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TIIDBITS Episode 2: Carneys, Vampires, & Ghosts!
42 Plays22 days ago
Chaos (and genius!) is stirring in The Tidbit Tower! Mike links a Founding Father to Hugh Jackman, Rob riffs on a seminal writer's showdown, and Gaz unpacks the spooky truth behind ghostly apparitions...
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Transcript
Introduction and Tidbits Tower
00:00:00
Speaker
fire sparkle cameram go through the atmosphere here and thinking that I'm thinking of thinking only makes me think a kink in a way that only goes to sight that Degard was right.
00:00:13
Speaker
So you dig everything in my head. Hey, guess what guys?
Fan Acclaim and Listener Feedback
00:00:20
Speaker
It is the of Tidbits. Here we are in the Tidbits Tower with my bicker buddies. Mike, say hi Mike. Hey, everybody. It's me, Mike. And and who else is here? Why didn't you test? You didn't test at all. You just started recording. There he is. There he is. I guess. That was a lesson for you, Robert.
00:00:41
Speaker
Oh, you learned a lesson. I wanted to tell you guys, we've gotten a lot of critical acclaim. Have we? ah Yeah. Not... Not just ah critical acclaim, but we had, I mean, I think, um I want to say hundreds of thousands of fan letters. Oh, yeah. I'm not to read them all to you, but I'm going to summarize one some of the salient points. one What I want to say, cobbled together the most important bits of information from all of them. And I want to start with the most common thing that people were pointing out. And the first thing, and I'm embarrassed to admit this, and Mike, you should join me in my chain because you supported me making fun of Gaz about the fact that with three people, you can't have a tie. And many people, including Eli, Riley, Q, Amanda, Val, Andy, many people have pointed out that there could be a three-way tie. Now, I want to point out, of course I consider that. Of course I do. I just think three-way tie, if everyone gets one vote, that means everybody's a winner. So I wasn't even counting that because everyone's
Betting on Tidbits Competition
00:01:37
Speaker
a winner. Yeah, we're going to feel good that.
00:01:41
Speaker
I just want to see what happened when I hit that What are saying, Mike? Should we briefly recap the premise of the show? Wait, oh, that's right. Here we are at Tidbits in the Tidbits Tower where we tell each other tidbits. We tell storied pieces of trivia and and then we judge um who's his best. And I propose we put some money into it because that was another thing that people suggested.
00:02:02
Speaker
Why don't we put some money in the game? So if we each bet 10 bucks, somebody walks away with a cool 20 bucks. Okay. So we're gonna pay each other? Yeah, something like that. We could just PayPal each other. Or we would just hand it to each other since we're all here together in the Tidbits Tower. I'm not done with mail call yet, though.
00:02:18
Speaker
Okay, fan mail. So I do feel like I need to be taken down a peg for being so mocking about the there can't be a tie with three people. But I also want to point out that a couple people pointed out that Gaz said in his tidbit that 9-11 happened in 1999.
00:02:35
Speaker
That was an error, yes. i My storytelling, I was sort of starting. was We were all there. it was ah Partially it was a mistake. It was like a factual inaccuracy that I said the wrong date. But part of the reason I did that was because I was sort of saying around 1999, he was in school and then he was in and I was sort of setting up a timeline. And I said one date and not another. And I was absolutely wrong. But I i knew I was wrong immediately after. Like, oh, I did not say the right date at the right time right there. my um The point is we're all idiots. Yes, Mike. My tidbit this week is, in fact, that 9-11 happened in the year 2001. Listen, we...
00:03:09
Speaker
yeah I'm not done with the mail. I'm not done with the mail. Because i we got about 17,000 pieces of mail asking if we were the sexy Herculean 29-year-old dudes that we all sounded. And I think people would be surprised. at what is What is happening right now? One thing I really want to say that is true. I didn't realize the tidbits tower laid out sounding lies.
00:03:33
Speaker
i and i I don't want to admit this either, but there were four women who all had something to say about Gaz's voice. One woman called it
Joyce Heth and P.T. Barnum
00:03:42
Speaker
sexy. Shrill. Another another called it buttery buttery. A third one called it yummy. And a fourth one called it killer. Yeah, i can explain that. I know I can explain that. um This is something called s sarcasm. I i know is i'm going to use my sexy voice from now on because i'm i couldn't hear what you're saying, Gaz. I was just enjoying the quality of the sound of your voice.
00:04:02
Speaker
ah say money of The point you were trying to express. Wait, wait, wait. I still haven't gotten to the main part. The main part is, according to people who gave feedback via the mail to the Tidbits Tower, who won in the popular vote? And I'm embarrassed to admit, it was Gaz.
00:04:17
Speaker
Gaz won the popular vote. I was a very close second and distantly coming in third. Although, the people who said Mike's was the best avidly defended it. Like, when they when people like were like, yeah, I guess Gaz.
00:04:28
Speaker
Nah, I guess you. But people were like, oh, hands down it was Mike.
Mary Shelley and the Birth of Science Fiction
00:04:31
Speaker
Hands Yeah, it's like when you love bad movie, it's like you love it. That's it right there. And then the other thing I want to say is just how, I don't have the numbers on this, but I can't express how many people. He doesn't have the numbers on this, Mike. I can't express how many people were excited that Mike mentioned the jorts in Twilight. Apparently that is a real hit with the tidbitters out there. And that...
00:04:52
Speaker
That's all the mail. I'm going to put the mailbag in the mailbag. Mike has a new theme song for us. Mike, would you do the theme song that you told us about? Here come the tidbits. No, I didn't have a theme song, but that was my best off the cuff.
00:05:04
Speaker
That was pretty good. I see why you built that up so much. I think we should get into the tidbits because I don't want this to run 50 million hours. yeah I think Mike should go first. Oh. last I think we should flip it every time. I don't think we should stick to the same order. We got mix it up like a salad. You know what? I'm sold. Mike, you're up.
00:05:19
Speaker
Let's hear your tidbit. I like the show's got so much
Technology and Ghost Perceptions
00:05:22
Speaker
more professional. Oh, really good. Okay. So a tidbit. Do either of you know, and if you do, I'll still explain for the purposes of the audience. Do either of you know who Joyce Heth was? No. No. So Joyce Heth was an enslaved woman. She was born in around potentially 1756 in Madagascar, and she lived life enslaved. And at one point in her life, she was actually purchased and put into like a show. And she was an elderly lady. And so the exhibit was that she was supposedly the nanny of George Washington. So... They claimed that she was 161 years old. Okay. So they lied and said that she was born in the 1600s and that she'd been George Washington's nanny. And that's how they promoted her in this sort like traveling show. So she was actually in her 80s. She was forced onto a diet of whiskey and eggs. So she would just be very, very wrinkly and not look very well. And actually, her teeth were removed to also make her seem older. So really horrible story, correct? would agree with that assessment. Yeah. Not a tidbit yet, but that's the horrible setup.
00:06:28
Speaker
The tidbit, well, the lead into the tidbit is the person who exhibited her. And it was, in fact, his first exhibition that made his name was P.T. Barnum. P.T. Barnum. I'm going to guess that. P.T. Barnum.
00:06:41
Speaker
And so that's a horrible thing. They left that out of the musical. they were Wolverine did this. Nice. My entire tidbit that you both stepped on is that, yes, they didn't put that song into The Greatest Showman. How, if there was a song in The Greatest Showman about this, what would it be titled? Well, the tidbit actually is that there was a period of time when my kids were, well, my daughter was quite into The Greatest Showman. And so I never actually sat down to watch it, but I would often come in and say, I don't think they made a song yet about Joyce Heff. Is that one in this show? And they would say, oh, dad.
00:07:19
Speaker
ah Rob totally stepped on that. I just wrote his coattails. Well, Rob, how does the song Eggs and Whiskey go? Eggs and whiskey. Eggs and whiskey. Get too frisky with this slave lady.
00:07:34
Speaker
That's right. We're liars and bad people. yeah Mike, do you have anything to contribute to the song? I'm done. I thought it was a great tidbit, Mike. I agree. I'm sorry. I did not know that. It was shocking. I knew he had done bad things, but I had no idea was that bad. You know, i avoided that musical for a while because I was annoyed because I had heard that it was not historically accurate, but I liked it once finally I was going to congratulate you on avoiding it because you're good person, but I get now that you're just willing to, now you're a PT Barnum apologist. Yeah. He's all right. He's all right.
00:08:05
Speaker
He hasn't done anything bad in a while. We could say that. been a while. Yes. No, you next. me let me next um You were flipping the order. and The next thing. All right. I am really excited about my tidbit this week. It's a little bit lengthy. I'm going to try to go fast, but for literary tidbitters out there, they're going to see this coming a mile away. But for most of you, kind of a fun twist, if I could get the the drama in the
Tidbit Voting and Future Ideas
00:08:24
Speaker
storytelling right.
00:08:24
Speaker
This is a tidbit about how a volcanic eruption led to a competition that led to the creation of an entire literary genre that changed the course of literary. Okay. Okay. So in 1815, Mount Timbora in Indonesia erupted. It was one of the biggest in history. Changed the climate of the whole world. It led to weather disruptions, monsoons in Asia, and crop shortages in Europe, and frosts in the summer in New England, which is super weird. So that led to the year without a summer because the summer wasn't really a summer. It was super rainy, super gross. And during this time, this guy, Percy Shelley, he was a famous poet in his time. ah Percy Shelley and his wife went to stay with ah their friend, Lord Byron, in some grand estate near Lake Geneva in Switzerland.
00:09:06
Speaker
And so we had Lord Byron, who was this famous scandalous poet. He was rich, he was talented, but he was also really pompous and arrogant. Supposedly, he slept with everyone, including, speculatively, Percy Shelley. We had Percy Shelley himself, a romantic poet, and his wife, who also dabbled in writing. And then we had John Palidori, who is Byron's personal doctor, who was only about 20 years old, but he was also an aspiring writer.
00:09:28
Speaker
So they all kind of come to this big, beautiful state with the hopes of you know going on hikes and horseback rides in the countryside. But you know because of this weird climate change from the volcano, it's rainy, it's gloomy, it's storming. for weeks and they all are forced to stay indoors and they're restless. So Lord Byron, he says, look, we're all stuck inside. We're all writers. I propose a competition. Let's take two weeks and see who could write the best ghost story and I'll be the judge because he just decides he's the judge. And the weather was perfect for writing a ghost story, right? So a couple weeks ago, and it's time to judge. ah Percy Shelley writes this kind of cliche ghost story. It wasn't even finished. He didn't even finish it. His wife writes something. Lord Byron wrote a fragment of a story that was almost nothing, but it did inspire John Calidori to write a story called The Vampire.
00:10:19
Speaker
Vampire, P-Y-R-E, because it's olden times. olden Sounds old. and And he writes a full ah short story that launches the modern vampire genre. The vampire story was ah the first of its kind. It's seminal, too. Without Palidori as the vampire, Bram Stoker would never have written Dracula. Stoker, I do know how to speak. Bram Stoker. Bram Stoker would never have written Dracula. And we would not have had Twilight, which means we wouldn't have had Gaz's tidbit from last week. Oh, true. So it ties in, right? You know, it's funny. as The tidbit I did not use this week was going to be all about vampire lore and everything you just said was going to be part of my tidbit. So I'm really glad I switched. Really? Yeah. We would have actually had the same tidbit. yeah And you know what did the the story that Palidori wrote, The Vampire, was actually really clever because it's a satirization of Byron himself. ah The lead character, the vampire, he's an aristocrat. He's alluring. He's charismatic.
00:11:11
Speaker
He's seductive. He's eccentric. He's very self-serving. He's predatory. All these things that Palidori saw in Byron himself. The other two men didn't even finish their story. Palidori created a whole literary subgenre.
00:11:24
Speaker
But according to Byron, it was Percy Shelley who won the contest, which is laughable. Particularly laughable, not just because he didn't write this great vampire story. But gentlemen and tidbitters, listeners, I have been burying the lead here. Dig it up. I told you at the beginning that this was about the birth of an entire literary genre. Vampires aren't a genre.
00:11:42
Speaker
They're at best a subgenre of gothic horror fantasy that already existed. Palidori did create the subgenre of vampire stories. And I talked to you about the men in the room, Byron, Shelley, Palidori.
00:11:53
Speaker
But I want to turn everyone's attention to the corner of the room where sits Percy Shelley's quiet 18-year-old wife. Oh, and I just remembered her name. It's Mary. It's Mary freaking Shelley.
00:12:05
Speaker
Oh. of Mary frickin' Shelley's Frankenstein fame. And do you know what she brought to this ghost storytelling contest? Not a vampire, not an unfinished ghost story. She brought the competition and the world frickin' Frankenstein.
00:12:18
Speaker
Frankenstein, or the modern Prometheus, which is its subtitle, is generally recognized in ah literary historians as the first true science fiction novel. So this woman essentially gave birth to science fiction. Without Frankenstein, there'd be no science fiction. Without science fiction, there'd be no Star Trek. And there'd be no tidbit from Rob in the first episode. Exactly.
00:12:40
Speaker
And she was 18 years old, which is amazing to me. What's funny is ah um she had writer's block for the first week. And then they had a conversation one night where they were talking about this cutting edge science from lu Luigi Galvani, who was running electrical currents through dead frogs to make their limbs twitch and speculating about reanimating life. And by the way, his name was Luigi Galvani. That's where the term galvanized came from. Oh, is this is like um tidbits. funny.
00:13:06
Speaker
And then she goes, she goes to sleep. It's a particularly stormy night full of lightning. And she has a dream about Frankenstein. And that's where Frankenstein came from. So it's it's weirdly sexist, I think, to ignore what we all kind of recognize is I don't know if you guys have read Frankenstein. It's one of the few novels I've read more than once. It's great. It's a really great story. It's um poetic. There's a whole bunch of levels to it. And instead, Lord Byron went with the already established male poet who gets the credit. um The sexism gets kind of worse beyond that because, of course, they recognize it as a good story. They go to publish it, but publishers will not agree to publish it under the name of an 18-year-old woman.
00:13:42
Speaker
ah So they publish it anonymously only if Percy Shelley agrees to write a preface so people assume he wrote it, which is kind of horrible. ah Years later, you know, she gets her name put on it, but only after, you know, she had to assert herself and really force it. um I also have one last little tidbit to this tidbit, and it's a sad follow-up, and I know Gaz really likes the sad follow-up.
00:14:04
Speaker
So Palidori was very proud of his vampire novel, and he does get it published, but the publishers, again, it's kind of funny how this mirrors what happens with Mary Shelley. ah The publishers decide not to publish it in his name. They catch wind that he was inspired from this little tiny couple pages from Lord Byron.
00:14:19
Speaker
And because Lord Byron is a big name, they put Lord Byron's name on the book and publish it as a Lord Byron book. And Palidori fights for years. It leads to legal debts. It leads to depression. And tragically, he takes his own life at 25. That's exactly the kind of thing I like. Thanks so much. I thought you would. So volcanic eruption, big stormy summer, ghost story competition among poets and a young, underestimated, brilliant woman. This little competition gives us vampires, ah the most famous sympathetic monster of all time, and the birth of modern science fiction.
00:14:58
Speaker
Well done. Follow-ups. Kaz, do you have a follow-up? I blasted a lot of my follow-ups out while it was happening. I think that's all I got. I enjoy that the initial setup, these writers got together and they had their own version, having to use the technology of the time, which is just writing of a podcast where they said,
00:15:16
Speaker
Who in this room can come up with the best thing and we will see who wins and if there's a tie and so on. but so I appreciate how you worked into that. Your indignation at the sexism and the injustice.
00:15:29
Speaker
It makes up for you being such a fan of P.T. Barnum. I really am a big fan of PT. All right. So guys, you're up. Okay. So, uh, I, I am not as prepared as I was last week and you both seem more prepared. So I'm, I'm regretting going last.
00:15:44
Speaker
ah this did I did. i did it's not bad I'm just, I have more, my notes are a bit scattershot. Okay. So let's, let's start this way. Probably in all of human history, once there was you know communication, maybe even before that, when people were just thought in their heads, um but belief in the existence of an afterlife or manifestations of spirits and ghosts has pretty much existed since civilization. um And ghosts are generally described as solitary human-like entities that maybe have unfinished business with a person or a place. But prior to about the 18th century, like arguably the end of the 17th century, right around when um the woman who was not really George Washington's caretaker was born... there came a change in the way things were perceived. There there was a new technology that eventually, first it was called a magic lantern and it was a simple projection device.
00:16:31
Speaker
But then later it was adapted into a phantasmagoria, which was sort of a show, kind of like a haunted house, kind of like a seance, Where people would go and it would be a dark room and they'd have like cheesecloth or smoke and they would project using just a simple like a light and a pattern.
00:16:46
Speaker
And they would maybe do skeletons or figures or things and it was sort of very translucent and wobbly. And that started to shape the idea of what ghosts in the afterlife look like. Prior to this, ah ghosts could come in all forms. And very often were seen as solid characters. They knock on doors or come into your house and push you around, almost like more like zombies or something, um but with you know mental facilities. But there was no unifying idea of this spectral, you know no legs floating around ghost until the advent of the Phantasmagoria, about the end of the 17th into the 18th century. And a little bit after that, going more towards closer to the 19th century, um spirit photography. Photography in and of itself was new. And there were charlatans at the time, of course, that would use long exposures, double exposures, the fact that if you moved, it would get blurry and they'd say, oh, these are spirits. And once they realized this was something they could do on purpose, they would sell it as a service.
00:17:36
Speaker
And very often the person, the spirit, you know, quote unquote, would look see through and would look like they're floating off the ground. So these two together that were products of limited technology, one was sort of an accident that they said, oh, these are spirits, these are ghosts. And the other was they were intentionally trying to create it. But the limited technology and the way they could present it sort of coalesced. And this was rated like sort of the beginning of the dawn of like a lot of scientific breakthroughs, but also this like surge in spirituality and and interest in that sort of stuff. And it sort of coalesced into becoming. becoming what we think of as the standard way ghosts are portrayed.
00:18:08
Speaker
But prior to about the 18th century, they were never portrayed that way, or at least not widespread. Maybe one person did it, but that was not how they're perceived. And over time, that has become, you know, in movies and books and video games, with few exceptions, we all think of ghosts in that general way. And what's interesting...
00:18:24
Speaker
I don't believe in ghosts, generally speaking, um but about 17 to 18 percent of people polled, I think in 2009 it was, report that they either believe in ghosts or believe that they've seen a ghost or a spectral thing, despite no scientific evidence ever being presented and despite quite the opposite, that like every attempt to prove it has ever gone wrong, sorry, come up empty. ah And in fact, all you know ghost hunters are described as pseudoscience as best.
00:18:48
Speaker
And the kind of the tidbit, the tidbit is how we view ghosts now is just a product of our limited technology trying to describe it being baked into the subconscious and baked into pop culture.
00:18:59
Speaker
And the reason I bring up the idea that people can't prove ghosts exists, and in my opinion, they don't, although I know some people, obviously 17, 18% of the population do. Most people that witness or purport to experience something with a ghost nowadays, and again, with some exceptions, will describe it in some force ah in some way as described thus. That's funny. Life in a dating art. Yes. and But to me, that means that we all in this day and age have absorbed what we think a ghost is based on what we described to ourselves in a previous version of civilization. And so it's much more likely that we're manifesting it from our own imagination or mind.
00:19:30
Speaker
Maybe we're having, you know, some of the cases you have dementia or you're sleep deprived or yeah carbon dioxide poisoning, whatever puts you in this altered state, the thing you see is informed by what you expect to see. And what you expect to see is informed by limited technology that humans invented around the 18th century. Yeah. So it was basically an an invention of artists and charlatans and yeah media, really, shaped how we think of ghosts. Otherwise, ghosts were just kind of seen as just people walking around. Yeah, people walking around and or a disparate collection of different types of descriptions as opposed to this more unified vision. I like it. I like it.
00:20:03
Speaker
I think you should get a new sound effect. we should have a new sound effect for the end of the tidbit. I only have two. I have ballpark. And then drums.
00:20:20
Speaker
I had two other sound effects, but I accidentally erased him and I don't know how to find him again. I think, uh, so I was going to say, uh, wait, I would like to have a sound effect, which is like, huh? Cause I think that was sort of like how I wanted to say at the end, but now I want you to always play, uh, the 20 second drum uncontrollable stuff, uncontrolled drum beat, whatever, follow-ups, jump-ins, what'd you call it? i already had my follow-ups, Mike. It's in Interesting. So what you're saying is that what we think of as ghosts is informed by the technological changes.
00:20:52
Speaker
It reminds me of what's not my tidbit. Could be a tidbit one day if I fully understood it, but about how people didn't used to see the color blue. Like it wasn't until, I don't remember. For some reason, blue didn't the appear that much in nature, and so it wasn't a color that people sort of had a name for for a period of time. This could go in a category called maybe a tidbit. I remember a thing about no blue. Cheasing tidbits. Something about blue. So that you guys can have that one for the FB trip. Mike, what's your vote for the best tidbit this week? I'm going to say Rob. Oh, thank you. i think It was good. becauses A lot of work went into this one. How about you guys?
00:21:26
Speaker
um mike Mike gets the um prize. improved. Most improved. Miss Congeniality. But Rob, yeah, Rob, rob you you wove a good tale.
00:21:37
Speaker
Especially because once again, I knew this trivia already. It was not new to me. So I'll give you extra points for selling it really well. You are one of my literary ah buddies. I would have to vote. I think I'm going to vote for Mike.
00:21:50
Speaker
Only because I was vaguely aware Because you ruined it. Because you ruined it. because I owe it to him, because I ruined it. But also because I love P.T. Barnum, apparently. I'm like a big fan, even though the reason I avoided the musical is I've heard that he was like a real jerk in real life. Like he treated those people who had whatever deformities or strangeness about them. He treated them like second class citizens and kind beat them and stuff. And they don't do that the musical. In the musical, he's just Hugh Jackman being super charming and singing great, which is great.
00:22:17
Speaker
liked it. So Rob is the winner. Rob is the winner. So we owe Rob $20. I wanted to propose this for upcoming episodes. We could maybe make it, put some money down, make it little gambling. I think money is not interesting. I think some other sort of thing. Let's see what the tidbitters out there have to say about it. I also want to propose the idea, maybe not next time, but in the future of having a fourth tidbitter join us. If we have a good friend or for somebody who's got, hey, I got a really great tidbit. i want to join the tidbits tower and the bicker buddies. It's not a bad idea, but then there could be a tie. So we have to One thing one thing is there there there can't be a three-way tie that way. So there's that.
00:22:58
Speaker
Hey, we've been the bigger buddies. Kaz! We've the bigger buddies. Yeah, me, Rob. And see you next time. Mike, you didn't say your name? You might say your name.
00:23:15
Speaker
And it seems gigantical scenes pouring in from your outer dreams wrinkle mental stuff in your own scully hug.