Friday Day, Friday. I gotta get down on Friday. Yeah, kicking it back to the old school. Old school. Oh god, is that old school now? I feel like that was last few year. Old school has got to be ten years or more. What was that you read earlier about how like um wedding Singer Wedding Singer would have taken place? What in like two thousand nine today? If it was the same period of time removed when the movie came out, it was nostalgically reminiscing about it would be about two
day Oh my wedding. Weird. Yeah, it's weird to think about being nostalgic for two thousand and nine or I guess I kind of am. Those were good years. Anyway, Happy Friday or who knows if it'll be Friday when you listen to this, but I hope that it's Friday in your hearts. Keep that Friday spirit going all week long unless you work weekends. I used to work weekends Friday for a nightmare like brunch, the bunch, the brunch.
What would you call it? Career? What do you call it when you do uh, when you're in the army and you do a tourre My years of service and the trenches. I think three tours of brunch and uh yeah yeah, weekends are not fun. It ain't fun. No, Friday was a Monday. Saturday was also a kind of a Monday. Sunday was Wednesday. Mondays and Mondays were still Mondays. Yeah, I know they were like your weekend, but for everyone
else was still Monday, so it was still Monday. Let's get out of reminiscing about this because it is not a place I ever wanted to revisit. Oh, bless you all you brunch workers out there. Thank you, We salute and tip you. Yes, we appreciate that. For real, love a brunch. I love to go to brunch, not like to ever work a brunch again. If I and make
that happen pleasing, thank you? Yes, So, so tell all your friends about the show so we don't have to go back to wait till we are relying on your friends, your neighbors, your uncles and aunts to listen to our show. You know the title, Um, thanks for tuning in. I'm excited about this episode today, doing something a little different. Yeah, I'm excited too, because we are going to dive into our mail bag and usually we just do like one or two in an episode. But we have such a backlog.
It's true. We talked in the last episode how we've just been getting like boatloads of suggestions and messages from people and we love them so much. But sometimes we're recording an episode, we're like, ah, this this episode runs a little long because you know our show, uh, and we don't feel like we have time to read one, so like, let's just take a minute here and go through some of these because there's such good stuff what I love. We get these amazing suggestions from you guys,
which is great. We get such cool reactions from you about the episodes that are just like stuff you're pulling out that we never even thought of, which I love. And then sometimes it sparks a story that you have yourself about someone you knew, or a story you experienced or something you know from your own life, and like seeing how people are connecting to the show on that personal level is like, I don't think I ever expected
that when we started this, and that's just so cool. No, And it's awesome because it's such a like a perk, I guess of doing history through the lens of a couple because you can connect. There's a character to connect with, and there's you know, things about your own life that are reflected no matter what period of time we're in. Yeah, there's things you can go well. I relate to that,
So it's kind of cool to see that so frequently. Definitely, So we want to take some of those stories and we want to share them with you all because I don't know about you, but I love, I really do love hearing people stories. It may not sound like it on this show, but I am a listener I in real life. If you get me in a conversation, I'm gonna let you do most of the talking because that's just easier. Um. I've I've been I was an actor since I was a kid. I'm very used to having
a script in front of me. And when I don't, when someone hasn't written my dialogue already, I don't know what to say. So you do it well, I'll say if if you get you if if if you get him on a subject you really like or knows a lot about, it can be like a train like you're just going to let that one happen. We're not stopping, which I'm the same way. So, yes, you know that
doesn't even have to be a subject you like. It might just be something about how I really don't know much about it for about thirty minutes and my memories shipped. So I will pull out a notepad and I'll jot down things as I think of them, and later I'll be like, remember at this point in the story, I was going to say this, Listen, the way my brain makes connections is one of the most unique things about me.
It's a beautiful pattern. I wish you could catch out the way your brain makes connections, because this is incredible work of art. It's like in Stranger Things and they have to put together the map of Oh my god, yes, of Indiana, of hacks, and you can map out your brain. No one would get that. Awesome. Well, I'm excited for everybody because we're gonna read some really cool stories today. So I say we just dive in. Yeah, let's do it. Hey, the French, come listen. Well, Elia and Diana got some
stories to tell. There's no match making, a romantic tips. It's just about ridiculous relationships, a love. It might be any type of person at all, and abstract cons that don't a concrete wall. But if there's a story where the second Glance Ridiculous rolls a production of I Heart Radio.
And just because this is one of my favorite sound effects, I think that it's time for us to take one giant awesome So are We're going to kick it off with this message from Sheila who was at Sheila dot Herrera on Instagram, and she reached out and said, Hi, guys, love the show. I was listening to the de Land McCullough episode recently and I had to share my own story. Let me just jump into McCulla just a tear jerker, beautiful, wonderful story. I love that story so much. He wanted,
like chills up my spine to second summary. Well, de Lan McCullough is a running backs coach. He had done like a Super Bowl and he's like a big name in the in the football world, American football and American football. Thank you and um he uh. He had been adopted as a child, and when he was sixteen, he got a coach who was like his mentors favorite person in the world, and that was kind of his father figure.
But he always wanted to know who his real father was, so he finally asked his adopted mother, like do you have any information? And his dad turned out to be the coach that had been his coach since he was sixteen years old. So it was like a wonderful coincidence. Insane, loving, beautiful story, just insane. I love it. Spoiler alert if you haven't heard that episode, but go back and listen to it anyway. It's the way it all plays out is so wonderful. So Sheila is going to tell us
her story. My mom gave my older sister up for adoption when she was born. Never had contact or knew where she was, but my mom knew the last name of the couple that the daughter had gone to. In high school, I had to take a swimming course for a scouting program that I was involved in. A couple of months after the course was completed, my mom was making a copy of the certificate to send in saw the last name of the lifeguard that taught me the course.
Froze looked at me and told me it was my sister. I knew I had a sister, but didn't know anything else. I didn't see her again until after I graduated and started going to the community college. We ended up in the same math class. I introduced myself to her. We talked for a while. I got to know where. Eventually my mom met her and we have been pretty close
for almost fifteen years now. Oh and after getting to know her more, we found out that she went to a local high school and was in the marching band. I went to a different school but was also in marching band. We were at competitions at the same time, competing against each other, and didn't know talking about sibling rivalry. Oh my god, and you didn't even know it was sibling which is rivalry flin old straight up rivalry, secret sibling rivalry. Now, this is a lot like the de
Land story. Do you think she had, like each of them had, there was something at that competition that were there inside. They were like, I don't know why this one feels like it matters more than the other, but yeah, there's something I gotta beat that school. I gotta kick as one trombonist whatever. Looking at her and she's just got something that makes me want to be better than her and also like connect with her too. There's something there, something there. Maybe maybe she will have to tell us
if you felt that way she left. You're like, there's this one school I was like, it feels really extra extra competition. They're playing SUSA extra hard. Seriously. What's funny about this is that, just like with the land, his mom when she gave him up, the adoption agency told her that he would not be staying in the same area, that he was going to be adopted out in a different city, but he wasn't. He was adopted out right in the same name, in the same hometown. So that's
so weird to think about. I guess you're like, psychologically, they're far away, so I won't look. It's not that weird to me that the administration at any facility just didn't work as hard as they said they were gonna, Yeah, we're going to send him real far away, and they just throw a dart at a local map and they're like, that's good enough. It's not the same stree. Yeah, don't worry,
we'll send him blocks. And because his mom even talked about maybe being in the same grocery store with his accompted mother and passing him as a baby and not even knowing it, which must be just a weird mind space to live in, right, like all the different ways this could have gone or whatever. So that's funny that she was so local. Yeah, she ends by saying, anyway, again, I love the show. My son and I looked forward
to them every week. Thank you, Sheila. I hope your son is either not too impressionable or a grown man. It's my year old son. Look, kids want to listen to the show. I welcome it, you know. Yeah, I was slightly censored when I was growing up in terms of what I've watched. I don't know how my parents
did it, because I just didn't want to. You know, my my friends watch horror movies or something, and I was just like, yeah, I never liked horror very much, and I wasn't too interested in like sexy stuff until I was old enough to want to watch it anyway. But like curse words, violence, no problem, our rated action movie. Like, yeah, that's true. I remember we weren't allowed to watch The Simpsons when I was very young. It was like a little just a little too adult, little too crude, crass.
And my parents are like free will and hippies, you know, they just don't like they didn't want violence in our childhood, which I appreciated. Not we couldn't have we could, like I had, I had like Ninja turtles, but they didn't want us to have the weapons. You know, you couldn't have like a nerf right right, right, which is all you know Again, I I think that contributed to my imagination and all kinds of my and I don't have a particular activity towards violence. I love violence in movies
and video games and stuff. That's great, but it's not like I'm not looking for it anyway. Point being, we weren't allowed to watch The Simpsons, and I remember my parents coming to me one day and saying, we watched the Simpsons last night. It was hilarious. We should all watch it, and from the next Sunday on every night is family. We sat down and watched the Simpson That's amazing.
What's funny is the first episode we all sat down and watched together opened with a McBain movie trailer, so it was like the most violent cartoon blood everywhere, and it was so insane. I was like, this is the show. You're okay with us watching? All right? But it was a new family tradition who watched every week. I mean, that's fun. The mom's going to call me next week and go, that's not what happened. But that's what I remember.
That's my memory. Yeah, don't trust your memory. Well, I remember we had like like a lot of uh probably the BBC FEATURETTS or something about like real historical figures. Yeah, that sounds right, And I remember like watching some of them and you would learn that like, oh, for example, this one king was killed when they snuck into his room and stuck a hot poker up his ass, and now no everyone thought he died of natural causes. That's a real story. Yeah, And I just wonder what you
were watching it on. Well, this is I'm saying. They were like, well of history is like that, and I want you to learn history. How can I tell you not to watch I mean basically, even in leath the weapon, they're not sticking up po grab someone's so it's like at least they're shooting like civilized people. I don't know why. Don't want you know what the logic was, to be honest, but I feel like I've turned out fine. I don't even remember how we got onto this mm hmm. I
don't know. This is what it's like when conversations anyway, Thank you so much, Sheila for sending us that message. That one put a big smile on my face. So our next one comes from Katie Kempbell Katie Duck Kempbell on Instagram. Katie says, Hello, I wanted to reach out and tell you how much my fiance and I love your show. Thank you, Katie and Katie's fiance um or
maybe maybe spouse now. I don't know how long it's been, UM, but Katie was talking about how, you know, all these different episodes we have sparked these what if conversations between her and her fiance, Like sometimes like I imagine an episode comes up and they're like, what if you were a hologram? You know, then what would you still love me? Well? It's sort of like when we did UM what were their names that were the Lonely Hearts Killers? Oh? Yeah?
And I was like, would you kill someone for me? Yeah? And I was like sure, I don't know who depends on who? Yeah, I'm sure, Yeah, that's a reasonable answer if I was just like this asshole you never met who I don't even know, But I just feel like they insulted me. Feeling maybe not UM. I can't to be fair, I can't think of an example where I'd say all right, Okay, I'll do I'll kill that person. I know. I guess I can't. I can't think of
anyone I would tell you to kill either. Let's just say it's probably a no. Probably anyway, So, Katie says, we usually listen to different episodes when commuting, and we love to tell each other high lights of episodes after work. That is a very efficient way to listen to a podcast. Efficient. That's partnership right there. Absolutely, and we don't have time to get through all this content. Let's make this a
team effort. Katie says, we are especially big fans of the pandemic episodes because we met at the beginning of the pandemic. What a weird time to meet, I know. She says. We were actually friends in middle school and hadn't seen each other in years. We had just both graduated high school and we had plans to go to collegees hundreds of miles apart, but because of the pandemic, decided to stay in town and take a gap year.
I had already put in my notice at work, and it was actually one of my last days there when Jacob came into the store and we reconnected. It's crazy to think something like a pandemic brought us together when we would have been living in separate states otherwise. That's so wild, you know, silver linings and all that. You just got to find something really good came out of this. While I'm glad it worked out for you, Katie and Jake, the rest of us had a lot of people got divorced,
but it was Twitter got rain on her. No, No, this is so awesome. I love that for you both. Um so cool, it really is. I mean, you know, causality. Let's go back and say, well, this thing happened because
of that thing. And it's just like and butterfly effect too. Right, if we've gone back in time and tweaked one thing, maybe you never would have met well, and I wonder if if they had gone to colleges separately, would they have met other people or would they have come back home and reconnected anyway, And just like the same thing
would have happened, but like four years from now. You know, that is a longstanding question in romance, right, you can really you can really burn your brain on that kind of question, destiny, predeterminism, um free will or is it just or is it just that draw just like you know Yeah, we we have free will to who's where we go and who we meet and who we fall in love with to some degree. But I'm just drawn back home for some reason. It feels like there's something
there that matters to me. Who knows, We can't We can't tell without a time machine. You just gotta pick your belief and go with it. That'd but true. But I'm so glad that this worked out for you too, So awesome. Probably engaged, may be married now. I don't know, let us know, Katie if what's going on, but I hope, I hope everything's going well for you all. Thanks for reaching out again. Yeah, it's nice to think about a pandemic bringing someone together instead of keeping them apart. Yeah. Okay,
Well here's another quick one. This is from Saxon who is welt Wondering on Instagram, and they gave us some really great suggestions, which we will save for when we actually do the episode. But they followed up with I shared your episode on Oscar Wilde with my law school class and we wound up using it as a reference for our class discussion. What awesome. That is both awesome and terrifying. I know. Now I'm like let should listen to you and make sure all the information is good.
Students facing their education on us. Our voices are too powerful. I guess someone take us down to peg. Someone tell me you told one of our stories to your teachers and they laughed at you. So wrong, so wrong. Now that's so awesome. I feel raps give me a very big ego right now. Right, someone used our episode as a references critic. Uh Saxon went on to say, you guys asked in your Stork Derby episode if it really was a thing that lawyers just sit around on a
Friday night talking about law cases for fun. I can confirm this is, in fact what lawyers do for fun. I'm a third year law student and I regularly read about law cases, both for school and fun. We're all a bunch of nerds. It's fine. Well, I am happy to know that confirmed. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, thank you uh Saxon for writing in and telling us the
truth about lawyers friday nights. Right, I did say. I was like, I guess we're all nerds about the things we love, so it would be nerdy of us to sit around and talk about podcasts on a Friday night. But we certainly do it. I don't know if we talk about podcasts. Well, we talk about our podcast yeah, constantly, it's never off. But we do talk about our theater. Yeah, yeah, things we've invested ourselves into, for sure. For sure. What else are you gonna talk about? It would be weird
if we sat around talking about law cases. That would be weirder. Like, I have no reason to talk about this or knowledge, but I just felt like Briga, Hey, Diana, you ever heard of Jordan v. Massachusetts. I can't say that I have. Well, I'm going to talk about it for the next twenty minutes. Just made that one up. If Jordan v. Massachusetts is a real thing, Saxon, please let me know what I'm talking about it. Jordan went up against the entire all right, Well, I think we
should just take a quick break. We'll come back with a couple more fun messages right after this. Yeah, welcome back to the mail bag, everybody. Okay. This one comes from German Nica on Instagram and she says, Hello, Eli and Diana. I love to hear your podcast. That leaves me in a great mood While I walk the dog in the morning, That's the perfect time to listen on this podcast. Um. She says, the biggest problem is I don't have enough episodes for my daily walks. Maybe you
should do a daily podcast. She at least laughs after saying right, I was like, I just broke out into a sweat. I guess if we just had to turn on the mic and be like, hey guys, we're just gonna shoot the ship for fifteen minutes, then I would do that. That's true, but then we wouldn't have cool stories to tell. We would get very boring very quickly, because I think we bore each other with our non story is all the time. Anyway, Uh, Germenica has seriously, guys,
great podcast, Thank you very much. I'm a Portuguese living in Jakarta and about to move to Singapore again. Maybe you can add Singapore to your places to visit. Maybe we care. I'm already done yea on the list on the list um. She also suggested that we look into in Yesta Castro and Pedro of Portugal, which we did last week. So I know that we had said, my mom, it's just that story to us, but Jermanica also suggested that story to us separately, So thank you for throwing
that idea out. So I hope that. I hope we did them right in your ears Portuguese ears, because she was saying, it's just a really well known story in her country. As we said, it's like the Romeo and Juliet right, so um hopefully, yeah, I hope right for a for a real life Portuguese person hearing it from a couple of Americans, I hope we did it justice. We do our best, so yeah, tell us what you thought of it. Yeah, please reach back out and thank you for messaging us again with that. I hope you're
talking to your dog. I hope you're walking your dog right now, and then you can lean down and pet him for us. Yeah, a little scrap, that's really all I care about. Um. So we got this email from someone and it's a really wonderful personal story, and so they asked us to keep their name out of it. Um, so we're just going to call her h thanks, thanks h And it's like made me cry a little bit because it's just so wonderful. So I'm very excited to share this one with one. H says hi Eli and Diana.
I'm a new listener to your show. I wanted to reach out to you and let you know how impressed I was with your episode on Lily and Gerda. So she's talking about our Lily. Elb and Gerda beganer two parter where um, we were talking about the first woman to get a gender confirmation surgery in Lely. L h says, I wasn't familiar with the story before I listened to it, but Lily's story really resonated with me. I dated someone
from high school through my first year of college. I am assis woman, and when we were together, she identified as a boy named Jamie, not their real name, and we were so in love and had so much in common. I thought we would be together forever. When Jamie went to college, she began taking a class on gender and sexuality. She came home to see me one weekend, just dying to tell me this secret that she thought would destroy our relationship. I begged her all night to tell me.
I did my best to reassure her that I would be there to love and support her. All kinds of terrible things are running through my mind, like was she a murderer? Was she an alien from another planet? That's so tough when someone tells you like I have something to tell you that's going to change your opinion of me, but I don't want to tell you, and then you're just left hanging like there's so many options there. What could change my opinion of Are you d B Cooper?
You know I didn't cross my mind? Is an option first placed? Next time, I'm gonna cheese, I'm gonna cheose a conversation with you. So you think I'm dB Cooper. I would have a lot of questions if you were dB Cooper. First of all, ain't no way you're jumping out of a plane. No, you so right. Maybe that's why you'll never jump out of a plane because you did once and it didn't go so it's like good cover for me. I'm like, I'd never jumped out of a plane. Also, I'd be like, where's the money? Can
we talk about where the money is? Please listen? If there's nothing like putting your assets on ice? Okay, she says. Finally she blurred it out, I'm a cross dresser. I breathed out a side relief. That's it, she says. I hugged her tight. We sat and talked for hours about how she came to this conclusion and what this meant, and honestly, I wasn't worried at all. I looked at my boyfriend with curly brown hair and warm eyes. Nothing
had changed for me. I guess I had noticed that he liked to dress up and win in's clothing as a joke, and had once begged me to let him try on my prom dress. It was nothing we couldn't work through. Time passed, and Jamie continued to learn more about herself. She grew her hair long and tied it back in a ponytail. She bought skinny jeans, buttoned down shirts, and slim sports jackets. She would wear women's clothing in private. She wanted to try going out, but was terrified of
what would happen or how people might react. I tried to be as supportive and understanding as I could, although as a seventeen year old in two thousand and nine, I felt very out of my depth. And I can't even imagine the dumb ship I would have said as a seventeen year old in two thousand nine, like, there's no way I would have done that. Well, let's be fair, you were not a seventeen year old in two thousand nine.
But if I had been in this scenario well, both when I was seventeen and even in the year two thousand nine when I was older than that. Um, I yeah, I didn't have the information, the education that I have now about how to have responded that. I think I would have been cool. I like to think, but but yeah, I would also like to think that definitely learned a lot since then. We all we all have h says.
From time to time, we would have honest conversations about how we felt about Jamie's changes and how we felt about our relationship. For a while, we pretended that it changed nothing. We still assumed that Jamie would propose to me when she graduated college, and that we would marry when I graduated college. We would eventually purchase her family home and have children. I found myself beginning to wonder
how I would explain Jamie to our future children. Our future wasn't nearly as cut and dried as it used to be, and I felt selfish and ashamed of how much that scared me. During many of our conversations, Jamie would swear to me that she would never transition, that although she felt her gender was fluid, she would not identify as a woman. She did not think of herself as a gay or bisexual man, and was not attracted
to men in any way. I know there are a man any things I did not do right during the course of our relationship, but even as a teenager, I knew not to let Jamie make this promise. You're still learning what this means for you, I would say, we both are. Let's just take it one day at a time. After I went to college, Jamie and I inevitably drifted apart. We broke up during Thanksgiving break of my freshman year,
and we didn't speak much after that. Jamie went on to become a computer engineering wizard and eventually moved to NYC. She eventually came out as a trans woman. Since then, I have been cheering her on from afar, but was afraid to reach out. As time passed, I felt as if my wonderful experience of first love was invalidated because my boyfriend decided to identify as a woman. Sometimes I felt that Jamie had tried to steal my role as a woman, whatever the hell that means, and it made
me feel ashamed for being so selfish. I would look back on pictures and memories and wonder if any of it was real. Your episode on Lily and Gerda was such a godsend because it helped me see that my relationship with Jamie was real and loving just like their's. Like Gerda, I wanted Jamie to be happy, even if that meant eventually losing her. We didn't handle everything perfectly, but we did our best and treated each other with love, respect,
and kindness until the end. I'm sorry this email is so long, but I wanted to let you know that I felt you two were speaking directly to me and it made me feel like my experience mattered. Thank you again for your wonderful podcast. Sincerely, H. Well, don't apologize, H. That was well written and really powerful email, and we're really glad we got that. I think this is such a really important conversation to have as people are getting more in touch and being more real about who they
are and their gender expression. And I think there's several relationships that are like Lilian Gerda's, where there's a lot of love, but at some point you're going you're not the same person, and that does change to an extent, doesn't it your attraction, your desire, your companionship. I mean everything would change somewhat. I mean, maybe not. I don't know. I think it just depends on the person and the couple.
And some people are very like, there's nothing wrong with being uh, with knowing the rigidity of your sexuality, right. I when we got together, we were heteronormative couple, and that's what I need, Like, you know, and if you're someone if you are transitioning, if you discover this about yourself, I still love and support you. I feel that. But I you know, if I was in a relationship with a woman who transitioned and was actually a man, you know, I would say, well, I'm not I don't have romantic
attractions to men, right, I think I don't know? Right, how could I know? And that's the kind of what you just have to feel out on an individual level. It must be because I've definitely seen ones to where there's transitions and they stayed together and it's no problem and every looks fine. So absolut lutely I think it
can happen either way. But it feels like kind of a I don't know, an experience that must feel very lonely because it's hard to talk about and I feel like she says she feels really bad for all her feelings about it, because some of them feel like they're coming from maybe a transphobic place where like a place of not understanding, and you're like, I don't want to be that person. That's of course I don't. But that's that's coming up for me. What do I do with that?
Who do I talk to? There's no one to say this too, and I don't. I feel like a bad person. That's just all I've got. So that's a that's a sad thing I think too. When we talked about Lily and Gerda, you know, we even talked about a little bit how Lily was very strict about gender roles. Lily herself was like, I need to pass as a woman, or I'm not a woman. I need to have women's reproductive organs, or I'm not a woman. And women don't marry women. Women are not with women. That's not a
thing that happens. So I have to find a man. A long time ago, right, it was the thirties. There's still a lot of gay stuff going on. No, definitely, But in terms of just like what support system would she have had to try and explore a different lifestyle. Yeah, And I don't know if Gerda felt the same way about like, well, you're a woman now and I'm not
attracted to women that way. Um, so I feel like you're my sister and we'll just have a different relationship than we did, or if Gerda was even in her mind going, oh, I thought we were good, but you feel like that's not what a woman does, so we can't be together anymore. So that might have been some
heartache as well. I like your idea about what a woman is is so rigid and what a woman does is so rigid that you can't be as free with your new gender expression and as well as you couldn't be free with your old gender expression either because you were having this dysmorphia going on. So that's the that's sort of the extra tragedy to me about Lily's story is that extra layer of like, well, if I'm going to do this, I have to dress this way, I have to act this way, I have to be this
type of presentation. It's tough, um. And of course we can only speak to it as sis people you know, outside looking in and from what we've read and learned and and listened and heard um. But so I can't know what that experience is like, but I can know that it's easy to uh, to validate that experience and support it. It's not hard. Genders super fluid and a lot a lot of the times. What I imagine is the idea is just like, well, because gender is a construct, right,
it's what a woman is. We made that up, right, Like you wear dresses, you have long hair, you wear makeup, you wear heels. You know a lot of his presentation, some of its behavior, but it's all we decided these things, right, and like not consciously. I didn't decide that at any point in my life, but it's the world I was born into, and we all kind of social contract style, uh, sort of have this idea. And I think it's great that we're like bending that idea and kind of breaking
it down a little because it's so absurd. There's no there's no law there, there's no nature. When you say, like, by nature, women are this and men are that. No, they're not. That's insane. Um. By nature, we're all naked, you know, so so it's it's that's silly, um. And also we it is our own nature to create an advance and change and if and we have a lot of medicine and things that we do to our bodies, either surgically or medicinally. Uh, which, hey, that's nature too
because we can do that and we are nature. So anyway, it's just it's a very clear cut and dry scenario to me that gender is fluid and people are exploring that, and I think that's awesome. And in fucking twenty years, if a bunch of people who you know are teenagers now grow up and say you never should have let me done that, then we'll have another conversation. But for adults now to be coming in and saying, kids, you
can't explore your gender, funk off, Like, are you kidding me? Well, some people now saying that it should be illegal at any age to take a hormone therapy or any any transition type surgery or anything, which is it's outrageous. It's outrageous. Nuts, it's outrageous, And message me. I will tell you why it's outrageous. He'll write you a very long message. Absolutely, and honestly, yeah, it's this podcast. You know what side we're on. I don't think we have any fine, I
don't energy. I mean that spitefully, like honestly, like if you are someone who as I mean honestly when I talk about two thousand nine and when I was seventeen years old and these things, I definitely had different opinions about this kind of stuff than I do now. And I'm glad to have learned, because who the fund doesn't like learning? Who? Why? Why the hell would I want to be the same person now that I was at seventeen years old? My god, thank god, I'm not the same.
So if you know, if you genuinely like I want to think differently but I just can't figure it out, I will totally have that conversation with you again the best of my ability. I'm not going to be right about everything, but well, yeah, and again it was like a good faith conversation. I don't want to any like essentialism about what kind of vagina you have. It's not interested in that conversation at all. But but yeah, it's just it's just so interesting to see how many times
in human history we've up ended gender. And women were like, I'm aware of pants, and football players were like I'm gonna take ballet, and you know what I mean. And David Bowie's out here where in dresses and people are like it's sexy and Prince is sort of non binary and everyone want to fuck him and like it's just and that that's all about your gender expression, right, It's like, how what clothes am I wearing? What do I want you to think of me when you look at me?
I don't want you to quite be able to put me in a box. And so that was sort of the vibe of that, I think, but it was a lot of chafing at and we don't like that, Like human beings do not like a cage, even if it's an invisible one. We chafe at that. And we'll find a way too to bend that ship, you know. And and it's there's something about identity to that, like you know, if you're assist person, of course you can't wrap your head around that's what it's like to be a transperse.
Of course you can't. I can't. You can't, And that's fine. You can think of that and go wow, I certainly could never be decided to be a woman, and like, yeah, that's a not how it works, and be of course you can't because you're not. But if you've ever had something about yourself or just a truth that you knew that was just like clawing inside of you to get out. Like that's a very difficult life to live and and it could be about any you just find something small
and and just blow that up. Try to try to make it proportionate to what someone might be experiencing, you know, live ving in what they feel like is not their own body. That's right. And every day, in countless ways, people are getting you wrong yes yeah, and telling you you're wrong about yourself, that they know you better than you do. Come on, stop that, people, just stop. It's not hard. It's not going to change your life in the slightest. That's the other thing too, It will not
more than likely not at all affect you. I promise. Thank you again to Age for this beautiful email. It was wonderfully written. You're so honest, You're so vulnerable with us, and I really appreciate that. That means a lot that that episode touched you so much and spoke to you so much. I think that's a really important experience to highlight and thank you for sharing it with us. Well, we better take a break, yeah, um, and we will
come back with a couple more messages. Right after these messages, Hey, everybody, welcome back to the show. I'm just still thinking that we should have given everyone a funny voice. I think I think historical voices are hilarious, but our contemporaries will We'll leave them. We'll just leave them alone. Okay, fair enough. Imagine that all of these emails have people reading them, just voices so beautiful that we can't replicate them. The
beautiful They're like Shakespearean actors. We are not doing them justice. Absolutely. Um. Okay, So we got an email from Rachel, uh subject line excellent podcast. A little clue, then pun in the subject line, this is Marty and Rachel. She says, hello there. I'm a big fan of the show and I've been listening from the beginning. Y'all are the cutest and I adore
your banter, absolute hashtag couple of goals. I'm blushing. In The Giant Dick That Changed Chinese History Forever, episode, Diana at a joke about using eggs instead of rice flour for construction because they're so difficult to scrape out of the pan. True. I live in Prague, where the most iconic site is probably the Charles Bridge. Heard of it, never been there, but dying to go. It has long been believed that eggs were used in the mortar when
it was created. There is even one village, Velvety that remains the butt of jokes because it is said that when the king requested eggs be donated for the project, they sent boiled eggs to prevent breakage. That is amazing. Oh you dummy, like, no, it's the yolk we wanted you, bastard Velvey. They want us to send eggs, well, jeeze, but we don't want us send broken eggs. Got it?
Got a perfect idea. Rachel goes on to say modern testing has shown that there are egg proteins in the fourteenth century Lime, More, confirming the long held belief Diana was onto something with her suggestion of eggs as a construction material. Look at that regular engineer. Yeah, who said I couldn't engineer, and probably a lot of my teachers. I'm an idea girl, okay, Rachel says, I'm including a picture of my pug. Thank you. If there's ever a
pet to be included, please include that. Send a picture of your pets, please, but this one at a special point, Rachel says, pugs were originally lapdogs for Chinese royalty, and it's believed Chin Chi Wang destroyed the written records of how they were created. As someone who loves the breed and is a major proponent of rescue, this is probably for the best, very true. We don't need to make more of these poor dogs. They can't even breathe like.
That is so cute, though, looking forward to hearing you cover all the ridiculous romances the world has to offer Rachel and Murphy the pug he s. I also love all the fringe talk. I knew there had to be one of y'all. I didn't mind all that. I've been an avid fringe attendant since I was a teen, as the festival coincided with my birthday. When I lived in the States, I had a tradition of celebrating with a fringe nerd lesque show. Nerd Lesque is so fun. It's
like nerdy burlesque. It's un Actually, this year, when we did five Fists Back to the Future, one of those burlesque performers created a doc Brown thinking cat from the fifties. That so cool, and she was like, I actually already do a Dalek burlesque number, and now she wants to do like a sexy doc Doc Brown, which I would love. I just love it. So anyway, look up nerd lesque if there's one in your area. It's definitely worth seeing.
Rachel says Progus Fringe is in late summer. If you're okay with lots of animals, I'm always happy to host. First of all, I insist on lots of animals. Absolutely. If I'm not a puppy pile or kitty pile, I don't want to go. Absolutely no. This is great. This is actually amazing because from listeners so far, we're staying with Robert Smith, not from the Cure in Scotland, between Glasgow and Edinburgh. We're standing in Munich and getting a
beer with Elaney Papadopolis. We're going to Singapore to see Dominica and then we're going to stay in Prague with Rachel and Murphy the Pug. So we already have a world tour going. We've got to get on this. We need to find some folks in France, need a couple of London and Ireland. So if you're out there, let's talk about Canada. Don't forget the big write in letter campaign to iHeart Radio. You got to tell them to put us on a world tour. World's are miracle at
street like bags of mail coming in. They're just gonna dump them out and be like everyone all over the world is demanding a live world tour of ridiculous romance. That's what we need to happen. Who even writes a letter anymore, that's how passionate they are pen to paper. All right, this is a really important email we got
from the Hobo Demon. This one was an email, and the Hobo Demon decided to help us out with our Anti Oakley episode because we talked about the possibility that maybe Annie Oakley died from lead poisoning from all her time around the bullets. Well, and of course there was the idea that uh sometimes shot could get into food and that could poison you. It was a whole thing. Well, the Hobo Demon sent us an incredibly long and detailed description of quote good news and bad news about the
possibility that Anti Oakby died of lead poisoning. The good news is that the effects of lead poisoning are highly dependent on what kind of lead you're going to be exposed to. In particular, water soluble lead salts for carry on birds such as vultures and condors, because they digest
things using stronger assets than humans. Using a parasitic acid solution mixed from vinegar and hydrogen peroxide, the waste from that is the flagration of the fuel air mixture, would be efficiently converted into which rings me to part three of this little essay. We can be somewhat confident that Annie Oakley didn't suffer lead tensions. Exposure to damage a
person's capacity to do people in good involves exposed. Understanding of lead poisoning as advanced in the last few decades enough that we consider my older cases of low enough now that we could have considered everyone alive during the nineteen seventies to be afflicted. And then to wrap it up,
he says, sorry that got rambily. The summary I'd endorsed for thirty seconds or less is Ariosolized lead from poorly ventilated indoor ranges or cars in the twentieth century are more harmful than eating lead, but still don't do it.
Annie Oakley probably died of something else. It takes a lot of lead poisoning to be fatal, and there are plenty of ways survivable illnesses can still leave a person destroyed, but nothing we know about Antiokley's life suggests that she was suffering more than the average person of her era from lead poisoning. Well, thank you. I did not expect a college course in lead poisoning, but I am I
learned something in that even too. I know we just gave you all this summary, but no, yeah, there's definitely more. Speaking of engineers, I'm getting engineer vibes from the Hobo Demon. He was like, I'm gonna be very thorough give you everything. Possibly physicist, possibly doctor doctor, I don't know, scientists of some kind, smart one t one what I'm getting here than demon? Absolutely thank you Hobo Demon for sending that. And now we can say definitively that Annie Oakley did
not die of lead poisoning. Heard it here first, What is our story? And we're sticking to us and Hobo Demon correct the age old mystery of Annie freaking Oakley's death. All right, and our final message for this mail bag episode is going to be from Jed Salts, who reached out through email to say just a note to let you know I enjoy your podcast very much. Thank you. Some favorites are Frederick Douglas. Awesome, Calico, Jack and Maximilian
and Carlotta. Thank you, Jed. Obviously, you may be interested to know that Passeo de la Reforma was originally Pasto de la Imperatrees to honor Carlotta. This main boulevard was laid out by Maximilian to connect Mexico City Center with their palace at Chapoltepec Castle. Awesome. That is really interesting. Yeah, there was. I mean, you know, there was a lot of love for these two and they did get some some things named after them. I did not know about
this reforma. Uh. He ends with there are other good history podcasts, but somehow yours is more entertaining. Keep up your use of sound effects. With the little sound effects. Here's some of my favorite sound effects for you classic love them all. I'm sure they're great. I love that those are Those are great some of my favorite episodes too. Honestly, now, I'm so glad to hear that someone loved Frederick Douglas because I was so like blown away by what I
learned about Frederick Douglas. Had no idea what a ladies man, I know too much. Ladies well, and also it was just inspiring to be like, look how many women were just like, you know what, I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna do a local sewing circle with fourteen other women, and you know what, We're going to change the freaking world. It's going to take a few years, but damn it, we're gonna do it. These are amazing, These messages coming in all the time, don't stop, you don't love them,
will run across the house. I think I've said that before too, to be like yeahs ye ye and um. And this is just a piece of what we have to bring to you. We'll be doing more episodes like these occasionally. I mean, you know, we we love our stories, but we love your stories. So that's so cool when when you get to add to the show like this with your own, your own voice. Thank you, Thank you everyone,
Thank you all for writing in. Even if we didn't get to your message, I promised you that it brought a big smile to our face and we definitely shared it amongst ourselves and if we did not respond, we will. Yes, So that's very true. We can't wait to talk to you a little more, so keep them coming. Send us your email, send us your Instagram, message, Twitter, anywhere you want to send us something. Carry your pigeon, hire a jet to write sky letters to us, will take it that. Yeah, uh,
we would love to hear from you. You can email us at ridic Romance at gmail dot com right or on Twitter and Instagram. I'm at Dynamite Boom and I'm at Oh Great, it's Eli and the show is at ridic Romance right. Follow along and send us your beautiful words and we can't wait to see it the next episod. We love you. Thanks for spending your time with us today. So long, friends, it's time to go. Thanks for listening
to our show. Tell your friends neighbor's uncle s Indance to listen to our show, Ridiculous Well Dance