Stuff You Should Know - The Last Meal Ritual

Episode Date: August 3, 2023

The last meal of the executed is a longstanding tradition. Listen in today to learn about the dark history and modern practice of this culinary curiosity. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

LA is expansive. There's nearly 10 million people living here and it comes with a lot of noise. But if you tune those sounds out and listen close, you'll hear the real LA. What up, Amar? Hey, Jim! I'm gonna be a father. Yes. You feeling this? A fiction podcast mixtape about love. Listen to it on the iHeart Radio app app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. Get ready for season 4 of The Restless Ones, an original podcast presented by T-Mobile

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and boy, this is a good show this year, are taking place very soon and tickets are still available. Yeah, so get in the saddle and come out and see us partners in Orlando at Lanna and Nashville. Just go to StuffYouShouldNo.com and click on the tour link and you can get all your tickets right there. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too. And this is Stuff You Should Know, part of the very grim edition. That's right.

All-star writer, Livia, helped us with this. So you know it's gonna be great. Just trying to butter Livia up, so she knows how much we appreciate her. It's true. This topic, though, is like she did a good job with it, but it's one of those things where people are all morbidly fascinated with it, right?

It's kind of one of those things where you might talk about it at a party or something like that. What would be your last meal kind of thing? Yeah. But when you dig into it, you're like, man, this is a dark topic. Because at the end of the day, what you're talking about is ultimately a ritual that surrounds the execution of a human life. Yeah, and when you really start to dig into and look at it seriously and look at like last meals that people actually had or why we give people last meals

That kind of stuff. It's just it's grim. I mean, there's no other word to describe it. It's a grim grim topic. So it is buckle up and it's a grim, grim topic. So it is buckle up. And it's easy to while you're sort of researching all this about the food to forget what happens just after the food. I thought you were gonna say get hungry. No. But I found myself over and over being like, oh, right. And then there was a firing squad,

or then they were hanged, or then they were putting the electric chair they were put in the electric chair. How many times did you forget? Two more times. I forgot six times, five times. Oh, wow. No, it was sort of a constant reminder. So this one won't be as full of laughs as usual probably.

Every time we say that, it turns out to be a laugh riot. Can we go back in time? Yeah, I was gonna say we probably should get historical because people have been eating last meals for a very long time. Apparently the code of homerabi was the first to describe not last meals, but capital punishment, execution by the state, right? It's not they didn't say it also by the way they can have some unleavened bread or something

as a last meal. It's not until I believe the Romans, the ancient Greeks, and the Chinese, I guess contemporaneous Chinese, where last meals first start appearing in documentation. Yeah. There are other examples that weren't necessarily like, you're going to be executed for a crime like Roman gladiator supposedly feasted pretty well because they might die. Astecs would give the people who were going to be rich will, rich will be sacrificed, a big feast, because they knew it was coming next. And the woman named Linda Ross Meyer, who she's gonna come up quite a bit

because she's done a lot of studying on this stuff, had a paper in 2008 where she said, I think a lot of this is based on the last supper of Christ. And you'll see that kind of throughout whether it's 17th century England or 21st century America where someone may just request the Eucharist as their as their last meal. Yeah, not only that being the last meal, apparently the more religious a group is, the more likely they are to ritualize executions. Which is surprising, I guess, but maybe not.

Not really. If you think about the state executing somebody and you take it to an or wellian level, that's just so dispersonal and dispatching. It just gets to the point. It's an execution done next. It makes sense to me that religious types would be like, no, we've got to like add this ritual to it, or that ritual to it, to give it meaning, you know?

Or else it's, what's the point of it kind of thing? As I said, it's just taking a life. No, that's a good point. Like the Puritan certainly, they almost had like celebrations of like, hey, you're going back to God, so let's throw a party. Can you just see the condemn like getting elbowed in the ribs? Like, hey, man, lighten up, it's a party. Yeah.

It's easy for you to say. Goody, goody, what, Clark? Goody, um, man, I guess Clark will do. Yeah, I can't think of anything better, so. Goody Bryant. He's fired right back at me. Just trying to pure it to not the, you know, Clark. So, goodie Bryant. You just fire it right back at me. Just trying to puritan up the, you know, Clark. Oh, sure.

I guess you could spell with a Y in an E or something weird like that. Yeah, or goodie Mather. Yeah, there you go. All right. So, yeah, the Puritans were a big time into that kind of thing, but they were far from the only ones to hold kind of like a communal or at least a bit of a feast, a communal meal or a feast. I guess Germany was really big on ritualizing it as well, which makes sense because they were pretty big into Protestantism by this time. This is the

18th century when Frankfurt used to give out the Hangman's meal, which is a pretty lavish feast. when Frankfurt used to give out the hangman's meal, which is a pretty lavish feast. Yeah, sounds like it. There was one they described in 1772 from a murderer named Susanna, Margaret Brant, who had, and this is kind of gross to read out loud, but there were six officials to eat this meal with Susanna, but those three pounds of fried sausages. Check. So far, not too bad. Ten pounds of beef. Doesn't say that's prepared.

Six pounds of baked carp. It's coy, you realize. Twelve pounds of carp is coy. I don't think I knew that. Yeah. I'm going to, that's a hill I'll die on. I'm probably wrong. I realized in the last episode in Mad, I did bad math right off of the bat, but this,

I'm going to stay with this fact. Well, there's no math involved in big curve. No, but I could be wrong. You should be wrong. 12 pounds of larded roast veal. It's a new one to me. Soup cabbage, bread, a sweet, and 8.5 measures of 1748 wine. It's a great plantain.

I tried to find out what a measure was in 1748. The best I could find that it was like five or six pints, but I don't know if that's right or not. It's a lot. You know, so a lot of wine. Yeah, for sure. And that's an ongoing thing, Chuck, you know, getting the person drunk before you execute, there used to be like a longstanding tradition. And not just in Europe, you know, like the, the, um, I believe the Inca, when they sacrifice children

Just basically left them out to die of exposure. They would get them high usually or possibly drunk on some sort of wine And as we'll see that is not something that's a part of executions today that that is There's just something wrong with that we've decided, even though it makes a lot of sense. But I guess if you're trying to exact retribution, you want that person like fully cognizant of what's happening to them, when it's happening to them, but that's a kind of a new idea from what I can tell. Yeah, the same as the last cigarette, you know, you have the, sort of the image in your head of the firing squad, like someone going and putting a cigarette and someone's mouth. But even cigarettes, you know, if they're not

on the prison menu as far as being allowed, then they don't allow it. That's right. I wondered, I wondered while I was researching this, if I would, if I could have a last cigarette, if I were being executed, if I would do it. And I decided I wouldn't, I would die feeling like, oh man, I'll let this get to me again. So I just wouldn would do it. And I decided I wouldn't. I would die feeling like, oh man, I'll let this get to me again.

So I just wouldn't do it. Oh, good for you. That means you really quit. Yeah, agreed. If you wouldn't smoke a cigarette, if right before your execution, you quit smoking cigarettes. That's a good, this is sort of a baggy t-shirt,

but not bad. Well, the big baggy t-shirts are back. The ones from the 90s. Everybody's wearing those now, yeah. So you could fit that on it. Are they really? Yeah. All right, because I couldn't tell,

because you've been messing with me a lot. No, it's true. Somebody rode in, was like, please stop doing that. I didn't understand what she meant at first, but then I was like, oh, you mean when Josh said something and he says, I'm just kidding. Yeah. She seemed pretty mad about it. Yeah, she I was like, oh, you mean when Josh said something and he says, I'm just kidding. Yeah. She seemed pretty mad about it.

Yeah, she didn't like that at all. So we're like 12 year old boys. That's true, which I took as a compliment. In London, there was a tradition of, and this was in, I guess, the late 1700s, early 1800s, I think, there was a tradition of letting the prisoner actually have friends over and celebrate. And then when they stepped up to the gallows,

they would have a, quote, great bowl of ale to drink at their pleasure as their last refreshment in life. Yeah, that's one of the suggested origins for falling off the wagon that you were taking to the gallows in a wagon, remember? And then you get off the wagon to have that last drink the stragglers in a wagon, remember, and then you get off the wagon to have that last drink, but they decided that probably wasn't it?

And the US, this came about, formally, sort of at the end of the 19th century, when public executions and big sort of, hey, let's everyone meet in the town square and watch someone be hanged, was replaced by a little more private affair, a little more standardized with not as many people around. And they started some prison, started publishing in newspapers because it sold papers, what people wanted to eat. Yeah, and they kind of had to because if not, then that's just again, the state executing

people because the state can or the state's decided. The point of an execution is it's the state's carrying it out on behalf of the community. And so since they stopped involving the community directly by saying you can come watch this person be killed because we're killing them for you, they had to share enough details to say we did this for you guys and here's the details of what happened. And one of the things that kind of came out of that custom, the new custom in the, I guess late 19th century, is sharing what the person requested for their last meal.

Yeah, and then what followed was like, should we still do this? You still hear about this stuff every now and then, but it's not as codified, I don't think. Some states used to have websites that had details like this. Texas stops doing that in the early 2000s because people complained Arizona apparently still has a web page even though the last information entry was I think in 2014. So this idea that people want to hear about this has always been intriguing slash controversial. Right. By the way, Texas stopped doing it because people complained

that they were taking up too much of the internet with those details because they execute so many people. I mean, you can't talk about executions without talking Texas. It's true. It's true. It's not the EX and both Texas and execution. Yeah, and we're going to talk about Texas again later, of course.

Yes, should we take our early break? Yeah, let's do it. Well, we're going to do it everybody. It's Tania Sam, host of the Money Moose Podcast powered by Greenwood, financial literacy podcast where we get straight to the steps to financial stability, wealth and abundance. And we are back for season two, with guests like Will Packer, Rich Fresh, Annie Gonzalez, and so many more entrepreneurs and experts sharing how they are making their money move. You know, if I look back, I mean, to be in that role at 25, was I talented, was I skilled, was I capable?

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But today, outside of his church, not too many people know about the man affectionately known as Sweet Daddy Grace. He raised, sort of wiped out, and I wonder if this was done intentionally. And there's one more piece of the puzzle. My cousins always said that we were related to Daddy Grace, but here's where things get murky. Every time I ask the elder members of our family, they flatly denied it.

My dad kind of looked at him as like in the devil. I'm Marcy Dupina. It's taken me years to find the courage to make this show. Listen to Sweet Daddy Grace on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, so Chuck, there's some questions about the purpose of last meal. Like it was one of those things that, you know, it's not a part of people's everyday life and when it is, it's, you know, it arms lengthen up these days like we were saying that it's just, it could be a part of party conversation even.

But if you stop and think about it, like's a good question like why would you do that? There was a very famous quote, I guess, from a guy who was executed in Arkansas in I think the 90s who said it doesn't make any sense because you're basically putting, it's like putting gasoline in a car that's got no motor. That there's no reason for this person to need food, right? We eat technically so that we can make it through the next day and the next day and the next day. It's like how we gain energy. Once you're executed, you don't need that energy any longer. So why would we feed people a last meal? It makes no sense if you step back and look at it as a purely functional thing.

Yeah. If you're, we can go back to Meyer who, like I said, is studied a lot on this. And she has a few reasons that, you know, and all of these are plausible because it's the kind of thing where there is no, like, quote, you know, correct answer. But so people can sort of speculate and she said, you know, like you kind of hinted at earlier, like it would just be extermination and have no meaning. So people like to attach meaning to things. It might be help the prison officials make them feel better. Like, hey, like, there's nothing personal. It's my job. Here's this nice meal. Yeah, not, hey, like there's nothing personal, it's my job.

Here's this nice meal. Yeah, not like a direct way. Like they, that's why the officials are doing it, but almost like it's just a subtext to it, right? Yeah, exactly. This one makes a lot of sense. Maybe it's even like a tool to keep the prisoner passive. And like, hey, you know,

like the threat that that could go away if you don't behave yourself on the way out. Yeah, and there's a guy named Brent Cunningham who wrote a really good article on this in Laplam's Quarterly, and he kind of concluded something that dovetails with what Meyer was saying that we are, we're showing that the person has humanity. So it's adding meaning to the whole process.

But his was kind of a darker take on it that were adding meaning to the process because we have stripped the person of their humanity so thoroughly while they were in prison. They were a number. They were like kept in a cage. They were not allowed to do stuff without permission That by allowing them a last meal were re bestowing Humanity back on them. So we see them as a person again So we can them kill them to get the maximum retribution out of killing them right? That makes sense like we're humanizing them so we can get the most satisfaction out of their death

Because if they're not humanized then there's no free will there's no We're just killing like a a machine or something like that. So there's not as much Closure I guess if if we if we didn't give them a last meal that was his take and I they're really resonated with me Totally like enjoy that steak buddy because know, you're getting what's coming to you, that kind of attitude. Hopefully they don't say things like that to people while they're eating that last steak, but it's socially speaking. Yeah. I was talking about like the

person at home, not necessarily the server of the state. I know you were, but I should not let that one pass and not jump on. Refusing a last meal is something that happens all the time and always has as an active protest. There was one person named Lawrence Hayes who was on death row, but I think eventually was found innocent and was a member, a founding member of Campaign to End the Death Penalty, who basically said, yeah, I wouldn't have taken a last meal because it's a gimmick just to make us feel better about this like terrible process.

Yeah. And then there is one study of close to 250 people who were executed over about a four-year period in the 2000s found that 29% of people who insisted they were innocent declined to last meal compared to 8% who said, no, yeah, I did it. Yeah. So that's a pretty big diff. Yeah, that's a huge difference, too. And it makes sense, too.

I wouldn't want anything from the people who are about to unjustly kill me. I wouldn't want to be in their debt at all. Yeah. I'm just sort of guessing one of the reasons why they would protest it. At least that's why I would. Yeah. I did sort of guessing one of the reasons why they would protest it. At least that's why I would. Yeah. And I think to draw a little more attention. Plus, I would also kind of manipulate them and offering me a cigarette so I could be like,

no, I don't want to keep your stupid cigarette. Yeah. And then say, and I used to love smoking. Right. But you guys really did for me. There are a few legal scholars, I got him Andrew Davies, Sabrina Atkins, and Sarah Gerwig Moore, who about 13 years ago in 2010, looked at sort of the rules on the books

in the 35 states who are still punishing capital in 2010. Two of them hadn't executed any one, even they were still allowed to in decades and they didn't have protocols. Of the remaining 33, 15 had no specific rules of that last meal. Some had suggestions. Five states had spending limits. Yeah. From 50 bucks in Cali, all the way to $15 in Oklahoma. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Georgia had some specifics like, hey, if they want a lobster, we're going to go down and get it at Publix, we're not going to fly it down for Maine or something like that.

Sure. Uh, and then, uh, I think a few states, three of them would deny the meal altogether and said, you'll get a last meal, but it's gonna be whatever's on the prison menu. Like nothing special for you. I know, when you speak like man, cabbage, really? Had to be cabbage night tonight. It just seems...

You know, that to me is worse than denying a last meal altogether. For some reason, it's just... I don't know, I can't quite put my finger on it, but just being like, nope, you get what everybody else gets for your last meal. It just feels like it's worse than saying, no, you can't have one at all for some somehow. Yeah, and it's not, you know, you sort of get the idea for movies that they like, you know, wipe their mouth from the lobster and then like get up and walk down the hall toward the execution chamber. Right.

And that's not happening basically. It's usually like the day before because I imagine executing someone on a big, I mean, some of these meals as we'll see are humongous. It's probably not a good idea for a lot of reasons. Yeah, I can actually interfere with the effects of the drugs that they use to execute people now, you know? Yeah. And again, remember we said that like the more religious a group is, or like a state or something like that, the more likely they are to ritualize executions.

And apparently, that study also found that the more fundamentalist Christian, the state population was, as well as the least amount spent per prison inmate overall, and the ones with the largest prison populations where those three dovetailed, they typically were the most generous with the last meals. Yeah, really interesting. But Meyer had a word for that. She called it Retributive Ritualism.

And you're not supposed to say it like Porcupig. You just say Retributive Rism. That's funny. I see a new, there would be a joker to in here. That's a good taste. Sure. Texas, which we said we would get back to, they changed things in 2011 before this is they were one of the states that were like, you know, you just get the regular prison food whatever that is But what really changed was when a man named Lawrence Russell Brewer. It's always three names requested and I'm gonna read all of these because this this is sort of indicative of how Ridiculous these meals can get two chicken chicken fried steaks, triple cheeseburger,

an omelet with ground beef, tomatoes, onions, bell peppers, and jalapenos. Okay. Fried okra with ketchup, three fajitas, pint of blue bell ice cream, pound of barbecue with a loaf of white bread, a meatlovers pizza, three root beers, and peanut butter fudge with crushed peanuts.

A slab of it. Yeah, a whole slab of it. Brewer refused to eat the food, and it seems like it was sort of the the waste of time and money really got under the skin of a Texas state senator named John Whitmeyer and he had kind of had enough at that point and was like, no, we got to cut this off. This is a ridiculous privilege that shouldn't be allowed. Yeah, he spotted an easy way to energize his base. So he wrote to the Texas criminal justice division and said,

something like, quote, is it is extremely inappropriate to give a person sentenced to death such a privilege. And that he pointed out, and this is very important, that Lawrence Russell Brewer, who is one of this white supremacist scumbags who dragged James Lee Boy to death behind a pickup truck in the 90s that he never gave James Lee Boy the opportunity for a last meal. That was his reasoning. And that is very sound reasoning. But what John Whitmer, the state senator from Texas, is missing is that one of the points of a last meal is for the state to show that its murder, its execution of this person is different from the crime that the person's being executed for. The state is saying, like, you have to die, but we can still treat you humanely, even though you didn't treat your victim humanely.

And so it elevates the state morally. And that seemed to be totally lost on John Whitmeyer because one of the reasons He saw for not giving somebody that meal is that they hadn't given that to their victim that opportunity Yeah, that's really interesting to think of it that way. Yeah, but it worked And they stopped serving last meals in Texas. Thanks to again, Lawrence Lawrence Russell Brewer, one of the white supremacists, scumbags who dragged James Lee Boyd behind a pickup truck to death. That's right. When this happened, there was a former inmate who cooked these last meals as part of his

job in prison. And then I think afterward, even named Brian Price, who said, you know what, I'll continue to make these meals. It won't cost the state a penny, but Texas Price, who said, you know what, I'll continue to make these meals. It won't cost the state a penny, but Texas said, no, thank you. We're not going to take you up on that offer. Apparently, Price got a lot of emails from people like supporting him and saying, you know, we think you did the right thing and making a humane effort at least. And ended up writing a cookbook called Meals to Die For.

Yeah, you said there'd be some tasteless joke or tasteful jokes in here that was not one of them. I mean that was Brian Price's joke. Right now we can distance ourselves from that. Yeah, but yeah he cooked 218 last Meals in 10 years. Again in Texas, right? And I guess when he was offering to do this for free, like he was no longer a prisoner, but he was willing to come to the prison and bring his own ingredients and cook on his own time. And the state still said no. And again, the reason why they said is that it's not really money.

It's the sentiment behind the whole thing that they're opposed to, so they turned them down. But in his book, he kind of chronicled with some of the people typically asked for. And Cheeseburger and French fries is like one of the biggest, one of the most frequent requests. But also there were those ones

that were kind of fancy, like lobster, shrimp or something like that. People wanted us their last meal. But because he had to work from the ingredients in the prison kitchen, they didn't have lobster or shrimp typically on hand. So he would just try to get creative with it. And apparently at first, this was his job.

He was tasked with this and he wasn't very comfortable with it because he believed in the death penalty. And I think he felt a bit like a scumbag, cooking for a scumbag who was about to die. And then he felt a bit like a scumbag, cooking for a scumbag who was about to die. And then he had a conversation with a guy whose job it was to clean up the execution room after executions. And he said that cleaning up the actual execution room itself never really bothered him. What bothered him was cleaning up like the tear stains and the lipstick stains off of the window to the execution room that the family members left behind that that really stuck with him and so that conversation with that guy

really stuck with price and it kind of changed his view of the whole thing so that he started to think of imagining the person he was cooking for as one of his family members because he was thinking of the family. And apparently, he eventually changes mind on the death penalty altogether. Yeah. Yeah. So, we talked about what you would call like status food. You said shrimp and lobster and, you know, like caviar and, you know, stuff like that. That's a common request.

I said fancy food. Yeah, yeah. But, uh, live you call it the status food. Yeah, no, I know that's what it's supposed to be called. And I would agree. And it is fancy. I mean, what's fancier than a sea spider? Right, a sea cockroach.

Was it cockroach? Yeah. Okay, I thought it was spiders. Anyway, um, not literally thought they were spiders. There are sea spiders and we're one of the most terrifying things on this planet. Oh, sure. Oh, man. But not as tasty as a lobster. Probably not. You into lobster? I like lobster. It's fine. I'm not like

Gaga for it. But yeah, I'll eat it. I'll eat a good lobster. I publics lobster bisque out of a plastic container the other day. So yeah, I guess I do kind of like lobster. Oh, man, this, oh, I shouldn't have the name of the company. There's a clam chowder and a lobster bisque and then the frozen aisle. I'm not trying to, I know what you're talking about though. Is that the one? It's good, you drop the whole bag in boiling water

and just let it sort of thaw itself and cook. I think they also make a gumbo, and if it's the same company, the gumbo's not that good. Mm, the bisque and the chowder are good. Okay, I'll try them, because I gave up on them after the gumbo, because gumbo's not that good. Mm, the biscuit and the chowder are good. Okay, I'll try them because I gave up on them after the gumbo. Because I really wanted some gumbo. I was like, score when I saw it and I made it

and I was like, I still want gumbo. I will love lobster in like a biscuit, certain other things, but I don't know that I've ever ordered a lobster or like a lobster tail. Oh, I have a red lobster. Probably so. For real. Everything is there.

That was like too fancy for us. The, the, really you don't go to a red lobster for the actual seafood. You go for the salad with their red dressing, which is off the chain. Or and or their cheddar biscuits, which if you get them when they're fresh, they're really good. You want to know something funny? What? One of the only times I've literally ever eaten at Red Lobster was with you.

When did we eat at Red Lobster? We went, I think when Discovery owned us, I think we went in and Silver Springs, Maryland. Okay. When we were there for a meeting or something, you were like, let's go to Red Lobster. I actually remember that now. Yeah. And we had those cheddar biscuits and man, those are good. They are. I'm glad you're one and only Red Lobster experience with me then. Yeah, it was too, that was too ritty for us as a teacher kid. Yeah, it's not like my parents were rolling. They just knew what to spend their money on and red lobster was part of it. It was probably a special meal for you guys, right?

Yeah, or not? Yeah, well, I mean, we typically mom made like chicken all a king and pepper steak and stuff like that. Sure. You know, it occurred to me, Chuck, as we were having this this conversation that we're talking about food and food we love Is that just tasteful to talk about that have that kind of tangent in an episode about last meals and executions? I don't think so it can live it as its own little side conversation. It's just wanted to gut-check it Yeah, I think we're okay But how we got started on that was status foods

Yeah, I think we're okay, but how we got started on that was status foods Or symbolic requests, so you know, we're gonna talk about some of these over the years that have been made symbolically There was a murder named Victor Figuar in Iowa I think the last Iowan and the last federal inmate to be executed previous to Timothy McVeigh Yeah, exactly. As for a single olive with a pit, saying he hoped the fruit of the tree of peace would grow from his grave.

And he kind of got his wish, because it was 37 years before somebody was executed federally. Yeah, what about Gary Gilmore, famously from the book to the executioner song and movie? Yeah, he was executed in Utah and one of the reasons why he became so famous was twofold. One, he insisted that he be executed by firing squad, which Utah was one of the few states that still had that on the books. And that's how they executed him. And then two, by refusing to appeal his death penalty,

despite, you know, the entire, apparently there's a lot of public sentiment against commuting this guy's sentence, but he was like, now I want to go along with it. So he was, I guess there was enough public attention on it that he was given the special privilege of having friends and family visit. And I guess Johnny Cash called up and sung to him over the phone. Yeah, that was his uncle had snuck in Jack Daniels. In this guy, somehow, his defense attorney arranged for Johnny Cash to call. And Johnny Cash sang a Stonewall Jackson's hall called Don't Be

Angry, that apparently he kind of duetited with Gary Gilmore over the phone. Man, that guy was so cool. Johnny? Yeah, he had a real thing for prisons, though, didn't he? Oh, yeah, sure. I mean, he performed in prisons very famously because he was in prison at one point himself. Yeah, and sometimes I mean, he would go to the trouble

like if he was a little hard up. He'd go to the mall and find that little room where they keep shoplifters and perform for them once in a while as well. I know you're kidding. You didn't get me this time. I wasn't trying to. I was so close though.

No. Yeah. That Johnny Cash took it upon himself to go sing for shoplifters at the mall when he couldn't find a prison gig. I mean, it sounds ridiculous when you say it like that. Wow, I can really sell it, huh? Yeah, you're good at what you do.

I'll say that. I'll say that. Well, thanks. Thanks, Chuck. What else? James Edward Smith was executed in 1990 and requested Voodoo dirt. It's called racoon to dirt. And they said, yeah, they said, no, you can't have that.

He wanted to prevent his soul from remaining on earth as a ghost. They said, no, have yogurt instead. And he said, all right, well, you will be haunted by me then for 300 years. And he was apparently a voodoo priest. I saw a self-professed voodoo priest, so I don't know what that means, but yeah, he was not very happy that they wouldn't give him that. Should we go through a few more of these? Yeah, there's one that we just could not do this episode and not mention because it's one of the most messed up things that we'll talk about today in a podcast about messed up things. that we'll talk about today in a podcast about messed up things. A guy named Ricky Ray Rector, who was executed under presidential candidate Bill Clinton's

watch when he was a governor of Arkansas. And Ricky Ray Rector had always been a little bit cognitively challenged. He went on a killing spree basically over four days, he killed five people, just randomly, in most cases. And then before the cops could get to him, he tried to end his own life by turning the gun on himself, but he missed and he made himself,

like apparently he then had the cognition or cognitive abilities of a kid about the age of four from that point on and that's the shape he was in when he went to trial. Yeah, lobotomized him basically. Yeah, accidentally. Yeah. So the advocates for him said, no, we don't execute people who are cognitively challenged. If they can't understand what's going on while they're being killed we don't kill them that's just what we do in the United States and Bill Clinton said no we're going to do this anyway. And they did Chuck they executed Ricky Ray Rector in 1992 and that's not the that's not the the thing about this story there's something that that's just about as haunting as it can get. Yeah, because while he was eating the meal, there was a pecan pie was part of that meal. He

pushed it aside and said, I want to save that for later. That was the understanding of what was happening to him. He knew he was going to get executed, but he was saving the become pi for afterward. Yeah. Isn't that nuts? Yeah. So that's for career record. Or what about John Wayne, Gacy? Gacy was a one time manager at Kentucky Fried Chicken. So he got Kentucky Fried chicken, original recipe,

french fries. He got some fried shrimp too. Got a pound of strawberries and some diet coke. I went through and looked at a lot of other people in lists, and one thing I found, weirdly, and of course, I'm sure you could find it if you really, really searched. But I saw a lot of Burger King and pizza hut, but I didn't see one McDonald's. Oh, weird. Yeah, and I don't know if it was just the,

you know, the 20 or 30 that, you know, I kind of scan through on the internet, but a lot of pizza hut pizzas and burger king cheeseburgers. Probably because most prisons have a McDonald's in them, and we just on the outside don't know it. You know, like a hospital, like a Chick-fil-A. Right. So there's one more

I think we should talk about before we move on if you don't mind. Sure. Philip Ray workman. Okay. Did you hear his case or see his case? Yeah, this is the vegetarian. Yeah. He was for his last meal. He wanted a vegetarian pizza be delivered to any homeless person nearby the prison. And the warden and the prison officials said, no, we don't contribute to charity. So no, we're not going to do that. And Philip Ray workman said, well, I'm not going to eat anything then. But it's Tennessee, right?

Yeah. And so his story got out. Apparently, his record between the time he requested him was denied and the time he was executed, it made it into the media, what he'd done and what the response had been. And apparently around the country, people on the day of his execution ordered vegetarian pizzas and had them sent to homeless shelters all around Tennessee. Yeah.

That's pretty neat. I agree. Should we take our second break? Sure. All right, let's take another break and we're gonna wrap it all up after this. The one thing that can never be replaced in our vast and ceaseless human story is live music. It has been with us since the beginning, and so it will continue to stay.

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And then turn that little movie into a success. Listen, to season two of My Nymouth's powered by Greenwood on the iHeart Radio app Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcast. So we talked a little bit about booze and cigarettes. That was a long tradition for hundreds of years and then kind of went away basically when prison started saying like, hey, you can't have cigarettes. Smoking is banned and booze is just not a good idea to let people drink alcohol. And people still request it from time to time.

I think there was a guy in our very own state of Georgia in 2015 who wanted to six back a beer, and that was it. And they said no, and gave him a meal of fish and grits and beans and coleslaw and cookies and fruit punch instead. What about elsewhere around the world? And that limits it to just a handful of countries, because America is one of just a few democratic industrialized countries that still put people to death.

Yeah, a few meaning exclusively or specifically three. They're South Korea, Japan, and the United States. That's right. And I don't know if this is better or worse, but in Japan, if you're on death row, you don't know the day you're going to be executed until the day you're going to be executed. Which, what would you want? Ah, cheese. I don't know. I don't need to answer that. I don't, yeah, I don't, I do not know. Imagine if you did existential trivia,

and that was an existential trivia question. I would wanna know, actually. You would, huh? Because otherwise, I would just constantly be wondering when. Yeah, but if you know, then you're counting down the days and hoping there's gonna happen. I'm not gonna do that. All right, I got you. Good.

I think it's good to know yourself like that. But so they don't know when they're going to be executed, but when they do, they can have whatever they want to eat. Apparently, they're very liberal with that idea. And that if they don't specify anything, they'll be given cigarettes, drink, which I take to mean booze, and cake, which Japanese cake is delightful.

Yeah, China is sort of all over the map and we probably don't even know really what happens to be honest these days, but there are witnesses from the 80s that say, hey, I saw a mass execution where people were just chained to a post and given a hard boiled egg. Other times bleak. Oh, it's bleak as it gets. Other times, like there was a soldier in 1985 who was apparently given a pretty good meal of like meat dumplings.

There are other reports of prisoners eating with their executioner, which is not unique to China. That was sort of an old tradition back in the day as well in different countries. Yeah, it's called St. John's Blessing. Yeah, so it just seems like there is no hard and fast rule in China. It could either be a very sort of lavish thing or almost nothing at all. Yeah, and just real quick for a move on, that St. John's blessing, like, it was a socially prescribed thing where you, before you were executed, you drank with your executioner,

like the two of you hung out, put yourself in that situation. Imagine being on either side of that equation. Like how would you make it through that? As the executioner? Or as the condemned. Yeah. No, no't know. That's tough, tough stuff. Sorry. I know. I keep getting philosophical here. I know. I don't have answers for all these. But you are answering them quite well if you ask me. Okay. Appreciate it. One thing I wondered was and I know the answer. So I actually don't wonder. But Timothy McVey wanted two pints of Ben and Jerry's mint chocolate chip and was given

that. Ben and Jerry's is a very progressive, lefty company. And I'm sure they didn't like that association. They're the very anti-bombing. Well, I mean, I'm sure they're probably anti-capital punishment. No, not too. Well, I mean, I'm sure they're probably anti-capital punishment, but I don't know if they would want that association of like being tied to a capital punishment. Probably not, they probably don't be anti that about.

Well, there's nothing they can do about it, though. I was like, could they protest that? I guess they could protest it, but you can't say who can eat your ice cream. So at the end of the day, they had, I'm sure they would have no luck to stand on. But also, then you're denying this person their last thing. And yeah, it's Timothy McVeigh. But if there were somebody else, would you want to be in that position as the company would be like, no, you can't have that? Sure.

Because we don't agree with them killing you. Yeah, I'm sure they just didn't like that press. Sure. Speaking of press, Olivia had a few more little nuggets here for us. A various sort of weird slash terrible things that have happened over the years. Or interesting things. One of them in 1985, two weeks after South Carolina executed their first prisoner in 22 years, Pizza Hut ran a commercial that showed, again, Pizza Hut showing an inmate ordering pizza

for the last meal. This executed person had requested pizza and so they kind of tied it back to that and they got a lot of heat for that and they took the commercial down. I think we talked about this in our death penalty episode. Yeah, one of our death penalty episodes, there's a blog called Dead Man Eating that ran from 2002 to 2010, and it just tracked last meal requests,

which is another thing, they're frequently requests, they don't necessarily say what the person got. It's the request that's the thing that's always been published. And then Amnesty International ran a ad campaign that's the thing that's always been published. And then Amnesty International, Rana, ad campaign that's just haunting. It's images of the last meals of five different prisoners

who were executed and then found innocent. Yeah, I mean, that makes a statement for sure. There was also a book in 2011-ish from a photographer named Jonathan Campbellis called the Last Meals Project and I don't think these were people who were proven innocent but he superimposed Last Meals on photographs of the executed prisoner. So, you know, another social statement for sure. Yeah, I remember Chuck reading, there was I think a New Yorker article on Cameron Willingham. He had a

third name in there somewhere, but he was executed and they are pretty sure he was innocent. Not a great guy, but probably did not start the fire that killed his family, but was executed anyway. And I remember there was a quote in there that always stuck with me. One of the Supreme Court justices said that if there was ever clear evidence that an innocent person had been executed wrongly, that that would cause a constitutional spasm that would be really tough to require from them, probably immediately lead to the cessation

of the death penalty. And when you stop and think about that Amnesty International ad campaign, where they've got five people whose last meals they're showing who are later found to be innocent. Like, we now know five people at least have been executed and then later found to be innocent. And yet we still have the death penalty. It's not even a topic of conversation that just sticks out to me because that quote always sucked to me, that sucked with me. And it's just, I don't know, it was just worth mentioning.

And also it was worth mentioning because that article on Cameron Willingham was just insanely good. Because not only is it about his case, it also calls out how arson is just, like arson investigation is just junk science. And people are executed based on that evidence. Yeah, it's a camera with a club is just look up New York

and Cameron willing, Hannah, can't remember his middle name. Have we done one on arson? I don't know. I don't think we have, that would be interesting, cause I always wonder how they find the source of those fires. I remember talking about arson being junk science before, so we've talked about something.

Superclub fire maybe? No, it was long before that. No, okay. Are you got anything else? I got nothing else. I mean, you know, this was dark for sure, but we, I hope we, it was in the good taste in which it was intended. Yeah.

There are also articles out there that are a little more fun to read about people's last meals non-executed. But people who knew, you know, famous people who knew they were on the way out. And like what's the very most special thing that they wanted to eat, like Julie, a child having French onion soup, stuff like that. Oh, man, a good French onion soup.

Yeah, so maybe go read those instead. Okay. It would be my recommendation. Well, since Chuck made a great recommendation to everybody, that means it's time for a listen and a meal. I'm going to call this Cussing Dentist because you know I talked about my doctor cursing and how much I enjoyed that. And so this guy wrote in, he said, hey guys, I won't tell you about my Cussing and how much I enjoyed that. And so this guy wrote in, he said,

Hey guys, I want to tell you about my Cushing Dennis. The first time I went to this guy's practice, I hadn't been in years. And the hygienist brings me in for X-rays in a cleaning and eventually she tells me she's gonna go grab the dentist, side cavities. I'm in the dental chair, the lights on my face. I hear footsteps behind me.

And an upside down mask disembodied head slowly comes into my field of vision. He glances up to my x-rays and looks back down. No introductions, no anything, and just says, hmm, open up. So open my mouth, he starts poking around with a little mirror tool. I'm panicking about that. Hmm. What did you see in those X-rays? Is something wrong? My anxiety is growing. He's taking a long looking around my mouth. Finally, he says, yeah, we're going to have to pull all of these f-ing things out. Yes. There was a comedic beat, and then he pulled his mask down, revealing a sligh goofy grin. I laughed so hard and nearly choked, and then he finally introduced himself as the dentist. Not sure how he picked up on my, hey, it's okay to swear around me a vibe so quickly,

or if that's just how he greets all of his 30-something male patients, but it was the best first impression I ever had with any medical professional. And I've recommended him to literally everyone I know. That's my story, thanks for the show. You guys are both true legends, and stuff you should know is my all-time favorite card listen. Uh, that is Ryan and Maine, and, oh man, Ryan, I wish he had permission to out this dentist because I would go to Maine to get, to go see this dentist.

What a great sense of humor. I have to pull all these effing things out. Who could it be? Is it like John C. Riley DMD or... The guy who played... Dr. Stade Droom. He had no, the guy who played J. Peter Men on Seinfeld. I could see him playing.

Oh, that'd be great. Sure. I love that guy. Let's go with that guy then. Alright. Oh, and also, just want to give a quick update to everybody. Remember Corey's choice? Oh!

No, Corey's in charge. Yeah, yeah. We influenced Spotify. Yeah, so, remember Corey wrote in and said that Millie Vanilli and what was the other one? Don't remember the initial one. I don't remember either, but they were two very disparate. Oh, owner of Lonely Heart.

They both sort of put in Spotify search together, and he said it was probably because you guys, so let's do a test, and we tested Black Sabbath's Warpigs and Barry Manelow's even now. Oh man. And short order people started writing in with screen caps of their Spotify searches, where if you search Barry Manelow,

Warpigs was the second thing that came up. If you search Warpigs Berry Manolo it was between three and five and that was clearly our influence so that's pretty awesome. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, how do we use this power? I don't know. We'll figure it out, but yeah, for good. We should probably do it for good.

All right. Okay. Well, if you want to get in touch with us like Ryan. Ryan did. You can send us an email to stuffpodcast.itihartradio.com. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple Podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

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