Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey brain Stuff, Lauren Vogelbaum. Here, the U S presidents have a lot to say, but once a year they really talked turkey. At least that's what President Joe Biden said he was going to do on a fine November day in one when he had his first opportunity to stand in the White House rose Garden and pardon a turkey for Thanksgiving. As has become the norm, Biden actually pardoned two turkeys. Their names were peanut Butter and Jelly
before they were sent off to Indiana University. The official pardoning of White House turkeys is now a familiar event that the press well eats up for the article. This episode is based on how Stuff Work. Spoke with Lena Mann, a historian at the White House Historical Association. She said, this is my absolute favorite White House tradition. It's just very fun, which I think is why it indoors. It's a way for the presidents to show off their sillier sides,
and it's certainly is silly. Lest do you think peanut Butter and Jelly wear flukes of Prior turkey pairs have had names like Mac and cheese, tater and todd, cobbler and gobbler, and corn and cob All of this leads us to the question of when and how this compassionate we get odd tradition hatched. It's definitely a departure from
the usual duties of a U. S. President. One theory about its origins is that it again when President Abraham Lincoln's son asked that the families Christmas turkey be spared. But the tradition developed in fits and starts. According to Man, in the latter half of the eighteen hundreds, citizens began sending turkeys to the president at the White House for
the holidays. The Thanksgiving had become a national holiday in eighteen sixty three, and by the eighteen seventies, a Rhode Island poultry man by the name of Horace Bows had begun getting fully dressed turkeys to the White House, of meaning they were cleaned and stuffed and ready to be not that they were wearing little bow ties. Those continued sending the turkeys every year, and newspapers started to report on his efforts, making him a well known purveyor of poultry.
By the time Theodore Roosevelt was President, vose was still sending fully dressed turkeys to the White House. Then a newspaper published an article claiming that Roosevelt's children had terrorized the turkey that they received, a claim that was clearly made up, because remember, the turkeys vose sent were not alive. They were definitely deceased, they had shuffled off their mortal coil.
They were ex turkeys. That does not mean that presidents never received live turkeys or other animals in those early days. In Nix, someone from Mississippi sent the Coolidges a live raccoon for the President's Thanksgiving table. But luckily for the raccoon, the first Lady, Grace Coolidge, took a shine to it and kept it as a family pet, naming it Rebecca Young.
Rebecca proceeded to live a charmed life, earning press coverage and even attending the nineteen seven White House Easter egg roll, and then she retired to a zoo when Herbert Hoover took over in n I should put in here that raccoons should not be kept as pets beyond the fact that they are wild animals and can carry rabies. Believe me when I tell you that they have a smell
and you want no part of it anyway. In the years following World War Two, food shortages led to an organization called the Citizens Food Committee, with support from the White House, requesting that Americans commit to meatless Tuesdays and poultry and egg free Thursdays. Many Americans were outraged by this idea, of especially as the holidays approached. In Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's Day of ninety eight all fell on Thursdays.
Of poultry farmers began sending chickens to the White House in protest. The campaign was called Hens for Harry, named for then President Harry Truman. The poll free free food conservation program quickly lost steam. In December of ninety seven, the Poultry and Egg National Board, in collaboration with the Turkey Federation, presented Truman with a turkey wearing a whopping forty seven pounds that's twenty one kilos, and a new
annual tradition was born. The Truman White House Thanksgiving table did forego pumpkin pie that year in honor of going egg free. Since nine seven, the National Turkey Federation has presented a bird to the President each year, but letting the birds live past Thanksgiving Thursday occurred sporadically for the next few decades. In nineteen sixty three, just three days before his assassination, President John F. Kennedy pardoned the turkey
Kennedy had received a bird wearing a sign good eating. Mr. President Kennedy chose instead not to find out, stating let's keep him going in night. First, Lady Rosalind Carter opted to send a turkey to live out its life in a mini zoo, and by the time Ronald Reagan took office, sending the pardon turkeys to farms had become the norm an informal fun event. The first official turkey pardoning ceremony took place during the presidency of George H. W. Bush
on November seventeenth. Bush and others headed to the Rose Garden to save the life of one lucky bird. Bush said, let me assure you and this fine tom turkey that he will not end up on anyone's dinner table. Not this guy. He's presented a presidential pardon as of right now, and allow him to live out his days on a children's farm not far from here. All presidents after have
maintained the tradition. Today they are sent from a different US far more farmer each year through the National Turkey Federation. More recently, the norm has been for two turkeys to arrive, the main turkey and an alternate think a sort of turkey understudy to step in and just in case the primary turkey behaves badly on stay age. Both turkeys received the pardon, though, and live out their days away from the dinner table. And just where the turkeys go after
the ceremonies has changed throughout the years too. Kennedy sent the nineteen sixty free turkey back to the farm that it came from, while Nixon sent his turkey to a petting zoo. During the Obama administration, turkeys named Courage and Carolina headed to Disneyland, Yes really. After Courage, the main turkey start in the Disneyland Thanksgiving Day parade, he and Carolina, the understudy, retired to the Big Thunder Ranch petting zoo. But you don't have to be a sitting president to
make a turkey's day on Thanksgiving. You can take up the old call for a poultry free Thursday, but you can also adopt a turkey symbolically again wild animal. But organizations like Farm Sanctuary let you symbolically adopt a rescued spokes turkey for the holiday season for a relatively small donation. M Today's episode is based on the article why in the world do US President's partnering turkeys? On how stuff
works dot com, written by Kerry Whitney. Brain Stuff is production by Heart Radio in partnership with how stuff works dot com, and it's produced by Tyler Clang. For more podcasts from My heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.