Poisonous Poo: The Dirty Secret of Lewis & Clark

Hey true weirdos, thank you so much for listening because of your support we have picked up some more awards in this past year including three w3 awards a gold for writing one for History episode and also best in show for the episode the living corpse We also picked up a silver signal award for best Independent podcast and be sure to subscribe rate and review on whatever platform you listen to us Helps in discovery and tell a friend if you like it and thanks again for your support Protein it's everywhere you turn now protein bars and shakes, of course But also protein pancakes protein pop-tarts protein cereal protein coffee protein tortilla chips protein pretzels protein trail mix protein cottage cheese Protein gummy candies social media is choked with fitness influencers preaching the benefits of a Protein heavy diet. How's it going guys?

My name is Richie Kerwin and today we're going to talk about all the ways you can increase the amount of protein in your diet There are plenty of reasons to try and get more protein in the diet Helps us build muscle it helps us to maintain muscle when we lose weight And it's good for helping us to stay feeling fuller for longer Which is always good news if you're trying to do something nutritionist Richie Kerwin is right Protein is critical to human health, but you know us humans if something's good. We want it. We want a lot of it That's how we arrived at this trend protein maxing It's a pretty basic strategy simple to understand you focus on maximizing your dietary protein intake You can do that by stacking meals meaning adding extra eggs or cheese or meat to a meal By eating protein fortified foods things like protein pasta and by adding high-protein snacks between meals The goal is muscle a boost at metabolism weight loss The reality though is a little less magical a lot less magical in some cases Protein maxing might seem like something new, but it's not the original protein bros discovered this nearly 222 years ago a couple of guys you might sort of kind of know Meriwether Lewis and William Clark they protein max their way across what is now the continental United States and Like so many of today's protein maxers. They suffered from wicked bad constipation So bad that they turned to a laxative laced with poison Never dreaming that they were leaving a trail of poison poo for us the people of the future to follow If You excelled in middle school social studies This is the moment when your knowledge of the Louisiana purchase is about to come in clutch The year was 1804 and President Thomas Jefferson was very pleased with his young country's latest acquisition 828 thousand square miles of land Stretching from just north of today's border between Montana and Canada all the way down to the Gulf of Mexico At about 18 bucks per square mile It was a deal one that US government was happy to take handing over 15 million dollars to France The irony of course was that while France claimed ownership of the territory its inhabitants Native Americans were neither considered nor consulted What Jefferson was focused on was gaining control of the Mississippi River port at New Orleans the fact that the Louisiana purchase basically doubled the size of the country and I was just the cherry on top and It was wild country Unmapped uncharted largely unknown to any but the indigenous tribes who called it home for centuries President Jefferson had been itching since the 1780s To explore the North American continent He was fascinated by the account of a Scotsman named Alexander Mackenzie who journeyed across Canada to the Pacific Ocean Jefferson wanted an expedition of his own He wanted to lay claim to the Pacific Northwest and quickly before some other European power beat him to it in 1803 Jefferson commissioned a special unit to be formed within the United States Army. They called it the Corps of Discovery Which would lay claim to the coolest name of any unit in the American military until December 2019 when Space Force was announced

The Corps of Discovery would be led by Jefferson's own personal secretary Army Captain Meriwether Lewis and Lewis chose as his partner Lieutenant William Clark Neither man had much in the way of formal education Lewis was sent to Virginia to be privately tutored at 13 years old Clark was tutored at home That was typical for the times both men were avid hunters and outdoorsmen both became militia men Lewis first joined the Virginia Militia and then the United States Army Clark first joined a volunteer militia in the Ohio River Valley and then was commissioned as a captain in the Clarksville, Indiana Militia at just 21 years old Clark enlisted in the Legion of the United States and served as a lieutenant He played a significant role in the ending of the Northwest Indian War and on July 4th 1996 in poor health he retired He was just 26 years old. He returned to his family's plantation in Kentucky when his father died three years later Clark settled into the life of a prosperous planter with no idea that fate had bigger plans for him meanwhile Meriwether Lewis invited the now 33 year old retired William Clark to join him in the newly formed Corps of Discovery He's known intrepidity and habits of perseverance in the execution of his determinations pointed out Captain Lewis as the fittest person to head the expedition and what an expedition it was the very first Transcontinental expedition to the Pacific Coast by the United States It was all a vast unknown a mystery and there were many who believed that it was pure folly There were senators who argued that Thomas Jefferson was sending the 33 members of the Corps of Discovery to their certain death on January 18th 1803 Thomas Jefferson sent a secret message to Congress asking for a small appropriation of just $2,500 to fund the mission gentlemen of the Senate and the House of Representatives The thing is Jefferson had an agenda The expedition was proposed in the name of commerce new trade routes and partners but what Jefferson really craved was expansion the interests of commerce placed the principal object within the constitutional powers and care of Congress and That it should incidentally advance the geographic knowledge of our own continent Cannot be but an additional gratification Jefferson had long believed that the United States should stretch from sea to sea across the entire continent this 8,000 mile expedition would give Jefferson and the US government Their first peek at the enormous territory that was the Louisiana Purchase the Indian tribes residing within the limits of the United States have for a Considerable time been growing more and more uneasy at the constant diminution of the territory They occupy although affected by their own voluntary sales and the policy has long been gaining strength with them of refusing absolutely all further sale on any conditions in so much that at this time it hazards their friendship and excites dangerous jealousies and Perturbations in their minds to make any overture for the purchase of the smallest portions of their land Jefferson had some ideas about how to best separate the native population from their lands

First to encourage them to abandon hunting to apply to the raising stock to agriculture and domestic Manufacturer and thereby prove to themselves that less land and labor will maintain them in this Better than in their former mode of living the extensive forests necessary in hunting life will then become useless and they will see advantage in exchanging them for the means of improving their farms and Increasing their domestic comforts once that was accomplished Secondly to multiply trading houses among them and place within their reach those things which will contribute more to their domestic comfort than the possession of extensive but uncultivated wilds Jefferson firmly believed that these actions were in the best interest of the indigenous people and as an added benefit We consequently undersell private traders foreign and domestic Drive them from the competition and thus with the goodwill of the Indians Rid ourselves of a description of men who are constantly endeavoring to excite in the Indian mind suspicions fears and irritations Towards us win-win-win Everybody plus Captain Lewis and Lieutenant Clark would have an adventure worth ten lifetimes The funding though $2,500 even in 1804 it wasn't enough not even close to covering the cost the actual cost of the expedition At least the wages for the members of the expedition were paid by the US Army Five dollars per month for a private eight dollars per month for a sergeant eighty dollars per month for Lewis and Clark unfortunately, there was no doctor assigned to the Corps and no money allocated to pay for one a Portion of the total budget was spent on medicines and amount totaling $55 keep in mind that the 33 members of the Corps of Discovery Were heading into an uncharted wilderness on a journey that was expected to take two years to complete their arms and accoutrements some instruments of Observation and light and cheap presence for the Indians would be all the apparatus They could carry the one thing Jefferson made sure the Corps had plenty of was ink and paper to document every discovery, however small Lewis and Clark knew they would need help in communicating with the tribes They would encounter and her trapper Toussaint Charbonneau and his pregnant wife Sacagawea a lot of us grew up pronouncing her name as Sacagawea and some of us have like an uncle Dave who's Rationally pissed off at the change as if he wouldn't object to being called uncle Dave But hello, she was Shoshone and that's how she pronounced her own name. So like why is that an attack on you uncle Dave?

Anyway, it was winter 1804 and the expedition had taken shelter in a fort They constructed about 12 miles or so outside. What is now Washburn, North Dakota there in February 1805 Sacagawea gave birth to a son named Jean Baptiste That we baby wasn't even six months old when the expedition set out in May 1805 Lieutenant Clark the US Secretary of War declined to promote him to captain took on the responsibility of map making He also led the hunting parties that kept the group fed though. His schooling had been limited He was a great reader you can see that in the journals he kept of the expedition He had a huge vocabulary but struggled with spelling something He was self-conscious about so much so that he insisted his journals be corrected before being published Captain Lewis treated lieutenant Clark as his equal in command regardless of rank Lewis served as the group scientist Documenting the particulars of geography the various flora and fauna and the cultures and ways of the Native American tribes the core Encountered he collected specimens to be shipped east Minerals plants and animals and the core of discovery was a surprisingly diverse little group Four sergeants and 23 privates made up the military contingents There were seven civilians including Toussaint Sacagawea the infant Jean Baptiste and an enslaved man named York who was owned by lieutenant Clark That's a hard thing to write much less to say and there was a dog Seaman belonging to Captain Lewis and spelled like the sailor not the bodily fluid. Can you all just behave?

How do you even begin to explore and map all of that wild unknown land? And how do we even know what route the core of discovery took? We have the maps drawn by Lewis and the journals detailing and describing But they left something else too Something they would never ever have imagined would linger for more than 200 years They left Well, we could try to dress it up and make it scientific sounding but let's just rip off the band-aid Lewis and Clark left a trail of poison-laced poop for the archaeologists of the future to find from Richard L Neuberger's 1951 book the Lewis and Clark expedition few other parties have ever been so completely on their own All their rations had cost only $224 these included soup stock flour tea cornmeal and salt and pepper The rest of their food would have to result from the steady aim of the hunters and the sure skill of the fishermen Which meant a diet heavy in animal protein?

so much animal protein Protein maxing out there in the wilderness day after day month after month for more than two years Constipation was a chronic challenge for the core of discovery something that had been anticipated and even planned for The expedition may not have been able to bring along a physician But they had a large supply of dr. Rush's bilious pills a laxative so potent that it earned the nickname under clapper So This dr. Rush not a make-believe character created to sell snake oil not a crackpot quack Dr. Rush was dr. Benjamin Rush founding father signer of the Declaration of Independence social reformer humanitarian educator and the founder of Dickinson College he served in the Continental Congress He fought against slavery fought for free public schools and worked to reform the colonial penal system He had an enormous impact on medicine Which was in the early days of becoming a profession his study of mental illness was light years ahead of its time making Benjamin Rush Essentially the founder of American psychiatry The man even wrote and published the very first chemistry textbook in America Dr. Rush firmly believed that all illness could be traced to the body's physical systems being out of balance Which was caused by a malfunctioning brain given Russia's reputation and prominence It only made sense for President Jefferson to send Captain Lewis to Philadelphia for a bit of pre-expedition Tutoring in the art of frontier first aid and a crash course and potential frontier illness and accident It was dr. Rush who put together the medical kit for Lewis and Clark He packed medicinal wine and Turkish opium laudanum a big container of Peruvian bark essence of peppermint and emetics to induce vomiting Rush was a good teacher and Lewis an attentive student because we know from the expedition journals that Lewis treated Snake bites with that Peruvian bark mixed with saltpeter and even healed up his own gunshot wound with the stuff Also in that medicine chest were 50 dozen of dr. Rush's bilious pills 50 dozen that's 600 pills and the not-so-secret ingredient that made them so effective each pill was 50% mercury Mercury is a poison That might come as news if you were allowed to play with it as a kid the old busted thermometer family fun time Plus for decades people applied mercurochrome or merthiolate to cuts and scrapes Just cheerfully pouring mercury into open wounds the burning sting and brightly stained skin was how you knew it worked What we didn't know for a long time was just how toxic mercury is in the ancient world people died from consuming mercury including the first Emperor of China It's almost like the ancients suspected mercury could kill them, but they swallowed it anyway Maybe they figured the possible cure was worth the deadly risk Listen, it took until 1956 and a deadly industrial accident in Japan to make it clear That mercury was bad news Wait, no Accident is the wrong word. It was a deadly industrial crime when the chris Oh corporation chemical factory dumped wastewater loaded with methyl mercury

directly into Minamata Bay that poisoning led to 36 years of disability and death for both affected humans and animals a crime a cover-up a scandal all So far off in the unimaginable future though for dr. Rush and captain Lewis and lieutenant Clark They were long tucked into their graves before it was truly understood that mercury based Medications were every bit as deadly as mercury vapors When Lewis Carroll's Alice's adventures in Wonderland was published in July 1865 It was understood that long-term exposure to mercury was a hazard Particularly in certain occupations like hat making Milliners used mercuric nitrate to help separate animal fur from its pelt in order to make felt for hats No one understood the importance of ventilation back then. So those poor hatters spent their days inhaling toxic fumes and mercury slowly and steadily accumulated in their bodies The symptoms of mercury poisoning can range from tremors and slurred speech to sudden changes and personality and hallucinations In other words given enough time It appeared that hat making drove a person completely mad as in the mad hatter Alice meets in Wonderland But none of this was known in dr. Rush's day He died in 1813 convinced that mercury made for good medicine And you can sure understand that just based on how swiftly his famous thunderclappers Blew the doors off even the most stubborn blocked up vowels now, here's one more thing about mercury It doesn't biodegrade It doesn't decompose. So as the Lewis and Clark expedition made its way west stopping at at least 600 different locations the camp latrines became Mercury catch pots That great philanthropist an eminent physician dr. Benjamin Rush Invented a universal remedy for diseases his infallible health pills for all Bilious complaints and as a purifier of the blood the world is challenged to produce its equal bill Yes, it's one of those great old-fashioned words that covers a whole stack of ailments in the olden days Anything from nausea to a bad mood to looking a bit sickly might be enough to earn you the diagnosis Bilious the meaning goes all the way back to ancient times when people believed that the body's health was governed by four humors blood phlegm black bile and yellow bile Basis of medicine for a couple thousand years Dr. Benjamin Rush was an intellectual Product of the Enlightenment he rejected the four humors theory in favor of his own the dangers of overstimulating the nervous system in the blood vessels His patients were free to be every bit as bilious as before but under dr. Rush's care. The difference was the cause Dr. Rush favored two types of treatment a good blood letting and a good purge Excess bile was the culprit causing most maladies and no better way to heal the patient than by Opening the veins or the bowels and letting that bile drain His bilious pills were hunk and big about four times the size of a modern aspirin. There were two active ingredients Powdered jollip root, which dr. Rush described as a safe purgative Performing its office mildly sodium occasioning nausea or gripes Jollip root was an official medication in the US until 1965 The other active ingredient was a little more problematic. It was called calomel physicians first began using calomel or mercurous chloride in the

1600s it was they decided a milder and safer Mercury compound calomel proved to be a profound intestinal irritant Calomel mercury chloride was a white tasteless powder in Small doses it was one heck of a laxative But when consumed over time and in larger quantities Calomel caused drooling sores in the mouth bleeding gums teeth falling out all signs of mercury poisoning to this Rush added the powdered jollip root and described the effect as Explosive calomel the star of dr. Rush's bilious pills his thunderclappers Was so well known so commonly used that the newly minted American citizens made up a little rhyme the doctor comes with good free will But ne'er forgets his calomel from lieutenant Clark's journal, June 11th 1805 after night it became cold and the wind blew hard The Indian woman Sacagawea was very sick. I Bled her which appeared to be of great service to her both rivers rising fast We can only wonder what Sacagawea made of this bloodletting Several men so unwell that they were compelled to lie on the side of the road for some time Others obliged to be put on horses I Gave a rushes pills to the sick this evening September 27th 1805 all the men able to work commenced building five canoes several taken sick at work Our hunters returned sick without meat Jay Coulter returned He found only one of the lost horses on his way killed a deer Half of which he gave the Indians the other proved nourishing for the sick Captain Lewis very sick Nearly all the men sick December 14th 1805 Last supply of elk has spoiled in the repeated rains Which been falling ever since our arrival at this place and for a long time before Scarce one man and camp can boast of being one day dry since we landed at this point the sick getting better My man York sick with colic and griping December 14th 1805 Ordway Gibson and my servant York sick several with vials on them and bruises of different kinds Much of our meat spoiled from the comfort of our climate-controlled homes Refrigerators humming away clean drinking water flowing from our caps Are we even able to imagine the hardships the core of discovery faced every hour of every day?

We tend to think about Lewis and Clark as these grand figures out of history Not as a group of people bushwhacking their way through a forbidding wilderness cold and wet crouched in the underbrush Shivering cramping weak and sick with explosive diarrhea Not understanding that they weren't purging their illness at all Not realizing how much of this suffering was self-inflicted trusting the only medicine they had to heal their bodies and Never knowing that medicine was a poison The core of discovery were the first non-native peoples to lay eyes on bighorn sheep mule deer pronghorns mountain beaver the black-tailed prairie dog They proved that neither the Colombian or the Missouri Rivers could be navigated to their source as had once been ferociously believed They discovered species of plants utterly new to science Clark's maps were the first ever created of the Western United States It's an insane accomplishment made more so by the fact that the expedition just Went in the terrain the elements the sheer unpredictability of it all It was 33 human bodies against every force of nature The fact that they succeeded at all is a miracle Made even more miraculous by the simple fact that they were slowly poisoning themselves and each other with dr. Rush's bilious pills Lolo, Montana 2002 Archaeologists have uncovered what they believe is the latrine used by the Lewis and Clark Corps of Discovery at their travelers rest Campsite almost 200 years ago It's plenty exciting all by itself to stand where the Corps of Discovery once stood Seeing what they once saw But what they found at travelers rest was proof Decisive proof Archaeologists first believed the site was a latrine because of its size and distance from the remnants of fire hearths fit military Guidelines for setting up camp which they believe the expedition followed Daniel Hall the historical archaeologist leading the research project Theorized that the latrine would contain traces of mercury from dr. Rush's thunderbolts a a Widely used cure-all at the time that the Corps carried it was there that lieutenant Clark Gazed upon the bitter root mountains of Montana and Idaho and wrote in the expedition journal Here I have been wet and cold in every part as I ever was in all my life Indeed I was one time fearful my feet would freeze in the thin moccasins Which I wore the Corps took time there to rest and mend their clothing and make repairs to their equipment Travelers rest was a place the Corps would visit twice once on the way to the Pacific and again on the way home And with the discovery of the latrine pits contaminated by mercury Travelers rest joined Pompey's Pillar near Billings, Montana as the second confirmed campsite for the Lewis and Clark expedition Lewis and Clark were not the first white men to cross the continent from the Atlantic to the Pacific north of Mexico Scottish fur trader Alexander Mackenzie crossed Canada a decade earlier Nor did they visit places not already seen and mapped by generations of native people You could even say that Lewis and Clark began the American expansion of the West Which aimed at making it safe for cows corn and capital at the expense of bison Prairie grasses and cultures not fitting the expansionist agenda

That's from a piece written by James P Ronda for the Smithsonian magazine It was a people. We love the story of Lewis and Clark America has always been a restless nation ever looking for more and bigger better We love to see ourselves as bold adventurers fearless in our dominion of the land We see ourselves as heroes on an epic journey And wasn't the Corps of Discovery exactly that?

Now look at the members of the Corps. It's about as diverse as you can get a real little patchwork community Consider York William Clark slave and fellow adventurer or Pierre Crescent the one-eyed fiddle player who was part French and part Omaha Indian There was German born private John Potts a Miller by trade and a soldier most likely by necessity Here is Saka Goya a Shoshone woman who spent formative years with the Hidatsu Indians and Jean Baptiste Charbonneau a child of mixed Shoshone French ancestry Imagine the sounds around the campfire William Clark's, Virginia, Kentucky drawl sergeant Ordway's, New Hampshire inflections George Drula Shoshone flavored French and the cries and first words of Jean Baptiste the baby born to Saka Goya on the trip This is the crazy quilt that was and is America and somehow Knowing that the members of the Corps of Discovery were pounding protein and throwing back mercury lace Laxatives just makes the whole crazy endeavor that much more arse Because that's how we roll. We fling ourselves into the unknown with optimism. We Enthusiastically swallow any medication that promises a quick fix a miraculous cure. What could go wrong?

They wouldn't be selling it if it wasn't safe, right? What could possibly go wrong? So what became of the members of the Corps of Discovery after their 28 months spent in the unmapped wilderness after 8,000 grueling miles the exhausted expedition rolled into st. Louis, Missouri on September 23rd 1806 it was and is an Astonishing achievement with only one member lost in all those 8,000 miles Sergeant Charles Floyd who succumbed to a ruptured appendix in August 1804 Lieutenant Clark went on to live a long life dying at age 68, which was just about ancient for the times in September 1838 which given all the mercury he probably consumed. It's pretty impressive Captain Lewis had a much more tragic passing He was in what some described as ruinous debt But it's hard to know how much of a role that might have played in his ending Captain Lewis was on the road in October 1809 staying in an inn about 70 miles southwest of Nashville, Tennessee It was the innkeepers wife Priscilla grinder who heard the shots Lewis was found bleeding in his rooms with multiple gunshot wounds to the abdomen and the head Bleeding was horrific and it was clear. There wasn't anything to be done as The Sun rose that morning Captain Meriwether Lewis died from his injuries Newspapers reported that in addition to the bullet wounds There was one more Awful detail a report has arrived in this place Which we believe may be depended on the governor Lewis formerly Captain Lewis who explored the Missouri with Clark After many attempts to put a period to his existence by shooting himself at length Completed the horrid deed on the road between the Chickasaw Nation and Nashville by cutting his own throat We have not heard nor can we determine what could have been the cause of this dreadful catastrophe Suicide Captain Meriwether Lewis acclaimed explorer governor Hero dead by his own hand, but why?

Contemporary researchers point to how mercury poisoning may have contributed to the mental distress depression and paranoia that led up to that final terrible night I fear the weight of his mind has overcome Lewis wasn't just taking copious amounts of dr. Rush's bilious pills He was also taking mercury to treat recurring bouts of malaria now remember mercury doesn't Biodegrade it accumulates in the environment and in the body There were those close to Lewis who said that the captain suffered from melancholy in the months leading up to his death He was edgy Suspicious paranoid Now say others it was murder plain and simple He was carrying money on his person that night at the end. He was robbed and then killed simple as that Strange though that a man of his experience Armed as he was with several pistols a tomahawk and a rifle That the thief or thieves would so easily overpower him Both William Clark and Thomas Jefferson who knew Lewis as well as anyone could Accept it that their friend had died by suicide There was evidence to back that up He'd had an earlier unsuccessful suicide attempt before leaving st. Louis on what would be his final journey Lewis prepared his last will and testament and Instructed associates on how to dispose of his belongings after his death depressed and financial trouble Struggling with probable alcoholism, maybe syphilis and definitely malaria, which is known to cause delirium and dementia Lewis was in rough shape The mercury laced medications he leaned on could do nothing but make it all worse Crazy as it sounds to us It's been said that Meriwether Lewis felt like a failure He and Clark had hoped to find the fabled Northwest Passage and didn't Never mind that today Lewis and Clark are icons of schools and bridges and fairs named for them We sit in awe of what the core of discovery pulled off even as we now reckon with the brutal cost to the land the people and The wildlife that is the legacy of relentless Western expansion We're like dude, dude, you're the Lewis of Lewis and Clark maybe basking that Words that fall flat to a man drunk on both whiskey and despair Trapped now in a desk job the rest of his life stretching before him Dull and with no new adventure on the horizon But he was an expert marksman. They say he would never make such a mess of his own suicide. They say what they didn't say because they had no way of knowing or Comprehending how severely Lewis's mental state had been compromised by that perfect storm of medical afflictions and medicinal poison All we can know for certain is that the death of Meriwether Lewis was a tragedy that remains a mystery It was so long ago and you know, how time is a game of telephone details morphing and blurring to suit the story Like this little anecdote about semen Lewis's dog They say he remained at Lewis's grave and would not ever be coaxed away So for all of you protein maxers Please know that your bowels are every bit as vulnerable to being blocked as the members of the core of discovery Every year hospital emergency departments treat more than a million people for severe constipation You don't want to be one of them Lucky for you the days of dr. Rush's thunderclappers

Are long gone you've got Miralax, Hexlax, Metamucil, Fleet, heck you've got Phillips milk of magnesia but like Could you also maybe eat a vegetable? Next time on true weird stuff This star was born in an Oklahoma storm cellar Touched by the angels with the gift of music on his way into this world handsome, charming, movies, live concerts, radio, and even his very own television show Everybody loved the man Until that one explosive night in the California desert When the fairy tale turned dark The end of the king of Western swing on the next true weird stuff Our voice talents on this episode were Sam Moore, Lamar Richardson, Kary "Doc" Bowser, and Don Morgan So first Sherry let me apologize that I sound like this because we both The funny thing about this is of course. I'm I've had kovat Sherry didn't have kovat but Sherry's been sick, too And we haven't seen each other and you know well over a month So it wasn't like we were around each other and caught something from each other the other thing I wanted to say is I want to appreciate the full circle moment that I've had in my life because When I was in fourth grade, I think my first big Report about an American figure was Thomas Jefferson So I can still remember That I had so I hand wrote it and then it was between two purple pieces of construction paper holes punched through with little ribbons holding it together That was my and and I and and I did a thing where it said this is what Thomas Jefferson's Signature looked like when he was a child and so I drew it in there and it looked just like my handwriting But anyhow, thank you for letting me play that part and It was kind of interesting to dissect and take a look at the interesting parts of the story mercury poisoning aside It was kind of interesting to take a look at this story that we've heard of and we've seen Pieces of we've studied in school but just to be able to see The different kinds of people that were involved with this and just how awful the circumstances were of this journey I I am in I'm in awe that they pulled it off and that is not Because you know, we could we could talk at length about the destructive The incredible Cult Environmental and cultural degradation and destruction that resulted, you know Yeah, we could but you can you can acknowledge that and still go how did 30?

How did this ragtag band of 33 people on foot basically? Do this because it's it is an astounding achievement and they were they were not well equipped in terms of food or Medication or really any provisions. I mean they've really really struggled and when you read Clark's journals, I Went through and was struck by There are these beautiful passages describing landscape and wildlife, right?

But over and over when you read these journals Everyone's sick. Everyone's shivering. The food is bad. We're so cold. Everyone's sick. Everyone's wet Everyone's shivering everyone's griping griping is the cramping of diarrhea And and what so when they felt sick, they would take these bilious pills, which were these wicked intense laxatives So they were constantly not only were they constantly like hiding under a bush and shivering and crapping their brains out But you need to think about the other impacts to the body the loss of electrolytes Dehydration like you can't spend a couple of years in a state of chronic diarrhea and be in your best health and Only one person died on the whole freaking trip and it was appendicitis It's an it's insane, isn't it? Yeah, it really is and I'm glad you gave dr Benjamin Rush a little bit of love because sometimes some of the stuff that he did people look down upon but you know of his time he really He had a lot of insightful things that he did now the bloodletting was not one of them and he was I believe he was The blood letter on George Washington that kind of ultimately killed George, Washington And it wasn't like he was um a wild card about that bloodletting was a standard of care I mean, that's just that's just how it was back then like But he was now insightful about so many different things But in like in our world you get injured and what do they say rice rest ice compression elevation right well back in the day it was Bloodletting leeches and laxatives that was there. That was their version of rice. So he you know, he didn't mean to be harmful You don't do have to excuse people some Thing like he didn't mean to be harmful in the bloodletting and folks They kind of knew that mercury was bad news, but they kind of didn't understand that The degree I guess The magnitude, you know, but it is a truly amazing thing that we can track the encampments They had because the mercury is still there. I mean, that's just an astonishing fact Here's what's amazing to me Gather around the campfire. We're over here chuckling. Oh, they were taking thunderclappers and there's a bear shit in the woods I don't know but Lewis and Clark did right?

lol As a child you your parents were using mercury to treat your boo-boos. Mm-hmm Mercurochrome. Yeah, I'm Rithi late. Yeah, so we can make fun of the people of the past while understanding that We also are the people of the past And and that this is all very recent we understand now That these things are toxic and it's very recent I mean, I've had people say to me boomers and Gen Xers all grew up with mercurochrome and rithiolate And if a mercury thermometer broke you were allowed to play with the mercury on the kitchen table You just were it was because we didn't know right people didn't know I've had people say to me Where can you buy mercurochrome these days? Well, you can't Susan Because it's poisonous And we don't want dumping on the baby's leg. Oh, we don't Know and it had food coloring in it. Oh To make it festive. Yeah Warns we need to make it fast. Yeah, that's right So I'm gonna try to articulate something Because I have these conversations with people in my family like with men in my family a lot Because they they get a little bit defensive or butthurt when you say things like You know the disastrous legacy of westward expansion They take that kind of personally as though they themselves were bushwhacking with diarrhea You know with Lewis and Clark, but just as we now know That you shouldn't take mercury for your constipation We know that we caused significant Genocidal levels of destruction to the indigenous people and to the environment if you want to see something That will blow your mind and break your heart watch the Kim Burns documentary on the Buffalo Because the way that animals move through a landscape Is part like nature is is this incredible?

Complex interlocking systems and so the buffalo would trample the would trample the ground and it would disperse the seed and it would turn the soil and The prairie grasses right which fed the buffalo and then the indigenous people would hunt the buffalo for meat and hides and the buffalo would move across the prairie and everything was in balance and in harmony, and then we come in and we slaughter the buffalo and You know then you've got you look at what you look at what happens when we don't properly Husband the soil in agriculture that you look at what happened like with the dust bowl right when all the topsoil blew off So in the absence of the buffalo there were all these other environmental impacts and impacts on the indigenous populations and so on and so on and so on and Just like we now understand that you can't drink mercury or poured into your cut We can also understand that in our ignorance in our enthusiasm in our arrogance in our arrogance and feelings of entitlement we caused great harm to the land and its peoples and My saying that is not an attack on you It's not Accusing you or your bloodline of anything in the same way that when I say we now know not to drink mercury Because we can't poop is Not an attack on you or your bloodline or anything you stand for this is the this is the process of Evolution and growth and learning we we learn as we go and I'll be damned if I can understand Why some people take that so personally I mean I I've had conversations with people Where they're like yelling at me? Well, you're just I'm just what?

What am I well, I mean, what am I this is your history don't you want to know who you are and where you come from and and to try to be sensitive to that fact as to not repeat it because If you ask the native people what they think about this, they'll tell you You know They They'll tell you it's not it's not good Well, you look at some of our expressions to the victor go the spoils History is written by the winners, you know as a as a species. We're very Very conflict very aggressive and conflict oriented, you know, that's yours I want it to be mine and to the victor go the spoils to the aggressor you know the the last man standing all this nonsense and And it's just kind of who we are as um as creatures and and I don't know why it's controversial to say that like why is that?

Hello, you're made of meat. I don't want to tell you I do. I Disloved the the article that was that you was quoted in this talking about the different Kinds of people who were gathered around the campfire and how that was sort of microcosm of this country I just I kind of loved that because it's true. I loved it, too So I've been I haven't landed on it yet, but I've been kind of circling Ellis Island for a while now Because I don't want to do a story about Ellis Island I want to do a story about Ellis Island by telling a story that happened to know do you know?

Like I want to tell one person's story and so I've been I've been accumulating Ellis Island information and when we talk about the America as a melting pot as a nation of immigrants if you listen to this podcast I'm not even trying to like make that point You can't avoid it because that's what we are Even so when the when the Puritans came over they were you know immigrants and then the colonists immigrants and then this Extraordinary wave of people from all over the world Coming into steaming into New York Harbor on ships and fanning out across the country Immigrants our history is filled with French Canadian fur trappers and German miners and Norwegian farmers and Italian stone masons and in this story in the Story of Lewis and Clark which is happening and a lot of people don't realize because we learn our history in Separate chunks and and there's no point where it's ever all kind of pulled together I think a lot of people are surprised to learn that Lewis and Clark and the founding fathers We're all kind of eating dinner together Mm-hmm, that's right you because you think of the founding fathers first and then dot dot dot then Lewis and Clark dot dot dot and then Harry Truman or whatever But these things are all on top of each other and so when you look at the core of discovery You have a private in the United States Army who was born in Germany Mm-hmm and and speaks heavily German inflected English you have Indigenous peoples you have you have French Canadians you have this microcosm of Who we are as a nation and all of this anti-immigrant sentiment right now does not unwind The the core fundamental DNA of who we are as a nation does it no it doesn't I mean My grandmother and my grandmother was your grandmother both were from from Europe I mean my grandmother was from Austria and her family came here with the idea of Let's try to find something better in our lives. You know and I'm always There's a There's a part of me that is very heartened by that through all the negative stuff I'm always heartened by the fact that people say we think we can do better for myself and my family Let me move them here, and they will have greater opportunities for perhaps a better life And I know that sounds really pie in the sky But when when they're able to do that and that actually happens there is something about that makes me feel good about this country Well and you you see that over and over again, I mean one of them so when we when we eventually make our way to Because I have a really personal a deep personal connection to the the To Ellis Island because of a job I had a million years ago where we where we actually handled the original ships manifests and Trent like we we would wear special gloves in a climate-controlled room And we would input the ships manifest into databases and so I spent a thousand hours Watching people whole families whole villages Empty out at the port of Belfast or Southampton and come across and you know and watch who was born on the crossing who died on the crossing the Occupations all of it, and and then they just they land they disembark and they go through Ellis Island, which is a whole fascinating I think most of us don't really know what happened to your ancestors when they when they lined up at Ellis Island It's fast like you've heard some Oh, they got their name changed or oh they got pulled out of the line because they had measles or whatever But you don't know the half of it. It's fascinating what happened there

and so all of these people coming in and And they came here to be American Like they left their homeland and their their identity that nationality that identity behind they may have been proud Irish or Polish or Norwegian or Swedish or Italian Americans, but they came here to embrace that identity and I think one of the greatest heartbreaks of my life Because I bought that hook line and sinker as a kid boy was I was I all about it?

Was I all about giving me your tired your poor your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, right? So one of the great heartbreaks of my life has been this contemporary discourse this anti-immigrant discourse And some asshole is going to email me and ask me if I want me and my daughters to live under shawarma law next and it's whatever Listen as long as we still have the First Amendment feel free to come at me keyboard jockeys but the core of discovery was absolutely the embodiment of that and When you sit back and you look at the core of discovery, which you have to admit is truly an epic name for your workplace You're the core of discovery. Holy cow. What's better than that, right?

Yeah, when you sit back and look at that the the whole story is not just a microcosm of like What it who who is it that became an American but it's also how we just Went bull in a China shop into stuff that wasn't ours and claimed it right which is also part of who we are now I Can't imagine What it would be like to be living on half-rotted slimy elk meat With cramping and chills and explosive diarrhea Constantly for two years. You're the only thing that I can think of when they were talking about that when we were going through the the narration on that When I was a Boy Scout We camped at Antietam and I've told this story on the the radio show But I can remember I stayed in a floorless tent and it rained the entire weekend and it was probably you know October November it was cold And I was cold and wet the entire time and I remember as we were riding in the car home All I could think was I am never doing this ever again. I am never camping. I am not going out in a tent There's nothing romantic about this. This is uncomfortable and when Through that. Could you imagine I was able to at least get out of the car Go in take all my clothes take a shower put my clothes on they had to sort of live this way all the time With the diarrhea with I just I don't know how they were fine. They were different stock. They really were and Look at the Kaguya who?

gave birth and then slapped that baby into his little carrier and off they went and You'll notice that it wasn't so Kaguya that was you know doubled over in the woods so there are there are aspects of this story that we're never gonna know because History is written by who in this case Clark right because he can write some journals So it's his and we're so they are a treasure But we there's there's stuff that we don't know but that that woman and her newborn Yeah, you know, but they're just sharing just different stock and they're There they are they're tougher they're tougher I mean I'm like I'm like Kevin is the Wi-Fi out how will I live?

Yeah, I know the the other thing in this story so how what grade were you in when they told you that Lewis committed suicide But did you learn that today? I learned that today Yeah, yeah, that's that is kept very very quiet because it doesn't suit the hero narrative No, does it? It because because we're you know, we're the the children and grandchildren of the Puritans We view any mental health that health issue as a kind of weakness or failing a character or moral family Not talked about yeah, and even though we say today that we don't really believe that anymore We kind of do still believe it deep inside. We're working on not believing it but when you understand the degree To which Lewis was consuming mercury not just the thunderclappers, but for his malaria Which even today is incurable, right? They don't they just don't manage it with mercury now Lewis consumed so much mercury and it accumulates in the body and The symptoms of mercury poisoning do look an awful lot like madness the hallucinating the violent outbursts The drooling blood part not so much but you know back then that would seem like, you know, you're like a mad dog, right?

People didn't know what they didn't know and it's amazing that Clark lived to the age that he did Given that maybe he didn't consume as much but you know that he consumed it for the whole of that That journey and by the way, I've been at the end of the Lewis and Clark Expedition which is in Seaside, Oregon I've actually been at the place at the beach and it's cool Really is to imagine. I mean and they did it, you know Some canoeing and some horses, but you know for the most part like I love when people go. Well, they did have canoes Okay, Daniel, would you like to canoe across America? Let me well text me when you get there Can you give people their accomplishments for God's sake?

Um, and I think that's the thing about it if you think that the fact that okay, you're you're going on Rough conditions and then all of a sudden you come upon a river. What do you do? You know what? I mean? There's no ferry set up. There's nothing you've got to find a way you've got to find a way across that river and It's kind of miraculous, you know that they managed as well as they did with losing only one person to appendicitis Look at the risks max hypothermia Disease snakebite broken bones burns What Clark Took a gunshot and healed himself. I mean, it's it's insane. It's insane And then Lewis Clark was put it in his holster mode. Oops Yeah, I mean it was crazy and and then for Lewis to take his own life And and the way that that was handled the news of that in the day It was an almost immediate attempt to find a crime anything but but suicide because people did not understand that Lewis Captain Lewis was not in his right mind. No he was so sick from mercury poisoning He didn't know up from down and that's that's a tragedy that we could kind of put our we could wrap our arms around and we could redeem that part of his story instead of making it this shameful secret that you a Person who loves this kind of thing just learned about right?

Yeah, I mean and the mercury alone I mean, okay He may have had other issues too, but the mercury alone will be enough to make that happen. It really would have been Especially when you think about the accumulation So even before the Corps of Discovery set out Captain Lewis was treating his malaria and The dose was small. But again, it doesn't you don't pass it. It doesn't degrade in your system piles up So and that was something that Clark wasn't Which which can account for the difference in the two men Clark was not consuming that same level When you were doing this all I could think was the episode that we did about the poor man who was taking the Radioactive medicine for the same reason. Yeah, great authority. Yeah I did I did um, we you know when you go we've talked about this where you go to school dictates Which chapter of American history gets focused on?

You know My husband got a lot more Civil-war and almost no Lewis and Clark and I got all kinds of Lewis and Clark and very little Civil War in the Wyoming public school system We did a number of projects over the various grades With Lewis and Clark and we were never told The captain Lewis took his own life and an in and outside Nashville. Nobody ever said anything about that. No And of course, you know, it wasn't like my fourth grade teacher. Mrs. Linford was going to talk about protein maxing and constipation That also wasn't even known when we were kids No, but I can tell you that as somebody who in an effort to lose weight went on a protein diet I went when you started talking about that. I went. Oh, yeah. Mm-hmm. I know what you're talking about there. Yeah I Feel like a million people a year being treated for impacted bowels and hospital emergency departments That's a strong argument for salad It is but but there are and Just say there are people who have that as a problem and it's oh, yeah Genetic problem than it is a dietary problem. Oh, yeah Not all of those million cases of protein maxers, but hospitals are reporting an uptick in younger extreme constipation cases Fitness. Yeah Related Constipation. Well people people don't seem to do anything in any sort of measured way They seem to go a lot of people go all in and you go you what and you're then there they end up having problems And you know, that makes more sense. Okay, you know in in America We love to use the phrase in moderation while not actually seeming to have a clue what that might mean You Remember what they did slim fast that was a shake you had a shake for breakfast You had a shake for lunch and and then a reasonable dinner My comedian one time says if I could have a reasonable dinner, I wouldn't need the rest of this I wouldn't need a shake. Yeah, I think that's really no reasonable. It's the word there You There are people who feel like if you if you give too many honest details about their heroes they won't be heroes anymore, but I'm the opposite because I Look at these people and when I see how they when you read Clark's journals and you see how they suffered They are cold and they are wet They can't get their clothing or their bedding dry right, and they are huddled in front of a fire that is smoky because the wood is damp and Giving off very little heat their guts are clenched and rolling and rumbling from these Thunder pills and the only food in front of them is spoiled deer or alchemy When I think about that and then those people making it to Seaside, Oregon and back they're even bigger heroes to me than when I when I was presented the Elementary school version of them as these infallible gods and goddesses of adventure, you know, yeah Yeah, I when I when I think about that as compared to is this Chinese good that when was this Chinese food?

Was this Tuesday is in the fridge. Is this still good? Yeah And they're trying to figure out whether the elk meat is still good and and that is a constant that would be a Well, not only are you trying to explore map out keep moving you're also having oh by the way You've got a hunt as well. So this there were a lot of moving parts to this and and without the hunting You're you don't eat and your expedition is powered by your own body, right? We're not in a car so you you have to imagine that the deprivation and the Fear the Tedium the lonesomeness, you know, like anything's good for a day or two, but how many days in wet boots?

Crapping yourself with your stomach clenching. Sure. How many days of that before you're not your best self and Yet they kept the core of discovery kept going and that makes them Truly heroic to me as opposed to the sanitized coloring book version Yeah, I Like seeing the gritty tired Short-tempered fallible human. Otherwise, they're just a couple of guys and some jaunty outfits Yeah, which is how honestly like when I so we you know You get a steady diet of Lewis and Clark in Western public schools Or at least you did when I was a kid and that's kind of how I pictured them I pictured them standing, you know with one leg perched on a boulder Hand shielding their eyes from the Sun gazing at the horizon, right?

I didn't picture them hiding behind a bush with their trousers at their ankles Praying to God For these cramps to stop that's not how you picture it. No, and is it dignified? No but is It that much more staggering an accomplishment when you know it Well laid out like this you just can't help but be amazed by it And I feel like Captain Lewis deserves Redemption his death is this kind of shameful half-secret and I don't think it should I don't think that's fair I don't think that should be I Think there should be recognition that the man was poisoned and not in his right mind. Yeah, I think you're right and I But we do love to sanitize our stories now Can we talk about how Thomas Jefferson would have made the great the greatest CEO of a broadcasting company?

He sends the Corps of Discovery out with a budget of $2,500 and says just have fun with it You guys have fun with it, okay, maybe shoot a deer or a rabbit or something I don't know why you'll be fine. I don't know what $2,500 was worth back then But I can't imagine that even it was worth a lot more than that How many people are you are relying on that amount of money in order to get by?

They're 33. So and wait, wait, wait, and there's this other thing that I love about it when when they went to Congress and Presented when Jefferson presented this Congress was like, um Yeah, okay. So listen, we're all about discovering the continent, but we don't want to pay for it, which is standard, right? That's ripped from the headlines. And so Jefferson is like, all right, we can do this on the cheap So cheaply that they wouldn't allocate the money for an army physician You're sending like these you're sending these people into an unmapped Wilderness with no food and you won't you won't cut loose a doctor Sherry Not only that they bought land, but they really weren't sure what they bought Yeah Yeah, we did this deal with the French somebody go see what we got, right and of course, you know The Louisiana Purchase has appeared in another episode of true weird stuff called the casket girls which takes a look at the legend of these vampire brides that were Trafficked into Louisiana by the King of France so that the fur trappers would get them some brides So The Louisiana we love the Louisiana Purchase here true weird stuff it it never disappoints But yeah, they wouldn't even Jefferson was like, all right, listen, listen, the whole thing's gonna cost 2,500 bucks I know that was worth more in 1802, but it wasn't worth enough And we're also not gonna send them with a doctor They can just keep they can catch some rabbits and eat some pine cones and whatnot. What did they call this a phantom budget?

Yeah, you allocate some money, but you're really not sure how much Thomas Jefferson even looks like a CEO we worked for You know, which one Peter? Oh, yes cotton top. Oh, yes Thomas Jefferson, so, uh, you know what you guys you're creative You're the best at what you do get out there and have fun with it, but president Jefferson We don't have any money for food or a doctor. You'll be fine. You'll be don't get hurt. You'll figure it out Just watch your step We wouldn't send you out there with without knowing that this is enough money for this is gonna be fine. It's it's like It's like it's like every year, you know, there would be a cost there was supposed to be a cost of living increase You know because the price of things went up and they would always come back to me and they'd go Max we just don't have that in the budget. Yeah, that's just not in the budget Sherry In fact, we're gonna need to uh, we need to talk to you about reducing your your pay Oh the number of times that happened Yeah So, um, we can so we can see it's kind of awesome. Even though it was a couple hundred years ago. We can see that same sort of nickel-and-diming You know calculation what is the minimum we can give these humans to get this job done?

You can see it even then and I think they calling them the core of discovery Was kind of like when we would get a free Jacket with the radio station's logo on it. It's true It's like it's like being named to a position and you go. Well now you are in the core of discovery What do you think now? Oh, look at that. Well, we must think a lot of you for that Is there any additional money for being in the court? No, not really. There's no But it's an honor but don't you feel an honor don't you feel proud that you've achieved this Make-believe position that we put you in and let's take a let's take one more. Look at the political maneuvering here Not only did Jefferson get the Congress to allocate just $2,500 But they they figured out a way to make the army Pay for the military contingent in the discovery in the court of discovery So that they they didn't even that was off their payroll, right?

They don't have to worry about all those soldiers. They were getting paid by the army. That was the army's problem and Even with the army assuming more than half the manpower costs Congress and Jefferson were still like, you know what they can eat a squirrel Sherry tonight. Can I relate this to the radio industry once again?

See the Louisiana purchases like they bought some radio stations but they didn't know how much it would cost to put the manpower in there and they just sort of Spit-balled it and put people in there who were working two jobs. Oh, yeah Hey, I would have never said Peter is the reincarnation of Thomas Jefferson, but it's starting to look very Overpayment. All right, maybe we overpaid for this So and because we overpaid you the core of discovery can have no money or medicine to get out there So it's kind of when you know the whole like truth it's a better story than the the cartoon version They set us down and they cut our insurance benefits and they said we believe that this is a Reasonable program that we're now putting you in Oh No behind the scenes but it's true Do you remember when we sat down where they put us in a conference room and sat us down and told us that?

Well, you know a lot of us were going to the doctor for frivolous reasons like sickness so Undetermined neurological problem, you know, we're wasting a lot of money that the company was spending on health insurance It just it's such a great It is such a great little only in America story even in the early days like America was so brand-new That it could barely hold its head up. Mm-hmm, and we were still acting we were already acting like this We were already who we are in every way our little band of diverse core of discovery members Cheap and out cutting back room political deals to get what you want at with the minimum of expenditure All of its right there right there. Mm-hmm and crackpot medicine All of it all in one tail So I hope that if this is your first real exposure to Lewis and Clark because again depending where you went to school You may know the name and you never really and they explored the West or something I don't know. They did they build the st. Louis arch? I don't know they did something The the Lewis and Clark story is very different than what and what you thought it was so they're looking for the next latrine That that will be loaded with mercury because just like it doesn't biodegrade in your body It doesn't decompose in the environment either and what makes it easier to find these because it's a little bit of a mercury laced Needle in a haystack when you think about like picture the map of the United States of America and then say to yourself All right. I got to go find some mercury poo But the core of discovery because the majority of its members were military and it was led by Military men Lewis and Clark they followed military discipline and They had this very Specific way of laying out their camp that they repeat it every where they went which is its own kind of impressive discipline because I'm guessing for me after like week three of Explosive diarrhea and being cold and wet. I'm no longer following any form of discipline Surviving right but even in their sickness and hunger even when they were cold and tired and wet Lewis and Clark maintained this intense level of discipline so the camps would be laid out the fires would be in a certain configuration and Latrines would be at a very specific distance. And so when archaeologists Following the journals Thank You Bridger When archaeologists following the journals come to an area that could have been a campsite Of course now we've had a couple hundred years of growth Right, but you can still see If you know what you're looking for you can stand back and your eye will slowly adjust and you'll begin to see the shadowy ghostly outlines of what may have been a classic military encampment and Then they begin, you know, they mark that off and and then the investigation begins and it's super time-consuming Because again, they were moving through an unmapped wilderness and stopping where they stopped not, you know in KOA campgrounds But you see how cool it is that we're able to go and find that that's pretty it is pretty amazing it is when you were talking about when we were talking about that you said the poison poo and I was like What was the poison and then?

Mercury, of course, which is still there two and it's later It's still there and mercury does occur naturally in the environment But not at the concentrations that they found in these two latrine sites both in Montana so far so And and I and you could ask well, then why haven't we mapped the full trail? Well, because that costs money and so, you know the people that the the archaeologists and the teams that do that they write grants and they they Donations like it takes forever to fund Research like that, but it's cool to know what you know, because that is again Like that's our history as a country and don't we want to?

Don't we want to know that which is why I love when they have these stories with history forgot. I Love those kinds of shows because I can't get enough of it because you do learn what really did happen And sometimes when you learn like this is like, you know that saying don't meet your heroes or whatever sometimes there'll be somebody you really admire and Then you'll learn and you'll be like, oh, I don't Know I don't like this. Oh, I'm disappointed I Don't I don't think that applies to the people in this story because all you're learning is that they were just humans and and it turns out that Real courage and bravery Isn't what happens when you have plenty of money and you're well-fed and warm and dry and safe Real courage and bravery is what happens when you are in the middle of nowhere with your ass hanging over a thornbush And you keep going that's courage and how much they had to have relied on each other and Stick together for the unity of that how important that was. I I think of all the details in this story that the plum that blow me away and There's so many the fact that only one person went down with appendicitis Think about all the bad things that could have happened that could have killed somebody drinking water alone Well an infected wound right? No, there are no antibiotics, you know, they've got the Peruvian bark and some saltpeter and Some you know whiskey Like they don't really have anything It's just me it's an amazing Accomplishment and the fact that there's like Adam Sandler levels of comedy in it. I don't know That just makes it more human to me. Yeah Like if you if I would have said to you, you know, who should you know, who should make a movie about?

Lewis and Clark Adam Sandler and fairly brothers Owen Wilson, oh Owen Wilson it. Oh that dad. You'd be like Adam Sandler and Owen Wilson. Absolutely. Not. What's the clock? Tommy Lee Jones. No, it's Adam Wilson and that's okay, right that is it Pete This this idea that you know, we have to drape the our heroes in all of this dignity that takes away their humanity I just Yeah, so no And in fact no disrespect to Lewis and Clark and their memory with their explosive mercury diarrhea the opposite full respect for Respect because like okay, so I've been sick for Two weeks two weeks. Yeah two weeks now and Max has been sick for a week And can I just tell you trust me everyone who knows us knows it We don't suffer in silence, there is no there is no max We must find the Pacific together. I need you to be courage son courage and not complain And and let history tell our story. No, we're like It's true, this is me the other night my soup is too hot And and these are people that literally were Being freezing rain pelting them So, thank you very much for joining us for this episode of true weird stuff on our next episode Some people say that this was the first OJ trial This was the OJ trial before there was court TV and cable 24-hour cable news before there was mass communications to similar story an absolutely beloved star hard scrabble upbringing total rags-to-riches Hollywood dream story, you know came from nothing and he was graced with so much musical talent It was crazy. He was he was in the movies and He toured and did concerts. He had his own radio show. He had his own television show until one terrible night in the desert in California and the shock the most shocking thing about this story isn't what happened that night It's that no one remembers this man's name so we're gonna tell you the story of The one-time king of Western swing spade Cooley on the next 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 Calm 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 a 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 Sweeten 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

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