Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello. Everyone. Back
Speaker 1: in November, we went on tour with three stocks in Texas,
Speaker 1: and we had an episode that covered a brief history
Speaker 1: of barbecue for that tour. So the version of that
Speaker 1: that we're sharing with you today was recorded in the
Speaker 1: first stop on the tour, which was Austin. That was
Speaker 1: just the one that had the cleanest audio quality after
Speaker 1: we had listened to it, So enjoy, Hello, and welcome
Speaker 1: to the podcast. I'm Tracy Ve, You Wilson, and I'm
Speaker 1: Holly Fry. Usually when we're on tour, we are going
Speaker 1: to several different cities in different states and normally distinctly
Speaker 1: different parts of the country, like they might be all
Speaker 1: on the same coast. But you know, Massachusetts is not
Speaker 1: the same as Georgia for examt ample. Yeah, it's weird.
Speaker 1: I mean, I've lived in both of those places, so
Speaker 1: I feel like I can vouch um. So there's not
Speaker 1: often a topic that seems like it could unite all
Speaker 1: the places that we're going on a tour, but this
Speaker 1: tour is three different cities in Texas, so we thought
Speaker 1: maybe we would try to find something a little more texasy.
Speaker 1: After some discussion, we landed on the possibly life threatening
Speaker 1: decision of barbecue. I may have told my lift driver
Speaker 1: that's what we were talking about. He was like, as like, Ken,
Speaker 1: if I need you, if I can I get your
Speaker 1: numbers so you can call me for a quick getaway
Speaker 1: of stuff goes south. Yeah. So normally we just picked
Speaker 1: something that sounds like it's going to be fun, and
Speaker 1: then sometimes in the process we realize it's kind of complicated.
Speaker 1: And also with barbecue, fund maybe also kind of complicated. Uh.
Speaker 1: We totally recognize that there are people who don't like
Speaker 1: barbecue or don't eat meat at all, and there are
Speaker 1: plenty of like atical and uh, environmental reasons to reduce
Speaker 1: the amount of meat that we we understand all of this. Um,
Speaker 1: but the story of barbecue is really intimately tied to
Speaker 1: language and history and culture, especially in the South, especially
Speaker 1: in Texas, maybe extra especially in Austin. I think the
Speaker 1: first thing that my lift driver said to me when
Speaker 1: I got in the car was eat some barbecue while
Speaker 1: you're here. Um. Obviously, there are all kinds of barbecue
Speaker 1: styles found all over the world, but the focus and
Speaker 1: what we're talking about today is really on the United States,
Speaker 1: specifically the lower forty eight. So even without getting into
Speaker 1: things like Korean bulgogai or Brazilian shiasco or South African bray,
Speaker 1: talking about barbecue is like walking into a linguistic and
Speaker 1: pedantic mind field. Um. And that is not as some
Speaker 1: people might think, just because there are people who were
Speaker 1: just gonna as politely as possibly called ignorant jerk faces
Speaker 1: um that like to claim that everyone else is ruining
Speaker 1: the language with their non understanding of what true barbecue is. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, you all have your steaks in the ground,
Speaker 1: it's for sure for sure. Um. Here is a quick
Speaker 1: list of some of the things that people argue about
Speaker 1: when it comes to the word barbecue. Um. Whether it's
Speaker 1: a noun or a verb. Whether it means a style
Speaker 1: of cooking or a food that has been cooked using
Speaker 1: that style, whether barbecue and grill or synonyms. Whether it
Speaker 1: involves cooking yeah, a c We're gonna get there, um,
Speaker 1: Whether it involves cooking over direct or indirect heat. What
Speaker 1: kind of fuel is used for the flame and if
Speaker 1: that fuel is would what kind of wood? Also the
Speaker 1: ingredients and what's in the sauce and whether the word
Speaker 1: barbecue has a C or a Q in it. We
Speaker 1: could go on, there's so much space for pedantry. But really,
Speaker 1: the word barbecue has been both a noun and a
Speaker 1: verb for almost four hundred years uh, and it's had
Speaker 1: multiple definitions going all the way back to its first
Speaker 1: use in the English language. And some of those definitions
Speaker 1: really don't actually have much to do with food or
Speaker 1: cooking at all. Yes, So, the most widely accepted explanation
Speaker 1: for where the word barbecue comes from is that it
Speaker 1: started with the Spanish word barbecoa, which today English speakers
Speaker 1: might more associate with kind of a slow cooked, spicy,
Speaker 1: shredded meat. In this case, though, we're talking about a
Speaker 1: term that Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo di uh Ivadez said
Speaker 1: that he learned from the indigenous Chino people of the Caribbean.
Speaker 1: He traveled back and forth between Spain and the America's
Speaker 1: a bunch of times in the sixteenth century. He wrote
Speaker 1: books on multiple subjects, including Spain's colonial conquest, and in
Speaker 1: his fifteen twenty six General and Natural History of the Indies,
Speaker 1: he used this word barbacoa to describe a raised frame
Speaker 1: of sticks used to store grain. Uh. He was the
Speaker 1: first person to use this term in writing. It's not
Speaker 1: quite his mouth watering is the way we think of
Speaker 1: it today. Soon other Spanish writers were using this same
Speaker 1: word to describe similar things that they saw in other
Speaker 1: parts of the America's Here's an example from an account
Speaker 1: of Hernando de Soto's expeditions, which was written in fifteen
Speaker 1: forty and describing what is now southwestern Georgia. Quote, maize
Speaker 1: is kept in a barbacoa, which is a house with
Speaker 1: wooden sides, like a room, raised aloft on four posts,
Speaker 1: and has a floor of cane. So explain that at
Speaker 1: the food truck. Eventually, this word did make its way
Speaker 1: into English and early chroniclers, and both English and Spanish
Speaker 1: and other languages as well all used barbacoa for other
Speaker 1: reasons besides just storing grain, including sitting on it and
Speaker 1: sleeping on it. And yeah, that last one is actually
Speaker 1: what the word barbecue meant in its first written use
Speaker 1: in English. In his nine seven Voyage around the World,
Speaker 1: the English pirate and explorer William damp Here wrote, quote
Speaker 1: the twelfth, in the morning, we crossed a deep river,
Speaker 1: passing over it on a tree and marched seven mile
Speaker 1: in a low, swampy ground, and came upon the side
Speaker 1: of a great deep river, but could not get over.
Speaker 1: We built huts upon its banks and lay there all
Speaker 1: night upon our barbecues or frames of sticks raised about
Speaker 1: three foot from the ground. I have to say, as
Speaker 1: somebody who might be like, I'm guessing nine percent reptile DNA,
Speaker 1: this doesn't sound bad to me. Um, I would probably
Speaker 1: sleep on a barbecue, because I'm cold blooded. Other writers
Speaker 1: in the sixteenth century also described people in the Caribbean
Speaker 1: and southern North America using the same or similar barbecua
Speaker 1: frames to cook food, typically fish or some kind of
Speaker 1: what is apparently my people lizards um like iguanas or crocodile,
Speaker 1: And eventually that sense of use carried over into the
Speaker 1: English word barbecue as well, both as a noun to
Speaker 1: describe the frame itself and as a verb to describe
Speaker 1: cooking on that frame. But the first written word barbecue
Speaker 1: as a verb in English still isn't exactly about food.
Speaker 1: It's from a play by past podcast subject Afra Ben,
Speaker 1: and that play is called The Widow Ranter or The
Speaker 1: History of Bacon in Virginia. Not that kind of Bacon.
Speaker 1: It's not that kind of Bacon. The play is about
Speaker 1: a different previous podcast subject, which was Bacon's rebellion, so
Speaker 1: we have like multiple previous podcast in that one sentence,
Speaker 1: all roads lead to barbecue apparently. Um. In Act two,
Speaker 1: seen four of that play, Colonel Wellman, deputy governor, is
Speaker 1: trying to take Nathaniel Bacon into custody as a rebel,
Speaker 1: but Bacon is defended by a rabble, which beats back
Speaker 1: Wellman's guards before Bacon steals one of the rebbels swords
Speaker 1: and turns them back. The rabble does not give up
Speaker 1: and shouts, let's barbecue this fat rogue, uh, meaning the
Speaker 1: deputy governor, and Bacon tells them to be gone, but
Speaker 1: Wellman says, quote, I'd rather perish by my meanest hand
Speaker 1: than oh, my safety poorly to this Bacon. Uh. That
Speaker 1: should be this to Bacon. But it's funnier the way
Speaker 1: I said it accidentally. Uh. And Bacon is like aces
Speaker 1: and he rolls out with the rabble. I like how
Speaker 1: the idea of being saved by Nathaniel Bacon is so
Speaker 1: objectionable to Wellman that he's just like, just let me die. Though. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's okay, just kill me. So this play was written
Speaker 1: in six nine. That means by that point the word
Speaker 1: barbecue was commonly known enough in England to show up
Speaker 1: in a play and have the audience know what they
Speaker 1: were talking about. But at the same time, this still
Speaker 1: is not really about food. It's more like they're calling
Speaker 1: for a wellman to be tarred and feathered. And also
Speaker 1: for anybody who is hung up on whether it is
Speaker 1: fell barbecue with a sea or a key afra ben
Speaker 1: in that instance spelled it with a sea, and other
Speaker 1: spellings in its earliest English uses include barbecue that's with
Speaker 1: an o or barbecue with no e. So see you
Speaker 1: and that's it. So you will find this evolution from
Speaker 1: barbecoa meaning a frame to sleep on or store things
Speaker 1: on or cook food on, to barbecue meaning that thing
Speaker 1: I just said, or cooking the food on the frame
Speaker 1: or eventually the food itself. You find that progression all
Speaker 1: over the place. That's pretty much how it's described most
Speaker 1: of the time, but there are some naysayers about whether
Speaker 1: that's correct, and some of them are more logical than others.
Speaker 1: In eighteen twenty nine, the National Intelligencer printed an article
Speaker 1: that called Andrew Jackson's supporters of barbecues because they were
Speaker 1: quote going the whole hog from the beard barbed to
Speaker 1: the q tail. Uh. Some people got kind of glammed
Speaker 1: onto that as meaning that there was a French origin
Speaker 1: for the word barbecue. And you'll still see that in
Speaker 1: some places most of the time. When you do see it,
Speaker 1: there's also a note that that's probably not correct. The
Speaker 1: Oxford English Dictionary calls it an absurd conjecture. The French
Speaker 1: would never put meat on a spit, for one thing. Um.
Speaker 1: Culinary historian Michael Twitty has also noted that in the
Speaker 1: house a language which is spoken in northern Nigeria, Babaka
Speaker 1: which is spelled b a b b a k e,
Speaker 1: is used to describe a number of things having to
Speaker 1: do with grilling or toasting or cooking over a fire.
Speaker 1: And then there's Professor Andrew Warrants of the University of Leeds,
Speaker 1: and he wrote a book called Savage Barbecue, Race, Culture,
Speaker 1: and the Invention of America's First Food, and he takes uh,
Speaker 1: he traces that connotation from barbecoa to barbecue like other
Speaker 1: people a lot of other people have done, but he
Speaker 1: makes a slightly different argument and it's a little more
Speaker 1: involved than we can get into you tonight, because he
Speaker 1: wrote an entire book chapter on this argument. But basically
Speaker 1: he points out that we shouldn't just discount the idea
Speaker 1: that the word barbecue also has some connection to the
Speaker 1: word barbaric, because that kind of reflects back to how
Speaker 1: the European colonists were viewing the people of the Caribbean
Speaker 1: and North America who had been cooking over the fire
Speaker 1: when they first got there. So, regardless of the exact etymology,
Speaker 1: English people on both sides of the Atlantic definitely described
Speaker 1: barbecuing as an indigenous method of food preparation well into
Speaker 1: the eighteenth century. For example, on August eighteenth of seventeen
Speaker 1: fifty eight, during the French and Indian War, George Washington
Speaker 1: wrote a letter to Colonel Henry Bouquet in which he
Speaker 1: talked about the provisioning of his troops and he said, quote,
Speaker 1: we have not an ounce assault provision of any kind here,
Speaker 1: and it is impossible to preserve the fresh especially as
Speaker 1: we have no salt by any other means than barbecuing
Speaker 1: it in the Indian manner. In doing this, nearly half
Speaker 1: is lost, so that a party receiving ten days provisions,
Speaker 1: will be obliged to live upon little better than five
Speaker 1: days allowance of meat a thing impracticable. I have some
Speaker 1: questions about this. Losing that much of the meat makes
Speaker 1: it sound like either whoever was doing Washington's barbecuing was
Speaker 1: really bad at it, or maybe he was describing something
Speaker 1: that was more like drying the meat into a jerky
Speaker 1: than like barbecuing it. I like how it doesn't occur
Speaker 1: to you that someone like me is working the grill
Speaker 1: and eating as they go, you're doing a one for
Speaker 1: me would just be like, yeah, one for them and
Speaker 1: one for me. Detail Yeah, that would be like my
Speaker 1: cut for doing the work. Is this not how you guys? Barbecue?
Speaker 1: Barbecue is also in Samuel Johnson's seventeen fifty five Dictionary
Speaker 1: of the English Language, with two barbecue as a verb
Speaker 1: meaning a term used in the West Indies for dressing
Speaker 1: a hog hole which, being split to the backbone, is
Speaker 1: laid flat upon a large gridiron raised about two foot
Speaker 1: upon a charcoal fire with which it is surrounded it
Speaker 1: And then Johnson lists barbecue as a noun with a
Speaker 1: definition of quote a hog dressed hole in the West
Speaker 1: Indian manner. So after all this, Uh, this might be
Speaker 1: an unpopular opinion, but I think folks can just relax
Speaker 1: about what barbecue means and whether other people are using
Speaker 1: it wrong. The Oxford English Dictionary list five different definitions
Speaker 1: for the noun and two for the verb. Miriam Webster
Speaker 1: lists three different meanings for each and one of those
Speaker 1: Oxford English Dictionary definitions is about drying coffee beans, which
Speaker 1: we haven't talked about at all. So, uh, we're going
Speaker 1: to get to even the much decried use of the
Speaker 1: word barbecue as a synonym for grilling. Like we're gonna
Speaker 1: get to that part that's been around and somebody's hissock,
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna pretend we sold a lot of tickets
Speaker 1: to snakes. Uh excited. Uh, it's an audience of slytherin. Um. Anyway,
Speaker 1: we're gonna get to how barbecue has been a synonym
Speaker 1: for grilling for almost a hundred years. But before we
Speaker 1: do that, we're going to talk about another definition that
Speaker 1: we haven't even gotten into here and might cause more
Speaker 1: snake activity, barbecue as a social event. And we're gonna
Speaker 1: get into that, but first we're gonna take a little break.
Speaker 1: Sulb culinary historians called barbecue the first truly American food
Speaker 1: because it combines these this indigenous cooking frame of the
Speaker 1: barbecua and then locally available spices with domesticated food animals
Speaker 1: that Europeans introduced to North America, especially pigs and cows
Speaker 1: and sheep and goats. UH. African cooking techniques were also
Speaker 1: really critical to it, because as the institution of slavery
Speaker 1: became more established and more widespread in the America's it
Speaker 1: was increasingly likely that the person who was due this
Speaker 1: cooking was an enslaved African, and over time, colonial barbecue
Speaker 1: went from using a raised frame of sticks to a
Speaker 1: pit or a trench that was dug in the ground
Speaker 1: and logs were burned alongside the pit until they were
Speaker 1: down to coals, and then those coals went into the bottom.
Speaker 1: And at first the food was laid out on a
Speaker 1: framework of sticks, but eventually people started to use gridirons
Speaker 1: or metals fits and the first barbecue sauces were actually
Speaker 1: pretty minimal. This might make you sad. They tended to
Speaker 1: be also pretty much the same regardless of where exactly
Speaker 1: the barbecue was being prepared, so it was usually some
Speaker 1: kind of very basic fat like a butter or a lard,
Speaker 1: and then a little bit of vinegar and black or
Speaker 1: hot pepper, just basically used as a based during cooking,
Speaker 1: and that was it. That sounds all right to me
Speaker 1: if it's really spicy, I'm no, they're not all right, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm a wass um just sue Wi swas and I can't.
Speaker 1: I can't handle the spicy. I'm sorry, I know. So.
Speaker 1: Apart from that, there was not a lot of consistency
Speaker 1: about what was being cooked because people were pretty much
Speaker 1: cooking whatever they had available. There might be several different
Speaker 1: types of meat at any given barbecue. Regardless of that detail, though,
Speaker 1: it was always a lot of food, so from the beginning,
Speaker 1: barbecues were usually community events, and the first written instance
Speaker 1: of barbecue with the meaning of a big gathering where
Speaker 1: barbecue is being served dates back to August thirty one,
Speaker 1: seventeen thirty three, in the Diary of Benjamin Lynde. And
Speaker 1: Lynde hasn't he on the end? We don't know if
Speaker 1: it was Lynda or Lynde, but we're going with Lynde
Speaker 1: for the evening, And he noted, quote fair and hot
Speaker 1: brown barbecue hack overset Uh, that is word salad. But
Speaker 1: just based on his very basic notations, it's pretty fair
Speaker 1: to conclude that he went to a barbecue hosted by
Speaker 1: someone named Brown. Uh. George Washington also noted that he
Speaker 1: had attended multiple barbecues. Those came up in his diary
Speaker 1: several times as well, the first of those being seventeen
Speaker 1: sixty nine. When it comes to where these first barbecues
Speaker 1: were being Hell, they started in Virginia, mostly because Virginia
Speaker 1: was the first permanent English colony in North America. Barbecue
Speaker 1: has a food and as a cooking technique, and as
Speaker 1: a gathering spread from there through British colonial territory. It
Speaker 1: may have also been President President barbecue president. That's how
Speaker 1: I feel about it. I would be actually really okay
Speaker 1: with that at this point. I'm a longer a vegetarian.
Speaker 1: In case that was not clear. Uh. So, barbecue has
Speaker 1: a food and a cooking technique and a gathering spread
Speaker 1: from Virginia throughout British territory. It might have also been President.
Speaker 1: I was going to say it again, this happens in
Speaker 1: the studio too, and our producer makes it sound like
Speaker 1: I didn't do that. It might have been present in
Speaker 1: Florida before Great Britain acquired that from Spain in seventeen
Speaker 1: sixty three, as well as possibly other places that were
Speaker 1: also controlled by Spain, maybe Texas, who knows. I like
Speaker 1: to think that Barbecue was a benevolent and kind president,
Speaker 1: I hope, so passing delicious legislation, no one was hungry.
Speaker 1: Um there's literally the best cartoon running in my head,
Speaker 1: and I wish I could project it to you, but
Speaker 1: it's in the style of I'm just a bill. Just
Speaker 1: know that. Um. So, although barbecue did make its way
Speaker 1: into New England, it fell out of favor there by
Speaker 1: the end of the Revolutionary War, and the reasons seemed
Speaker 1: to have been largely practical. Barbecuing is time and labor intensive,
Speaker 1: and it required people to stand outside tending a pit
Speaker 1: for up to twenty four hours. New England has a
Speaker 1: shorter season where this is even feasible, as well as
Speaker 1: a smaller supply of labor at this time, and just
Speaker 1: not as much livestock as other parts of the colonies.
Speaker 1: And I would say, no one wants to stand out
Speaker 1: in the cold for twenty four hours now, and you know,
Speaker 1: maybe the ground is going to be frozen. Maybe there
Speaker 1: are a hundred and ten inches of snow on the ground. Um.
Speaker 1: Over time, because of all this, barbecue became a lot
Speaker 1: more associated with the South, and the South that started
Speaker 1: to serve a lot of social purposes. Sometimes it was
Speaker 1: just a basic social activity that was supposed to be fun,
Speaker 1: at least in theory. John Kirkpatrick was one of George
Speaker 1: Washington's secretaries. George Washington is in this show a lot Um.
Speaker 1: On July seventeen fifty eight, Kirkpatrick wrote Washington a note
Speaker 1: that ended quote to tell you our domestic occurrences would
Speaker 1: look silly, and I'll suit your time to peruse. But
Speaker 1: we have dull barbecues and yet duller dances. An election
Speaker 1: causes a hubbub for a week or so, and then
Speaker 1: we are dead. Awhile after that he talks about who
Speaker 1: won the most recent elections, and then he wraps up
Speaker 1: with some thoughts about how much tobacco cost, which he
Speaker 1: included even though he admitted that that was probably not pertinent.
Speaker 1: And when he talks about how dollies events are, there's
Speaker 1: some part of my brain that I'm like, dude, be
Speaker 1: the change, Like shake it up, um, you go dance,
Speaker 1: make it fun. Uh. Political barbecues got their start in
Speaker 1: Virginia in the late eighteenth century, and it was frowned
Speaker 1: upon for candidates at this point to actively campaign the
Speaker 1: way we would see today. But one sneaky way around
Speaker 1: this was that they could treat voters to a super
Speaker 1: delicious event. Um, and some went as far as to
Speaker 1: throw big, entire barbecues, but they had to be really
Speaker 1: careful about it, because if the whole thing was too lavish,
Speaker 1: or too showy, or too obviously tied to a candidate,
Speaker 1: people did not like it. Uh. It was not unheard
Speaker 1: of for local election committees to actually avoid people's candidacies
Speaker 1: entirely if they felt like their barbecue had gone a
Speaker 1: little too far. Can you imagine this is too delicious?
Speaker 1: You may no longer run for public office? And then
Speaker 1: barbecue steps up onto the No. Yeah, I'm going to
Speaker 1: sign some orders about deliciousness of sauce. So the criticism
Speaker 1: of political barbecues did not just come from the election committees.
Speaker 1: This is our favorite part of this episode. Starting in
Speaker 1: eighteen twenty seven, somebody writing under the pen name barbecue Sis.
Speaker 1: See that's why I was laughing, Barbecues is published a
Speaker 1: series of letters against campaign barbecue in the Southern Advocate,
Speaker 1: and then two years later, more than a thousand people
Speaker 1: in Madison County, Alabama signed a petition against this practice.
Speaker 1: I feel like the name barbecue in this is another
Speaker 1: great pet name, or it should be a Star Wars character,
Speaker 1: and I don't care which, but I'm I'm in it
Speaker 1: could be both. This whole campaign against barbecues did not
Speaker 1: stop political barbecues, though they were a huge part of
Speaker 1: elections in both the eighteen thirties and the eighteen forties,
Speaker 1: and they were also held just as celebrations. Francisco de
Speaker 1: Miranda fought with Spanish forces against the British during the
Speaker 1: Revolutionary War, and on June seventeenth of seventeen eighty three,
Speaker 1: he wrote about a barbecue that had been held in
Speaker 1: New Bern, North Carolina to celebrate the end of active fighting.
Speaker 1: Here's what he said, quote by way of celebration for
Speaker 1: this event, starting at one o'clock, there was a barbecue,
Speaker 1: a roast pig, and a barrel of rum, from which
Speaker 1: the leading officials and citizens of the region promiscuous lee
Speaker 1: ate and drank with the meanest and lowest kind of people,
Speaker 1: holding hands and drinking from the same cup. It seems
Speaker 1: impossible to imagine without seeing it a more purely democratic gathering,
Speaker 1: and it conforms to yeah, and it conforms to what
Speaker 1: the Greek poets and historians tell us of similar concourses
Speaker 1: among those free peoples of Greece. There were some drunks,
Speaker 1: some friendly fisticuffs, and one man was injured with that,
Speaker 1: and the burning of some empty barrels. As the fact
Speaker 1: now it's I put gave myself the French part, and
Speaker 1: then I didn't practice ahead of time with that and
Speaker 1: the burning of some empty barrels as a footage wide nightfall,
Speaker 1: the party ended and everyone retired to sleep. It sounds
Speaker 1: like a great night, it does. God, let's have it now. Um.
Speaker 1: It was not long after the Revolutionary War formally ended
Speaker 1: the barbecues really became an established part of Independence Day celebrations,
Speaker 1: with the whole event pretty standard no matter where in
Speaker 1: the country you were. It was a day full of
Speaker 1: songs and patriotic speeches, readings of the Declaration of Independence,
Speaker 1: lots of toasts, and of course the barbecue. Alcohol had
Speaker 1: been served at barbecues pretty much since the start of them,
Speaker 1: but by the early to mid nineteenth century it had
Speaker 1: become a bigger part of the festivities, and that meant
Speaker 1: that the Temperance movement and religious denominations that discouraged alcohol
Speaker 1: became increasingly critical of barbecues. In eighteen fifteen, several members
Speaker 1: of Old Salt River Primitive Baptist Church got in trouble
Speaker 1: for going to an Independence Day barbecue, and the question
Speaker 1: was put to the whole congregation of whether it was
Speaker 1: right or wrong to attend a barbecue, and the congregation
Speaker 1: answered that it was wrong again. I bet they didn't
Speaker 1: know how to party there. Um. There is also a
Speaker 1: widely circulated tale about a traveling Methodist minister named Paul Denton,
Speaker 1: who is on my personal enemies list, who in eighteen
Speaker 1: thirty six, so you'll see why, in eighteen thirty six
Speaker 1: posted announcements about a splendid barbecue. The preparations are being
Speaker 1: made to suit all tastes. There will be a good barbecue,
Speaker 1: better liquors, and the best gospel. And a man named
Speaker 1: Peter Brinson had been paid to arrange the food, and
Speaker 1: people kept going to Brinson with questions about the liquor
Speaker 1: because it did seem kind of strange for a minister
Speaker 1: to have an event where he was going to serve
Speaker 1: liquor and like brag about it. Uh. Brinson kept telling
Speaker 1: people he was not the boss of that, and that
Speaker 1: Denton was the person seeing to the alcohol. So this
Speaker 1: barbecue was set up around a spring, and it was
Speaker 1: overrun with people. Of course, when you say food and hooch,
Speaker 1: people are coming. Um. The crowd was anxious to eat,
Speaker 1: and Brinson kept telling them that they had to wait
Speaker 1: for the preacher, and finally a colonel in the crowd
Speaker 1: demanded that they get on with it. And at that
Speaker 1: point Denton showed up and he basically scolded them all
Speaker 1: for not waiting for the blessing. And then when the
Speaker 1: crowd demanded to know where the liquor was, he said there,
Speaker 1: and he pointed to the spring, and then he turned
Speaker 1: the whole thing into a temperance sermon. Right, he's on
Speaker 1: my enemy list forever. This is my new use of
Speaker 1: the time travel machine. Who's to go back and slap
Speaker 1: him in the face while I hold a martini? That's
Speaker 1: that seems fine. Uh. This story was printed in a
Speaker 1: lot of places, but none of them say what the
Speaker 1: crowd did at that point. Uh. There were, however, a
Speaker 1: lot of temperance activists who started holding barbecues to try
Speaker 1: to rally support for their cause, but without tricking people
Speaker 1: with the promise of alcohol first. This makes me think
Speaker 1: about South Park punch and Pie situation. I don't know it.
Speaker 1: Oh Cartman promises people punch and pie to come over
Speaker 1: and play this whole event, but he doesn't have punch
Speaker 1: of pie. Okay, so uh, Denton is Cartman in this
Speaker 1: story if you were watching, sorry we went down that avenue. Um.
Speaker 1: It was about this time that it did become a
Speaker 1: little bit more common for women to be included in
Speaker 1: the white community's barbecues. Today, it is a popular stereotype
Speaker 1: that the backyard grill is a man's domain. Whatever. That
Speaker 1: is not a new idea, but that idea goes all
Speaker 1: the way back to the first barbecue pits. The first
Speaker 1: barbecues tended to be fairly rough affairs, with women neither
Speaker 1: helping to prepare the food nor helping to eat it.
Speaker 1: That is so sad. It wasn't until the nineteenth century
Speaker 1: that barbecues were actually considered appropriate for ladies, and even
Speaker 1: then it was only some other time, often with separate
Speaker 1: seating for them away from the men. This is the
Speaker 1: stupidest thing I've ever heard. Like, I can eat a
Speaker 1: piece of meat next to a dude. There's no problem there.
Speaker 1: They don't. It doesn't make a lot of sense. It
Speaker 1: really doesn't, because there was too much fighting and swearing
Speaker 1: and drinking. I guess ladies can do all those things.
Speaker 1: I know, we know this now. They knew it then too.
Speaker 1: They were just they had they had views, uh, wrong,
Speaker 1: wrong views. In the middle of the nineteenth century, barbecues
Speaker 1: as an event had become really an almost exclusively Southern,
Speaker 1: Southern thing. In eighteen fifty one, the Boston Post printed
Speaker 1: a piece that started, most of your readers have heard
Speaker 1: of a barbecue, but probably few have ever attended one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm it's it's only a little bit condescending. Uh. It
Speaker 1: went on to describe a barbecue that the writer had
Speaker 1: been to that was held in Athens, Georgia for retiring
Speaker 1: Speaker of the House Howell Cobb, and the writer, who
Speaker 1: signed this piece with the initials E. L. F. Thought
Speaker 1: this whole thing was incredibly gross. Uh. Honestly, I have
Speaker 1: to agree with him, because he described the people who
Speaker 1: were preparing this food, three of whom were black, and
Speaker 1: three of whom were white as just incredibly dirty, and
Speaker 1: he went on to say, quote as there were neither
Speaker 1: towels nor water near them, the cooks made their mouths
Speaker 1: answer the double perch purpose of towels and water. Right,
Speaker 1: this is worse than when somebody puts the meat on
Speaker 1: the grill and then takes it off the grill with
Speaker 1: the same spatula. Don't do that. Tracy has very strong
Speaker 1: feelings about food safety. I wrote about food safety for
Speaker 1: the first two years of my career as a writer. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm a little more sloppy gloppy about it. I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't do that, but like I'm not quite as
Speaker 1: flip it. I'll wash it, it'll be fine. I had
Speaker 1: like that grandmother that literally said, if you don't eat
Speaker 1: a peck of dirt by the time you're one year old,
Speaker 1: you will die of disease because you will not have
Speaker 1: built up your immunity. It's a very I carry it
Speaker 1: with me to the day. Yeah, my brother got salmonella
Speaker 1: from a turtle when he was eight, and I'm still traumatized.
Speaker 1: That's the best thing I've ever heard. I didn't know
Speaker 1: it was going to disrupt the show. Salmonella Turtle is
Speaker 1: like I hero. To me, this is the best. It's
Speaker 1: a comedy hero. He's with You're all making fun cartoons. Uh.
Speaker 1: This person E. L. F that was writing about this
Speaker 1: horrific and gross and uncleanly barbecue finished his piece by saying, quote,
Speaker 1: as I had seen the cutting up process. Of course
Speaker 1: I did not eat any of the dinner, but I
Speaker 1: could not help thinking that it was rather a brutal
Speaker 1: way of serving a retiring speaker of the United States
Speaker 1: House of Representatives. Even though barbecue was not particularly associated
Speaker 1: with the more northern part of the country at this point,
Speaker 1: Stephen Douglas did try to have a campaign barbecue in
Speaker 1: New York City in eighteen sixty. This was the first
Speaker 1: political barbecue known to have been held in New York City,
Speaker 1: and it apparently went very badly, with the meat itself
Speaker 1: being compared to the charred remains of a burned down tenement.
Speaker 1: The meats, such as it was, was served with crackers
Speaker 1: and bread. There were right there were about three thousand
Speaker 1: people in attendance at this horrifying barbecue, and apparently they
Speaker 1: were really eager for things to get started. There's an
Speaker 1: account from the day that states quote, at the last
Speaker 1: patients of As the last patients of the mob began
Speaker 1: to expire, and fearful that they might not be able
Speaker 1: to get any of the gratuitous supply of roast beef,
Speaker 1: they resorted to physical force and tore down the pine
Speaker 1: fences and burst into the enclosure. The police were too
Speaker 1: small a force to keep the crowd back, and a
Speaker 1: most disgraceful scene ensued. This scene involved the crowd falling
Speaker 1: onto the tables and turning them over and scaring the
Speaker 1: carver away from his post. And then the whole thing
Speaker 1: devolved into this combination of a riot and a food fight,
Speaker 1: with the crowd throwing things down into the barbecue pit,
Speaker 1: and then quote the unruly host seized upon the only
Speaker 1: table that had been preserved and began debolishing the provisions
Speaker 1: there on, and really the table itself. Of course, Stephen
Speaker 1: Douglas lost the election of eighteen sixty uh as did
Speaker 1: John C. Breckenridge and John Bell. Abraham Lincoln won, and
Speaker 1: the Civil War started not long after, And naturally, because
Speaker 1: it had become so closely associated with the South by
Speaker 1: this time, barbecue was far more associated with the Confederacy
Speaker 1: than with the Union. During the war, with barbecues being
Speaker 1: used for things like wartime fundraisers, recruitment events, and troop musters.
Speaker 1: So throughout all this, like we said before, most of
Speaker 1: the people who had been preparing and cooking all this
Speaker 1: barbecue were enslaved Africans, and sometimes they were under the
Speaker 1: supervision of a white person, but often it was a
Speaker 1: more experienced enslaved person who was in charge of actual cooking.
Speaker 1: But enslaved people's experience with barbecue definitely did not end
Speaker 1: with fixing food for white people. Many slave owners used
Speaker 1: Christmas and Independence Day barbecues as a reward for their
Speaker 1: enslaved workforce, but of course that workforce was preparing it
Speaker 1: for themselves. Barbecue served a similar purpose during times of
Speaker 1: intense labor, so like when it was time to pick
Speaker 1: the cotton or shut the corn. Although some slave owners
Speaker 1: talked about these barbecues as evidence of their own generosity,
Speaker 1: as Frederick Douglas pointed out, this was really a way
Speaker 1: to keep enslaved people in line and maintain a facade
Speaker 1: of benevolence. There are also accounts of enslaved people arranging
Speaker 1: their own secret barbecues with Pilford livestock as an act
Speaker 1: of resistance and barbecues were also associated with multiple slave uprisings.
Speaker 1: In eighteen hundred, enslaved people in Henrico County, Virginia planned
Speaker 1: to take the capital of Richmond with a force of
Speaker 1: about two hundred people. They were going to take Governor
Speaker 1: James Monroe hostage, and then they were going to negotiate
Speaker 1: for the emancipation of everyone in the state. They planned
Speaker 1: this uprising over a series of barbecues. This uprising, which
Speaker 1: was known as Gabriel's Rebellion, was unfortunately thwarted by heavy
Speaker 1: rain and by somebody informing authorities of the plot, and
Speaker 1: at least twenty six people were hanged. The final plan
Speaker 1: for Nat Turner's Rebellion, which was the deadliest slave reable
Speaker 1: in US history, was also put together at a barbecue
Speaker 1: on August one, eighteen thirty one. After Abraham Lincoln issued
Speaker 1: the Emancipation Proclamation on January one of eighteen sixty three,
Speaker 1: newly freed people celebrated with a barbecue, and after the war,
Speaker 1: barbecue became a common part of Emancipation Day festivities, with
Speaker 1: the exact date of those festivities varying from one place
Speaker 1: to another. On June nineteenth of eighteen sixty five, more
Speaker 1: than two months after the end of the Civil War
Speaker 1: and two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation,
Speaker 1: Major General Gordon Granger took his position as the appointed
Speaker 1: military governor of Texas. He issued General Order Number three,
Speaker 1: which began, quote, the people of Texas are informed that,
Speaker 1: in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the
Speaker 1: United States, all slaves are free. That event has come
Speaker 1: to be celebrated as Juneteenth with barbecue still yeah yeah, Juneteenth, uh,
Speaker 1: with barbecue still a frequent part of that observation. And
Speaker 1: after the Civil War, barbecue continued to be a huge
Speaker 1: tradition all over the South, and it also moved westward
Speaker 1: as the nation expanded. In mad Andrews published an essay
Speaker 1: in Harper's Weekly that read, quote, the barbecue is one
Speaker 1: of the institutions of the South. To have known it
Speaker 1: means happiness. Not to have known it means that the
Speaker 1: link in the chain of life has been lost. By then, though,
Speaker 1: barbecue was also taking on a more regional character which
Speaker 1: is well established today, and we'll get to that after
Speaker 1: another quick break. So, for most of barbecue's history it
Speaker 1: has been about cooking whatever meat was available slowly over
Speaker 1: lower indirect heat. There was not a lot of variety
Speaker 1: and the sauces or the sides. A lot of times
Speaker 1: it was just served with some bread, maybe some crackers,
Speaker 1: like that time in New York. Uh. But in the
Speaker 1: nineteenth century a new innovation really started to change that,
Speaker 1: and that innovation was the barbecue restaurant. The first barbecue
Speaker 1: restaurants were not like a full sit down experience like
Speaker 1: you might think of. It was just as likely to
Speaker 1: just be a thrown together stand that was by the
Speaker 1: side of the road. And it's really hard to say
Speaker 1: what the first one of those was or where it
Speaker 1: was built, but often the person who was doing the
Speaker 1: cooking at such places had kind of come to be
Speaker 1: known as the local barbecue guy or the barbecue man,
Speaker 1: and was regarded as being especially good at what he did.
Speaker 1: One of the reasons it's hard to tell exactly who
Speaker 1: was the first UH is that a lot of the
Speaker 1: first written references to these restaurants are about when they
Speaker 1: burned down in grease fires. Um, So who knows how
Speaker 1: long it was there before it caught on fire. Um.
Speaker 1: Over time, though, these temporary kind of shacks evolved into
Speaker 1: more permanent establishments a lot of times with the pit,
Speaker 1: the pit or the trench that had been used evolving
Speaker 1: into this uh permanent structure that was made out of brick.
Speaker 1: Umcent lost my place on my paper. Uh. It was
Speaker 1: after these permanent restaurants really started to establish themselves that
Speaker 1: different parts of the United States started to develop their
Speaker 1: own regional barbecue styles. And although the United States had
Speaker 1: an ice trade thanks primarily to Frederick Tutor, who is
Speaker 1: someone we have talked about on our show before, there
Speaker 1: just wasn't a lot of refrigeration in the late nineteenth century.
Speaker 1: So these first restaurants really had to develop relationships with
Speaker 1: local farmers and ranchers who could provide them meet when
Speaker 1: they needed it, which they could then cook very promptly
Speaker 1: and serve right away. Sauces and side dishes were also
Speaker 1: influenced by what was locally popular or available, and then
Speaker 1: as the restaurants served these styles of barbecue along with
Speaker 1: other accompaniments, people started to expect something similar from other
Speaker 1: restaurants too, and this became a whole thing. As examples,
Speaker 1: cattle ranching is a huge industry in Texas, as I'm
Speaker 1: sure you all know, but not so much and a
Speaker 1: lot of other parts of the United States, so, especially
Speaker 1: in Central Texas, beef brisket is a popular barbecue dish. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: in North Carolina, where I am from, which at various
Speaker 1: points in its history has had more pigs than human
Speaker 1: beings and its population, pork barbecue is really the standard,
Speaker 1: especially in Lexington style barbecue, which is found in the
Speaker 1: more western part of the state. Slaw is a popular
Speaker 1: side dish or topping thanks to the presence of cabbage
Speaker 1: as a crop in the state that slaw is often
Speaker 1: made with ketchup instead of mannai'se y'all are wrong, It's
Speaker 1: so good, very idea. Wait, are you a proponent of that? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't. And it's not a thing you can find anywhere.
Speaker 1: Besides that, if you go into anytime you see a
Speaker 1: restaurant that says Carolina style barbecue, it's like, that's not
Speaker 1: exactly a thing because there's two different styles and they're
Speaker 1: not one of them doesn't have that anyway, uh where
Speaker 1: I get kind of like I have not even tried this.
Speaker 1: South Carolina's German population often gets the credit for its
Speaker 1: traditional mustard based barbecue sauce. I would do that before
Speaker 1: I would do the catch up slaw. I can tell you, uh,
Speaker 1: I like German food. Um so, here's what we're gonna do,
Speaker 1: like a quick rundown of all of the most well
Speaker 1: known regional barbecues. But honestly, there are a whole lot.
Speaker 1: Texas has at least four, North Carolina has two, and
Speaker 1: though South Carolina is best known for that mustard based
Speaker 1: sauce we just mentioned, there are other regional barbecues and
Speaker 1: sauces in that state as well. And that is not
Speaker 1: even getting into that disagreement of Tracy referenced earlier. Whose
Speaker 1: definitions are right or which way or which city of
Speaker 1: Brunswick was the one that actually invented the barbecue side
Speaker 1: dish of Brunswick sto and my family. We also made
Speaker 1: it in a way that it was the entree. So yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: um so yeah. That you will not have to listen
Speaker 1: to us a and its smoked over hickory for fifteen
Speaker 1: times with this. But we do want to do though,
Speaker 1: is note an outlier in all of that, which is
Speaker 1: Kansas City Barbecue. Most there was there was division in
Speaker 1: people's responses. This is why there are fisticuffs at barbecue.
Speaker 1: Uh So, most of the regional barbecue styles stick to
Speaker 1: meet from one kind of animal, maybe two. They might
Speaker 1: have several signature preparations of that thing, but it's usually
Speaker 1: one thing. In Kansas City, though, they barbecue everything. Henry Perry,
Speaker 1: who was born in Memphis, is nicknamed the father of
Speaker 1: Kansas City barbecue. In nineteen seventeen, he ran a holiday
Speaker 1: ad encouraging people to call on him for all their
Speaker 1: barbecued meats that included possum, groundhog, raccoon, beef, pork, and mutton. Uh.
Speaker 1: You might not find all of those on a menu
Speaker 1: today in Kansas City, but in generally you will find
Speaker 1: way more meat variety than you will in the traditional
Speaker 1: barbecues of other places. Restaurants are not the only thing
Speaker 1: have had such a huge influence on barbecue. For most
Speaker 1: of the dish's history, it's been all about cooking meat
Speaker 1: slowly over low or indirect heat. But today when people
Speaker 1: say they're having a barbecue, they could be talking about,
Speaker 1: i know, cooking on a grill with the flame right
Speaker 1: under what they're cooking in their own backyard. And that's
Speaker 1: really a trend that started all the way back in
Speaker 1: the nineteen twenties when architects and designers started building barbecues
Speaker 1: in new homes. Uh. At first these were permanent, raised
Speaker 1: brick structures, and then portable grills became a thing not
Speaker 1: long after that. The heat was a lot more direct
Speaker 1: than in a traditional barbecue pit that had been around
Speaker 1: for hundreds of years at that point. Um. But for
Speaker 1: folks who feel like barbecue should not ever be used
Speaker 1: as a synonym for grill, that's a usage that goes
Speaker 1: all the way back to about the twenties. So we're
Speaker 1: almost that a hundred years of people saying that charcoal brackets, incidentally,
Speaker 1: also go back to the nineteen twenties. They were patented
Speaker 1: by Oran F. Stafford of the University of Oregon in
Speaker 1: ninety six, and then Henry Ford realized that he had
Speaker 1: used the wood waste from his automobile plants to make them. Uh.
Speaker 1: They were not, however, a commercial success until the nineteen fifties,
Speaker 1: and that is when Ford's briquette facility was bought and
Speaker 1: renamed Kingsford, after the man that had sold forward his
Speaker 1: timberland in the first place. Big Kingsford fan right here. Um.
Speaker 1: And that is when Kingsford briquettes started to be sold
Speaker 1: in grocery stores, and this person became very excited about it.
Speaker 1: At about that same time, home barbecues also got another
Speaker 1: jolt as post World War two economic expansion led people,
Speaker 1: particularly white people, to move into the suburbs, so more
Speaker 1: people had yards, and more yards had barbecues. The webber
Speaker 1: grill made its debut in ninety six. Before that point,
Speaker 1: home grills did not have lids, so people had to
Speaker 1: fight with the wind all the time. Commercially bottled barbecue
Speaker 1: sauces also started taking off in the forties and fifties
Speaker 1: as well. Before that, it had been common for people
Speaker 1: to just make their own. Then the gas grill, which
Speaker 1: I know a lot of people think is heretical, that
Speaker 1: made its debut in the nineteen sixties. That low and
Speaker 1: slow cooked over fire barbecue started to actually struggle a
Speaker 1: little bit in the nineteen seventies because it takes a
Speaker 1: lot of hardwood to run a barbecue restaurant, and it
Speaker 1: got harder and harder to come by and more and
Speaker 1: more expensive, and laws that were meant to protect the
Speaker 1: environment also made it a lot more challenging to run
Speaker 1: a business that required the constant burning of wood. Labor
Speaker 1: costs were also on the rise during this time, and
Speaker 1: fast food restaurants and home grills had made other foods
Speaker 1: like hamburgers and hot dogs a lot more popular, but
Speaker 1: that more traditional barbecue has really had a resurgence in
Speaker 1: more recent years thanks to competitions and television shows and
Speaker 1: just an overall restaurant boom and in some cases a
Speaker 1: willingness to slow cook meat by other methods than over
Speaker 1: hardwood smoke, which I know a lot of people have
Speaker 1: strong feelings about. Brooklyn, New York, even has its own
Speaker 1: barbecue now, which the Internet was really really ready. It's
Speaker 1: to make fun of. When somebody tweeted a picture have
Speaker 1: a very sad looking tray of it in March. None
Speaker 1: of you saw this on Twitter. It was literally a
Speaker 1: tray with what looked like maybe three pieces of biscuit,
Speaker 1: two rolls in like a pickle. I think it's pretty sad.
Speaker 1: The Internet was really ready to make fun of that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was like the sad faced, humble figuring of plates.
Speaker 1: It was not okay. It made you go, I'm sorry
Speaker 1: animal that gave your life to make that it was.
Speaker 1: That was basically the response that the internet had. Uh.
Speaker 1: And that is our brief history of Barbecue. Thank you
Speaker 1: guys so much for being an amazing Thank you, Thank
Speaker 1: you so much to everybody who came out for this show.
Speaker 1: All three of these audiences were just amazing. Yep. I
Speaker 1: want to tour Texas every time because they were fantastic.
Speaker 1: But we also want to make sure that we thank
Speaker 1: the staff at the North Door in Austin, Sons of Herman,
Speaker 1: Holland Dallas, and Secret Group in Houston all for howing
Speaker 1: us and being incredibly lovely and sweet and making this
Speaker 1: just an incredibly fun trip. And also thanks so much
Speaker 1: to Headcount for being with us for part of the
Speaker 1: tour to register people to vote and to provide other
Speaker 1: voter information. They are awesome. We've worked with them on
Speaker 1: all of our tours so far and we love having them. Yes,
Speaker 1: they're Uh. It makes me so happy every time I
Speaker 1: see them. Uh just thrills me that we get to
Speaker 1: have them at our shows. Uh. Do you have a
Speaker 1: little bit of listener mailed around this one? Up? I
Speaker 1: sure do. This is from Charlotte. Charlotte says, Hi, Holly
Speaker 1: and Tracy, I attended your Houston Live show last night
Speaker 1: and it was a delight. Thank you so much for
Speaker 1: coming to Houston and sharing your wonderful selves with us
Speaker 1: for an evening. Before I lived in Houston, I lived
Speaker 1: in Chicago, near the south side of the city, and
Speaker 1: I was wondering if in your explorations of regional barbecue
Speaker 1: you'd come across Chicago barbecue. I think the story of
Speaker 1: barbecue on the South Side is really interesting because it's
Speaker 1: largely the product of the Great Migration. As African American
Speaker 1: families moved north, they brought barbecue with them and adapted
Speaker 1: it to the new urban environment of Chicago, exchanging outdoor
Speaker 1: pits for aquarium smokers basically metal and glass tanks where
Speaker 1: the meat is cooked. Charlotte then gave us a couple
Speaker 1: of links about that no shade to my current home,
Speaker 1: but Chicago barbecue is just as delicious as barbecue farther south,
Speaker 1: and I believe it tells an important story about how
Speaker 1: food culture adapts to and reflects larger changes in the
Speaker 1: historical and social environment. Thank you again. I hope you
Speaker 1: enjoyed your time in Texas, Charlotte. Thank you so much. Charlotte.
Speaker 1: That seemed like an incredibly appropriate email to share. For
Speaker 1: the list of real segment of this episode, I did
Speaker 1: find a little bit about Chicago barbecue. We talked about this,
Speaker 1: uh in the live show during our ad break time
Speaker 1: and during the Q and a s that we do
Speaker 1: after the show at almost every stop. I originally had
Speaker 1: plans to talk about all of the major regional styles
Speaker 1: of barbecue in that episode, and we mentioned it briefly
Speaker 1: in this one. That turned out to just not be
Speaker 1: entirely feasible because there are a lot of them, and
Speaker 1: in the context of an audio podcast, the ingredients and
Speaker 1: such start to sound a little bit repetitive. UH, So
Speaker 1: we did not get into that. But if you're interested
Speaker 1: in that kind of information, there is so much stuff
Speaker 1: on the web. If you google regional barbecue styles, you
Speaker 1: will find lots of different thoughts from various folks about
Speaker 1: which ones are the most delicious and and what their
Speaker 1: experiences are with them, and lots of articles that highlight
Speaker 1: the various regional styles and how they came to be,
Speaker 1: which they all have very cool stories, but not ones
Speaker 1: that we could uh and really do justice too in
Speaker 1: a live show like that. And I also wanted to
Speaker 1: shout out to the various folks we've We've heard from
Speaker 1: several people who were planning to come to the podcast,
Speaker 1: but we're prevented by various circumstances, and we certainly appreciate
Speaker 1: you all. Also, do not feel badly if you had
Speaker 1: to miss the show because something happened. Uh. Really, you
Speaker 1: were there in spirit and now you get to listen
Speaker 1: to the episode as an episode of the podcast. So
Speaker 1: if you would like to write to us about this
Speaker 1: or any other podcast, we're at history podcast that I
Speaker 1: heart radio dot com, and then we're also all over
Speaker 1: social media. Missed in History. That's where you'll find our Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter,
Speaker 1: and Instagram. You can come to our website, which is
Speaker 1: missed in History dot com, where you'll find show notes
Speaker 1: of all the episodes Holly and I have worked on together,
Speaker 1: and the ones for this include the links to all
Speaker 1: the things that we read, the books that were part
Speaker 1: of it, all of that. Uh. And you can also
Speaker 1: get a searchable archive of every episode ever on our website,
Speaker 1: and you can subscribe to our show on Apple, podcast,
Speaker 1: the iHeart radio app, and anywhere else you get a podcast.
Speaker 1: Stuff You Missed in History Class is a production of
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts for
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