This isn't "I Heart Podcast.
Guarantee human.
“I'm Mungisha together and I'm back with a new season”
of my podcast Skyline Drive. This time I talked to scientists, bio-punks, commudions, blues owners, super seniors, and Goa's top cryotherapy lab to try to understand this obsession with living forever.
And what it means for all of us. And I get into a bit of trouble along the way. I'd say probably start bone smashing. That doesn't work. Make you look more defined.
They say it works. I don't know. Listen to Skyline Drive. How to live forever on the "I Heart Radio App," Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.
On the new podcast, Solita, we share the messy reality of traveling alone as a woman. I can wait for hours for the next bus, or this random dude is offering me a ride on his motorcycle.
I choose Option B. I'm Julie Bignero and I travel by myself because it's a rare space where I can say yes
without asking anyone else first.
I'm on a mission to reclaim the word Solita, trading the pity for possibility. Listen to Solita on the "I Heart Radio App," Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, this is Ace Davenport.
And Sean Clements. We host the podcast Hollywood Handbook. Each week, we talk to someone in show business and try to help them with their careers and see what they have to offer us.
Everyone has a good time and no one gets mad at their publicists for letting them do our show. We've had a lot of great guests like Sarah Sherman, Adam Scott, Danny McBride, Ben Stiller. It a lot of other big shots that wouldn't be where they are
without us. Listen to Hollywood Handbook on the "I Heart Radio App," Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, everybody. It's July 14th, 2020.
And we're all rolling through COVID, pretty well by this point. We're all pretty drunk. Most of the time, and gain and wait, but that's okay. We're gonna let each other up
because it's a global pandemic. This episode is called Flag Bull Sitting, Co-Lin, a Real Fad. And it was, people would sit at the top of Flag Bulls for as long as they could.
And it was a part of a weird time in American history. So check out this episode, not on Harvey Danger, the band who sang the song, Flag Bull Sita, as did my cover band, but Flag Bull Sitting, for real. Check it out right now.
(upbeat music) - Welcome to Stuff You Should Know. A production of "I Heart Radio." (upbeat music) - Hey, welcome to the podcast.
I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant right over there.
“Jerry's out there somewhere, and this is stuff you should know.”
You know Chuck, I have to say. - Yes.
- Every once in a while, the amazing theme song
from our short live television show comes into my head. And it'll just, it's just a complete earworm. - Yeah. - Okay, they just hear the end of it over and over and over again. And it's actually pretty pleasant, it doesn't bother me.
- I love it, I haven't heard that song in a while. - Well, you need to go listen. That was the Henry Clay people, right? - Yeah, our buddies, Joey and Andy Sierra, California Boys, Southern California Boys, men.
- Didn't they go to Harvard or something crazy like that? - Joey ended up going to Harvard, and then I think Andy went to AFI, and then Joey, I think went back to film school, and they're both writing, you know, screenwriting. - Man, that's great.
- Andy's got to, he wrote it, this Andy Sandberg movie that's coming out soon. - Really what's it called? - It is called Palm Springs, I think. - Wow, any wrote it?
- Yeah, dude, that's fantastic, congratulations. - And he wrote on the TV show, "Lodge 49." - Yeah, I haven't seen that. - Oh, I haven't seen that. - But that guy, Kurt Russell and Goldie Hanson,
I love that guy, I think he's one of the coolest people walking around on the planet today. - Yeah, I haven't seen "Lodge 49" as supposed to be awesome, and he was a writer's assistant and ended up on the staff, and they're both doing great.
- Man, that's great. - It's got a little baby now, they're both married. - Nice, man. - That's nice. - And that's an update on the CRR club, as I don't know.
- Thank you. (laughs) - Let's see what else. - What was it? - How did that come in your head though, this song?
Like, what made you think of that? - Nothing, I was just out back, like, mowing the lawn with my big old lawnmower, and it just popped in my head. I was probably thinking of something I had to do
“that had to do with stuff you should know,”
and I thought stuff you should know, and when I thought it, I thought it as stuff, you should know, doing it. - And then it just played on the loop.
- This is the second time you mentioned
the size of your lawnmower, yeah. And now you just gotta send me a picture. Is this one of these things that you stand?
- No.
- And it wheels you around, like some weird land speeder?
“- You mean like a scag or something now?”
- This is just a good old fashioned Toro that is because it's gas powered, I got it on super discount, because everybody's making really good electric lawnmowers, but this one was on discount, and I like the look of it.
- Yeah, it's good looking mower, huh? - Yeah, I was like, I like your style. - Is everyone with me? - Is it red? - Yep.
- Yeah, it's red, Toro's. - Yeah, it's nice. - Take you back to days of paper routes, and still look better than that. - I thought you were mentioning the song
because you were thinking of the song Flagpole Cida, by Harvey Danger. - No, I wasn't at all. - Okay. - But that's a great segue, Chuck,
because it just so happens, and you may be aware of this, for talking about Flagpole Cida in this episode. - It's right, and I've been singing that song in my head all day.
- No, I don't know that song. - You know it, it was a, well maybe not. It was a, it was a top 40 hit in the '90s, kind of during the Grunge era, it was a power pop hit, that kind of, oh, from part of the danger.
- Danger, danger, danger, danger, danger, danger, danger, danger, danger, danger, danger, danger, danger, danger, danger, danger, danger, danger, danger, danger, danger, danger, danger, danger, danger. - Is that it? - That's not it. - No, my band actually covers a Flagpole Cida, it's a fun song. - Okay, that's great.
I'm gonna have to go listen to it, because I feel like I'm missing out. But what that song is that song about Flagpole Cida, is about shipwreck Kelly in particular? - No, it's not, but it does have one line that says,
"I run it up the Flagpole and C." And that's the only time it references Flagpole at all. - C's what?
“Who's salute, but no one ever does, I think, is the next line.”
- That rings a bell. - I bet they can end it and then I was again to the mirror. I think a little bit clearer, sure. - Run it up the Flagpole and C. Who's salute, but no one ever does.
- Yeah, I'm not sick, but not well. - Who is that Harvey Danger? - Harvey Danger? - Okay, yeah, that's a great song, I love it. - Yeah.
- Who fellow, podcasting friend John Roderick, actually Sean Nelson was a friend of his and Seattlemate, he played bass for a little while in Harvey Danger. - No, very, wow, man, this is all coming for a song.
I got one more for you, I used to have that song. And I don't know where I downloaded it from, this would have been probably back in the Napster days or something, and it was mislabeled as Brian Jones
how Massacre, and I was always like,
this sounds sound like Brian Jones how Massacre. Now I know it most definitely was in Brian Jones how Massacre. - Wow, all right, we haven't even talked about Flagpole sitting yet.
- No, we haven't, which is a crime, because it's actually one of the more interesting weirdo fads that's ever come this way in America. - No, it's in the 20s, started, we actually, we know who patient zero was a flagpole sitting.
And it's easy to tell because it is such a bizarre thing to do that if you can find the person who did it first who claims to have done it first, they're probably correct, and in this case, you can trace it back to some time around January of 1924,
supposedly potentially in Hollywood, California, part of Los Angeles, and there was a man named Alvin Shipwreck Kelly, who supposedly climbed up on a flagpole as part of a promotion for a movie and sat there for a full 13 hours and 13 minutes
to help draw a crowd and boy did he ever. - Yeah, which, you know, it sounds like a long time to sit on a flagpole, but that is kid stuff. - Yeah, compared to where this is headed. - Yeah, for sure.
“- That's an aportice, but it's a good first attempt, you know?”
- Yeah, and so, you know, it sounds strange because when you think of a flagpole, you're like, what are they sitting on, it's a modified flagpole
that basically they're different kinds,
but usually it's sort of like a bar stool at the top of a flagpole, and it's that low-fi, and you climb up there, and you sit, and that's all you do. - That's, I mean, whatever else you wanna do, well sure, you do have to use yourself or whatever,
that's up to you, but as far as being considered a flagpole sitter, that's it. You sit on top of a flagpole for as long as you can. - All right, so let's talk about this guy, 'cause Shiprock Kelly was a pretty interesting character.
- And I have to say there's a memory palace episode about him that I specifically didn't listen to beforehand 'cause I didn't want to unconsciously rip it off. The goal is to into that. - Yeah, Robuddy Nate, I'm gonna check that out for sure.
So Alvin Kelly, he was born, Aloisius Anthony Kelly, in New York City, in Hell's Kitchen,
In a tenement, in 1893, and had a very sad start to his life
in that his father had already passed before he was born.
“His mother passed in childbirth, and that basically meant”
he was shuttle around to relatives and orphanages
from the minute he took his first breath.
- Yeah, and apparently from a pretty early age, he would do things like climb flagpoles and other tall stuff. And like working at heights became kind of a recurring theme in his life, supposedly by age 70 was climbing flagpoles within a few years after that, he was starting to scale
the facades of some of the buildings in his neighborhood. And by the time he was 13, and bear in mind if this guy's biography seems a little thin, he just came out of nowhere in 1924 for sitting on a flagpole. So all of the info about him came from him to reporters
who were reporting in the 1920s. So just fabrications are flying around left and right. But supposedly he ran away at age 13 and ran off to join the crew of a cargo ship and started his life sailing the seas.
- Yeah, and he did a lot of kind of odd jobs, or maybe not odd jobs, but just jobs that didn't have anything to do with one another over the next couple of decades.
“He was in the movies as a stand-in and a double.”
He was a stunt person, a stunt pilot, a high diver, a boxer, this part I love. There's actually a name for people that repair church stepples. And what is that?
- Steeplejack. - He was a steeplejack. - That is definitely a band name for sure. - Steeplejack? Oh yeah.
- It sounds like maybe an industrial band, but like on the lights, like they're technically too melodic to actually be considered industrial, but they still call themselves industrial.
- Let's pick up my favorite part of this old band name thing. Is you describing what kind of band it is? - Oh, okay, I love it. - Well, thanks man, that makes me feel wonderful. - So, World War I comes along
and he was in the Naval auxiliary reserve as an instant and served on the USS Edgar F. Luke and Bach during that war. - Yep, so he did have some sort of, well, I should say, I don't know if anybody's corroborated that,
but we'll just take all that at face value because it doesn't really matter at this point, but he eventually picked up the nickname shipwreck. And there's a lot of different explanations for this. And he's given regave multiple different explanations
depending on what reporter he was talking to. But one of the numbers that gets bandied about pretty frequently is that shipwreck Kelly was so named because he survived 32 different shipwrecks at sea, which is where shipwrecks tend to happen.
Those are the good old days.
- Third, yeah, you just make up stories about yourself.
- Do you remember when we talked about, we did an episode on the world's, either luckiest or unluckiest people? - Mm-hmm.
“- And do you remember that one guy who's like,”
I survived a car that fell off a cliff when I survived a train wreck and all that? He was doing his jam in like 2005, remember? - Oh, was he? - Yeah, it was pretty recent, if I remember correctly.
- Remember, his son came out and was like, everybody, this is not true, right? - Like, none of what you're talking about is true. - Well, we don't have just fooled you all. - We don't know if shipwreck Kelly actually survived
the Titanic, like he claimed, but we do know that he was not on the roster on the Titanic, so I am gonna venture to say that he made that one up. And there were three Kelly's on board
who were survivors, but all three of them were women. So yeah, he probably wasn't on the Titanic. Maybe he did survive from shipwrecks. He was at sea most likely. But the point is, is they call him shipwreck Kelly.
And I guess somebody went to the trouble of digging up that some reporters who covered his boxing career are probably the likely source for where he got his nickname shipwreck, right? - Yeah, which I love, because I guess he was
in a great boxer, because they said that he was often adrift and ready to sink. - That great shipwreck Kelly. - It's a great nickname and even better origin story than surviving 32 shipwrecks, if you ask me.
- Yeah, and the other thing we don't know for sure is even if that Hollywood movie premier story
is correct in his first major outing as a flag pulsator,
because yet another story says, no, this is actually in Philadelphia at a department store, and he just did it on a dare in the department store. Got a lot of business because people were standing around looking and then doing some shopping.
So they were like, hey, stay up there and I'll give you some extra do. - Yeah, so either way, it's pretty widely held
That shipwreck Kelly was the guy who started
the flag pulsating craze.
“And it was a craze because this is a time”
where you could go sit on a flagpole for 13 hours and 13 minutes. And newspapers around the country would pick up the story and write about it. And you would suddenly become famous overnight.
And that's exactly what happened to Shipwreck Kelly. So that's pronged one toward this becoming a fad in the 1920s. The other criteria is that people have to want to topple that record and that was very widespread at the time too. 'Cause the 1920s were actually really big into fads.
Like people would take up weird fads
and just go nuts over them for basically the whole decade.
- Yeah, you know, people had time and they had fewer distractions. - Yeah, no TV. - So like, someone doing a danceathon for 28 hours or sitting on a flagpole for a day, you know?
It's a interesting story back then, it's sad. But that was interesting, but it was. (laughing) - So we'll talk about dance marathons and then we'll take a break, okay?
- Okay. - Okay. (upbeat music) - On the new podcast, Solita,
“we share the messy reality of traveling alone as a woman.”
I can wait for hours for the next bus or this random dude is offering me a ride on his motorcycle. I chose option B. - I'm Julie Biniero and I travel by myself because it's a rare space where I can say yes
without asking anyone else first.
I'm on a mission to reclaim the word Solita, trading the pity for possibility. - Every time I try to be alone, I kept meaning people and they were like, you smile that that's not a lot of people smile around here.
- It's when you're alone that you're most receptive to the world as it is and not the lies you're sold about it. It can be a time where you push your limits, change your mind, or wake up to a new version of yourself. So whether you're a solo travel veteran
or you're too nervous to book your first trip, I hope you listen to Solita. On the I-Hart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
“Bartown is small taters by most standards, right?”
But to the people who grew up here, it's everything. - What happens when a quiet Tennessee town becomes the front line in a battle over the future of America? - Developers with right wing ties
have purchased hundreds of acres of land in the area.
- The first thing you see when it pops up
is pioneers in Appalachia. But they weren't just planning houses. - We need cities on a shining hill that exemplify and embody the Christian way of life. - Stop right there, is that normal?
- Appodcast about what happens when a small town becomes the site of a social experiment. - God need bedroom! - Great! - And decides to fight back.
- Do not use my hard work to sell your bullsh*t. - They're not just opposing what's being planned for here. - Our hometown is not a test too. - They feel like they're standing in opposition to an entire administration.
- Guess you didn't move in on a bunch of dumb hillbillies now did you listen to our town. - On the I-Heart Radio App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. - I'm Munga Shittegather and I'm back
with a new season of the podcast Skyline Drive. This time I'm diving into a rabbit hole of peptides, Oregon-oids, blood boys, blue zones, and brain replacement to try to understand what this longevity of session is all about.
And what it really means to live forever for all of us. I learned about some rad science. I can make a brain for you. And then we can test what draw is the best for your brain, a supposed to his brain.
- Here are some hard truths. - I would expect Indians to age faster, but I did not expect it to be almost a four to five year acceleration and get myself into a world of trouble. - I'd say probably start bones smashing.
- That doesn't work. - Make it look more defined. They say it works. I don't know. Listen to Skyline Drive, how to live forever
on the I-Hart Radio App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. (upbeat music) - Oh, wait. I got that backwards jacket.
I just realized, hopefully Jerry figured it out and there was an ad in there somewhere. - I think we should just leave it just like that,
Though, that'll be fun.
- Okay, so we're gonna talk about Marathons, dance Marathons now after the ad break, despite what I said before.
“And dance Marathons are a super 20s example”
of a crazy fan that kind of came along and got everybody by the hackles and people across the country started
entering basically dance Marathons competitions.
All because of one person, one woman, a dance instructor named Alma Cummings. - That's right, 32 years old. She danced for 27 hours at the Audubon Ballroom in New York in 1923 with six different dance partners.
And it was a weird time because it wasn't just dancing. It was endurance challenges as a whole. We're just all the rage and punishing your bodies and all these weird random ways from yo-yoing to whooping to rocking and rocking chair
or skipping rope to dancing. Dancing was the big one, that's where you know, if you see these videos of these Marathons dance competitions it looks like hell on earth, it looks awful. - Yeah, oh yeah, they didn't seem very fun at all,
but Alma Cummings just kicked the whole thing off.
And again, just like Shipwreck Kelly
who would follow I guess a year later, even, yeah, about a year later, she got a lot of publicity. There's like a famous photo of her with her feet in a tub of water soaking. - Yeah.
- And she's holding up her shoes and they have holes in the souls where she wore holes from dancing for 27 hours. And I guess like you're saying people were bored or there wasn't as much to do,
but also there really seems to just be a profound hunger for celebrity, however you can get it. And that seemed to like really drive people who wanted to be like, well, if this lady got this much attention for dancing 27 straight hours,
maybe I can get even more attention for dancing 30 straight hours.
“And so within just like, I think three weeks”
of Alma Cummings setting this record for dancing, it had been broken nine times at least from people trying to seek the same kind of publicity she got. - Yeah, and you know, it's funny. It really like we talk about these days
'cause everyone wants their 10 minutes or they want to be reality show famous or whatever. - It's been whittled down to 10 now, I thought it was like 15. - Well, like that's something new, and it's really not.
Like this is sort of the version of that back then was I want to be famous, I want my names in the papers, but I'm not particularly skilled enough to do anything to do that. So I'll rock in a rocking chair for three days.
- Yeah, you know, and hopefully they will come. - Oh, I rock, they will come. (laughing) - And it's, that was a pity laugh at best, but I appreciate it.
- Well, that's a bad joke. (laughing) Admittedly. - But we should shout out a bunch of great websites here because this next bit came from Atlas Obscura,
one of our favorite sites, and also our dearest
of old sites that we always have love mental floss.
Ripley's History Daily, J. Mark Powell, and Historic Pelham, which is great. (laughing) But Atlas Obscura talks about the, in the 30s, and this is really kind of depressing during the depression.
- This is very appropriate. - Is that sometimes people would enter these dance marathons because it would be somewhere they could sleep and eat for a week at a time when they didn't necessarily have a home or food.
- Yeah, it is extremely depressing. Or just the prize money that was offered in the depression might be enough to keep your house from being foreclosed on. - Yeah.
- So yeah, the thing is, you know, you can blame promoters for continuing this long beyond the Fed, but the promoters wouldn't have been putting these on and offering these prize money, were it not for all the crowds that would show up every day
to watch these people get increasingly closer to catastrophic exhaustion from dance marathons because like there were rules where, you know, probably early on in the dance marathon, you could sleep or rest for 15 minutes of every hour.
And then after like a week, a week of this dance marathon going on, the promoter might be like, "Okay, well, you know, we need to step things up a little bit "and you will now have three minutes per hour." Every 24 hour period in a day to where you can rest.
And then toward the end, they'd be like no rest.
“I think I read about one where the last 57 hours”
of a multi week dance marathon was like had no rest. So these people dance for more than two straight days constantly.
You had to constantly be in motion
and your knees couldn't touch the ground
or else you'd be disqualified. Yeah, and if you look at footage of this stuff, I mean, it's charitable to call up what they're doing and dancing toward the end. It's just hanging, it looks like two corpses hanging
on each other sort of swaying back and forth. - Yeah. - I don't get, I mean, any of these things, even the modern day versions of like these contest
“where you have to keep your hand on a car, whatever.”
- That's a hard body. - Oh man, or sit in the car, a new guy that did one of those really try to win a Volkswagen Beetle by sitting in it with four other people in a mall. I don't just say--
- Oh yeah, you told us that story before. Did he win or not? - I think he did, but it's just no way, kill me. - Yeah, it would be really awful for sure. - Because let's say for one of those contests,
let's say don't win, then you've just set in a car with three strangers for a week and you didn't even get the car. But even if you did get the car, imagine yourself five years on,
and that car is like, like, hers. There's tears in the seats or something like that. You know, like the glove compartment won't close. That's, you know. I mean, I guess you got a story to tell like cocktail parties
but even that would wear thin after a while. But Chuck, we need people to do stuff like that
“because there's something about contests like this.”
There's something about fads, like flagpole sitting, that keep humanity from becoming too cerebral. You know what I mean?
From just becoming like computers basically.
We need people to do stuff like this because it brings out some juvenile something in us that makes us wanna find out about our learn about it or talk about it. And I think that's good.
I think that's healthy for our species. All right, it's my take. It's genuinely off the cuff. I'm actually just surprised at myself that I just said that out loud.
- You're just riffin'. - Yeah. - So shipwreck Kelly, back to flagpole sitting. That initial 13 hour, 13 minute sit. Like you said, inspired so many others to break it.
And it was getting broken in pretty short order. Kind of like the dance of thons. There was a woman named Bobby Mac from LA who did it. That guy named Joe Holdham Powers, who did this in Chicago for 16 days, another guy for 51 days named Bill Penfield.
- Yeah, so let's point this out. Take a second here. Shipwreck Kelly did 13 hours and kicked off the national fad. These people are now into weeks at a time.
51 days is more than seven weeks up there. - Yeah, it's pretty impressive. - I'm impressed at least. - Yeah. - Why are you bucking this a re-roll?
- Yes, right now. - Key, tell. - Let me see here in the 20s. It was a 15-year-old boy who set the kid record for 10 days, 10 hours, 10 minutes, and 10 seconds.
So I think that was planned. - Yeah, if not, then. But see, there you go, Chuck. We're thinking about that. It's making us think this little kid is making us think,
we gotta avoid that. It needs to be random combinations of numbers. So we don't start thinking about it. - We should also point out that not everyone was like,
“oh, this is the best thing ever in Cosmopolitan magazine,”
Cosmopolitan competitive in facility. - Yeah, this is fine. We need that too. I have to say, I wanna say something here, it's a little PSA, this might not even ever make it
in the final edit. - Yep, well. - So I'll just say it to you, how about that? I would say the last like few weeks of episodes. There's been like some good ones here there,
but overall, I find that they've been less good because I am so sick of myself, because we've been so entrenched in the book right now. So it's like living, breathing, S-Y-S-K, which is us and having to confront and like myself
in my own personality and sense of humor and whether that's actually funny and just constantly thinking about this on top of doing the podcast, on top of the other stuff we're trying to do now too.
And I am so sick of myself, I can barely tolerate listening to myself talk. So if anyone's picked up on the last few episodes, like in the last few weeks is being a little ho-hum, that's why and I apologize.
Maybe we'll go back and redo on one day. - Wow. - News to me. I think you've been great. - Hey, thanks a lot, man.
That's ultimately what I was fishing for.
- All right, well, if you wanna cut that part out, let me pick this up by saying, and I'm sure you've made a great point, Josh.
(laughing)
- So back to Kelly, right?
You've got all these, what I'm sure, Shipwreck Kelly deemed
“"Slapped Yokeles, Ho-Hums," that kind of thing.”
Who were out there trying to topple his record? And they did, so did topple his record, but nobody had turned this into a business like Shipwreck Kelly had. He was a one-man money-making machine
who made his money just by sitting on top of a flagpole. - Good money. - Because he was really good at self-promoting. Like there wasn't a reporter who's the year he wouldn't bend if he got the chance.
And in these reports or these articles, he would say things like, yeah, I'm in town for this, but if anybody has any other offers on wide open and I'm staying at, you know,
the Cambridge Arms, I tend to rent hotel
for the next few days of somebody wants to get in touch with me there with a job offer. Like he was really good at attracting job offers specifically for flagpole sitting. - Yeah, and he made good dough.
“For back then, I mean, this is good money any time.”
If he made $100 an hour like he claimed to, other people said, now really wouldn't that much. It was probably closer to anywhere between $100 and $500 a day, still a lot of money. And like he said, it was like, he was almost like
a celebrity version of a sign spinner. Like if you could pay George Clooney to sign spin in front of your mobile phone store, that was sort of what Chipprette Kelly was. - That's a great one.
I got one too. It's almost like if there was a cult of personality, I built up around like the flapping dancing wind-sought guy that they put out in front of like mattress stores in like 2005.
- Yeah, I love those dudes. - Okay, those are fun. - Both, I think both of those are high quality analogies. - We'll see which one Jerry uses in the end.
- Okay, let me see here, here's some of his longer sits. He did 146 hours at the Old West Gate Hotel in Kansas City. - Not bad. - Three hundred and twelve hours in Newark, New Jersey
atop the St. Francis Hotel, that's pretty good. - Sure, I don't know what that is in days, but three hundred and twelve hours, let's see.
“If you divided that by 24 as you should,”
you would come up with something along the lines of 13 days on the nose. - All right, well how about 22 days? And this was in conjunction with the dance marathon. And another, then Madison Square Garden.
- Yeah, because I don't know if we said or not, but there was a dance marathon at Madison Square Garden as I was actually shut down by the health department because they decided to go on on too long 10 days and that it deemed a threat to the health of the participants.
That wasn't the one that he sat in, but there was one the following year where for, what was it 22 days? - Yeah. - That means that the dance marathon went on for 22 days.
But imagine that, so you've got these two endurance fads just interweaved in this way that the universe almost collapsed as in on itself because they're put together too close together. You know.
- Yeah, and here's how he would do it. He would sit on that bar stool like thing and it was padded and he would, he'd in smoke cigarettes and shave apparently and they would send this stuff up and like a bucket and a rope
and tell him how he would sleep because this is what I really kind of wanted to know. - So you said his seat was like a bar stool
around bar stool basically, right?
And it was on a pole, a flag pole appropriately. And then in the flag pole, you'd have two holes drilled just beneath the seat. Now that I'm doing it, I'm like, that's really hard to reach. So now I'm questioning whether this is true or not.
- He might have a long arms. - Maybe so. - Long thumbs. - So he would plug his thumbs into those holes drilled into each side of the flag pole so that when he started
to lean forward, the pressure from that, the flag pole on his thumbs would kind of cut into his skin and wake him up just enough that he would adjust himself. And apparently he got, so good at this, that he would adjust himself to sit back out
so he wouldn't fall over off of the flag pole while he was still sleeping. Like he wouldn't wake up. He could just adjust himself in his sleep. - That's right.
And he'd have his little, I don't know if they're little, but he would have his ankles locked around the pole. And apparently it would tether a leg to keep him from catastrophe but I think it's very dubious that that was a solid life-saving rig.
- Yeah, and I mean, like some of these flag poles
he's sitting on 30 feet, 50 feet.
One of them, I guess the impression I had, the one that you mentioned on Kansas City's Westgate hotel, that that flag pole was on the top roof of the hotel. So I mean, he was up there for sure. And if he had something that gone wrong,
he would have, yeah, that tether probably would not have done terribly much or it would have done a lot to keep his leg hanging up there
“but the rest of him would have kept going to the ground, you know?”
- How did he pee pee and poo poo? - He had a little contraption for that with the tube that went down. - Okay. - But here's the thing.
So you're a traveling flag pole sitter. You're relying on the help of other people on the ground. You need food. When you pee and poop into that contraption that leads to a tube that goes down to the ground,
you don't want that just leaking out for the spectators to see this fellow experience, you need to eat it to go into a bucket that somebody's going to go take away and dump. So you rely on this kind of group of assistants and hands
that probably the promoter may be held tire for you. Maybe you make a friend along the way who just kind of travels from town to town with you for a little while. - That's what I think.
He had chipperically had an assistant. - He had a boy. - That was the worst job in his business. - All right. He had a lad who would help him.
- Yeah. So it would be a pretty bad job, yeah. But anyway, so he had to eat. Then it didn't eat much.
“He would apparently just kind of almost do a broth fast,”
augmented with cigarettes and coffee. He would stay up for four days at a time because living on a flag pole is not exactly like the most comfortable place you can exist for 22 days or 13 days or however long.
- I know, and it eventually turned against him in that the money dried up after he did this sort of big Atlantic city stunt that we talked about. And it was the great depression. And eventually people were kind of like,
I don't really care so much about this dump stunt because I'm starving and I'm broke and I'm homeless. - Right. - And the kind of tide of public opinion turns such that in 1935 he went to do this
in the Bronx and he was actually arrested for public nuisance. - Yeah. - And I'm sure he was like, but I'm shipwreck Kelly.
- Right. But I mean, think about it. That's like everybody's sick of you now, Kelly and you're sick. We're all just depressed in the depression.
So maybe we'll do a dance marathon but we're not gonna watch you sit around in a flag pole anymore. And there was a contemporary article that was written at the time that said
that he attributed the decline of flag pole sitting directly to the stock market crash. And he said that people didn't want to see anything higher than their securities, stock securities at the time,
which were not very high. So... - And everyone went. That's just not even a joke and good taste. And he punches human familiar in the mouth
and can say, "You told me to tell that joke." (laughing) - Man, those gang vusters, Chuck. Do you watch that show? - Got me.
- What we do in the shadows? - I've seen some episodes of it. You know, we were talking about it.
“And one of the PAs, I think, wrote in to say”
that they were just blown away that we were giving such big ups to their show. - I think I remember. - If you talk to Matt Barry, tell him he's a comedy genius.
I never heard anything back, man.
But have you seen an evening with Beverly Loughlin? - No, how do I know that name? - So it's a Craig Robinson? - Yes, from the office, right? - Yeah.
- He plays a guy named Beverly Loughlin and Aubrey Meadows. - Aubrey Meadows. - Plaza, that's right. - Man, I'm a woman.
- You're the greatest. - You're the greatest. - Yeah. And then, okay, so she's the main character, "Gemean Clement."
I know him. - You got that. - He plays, well, you just have to see it. - Anyways, well, he was in what we do in the shadows, the movie.
- Right, right. So I think he co-created it too. This is what all ties into this. He and Matt Barry are also in this too. Matt Barry's in the TV version of what we do in the shadows.
- Yes. - I mean, Clement helped create it. But it's definitely worth watching is purposefully, very bizarre, which can get really annoying really easily.
But this movie pulls it off very well. Like purposeful, bizarreness and for humor. And it's a good movie, it's worth watching. Okay, it's worth watching. - I leave it to you to decide whether it's a good movie or not.
- Well, I love everybody in it. That's a great cast. - Yeah, I mean, it's a, it's a, it's worth watching. How about that?
- All right, should we take our second break here?
Can you believe we have it?
- Yes, I can. - All right, let's do our other break. And then we're gonna talk about,
“we're gonna wind up this flagpole sitting thing right after this.”
(upbeat music) - On the new podcast, Solita, we share the messy reality of traveling alone as a woman. - I can wait four hours for the next bus or this random dude is offering me a ride on his motorcycle.
I chose option B. - I'm Julie Bignero and I travel by myself because it's a rare space where I can say yes
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I'm on a mission to reclaim the word Solita, trading the pity for possibility. Every time I try to be alone, I kept meaning people and they were like, you smiled at us, not a lot of people smile around here.
- It's when you're alone that you're most receptive to the world as it is and not the lies you're sold about it. It can be a time where you push your limits. Change your mind or wake up to a new version of yourself. So whether you're a solo travel veteran
or you're too nervous to book your first trip, I hope you listen to Solita. On the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
“- Our town is small haters by most standards, right?”
But to the people who grew up here, it's everything. - What happens when a quiet Tennessee town becomes the front line in a battle over the future of America? - Developers with right wing ties have purchased hundreds
of acres of land in the area.
- The first thing you see when it pops up
is pioneers in Appalachia. But they weren't just planning houses. - We need cities on a shining hill that exemplify and embody the Christian way of life. - Stop right there.
Is that normal? - A podcast about what happens when a small town becomes the site of a social experiment. - God need bedroom! - Great!
- And decides to fight back. - Do not use my hard work to sell your bullsh*t. - They're not just opposing what's being planned for here. - Our hometown is not a test too. - They feel like they're standing in opposition
to an entire administration. - Guess you didn't move in on a bunch of dumb hillbillies now did you? - Listen to our town. On the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts. - I'm Mungusya, together and I'm back for the new season of the podcast Skyline Drive. - This time I'm diving into a rabbit hole of peptides, organoids, blood boys, blue zones,
and brain replacement to try to understand what this longevity obsession is all about. And what it really means to live forever for all of us. - I learned about some rad science. - I can make a brain for you,
and then we can test what draw is the best for your brain. - That's right. - A supposed to his brain. - Here's some hard truths. - And I would expect Indians to age faster,
but I did not expect it to be almost a four to five year acceleration. - And get myself into a world of trouble. - I'd say probably start bone smashing. - That doesn't work.
- Make it look more defined. They say it works. I don't know. - Listen to Skyline Drive, how to live forever on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you get your podcasts. (dramatic music) (dramatic music) - Okay, so Kelly, when we left off the public turns on him, they don't care about him anymore.
He's probably drunk in some hotel room somewhere with his human familiar talking about the good old days at this point. - Yeah, yeah, it is kind of said, I get the impression that the memory palace episode really focuses
on the sad decline of Shipwreck Kelly, because I mean, he was a celebrity, a national, probably, international celebrity for like a decade, a decade for sitting on flag poles. And then all of a sudden, he's just done,
like society drops in like a hot potato,
and he's penniless in on public assistance, basically.
- Yeah, and he died a very sad death.
“He did, and I think, his final flag pole set was all the way”
in the 1950s and Orange Texts is in 1952. He was almost 60 years old at this point, and he had, during the publicity, run up to this, had two heart attacks. Well, was he sitting on his pole for publicity
or was this part of the pole sitting when he had the heart attacks?
- He had the heart attacks on the pole during the publicity.
- Oh, oh, so the actual sit was another publicity stunt for someplace. - Right, yeah, I don't know what business it was for, I didn't see that, but I did see that the promoters were like, come down right now.
We don't think you're gonna survive a third heart attack,
so stop. - Which is crazy, I mean, it's only 59 at the time. - Yeah, but 59 in the 1950s, that was the best. - I guess so. - That's a tough thing.
- When your name was shipwreck? - Yeah, but he did die,
“have that third heart attack like a week after that, right?”
- Yeah, he was walking around New York on 51st Street, and he dropped that on the sidewalk from a heart attack, and he was found holding a scrapbook of all clippings of newspaper articles about him during his heyday. - Oh, man.
- In that sand? - It's like a movie. Yeah, I can't believe this is a movie. He's, I mean, he's a gold mine, just waiting to be well-mined. (both laugh)
(both laugh)
Wait, wait, wait, there's one other thing about him
- Okay, okay. - Okay, okay. - What would he do? - After he was done with this flag pulsed in career, the heyday of it. He, one of the jobs he had was as a jigalo,
a male escort who would dance with whoever wanted him to dance at the Rosalind Ballroom near Times Square. - And he was a private dancer. - A dancer from Money. - I've been to Rosalind.
I've seen some good shows there. - Yeah, well, you were where shipwreck Kelly danced for a dime of dance, 'cause he was a jigalo. - I would have paid for that dance. - Sure.
- So I'm the set on my head. - Hey, he'll do what you want him to do. - Oh boy, so we'd look, or rather you look, 'cause you put this one together, and you found one death from flag pulsating.
Isn't that right? - That's all I could turn up, surely. Surely there were more, but I could really only find one, and this guy was wonderful in every way. - Dick Blandy.
- Dicksy Blandy, Richard, Dicksy, D-I-X-I-E, Dicksy Blandy. - Sure, so Dicksy Blandy, he was a flag pulsator who was contemporaneous to shipwreck Kelly. - A little bit, like, during, I,
surely he was directly inspired by shipwreck Kelly. He came along and started in 1929, which is almost the worst year you could join the flag pulsating movement, because just the next year,
Shipwreck Kelly had his triumphant sit aboard, like a robot, what, triumphant sit, it's just great. - Yeah, well, it was triumphant for a couple of reasons. One, it was his longest sit.
“I believe 22 days, 23 days, something like that.”
And secondly, his aboard, or above a top, a 200 foot flagpole for weeks, he sat up there. That's triumphant if you ask me. But he did his in 1930, and everybody dropped him right after. Dicksy Blandy just started in 1929,
but even though people said flagpole sitting is so out, we're not gonna bother even looking up when we see somebody on a flagpole. Dicksy Blandy said, you know what, I'm not giving up on this,
and he continued to make a career out of it wherever he could. - Yes, until he died from flagpole sitting in the age of 71, in 1974, he fell off of his flagpole.
It was a 50 foot pole, and where was this, and Harvey? - Yeah, I get the impression in Pennsylvania. - Harvey, Pennsylvania. - Yeah, because the article that reported on it is if it were something of a nearby event
was called the Reading Eagle, and Reading is in Pennsylvania, right? Yeah, is it Reading? - Whatever. (laughing)
I can't tell you how many times I've been told that, since I was a child playing monopoly,
and it's just never stuck for some reason.
- Oh, no. - Is that the titular railroad? - Mm-hmm. - Oh, okay. - What was the Reading Railroad?
- We said Reading.
“- Yeah, that's right, that's what I said too,”
but apparently he's revving. - No, I didn't know, I did know it's the same thing. But either way, this is where Harvey, and of course, it's always like the grand opening of a chopping center, something.
- Yeah. - And that's what was going on here. So four-day promotion, and he basically said, I think this pole is attached to a trailer, and the trailer moved, is that right?
- Well, he asked the security guard to move the trailer, so they can make room for what I took to be a cherry picker that could go up and get 'em. This is hours before the end of his four-day sit,
When the security guard, I guess,
who had never tried this before,
moved the trailer, a guy wire that was stabilizing the pole became taught, and actually pulled the pole, snapped the pole in two, with Dixie still on top of this 50-foot pole, and he landed skull first from what I can tell onto the asphalt below.
- Oh. - There's not what you want to open your grocery store with. - No, or to close your flag pole, sit with. - No, either way, it's a bad jam. - If you're gonna fall early.
This was not his only accident, too. This was the one that got 'em, but he had fractured his skull before when he was thrown off a pole in a storm in 1955, and then there was, this is heartwarming.
In 1961, he was doing a pole sit for promotion dressed as Santa Claus, and he was shouting Merry Christmas. That was his job. Sit on the top of the fight pole and shout Merry Christmas.
And apparently, he got to the point where he finally yelled
down that he was getting numb and he had to be taken to the hospital, which is what I'm talking about, man. Just no thought. It doesn't take thought to just think about the flag pole sitting, and I'd love that about it.
- Yeah. - Merry Christmas. - Merry Christmas. - Merry Christmas.
“I think there's something wrong up here.”
I gotta go to the hospital, 'cause I'm sitting on top of a flag pole dressed as Santa Claus, shouting Merry Christmas for three days, and it's December in Pennsylvania. And it's reading, all right.
This was, you know, these were definitely the waning days. This was in the 1970s. There were some other stunts throughout the years here and there, a couple got married, a top of flag pole. Let me see here, 17-year-old in 1963.
I mean, Peggy Townsend spent 217 days on a pole for a contest for a radio station. - Yeah. - And then the granddaddy of them all, this guy, Kenneth Gage, Ken Gage, 248 days in 1971.
This guy would later on be a state rep for New Hampshire. And he, I mean, reading his account, he was basically like, it was terrible. - Right. - And I hate it.
- Every second. - He had a pair of key, he had his pair of key with him.
“Name Nixon, and he said that his pair of key came to hate him.”
Like despise him. He said he didn't think any animals ever hated somebody more than that periquete hated him. Probably because he made him stay up there. And this little tiny house,
the top of fiberglass poles, that was generous. Sway back and forth, he couldn't lay down straight in it because the pole, so he had to lay wrapped around the pole. It sounds really horrible and terrible. And he did it to get publicity
because it was an out of work actor, I guess, at the time. - Yeah. Like I said, it's a call of the thing a house is generous. It's this little, you can see a picture of it, but it was, it was some sort of shelter at least.
He wasn't just sitting like in a bar stool, like shipwreck Kelly for 248 days. - Sure. - But it was bad and it's just funny reading these quotes from him. He did not have a good time.
And he just basically kind of talked about it. I'll awful it was. - Yeah, he said that he lost 15 pounds, three inches from his waist and 13 days of sleep, just within the first three months.
And that when people would come out like, when the weather is nice, people would come out and shout questions up to him and he talked to him. And he said, the men usually asked if he sleeps and how he goes to the bathroom.
And then women asked if he was lonely, which I find very sweet.
“But I mean, remember, we started out here at 13 hours”
is what kicked this off. And this guy Kenneth Gidge has brought it up to 248 days. But Chuck, that does not seem to be the record any longer.
In fact, the record may never be broken ever.
- What do you think? - Yeah, H. David Werter of Wiki Watchy Florida. Man, this is unbelievable. Sat for 439 days, 11 hours, six minutes. - Yeah, his sit went from 1982 to 1984.
- That's amazing. - Yeah, and it was outside of an appliance center in Clearwater. And he didn't do this as like a publicity stunt for that appliance center.
He did it to protest gas prices at the time. - Yeah, that's how you see these, these days sometimes his protests. - Sure. But the gas at the time was 99 cents a gallon.
- That's cute. - So his protest didn't work at all. But he spent 439 days of his life on a flagpole because there was mad about the price of gas. - No thought whatsoever to a zen-like beautiful state
is what this man achieved. - Is that the overarching theme? - Yep, I think so, man.
- All righty.
- You got anything else?
“- Yeah, I mean, we should mention David Blaine.”
He very famously did this standing in 2002.
Remember that? - For how long? Yeah, I don't remember that at all. - He stood atop a 90 foot pole for 35 hours in Bryant Park in New York.
- Wow. - And this is when he was doing those, I'd love the guy's to street magician and give me a little levitation trick. But when he was like, I'm gonna hold my breath
or I'm gonna be encased in ice or stand on this thing. That's when I lost interest. - Oh yeah, yeah, I like street magic too. It's pretty great stuff. - Yeah, but yeah, he stood,
it's tough to stand. I mean, sitting is hard, but standing is a whole different deal. - Yeah, for sure.
I wouldn't want to do it.
- Nope. So, you got anything else about flag pole sitting? - I don't. - Well, then Chuck, that means, of course, it's time for listener mail.
- This is, oh, this is just funny. Remember in the, on Bruxis, and I talked about my Dr. Tuggle, this comes from Joe and Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. He said, "Hey guys, thanks for your entertainment knowledge,
"you're discussion of Dr. Names "at the end of the Bruxis and Podcasts remind me "of two anecdotes. "My ex-wife had a dentist in San Francisco, "named Dr. Dr. Dr. Drilling."
- No. - Pretty good, huh? - Sure. (laughs) - And this is even better.
He said, second, this one never gets appreciated
as much by others for some reason. It must, he just hit me the right way, but with you, Joe, it hits me too. She worked with a medical, worked in medical administration, and her boss, at one point, was named Dr. Walker.
WACH T-E-R, pronounced Walker, and he said, "I can just imagine her submitting daily reports "using baby talk going, "here, Dr. Walker, he or your reports from the day." (laughs)
- Man, this guy is our new mascot here on the show.
“I think we need to actually get him on here.”
What's his name? - Joe and Gettysburg, I love it. - Yeah, Joe, wait a go. This is one of the best listener males I think I've ever heard, Chuck.
- Dr. Walker. - Well, if you want to be like Joe and try to topple his record as the greatest email listener male writer of all time, let's take your best shot.
You can wrap it up, spank it on the bottom, run it up the flight pole, and see who salutes it at Stuff Podcasts at iheartradio.com. - Stuff you should know is a production
of iheartradio. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the iheartradio app. Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
- I'm Mungisha Together, and I'm back with a new season of my podcast, Skyline Drive. This time I talked to scientists, biopunks, cramudgins, blues owners, super seniors,
and Goa's top cryotherapy lab to try to understand this obsession with living forever. And what it means for all of us. And I get into a bit of trouble along the way.
- I'd say probably start bone smashing. - That doesn't work. - Make you look more defined. They say it works. I don't know.
- Listen to Skyline Drive, how to live forever on the iheartradio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. - If you're a bookshelf and you are for you page
“or equally important to your personality, welcome home.”
Pro Society is a weekly podcast that's part book club, park group chat for anyone who thinks pride and prejudice and love island deserves the same level of discourse. Each week, we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and pop culture,
with your favorite writers, booktop creators, and plenty of overthought opinions. - Yeah, I'm obsessed, so I'm obsessed. - Listen to Pro Society on the iheartradio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- Hey, this is Ace Davenport and Sean Clements. - We host the podcast Hollywood Handbook. - Each week, we talk to someone in show business and try to help them with their careers and see what they have to offer us.
Everyone has a good time and no one gets mad at their publicists for letting them do our show. - We've had a lot of great guests like Sarah Sherman, Adam Scott, Danny McBride, Ben Stiller, and a lot of other big shots that wouldn't be
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