November 3, 2011 • 54 mins
The pre-colonial range of the American bison stretched from Canada to Mexico. From 1820 to 1880, the population dwindled from 30 million to just over 1,000. Join Josh and Chuck as they explore how bison were brought back from the verge of extinction.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff You Should Know?
From House Stuff Works dot Com? Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant,
and that makes this stuff you should Know the big
(00:23):
wooly addition. Yeah, I'm kind of excited about this one. Yeah, man,
we've seen one of those before. We're talking about bison's
by the way, Yeah, I thought you might bring that up. Yeah,
we we saw one at that animal preserve. There was
like a bear and a bison and they were fighting.
This little depressing next year, but they are supposedly rescued animals.
(00:44):
Um at this animal petting zoo, this wild game petting zoo.
And that was a smart bison because he had learned
to go to the little shoot where you would put
his food. And wasn't he doing something too? He's manipulating
it somehow sounds like it, or he was trying to
manipulate us into giving him some food. I can't remember
there's some manipulation involved, because I remember thinking like, huh,
(01:08):
bisons are very manipulative animals. Jerks. I have a story
for you to start this one. If you like that.
That sounds great, Chuck. Have I ever told you about
my one glorious football story. I've heard little bits about
your football experience, that you were a bigger kids. He
played on the line, and that's about all I can remember. Okay, Well,
(01:32):
as a child, I went to Beverly Elementary School and
I played football for them. Uh And the way it
was in Toledo was you would play for your elementary
schools team when you got the middle school. Interesting, so
you could play your last year of elementary school sixth grade,
but then you could keep playing through seventh and eighth grade,
(01:52):
but it was for your elementary school. It was weird.
But so I played for Beverly Elementary, which meant I
was Beverly Iison. And I was probably the kid on
the team that must resemble the Bison because I was
a pretty big, fat kid and I was aligneman. And um,
I sucked at football because no one ever explained any
strategy to me. It wasn't until college that I understood
(02:15):
that football even had strategy. Old technique, Yeah, I thought
it was just like block that guy right right. Um,
So I didn't teach you to swim, move nothing. They
taught me nothing. It was literally like just stand there
and don't let that guy through. That's what I was taught.
Failed by all coaches. Um. Anyway, I did have one
shining moment. Right I was eighth grade. I was third string.
(02:38):
We were playing the Colts. I can't remember what school,
but they were the worst team, and uh we were.
We had the game in hand and the Colts were
all like just three and a half foot tall, little
pint sized kids. So we had the game in hand. Um,
it was late in the game and they put me
in as a defensive lineman. Right to you're the biggest
guy on the team and your third string. I am
(02:59):
at this point the biggest guy on the field. But yes,
I was third strict grade two. Um, so they at
this point in the biggest guy in the field and
they put me in and um, and I'm I'm like,
I pointed to the quarterback. I'm like, I'm gonna I'm
coming for you. They put two guys on me. Right
the quarterback hikes the ball. He's he's appropriately nervous because
(03:22):
I'm staring at him. He knows like I'm gonna get
to him. One way or the other. This is like
my my last chance, right, these two guys come at me,
these two offensive linemen. I just grabbed both of the
bachelor helmets and just push him down, like right underneath,
but go right through him. Yeah. I don't like after
this is the coach, You're like, maybe we should put
this kid in, you know, earlier in the season. Anyway,
(03:42):
I um, I push. I just get through both of
the guys who are who are on me? I go,
is it? Well, that's what I did. I go right
to the quarterback, didn't tackle him. I picked him up
and threw him down. I didn't even like stagger. I
just picked the just kid up and through them. And
I turned around. I was like, yeah, you know what
(04:03):
I didn't know is I caused a fumble and one
of our guys picked up and ran it in for
a touchdown. I didn't find out until after that the
play was over. So your line cheat that day was
once one play, one sack, one force fumble. Yeah that's awesome. Yeah,
and a touchdown as a result of the fumbles. So
that was my big story as Beverly Bison. And that
(04:24):
is the the the intro. I guess you could say
to this, what happened to bring the Bisons back from
the verge of extinction. I think that might have helped
the cause. I think it did too. Perhaps I've always
had an infinity affinity for Bisons ever since playing for
the Beverly Bisons. But I think we should probably start out, chuck,
(04:44):
what what's Some people might be like, I've heard a buffalo,
but I don't know what a bison is. Well, if
you've heard of a buffalo and you're an American, you've
heard a bison, pal you're confused. That's right right here
in the States, they're bison. Technically, they're pretty in are changeably.
You know, you can call him a buffalo. But technically
a buffalo is a cape buffalo or water buffalo, and
(05:07):
they're native to Africa and Asia. The bison's native to
here in the United States, North America typically specifically, and
the word buffalo comes from the French. Seventeenth century explorers
encountered these things and said, let both what is that beef?
(05:28):
It means oxen or beeves whatever, beavis be e e
v e s is what I said, Okay, And then uh,
the English folks arrive later and change it to La
buff and then Buffalo, then Buffaler, than Buffio and eventually
they settled on Buffalo. So that's where we're at now,
(05:49):
that's where right now. But so they're both members of
the Boviday family. UM, and they're very much related. But yes,
one lives in Asia and Africa, one lives in North America.
And we've got two um types of buffalo or bison
I'm sorry. In North America. We've got the wood bison,
which is the smaller the two, and then the planes bison,
(06:09):
which is the big, the big daddy. Yeah. And they
you know, if you've ever seen the one with the
big hump, that's the wood bison. The planes bison has
the flat back, more distinctive cape, and a more well
developed beard in throat main. Is that right? So the
one with the big hump is the wood bison because
(06:30):
the hump from ground to hump can get up to
like six ft tall. Yeah, that's huge. Uh. Let's talk
numbers first, like sheer numbers. UM. In two thousand seven
they did a bison census and the number on private
ranches was add to thirty four. That is significantly more
(06:51):
than it was a century earlier. UM. About two d
and twenty thousand in Canada, and about twenty and of
these bison in the United States and Canada are roaming
free on public land, and close to a half a
million total herd in North America today. But at one point,
(07:13):
the chuck in about eight there were maybe in all
of North America five hundred of these things five hundred,
and those five hundred were federally protected on federally protected land.
Prior to that, say, I think it was in Lost
(07:35):
Part Colorado, UH, poachers killed four bison, UH, and those
four represented the last unprotected free roaming bison herd in
the in North America and thus ended what was called
the Great Slaughter, which we'll get to in a second.
But let's go even further back to really get to
to the the the point about how few five hundred
(08:01):
bison is in like say ere, you have to understand
how many there were in say seventeen hundred. I've seen
estimates is high as sixty million. That far back. Oh yeah,
chew on this pal I saw an estimate as high
as a hundred millions. Yeah, normally the accepted number UM
(08:24):
was proposed by a guy named Um Shepherd crushed the third,
he's an anthropologist from Brown University in he came up
with an estimate of thirty million. And if you're an
anthropologist or a wildlife biologist, or just a bison enthusiast,
you're probably gonna go with thirty million. At any given time,
(08:44):
there were thirty million pre European um settlement. There are
thirty million bison roaming North America at any given time. Well,
they were the largest large mammal in the United in
North America, the largest uh population at one point. But
they're also the largest physically. They were about two thousand pounds.
The average mail is about two thousand pounds. And they're
(09:07):
quick too. They can get up to like thirty five
miles an hour. Two thousand pounds thirty five miles an hour.
And there are thirty million of these things running around.
That's a ton. That's that's a lot of times tons. Yeah,
and they spanned They obviously made their home most abundantly
in the Great Plains because there was lots of great
(09:30):
virgin grassland that was packed with vitamins and minerals, which
allowed it to grow back really fast after it was eaten.
From Canada to northern Mexico, tons and tons of buffalo. So, um,
there's something interesting if you've read that pops up towards
the end of the book. I know I keep going
back to this well, but it is it is really wet.
(09:53):
It's a consistent thread. Um there were there. There's this
whole idea that what the settlers out west around the
plains encountered and took to be like a wild state,
like the natural wild state of tens of millions of
buffalo running everywhere, was actually a freak of nature. Right
(10:15):
that you have um an apex predator in any ecosystem,
and if you remove the apex predator, all the other
all the other UM species are allowed to just boom
right in on the great planes. The apex predator was
man human in the form of Native Americans who were
removed from the ecosystem, and without the Native Americans to
(10:37):
effectively manage the herb populations and the prairie lands, UH,
buffaloes were allowed to explode to unnatural population numbers. So
there's an idea that what we took and still to
the state consider was a natural population of thirty million
was actually far far less than that. Prior to the
(10:58):
Colombian exchange. Really Yeah, very interesting? Didn't that interesting? Either way?
They're probably about thirty million buffalo roaming the Great Planes
in state seventeen hundred. That number dropped dramatically starting about
eighteen twenty, right, yeah, with the Great Slaughter. Uh pre um,
Well we'll get to the horse. Pre horse. Dating back
(11:20):
to prehistoric times, there was what was known as buffalo jumps.
Did you see this? So buffalo jumps are were when
they would Native Americans would herd buffalo down these narrow
shoots and run them off a cliff like lemmings like lemmings,
and it would break their legs. I mean not such
a cliff that it would you know, destroy the animal completely.
(11:43):
It would just break their legs so they couldn't move.
And then they would you know, they had guys waiting
down there with spears and stuff and clubs to kill them.
And it was sort of like the first factory farms
that was where they were would get large abundance over
and over abundance of buffalo meat and pelts and all
the stuff that they use. And uh. There is today
in Canada a World Heritage Site called head Smashed in
(12:08):
Buffalo Jump, and it is one of the oldest and
largest and best preserved buffalo jumps known to exist today.
And if you go to their website, it has a
little animation of buffalo like lemmings like running and then
falling off a cliff, over and over and over. Right,
(12:28):
And I should also insert here that Chuck and I
are both fully aware that lemmings don't naturally run over
the cliff. That that was actually the producers of the
Walt Disney documentary that created that myth and drove those
poor lemmings over the cliff. That's true. Yeah, I'm glad
you said that because we heard about that. Uh So,
at any rate, they were buffalo jumps. That was a
way to get lots and lots of buffalo dead quickly.
(12:50):
And if you live in Alberta, you can go see
the head smashed in Buffalo Jump for a mere ten
dollars for an adult. And not only if you live there,
if you're visiting there you could do it too. That's right.
But the Native American had a I mean, I know
the white man is blamed for it, and they largely
are responsible for the mass slaughter, but the Comanche Indian
in the eighteen thirties were killing close to three hundred
(13:11):
thousand bison a year, which was not a sustainable number. Right.
That's actually a very hot topic. Um. You know, there's
the idea that the Native Americans are the noble savage um,
and then there's also evidence that they're not, that they weren't.
There was this thing called bison overkill. Um. They also
believe that that's what happened to the mastodon and the
(13:32):
sabretooth tiger and that they were basically hunted to extinction
um by like the Clovis people, and the Clovis people
in turn became extinct as well. It's like a highly
debatable topic of over exactly what happened. But if that's true,
then that means that bison have always been over hunted
because if the Commanche were doing that, and apparently it
(13:55):
takes six to seven bison to to for a person
to subsist a year, six bison per person per year. Yeah,
but that's without agriculture, Like, that's just living on bison.
Can you imagine your your stool productions just like bison
break for the spic and the eggs bison burgers. Yeah,
(14:16):
and I would imagine your sweat smells like vinegar because
apparently you have a high protein, low carb diet, you
sweat vinegar. It is gross, believe me. The railroad industry
was also a great threat to the bison because the
bison were a threat to the railroad industry. And you
know who won that war. Well, there's a guy um
named Frank Row who who wrote a book in nineteen
(14:36):
seventy two called the North American Buffalo, and he cites
um a train that was headed west in eighteen fifty
that had to wait for three days for a herd
of bison to cross the track them and they weren't
necessarily slow moving. There's just that many bison. Um. So yeah,
we reached the point now where the the White Man
(14:57):
has entered the picture, the Winchester fifty aliber rifles under
the picture, and the horses under the picture. So all
of these factors that would lead to the near extinction
of bison have all come together and converged on the
Great Planes and they are about to unleash holy hell
on the bison population, the Great Slaughter. So do you, like,
(15:20):
have you heard about the Great Slaughter? Do you know
some things about it? I know that they could have
been potentially killing like two hundred thousand buffalo per day.
At one point, they had contests, Chuck, they were buffalo
killing contests the railroads, like you said, to get rid
of this bison problem. They also figured out how to
(15:41):
make money by hosting hunting expeditions where you never left
the train. The trainer just drives slowly and you would shoot.
It's also in dead Man. Oh yeah, Um, that was real.
They had bison killing contests. There's a man who holds
the record in eighteen seventy Helo Bill. No, no, he
had Buffalo Bill beat A man named Thomas C. Nixon
(16:04):
of Kansas set the record in eighteen seventy, killing one
and twenty bison in forty minutes. Buffalo Bill supposedly killed many,
many thousands himself. He was hired to do that. Um
and hides were going for two dollars ahead and in
the winner of eighteen seventy two to seventy three, just
the winner one point five million buffalo hides. Bison hides
(16:25):
were shipped back east by train. Well. I do know
at one point that they said that the big hunters
were using two guns because they were shooting them so fast,
they had to let one gun cool down, and so
they just picked up the fresh gun so they wouldn't
have to stop killing. Yeah, at first, like they were
shooting him for meat, and then buffalo hide, bison hide
(16:46):
became all the rage, not just back East but in
Europe as well. Demand increase, so they're like, oh, well,
let's you know, we'll just leave the meat there. We
don't need the meat. There's millions of these things, rotting
carcasses everywhere. Um And as if this couldn't get worse,
as if it couldn't get worse, right, So the poor
bison population, possibly if there was bison overkill, their apex
(17:11):
predators removed, they're allowed to bloom, and then a new,
even more damaging apex predator comes in starts killing indiscriminately
like they've never seen before. The one of the reasons
why they had bison killing contests was not just for
the railroad, but it was because the um federal government
in whites in general figured out that the planes Indians
(17:33):
subsisted on bison take away. The bison take away the
food supply. You civilized the Indian. So that was one
reason why bisons were hunted to near extinction with so
such glee was because it was serving a larger purpose
of bringing the Indians into the fold as well. So
there's a way to tame the West. We're starving them.
(17:57):
So again we get down to what five bison that
are finally protected. Um, and it's starting in nineteen o six.
Who who is responsible for this? Uh, nineteen oh five
environmentalist he might have heard of by the name of
Teddy Roosevelt and William Hornaday, who was a zoologists, poet,
(18:18):
can conservationist, songwriter, realtor evidently thought that was odd. That
is not well, you gotta make money somehow because those
other ones aren't doing so. Uh. He was a really
top notch conservationists actually. But um, William Hornaday and Teddy
Roosevelt formed the American Bison Society nineteen o five because
they were like, wait a minute, these things are remember
(18:39):
all those buffalo that used to be out there that
aren't there anymore? Like this might be a problem. They're like,
what are we gonna hunt? And so we're better to
send them plus send them to the Bronx in New
York City, the Great Plains of the Bronx. Yeah, and
it definitely got him out of the hands of poachers.
Uh and kidding aside, though the bronx who was a
great place for them to send some species for uh reproducing.
(19:02):
And Yellowstone National Park was established as a as a
preserve and the New Yorkers got to sit there and
watch bison getting it on. I guess so nicol ahead,
nick boy, not a buffalo, nickel uh huh uh. They
also uh the night created the federal government created the
National Bison Range in Montana. But these weren't the efforts
(19:24):
that ultimately did a lot to increase the numbers. No,
because you know what, although they were protected, and Congress
actually did pass an act um, the Federal Park Protective Act.
I believe that said if you poach buffalo, you're in
big trouble. Um, they were never listed as endangered. Yeah,
(19:45):
I wonder why I couldn't get a reason there, So
I don't know either. But they were clearly close to
being in danger, but they were never listed, so they
didn't enjoy that full protection. So Roosevelt, he he had
a pretty good effort by establishing the Park Service, yellow
Stone had a protected heard. You had him in the Bronxoo,
you had him in Oklahoma, you had him in in
(20:05):
um South Dakota. But none of these, like you said,
led to the real resurgence, the the um, the resurgence
in the bison population in North America. What did, though, Chuck, Well,
maybe we should talk about well, yeah, sure, what did uh?
Private landowners? Head Turner, head freaking turner. Yeah, he was
(20:26):
the one responsible for bringing the bike the bison back
from the near extinction. He's one of my heroes. Should
we just give a few Turner stats here? The second
largest private landowner in North America. He's got about two
million acres of ranch land and uh fifteen ranches and
(20:46):
seven states that are all bison ranches, active working bison ranches,
and I believe he manages about fifty thousand head of
bison himself, himself, by hand himself. Well, Jane helped out
while they were together, and he opened his I'm sorry.
He purchased his first bison in seventy six and opened
(21:07):
his first bison ranch in seven, which makes me wonder
where did he keep that bison for eleven years? Did
he just like take it everywhere with him in the
backseat or he had plenty of land. There was no
shortage of space for that one bison. But I think
he to answer your question, he kept it at his
mansion in Buckhead, UM. If you want to learn more
about Ted Turner's um, he has many ongoing projects to
(21:28):
save the species. You can go to www dot t
E s F dot org and he's I mean a
lot of this is obviously for for raising bison to
sell two stock his Ted's Montana grills with fresh bison
steaks and burgers. But it still helps the conservation, well,
it does. I mean, whether they're free roaming or um
(21:52):
commercially raised. If you are just looking at the hard
numbers of bison populations in the US, they are not
in injured anymore. And it's because they're so delicious that
there is. That's the reason why they're not endangered. Well,
and one of the cool things about the bison is
it's it's across the board. The National Bison Association prohibits
(22:12):
the use of sub therapeutic antibiotics, growth hormones, and animal byproducts.
So it's not like, oh, this one calform says we
shouldn't inject them with hormones. It's all all bison in
the US, and they are very nutritional compared to cow beef.
They I don't need to be handled much. They almost
exclusively dine on grass. And if it's if it's um
(22:36):
unmanaged grass, that's it's organics, fully organic. Yeah. Absolutely. Uh,
let's talk nutrients. The proportions of protein, fat and minerals
and fatty acids to its caloric value are outstanding compared
to grass. Beef, I'm sorry, just beef period and um,
large concentrations of iron and a lot of essential fatty acids.
(22:57):
So people are up with bison. They're eating it a
lot more over the past decade. The numbers have really
risen dramatically. Um, do you eat it? Yeah, I've had it.
It's good stuff. I've had a bison burger. I didn't
you know. I've had bison steak at ted the Montana Grill,
which I should say, full of this closure, we own
no stock. What's however, and I've never eaten there. Oh
you should. It's cool. It's got to like the the
(23:18):
interior decor is like a turn of the last century
like Kansas restaurant. Yeah, it's very cool, like the tin
plate ceiling and all that stuff. Um, and yeah, the
bison steak is very good. Now, can you tell the
big taste difference. Yeah, really yeah, because I've had the
burger and I couldn't tell a huge difference. But you're
a steak guy. You like steaks, you immediately you can
(23:40):
look at it and tell a difference. But the taste
you can tell the difference as well too. I mean
it's not just like it's not like eating cat and
eating steak, but I mean you can tell a difference.
Well yeah, cat is gamey um, so chuck. Also, we
should say it's not just Ted Turner who's single handedly no,
keep saving the bison herds, because now there's what four
(24:02):
thousand commercial bison living in the US right now, Yeah,
a little more. Even that's just the US alone. Turners
got fifty thousand of those, which pretty substantial portion. Canada's
doing their part um. There is a group of eleven
tribes who get together in to form the Inner Tribal
Bison Cooperative. No, I'm sorry, fifty seven tribes that managed
(24:23):
fifteen thousand heads of bison collectively. And one of the
things that if you are if you manage a herd
of bison, whether for conservation or for deliciousness, you are
going to run into something called brucellosis. Which is not good.
It's a bacteria and it's called like another name for
it is contagious abortion. That's two great words to pair together.
(24:49):
So basically, brucellosis is a bacteria that you can that
ruminating animals, which is grazing animals um. They can pick
up pretty easily through the mouth um. The bacteria collects
in the reproductive organs. If you are if you have milk,
you're going to pass bad milk. If you're pregnant, you're
(25:11):
going to abort your fetus. And if you lick this
genital area, you've just contracted it. If you eat tainted meat,
tainted buffalo, you can catch it as well and you
get terrible, terrible flu like symptoms. But if you're a
bison or a reindeer or something like that, you are
in grave danger. If you have this bacteria can kill it.
(25:32):
You're pretty easy well, And that's certainly one of the
big reasons, because you know, with all these conservation efforts,
you might think, well, why are there still only half
a million. That's one of the biggest reasons. And sadly,
there are quarantine periods and when these infected bison roam
free like they're prone to do. They have have to
(25:53):
be put down. They get shot, like thirty seven hundred
of them. Uh in the past twenty years have then
have wanted outside of Yellowstone and they have to take
him down. Yeah if yeah, if you're one of the problems.
One of the big problems we're facing with getting the
bison population back on its feet is that we don't
have land like we used to. Well that's the other
(26:14):
So their original range, the original ecosystem are now developed
like a quickie mark. So it's like, you guys, just
stay in Yellowstone, so you you wandered outside of Yellowstone
and bang right. Um. Apparently, also even in Yellowstone sometimes
things converge, like they did in ninety seven. That winter
there's a particularly harsh winter, so a lot of the
(26:37):
a lot of the food supply was covered up with
snow and ice, and like thirt hundred bisons starved to
death in the park on top of a bunch that
had to be shot for wandering out too. So it's
a bad year for bison and Yellowstone well and not.
The final reason really is um, when you have a
smaller herds like this, there's gonna be more inbreeding and
inbreeding doesn't lead to a healthy population. Yeah, which is
(27:00):
one of the reasons why brucellosis is so rampant. You
have a narrower gene pool. So thank you to the
private system of all bison are on private land. Yes,
that's crazy. Yeah, like people coming together to single handedly
revived this species from the brink of extinction. So every
(27:21):
time you eat a bison burger, you're helping to conserve
the bison population. Inn't that weird? That is weird. I
got one more fact for you, Is it on a
high note? Uh? Sure? Do you like buffalo cheese and
stuff like that? I do like buffalo mozzarella. It's good stuff,
not from a bison. Apparently, any kind of buffalo product
(27:42):
like that milk and cheese is from the the water buffalo. Cool.
And the reason why bison are not commercially milked is
because the ladies have little teets, really tiny little teats
that are very small, and they're not great for for
milking and um. Yeah, so they don't adapt well to
(28:06):
that kind of thing. The ladies are like hands off fellas. Huh.
I did not know that. I can tell you, chuck.
Even having been a beverly bison, I know today, as
of today, more than I ever have before about bison
in general. Yeah, me too, and it's bison's plural. We
should go free that. Uh, we should go free that
bison and the game ranch. Do you want to Yeah,
(28:29):
we should just send it down seventy eight East. Well,
that's one reason why we're down. Well, I mean it
would be a descent. Somebody shoot it because they behave radically.
But apparently one last thing. You can tell how a
bison's feeling based on his tail. If his tail is
dangling between his legs, he's calm. If it's moving, he's alert.
He's maybe watching you. If it's pointing straight out or up,
(28:53):
get out of town. Yeah, because we're going to charge.
Well that's pretty cool. Yeah. So that's it for bison,
and um again, hats off to everybody who's eating bison
burgers because you are keeping the bison population in check.
Ted Turner, thank you, sir. I commend you. I had
raised my cutty sark to you. I saw him at
(29:13):
at the Willie Nelson concert a few years ago. You did, yeah,
and I wanted to tackle him and say thank you.
He probably would have liked that. He was a big
part of my childhood being from Atlanta, Like he can't
be from Atlanta in the seventies and all right, not
think a lot of Ted Turner. Yeah, I'm sure he was,
like your secret saying a one year. Of course, if
(29:33):
you want to know more about bison and extinction and
uh bison burgers and brucellosis, you've got all this stuff
packed into one great article called what brought Bison Back
from the Brink of Extinction? You can just put a
bison extinction in the search bart how stuff works? Dot
(29:54):
comment should bring up this article? And I think I
said search bar, did I not? Let's just the cats
out of the bag already. Okay, John Hodgeman is sitting
right here. We're not going to do listen to mail.
Sorry listeners. Is the fourth time I am putting my
foot down. This is the last time, at least for
this series. This has been going on for two weeks.
It's fine, this is the last time. Okay, So this
(30:17):
is four of four. Yeah, maybe we should treat you
a little more regally then. This is four of four?
Can we keep some coronets? Excellent? Yeah, so, Mr Hodgeman,
thank you very much for coming pushing me right out
the door. Josh, thank you very much for coming. And
I'm a hologram. I'm not even here pushing through you
right now. Hodgeman Actual is in St. Louis, Missouri Gateway
(30:38):
to the West, getting ready to perform tonight on the
book Tour live at Top to St. Louis Arch Yeah, well, no,
not exactly. Where is the locale again? I had here
just a second ago. It was at the bookstore there
last like laugh a minute, bookstore, I think is what
I was calling. I think it was the Mad Art Gallery.
That's the same same thing, laugh a minute, seven pm,
(30:59):
this very evening, November three. Do you want to say
the name again? The Mad Art Gallery? Seven pm, this
very evening, November three. Hodgeman Actual is presenting material from
his book that is all with special guest insert name here.
That's excellent. I can't believe we got that guy or gal. Yeah,
(31:19):
good going so so No, I'm just a holographic representation
of myself here again to say hello to you guys. Well,
thank you because because I'm a I'm a big fan
and I'm a deranged millionaire who has a hologram of himself,
and you can send a favorite podcast. Why not exactly.
And that's the thing about Hodgment, like even even getting
the hologram of him, is you know more than you
(31:40):
could possibly want with anybody else. I agree with you.
As the hologram, I can say, I'm actually a little better.
Oh really, we noticed, we noticed last time. I'm not
as flatulent. We noticed due to my holographic nature. Although
you still make the sounds. It's just weird. It's that
the pros But I am I am. I'm a simulated
(32:03):
program designed to interact with real world stimulus in a
realistic manner. Eat a Hamburger sandwich that moves you one
of your favorite, one of your famous Atlanta and Hamburger sandwiches. So, John,
you wrote a book. It's called That is All. It
is the third in your series explaining the world. It
is my complete book of World Knowledge. Is like my
(32:25):
previous two books, a collection of fascinating trivia, historical tidbits,
and amazing true facts, all of which made up by me.
This being the last in the series of complete world Knowledge,
indeed the final world Knowledge, dealing with subjects as diverse
(32:46):
as travel and ghosts and magic, tricks and wine and sports.
In the end of the world, and it is called
that is All, and we've covered a lot of those
in the podcast too, So this is almost I guess
you would say companion piece the last time you would. Yeah, no, Yeah,
that's right. It's also my life's work. But thank you.
Last week you accused me of taking Sorry, last week,
(33:07):
Chuck accused men over over let's say, over liberal inspiration
from the Stuff you Should Know podcast after I had
very graciously pointed out that a huge section of my
book regarding noodling was an homage to your very podcast,
and then I took that nice gesture and I stomped
(33:30):
on it. But I will tell you one thing. I
did download one of your podcasts specifically as research for
the book That is all Necronomicon. That was a good
one with co host Jonathan Stricklin's, by the way, just
beat himself because we mentioned him in reference to you.
(33:54):
What just happened just now? Yes, my other hologram is
cleaning that up this week. That is your full service.
There are many holograms wandering the halls right now. That's
part of a new security system. How stuff works is considering. So, John,
is it true that in this book you explain things
like the thick fish, what's the thick fish? And the
(34:15):
bowl of brown? Oh? Yes, that's right. Well that's not
part of my You know, you know my book better
than I do. Is it true that you explain the
superiority of the year nine one as birth year, which
we both share? That's true? What's going on? Yes? True?
Is it true that you explain the benefits and taboos
(34:35):
at sea while cruising? That is so. Is it true John,
that there is a table in your book about disgusting
regional sodas? That is true? Would you be kind enough
to read some of those sodas? I feel like I'm
being interrogated. Yes, I have my own copy of the Okay,
oh well you haven't open there? The thick A thick
(35:00):
fish and the bowl of brown? What's the thick fish? Fish?
The bowl of brown? The the Patagonian toothfish wine, the
furry forms. These are some of the funny things that
you ingest in your book. Those are just words, but
you're streaming together. You would think that's my job to
string those words together. Bowl of brown comes from a
(35:23):
section of my book on rose wine, because rose wine
is neither white nor red. I love the wine chapter,
Thank you very much. It's something that I previously knew
nothing about because I thought that wine was so complex
and multilayered uh and and um and his stork that
it could only be enjoyed by But apparently no simple
(35:47):
just grape juice all you need to make its scrape
juice human feet in time. Yeah, own yeast. But but
I point out that because rose is neither white nor red,
it is best haired with ambiguous foods like the thick fish.
Like thick fish, scrod, brown brown, mystery meat. That's a rose.
(36:14):
I like rose like. I mean it, quite honestly. I
like rose. I like sparkling rose as well. I know it.
You know you can. You can tolerate ambiguity. Some of
us can't. Like. I'm not the least bit certain how
either of you two feel about. We like things that
you know, we like things black or white, so we
drink either white wine or black wine. You know what
I mean, We'll mix them up. I don't remember what
(36:36):
all those other words you were talking about were pretty
much it you were going to talk about. But they're
also non alcoholic drinks that you can drink, And there
are still regional sodas all over this country that are
not distributed to the rest of the world. Um and
and you might enjoy going into a local uh you know,
(36:58):
on a road trip, go into a little trading post
there and reaching behind the disgusting handmade sandwiches and pulling
out one of these disgusting regional sodas to enjoy. So,
for example, there's ties Gumption brand brain drizzle, which you
can only get in Maine, Vermont. It's uh, you know.
(37:20):
Sodas were originally served in pharmacies. That's why there in
parts of the country is still called tonic. In New
England they're still called tonic because they were medicine. There
were ways of delivering medicine and and in particular sort
of like herbal remedies and nerve tonics and cocaine phizzics.
These are what they would serve. Cocaine pizzics were invented
in this very city, in this very city of Atlanta.
(37:40):
The cocaine fish, who later became Coca Cola. Ties Gumption
brand brain Drizzle was the only one of the great
old sodas to actually contain cerebrospinal flute. Once incredibly popular
throughout the Eastern Seaboard, for its invigorating flavor and hallucinatory properties.
It is now primarily found only in northern New England,
(38:02):
where it is still made using the company's own secret recipe,
including fluid from patient thirty one unnamed Hydrocephalic Patients Secret
Hospital and Brattleboro, Vermont. What's the the other flavor profile?
And that one yes bitter medicinal brainy sugary. You know Brattleburg,
(38:24):
Vermont as a town very near to my retreat in
Internetlas Hills, western Massachusetts. Um, and it's a wonderful town.
I had a hard time during Hurricane Irene. There was
a lot of flooding in Brattleboro, So I hate to
make fun of it. Do you know what I mean?
That they they're all dried out. Now you should go
up there, Go visit the Latchus Theater, go eat at fireworks,
(38:46):
go to the retreat farm and petting zoo. It's wonderful
place to go. But did you know the Brattleboro, Vermont
speaking of ties brain drizzle? But that that the that
the hit wraps all from two thousand seven Sipping mice
A Drizzle is now synonymous with the musical subgenre known
(39:06):
as brattle Brattleboro, Vermont, white person with dreadlocks wrap. That
whole subculture, the whole subculture started up there, and uh
and that song. Sipping on Massa drizzle also introduced America
to the controversial drink known as si drizzle, which is
(39:26):
ties brain drizzle mixed with apricot brandy about a hundred tablets,
suda fed crushed up and maple syrup and and and
to enjoy it, you serve it in a Solo brand
plastic cup with a viking and dusted rim. That's great.
I don't know if we need to go in any
into any other regional Sodus, but there are a lot
(39:48):
of them. Uh. Well, the the only other one in
the Denver, Colorado area and the Rockies. You can still
get Chickoh soda and it's roast chicken flavored. Uh and
it's the only remaining product in the in the in
the company in the line from Savory Meat Soda Corp.
(40:13):
Because up up until up until not only could you
get Chicko, you could also get porko and steak and eggsham.
Those are also available, but now just Chicko and then
chum and then chum wine based on cheer wine. Right.
(40:36):
It was one of many rip offs of North Carolina's
famous cheer wine. But this one, this one, unlike cheer wine,
this one has its flavor profile of sweet cherry, bubble
gum and fish blood chum wine. It's it's motto was
the one, the one to drink while spreading chump. It
was for fishing for fisher persons, and that that was
(40:59):
that little of delight was read directly from the book.
That is all. That is all, John Um. That is
a hardcover book. It is a usually issue. It is
It is the first edition hardcover book in pure black
and white. No light can escape from that. It is.
It is the black hole of hardcover books. It is absorbing,
(41:23):
It is absorbing every light ray that comes at it.
It is a dark, stark tablet reflecting um and monolithic,
indeed reflecting the end of this series, the end of
human civilization and time as we know it in two
hasnt twelve, and now that I've turned forty, the end
(41:43):
of my life so more tragically, what's your life's work? Yes,
it is actually, you know, I'm sorry to put it
in such stark terms, but I mean, you know, it
is the purest unfiltered expression of my adult brain. And uh,
and I hope very much the people will. I mean, look,
(42:05):
we live in it. We live in a culture where
people are getting their their fake facts and they're made
up trivia, and they're and they're invented truths for free
on the news every night. Do you know what I mean?
Though you may ask why should I go out and
buy a hardcover copy of a book? Uh full of it?
And you know that is a question only you can answer.
All I can tell you is this is truly my
(42:27):
life's work. And I hope and I enjoy sharing it
with you, and I hope you enjoy it well as such.
I mean, you're you're curating it. This kind of experience,
this release is not just like Hodgeman dropped a book.
Hodgeman dropped a book. It's a great book. This is
not my tumbler book. Um there you're touring with it.
I am starting well, I'm in St. Louis. I'm in St.
(42:49):
Louis and right uh, and then tomorrow I will be
in Los Angeles, California at the November four the Largo
Theater with Paul F. Tompkins. That's a wonderful place. And
then I will be in Portland on Sunday the seventh
with John Roderick uh and uh and then we we
traveled directly up to Seattle after that to be at
(43:10):
town Hall again with John Roderick and other special guests
will join me later on the tour. John will be singing,
and there will be singing songs. You will not just
be We're going to join him on ukulele and vocals.
There will be ukulele playing for sure, jumping fleet playing.
John is going to on stage teach a kid to read.
That's right, because this isn't a sham, It's not it's
(43:33):
not a carnival act. I will find an oliterate child
in each town and teach them to read the words.
That is all. And it's gonna be heartbreaking. It's going
to be the last part isn't true. But I will
be joined by other special guests who may or may
not be literate throughout the tour and it will be
going on through the sixteenth. And if you want to
find out where I am, and and if you want
(43:53):
to come and see see me present material from the book,
you can go to areas of my expertise dot com
and and and visit there. You will have to buy
a ticket for the book, but the cost of the
ticket includes a copy of the book. So that's a
pretty good deal. Yeah, I think. And you'll you'll be
signing some too, and you'll sign, I will sign. I
(44:13):
will sign every I will sign every book. And uh,
you're one of those guys, aren't like you? Yes, you
see to it that everybody who's standing in line gets
the gets the signature. I want Legionnaire's disease. I'm gonna
I'm gonna shake everyone's hand, come on, um and if
if I can pull it together, guys, And I hate
to make promises, but you know, sometimes you got to
(44:35):
say something publicly to make yourself do it. I'm trying
to find maybe you guys can help me. We probably can't.
Is a company that will make me some custom mini
packets of mayonnaise so that I can give people who
come to the event free premium premium which is samples
of John hodgmons uh Ragnarok Proof survival mannaise. Awesome because
(45:01):
aside from your own urine, mayonnaise is going to be
the thing that you need most after the feces comes
down and civilization is over. Well, one thing you can
do is lubricate small engines with mayonnaise. With mayonnaise, Yeah,
that's just one of the uses you can You can
use it as a as a cleanser, a hair cleanser,
and it's a wonderful conditioner. You can use it to
(45:24):
lubricate small engines. Uh. You can take garbage bags and
spread them out on the lawn and put mayonnaise all
over them. Guess what, you just made a slip and
slide in a time when there is no more running water.
Your kids can enjoy that you leave those garbage bags
out in the sun for a while. Guess what, You've
just made yourself a handy poison well and during after
(45:45):
the super collapse, John, you also make a good point
in the book that the currency could very well be
the beef jerky dollar. Oh, it's definitely going to be
the beef You have a handy table of what one
beef jerky dollar equals. Yeah, and I think my where
I would spend my beef turkey dollar if I had one,
would be the I think seven point five hours of
(46:06):
human human contact was that it, Yes, without murder at
the end, without being cannibalized at the end. You have
to recall any other things A beef turkey dollar will
get you after the super collapse. Well no, but if
you're interested listener, you can take a look at my book.
That is all. It's one of my favorite parts, which
really I mean also it's it's let's just come out
(46:28):
and say it. It is something of a if not
a survival guide. There's some survival to it, but also
like a pretty like a beat by beat prophecy of
what's going to be going down in twelve. If you
if you accept the hard made up fact that the
Mayan Long Count calendar ends on December twenty first, two
thousand twelve, thus bringing an end to human civilization and
(46:51):
time as we know it, in the end of the world,
then you will find in my book A Day by
Day Today in Ragnarok, page of day calendar running down
for you what's going to happen starting December one, two
thousand eleven, all the way through the Blood Wave, the Omegapulse,
the collapse of the dollar, the the return of the
(47:13):
ancient and unspeakable ones, um and uh and and the
Singularity as well, um and so yes, So we'll teach
you how to survive all of these terrible catastrophes until
December twelve, and then it's just all over for every
bo or maybe not, maybe not, I could be wrong.
Well that's probably right. Well, I think what you're saying
(47:35):
is there limits to even your power. Look, there is
a possibility that when two thousand excuse me, there is
a possibility, when December twelve comes around, that the last
event of Ragnarok will be the headless body of nugs
(47:57):
show hubb, one of the ancient unspeakable, pushing the Earth
through a rift in space time into another dimension in
which none of us have any memory of Ragnarok, and
the things in my book are considered to be simply
the flights of fancy of a television personality and the
made up facts of an adult, deranged millionaire. Look, I
(48:21):
hope that happens. Okay, probably not, But it's one possibility
that we will wake up on December twelve and it
will be like none of this has ever happened, sort
of like why two K? No, that's coming? Okay? Why
two K is coming next? In two thousand twelve, I think,
(48:41):
And about uh, it's sometime in May or June. The
thing with why tu K, though, is that it doesn't
attack computers. It only attacks like um small non mechanical
tools like can openers. We had that all wrong. It
is not after computers at all. Is it is after
non computerized helpful devices. It's weird, and John I misspoke.
(49:06):
I don't want to misquote your fake fact. But one
beat tricky dollar after the super collapse, so people know,
is equal to seven point three hours of human intimacy.
And that's what I'd spend my dollar on your dirky dollar.
Hankah guilt. Yeah, well that's it's not that those are
It's not that there's gonna be one currency. They're just
(49:28):
gonna it's you know, this is why I say you
shouldn't bother hoarding gold. Do you know what I mean? Yes,
gold is shiny. I'm not going to argue with you
on that's shiny and heavy, do you know what I mean?
But when you are are, when you have been turned
into an albino right by by the great worm hug numbeth. Right,
(49:51):
you don't care about gold. You want sunscreen, you know
what I mean? And the great thing about mayonnaise is
that it's not very good sunscreen, but it makes a
terrific short term albino mask. If you want to sneak
into albino town and sell them Mayonnai's posing a sunscreen.
(50:12):
This is how we're all gonna have to live in
the future. Do you understand what I'm saying? This is
why Mannai's is so helpful. It all comes back to this.
So listen, everybody. I hope by the time you hear this,
I will have solved the problem. Well, I got a guy.
You know you got a man. You got a comment
I gotta packet guy. He does all kinds. You're not messing.
You're not messing with the Hodgeman. Now are you want Hodgeman?
(50:34):
Catch up? You want Hodgman Tartar sauce? No, no, I
don't want Tartar sauce for right. What do you think
I got a guy? You think I'm looking for something
to put on a filet o fish. I'm looking for
something to save the world. I gotta go. I gotta
power down. Guys. It's been a lot of fun. I'm
sorry listeners whose mail did not get read because I
(50:54):
took over your segment. All four of you know now
come on, But I but I please understand, listeners, I too,
am a listener, and I hope you will continue to
support these two wonderful natural broadcasters even though they have
betrayed your trust by putting me on their podcast air
four weeks or four podcasts in a row, that's right
(51:16):
by that is all. I recommend the hardcover just because
I'm old school and it's all that exists. There's no
there's no audiobook, there is no electronic edition, there is
no paperback. There is only hardcover edition. You know why,
because when Ragnarok comes, you're not gonna You're gonna be
using your reading tablets to make shanties. That's right. This
(51:38):
is the only thing that's going to be left. Also,
I haven't gotten around to recording the audiobook, and I
don't know when we're going to do any book. So
if you want to support my life's work, seriously, please
come and see me on tour, or go to your
local bookshop and purchase the book. Go to see him
on tour. That's a treat, just to share air with you,
my friend. You know what. We're not sharing air. I'm
(51:59):
a holograp m you know. But but the people who
go see you will be able to share. They will,
and we have before and it's not. And my breath,
despite what you may have read and nothing to post,
my breath is not poison. So if you want to
catch up with the real Hodgeman, share some air with
him on tour right, you can go to areas of
(52:22):
my expertise dot com Areas of my expertise dot com.
Spell it out like a normal person. Or you can
tweet to him and be like Hodgeman, where are you at?
On Twitter by addressing it to at Hodgeman it's the
at sign at sign h O D G M A N. Yeah,
(52:44):
and that will go directly to John's pocket. I shall
and I shall feel it. Um. And if you are
ready to get back to business with us, join us
next week when things should be substantially more normal. Uh.
And in the meantime, if you want your listener mail red,
you send it to us. Send it to us right now,
and if it's the coolest one, it will be the
(53:05):
first one we read after the Hodgeman break post Hodgeman break,
and it will that will be substantial, that'll mean something. Okay, Hey,
you know what, whoever is listener mail you read next week,
I'm gonna send them a free book that is really
and then it's on us to pick it out though.
So that's fun to trust you so they can bribe
(53:26):
us crazy how about but not but not Sarah? How no? No,
sorry Sarah. So I'm going to send something anyway? All right, Well,
then I would get to my email if I were you,
because obviously the first ones we get are gonna be
the ones we read. You can shoot us that email
at Stuff Podcast at how stuff works dot com. Be
(53:56):
sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from
the Future. Join hal staff Work Staff as we explore
the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow, brought to
you by the reinvented two thousand twelve cameray. It's ready,
are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff You Should Know?
From House Stuff Works dot Com? Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant,
and that makes this stuff you should Know the big
(00:23):
wooly addition. Yeah, I'm kind of excited about this one. Yeah, man,
we've seen one of those before. We're talking about bison's
by the way, Yeah, I thought you might bring that up. Yeah,
we we saw one at that animal preserve. There was
like a bear and a bison and they were fighting.
This little depressing next year, but they are supposedly rescued animals.
(00:44):
Um at this animal petting zoo, this wild game petting zoo.
And that was a smart bison because he had learned
to go to the little shoot where you would put
his food. And wasn't he doing something too? He's manipulating
it somehow sounds like it, or he was trying to
manipulate us into giving him some food. I can't remember
there's some manipulation involved, because I remember thinking like, huh,
(01:08):
bisons are very manipulative animals. Jerks. I have a story
for you to start this one. If you like that.
That sounds great, Chuck. Have I ever told you about
my one glorious football story. I've heard little bits about
your football experience, that you were a bigger kids. He
played on the line, and that's about all I can remember. Okay, Well,
(01:32):
as a child, I went to Beverly Elementary School and
I played football for them. Uh And the way it
was in Toledo was you would play for your elementary
schools team when you got the middle school. Interesting, so
you could play your last year of elementary school sixth grade,
but then you could keep playing through seventh and eighth grade,
(01:52):
but it was for your elementary school. It was weird.
But so I played for Beverly Elementary, which meant I
was Beverly Iison. And I was probably the kid on
the team that must resemble the Bison because I was
a pretty big, fat kid and I was aligneman. And um,
I sucked at football because no one ever explained any
strategy to me. It wasn't until college that I understood
(02:15):
that football even had strategy. Old technique, Yeah, I thought
it was just like block that guy right right. Um,
So I didn't teach you to swim, move nothing. They
taught me nothing. It was literally like just stand there
and don't let that guy through. That's what I was taught.
Failed by all coaches. Um. Anyway, I did have one
shining moment. Right I was eighth grade. I was third string.
(02:38):
We were playing the Colts. I can't remember what school,
but they were the worst team, and uh we were.
We had the game in hand and the Colts were
all like just three and a half foot tall, little
pint sized kids. So we had the game in hand. Um,
it was late in the game and they put me
in as a defensive lineman. Right to you're the biggest
guy on the team and your third string. I am
(02:59):
at this point the biggest guy on the field. But yes,
I was third strict grade two. Um, so they at
this point in the biggest guy in the field and
they put me in and um, and I'm I'm like,
I pointed to the quarterback. I'm like, I'm gonna I'm
coming for you. They put two guys on me. Right
the quarterback hikes the ball. He's he's appropriately nervous because
(03:22):
I'm staring at him. He knows like I'm gonna get
to him. One way or the other. This is like
my my last chance, right, these two guys come at me,
these two offensive linemen. I just grabbed both of the
bachelor helmets and just push him down, like right underneath,
but go right through him. Yeah. I don't like after
this is the coach, You're like, maybe we should put
this kid in, you know, earlier in the season. Anyway,
(03:42):
I um, I push. I just get through both of
the guys who are who are on me? I go,
is it? Well, that's what I did. I go right
to the quarterback, didn't tackle him. I picked him up
and threw him down. I didn't even like stagger. I
just picked the just kid up and through them. And
I turned around. I was like, yeah, you know what
(04:03):
I didn't know is I caused a fumble and one
of our guys picked up and ran it in for
a touchdown. I didn't find out until after that the
play was over. So your line cheat that day was
once one play, one sack, one force fumble. Yeah that's awesome. Yeah,
and a touchdown as a result of the fumbles. So
that was my big story as Beverly Bison. And that
(04:24):
is the the the intro. I guess you could say
to this, what happened to bring the Bisons back from
the verge of extinction. I think that might have helped
the cause. I think it did too. Perhaps I've always
had an infinity affinity for Bisons ever since playing for
the Beverly Bisons. But I think we should probably start out, chuck,
(04:44):
what what's Some people might be like, I've heard a buffalo,
but I don't know what a bison is. Well, if
you've heard of a buffalo and you're an American, you've
heard a bison, pal you're confused. That's right right here
in the States, they're bison. Technically, they're pretty in are changeably.
You know, you can call him a buffalo. But technically
a buffalo is a cape buffalo or water buffalo, and
(05:07):
they're native to Africa and Asia. The bison's native to
here in the United States, North America typically specifically, and
the word buffalo comes from the French. Seventeenth century explorers
encountered these things and said, let both what is that beef?
(05:28):
It means oxen or beeves whatever, beavis be e e
v e s is what I said, Okay, And then uh,
the English folks arrive later and change it to La
buff and then Buffalo, then Buffaler, than Buffio and eventually
they settled on Buffalo. So that's where we're at now,
(05:49):
that's where right now. But so they're both members of
the Boviday family. UM, and they're very much related. But yes,
one lives in Asia and Africa, one lives in North America.
And we've got two um types of buffalo or bison
I'm sorry. In North America. We've got the wood bison,
which is the smaller the two, and then the planes bison,
(06:09):
which is the big, the big daddy. Yeah. And they
you know, if you've ever seen the one with the
big hump, that's the wood bison. The planes bison has
the flat back, more distinctive cape, and a more well
developed beard in throat main. Is that right? So the
one with the big hump is the wood bison because
(06:30):
the hump from ground to hump can get up to
like six ft tall. Yeah, that's huge. Uh. Let's talk
numbers first, like sheer numbers. UM. In two thousand seven
they did a bison census and the number on private
ranches was add to thirty four. That is significantly more
(06:51):
than it was a century earlier. UM. About two d
and twenty thousand in Canada, and about twenty and of
these bison in the United States and Canada are roaming
free on public land, and close to a half a
million total herd in North America today. But at one point,
(07:13):
the chuck in about eight there were maybe in all
of North America five hundred of these things five hundred,
and those five hundred were federally protected on federally protected land.
Prior to that, say, I think it was in Lost
(07:35):
Part Colorado, UH, poachers killed four bison, UH, and those
four represented the last unprotected free roaming bison herd in
the in North America and thus ended what was called
the Great Slaughter, which we'll get to in a second.
But let's go even further back to really get to
to the the the point about how few five hundred
(08:01):
bison is in like say ere, you have to understand
how many there were in say seventeen hundred. I've seen
estimates is high as sixty million. That far back. Oh yeah,
chew on this pal I saw an estimate as high
as a hundred millions. Yeah, normally the accepted number UM
(08:24):
was proposed by a guy named Um Shepherd crushed the third,
he's an anthropologist from Brown University in he came up
with an estimate of thirty million. And if you're an
anthropologist or a wildlife biologist, or just a bison enthusiast,
you're probably gonna go with thirty million. At any given time,
(08:44):
there were thirty million pre European um settlement. There are
thirty million bison roaming North America at any given time. Well,
they were the largest large mammal in the United in
North America, the largest uh population at one point. But
they're also the largest physically. They were about two thousand pounds.
The average mail is about two thousand pounds. And they're
(09:07):
quick too. They can get up to like thirty five
miles an hour. Two thousand pounds thirty five miles an hour.
And there are thirty million of these things running around.
That's a ton. That's that's a lot of times tons. Yeah,
and they spanned They obviously made their home most abundantly
in the Great Plains because there was lots of great
(09:30):
virgin grassland that was packed with vitamins and minerals, which
allowed it to grow back really fast after it was eaten.
From Canada to northern Mexico, tons and tons of buffalo. So, um,
there's something interesting if you've read that pops up towards
the end of the book. I know I keep going
back to this well, but it is it is really wet.
(09:53):
It's a consistent thread. Um there were there. There's this
whole idea that what the settlers out west around the
plains encountered and took to be like a wild state,
like the natural wild state of tens of millions of
buffalo running everywhere, was actually a freak of nature. Right
(10:15):
that you have um an apex predator in any ecosystem,
and if you remove the apex predator, all the other
all the other UM species are allowed to just boom
right in on the great planes. The apex predator was
man human in the form of Native Americans who were
removed from the ecosystem, and without the Native Americans to
(10:37):
effectively manage the herb populations and the prairie lands, UH,
buffaloes were allowed to explode to unnatural population numbers. So
there's an idea that what we took and still to
the state consider was a natural population of thirty million
was actually far far less than that. Prior to the
(10:58):
Colombian exchange. Really Yeah, very interesting? Didn't that interesting? Either way?
They're probably about thirty million buffalo roaming the Great Planes
in state seventeen hundred. That number dropped dramatically starting about
eighteen twenty, right, yeah, with the Great Slaughter. Uh pre um,
Well we'll get to the horse. Pre horse. Dating back
(11:20):
to prehistoric times, there was what was known as buffalo jumps.
Did you see this? So buffalo jumps are were when
they would Native Americans would herd buffalo down these narrow
shoots and run them off a cliff like lemmings like lemmings,
and it would break their legs. I mean not such
a cliff that it would you know, destroy the animal completely.
(11:43):
It would just break their legs so they couldn't move.
And then they would you know, they had guys waiting
down there with spears and stuff and clubs to kill them.
And it was sort of like the first factory farms
that was where they were would get large abundance over
and over abundance of buffalo meat and pelts and all
the stuff that they use. And uh. There is today
in Canada a World Heritage Site called head Smashed in
(12:08):
Buffalo Jump, and it is one of the oldest and
largest and best preserved buffalo jumps known to exist today.
And if you go to their website, it has a
little animation of buffalo like lemmings like running and then
falling off a cliff, over and over and over. Right,
(12:28):
And I should also insert here that Chuck and I
are both fully aware that lemmings don't naturally run over
the cliff. That that was actually the producers of the
Walt Disney documentary that created that myth and drove those
poor lemmings over the cliff. That's true. Yeah, I'm glad
you said that because we heard about that. Uh So,
at any rate, they were buffalo jumps. That was a
way to get lots and lots of buffalo dead quickly.
(12:50):
And if you live in Alberta, you can go see
the head smashed in Buffalo Jump for a mere ten
dollars for an adult. And not only if you live there,
if you're visiting there you could do it too. That's right.
But the Native American had a I mean, I know
the white man is blamed for it, and they largely
are responsible for the mass slaughter, but the Comanche Indian
in the eighteen thirties were killing close to three hundred
(13:11):
thousand bison a year, which was not a sustainable number. Right.
That's actually a very hot topic. Um. You know, there's
the idea that the Native Americans are the noble savage um,
and then there's also evidence that they're not, that they weren't.
There was this thing called bison overkill. Um. They also
believe that that's what happened to the mastodon and the
(13:32):
sabretooth tiger and that they were basically hunted to extinction
um by like the Clovis people, and the Clovis people
in turn became extinct as well. It's like a highly
debatable topic of over exactly what happened. But if that's true,
then that means that bison have always been over hunted
because if the Commanche were doing that, and apparently it
(13:55):
takes six to seven bison to to for a person
to subsist a year, six bison per person per year. Yeah,
but that's without agriculture, Like, that's just living on bison.
Can you imagine your your stool productions just like bison
break for the spic and the eggs bison burgers. Yeah,
(14:16):
and I would imagine your sweat smells like vinegar because
apparently you have a high protein, low carb diet, you
sweat vinegar. It is gross, believe me. The railroad industry
was also a great threat to the bison because the
bison were a threat to the railroad industry. And you
know who won that war. Well, there's a guy um
named Frank Row who who wrote a book in nineteen
(14:36):
seventy two called the North American Buffalo, and he cites
um a train that was headed west in eighteen fifty
that had to wait for three days for a herd
of bison to cross the track them and they weren't
necessarily slow moving. There's just that many bison. Um. So yeah,
we reached the point now where the the White Man
(14:57):
has entered the picture, the Winchester fifty aliber rifles under
the picture, and the horses under the picture. So all
of these factors that would lead to the near extinction
of bison have all come together and converged on the
Great Planes and they are about to unleash holy hell
on the bison population, the Great Slaughter. So do you, like,
(15:20):
have you heard about the Great Slaughter? Do you know
some things about it? I know that they could have
been potentially killing like two hundred thousand buffalo per day.
At one point, they had contests, Chuck, they were buffalo
killing contests the railroads, like you said, to get rid
of this bison problem. They also figured out how to
(15:41):
make money by hosting hunting expeditions where you never left
the train. The trainer just drives slowly and you would shoot.
It's also in dead Man. Oh yeah, Um, that was real.
They had bison killing contests. There's a man who holds
the record in eighteen seventy Helo Bill. No, no, he
had Buffalo Bill beat A man named Thomas C. Nixon
(16:04):
of Kansas set the record in eighteen seventy, killing one
and twenty bison in forty minutes. Buffalo Bill supposedly killed many,
many thousands himself. He was hired to do that. Um
and hides were going for two dollars ahead and in
the winner of eighteen seventy two to seventy three, just
the winner one point five million buffalo hides. Bison hides
(16:25):
were shipped back east by train. Well. I do know
at one point that they said that the big hunters
were using two guns because they were shooting them so fast,
they had to let one gun cool down, and so
they just picked up the fresh gun so they wouldn't
have to stop killing. Yeah, at first, like they were
shooting him for meat, and then buffalo hide, bison hide
(16:46):
became all the rage, not just back East but in
Europe as well. Demand increase, so they're like, oh, well,
let's you know, we'll just leave the meat there. We
don't need the meat. There's millions of these things, rotting
carcasses everywhere. Um And as if this couldn't get worse,
as if it couldn't get worse, right, So the poor
bison population, possibly if there was bison overkill, their apex
(17:11):
predators removed, they're allowed to bloom, and then a new,
even more damaging apex predator comes in starts killing indiscriminately
like they've never seen before. The one of the reasons
why they had bison killing contests was not just for
the railroad, but it was because the um federal government
in whites in general figured out that the planes Indians
(17:33):
subsisted on bison take away. The bison take away the
food supply. You civilized the Indian. So that was one
reason why bisons were hunted to near extinction with so
such glee was because it was serving a larger purpose
of bringing the Indians into the fold as well. So
there's a way to tame the West. We're starving them.
(17:57):
So again we get down to what five bison that
are finally protected. Um, and it's starting in nineteen o six.
Who who is responsible for this? Uh, nineteen oh five
environmentalist he might have heard of by the name of
Teddy Roosevelt and William Hornaday, who was a zoologists, poet,
(18:18):
can conservationist, songwriter, realtor evidently thought that was odd. That
is not well, you gotta make money somehow because those
other ones aren't doing so. Uh. He was a really
top notch conservationists actually. But um, William Hornaday and Teddy
Roosevelt formed the American Bison Society nineteen o five because
they were like, wait a minute, these things are remember
(18:39):
all those buffalo that used to be out there that
aren't there anymore? Like this might be a problem. They're like,
what are we gonna hunt? And so we're better to
send them plus send them to the Bronx in New
York City, the Great Plains of the Bronx. Yeah, and
it definitely got him out of the hands of poachers.
Uh and kidding aside, though the bronx who was a
great place for them to send some species for uh reproducing.
(19:02):
And Yellowstone National Park was established as a as a
preserve and the New Yorkers got to sit there and
watch bison getting it on. I guess so nicol ahead,
nick boy, not a buffalo, nickel uh huh uh. They
also uh the night created the federal government created the
National Bison Range in Montana. But these weren't the efforts
(19:24):
that ultimately did a lot to increase the numbers. No,
because you know what, although they were protected, and Congress
actually did pass an act um, the Federal Park Protective Act.
I believe that said if you poach buffalo, you're in
big trouble. Um, they were never listed as endangered. Yeah,
(19:45):
I wonder why I couldn't get a reason there, So
I don't know either. But they were clearly close to
being in danger, but they were never listed, so they
didn't enjoy that full protection. So Roosevelt, he he had
a pretty good effort by establishing the Park Service, yellow
Stone had a protected heard. You had him in the Bronxoo,
you had him in Oklahoma, you had him in in
(20:05):
um South Dakota. But none of these, like you said,
led to the real resurgence, the the um, the resurgence
in the bison population in North America. What did, though, Chuck, Well,
maybe we should talk about well, yeah, sure, what did uh?
Private landowners? Head Turner, head freaking turner. Yeah, he was
(20:26):
the one responsible for bringing the bike the bison back
from the near extinction. He's one of my heroes. Should
we just give a few Turner stats here? The second
largest private landowner in North America. He's got about two
million acres of ranch land and uh fifteen ranches and
(20:46):
seven states that are all bison ranches, active working bison ranches,
and I believe he manages about fifty thousand head of
bison himself, himself, by hand himself. Well, Jane helped out
while they were together, and he opened his I'm sorry.
He purchased his first bison in seventy six and opened
(21:07):
his first bison ranch in seven, which makes me wonder
where did he keep that bison for eleven years? Did
he just like take it everywhere with him in the
backseat or he had plenty of land. There was no
shortage of space for that one bison. But I think
he to answer your question, he kept it at his
mansion in Buckhead, UM. If you want to learn more
about Ted Turner's um, he has many ongoing projects to
(21:28):
save the species. You can go to www dot t
E s F dot org and he's I mean a
lot of this is obviously for for raising bison to
sell two stock his Ted's Montana grills with fresh bison
steaks and burgers. But it still helps the conservation, well,
it does. I mean, whether they're free roaming or um
(21:52):
commercially raised. If you are just looking at the hard
numbers of bison populations in the US, they are not
in injured anymore. And it's because they're so delicious that
there is. That's the reason why they're not endangered. Well,
and one of the cool things about the bison is
it's it's across the board. The National Bison Association prohibits
(22:12):
the use of sub therapeutic antibiotics, growth hormones, and animal byproducts.
So it's not like, oh, this one calform says we
shouldn't inject them with hormones. It's all all bison in
the US, and they are very nutritional compared to cow beef.
They I don't need to be handled much. They almost
exclusively dine on grass. And if it's if it's um
(22:36):
unmanaged grass, that's it's organics, fully organic. Yeah. Absolutely. Uh,
let's talk nutrients. The proportions of protein, fat and minerals
and fatty acids to its caloric value are outstanding compared
to grass. Beef, I'm sorry, just beef period and um,
large concentrations of iron and a lot of essential fatty acids.
(22:57):
So people are up with bison. They're eating it a
lot more over the past decade. The numbers have really
risen dramatically. Um, do you eat it? Yeah, I've had it.
It's good stuff. I've had a bison burger. I didn't
you know. I've had bison steak at ted the Montana Grill,
which I should say, full of this closure, we own
no stock. What's however, and I've never eaten there. Oh
you should. It's cool. It's got to like the the
(23:18):
interior decor is like a turn of the last century
like Kansas restaurant. Yeah, it's very cool, like the tin
plate ceiling and all that stuff. Um, and yeah, the
bison steak is very good. Now, can you tell the
big taste difference. Yeah, really yeah, because I've had the
burger and I couldn't tell a huge difference. But you're
a steak guy. You like steaks, you immediately you can
(23:40):
look at it and tell a difference. But the taste
you can tell the difference as well too. I mean
it's not just like it's not like eating cat and
eating steak, but I mean you can tell a difference.
Well yeah, cat is gamey um, so chuck. Also, we
should say it's not just Ted Turner who's single handedly no,
keep saving the bison herds, because now there's what four
(24:02):
thousand commercial bison living in the US right now, Yeah,
a little more. Even that's just the US alone. Turners
got fifty thousand of those, which pretty substantial portion. Canada's
doing their part um. There is a group of eleven
tribes who get together in to form the Inner Tribal
Bison Cooperative. No, I'm sorry, fifty seven tribes that managed
(24:23):
fifteen thousand heads of bison collectively. And one of the
things that if you are if you manage a herd
of bison, whether for conservation or for deliciousness, you are
going to run into something called brucellosis. Which is not good.
It's a bacteria and it's called like another name for
it is contagious abortion. That's two great words to pair together.
(24:49):
So basically, brucellosis is a bacteria that you can that
ruminating animals, which is grazing animals um. They can pick
up pretty easily through the mouth um. The bacteria collects
in the reproductive organs. If you are if you have milk,
you're going to pass bad milk. If you're pregnant, you're
(25:11):
going to abort your fetus. And if you lick this
genital area, you've just contracted it. If you eat tainted meat,
tainted buffalo, you can catch it as well and you
get terrible, terrible flu like symptoms. But if you're a
bison or a reindeer or something like that, you are
in grave danger. If you have this bacteria can kill it.
(25:32):
You're pretty easy well, And that's certainly one of the
big reasons, because you know, with all these conservation efforts,
you might think, well, why are there still only half
a million. That's one of the biggest reasons. And sadly,
there are quarantine periods and when these infected bison roam
free like they're prone to do. They have have to
(25:53):
be put down. They get shot, like thirty seven hundred
of them. Uh in the past twenty years have then
have wanted outside of Yellowstone and they have to take
him down. Yeah if yeah, if you're one of the problems.
One of the big problems we're facing with getting the
bison population back on its feet is that we don't
have land like we used to. Well that's the other
(26:14):
So their original range, the original ecosystem are now developed
like a quickie mark. So it's like, you guys, just
stay in Yellowstone, so you you wandered outside of Yellowstone
and bang right. Um. Apparently, also even in Yellowstone sometimes
things converge, like they did in ninety seven. That winter
there's a particularly harsh winter, so a lot of the
(26:37):
a lot of the food supply was covered up with
snow and ice, and like thirt hundred bisons starved to
death in the park on top of a bunch that
had to be shot for wandering out too. So it's
a bad year for bison and Yellowstone well and not.
The final reason really is um, when you have a
smaller herds like this, there's gonna be more inbreeding and
inbreeding doesn't lead to a healthy population. Yeah, which is
(27:00):
one of the reasons why brucellosis is so rampant. You
have a narrower gene pool. So thank you to the
private system of all bison are on private land. Yes,
that's crazy. Yeah, like people coming together to single handedly
revived this species from the brink of extinction. So every
(27:21):
time you eat a bison burger, you're helping to conserve
the bison population. Inn't that weird? That is weird. I
got one more fact for you, Is it on a
high note? Uh? Sure? Do you like buffalo cheese and
stuff like that? I do like buffalo mozzarella. It's good stuff,
not from a bison. Apparently, any kind of buffalo product
(27:42):
like that milk and cheese is from the the water buffalo. Cool.
And the reason why bison are not commercially milked is
because the ladies have little teets, really tiny little teats
that are very small, and they're not great for for
milking and um. Yeah, so they don't adapt well to
(28:06):
that kind of thing. The ladies are like hands off fellas. Huh.
I did not know that. I can tell you, chuck.
Even having been a beverly bison, I know today, as
of today, more than I ever have before about bison
in general. Yeah, me too, and it's bison's plural. We
should go free that. Uh, we should go free that
bison and the game ranch. Do you want to Yeah,
(28:29):
we should just send it down seventy eight East. Well,
that's one reason why we're down. Well, I mean it
would be a descent. Somebody shoot it because they behave radically.
But apparently one last thing. You can tell how a
bison's feeling based on his tail. If his tail is
dangling between his legs, he's calm. If it's moving, he's alert.
He's maybe watching you. If it's pointing straight out or up,
(28:53):
get out of town. Yeah, because we're going to charge.
Well that's pretty cool. Yeah. So that's it for bison,
and um again, hats off to everybody who's eating bison
burgers because you are keeping the bison population in check.
Ted Turner, thank you, sir. I commend you. I had
raised my cutty sark to you. I saw him at
(29:13):
at the Willie Nelson concert a few years ago. You did, yeah,
and I wanted to tackle him and say thank you.
He probably would have liked that. He was a big
part of my childhood being from Atlanta, Like he can't
be from Atlanta in the seventies and all right, not
think a lot of Ted Turner. Yeah, I'm sure he was,
like your secret saying a one year. Of course, if
(29:33):
you want to know more about bison and extinction and
uh bison burgers and brucellosis, you've got all this stuff
packed into one great article called what brought Bison Back
from the Brink of Extinction? You can just put a
bison extinction in the search bart how stuff works? Dot
(29:54):
comment should bring up this article? And I think I
said search bar, did I not? Let's just the cats
out of the bag already. Okay, John Hodgeman is sitting
right here. We're not going to do listen to mail.
Sorry listeners. Is the fourth time I am putting my
foot down. This is the last time, at least for
this series. This has been going on for two weeks.
It's fine, this is the last time. Okay, So this
(30:17):
is four of four. Yeah, maybe we should treat you
a little more regally then. This is four of four?
Can we keep some coronets? Excellent? Yeah, so, Mr Hodgeman,
thank you very much for coming pushing me right out
the door. Josh, thank you very much for coming. And
I'm a hologram. I'm not even here pushing through you
right now. Hodgeman Actual is in St. Louis, Missouri Gateway
(30:38):
to the West, getting ready to perform tonight on the
book Tour live at Top to St. Louis Arch Yeah, well, no,
not exactly. Where is the locale again? I had here
just a second ago. It was at the bookstore there
last like laugh a minute, bookstore, I think is what
I was calling. I think it was the Mad Art Gallery.
That's the same same thing, laugh a minute, seven pm,
(30:59):
this very evening, November three. Do you want to say
the name again? The Mad Art Gallery? Seven pm, this
very evening, November three. Hodgeman Actual is presenting material from
his book that is all with special guest insert name here.
That's excellent. I can't believe we got that guy or gal. Yeah,
(31:19):
good going so so No, I'm just a holographic representation
of myself here again to say hello to you guys. Well,
thank you because because I'm a I'm a big fan
and I'm a deranged millionaire who has a hologram of himself,
and you can send a favorite podcast. Why not exactly.
And that's the thing about Hodgment, like even even getting
the hologram of him, is you know more than you
(31:40):
could possibly want with anybody else. I agree with you.
As the hologram, I can say, I'm actually a little better.
Oh really, we noticed, we noticed last time. I'm not
as flatulent. We noticed due to my holographic nature. Although
you still make the sounds. It's just weird. It's that
the pros But I am I am. I'm a simulated
(32:03):
program designed to interact with real world stimulus in a
realistic manner. Eat a Hamburger sandwich that moves you one
of your favorite, one of your famous Atlanta and Hamburger sandwiches. So, John,
you wrote a book. It's called That is All. It
is the third in your series explaining the world. It
is my complete book of World Knowledge. Is like my
(32:25):
previous two books, a collection of fascinating trivia, historical tidbits,
and amazing true facts, all of which made up by me.
This being the last in the series of complete world Knowledge,
indeed the final world Knowledge, dealing with subjects as diverse
(32:46):
as travel and ghosts and magic, tricks and wine and sports.
In the end of the world, and it is called
that is All, and we've covered a lot of those
in the podcast too, So this is almost I guess
you would say companion piece the last time you would. Yeah, no, Yeah,
that's right. It's also my life's work. But thank you.
Last week you accused me of taking Sorry, last week,
(33:07):
Chuck accused men over over let's say, over liberal inspiration
from the Stuff you Should Know podcast after I had
very graciously pointed out that a huge section of my
book regarding noodling was an homage to your very podcast,
and then I took that nice gesture and I stomped
(33:30):
on it. But I will tell you one thing. I
did download one of your podcasts specifically as research for
the book That is all Necronomicon. That was a good
one with co host Jonathan Stricklin's, by the way, just
beat himself because we mentioned him in reference to you.
(33:54):
What just happened just now? Yes, my other hologram is
cleaning that up this week. That is your full service.
There are many holograms wandering the halls right now. That's
part of a new security system. How stuff works is considering. So, John,
is it true that in this book you explain things
like the thick fish, what's the thick fish? And the
(34:15):
bowl of brown? Oh? Yes, that's right. Well that's not
part of my You know, you know my book better
than I do. Is it true that you explain the
superiority of the year nine one as birth year, which
we both share? That's true? What's going on? Yes? True?
Is it true that you explain the benefits and taboos
(34:35):
at sea while cruising? That is so. Is it true John,
that there is a table in your book about disgusting
regional sodas? That is true? Would you be kind enough
to read some of those sodas? I feel like I'm
being interrogated. Yes, I have my own copy of the Okay,
oh well you haven't open there? The thick A thick
(35:00):
fish and the bowl of brown? What's the thick fish? Fish?
The bowl of brown? The the Patagonian toothfish wine, the
furry forms. These are some of the funny things that
you ingest in your book. Those are just words, but
you're streaming together. You would think that's my job to
string those words together. Bowl of brown comes from a
(35:23):
section of my book on rose wine, because rose wine
is neither white nor red. I love the wine chapter,
Thank you very much. It's something that I previously knew
nothing about because I thought that wine was so complex
and multilayered uh and and um and his stork that
it could only be enjoyed by But apparently no simple
(35:47):
just grape juice all you need to make its scrape
juice human feet in time. Yeah, own yeast. But but
I point out that because rose is neither white nor red,
it is best haired with ambiguous foods like the thick fish.
Like thick fish, scrod, brown brown, mystery meat. That's a rose.
(36:14):
I like rose like. I mean it, quite honestly. I
like rose. I like sparkling rose as well. I know it.
You know you can. You can tolerate ambiguity. Some of
us can't. Like. I'm not the least bit certain how
either of you two feel about. We like things that
you know, we like things black or white, so we
drink either white wine or black wine. You know what
I mean, We'll mix them up. I don't remember what
(36:36):
all those other words you were talking about were pretty
much it you were going to talk about. But they're
also non alcoholic drinks that you can drink, And there
are still regional sodas all over this country that are
not distributed to the rest of the world. Um and
and you might enjoy going into a local uh you know,
(36:58):
on a road trip, go into a little trading post
there and reaching behind the disgusting handmade sandwiches and pulling
out one of these disgusting regional sodas to enjoy. So,
for example, there's ties Gumption brand brain drizzle, which you
can only get in Maine, Vermont. It's uh, you know.
(37:20):
Sodas were originally served in pharmacies. That's why there in
parts of the country is still called tonic. In New
England they're still called tonic because they were medicine. There
were ways of delivering medicine and and in particular sort
of like herbal remedies and nerve tonics and cocaine phizzics.
These are what they would serve. Cocaine pizzics were invented
in this very city, in this very city of Atlanta.
(37:40):
The cocaine fish, who later became Coca Cola. Ties Gumption
brand brain Drizzle was the only one of the great
old sodas to actually contain cerebrospinal flute. Once incredibly popular
throughout the Eastern Seaboard, for its invigorating flavor and hallucinatory properties.
It is now primarily found only in northern New England,
(38:02):
where it is still made using the company's own secret recipe,
including fluid from patient thirty one unnamed Hydrocephalic Patients Secret
Hospital and Brattleboro, Vermont. What's the the other flavor profile?
And that one yes bitter medicinal brainy sugary. You know Brattleburg,
(38:24):
Vermont as a town very near to my retreat in
Internetlas Hills, western Massachusetts. Um, and it's a wonderful town.
I had a hard time during Hurricane Irene. There was
a lot of flooding in Brattleboro, So I hate to
make fun of it. Do you know what I mean?
That they they're all dried out. Now you should go
up there, Go visit the Latchus Theater, go eat at fireworks,
(38:46):
go to the retreat farm and petting zoo. It's wonderful
place to go. But did you know the Brattleboro, Vermont
speaking of ties brain drizzle? But that that the that
the hit wraps all from two thousand seven Sipping mice
A Drizzle is now synonymous with the musical subgenre known
(39:06):
as brattle Brattleboro, Vermont, white person with dreadlocks wrap. That
whole subculture, the whole subculture started up there, and uh
and that song. Sipping on Massa drizzle also introduced America
to the controversial drink known as si drizzle, which is
(39:26):
ties brain drizzle mixed with apricot brandy about a hundred tablets,
suda fed crushed up and maple syrup and and and
to enjoy it, you serve it in a Solo brand
plastic cup with a viking and dusted rim. That's great.
I don't know if we need to go in any
into any other regional Sodus, but there are a lot
(39:48):
of them. Uh. Well, the the only other one in
the Denver, Colorado area and the Rockies. You can still
get Chickoh soda and it's roast chicken flavored. Uh and
it's the only remaining product in the in the in
the company in the line from Savory Meat Soda Corp.
(40:13):
Because up up until up until not only could you
get Chicko, you could also get porko and steak and eggsham.
Those are also available, but now just Chicko and then
chum and then chum wine based on cheer wine. Right.
(40:36):
It was one of many rip offs of North Carolina's
famous cheer wine. But this one, this one, unlike cheer wine,
this one has its flavor profile of sweet cherry, bubble
gum and fish blood chum wine. It's it's motto was
the one, the one to drink while spreading chump. It
was for fishing for fisher persons, and that that was
(40:59):
that little of delight was read directly from the book.
That is all. That is all, John Um. That is
a hardcover book. It is a usually issue. It is
It is the first edition hardcover book in pure black
and white. No light can escape from that. It is.
It is the black hole of hardcover books. It is absorbing,
(41:23):
It is absorbing every light ray that comes at it.
It is a dark, stark tablet reflecting um and monolithic,
indeed reflecting the end of this series, the end of
human civilization and time as we know it in two
hasnt twelve, and now that I've turned forty, the end
(41:43):
of my life so more tragically, what's your life's work? Yes,
it is actually, you know, I'm sorry to put it
in such stark terms, but I mean, you know, it
is the purest unfiltered expression of my adult brain. And uh,
and I hope very much the people will. I mean, look,
(42:05):
we live in it. We live in a culture where
people are getting their their fake facts and they're made
up trivia, and they're and they're invented truths for free
on the news every night. Do you know what I mean?
Though you may ask why should I go out and
buy a hardcover copy of a book? Uh full of it?
And you know that is a question only you can answer.
All I can tell you is this is truly my
(42:27):
life's work. And I hope and I enjoy sharing it
with you, and I hope you enjoy it well as such.
I mean, you're you're curating it. This kind of experience,
this release is not just like Hodgeman dropped a book.
Hodgeman dropped a book. It's a great book. This is
not my tumbler book. Um there you're touring with it.
I am starting well, I'm in St. Louis. I'm in St.
(42:49):
Louis and right uh, and then tomorrow I will be
in Los Angeles, California at the November four the Largo
Theater with Paul F. Tompkins. That's a wonderful place. And
then I will be in Portland on Sunday the seventh
with John Roderick uh and uh and then we we
traveled directly up to Seattle after that to be at
(43:10):
town Hall again with John Roderick and other special guests
will join me later on the tour. John will be singing,
and there will be singing songs. You will not just
be We're going to join him on ukulele and vocals.
There will be ukulele playing for sure, jumping fleet playing.
John is going to on stage teach a kid to read.
That's right, because this isn't a sham, It's not it's
(43:33):
not a carnival act. I will find an oliterate child
in each town and teach them to read the words.
That is all. And it's gonna be heartbreaking. It's going
to be the last part isn't true. But I will
be joined by other special guests who may or may
not be literate throughout the tour and it will be
going on through the sixteenth. And if you want to
find out where I am, and and if you want
(43:53):
to come and see see me present material from the book,
you can go to areas of my expertise dot com
and and and visit there. You will have to buy
a ticket for the book, but the cost of the
ticket includes a copy of the book. So that's a
pretty good deal. Yeah, I think. And you'll you'll be
signing some too, and you'll sign, I will sign. I
(44:13):
will sign every I will sign every book. And uh,
you're one of those guys, aren't like you? Yes, you
see to it that everybody who's standing in line gets
the gets the signature. I want Legionnaire's disease. I'm gonna
I'm gonna shake everyone's hand, come on, um and if
if I can pull it together, guys, And I hate
to make promises, but you know, sometimes you got to
(44:35):
say something publicly to make yourself do it. I'm trying
to find maybe you guys can help me. We probably can't.
Is a company that will make me some custom mini
packets of mayonnaise so that I can give people who
come to the event free premium premium which is samples
of John hodgmons uh Ragnarok Proof survival mannaise. Awesome because
(45:01):
aside from your own urine, mayonnaise is going to be
the thing that you need most after the feces comes
down and civilization is over. Well, one thing you can
do is lubricate small engines with mayonnaise. With mayonnaise, Yeah,
that's just one of the uses you can You can
use it as a as a cleanser, a hair cleanser,
and it's a wonderful conditioner. You can use it to
(45:24):
lubricate small engines. Uh. You can take garbage bags and
spread them out on the lawn and put mayonnaise all
over them. Guess what, you just made a slip and
slide in a time when there is no more running water.
Your kids can enjoy that you leave those garbage bags
out in the sun for a while. Guess what, You've
just made yourself a handy poison well and during after
(45:45):
the super collapse, John, you also make a good point
in the book that the currency could very well be
the beef jerky dollar. Oh, it's definitely going to be
the beef You have a handy table of what one
beef jerky dollar equals. Yeah, and I think my where
I would spend my beef turkey dollar if I had one,
would be the I think seven point five hours of
(46:06):
human human contact was that it, Yes, without murder at
the end, without being cannibalized at the end. You have
to recall any other things A beef turkey dollar will
get you after the super collapse. Well no, but if
you're interested listener, you can take a look at my book.
That is all. It's one of my favorite parts, which
really I mean also it's it's let's just come out
(46:28):
and say it. It is something of a if not
a survival guide. There's some survival to it, but also
like a pretty like a beat by beat prophecy of
what's going to be going down in twelve. If you
if you accept the hard made up fact that the
Mayan Long Count calendar ends on December twenty first, two
thousand twelve, thus bringing an end to human civilization and
(46:51):
time as we know it, in the end of the world,
then you will find in my book A Day by
Day Today in Ragnarok, page of day calendar running down
for you what's going to happen starting December one, two
thousand eleven, all the way through the Blood Wave, the Omegapulse,
the collapse of the dollar, the the return of the
(47:13):
ancient and unspeakable ones, um and uh and and the
Singularity as well, um and so yes, So we'll teach
you how to survive all of these terrible catastrophes until
December twelve, and then it's just all over for every
bo or maybe not, maybe not, I could be wrong.
Well that's probably right. Well, I think what you're saying
(47:35):
is there limits to even your power. Look, there is
a possibility that when two thousand excuse me, there is
a possibility, when December twelve comes around, that the last
event of Ragnarok will be the headless body of nugs
(47:57):
show hubb, one of the ancient unspeakable, pushing the Earth
through a rift in space time into another dimension in
which none of us have any memory of Ragnarok, and
the things in my book are considered to be simply
the flights of fancy of a television personality and the
made up facts of an adult, deranged millionaire. Look, I
(48:21):
hope that happens. Okay, probably not, But it's one possibility
that we will wake up on December twelve and it
will be like none of this has ever happened, sort
of like why two K? No, that's coming? Okay? Why
two K is coming next? In two thousand twelve, I think,
(48:41):
And about uh, it's sometime in May or June. The
thing with why tu K, though, is that it doesn't
attack computers. It only attacks like um small non mechanical
tools like can openers. We had that all wrong. It
is not after computers at all. Is it is after
non computerized helpful devices. It's weird, and John I misspoke.
(49:06):
I don't want to misquote your fake fact. But one
beat tricky dollar after the super collapse, so people know,
is equal to seven point three hours of human intimacy.
And that's what I'd spend my dollar on your dirky dollar.
Hankah guilt. Yeah, well that's it's not that those are
It's not that there's gonna be one currency. They're just
(49:28):
gonna it's you know, this is why I say you
shouldn't bother hoarding gold. Do you know what I mean? Yes,
gold is shiny. I'm not going to argue with you
on that's shiny and heavy, do you know what I mean?
But when you are are, when you have been turned
into an albino right by by the great worm hug numbeth. Right,
(49:51):
you don't care about gold. You want sunscreen, you know
what I mean? And the great thing about mayonnaise is
that it's not very good sunscreen, but it makes a
terrific short term albino mask. If you want to sneak
into albino town and sell them Mayonnai's posing a sunscreen.
(50:12):
This is how we're all gonna have to live in
the future. Do you understand what I'm saying? This is
why Mannai's is so helpful. It all comes back to this.
So listen, everybody. I hope by the time you hear this,
I will have solved the problem. Well, I got a guy.
You know you got a man. You got a comment
I gotta packet guy. He does all kinds. You're not messing.
You're not messing with the Hodgeman. Now are you want Hodgeman?
(50:34):
Catch up? You want Hodgman Tartar sauce? No, no, I
don't want Tartar sauce for right. What do you think
I got a guy? You think I'm looking for something
to put on a filet o fish. I'm looking for
something to save the world. I gotta go. I gotta
power down. Guys. It's been a lot of fun. I'm
sorry listeners whose mail did not get read because I
(50:54):
took over your segment. All four of you know now
come on, But I but I please understand, listeners, I too,
am a listener, and I hope you will continue to
support these two wonderful natural broadcasters even though they have
betrayed your trust by putting me on their podcast air
four weeks or four podcasts in a row, that's right
(51:16):
by that is all. I recommend the hardcover just because
I'm old school and it's all that exists. There's no
there's no audiobook, there is no electronic edition, there is
no paperback. There is only hardcover edition. You know why,
because when Ragnarok comes, you're not gonna You're gonna be
using your reading tablets to make shanties. That's right. This
(51:38):
is the only thing that's going to be left. Also,
I haven't gotten around to recording the audiobook, and I
don't know when we're going to do any book. So
if you want to support my life's work, seriously, please
come and see me on tour, or go to your
local bookshop and purchase the book. Go to see him
on tour. That's a treat, just to share air with you,
my friend. You know what. We're not sharing air. I'm
(51:59):
a holograp m you know. But but the people who
go see you will be able to share. They will,
and we have before and it's not. And my breath,
despite what you may have read and nothing to post,
my breath is not poison. So if you want to
catch up with the real Hodgeman, share some air with
him on tour right, you can go to areas of
(52:22):
my expertise dot com Areas of my expertise dot com.
Spell it out like a normal person. Or you can
tweet to him and be like Hodgeman, where are you at?
On Twitter by addressing it to at Hodgeman it's the
at sign at sign h O D G M A N. Yeah,
(52:44):
and that will go directly to John's pocket. I shall
and I shall feel it. Um. And if you are
ready to get back to business with us, join us
next week when things should be substantially more normal. Uh.
And in the meantime, if you want your listener mail red,
you send it to us. Send it to us right now,
and if it's the coolest one, it will be the
(53:05):
first one we read after the Hodgeman break post Hodgeman break,
and it will that will be substantial, that'll mean something. Okay, Hey,
you know what, whoever is listener mail you read next week,
I'm gonna send them a free book that is really
and then it's on us to pick it out though.
So that's fun to trust you so they can bribe
(53:26):
us crazy how about but not but not Sarah? How no? No,
sorry Sarah. So I'm going to send something anyway? All right, Well,
then I would get to my email if I were you,
because obviously the first ones we get are gonna be
the ones we read. You can shoot us that email
at Stuff Podcast at how stuff works dot com. Be
(53:56):
sure to check out our new video podcast, Stuff from
the Future. Join hal staff Work Staff as we explore
the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow, brought to
you by the reinvented two thousand twelve cameray. It's ready,
are you
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