People Chow

Hey true weirdos, thank you so much for listening and we want you to be a part of the true weird stuff database All you have to do to sign up is go to true weird stuff calm wait for the pop-up that says sign up for updates fill out the info and you're in and Some lucky weirdos chosen at random are going to win a true weird stuff. Very high quality hoodie Fancy enough for wearing to a deposition Sturdy enough to wear for robbing a grave and I promise we won't spam you and after the episode We hope you'll stick around because we've got more to the story little bonus content little conversation Some bloodthirsty stuff right after the episode Death is unnecessary We are on the threshold of a new system living These people who set out to create their own religion or philosophy or whatever you want to call it out here promising Immortality, or if not, that just a crazy long lifespan and also possibly magical powers I'll seem like Insane promises to make wouldn't it be better to offer up a flavor of salvation that you at least have a shot at delivering or Maybe that's a question that only those of us not drunk on our own glory. What do you think to ask?

I mean, how many people do you know who are utterly convinced that they alone know the secret to the best and most fulfilling life? most likely not many maybe not any but here's a man with a plan a man who dreams bigger than anyone a man who even took it upon himself to try and create a People on earth a language he called Adam man tongue. The English alphabet is seriously defective and that its letters do not tell us their true sounds zero disagreement about that, but Adam man tongue added an extra 17 letters to the alphabet and about 43,000 layers of confusion. It's hardly necessary to say that the Adam man tongue is intended to take the place of present English among all English-speaking people as the first step in its new progress and When this shall have been accomplished to go to all the nations of the world as the permanent language of the human race Such is its mission and if kicking death to the curb doesn't impress you and inventing a Universal language for the people of earth is whatever That may be his idea for creating the ultimate food for humans Everything the body needs all in one bowl Maybe that's what you're looking for a nice big bowl of people chow Oh The story began for us with an email from a listener named Brenna Ralston Hi Sherry and Max, I wanted to throw an idea your way for true weird stuff I was in a used bookstore recently and I came across an antique book full of crazy ramblings called Operations of the Other Mind There are lots of crazy old books that exist, of course But I was personally interested in this one because it was printed by Ralston University Press My last name is Ralston and I'd never heard of such a thing Only Ralston as connected to the Purina brand years ago, which has disappeared from their branding in recent years Later when I googled Ralston University Press I was taken to the Ralston ism Wikipedia page and from there tumbled down a rabbit hole of absolute Insanity about a dude named Webster edgerly. He has like three aliases as well and his crazy cult Which is or was actually tangentially connected to Purina back in the day Brenna wasn't kidding about the absolute Insanity Ralston ism is for the rich and the poor The high and the lowly the sick and the well of all nations and in all climes Among its members are governors superintendents bishops ministers physicians statesmen merchants judges congressmen farmers clerks bankers Society women and home women in fact people of every occupation sounds inclusive and welcoming right and it was Kind of sorta as long as you're not bothered by the founders dream of having all non Caucasian males castrated at birth. Oh, yeah, and also involuntary euthanasia for non-caucasians has any euphemism clocked a harder day at work than Involuntary euthanasia, I mean is that not just a fancy way of saying murder

What is it about Americans that were so quick to fall under the spell of charlatans and tricksters and cult leaders Long before the Manson family Jonestown the Branch Davidians or Heaven's Gate there was Matthias the Prophet the Shakers and the New Israelites It's not your imagination Although cults aren't unique to America. We are real global leaders in the category One theory is that religious fervor trends lower where the standard of living is higher While the USA is a highly developed nation We don't even crack the top 10 list for countries with the highest quality of life or healthcare or life expectancy The living is hard here in the USA what with catastrophic medical expenses driving people into bankruptcy housing costs not keeping pace with wages and and and and and Appearing this just pisses you off. I get it but yelling at us ain't the way we're in the struggle, too And it's this struggle that has fertilized a weird dynamic in American culture Guru worship and the near bottomless belief and shiny promises delivered by charismatic Hucksters Ralstonism is not built on a theory but rest on a solid foundation of incontrovertible facts Facts which centuries of study and observation have demonstrated to be correct not the wild creation of a disordered brain but the result of research in books laboratories and nature So who was the wizard behind the curtain of the Ralstonite movement?

His name was Albert Webster Edgerly born in 1852 Edgerly found at the Ralston Health Club the same year he finished law school overachiever Though it might make you feel less like a slacker to know that the Ralston Health Club couldn't be found at any physical address It existed entirely in Edgerly's imagination. In the beginning Edgerly said that he'd made the name Ralston using letters in his mother's name Rhoda Lucinda Stone As time went on though, he claimed that Ralston was an acronym regime activity light strength temperation oxygen and nature By temperation, I'm pretty sure he means temperance But if you're making up your own philosophy or religion, you might as well go ahead and make up your own words to regime activity light strength Temperation oxygen and nature all of the things that Edgerly believed to form the foundation of a superior human being an Imaginary health club wasn't gonna earn the man any real dollars, but he had a plan for that, too Edgerly would package his ideas into books so so so many books Edgerly was a wildly prolific writer obsessed with his own notions of religious utopia and wellness He wrote more than a hundred books on the subject published under the pen name Edmund Shaftesbury this one is from a 545 page Turner called the Shaftesbury School of Philosophy known as the story of our existences or the doctrine of diversity Some are endowed with the disposition to improve themselves others desire to improve but lack the energy to do so and Still others are perfectly indifferent to all the finer impulses of life The last class is not teachable Charity is supporting today Thousands of miserable wretches who have scorned to lift a finger to help themselves except for the immediate present among the better classes this Indisposition is found in its usual proportions and indicates that proneness to laziness is a disease Indeed, it's getting to be the opinion of medical men that all Divergences of life are forms of disease crime literary genius laziness and others the question now is May a man choose to make himself active who is naturally indifferent to his success It's a deep and intricate problem deep and intricate and also Deeply and intricately Astoundingly racist the first duty of every Caucasian nation to itself and to the antiracist is to prevent miscegenation and immigration and certainly to prevent citizenship The Caucasians will eventually occupy the earth and their march would be rapid as soon as they're educated If the white nations were to form a federation of nations and to compel the next generation to receive a thorough common school education a Half-century hence every race on the globe would be in subjection to the Caucasians edgerly aka Shaftesbury aka Ralston was a Believer in eugenics in a nutshell eugenics aims to improve all of humanity by restricting breeding to certain select or

desirable groups Since human beings have never ever successfully been persuaded to check their own biological drive to reproduce Eugenicists have tried various other strategies Like chucking an infant deemed less than robust into a chasm as the ancient Spartans are said to have done or drowning the weak and disappearing their bodies in a swamp something practiced by the early Germanic tribes at least according to the Roman historian Tacitus and How a guy like edgerly was able to convince his Ralstonite followers the Caucasian people were all allergic to watermelon No, seriously, he did and that was eugenics, too But edgerly's ambitions wouldn't be satisfied by just lecturing people he intended to remake the world He'd been wandering from place to place feverishly writing books and pamphlets promoting his ideas about human magnetism and Glame, but it was time to settle down to the business of making Ralstonism a fully realized way of life And his starting place would be the sprawling rural community of Hopewell, New Jersey He started buying land in 1894 and where others saw only lush farmland Edgerly envisioned an entire city of Ralstonites 400 homes in all half-dozen farms and a handful of estates including the one he chose for himself a 27,000 square foot Victorian mansion that he named Ralston Manor He imported plants and trees from China and Japan He grew fruits and vegetables that he offered to the residents of Hopewell in the hopes of winning them over And edgerly also founded a special club called the Magnetism Club of America All are invited to join the club Membership is grand It's one Continual round of enjoyment to be a Ralstonite It's full of good times good things and happy events. Will you become a Ralstonite now?

Edgerly promised that a combination of the right foods and exercises Would not only significantly amp up a member's riz It would ultimately give those individuals the power of mind control We are creatures of their motions passions circumstances and accident What the mind will be what the heart will be What the body will be are problems that are shaped to the drift of life Even when special attention is given to any of them If you sit down and think for a while you'll be surprised to know How much of your life has been mere drift?

How little you have done towards finding out the power that operates in animal volition Once it comes how it is lost and how it may be utilized Hmm Let's start with the exercises Edgerly declared that all movement ought to be gentle and circular Avoiding sudden stops and sharp angles and always on the balls of the feet Anything else risk draining one's vital forces This meant that Ralstonites were required to move and bathe in highly specific ways Same rules applied to how they spoke how they slept even how they had sex They practiced this curving motion by gracefully scooping up marbles that had been arranged in circles on the floor Repeating the movement over and over and over again until the act of bending and a graceful arc Became ingrained habit the natural gift of personal magnetism Arises from such accidental habits that prevent the constant loss of vital electricity Edgerly was rapturous when talking about this vital force an Apocalyptic when describing all the threats to that force that could result from its loss This exhaustion robs the blood circulation of its tone or health it weakens the bones By making them like the bones of dead people it weakens the stomach It destroys the tone of the cuticle and skin by deadening of weak fibers It weakens the hearing by causing part of the sounds to be obscured It weakens the sight and causes films or small specks to move in front of the eyes It weakens the mind and often leads to insanity Tempting as it is to make fun of his followers gliding around on the balls of their feet and all There's not much difference between Edgerly and any random wellness grifter on social media today is there?

so in all this talk of cultivating and growing one's personal magnetism toward the goal of Exercising power and leadership over one's fellow humans How did Edgerly navigate the question of race and ethnicity? Which is every eugenicists favorite fixation human beings still have some instinctive faculties left When you meet someone you do not like it is a reasonably sure deduction that that person is of an antagonistic type Your instinct have faculties little golf or in our civilization Tells you that you will lose rather than gain from that individual's influence or from association with him and Here it comes To show how little consideration has been given to racial difference and the resulting dislikes It's only necessary to consider how the various races have been thrown together It was the custom in a certain large industry employing large numbers of common labor to put workers of all nationalities together in one group Finally some observant Foreman suggested that workmen be segregated into groups in these groups be made of nationalities, which would not clash carefully carefully diplomatic There may be an inherited Repugnance which is due to ancestral experience if your Ancestors were at war for ages with another race nation or tribe Some of that racial or tribal antipathy is quite likely to persist Edgerly called this vital life force that so obsessed him Glam it's a word he made up using the first five letters of what he declared were the most Important words in the world, you know in English, of course Glame God G life L advance a mortality M eternity E Glame all men and women possess personal magnetism, but some magnetism repels and some attracts Magnetism is largely relative. What will repel one person may attract another The woman who is so ugly that she causes a stampede when she enters a room May be an angel to some man as ugly as herself She may even inspire poetry on her angelic attributes So ugly it causes a stampede rude Edgerly wrote reams and reams and reams about Glam in the book of Glam a complete course in life electricity 334 pages to be exact Managing one's Glam was a whole mind body commitment because the enemies of Glam were everywhere like dust Curtains and carpets and houses in the city are the sources of more sickness than all other immediate causes combined for they catch the foul dust that comes in from the streets and Hold it until such time as they're swept or agitated Then give it out into the air of the hotel room to be inhaled by the occupants Bedrooms are hot beds of disease for this very reason and gasoline those who ride in automobiles have what the doctors today call the Automobile heart and every person who has read the papers and magazines is easily familiar with this fact But the doctors who do not study conditions closely are not cognizant of the real cause And they assume that the high rate of speed is to blame for the weak hearts

Others who have given the matter close study Find that the gasoline that is employed as the fuel of these cars and it's volatile oil as well as the burnt carbon are the direct causes of the trouble and pain and suffering Edgerly offered up this example of how pain can drain away human electricity a young man Who was in a highly electrical mood for proposing to a most beautiful young lady and walking to her Struck his foot in such a way that one of the small toes was pitched under a carved projection of a table leg It caught his corn right in the very heart and the pain made him as limp as a moist fabric Causing a revulsion of feeling on the part of the fair maiden. His electricity was gone his lips ejaculated an expression that he ordinarily would have admitted until after marriage at least as Nothing is easier to cure than a corn there's no reason why a person should suffer this kind of pain a Sharp knife will remove the whole growth of the corn and in any antiseptic valve applied each morning will prevent a new growth for some time a revulsion of feeling Because the poor bastard stubbed his toe harsh Since 19th century shoes were pretty miserable and dr. Scholl was only 14 years old at the time. Yes Dr. Scholl was a real person from La Porte, Indiana a job at a shoe store Inspired him to become a podiatrist the creator of foot comfort week and ultimately a brand carried in a gazillion drugstores What could that heartbroken young man do but work harder on his glame game?

And for that he needed a glame Stick a man should take a piece of broom handle about six inches long and seven eighths of an inch thick A woman should take a piece of broom handle about five inches long and three-fourths an inch thick or even less in Diameter than that. These are called Glamesticks and they have been so called for more than 32 years Having secured these bits of wood you must learn to use them by Diffusing glame and not by setting the muscles The latter are set when you have grasped the wood in such a way as to be able to use it for any purpose But first you'll need to prep your hand which is easy just open the hand Shake it until it is as limp as a damp rag Have every finger limp and flimsy This is called Devitalizing The trick to getting all that gleam flowing is to diffuse the muscles I guess then and not set them But what is setting the muscles mean when they have grasped the wood in such a way as to be able to use it for any purpose So basically get yourself a stick and waggle your hand and don't in any way Actually hold on to the stick and what the greatest power comes from the progress of the Not from its position It is in progress when it is increasing its tendency to tense Which means that it's actually adding power all along the way But has not reached the point where the muscles are set you guys Eight hundred thousand people followed this man Bouncing on the balls of their feet and doing their damnedest to not hold on to a piece of wood Human beings are a pure wonder Like the actor W Fields once said if you can't dazzle them with brilliance baffle them with bull You Like any proper guru Edgerly's true gift was in knowing just how to stoke fear in his followers and then offer them their best source of protection a Solution the one true way to fend off the multiple and terrible threats The world was just waiting to unleash on them life is surrounded by enemies So numerous and pervasive that the wonder is that the race has survived these attacks The enemies are present in every form in the activities of the mind the dangers to the lungs the diet Membranous system and bad habits in a variety of other ways Of course Ralstonites unlike the common person at least had a fighting chance against these enemies Unlike the rest of us many of the most contented people are indifferent and weak-brained Caring little for what the world may have in store for them and not knowing how to cope with its many problems Not that edgerly didn't land on some solid truths that we now take for granted Like how excessive worry and anxiety take a toll on the body in mind Now we talk about stress hormones impacting the immune system Edgerly believed that worry and caused less air to be breathed which reduced the body's natural electricity, you know Also known as glaim It's a kooky theory, but it's one that made sense to the Ralstonites who could indeed confirm their own Experiences of the negative impacts of constantly brooding over every damn thing

Since diet was a critical aspect of edgerly's theory of natural electricity of glaim It seemed to him that if merely talking about food or writing about it was good It will be even better to create and sell special food for the Ralstonites Now as fate would have it one of the 800,000 Enthusiastic followers of Ralstonism was a man named William H Danforth Danforth was a businessman born in Missouri in 1870 and like edgerly he was big on wellness Nutrition and exercise he had his own personal philosophy One he described in his very well received self-help book I dare you there are four key components in life That must be in balance the physical the mental the social and the religious to be healthy you need the four squares to stay in balance and One area was not to develop at the expense of the other Danforth Remembering the bolt of red and white checkered cloth his mother had once turned into clothing for him and his siblings Was inspired to use that checkerboard imagery to help explain what he meant picture the four red and white squares to be healthy Those four must stay in balance one area is not to develop at the expense of another Danforth made his checkerboard the logo for the company. He founded in st. Louis in 1894 Purina Mills Purina Mills was in the business of feeding livestock at first Danforth had concocted a blend of grains molasses and salt he and his partners Inspired by the name soldiers and World War one gave their food Decided to call the feed products chow Pig chow horse chow rabbit chow even monkey chow and of course dog chow Eventually though Purina Mills turned its attention to people chow Which is where Webster Edgerly and his ideas about magnetism and glame and the optimal diet for his Ralstonites comes in Edgerly had become obsessed with whole grain cereals and Danforth had become obsessed with Edgerly's ideas Danforth must have been delighted when Edgerly urged his followers to eat Purina Mills cereals The perfect food he advised to boost human magnetism and Just three years into the cereal business Purina Mills officially partnered with Webster Edgerly to form Ralston Purina for health's sake eat Ralston Purina food our pure family of which Ralston breakfast food is at the head Represents the highest standard of excellence ever attained in cereal food products Serve your family Ralston breakfast food Ralston barley food Ralston pancake flour how many grits health oats and whole wheat brain bread The competition in the cereal game was already intense John Henry Kellogg was doing a brisk business in granola CW Post gave the world that oddly named bowl of gravel called great nuts Corn flakes were fast becoming a fixture on American breakfast tables Quaker Oats had figured out how to make grains of rice explode under pressure and Promptly declared their puffed rice cereal to be both the first food shot from a gun So very on brand for America and the eighth wonder of the world Wheaties made their debut in the 1920s and were soon duking it out with snap crackle and pop for morning dominance and

Ralston Purina introduced shred at Ralston Even back then marketing was critical on the cereal aisle and shred at Ralston Engineered to nourish the extremely strict and racist Ralstonites featured the movie star Elizabeth Taylor on the box It's doubtful She hadn't saying the matter the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer movie studio wanted to sell tickets to the movie father of the bride and was aggressively advertising the film everywhere it could now real quick in the 1950s shred at Ralston got a name change to Wheat Chex and Wheat Chex was soon followed by Rice Chex and eventually the beloved snack Chex Mix and why call it Chex Well, the word Chex was inspired by William Danforth's beloved Checkerboard, how's that for a fun fact?

But Ralston Purina was playing catch-up in the cereal business So the company got creative a unique plan of distribution Adopted by one of the largest cereal houses in the country is being inaugurated in the city of Trenton Whereby every home will be presented with a free breakfast for five people Ralston Purina recruited schoolboys put them in outfits with large red and white checkerboard Satchels and sent them door-to-door in Trenton, New Jersey with free samples and the boys were compensated for their effort the company is teaching the schoolboys the principles of Merchandising and paying them with a beautiful set of Brazilian beetle cufflinks and stick pin mounted in a green gold setting These beetles are from the jungles of South America and are highly prized by the natives of that country and worn by them As an omen of long life and good luck boys back Then were mad for cufflinks I guess the Ralston Purina company is to be congratulated in this unique plan of bringing the merits of Ralston breakfast food to the attention of the public the Enthusiasm with which the boys have taken hold of this work indicates that this city will be a Ralston stronghold henceforth Turning Trenton into a Ralston stronghold was bad news for the non-caucasian men who called the place home As they were unlikely to agree with the recommendation that they be castrated Not to mention the city's other inhabitants who didn't fit the strict racial and eugenics guidelines put forth by Webster Edgerly Who very much like today's horde of online wellness grifters was hell-bent on discrediting medical experts and science It is gratifying that all honest doctors who have Investigated Ralston ism are its friends and recommended or rather prescribe it in place of medicines to their patients a doctor who has investigated this system and does not affirmatively aid and use it may be set down as dishonest and unsafe to employ Is energy you need it winter and summer a cold breakfast lowers your body temperature and Weakens you start your day with a bowl of hot Ralston breakfast food and see how much better you feel Ralston Purina where purity is paramount All This success book after book a whole community in New Jersey a line of breakfast cereals Manufactured by a leading company so on board that it changed its name So what happened to Webster Edgerly and Ralston ism and Ralston Purina?

The Ralstonite utopia in Hopewell, New Jersey never quite took off the land was rich and fertile and you sure couldn't beat the location But that part of the Garden State has always been pricey and of the 400 proposed lots only 25 sold with few job opportunities and reasonable distance only the most affluent Ralstonites could commit and Then there was the problem of drinking water Edgerly put a large water tank on his own property to supply the entire area But for whatever reason cracks developed in the tank allowing contaminants to foul the water That appears to have been the last straw for the people of Hopewell With his neighbors firmly against him Edgerly moved his family to Trenton and died just two years later on Friday November 5th 1926 he was 74 years old There was virtually no mention made of Ralston ism and any of the coverage of his death Instead he was described as an expert in the control of the will as a man who'd made Millions in the educational field and the author of more than 60 books of a semi philosophical and scientific nature weirdly not a peep about the rabid racism and Insane eugenics and the bewildering made-up language. He called Adam man tongue Ralston Purina though kept chugging along kicking off international sales in 1957 40 years later the company sold their cereal business to General Mills by that point no one much knew or Remembered or even cared that Wheat Chex started off as shred at Ralston a people chow Inspired by a peculiar and mostly forgotten social movement advocating the most appalling racism the yellow race are seeping in very Rapidly despite efforts to keep them out. There's an example tramps Idlers loafers and the whole slum crowd should be deported There's another example one that sounds you know ripped from today's headlines in 2001 Nestle scooped up Ralston Purina for 10.3 billion dollars the company celebrated by taking on a new name Nestle Purina pet care company and with that new name came a little case of corporate amnesia radical eugenics racist guy obsessed with human magnetism When it comes to their company history Nestle Purina pet care appears to have adopted the strategy new phone who dis If you dig you might find a vague reference to a dr. Ralston one of Edgerley's many pseudonyms But that's all you'll find And that's as it should be Edgerley wasn't just a kooky eccentric who wanted his followers forever bouncing on the balls of their feet and Practicing the new consonants of adamant on He believed that non Caucasian men should be gathered up and castrate it that the non Caucasian people of this world were best eliminated entirely No amount of flowery language or silly Exercises or steaming bowls of hot cereal can cover up the rancid truth of the man He's long dead now as is his admirer and one-time partner William Danforth Who not only agreed wholeheartedly with Edgerley's revolting beliefs, but who made his first fortune Shoveling pellets of green molasses and salt into farm animals and household pets No wonder Purina keeps their distance Even as the company keeps that red and white checkerboard and its logo even today

And now you know what that checkerboard once represented life is full of hope and Expectation but few plans are ever realized We think out our way for years ahead and die in the same old tracks But the thinking ahead carries hope Edgerley wasn't wrong about that Thinking ahead does carry hope people always hope for better. We hope to be better sure, we have to learn the same terrible lessons over and over and over and over and over and over but we do make our own slow progress and eventually with time and often bloodshed a man like Edgerley Ralstonism is the grandest movement that man is capable of establishing winds up forgotten his followers melt into the background oddly quiet and Suddenly hesitant to own up to what they want so proudly and so loudly proclaimed Maybe they felt silly about all the hours spent balancing on the balls of their feet and chanting made-up words Maybe they were ashamed by how easily and gleefully they bought into an idea of their own superiority and by how easily and Gleefully they agreed that their neighbors were a poison Corrupting the glory that was their birthright Whatever may be the immediate verdict of mankind. I am sure that my principles will be ultimately accepted and Unreservedly believed by all the intelligent world I'm sorry Who are you?

Next time on true weird stuff It's fair season Grab a corndog take a spin on the Tilt-A-Whirl Try your hand at winning a giant stuffed bluey on the midway and then head on over to the livestock pavilion prize hogs and blue ribbon cattle goats and chickens and meat rabbits Now there was a time when another kind of animal competed at the fair the human animal Breeding better babies at the State Fair That's on the next true weird stuff Special thanks to our voice talents on this episode Don Morgan who this guy What have you got me into Sherry?

Lord have mercy and Erin Cox Well, this is fun. We don't usually have a friend come over to play for our episode post-mortem But Brenna Ralston who inspired this episode is with us right now. Hey Brenna Hey, Sherry. Hey, Max. Hey So is it um, is it a giant relief to you that you're a good last name Ralston? It's not really Biologically or in any way related to this crazy eugenic nutjob Because he just made it up and it happens to be your last name Did that come as a relief when you went down that rabbit hole?

Yes, because my grandmother actually did a lot of Genealogy stuff when I was a kid and she continually hit a wall on my granddad His family was from Scotland and she could sort of trace them back to East Tennessee and then to Scotland But she would hit a wall and then that was it. So I was like, maybe this is related when I saw it But so yes, I was very relieved that this was not the answer that this guy I mean this is a person who the amount of pages that he wrote and and I after getting your email Brenna, I went looking for Webster Edgerly and I found his books and I Have to say like I'm he deserves a prize For being able to put so many words on so many pages these books are Insane there were sections of his books where I would have to read the same page four times To try to figure out. I'm sorry. What in the What in the hellacious heck is this man trying to convey with this?

He was and I mean this in the in the most clinical kind of way. He was not and Incredibly prolific. It's almost max like you and I have maybe met people like this Whose brains never turn off and they just vomited all onto the page but somehow this man persuaded nearly a million people to follow him and the one thing I can say about that is this at the time that Webster Edgerly was advocating for the castration of non-caucasian men and the elimination of all non-caucasian peoples and the deportation of anyone that he deemed shiftless a lot of people believe that eugenics was really a huge huge mainstream thing in the United States Prior to World War two when the Nazis took the shine off of it So when you when you think about what Webster Edgerly was preaching and Then you remember that he was preaching it at a time when people were like, yeah I mean that kind of makes sense It really makes it all the worst doesn't it that he's not just some looney tune yelling at clouds But that he was really articulating thoughts that big swaths of the population Kind of had it does make you wonder whether it was the health part of his message or the Eugenics racism part of his message, which was the greatest attraction. Oh That's a good question And jump in at any time Brenna because I know that you had to like shove your eyeballs back into your head after you found this man, too Yeah, I think it's kind of Sad that they took the really groundbreaking work of Charles Darwin, which I think started a lot of that and and turned it into To this and like you said this was Incredibly common at the time So I think to Max's point it really could have been either one. Unfortunately When I think about the number of stories that we've told on this podcast Where eugenics is a feature to remember the Pine Barrens episodes max?

I mean that was me eugenics are everywhere Eugenics show up in next week's episode when we take you to the livestock pavilion at the State Fair to Let's see how many of these human babies we can get a prize for I mean as a as a species were just like insane but at the time it was mainstream and The simple truth of it is is that it never went away it just kind of went underground after the revelations of the Third Reich and the Nazi Holocaust as American GIs liberated death camps and The full magnitude of what had been done Was revealed Because the Nazis were the you know the Mac Daddy Eugenicists right when all of that was revealed all the folks on this side of the ocean who were Believers in it were like oh shit, and it went quiet it went underground But it never went away So like Brenna when I read your email, I was like yeah, wait a minute I remember it was Ralston Purina for almost my whole life and now Now it's not and my our dog eats Purina ProPlan and one of our cats eats Purina ProPlan So we're Purina ProPlan people and that checkerboard on the bag I never gave it a minute's thought I was like oh, it signals wholesome home cooking or something I don't know what I thought, but the truth is is that the Ralston Purina Checkerboard was part of William Danforth the founder of Purina's part of his own like Philosophy and he had an incredibly popular Best-selling self-help book that he wrote called I dare you that we mentioned in the episode that you can still find in different places That checkerboard was the four you know things in life that had to be in balance So the original people chow That Purina made under William Danforth under the Ralston Purina banner was called shredded Ralston But all it was was Wheat Chex They shredded the wheat and they formed it into the iconic checkerboard that William Danforth was so obsessed with And they didn't change the name until the late 1950s So Wheat Chex Rice Chex Chex Mix all of that is related to that Purina checkerboard, which is one of the few things that survived the merger they lost the Ralston name and they became Nestle Purina, and they also lost any acknowledgement of the History of the original Ralston Purina company if you if you do some searching online You can find little nuggets that redirect you to Purina's corporate Websites But Purina has scrubbed any mention of Ralstonism or Webster Edgeley I mean they just went in and did a deep dive and removed all of it because it's not helpful Especially now with the internet when you get somebody that's like oh Hey, wait a minute as a company you used to advocate this and then boom it can go viral and trigger a boycott and all Drama so Purina scrubbed any mention of Ralston from its own corporate mythology and to be fair the Purina that exists today You know is not the Ralston Purina You know of the eugenics movement of it of this period that this story is set in to be fair What was When you were looking sorry go ahead. I was gonna ask What was it that when you started to look at this?

What was the most surprising thing that you came across with that that made you say? I really need to dig deeper here Well my whole life People would say when I tell them our last name. It's oh are you related to Ralston Purina, and I'm like well We're not poor, but you know I think we wouldn't be in the financial situation We are if we were but um I don't know I just googled it, and I actually googled Ralston University Press which was on the side of the book So I was like I have never heard of this and I have two graduate degrees my father worked in Higher Ed his whole career. He's retired now, but he was you know At the time he retired he was a provost we moved around a lot, so I'm familiar with a lot of Most I would say Colleges and universities, and I was like I've never heard of this and for something to have my last name on that is so strange So that's what I actually googled first was Ralston University Press And it took me to the Ralston ism movement, and I don't know if you just a cursory glance at the Wikipedia page is One of the most insane things I've ever read And it just lists things so Casually you know it talks about all of his aliases, and then it talks about how he had books on everything from elocution and and Ventriloquism and I was like who is this guy so I then I clicked him and I just started googling it and then I found about the the comm you and then I was like this is this is a Rabbit hole, and that's what I thought of y'all because I was like this is I Thought Sherry could do it more justice research wise than I had time to to do I Was um I was astonished by what I found and we we owe any knowledge that we have this is how deeply Ralston ism got shoved aside a memory hold a graduate student who went to the Ralston Manor his old 27,000 square foot Victorian mansion in Hopewell, New Jersey it still stands and a graduate student went working on a research project and it was that students work that sort of like unearthed this idea of Ralston ism and the Ralstonites and that now that you know the how there a lot of this stuff has been archived and you know that We're talking about this in part because one curious person went wait a minute what the heck is this and You can see how successful and I don't mean this in a sinister like crazy tinfoil hat way You can really see how successful Purina was and shutting this ish down because when the when Nestle bought Purina it was before the internet it was right before the internet So a good time to scrub your history would be before it gets online, right?

Yeah, she I think her name was Janet six the one who she's like the only person I think who's ever done any Concrete legitimate research on this and she has I think said she wants to write a book but hasn't done it yet But yeah Purina claims it was some guy I guess she Janet six had mentioned in a podcast or something that I listened to that when she contacted them they Legitimately seemed to not know what she was talking about and they said oh, no, it's this man named. Dr Everett Ralston and she was like No, it wasn't So they it may be that the people working there now legitimately do not have Any idea that this is, you know part of the origin of of their company. I Think that you're right about that And that's why I say to be fair the the Purina that we are feeding our pets today Is this is not the same company as the Purina of this story Even when you go Looking like I was able to find all sorts of kooky stuff about Ralston But by the time he by the time he got discovered by William Danforth the founder of Purina you know Purina was already a very successful livestock feed company and Yeah by the time William Danforth found Webster Edgerly Danforth was eyeing the incredibly lucrative breakfast foods market and Edgerly had this you know Danforth was a believer in what Edgerly was preaching and Edgerly had this sort of built-in customer base for this future breakfast food that Purina would put out But it's a sign of how much of a follower William Danforth was That he gave he gave the company the name Ralston Purina not even Purina Ralston Brenna like he put Ralston first in the mix. That's an accolade right there and I have to say setting aside all of the unfreaking believable racism capital R racism Do you have any idea how much money they made on breakfast cereal on people food products Crazy money. Yeah, and I don't know about you guys, but when I was a kid sitting at the breakfast table It seemed funny to me that the the logo on the cereal box Was the same as the logo on the bag of dog chow that my father fed the beagles. I Just sort of accepted it. I just went. Oh there it is and it is so iconic I I think the weirdest thing that I'm seeing on the Wikipedia page is They suggest that every young man should engage in a form of probationary Marriage with a woman old enough to be his grandmother What yeah, I put that in and then took it out because it leads you down this tangent of what is it with these freaking cult leaders and their horror of Which by the way, I don't think he even did he married I Read something about him. He was married to someone age-appropriate for him Early on and I don't know if you put this in the episode But he was he thought she was cheating on him. So he organized like a sting operation Yeah, I'd uh to catch her and then he was I think run out of I don't know what Massachusetts Maybe or Kansas. He was run out of town and then he married at 42 someone who was 18 So where this and this was his you know, the little health club So where this idea that you should marry someone as old as your grandmother came from I don't know because he didn't he didn't do

That you know, you know how these guys are. It's fine for thee but not for me, right? Yes in what universe are any of us surprised that in that somebody's grandpa wants an 18 year old bride Talk about ripped from the headlines, right? So there's nothing nothing strange about that What it's just amazing to me having read the man's I haven't read all of the man's books I'm sorry, you you've struggled to you couldn't You couldn't And they're insane, I think you would go insane before you accomplish that there's like 80 of them and they're wrong They're not they're so long Yeah, the one that I saw at the bookstore was a couple inches thick. So They're not I they're not novellas I would try I would read a page and my brain would go that didn't make any sense And so then I would stand up and read that same page out loud thinking well, maybe Maybe I'm just distracted and it wouldn't make any sense I'd read it a sentence at a time and it wouldn't make any sense. And then I realized it's because it doesn't make any sense Sherry this is the guy you get stuck with at the party and Sure, then you'll shoot the look How The whole thing about gleam and the gleam stick Where that's crazy So gleam Brenna is your body's natural?

Electricity vitality life force like he had all these different ways of talking about it Everyone has gleam gl a me gleam and you would you would work on Amplifying your gleam like you would train your gleam like I'm like a muscle, you know Make your gleam stronger by working with a gleam stick So this would be like part of a broom handle right max. This is part of a broom handle, right? And the thing is You would shake your hands to shake your hand right now. So it's really relaxed right get those fingers all good and limp and Then reach for your gleam stick if your hands can grasp the stick You're not doing it, right?

So then you guys shake your hand again The goal here as best I can understand it is to not be able to hold a stick. I Have to wonder you know when I was reading all this I don't know if you read the part about the marble and how you're supposed to Pick a marble up and put it down without ever moving the marble in a graceful arc on the balls of your feet Walk on the balls of your feet and you're not supposed to do any sudden and starts and stops with things like this I'm like how much of this did he personally honestly believe like was he crazy or was he like a huckster?

Because the books sold for I think I wrote down they cost $25 at that time which you know in today's money is over $700 so I wonder if people are like wow get it. I need the next book You know, maybe I'll get it if I get the next book well, I you know, I just wonder I mean She just like tackling to himself while he's writing all of this or does he really?

He's got to and he just and because and because he has to keep on selling books He has to keep them coming up with more harebrained crap But what is it? What is it about us that there were so many takers? because he the truth is He sold those books and People believed in this and now he wasn't successful in creating a Ralstonite utopia in New Jersey But mostly because he picked a really expensive part of New Jersey He might have had a little bit of luck if he if he settled his utopia Yeah, doesn't he remind you work for the people? Yeah a little of the guy who was who had that place in Zizek's Yes, so the thing that's and I can't remember the name of the episode, I'm sorry Shoot. Anyhow, it was an episode of true weird stuff. I'll go look for it while we're doing this But anyhow, he had the same sort of thing. There's a certain Plausibility to what they say about you know, you should exercise well who can you know?

Yeah, I can get behind that you should eat right? Yeah, you can get behind that and there's certain things that they say that are very obvious but some people act like Wow, that's profound and then they're hooked in and then the other stuff is all piled on and once they're hooked in they'll believe all of it and He he really did he really did a pretty good job of There was so much because Bernie you've read some of his writing it's so incredibly Insane it's so complex and wordy That by the time you get to the end of the page, you no longer know what's real or what you believe or anything You're like, well, I'm so what's it? What am I even looking at? He did a really good job of hooking people in and Keeping them hooked in and you know, everything is of its time so at the time that William Danforth launched people chow with the Purina company. This was at a time when There was a real wellness craze in this country that was driven by believe it or not breakfast cereal like Kellogg Kellogg he wasn't making cereal so that she could have a good day at school He was trying to destroy like the libido like he had all this wacky Stuff going on in his head. It was it was quasi religious. It was quasi medical Grahamcrackers were originally invented to keep people from being horny like absolute nuttery that somehow weirdly centered around the breakfast table and so you can see how Webster Edgerly just slot it in at this exact perfect moment in history With let's eat this special food and bounce on the balls of our feet It at the time it didn't seem all that weird. I guess He had a lot of company the episode. I'm referring to is the king of quacks and the guys Curtis Yes, Curtis house Springer But there's a there's a real similarity between the two of them and they both had people that followed them with this really obvious Kind of obvious advice There's some telling you guys there's something in the American psyche that leaves us so vulnerable to this We have a long line of people like this taking our money and our trust and For the most part, you know, they've been fringy show business religion We've had only a handful of big mainstream kind of movements Ralston ism did not make the mainstream Look how quickly it was forgotten But you know, you look at like Jonestown, right?

It's gonna make people so mad but am way Lou what were those multi? Multilevel marketing leggings Lulu Leroux. I mean we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we we Lulu lemon or Lou, you know, I thought they were ugly, but you know, that's me It's teach their own a lot of the road. That's right. Lulu. Oh, yeah a lot of people got taken in by that messaging and They lost everything Which is kind of like a running theme People people are searching. There's an emptiness. There's a hole that looks to be filled these gurus Come in they fill that hole or they seem to but then they leave you Empty and broken and if and maybe alive in The cult guru world alive is no guarantee. Look at Heaven's Gate. Look at Jonestown Look at Manson family. Look at the branch Davidians. Look at all of these movements Invariably somebody pays but this guy This guy dodged every bullet Brenna None of his obituaries made any mention of any of this none. It was almost like the same Isn't that interesting? It was almost like by the time he kicked it People were like God he was really racist and nuts Maybe leave that including evidently his own family because they would have written the obituaries right at least. Yeah Yeah, I mean if it's his kids, I think he had two daughters. I think if they had wanted to carry this forth We would have heard about it. I You know with eight hundred thousand followers and one of them rumored to be the Queen of England I don't know how much veracity there is to that claim, but That fact is floating out there that she was a fallen she was a lost Ice I Couldn't I couldn't back that up either but it's definitely one of the claims that's made the amount of time I spent with Adam Manton I'm gonna give Webster edgerly I'm gonna give him a lot of credit But if that is a terrible name for your made-up language, this is not Adam Manton It sounds like it sounds like a product It's Prince like a product that they used to sell in the in the back pages of cosmopolitan magazine It's the battery-operated Adam Manton for endless pleasure This and it sounds just like a worse version of English Complicated a more complicated version. Yeah. Yeah infinitely worse and so I get the book I download the book on Adam Manton and I'm trying to he adds all these letters to the alphabet and he he takes like cool shots at certain existing letters You know and all these different ways to say like the vowels. So I'm literally in my house going There is no way as bad as English is as complicated as hard as it is to learn Adam Manton is Unspeakably worse if it made no sense, it's not did it make any sense at all. Could you make any sense of it?

Sherry, thank you for not writing a part where you'd make me say those things. That's all I can say. Thank you for that Unsayable Yeah, I don't think you actually can I don't look even the dogs agree I'm not and and here's the thing about Webster edgerly. He himself did not appear to speak Adam Manton, it's not ethical to diagnose people at a distance, but I found myself so many times stopping in the middle and going okay, this guy is so clearly in the grip of Self-aggrandizing delusion. Is this a narcissistic personality disorder?

The way that he writes the volume of pages is he is he manic? You know, does he go through these periods of mania where he doesn't sleep for three days and he's just I'm making up my own language now the which had me thinking does he have like a mood disorder like does he have bipolar one where he's got these periods of intense mania that he just flows this stuff onto the page, but I couldn't find I Couldn't find anything that signaled the other side of that which would be the the depression All I could find was this cheerful racist son-of-a-bitch who wanted to kill and castrate people Who weren't white?

happily making up his own language and Trying to invent his own food in his own town So sometimes we we very often look at people that are doing nutty things and we go well They must be crazy But what if they're not crazy? What if they're just not good people? I Think he could potentially be not a good person and also on cocaine You know something that Janet six had mentioned in the podcast I was listening to with her is that he had This extra room built off the side of his house because he would type all his crazy stuff at night And on it was a typewriter back then and it would keep his wife up so if you're typing 82 books Manically or on cocaine. I mean I get the image of that like Kermit the Frog meme on the On the ship writer. I don't know the one I'm talking about, but that's kind of hanging away I'm writing through the night keeping his wife up With his craziness Well, that's why my first thought was does he is he manic?

Because when you read when you read what he actually wrote it feels like it feels like this crazy Manic stream of consciousness vomit it directly onto the page it does So maybe yeah, you know what I are need of an editor Maybe needed an editor Yeah, maybe cocaine is what we have going on there and the fact that he So his books aren't really in print But they're still available because Brenna stumbled across one in a bookstore. Do you remember what they were charging for it?

Um, I don't but it was more than I was willing to pay because it was it was crazy I was at an ant like I was at black swan books in Richmond I think it was probably like I think it's probably 25 30 bucks But I was like, I'm not I can't remember which book it was I think I said it in the email, but uh, it was nuts I sat there and read five or ten pages and like you said I was like I have no idea what this guy is talking about. But this does not seem like something that a university press would put their their stamp of approval on He invented Raulston University just like he invented Raulston ism just like he invented Ralstonia in New Jersey Just like he was talking about mind control. It was talking about how if you gained Perfect health that you could at some level The more books you would buy I guess that you could at some point attain mind control and Immortality and I was like this what is this?

Them some big promises to our Immortality He sold something called the 200-year club or something where if you bought special water from him Oh This was him being a huckster and how much did he actually like I feel like it's a blend Yeah, I think what you know what? You don't know. You don't know at what point he started believing his own bullshit because don't you get the feeling that it started off as one thing and Then it became a grift. There's no question about it. The guy was making money in every direction but by the end if It felt to me as I read his later work like oh, no, he really does think One of the only pictures you can find of him He's actually dressed as Christopher Columbus and when I did more digging on that It was a costume from a play he had done and in this play And I don't know if you talked about this or if you were able to find it He wrote directed and acted in the play about Christopher Columbus But the one of the reviews of the play by just like a regular theater critic mentioned that the entire play He was walking on the balls of his feet and the critic was like what is wrong with this guy?

So if he didn't believe it, I don't think he would do that publicly the the balls of the feet thing and I had to leave though I had to leave so much out of this episode because You know, we were pushing toward the Purina Ralston unholy have merger because I mean I'm guessing that Probably if you have a pet Right now and you're listening maybe half of the people with a pet right now listening or Purina or Purina Pro plan customers So like this is in your kitchen like this you are pouring into the bowl this little bit of history I think he did believe that that stuff about the balls of your feet and I can't make that make any sense for anyone In any way, I want you to imagine spending an hour bopping around on the balls of your feet Ross tonight's believed that that was the only way to walk. So I guess you could see them coming You would know what you were dealing with Tonight's, you know Our father balls of the feet Makes you question Barbie a little bit on her tiptoes no matter what I Loved I do. I love Rice Chex now. I want to have some now we talk about it. I've got it. I'm sorry While we're talking about Rice Chex Didn't you believe that didn't you love that when Quaker Oats first turned rice into puffed rice How excited everybody was by that It's the cereal shot out of a gun You know, there's a whole episode to be done on the Road to book called The road to Wellville and it became a movie. Do you know that what I'm talking about max? They made a movie I can't remember who's in it, but it's about Kellogg and this weird Coltie Wellness fixation, which is another thing. It's another Vein that runs through the history of America and American life every Generation has its own Freaking weird wellness thing going on We're in the middle of it of one right now in the 90s It was the fat-free thing nothing tastes as good as being skinny Remember now we're in this whole weird and got social media hit this whole weird wellness grift Breakfast cereals were part of that. This guy is part of that. Here's the cast of that movie Sherry Anthony Hopkins Bridget Fonda Matthew Broderick John Cusack and Dana Carvey It was um, I don't remember how it was received. It was a terrific book I don't remember how the movie was received, but it's all but there's something so weird about us as a nation as a culture that Everything has its roots and something jacked up and Coltie like this 39% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Yeah, they call it mixed reviews, which is never good Yeah, it was a good book though. If you wanted to if you wanted to learn more about that, we'll do you know I'll make a note. We'll do an episode about the weird Coltie aspects of what you eat for breakfast Which on a big part of that story is the Ralston ism. That's where Wheat Chex comes from That's where Chex Mix comes from Shred at Ralston became Wheat Chex that was their new name. Yeah but prior to getting that new name shred at Ralston was being marketed to people as the ultimate food for boosting your natural electricity and magnetism Provided you ate it while bouncing off the balls of your feet

Yeah So we're gonna stay in eugenics a little bit for next week's episode Because it's fair season and a lot of parts of the country if you're listening to this episode when it was dropped Which is in the end of July 2025 We're heading into state fair season all around America and who doesn't love the state fair tractor pulls Cotton candy Ferris wheels the livestock exhibitions little 4-h kids Leading their goats and cows into the pens Not all that long ago right around the same time that my man here was trying to persuade people To not be able to hold on to a stick Right around that same time yes Yeah human beings were competing at state fairs For the best Human being prize it was eugenics at the fair people were opening their mouths and having their teeth examined People were having the distance between their eyes measured and we were awarding prizes to the best Human livestock How's that for a good day at the fair?

And that's gonna be on the next episode of true weird stuff Brenna Ralston We are so happy for you and everyone related to you that you're not really related to this guy And thank you for inspiring this week's episode. Thank you for listening to the podcast too. We really yeah And for joining us to everyone and thank you for having me on We're so excited and y'all if um if you're concerned that you may be in some way related to a real kook Drop us a line Brenna thank you for we know you're a school teacher and this was um Precious time that you gave us to be on today's episode of true word stuff. We appreciate that we hope you have a great year in the classroom and For all of you that are listening, we'll see you next week for Blue ribbon human livestock right here on true weird stuff And if you listen to us on Apple podcast hit the plus button in the top right corner And now it helps an independent podcast like ours to get discovered and we really appreciate it If you subscribe rate and review true weird stuff hit our website true weird stuff For show notes and photos and videos when we have it and bonus content Everything true weird is waiting for you at true weird stuff Calm and follow true weird stuff on Instagram true weird stuff is in Now! Media production Our executive producer is Anthony Garcia The show is written and hosted by me Sheri Lynch along with my deeply weird director max Our equally odd producer is Kary Bowser Additional production by the mysterious Stephen Call our digital witch and social media cult leader is Heather Furr original graphics by Kevin Nash original artworks by Olivia Axland true weird original music composed and performed by Jack Griffin and Zane Nash copyright 2025 Now! Media all rights reserved all wrongs remembered You