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. That's the man the myth
Speaker 1: Legend are one and only superproducer, Mr Max Williams. They
Speaker 1: call me Ben Noel. You and I being guys of
Speaker 1: a of a certain age, we are familiar with the
Speaker 1: triumphs and the travesties and the trials of love. Wouldn't
Speaker 1: you say, oh, in what age? Might that be bad?
Speaker 1: I don't think I've ever said my true age on
Speaker 1: the podcast, and it's impolite to be asked. It's illegal
Speaker 1: for you to ask me that I love, I love.
Speaker 1: I think you should leave now. But but yeah, we,
Speaker 1: like most people at some point in their life. I
Speaker 1: don't think it's a hot take. Are going to fall
Speaker 1: in love. And so much of human culture is built
Speaker 1: upon explorations of how to express that love right, how
Speaker 1: to how to find the one and have your cloud
Speaker 1: Atlas moment or whatever. But here in the US we
Speaker 1: all grow up with a holiday dedicated to this. Uh.
Speaker 1: If you are listening to the show the day it
Speaker 1: comes out, you deserve some congratulations. You have survived Valentine's Day,
Speaker 1: and uh, and when we were talking off air and
Speaker 1: we're like, hey, let's let's figure out a cool, a
Speaker 1: cool episode to explore Valentine's Day, we knew that you
Speaker 1: and I had to go to the experts. That's why
Speaker 1: we're over the Moon or over the weird heart shaped thing.
Speaker 1: To welcome back our returning special guests, the creators, the
Speaker 1: co host the masterminds Ofridiculous Romance, Eli and Diana Bates.
Speaker 1: Thanks for coming on the show. Guys, everybody, you know,
Speaker 1: we don't know everything about the ways of love, and
Speaker 1: we know enough to know what we don't know and
Speaker 1: to come to the experts on you know, unraveling this.
Speaker 1: Uh Freudian not was that a thing? A Gordian k
Speaker 1: nots a thing? But I went I went with Freudian
Speaker 1: not because I think that would have something to say
Speaker 1: about your not talk sheepshank kind of situation. Freudian slipknot. Yeah,
Speaker 1: oh oh my goodness, we're making magic today that we're
Speaker 1: Freudian slip not. We definitely, we definitely give our spooky masks. Yes. So,
Speaker 1: so we had such a great time when you all
Speaker 1: came over to the show, previously. Do check out that
Speaker 1: episode if you haven't yet. Ridiculous Historians, and you know,
Speaker 1: we've made no no secret about it that we're Max,
Speaker 1: Noel and I are all big, big fans of Ridiculous Romance.
Speaker 1: So get the to your podcast network or platform of
Speaker 1: choice and check out the show today. The episodes all
Speaker 1: slap at least in my opinion, and you're gonna you're
Speaker 1: gonna learn some stuff that you did not know. You're
Speaker 1: gonna learn some stuff that surprises you. And maybe the
Speaker 1: best way to make that case is to introduce you
Speaker 1: to some stuff you probably didn't know about Valentine's Day.
Speaker 1: Like I think we all have those memories from like
Speaker 1: grade school, elementary school, people would hand out Valentine's to
Speaker 1: their classmates and you kind of collected them like a
Speaker 1: Pokemon thing. Oh no, buddies, it's not even like a
Speaker 1: g I Joe one. You know, I just said, you're
Speaker 1: a real American hero. I wasn't allowed to have stuff.
Speaker 1: It was kind of violent. It did kind of glorify Wary.
Speaker 1: So that was my only Valentine And my parents said,
Speaker 1: I don't think so, which is funny because I know
Speaker 1: your parents. You know, now this is the first thing
Speaker 1: I'm going to talk to him about. I'll be like,
Speaker 1: you guys ruined his love life, gonna be like are
Speaker 1: you slandering? As other podcasts, but she's gonna say, well,
Speaker 1: your love life shouldn't have been centered around the military
Speaker 1: industrial complex. Yeah, Jo, Valentine's from my son. Yeah. But
Speaker 1: when when we talk about Valentine's Day, everybody has accepted
Speaker 1: it as just a normalized thing that happens once a year,
Speaker 1: and I think, at least for a lot of kids
Speaker 1: growing up, when you first start questioning Valentine's Day, it
Speaker 1: starts by saying, that's not what a heart looks, like,
Speaker 1: how did we get there? You know what I mean?
Speaker 1: Or like you know when you start learning about the
Speaker 1: origin of at least the word Valentine, like it's it's
Speaker 1: a cool thing, but where does it come from? Why
Speaker 1: is it not called I Love You Day or something?
Speaker 1: You know? Much more on the nose happy, I love
Speaker 1: you Day? And my girlfriend's name is Day, So I'm
Speaker 1: constantly saying I love you Day. Isn't that sweet? Every day?
Speaker 1: And I love you Day? At least one that's a
Speaker 1: good day. She has never heard any of those buns
Speaker 1: before and she's all tired of them. She's she's like,
Speaker 1: you were brilliant. You should just stand up. Oh my god, yes,
Speaker 1: and please, so Eli, this is I think. I think
Speaker 1: you're kind of first up to bat here because I
Speaker 1: don't know about I don't know about you all, but
Speaker 1: I have heard of like the legend of Saint Valentine
Speaker 1: in the Catholic Church, but I don't know anything about
Speaker 1: the guy. Did he send people cards or chocolate? A
Speaker 1: little bit? Um? Maybe we have several origin stories for St. Valentine's.
Speaker 1: There seemed to have been a number of guys named
Speaker 1: Valentine who were murdered on the fourteenth of February. Uh,
Speaker 1: just came a running trend in the third century. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there was a this this order of Belgian monks, starting
Speaker 1: with this guy Jean Boland in sixty three who went
Speaker 1: on this world tour trying to find saints and compile
Speaker 1: a book called the Acta Sanctorum or the Lives of Saints,
Speaker 1: volumes long. They wrote it right up till the nineteen
Speaker 1: forty and so they started digging through those books to
Speaker 1: try and find who was this Saint Valentine that started
Speaker 1: this whole thing. And they found three guys from the
Speaker 1: third century that we're all named Valentine or a variant thereof,
Speaker 1: who were all murdered martyr on the fourteenth of February.
Speaker 1: And uh, the first guy they had is this guy Valentinus,
Speaker 1: sometime in the mid two hundreds. All they know about
Speaker 1: him is he died in Africa with twenty four soldiers.
Speaker 1: That's all they know. They said, a lot of these
Speaker 1: saints we dug up. All we got is a name
Speaker 1: at a time of death. But it's good enough for
Speaker 1: sat that guy. But Valentinus was another guy. He was
Speaker 1: the Bishop of Tourney at only twenty one years old.
Speaker 1: And one of the stories about him it said that
Speaker 1: he heard two lovers fighting and he walked up to
Speaker 1: them and he said, hey, why don't you each hold
Speaker 1: onto this rose together by the stem and try not
Speaker 1: to prick your hands on the thorns. And so this
Speaker 1: is like a joint couple's exercise, right, hold the hold
Speaker 1: the rose together, and then talk about your problems. He's
Speaker 1: like the original relationship counselor. He was like, this is
Speaker 1: called a talking stick playing Yes, I'll be you, you
Speaker 1: be him, and he'll be me. And can you imagine
Speaker 1: the confidence, like the confidence or the the the foolish
Speaker 1: nature of saying like, hey, I'm gonna intrude in these
Speaker 1: people's relationship. I got some prop work that I think
Speaker 1: is going to be a real breakthrough for us. Hi,
Speaker 1: I'm you don't know me, but you're gonna leave very
Speaker 1: into roses like I have a standing I have a
Speaker 1: standing policy. I think a lot of our friends all
Speaker 1: have standing policies where it's like every relationship, especially romantic relationships,
Speaker 1: are sort of their own country. You can visit, but
Speaker 1: but don't think you live there, and don't start talking
Speaker 1: about how things should change that ryalize madness. So I'm
Speaker 1: glad it worked out for this guy, but that that
Speaker 1: feels risky for me. My social anxiety meter just gotten
Speaker 1: to the red hearing about that. Yeah, he was all
Speaker 1: about He said, you gotta, you know, talk about your
Speaker 1: problems together. Use I feel so instances right, he said,
Speaker 1: I feel thorns in my fingers. This like smell the
Speaker 1: beautiful flower. He's like that recruiter guy in the Squid game.
Speaker 1: You know, it's going up to random down on their
Speaker 1: luck strangers and convincing them to like play a game
Speaker 1: that that results in him slapping them in the face repeatedly.
Speaker 1: That's a little more extreme, but it still takes the
Speaker 1: same level of confidence to pull this up, pull this
Speaker 1: whole thing off. Squid game is an allegory for sure,
Speaker 1: and everybody, ye same outcome a whole bunch of tests
Speaker 1: to prove yourself, all amounting and disappointments. No one really wins.
Speaker 1: But it worked. These two. They came back to him
Speaker 1: and they said, hey, it worked, will you please marry us?
Speaker 1: And he married them. Successful marriage counseling session done and done.
Speaker 1: So try the rose game everybody, if you're having a
Speaker 1: relationship troubles, just you both grab onto like something pointy,
Speaker 1: so maybe a hot pot, you know, like cast time skillets.
Speaker 1: But this guy got around. He wandered around trying to
Speaker 1: help other couples he found. Allegedly this Christian woman named
Speaker 1: Serapia and a Roman soldier named Sabinus who wanted to
Speaker 1: get married. Sarapia's parents were against marriage, and Sabinus was
Speaker 1: forbidden because it was against the law for Roman soldiers
Speaker 1: to get married when they were about to go off
Speaker 1: and fight. They never really got a chance anyway, because
Speaker 1: Serapia got consumption got very sick. So they brought Valentino's
Speaker 1: over and asked him, you know, we we don't ever
Speaker 1: want to be separated. We want to be united in
Speaker 1: life and death. Please, And he said, okay, I'll baptize
Speaker 1: Sabinus and I'll marry you two right here. And then,
Speaker 1: as the story goes, as he was blessing them a
Speaker 1: blissful sleep enveloped their two hearts for eternity. So they
Speaker 1: just died together after he married them. I can't help
Speaker 1: but wonder if Sabinus wasn't like, no, not now eventually
Speaker 1: like a honeymoon at least, I mean, he poisoned them,
Speaker 1: right how they I don't know. I don't want to
Speaker 1: accuse a saint of murder or anything, but I guess
Speaker 1: I'm accusing saint of right, Like, how do you how
Speaker 1: did that guy? What was the canonization conversation like for that?
Speaker 1: Were they were? They? Like? Well, the thing is, yes,
Speaker 1: they died, but he did marry them first, and we
Speaker 1: were super into that idea, so heed them. So they
Speaker 1: went to heaven technically better off. So and this is
Speaker 1: back when you could you could just like marry people
Speaker 1: if you wanted, right, didn't have all the paperwork today. No, yeah,
Speaker 1: you just get sign your certification online and you're good
Speaker 1: to go. Yeah, less than an hour, ten minutes. I
Speaker 1: got one more valentinous here, also in the third century,
Speaker 1: and this guy was arrested for being Christian and he
Speaker 1: was he was like forgiven and put into the custody
Speaker 1: of some fancy rich dude. And I'm thinking about like
Speaker 1: the Seinfeld Butler plot line, like you are sentenced to
Speaker 1: go live and work for this guy to buttle. But
Speaker 1: that might be my one of my favorite verbs. Good, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what butler does. And it's a very vague, it's
Speaker 1: just butling. You know, this has nothing to do with
Speaker 1: that anything. But I did you know our shows lead
Speaker 1: us to these weird research rabbit holes, right, And one
Speaker 1: time I can't remember how this came about, but one
Speaker 1: time I realized that I had lost hours learning the
Speaker 1: process to become a butler. Like there are schools of butling. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and uh, and they're apparently quite prestigious, which I didn't know.
Speaker 1: And also just to add to this, uh, butlers make
Speaker 1: a lot of money, like Mr Belvidere. Mr Belvidere was
Speaker 1: just living there because he wanted to. He could afford
Speaker 1: his own place. That's so true. I did one back
Speaker 1: in my serving days. I did catering jobs sometimes and
Speaker 1: I had to work a really fancy place and they
Speaker 1: had a butler, so it was like kind of cool
Speaker 1: to see one in action and like managing the household.
Speaker 1: And I don't know, I was just like, oh, you
Speaker 1: have a lot more than I to do. Then I
Speaker 1: would have thought, I guess the silver tray butler exactly
Speaker 1: the little males? Did he were you like beneath him?
Speaker 1: Was he like he was this is my turf, you
Speaker 1: said at the very end of the table. No, he
Speaker 1: was actually pretty nice. I think, yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 1: It seems like it takes a unique personality to be
Speaker 1: a butler or be a saint. Although eli after this
Speaker 1: now I'm starting to question a lot of like st
Speaker 1: to flexes, which also, that's a great idea for an episode,
Speaker 1: isn't it. I think so? I mean what st Hood
Speaker 1: is the ultimate flex, especially if you really flex it,
Speaker 1: like I'm saying, man um. But the question, I mean,
Speaker 1: I wish of these mysterious figures is most likely to
Speaker 1: be the fabled Saint Valentine that like the holiday is
Speaker 1: it the rose guy like. I think it's this last guy,
Speaker 1: because he had a real like saint moment where the
Speaker 1: man who was looking after in, the man whose house
Speaker 1: he was imprisoned in, basically had a daughter who was blind.
Speaker 1: And this guy, Valentina's, he walked around and he just
Speaker 1: would not shut up about Christianity, just kept talking about it.
Speaker 1: And eventually this man, a Sterious who whose house he
Speaker 1: was in, said all right, look, I'll tell you what.
Speaker 1: I will straight up convert to Christianity if you can
Speaker 1: cure my blind daughter and restore her vision. But if not,
Speaker 1: you have to shut up about it, okay. And so
Speaker 1: Valentina's it's his hands over her eyes, said a little prayer,
Speaker 1: and her vision came back, and so he baptized the
Speaker 1: whole family. You know, Sterious said all right, I'm a
Speaker 1: man of my word, so all right, I'll convert. So
Speaker 1: he baptized the whole family. The Emperor Gothicus found out
Speaker 1: about it, was super mad and a right lived up
Speaker 1: to his name too. Uh. He went ahead and sentenced
Speaker 1: Valentinus to death. And Valentinus sent the blind girl a note,
Speaker 1: and you know, just a lovely note. I'm glad I
Speaker 1: was able to help you, thank you for converting to Christianity,
Speaker 1: and he signed it from your Valentino, so that sort
Speaker 1: of became maybe the origin of the Valentine from your Valentine. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so I think maybe he's the closest. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: you're onto something. And we see this a lot in
Speaker 1: the world of like myth evolving into history. Uh, We're
Speaker 1: often looking at an amalgamation of possible real life people
Speaker 1: who later became the mythic thing, right, Like the origin
Speaker 1: of Santa Claus also has some relationship to the world
Speaker 1: of sainthood. But this this alone doesn't explain Valentine's Day.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's the coffee. But I feel like I'm accellently
Speaker 1: getting sort of hardline on this because for decades I
Speaker 1: haven't really understood what the heck is going on Valentine's Day.
Speaker 1: I know you're supposed to do it. I know you
Speaker 1: get in trouble if you don't do it. So I've
Speaker 1: like I'm conforming, but I'm kind of phoning it in,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, Like, why why can't it
Speaker 1: just be June? Why can't I just give you flowers?
Speaker 1: Sometimes at this point it feels like a greeting car
Speaker 1: on holiday like day, like almost like the modern version
Speaker 1: of it that we know. It's fully a commercialized kind
Speaker 1: of fabrication of industry. It's funny reading about these saints
Speaker 1: because I mean, you think the full name is Saint
Speaker 1: Valentine's Day. But I also never ever, ever associated with
Speaker 1: a Christian holiday, like you know you do Christmas. Well,
Speaker 1: they do call that big gangster massacre the St. Valentine's
Speaker 1: Day massacre, but that's honestly the only time I ever
Speaker 1: hear anyone attaching saints to Valentine. Yeah, and uh, this
Speaker 1: this is interesting too. We're talking about the role of
Speaker 1: Christianity because, as you know, folks, historically Christianity, regardless of denomination,
Speaker 1: has been pretty hyped about like converting other people to Christianity,
Speaker 1: and as we see in the case of Christmas, religious
Speaker 1: conflict plays a role in the origin story of Valentine's
Speaker 1: Day as well. This I didn't know this is like
Speaker 1: gothicis level metal, And I was not aware of this
Speaker 1: until like I had a and Nold you basically confirmed it.
Speaker 1: What we call Valentine's Day like the predecessor used to
Speaker 1: be way more um horny. Yeah, we're a family show
Speaker 1: and I apologies to that person. I had to improvise
Speaker 1: the tennis explanation if you're listening, but thank you so much. Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's like it's it's much it's um much
Speaker 1: less kind of airbrush. Right. This was not even a
Speaker 1: Christian festival originally, Is that correct? No, it was super pagan.
Speaker 1: And then just you know, credit where credit is due.
Speaker 1: Diana found this amazing story, um, and I was not
Speaker 1: personally familiar with them, doing some additional reading on it,
Speaker 1: and it's cool and it involves like wolves and you know,
Speaker 1: weird naked rituals and like milk soaked pieces of cloth
Speaker 1: used to wipe off blood. I mean, that's got all
Speaker 1: the hits. Where's day exactly? It's called it's called looper
Speaker 1: collar or lupercalia rather, and you might recognize the prefixed looper,
Speaker 1: you know, which is a wolf kind of situation. It's
Speaker 1: an ancient pagan festival where a goat, several goats, and
Speaker 1: a dog were sacrificed and then the goat was slaughtered
Speaker 1: or or you know, butchered rather. Uh, the hide was
Speaker 1: then dipped in the sacrificial blood and passed around. In
Speaker 1: various accounts of it, and some accounts that you involves
Speaker 1: gently slapping women with the bloody hides, and others it's
Speaker 1: more like whipping women's thighs as they wail in agony
Speaker 1: and the men, the presumably full nude are cackling with ecstasy. Uh.
Speaker 1: Super weird. Um. It's supposedly was meant you encourage fertility
Speaker 1: in the coming year for the women on the receiving
Speaker 1: end of the bloody hide slappings. Um. And if they
Speaker 1: were already pregnant, it was like, you know, gonna would
Speaker 1: bode well for the survival of the child, because, as
Speaker 1: we know, surviving childbirth in those days, in ancient times
Speaker 1: was not a done deal. Mental Flaws has a really
Speaker 1: great article. You know, it definitely still isn't, but back
Speaker 1: then it was absolutely a dice roll, so you needed
Speaker 1: all the help you can get, like you know, from
Speaker 1: the gods. Mental Flaws has a really great article breaking down, um,
Speaker 1: a lot of the different aspects of uh Lupercalia by
Speaker 1: Austin Thompson. Eight facts about Lupercalia, the ancient festival full
Speaker 1: of weapons and ritual sacrifice. So let's see the origins, right,
Speaker 1: So Lupercalia was actually I believe the wolf that Romulus
Speaker 1: and Remiss, the you know mythical founders of rome Um
Speaker 1: suckled from they were raised by this she wolf uh
Speaker 1: literally nursed by the she wolf, and and this myth
Speaker 1: would would trace back to sixth century b c. E.
Speaker 1: It's a you know, ancient Roman legend um. King Amulius
Speaker 1: ordered Romulus and Remus, who were his nephews, and of
Speaker 1: course they were twins and considered to be the founders
Speaker 1: of rome Um, to be thrown into the river Tiber
Speaker 1: to drown, and that was in retribution for something their
Speaker 1: mother did. She apparently broke a vow of celibacy. So
Speaker 1: I'm not sure why they get punished for that. That's heavy, man,
Speaker 1: it's like very yeah, twisted, I guess. I guess he
Speaker 1: was like, I'll hit her where it really hurts. Yeah,
Speaker 1: kill our children together. Yeah, super super weird. But you know,
Speaker 1: this is the time of rulers names like Gothicus, so
Speaker 1: our Gothica. Whatever, what are you gonna do? You're gonna
Speaker 1: expect some some some nutballs in here. So we've got
Speaker 1: this servant though that takes pity on them, that's sort
Speaker 1: of you know, the size is gonna spirit them away
Speaker 1: placed them in a basket. It's almost like a it's
Speaker 1: you know, there's just so many parallels in religious mythology.
Speaker 1: My ma, I'm sorry. I'm not being dispectful to anyone
Speaker 1: that believes the Bible verbatim. I just tend to prefer
Speaker 1: referring to it as mythology or like origin stories and
Speaker 1: things like that. But like the story of Moses being
Speaker 1: placed in in a basket, you know, to be protected
Speaker 1: from the Pharaoh who was gonna have him killed or
Speaker 1: he you know, or whatever, it's very similar story because
Speaker 1: this this servant takes pity on Romulus and Remus, knowing
Speaker 1: what their faith is going to be um, and instead
Speaker 1: of throwing them into the river, he puts them in
Speaker 1: a basket on the river. And apparently the river god
Speaker 1: carries the basket down river to a fig tree where
Speaker 1: it gets caught in the branches and then catches the
Speaker 1: attention of a she wolf who is is in this
Speaker 1: den at the base of a hill called Palatine hill
Speaker 1: um and that is where Rome was founded. So later,
Speaker 1: after being raised and suckled by the she wolf, shepherd
Speaker 1: and his wife adopt Romulus and Remus, and they become
Speaker 1: shepherds they actually learned that the trade of shepherd try
Speaker 1: um whatever, and they take revenge and kill that uncle
Speaker 1: who ordered their death. Then they went and found the
Speaker 1: wolf that nurtured them, and they named it Looper cow Um,
Speaker 1: and that's the origin story of Lupercalia. It's a little
Speaker 1: weird though, because there are a lot of like debates
Speaker 1: around several key factors in this, uh, in this ritual celebration.
Speaker 1: One is how much nudity was there. There's a lot
Speaker 1: of there's a lot of references like the word nude, nu, nudie,
Speaker 1: nude or news rather appears apparently a lot in the
Speaker 1: you know accounts of this from the early days, but
Speaker 1: there are just there are kind of just grepancies into
Speaker 1: what that actually means, but whether it means naked or
Speaker 1: just having quote having one's main garment removed. There was
Speaker 1: there There was a race involved in this too. There
Speaker 1: were runners. This is like almost like an athletic competition,
Speaker 1: like feats of strength and um. That could have referred
Speaker 1: to the runners, you know, stripping down to their goat
Speaker 1: skin like running attire, you know, yeah, listening abs and
Speaker 1: romans the sun um. But then there are a lot
Speaker 1: of other writers that are very explicit and mentioning how
Speaker 1: you know nudity was a big part of the festival. Um,
Speaker 1: but it is a question much in the same way
Speaker 1: that the nature of St. Valentine is a question how
Speaker 1: much whether this is like an orgy type situation or
Speaker 1: whether it was just like, uh, you know, of a
Speaker 1: friendly game of shirts and skins, you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: It's good Almost every every myth I learned, my first
Speaker 1: question is always how much nudity wants there? How much
Speaker 1: nudity there? Yeah, we're getting into it. Look, people back then,
Speaker 1: we're the same as people today. There there are certain
Speaker 1: things that just make it into the headlines, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean. Well, if if I want to sound
Speaker 1: really smart this Valentine's Day, I'll say, send nudists fantastic
Speaker 1: You're gonna get lots of bites on that one. Be careful.
Speaker 1: I would never actually ask for nudists from any if
Speaker 1: you get If you get a question like that, for me,
Speaker 1: it is spam. I've been hacked, and please please no
Speaker 1: unsolicited newdus. The last thing and then this really you know,
Speaker 1: kind of connects it back to your story, you like,
Speaker 1: is that's not even clear? If is that anything to
Speaker 1: do with Valentine's Day? You might have been asking yourself
Speaker 1: that question the whole time. Um, it is thought to
Speaker 1: be sort of a proto Valentine's Day thing. Uh. It
Speaker 1: Actually it went on for quite some time. It went
Speaker 1: on until um at least four ninety four c E.
Speaker 1: When there was a letter from Pope Galacious, which is
Speaker 1: what goo Galoshows were named after. It is absolutely true, um,
Speaker 1: he wrote. He wrote this letter criticizing Christians participating in
Speaker 1: this clearly super pagan and horny weird ritual. He commented
Speaker 1: on how in the old days nobles would run the
Speaker 1: race of of Lubricali and strike naked matrons. Um, I
Speaker 1: guess that refers to the women. And this I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: this is again I'm cripping from from mental plus here
Speaker 1: a little. But this is the quote, he said. Quote,
Speaker 1: your own bashfulness ought itself to teach you that the
Speaker 1: lupricalia is a public crime, not salvation and the cult
Speaker 1: of the divinity, regarding which no wise man would blush,
Speaker 1: rather than lupricalia as an instrument of depravity, which your mind,
Speaker 1: in testimony against itself, blushes to fulfill. Yeah, yeah, that's true. Too,
Speaker 1: because we see this sort of I think it's a
Speaker 1: pretty common misconception, right that you'll you'll see arguments that
Speaker 1: seems pretty certain that luperca is directly tied one to
Speaker 1: one with what we call Valentine's Day. But I think
Speaker 1: I had looked at the same mental Flaws article as well. No,
Speaker 1: it looks like there's that that letter is key, and
Speaker 1: it looks like maybe the at the very least, the
Speaker 1: relationship between these two events got wildly exaggerated over the
Speaker 1: great game of telephone that is history, right, It's like,
Speaker 1: and then why do we lose all the metal stuff
Speaker 1: if they are related? You know what I mean? Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: I think the implication is that that poed Pope replaced
Speaker 1: Lupercalia with this other festival um, which may or may
Speaker 1: not have been St. Valentine's Day um. But but there's
Speaker 1: really no evidence to support that. Uh. There's a scholar
Speaker 1: by the name of Jack Rock who says that no
Speaker 1: point does Glaciers speak of compromise or of adapting any
Speaker 1: Pagan customs. It just drives me crazy. He says that
Speaker 1: the Roman story keeps circulating and circulating. They're also very
Speaker 1: popular legends about lupercalia, the feature women or young girls
Speaker 1: writing their names on pieces of paper that would be
Speaker 1: drawn from a box by boys. Um, those are, according
Speaker 1: to many scholars, also kind of fabrications. Good because they
Speaker 1: sound like key parties. Yeah, it legit like they were
Speaker 1: matched up by lottery. That's so weird. And I guess
Speaker 1: some of them stuck, or the legend is that some
Speaker 1: of them would stick. And that's right, that's right, okay, okay,
Speaker 1: But I don't know. Feel feels like a lot of
Speaker 1: this is is bs uh. I don't think we're any
Speaker 1: closer understanding the true origin of Valentine's Day. Also interesting
Speaker 1: to me, the Pope came in and was like this,
Speaker 1: this is shameful, this is lustful. You shouldn't be doing this,
Speaker 1: but made no mention of like please stop whipping women
Speaker 1: with bloody goat hides the problem. That's not the problem.
Speaker 1: Like the dogs bung and around Dong ping pong party
Speaker 1: part I could come off with, I'm wanna rescind my
Speaker 1: earlier request to celebrate the old pagan festival. The only
Speaker 1: woman present, I mean you lost sacrifice? Oh no, no,
Speaker 1: it was several goats and a dog. Right, Oh yeah, man,
Speaker 1: forget it. See like with the goat. Look, I respect
Speaker 1: other people's cultures, and you know, my my diplomatic question
Speaker 1: is like, what are the goats personalities? Are they like jerks?
Speaker 1: Are they? Are they goat criminals? You know? Because in
Speaker 1: that case, fine, but I can't imagine just killing a
Speaker 1: dog man I love dogs, didn't do it somewhat unrelated. Um,
Speaker 1: I've been I've become obsessed with this film. I've been
Speaker 1: like going down this Criterion collection rabbit hole. I got
Speaker 1: the channel and I'm just like obsessively just devouring all
Speaker 1: this weird classic art cinema. And there's this film called
Speaker 1: The Color of Pomegranates that's, um, it's like, I'm not Iranian,
Speaker 1: um Armenian film. And it's the story of this poet
Speaker 1: who almost looks like this kind of christ like figure.
Speaker 1: And I only bring it up because it has this
Speaker 1: kind of ritualistic quality to if you've ever seen any
Speaker 1: movies by Jodorowski, everything's kind of a weird tableau of like,
Speaker 1: you know, different iconography and like, you know, all these
Speaker 1: these characters there's kind of doing things in a very
Speaker 1: wide field of frame, and there are just some things
Speaker 1: in this where I'm like, is this really a ritual
Speaker 1: that happened that's like historically accurate or is this just
Speaker 1: some weird styled on psychedelic version of something that seems
Speaker 1: from remotely plausible. And that's how this whole goat ritual
Speaker 1: strikes me. It's like there's parts of it that seemed
Speaker 1: like okay, I can see that, but like why the
Speaker 1: slapping and then the milk detail, Like who came up
Speaker 1: with these ideas and where do they come? Fared? It
Speaker 1: was a weird epic drinking party, and when a bunch
Speaker 1: of people get together and they drink a lot, then
Speaker 1: increasingly absurd stuff starts to sound like a good idea. Right,
Speaker 1: this is this is like a hold my beer celebration,
Speaker 1: you know what I meant. We just had an episode
Speaker 1: come out on our show of where a guy married
Speaker 1: his goat and he was thrilled about it, very thrilled.
Speaker 1: Good goats, good goats, hard to find. Yeah, said that down.
Speaker 1: It was nicely because he said, the goats the best
Speaker 1: wife he's ever had, and he's had four before her.
Speaker 1: Because the goat can't talk and doesn't ask for money
Speaker 1: to go shopping, can't get pregnant, and Also, she can't talk.
Speaker 1: He said it, so the implication is that he's he's yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: GA consummated it. Okay, Um, well, apparently the priest only
Speaker 1: agreed because there would be no sex involved. It was
Speaker 1: just a companionship thing. But I was like, that sounds
Speaker 1: like something you tell the priest to, Like me, Why
Speaker 1: don't even bother marrying understand? I don't know. Does he
Speaker 1: get shaken down at the petting zoo? Does he have
Speaker 1: to be able to be sorry? I'm taking by the
Speaker 1: night you wanted to make an honest goat of her?
Speaker 1: I guess we go? There we go, So Ben, you're
Speaker 1: the punt goat my friend. It's too kinds all his
Speaker 1: wives she was so um, you know, I guess do
Speaker 1: what makes you have? Okay, I'm gonna have to just
Speaker 1: listen to that episode I haven't heard yet within reason,
Speaker 1: you know, with that one, because it's like the animals
Speaker 1: don't exactly say yes yeah uh. There's also I just
Speaker 1: want to shout out there is also a most Beautiful
Speaker 1: Goat contest that takes place in the Middle East. Um
Speaker 1: the winner. The winner that I saw was a Damascus goat,
Speaker 1: which looks very messed up if you get a chance
Speaker 1: to google it. No, I I inflicted that picture on
Speaker 1: you in the past. Another one, another one. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: we know that. Oh yeah, I know those goats. It's
Speaker 1: got like a oh god. You know what this goat
Speaker 1: reminds me of is this. It looks like a shadow puppet.
Speaker 1: You're making a guerrilla shadow puppet on the wall, Like, sorry,
Speaker 1: please go ahead. No. Do you remember in Willow when
Speaker 1: they killed the troll and threw it into the river
Speaker 1: and then it grew into that giant monster head look
Speaker 1: remarkably like this goats very sloping. It's the most sloping
Speaker 1: brow I've ever seen. And the eyes are like like
Speaker 1: iguana eyes. It was like one on either side. Like well,
Speaker 1: that was at least once or twice decreed the most
Speaker 1: beautiful goat in the world. Uh. The fact that they're
Speaker 1: using beautiful to describe the contest cheek there, I think, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't know, but they're serious. Look, beauty is in
Speaker 1: the horizontal pupil i of the beholder. Yes, yes, and
Speaker 1: we know that, so we know that psychologically for human beings,
Speaker 1: when you are experienced affection, when you're experiencing amorous love, right,
Speaker 1: so romantic love, not just like, hey, I really think
Speaker 1: my mom and dad are cool or something like that,
Speaker 1: or I like my siblings. When you have when you
Speaker 1: are in the midst of that honeymoon period, you're are painted,
Speaker 1: your heart is in your chest, You've got a crush,
Speaker 1: and the whole world gets just a little bit more
Speaker 1: exciting and things are a little bit more high stakes.
Speaker 1: You start to realize, or I think people realize in
Speaker 1: retrospect that maybe their perceptions were a little skewed, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. Like you, that's why we call
Speaker 1: it the honeymoon period. After you've been in a relationship
Speaker 1: for a while and and you know each other very well,
Speaker 1: then you start to acknowledge the ideosyncrasies and the warts.
Speaker 1: But everybody was aware of the idea of being what
Speaker 1: we call head over heels, and they were so aware
Speaker 1: of this in ancient times that they made a mascot
Speaker 1: for it. They were like, what's the best way to
Speaker 1: express that sensation of love to embody it? It should
Speaker 1: be a sexy baby that shoots you with it, you know, arrows.
Speaker 1: And everyone was like, Everyone's like, nailed it, dude, We're done.
Speaker 1: This is great. That's our next thing. That's something Diana,
Speaker 1: you had some great research on this. It is something
Speaker 1: that had always kind of confused me. And if I'm
Speaker 1: being candid, no judgment, it creepy out just a little bit.
Speaker 1: We're talking about Cupid. Cupid, Cupid. You know, we all
Speaker 1: we don't know Cupid. It's like a cherubic looking little
Speaker 1: creature that is a naked or mostly or nudice baby
Speaker 1: that has tiny wings and it has usually like a
Speaker 1: very adorable bow and arrow. Yeah, the Cupid we know,
Speaker 1: and this is like this guy's time to shine this week.
Speaker 1: As as the episode is playing, the Cupid that we
Speaker 1: know is totally ripped off from the Romans by the Greeks,
Speaker 1: which is like tail as old as time at this point.
Speaker 1: They just ran through Grecian mythology and we're like, I
Speaker 1: kind of change the names, you know, how like how
Speaker 1: like there's arrow in d c and then there's Hawkeye
Speaker 1: in Marvel, and everybody's just sort of like pretending those
Speaker 1: were original ideas. So so that's what we're at with Cupid.
Speaker 1: H He Also, the idea of Cupid comes from the
Speaker 1: Greek myth of arrows e r o s dot arrows,
Speaker 1: because that would make too much sense, I guess. Uh,
Speaker 1: the the picture that we have actually become, it has
Speaker 1: a story behind it. So Cupid was regarded as the
Speaker 1: child of some divine couple, some supernatural couple, and the
Speaker 1: story changes. Sometimes it's like Heaven and Earth. Sometimes it's
Speaker 1: Aries and Aphrodite. But he used to be not a
Speaker 1: baby Arrows. The original Arrows was you know, kind of cut,
Speaker 1: you know. He he he put in his app day right,
Speaker 1: and that like like a like a like a buff
Speaker 1: baby like in that I think you should leave sketches.
Speaker 1: Look at a little karba beef. That's a buff baby,
Speaker 1: right he was. He was like a handsome dude who
Speaker 1: later got infantalized, you know, and and turned into this um,
Speaker 1: this less saucy deity uh k of a cherub. Right
Speaker 1: is a cherub. Yeah, he's cherubic. So he also didn't
Speaker 1: always just have the little love zappy arrows. He had
Speaker 1: golden arrows that would make you fall in love. But
Speaker 1: if you caught him on a bad day, he had
Speaker 1: lead arrows to make you, you know, just a pill
Speaker 1: to people and or like poison you to death, I mean,
Speaker 1: or if right, And so this this made him somewhat
Speaker 1: of a trickster fer. This also made him an agent
Speaker 1: of chaos, and Greeks wanted to make the guys seem
Speaker 1: a little more friendly back when he was Arrows. So
Speaker 1: they started saying, Okay, let's I don't know a better
Speaker 1: way to say it. The Greeks started propagating the story
Speaker 1: with some changes, and they said, basically, we're going to
Speaker 1: make Cupid or Arrows as they called him, a goon.
Speaker 1: So he has some powers, but he is, uh, he's
Speaker 1: kind of childlike. He's a real mama's boy, right, and
Speaker 1: and this is something you found, Diana, and then uh,
Speaker 1: that concept to make him to like rebrand him as
Speaker 1: a little bit more approachable. Let's lean into the love
Speaker 1: stuff and lean away from his like hate mongering power
Speaker 1: set and h. And then as time continues, Renaissance painters,
Speaker 1: you know, who were just so like annoyingly into ancient Greece,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, And they're like everything reminds
Speaker 1: them of ancient Greece, but at the same time they're
Speaker 1: taking a lot of liberties with their imagining. So they're
Speaker 1: the ones kind of like how Coca Cola made the
Speaker 1: version of Santa Claus that Americans are familiar with Renaissance
Speaker 1: painters said, Okay, he's childlike, let's make him speaking a
Speaker 1: sexy baby, you know. And that's where you see all
Speaker 1: these paintings of Arrows as Cupid who is like a
Speaker 1: well fed boy being polite, a well fed boy who
Speaker 1: has a bow and arrow. But now they just now
Speaker 1: they just create love. Now he's like a care bearer. Okay,
Speaker 1: and I can always love you want, not love you
Speaker 1: don't want another part because I think Arrows would make
Speaker 1: you fall in love like unrequited or as a right.
Speaker 1: This Cupid only ever does what you want. I think
Speaker 1: is part of it's very harmless. Yes, yeah, it's it's
Speaker 1: a newer, friendlier Cupid. And I love the point you
Speaker 1: make there, because yeah, Arrows was a a trickster and
Speaker 1: through the lens of myth. That's actually that's actually really
Speaker 1: interesting way to explore the problems of romantic love, you know,
Speaker 1: like there are people who have that I wish I
Speaker 1: could quit you moment all the time. And to be
Speaker 1: able to personify that is first it makes people feel
Speaker 1: a little less terrible about themselves because it's like, it's
Speaker 1: not me, it's that baby that I saw flying around earlier, baby, baby,
Speaker 1: we'll get out of my mind. Usually full nude or
Speaker 1: just draped with some sort of ribbon that's obscuring us. Yeah, carefully. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but a little red butt poking right out. He's got
Speaker 1: a ruddy booty. Yeah. This is uh, yeah, he's that's
Speaker 1: what we're talking about. He's a great example of nudis right.
Speaker 1: He's doesn't have a main garment. But I like I
Speaker 1: like hardcore and Newdots because it just sounds really holy.
Speaker 1: That sounds good too. Yeah. So where does this take us?
Speaker 1: There are all sorts of stories featuring Cupid. The comic
Speaker 1: book analogy holds, I would say, because you know, every
Speaker 1: every member of a superhero team gets their own spinoff
Speaker 1: series at some point in the world of comics and
Speaker 1: probably increasingly in the world of Marvel films. But you
Speaker 1: see him have run ins with bees during his time
Speaker 1: as a honey thief. He's associated with dolphins. He likes
Speaker 1: to ride dolphins. Uh, and and he got his character
Speaker 1: or I guess I couldn't. If I could, I guess
Speaker 1: I would. I feel like it would be Yeah, if
Speaker 1: it was like a game time decision, you know, I'm
Speaker 1: if I'm drowning and a dolphin comes up and offers
Speaker 1: to save me. As I guess that's how I would
Speaker 1: end up doing it. Go it. Remember that Sega game
Speaker 1: Echo of the Dolphins. It was really depressing. It was
Speaker 1: about like the environment just deteriorating, and not only this
Speaker 1: one dolphin could save us with the power of dolphin
Speaker 1: love and sonar and a really sad soundtrack. M And
Speaker 1: the way I played that game, I was not going
Speaker 1: to save the world from It was hard, remember, very hard,
Speaker 1: all of these. So many of those, like well intentioned
Speaker 1: ecology oriented video games, were unfairly difficult. Like Captain Planet
Speaker 1: was the worst. You probably couldn't they would, you would
Speaker 1: get No one's ever beat them, and if you did,
Speaker 1: they were like, actually didn't. It all requires personal changes
Speaker 1: that are going to be very hard. The real winner
Speaker 1: in this game is recycling, right, like that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: But but when we get to when we get to
Speaker 1: the modern Cupid, which you have probably seen in the
Speaker 1: days leading up to this week, and you'll probably see
Speaker 1: them in discount shelves at your local pharmacy or grocery
Speaker 1: store whatever. Um, we're pretty lucky to have the version
Speaker 1: of Cupid we have now for a time, Cupid was
Speaker 1: the victim of character assassination medieval mythographers. That's right, Christianity's
Speaker 1: coming back. We didn't drop it, medieval mythography, mythographers. We're
Speaker 1: trying to adapt these Greco Roman myths to fit into
Speaker 1: the world view of Christianity at the time, and they
Speaker 1: ended up paying them as a demon, demon of fornication. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: and they said, you know, he's uh, he's seductive, but
Speaker 1: he's malicious. He exploits your desires. He's like hanging out
Speaker 1: with him as a gateway drug descent, and you can't ever, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can't trust him. He's got a depraved, perverse mind. Uh,
Speaker 1: and you have to show him. You have to show
Speaker 1: that he's naked because he's wild and unreliable, and he is.
Speaker 1: His head is filled with lust. He is a rational
Speaker 1: man boy who is ruining the world because you can't
Speaker 1: just keep it together. Luckily that faded out over time,
Speaker 1: and now we have this more again, this more sanitized
Speaker 1: version that people people think of as kind of a
Speaker 1: mascot for Valentine's State. He's not a main character mascot
Speaker 1: the way that Santa is for Christmas. But I would
Speaker 1: argue that he's the closest thing to a mascot Valentine's
Speaker 1: Day has, and I think he's ready for a reboot,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, I don't know, you know
Speaker 1: where we take it. Franchise of Films, Cinematic Universe, crass,
Speaker 1: there you go, all the many faces of Cupid. I
Speaker 1: was just thinking about how the you know, when the
Speaker 1: Romans took over the myth from the Greeks, it was
Speaker 1: basically there soft reboot of cubid. Kevinist Vigus comes in
Speaker 1: and says, you know, market research says, they don't like,
Speaker 1: they don't like these lead arrows anymore, so let's make
Speaker 1: them all happy and make the shape like big pink
Speaker 1: hearts of the era. Yeah, and then someone's like, you
Speaker 1: know who I think is really hot? Someone else goes
Speaker 1: babies right, and they're like, yeah, Like, how do you
Speaker 1: know you were in the right room for that one?
Speaker 1: I guess you could be in a wrong room for
Speaker 1: that one. But I've gotta I gotta set up here
Speaker 1: for our next exploration here. Obviously, Valentine's Day got associated
Speaker 1: with Cupid because it's a personification, because he's on brand
Speaker 1: with falling in love with people and all the mysteries
Speaker 1: of how that works. I also, as paper products get
Speaker 1: mass produced and as postage costs drop, Cupid is getting
Speaker 1: slapped on Valentine's Day cards. When I think of you,
Speaker 1: the you know, the implication is I feel like, uh,
Speaker 1: shot through the heart with affection. Uh. And and there's
Speaker 1: still there's something else, subtle that happened there, which is
Speaker 1: that in the original story of Cupid, it wasn't always
Speaker 1: like um, it wasn't always consensual love. It might be
Speaker 1: something that creates an unpleasant situation, and that brings us
Speaker 1: to our last story. This is something I have not
Speaker 1: heard about. But when I first read the phrase vinegar
Speaker 1: Valentine's I thought, just tell someone you don't like them.
Speaker 1: You know. What made me think of it made me
Speaker 1: think of dying Easter eggs for some reason, because you
Speaker 1: always there's always that vinegar smell. And that's what my
Speaker 1: mind immediately went to, is, Okay, this must be a
Speaker 1: use of actual vinegar in preparing these Valentines. That is
Speaker 1: not the case. It's more like like vinegar as as
Speaker 1: outright aggression. Right, yes, yeah, vinegar from your my emotions.
Speaker 1: My emotions are vinegar and it's sending it to you.
Speaker 1: But yes, Vinegar, Valentine's are hilarious and amazing and rude. Um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, as dare we say, body right? Well for
Speaker 1: Victorian times, I guess they were pretty body um. But yeah,
Speaker 1: so as as you're saying, Ben, people got really into
Speaker 1: sending cards on Valentine's Day, mostly because postage got cheaper. Um.
Speaker 1: In eighteen forty Britain started the uniform penny posts that
Speaker 1: allowed anyone in England to send something in the mail
Speaker 1: for just one penny, and like the next year half
Speaker 1: a million Valentine's cards were sent, so that just really
Speaker 1: opened the floodgates. The same thing happened in America, and
Speaker 1: after the eighteen fifties Congress voted to decrease posted raids.
Speaker 1: So everybody was like, sweet, in these repressed Victorian times,
Speaker 1: I can finally express my sentiments through the anonymity of
Speaker 1: the mail. And at first, and of course people got
Speaker 1: into a huge industry of this. At first, Valentine's were
Speaker 1: really they were handmade and they were incredibly expensive. Um.
Speaker 1: In England, Jonathan King of London was the premier Valentine maker.
Speaker 1: There's a hallmark archivists and historian Samantha Bradbeer who runs
Speaker 1: a like a whole blog about Hallmark history, and she
Speaker 1: wrote an article about Vinegar Valentine's. She says, king pioneer
Speaker 1: decorative lace paper and unusual design using bits of tinsel, feathers,
Speaker 1: and flowers as accents. So pretty okay, So this is
Speaker 1: like like his little own Etsy store for scrap booking. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like you can imagine m late at night gluing all
Speaker 1: the lace down and writing a very pretty cursive like
Speaker 1: I love you on their something weird like like you up. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The next episode we've got coming is also about scrap
Speaker 1: book for the future of ridiculous history. If we get
Speaker 1: to do that episode, We've had it in the kitty
Speaker 1: for a minute and various events and life. I was
Speaker 1: in my shelter of solitude, but you brought me out now,
Speaker 1: Like this episode is cursed? Why do you say that
Speaker 1: on air? Own? Because I want to do that. I
Speaker 1: want to do We initially were kind of like, I think,
Speaker 1: dragging our feeling it because we thought it was a
Speaker 1: little but the more we both read into it, um,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of uh. There can be a lot
Speaker 1: of sexual uh release, some kind of tension and release.
Speaker 1: It wrapped up in scrap booking. Can they're not, Diana?
Speaker 1: I hope not in any scrap book anybody's ever given me. Well,
Speaker 1: I actually used to love scrap booking, and I've been
Speaker 1: to a scrap booking conference before. If you can, everybody
Speaker 1: has the keeper you could buy like little stickers, and
Speaker 1: people have full, like rolling suitcases of glue sticks. Since
Speaker 1: I was like pretty interesting peek into that world, I
Speaker 1: bet people were hooking up in that conference. I was
Speaker 1: too young to know about that. The darker side of
Speaker 1: the scrap booking. I believe it. I believe it. There's
Speaker 1: a conference for everything, and I really love going to
Speaker 1: conferences for very specific stuff. It's I've like snuck into
Speaker 1: a John dear Try conference before. Yeah, their security wasn't
Speaker 1: super tight because you know, I went to I went
Speaker 1: to like a talk about tractors. I know, right, but uh,
Speaker 1: but when you're when you're talking about scrap booking, you know,
Speaker 1: we we have a lot of people in the audience
Speaker 1: today who are probably also either scrap book collectors or
Speaker 1: they kept one maybe um their relatives made, or they
Speaker 1: themselves scrap book It's it's neat because It's a piece
Speaker 1: of tangible history and for a lot of people during
Speaker 1: this Valentine's Day card boom. You know, it's like day
Speaker 1: made if someone. If someone sends you, they go out
Speaker 1: of their way to send you something nice. Especially it's
Speaker 1: so elaborate. Like you mentioned, um, you mentioned, these Valentine's
Speaker 1: were pricey as you guys remember on our show we
Speaker 1: do something called an inflation calculator. Do we know how
Speaker 1: much money were talking here? Like how how deep in
Speaker 1: the hole did you have to go to let somebody
Speaker 1: know you were into their vibe? We got to do
Speaker 1: the boobs bob. That's the sound of the inflation calculator,
Speaker 1: very high. Yeah, well, I'll stay on. In America, this
Speaker 1: woman esther Howland in Worcester, Massachusetts, made her first fancy Valentine.
Speaker 1: It was like much like Jonathan King, elaborate, lace edged
Speaker 1: valentine and her brother took it along on a selling
Speaker 1: trip because her family had like a printing press thing,
Speaker 1: and he came home and surprised her with that people
Speaker 1: were paying as much as fifty dollars for one of
Speaker 1: her cards, which again that's eighteen forty nine that he
Speaker 1: was run around the country selling these so today that
Speaker 1: would be one thousand, seven eighty seven dollars. Jeez, that's
Speaker 1: a pricey card, Diana. I'm want to do you a
Speaker 1: solid and keep you from getting yelled by the internet. Uh.
Speaker 1: That city in Massachusetts reference is pronounced Wooster, saving the
Speaker 1: pedantic people from the effort. You know, No, I appreciate it.
Speaker 1: You know, we we have to get our pronunciations right.
Speaker 1: It's very important. It's funny how often like will be
Speaker 1: in uh, India or South Korea or something, and we
Speaker 1: work really hard and we get the pronunciations, and then
Speaker 1: we'll be in like Washington State and totally botch it. Oho,
Speaker 1: that turns out that guy. I don't think people people
Speaker 1: should feel bad about that, because the English language is
Speaker 1: such an agglomeration of stuff people didn't think carefully about.
Speaker 1: And you know, and now now we have to carry
Speaker 1: the sins of speakers who came before us. Uh. But
Speaker 1: you know, I'm not one to talk really about pronunciation
Speaker 1: or getting things wrong. The last time I was in Korea,
Speaker 1: I spent the better part of a week. Like when
Speaker 1: you walk in stores, they're phrases you say that are
Speaker 1: like hello, and people walk in and I would walk
Speaker 1: in and slow and say hello, you know, as you're
Speaker 1: walking in the store. And then I would try to
Speaker 1: say hello back, and I thought I had learned to
Speaker 1: write like a proper, pretty formal way to say it,
Speaker 1: but instead what I was saying was where am I?
Speaker 1: And this man is confused a huge stage. I was like, smiling,
Speaker 1: I would wait. They thought you'd gone mad. I said
Speaker 1: that it was terrible. I said the same thing when
Speaker 1: I left, too, like I didn't. We didn't think that's
Speaker 1: really endearing that I love. I love thinking about love.
Speaker 1: I would love to see a Korean soap opera where
Speaker 1: they're just dealing with this random character cameo with tourists
Speaker 1: who comes in just as where am I, and they're like, hell,
Speaker 1: you should very it's very lynchy and kind of think.
Speaker 1: I was gonna say you should bring that home and
Speaker 1: just in English next time you walk into the store,
Speaker 1: open with where am I where? Yeah. It wasn't until
Speaker 1: we were riding back to the airport and in this
Speaker 1: brilliant taxi driver who's polyglot, was like, oh, you've you've
Speaker 1: learned some Korean. Give it a go, and uh then
Speaker 1: it really sank in and he uh he laughed his
Speaker 1: ass off. He's like, you fool exactly exactly he was.
Speaker 1: He told me, um, what do you say? He said
Speaker 1: something like, well, you know, at least you're trying to
Speaker 1: speak one language, right and uh they said it in
Speaker 1: good fun but whatever. That has nothing to do if
Speaker 1: you're listening to this. If you're listening to this, sir,
Speaker 1: thank you for setting me straight. Um pronunciation aside, That
Speaker 1: is a hefty investment. Like I know, I know people
Speaker 1: who are in um really committed like long term relationships,
Speaker 1: whether they're married or not, and they may just be
Speaker 1: complete e uh into each other, but even they would
Speaker 1: bulk it's spending almost two grand on a card, you know,
Speaker 1: and honestly be mad at you if you did. Spin
Speaker 1: would hope they get me a card. I feel like
Speaker 1: there's so many other things like the original n f
Speaker 1: T s kind of you know, it's like there's a
Speaker 1: stupid overvalued thing. At least it was real, you could
Speaker 1: hold it, and there really was only one of them,
Speaker 1: one of them. Yeah, it's funny again. This teas the
Speaker 1: next episode We're gonna do It is about a form
Speaker 1: of scrap booking. The term it reminds me of our friend, Uh,
Speaker 1: and composer and brother of Max Alex Williams show called
Speaker 1: ephemera or ephemeral rather um. But the things like that
Speaker 1: real life kind of you know, um Pinterest board items
Speaker 1: are considered you know, pieces of ephemera. Um. They are
Speaker 1: you know, perishable over time, and they're just kind of
Speaker 1: weird little memory things, you know. I think it's interesting
Speaker 1: that word was used a whole lot of their research
Speaker 1: for that upcoming up. Oh and we're going somewhere with this, folks.
Speaker 1: So they're really expensive nice Valentines, Diana. Those aren't the
Speaker 1: vinegar Valentines? Are they? No? No, no, no, And of course,
Speaker 1: you know, not everybody wanted it could or wanted to
Speaker 1: spend two grand on a Valentine's card. So as printing
Speaker 1: press technology got better and better, a lot more cheaper
Speaker 1: printed cards. They weren't handmade anymore, so they were much
Speaker 1: much cheaper started getting printed out. But not all of
Speaker 1: them were nice, not all of them were meant to
Speaker 1: express love and affection. Of the millions of cards sent
Speaker 1: in London in the nineteenth century, it's estimated that nearly
Speaker 1: half were vinegar Valentines, which were overtly mean or hustle messages,
Speaker 1: and they were sent for a variety of reasons, especially
Speaker 1: when like the Suffragette movement started. There were a lot
Speaker 1: of very politically slanted ones and stuff like that, but
Speaker 1: mostly just then it, you know, to be a ruined
Speaker 1: so would stay and I think we should read a few.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, I'm so excited. Here we go. This
Speaker 1: one is untitled, I assume, um, but let's just call
Speaker 1: it The Lemon tis a lemon. I hadn't you and
Speaker 1: bid you now scannoo because I love another there's no
Speaker 1: chance for you. I love a good skan doo you Ryan.
Speaker 1: I didn't even know what man scandoo I did. I
Speaker 1: I guess it'd be like goodbye. It means all get
Speaker 1: out of here. They went out of their way to
Speaker 1: send that to someone, you know what, the straight up
Speaker 1: a picture of like someone holding a lemon and handing
Speaker 1: it like they did not they didn't get abstract with
Speaker 1: the artwork. Oh my god, there's illustrations too. That's this
Speaker 1: is fun. This is fun. Yeah, that one's kind of
Speaker 1: on the On the same side, I would say, yeah, yeah, uh,
Speaker 1: there's like, let's look at another example you found, which
Speaker 1: was no, I don't know if you heard I was
Speaker 1: doing kind of like a snapping along like yeah, it
Speaker 1: feels like it feels like you know, so I married
Speaker 1: a nax murderer like woman. Who man, I'm gonna watch
Speaker 1: that later. He's here we go. You've opened the car.
Speaker 1: It's February four. You're excited you've got mail, only to
Speaker 1: find that the card says the following. He said, you
Speaker 1: share your love with many, but I believe you have
Speaker 1: not any at least enough to give away. Keep it
Speaker 1: for your sales. They say, I don't know why that
Speaker 1: guy is so arch is it? First he's accusing him
Speaker 1: of being lecturers and like having multiple parties with the
Speaker 1: saying Psyche can't get Annie's son? Is that? Basically? I
Speaker 1: think it's like you don't love anyone but yourself, you
Speaker 1: selfish jerk. That's what I read. It's like just a site,
Speaker 1: like a hit piece on someone's perceived personality. They're like, hey,
Speaker 1: I wanted to take this occasion to tell you that
Speaker 1: I think you're a dick. Yeah, there was one and
Speaker 1: I didn't keep because it wasn't as funny. But it
Speaker 1: was just about how she read novels all day and
Speaker 1: so she didn't have time for a relationship. Oh my god.
Speaker 1: It's like whenever you get reads of characters, maybe you
Speaker 1: get to the world of like media correspondence. So the
Speaker 1: predecessors of social media. It's just true time and time again.
Speaker 1: The misogyny is real. Like these guys are these guys
Speaker 1: are thinking like they're paying for these cards, and a
Speaker 1: lot of them were dudes, right as you said, got
Speaker 1: politicized and they were honestly having these conversations with themselves
Speaker 1: where they were like, yeah, this might be a little expensive,
Speaker 1: but what price can you really put on being a jerk?
Speaker 1: You know, man's got to have a code. There's some
Speaker 1: Victorian meme of like her opening the card and having
Speaker 1: a horrible face, and like that face is priceless. We
Speaker 1: should film that. We should film that's already the Visa
Speaker 1: Vinegar Valentine skit. I'm just imagining, you know, receiving one
Speaker 1: of these and the injury he sustained. This poor guy.
Speaker 1: He opens it up. It says, the kiss of the
Speaker 1: bottle is your heart's delight and fuddled. You reel home
Speaker 1: to bed every night. What care you for, damsels, no
Speaker 1: matter how fair. Apart from your liquor, you have no
Speaker 1: love to spare. So it's a drunk yeah. What else
Speaker 1: it's like like like like drunken, got it? Yeah? Yeah.
Speaker 1: But so it's basically saying, I would like to take
Speaker 1: the opportunity on this Valentine state. Let you know that
Speaker 1: I think you're a bad person and an alcoholic. Yeah,
Speaker 1: even if I were the hottest girl in the world,
Speaker 1: you wouldn't care. This could even be well intentioned if
Speaker 1: you read it right, you know, like, hey, you know
Speaker 1: you don't even care about your love life drinking so
Speaker 1: much A trying to help, Yes, But as I said,
Speaker 1: a lot of they did get politicized during the suffragette movement,
Speaker 1: and there's several with like women on soapboxes and they're
Speaker 1: very not complimentary of the women's suffragists. No surprise there. Um.
Speaker 1: So this one was sent by an ordinary man trying
Speaker 1: to get the ladies to shut the hell up about voting.
Speaker 1: To a modern woman, you have got the vote and
Speaker 1: think it's your mission to go to the polls like
Speaker 1: a bum politician. And while you are voting, your husband
Speaker 1: must roam for something to eat, which he can't find
Speaker 1: at home. He's getting dyspepsia and can't work for pain,
Speaker 1: your children neglected, ask for you in vain while you
Speaker 1: make speeches from a broken soapbox. Your family is wearing
Speaker 1: soiled clothes and torn socks. Damn, really really hitting home,
Speaker 1: getting personal. First of all, it doesn't take that long
Speaker 1: to vote, so you can wait. Second of all, make
Speaker 1: a sandwich. Third of all, yeah, it's like we had
Speaker 1: a mom, but she disappeared for two years. She walked
Speaker 1: out to vote and hasn't come back. Is that like,
Speaker 1: did they think, Yeah? Did they think women suffrage was
Speaker 1: like the female gendered version going out for like dad
Speaker 1: going out for cigarettes. Yeah? Probably, I guess it's just
Speaker 1: I guess it was politically smart to position them as
Speaker 1: like women not taking care of their families, so they're
Speaker 1: out there with their picket signs or whatever. But it's
Speaker 1: very annoying to read it. If I were a stufford jet,
Speaker 1: I would have been very angry to receive this. As
Speaker 1: he went, he went fall in with two stanzas too
Speaker 1: went on, I got more to say. I didn't even
Speaker 1: get to the socks yet. And even worse than the
Speaker 1: Valentines themselves and how mean they are. They were usually
Speaker 1: sent c O D or cast on delivery, which meant
Speaker 1: that you had to pay to read your hate mail.
Speaker 1: You had to give a penny for some you didn't
Speaker 1: even want, did you collect? It's like the cherry on top,
Speaker 1: so you pay for it before you know what's in
Speaker 1: it too. Yeah, yeah, it's kind of a Valentine how sweet?
Speaker 1: Of course I'll pay a penny. What you would hope
Speaker 1: that word would spread? That was like, if you're paying
Speaker 1: for your Valentine, then it's probably a mean one and like,
Speaker 1: don't pay for it, but I guess not the that's
Speaker 1: literally what they call adding insult to injury. Oh yes,
Speaker 1: and so so are there is This might be a
Speaker 1: dumb question. I'm sure I'm not the only one thinking this.
Speaker 1: Is there still something like a vinegar Valentine's industry? If
Speaker 1: you're listening, please don't do this to someone, But you
Speaker 1: know there might be. I know when I worked at
Speaker 1: a bakery, we would have Valentine's mean Valentine's cookies or
Speaker 1: cakes that you could get like mean messages written on
Speaker 1: or whatever. Yeah, and I don't think they were incredibly
Speaker 1: popular because you still have to pay for it. So
Speaker 1: it's like people being like, I don't want to pay
Speaker 1: for that something for this person I don't like anymore,
Speaker 1: but people thought it was very humorous, so it's sold
Speaker 1: like actual real Valentine stuff. While I don't think anyone
Speaker 1: actually really sent the mean messages, but it was very
Speaker 1: effective to get me want to buy. Okay, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, that's so funny. I guess I'll
Speaker 1: buy a conversation hard for my husband. Okay, okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: I totally forgot about the hearts. I know that there's
Speaker 1: some saucy you know, those little chalk chalky heart candies.
Speaker 1: There's a saucy, salacious versions of them. I don't know
Speaker 1: if there are any mean ones that just you know,
Speaker 1: say stuff like get out or whatever. Right never you
Speaker 1: just okay, So what happened to vinegar Valentine's? Are these?
Speaker 1: Are these preserved anywhere? Or are they you know, like
Speaker 1: you were mentioned earlier? No, would they be relegated to
Speaker 1: the role of ephemera today? Yeah? Uh I think yeah,
Speaker 1: they're more ephemera. Um and Bella Pollen is an art
Speaker 1: and design historian. She wrote a paper about vinegar Valentine's
Speaker 1: and she's like, now, ones that are actually postmarked don't
Speaker 1: don't survive today because people did not save them pressed
Speaker 1: between a book they did not want to remember. They
Speaker 1: got him, they usually tore him up. Sometimes postal workers
Speaker 1: would confiscate them if they were too vulgar, if they
Speaker 1: had something to body on there. I guess they're too
Speaker 1: mean that they could see, they would not just not
Speaker 1: deliver them. Um. And often apparently they lead to violence,
Speaker 1: real life violence. Uh. Paulin said. There are contemporary accounts
Speaker 1: from memoirs and newspapers that show that fistfights and court cases,
Speaker 1: suicide and a Tipton murder resulted from getting a vinegar valentine.
Speaker 1: And there's a pall Mall Gazette story from five about
Speaker 1: a husband who shot his estranged wife after she sent
Speaker 1: him one. So it wasn't just men that sent them.
Speaker 1: I'll say that a lot of women were also trying
Speaker 1: to be jerks. He probably had some other Uh, there
Speaker 1: were probably other things leading up to that, right, Like
Speaker 1: it was, yes, unless it was a really well written,
Speaker 1: just very cutting vinegar valentine, Like she got to his
Speaker 1: soul and it was like this was cut too deep.
Speaker 1: Anything was fine until this and he's like he's like
Speaker 1: I should have married the goat right full. Yeah, she
Speaker 1: can't talk or send a vinegar Valentine God. So that
Speaker 1: I think puts a little bit of a little bit
Speaker 1: of cold water on how excited I was about resurrecting
Speaker 1: this idea. We don't want people right, we do want
Speaker 1: to shout out super producer Max Williams, who just popped
Speaker 1: in our chat and helpfully shared the link to wise Cracks,
Speaker 1: which are the mean little Valentine's stay Hearts? Max, how
Speaker 1: did did you just have that in your back pocket?
Speaker 1: So I was listening to like, you know, fellow podcast Saver.
Speaker 1: They just did a classic episode about candy hearts and
Speaker 1: they had mentioned these. I was like, oh yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna him up. And so I found some uh, some
Speaker 1: of the messages they have on the hearts lay what
Speaker 1: are they? Are? They as good as Victorian ones? Not
Speaker 1: as good, you know to be pretty short. But they
Speaker 1: have one that says dream on, another one that says
Speaker 1: friend zone. Are these are like updated? Right? Is that
Speaker 1: what you're saying? Yeah? These are pretty current? I would say.
Speaker 1: Then they have some of that just have like, you know,
Speaker 1: a thumbs down emoji, a crown face emoji. Don't you
Speaker 1: even have the egg plant emoji? You turn? You turn
Speaker 1: the thumbs down upside down and it's a butt with
Speaker 1: the thumbs Yeah, I think that's where we had that there,
Speaker 1: Diana with the positivity right there. That was very very
Speaker 1: well done. And this this is into the close of
Speaker 1: our episode today, folks, we hope you enjoyed it at
Speaker 1: least partially as much as we did. I'd love to
Speaker 1: hear Valentine's Day stories from other parts of the world,
Speaker 1: other cultures. But before I hear any of that, I
Speaker 1: had to go hop on Ridiculous Romance and uh, figure
Speaker 1: out what's going on with this goat, which is not
Speaker 1: a thing I woke up today thinking I would say
Speaker 1: on air, but no, no, it wasn't for us either.
Speaker 1: But there's a lot of good stuff in there. Yeah
Speaker 1: it's messed up. Yeah, goats, dogs, cats together. So we
Speaker 1: want to I want to thank you both so much,
Speaker 1: Diane Elive for coming back on the show today, and
Speaker 1: we'd like to ask, could you you let us in
Speaker 1: our audience know where they can learn more about Ridiculous Romance,
Speaker 1: where they can find more of your inside and outside
Speaker 1: of the show. Absolutely, you can find our show, of course,
Speaker 1: anywhere you get your podcasts. You can also follow us
Speaker 1: on social media. My personal handle at O Great. It's
Speaker 1: Eli on Twitter and Instagram. I'm at Dynamite Boom and
Speaker 1: our show is at ridicu Romance. We have some fun
Speaker 1: memes up there about our episodes. It's usually worth a look. Yes,
Speaker 1: follow along and then we've got new episodes every Wednesday
Speaker 1: and Friday. Yeah, and you'll also be teaming up with
Speaker 1: some other members of the Ridiculous What do you call
Speaker 1: the Ridiculo verse? I like ridiculverse. I think that was
Speaker 1: an Eeli Banks original. Yeah, I like ridiculovers or the
Speaker 1: r RPU for the Ridiculous podcast the Yeah. You will
Speaker 1: also be sure to tune into the future Ridiculous Romance
Speaker 1: episode featuring Elizabeth Dutton and Szaren Burnett from Ridiculous Crime.
Speaker 1: That's gonna be rollicking good time and and nol in
Speaker 1: the meanwhile. Man uh, you and I have show social media,
Speaker 1: but we are also on the internet as individuals, right,
Speaker 1: We are in fact, real, actual human people on the Internet.
Speaker 1: You can find me on Instagram exclusively where I am
Speaker 1: at How now, Noel Brown? How about yourself, sir? I
Speaker 1: am in a burst of creativity, as I always say,
Speaker 1: calling myself at Ben Bolan on Instagram. It just came
Speaker 1: to me as an idea. I'm on Twitter stalking Max
Speaker 1: Williams as at Ben Bolan hs W Max, do you
Speaker 1: want do you want to tell people where you are
Speaker 1: so they can help me stalk you. I'm working on
Speaker 1: some vinegar Valentine's bro Oh yeah, yeah, of course, of course.
Speaker 1: I mean, I did find it funny that last night
Speaker 1: you sent me a text message with just the description
Speaker 1: of my Twitter account. But you can find me on Twitter,
Speaker 1: at chat at l underscore, Max Willing, I said that
Speaker 1: because you were dispassionate, and then you said you were
Speaker 1: once again passionate. So it's funny because Michigan then beat
Speaker 1: produced last night, so I'm passionate again. Yes, it's amazing
Speaker 1: to see that come and go. Well, thanks to you, Max,
Speaker 1: Thanks to you, Eli, Diana are ridiculous romantics. Yeah, that
Speaker 1: phrase makes sense. If that works, we'll keep it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and Nol, I think maybe you and I have Maybe
Speaker 1: it's not even a thanks, but it's just like a
Speaker 1: show of support for all the people out there navigating
Speaker 1: the tricky roads of romance, you know what I mean, Yes,
Speaker 1: waiting through the troubled, frothy waters, of love. Yes, I
Speaker 1: do you have in trouble? Just get your goat two
Speaker 1: thousand dollar card and he'll eat it. It'll be great,
Speaker 1: turn out, perfectly huge. Thanks to Alex Williams, who composed
Speaker 1: this theme, super producer Max Williams. Of course, Um, Jonathan
Speaker 1: Strickling the quister. We were potentially going to prank Diane
Speaker 1: and Eli with his presence, uh into coming, but he
Speaker 1: was unavailable. He was quis terring some other podcast. I
Speaker 1: guess you didn't have time for us. But another time, Uh,
Speaker 1: he will be ours. I think we're ahead in the
Speaker 1: rankings right now. Let's see who else. Christopher Aciota, Steve
Speaker 1: Jeff Cotes here in spirit Yes, yeah, and uh also
Speaker 1: big thanks to the various Saint Valentine's. Um. You know
Speaker 1: it's weird because this show. I realized, guys, this is
Speaker 1: coming out the day after valentine to Day, which I
Speaker 1: didn't clock yet. But even though it might be, this
Speaker 1: might now be advice for next year. If someone you're
Speaker 1: dating or you're in a relationship tells you they don't
Speaker 1: want anything, don't believe them. Do do like some one
Speaker 1: small thing, you know, take it, take it for me.
Speaker 1: That stuff comes back just to engl Red Rose and
Speaker 1: be like, we're both gonna hold this together and talk
Speaker 1: about talk about our feelings. Happy Valentine's Day, everyone, Happy,
Speaker 1: Happy Valentine's Day. Thanks so much, you guys. We'll see
Speaker 1: you next time. For more podcasts from My Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.