The Sordid History of Bachelor/Bachelorette Parties

When it comes to pre-wedding festivities, bachelor and bachelorette parties take the penis-shaped cake. Learn all about these sordid affairs today.  

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
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 Cherry's here too, and we're just
batching it on this episode of Stuff you Should Know. Yeah,

(00:22):
uh So before we get going, my friend, we want
to alert people we've got a little something special at
the end of this episode. Our former colleague who was
no longer with My Heart but dare I say, one
of the best dudes ever and one of our most
beloved colleagues, Man Guesh, had to condure he has is
doing his own little uh like he calls it his

(00:44):
own little podcast shingle, and he's making shows now and
he has a great new show that he's launched called
Obsessions Colan Wild Chocolate, hosted by Rowan Jacobson, And we're
gonna play a preview that at the end of the EPISO. So,
but we wanted to tell people what it was about, right, Yeah,
it's pretty awesome. Like they kind of call it the

(01:05):
Indiana Jones of chocolate, where basically these people who are
like really into chocolate, chocolate makers are like, yeah, all
this cocao that we're finding is really good and sounds
better than others. But we've heard legend that deep in
the Amazon there's cocao that will knock your socks off
and they go to find it, and Man Guesh made
a podcast out of it. So it's really interesting stuff.

(01:27):
It's really well made. Man Guest is really good and
knows what he's doing with podcasting, so congratulations to him
on his podcast company Kaleidoscope, and on Wild Chocolate too.
That's right, so check it out Obsessions, Wild Chocolate. It's
wherever you can get podcasts and stick around after listener
mail where we're gonna have a little preview of it. Okay, Chuck,
so we're back at it. Then that's right. A little

(01:50):
c a here. This one's probably rated at least PG
thirt I would say that, yeah, I mean it's not
rated are necessarily, but you know there's it's about bachelor
and bachelorette party. So I'm just gonna be talking about
some stuff you want You do you really want your
kid to learn about bachelor parties? No? I don't either.

(02:12):
It's a fair warning. And if you are in other
parts of the world and you're like a bachelor party,
what's that we're talking about a stag party those of
you in the UK, Ireland and Canada. In Australia, we're
talking about the Bucks party for that was that was Boston.
And by the way, have you seen Kevin kin f himself?

(02:34):
Uh no, I have not. We got recommended that from
a lot of people after the sitcoms up. It's yeah,
it's good. That's why I picked it up too. I
mean I was familiar with her, aware of it, but yeah,
it's definitely definitely worth watching. Yeah right, I've only seen
the first episode and I'm like, this is this has
legs for sure? What does that have to do with
Bucks parties in Australia. It's set in Worcester and the

(02:57):
house from Boston, yes exactly. And a lead I don't
know the actor's name, but she, you know, from um
Ship's Creek, the daughter sister from Ship's Creek is an
amazing like Boston accent without overdoing it. Like she's really good.
So it's a good, good show. Chuck. Uh well, quickly then,

(03:18):
while we're seguing or diverting, I was just in Boston
and I just wanted to shout out. I went up
there for a pavement show and from my hotel room.
I looked out and what was sitting there but the
Wilber Theater. Yeah, our Boston Live Performance Home, right outside
my hotel window and right next door to the Whang
Theater where Pavement played, And I probably bumped into seven

(03:44):
different stuff you should know listeners cool who all came
up and chatted it up, sat right next to a
couple and promised them live showed freebees, which they need
to email me. By the way, if you're out there
and listening, it's the only way could happen. We'll probably
be in Boston this year. Is a better than average
chance when you say, I would say so. So just

(04:04):
a big shout out to the Boston Nights because they're
always super supportive and nice. And I think my friend
from high school and his friends who were with us
were like, jeezus, chuck that famous and Nights No, not
at all, Like this is like this happens once every
few months, not seven times in a night. Sure, I
think the fact that it took place at a Pavement
show kind of skewed the um in population. Yeah, they

(04:26):
were probably on the lookout at any payment show I
might be there. Yeah, So back to the content, Yeah,
back to back to bachelor parties. What do they call
him in France? Oh, in France, they have a great
name for him, the entire Monte de vie de Gasson,
which means the burial of the life as a boy heavy,
Which makes a lot of sense because bachelor parties in

(04:48):
particular started at a time like the late nineteenth century,
uh is when they really started to become what we
understand of them today. Um, at a time when, like
you probably were, there's a higher than likely chance that
you were going into marriage is a virgin, and so

(05:10):
this was exposing you for one last time. You're one
last opportunity to you know, um, how do I put
this man? If? So, I guess, but without actually doing
that more just like you know, seeing a naked woman
doing a strip tease or something like that, like this
was your chance to do that before you got married
kind of thing. And so back then it actually made

(05:33):
sense in a certain way, whereas today, because people are
getting married later and later, the bachelor party makes less
and less sense. But the same behavior from days of
your is expected. So there's this weird tense juxtaposition between
bachelor parties now and how people actually whether or not

(05:55):
they enjoy bachelor parties today, you know what I mean? Yeah,
And I mean I think we should just go ahead
and say I can speak for you. Neither one of
us are big on the traditional bachelor party. Uh, we're trying.
We're going to try not to yuck the yums and
get to judge. I went camping for my quote unquote
bachelor party. Uh that's uh. Never been into strip clubs

(06:19):
at all, Uh, much less for a bachelor party. Which
is it? Just it makes me uncomfortable just thinking about it. Well, supposedly,
Chuck like there's there was at least one ethnographic study. UM. Oh,
I can't find it right now. We'll come across it
later on. From two thousand sixteen. This uh, this ethnographic

(06:41):
study basically followed UM bachelor parties to Bitha and like
other places around Europe, and they interviewed UM like the
people who were there just kind of candidly, and most
of them were like, no, I really don't enjoy this
at all. I'm not having that much fun. Like the
time when we're hanging out back at the rented house

(07:01):
drinking together, that's fun, but like being put on stage
and you know, whipped by a stripper is not that fun.
It's kind of humiliating, and no, it's not really enjoyable,
but I feel like I have to go through it.
So that's the tension that I was talking about, where
it's like that kind of body raucous, you know, objectifying

(07:21):
behavior that again kind of like maybe made sense in
the fifties in a different time, it doesn't make sense today,
but people still do it, and so it makes people
deeply uncomfortable. Um as far as most I can't say
most days, as far as plenty of studies who have
actually looked at this thing and a lot of anecdotal
evidence to say, yeah, I'm a full belief that the

(07:45):
traditional hedonistic bachelor party thing is being driven still by
like a small minority of guys that are like, go
to do it, dude, that kind of guy. They are
called you're desperate already married friend. Those are the ones
that are trouble at a bachelor party. You have to

(08:05):
look out for. Those are the ones that push everybody
else to do dumb stuff that they wouldn't totally do
and that they'll later regret. As a matter of fact,
if you want to have a chill bachelor party. Do
not invite me desperate already married friends. No, not at all,
or hopefully if you're you know, get married a little
later in life, then then everyone is sort of a

(08:26):
little more on board with something chill. And that seems
to have um caused bachelor parties to evolve into you
know what they're becoming more and more today, which are
basically like men's retreats to barbecue and like hike and
stuff like that. And there are definitely plenty that go
to Vegas or you know, go out of the country
or something like that and just party hard, but there's

(08:49):
a growing number of of ones that just do like
you said, like go camping, you know, just hang out
with your pals, which is ultimately what the points supposed
to be. The point of a bachelor party, isn't it
you umiliate the groom to be But that is a
huge kind of through thread, uh in a lot of them.
The point is to just like celebrate your time as

(09:11):
an individual. I saw I put so perfectly. It was
on a gay marriage website and they were talking about
whether you should throw a bachelor party for both grooms
or a combined one. And this website was saying one
for each because what they're doing is going into a
marriage and they're combining themselves. This is one of those
times when they can be celebrated as individuals separately, distinctly,

(09:34):
And that's ultimately what a bachelor party is supposed to
be about. It's celebrating this individual before they basically become
responsible and enter into a union with another person and
become a couple. That's that's ideally what the bachelor party
sentiment is supposed to be. That's right. Uh. And the
only time I will get super judge is if you

(09:54):
are one of those dudes that thinks it is okay
or you should like have sex with one last girl
before you get married. Make the worst decision you've ever made.
You are cheating on them, and you will cheat on
them again one day probably, and that is not right
in any way, shape or form. So again this is

(10:17):
anecdotal self reporting. But on George ta Kay's website, I
don't know what he was doing. He hosted like a
that was Jeffrey Tambor and George t Ka cross together?
Yeah or Hank? What was hankstand? Hank? Yeah? Um? So
On George t Kay's website, he had this this like

(10:40):
list of like people who wrote in and said, like, yeah,
I was at this bachelor party and the wedding ended
because the groom cheated on his fiance, like at the
bachelor party the night before the wedding, and the you know,
the fiance found out because her brothers there. That was
part of the bachelor party. Um. And so apparently there
have been again I didn't see like, you know, anything

(11:02):
out of like Rutgers or m I T that was
a study on this, but anecdotally, there have been marriages
that have ended before they started because just terrible decisions
were made at the bachelor party. That's right, And uh,
ladies were not forgetting about you. The bachelorette party is
a big thing. They also called them hind parties. Uh
they called them early on, I think hind parties, but

(11:24):
they came about much later, generally between the seventies and
the nineties is when that kind of started. And we'll
touch on both as we go along. But first, and Livia,
God bless her. I feel bad for even putting her
through this, but she helped us put this one together
and did a really good job. And that she looked
at a lot of other sort of pre wedding traditions,

(11:47):
and you know, the bachelor and batchelrette parties are one thing,
but there's a long, long history across every culture you
can think of kind of since marriage was even a thing,
that there is some sort of pre day before or week.
But for rituals that different cultures partake in, yep, ritual bath,
the mikvah and Jewish tradition, ancient Greece, women used to

(12:10):
hang out and sacrifice things to the gods before the
day before. There was one in Sweden I thought was
pretty interesting. In seventeenth century Sweden. They celebrated the muck Verlaar,
which is virgin nights, so they would bathe and feast
and drink with their friends. And there was actually one
town in sixty nine of Uppsala that said no more,

(12:34):
like you're showing up so hungover on the wedding day,
Like we can't do the muk vlaar here anymore. It's banned.
That's another thing too, like there are a few bad
ideas that have to do with marriage that are are
worse than having a bachelor and or bachelor at party
the night before the wedding. Not the time to it.

(12:54):
That's when you have your rehearsal dinners and stuff. Usually, right,
it's supposed to be like kind of chill and exciting,
not not partying like that the day the night before
the wedding. Like you have to be so bad at
thinking things through to actually do that that it's just
kind of mind boggling but also hilarious in a way. Uh,
there's one in the northeastern Scotland, I think in rural

(13:15):
Scotland that I think still happens. I'd love to hear
from our friends there. But they will drive it's called
the Blackening. They will get the bride and groom and
kind of fake kidnaped them. And you'll see that happens
a lot in a lot of these traditions. It's like
what we've got you now, and they will cover them
with disgusting sticky things, dog food, rotten eggs, does anything

(13:39):
that'll kind of stick to your body and humiliate you,
and they will drive you around in the back of
a truck basically around town. And they basically said there
are not many rules except that you're uncomfortable and embarrassed. Basically.
One thing I saw was that, um, this is like
a farming community, so that like manure doesn't actually work

(14:00):
because everybody's so used to the smell of manure that
if you smear it on somebody like whatever, it's not
they're not close to the coast, so they'll actually drive
to the coastal areas to get like fish guts and
stuff because those people do find the particularly disgusting and
offensive smelling. Wow. Yeah, it's kind of mean, but it
actually evolved out of a tradition of washing the bride's

(14:23):
feet and it ended up becoming bad in this little
part of Skyland. But yeah, it still goes on from
what I saw. So if you look at the US, uh,
in the United States, we're talking about, like you said,
the nineteenth century when these things kind of became a thing. Uh.
There's a sociologist named Thomas Turnell read that did an

(14:45):
article with Life Science and basically said, you know, when
we became industrialized and we moved into the cities and
started working in factories, new rituals came about. Now that
you weren't in doing sort of the farming community rituals
where if you had kind of any sort of promotion
or anything to mark a rite of passage, people would
maybe an apprenticeship would end or something. You would take

(15:08):
people out and you would like to drink beer with them,
maybe played practical jokes on them, maybe tarn feather there
their jumpsuit for work or something like that. And this
is what this sociologist thinks sort of led to this
tradition of bachelor and bachelorette parties of getting the other
drinking a lot. Maybe some practical jokes will get to

(15:29):
those later, but those are still a thing apparently. Yeah,
which makes sense. I think it's a pretty good argument
because you have these these you know, new living situations,
but still some of those old surviving traditions, so you
have to come up with, you know, new customs around
those traditions because the old living situation isn't around anymore.
I totally buy that. I buy it too. Uh. And

(15:50):
Livia also found this really cool story that sort of
exposed a lot of um how the how the richies
lived in Gilded Age in New York. It was exposed
with something called the Awful Seely Dinner. And this was
the Seely family in New York and this was these

(16:10):
were relatives, I think, ancestors of P. T. Barnum, right,
the descendants of P. T. Barnum. Yeah, the grandson. What's
the difference. I always forget P. T. Barnum who came
before was their ancestor descendants, right, So Um isn't one
of your favorite movies, The Descendants it is, But I
also called the ancestor sometimes so Herbert Barnum seely uh

(16:36):
through this party for his brother Clinton. Um. Just I
guess eleven days before he was to be married, and
I guess did get married. And it was at a
restaurant called Sherry's. At a time before there was like
dining out was a thing, So this was really really expensive. Actually,
you know what, dining out was a thing. I looked

(16:56):
into this party a little bit more. But uh, if
you were really a leat, as you'll see, you like
a lot of privacy and you like to do some
like nasty things sometimes. So there was this big private
dining scene in New York at the time that was
a really really big deal. Okay, potato potato, But so
they were doing this private dining thing. Yeah, that actually

(17:18):
makes a lot of sense because they they had very
tight lipped wait staff help performers. When they were interviewed
with the cops, all these people were like, it is
not within our our social strata to inform on the
people who hired. We just can't. And from what I understand,
the cops were like, yeah, we we totally get it.
We don't have a case, but we totally get it.

(17:40):
And it wasn't until Herbert Barnum Seeley told the cops
who some of the attendees were. The cops went and
interviewed these incredibly rich people and stuff started to come out,
and it was like, no, they actually did have a
woman who did like this, who jumped naked out of
a I guess a cream pie or something like that
and danced on the table. Her name was Little Egit.
She was kind of a famous dancer at the time.

(18:03):
But this is a time where like, as far as
society was concerned, you did not do this. This is
like finding out that, you know, the wealthy have eyes
wide shut parties. I think was was what it what
it was like, but you know, times a million, because
the the Victorian era was so genteel. Yeah, but here's
the thing, they totally did this, which is why they

(18:26):
had all those private dining events because they like to
do stuff like this. So they were tipped off, but
I think an agent of one of the dancers. The
cops were tipped off that there was, you know, lurid
things happening. So the cops show up and accidentally walk
in on um a bunch of dancers changing, like you know,
changing their outfits, and were embarrassed away basically away from

(18:49):
the premises, said we you know, didn't see anything, and
then the seelis it probably would have just kept quiet
if it hadn't been for the Seelie's taking it back
to the city and saying, you know what, what you wanna,
we want these cops investigated, and so all of a sudden,
they're dirty laundry is being dragged out. And it was
quite the scandal of the New York court system because,

(19:11):
like you said, these people didn't this quote unquote low society,
didn't mix with the high society. And all of these
people were brought through to testify in court, and apparently
the people in court watching was everything from the high
society person looking to get dirt or laugh at their
you know, uh, their comrades or whatever, to the to

(19:33):
the the guy on the street who was just looking
for warmth in the courtroom. And so they were all
kinds of people mixing in New York when you really
never saw this happening. And you know, the the dancers,
they had all their outfits rigged to either be snipped
off with scissors or for their stockings to drop, and
it was just for the time. Very lord stuff, big
time embarrassment. There's a lot of fun um contemporary contemporaneous articles.

(20:00):
There's one from the New Yorker that's really fun to
read about the Awful Seely Party. Uh. And just a
little quick side note about little egypt Um. She was
quite the business lady. Apparently she was a real estate
investor and died of very sadly died a couple of
years later gas asphxiation and apartment, but died with in
today's dollars, about a million bucks in the bank. Yeah,

(20:24):
so she had it going on. Yeah. And apparently she
was secretly married and her husband wouldn't claim her in public,
but when she died he came forward immediately. It was like,
that was my wife, that's my money. So um. The
upshot of the Awful Seely Dinners, it was called it
gave bachelor parties or bachelor dinners is what they were.
Called at the time kind of a bad name because

(20:45):
everybody had assumed that, yeah, there's some drinking and you know,
they smoked maybe an extra cigar or something like that.
This really exposed them, uh and and just just gave
him bad reputation, it turns out, for like twenty five
years tops, because no less than Emily Post in her
book Etiquette in Society and Business, in Politics and at Home,

(21:09):
wrote that the bachelor dinner is popularly supposed to have
been a frightful orgy, but in reality it was a
sheep in wolf's clothing. So her point was less than
a quarter century after this awful Sealy dinner when it
comes out that the rich at their bachelor parties higher
like couples to perform sex shows in the middle of dinner.
Um By by this time, Emily posted saying, no, that

(21:32):
was all just hysterical. They're actually very staid events. Yeah,
and she really I don't know if she didn't know
what she's talking about, That's what I think. Probably, So
I was just didn't know if she was trying to
just make things seem a little more upstanding than they were.
But yeah, she probably just didn't even know what was
really going on, because Uh, I think it was that

(21:53):
very same time period. There was a counterclaim, which I
just called the reality of it all. Uh. There was
an oral history gathered by the w p A, which
is a Rhode Island French Canadian of a Rhode Island
French Canadian tech stile worker named Henry Boucher, who described
in first person his own stag party, and it was

(22:17):
a raucous affair. Basically, they had a priest there that
gave a speech about the duties of a married man
and gave a toast. But then they basically said he
had a good you know, the good sense to get
out of there really quickly. Uh. And we were really
relieved because you know, income the the strip tease acts
and stuff like that, and we didn't want the priest here.

(22:37):
So Emily Post had it all wrong. That's that's my
take that she was just like, this isn't possible. My
my brain won't comprehend what's actually going on at these
bachelor dinners. So um, at the very least by the
nineteenth late nineteenth century into the twenties, the bachelor party
is really starting to evolve and take shape and reflect

(22:58):
what we're seeing today. Right, and I say, something else
that's evolving and taking shape is a ad break. Very nice, okay, Chuck.

(23:30):
So the whole time that the bachelor party is evolving,
starting in the late nineteenth century, there wasn't really anything
that was um, what's the word I'm looking for, chunk,
i't know. The bride didn't have anything quite similar to
the bachelor party analogus, yes, thank you, um, but there
was like a bridal shower. Those have been around since

(23:52):
from what I saw, sixteenth century Belgium, and the origin
story for those is really sweet. There was a wealthy
girl who all in love with a poor I saw
a miller's son, um, and her father was like, you
can't marry him, and if you try to proceed, I'm
I'm keeping your dowry and you guys will be broke,
and so don't even try it. She said, I don't care, father,

(24:14):
I'm marrying him anyway. And they got married anyway, and
the town found out about this and was so moved
by their love that they actually brought gifts to get
This couple started in life too in in lieu of
the dowry that I think the father finally relented him
was like here fine, here's the dowry too. But they
say that that's the origin story of the bridle shower,

(24:34):
which was the bride and her friends and her future
in laws and her mom and her future mother in law. Um,
kind of hanging out having a very nice, um tasteful
like luncheon or brunch and then getting you know, presents
that were usually of like a household nature, that's right. Uh.
And in the twentieth century, early twentieth century and Britain,

(24:55):
women there started celebrating, uh, what was called ribbon girl traditions,
and they would decorate the bride with ribbons and hearts
and kitchen utensils and stuff like that, because of course
this is a time where they're like get ready for
a life of you know, domestic servitude, because that's what's

(25:16):
coming your way. And yeah, and they would parade her
around on the factory floor where she worked. Um. And
then this sort of evolved over time, and then by
the nineteen sixties is especially into the seventies, is when women,
especially in the US, started saying, hey, you know, maybe
these showers were throwing should be a little bit more

(25:36):
like what these guys are doing, and um, this is
kind of pre bacherette party still, but they would have
what they would call a personal shower where all of
a sudden, you're not getting a toaster or a spatula,
but you might get you know, like a sex toy
or something fun like that, right, and the future mother
in law was typically not invited to that, typically unless

(25:58):
you know she's fun and as a open mind. Sure,
so that's the sixties, I guess I'm taking it as
the late sixties. Within three decades, um, the early nineties,
So within just a couple of decades actually, yeah, Um,
it evolved at least in the UK into him parties,
which became like boozy, raucous body events where the bachelor

(26:25):
atte party that you might see at a club today
really kind of finds its route from what I understand
in the UK in the early nineties, Um, and there's
I think they're still called him parties today, and then
in the United States, Chuck. They attribute the rise of
bachelorette parties not necessarily from people going over the UK
for hem parties and coming back and saying like we

(26:46):
gotta try this, but almost evolving independently thanks to the
arrival of the Chippendale's review in Los Angeles in nine
that that apparently kicked off the bachelorette industry, bachelorette party industry.
I can only think of Chris Farley when I hear
the word Shippendale's and Patrick Swayze, Yeah, what a great
bit um And that look that Patrick Sayzy has where

(27:09):
he's just like, I can't compete with this when he's
watching Chris Farley, it was just priceless. I would like
to equally shame the bachelorette parties because there are two
words of advice. If you see a big, raucous bachelor
party coming your way in a bar or a club,
run the other way. If you see a bachelorette party
headed your way at a club or a bar, run

(27:29):
the other way. For you don't want to be swept
up into any of these shenanigans. Uh. And I have
unwittingly somehow been swept up in bachelorette party shenanigans more
than once in my life because a lot of yeah,
a lot of times there's a bacheltte parties will have
a kind of um body scavenger hunt kind of thing

(27:49):
where they're like, but they're all dares, like the bride
has to go do whatever to whoever. And I've been
that guy a couple of times somehow where they're like,
she wants to do uh uh, I don't even know.
It's just like a shot out of your belly button
or something dumb. It wasn't that, but just it's it's
always stuff like that. Take a shot from a stranger's beard.

(28:14):
I think I still have a bachelor at in my
beard somewhere. Uh. There might be like whip cream involved.
Just just go away. You don't want to be a
part of any of this stuff. It's true. At least
I don't want to be. It's just embarrassing for me.
You'll put a penis shaped straw in your mouth faster
than you can say. You open your mouth to say,
wait a minute, and there it goes. So Um chipping

(28:36):
Dale show up in nineteen The word bachelorette party is
um coined in a New York Times article. Um, and
they're just talking basically about what you might think of
is more of like a spa weekend today, not at
the bachelor atte party like you just described. Um. That
didn't come along until about the eighties or the nineties,

(28:59):
and one of the reasons why, at least, I should say,
in the United States, definitely in the early nineties. In
the UK, some people say, no, it still wasn't even
a thing in the early nineties in the US. But
one of the reasons why they became bodier and body
or and more and more extravagant and more and more
out and proud. Basically proud is the wrong word, but

(29:21):
you understand what I mean is because people started getting
married later and later, and so they didn't have to
go to their parents and be like, I need five
thousand dollars to throw this party that you would not
want me to have ever in a million years. They
had their own money and their friends had their own
money because they weren't. They weren't getting married at twenty
one and then starting their professional life. They've been working

(29:44):
for a decade already before. Now they're going to get hitched.
And that changed everything. That was the big sea change
for bachelor parties that in my opinion, made them no
longer make sense in that context any longer, because peop
we weren't getting married basically as children. They were getting
married as grown adults now, and so it doesn't make

(30:06):
sense to go back and behave like children the you know,
a few days before you get married. That's that's what
I'm saying. No, I'm with you. Um. And also as
that sort of was in lock step with the rise
of a party industry, that kind of you know, marched
in lockstep with it. So people started having more money
because they were getting married later, and all of a

(30:28):
sudden there was this industry surrounding it where you know,
you just have to call a company if you want to.
You can also play in your own stuff, of course,
and people still do that, but I mean Lyda gave
one example. There was a scholar UH named Diane Tye
who interviewed and of course this is all again that
the Thankfully they don't do a lot of studies, like
real studies on this stuff, but they did some. She

(30:51):
did some interviews with UM, middle class Eastern Canadian middle
class white women in the mid nineties, and then interviewed
the same type of people UH in two thousand, seventeen
and eighteen. And the big difference was in the mid
nineties they were all just sort of planning the stuff
from scratch, and by the time the two thousand tents
came along, you would call a company up and there

(31:13):
would be a script basically where you drink these you know,
uh colored sugary drinks, and there was a penis cake
and uh games, you know, pin the pin the penis
on the Playboy, and there might be mail strippers and
just a lot of phallic stuff happening. Yeah, but you know,

(31:33):
it's like it's one thing to plan all that from scratch,
Like that is your best friend who did that for you?
And I think for your best friend to just like
email a company and be like I need and I
need this on this night and we'll show up and
then that's it. You know, the soul's taken out of
it a little bit. Oh No, I totally agree, because
any any party you throw for someone should have that

(31:53):
personal planning touch, I think, you know. Yeah, So hats
off to the maids of honor from the early nineties.
Out out to them, right, that's right. Uh, If you
do any kind of research on bachelor and bachelotte parties,
you will find a lot of articles kind of starting
in the late nineties everywhere from like Vice to maxim

(32:15):
to the New York Times. So they and they're all
written a little mournfully and sadly where where they're saying, like,
you know, the old days of the wild hedonistic bachelor
parties are going the way of the dodo in These days,
guys just want to go on a fly fishing trip
and ladies just want a nice spa weekend with some
good wine and prosecco. Uh. And isn't it a shame

(32:37):
almost that that guys aren't going out and trying to
have sex with one more lady before their wedding day? Right,
They're very annoying to read to me. Yeah, no, it's
true for sure, And like they always like interview somebody
who's like, what's going on? This terrible? You know exactly.
But the thing is, from from all appearances, the bachelor

(32:59):
party is not actually going away anytime soon, the rowdy,
raucous bachelor and bachelor atte parties again. Yes, more and
more people are coming up with alternatives that suit them
and their friends and their you know, demeanors much more.
They're just like, I don't need to be publicly humiliated
because this is some sort of right of passage that
you know, my dad went through. My older brother, who cares.

(33:22):
I'm not going to do that anymore. And I think
that that sentiment has really kind of freed people quite
a bit, but they're still I would say the vast
majority of a bachelor and bachelorrette parties are of the
very stereotypical kind that you imagine. Yeah, and you know what,
I haven't even been to many of those uh my
dude friends. I feel like a few of them had those,

(33:44):
and I was out of town when they got married,
so I was just around for the wedding. But I
went to one of them, of one of my good
friends who had kind of a stereotypical I mean there
were no like sex acts, but you know, there were
strip clubs and just to auchery, and I was so like,
all that stuff just makes me. It's not even uncomfortable,

(34:06):
but nervous, like, oh, I just I've seen too many
movies and we'll get to the movies in a second,
or just I don't know, just bad luck coming that.
I just don't want to be super involved. And these
are like close friends sometimes and so for for that one,
I was the uh d' not putting myself up as

(34:26):
some like saint or anything at all, but I just
don't want to be involved in that level of of
hard partying for the night. Um, and I was the driver.
We rented a van and I sober drove everyone around,
drove into all the places. We saw Snoop dog at
a strip club in Atlanta, which was kind of fine. Uh,
and he remarked that we all had sideburns. This was

(34:46):
the nineties after all, so Snoop Dogg recognized us. He was, well,
i'll tell you what he said later. Uh in private.
But uh. As soon as I got them back to
the rented hotel and everyone was, you know, going to
be in one place, I said good night and I left.
Oh yeah, you're like, okay, you're all safe, goodbye things.
That was it. And I heard the stories later and

(35:08):
I was like, boy, am I glad I left? Right?
And these are people that I love and I'm not
judging them, but it's just never been my scene. I'm
too nervous about that kind of thing. Yeah, but again,
I think it's really cool that younger people today and
I'm younger means I guess people in their thirties, even
as far as we're concerned chuck um like that, they
are comfortable saying I don't really want to do that. Everybody,

(35:30):
do we have to do that, and everybody else is saying, no,
we don't have to do that. Let's figure something else out,
you know. Not. And again, if you're really really into
bachelor parties and you're so psyched that your best friend
is going to throw you just a rager of a
bachelor party, man, hats off to you. Like, I don't
think anything we're saying is meant to like like you said,
yuck that yung. I just think that there's there's people

(35:53):
are like, okay, cool, you know, let's do something different instead,
and they feel comfortable doing that because it shows that
America and the West is growing up. Let's take a break. Okay,
we'll be right back. Stop. All right, we promised talk

(36:30):
of movies. You can't talk about bachelor bachelorette parties without
talking about movies, because there are movies called bachelor Party.
There was one called The Bachelor Party from seven. I
want to see this movie. I kind of do too.
I was faced on an old stage. I'm sorry, TV play,
but uh, this is sort of one of those things
where goodness wins in the end because the newlywed, uh,

(36:53):
you know, inevitably, it's revealed that his his home life
is secure, quiet home life is much better then his
playboy friends, who kind of plans this evening right, and
the potential love interest is played by Mortisia Adams. Okay,
Caroline Jones, I think was her name. I don't know
if I've ever seen her, not in her Mortia get up.

(37:15):
It's it's odd. You can tell it's her if you
know that it's her, but it's just, you know, it
just doesn't quite look like her. Um. And then there's
like the hilarious typical boomer humor of How to Murder
Your Wife, a n Jack Lemon movie, who who figures
out that he married a a not great woman who

(37:38):
was the person who jumped out of his friend's cake
at the bachelor party the night before, which The Hangover
totally stole. Yeah, it was married, Heather Graham. Sure, yeah,
I don't know if we should jump forward to The
Hangover yet because that was just such a monumental movie
as far as the bachelor party genre goes Chuck that,
I want to give it it's do. Yeah. Yeah, we'll

(37:59):
wait on the uh because we have to parkt a
bachelor party with Tom Hanks, who Olivia points out, like
if you if you only know, sort of today's Tom
Hanks and you haven't people in the airport to get
away from his wife. Yeah, exactly. Uh, this is very
off brand for him, um, but on brand for him back. Well,
I'm not on brand. But you know, he did a

(38:21):
lot of kind of uh different kind of comedies earlier
in his career. And I used to love the movie
Bachelor Party. I thought it was so funny. Uh looking
back on it now, it is kind of an I mean,
it's still funny in a lot of ways, but it
also has you know, transphobia and uh casual racism here

(38:41):
and there, and of course women are sexually objectified through
the whole thing. There's a donkey that they almost get
to have sex with a woman, but it's it's sort
of a red heron because the donkey dies of a
drug overdose before it couldn't happen. But I still love
Bachelor Party. I'm just I haven't seen it in a
long time, but that was one of my movies in college.

(39:03):
Very Bad Things was a dark comedy where there was
the accidental killing of a sex worker. That was such
a terrible movie. I saw it back then. It was
it wasn't good at all. No, and not like the
acting is bad or the direction, but it's like just
the concept of it. It was meant to be funny
and it wasn't like it really missed the mark and
just me, the whole thing just terrible. Totally. It was

(39:27):
I'm like in my early twenties and I'm like, this
is reprehensible. Yeah, you know. Uh, The Hangover finally came
along two thousand nine, which took the place of Bachelor Party.
I think it's sort of the quintessential, definitely bachelor party movie.
And I'm still on record as thinking the first Hangover
it was a very very funny movie. Okay, you didn't

(39:47):
like it, right, I think we talked about this before.
Not really. I mean, it's fine if I'm not gonna
try to detract from mean, I know, it's like one
of the most successful movies of all time. Yeah, I
thought it was very fun me. I thought Zach Gallafanakis
was great and uh, what's his name, Mike Tyson? No, well,

(40:08):
I thought Ed Helms was great, and I thought Kenjong
it was very very funny, and I just I thought
it was very funny and the and the sequel is terrible.
Wasn't the one in Thailand. Yeah, it wasn't good at all.
I did not think Bradley Cooper was very good in
the Hangover though he didn't have a good role written

(40:28):
for him. He had play the straight man for everybody else.
And of the jerk. Yeah. Yeah, but I love Zack
and Ed and Ken John. I thought they were very funny. Yeah.
What about Bride'smaids? Have you seen that? I have not
seen that one. Oh, Bridesmaids is great. Yeah, it is
really really funny. Yeah, I've heard nothing, but yeah, you
should check out Bridemaids Kristen Wig. Just the plain scene

(40:50):
with Kristen Wig is worth the admission price alone. Yeah.
That one came out in two thousand and eleven, and
there was like this kind of grassroots um a pro
feminist social media movement around it saying like, go see it.
It's like I saw it described as like a um
like I can't remember the wording they used, but basically,

(41:11):
if you're a feminist or you're for women's rights, you
have to go see that movie. Basically that it was
like that groundbreaking and monumental, and it basically said Okay,
women can have the same kind of movies as men. Yeah, like,
you know, the women's version of The Hangover in a
lot of ways, at least as far as like genre
stuff goes, I think it was more well written than
The Hangover for sure. Yeah, it was funny. And then

(41:33):
there was a movie that I don't know how I
never heard of, this movie from seventeen called rough Night,
and it was had Scarlett Johansson and a lot of
Glazer and Zoe Kravitz and Kate McKinnon and Jillian Bell
like huge cast. Never even heard of this movie. But
it's sort of like a bachelorette party that goes wrong,

(41:55):
sort of like very bad things. But it wasn't critically
reviewed very well, but the filmmakers great, uh, because she
does that along with her husband does that TV show Hacks,
which is really really good. Oh yeah, so maybe the
movie just missed the mark or maybe you know, I
need to see it and judge it for itself. But
not well reviewed. Okay, what else? That's it. That's all

(42:20):
the movies I got. Okay, so um we I think
we've talked quite a bit about the fact that humiliating
the brider groom is like a thing, and part of
that is kidnapping them so it's not just humiliation, it's
domination too, and that typically comes through in um the

(42:40):
idea that that the bride or the groom is kidnapped
at some point they're taking against their will and they
don't have any say in the planning, like this is
done for them but also done to them. Yeah, that's
I can't imagine being scarier than going to a bachelor
party that was planned without my knowledge. Right. So apparently

(43:02):
in Australia, their bucks parties, all of them start with
a kidnapping, and like a serious kidnapping, so much so
that I saw an article about you know, um imaginative
ways to kidnap the groom to be and they were saying,
do not do it on the street in broad daylight
like a vand because the cops will be called. But

(43:23):
apparently that's how how seriously they take it that they
need to actually tell people not to do that. They're like,
how else you supposed to kidnap someone? Right? Uh? Yeah,
And those can get out of hand with um. This
is when the practical jokes come and play. There was
one account from a journalist David Boyer and his book
Bachelor Party Confidential, where and this is so wrong and

(43:47):
mean where these friends quote unquote friends, um got this
groom so drunk that he passed out and then they
had his leg put in a full cast, uh and
told him that he broke it and did not tell
him until after his honeymoon. Yes, like not to not

(44:09):
like the night before the wedding or even after the wedding.
After the honeymoon, they finally told him that his leg
wasn't actually broken into Not funny. I think it's funny.
I think it's hilarious up until like the wedding and
then you tell him and he's just watched. He's just
washed over with relief, and that's hilarious to not tell
him before the wedding, so he's up on crutches that

(44:31):
he doesn't need. And then the honeymoon is the real clincher.
I think then they it just that was just mean, Yeah,
your expensive honeymoon. For sure, you can't go swimming in Fiji, right, Uh?
I thought, great conception, poor execution. Yeah, like day before
the wedding, they I'll take the hammer out and break

(44:52):
the cast up. Yeah, that's a fun that's a fun scene.
All right. Well, let's wrap it up with a little
bit on money. Uh, these things are quite expensive, or
can be quite expensive these days. There was a survey
uh by Savings dot com, and we should point out
that out of the five people they surveyed, they made

(45:14):
um of them made over a hundred grand years, so
these are well funded people. But they said the average
costs for a man's bachelor party is about fifteen hundred
bucks and a bacherette party was about nine hundred and
said it was uh like a weekend event in sixties.
Six percent it was a destination thing. Scent was international.

(45:38):
So these things have gotten really expensive. And I think
they interviewed about half the people very quietly said Hey,
I think it's gotten a little too expensive and it's
gotten a little out of hand, but I felt like
I had to do it. I read that this was
um not fully but largely attributable to the rise of Instagram. Uh.

(45:58):
People are now trying to like, like their lives just
look so amazing, you know, and like the bachelorrette and
bachelor party is such a big part of like the
life at that age that that was. That's definitely something
they spend money on just Instagram. It basically I'm gonna
start once a week, I should just start posting pictures

(46:19):
of my bear beer belly. Okay, just to fight that
whole notion that you know what I mean, what filter
will you use? There is no filter? Oh my god, Chuck,
that hasn't been invented yet. You've gone mad. Just I'm
I'm going to Chuck the podcaster for some disgusting photos

(46:39):
of me. Yeah right, doing hearth hands, sunset over your
beer over my belly pledge. And that's my attempt to
make the world a better place. I think that's a
great idea, Chuck. I support that. I will like every
single one of those posts. You're gonna hurt my stomach
for sure. Uh you got anything else? No, thankfully. Now Okay,

(47:03):
that's it for Bachelor and Bachelor at parties. I'm sure
we could go on. There's more details, but you know,
just go to a Bachelor bachelorrette part and see what
you think. And since I said that, it's time for
listener mail. Uh yeah, but before the listener mail, another
reminder that after we read this, you can check out
a preview of Obsessions Wild Chocolate, the great new show

(47:24):
from our old friend Manesh. Excellent. I'm gonna call this.
Oh and By the way, we need to shout out
another listener mail real quick. We heard from Diarrhea Planet.
Oh yeah, did you see that email? No, I didn't
see that. I gotta go check. Yep. We got an
email from them and they said, hey, guys, we heard
that you were talking about us again. Please and I'm

(47:45):
sure you've heard that we have a reunion show coming
up in Nashville. And then they said, if it sweetens
the pot, you guys are our guests for the nights
waituh and I really want to go, but it's in
the two days of Thanksgiving week and Nashville and that's
just a tall order diarrhea Planet to uh to talk
my family into stay and like, Hey, I'm gonna leave

(48:08):
Thanksgiving week for a night because see diarrhea Planet right
at he's understanding, but that may draw that may be
where the line is drawn. Yes, but regardless whether we
make it or not, that was very very kind of
Diarrhea Planet to offer. What I want them to do
is come to Atlanta and do it another show, right,
because you like chomping on a cigar, You're like, you
come to make Yeah, come to me baby, all right.

(48:30):
So I'm gonna call this. Thanks for the company. Hey guys,
been listening stuff. You should know my drive to work
For about three years. An old coworker introduced me to
the show and I would look forward to our discussions
on each episode every morning of our coffee. Recently had
a baby girl, and my husband and I agreed, uh,
that it was best that I stay home for a
little while. After about four months in, I noticed I

(48:50):
was showing some signs of postpartum depression and it hit
me one morning but that what I really just missed
was those morning chats in the office and the freak cofee.
So I started an episode with you guys and began
deep cleaning our home. Decluttering and organizing has always been
something that made me feel better, and every day I
continue to tune in and clean during naps, uh presumably

(49:14):
your baby's naps, because that would be amazingly efficient if
you can clean right. I now have those same discussions
with my husband when he gets home from work, and
I really just want to say thanks for the company,
the memories and the new ones to come. And that
is from Anonymous. Great thank you Anonymous. H. That was
a wonderful email and I'm glad we could feel that
little hole for you, right, Chuck totally. And if you

(49:36):
want to let us know about something nice we did
for you and we didn't even realize we did. We
love hearing that stuff. You can send it to us
in an email to stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com.
Stuff you Should Know is a production of I Heart Radio.
For more podcasts my Heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

(50:17):
I'm in the co pilot seat of the small Cessna
plane and we're circling in the Bolivian Amazon. Beside me,
pilot sweating because we're looking for a place to land
and we can't find one. The weather was bad and
and the pilot was nervous, and it was it was

(50:38):
quite exciting behind me. Is this guy just been a
day ago? This German caccau hunter named Volker Lahman. Volker
looks a bit like the German director Werner Herzog. Sounds
like him too. The more dangerous or tricky the situation
dance with the Kalmar I get. It's two thousand ten,
and Folker's letting me tag along. If you searches for

(50:59):
a holy Grail wild cocoo, the tree that gives us chocolate.
Cocao's native to the Amazon, and now it's farmed all
over the tropics, mostly in Africa. A few years before
our trip, Focus dumbled upon an incredible variety of wild
cocao in Bolivia and he turned it into this mind
blowing chocolate. So now there's a gold rush for these
magic beans. And Volker's hope is to say, one step ahead.

(51:22):
There's an indigenous group in the forest called the eurocare
Rumor has it they have a ton of wildcata cell
So the plan is fly in, find a landing strip,
take a dugout canoe to the Eurokara village, strike a deal.
Below us, the jungle looks otherworldly. The whole thing is steaming,

(51:47):
miss rising to form these immense thunderheads, and the thunderheads
are dropping ropes black rain back to the forest. At
one point we punched through a storm and water comes
spitting through the vents of the plain. I shoot a
glance of the pilot, like what, but he just waves
me off. It's getting hard to tell what to worry
about and what not to worry about. For that, all

(52:10):
I can do is counting vulgar because he's been navigating
the Amazon for twenty years. This part of Olivia is
all rainforests and grasslands. It's also a major cocaine flyaway.
The rivers are dotted with these homemade landing strips and
small planes swoop in, pick up the drugs, and head
for Brazil. Those landing strips are super convenient if you

(52:32):
need to get into the deep woods quickly, which we do,
but it's also super dangerous. Hundreds of people get shot
in the Amazon every year for all sorts of reasons.
Just being an environmental activist is enough, but stumbling upon
a cocaine lab that's one of the surest ways to
make it happen. But when you need a landing strip,

(52:56):
you need a landing strip. The problem is that is
the rainy season and everything is flooded. The rivers have
risen like thirty feet, the trees are in standing water,
the ground is gleaming like a mirror. At last, there's
a strip near a small cabin on the river, but
it's really short. The rain swamped part of the landing strip,

(53:20):
and the landing strip was homemade. No, it's not official
landing strip. The pilot swoops down to get a closer look,
and he doesn't like what he sees, and neither do I.
He pulls back up and circles the area looking for alternatives.
There are no alternatives. The pilot keeps circling back to
that original strip. I think he's trying to psych himself up.

(53:42):
And for all I know, we're running well on fuel.
Get voltas still sitting there like another day in the park,
and that is making me more nervous because I can
tell that his appetite for risk is a lot higher
than that. And then the pilot banks the plain that strip.
For a second, I think, well, this must be another

(54:04):
reconnaissance run, because nobody would. Oh no, he's going for
it right now. The ground is rising in front of
us fast, so I grabbed the handle above the door
and tucked my head and grace and we hit actually
hits the wrong word. It's super soft thanks to all
that spongey ground. So we break hard and slammed with

(54:26):
stopped spraying puddles, and I'm like, we made it. So
I grabbed my back and hop out vulcans behind me
and it's like, hello Amazon, it's a cathedral. When you're
on the ground, there's these massive trees that are dripping

(54:48):
thick vines. There's flocks of actual parrots screeching through the canopy.
And then from that little cabin off ahead, four guys
emerge and they're holding rifles. There were like one guy coming,
and then the second, and the third and the fourth,
and then they were surrounding us. And I was looking
at the pilot and he said, I have to leave

(55:11):
because of the weather, and you know, nobody said anything,
and so he turned around this plane and off he
off he went. And then I realized, oh, we are
in the middle of some people we don't know. I
was nervous. I am trying not to make any fast
moves because these guys are twitchy, and everything they say

(55:33):
confirms my worst fears. They're watching this place for their boss,
who's a Columbian man, and we've just landed on his
private runway without permission. And I've been in the Amazon
for all five minutes, and I'm starting to wonder if
maybe I'm not really cut out for this cacall anything.
And all I can do is look over Vulgar and think,

(55:53):
I hope you got this collide us soope, and I
heart podcast. This is obsessions wild Chocolate. I'm rolland Jacobson.
Chapter one, The Hunt