliffs notes. That is the laziest thing you could possibly do prior to Chet GPT writing your paper for you? Yeah, this is coming from two Gen Xers,

and we wrote the book on how to get away with lazy. Yeah, I didn't even read the material or the CliffsNotes. That's pretty lazy. Yeah. Certain universities took charge. 1997, Villanova pulled CliffsNotes from their college bookstore. Other bookstores maybe didn't sell them,

but they're the only one that Livy could find at least that actually pulled them off the shelves. Yeah, they were famously sent in a hit squad that ended up trashing the bookstore and tore up all of the Cliff's notes. And when they left, they threw flashbang grenades into the bookstore as they took off. That's right, and yelled,

"'Hud, hud, hud. Cliff did not like this, and they took out a full page ad, I guess he was passed away by this point, but the company didn't like this, and they took an ad in the Villanova student newspaper, called it censorship, and the college was like, they can still buy these things anywhere, this is sort of a symbolic gesture, calm down.

Yeah, we kind of touched on, and we didn't say it like overtly, but there were a lot of teachers out there who were OK with Cliff's Notes, and some who even encouraged their use. That seems to have come along like a generation after Cliff's Notes came out, which is not coincidental, because a lot of those people who grew up to be English teachers and English professors

used Cliff's Notes when they went through school themselves. So at the very least, they had a certain fondness of it, and at best, they were like, this is actually super helpful as a reference material. Yeah, for sure. And if you have a set of Cliff's notes that you have read recently from later in the company's story, you're like,

hey man, I didn't see any note from Cliff saying these aren't shortcuts, PS, enjoy the shortcut. This didn't have anything in it. I think the minute he sold that company, they were like, let's get rid of that note. It's a real drag. Yeah, it's a real drag, and not only that, our advertising should actively encourage the fact

that this is a shortcut. Yeah, that's pretty much what they did. Let's own it. Yeah, and they did own it. I think they kind of walked it back a little bit, so there's like a watered down version of his note, essentially saying the same thing, but they definitely did, they said the unspoken part

out loud, I guess is how they put it. Yeah, for sure. Here's the big question though, and I'm glad Olivia posed this question. Is it bad to use Cliff's notes? And the very idea of like, do kids need to read the Scarlet Letter? Or is the only reason they're reading the Scarlet Letter to just not look like a dipstick when someone brings up the Scarlet letter, or is the only reason they're reading the scarlet letter

to just not look like a dipstick when someone brings up the scarlet letter? Like, do you just need to be acquainted with this stuff as a cultural touch point in life, or to get a Jeopardy answer correct, or I'm sorry, Jeopardy clue correct? Nice catch. Man, we almost got our membership revoked.

And you know, this is me speaking. I think, yeah, like you should read these books. And a lot of people are on record saying, yeah, I mean not necessarily Justice Scarlet Letter, but it's called, I believe there's a literature scholar from the University of Kentucky named Alan Nadel that calls it the labor of witnessing. Like to actually read the thing is the thing.

It's not reading the Wikipedia. I think that was, she found a Redditor, East, TX Josh, that said it's like reading the Wikipedia on Beethoven's ninth but not listening to it. There's something about experiencing the thing that is different and valuable. Yeah. Yeah, and reading all this, Chuck,

made me realize how much I missed out by not reading all those books in high school. You still can, buddy. Right, so I went on a couple of, like I searched books you should read before you die, and that brought up numerous lists, and there's some that appear on all the lists. And I'm still searching for which

the Scarlet Letter I'm gonna read. But yeah, if you have any recommendations for one to start with, let me know. Well, you know what would be fun is our mutual friend Joey Ciara of the Henry Clay People, who are friends who wrote and performed the theme song to our television show, and still a good friend.

I'm gonna see it, he's going to Glengarry with me this weekend. Very nice. He is a Moby Dick aficionado and collects copies and versions of that. And he said, that is the best book of all time. He said, it's not my favorite book. He said, it's the best book.

You mean the Scarlet Letter, the one with the great white whale? Oh, that's right. I got the name wrong, so sorry. Yeah the Great White Whale. Oh, that's right. I got the name wrong. So sorry. Yeah. All right. Yeah, I saw that one.

I was like, I don't know. I read. It might be fun if we both read that. OK. I have a feeling you're going to be like, you're still reading that two years from now. But should I? Well, let's put it this way.

Joey gave me a copy probably two years ago, and it sits untouched on the shelf. OK. All right. You give me a two-year years ago, and it sits untouched on the shelf. All right, do you give me a two year head start, and then you start, and we'll finish at the same time and talk about it. I gotta put down this Mike Campbell book

of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, and the R.E.M. one before that, and the Mudhoney one before that. All I read is these rock books. I need to put them all away, and by the way, those are all called The Scarlet Letter. My story in Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. Right.

And also, Chuck, I mean, if rock and roll rots your brain, reading about rock and roll really does. Should we mention one more point that teachers make, or I'm sorry, that problem with study guides. Some people are like, hey, these study guides just give you one lens to look through to view this thing. And what you need to do is read the book and go to a class and hear it from a teacher.

But some people say, yeah, but that teacher is just looking at it through their lens. I disagree. As an English major in my classes, the teacher would present perhaps their analysis and then say, this is what other people think. And what do you think? Right. And you have to have read the Cliffs Notes to say what you think. What else?

You want to talk about any of these parodies or spin-offs or competitors? Yeah. I mean, we can just mention kind of quickly, Spark Notes became the biggest competitor in like 1999. There's one called Shmoop, founded in 2008, that became a pretty good competitor. That's pretty good, I went and read some of their stuff. It's much more loosely written, like what's up with,

yada yada yada. Oh really? What's up with that letter A. Interesting. I do want to mention this one spoof at least, Thug Notes. Yeah, it's great. Did you watch any of these? I watched the one on Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

I think you mean The Scarlet Letter. Man, I got it too, we both went down. Thug Notes is on YouTube. I was talking about the movie. Oh, right, right, right. It's a YouTube series from comedian Greg Edwards. He plays a character, a PhD named Sparky Sweets, who summarizes a commentary on 100 different books.

They're generally about five minutes long, and it's a comedy thing. It's Thug Notes. He does African American vernacular, and breaks down these books in a fun way, in a very quick way, but he's got 3.14 million subs, and if you watch one of these, like you did, you will soon learn it's a joke, but he's laying 3.14 million subs, and if you watch one of these like you did, you will soon learn it's a joke,

but he's laying down some real truth on some of these as well. Oh yeah, when you finish watching one of these Thug Notes, you understand what that book was about fully. He does a great job with it, but yeah, there's just this whole schtick to it that's pretty awesome too. Yeah, I watched a few of them,

but the one on the Scarlet Letter by George Orwell at the end, in the analysis he explains, he talks about censorship and book burning and Stalinism and double-talk and all that stuff in a very fun way and I can only think that like there might be young students that identify with Greg Edwards and what he's doing, that it might provide a little real insight and inspiration. I hope so. Even though it's just a joke.

Did you say the name of his character on Thug Notes? I did. I love it. I guess that's about it, huh? That's all I got on Cliffs Notes. Okay, I think, man, hats off to us, think man hats off to us hats off to Olivia hats off to mental floss That's off to Sparky Sweets PhD We made it through Cliff's notes hats off to Nathaniel Hawthorne. Yeah and Hester print too. Yeah

Let's see since we took our hat off to Hester print. Of course, that means it's time for listener mail print, of course that means it's time for listener mail. Hey guys, this is about Broadway. My name is Reagan. I've been a listener for 10 years. My husband Paul and I love to listen to you guys while we cook dinner. And we listen to reruns on long car trips. I'm writing in because Broadway episode because I am a theatrical costume designer and I wanted to offer some more insight about previews that you guys were discussing. Previews have a cool function where they are actually used by the production team to keep changing, like Josh said, and fine-tuning a show based on audience feedback. Especially on a brand new show, new lines and music may even be written and added during the process. Changes can also include restaging and cutting or adding technical elements like costumes or props. However, Chuck was right,

and that toward the end of previews, the show will be frozen by the director, which means no further changes are allowed to be made. And it's after that time that critics will be invited to attend during previews, after they're frozen, before opening night. Got it. So that totally clears it up.

Thanks for doing such a great job covering Broadway. I really touched me to hear about the theater world on my favorite podcast because I listen to you guys almost daily in the costume shop. And that is from Reagan McKay, interim costume shop manager at the Roundhouse Theater. Wow, that's awesome. I think we talked about the Roundhouse Theater, didn't we?

It sounds familiar. I hope we did. That's thank you very much, Reagan. We love it when we hear from experts in the field about an episode we talk about, especially when they say we got it right. And if you want to be like Reagan and send us an email where you're like, hey, I know what I'm talking about and you guys did a good job, we love that kind of thing, you can send it to stuffpodcasts at iHeartradio.com. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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