Hello everyone.
It's your old pal, Mick Sullivan, and I want to let you know that I am coming to perform in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania, on Saturday, October 4th, and I hope that you can make it.
More specifically, I'll be in the Pittsburgh suburb of Mount Lebanon, thanks to the Historical Society of Mount Lebanon.
I am really excited, so come join us for a live performance on Saturday, October 4th at 4pm.
It's gonna be a blast.
Stories, laughs, music, and a book signing to boot.
It will take place at the Mellon Middle School Auditorium and we will have fun.
The Past and the Curious live in Pittsburgh area.
You can find the details and a link to tickets at thepastandthecuriouscom and also at lebohistoryorg.
Forward slash events.
That's L-E-B-O history.org forward slash events.
See you on October 4th Pennsylvania, pam.
Are you here to game with me in a minute, ryan?
But first it's time to share what's happening on the 10 news podcast.
The 10 news is a kids news podcast for curious 8 to 12 year olds that even grown-ups can learn from.
What else is there to say that?
We cover everything from the supreme court in the war in ukraine to pokemon and minecraft, and we'll always tell you 10 things you need to know, and we're available wherever you get your podcasts.
Is it game time now, pam?
It's game time right, let's go.
You're listening to an airwave media podcast.
Yeah, that's right.
Just an appointment for a regular haircut.
Trim my beard.
Yeah, sure.
Trim my eyebrows.
Yeah, sure.
That's what we're rolling.
What?
Oh, OK.
I got to go.
I'll call you back.
Hi, everybody.
This is Mick.
Welcome to the past and the curious.
It's episode one hundred and ten.
One hundred and ten.
I was just making a quick appointment.
For my hair, it was on my mind because this episode is about hair.
Some of it is hair on faces, some of it is hair on heads and some of it is hair that wound up being used for other things.
We'll find out about that.
Hey, if you are listening to this in real time, I'm going to be in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania, Mount Lebanon, specifically on Saturday, October 4th, at 4 pm.
There's details on my website.
I hope to see you there.
If you're not listening to this in real time, well, this is episode 110.
It's really fun.
I'm excited to share it with you.
And I also hope to see you wherever you are, whenever you are, sometime in the future.
Maybe I'll be in your neck of the woods.
Anyway.
Let's get started.
By the time that he was 22 years old, Peter Alexeyevich Romanov had seen a lot.
Battles uprisings, a lot of blood and enough political turmoil to drive most people into the cold wilds of Russia for the relative peace and quiet.
His Russian homeland was huge, though not very populated.
But it was all his.
Since the age of 10.
Following the death of his father, Peter had tag-team ruled Russia with his half-brother, Ivan.
Together over the empire, the young men were co-czars.
But his brother's health was poor.
And when he died too, that left 22-year-old Peter as czar of all Russia.
And he had seen a lot.
But there was plenty more that he had not seen.
And Peter wanted to cross a few things off of his list.
One thing that he had seen plenty of was beards.
They were on faces all over Russia.
Beards were a tradition.
Some people even believed that the facial hair represented a kind of religious purity.
Plus, there wasn't really a particularly strong sense of fashion in Russia in the 1600s.
Things were a bit more practical.
Saving money and keeping warm, those were two important things for most people.
And heavy beards were warm.
No fuss.
And they could be pretty intimidating looking to strangers.
Of course, saving money wasn't an issue for the Tsar of all Russia.
That title came with tremendous wealth, so Peter had plenty of dough to throw around.
And come to think of it, being intimidating was pretty easy for him too.
Aside from his powerful title of Tsar, he was also taller than pretty much everyone he ever met.
How tall are you?
6'7".
Like 6 or 7?
6'7".
Yes, he was 6 feet 7 inches tall.
And in the 1600s, there were not many people taller than that.
When he was younger, he had been temporarily exiled with his mother north of Moscow.
There, while roaming the countryside, Peter saw an old sailboat in a run-down barn.
Though it wasn't in good shape, something about the boat grabbed him.
Not many people in Russia knew about boats.
There was little need.
Other than a few lakes, there were not many places to sail.
Russia was landlocked, and no oceanfront property meant Russia did not have a navy.
Other nations in Europe and Asia were prowling the seas and had been for centuries, but not Russia.
This was a problem at the time, because a navy meant a nation could have access to the world and all of its riches and wonder.
But Peter and the Russians were stuck on land.
It was a lot of land, but it was cold.
And so big that travel was hard.
Luckily, little Peter met a German man living in the area who knew a lot about boats.
And he explained to young Peter that with a sail, a boat could move without human power.
And more amazingly, depending on how you have the sail set, you could actually sail into the wind.
The man agreed to help the boy fix up the boat and learn to sail.
And Peter was soon obsessed.
I'm the king of the world!
Well, actually, I'm the Tsar of Russia, but who knows what the future holds?
Years later, adult Tsar of all Russia, Peter, wanted to know more.
The young ruler wanted to know how to build boats, and he wanted Russia to have a navy.
But it was more than just boats.
There were tools that he had seen and heard about that he wanted to learn how to use.
And he wanted to learn about the scientific developments popping up across Europe.
There were cells being discovered, electricity being dabbled with navigation, advancements being defined and philosophies being framed.
But it all felt so foreign, so far away from his world.
But he knew Russia would benefit from it all, and bringing these ideas and the knowledge to the far-flung, yet huge kingdom could bring the nation power to match the massive size of the motherland.
And boats were a big key to him.
If he knew more about boats, maybe they could start a navy.
Also, there were many other powers in Europe, and he wanted allies, and to learn about enemies.
So, he did what any 6 foot 7 inch tall czar of a massive empire would do.
He went undercover.
And he didn't do it alone.
He took 250 friends.
Hello, I am Peter Mikhailov.
These are my friends.
We are but weary travelers who have come to visit Holland.
Oh, yes, Mr. Mikhailov.
Wink, wink, wink.
Very nice to meet you.
Where did you say you were from?
Oh, it does no matter.
Say, I like your smooth face.
Why, thank you.
I shaved it myself.
Anyway, you sure have a lot of friends with you.
This must be an expensive group of people to entertain.
And jeez, I've never seen anyone as tall as you.
Just how tall are you?
Six-seven?
Wow.
Well, Peter the... Mikhailov.
What can we do for you?
I want to see you build boats.
In fact, I want to help.
Okay.
After making his way across Eastern Europe in disguise, Peter Mikhailov got a job at the boats in Zandam.
For weeks, the secret czar woke up and walked to work each morning with his own tools and diligently worked beside people who had made boats every day of their lives but who had a fraction of the money and none of the power of their new co-worker.
Maybe those people knew.
Maybe they didn't.
But soon, his height and downplayed celebrity garnered attention.
People started gathering on lawns, even standing on rooftops, to watch him head out the door each morning on his way to work.
Who are you?
The king of russia, or something?
Yeah, how tall are you?
Are you six, seven?
Once some unwise and unkind young town punks even threw dirt at him on his walk to work.
If they'd known who he really was, they would have thought twice about this move.
He'd do a lot of bad things to a lot of people for a lot less over the years as czar.
Anyway, he quickly grew fed up with the attention, so he and his gang went on to Amsterdam, where the Dutch East India Company had a shipyard behind tall walls that would help to keep him private.
For over four months, the Tsar of Russia and his huge gang of friends, most of them bearded and big, lived incognito cutting boards and hammering nails and raising masts.
He also met a lot of people, including microscope pioneer Antony von Leeuwenhoek, who gave him a special gift.
You might remember a scene like this from a previous episode of The Past and the Curious.
I can't show you my newest microscopes, no matter who you may or may not be.
I'm still working on them, and they are my secret.
That's disappointing.
But I have a gift for you.
It's an eel viewer, a small box with a lens for looking into the tiny parts of an eel.
Oh, I love eels.
Yes, I've heard that about you.
Someone bring me an eel.
Peter's presence wasn't exactly a secret.
On one hand, he didn't want people to know who he was, because then he'd have to deal with all the ceremonies and the pomp and the requests and all the hullabaloo that comes with being a political leader in another land.
And this way he could work side by side with normal craftsmen.
It was probably enjoyable in addition to educational for him.
But on the other hand, he did kind of want certain people to know it was him.
That way he'd get some parties and some free dinners and gifts like super sweet eel, viewing microscopes, stuff like that.
But despite all the fun, he wanted to make a few friends, see the cultural developments of Europe, and he wanted to know how to build boats.
Don't you guys have any plans?
Any books?
Any blueprints?
Peter, the greatest thing about the tradition of shipbuilding in Holland is that it lives in our heads.
Excuse me?
Did you burp?
Oh, you're excused.
No.
What did you call me?
I said, Peter, the greatest thing about our shipbuilding is that we do it from memory.
You called me... You know what?
Never mind.
So there's nothing written down?
Oh, zartanly not.
See, there you go again.
I could have sworn you said czar, and you almost called me Peter the Great.
Who is that?
I mean, how weird of you.
Weird indeed, yes, but I most zartanly did not.
I know you are but a humble six-seven carpenter who is Romanover the land.
Romanover?
Really?
Come on.
So you have no blueprints?
No, no blueprints.
Luckily, William III invited him to England.
The shipbuilders there had plans that Peter could learn from.
Now, it might be a gamble for one king to offer such help to another king, but William wanted any help that he could get in pushing back against his rival France.
So it was a gamble that he was willing to make.
For months, Peter and his many friends enjoyed the society of England.
Women wore corsets and dresses of beautiful fabric.
Men wore all sorts of things.
Except of course for the heavy dark, boring clothes like his gang used to keep warm in Russian winters.
No one wore that here.
And with the fashion came culture, music, art, theater.
You know, the good stuff in life.
Also on display throughout England and the rest of Europe were the whiskerless cheeks of men left and right.
There was barely a beard in sight.
The boats, the fashion, the art, the science, and the bare cheeks.
He would bring it all back to the motherland.
Along with one other new thing.
While living with his wild crew in England, they were invited to stay at the large estate of a wealthy British man.
It was a beautiful place that filled the owner with pride.
But perhaps above all, this man loved his garden.
He believed it was the finest garden for miles around.
And perhaps he was right.
A beautiful garden requires lots of tools.
Shovels, spades, shears, and such.
But one great tool, especially if you have to move soil, is a wheelbarrow.
And Peter and his friends had never seen a wheelbarrow before.
Of course, as a bunch of wild guys on vacation, they couldn't help themselves.
The Russian travelers did what any unruly pack of people would do with a bunch of wheelbarrows.
They had wheelbarrow races.
One person in the bucket, one person pushing.
Now, don't get any ideas at home.
Their stopping point in this race was the treasured shrubbery of their host, which they crashed into repeatedly.
Plus, their many wild races left deep divots and ditches and broken branches and trampled plants in the path behind them.
In today's world of Airbnb, they would have gotten a one-star review as disrespectful and destructive guests.
The disrespect wasn't limited to the garden either.
When they left, finally making their long way back to Russia, the owner was dismayed to find that there were absolutely no zero, zilch zip, no chairs left in the entire house.
The travelers smashed them all and used them as firewood.
Carpets had to be thrown out, there was food rotting in the corners and the walls were so bad the whole place had to be repainted.
It was a mess.
And the Tsar of Russia wasn't even stuck with the bill.
He was a guest.
Of course, technically, the Tsar was never even there in the first place, right?
It was some dude named Peter Mikhailov who was 6'7".
In the end, the Tsar of all Russia had been away from his homeland in relatively poor disguise for over a year.
He had left a friend in charge back in Russia, But his return was badly needed.
When Peter finally made it back to Russia, one of the first things he did was pass a law against beards.
He even shaved a few faces himself.
Peter wanted a culture shift in Russia, and this was a big step in his mind.
Perhaps it was symbolic of Russia joining the Age of Change moving across Europe.
But in any case, it was a big deal.
And he wasn't a total facial hair hater.
He had a mustache.
And anyone super attached to their beards always had the option to pay a tax to keep their cheeks fuzzy.
Peter the Great changed Russia profoundly.
And don't get the wrong idea, he did some incredibly brutal things.
Things which are not good fodder for a history podcast aimed at kids and families.
But his time romping through Europe as a supposedly normal dude who just so happened to travel through the continent with a crew of 200 plus people was a defining moment both in global politics, Russian history and facial hair acceptance.
It also tells me two things.
That normal people can have more fun than the powerful.
But it also tells me this.
That, no matter how powerful you are, There's always something to learn from someone else, from other cultures, from other people and from other places.
Peter knew that, and he also greatly enjoyed the time that he spent as a normal person.
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Hello, grown-uppers.
I don't think I'm alone in saying that I've made some mistakes with money as an adult.
It took me a while to learn.
For starters, you know, saving.
I remember a time when I didn't save the way that I should have.
I think if I would have learned some things when I was young, I would have been better prepared.
And it's easy to think beyond this with kids, but I'm not talking about piggy banks here.
Piggy banks are cute and great for loose quarters and all, but these days there is so much more that kids need to know about money.
Acorns Early makes it easy to teach kids lifelong money skills that they can actually use in the real world.
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Kids can spend what they've earned with their very own customizable debit card, giving them that extra sense of independence.
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I'm excited to use this with my kids, and...
Yeah, a little jealous that it wasn't there for me when I was their age.
It's a great option for saving, planning, spending, and learning the value of a dollar.
Ready to teach your kids the smart way to earn, save, and spend?
Get your first month on us when you head to acornsearlycom.
Forward, slash curious or download the Acorns Early app.
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And we're back.
And it's time for You Have 30 Seconds.
Take it away, Clara.
You've got 30 seconds.
Hi, I'm Claire from Pennsylvania.
I want to tell you about Shirley Chisholm, because we just had a presidential election and Shirley Chisholm was the first black person to ever run for president of the USA.
When Shirley ran for president in 1972, her campaign was mostly supported by women and children who gave her the money to run.
Shirley Chisholm's most famous words are I'm not the candidate of the woman's movement of this country, although I am a woman and proud of it.
I am the candidate of the people of America.
Shirley lost her election, but she is still awesome.
Thanks for your show, Mick.
Clara, great job.
Shirley Chisholm's been on my list.
She'd be a great episode, but you beat me to it.
Nice work.
Thank you very much.
And, uh...
If you're in Pennsylvania, I'm going to be in Pennsylvania soon.
Actually, on Saturday, October 4th.
I don't know.
Maybe I'll see you.
Although Pennsylvania is a big state.
Or Commonwealth, actually.
Anyway, if anyone else out there is like Clara and would like to tell a story, you have 30 seconds to do it.
Clara, you did a great job.
And anyone else, if you have a you have a you have a you have a 30 seconds, then just send it in.
Hello at thepastandthecurious.com.
It's quiz time.
It's quiz time.
It's quiz time.
Oh, boy, yeah, that's right.
It is quiz time.
Would you look at that?
Well, anyway, here's a question for you.
Who was the first American president to have a beard?
Well, it was Abraham, old honest Abe Lincoln.
If you remember, we actually covered in a past episode...
An 11-year-old girl named Grace Bedell actually suggested that he grow it while he was running for president.
And though it was the first beard in office, other presidents had had facial hair.
Actually, the first one to do so was John Quincy Adams, who had great big sideburns.
One of my favorite pieces of trivia is that John Quincy Adams and Abraham Lincoln knew each other.
Okay, question number two.
If someone has apogonophobia...
What are they afraid of?
They are afraid of beards.
Boo!
Yeah, that was a short one.
Anyway, okay, question number three.
In what decade was it first possible for people to buy a commercially made and affordable shampoo?
Just guess the decade.
It was the 1920s, in fact it was 1927, when a German man named Hans Schwarzkopf marketed and sold the first widely available commercial shampoo.
That's of course not the beginning of shampoo.
Recipes for hair treatment exists from, actually still exists from ancient Mesopotamia.
Different powders and soaps and other things were used by people through the years since.
And in the 1800s it got popular thanks to an Indian man who brought the idea of shampooing to England.
But people still had to go to his salon for this special treatment.
Now people can just shampoo their hair whenever they want.
Heck, you may be doing it right now.
Hello friends, it's the Hair Baron coming to you with an offer that you can't refuse.
If you act right now, you, yes you, can own a handful of history.
Okay, I'll be honest with you.
It's only a handful if you have tiny hands.
If you're a grown-up, maybe it's more like a pinch of history.
A pinch of who, you might ask?
Why, a pinch of King George III, monarch of England from 1760 to 1820.
You know, the guy who vastly expanded the British Empire, who lost the American continent, but also sang.
You'll Be Back in the hit Broadway musical Hamilton.
And I've got one syllable for you, people.
Hair.
That's right.
For a modest and meager 7000 pounds you can own your very own wispy tangle of some of George's hair.
Strings from the king, split ends from the sovereign strands from the man once adorning the head of the head of England.
The frizzy little tangle can be yours.
Run tests, see if his health decline was from lead poisoning or something else.
Try to clone him or just pull it out at parties and amaze your friends.
Imagine the king of england in your house.
Follow, call us now and we'll throw in some hair from another less famous member of the royal family, your pick.
This is no joke.
If you want to buy King George's hair, some is currently for sale.
7,000 pounds or about $9,400 in American money for a messy little knot.
Now, if you've got money to burn but aren't itching for a King George's locks, you can currently buy, for about the same price, hair from actor Cillian Murphy.
Which seems weird because he's still very much alive and currently producing more hair.
Or you could buy a lock from Elvis Presley's head for $200,000.
Or get the relative bargain for celebrity hair from actor Kevin Costner for a mere $500.
All of the hair that I'm telling you about right now is documented, credentialed and guaranteed to be genuine, which makes it, to some people, highly collectible.
But it might surprise you to learn that at times in our history, Hair has not just been an acceptable token to remember people, but a coveted one.
Hair has meant a lot to many people.
And it's not just about the hair from the famous or the no longer living people.
People treasured hair from the regular people of their lives, living or dead.
If you were alive in the 1800s, you might not even bat an eye when someone gave you a valentine that included not a piece of candy but a lock of their hair.
Or you might even wear a piece of jewelry that is made from the hair of someone you love.
Sound gross?
Hair is funny like that, you know.
Most people would agree it's perfectly fine on someone's head.
But as soon as it's cut off, things seem to instantly change in our eyes.
Picture the floor at the barbershop after someone has had a trim.
That's not such a great image, is it? it's really easy to get grossed out by hair.
Oftentimes, when people see things made out of hair, they have an initial reaction of disgust or aversion.
That hair was so personal, something that was once part of another person, and now it's just there in a museum.
But it turns out that hair is a huge part of many historical collections.
Take America's Library of Congress, for example.
Patent Office.
The Library of Congress has hundreds of millions of documents letters images, photos and writings in over 470 different languages.
But they also have a lot of hair.
They have Walt Whitman's hair, Thomas Jefferson's hair, Beethoven's hair, even hair from some random dude in the Civil War named Karl.
There and in similar places archivists, historians and scientists have discovered some unusual things about this hair.
It's very stable, and it doesn't change.
Clip off some hair, and it will remain exactly the same for centuries.
Was it gray and curly?
It will stay that way.
Was it red and wavy, straight and brown?
Well, we believe it will remain exactly the same for an incredibly long time into the future, perfectly preserved.
But it's also a health record.
Thanks to testing hair samples of Ludwig von Beethoven, scientists have determined that the levels of lead in his blood were tremendously high.
And that's dangerous.
High lead levels would explain the sicknesses that plagued him for much of his life.
So who knows?
Maybe a healthier lead-free environment would have given us more years of his musical genius.
But you may ask, how did all of this hair get clipped off of heads in the first place?
And that answer varies.
There are a number of ways.
Sometimes at someone's deathbed, people would clip a bit as a keepsake.
So more than a few people were probably buried with patchy scalps or at least with what looked like a bad haircut, thanks to some overzealous scissor wielders.
Oftentimes though, the totally alive hair owner would clip a little bit of their own hair and give it to a loved one, sometimes even in the mail.
If you couldn't see someone and you didn't have any photographs well, a little bit of hair was an easy way to remember someone and feel a connection.
Sometimes the hair gift might be wrapped in a nice little ribbon and kept in the pages of a book or the folds of a pocket.
Some people set the special strands into a necklace locket or, in the place of a gym, on a ring that they'd wear on their fingers.
Very commonly, hair was even displayed in a place of prominence on the wall of your home.
Several magazines in the late 1800s published ornate patterns for people interested in twisting, weaving and braiding hair to make their very own hair wreaths.
Yeah, that's right.
A wreath for your wall, but made entirely of human hair.
You'd be surprised how many surviving hair wreaths there are from the 1800s.
And while many people used hair in mourning, this practice was a little different.
Family members would save and donate their hair, and then the wreath could be carefully crafted as a symbol of family unity.
Each wreath contained a little bit of everyone.
You can still find the archived patterns online if you would like to give it a try.
These were a few common reasons hair would be cut for preservation, but there is one more way.
If people admired you, they might ask you for a lock of hair just like they'd ask for an autograph.
And sometimes the answer was yes.
Usually the hair gift was just a small clipping, but not always.
There's a story that survives about a man named Thaddeus Stevens, a politician from Pennsylvania active before and during the Civil War.
He was a very fiery speaker who happened to lose his hair early in adulthood.
Many say it was a result of typhoid, which he called brain fever.
Anyway, after losing his hair, he bought a wig.
But as a guy who wasn't very fussy about fashion and who was usually in a hurry, he just had it cut to be exactly the same on all sides.
That way he could just throw it on his head as he walked out the door and not have to adjust it or get it seated properly.
The result was a humorously bad wig to many people.
However, one woman who heard him speak had no knowledge of the wig.
She was moved by his words at the pulpit and approached him afterwards asking if she might have a small clipping of his hair to remember the moment.
This was, of course, not an unusual request at the time, but he was an unusual man and it is said that he looked at the woman humorously, removed the wig, much to her dismay, and suggested that she just take all of his hair.
One of his most unusual wigs remains preserved in a collection in Pennsylvania.
And not far away in Syracuse, New York, sits perhaps the most valuable and rarely seen piece of hair art in history.
It is one that used hair to raise money for charity.
History lovers, I give you the hairy eagle.
Oh my, that's only been seen publicly three times over the last century?
Yes, the hairy eagle is exceedingly rare.
Did he say recedingly hair?
No, exceedingly rare.
What kind of an eagle has hair?
Not just any eagle, my friend.
This was made in 1861, with Where are its feathers?
Well, it's not a real eagle, it's just a piece of art made of.
Is it laying an egg?
No that, that's a globe.
Just really quick, let me tell you, this was made out of hair from abraham lincoln, and abraham lincoln wasn't a bird.
We know that.
Oh, my goodness, what i would give to be a museum tour guide who gets to talk about the hairy eagle.
The hairy eagle is a special thing, for sure.
Mounted on a gold-framed circle that's about a foot wide.
The art depicts an eagle standing on a globe, and it is, in fact, made from 37 different people's hair.
In addition to cuts from Abraham and Mary Lincoln's head, there are 35 other notable people from around the time of the Civil War whose hair is also ornately included in the hairy eagle.
Originally crafted to raise funds for troops, the hairy eagle was displayed in New York City with a goal in 1861 of using it to raise 1000.
The curious public had the opportunity to pay a dollar to take a peek at this weird creation.
And they raised much more than 1000, as it would turn out.
But after the war it kind of disappeared.
It finally showed up again in the 1920s when it was donated to the Onondaga Historical Society.
Since then, it is rarely seen by the public.
Nevertheless, it remains one of the most unusual and valuable pieces of hair art from any time in our past.
Well, okay, that's how episode 110 goes.
Thanks for listening to The Past and the Curious.
As always, my name is Mick Sullivan.
As always, this episode was produced by me.
All the writing, all the music, all the production.
Absolutely zero AI.
I feel like I should start saying that now.
Not an ounce of AI.
Artificial intelligence was used.
I did all of this and I did it for you.
I really enjoy making this show, and so I put a lot of hard work into it, and I'm glad that you listen and I'm glad that you.
I hope you're enjoying it if you made it this far.
So people who help me do that are Patreon people, and I want to thank a few.
Your sponsorship really, really helps keep me going, and you deserve a shout out, like Logan Logan Zorn in Vallejo, California.
Logan, thank you so much.
I'm glad that you are out there in the world and listening and liking the show.
It means everything.
Thanks, Logan.
Oh, also, I need to thank someone named Denise.
I think that's my mom.
Thanks, mom.
And, last but not least, because there's more coming soon.
Samwise, eight years old, a big fan of Cub Scouts, Minecraft and Lego.
Also a member of the local circus troupe, which I always think is really cool.
I love that.
I love saying it.
Also, I communicated with your mother, Lori Samwise, and she is very, very nice, very kind and very proud of you.
So you, my friend, you're going to get a song. in just a few weeks.
For everyone out there, good news I'm gonna have a special episode in the middle of October, so there's gonna be two episodes next month.
It's this one upcoming. is actually a partnership that I am doing with my friend Nate DeFort of the podcast Unspookable.
We worked on this together, and I'm really excited about it.
I think it's really fun.
It's a fun story.
Heads up.
It has to do with Ouija boards, but it's not about I mean.
I don't know how people feel about those.
You can feel however you want to feel about Ouija boards.
But this story is about someone who maybe used a Ouija board to publish a book by someone famous.
You'll, you'll learn about it.
It's really funny uh, and and that's all we're going to talk about.
So um, i can't wait to share it with you and, in the meantime samwise, i hope you have a great day.
Logan mom everybody everybody, thank you for listening and uh hey, if you want to do me a favor, tell somebody about the show, share it, spread it, spread it.
You know word of mouth stuff that's really, really helpful.
Thank you all very much.
My name is mick sullivan and this has been the past and the curious.
Are you looking for a podcast that your whole family can enjoy that asks the deep philosophical questions like do trees fart?
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I'm Lindsay.
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You'll love these stories and you'll learn something new.
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