Fellow Ridiculous Historians. We are so excited that you have looked around all the candidates for podcasting and you have voted to join us for today's classic episode. This is a special one for us, man, because somebody else joined the show.
That's right, Christopher Rasiotis is here not only in spirit, but in the flesh corporeally to talk about history's coolest non human political candidates.
Part one of two. Yeah, we get super into this one, Ed, you know what. I wish we could do an update, but no spoilers. We'll see if we get to it.
Absolutely man.
Yeah, so tune in and let us know some of your favorite non human political candidates. Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome to the show, Ridiculous Historians and hopefully fellow animal lovers. This episode is going to maybe knock your socks off, or at least maybe you'll take your socks off while you're listening to the podcast.
Ben, are you what kind of animal person are you?
I'm pretty much every animal person real, Yeah, except for the tales of rats and possums bother me as they should. But yeah, but other than that, I'm I'm super into pretty much every animal.
Se you're a bit of a doctor dolittle figure.
Yes, yes, but I've been thinking about life lately, Nolan. Maybe I should be a doctor do more. Yeah, so I'll get sued Ben. That's very good. That's very good. I like what you did there.
I cat person, I guess a fair weather cat person. They kind of just they sort of drift around my periphery. They don't really bother me too much. There's the occasional meal. I'm an indoor outdoor cat person, so not as much of a do little as you. But I really do appreciate your commitment to the animal kingdom.
Oh man, where would we be without animals? As a matter of fact, where would we be without our super producer Casey Pegram, who, if ever an animal is probably only a party animal is He's like Animal from the Muppet Show. He plays drums about as aggressively. This is true.
Casey has an incredible drummer.
Yes, this is true. We actually have a lot of very talented percussionists here at how stuff works. Maybe we can get a drum circle going on one day. However, today is not.
That day, fortunately, but you know, fortunately for other reasons.
Right right, today is another kind of very special day. As you can tell from whatever of writing the title of this episode, as we are exploring a very particular type of candidate, political candidate. One thing that's great about this country almost anybody can run for some sort of office. And one thing that's great about this podcast is NOL and I are not launching out on this endeavor alone.
We are joined by our returning guest, longtime friend of the show, fellow ridiculous Historians give it up for Christopher hasiotis.
Hey, good afternoon, good evening. If you're listening in the evening, good morning, we're waking you up. And if you are sleeping to this podcast, just keep on sleeping. No, wake up, wake up. I don't think this is a good.
Sleeping podcast because it's a little toophrenetic. Yeah, we're too high energy, a little ridiculous.
Ah yeah, wake up. We could do an ASMR, you know, lower the voice quiet, Steve, you.
Want to talk about some animals?
You dogs?
You know what I discovered the other day? What a podcast? Well, it's called Sleep with Me. Have you heard of this?
Is that just a text? You got?
No?
No, No, it's a podcast. It's a guy who plays this character named the Divine Scooter or something like that, and he just tells weird, non sequitar stories and this very relaxing, kind of unplaceable accent, and it's just a delight. So if if you're looking for a podcast to sleep too, I recommend Sleep with Me American Public Media.
But not this podcast.
No, definitely not this podcast.
So Christopher, earlier you had given us this amazing idea. You gave us a choice between two possible topics to explore, and the one we ended up going with was the idea of non human political candidates.
Yeah, that's right.
There are a lot of ways that people around the world choose their leaders, and one of the most popular, in if you're gonna accept the pun, one of the most popular ways is to vote right. We we put folks in office that we as a whole decide will best represent the majority and best uphold the needs of the minority. Sometimes I wanted to talk about non human
electoral candidates after we dug into the story of Hartlepool. Now, ridiculous historians, you will remember that this was the story of the monkey perhaps that washed ashore in Hartleypool, England. The Hartlepool Monkey inspired or the story inspired Hengus the Monkey, and Hengus the Monkey was the mascot of the town
the soccer team and ended up becoming the mayor of Hartlepool. Now, you guys talked about this a couple weeks ago, and that got me thinking, let's dive into more of these weird, strange, ridiculous stories of things, of animals, of ideas that somehow made it on the ballot and got into office.
Okay, so our rules of engagement then would be ideally non humans of some sort that successfully ran for office.
Yeah, that successfully we're part of a campaign. Yes, let's stick with that, because not all of these are winners. But that doesn't mean they're not worth talking about it because there's some really weird, ridiculous stuff that we can get into.
Now.
I don't know if mine were necessarily successful or not. I didn't realize we had this criteria.
Well, they were successfully candidates, right, they were put forth? Yeah exactly?
Is that is that good enough?
Oh?
Yeah, if they didn't win, probably were all better off. Four.
Yes, I think that's fair.
So we each on our own went out and found a couple of great candidates, and we'd like to share some of these with you today. I love this idea, But the sad part is when we set off, we're not going to be able to cover all of the non human candidates, because there are surprisingly a ton of them.
Yeah.
I mean, it's funny. We were talking about doing this topic and I'm like, surely not. Surely, there's not enough to fill an entire but cast with this. But yes, in fact, we've been able to do it, and we have leftovers on the cutting room floor. Maybe we'll do a part two.
Yeah, you you you underestimate the ridiculousness of human history and how seriously or not we're willing to take our political process.
That's true, and we found one of the very first examples of this, which I think Noel you had looked into.
Oh I get to go first. Oh please, you're nominating me? Okay, well, I mean I think wait, should we should vote? I guess what we're doing. Let's do the let's let's hold true to the political process.
Okay, I just really quickly, let me just okay, here's a ballot, made the ballot. I'm gonna check my box check.
Okay, I'm gonna voting for NOL. I already did that.
Will vote for myself. Perfect, Okay, are we are we in agreement?
Vote Casey what's.
On hereby declare it shall be nol.
It's been Casey on the case in the case. Literally he made it. He made a judgment there, he made a ruling. Okay, I like this one. Guys. Have you guys ever heard of Pigasus the immortal pig? Yeah, Pigasus the Immortal I'm did you say Pegasus? No, Pigasus, my friend, Pigasus.
G I think I see where you're going with it.
It's a bit of a pun, you see, because Pegasus was a unicorn, an aliicorn. I'm not sure what the terminology is, but a winged horse is a pegasus. And then I think Pegasus was the name of a particular winged horse from Greek mythology. Pegasus, on the other hand, was an actual pig, a spotted pig that was obtained in the country and outside of the city of Chicago during the Democratic National Convention of nineteen sixty eight by a little group you may have heard of called the
Youth International Party aka the Yippies. Yep, yep, yep.
You know these guys been I am not terribly familiar with the Yippies, Well, they're pretty neat.
They were kind of a fringy, sort of a band of mary pranksters during the sixties that would do sit in but mainly their whole bag, as they might have said, was kind of political theater, right, So they would stage these events that were almost like a combination of protests and performance art. Right. So one big one they did was during the March on the Pentagon in nineteen sixty seven in Washington, d C. The Yippies kind of connected with a bunch of different people, including kind of fringe
weirdo filmmaker Kenneth Anger. They were led by Abby Hoffman. He may know of he was in Forrest Gump. He's a Forrest Gump fame. They hung out. He always with like an American flag t shirt. He wrote a book called Steal this book, you know, proponent of free love a copy of that book.
Yeah exactly, Yeah, did you I did?
Did you?
Did you?
Yeah?
Yeah? Well it says it, Yeah, I kind of stole it. It was a friend of mine was like, this book is awesome. You should borrow Oh you just you just borrowed it and I never gave it back. So what's the statute of limitations When just borrowing becomes stealing, that's a a whole that's a whole other bag of badgers.
That really really so yeah, Abby Hoffman, you know, very influential, kind of hippie revolutionary, I don't know what you want to call him and his partner, a guy named Jerry Rubin, they co founded the yippies together. And when they did this event in DC, they attempted to levitate the Pentagon. So they all sat around the pentagon and put their fingers underneath the foundation and they claimed that they levitated it like an inch or something, or like a couple
of centimeters. But again, it was all just like this kind of charade for the purposes of like making a big fuss and getting some attention and riling up the squares.
I will say, can you disprove that they levitated Pagan?
Absolutely?
No, you can't prove they didn't.
No, you certainly can't. And that's sort of the beautiful thing about I actually first heard about this from a really cool It was just like a kind of a broadside like the creedive loafing type thing, like a like a free paper called Arthur Magazine. It was out of San Francisco, and they actually had a really cool music festival years ago that discontinued. I think the paper is too, but there was a cover story about this whole Yippie movement and the levitating and the Pentagon.
Yeah, okay, now I remember the Yippies in further detail, But I still have a question with pigass.
Oh yeah, well, I mean I haven't even like balved into the lun yet. So Pigasus again, Like I said, they obtained this pig from a farmer outside of Chicago, and they said it wasn't super easy. Hoffman and some of his compatriots wandered around looking for a pig farm and they had to kind of like get directions to find one, and they finally found one, and they decided they had this pig that they named Pigasus for the purposes of nominating it for the presidency during the Democratic
National Convention. Because this is how they put it, this is their campaign pledge quote. They nominated president and he eats the people. We nominated a president and the people eat him. And they also justified that if you know, the nomination didn't work out, they could just eat the eat the pig for breakfast. So the Democratic nominee was a guy by the name of Hubert H. Humphries, and
he was of course running against Richard Nixon. And the Yippies put forth a nominee for their party, whatever that the Yippie party, I guess, which was Pigasus the Immortal. And here's a quote from Jerry Rubin about the whole thing. He says, we want to give you a chance to talk to our candidate to restate our demand that Pigasus be given Secret Service protection and he'd be brought to the White House for his foreign policy briefing. So you know,
they had some demands. But here's the thing, it really didn't go over super well. Jerry Rubin was actually about to give this speech in front of the statue of Picasso in what is today called Daily Plaza in Chicago, and no sooner need to get up there. They actually paraded the pig through the streets. They I think they brought it in in like a station wagon of some kind, and then they brought it out and had it on
a leash. They were arrested, and for all intents and purposes, they arrested the pig or at the very least confiscated it, right, So that's pretty silly. And it was August twenty third of nineteen sixty eight and the pigs came in, busted in, arrested the pig, the actual pig, along with a folk singer by the name of Phil Oakes, a guy named Stuart Albert, and Rubin himself, and they were hauled off to the clink, and the pig was actually taken to
the Humane Society. And there was a whole court case surrounding this where they were kind of trying to get them on charges of animal cruelty and obstructing a right of way of some kind with this vehicle that they paraded it in with. And supposedly, according to Jerry Rubin, one of the cops came in when they were in lock of it and they said, all right, boys, you guys are going away for a long time because the pig squealed on you.
Of course they did, of course. You know what I want to know about pegasust though, And I've been wondering this the whole time we're talking. Did pigas Has have wings?
Absolutely not?
What?
Sorry, Christopher, It's an outrage. Here's the thing though, It was sort of a pun on again pig and Pegasus, but also the old adage you know when pigs fly.
Oh, gotcha, that makes sense. This whole time I've been thinking of I don't know if you guys know the back cover of Prince's first album. We're gonna take a little musical digression here, but you know this is this is the podcast, and there's a naked Prince sitting astride a glorious white Pegasus, all on a really soft focus. And this whole time I've been thinking about Prince sitting
atop a pig with wings. It's great, incredible. I'm sorry, Like, I know, you've been giving us a really good information, But all I've been thinking about is Prince on top of a page.
Well that you know, that just shows where your mind is, and it's a it's a dirty mind.
I think it's I think it's a beautiful, great place. Also, I don't know if we pointed out Pegasus was not a tiny boy.
No, no, no, no.
There's a picture of the cops wrangling this this boy and he's you know, he's about the size of a human boy.
He's like one hundred and forty something for sure.
Yeah.
Well, I don't know, he's probably I mean, pigs are pretty dense. That's that's very true.
He packs a lot of substance in there. Yeah, in this picture with the cops, they're also laughing about it. They they you know, as is evidenced by this comment about the pig.
Squealer, they seem like fun cops. They seem like fun cops.
I mean, I guess if it's nineteen sixty eight and we're in Chicago, a lot worse things happen than people wrapping up a pig and booking him. The cops kind of cracked down at that.
Well, that's the thing exactly. So, just as for a little bit of background before we move on to some more ridiculous non human candidates. Yeah, this was a big year because of all of the anti war protesting, all the protesting around Vietnam. There were like something in the neighborhood of twelve thousand police deployed, six thousand National Guard
and over seven thousand someone the neighborhood. Seventy five hundred Army troops there to kind of help deal with all this chaos because people were coming and descending on this city, and this convention to let the powers that be know that they were not going to stand for this aggression.
Pink oink oink.
Indeed, so this is a nice kind of tongue in cheek way for the yippies to poke a little fun at this without you know, getting into a shooting match with the with the fuzz.
And what's interesting here a common thread that I think will be discovering as we as we continue. What's interesting is that often these candidates exist as a form of protests, almost exclusively. It's very rare for someone to or a group of people to seriously elect an animal or a thing and expect it to do the job. But I think it's such a powerful form of protests.
That's true. And my other one, just to for a little tease is sort of a combination of protests, but it's more.
Of a a form of humiliation and craziness. Rightly, Yeah, because that's I was setting you up for that. I think that's one of the earliest ones. But let's pause on that one, and let's let's turn to you, Christopher. I think Nolan I mainly have animals, but you've got a couple of inanimate yeah, Jackson, I do.
Well, we're going to start with one inanimate one. The next one is animate but not alive. We'll explain what that means when we get to it. But Noel, since you have us in the mid to late sixties, let's stick there. We're going to go to nineteen sixty seven, so a little bit before Pigasus had his his day in I don't know, like in the frying pan, and before his bacon got booked. Yeah, sure, I like it all right. So let's go back a year. It's nineteen
sixty seven. We're going south of the Equator to South America. We're in Ecuador. There's a small town called pico Asa. Now pico Asa is on the it's close to the Pacific coast of Ecuador. It's a small town. There's just four thousand people. They've got an election coming up. They really want to put someone in place who's going to
represent everybody in town. And all of a sudden, these news reports showed up after the election in the United States, and the winner of the mayoral election, according to these reports in the in the US, pico Asa in Ecuador elected a foot Powder as mayor.
Old I will rewind that. We we say that again.
A foot Powder, a talc a talcum, a nice white, powdery substance to absorb the moisture in your feet, you know whatever. I guess you can use it in other sweaty parts of your body to to reduce chafing that you might have.
In fact, the gold bond situation.
Yeah, I sort of like that.
Was there a brand associated with this candidate?
Yeah?
Was okay?
Yeah, there's a specific brand. It's called pull Ups Talco pull Ups means foot powder, powder of the feet. Yeah, very Yeah. So what happened is this foot powder pull up Yas they put out ads, they kind of you know, there's there's an election coming up. You see this today when the presidential election is coming up in and Coca Cola and Pepsi might have some sort of fake campaign ads and vote for Pepsi or the choice of whatever you want it to be.
And I'm sorry, I.
Don't want to toss out their slogans, but same thing happened fifty years ago. So pull up yis this talcum powder put out ads to kind of take advantage of the of the political spirit of the time, And they had a slogan and said vote for any candidate, but if you want, well being and hygiene. Vote for pull Up Yers, and people did.
People did.
Okay, wow, Well here's the thing. Okay, so the day before the election, pull up Ys Talcum Powder put out a flyer they distributed around town and the flyer was made to look like one of the ballots that would indicate the choice in tomorrow's election. And I really really really encourage anyone listening to this podcast to go look up this ballot. We'll post a link to it on
the Ridiculous Historians Facebook group. But this ballot, it has this visage of a of a creepy, terrifying foot, right, Okay, so that imagine a big yellow foot. Yeah, is it like a cartoons it's a cartoon foot, but the foot is what's the what's the bottom of your foot called the palm of your soul, the soul exactly. So imagine the soule of your foot looking right at you. There are eyes on the soul, a nose and mouth. The toes are kind of hanging forward over the front of
the sole of the foot like like long bangs. Yeah. He's wearing a suit and a bow tie, giant foothead and uh, he's got two hands, two arms, you know, he's a kind of anthropomorphic foot.
It's weird that he has arms, it's weird.
And one hand is giving the thumbs up, the other hand is giving the V for victory sign, so covering all the bases for for winning, and and he's cut off at the waist. So I don't know if the foot has a foot has two feet is a mystery. I don't want to know the answer to this.
Just technically speaking of what a cephalopod yeah, I.
Mean, yeah, he's actually a cephalopod or I'm guessing though, in place of feet, he has two little heads, two little people heads that he's walking in.
This is cool.
This is the stuff of nightmares.
Was this like like a publicity stunt by the foot powder manufacturer ad campaign?
It was basically just a promotional stunt. But I think I think what you run into is a little bit of American mid century narcissism, looking at foreign countries as a little exotic, a little behind the times, and kind of having the journalists here in the States having a little bit of a laugh at the folks there because what was reported is that this footpowder won the election, and basically people were having a laugh thing These people are so dumb they voted for a foot powder or
this foot powder is so much better than these other candidates that people actually believe the slogan and went for it. Turns out what is likely to have happened. First of all, it wasn't actually a vote for mayor. It was a
vote for a municipal councilman, So slight difference there. And the pamphlets the brochures that pups distributed did in fact look like the ballots, and so it what what people theorize is that when they had to turn in the ballots, people grab the wrong one and put them in the ballot box, and people weren't actually voting for a foot powder. And when the votes were tallied, yeah, there were a lot of these foot powder ballots in there, but they were tossed out real persons over That's like.
Some Russian meddling in the election right there, my friend, I mean, did they not get in trouble with the government for doing this?
So I actually looked into it, and there's not a lot more out there, especially not in English. There's not a lot in Spanish. I tried to dig into some some Spanish language newspapers and couldn't find much, and I actually emailed the city of Posa got no response. The municipal website it actually goes into a good amount of detail on the town. But it's a certain incident in nineteen sixty seven for which I would think they're most well known.
I would either hire slash promote the person behind that ad campaign, or have them kicked out of the country. That's just you can't mess with the vote that way. But that's brilliant.
But kicked out with a nice, dry, hygienic foot.
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, because literally the stuff spread like wildfire after this thing, Right, you got a powder your feet, man. I want to know what their market share became after this incident.
I want to know if they'll sponsor US.
I wouldn't. Yeah.
I mean, it's pretty humid here in Atlanta too.
That's true. That's true. That's amazing though. Okay, so we've got foot powder for president, We've got.
Mayor the municipal municipal councilman, Yes, excuse me, So the story is mayor not so true, kind of true, but still ridiculous.
Pig for president, foot powder for mayor. Sure, let's say let's just say maynor, mayor Ish mayor esque. So far, Ben, who are you voting for? Pig or foot powder? Foot powder?
Cool?
Yeah, so I'm just I also like that it's an idea that it's not just one particular box or tube of foot powder. It's the concept of foot powder, which is pretty neat to vote for something that abstract. I have something I thought you guys would be very interested in. It is a story that comes to us from West Texas, a little town called Lahitas. And in Lahitas, this is an area about the size of almost Connecticut, right with
maybe ten thousand people, and it's very small. In the seventies, if you walked by the Lahitas Trading Post, you would tend to see a lot of the same people, a lot of the same conversations occur. How's the weather, did you see the game? Stuff like that.
Yeah, small town. Everyone knows each other. Did you hear the news about Ecuador they elected the foot powder?
Yes? Ahaha, Yes, so you were there.
You were there, Christopher, I've been to Texas.
I've been to Texas. But they also had their own versions of local celebrities, and one of them was a fellow named Clay, Henry Clay Henry. The first Clay Henry hung around at the Lahita's Trading post for years and years, and in nineteen eighty six he entered politics. His qualifications included a love of alcohol, and the race for mayor was organized by a man named Walter Mischer, who was a Houston businessman, and he thought, you know, it would be a good promo thing, good pr Right.
Yeah, so Clay Henry's getting involved in politics. It's a good name. It's a good, solid kind of a political name.
I think it is a great political name. You're right about that, Christopher. But he was perhaps best known this goat for his consumption of booze upwards of forty beers a day.
I'm sorry, Ben, we rewind a bit, did you say goat?
Yes? Oh?
Did I not mention that part as in greatest of all time?
Well, at least in Texas. There's a couple of different levels. Yeah, he's a goat.
WHOA wait a minute, All right, you buried the lead here, man.
Klay Henry is a drunk, belligerent goat.
Okay.
His qualifications include drinking a cartoonish amount of beer and I quote, headbutting constituents without provocation, not only is he famous in this town, but he's he's famous in the region. People would come to see, you know, to have a beer with the mayor. And he was known for walking around the trading posts and other places in town. And if someone didn't hand him a beer, he would just find someone and take it, find their drink and take it.
And there's a great article in the Houstonia by Peter Holly that describes the experience with the first Clay Henry in nineteen ninety two. Because he was mayor for essentially the rest of his life. I never actually witnessed Clay Henry drink a beer. I did see him slam them, guzzle them, and ferociously ingest them at a rate capable of incapacitating a full grown man in minutes. To see it in person was nothing short of incredible.
Do you think a shotgun them or funneled them to Yes? Yes, really, yeah I could.
I could see a goat just just eating the whole can, just a full cann of beer, or just chomp, chomp, chump.
So not only is he a physical goat, he is also a goat greatest of all time. Yeah, when it comes to being a goat, that drinks greatest of all Texas.
There you go, there, there we go. We got there.
Yeah.
So one of the questions you would have is how does he drink without thumbs? There are two answers. The first, there's a holster that they fixed to in his office that, you know, we could put a bottle in it like a water feeder for a hamster cage. And then sometimes he would just go up to people and bug them until they got him a Lone Star because of course it's a lone Star beer. That's what he drinks. And he would polish off a twelve ounce bottle in ten
seconds or less. And here's the thing. This guy was so popular that one of his offspring was elected mayor later, Clay Henry Jr. And then Clay Henry Jr. Was so popular that they elected a third goat mayor, Clay Henry the Third. Clay Henry the Third unfortunately, was involved in an altercation where in a local who had probably been drinking or we don't know if they had an argument
because all three Clay Henry's are pretty heavy drinkers. Clay Henry three was attacked ouch one of his testicles was cut off. Oh he he stayed in office, of course he did. Well, you know, you don't need both testims go to stay in office.
Especially if you're a goat. Yeah right, you get all the head buttting done in your early days.
H yeah, I mean, you know, surely one goat testicle is like the equivalent of several human testicles. I don't know why I think that you're putting it out there. You mean in terms of like the fortitude, Yeah, yeah, exactly, Okay, yeah, and just the sheer gumption that it goes. Goats are very stubborn and they eat like everything, and this goat surely was no different.
Also, goats have those weird sneak octopus like terrifying. Yeah. Favorite goat. I don't know about you guys, but my favorite goat, Sorry Clay Henry, My favorite goat is and will always be black Philip from The Witch.
It's a good one. I thought maybe you're going to go with Gregory the Hungry Goat. There's there's a spot up in North Georgia called Goats on the Roof. Have you guys been there? Goats on the Roof?
No, but there is a place around here where you can rent a goat to mow your lawn. Yeah, it's a good business.
Yeah. My palace Scott Benjamin is actually a huge fan of those guys. Okay, so we have I have a successful line of goat mayors, the goat dynasty, the goat dynasty. We have the foot powder candidate not elected, and we have the pig president not elected. But we have more defined.
I want to see a runoff between the drunk goat and the and pigasus.
I don't know, man, that goat has like has the political game locked down? Yeah, they know how to play it.
Was there an election Every time, I'm picturing a goat on a deathbed, you know, kind of wheezing its last breaths and as it says goodbye to this mortal coil, passing along the mayoral responsibilities to the next goat in line.
Well, here's the thing. The mayor, the position of mayor in this small town contains no actual duties or responsibilities. I think the original Clay signed one thing with a hoof, but essentially their mayor is just there to drink, to.
Drink beer, to drink beer.
You know what. I'm sure there are a number of towns around the country that would think something similar about their own mayor.
That's true, that's true. So what's next? What's our next animal?
Oh boy, next one we get to talk about my favorite Roman orgy connoisseurs, psychopathic emperor, that kind of rhymed connoisseur and emperor. Sure I got there with the rhyme scheme. By the name of Caligula. Also one of my favorite, you know, fully pornographic yet artistically rendered films, the one in Esperanto. Uh huh yeah, wait is it? Is there a version of it in Esperanto?
I think it's starring William Shatner.
No, no, no, no, we're talking about the one with Malcolm McDowell. That was the one that was produced by like the publisher of Penhouse. I'm just kidding. It's not really my favorite, but it is in fact a pretty epic film with a giant budget that depicts the life and times of the Roman emperor Caligula, who had many predilections, including fondness for coupling with his sisters, basically just a
total hedonist. There's some stuff in the film that I don't know if it actually happened, but there's a part where he's buried his enemies up to their necks in the sand and then has this crazy like threshing lawnmower head cutting machine that just like goes over them and cuts all their heads off.
I'm going to interrupt you real quick note, and I just want the listeners to know you were making some amazing hand motions.
Right now now, sweeping back and forth.
Yeah, Like, I wish everyone could see this. Maybe I should do some sort of like a like a gift or a boomerang, maybe social media.
You know, we need to get better at that. We need to do more like real time podcast studio hijinks. Sure, talking about caligulous sweeping my arms back and forth. I could just get somebody in here to film this while we were recording this. We mean, we could recruit somebody from our socials.
I'll have to put on pants, but you know what, that's a no, it's.
Fine, but it's a it's a sort of a waste up view.
That's a hill I'm willing to die on for the good of the show.
Now, speaking of eyeing on hills, that probably happened a lot in Caligula's day in terms of his enemies, because he was pretty brutal and one of his main group of enemies was the Senate, because he was constantly beefing with the Senate because he, you know, was basically like trying to be a complete and utter totalitarian ruler. And you know, they still kind of had a semblance of a little thing called democracy, or at least what was it, like a republic right in Rome. So he was not
fond of the Senate. And in fact, the legend has it this is this is a little unconfirmed, but there's a few historical counts of this happening. He had a horse that he was quite fond of. A horse. This is the doozy of a name. Let me see if I can, like, if I can do this one a horse by the name of Incitatus. It's actually not that hard.
But when you look at it, Oh, you built it up. I'm excited. I'm so glad.
There's more.
So.
This was his favorite horse. He loved this horse. He loved it more than he loved probably any human person in his life, to the point where he got this horse, had it fashion a jeweled collar. He even like had like a special like manger built out of ivory for it. He had a stall made out of marble and and supposedly some accounts say that he bought him his very own house, So that's a lot of stuff.
Yeah. I also heard he owned slaves though the horse did. Yeah, that's in one of the accounts.
Can a horse really own anything though, I mean.
It's a great question.
Yeah, he did own colligulss heart and apparently he was fed with food with the gold flakes built mixed in and stuff, you know, because gold is is important to consume for for animals.
Caligula was a big fan of consuming or at least bathing in gold himself. He's a very pro gold guy.
He is very pro excess And a big part of this was he was constantly thumbing his nose at the poor and just like you know, wanted to just be as decad and as possible, display it as openly as possible with as little shame, zero shame, as it turns out, as possible. And another thing he liked to do was humiliate the Senate because they were like his nemeses, you know, these these senators, these puffy, you know, stuff shirt senators.
So supposedly he put forth into Tatis to become a console, like an official console, uhuh, an official console.
But he's a horse.
He's a horse, but it doesn't matter because it's a very special horse endowed now, you know, surely endowed with the same amount of wisdom that any of these you know, lifelong politicians possess, at least according to Caligula. And a big part of this was obviously to kind of humiliate them and say, you know, a horse could do your job, you morons, and you're gonna like it. You're gonna take it, and you're gonna you're gonna he's gonna live amongst you,
and he's gonna vote. He's gonna hold up his hoof, you know, that's how he's gonna vote. Obviously. But apparently this did not go through because Caligula was just universally hated for obvious. Yeah, he was just kind of a he's kind of a bad guy, what with the thresher head chopping machines and the crazy Roman orgies with sisters, and he just.
Wasn't a wasn't a good look for this guy. It's funny how that can turn the people off, the chopping off of heads and such.
Yeah, you would think it was just a different time. But I like to think I know this is not true, folks, But I like to think that the horse becoming console was the last straw. I feel like the horse burn is what set everyone over the edge. The horse burn, horse burn. I like that. You like a horse, or you pointed a horse to burn his enemies, So it's a horse burn.
Are you familiar with the move horse bites the corn?
No?
I am mystified.
It's when you when you take yours, when you take your hand and make it into a C shape. I'm doing it right now. Yeah, and then you grab someone right above the knee and you go horse bites the corn. And it's the most annoying thing.
Yeah, it's like, is this a brown family? Yeah, no, it's just.
Maybe it's just my friend Tyler. It's a thing that he does to me all the time, and I hate it. I hate it. I hate it, and it gets a rise out of me every time.
Why do you it's a very strange relationship.
It is a very strange relationship.
Maybe google it and see if other people do it, because it sounds like he's just making up reasons to grab you.
Wow, you're right, it's not it is it is?
Sure?
Well okay, so yeah, what's it called when you squeeze just above someone's knee, it's called a horse bite. That a horse bites corn. That guy is making this up, so okay, horse bites aside. Caligula super unpopular. He was assassinated, he died, and so the horse did not ascend to the consulate. Right.
It was before the horse was able to get in, which is a shame. We'll never know how history would have changed.
I would have liked to see the horse's fiscal policy, you know, play out in the in the Senate.
I would like to see it bite some cord, you know. I'd like to see the horse out there press in the flesh, kissing the babies, given complicated speeches, having political intrigue. I'm getting carried away, Christopher, what's next.
We need to stick on the horse for one second more, because yeah, I want to hear a horse put things up for a vote. I want to know if the horse is going to vote yea or or nay?
Worth it? Yeah, it was absolutely worth.
Sorry I had to do it.
Yeah, you absolutely were required contractually to do that day.
It's the reason I'm here, and you are.
In fact a dad now, so you're allowed to You're in the in the exclusive camp of the dad joke elite.
It's the US jokes.
Yeah exactly.
And you know people say politics these days are just a horse race. Yeah, all right, let's move on. Let's let's all right. I'm going to bring us from the Roman Empire back to modern times so we can debate how historical this is, but it's part of modern history. I want to tell you guys about Dustin. Dustin the wind No, dust in the Turkey. Ah, yes, dustin the Turkey is not actually even a turkey. What dust in the Turkey is a Turkey vulture. But dust In the
Turkey is not even a Turkey vulture. Dust In the Turkey is a puppet Turkey vulture.
Whoa.
Yeah.
So one of the fun things I think about traveling the world is you get to see pieces of pop culture that are so deeply enmeshed in other countries that you've never heard of. You know, Folks come to the States and they're like, what is this purple dinosaur Barney like, it's confusing. Go to Ireland, he'll be confronted with dust In the Turkey. So Dustin the Turkey is a character. He's a television presenter, He's a puppet who was on TV.
He made his debut in nineteen eighty nine on the show The Den was on RTE, which is kind of the Irish version of PBS. Here is the kind of publicly funded broadcasting. Dustin the Turkey was on the show until twenty ten. And I want to paint a picture for you of dust In the Turkey. Imagine a c off creature that looks like a mix of Gonzo from the Muppets with Bernie Sanders, kind of you know, Statler and Waldorf, the two cranky guys also in the Muppets.
Yeah, so Hecklers.
Yeah, imagine Statler. He's the one with kind of the ring of hair around his head, that sort of Bernie Sanders Larry David hairstyle across him with Gonzo the Muppets, big weird beak, and you get a cranky, strange, odd Turkey puppet. Now Dustin the Turkey. He's he's a very specific kind of Turkey. He's from Dublin and he spent a lot of time. He's kind of a roustabout. He's got a strong attitude and he loves his city so much. He speaks out specifically as an advocate for Dublin itself.
He's got a very strong Dublin accent. And I think, Casey, if you could queue up the SoundBite we've got from Dustin himself.
He brought a clip.
I brought a clip.
Well done, Chrismas.
That's why I'm here, over achiever, not just jokes.
There's nowhere that matches Doblin. Sure don't. We have the biggest rock and roll band in the world. Yeah Aslan all right, ko, okay, and we have James Joyce, Yeah, the Bell Jimmy Joyce, Mazer, brilliant form with a Glenn Hansard. Okay, he might watch listen he did.
Once and that's that's Dustin the Turkey is he voiced by Colin Farrell. He's a doub learned through and through, but he's he's deeply Irish, so much Southern. In nineteen ninety seven, Dustin ran for President of Ireland.
Oh cool? Yeah, How far did he get?
He did not get far at all. In fact, he had troubles with getting on the ballot because Dustin is a one named guy. He's just Dustin the Turkey, and you've got to have two names to get on a ballot.
That was what that was the technicality.
He worked his way around it by listing himself as Dustin Hoffmann.
Oh great, So it wasn't that okay, So he was able to overcome that bureaucratic obstacle.
Uh huh.
And that was apparently more important than the fact that someone has their hand inside of him and his orchestra in his movement.
He is truly a puppet, a political puppet. But the thing is, Dustin went nowhere in nineteen ninety seven with that candidacy nor a subsequent one for president. However, in two thousand and eight, I've got to ask you guys. Are you guys familiar with the Eurovision Song Contest?
Yes, I am.
No, that's a thing for you.
Yeah yeah, yeah. It's sort of like America's Got Talent or something, yeah, but super huge, super popular. So Ireland is a country known for its song, its story. It's it's oral tradition. We've got all this great music from Ireland. Ireland is actually the winningest country on the Eurovision Song Contest. Oh cool, yeah, for decades, They've won seven times. Sweden is number two with six wins, but Ireland tops it
with seven wins. One of those wins, however, was not in two thousand and eight, and this is where Dustin comes in. So the way the Eurovision Song conon test works is every country has its own kind of championship round where five six songs from that country are voted on locally. All those the winning songs from each country then go to the finals wherever that is every year, and then Europe as a whole and parts of North Africa and the Middle East vote on who the winning
song is that year. In two thousand and eight, the champion in Ireland, the one who beat out actual musicians like Maya, like Donald Skian, like Liam Gettis, was Dustin the Turkey. Yeah, so in two thousand and eight, Dustin the Turkey was the Ireland representative in the Eurovision Song Contest. His song Ireland. Dues point that it's a really dumb name that means kind of is a mispronunciation of Ireland twelve points in French, which is the number of points
needed to win this the Eurovision Song Contest. So saying the name or the title of the song would sound like someone is saying that Ireland had won, but it didn't. Anyway, this competition, this election is what theust In the Turkey one, and you can actually go on YouTube you can find his performance at Eurovision. Did not win at all overall, but it's this weird psychedelic nonsense song about the competition itself.
It's sort of met textual. Dustin the Turkey is sitting inside of a shopping cart with backup dancers painted in gold dancing next to him. There was some confusion among the judges. Well, I would imagine there's a lot of confusion among the judges whether he should be disqualified because you're only supposed to have a certain number of people on stage for your performance, and did the puppeteer actually
count as an extra person? And so did Dustin the Turkey actually violate the Eurovision Song Contest rules by having a man hidden under the cart with his hand up as butt something we all want to know, And oh, yeah, puppet, they get right, Yeah, it's a puppet.
So what happens to Dustin the Turkey later? Is he still around?
Dustin?
Is still around? Dustin? He did not win the finals in the Eurovision Song Contest, but he did then go on to campaign that next year against the Lisbon Treaty, which was an EU policy treaty. So Dustin has been involved in political life. He went on to record with release albums with artists like Ronnie Drew of the Dubliners, Bob Geldoff of the Boomtown Rats. Yeah, and you know, you can still use the hashtag vote Dustin to look up what's going on with the Poultry Party, which is
Dustin's official group. Dustin also is taking things global. He became a UNISEF ambassador for Ireland. This ugly, foul mouthed, crass little puppet and he went to South Africa to the Quasulin Natal region to learn about the plight of people with HIV and eights.
Wow. Yeah, positive change through comedy.
Yeah.
So he won an election, he lost an election. He's a weird puppet, but he's got the people behind him.
It's not even an animal. He's now officially my favorite Turkey Buzzard because I just I said at the beginning, I love animals, but those things freak me out.
Turkey buzzards.
Yeah, howbout puppet? How do you feel abut puppets?
Pro puppet?
Yeah?
Yeah, and you got a pet puppet, don't You don't have a puppet? Yeah, you don't call them with pet though that's sort of actually, that's unfair to Stevens. Your companion is technically an intern. Steven still really formal with him. Now, I thought it was Steve.
He's earned he's earned that second syllable phr v pH. Okay, there was a moment of tense silence between us just now. I hope we're still friends.
We are.
And if you're out there listening, if you're a Stephen with a pH, if you're a Stephen with a V, we're happy to have all of you.
Yeah, thanks for hanging out. Well, maybe we can put a put a picture of the puppet on the on the social media's one day this. This is interesting, though, that you're talking about a political party, because this is not my second thing, but this reminds me of the Inanimate Objects Party. Did you guys hear about this. It's a it's a party that is based in Troy, New York, and their main thing is that we should elect more
inanimate objects in political office. Their main candidate is an inflatable whale named Arthur Galpin, and their other major candidate is an albino's squirrel. Their symbol, their formal symbol, is a fork, but check them out.
But that squirrel is not an inanimate object. So I'm already seeing some flaws in there in their policy.
I think they're a fractured party, to be honest with you.
But well, you're saying that it's not a serious thing, that people who put forth inflatable whales are not taking this process seriously.
Perhaps I'm saying comedy is in the eye of the beholder.
Fair enough.
God, I hope they take it really seriously. But this leads us to an example of when these animals, or these non human candidates become a matter of very serious, important, non comedic stuff. And this story takes us to Brazil is the story of a female black rhinoceros named Kakareco. Cacareco was in nineteen fifty eight. She was residing at the Ardim Zoologico do Rio Dejanio. I am not a Portuguese speaker, but you could be. Yeah, I just have
to try harder. So Cockareco is the daughter of Britador and Terra Zina, and in nineteen fifty eight she was loaned out to the Sal Paulo Zoo. People knew about this rhinoceros, and they didn't say particularly kind things about her. In the case of the drunk goat Mayor, people like the drunk goat, They like the bit hey.
He hangs out, he has a beer, maybe a whiskey, I don't.
Know, right, who knows. But in the case of Cacareco, people would say, this rhino is dumb as a door nail, as the brains of a peanut, and is still the best. It's still the best possible political candidate. So in nineteen fifty eight, a group of students print over two hundred thousand ballots with Cacoareko's name on them, and the ballots are all legitimately cast by voters. One person, because you could write in this is right an election one person said,
better to elect a rhino than an ass. You see, this election was the result of serious and valid concerns about rampant corruption in the Brazilian political scene, especially in South Paulo. And not only did she end up winning, she won by a landslide, and it was one of the highest totals for a local candidate in Brazil's history to that date, which is weird because we also have to point out people who are familiar with the way voting goes in the US will know that our country's
notorious for a lot of people just not voting. It's way way worse in Brazil, or it was at that time, and.
So this was a way to get people engaged or were they protesting the actual people who were on the ballot.
Both both Brazil seemed at the time, according to some sociologists, to be on the threshold of revolt. It was seen as a general protest from people who had varying different objections to the way things were going. There were food shortages, the cost of living was going up. Of course, political corruption as we already meant, and some voters there were
actually multiple forms of protests. Some voters in the same election voted in local politics by putting black beans in the ballot envelope instead of the actual ballot.
So this is kind of a way for people to say, our choices are so poor, we would rather have not just a rhinoceros, but a dumb as beans.
Rhinoceros rights, yes, and cacuare Echo dies in nineteen sixty two, but her legacy lives on today. There's a widely used term that derives from her name. They think you've heard about before voto cacareco, which means cocka eco vote. It's kind of it's almost like kangaroo court, but it's a rhino vote. And she also inspired the formation of the Rhinoceros Party of Canada, whose members went on to appoint the Rhinoceros Cornelius the First as their leader.
You know what a rhino is in American politics?
A Republican in name only. I love that. It's not like the perfect acronym.
But no, I'm just fond of acronyms in general, you know, yeah, yeah, yeah, you know that's about me.
And there's something about Brazil I think, like, I think they have fun with their politics there too, because I think in the eighties or nineties there was a monkey who ran for office, Macaco Chiao, who was a chimpanzee. You know what. That was on one of the.
Lists for this whole thing that we're doing, this crazy experiment. I think we really need a part two, guys.
I think we should come back for a part two because we did pretty well, but we only had a total of six and then maybe a couple of ancillary mentions. Why do they call it kangaroo court because in in the early days of the formation of Australia, all judicial positions were occupied by kangaroos. Of course, I don't believe it. They were wallabies, the wallabies. You're right, nobody gives enough credit to the wallabies role in the creation of Australian government.
But maybe we can in part two if it actually happened. We can't just make up a wallaby story.
Christopher.
We want to thank you so much for coming back on the show. It's always a blast to have you over Hey.
Thanks for having me here, guys, and thank you everyone for listening. I really love digging into these weird, ridiculous facts and sharing them with everyone.
And we have not seen the last of you. Spoiler alert. If Casey Nolan and I have our way, you will be returning to the show. It's sometime sooner rather than later.
This could be like a recurring episode. I don't know.
I like this.
There were so many more that we got to or maybe we could just do other list episodes like this in the future.
I would like to get an animal and see if we can get it in office or least in the running for a position in Atlanta.
Or maybe we could that the very least have one as a guest on the podcast.
I yes, see, I thought you just said I would like to get an animal in the office, and I thought you were going to bring a rhinoceros here into the studio. I'm also open to that, at least an inflatable whale. Yeah, at least see see this is cut from the same cloth.
Yeah, cut from the save inflatable cloth. We hope that you enjoyed checking out this episode. Write to us and let us know if there are any notorious animal or at least non human politicians in your neck of the global woods. Thanks of course to our super producer Casey Pegram.
Thanks to Alex Williams, who composed our theme, and Eve's Jeff Coode, who is not here but is also an incredible research associate for this show, along with our illustrious guest Christopher Hasiotis, who I can thank for the first time. On the first time, I thank you for stuff, but in person, it's nice.
Here I am a human touch Yeah, Thanks Nol, Thanks Ben, Thanks Casey of.
Course, of course, so find us on Instagram, find us on Facebook, find us on Twitter. Post your favorite pictures of non human politicians. These questions are becoming increasingly specific as we continue with the show. I love it, love it, Yeah, post some. We'll see if we can get someone to start filming in the studio as we record, and stay tuned for our next.
Episode, which is about a Napoleon thing.
It is. It's don't want you.
He really is.
He's done a lot for this show, you guys. I know he's not perfect, but he has done a heck of a lot for our show.
Agreed for more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.