TMI: Oops, All Digressions 2 — Live from Qatar!

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Speaker 1: Too Much Information is a production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 2: All right, let's do it.

00:00:11
Speaker 1: We're back baby. Hello everyone, and welcome back to Too Much Information. As you may recall, it's the show that brings you the secret histories and little known facts behind your favorite movies, music, TV shows, and more. We are your freewheel and friends of facts, your long lost legends of long winded lore, your truant Titans of trivia. You're a wall associates of Arcana. My name is still.

00:00:36
Speaker 2: Jordan Runtag, and I am as ever Alex Heigel.

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Speaker 1: And we are coming to you live from Qatar.

00:00:44
Speaker 2: Did you folks expect that?

00:00:47
Speaker 1: We've seen your messages and here we are back and better than ever in Qatar?

00:00:51
Speaker 2: Makes perfect sense, right, you know, Jordan, We got a lot of fan mail from our wonderful, dedicated fan base, and the note kept coming up. You guys need to move to Qatar, so we did you know? Come on, guys, we're just your humble servants.

00:01:04
Speaker 1: We need our five star reviews.

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Speaker 2: Yes please, actually we do. They matter to me so much. I've been bereft. Yeah, Jordan, how's Qatar?

00:01:14
Speaker 1: It's good? It's very very good. I uh, who actually tell them all I'm here, or should we actually just leave it a mystery? I can't tell, you know, It's just part of our tireless mission to deliver only the choicest pop cultural anecdotes. It sent us around the world and back, and now we're staging our long awaited return in Doha, the capital of Qatar. It's like when Broadway musicals open in Connecticut because they want to have the out of town test run first in cause it goes bad. So we chose Qatar just to be safe, just to be far enough away from our home base in the States.

00:01:42
Speaker 2: Yeah, you thought my takes were hot before, now that I'm now that I'm out of the long arm of the US intelligence community. I'm kidding now.

00:01:51
Speaker 1: In truth, we have been invited to the Web Summit conference in Doha, and we figured this will be the perfect time to stage our return. So here we are, out of practice jet lag to the point where I no longer know what day it is, in a new country, in front of a live audience for the first time. And that's not all adding to this death defying feat of podcasting. We are out here without a safety net, folks. That's right, we are back with another hotly anticipated installment of TMI. Oops all digressions, iigeo, I'm so excited. What about you?

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Speaker 2: Well, they thought it couldn't be done. They did, yes, And here we are, as ever, proving the haters wrong.

00:02:36
Speaker 1: Here we are covering the globe.

00:02:38
Speaker 2: Du du da da dun dun dun du du.

00:02:43
Speaker 1: Gonea flood. Now it's the Jurassic Park game.

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Speaker 2: Oh sure, sure, yeah, No, I mean I like to think of this as the perennial underdogs.

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Speaker 1: Jordan, That's true, that is very true.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, you yourself are, of course the Dolph lung Green character, and I am the novelty robot that was purchased in rockby.

00:03:01
Speaker 1: Four by Paulli.

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Speaker 2: I want to say Poulli bought that ro Yeah.

00:03:05
Speaker 1: I went on a first date to Rocky for and how did that go? Not in the eighties like recently, which is weird, But we'll we'll table that, we'll offline that for you new listeners out there. First of all, I'm sorry that this is your introduction to us, But normally we pick a single topic discuss each episode, a movie, a TV show, a song, or an album. But for this episode, we are going rogue. Higo and I have each pooled a series of exhaustively researched trivia factoids, and we will share them with one another. We haven't discussed this in advance, so we're going to react to them in real time and see what other stories they provoke from our hoarder's basement of our respective minds. It's riffing tangents of the name of the game here, at least in my case. I've chosen anecdotes that are maybe a little more general than normal, just for cultural reasons. I'm not sure how well Jeffrey Katzenberg jokes translate over here. Quibi. Yeah, I don't know if they have quibi over here one day, or maybe this is the one place it still exists. I don't know, Jamie, can we look up where we're quibus still active? Please? That's our long running bit where we call off to our non existent producer Jamie, who.

00:04:09
Speaker 2: I believe is a reverence to Joe Rogan.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, he's not at US conference, so we won that one.

00:04:15
Speaker 2: Yeah, us one Rogan zero. Do you know that dogs can get obsessive compulsive disorder from playing with laser pointers? Jordan?

00:04:25
Speaker 1: Wow? I did not. We we doing the facts already.

00:04:27
Speaker 2: No, I'm just killing time. Did you want me to keep going?

00:04:29
Speaker 1: I mean, tell me more about dogs in the psychological conditions? That's new to me. Wow, this is we're really we're breaking new ground here. We're moving beyond pop culture. This is like a totally new realm for us. I'm proud.

00:04:40
Speaker 2: Actually I can't back that up. Did you just make that up? Noise?

00:04:44
Speaker 1: Noise?

00:04:45
Speaker 2: Just online?

00:04:48
Speaker 1: All right, Well, we only have the studio book for ninety minutes, so we better get going. Ladies and gentlemen, Welcome to TMI. Oops, all digressions to Electric Boogloo.

00:04:57
Speaker 2: Live from Qatar, Quickening the Revenge three D. We're doing it, baby, We're doing it all right?

00:05:12
Speaker 1: Should I go first through you?

00:05:13
Speaker 2: I'll take a quick one first. I'm going to just throw out a topic there for you, Jordan Electric Jug Now what does that bring to mind for you?

00:05:20
Speaker 1: Jordan Electric Jug? Band? Music? Are you talking about like sixty? Oh?

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Speaker 2: No, well no, then I don't okay, Yes, I actually am. But you were supposed to say no, what could that possibly mean?

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Speaker 1: No? What could that possibly mean?

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Speaker 2: Well, Jordan, I'll answer you. Did you know that stemming from the sort of usual folk band roots of what we would consider jug players, which is a proud tradition in the United States.

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Speaker 1: We have here of is it proud.

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Speaker 2: It's very proud of men blowing over the tops of those huge earthenware jugs that I want to say whiskey used to came in. But you could put anything in them.

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Speaker 1: Right, It's like the x's on that, like the three x's.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you know, but it would carry any kind of liquid, uh maybe an The.

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Speaker 1: Only liquid that comes to mind, the only for you.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. So you know, you used to used to sit around the old campfire jamboree and you'd have men going, you know, because you blow over the top of a bottle and it produces a tone, right, So that that that came into into being in sort of the old timey string band sort of thing. But as the folk music boom in the fifties came around, you had a whole gen a nation turned its hopeful eyes to jugs.

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Speaker 1: America was in the pocket of big jug and one bait. I just got so.

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Speaker 2: Many looks right now when I said that. All right, so we're backing off that topic. It was jugs. Drugs were just too hot. So as the folk boom swept America in the early sixties, and then rock and roll subsequently followed in its path. We got the world's only, I believe to this date, electric jug player, in the form of the Thirteenth Floor Elevators. Now, was that what you were going to? Guess where I was going with that, Jordan?

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Speaker 1: I was gonna say love and spoonful, But I guess that was my second guess.

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Speaker 2: Did Love and Spoonful also do it? Because you just threw off my entire tangent right now?

00:07:07
Speaker 1: Oh no, I'm sorry, Okay, Now, I I love that. I went for broad, generalist strokes for this audience, and he went for the most niche genre of American.

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Speaker 2: Music, electrified drug music.

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Speaker 1: We're both, We're both cultural ambassadors in our very own unique way.

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Speaker 2: Well. The Thirteenth Floor Elevators were a prominent Texas garage rock band, best known for their immortal hit You're Gonna Miss Me mm hmm.

00:07:31
Speaker 1: Rocky Erickson was the lead singer.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, that is correct, But the actual power behind, or some of the power behind that band was a guy named Tommy Hall. And Tommy Hall his big contribution to the band was not playing the jug but singing into it. And so what he did would hold this thing in one hand or like and put a mic up to it, and he would actually sing into it, just going, so you hear all these great thirteenth floor elevators, so you're in the background and going, what is that sound? It almost sounds like an arpeggiated synth, And that is this gentleman Tommy Hall playing the electrified jug. Now, the thirteenth Floor elevators fell apart for various reasons, many of which I'm just now realizing that we can't mention here.

00:08:14
Speaker 1: The substances, substances.

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Speaker 2: Substances were involved. Tommy Hall was the chief purveyor of these substances. He was actually the lyricist of the band, so you know, all the psychedelic imagery for them kind of came directly from him. And he is a fantastic quote from an interview with him from twenty fourteen where he says, I was trying to advance consciousness. The jug occupied a position. So Tommy Hall found his way to San Francisco eventually after the Elevators disintegrated and people just kind of lost touch with him. But I was written about the band, and in twenty fourteen they had still managed to find him and they were doing these interviews with him. But the guy apparently lived in the Tenderloin, which is a fun district of fun neighborhood in San Francisco, and he was living in just like a single room advancing this cosmic theory of consciousness and mathematics and mysticism that he had started substance related And now he just is surrounded by all these VHS, tapes and CDs and all of this stuff, and he just sits there fixating on things like a Mickey Mouse poster is one of the things in this and while listening to jazz and watching golf on television, and we're waiting for him to publish his findings one day. This is actually part of an overarching theory that he calls the design, and what he does is sit on his bed and quote, run the design. Here's a great quote from that article. Right now, I'm not even working with galaxies. I'm just on suns, although I've done that before. So that was my first shot across the bow, if you will, my opening salvo. Every time you listen to thirteenth Floor Elevators and the immortal Rocky Ericsson and to hear that weird noise in the background. Remember that it is an amplified electric drug. The man playing in his Tommy Hall, architect of the band's lyrics and psychedelic consciousness, and he's still working on figuring out the universe.

00:10:19
Speaker 1: You know, aren't we all working on figuring out the universe every day?

00:10:23
Speaker 2: It's true, and I usually do this through the lens of cinema and Jordan. I believe that leads us into your next topic.

00:10:30
Speaker 1: Yes, you know how I go. I gotta say this whole trip has been very exciting for me. It's a new place, it's very exotic, very beautiful, very luxurious, and they've been very generous with their accommodations. And to be honest, it's got me feeling a little bit like James Bond. And that got me thinking, you know, they're in the midst of trying to find a new James Bond now that Daniel Craig has done.

00:10:49
Speaker 2: So why not me?

00:10:50
Speaker 1: And I very quickly came up with a long list of reasons why not me? But it got me curious about actors who very nearly stepped into Double O Seven's tucks. Can I share a few of them? With you now hit me all right, I'm there are some really crazy choices and crazy stories here. But first, you know, I mean, for me, Sean Connery will always be the true James Bond, but he was actually far from the first choice for the character's creator, author Ian Fleming. Sidebar before we even get rolling. Do you know how Ian Fleming chose to name James Bond?

00:11:21
Speaker 2: I sure don't, Jordan.

00:11:22
Speaker 1: It's the least swab spy like explanation you could possibly imagine. Ian Fleming, the author of James Bond, was a avid bird watching fan. An avid were phonologists something like that for the technical terms. Yeah, and he owned a book written by an American avery expert named James Bond. Prior to the Double Seven books, James Bond was a very famous bird expert, and so when it came time to name his character, Fleming wanted a name that sounded, in his words, as ordinary as possible, and he later explained in a letter to the real James Bond's wife, it struck me that this brief, unromantic, Anglo Saxon and yet very masculine name is just what I needed. And so a second James Bond was born but hilariously, he didn't ask permission to use this man's name, and the bird loving Bond didn't realize that he was now the partial inspiration to a very famous character until the movies were being made in the early sixties, and that's when the Bonds dropped in on Ian Fleming unannounced in his Jamaica vacation home, presumably to give him a shakedown. Fleming later gave Bond, the real James Bond, a first edition copy of his book He Only Lived Twice, signed to the real James Bond from the Thief of his Identity, which I find really cute. That book sold for eighty four thousand dollars at auction in two thousand and eight, so that is where the name James Bond came from.

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Speaker 2: I think I could buy your name for forty eight grand.

00:12:53
Speaker 1: My childhood best friend, as a prank, bought the domain name for my name and just was like waiting for me to like, go try to buy it someday, and he kept looking cocouraging. He like, you know, you really need a website. You really need a website. You write so much, got all your podcasts, you need a website. And finally I took his advice, and I want to try to buy it because my name is very distinctive and weird, and I assume nobody would ever want it. And I found that somebody had purchased it, and I went and tracked it down and it was him, and he laughed and laughed and asked for initially a huge amount of money, and then I think I just bought him lunch and he sold it to me. So no, not eighty four grand Okay. Yeah, So, like I said earlier, to me, Sean Connery is James Bond. But to author Ian Fleming, the creator of the character, he was initially displeased that they cast him this one time mister Universe, who he called a quote overgrown stunt man. And you know, it's hard to believe now, but at the time it kind of makes sense that Ian Fleming wouldn't be all that into Sean Connery because at the time, the biggest movie that Connory had on his resume was a live action Disney movie called Darby O'Gill and the Little People, which is about leprechauns. So you've got big buff Sean Connery and leprechauns. Have you ever seen this, it's hilarious.

00:14:06
Speaker 2: I can't say I've seen this movie.

00:14:08
Speaker 1: No, No, it's very good. Look it up. I mean it's not very good, but you should watch it anyway.

00:14:11
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would say, you want to walk that back?

00:14:13
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, And I did. Yeah. So. Though Ian Fleming was later won over by Connery's quote roughnecked performance, he initially wanted someone more polished and posh, and an early choice that he had in mind was the great Richard Burton, one of the great titans of English cinema. Unfortunately, Richard Burton had absolutely no faith in the project at all, believing it to be quote an untested concept and also another quote, just another movie. He demanded a sky high feed to basically torpedo his chances, and the producers moved on. How do you think Richard Burton would have done as James Bond?

00:14:45
Speaker 2: I mean he would have already had the requisite bac. I you know, Burton Swave, perhaps a little too ced.

00:14:54
Speaker 1: Maybe, but ced I was gonna say too plumby to I guess.

00:15:00
Speaker 2: It depends what you were talking about. I mean, like I'm thinking of him, like who's afraid of Virginia Woolf? Oh okay, sousing around all pickled. But you know again, he wouldn't have had to work very hard to get into character.

00:15:12
Speaker 1: That's very true. That's very true. Another name on M Fleming's wish list was Carrie Grant, and why wouldn't he be on M Fleming's wishlist? He was suave, debonair and at this time he was a favorite of Alfred Hitchcock, starring in nineteen fifty five's To Catch a Thief in nineteen fifty nine north By Northwest. In addition to being a big fan of the novels, Carry Grant also had a personal connection with the film series. He was best man at the wedding of one of the Bond series producers, the fantastically named Albert Cubby Broccoli. Carry Grant actually signed a deal to star in the first James Bond film, nineteen sixty two Is Doctor No, but he dropped out later because he only wanted to make one movie. At this point, he was fifty eight years old and he didn't want to commit to the grind of a whole film series, which kind of makes sense. The actor James Mason also turned it down for similar reasons, and so did Rex Harrison of my Fair Lady Fame, who seth MacFarlane based his Stwy impression on. That would have been a very different energy to Double O seven, let me tell you. And also David Niven turned it down as well, although he would later play Bond in the nineteen sixty seven spoof Casino Royale, and Patrick McGowan, famous for his sixties show The Prisoner, he turned it down because he thought James Bond was too promiscuous, which fair, How do you think any of those guys would do? Umm?

00:16:32
Speaker 2: I would have allowed Rex Harrison. I think he would have been you would have really, yes, I would have. I would have. Actually, he's he's he's exactly the right kind of posh I feel to like talk his way through certain situations, and you know, and it's I think it's hard to forget that. Like, you know, I know Sean Connie was like a stunt man, but they weren't doing like Jackie chan on these movies, right. It was just kind of some light rolling in a punch or two. So are you rolling?

00:17:02
Speaker 1: You know?

00:17:02
Speaker 2: I don't really think he wasn't gonna it wasn't gonna be hurling himself off any buildings or anything okay, far David knit in too. He has like that kind of yeah. I'm just you know, you just have to picture them in a tuxedo and kind of equipping around and was that the that's the audition, right, They would just invite you to party and just slap a tucks on you and watch you pitch wo at the assembled ladies.

00:17:25
Speaker 1: Pitch woo. Is that a Higle original? I've never heard that expression.

00:17:30
Speaker 2: No, that's a recognized uh pitch to pitch wo. To pitch wo is like to court, you know, like you're wooing wow wow.

00:17:38
Speaker 1: When I heart was looking for culture ambassadors, they sure came to the right place. I am so glad that you've taught me well. While the role of James Bond brought Sean Connery worldwide acclaim, by nineteen sixty six he'd become massively dissatisfied. He famously said, I've always hated that damn James Bond. I'd like to kill him, and knowing Sean Connery, he probably meant it. Between filming and promotion, he had very little time to do other movies, which led to his very real fear of being type cast. He complained that he couldn't go anywhere without photographers, security concerns, or expectations to behave like Double O seven in real life, which I'm guessing he meant beating people up, which he kind of did. He said, I was getting sick of the publicity. It was taking over my life and it's kind of crazy. I think he did five James Bond movies in five years, which is an insane rate. It took Daniel Craig fifteen years to equal that, and plus Connery was annoyed that he wasn't being paid enough and he felt disrespected by the producers. He said, they treated me like an employee, not like someone who had helped create the success. And he apparently was the one who actually came up with the immortal Bond James Bond, because the original line, as written in the script for the first Double O seven movie, was just I am James Bond, which is not good.

00:18:57
Speaker 2: Well would you deliver it like that?

00:19:00
Speaker 1: How would you do? How would you deliver I am James Bond in a swave way?

00:19:04
Speaker 2: I am James Fond. Yes, that's a that's your that's a that's like the Jeff Goldbloom River. I uh uh, Well, I'm James Fond.

00:19:21
Speaker 1: I mean you could do it like I am Batman too. I guess I'm James Bond.

00:19:26
Speaker 2: It's the Christian Bale Batman.

00:19:28
Speaker 1: Did you really gobout Michael Keaton when he was in that Spider Man one of the Spider Man reboot movies and he was fighting with Tom Holland as Spider Man to like throw him off when they were fighting, he would like mutter to Tom Holland, I am Batman. I guess they were doing the fighting to like give him an extra sense of like, you know, just an extra motivation, just to get into his head.

00:19:48
Speaker 2: I mean it would work for me.

00:19:50
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, it's great. Is he your favorite Batman? Oh? I know that's a tough question, that's an unfair question. One.

00:19:57
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I think Christian Bale has been in all the best ones, But you know, Batman Returns is is the best one. So I've been in all the best recent ones. You know, I don't know the best Batman is. You know what it is?

00:20:10
Speaker 1: No, I don't.

00:20:11
Speaker 2: It's Kevin Conroy.

00:20:13
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, okay, you're right, you know what. You're absolutely right from the animated series. Yes, we've talked about that. Yes, yes, yes, anyway, Sean Connery bristled at how little he had to say about the scripts, the schedules, the direction, anything I had to do with the franchise that he helped build. And so by the time they were filming the fifth installment, nineteen sixty seven's You Only Live Twice, he was ready to leave, and producers knew they had He got a replacement lined up, and so they looked to Connery's buddy, Michael Kane. I love Michael Kane. We all love Michael Kane. Who doesn't love Michael Kane. He was born Marris Micklwhite in London, and Michael Kin later said that he took up acting because the prettiest girls were in drama club, which same this would not be the most ridiculous thing that Michael Kin did for love? Do you know this story, the one I'm about to tell about his wife? No?

00:21:02
Speaker 2: But I thought you were going to tell the story of uh, Because wasn't it Michael Caine who watched Sean Connery beat up like six men in a pub?

00:21:10
Speaker 1: Oh? No, you tell that, tell that you. I remember you telling me that offline, and you tell it way better do I?

00:21:16
Speaker 2: Uh, I'm not sure where this was placed in their chronology, but I'm sorry it was merely.

00:21:21
Speaker 1: Four men four? What was actually four men? Yes?

00:21:26
Speaker 2: Sadly enough, Michael Kaine said this was too Daily Star. At one point, he said, in my early twenties, I was running around with Seawan and Terrence Stamp, who most people in the States will probably be familiar as General Zod. Oh yeah, and he said, uh yeah, you know. Oh, Ever, the humble one, Sir Michael said, every girl in London was running after us. Sean Connor used to have parties called bring a bottle and a bird a bird not actually confusingly in this instance, after following the whole thing about the Avian being a bird watcher, bird of course being British slam for woman, and Michael kin quipped, I couldn't afford a battle then, so I took two birds. Anyway, Michael Kain continues, I was twenty three and Shawn was twenty six, and he had just got into the chorus of South Pacific. There's an image for you, Yeah, Sean Connery in the chorus line of a production of South Pacific. Anyway. He was mister Edinburgh at the time.

00:22:22
Speaker 1: Ah, that's right. Yeah.

00:22:24
Speaker 2: The story is one Saturday night, Sean walked into a party where I was with two beautiful girls. He saw me and we became friends. Once we were in a club and some girls were on stage trying to sing. Some guys behind us were giving them a hard time. So Sewn just got up and beat all four of them up while I held his coat.

00:22:42
Speaker 1: I was gonna say, yeah, he took off as Colley followed it put it around a shell. Yes, I have heard that story Sean Connery. Ladies and gentlemen, he was James Bond in real life. We all need a friend like Michael Kain or Sean Connery.

00:22:52
Speaker 2: Or to Sean Kin, or two to Sean Kin, to Michael Kaine, Vin Diesel, I think I hipped you to this a few months to go.

00:23:00
Speaker 1: Oh remind me, yeah, I remember you telling me this.

00:23:03
Speaker 2: Michael Caine and Vin Diesel, Star Fast and Furious are dear friends.

00:23:07
Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:23:07
Speaker 2: Yeah, And Michael Kane cannot explain why.

00:23:10
Speaker 1: He just like walked into a party once and saw in Diesel.

00:23:13
Speaker 2: Party and saw Vin Diesel and like exclaimed to the room like I love this guy, he's my son, and walked over and embraced him. So there's all these pictures of Vin Diesel pushing Michael Caine around in a wheelchair and hanging out, you know, strange bedfellows. I'll say in Hollywood, not to imply anything.

00:23:31
Speaker 1: I think I just read something about how like Sarah Paulson paid for I want to say, Pedro Pascal's like acting lessons or something. They have some kind of cute relationship.

00:23:41
Speaker 2: Adorable.

00:23:42
Speaker 1: Yeah, I love that. And I think Denzel might have paid for Chadwick Bozeman's lessons. I definitely, you know what I think it was for our last Oops All Digressions episode. I had a whole section. You had that wholesome, wholesome acting stories that we didn't get to because we were focused on rivalries and bitterness and feuds. Yeah. No, I believe that's true. But Michael Kine, I mean, I love Michael Kane for so many reasons. One in particular is that he goes to the similarly insane lengths I do for love. One night in nineteen seventy one, he was watching TV when he saw an ad for Maxwell House Coffee featuring a beautiful woman. According to Kane, it was the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen. In his life. Kane was awe struck and apparently turned to his friend and said, that is the woman I'm going to marry. She'd been on the screen for eight seconds, but that is all it took. He became obsessed with finding her and leaned on his friends in the advertising world to track her down. For some reason, he believed she lived in Brazil and was fully prepared to fly there, but then one of his ad buddies came through and informed him that her name was Shakira baksh and she lived down the road in London. He called her up and asked her to dinner.

00:24:54
Speaker 2: She said no.

00:24:55
Speaker 1: This happened ten times. He rejected him ten times before finally agreeing to go to dinner, where he quote fell in love in eight minutes, and they've been married since nineteen seventy three. He gave up smoking and drinking for her. He said that she's made his life better in immeasurable ways. I find that very sweet and one of the strongest couples in Hollywood. Adorable emotionally not physically. He's very old now anyway. Michael Caine was considered to play James Bond. He'd already played Harry Palmer in nineteen sixty five is the Ipcress File, but ultimately the Bond producers went another way. Cam would later claim that he was quote too ordinary to play James Bond, saying I was always much more ordinary, but Bond was glamorous. I've always played real people. And he also inferred that his friendship with Connory might have influenced his decision, saying you didn't raise the subject of Bond around him. Following his acrimonious departure, Connery, as has been noted many times, was a very tempestuous man. Years later, Heigel, I hope you don't know the story, because I love it so much. He was working with a trainer and apparently they had some terse words and the trainer sort of accidentally on purpose, broke Connery's wrist. That trainer's name was Steven Sagal. Yeah, that seems like something that you would know.

00:26:11
Speaker 2: I mean, I assume at one point Stephen Sigall was good at martial arts before becoming an apparatchic of the of the Russian State.

00:26:18
Speaker 1: And a blues musician.

00:26:21
Speaker 2: Yeah, songs from the Crystal Cave. Yes, boy, that's a deep cut. Yea man. The less said about Steven Sigal, the better.

00:26:29
Speaker 1: Yeah, and the more said about Michael Kine the better, because Michael Kine rules. I love him so much, So many great Michael Kaine's stories. My favorite. Have you heard the quote aout him when he's talking about why he start in Jaws the Revenge, which is like I have he certainly this was spoiled for me. But please tell the people, Okay. Yeah. Michael Kaine was a man who did not turn down work. He came from poverty, so he had no problem doing movies just for a paycheck. And somebody asked him, you know, why did you do that horrible Jaws sequel? And he said, I've never seen the film. By all accounts, it was terrible. However, I have seen that house that it built, and it's terrific. Michael Caine, Ladies and gentlemen. So Michael Caine has passed over to play James Bond. This option, I can't believe they were considering going with this. They were considering Tom Jones, the Welsh belter Tom what's new Pussycat Jones?

00:27:18
Speaker 2: I don't know. Have you seen Tom Jones really cut loose on stage? That man has a leonine physicality.

00:27:23
Speaker 1: He does. He's a lion. Yes, I have seen that. Actually have all the ones I've mentioned, He's probably the one that have the least problem with that's right, So that's pretty funny. They also when Sean Connery was looking to leave, we're looking at a number of Americans, which I find really strange. One of whom was Clint Eastwood, who was extremely famous at this time from his appearance as the Man with No Name and so Giolioni's iconic Western trilogy The Dollars Trilogy. Eastwood did the sensible thing and said that, yeah, I kind of think that Bond should be British. I think he kind of feel that there was gonna be a backlash if an American took over the job. They also considered Adam West, who was also extremely famous at this time for playing Batman on TV. Robert Wagner was considered, and Burt Reynolds. Burt Reynolds he turned down. He said, in my stupidity, I said, an American can't play James Bond. It has to be an Englishman. And you know what, later I realized, Nah, I could have done it, which sounds like I can only really hear that in like the Norm McDonald Burt Reynolds impression voice. But yeah, I could have done it, could have done it well, James Bond, Yeah, chewing absently.

00:28:35
Speaker 2: Yeah, I do like to imagine, Oh man, can you just imagine what life Adam West would have had had he been Batman and Bond?

00:28:44
Speaker 1: I mean, who else who has had too? I know there's like a big one that I'm completely skipping. Who has had two massive characters that they've played in their career?

00:28:57
Speaker 2: It's too broad man, What are you talking about.

00:29:00
Speaker 1: Like huge franchise characters, Like there's some I'm forgetting somebody move on?

00:29:05
Speaker 2: Move on?

00:29:06
Speaker 1: All right, fine, fine, I don't have that at the top of my head.

00:29:08
Speaker 2: Keep going.

00:29:08
Speaker 1: I'll blow through the rest of the Bond. Apparently they were considering Dick Van Dyke. The Bond producers asked Dick Van Dyke, and Dick Van Dyke this is he said, he was on the Today Show recently. He is very old, so maybe starting to make stuff up, having Quincy Jones syndrome and just starting to make things up. He said, yeah. Albert Brockley, the producer James Bond came to me and said, how would you like to be Bond, and I said, have you heard my British accent? Which is a reference to his awful British accent in Mary Poppins.

00:29:33
Speaker 2: I feel like that was one of like the first British accents I ever heard in my life. Though, so like, whenever people would talk about that and you thought that was what it was, I was like, don't they just sound like that?

00:29:42
Speaker 1: Yeah? Uh, James Brolin. Once Roger Moore was going to wrap up, he felt that the job was his. He ended up buying an apartment where they were filming, and he started training, I think with his own money, but unfortunately he didn't have it in writing and someone Roger Moore decided that he wanted to one more Bond movie. James Brolin was stuck and he was very sad. And Brolin wasn't the only man heartbroken by the Bond people. In the early eighties, Steven Spielberg desperately wanted to direct the Bond movie, but he was turned down by the producers. And when he told his friend George Lucas, Lucas said he had a film quote just like James Bond, but even better. It was a story about an archaeologist named Indiana Jones, And isn't the reason George Lucas created Star Wars was because he couldn't get the rights to make Flash Gordon something like that. I think I read that. Yeah, and he was gonna make eleven installments George Lucas before he decided that was insane. Presumably.

00:30:39
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, I'm not the most well versed in Star Wars. Low, it was a huge part of my life, and it then it became one of the most disappointing parts of my life, next to many other things.

00:30:48
Speaker 1: Music.

00:30:49
Speaker 2: But well, why stop there, Jordan? But yeah, the original god, what was the original line for?

00:30:58
Speaker 1: There was a pitch for Oh, I know what you're talking about.

00:31:01
Speaker 2: It was like one sentence that he was carrying around to people, and it's in the book Easy Writers and Raging Bulls.

00:31:09
Speaker 1: Oh that is a great book. Yeah. Was the term space opera involved?

00:31:13
Speaker 2: No, but it's something about like this is the story. Yeah. Within within a year of writing, Lucas had one sentence of Star Wars saying, this is the story of Mace Windu, which is like an ancillary character eventually played by Samuel Samuel Jackson. As we all know, Easy writer. Raising Bulls is an incredible book, mostly for how much how intertwined Lucas and Coppola were.

00:31:38
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, you.

00:31:38
Speaker 2: Know, everyone knows the American Graffiti bit. But as sort of George began breaking in money hand over fist, Copela actually kind of went to him hat in hand, being like, hey, man, can I have some money now that you're like the richest person on earth and I like helped get your early stuff made, And George Lucas was.

00:31:58
Speaker 1: Like, no, really, you can't. I didn't know that.

00:32:00
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, Coppola is very interesting in that book. I mean he went straight down the Bolivia marching powder hole and did not come out. And maybe also his own ego to you know, just spending money like he was paid to do it. He was really bless his heart invested in trying to launch San Francisco as a film production alternative hub to Hollywood. And so that's why he founded American Zoo Trope. You know, he bought this enormous building that was going to be the headquarters and where we had lunch, correct, where we had lunch, that's correct in the North Beach neighborhood. And after apocalypse now just like cleaned him out. He was just kind of bereft for a while and they were just a number of flops and then he basically just kind of became a jobber actually, like a work for hire guy.

00:32:43
Speaker 1: But we did like Jack and stuff like that in the nineties.

00:32:47
Speaker 2: But he was, I mean, he was quite admirably being like, let's set up Hollywood b and like rest control away from all these LA studios. And probably the person that he could have done it with was Lucas, because Lucas had that much money, and Lucas sort of did, but he just he sort of did set up hollywould Be. But it was called Skywalker Ranch and it's out in Marin and they don't shoot so much there as they do anymore is record a boat load of stuff.

00:33:11
Speaker 1: That's right.

00:33:12
Speaker 2: Skywalker Sound has actually become like a first call studio for all kinds of stuff these days. But yeah, and I think that might have soured their relationship like forever. I mean, it was this whole thing in the era when they would just trade points on stuff speculatively back and forth. They would be like, oh, well, like if you give me five million towards bridging this gap, I'll give you a point on this thing, and then the movies would flop and people would either kind of forgive that debt or come come to collect and the person be like, yeah, I don't have that, And I think it was one of those situations where just like the money kind of got crossed. And Coppola was like, when you were down and I was up, I helped you. Now that you're up and I'm down, you can help me. And George Lucas was like, I don't think I'll be doing that, Francis. I've seen how you spend money.

00:33:56
Speaker 1: And he ever learned because now I got Metropolis And isn't he like selling.

00:34:00
Speaker 2: He's selling his wristwatches.

00:34:02
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. We're gonna take a quick break, but we'll be right back with more. Too much information in just a moment.

00:34:27
Speaker 2: What were we talking about?

00:34:28
Speaker 1: Talking about James Bond and how James Bond ended up birthing Indiana Jones because Spielberg couldn't get a job directing one of the Bond movies. But he got the last laugh because for the Last Crusade he hired Connery, the original James Bond, to be Indiana Jones's dad, which in a lot of ways spiritually he is. And you know, well, no, wat I got another fact, Tygle, I've got so many facts you wouldn't believe, you know, what's kind of the thing. But well, you know that the famous image of Indiana Jones in the white dinner jacket with the red our nation that's taken from one of the early James Bond movies. That's I think it was in Doctor No. I think it was the first Bond movie that was an homage to James Bond.

00:35:08
Speaker 2: I simply never would have guessed.

00:35:10
Speaker 1: Yeah, so what are you saying?

00:35:12
Speaker 2: I actually completely forgot it now, adhd. It's a wonderful condition to have. Nope, it is completely gone. But now I'm thinking Harrison Ford in a white dinner jacket. So hey, things aren't all bad.

00:35:23
Speaker 1: Things are looking up from that cycle the world. All right, I'll blow through the last bunch. Mel Gibson was considered. How do you feel about that?

00:35:32
Speaker 2: Oh, I remember what I was gonna say. Steven Spiegeger would have crushed a Bond movie.

00:35:36
Speaker 1: Yeah, of course he would have. Spielberg would have been amazing if the bat jerk to Bond movie.

00:35:40
Speaker 2: Kidding my god, at the top of his powers, what is wrong with them?

00:35:44
Speaker 1: Any This would have been like eighty so I probably would have been like Moonraker or like one of those. Yeah, Moonraker for Spielberg, Moonraker after after close Encounters and all those. Oh my god, it'd be incredible. Yeah, I know that that was somebody fumbled that.

00:36:00
Speaker 2: This is what they took from us. This is what they took from me.

00:36:03
Speaker 1: They took so much from.

00:36:04
Speaker 2: Us mel Gibson, let's see, well, he wouldn't know.

00:36:10
Speaker 1: They have been right after Mad Max. It was hot off a Mad Max.

00:36:13
Speaker 2: And that, but they would have never let it off the British let an all Australian be James Bond, George Lazenbye.

00:36:19
Speaker 1: He did one Bond. He was Australian, he was he was an Australian model. He only lasted one.

00:36:24
Speaker 2: But that was his I was gonna say. Mel Gibson's accent at the time was so strong that they dubbed the original Mad Max. Right, that's not his speaking voice in the original What I didn't know that?

00:36:33
Speaker 1: Wait, that's crazy, that's that's vaguely disappointing. That's the most disappointing thing Mel Gibson has ever done. I say that here anyway, Sam Neil, A pre Jurassic Park Sam Neil, How do you feel about that? That's James Bond.

00:36:50
Speaker 2: Sam Neil could do absolutely zero wrong in my heart.

00:36:53
Speaker 1: So okay, all right, this would have been right after he did Omen three, I believe.

00:36:58
Speaker 2: Oh yes, that's when he played is a grown up Damien now running for president. I actually, you know, it's kind of amazing. Everyone thinks of him as you know doctor grant In in Jurassic Park. But you know, Sam Neil has a cozy little niche in horror movies as like the extra dimensional like cosmic horror guy. He was in a movie called Possession, which is one of the absolutely craziest divorced movies of all time. Polish director's name I cannot pronounce, co starring the most beautiful woman in the world. What is her name?

00:37:31
Speaker 1: Monica?

00:37:33
Speaker 2: Nope? Close though, yes, actually Isabella Johnny, Yes, Johnny and Sam Neil. And then he went and followed that up with I think Omen three, And then he's in a lesser John Carpenter movie called At the Mouth of Madness, which is loosely love Craftian. So you know, I just got to give it to Sam Neil. For oh, and then he was in an event Horizon, which is like a haunted house space ship movie essentially.

00:38:02
Speaker 1: So I just, you know, you think Sam Neil's neat.

00:38:05
Speaker 2: I do think he's he makes neat choices and I enjoy his ouvra.

00:38:09
Speaker 1: Okay, all right. Uh. Interestingly, not one but two actors who would later co star on Schindler's List were considered for James Bond in the late eighties or early nineties, Liam Neeson and Ray Fines. Liam Neeson wanted to do it, but his wife to be Natasha Richardson, refused to marry him if he did. But very funny, I'm quite sure what that overlap was, but he was like, yeah, I really wanted to marry her, so I turned that down.

00:38:39
Speaker 2: So we can do it now, right, He could the oldest James Bond. No, he's with uh, I think he's still with Pamela Anderson.

00:38:50
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right. Yeah, Okay, Ray finds in that era, I could see him being a really good James Bond. He said he felt really uncomfortable all dish, and he said he would have felt better if they'd set the Bond movies in the fifties. And I could see him playing like a classy again white dinner jacketed James Bond in like the late fifties. That would be very good for him. I feel like, how do you feel about that?

00:39:14
Speaker 2: M Ray Fine scares me actually, which elaborated well, I mean, you know, not just from being Voldemort, but for being the character in Chindler's List.

00:39:25
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, and that would have been around the same era too.

00:39:28
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's also terrifying in Bruges, like hilarious but also like very scary. I mean, yes, of course he can be charming, but I actually would find that frightening.

00:39:39
Speaker 1: Deeply unsettling. Well he was. He did get his moment of sixties British spy dumb. He was in the nineties movie version of The Avengers, the British sixties spish show, which also had Sean Connery in it. He's the villain who's trying to control the weather. I believe, sure, yeah, something like that. But Ray Fines he did get his moment of Bond dum. He replaced Judy Dench as Bond's boss, the chief of M I six M.

00:40:06
Speaker 2: I forgot that, but I was just I know, I kind of like he replaced Dame Judy Dench in Elizabeth.

00:40:13
Speaker 1: In Shakespeare in Love. Yeah, Hugh Jackman was considered after Pierce Brosnan was hanging up the Tucks in two thousand and two, after Diana the Day or the World's Not Enough. I forget which one. This was just after he did X Men.

00:40:30
Speaker 2: And therefore he became an enormous pile of human growth hormones.

00:40:36
Speaker 1: Hugh Jackman. Oh yeah, Oh that's disappointing.

00:40:40
Speaker 2: No, I mean everybody was. I mean, there's no he was. I mean he was pushing his You know what's really interesting, I just have Arnold Schwarzenegger on the mind. Who doesn't these days you so often do as I so often do. Yeah, but you know, yeah, there's no way he wasn't. I'm sorry he was by the time he was in that third Wolry movie where he was like maximally jacked. He was God, it had to be in his above forty and one of the things that I thought was interested I was listening to as we think about Terminator and speaking of on speaking of lengths that people go to prepare for Terminator, Arnold was apparently so this is adorable, speaking of like director, actor friendships. James Cameron took Arnold Schwarzeninger out to lunch to the sort of like, you know, a pitch him the thing pitched him on the Terminator. But Cameron was so broke making that film that he could not cover the lunch, and so Arnold picked up the check for him being wooed. But they just became such good friends, and that's why he was in True Lies, and they went on to do They went on to do not just the Terminator sequel, but True Lies together and anyway. So that's adorable. But one of the things that Arnold did to prepare for that movie was just go down to the gun range and spend hours shooting like every gun that he could get his hands on, for the purpose of training himself not to blink when guns went off. On the set of that.

00:42:03
Speaker 1: Movie, I thought the RoboCop guy did that too.

00:42:07
Speaker 2: Peter Weller maybe. I think Peter Weller probably didn't have to train himself to Peter Peller's still Peter Weller has like a doctorate in Italian art. Yeah, he's a PhD.

00:42:18
Speaker 1: Interesting, all right.

00:42:20
Speaker 2: And here's something, here's another fun fact. Do you know which movie earned Arnold the most money. I don't think you'll guess.

00:42:27
Speaker 1: Is it one of the stupid Like, is it like Twins or some comedy you do.

00:42:32
Speaker 2: Twins? Forty million for twins?

00:42:36
Speaker 1: Yeah, he got paid, Like did he get points on the back end or was at his salary?

00:42:40
Speaker 2: Well, no one wanted to cast him into comedy, and he was just like, I want to do comedy. I want to make the children laugh.

00:42:47
Speaker 1: Presumably, Wait then why why did he demand so much money for that?

00:42:52
Speaker 2: Then he didn't, he said he demanded he demanded no money. Oh, and he just said, I'll do points, okay, and it got in when that well million, Yes, that's insane. Okay, that move made two hundred and sixteen million dollars worldwide.

00:43:10
Speaker 1: That's obscene. That upsets me.

00:43:12
Speaker 2: And you know what it's really going to upset you.

00:43:14
Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:43:14
Speaker 2: Do you know who they were going to add to make the movie Triplets? No, Eddie Murphy. Okay, imagine a world where that came to pass.

00:43:27
Speaker 1: So, Hugh Jackman did not play James Bond. Neither did Christian Bail. He was considered before they cast Daniel Craig. It's a testament to how low the stock for James Bond had fallen. So many people turned down James Bond after the Piers Brazen era, and Christian Bale was extremely negative towards the idea. Barbara Broccoli, one of the producers for the Bond franchise, said the job was Christians for the asking, but he said, it's every despicable stereotype about England and British actors, and I already played a serial killer, a reference to Patrick Bateman from American Psycho. So Christian Bale was very cold in the idea of playing James Bond. Clive Owen, who's a guy that I often confused for Daniel Craig. He apparently wanted points on the back end of the Pond movies and they were like, nope, get lost. And he had an incredible quote about this. He said, am I gonna be the next Sean Connery? No, I'll just be the next Clive Owen, and we should all aspire to that level of self confidence. I like that.

00:44:30
Speaker 2: I wonder what he would have been coming off, maybe since city, like, I have no idea how he got it, since he is an action star. But have you ever seen the movie that he apparently made. Instead of becoming James Bond called Shoot Him Up.

00:44:41
Speaker 1: Oh, no, children of Man. I thought children a man?

00:44:44
Speaker 2: No children, amen is no, that's a great one. No, he made just a very brick stupid action movie called Shoot Him Up Rick, which is oh my god, it's it's it's awful, and I sadly cannot detail one of the most hilarious things that happened in that movie, but legal reasons. Google it, folks.

00:45:04
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay. Finally, Superman star Henry Cavell was a finalist to play James Bond in Casino Royal, but he was just twenty two and producers thought he was too young. In fact, he thought he was too young too. Daniel Craig was thirty eight when he started James Bond in twenty years ago. Wow, that's crazy. But he's still apparently very interested in it, and I guess there are talks about getting him in as the new James Bond, now that Craig has retired from the.

00:45:32
Speaker 2: Role, now that Cavell has no job. Yes, they took Superman away from Who would your choice be? Who would be my choice to play James Bond? I you know, I don't care. We've talked about this before. I'm sorry. I know, I can't believe that you're not a James Bond guy, because, dude, my theater going age was the Decline. I was too young to see GoldenEye. I played the N sixty four games. So then my like only films that I got to see where the two last bad ones.

00:46:02
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, Pierce Broson's last ones were not good Bond movies.

00:46:05
Speaker 2: Now, yeah, but the.

00:46:06
Speaker 1: Original like the Connery one, the gold Fingers a classic.

00:46:09
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, but I mean, you know, I like them for all the right reasons. I like no, mister by no means mister Bond, I expect you to die. Say yeah, Bond, I expect you to die. Yeah, such great, great line readings and great everything. You know what they should you know what they should do. How about this, I'm gonna pitch you something New Job in which, oh Bond's new job. Okay, no, no, no. The movie is called New Job in which odd Jobs. Great great grandson grows up to take revenge on James Bond.

00:46:45
Speaker 1: This was my grandfather's hat. That's good. It's got low note bom.

00:46:52
Speaker 2: There's a lot of things you never know about your grandfather blowing.

00:46:57
Speaker 1: Dust off the brim of the hat.

00:46:58
Speaker 2: Yeah, lifts it, lifts it out, blows dust on it, maybe runs his finger around, and he goes, ah, little drop of blood, push it and zoom on that. I need to go to America. Wait, no, I need to go to Britain. I need to go somewhere. And he will be played by Henry Cavill actually in a very confusing twist. Remember everything we say here counts as a verbal hop trademark, So Hollywood don't get any big ideas without my name on the check and Jordan's.

00:47:30
Speaker 1: Or Doha, Doha, don't get any big ideas.

00:47:32
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, you too, Doha, You're on notice.

00:47:37
Speaker 1: You've had it too good for too long. Um. That is the end of James Bond segment. That is a that was a third of my notes.

00:47:47
Speaker 2: How did you pass over the fact that Shaquille O'Neal wanted to be in the X Men movie?

00:47:51
Speaker 1: Oh? Yeah, right, I forgot the actually did share these with here. Yes, Shaquille O'Neal begged to be in the X Men movies and they kept turning him down. Also on in a similar note of well, I was gonna say extremely qualified, Tequil O'Neil. I don't know how qualified he would have been to be in the X Men movie. He's probably pretty qualified, I guess. Bruce Springsteen wrote a song and offered it to the to the Harry Potter people, and JK. Rowling was like, no, we don't want it. Thanks.

00:48:16
Speaker 2: That's amazing. It's so funny.

00:48:21
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know what's funny that he wrote a song for the Harry Potter franchise or the Harry Potter franchise didn't want it. It's both.

00:48:28
Speaker 2: Walking down Platform seven three.

00:48:30
Speaker 1: Quarters, Hey, thanks Bruce. Thanks for the song. Bruce. You know, I think we're gonna go another way, but.

00:48:38
Speaker 2: Weird that it's all about Detroit.

00:48:42
Speaker 1: You know that. But it doesn't really have to do much with the decline of the auto industry. But thanks Bruce.

00:48:48
Speaker 2: Yeah, really impressive you You managed to jam Hermione with real life mining catastrophe. Impressive bit of songwriting. But no, it's a no from JK.

00:48:59
Speaker 1: Jak Jake. I didn't want to.

00:49:00
Speaker 2: Oh, okay, so I had some I had a fun one avant garde director category. Oh did you know this, Jordan? And I don't think that you would have because the documentary is new which avatar of American Experimental Cinema was present at the very first Beatles concert in the United States.

00:49:22
Speaker 1: You're asking me a Beatles question. Of course I know this. It's David Lynch.

00:49:26
Speaker 2: That's correct, sir.

00:49:27
Speaker 1: You can't ask me a Beatles related question. I know everything about the Beatles. Yeah.

00:49:31
Speaker 2: I was just kind of doing that to shove the Beatles in here, because I knew it would make you happy. Yes, David Lynch's father was in the Department of Forestry, and they moved around a lot, but they were living in Alexandra at the time. And I think, as we mentioned in our Razorhead episode Young Eagle Scout, David Lynch once met JFK in the same sittings. So then he had gotten a ticket to the Beatles' first US concert at the Washington called Oh see Him follow up to that apropos of nothing, did you know, Jeordan? Are you familiar with the film Werner Hertzog eats his shoe?

00:50:06
Speaker 1: It sounds familiar, but I guess you don't forget a title like that.

00:50:09
Speaker 2: So Warner Hertzog my beloved. He completed this film Burden of Dreams with this Northern California, specifically Berkeley filmmaker named Les Blank. Yeah, Les Blank's films are incredible, but so Les Blank was there when Werner Hertzog was trying to make FITZGERALDO and move an actual steamship over a mountain in the amazons Well Hill an isthmus to be precise, but so Herzog has this like Berkeley connection and Errol Morris documentary filmaker. Er Morris, perhaps most famous for The Thin Blue Line, was a graduate philosophy student at UC Berkeley, and Hertzog made this offhand val to Errol Morris once while talking there, presumably at the behest of Les Blank. He said, when I see finished movie, I will eat my shoe. And then there's another guy who said it was somewhat less encouraging than that. He said, you'll never make a movie to Errol Morris, but if you do, I'll come and eat my shoe at the premiere.

00:51:13
Speaker 1: When was shoe eating such a big popular expression.

00:51:17
Speaker 2: It's a fun idiom. I guess I'll eat my hat would probably be in the Maybe just Werner just wanted to make it make it difficult for himself. Errol Morris says he does not remember this, but the fact of the matter is is that it does, in fact occur at famed Berkeley restaurant Shapanee by many people for having you know, Alice Waters, chef widely credited with starting like the farmed table movement in California cuisine that came out of Shapinee in Berkeley, along with the Garlic Gilroy Festival and the book that inspired it simply called the Garlic Book, and then the Less Blank film Garlic Is as Good as Ten Mothers. So, assisted by Alice Water at Shapinee, Herzog boiled a pair of his shoes for five hours with garlic, herbs, and I believe beef stock, and he was later shown eating one of those shoes in front of the audience at the premiere of Errol Morris's documentary about a pet cemetery called Gates of Heaven. He however, did not eat the sole of the shoe, as he explained, one does not eat the bones of the chicken.

00:52:33
Speaker 1: Isn't that what they did during the siege of Stalingrad when no food could get in that they started boiling leather suitcases as like sort of the closest thing to meat that they could get.

00:52:44
Speaker 2: Yes, Jordan, that is correct.

00:52:46
Speaker 1: So there was a precedent for this in the Eastern block of boiling leather to eat, okay, a proud tradition of leather consumption.

00:52:55
Speaker 2: H As you meditate on that, we'll be right back with more too much information after these messages.

00:53:10
Speaker 1: Wow. One of the first things I did when I arrived here was exchanged by US dollars for the guitar reale, which was exciting for me because it was a little kid. I loved collecting coins and foreign currency. I was just fascinated by how it came in all kinds of colors and shapes and denominations. So I thought to do a quick spotlight on some interesting kinds of money from across space and time. There are one hundred and eighty currencies in the world, spanning roughly one hundred and ninety five countries. I say roughly because that gets into the complicated matter of which countries are technically recognized, which we are not getting into right now. These spam from the Azerbaijani mona to the Zambian quacha. Of course, there's also more than four hundred currencies that have been withdrawn, like the Italian lira, French franc or Spanish perseda, which were all taken out by the Euro, which is a very sad day for a young currency collector like myself. Of course, currency became a stand in for objects to use for bartering in ancient times, and some of these may surprise you. The Aztecs used coco beans as money. They were so valuable that they were even counterfeited, which says so much about human nature. In ancient Japan, rice was used as currency, the value of which was measured in cookou, which was enough rice to feed one person for a year. Salt, rather famously, was a highly valued commodity in ancient times because of its properties as a preservative, was often referred to as white gold. Large palmejan and cheese wheels acted as both edible currency and collateral medieval Italy. The long aging process and costly preparation made them valuable trading commodities that could be divided as needed for payments. And buckskins were traded in North America, which is where we get the slang term buck for dollar. Now to me, he the most interesting form of currency is the rye stones found on the Yap Islands of Macronesia. People there traded large limestone discs called rye, which could be as large as twelve feet in diameter. Rye meant whale in the native language because they were so big and heavy. These are interesting to me because they had no practical or intrinsic value. The community just decided that they did. It was purely a social construct, which is kind of mind blowing. The value was determined in part by whether or not the stone was delivered to the area by a famous explorer or sailor, and sometimes by how many people died transporting it. The abstract nature of this currency is compounded by the fact that they were very rarely moved. Ownership was determined by collective recognition and could be passed on without anyone actually handling or even seeing the stone. Each large stone carried an oral tradition of its past owners. In one case, a massive Rye stone sank to the ocean floor during transport by canoe, and oh it was never recovered, the community agreed that it still existed, and it still continued to be traded, just like any other stone. The first known currency was created by the Lydians in six hundred BC. They struck coins from a mixture of gold and silver called electrum. The Romans for the first to standardized currency throughout the empire by minting coins with the image of the emperor, thus providing a sense of economic unity throughout their vast territories. The oldest currency that still in use today is the British pounds sterling, which dates back to Anglo Saxon times and roughly seven to seventy five AD, and as you may expect, early currency took the form of metal coins, hence the phrase cold hard cash, which was quite literal at the time. In those early systems, a coin's value was tied directly to the type and quantity of metal it contained. Gold was worth more than silver, and silver worth more than bronze, et cetera. Over time, however, currency began to drift away from intrinsic value and towards symbolic value, much like the Rye stones. Money was worth what was collectively agreed it was worth, rather than what it could be melted down for. That shift laid the groundwork for the modern fiat currency. Today, the idea that a coin's material defines its value was almost completely vanished, so much so that some modern coins like the American penny actually cost more to produce than their face value, which is why it's being phased out these days. Coin stay in circulation for about twenty to thirty years, which is when they become too warned to use, and every year TSA officials collect roughly a million dollars in unclaimed money at American airports from people who empty their pockets at security and just leave it. China was the first country to circulate paper money, the giouzi, during the Song dynasty between nine sixty and twelve seventy nine a d. This was known as flying money because the wind would take them so easily. The largest banknote ever made to date was in the Philippines to commemorate one hundred years of Spanish rule, and it was fourteen inches long by eight point five inches wide, which is larger than your standard piece of printer. The smallest paper currency was printed in Romania in nineteen seventeen, and that was just under two inches long. The Swiss have adopted a vertical banknote to be more practical because they're Swiss, and Canadian banknotes feature braille because they're compassionate and hey, this is fun. Ninety percent of US bills are coded with illicit substances which I won't elaborate on. The cost of producing paper money depends on many factors, such as the size of the banknote, its security features, and the production quantity. According to the German Federal Bank, a euro banknote costs an average of eight cents to produce, while the US Federal Reserve says that the cost of printing paper money ranges from seven cents to twenty cents per note. The process of making these bills is very interesting because they have to pass through many hands, especially low value notes like You're one, five, and ten dollars bills. They are put through extreme stress tests. In the United States, paper bills are exposed to two hundred and fifty degrees of hot air for thirty minutes, put through a washing machine cycle at four hundred spins per minute, and they are also pressed for five minutes under a three hundred and twenty degree iron. The US Bureau of Engraving and Printing produces about thirty eight million notes a day, worth approximately five hundred forty one million dollars. Yes, the Mint creates five hundred and forty one million dollars in bills a day. The Federal Reserve printed approximately three point three trillion dollars in twenty twenty alone, and each year a staggering one hundred and seventy billion banknotes are shredded and replaced with brand new ones. As we touched on earlier, money comes in all shapes and sizes and also denominations, from the humble one dollar bill to the one hundred quintrillion pagos note circulated by the Republic of Hungary in nineteen forty six. The country was going through a hyperinflation at the time, and they issued a note for one hundred quintillion, which is a number that I thought was made up. That's ay ten with twenty zeros after it. That extremely high number. The note was worth approximately twenty US cents at the time, and Germany went through a similar period of hyperinflation following the First World War. You could see photos of women bringing wheelbarrows of bills to the bakery just to get a loaf of bread, or children playing with stacks of bills like building blocks because they were effectively worthless. And I actually have some bills from this era that were initially things like ten marks, and then there was a crude stamp over top that says ten billion marks. Very interesting, but not all money is worthless. Take Canada. Canada broke a record when it issued the one million dollar coin dubbed the Big Maple Leaf in two thousand and seven. It was made of ninety nine point nine to nine percent pure gold bullion that weighs two hundred and twenty pounds and measures twenty inches in diameter. It's basically a gold frisbee, only five or ever made. Despite its face value, its worth fluctuates on the market price of gold, and it's now worth closer to twelve million dollars for one coin. On the flip side, the bill worthy smallest value in the world is the one thousand Somaliland shilling note, which is worth about half a cent. Now. You probably notice we've been talking a lot about multiples of ten so far, but that's not always the case for some bills. For example, the Burmese military leader nay Win caused a massive financial crash when he attempted to make all Burmese currency divided by nine, his lucky number. A slightly happier incident occurred in Fiji, when the National Mint circulated a seven dollars note to celebrate the nation's gold medal victory in rugby seven's at Rio de Janeiro's Olympic Games in twenty sixteen. Now, over the years, some strange materials have been used to make currency, particularly during wartime. Copper was a valuable resource for the war effort during World War Two, so pennies were made out of aluminum, which made them extremely light. The Australians got even more creative during the war and melted down old tin toothpaste tubes to make their coins. Post World War One, money in Germany was even stranger. A paper shortage led them to issue not guild, which translates to emergency money or notes printed on things like wood. The designers took a somewhat less than serious stance on this. For example, the tu mark note features a donkey eating grass, while let's just say the artists had a lot of fun with the fact that the number two was featured on it. There have been lots of weird things on money over the years. Latvia has a hedgehog on their coin, Switzerland is a human brain, and Peru has lamas. My personal favorite is a three dollar bill from the Cook Islands that depicts a Polynesian woman riding a shark. The Euros feature arches and bridges, which doesn't seem very weird until you learn that none of these arches and bridges exist. They're all fictitious so that no country could complain about favoritism. But then those fun loving folks in the Netherlands started building a few of them for real. The tiny Pacific island of Nue, which uses the New Zealand dollar as his currency, annually releases commemorative coin featuring Disney princesses, Star Wars characters, Pokemon, and other fan favorites. And that is my brief seminar on currency of the world. Thank you, Heigel h Well, you know I had a long flight over here. I just flew him from New York and uh boy in my arm's tired. Sorry I had to I was an eleven hour your Ar'm sored. There it is, there it is. And to pass the time, I played a little solitaire and it got me thinking about the origin of playing cards. So I did a little digging the past even more time. I'd like to share with you what I learned. What do you think about that? Hit me?

01:03:34
Speaker 2: I love solitaire, I do time trials and solitaire. What's your best time three draw.

01:03:39
Speaker 1: I didn't actually play solitaire. It was just for the bit. It was just the setup. But I did actually one seven. That's mine.

01:03:46
Speaker 2: That's my shut up one minute thirty seven seconds. I have the screen grab. If anyone out there wants to challenge me, if you can beat go toa s L t r dot com solitaire using draw three. If you can beat me, you can get lower than one minute thirty seven seconds. I will eat one of my shoes and we'll do it on this show. Not from Qatar though.

01:04:11
Speaker 1: Well, like many things, Okay, seeing people outside with the headphones taking the hearing you talk about eating your shoe, just taking their headphones off and putting a pack on the card and walking away.

01:04:24
Speaker 2: I'm activating your brand.

01:04:25
Speaker 1: You are you, are you?

01:04:27
Speaker 2: Thank you?

01:04:27
Speaker 1: Hell of an activation. Well, like many things, particularly of the paper variety, playing cards are believed to have originated in China at the end of the Tang dynasty in the ninth century. Made with woodblocks, these early decks contained only thirty two cards, which is a number that I'm told corresponds to the maximum number of combinations of a pair of dice. So it's believed that these cards were initially intended to be a stand in for dice games, which is interesting. Through trade routes and cultural exchange, card like games spread westward across Asia, reaching India and Persia before appearing in the Islamic world, and some of the cleanest early non Chinese examples come from Egypt under the Mamluk Sultanate, where surviving cards show suits like cups, swords, coins, and polo sticks, which were believed to be inspired by early Tarot cards. And now these Mamluk cards are widely thought to be the direct ancestors of European playing cards, and likely entered Europe via the Mediterranean trade routes in the late fourteenth century, and once there, card designs rapidly diversified, with regional styles in Germany and Switzerland, for example, that depicted hearts, bells, acorns, and leaves, and early European decks. These were hand painted luxury items, sometimes commissioned by nobility and decorated with gold leaf. Owning a deck at this time was closer to owning a piece of fine art rather than a casual game accessory. It was a big deal. The world's oldest surviving deck of cards date back to the fifteenth century. Originally made in the Netherlands, was purchased by a private collector in nineteen seventy one for one hundred and forty three one thousand dollars and are currently on display at the Cloister's location of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Ultimately, the simplified French suit the hearts, diamonds, clubs, and spades, became dominant in the fifteenth century, and that's the version that we know today. The hearts represented the church, the diamonds were arrowheads, which were symbolic of archers and bowmen, clubs were clovers to represent shepherds, and the spades were the points of lances for knights. The face cards I didn't know this are thought to represent famous historical figures. The King of hearts is believed to be Charlemagne, the King of diamonds is Julius Caesar, king of clubs is Alexander the Great, and the king of spades is King David of Israel. And the queen's origins are less clear, but it's believed that the Queen of Spades is the Greek goddess Palas and the Queen of Hearts is based on the biblical figure of Judith, and the Jack of Clubs is supposed to be Lancelot from King Arthur's.

01:06:56
Speaker 2: Court Judith, as in Judith killing Holophernies. I think, so, wow, is there anything that woman couldn't do.

01:07:06
Speaker 1: You may notice I didn't realize this that the Ace of Spades always looks very distinctive with a unique design from the rest of the cards. This is because, in the early eighteenth century, the French and English governments levied a tax on playing cards, and to prove at tax was paid, each Ace of Spades would need a special stamp, which was applied before the deck was sold at market. And because it served this legal function, the Ace of Spades was often more ornate than other cards, featuring elaborate designs to deter forgery. Some producers tried to avoid the tax by simply not including the Ace of Spades, which is thought to be where we get the phrase not playing with a full deck, which is pretty saying.

01:07:42
Speaker 2: I wonder if that's where the Motorhead song came from too. Motorhead was Ace of Spades, yeah, ace of Spades, aces spades. Yeah.

01:07:51
Speaker 1: Well you know, now, something I never noticed and I bet you have any either. Is that playing cards had a really bizarre number of connections to a calendar year. Some skull think it's a coincidence, whereas others believe that they were specifically crafted for this purpose. Follow along with me. The red and black colors of the suits are believed to represent night and day. The four suits symbolize the four seasons spring, summer, fall, and winter.

01:08:14
Speaker 2: Frankie Valley.

01:08:15
Speaker 1: Each suit has thirteen values ace through king, and there are roughly thirteen lunar cycles in a year or thirteen weeks in a quarter. There are twelve court cards in a deck of cards and twelve months in a year. And there are fifty two weeks in a year and fifty two cards in a deck. Is it interesting? Yes? Yeah? Good? With caution? Well okay. I usually prefer history to math, but I learned this incredible stat that I can't stop thinking about. I suggest you sit down for this. There are more possible ways to shuffle a deck of cards than there are atoms that make up the earth. Isn't that crazy?

01:08:55
Speaker 2: Explain?

01:08:56
Speaker 1: The math behind this can be summarized as fifty two factorial, which means fifty two times fifty one times fifty, et cetera, all the way down to four times three times two times one. If you do the math out, you'll end up with an eight followed by sixty seven zeros. So, in other words, every time you pick up a deck of playing cards and shuffle, it's more or less guaranteed that you're going to get an order of playing cards that has never existed before. You could change the arrangement of cards every second, and it would take you a million years to achieve all combinations. More than a million years. I find a weird degree of comfort in that you can do something that no one has ever done before, just by picking up a deck of playing cards and shuffling. Is that beautiful?

01:09:39
Speaker 2: I'm so that is crazy that you have actually genuinely stumped me right now the first time maybe ever in our friendship. Or maybe I'm just comfortable saying that because because of the beautiful guitar air. But wow, Jordan, that is that is that is crazy? I assumed you know, I'm an idiot. I was like, fifty two times fifty two. It can't be that many. My god, isn't that crazy?

01:10:03
Speaker 1: That is wild? Oh? Is that a note to end?

01:10:06
Speaker 2: On I was gonna say, I mean, you know, I don't think we can.

01:10:10
Speaker 1: I don't know.

01:10:10
Speaker 2: Do you have a deck you want to start shop with some cards?

01:10:13
Speaker 1: What happens? To shuffle some cards and see what happens? Yeah?

01:10:17
Speaker 2: Well this was fun. I don't think I'll ever get over the side of you in a well cut suit in a glass cube in Qatar. It's the way I choose to remember you. Actually, Well, folks, thank you for listening to this unexpected and interesting episode of too much information. They're all interesting, Heigel, they are all interesting, you know. It's just it's it's uh, it's like live theater. You never know what's gonna happen. Bubba booe bubba booey. I'm just trying to riff in ways that I know won't get you killed and or fired, and it's very difficult for me. So I'm gonna sign off. Thank you for listening, folks. This has been too much information. My name is Alex Heigel and.

01:11:01
Speaker 1: I'm Jordan Runtagg. We'll catch you next time TVD. I'll be back. I'll be back. Don't you worry your pretty little head. I'll be back. I'll be back, baby, I'm coming Back Too Much Information was a production of iHeart Radio.

01:11:21
Speaker 2: The show's executive producers are Noel Brown and Jordan Runtalg.

01:11:25
Speaker 1: The show's supervising producer is Michael Alder June.

01:11:28
Speaker 2: The show was researched, written and hosted by Jordan Runtag and Alex Heigel.

01:11:32
Speaker 1: With original music by Seth Applebaum and the Ghost Funk Orchestra. If you like what you heard, please subscribe and leave us a review. For more podcasts on iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows