Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
Speaker 1: back to the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
Speaker 1: so much for tuning in. Let's have a big hand
Speaker 1: for our one and only super producer, Mr Max Williams.
Speaker 1: I am Ben. I'm a big I think you can
Speaker 1: clap for yourself. Max, you've fully support Yes, Yes, that
Speaker 1: is my rider die Mr Noel Brown himself, the one
Speaker 1: and only. I am Ben Boland. We're hurtling headlong toward
Speaker 1: the end of one the beginning of two. Uh. This
Speaker 1: is the time of year when a lot of people
Speaker 1: in the US, regardless of their personal religious beliefs, are
Speaker 1: living in Christmas Land. Right. We've we've just gotten over
Speaker 1: the Thanksgiving hump. Hope everybody had a good one, and
Speaker 1: now for the next. For the next few weeks, everything
Speaker 1: is gonna be Christmas. Right. It's gonna be the Mariah
Speaker 1: Carey song again, right, and all the all the old hits. Yeah.
Speaker 1: People have really strong opinions about that Mariah Carey song.
Speaker 1: Like there's some jukeboxes that won't let you play it
Speaker 1: more than once, you know, any given night. I've seen
Speaker 1: memes about it. It's very divisive. I mean it's obviously
Speaker 1: a stone called banger, But do I want to hear
Speaker 1: it like ad nauseum throughout the Christmas time? It does
Speaker 1: kind of suck some of the joy out of the
Speaker 1: song when it's beaten to death, you know. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: and television shows will have themed Christmas episodes your Saturday
Speaker 1: Night Lives, your Simpsons and so on. You will also
Speaker 1: see a lot of nostalgia, and you'll see things become
Speaker 1: singularly important, like every every parent in the audience today Again,
Speaker 1: whether or not you celebrate Christmas, you've heard the same stories.
Speaker 1: They come back, insert toy here is the new hot thing,
Speaker 1: and thus it is impossible to find, you know, an
Speaker 1: Elmo that wants you to tickle it, which no one
Speaker 1: thinks it's creepy for some reason, but everybody needs one
Speaker 1: and they did. That was a frenzy around that weird toy. Uh.
Speaker 1: It's one of those things where it's like, I think
Speaker 1: the frenzy just comes from the exclusivity, right, Like you
Speaker 1: gotta wonder is it manufactured? Do they not make enough
Speaker 1: of them on purpose? So there would be this like
Speaker 1: massive hysteria around what is ultimately a pretty obnoxious toy.
Speaker 1: The novelty of which would probably wear out pretty quick
Speaker 1: for most kids. You don't even see them around anymore,
Speaker 1: Like I've never run into one, like in a thrift
Speaker 1: store or anything, which surprising. Maybe they are covenant, maybe
Speaker 1: like people just held onto them. And and it is
Speaker 1: still continues to be an item of great pride that
Speaker 1: you that you got one, you know, yeah, like a
Speaker 1: badge of of capitalist honor, you know, like you wouldn't
Speaker 1: see a purple heartner thrift store. Maybe that's uh, maybe
Speaker 1: that is an unfair comparison spoiling, which would be sad
Speaker 1: but not. Yeah. And and so we were talking a
Speaker 1: little bit off air about different things that happened in
Speaker 1: the nostalgia wave of American Christmas. And we notice, of
Speaker 1: course that there are the same movies that pop up.
Speaker 1: People watch them almost ritualistically with their loved ones, family
Speaker 1: and friends. There's one film without the most creative name,
Speaker 1: but it's definitely a classic this time of year. It's
Speaker 1: called a Christmas Story, and the Christmas Story plot concerns
Speaker 1: the adventures of a young man named Ralphie Ralphie Parker,
Speaker 1: and a lot of stuff goes down here. It's kind
Speaker 1: of tough to spoil this one, NOL, I think because
Speaker 1: the story is so quin essentially like established culture, but
Speaker 1: we're we're using poor Ralphie as a tangent here, I
Speaker 1: believe a segway or just just kind of like a
Speaker 1: setting the stage kind of situation. You know. It's funny
Speaker 1: been um here in Atlanta, I think this might be
Speaker 1: at our neck of the woods center kind of thing.
Speaker 1: But on TBS every year, they for for many many years,
Speaker 1: they would play a Christmas story for like twenty like
Speaker 1: on a loop leading up to Christmas, like over and
Speaker 1: over and over and over again. So I'm pretty sure
Speaker 1: I've seen the entirety of a Christmas story, just not
Speaker 1: in the right order. Like I I know everything about
Speaker 1: that movie literally more more like backwards than front words,
Speaker 1: but I absolutely know everything that happened. But I don't
Speaker 1: think I've ever sat down in one go and watched
Speaker 1: a Christmas story. Oh fun. So so you have a postmodern,
Speaker 1: you have a post experience non linear. I love it,
Speaker 1: and it is ultimately a postmodern kind of story because
Speaker 1: it's a retelling of an era sort of stylized kind
Speaker 1: of fantasy version of the nineteen fifties, um, you know,
Speaker 1: with Ralphie and his brother and the you know, his
Speaker 1: father and the leg lamp that was like, what was
Speaker 1: that He got that as a prize or some sort
Speaker 1: of clearinghouse sweep steaks or something like that, this major reward.
Speaker 1: I just remember that, but I don't remember quite how
Speaker 1: he got it. Yeah, it's um, it's weird, like a
Speaker 1: love letter to this period of time, definitely through rose
Speaker 1: colored glasses. It's uh, it's believed to be set in
Speaker 1: nineteen forty, but there are a lot of anachronisms in
Speaker 1: there because it's really it's really more about the vibe,
Speaker 1: like the Norman Rockwell esque vibe of how people viewed
Speaker 1: America at the time. And it heads up, folks, this
Speaker 1: is a two part episode. This is gonna be a
Speaker 1: wild ride. We're gonna go some weird places, will return
Speaker 1: to a good place. But we are very proud of
Speaker 1: ourselves for making sure you know it's a two part episode.
Speaker 1: In advance. Thank you Max, Thank you Uh Nolan. I
Speaker 1: would like to accept this award on behalf of all
Speaker 1: the other episodes that accidentally became two parters. Major award,
Speaker 1: this major award. And there's this thing, No, there's this
Speaker 1: thing that happens there. There's so many iconic moments in
Speaker 1: a Christmas story that you almost just remember them as
Speaker 1: moments rather than like one long narrative. You know, he
Speaker 1: gets his tongue stock, he curses in front of his parents,
Speaker 1: you'll shoot your eye out, etcetera. For a big part
Speaker 1: of the movie, he has this quest two interact with
Speaker 1: his favorite radio program, the equivalent of like his favorite
Speaker 1: TV show, and his favorite radio program is something called
Speaker 1: Little Orphan Annie. Uh and Max Nolan, I have a
Speaker 1: clip of this the Little Orphan Annie radio show that
Speaker 1: we'd like to would like to just drop in play that.
Speaker 1: For us, it was the Little Church Balls Want Long?
Speaker 1: Who do you see? It's a little yesterday. Remember Mr
Speaker 1: Flint was trying to sell stock in the new Bridge
Speaker 1: to Jake at the emporium. But and he convinced Jake
Speaker 1: you ought to think the matter over before he went
Speaker 1: into debt to buy stock. But here it is the
Speaker 1: next day after school and Annie and joy of walking
Speaker 1: across the snowy field pard the river to see the
Speaker 1: new bridge. She'd see any it sure did seem good
Speaker 1: to get back to the old school again, didn't I'll
Speaker 1: say it? Did you? Gee? The kids were awful glad
Speaker 1: to see it's worth it, and I was awful glad
Speaker 1: to see them. Wow, gee, Willakers, that was an awful
Speaker 1: team Ben, Where did you dig that one up? Whole wowser? Okay,
Speaker 1: So I'm sorry, I just I think we buried the
Speaker 1: lead there little bit. She's trying to convince somebody not
Speaker 1: to go into debt to buy stock. That's that's that's
Speaker 1: the conflict, that's the central const like in this episode.
Speaker 1: This episodes from nineteen thirty six. So yeah, I didn't
Speaker 1: want to spoil the whole thing, but yeah, I'm glad
Speaker 1: that stood out to you guys as well, the concept
Speaker 1: of like what do children worry about? Yeah, so this
Speaker 1: was a theme. I mean, this is something that that
Speaker 1: played throughout the series. Um, you know, it originally was
Speaker 1: a comic strip that was based on subject matter that
Speaker 1: went even further back to a five poem called Little
Speaker 1: Orphans Annie by James Whitcomb Riley. I think it maybe
Speaker 1: it wasn't based on that exactly, but originally the comic
Speaker 1: was going to be called Little Orphan Auto Um, but
Speaker 1: a friend of the comic strip creator, Harold Gray, was
Speaker 1: convinced to change the name and the you know, the
Speaker 1: gender of the of the main protagonist to Little Orphan
Speaker 1: Annie based on the I think popularity of that poem.
Speaker 1: But it was all about like strike breaking and like
Speaker 1: it was very anti Roosevelt policies. You know, it was
Speaker 1: very interesting. And then it was like clearly you know,
Speaker 1: meant for kids, I think, but I mean adults like
Speaker 1: the Funnies too. There's a lot of an interesting kind
Speaker 1: of like buried adult messaging and like old comic strips.
Speaker 1: If you look back at the the father or the
Speaker 1: adoptive father, the figure, Yeah, it's literally named Warbucks as
Speaker 1: a surname, so that's clearly seems like a war profit
Speaker 1: here went over my head as a kid. I thought
Speaker 1: he was just wealthy, going over my head until you
Speaker 1: just pointed it up. And I didn't even think about
Speaker 1: the the not too subtle buried message their war bucks,
Speaker 1: like it was my war chests, you know, Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: exactly what it was. Um. But that transferred over to
Speaker 1: the radio show and then this was like you know
Speaker 1: the golden age of of wireless you know, the radio people,
Speaker 1: families gathering around hearing you know, the news and all
Speaker 1: of that stuff. But also these serialized drama performances, you
Speaker 1: know that that like you know, had new stories, Monster
Speaker 1: of the Week kind of things a week to week. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And here's the thing. So if you look back at
Speaker 1: this now from one, it's easy for us to go, okay,
Speaker 1: that's not necessarily controversial. There are some hidden political agendas
Speaker 1: in there. Are they a proposed to today? Maybe not exactly.
Speaker 1: And this probably goes over the heads of most children.
Speaker 1: It might surprise folks to realize that a lot of
Speaker 1: parents were squigged out by this radio program because it
Speaker 1: had a hold on their children. And when we say hold,
Speaker 1: it had the same kind of hold that a show
Speaker 1: like Breaking Bad, or The Sopranos or or The Wire
Speaker 1: a Game of Thrones would have on people. But it
Speaker 1: was a children's show and it was four kids, and
Speaker 1: it was able to direct children to do things, to
Speaker 1: push their parents for things, namely products, right to make
Speaker 1: their parents buy stuff because uh, you know, little orphan anity,
Speaker 1: just like old dirty Bastard said about Wu tang is
Speaker 1: for the kids. Parents were freaked out. They didn't appreciate
Speaker 1: all the child directed marketing. They were to the mercy
Speaker 1: of whatever these folks who created the show decided to
Speaker 1: sell absolutely and little or Finanni was also in the
Speaker 1: words of the wood Saint clani Fern, which remember nothing
Speaker 1: to with because her catchphrase was she was the spunky
Speaker 1: orphan with a heart of gold and a fast left,
Speaker 1: and that was referring to the fact that she and
Speaker 1: her dog Sandy were kind of this like almost like
Speaker 1: detective pair Like you could clearly see the influence and
Speaker 1: other pop culture pairings of like kid detectives, kind of
Speaker 1: like Scooby Doo for example, you know, clearly influenced by
Speaker 1: the pairing of you know, Annie and her dog um
Speaker 1: or things like Brain and Penny and inspector Gadget. You know,
Speaker 1: this is very much a pop culture trope that clearly
Speaker 1: got its beginnings here. But you're right, then the political
Speaker 1: you know, messaging aside, which apparently really you know, stemmed
Speaker 1: from Gray's own political views. Um many of the plots
Speaker 1: of the comics, apparently, um almost got the comic pulled
Speaker 1: from the newspapers that it ran in, Like I'm just
Speaker 1: gonna really quickly because this interesting time ran an article
Speaker 1: called the surprisingly controversial plots that almost got Little Orphan
Speaker 1: Annie axed, one of which I'm just gonna read it
Speaker 1: right from here because it's fantastic. Um. The plot takes
Speaker 1: a turn for the propagandistic when political racketeers threatened to
Speaker 1: destroy one of Daddy Warbuck's factories. To the editor of
Speaker 1: the Huntington Herald Dispatch, the rhetorics seems better suited to
Speaker 1: Ann Rand than to America's Best Love Orphan, as he
Speaker 1: describes the offending plotline per time, here's from the letter
Speaker 1: to the editor. All political leaders, and it follows every
Speaker 1: public official are at once indicted as crooks. And to
Speaker 1: accept such a sweeping indictment is to permit the creator
Speaker 1: of Little Orphan, Annie and the Chicago Tribune syndicate to
Speaker 1: attack and condemn all persons, all institutions, and all ideas
Speaker 1: save those they choose to label acceptable. And I pointed
Speaker 1: out because it's interesting because clearly the source material of
Speaker 1: this comic, or the inspiration behind it, I guess, is
Speaker 1: pretty virulently pro capitalism. It's a little interesting because it's
Speaker 1: the dude's politics seems to change a little bit as
Speaker 1: time goes on, but he ends up in a place that,
Speaker 1: while seeming to be like pro hard work and the
Speaker 1: working man and all that really kind of raises up
Speaker 1: characters like Daddy Warbucks, who are ultimately the you know,
Speaker 1: fat cats right in the factories and all of that stuff,
Speaker 1: And it takes on this kind of weird, almost propagandistic tone, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it was very randy and in its concepts, you know,
Speaker 1: just just as you said. In fact, when F. D
Speaker 1: Are was elected president in thirty two, Great appeared to
Speaker 1: kill off Warbucks, later implying that Warbucks could not coexist
Speaker 1: in the world with Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He actually killed
Speaker 1: him off in forty five, and then after the real
Speaker 1: life Roosevelt dies, Gray brings Daddy Warbucks back and he
Speaker 1: and he says in the comic strip, so how I
Speaker 1: feel that the climate here has changed since I went away?
Speaker 1: So it's like, come on, man, this is for kids.
Speaker 1: What are you doing getting in their heads this way?
Speaker 1: This is this is at best a precursor to the
Speaker 1: approach that is later perfected by a big corporation Little
Speaker 1: orphan AI. This massively successful radio program was I Kid
Speaker 1: you not. This is a true story. It was pretty
Speaker 1: much one long commercial. It was entirely sponsored by Ovaltine
Speaker 1: and the writing staff they were all advertising executives at Ovaltine.
Speaker 1: You know, for some, for some advertisers, this is like
Speaker 1: a dream you wouldn't dare to dream. The radio show
Speaker 1: existed entirely to propagate the use of Ovaltine in the
Speaker 1: American public, and it was so successful because it was
Speaker 1: a new approach. It was a new kind of media
Speaker 1: um well, not necessarily a new strategy, but it was
Speaker 1: new in terms of its target audience. And we see
Speaker 1: the dangers of this reflected today and things like um
Speaker 1: Facebook or Metaverse or whatever meta I'm supposed to call
Speaker 1: them now apparently you can see this and things like
Speaker 1: their plans to make an Instagram for children, exclusively and
Speaker 1: specifically for children. And this just shows us that there
Speaker 1: is a cyclical, continual history of media technology scares when
Speaker 1: it comes to kids, like even now, you know, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of debate about when a child should have
Speaker 1: a smartphone or when a kid should be allowed to
Speaker 1: have UM Well, nowadays, I guess to be a TikTok
Speaker 1: account because kids aren't really on Facebook unless they have
Speaker 1: to keep in touch with you know, their mom or
Speaker 1: their uncle or something. But what's startling is that it's
Speaker 1: not so surprising that these conversations always come up, but
Speaker 1: it is incredibly surprising that they are so similar from
Speaker 1: one century to the next. I mean, you and I
Speaker 1: were looking into some of this stuff and we found
Speaker 1: a great Slate article called a History of Media Technology
Speaker 1: Scares or Don't Touch that Dial by Vaughan Bell, and
Speaker 1: in this Bell points out that these concerns over like
Speaker 1: technology and how it affects it molds the young minds
Speaker 1: of children date all the way back to the birth
Speaker 1: of literacy. Was a technology that's so crazy and I
Speaker 1: love this and we're gonna get back to a Christmas
Speaker 1: story and all of the uh, you know, new fangled technology,
Speaker 1: you know as we kind of know it today, which
Speaker 1: really set the groundwork for what we know as advertising
Speaker 1: and television and commercials and all of that good stuff.
Speaker 1: But it's true, Uh, it was intensely distrusted. Socrates warned
Speaker 1: against writing itself because he thought that it would quote
Speaker 1: create forgetfulness and the learners souls. And let's remember that
Speaker 1: so much of the history and mythology of that time
Speaker 1: was passed down through the oral tradition, and it was
Speaker 1: very important memorization and all of that was such a
Speaker 1: crucial feature of that storytelling and essentially academia. So Socrates
Speaker 1: warned that it would actually corrupt the youth. He advised
Speaker 1: that children won't be able to distinguish fantasy from reality,
Speaker 1: and so it's up to parents to ensure that they
Speaker 1: only hear allegories that are deemed to be proper as
Speaker 1: opposed to quote unquote improper tales. Uh could in fact
Speaker 1: completely screw up their developmental process, you know, as their
Speaker 1: brains are developing in this crucial time. And you know,
Speaker 1: the this whole line of thinking from Socrates really did
Speaker 1: set a foundation for what we think of today as
Speaker 1: like too much screen time. You know, it's kind of
Speaker 1: evolved into that kind of thinking. Are like video games
Speaker 1: will rot your brain and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: Older generations typically worn and are suspicious of new technology,
Speaker 1: whatever it might be, whether it's um even the new
Speaker 1: type of music. You know, like to maybe our grandparents,
Speaker 1: like jazz and kind of swing music at the time
Speaker 1: would have been incredibly controversial, you know, to their parents.
Speaker 1: They would have thought of that as there's the devil's music.
Speaker 1: And nowadays, you know, with music being so all over
Speaker 1: the place, and they're being certainly some pretty extreme forms
Speaker 1: of it. Parents that maybe aren't as keyed into that
Speaker 1: kind of pop culture stuff certainly, or maybe you're a
Speaker 1: little more religious in their background certainly could look at
Speaker 1: things like slipnot or like heavier music is absolutely being demonic,
Speaker 1: you know, satanic in some way and not not to
Speaker 1: mention like corrupting like centuries ago. So when it's like
Speaker 1: I don't and music with different instruments, that's on God,
Speaker 1: Like give me Gregorian chat. Okay, back when things were good,
Speaker 1: I like this is you're you're absolutely right. And the
Speaker 1: same thing happened with television, The same thing happened with VHS,
Speaker 1: the same thing happened with dungeons and dragons. Now it's
Speaker 1: a social media technology. Yeah, now it's all about social media.
Speaker 1: And so when the radio came into play, this immediately
Speaker 1: fit the bill of a new technological threat to the
Speaker 1: minds of the young. Wireless radio was now accused of
Speaker 1: distracting children from practicing the same literacy Socrates have warned
Speaker 1: about so long ago. Radio was apparently also making children
Speaker 1: do terribly in school, and a big part of the
Speaker 1: blame fell specifically on these audio thick shin programs, which
Speaker 1: now are considered so like old timey you you find
Speaker 1: them as nostalgia clips on YouTube, or if you go
Speaker 1: into a a Cracker Barrel, which is a nostalgia based
Speaker 1: restaurant here in the US, you'll see you'll see DVDs
Speaker 1: of stuff like Little or fananim or The Shadow Knows
Speaker 1: sold in their um faux country store. But think about
Speaker 1: the alternative what it was luring kids away from. You know,
Speaker 1: they're like very strict taskmasterly like school teachers that were
Speaker 1: just kind of teaching them. They're you know, reading, writing
Speaker 1: and arithmetic, probably not with a whole lot of theatrical flare.
Speaker 1: So I mean even just the most basic kind of
Speaker 1: levels of performativeness or theatricality that they would hear on
Speaker 1: what we now you know, clock is being incredibly dated
Speaker 1: and stuffy. Radio shows would have been just like a
Speaker 1: whole new world of of of information and of just
Speaker 1: you know, and absolutely could have could have been distracting.
Speaker 1: It's described here, um in this Slate article, Um his
Speaker 1: sure you have media technology scares from the printing press
Speaker 1: to Facebook. Um As. Actually they quote a Grammophone magazine
Speaker 1: article from ninety six um and it says that children
Speaker 1: quote had developed the habit of dividing attention between the
Speaker 1: hum drum preparation of their school assignments and the compelling
Speaker 1: excitement of the loudspeaker. Yeah, play that back in your head, folks,
Speaker 1: because I I have a question, and I don't want
Speaker 1: this to be gotcha journalism or got a game show
Speaker 1: question for you guys, but Noel Max, When is the
Speaker 1: last time that you just watched a television show or
Speaker 1: a film without also being on your phone, without also,
Speaker 1: you know, working on something on your computer, Or when's
Speaker 1: the last time you listen to a song without also
Speaker 1: being on your phone or engaging with some other piece
Speaker 1: of media. That's what the grammophone is complaining about, right, Well,
Speaker 1: it's an important question, and I think the pandemic has
Speaker 1: really tipped the scales in a negative way. I mean,
Speaker 1: spent so much time just consuming media in our homes
Speaker 1: and multitasking with the subtitles on and and we have
Speaker 1: just infinite distractions at our fingertips. I recently went and
Speaker 1: saw a movie in the theater and and it kept
Speaker 1: having to fight the urge to whip out my phone.
Speaker 1: But you know that in the theater you will get
Speaker 1: shamed and and for good reason. But at home, when
Speaker 1: it's just you in charge, you can do whatever you want.
Speaker 1: And I would argue that you are not fully experiencing
Speaker 1: any of those things, you know, if you're like kind
Speaker 1: of bouncing back and forth between watching the New Dune
Speaker 1: movie while also checking the you know, doom scrolling on
Speaker 1: Instagram and also perhaps um, you know, dealing with a
Speaker 1: kid or something that's actually there in person. Okay, so
Speaker 1: for you, it was a it was a movie. It
Speaker 1: was you answer to your question was it was? It
Speaker 1: was a movie in the theater a week or so ago,
Speaker 1: I saw The French Dispatch by west Anderson. Nice Max,
Speaker 1: how about you? Yeah, I look that Noel mentioned like
Speaker 1: a movie because like when I'm watching a movie, whether
Speaker 1: it's at home or out, I will generally us watch that.
Speaker 1: But from at home, I'll take a break and go
Speaker 1: do something. But like, and I watch a lot of sports.
Speaker 1: And if I'm watching sports, I'm like have multiple games on.
Speaker 1: I will be texting people, I will be doing watch
Speaker 1: mccallough and everything else in the side. Like I never
Speaker 1: just sit down really just watch TV and watched sports.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it reminds me of there's a scene and oh, brother,
Speaker 1: where art thou Where there the group is. I think
Speaker 1: it's a brother art that where the group is singing
Speaker 1: as the Saggy Bottom Boys. And then you cut to
Speaker 1: different homes where people are listening to this song and
Speaker 1: people are just sitting there in their rooms with the
Speaker 1: radio on, just kind of nodding because they're fully they're
Speaker 1: fully engaged. And so for the Gramophones example, and I
Speaker 1: love that you bring this quote in all the Grammophones
Speaker 1: example of multitasking is interesting because they phrase it as
Speaker 1: the worst thing since unsliced bread. You know, if I
Speaker 1: could play with that cliche. So it's strange because now
Speaker 1: we see that that is normal in this age of
Speaker 1: ubiquitous information. And as we continue, we are going somewhere
Speaker 1: with this folks. We're going back to Annie. We're gonna
Speaker 1: hang out with her for a while. As we continue
Speaker 1: in this episode, it's a question that maybe you can
Speaker 1: ask yourself and your friends and your family, um kids,
Speaker 1: if you have kids, which is, how how normal is
Speaker 1: it to multitask this way? And how normal should it be? Um?
Speaker 1: It's a good question, and I think it really is
Speaker 1: at the heart of the same argument that we still
Speaker 1: make today when it comes to social media, it's too
Speaker 1: intense based on you know, for kids brains, it takes
Speaker 1: them too many different directions, and it gives them too much,
Speaker 1: too many options, and they they're not really equipped maybe
Speaker 1: to juggle all those options, just like I'm not equipped
Speaker 1: to juggle watching done uh dooms growing on Instagram and
Speaker 1: you know, pay them out with my cat. You know,
Speaker 1: I would probably pick one and roll with it. And
Speaker 1: that became the crux of the argument in the nineteen
Speaker 1: thirties as these kind of children's radio hours began to
Speaker 1: get more and more popular, and shows like specifically Little
Speaker 1: or Finanni dealt with, you know, kind of more shady
Speaker 1: aspects of of life. You know, there's like seductive villains
Speaker 1: and you know, cat burglars like you know, breaking into
Speaker 1: homes and criminals and like very unsavory types that maybe
Speaker 1: kids would have kind of been um shielded from even
Speaker 1: knowing about. Yeah, yeah, and children have a tremendous capacity
Speaker 1: for imagination and radio creates, uh, something that we still
Speaker 1: owe a lot to in the world of podcasting, which
Speaker 1: is a theater of the mind of folks. We hope
Speaker 1: that you enjoy our occasional re enactments of things on
Speaker 1: on any of the shows the three of us do
Speaker 1: because there are a lot of work, but there are
Speaker 1: a lot of fun and we quite enjoy them. Podcast
Speaker 1: making No Mistake at her best or a direct descendant
Speaker 1: from the golden age of radio. Parents were worried, like,
Speaker 1: I like that you pointed this out, man. Parents were
Speaker 1: worried that this gave kids too much to think about,
Speaker 1: to put it in really simple terms, and that it
Speaker 1: might make things that are dangerous in real life seem appealing. Right, mysterious,
Speaker 1: Edgy Cool, I love that you just said. Mysterious. Bennett
Speaker 1: reminds me of There's this amazingly hilarious and heartwarming scene
Speaker 1: in The Sopranos where Bobby bacalas kids they've lost their mother, um,
Speaker 1: and there's a whole subplot where like Janice is like
Speaker 1: trying to essentially, you know, reel them in and make
Speaker 1: become like the new mom, and she's told psychopath playing
Speaker 1: all these head games. But at one point Bobby's daughter
Speaker 1: is upset and Bobby's like, did you let her read
Speaker 1: her Nancy Drew book? So it was like she wouldn't
Speaker 1: even calm down by reading her Nancy Drew book. She
Speaker 1: said they were too mysterious. That's great, h Nancy drew, Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: like this is this is fascinating. There's a letter that
Speaker 1: one guy wrote to The New York Times with the
Speaker 1: ninety three and he described, uh, he described the delatorious
Speaker 1: effects that radio's children's hours would have on his kid.
Speaker 1: He said the adventures were all too hair raising, and
Speaker 1: he wrote, my son has never known fear. He now
Speaker 1: imagines footsteps in the dark, kidnappers looking in every quarter,
Speaker 1: a ghost a period and disappearod everywhere, and admitting their
Speaker 1: blood curdling noises, all in true radio fashion. Uh. Like
Speaker 1: he thought this was I don't know. I think a
Speaker 1: lot of kids about the experience where you see a movie,
Speaker 1: or maybe you hear a spooky campfire story and you
Speaker 1: stay up late in the night afterwards because you're worried.
Speaker 1: You know that someone in your house may have said
Speaker 1: bloody Mary three times right, or you're worried that someone
Speaker 1: made a past two um or candy Man past three.
Speaker 1: But yeah, you certainly feel compelled to do so um.
Speaker 1: You know. And in the same way, I think we've
Speaker 1: all more or less landed on like movies and video
Speaker 1: games do not serial killers create. Uh, maybe could push
Speaker 1: someone over the edge who's already you know, got serious
Speaker 1: inclinations towards that kind of behavior, or maybe they get
Speaker 1: some inspiration from a particular act they see. But in general,
Speaker 1: healthy you know, kids with the with the balanced you know,
Speaker 1: life style and and parents that are supportive or whatever
Speaker 1: typically are not going to be turned into raving psychopaths
Speaker 1: by listening to a spooky radio programmer, you know, playing
Speaker 1: Grand Theft Auto or whatever. And this argument really does
Speaker 1: go as far back as this, which is so funny
Speaker 1: considering how it really was like a total theater of
Speaker 1: the mind. So so let's get into why Little Orphan
Speaker 1: Annie specifically. Were lots of other programs You mentioned The Shadow,
Speaker 1: you know, that was a big one, Um, which was
Speaker 1: another kind of spooky masked figure fighting crime. A lot
Speaker 1: of these were like you know, pro know d C
Speaker 1: comics kind of vibes. You know, they were like a
Speaker 1: protagonist sort of like with the world against them and
Speaker 1: they were kind of trying to right wrongs and all
Speaker 1: of that stuff sort of do good y um. But
Speaker 1: Little Orphan Annie specifically was a kid with a dog
Speaker 1: um and she got the brunt of a lot of
Speaker 1: these concerns from parents. Yeah. Yeah. There was a question
Speaker 1: that a noted educator named Sidney Gruenberg asked The Times
Speaker 1: when she said, why is it that the children seemed
Speaker 1: to get their greatest pleasure from the very things which
Speaker 1: parents most deplore. That's a question people ask in the
Speaker 1: modern day. Right, you want to make something cool, have
Speaker 1: people's parents tell them it's dangerous and you shouldn't listen
Speaker 1: to it. Uh. Yeah. The program that kids loved the
Speaker 1: most and the parents hated the most was Young Ralphie's Favorite.
Speaker 1: That part of the story is true. It is Little
Speaker 1: Orphan Annie. So she battle the big evil unions, gangsters, pirates,
Speaker 1: other you know, the like the the Whitman's Sampler of
Speaker 1: ne'er do wells, scoundrels and wrap scallions. Everybody apparently listen
Speaker 1: to that show. Richard German in the Saturday Night Review
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty nine had a great line about this.
Speaker 1: He said, all people during that period, one to two
Speaker 1: budding deliquents, safecrackers, stock market manipulators or whatever, all listened
Speaker 1: to Little Orphan Annie and a group of I'm laughing
Speaker 1: just because I know this was a serious issue at
Speaker 1: the time. But tell, tell us, fellow ridiculous historians, if
Speaker 1: this does not sound a bit like overkill. Here we go.
Speaker 1: In March of nineteen thirty three, a group of concerned
Speaker 1: mothers in Scarsdale, New York, got together to protest radio
Speaker 1: shows that shattered nerves, stimulate emotions of horror, and teach
Speaker 1: bad grammar. Which was a big one. They singled out
Speaker 1: Little Orphan Annie, and he said that it was very
Speaker 1: poor because the main character, Little Orphan Any had a
Speaker 1: bad emotional effect and an unnatural voice. Exactly what don't
Speaker 1: we going with all these Verdi origons about? Exactly? And like,
Speaker 1: you know, it introduced things like slang. You know, well, gosh,
Speaker 1: she will ocurs. That's keen, you know, I mean, like
Speaker 1: I'm sure again as goofy and dated is that way
Speaker 1: of talking sounds now? Now? I bet a lot of
Speaker 1: parents really were not into that, especially teachers, you know,
Speaker 1: they were like, no, this is essentially tantamount to swearing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like in that what is that? That musical? The music
Speaker 1: man Seth McFarlane, creator Family Guy, is a great cover
Speaker 1: of it, the one where it's like P and that
Speaker 1: stands for pool and that in River City it's gonna
Speaker 1: it's gonna totally upend our way of life, you know, right,
Speaker 1: I mean Pool, You got Pool of Step one. Next thing,
Speaker 1: you know is the complete you know, crumbling of civilization ship.
Speaker 1: People will be yeah, exactly, Yeah. I want to bring
Speaker 1: that up because there's this commonality between these fears, the
Speaker 1: idea of a slippery slope. Right, it's gonna terrorize children
Speaker 1: in a way that compromises their moral standing and makes
Speaker 1: them God forbid scali wags in the future. This is
Speaker 1: what they thought was the sinister aspect of Little Orphan
Speaker 1: Annie in the beginning, and people were adopting resolutions in
Speaker 1: communities throughout the US that that wanted to fight back
Speaker 1: against what they saw as the unnatural overstimulation and thrill
Speaker 1: of children's cereals. S. E. R. I A L. S.
Speaker 1: Mainly Orphan Annie and show called Skippy, which was about
Speaker 1: a street willy city boy and it was a radio
Speaker 1: and like like Annie, it was a radio show based
Speaker 1: on a comic strip. What I what I love about
Speaker 1: this too, though, man is I don't know if you
Speaker 1: guys read a lot of young adult fiction, but I do,
Speaker 1: and there's some really dark stuff in there. We talked
Speaker 1: about roll Dall. That guy is nuts, you know, the true,
Speaker 1: the actual original Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. He's got
Speaker 1: this banger called George's Marvelous Medicine, which is all about
Speaker 1: a kid trying to poison his grandmother fatally while his
Speaker 1: parents are away shopping. It accidentally makes her giant. I've
Speaker 1: got it if you want to borrow it. It's like
Speaker 1: a quick afternoon read. But it's it's messed up. It's
Speaker 1: about him trying to unsuccessfully murder his grandmother. So there's
Speaker 1: there's already so much darkness and serious themes and like
Speaker 1: children's books and young adult content, and it may owe
Speaker 1: a lot to this period of radio drama, but what
Speaker 1: like how valid is that concern? Do we think this
Speaker 1: concern that it's just it's too much for children to
Speaker 1: hear a little orphan? It depends, right, So, like at
Speaker 1: this time, you know, radio is just starting to come
Speaker 1: to like the heartland, you know, in places where kids
Speaker 1: had to maybe do chores, you know, or it was
Speaker 1: maybe they lived in a more of an a grarian
Speaker 1: type situation. And I'm gonna go back to the the
Speaker 1: other pop culture reference you made, which is that song
Speaker 1: from the music Man trouble right here in Ritter City,
Speaker 1: River City. The lyrics are fantastic, this one verse, in particular,
Speaker 1: frittering away their noontime suppertime, short time to get the
Speaker 1: ball in the pocket, never mind getting dandelions pulled, or
Speaker 1: the screen door passed, or the beefsteak pounded, never mind
Speaker 1: pumping any water until your parents are caught with the
Speaker 1: sister and empty on a Saturday night. And that's trouble. Yes,
Speaker 1: You've got lots and lots of trouble. Um. So it's
Speaker 1: the idea of this distracting element. You could argue that maybe, yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe that maybe they did have a point, but again,
Speaker 1: it all comes down to discipline and like you know,
Speaker 1: how you balance that stuff out with your kids. You
Speaker 1: can't really blame the technology because, as we always say,
Speaker 1: you can't really put those genies back in their bottles.
Speaker 1: You can't shelter your kids on that stuff for long
Speaker 1: because then what are they gonna do. They're just gonna
Speaker 1: seek it out and and go to more underhanded lengths
Speaker 1: to kind of get at them, you know, because they
Speaker 1: they don't want to be left behind. That's that's how
Speaker 1: kids are. Um. So I think to that end. There
Speaker 1: there is a point. Is it making them, you know,
Speaker 1: into is it robbing them in some way of like
Speaker 1: brain capacity? Like I don't think so. I think time
Speaker 1: has shown that, like plenty of very intelligent people came
Speaker 1: out of this period and came out of the period
Speaker 1: that we're living in with social media. It's all about balance,
Speaker 1: and some kids can handle it better than others. And
Speaker 1: a lot of that has to do with their parents.
Speaker 1: It's true, It's true, And a lot of it has
Speaker 1: to do with the support structure and community a kid
Speaker 1: has beyond just their parents. But the parents are the
Speaker 1: principal actors here, not not the media. Uh there's also
Speaker 1: I love this slippery slope idea because it's like, ah, shucks,
Speaker 1: mom won't let me listen to a little or fananny.
Speaker 1: I guess I'm gonna read the necronomicon Like that does
Speaker 1: to me. It just doesn't. It doesn't quite compute. But
Speaker 1: they they didn't get the necronomicon in the Heartland for
Speaker 1: many more years though, so or even just like I
Speaker 1: think I'm gonna go you know, torture cats, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, I guess I'm gonna burn something. Uh.
Speaker 1: So this it's funny because, uh, there was this great
Speaker 1: line in a Smithsonian mag article about this period of
Speaker 1: hysteria and and yes, we know the problematic etymology of hysteria,
Speaker 1: but this period of panic of social outrage. In the
Speaker 1: Smithsonian mag they point out that this radio series was
Speaker 1: kind of like the Grand Theft Auto of its day,
Speaker 1: which is wild but it's but it's it's funny because
Speaker 1: this radio show for most people, I'd say these days,
Speaker 1: you when you think of or fanany you think of
Speaker 1: the musical that is, like you said, old based on
Speaker 1: the radio show that has based itself upon a comic
Speaker 1: strip that itself is based or inspired by the title
Speaker 1: from an earlier poem. And these adaptations and reimaginings aren't
Speaker 1: always the same, not the same tone that comic we
Speaker 1: were talking about earlier. It's kind of grim because grim
Speaker 1: stuff was happening in the uh in the twenties and thirties.
Speaker 1: And then the Broadway musical is super optimistic, right, you know.
Speaker 1: And I will also say that that easy Street song
Speaker 1: is pretty great. There's a lot of great songs in
Speaker 1: Annie the musical, um and I mean there's things about
Speaker 1: the movie that are pretty grim, like MS hannighan Is
Speaker 1: is incredibly portrayed by Carol Burnett, just like sopping lee
Speaker 1: drunk and like you know, again we mentioned earlier the
Speaker 1: idea of the seductive villain like she is like all
Speaker 1: you see her in her like weird kind of ninety
Speaker 1: all the time and very inappropriate. I mean, there's some
Speaker 1: pretty wild things in that movie as well. But the
Speaker 1: Broadway Musical it was relatively optimistic, you're right, the idea
Speaker 1: of Annie's getting rescued from this bad situation by Daddy Warbucks, um,
Speaker 1: and then she's able to kind of help her compatriots,
Speaker 1: you know, escape their you know, plite as well. But
Speaker 1: in general, the comic strip and then the radio show
Speaker 1: it was all about, like, you know, Annie being this
Speaker 1: kind of force of good and justice in a completely
Speaker 1: crooked and uh and negative and abusive world. And we're
Speaker 1: we're midway through this strange exploration, and I think Noel's
Speaker 1: fair to say that we've already gone to some pretty
Speaker 1: interesting unexpected spaces here. Indeed, who knows what those are.
Speaker 1: We haven't actually listened to the edit yet. We're just
Speaker 1: kind of flying blind here, but we know that we
Speaker 1: definitely touched on some interesting stuff. And now I'm drinking
Speaker 1: my ovaltine. I don't know if you see this, but
Speaker 1: I've got a big old glass of good stuff. Yeah
Speaker 1: for bones, for your bones, um, and it gives you
Speaker 1: a pep. Yes. And we will return very soon with
Speaker 1: part two of the Sinister Influence of Little Orphan Annie Uh.
Speaker 1: So everybody make sure to drink your ovaltine. I guess
Speaker 1: that's the main takeaway of our story today. And and
Speaker 1: when it comes to PEP, we always want to thank
Speaker 1: our very own PEP master one and only super producer,
Speaker 1: Mr Max Williams. Thinks also to Alex Williams, who composed
Speaker 1: the banging soundtrack that is I believe playing behind us now.
Speaker 1: One would think so many mysteries in the world of
Speaker 1: podcast production editing, but I really hope that Max uh
Speaker 1: followed the president that he has set for low these
Speaker 1: many years or months anyway, and has the music playing
Speaker 1: underneath this as we speak. PEP PEP to Christopher Haciots
Speaker 1: and Eaves Jeff Cotes, both here in spirit. Jonathan Strickland,
Speaker 1: the Quister, may your pep drained from you, sir, and
Speaker 1: and and leave you a husk of a man, and
Speaker 1: that you may never darken our doorstep again. No, that's
Speaker 1: not sure. I missed Jonathan. We gotta have him back.
Speaker 1: We don't. It's not really up to us, though, so
Speaker 1: we'll see what happens behind the curtain. He's a busy guy.
Speaker 1: Check out his show tech stuff, with new episodes coming
Speaker 1: out like every day. Wait, Ben, you're not saying that.
Speaker 1: He also like Moonlights as an another podcast teams Nemesis,
Speaker 1: are you because that would be too much for me
Speaker 1: to bear. I can't handle that, you know. I was
Speaker 1: thinking of, Uh, We've got some exciting stuff on the
Speaker 1: way early next year, folks. I was thinking of seeing
Speaker 1: if he might be a somewhat like a thematic bridge
Speaker 1: in the expanding Ridiculous Universe. But it's a it's a
Speaker 1: weird thing to sell to our colleagues, like over Ridiculous Romance.
Speaker 1: We were like, let's explain what our whole thing is
Speaker 1: with this guy. Do you want them on? You know,
Speaker 1: we're still working out negotiations are underway. Jonathan's rider is crazy,
Speaker 1: but as you said, we do love him. Shout out
Speaker 1: of course, also to Mr Casey Pegram. Isn't it weird
Speaker 1: that Jonathan only wants left foot socks and his rider.
Speaker 1: What's that about? Yeah, yeah, it's uh, you know, I
Speaker 1: gotta be honest. I've read the whole thing once, but
Speaker 1: it took all weekend. It is very specific. I don't
Speaker 1: know what happens with all. We have a pile of
Speaker 1: just right foot socks in the office. Yeah, and then
Speaker 1: in the whole whole section of this writer is just
Speaker 1: like in Cipher's like Zodiac killer type stuff. It's very odd. Hey,
Speaker 1: it takes all kinds. We've got to get a decoder badge.
Speaker 1: We all do Cliffhanger. We'll see you next time. Books.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit the I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to
Speaker 1: your favorite shows.