How the Boy Scouts Conquered America

in New Orleans cotton nine feet of floodwater. It's just rushing into their house. So this boy, Ashton Pruett, he's only fourteen and he just got his swimming badge from the boy Scouts a week ago. And Ashton he's ready for this. He creates flotation devices out of pants and hands them to his family. He comes up with a plan to swim everyone to safety. Like he swims them

out of the house one by one. He gets a seventy two year old grandmother to the neighbor's roof, and then his blind brother, and then each member of his family and they sit there as the water rises to eighteen feet high and eventually they're rescued, but it's just incredible. So as I was reading this, I was struck by the story. Like a kid from the city tying knots and being resourceful, staying calm, using his scouting to save his family in what has to be the unlikeliest of circumstances.

To be it's the true meaning of the word boy Scouts. Yeah, I mean, that's amazing and almost as impressive as the Pinewood Derby car my son made in The Scouts. Maybe. So I heard that story and thought that's America. But the whole thing made me wonder, why are the Boy Scouts such an American institution and how did they conquer America? And that's what we're covering on today's show. Welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson and as always I'm

joined by my good friend Manes Ticketer. We've got a super fun show for you Today. We're tackling a big question, how did the Boy Scouts conquer America? So we'll be digging into how the Boy Scouts one American hearts and became such an enduring institution, And as usual, we'll have a couple of ridiculous quizzes who are we putting to the test today? Mango? Well, we found a couple of

former Scouts to answer our crazy questions. They're basically doing their good deed for the day by joining us, right, all right, well good, and we've got the incredible Chuck Brian and studio with us too. Chuck is the co host of the ridiculously popular Stuff You Should Know podcast, and he'll be checking in a little bit later. But why don't we dive into the topic at hand, Mango?

Why are the Boy Scouts such an American thing? I mean, we have motherhood and apple pie and Boy Scouts really aren't that far behind, yeah, which is, of course ironic because none of those things are particularly American. I mean, I think it's safe to say motherhood was pretty solidly a thing before America existed, and apple pies were consumed by the Squeets in the Dutch long before it was baked state side. And the Boy Scouts they got most

of their early momentum from the Brits. But the Boy Scouts feel so American, I know, and America definitely played a big part in the movement, but the biggest influence comes from one man, Lord Robert Baden Powell, who actually went by the name Stevie. Stevie yeah, or Stevie like. He was the guy who really launched the scouting movement and got it to catch on across the globe. But for him, it wasn't just campfires and pine cone art.

It was about winning a war. But before we get into that, can we talk for a second about masculinity? Such a bad transition? All right, Mago, what do you want to say about masculinity? And please don't tell me this is just your way to slip in your favorite fact from a few years ago, which one you know, the one about the guinea pig who jumped the fence at the animal sanctuary in England and impregnated something like

a hundred female guinea pigs. Yeah, that's another legendary brit The best part of that story is the guinea pigs name was Randy. That's right, Randy. No, this has nothing to do with guinea pigs. It's about boy Scouts. So it occurred to me as I was researching the Scouts that about every decade or so there's some big national panic about whether we're coddling our sons too much and how men aren't raised to be men anymore. I feel like you kind of hear echoes of it in the

air right now. Like for the past few years, schools have made a big issue of curbing bullying, right, but there's also been a vocal backlash to it. I mean, you even hear people like Chris Rock half joking about how bullies and fist fights are really what we need to toughen up the next generation, and how if there weren't bullies, there'd be no comedians. Well who can imagine

making an argument for bullying now. But yeah, that's a common knock against millennials too, that they're a generation that's suffered from too many participation prizes and all the helicopter parenting. So there's a worry that they're ill prepared for the future. And I know what you're talking about in terms of

being cyclical. I remember back in the early two thousands when that book Dangerous Book for Boys became a bestseller, and it felt novel because it was telling kids to step away from their screens and go shoot a bow and arrow and make a ford and come back with bruises is and scrape knees. Right, And of course I love playing in the backyard and building forts too, and I think that stuff is super important for kids. What's interesting to me is that this worry about raising real

men isn't a modern phenomena. What do you mean, Well, it's actually one of the biggest reasons the boy scout movement took off way back in the early nineteen hundreds. You know, it was the age of manufacturing and all these new time saving technologies, and as populations were growing in cities, there was a real fear of taking the boy off the farm and detaching him from the wilderness,

which is crazy. I mean, we're talking about the early nineteen hundreds, right, It's not like all men were working in air condition offices. Most things were still done by hand, right, But even in the nineteen hundreds, Americans were looking back wistfully at the manly men of the past, like pioneers and men in the wild West, and the self sufficiency of Native Americans. Well, to put it in context, that was when called the Wild and White Fang came out

and were immensely popular. Right when Jack London fueled the idea that real boys live in the wild. And at the same time you have Teddy Roosevelt in office, I mean boxing in the White House at vent Is, on the Amazon rough riding and all that. He was the poster child from muscular Christianity, absolutely, and all of that went into how the Scouts got started. Actually, do you

want to explain what muscular Christianity was, Like? I read about it too, and it plays a big pardon being in Pal's life and why the boys got movement took off. But you know, it isn't exactly a household term. I know what makes me think of priests doing free weights at the gym, but that's not so far off. Actually, muscular Christianity was a reaction to Victorian gentleman being a little too genteel and the Anglican Church being considered to a feat But the time women were starting to play

bigger roles in local churches. So it was partially a movement of men reclaiming their religion, but it was also this commitment to a more vigorous Christianity where people boxed and went to gym's and sweat their aggression out and back. Then all of that hitting the gym was about a philosophy of actively showing your Christian principles and a healthy body through good deeds and actions exactly. And what also gets mixed into that philosophy is patriotism, you know, like

do your best for God and country. So in the early the air is thick with this concern that boys aren't becoming the right kind of men, and then up pop a few scouting groups that are trying to make men of boys. There's the Woodcraft Indians launch in nineteen two in Connecticut, and there's the Sons of Daniel Boone out of Cincinnati in five Like, both of those groups

harkened back to the manly men of yesteryear. But the man who really kicks off the scouting movement in America is this millionaire publisher out of Chicago named W. D. Boys. As Boys is traveling to London, he gets lost in the city's legendary fog, and as he's trying to find his way, this kid approaches him and guides him where he's going. And when Boys tries to tip his guide, the boy refuses and says he's doing his duty as

a boy scout. Well that's England. But Boys is so taken by this unknown scout that he looks up the Boy Scouts, which Baden Powell had launched a few years before, and Boys gets bidden Powell's blessing to use his manual on Scouting to spread the philosophy across America, and in the process he helps unite all these splinterd little groups of Scouts out there under this big banner, the Boy

Scout Association. That's right. But before any of that, there's a South African war we have to talk about, and the first real Boy Scouts, a crafty group of kids who helped save a tiny British outpost from complete annihilation. Not your typical church basement group. But before we get into that, how about we break for a quiz. Our guest today is partially responsible for our decision to leap

into the podcast world. He and his Stuff you should know co host have been producing one of the most popular podcasts in the world for nearly a decade now. But he's certainly one of our favorites and a big part of why we decided to come join the house Stuff Works family. Chuck Bryant, Welcome to part time Genius. Yeah, that's right. I feel intimidated now. I didn't know I was responsible for this intimidating We can apologize to the nation.

I know, we're kind of relieved that we're not recording in the studio next to us, which is the studio that you guys recording, because it would be a little bit weird to have you as a guest and your own studio, right guest in my own home. Yeah yeah, Plus it's tiny and small and a little stinky. This is much nicer. That's actually the main reason. So, you know, so josh One said that you guys are on this never ending quest to explain absolutely everything on planet Earth

and beyond. So you guys are now approaching what a thousand episodes is that this this November, at some point it will be a thousand. We have a listener that uh is very sweet and makes a keeps up with a spreadsheet for us and since sends it to us every few months. I love that, And she told us that it would be a thousand in November. You guys gonna do anything to celebrate a thousand? Well, I think we have a special topic in the kitty for that,

which I won't ruin now. Um and well, you know, we're not much into fanfare, so knowing us will probably just reference it, you know, out of the sides of our mouths and thank everybody, and that will be it. Yeah, or maybe bringing a brass band. I think that's I think that's the way to do it. We might plan

to bring in a brass band. I know you love movies, And years ago, Chicago made this recommended reading list for the city and they put To Kill a Mockingbird on it, And I was curious, what movie you'd make recommended viewing for all of America? Oh wow, or movies. It doesn't have to be one recommended viewing because it's a little bit dicier than just your favorite movie. But I'm gonna go with one of my favorite movies and say Jaws. Yeah,

everyone should see that movie. I think Jaws is uh, it's one of my favorite movies, not only just because I love the movie, but it's it's a perfect movie to me. Um if if you look at the story and the way it's played out, and the performances and just Spielberg at that age when he was young, and uh, I mean he's still great, but I just have not been as much into his movies here in the last you know, yeah, twenty years, it's Jaws really yeah, yeah,

basically last forty five years. Um. Yeah, it's kind of the perfect movie to me. So I think it's a great movie to recommend for just to to learn about the craft. Yeah, and you know, every kid should watch something that makes them terrified the ocean. It's true. Yeah,

that's true. Yeah, there's actually I saw Quirkbooks put out a book not too long ago that was about I forget the name of it exactly, but it was these terrible paperbacks that came out really as a response to something in popular culture, and it was talking about when Jaws came out that there's this immediate rush to put out other things like rabbits and like the scary animals, crabs, whatever it might be. Yeah, I think I remember, Well, that's an entirely different movie. I think I do remember

a lot of Uh. I think that even John Sales wrote the great John Sales wrote one of the Piranha movies, I'm not mistaken. And then there were giant alligators and uh yeah, but those you know, they can't touch Jaws.

So on. On a very different topic, I remember listening to your episode on Artificial Suite there's not too long ago, and it sounded like at least Josh changed many of his behaviors, or you guys talked about changing your behaviors after learning more about the effects of artificial sweeteners or at least the fears around those. Have there been other big episodes where you guys have either changed the way you thought about something significantly or even changed the way

you know you lived based on what you've learned. That's a good question. UM. I think a lot of times little things inform my psyche and maybe have a little bit of a more subliminal undercurrent. Uh, maybe not so much a conscious a major conscious decision to do things differently, although sometimes like we did one on zoos a long time ago, and I had just never given much thought to zoos and um, but you know, zoos are great

and zoos can be great. But you know, when you you do what we do, which is really digging and research all sides of something, UM, it really kind of made me think about whether I need to be supporting zoos and aquariums and these places that keep animals like elephants, and even though here in Atlanta, like it's a a

great elephant enclosure, but it's tiny compared to what they need. Um. But then we heard from a lot of I mean, we didn't totally poopa um, but uh, we did hear from a lot of zoologists and zookeepers that said, like, guys, you know, I see where you're coming from. But we do really good work and there's so much research that goes on now and it's not the old days of animals and cages for the most part in the United States. Um, forget about zoos in some other countries like those are abhorrent.

But um yeah, things like that really made me kind of look at like, all right, I really need to just at least give more thought two what I'm supporting here. Yeah, so we probably won't see drinking a diet cokes throwing through the Atlanta zoos sometimes. Now, well, I do go to the zoo now though, because of a young daughter, and like I said, you know, there is a lot of great things and it's great to expose kids. You know, she sees elephants and picture books and giraffes and then

for her to see one a person. Um, as a parent, you can't not want to exposure to that stuff. Yeah. So yeah, you just hope that they're doing the right thing, you know, and they are in Atlanta. My my family lives. I've got family in this tiny village in India and uh, and they have a local zoo there, and the zoo is basically filled with animals that used to be our family pets, some rabbits there, docks, just ridiculous. You should take your daughter sometimes. Right, this is the kiddycat Room.

All right? Well, as you know, you've joined us for an episode on the Boy Scouts. We asked you if you had been a boy Scout as a kid. Um you said no, But then we asked you if you had heard of boy Scouts and you had, so we figured that qualified to uh to join us for today. So so what what what game is Chuck playing today? Mega? We're playing a game called Discontinued Merit Badge discontinued Billy Joel song And actually it's just Billy Joel songs, but

it's more fun to say discontinued. That's right. You probably didn't know that I'm a huge Billy Joel. Yeah, it's uh, And people always kind of laugh at that because I'm Indie rock guy, but I have been a Billy Joel fan. It was the first record I ever bought, and I never was like, nah, that's not cool. Since I was thirteen years old, I've been a Billy Jewel. Pretty awesome. Well, you know what, let's reuse this in the Billy Joel episode.

We've got planned so great? All right, So as an example, if I said cement work, you would say discontinued merit badge instead of discontinued Billy Joel song. Though clearly it would have gone you know, could have gone either way, I think so, So let's play. So we're playing discontinued merit badge or discontinued Billy Joel's song number one Traveling Prayer. Well, that's discontinued Billy Joel song and really good Billy Joel song. Bonus points if you happened to know the album since

you're a big fan. I just thought i'd thrown out that's on piano, man. I believe, Okay, we have we have been person for this one. Okay. Question number two, nut Culture, that's a discontinued merit badge? Is that? Is that right? It was merged into the fruit and nut growing badge. I would love to get a nut culture badge though on eBay or something. Wear it on my hat it's totally worth it, alright. Number three Clerk, Uh

discontinued Merit Badge. You got it, that's right, that's right it It only lasted a year in nineteen ten to nineteen eleven, so clerk, you'd have to reach bad for back for that one. So alright. Number four World Brotherhood, Uh discontinued Merit Badge. Wow, yeah, he's really good. There's only three left. He's four for four, alright. Number five Running on Ice, Uh discontinued Merit Badge. And and no way you know which album this is from? Oh no, no,

I said, mayor Badge. Is that Billy Joel? It's actually a billy This was from a nineteen eighties six album, The Bridge. Oh well, that explains it. Yeah, The Bridge is probably my least favorite and least listen to album. Boy right now Running on Ice with a Badge. Yeah, that's all right. You're you're you're four for five two left, all right? Question Number six Beef Production even home along to this tune to that. I so wish that was

a Billy Joel song. If it's on the Bridge and be mad, I say Merit Badge, and you would be correct. This one lasted for about fifty years beef production and in all Right, last One Stalker. Uh, well, I don't know it is a Billy Joel song, but that would be a really weird merit badge. Yes, but sometimes this scuts the weird things. Yeah, I'm gonna go with Billy Joel. I wish it were, but it was a real merit badge. It got changed to the stock and then tracking. Oh

it was. Of course my brain went to um ex girlfriend stalking, animal stalking, which leads to beef production. Yeah, so kind Yeah, you got five out of five out of seven bonus. So what has what has Chuck one? Well, you win the same prize that we give away every week, which is our Endless Admirations. I thought you're gonna say, a copy of the Bridge. Yeah, I think that might be and listen to that song. I'm so mad coming as well. So all right, Well, for those of you

that have not listened to stuff, you should know. I don't know how that has possibly happened, but it is one of our favorite podcasts. Hope you guys will check it out. And Chuck, thanks so much for joining us. Hey, thanks, and welcome to the family, guys. Has been great Welcome back to Part Time Genius, where we're discussing how the boy Scouts conquered America. So remember how I said we have to rewind to a war in South Africa, right, but I have a bit of a tangent first, and

I promise we'll get there. So, as you know, my parents are from India, and even though I was born in New Jersey and grew up in North Carolina and Delaware, I've always felt like I needed to learn for myself how things really get done in America. Like my parents were great for food and shelter and unconditional love and you know, help with homework, but they were a little clueless about how certain things work. What do you mean by that? Well, intentionally or not. I'm always trying to

connect little things about how people get places. So things like the NBC Page Program. Sure, I mean, if you're a page at NBC, it's supposedly a real gold star if you're trying to work your way up at the networks. And the alums from it are incredible, people like Michael

Eisner reis filled in Aubrey Plaza right. And there are other little pockets of this too, like how the Groundlings and Second City, or gateways to Sidurday Night Live, or I read somewhere that being on the little team that is some is the Harper's Index can actually open a huge career in magazines. That's where a bunch of big editors got their start. Okay, I get what you mean, But you do remember that this is a show about Boy Scouts, right, Yeah, and I promise we're getting there. See.

I feel like being an Eagle Scout is another of these things that as an outsider, people don't really tell you about. But if I'd really wanted to get into politics or the military, or even be an astronaut, I think there's almost an extra level of perceived patriotism that comes with being a Boy Scout at the highest level, which is definitely grounded in Boy Scout history. I mean,

the Boy Scouts are kind of officially patriotic. So just five years after being established in the States, the Boy Scouts got a charter from Congress in nineteen sixteen, which protected it as a patriotic institution from monopoly laws and help them consolidate Scout troops across the country. I mean, this was a huge deal. Other institutions with this charter from Congress include the Red Cross or the Future Farmers

of America. Oh so, how they scored the Charter Well, the fact that Teddy Roosevelt, Mr. Muscular Christianity himself was a big booster really helped. And then the charity work the Boys did in their early years making sure July Fourth events across the country were safe, insane, selling bonds

for the troops, planning gardens, collecting clothes in wartime. All of those things, combined with the fact that Norman Rockwell started illustrating covers for their magazine from the nineteen twenties on, that all cemented The Scouts is this very American thing. Yeah, and the Eagle Scout is like achieving the ultimate American boys status. I mean, just take a look at some of the names of Eagle Scouts. Former New York City mayor and self made billionaire Michael Bloomberg is one. Sam

Walton of Walmart's fame, Neil Armstrong. It's harder to get more American than Neil Armstrong. There's a really fun bit from the Astronaut Logs where Neil Armstrong, aboard the Apollo eleven, is on his way to the Moon and sends a shout out and best wishes to the boys at the National Scout Jamboree and Idaho. Can you imagine how psyched the Scouts must have been to hear this. I know it's such a great story. By the way, JFK was the first Boy Scout president. But do you know who

the first Eagle Scout president was? Gerald Ford? That's right. He was so American. He had a dog named Liberty. Can I quickly tell you my favorite Gerald Ford's story? Yeah, definitely. So David Gergen, you know, the political storian and Honda, had this story about Nixon and the White House and how Nixon of course needed a bigger, more important chair

than anyone else at the conference table. But on the day Nixon resigned and Gerald Ford took office, Ford had that big chair at the table removed, so all the chairs were the same size. Gergan's point was that whatever you think of Ford as a president, he was a pretty good guy, sage boy Scout. But back to my Eagle Scout rent. So you have people like Bob Gates, who was the head of the CIA, or Rex Tillerson from Exxon who's now our Secretary of State, or Hank

Paulson who was a Goldman. Saxon was also at the Treasury. Like they all talk about how they'll take a second look at job applications if you're an Eagle Scout. I mean, earning all those badges and doing good in your community can actually help you get a job even today. Well, another thing about those famous Scouts is that almost everyone you've named is white, which is the thing we'll talk about a little bit more later, but first let's get personal.

Were you a Scout? Nope? So why not? So this sounds stupid, but I think by the time I was really interested, I'd seen copies of Boys Life at my friend's house and thought the advertisements for things in the back were awesome. And then I heard about making Pinewood Derby cars and going camping. These were all things that appealed to me. But I was turned off by the uniform.

They just seemed so embarrassing to wear in public. And I mean I say this as a kid who wore a lot of villure in my earliers and I've seen the pictures. Well, you know what's funny is that the uniforms have always been a problem. Like there's this great quote from David McCloud's book about the Scouts, it's called Building Character and the American Boy and he talks about this in the town of Lockport, Illinois and the decade after b s A launched, And let me just find

the quote right here. Basically, the mocking and whistling was so bad that quote, the Boy Scouts had to beat up several gangs of town tuffs before it was safe to appear alone in uniform on the street. And apparently it only got worse after the nineteen twenties, when the Boy Scouts of America started pushing teenagers to wear shorts instead of pants because they were cheaper, which makes you

wonder why they pushed uniforms at all. Well, part of the reason the Boy scott started mandating uniforms early on was that it showed a commitment to the cause, and also because Boy Scout leaders wanted to make sure that boys in the woods were immediately recognized as part of an organization instead of, you know, just a bunch of delinquents up to no good. And I get it. I mean, if you saw my elementary school friends trying to start

a fire with sticks, you probably called the cops. But the Boy Scouts have had to walk this very fine line of whether they were training boys to be in the military, because people were suspicious from the start, like the uniforms were certainly advantageous because they conveyed this respect and commitment to serving and protecting the community, and the Boy Scouts of America like that, they were admired by

the military. At the same time, the organization wanted to court churches, so they secured funding from Andrew Carnegie, who McLeod points out was the staunch anti war supporter, and they went so far as to eliminate all talk of the military from their handbooks, which finally brings us back to the real origins of Scouting. Our good friend Robert Baden Powell, or as you call him, Stefy. That's right. So here's the quick story, or as quick as I

can tell it, which probably won't be that quick. So Biden Pal's dad passed away when he was just a toddler, but his mom was like this proud and clever woman, and she was determined to make men of her boys. So one Pale was growing up, not only were her sons encouraged to be off in the wild, but for vacation she'd make them backpack incredible distances, like she'd packed them off from their home in London and planned to

meet them in Wales. I know the boys would travel light and navigate on their own, and they'd catch and cook their own meals while setting up camp and canoeing along the way. It's incredible, yeah, and it's not really my idea of vacation, but her plan worked. They all ended up super capable, and Biden Powell really takes to this life, and so he joins the army. And I remember all along the way he's felt this loss of his father, so he's always looking for an older brother

or father figure to guide him. So let's fast forward to eighteen nine. By this time, he's forty two and he's a decorated colonel posted in colonial South Africa. But

he finds himself in a spot of trouble. He's in a region where the Dutch columnists the Bowers, want to seize the land from the British, and the British camp is seriously outnumbered, like they've got five hundred soldiers compared to the eight thousand Bowers surrounding them, and England doesn't want to send in reinforcements because they don't want to provoke a war, so bab Powell basically has to rely

on his wits. He consolidates his troops inland at a town called maf King, trying to move the bowers away from the coast, and then he starts employing the manly art of stagecraft. What do you mean like theatrics exactly? So Biden Powell does all these things to make the

area seem better protected than it actually is. He knows they're being watched, so he gets his men to act like they're ducking through barbed wire around the encampments when there actually isn't any and he gets his men to build gun turrets even though there isn't any artillery to use. He has this whole deception campaign. But one of the smartest things he does is to get a group of local boys as the maf King Cadet Corps to help

him out. Decked out in khaki, these boys relay messages and watched the hospital and scouting patrol areas for him, and in the process he relieves the soldiers of these more mundane duties and frees them to fight. So how long does this last two hundred and seventeen days. I know, it's unbelievable. Like he builds artillery from scrap metal, and he keeps morale up while keeping the Boers at bay.

And when the British finally send in troops and free the town Baden, Powell is declared a hero and becomes the youngest major general in the army. Oh and thirty eight of his young cadets, like those khaki wearing do gooders, they also get medals from Queen Victoria. That's great. But the craziest thing is that he was actually writing a book during the siege, Right wasn't he producing AIDS to scouting while he was down there? He was, people didn't

think he's left. So, just like Teddy Roosevelt, he was worried that boys weren't coming into the army well equipped enough. So he wrote this book that talked about the training he received, and when he went back to England and was declared to war hero, the book became a best seller,

and so he kind of becomes the godfather of scouting essentially. Right, so Aids the Scouting informs groups like the Woodcroft Indians and other proto Scouts, who then inspire him to do a revision of the book Scouting for Boys, which then becomes the official Boy Scout Manual. It's this virtuous cycle

between the efforts in England and the States. But what's most interesting to me about Biden Powell is that while he's formed the Boy Scouts to instill morality and the sense of adventure and boys, what really comes through is that this is the group he wished he could have been part of in his childhood, growing up without a dad. He wanted to create a place where lost boys could

learn life skills to become good men. Yeah, it's like two parts of mcgiver and one part Peter Pan, Right, And of course there's still the question of what's a good man and who's allowed to be a Boy Scout thinks the Boy Scouts of America will wrestle with for the next hundred years. But before we get into that meaty topic, why don't we take a break for a quiz. So, mago, who do having the line? Today? We've got two former Boy Scouts on the line. We've got Howard calling in

from sunny California and Ryan in Maryland. All right, well, let's meet each one of them. Howard I hear that you became a Scout just because you wanted a subscription to Boys Life. Is this true? That is correct, and actually you can pay for subscription, But then I learned it joint Scouting, you get a subscription for free. So that was my main motivator. It's because the back of the boy's Life was always the coolest part you could buy, like smoke grenades with army knives that were like two

inches thick, and plans for a hovercraft. But I avoided that one because the fine print said you needed to take a part of vacuum cleaner to build it. Wow, that's true scouting right there. Well, welcome to part time genius Howard and Ryan carrying on the boy Scout mission. I hear you started a hedge fund where the profits actually go to charity. Is this true? Yeah, so pretty pretty true. It's not exactly a hedge fun it's a student run investment group, but yeah, it's called the Urban

Philanthropic Funds pretty up fun and it's missing. It's to bridge investment education with community service. So the idea is that starting in the fall, will be managing a pretty small investment portfolio and then using returns to finance nonprofit initiatives in New Haven, and in our investment team, we're going to have not just you know, undergrads, but also uh NBA candidates from the Yal School of Management and we're hoping to include some high school students from the

New Haven community as well. UM and then our returns will be used to finance different nonprofit initiatives, but each year with a different focus issue. And our first years focus issue is going to be education including childcare and jobs, trading mango, what are what are we doing with our lives? Donate something? So alright, so where it's time to play our quiz for the day. What quiz are we playing today?

We're going to play a quiz called boy Oh Boy, And that's because every answer has the word boy in it. So if we were to ask the question, uh, type of musical act in sync or one direction is? You'd answer? All right? So that seems appropriate since we've got a pair of boy scouts. So this is how it works. We'll pick one contestant, put thirty seconds on the clock, and then you'll try to answer as many questions as you can get through. And remember every answer has the

word boy in it. Okay, Howard, are you ready to kick this thing off? Alright, so let's put thirty seconds on the official clock. Remember, each answer has the word boy in it. Here we go. Number one, the magazine Hugh Hefner used to edit the spokesperson for Pillsbury, is also known as what. Gandhi and Martin Luther King both advocated for this type of protest slogan on trucker hats used to read Jesus is my recent Richard link letter movie? Oh and times off? Times up? So how many did

you get mango? He got four, which is really good answer. The last one was boyhood. Okay, al right, here we go, Yeah, alright, let's put thirty seconds on the clock. It's Ryan's turn. Ryan, are you ready? Alright? Ready, here we go. Number one nickname for Robin Batman's sidekick, right, person who clears tables at a restaurant, boy right. Type of toy Woody is in Toy Story Cowboy Chris Farley and David Spade movie. Um uh, I don't know, So how did Ryan do

you mango? So? Ryan got three in a row, which is not bad at all. Um, and Howard was in with four. Okay, so what what what prize has Howard one today? So as always, first place wins a handwritten note from us to your mom or your boss, singing your praises, and this week that goes to Howard. And because we don't want Ryan's mailbox to feel lonely, will be mailing you a Horsemanship Merit badge, the cheapest Boy Scout badge we could find on eBay. Thank you, Thank

you both for thanks. Guys, have a great one so much. Okay, I can see now how the Boy Scouts got their start and why they quickly became an American institution. I mean, the Boy Scouts actually give a report to the nation every year, and in two thousand and sixteen, troops across the country contributed an astounding fifteen point four million hours of service. It's stunning how much volunteer work they do. But what are some of the threats and opportunities Boy

Scouts will face in the future. Well, one of the things that's been tricky for the Scouts is that if you're all about raising the American boy to be the all American man, and you have to reckon with who gets to be American, And that's some pretty thorny territory. You know, we were talking earlier about the way they were perceived as linked with the military and how Scouts

had to downplay their uniforms at times. Recently, of course, the Boy Scouts have had issues with whether to allow gay scouts into the fold and whether gay adults can be part of the leadership. Part of this issue comes down to who sponsors troops. Like overt of the troops in the US were sponsored by the Mormon Church, and so the Boy Scouts of America are constantly trying to balance their more socially conservative base with the more progressive troops.

And today, boys who identify as gay or in fact allowed to be Scouts and the parent organization of b SA refuses to discriminate, but individual troops can decide who their leaders are, right. This is sort of tricky terrain for the Scouts, and has also happened with issues like atheism and certainly with race before that. That's right, though the early Boy Scout text didn't discriminate against creator race,

it was a little different in practice. I mean, the Boy Scouts were very middle class and upper middle class institution from the start, in part because of the money you needed, like JFK supposedly asked for his allowance to be up just so you could pay his scouting fees. And you know, canteens and camps don't come cheap. So initially at least Scouts didn't really try to recruit in lower class areas. But the Boy Scouts had a very I don't know whether you call it pragmatic or exceedingly

cautious or sort of inept approach to race. While places like Camden and Philly and Buffalo had integrated troops from the early days, in the South, the b s A went with a kind of states rights plan. They had a provision that regional councils of b s A could vote whether to integrate its troops or not, and so they generally voted to keep the scouts white south of

the Mason Dixon. Some of it was at least cloaked in a sense of caution, like in Memphis, the councilman warned, how can we allow black boys to be Scouts when adults here are still advocating for lynchings. And in Louisville, Kentucky, there were actually five black boy Scouts, which sounds progressive, but then I read that they also had a representative set up just to feel criticisms for the integration, and

they weren't worrying about nothing. So the great historian John Hope Franklin was a boy scout in his native Oklahoma in the twenties. He tells a story of how he and his troop were groomed to do one good deed every day, and so when he saw an elderly blind woman on a street corner, he offered to walk her across. She gratefully accepted, and then they began. But and they got halfway across the street, she asked him if he

was white or colored. He answered that he was colored, and even though they were in the middle of an intersection and she couldn't see, she shook him off, saying, get your filthy hands off of me. And, as he put it to his son, quote, this woman, who could not see and who was in desperate need of help, was not as interested in help as she was in being certain that a young black man did not touch her. Yeah,

I mean, that story is so heartbreaking. And there were regions where black scouts weren't allowed to wear uniforms for a while. It was really messy. But on the other hand, you have the Girl Scouts, who Martin Luther King singled out as a force for desegregation. It's funny. The Girl Scouts have been progressive on most issues, so when someone sued about using the word God and their oath, the Girl Scouts responded by allowing that girls could insert whatever

word they wanted there. LGBT issues haven't been much of an issue. They allow transgender youth and have worked hard towards inclusivity. Well, we should do a whole different show on Girl Scouts, if nothing else, to talk about why

cookies tastes different in different parts of the country. Like, I have some theory, I can't wait to hear this, but you're it's partially just in the organization's d n A while Boy Scouts were intended to look back to a romanticized past and turn these coddled boys into men, Girl Scouts were constantly fighting against type, teaching women to be independent and empowered and to fight for social justice in ways that the Boy Scouts were often wary, and

their founder, Juliette Gordon Lowe was secretly suffragist. But back to Boy Scouts. Well, despite some of the challenges we've discussed. The Boy Scouts continue to do meaningful work in their communities and provide terrific opportunities for their members. I remember Scouts being about meetings and churches or schools and mainly being a thing where we talked about adventure. But in my experience as a parent, I've watched my son go on all sorts of fun outdoor adventures, even as a

first grader, and he loves it. Oh. I agree, it's hard to dislike the Boy Scouts. They're so totally American, and in truth, the problems the institution is faced, they're really just problems that America has faced over the years. But I love that there are Scouts everywhere from Hawaii to Harlem now, and that there will be plenty of Scouts out there to help me cross roads and on my way through foggy London in the years to come.

That's right. And while I'm sure people continue to debate what it means to be a man, and who knows where exactly those debates will lead, it's clear the Boy Scouts are an institution that's built to last. But before we get too deep into the future, how about we have a little fact off h here's something I didn't realize. Of the twelve American astronauts who have walked on the Moon,

eleven of them were Scouts. That's incredible. Did you know Steven Spielberg was an Eagle Scott As an eleven year old, he made a movie with his friends called Last Gunfight, which he credits with spurring his interest in filmmaking. Oh and you got a photography badge for it. That's so great. You know who else was a boy Scout? Rothbero l

Ron Hover. He has both both of them, but also Bill Gates and as you might imagine, he wasn't very good at hiking or cooking, but he claims he excelled in one badges for basket weaving and would carbon but the service component definitely made an impact on him. Did you know Boy's Life got this exclusive with or We'll write it was the only magazine he published his article, how I learned to Fly with Like that should have been with the New York Times, in the Sunday magazine

or something. That's pretty good. So after September eleven, Scouts collected over a hundred and fifty thousand bottles of water for ground z or rescue workers and they placed handwritten notes of thanks and first responders hard hats. That's so good, like truly good you went this round. Oh and we forgot to nominate a part time genius this week. Who

do you think it should go to? Wolves? Wolves? Yeah, Wolf Scout was supposed to be the ultimate honor for boy scouts her earned all their badges, but then it got rebranded Eagle Scout because it sounded more patriotic, and I think wolves deserve a little more do so I think we should send a certificate of genius to Atka, the Wolf Conservation Center's official wolf ambassador, to say thank you for being you. Well that's pretty ridiculous, but it

works for me. And that's it for today's Part Time Genius. Thanks so much for less Thanks again for listening. Part Time Genius is a production of how stuff works and wouldn't be possible without several brilliant people who do the important things we couldn't even begin to understand. Christian McNeil does the ending thing. Noel Brown made the theme song and does the MIXI MIXI sound thing. Jerry Rowland does

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