Cool Zone Media.
Hello, and welcome to Cool People Did Cool Stuff, which is a weekly podcast, a twice weekly podcast. I don't know how it's a podcast, And I'm your host, Maria Kiljoy, and we talked about cool people who Did Cool Stuff on the podcast that's named that. But my guest is Chelsea Weber Smith, who's host of a different podcast, American Hysteria.
How are you?
I'm doing so good and I'm just so excited to be here and hear whatever you got for me today.
Yeah. It's always fun because people, I think know that I don't tell people what they're gonna learn about.
Yeah, it's a complete mystery, so thrilling. I am on the edge of my seat.
Yeah, whereas everyone who's listening already knows what it's about because it was in the title. They really have one up on you. Although actually the title of this one isn't going to mean anything to anyone. But Sophie is our producer.
Hi, Sophie, Hi, that's what we call a podcast flex. You're like, ooh, you want to know the topic?
Hi, Sophie.
Hi, Chelsea. I'm so happy to have this combination of humans on one pod. Does feel good.
I'm honored.
Our audio engineer is Ian and our the music was written for us by unwoman. Hi, Unwoman. So, Chelsea, have you ever heard of the Dill Pickle Club?
No, but I couldn't be happier to find out what that is.
I love a dill pickle great.
Probably being a club, I mean, no, I don't like love it that much, but I would learn about a club that still pickles.
Okay, okay. There was a club in Chicago in the nineteen tens and nineteen twenties up until nineteen thirty three that changed so much about culture in the city and therefore the country. And it was founded and run by a bunch of revolutionaries and the main guy who ran it was a syndicalist bomber. Okay, all right, so much culture comes from it. Okay, perfect, This is the kind of shit I love. Yep, Yeah, cool, Yeah, I thought
that this was. The guest doesn't know what we pick, but I try to pick something that will work for the guest.
You did a great job.
Yeah, Okay, So we're going to back up first. Okay, I'm gonna talk about hoboes. I'm not going to ask if you know anything about hoboes. I'm going to talk about hoboes.
Maybe you know about hobos, Yeah, I know a little bit.
Yeah, yeah, okay, Well this story will start where all good stories start with hobos. I am not using that word pejoratively. Some people do these days use it pejoratively. I absolutely am not. Have you ever heard of the distinction between hoboes, tramps, and bums.
Yes, I have, and I'm not entirely sure I would be able to make the distinction. But let's see, is a hobo someone who is by choice traveling.
That's part of it, but that's not the thing that makes it right.
You tell me, you tell me, okay.
I actually I first learned this when I was a streak kid and a train hopper, until I was hanging out with hobos and tramps and bums. So there's a hobo travels and is willing to work. And these definitions go back at least as far back as the nineteen twenties and probably way before then. So a hobo travels
and is willing to work. A tramp travels and avoids work if possible, does like just does enough work to not die, you know, right, And a bum neither travels nor works, and none of these were necessarily pejoratives, although people in one category might look down on the others, and both hoboes and tramps probably look down on each other, and everyone looked down on bums and.
Right, you know as it goes.
Yeah, yeah, it's the sort of self importance hierarchy with whatever you are is at the top.
Right.
I was a tramp probably in several senses of that word in my early twenties.
I did have a pretty long hitchhike in career during the summer. Yeah, so I wasn't quite I did hop one train. I wasn't like in the community in the world, but I do have at least some uh some of that in my in my past.
Where's you okay? Now, everyone in the earth you want to do that?
Yeah?
No, no, everyone who everyone who's hop trains talks about like where they hopped trains to and from and it only matters to other people trains. But where did you have trains to it?
From Brattleborough? I want a very cool little city, uh out to New Hampshire. I think it's is it white city? It's white something? But yeah, it was just like an one overnight yeah, box car opened to the sky absolutely like a truly, you know, beautiful experience. But it was just like my one little tourist ye, and I can't say anything other than that, but it was a really cool experience. And then yeah, hitchhiking a lot more.
But yeah, mine is similar. I've successfully hopped trains three times. I spent a lot more time than that trying to hop trains, and I've hitchhiked.
A lot, kicking it in the train yard. Yeah it's real.
Yeah, Okay, so no, I'm really excited. You're definitely the right person to the one.
Okay, cool, Okay.
My grandfather was a hobo. He grew up poor in the Midwest, and he left to go ride freight trains and find work where he could in the Great Depression before he wound up in the Navy in World War Two. And so we've talked a little bit about the radical history of hoboes and tramps on this show. Before one week we talked about the industrial workers of the world and their free speech fights where they mobilized the transient workforce of the country during the first couple decades of
the twentieth century. And these were like free speech fights basically like they'd go be organizers, and then the government and be like, now you can't soapbox, you can't organize, and so then they would like fill the with hobos who would get up and you know, talk on a soapbox and get arrested and they'd fill the jails, and I don't know, it was cool. That's not what this episode's about. Weird, even an episode about that. No one knows the etymology of hobo, which is really I love
this shit. I love when there's an unknownnology.
Oh yeah.
And there's a couple versions, and I'll say the version that I think is most likely. But first there's there's one that's like it might stand for ho boy because they were farm hands and the used hose. It might have been railroads slang for homeward bound. I actually think that one has some it rings a little bit true, this kind of shit that fucking train riders love doing this.
Yeah, oh yeah.
The most convincing etymology to me is that it's short for homeless bohemian Okay, yeah, bohemian being I've always really hated this word, but it's going to be such an important part of what we're talking about today. Bohemian being a sort of old fashion but very long lived slang for a countercultural person. Right, And I've hated it because it's a Western European thing and it descends from the exoticization of Romani folks, and Bohemia is a specific place.
It's a precursor of the Czech Republic, but it's specifically like not even oh, you're from the Czech Republic, it's like, oh, you're acting like a Romani person, you're traveling blah blah blah, blah blah. All these literary types in France early eight nineteenth century were like, Wow, we're just like the Romani people because we live outside of society. We're bohemians.
Yeah, it's hipsters exist in all times and cultures.
Yes, why can't they just use that word, which I use is a pejorative.
Fixed it?
Yeah, Okay, So Hobo's most famously traveled by writing freight trains, which is a crime, and it is a dangerous crime, and anyone who's listening, I cannot in good conscience tell you to do it unless you are taught by someone with more experience. If you want the like train riding tourist experience, which is a lovely one. Go with someone who knows what they're doing.
And that's what I did. So I acted responsibly, excellent as much as one could. Yeah, I get that.
The fact that you described successfully riding a train, I was assumed you had gone with someone.
Oh yeah, different time.
Yeah. And then people just sit around and be like, oh, it's a forty eight and out of fifty three, and they like, you know, oh that's a grainer and that's a goggle. And my brain was like, oh, you weren't in a box car, you were't a gondolet was open to the sky. And I'm like, fuck, I love that.
I love that trainhead, you know, I know a grainer, Like I know that you get in.
That little hole.
Yeah, to get that little hole. I had such a like cartoon initially, beauty. It was just you know, like stars, you couldn't see anything. You got into town and you just like the blue sky, you know. I was like, yeah, way too idyllic, what I deserve?
Yeah, people die doing this all.
No, it's not That's what I'm saying. It's like, yeah, not not a typical experience probably.
Yeah, And this tradition of riding trains and having fun and dying goes back to the beginning of trains. As soon as there was like, oh, here's a big thing that no one's watching that goes from one place to the other, people were like sick. That sounds like a way to not pay. Yeah, you know, in the late eighteen sixties, after the Civil War, you get the beginning
of hobo culture. Returning veterans became the first hobos. They wandered the country and they would drift out west looking for work, and it became a real big thing around the turn of the century, and then it peaked during the Great Depression, and it slacked off since then, but it never quite went away. Like returning Vietnam veterans kind of gave it new life. Crusty anarchists at the turn
of the next century gave it new life. And like a lot of stuff we talk about of all these like mythologized radicals, we're like, we're gonna talk about all these radicals from a hundred hundred fifty year ago, and we're talking about hoboculture.
Right.
The people who deserve the amazing reputation of like being these like wandering hard workers with their own beautiful culture are the current immigrant migrant workers who fight against depression. But they're not white, so white people try to avoid thinking about them so they don't get romanticized. And I don't know, romanticization's messy, but yeah, I just want to shout that out about who the real the people still
kind of came. Yeah, okay, hobos. There's only one labor union with the teeth and the grit to organize hoboes, and that was Friends of the Pod the Industrial Workers of the World, and they started. We've talked about them a bunch of times. I didn't write down what year they started this time, I think is nineteen oh five. And basically they started when a bunch of people were like, hey, socialists and anarchists, let's get over our differences, organize all
workers of the world together. All the while we will actively fight against the racism, nativism, and sexism that the labor movement has way too much of in the United States, and then we'll overthrow capitalism and make all of our lives beautiful.
Right, And will you tell me again what year we're in ish?
Yeah? So, okay, so this started nineteen oh five? Is this year?
Got it?
And yeah? And this union was founded by repeated friends of the pod, like the born enslaved black anarchist Lucy Parsons and the Irish goth socialist Mother Jones. People get people have messaged me being like Mother Jones is a goth a and I'm like, she literally wore black morning dresses all the time. I don't fucking know what you want.
Like, yeah, what else is there? Yeah?
When I talk about we've always been here about like queer people, I also am just going to go ahead and say we've always been here about goths.
One of the like like great archetypes of psychology is the so yeah, the person.
Is us with death but not necessarily depressed or not any more likely to be depressed than anyone else in the world.
Yeah, it's like a different kind of saint, you know.
Yeah, And you know I was founded by these two. I'm sure some men were involved too, but they get enough of books of their own. Although I will say several of our heroes this week are men, which is very progressive of me to include men in the show. So free, but don't worry. Two thirds of the men, there's like three core men that we're going to talk about today, two thirds of them are mostly only famous
for being attached to their way more famous girlfriends. Cool, and so it's like, well, what do the boys get up to while the girls are out organizing revolution?
Yeah? What are they doing at their little topperware parties? Yeah?
Through some cultural stuff. They start at a club, you know.
Yeah, that's nice.
Yeah, we are going to start with the most complicated one. Sophie. You're going to notice that this is the first time this has happened on the show. Where I get excited about this some guy and I start writing about him. In about halfway through, I realized he was not necessarily Oh good dad.
Did we not?
Did we not follow the Sophie rules of reading about men? Which is a scroll to the end so you find out if they.
Go to the controversy section of Wikipedia, Yeah, to go.
To the ashtrik session where you find out that they're a woman abuser?
Did we?
Did we not listen to my to Sophie's rule of reading about men?
So, okay, what's funny about this guy? Almost everything written about him, that's true, But almost everything written about him was written by the women in his life because they're all more famous than him, right, And so he's actually I'll just I'll just talk about him and we can we can sit in moral judgment. I enjoy sitting in a moral judgment of historical character. This is one of my favorite pastimes. But this one's like, I'll be curious what you all thing? Okay, so, uh you ever heard
of Emma Goldman? Yes, okay, this is Emma Goldman's boyfriend. Oh okay, she had many, Yeah I know, this one actually was like the main love of her life and is not the assassin guy who's the main one people, he's the artist. He is the doctor.
Okay. Didn't she have like an artist.
Sma Goldman?
Yeah?
Yeah, oh yeah, no, like okay, so lover.
Yeah, We're gonna start with a guy named Ben rightman, he's mostly known for dating. That's true. I mean, actually, I don't know what.
It could be, right right man, I'm sorry, all right, I'll say I'm just waiting for you to tell me what bullshit this man did.
This man is the horniest man I've ever had on this I've ever talked about on this show. In ways, I.
Didn't have a rasputant episode yet.
He might have out walked around dispute. It's impossible.
This man was kind of a fuck boy, but actually mostly a good person and the main thing he failed as he was a shit father. But the main book written about him was written by one of his daughters and is like about his complicated relationships with women, and actually kind of is like, well, you know, all right, you know, it's like it's a doesn't like give him a pass, but it's like it's not as Okay, I'll just keep going, I'll just keep talking about him.
She puts a whole like a context around Yeah, maybe his actions well, and.
Most of his actions aren't wrong even though they like because they're all consensual with adults who are also into free love.
Okay, gets complicated. Yeah, I know, I know, even today, I know.
So.
Ben Reitman was born in Saint Paul, Minnesota. I almost sid same Paul Minneapolis, but it's a different place to poor Russian Jewish immigrants. In eighteen seventy nine, when he was one, his dad ran out on the family. Later he was like, ah, that's where I learned it from. Whatever, fuck you. His mom moved to the Red Light district of Chicago. Almost every version of this voids mentioning that his mother was a sex worker. And he grew up in a brothel and he was now eventually he's famous
for two things. He's famous for one being called the Hobo Doctor because he was both hobo and a doctor, so it's a pretty legit and he's not fake in either of them. Two, he was Emma Goldman's partner for a long time. Emma Goldman has woven her way through a fuck ton of our episodes, but we talked about the most in our episode about birth control pioneers, and she got arrested all the time for advocating that people ought to be able to control their bodies.
So was this a prime like her primary partner that we're talking about.
For eight years, okay, okay, and the one who kind of left the mark, like like this was the okay, Like she wrote about him as like her most passionate love affair, and so Alexander Berkman, her like more famous boyfriend who tried to kill Henry Clay Frick and like once tried to break out a prison and stuff. Berkman fucking hates Ben Rightman. Like this is one of the great shit fight in fighty things of history, is how much they hated each other. I think I Actually, I
think Ben didn't give a shit about Berkman. I think Ben was just like, whatever, fucking doing my thing.
Yeah, it's like, you know, just it does sound like things that still happen to this day in Paul in your first situation.
Totally what anarchists getting involved in polydrama? No, go on, It goes back a long way.
It's a rich history, a rich tradition, you can see.
Yeah, exactly, That's why we're doing this is to stay true to our roots. Oh yeah, there's a lot of roots to this that okay. Anyway, So Emma Goldman spent decades traveling back and forth across the US advocating for workers' rights, anarchism, feminism,
free love, and all the cool stuff. At least eight of the years that she did that, it was her boyfriend Ben who organized those talks, handling the booking and the pr And he also got arrested multiple times for advocating that people ought to be able to control their bodies and advocating birth control. He served the longest sentence in US history for advocating for birth control. Wow, he
served six months okay for speech, you know. And there's a third thing he could be famous for is that there's a Martin Scorsese film based on one of his books, which was he wrote a fake autobiography called Sister of the Road that's like about the life on the rails, and it was like, the protagonist is named Boxcar Bertha. And so in nineteen seventy two, Martin Scorsese makes a movie called Boxcar Bertha based on Sister of the Road.
Cool.
So he grew up in Chicago. Just to zoom back to his beginning of his life. His life is not easy. His first arrest comes early, as shit, he's caught stealing coal from train cars. I think he's not even ten when this happens. By twelve, he's out on the rails as a tramp. That's the one every now and then people even back then were like King of the Hobo is my ass. You're a tramp, not a hobo.
You know there it is gatekeeping, uh huh.
Yeah. But unlike half the doctors of the nineteenth and twentieth century that people like talk about, right, he actually went to medical school. He actually has a degree.
Okay, yeah, And.
At one point I didn't put this in the script, but Berkman was like, fuck this guy, the other boyfriend, and he like wrote to the university to like double check that he had gotten a degree.
Oh so Patty, Yeah.
And then never forgave him for doing this.
Oh so he found out.
Yeah, I don't, uh, I bet you. Alexander bergman like told him, but like I was looking into you. You know, I'm on to you.
You know.
But when he was twenty one years old the year nineteen one hundred, he started at the College of Physicians and Surgeons in Chicago. By nineteen oh four he graduated, and he just becomes a like a free doctor being cool as fuck. He offers services to sex workers and hoboes and the poor and whoever needs it. And he is primarily an STI doctor. He treats like syphilism all this stuff, right, and his like whole thing is fighting
venereal disease. His other whole thing is he illegally performs abortions, which is cool and you know, and he becomes a pioneer in the field of venereal disease like treatment. He goes on to spend his later life developing public health around STIs and stuff like that, which is you know, kind of putting his money where his mouth is right. Yeah, definitely, But most of the time he's not like the most
when he's younger, he's not the most committed doctor. He does it when he needs money or when people need help. You know, he works when he has to. He spends as much of his time as he can bumming around the country. He throws down at protests. He falls in love with new people constantly, sometimes he doesn't always fall in love with them. Mostly women, but not exclusively women. And he's horny as fuck. He's part of a culture
that espouses free love. He respects the shit out of women, and he kind of goes back and forth across the line between being a fuck boy to being a happy and respectful queer slut. One of his many daughters, I know, I know the road. We are all sports to walk, and but he like, I don't know whatever. It's so fascinating me. I changed my mind about how I felt about him like three or four times while writing this. But you know what, I've never changed my mind about
what's that? Actually I did. I specifically changed my mind when I was like twenty, I would have hated the fact that I had a radical history podcast with ads in it. But I'm forty and my dog needs food, so.
Hey, you and me both, Yeah, exactly. Sophie and I talked a lot about this when we met in a bar. We did, yeah, big conversation, so I guess roll them.
Yeah, fuck it, here's the Mads and we are back and we are talking about our guy. One of his many daughters wrote a biography discussing him and his behavior. How he is is this?
Is this?
Is this the part? Is this the part? I'm waiting Yeah, I'm waiting for it.
Well, okay, so there's not like he was not present in his kids' lives and he was not always like telling everyone what was going on. But see, see there's not like he's not a monster.
Okay, because we've definitely like there was. There was one time, Chelsea where Margaret did an entire episode and then she gets to like the fifth book she's read about this one person, and there's like two sentences at the end it's like, by the way, he was a fucking super villain to his family.
Yeah, yeah, that is very common. Unfortunately.
Yeah.
Yeah, no heroes, no villains.
So I'm not saying I'm not getting the two sentence thing that makes me not care about anything else.
Okay, okay, okay.
He was not present in his kids' lives. However, that seems to even that seems to be complicated, like the the daughter who wrote the biography of No Wait one of the others, a bunch of his daughters wrote books. One of his daughters who was talked about how he
wasn't present in her life. Her mom had basically been like, yo, I want to have kids and I don't want to get married, so you're gonna fuck me or what you know, and like and he basically sperm downered, right, and so like that one, I'm like, well, I got nothing against his decision. That was like the mother's choice, right, you know.
Yeah, but he.
I think that he also like was a shitty dad.
He was a man in the early nineteen hundreds.
Yeah, although there's gonna.
Be not everything is avoidable, I guess not. I don't want to sound apologistic, but you know, it's like it was really great. The early nineteen hundreds for men was also just like this huge like masculine revolution where Teddy Roosevelt and everybody were just like pushing this just extreme, ridiculous, cartoonish masculinity. So I feel like, you know those people that resisted that is like, yeah, I had a given props.
Yeah yeah, yeah, And this guy like, I mean, you've he gen you andly loved women and respected them. He was constantly like he the main thing he did with his career was live in the shadow of a woman ten years older than him who is not conventionally attractive, like you know.
Yeah.
But later in life he becomes a he's was organizing him for public health. He becomes a huge condom guy. He talks all the time about how great condoms are. That quote the sex urge cannot be controlled, and that quote a time will come when condoms will be on exhibit in high schools and yeah, and that we must make sex safe and fool proof.
But god, yeah, that's that's an early adopter for sure.
Yeah.
I was reading I'm really into the Donner Party. It's one of my weird interests in just like reading about the f friends of the party.
No again, yeah.
Yeah right, yes, yeah, Abe Blanket almost went on the Donner Party. That's my fact for al. I want to spread it far and wide. But yeah, condoms were ma out of like a just like sheep membrane and just like I'm curious what they Yeah, do you know what the condoms he was talking about were made out of? Like latex was far off right?
No, no, I think, oh god, I've looked this up before. I think that the rubber condom. Hold on, Oh no, I totally didn't go run and look that up. I totally knew that the volcanization of rubber happened in the mid nineteenth century, and one of the first things they did with it was make condoms.
Well God blessom.
Yeah, I don't remember when they like started making like forms instead of like individ whatever. Anyway, but yeah, no, but he's still like I mean, he he's getting arrested talking about birth control. He like takes it seriously. He's a venereal to see his doctor, like you know, but all that comes later is condom. Well I don't know best condom use, but his condom advocacy, you know. For now, he's a hobo doctor in his twenties. He is fucking
his way across the country. And in the winter of nineteen oh seven nineteen oh eight, there's this upsurgeon on employment and labor organizing, which of course is going to be totally unfamiliar to a listener today. Those two things don't go hand in hand at any time. About and Ben Rightman started organizing hobos, and this is before he
actually never formally joined the IWW. He led a march of unemployed men to Chicago City Hall and he's like fighting for the rights of unemployed people and transient folks. He's throwing fundraising dinners and shit. He's like super charming, right and even though he's this poor Jewish kid, he's like always like figuring out how to get the upper classes to take to like put their money where their mouth is by taking care of you know, working class
and stuff. He gets involved in a larger hobo organization, the International Brotherhood Welfare Association, which was founded they're kind of like the Wobblies are like politically organizing unemployed folks, and the IBWA is like cult not even well culturally and like taking care of organizing. And so this is founded in nineteen oh five or nineteen oh six. That's chapters all across the country. It published a street newspaper
called Hobo News that was sold by street vendors. This isn't the first time that that particular like that's a very common thing these days, right is the street paper, and they mostly kick in at the end of the twentieth century. This isn't like the first one, but this is one of the first ones.
Sounds kind of like a zine precursor.
Oh totally, yeah, totally, and its founder was another fascinating guy, this Christian socialist named James eid Howe, the millionaire hobo, whose name was literal once again.
Wait, the millionaire Hobo's that's That's not a reality TV show from twenty twelve.
Nor is it the story of many Silicon Valley boys. No, I sleep on a bean bag people, Yeah.
Well why would well? Why would I get an apartment? They have everything for me at the Google campus.
It's like, you're getting millions of dollars, buy your own sofa, chad, get your own kombucha, our capital.
Yeah, this guy's like the inverse of that. I wish that all of the tech billionaires are millionaires who like think of themselves as like cool, burning man types or whatever. I wish they would do this instead cool.
I'm ready to like him.
He was an heir to two different wealthy Saint Louis families, Like both sides of his family come from a fuck ton of money and he just inherited a fuck ton of railroad money. But he didn't had no interest in capitalism. He studied theology, he didn't eat meat. He hated capitalism. He tried and failed to start a monastic order, but it didn't work, right, Oh I that yeah, that's cool.
And so then he was like, fuck it, I'm gonna be a hobo and he he took all of he only spent money on himself that he actually earned doing hobo work, like going to the you know whatever. But he didn't just like sit on his trust fund. It wasn't even a trust fund. I think he just literally
had the money. He formed the iwa ib Wa and he offered food and lodging and education and hangout spots for hoboes at places called hobo colleges, so all across the country you could go in and get a place to stay, free food, and there's like classes and you can just hang out and have a good time.
And were these like just in different buildings or houses or do you know what? Was it like?
I think he's kind of renting out the same kind of halls that like union halls are renting out okay, okay, which I think was a bigger part of culture back in the day.
Like a grange. Yeah, rent out the grange here totally.
But he would like rent them I think permanently, Like there would be like these now very cool, I know, I just like really like him. And then the Chicago branch was founded by his protege, Ben Reitman, and this was the largest and most successful hobo college in the country because I mean basically, because Ben Rightman is an amazing pr guy and an amazing fundraiser, an organizer and a swaggering guy who pushes dude who men hate. Like
that's the people hate him, you know. The Chicago Hobo College was opened to nineteen oh eight, and it was a free university where professors from the University of Chicago and Northwestern University came and taught hobos and tramps. They had an arts program, Opera stars and famous stage actors would come and perform and also teach, and basically Ben was a master of convincing respectable standing folks to come
teach and perform for anarchist hobos and wobblies. So cool, yeah, and hoboes at this time like clearly when people are using the word hobo is a pejorative, they have a lot of assumptions that they're making about people don't have housing. Right, Hoboes in this time are generally well but self educated. They're riding the rails with like tons of books. A lot of them are like basically running zen distros.
Right.
They get all of these pamphlets from like the Wobblies and probably from the Waibwa, and like go around and literally just like stop various places and sell books and like you know, like if you want to read Marxist capital, you probably got it from a hobo at a certain point in American history. And yeah, they're being cool as shit. And why does Ben have anything to do with anything that we're talking about today with the Dill Pickle Club.
Two reasons. One, the Hobo University is sometimes perceived as the precursor to the Dill Pickle Club, and people tend to forget the like radical origins of cultural institutions. So I want to give a justice that comes out of this homeless organizing. And too, Ben Wrightman's actually a really big part of the Doll Peckle Club. Okay, but I want to keep telling the story of Ben Rightman because he's fascinating and specifically how he meets him a Goldman.
Another thing that happened in nineteen oh eight, besides the Hobo college getting started, is something that we don't know the truth of but has consequences for history. There was this young Jewish man. He's a broke, nineteen year old kid. He's a Russian immigrant. He I think grew up He's at least born in but I think he grew up in Russia. And he worked as an egg packer. And his name was Lazarus Aberbusch. Whi's a fucking cool name anyone named Lazarus?
Yeah, I mean it's a loaded name.
I know. Can you even die?
Yeah?
Probably not?
Yeah, well spoiler, but anyway, he was probably an anarchist. The jury is out, well the jury convicted him, but well no, okay, let's just get to it.
Okay.
One day he shows up at the Chicago Police Chief of Police's house, and there's two stories about what happened he goes into the house. The official version, which I actually think is the most likely, is that Lazarus was there to do a murder on the chief of police. For that guy's brutal repression of protesters and the labor movement and anarchists. But the chief of police wins the
fight and kills Lazarus, shoots him dead. The other version is that Lazarus was not an anarchist, but he was there as like a misguided attempt to get the chief of police to write a letter of good character for Lazarus to live and work outside of Chicago, because this was the Russian Empire's cultural norm is that if you want to go work somewhere else, you go to the chief of police or whatever.
Huh, those are really different.
I know, I know his sister holds to this one, like to the end of her days.
I think she holds to the second story.
Yeah okay, yeah, okay, She's like, he couldn't have afforded a gun. There's no way he would have had a gun. He wasn't an anarchist. I think it's more likely that he showed up there to do a murder. I support
him either way. The police version is what's stuck, and since this is nineteen oh eight and people are fucking weird back then, they exhume his body from the grave to remove his brain to study the brain of an anarchist because they're convinced we have like abnormal growths on our brains or some shit.
Yeah, it's like phrenology days. Yeah. Well, they're looking at the shape of your forehead to decide if you should live, yeah, or be part of the elite utopia. Yeah.
I remember one of my friends was once explained to me this like blew my mind that there was a person who had to dedicate his entire life to measuring the skulls of people different races, and he knew that racism was nonsense, and he was just literally he was like, I'm the guy who up with the statistics to say that white people's brains aren't bigger. Hooray. This is totally a good use of my time.
That's what he did with this one wild and precious life.
You know, I mean like it needed to be God, it shouldn't have needed to be done.
It shouldn't have needed to be done. But yeah, you know.
But digging people up to pull out their brains actually is one against the law and two reel against Jewish religious practices. Yeah. Yeah, people got really mad. The chief of police who shot him posed in a photo with the kid's corpse as if he was a big game hunter. The only upside is that the chief of police like never emotionally recovered from it all and wound up like
quitting well good. I know, yeah, but the dominoes of this is that the cops running around arresting all the anarchists in Chicago, which I mean that happening forty years earlier is why we have the made egg the May first celebration of worker holidays. But they're running around arresting all the anarchists. Gets to the bottom of this plot, even though there probably wasn't a plot, even if he was there to do a murder, it was probably just
he was like, man, fuck that guy, you know. But they're like, oh shit, these like Russian born Jewish anarchists, they're the problem. When who shows up in town. But the most dangerous woman in America red Emma Emma Goldman a Russian born Jewish anarchist. So her venue is like, oh, you're not talking here, that's not happening. Our guy, Ben Reightman is like what you're talking about? She's coolest shit. It's like I found you a new place to talk.
Come speak at the Hobo College. Ooh, perfect, it would be. But then the police shut down the whole event. She did not get to do a talk in Chicago that time, but.
That would have been so nice. I would have loved to have been there.
I know, I know, got it.
There's like, it's not even like my favorite historical figure or whatever. I don't know if I have one. I can't think of anyone else I'd rather go see's talk, besides maybe Lucy Parsons, who will mention some of the quotes from later.
But yeah, oh yeah, it would be a dream. At least we have some recordings of it, which is nice. Not a lot, right, we know, there's not too many recordings of her talking, but man, it is uh, it is powerful, that's for sure. I've never heard got the voice of the Leader. Oh my god, you haven't heard recordings of her? No? Oh yeah, I mean maybe there's only like one I've heard, the one where she's talking about how she appreciates FDR actually like listening to workers.
I've read that one. But she also like dis is kind, she kind of disses him and yeah it's good, it's really good. But it's uh, I can hear it in my head, right.
Now that's fucking cool.
Yeah, look it up everyone.
Yeah. So she can't talk in Chicago, but Ben Rightman is now intrigued, so he goes to Minneapolis to see her talk and he just like falls madly in love. He sees her on stage and is like, there's the girl from There's one of the many girls for me. She's ten years older than him, She's thirty nine, he's twenty nine. And he basically like goes and runs her merch table during the talk without even like chucking. He's just like, ah, shit, how do I get involved?
You know?
He goes and runs her the book table, you know.
And yunsung heroes.
Yeah, yeah, And he's just the scene guy, like I love that. This is an episode it's about men, but it's about man who live in women's shadows and that do stuff, you know. Yeah, And and it meets her and she falls for him too. He becomes her manager for eight years, and one of the reasons she falls in love is this man can fuck okay. Emma Goldman wrote of the first time they fucked, quote that night, I was caught in the torrent of elemental passion. I had never dreamed any man could rouse in me, I
responded shamelessly to its primitive call. It's naked beauty, it's ecstatic joy.
Oh my god. This is from her books memoirs.
Yeah, I think so.
Oh well, let's just say good for him. Yeah, okay, well let's tell me we're looking him up. Yeah, I want to look at.
Him, right, totally young, Ben Right.
That was good, Sophie, Thank you so much.
All right, Ben rightman as hot as hell?
Oh oh yeah, okay, mm hmm he's got the mustache.
Look, he's kind of got like a Zappa vibe.
Mm hmmm mm hmmm, I see an ascot.
Yeah, and then like good later, Ben rightman, you know what, he has earned his reputation and people, I'm sure still completely into him. Yeah. She described him as a handsome brute.
That's what you want.
Yeah, the kind of energy that is putting out. And he is an amazing booking agent and he changed him Goldman's life. She goes from speaking to whatever local cliqu of anarchist is in any given town just selling out halls of thousands. She gets, he gets the middle class to show up to see her too, and he hands sells radical books at the events, saying quote we sold more books and works of literature than any two propagandists
in the United States. The publisher of Whitman's Leaves of Grass told us that for several years, Emma was his best customer, and her pamphlets are selling like fifty thousand copies, which is like, wow, that's like New York Times bestselling. That's like real easy. Yeah, yeah, that's like number one.
She'd be on there. Oh yeah wow. And you know what's cool is like you were talking about the radical roots of institutions, and it's like pr itself isn't coming into play until like the nineteen twenty is real as an industry. So you know, these are some radical roots. We got propaganda, we got the anarchists come together, you get a horrifying new industry.
Yeah, totally. That is one of the like sad things that comes out of all of this. It's like, and then we invent new culture and then capitalism takes it. Yeah, yeah, unrelated to that. Did you know that you could spend your money on the products and services that support this fine podcast?
I didn't know that.
Well, it's true. In fact, here's someone who will explain to you just how to do it.
I hope it's the Rigan coin people.
We all hope, Hi Regan, and we're back and we're talking about Ronald Reagan, the cool person who did cool.
Wait, you know, I do have to add Joni to my list of things that could be considered the equivalent of the Roman Empire list that I've been making with Sarah Marshall for the last since.
That's talking about the astrologer.
I'm talking about the astrologer Joe our girl.
Oh okay, And you know, I want to tell you maybe you know this, maybe you don't. Ronnie Reagan early hitchhiker. He hitchhiked in his young life to find work. Yeah, where he was trying to work as a journalist, radio guy. I know, you know it could have gone either way with him. Yeah, and it really went either way.
Ronald Reagan, the wobbly is like, that's the all history that I'm.
Kind of disappointed that Joni didn't make my original top ten list of things that are the equivalent of men thinking about the Roman Empire.
Okay, let's hear the rest of them.
I don't know if you'll understand how I won't.
I won't understand it.
I'll give it that's absolutely number one. Princess Diana, Okay is number two, Lolita. Especially that photo of Bradley Cooper reading it to his extremely young girlfriend in the park.
That was weird? Was that was?
That was the time? Number three, the Tutors. Number four, the post it note scene from Sex and the City. You don't know that I.
Know, but I made it pretty far. I got the first three.
Number five just Taylor Swift as a concept.
Oh, I mean, I have conversations about Taylor Swift constantly, even though I just because of the people are Yeah.
Number six, you'll get this one, Marie Antoinette, Oh yeah, number seven, the Titanic. Number eight, that magazine cover of Jessica Simpson that gave every young girl body issues because they called her Jumbo Jessica.
Oh yeah, I think about that often.
Mild Number nine, why did you drop out of Yale from Gilmore Girls?
Oh nice?
Twilight? And now eleven Jony.
Yeah, John Quiggley, She's We did a whole episode that revolved around presidents using astrologers and Reagan. Nancy Reagan used a particular astrologer quite often, and she wrote a very wild expose.
We got I think it was at least a one part from Behind the Bastards on Jony, but you did, yeah, oh yeah, yeah, yep, She's She's worth it. But I'm going to keep growing this list, and if you have suggestions.
Strangle shirt wi was foul.
Oh my god, yeah that too, Yeah, that too. That's a good one. I also think about that ballerina that her her costume lit on fire and killed her. I think about that.
Oh my god, I've never heard of that.
I haven't heard of that either.
Yeah, Sophia Alexandra gave me this book that was like a like a book that had this that was like death, like like how how clothing is dangerous? And there was like a whole thing about it. And I was like, oh now fear unlocked.
Yeah, that's like a spontaneous combustion level.
Not that I'm doing ballet, but well not yet. Anyways, back to the podcast and less about me. But if you, if you, dear listeners, have things that you think should be on this list, you have permission to tag me on the social interwebs, but not me, Margaret.
You can tag me. You can tag Chelsea.
Don't know if they will see it either.
I thought spontaneous human combustion is gonna be a much larger part of life. It's like what people say about like a quicksand you know, or.
Like Bermuda Triangle.
Yeah yeah, Like I had an aunt who lived in Bermuda and I was like, how is she alive? For a very long time? And but yeah, span yeah, I thought spontaneous human combustion was just like because I loved these pre internet books, the like Mysteries of the Unknown from Time Life or whatever these like is a like thing where you convinced trick people into buying this like subscription to these shitty hardcover books full of nonsense.
Oh, like an early subscription box.
Yeah, totally very cool. Anyway, what might have come in them is pamphlets from Emma Goldman.
Yeah, but cool.
At one point, Ben Rightman, so he's not even technically in the IWW we actually covered this part in a different episode at one point, but he's fighting with the Hoboes for free speech, like whenever they have a free speech fighting sometimes showing up, you know. And at one point he gets literally tarred and feathered by a right wing mob of businessmen in San Diego, which.
Is like, no joke, that's hot.
Tar yeah, yeah, no, uh almost.
Kills you, right yeah. Ough.
They actually they didn't have any feathers, so they tar and sage brushed him and then they burned the letters IWW into his like into his butt, you know, or like onto his butt. Shetran, Yeah, but well, I guess with a cigar so slowly, and he wasn't even a dues paid member. But I hope he decided he I hope they just decided he's in after that, right, yeah, And he apparently like took it, and I mean, what else are you gonna do? He would like give talks
and we'll get to it. But the Dill Pickle Club, like everything's like kind of comedy, and like one of his big things when he'd give talks is he'd be like, well, I'm gonna show you, and everyone's like, nah, don't show us.
You know.
It's like the scandalous thing where he's gonna show you the scars on his butt or whatever. In nineteen eighteen, while he was in prison for six months for teaching birth control, he he did all of his usual stuff. He was the prison's free doctor, like all the inmates would come to him. Right. He was also fucking just fucking his way through the prison, gluting you know the boy you would assume male prisoners. He also fucked a bunch of female prison guards. Hey, and then he also
fucked female prisoners consentually. And I I don't know how he's managing this, Like is he like fucking guards to be like get permission to go fuck other people? I don't know.
I guess we're just spreads. Yeah, opportunities come your way. Yeah.
And his quote about this when people are like, wait, you fuck dudes, he's like, quote, yes, I took my fun where I found it, and I denied myself nothing.
Wow.
Yeah, iconic.
I know.
He goes on living his life. He works as a doctor for the down trodden. He advocates public health. He is somewhat irresponsible about how he fucks. The whole thing with Emma Goldmett didn't put it in the script specifically, She's like going on tour talking about free love and the whole time he's like just like fuck a ton of people and like kind of and she's on this like like there was like this like fight in the free love thing between like sort of the spiritual and
profane sex. And so there's kind of like, only fucking people that you like, romantically care about and then casual sex, right, and he's on a team casual sex and she's not, and like, and later he writes her a letter being like, hey, I've been fucking all these people, and she's like, oh no, I'm very sad. But also she sort of knew and was also fucking other people and yeah, whatever, old polydrama.
Yep.
And while it's open, the Dill Pickle Club is his home away from home, with his actual home being the rails. He died of a heart attack at sixty three, and he's buried in the same Chicago cemeteries and Ma Goldman Lucy Parsons and the Haymarket Martyrs. He supposedly rode a million miles of railroad tracks without ever having paid a single fare. Might have you know, wouldn't put it past him.
He also supposedly left fifteen hundred dollars in his will to establish a drinking trust for the local bumps to drink to his memory, like, and anyone caught crying over his death into their beer was cut off from the fund.
Wow yeah, wow wow, And.
It seems like one of those things. Yeah, okay, wait wait you specialize in urban legends. I want to get your your sure your take on whether or not that's just an urban legend.
I mean it kind of sounds like tall Tale a little bit, but it's kind of specific, so you know, it feels like maybe a little too specific to be a legend. Maybe I would say the million miles sounds more urban legendy than something as specific as creating a drinking fund and like the no crying, But I don't know, you know, that's the thing about urban legends.
No, that makes sense. And I while at some other point he mentions in his writing being inspired or like, he mentions how cool it was when so and so died left behind four hundred dollars for the bumps to like and like, so that his funeral was like the best raucous fun time in whatever. So he clearly so he.
Has like some consciousness already over what he wants to do. Yeah, potentially yeaheah, okay.
Which is funny because.
Then let's believe it.
Yeah, yeah, it's funny because the Dopeckle Club was sober and run by a tito.
Yeah that's funny.
But one of his daughters, Helen Reightman, was a lesbian who went on to become a prominent nudist who wrote a book in the thirties in nineteen thirty two called Ongoing Naked and founded a newdist club, as well as being a sexologist in nineteen thirties Germany, studying homosexuality and working to regularize it because nineteen twenties and thirties Germany was the front of the world for queer rights. And she also rode the rails wearing men's clothes and changed
her name to Jan Gay. And I don't know whether it was a like because I'm a gay lady thing or not.
When did gay come into common useage? Sure, because it was, like you, it was more pansy, more fairy in like the twenties and thirties.
And it was the third sex before then.
Right, Yeah. Yeah, we just did a series on early drag queens, so I was really deep in the pansy craze and kind of the how everyone was kind of weirdly pro gay for like three years in the thirties.
Yeah, that's cool as hell.
Yeah.
No, I only am about fun from an American point of view. I know more about like when it kicks in, like with the Matachine Society and stuff a little bit later, like.
H totally it's good history. Yeah, check it out, guys.
Yeah, okay, so that's the setup about hobos and this like started with hoboes, the Dopickle Club all this stuff, right, and from there, so Chicago has this hobo culture. From
there it becomes the bohemians. And again not actually people from bohemia, people who get called that or call themselves that, the counterculture and specifically the two came together in Chicago in what got called Hobohemia, which is a counterculture built on vagabonds and with wandering working class intellectuals and artists. And it's a really funny portmanteau to me because hobo might already mean homeless bohemian, right right, so it's like hobobobo or something, I don't know whatever.
Yeah, yeah, what do they call that? A baby puppy in journalism? Kind of kind of.
Yeah, it's a baby puppy. Our hoe Bohemia in Chicago was located in an area called Tower Town, which is now called Old Chicago water Tower District. It is named after the Old Chicago water Tower. But you didn't see that coming it and its pumping station were the only buildings that survived the Great Fire of eighteen seventy one that destroyed pretty much the whole. They'd been built two years earlier, and they're like stone right, it's a really neat castle. It looks like some Lord of the Rings,
like evil war fang. Shit. Eh, I've worked in Lord of the Rings, Sophie. Aren't you proud of me? Thanks?
Less than an hour and you did it.
Yeah, that's what matters. That's why I get paid the big buck. It actually get fired if I don't mention Lord of the Rings every episode or week.
Yeah, it's Lord of the Rings the equival of the Roman Empire for you, Magpie.
Yeah probably, Yeah that in the Spanish Civil War.
Well you think about that like every three hours.
That's true. I'm trying to figure out this episode. This episode might not tie into the Oh my god, don't worry. It's gonna tie into the Irish Revolution, the Easter risings in it. And I talked shit on Stalin. Don't worry.
Oh good Yeah, thank goodness. Yeah, you're checking some of the box.
Yeah, I'll take it.
Yeah, tuberculosis, that's what I think about every once a week instead of the Roman Empire consumption. Yeah yeah, yeah, So Tower Town and where Hoe Bohemia is. It had been a rich neighborhood originally, but by the nineteen tens
it's a working class neighborhood. It's the large houses are divided up into tenements, and it was a three block wide buffer between the Gold Coast, which was rich bastards on the shore to the east, and Little Hell to the west, which was a poor immigrant Italian neighborhood whose organized crime would capture the nation's attention during Prohibition. The word gentrification was not coined until nineteen sixty four, but it's a process that's been with us as long as
there's been cities. The neighborhood was cheap, so artists moved there because art doesn't pay well in the capitalist society. If you want to stop gentrification, stop capitalism, because then artists can live wherever they want, or it can get paid better whatever. Anyway, Artists have to afford to eat, so they move where they can afford. Poor artists attract rich artists and wealthier people in general, and then the poor artists as well as original residents are priced out.
For a little while. It was a place for free thinkers where new ideas could percolate and take hold. This whole bohemia didn't center around the water Tower itself. It centered around Washington Square Park, which they called bug House Square.
Yeah.
Bug House Square was where people soapboxed, which is they literally stood up on boxes to address the crowd to go on about this or that thing. Okay, this is like the opposite thing, like of like quicksand or spontaneous human combustion. Soapboxing it seemed like a like weird thing, like a weird trope that obviously probably didn't really happen. Why would someone do this? This is like, this is like the entertainment of.
The Yeah, this is tweeting. Yeah, No, totally just yell your tweet yeah to the square. Yeah.
And it was called bug House Square because bug house was slang for crazy at the time, and it was an awfully eclectic mix of folks doing soapboxing, including anarchists, Wobbly's, communists, and folks with more unique political inclinations and ideas like whatever they've come up with. This is a time before podcasts when there was no other entertainment available. Because I think podcasts are the only form of entertainment if you've come up with it.
There definitely are soapboxes.
Yeah, it's true, absolutely, Literally thousands of people would show up on the weekends to listen to and heckle dozens of soapboxers every every day. It was the best known public square for this in the country during its heyday. And the thing that's interesting to me is that this they're not like modern talking heads there. They have more in common with modern stand up comics, and like all
the good podcasters, I've never done stand up comedy. I probably never will I have either, but like, clearly we try to be funny instead of just serious.
I'm very funny grim.
Yeah, so all kinds of views are espoused all over bug House Square, but the sort of hegemonic influence, the overall vibe, and the most speakers were the Wobbleys, the industrial workers of the world. Chicago was the crossroads of the country where East meets West. They kept calling it the Middle West, and I like don't know if that's just what they called it, or if that's just what
people called it before the Midwest. I'm not sure. I've never read so many first hand accounts of the Midwest until that's particular, and so we had a lot of railroads going through it, so it had a lot of hoboes, and so that I had a lot of wobbleys and IWW was found in Chicago in nineteen oh five. I want to quote one of my favorite bug house soapboxers, Lucy Parsons, who's later a dill pickle, a pickler as
they call them. Lucy Parsons was born a slave. She saw her husband hanged for running a newspaper during the Haymarket affair, which gives us may day. And this is a soapbox quote from her from a little later, but it seems to carry the vibe and I just kind of like it. It's not too far from what you'd see on Twitter before a billionaire got scared of us
all and destroyed Twitter. Lucy Parsons said to a crowd, what I want is for every greasy, grimy tramp in the country to arm himself with a knife or a gun and stationing himself at the doorways of the rich, shoot or stab them as they come out.
Didn't mince words. Very direct, very direct. Yeah.
Fifty years earlier, she was writing pieces about why dynamite is the working class friend.
Right.
She just pretty pretty consistent.
Yep.
I'll say there's a few other landmarks to Hobohemia. There's the Radical Bookshop, which had a bit of an uninspired name. It was called the Radical Bookshop. This was started in nineteen fourteen by what I've seen described as a disaffected preacher and his blind anarchist wife and co run by
their two daughters. And basically they were like fuck off, broke, and they had a ton of books because they were both really bookish people, right, and so they were like, all right, we better turn our house into a bookshop, otherwise we're fucked.
Fair enough.
This lasted more than a decade, despite police harassment, and it was an inspiring place for some of the folks that laid kind of the foundations for twentieth century American poetry. And I don't know, I've heard these names, but I don't. I'm not enough of a poetry person. But Kennis rex Roth and Carl Sandberg kind of got their start through all of this. The mother, her name was Lillian h Udell.
She was a writer herself, and she wrote reviews of books and a biographical sketch of future friend of the pod Fltering Declaire. The other major partner in the bookshop was a socialist publisher called Charles H. Kerr, and he was another who at this point he's no longer that that's the name of the publisher, not the guy. But it was started by a guy named Charles H. Kerr, who is another Christian, socialist, vegetarian guy. And this guy's
a Unitarian. His press is still around today. They published the book about the Dill Pickle Club. I believe the only book about the Dill Pickle Club. I just read it. I think you think I know what it was called. It's probably called the Dill Pickle Club. If anyone's trying to google this, there's one l in Dill pickle because I think they got like sued over that was like trademark problems when they tried to use two wells and
they're like whatever, we don't care. Every Sunday, the Udells had discussions in their bookshop sort of an indoor bug house square. Before too long they realized they needed a real indoor bug house square, a cafe for all comers to discuss ideas and collectively and democratically form new ways of thinking, being and living. They needed a Dill Pickle club, which will talk talk about on Wednesday.
Yeah. Mmm, I'm so excited. Wow, this has been a really cool journey so far. Thanks, like a real American tale.
I say, right, very okay, but what's your uh both of you, what's your what's your takeaway on Ben rightman?
The man can fuck? Yeah?
Yeah, I don't know.
It sounds like he was put his money where his mouth was and you know, lived kind of a weird dual life as like a dog because he was the doctor. Yeah, a doctor. I don't know. It's like a very very cool story and anyone connected Emma Goldman I want to know about. So this is definitely a very cool story. And I don't I'm I don't know where it's going to go. I have no idea.
Well it's going to go to Wednesday. But first, where can people hear you or at you on social media when they have ideas about what they think about every week? That isn't the Roman Empire?
Great? Yeah? American Hysteria is my podcast and we cover moral panics, urban legends, conspiracy theories, and hoaxes as well as crazes throughout American history and we kind of trace them back to their roots kind of not unlike your show, and try to uncover some hidden history that illuminates the present day. So you can find that anywhere. You can find me mostly on Instagram at American Hysteria Podcast. I'm
not doing Twitter anymore. I've officially decided Twitter's gone. No, I'll be in the town square.
So you're saying that people who like this podcast might like your podcast.
I'm saying it. Okay, I'm going to say it right. Yeah, Uh, what do I have to plug? I once had a satanic panic after me. That's what I'm going to try and say to impress you.
Instead, you had one after me. Yeah, there was a satanic planic for my band. When I lived in Ashville, North Carolina. There's this local right wing news quote unquote news journalist who actually had a pretty large following, was a Facebook guy called a Skyline News, and he like was like convinced about antifoe, which, murder, baby whatever.
All the keywords. Yes, Okay.
He found my music video and was like what and so we just printed pieces of it onto our band shirts after that and just.
H well, that's what you definitely do. You got to work that in. Yeah, well that does impress means I am impressed as my goal.
So if you want to follow me, I'm still on Instagram at Murder at Kiljoy, and I'm on Substack now where I write a bunch every week because that's the thing that I can't stop doing. I mean, because I have new and insightful things that you should totally check out. Uh And and also I want to shout out sad Oligarch, which I just finished listening to, because you think I wait, I always wait until everything's like if it's like a limited run.
You binge it, you binge it totally? Yeah, what'd you think?
That's fucking great? If you like this, you'll like sad Oligarch Jake Hanrahan talking about basically skirting around outright saying that Putin is killing all these oligarchs to consolidate power in Russia. And it's good, it's entertaining and as it's also kind of dark, but that's what I got to plug. Go listen to sad Oligarch, Sophie Cool, what do you got?
I want to plug the good folks at Border Kindness. If you're not following them ontocial media, then you should be. And if you are able to donate, that would be awesome. They're doing really good work. And listen to the couple of episodes that our video and James Stout has done on what's going on at the Border on it.
Could happen here yep, and see y'all Wednesday.
Ye by Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website Coolzonemedia dot com or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.