0:02

We are Ken Jennings and

0:04

John Roderick. We

0:14

speak to you from our present, which we can

0:16

only assume is your distant past, the turbulent time

0:18

that was the early 21st century. Fearing

0:21

the great cataclysm that will surely befall

0:24

our civilization, we began this monumental reference

0:26

of strange and obscure human knowledge. These

0:29

recordings represent our attempt to compile and

0:31

preserve wonders and esoterica that would otherwise

0:33

be lost. So whether

0:35

you're listening from an advanced civilization or

0:38

have just reinvented the technology to decrypt

0:40

our transmissions, this is our legacy to

0:42

you. This is our

0:44

time capsule. This is the

0:46

OMS bus. You

1:14

have access to the OMS bus. Have

1:29

you noticed pet culture changing in the West lately? Lately?

1:55

Yes, I have. I have noticed

1:58

pet culture changing. Well, that

2:00

kind of wraps it up for this, uh, entry.

2:02

Yeah. Thank you for listening to the omnibus. Um,

2:05

you know, I, I get sideways

2:07

with the internet and with popular culture

2:09

a lot. I've been accused of not

2:11

being sufficiently sensitive to

2:13

other people's needs.

2:16

I've yucked other people's yums. Let's piss

2:18

off pet owners. 70% of Americans own

2:20

a pet. Now this is your chance

2:23

to alienate the other 70% of America

2:25

in one fell swoop. Go. Um,

2:27

um, um, I

2:29

feel like pets have a

2:31

much, much larger station

2:34

in our world today than they did when we were

2:37

young. And, uh, and

2:39

yet pets also seem like, I don't

2:42

know, unhappier than they did when they

2:44

were young. You know,

2:46

they lived short, intense lives when in the

2:48

1970s and eighties. And now

2:50

I think they live prolonged and

2:53

pampered lives, which, which perhaps is not what

2:55

a, what an aminal wants. Can you imagine

2:57

the horror if you or I had to

2:59

have a prolonged and pampered life? We

3:02

would just hate that. Right. I suppose it's

3:04

true that most, most times in

3:07

history, I would be either, I would be

3:09

long dead from battle or

3:11

would be like, not battle. Yeah.

3:13

Good job. I mean, probably color,

3:15

but yeah, sure. Let's say battle. I would have died

3:17

between the ages of 19 and 24 in

3:20

some kind of sword fight. But other

3:22

than, but you know, 55, right? But

3:24

it's going to be drunken in the end, right? There's

3:26

no way it's actually going to be on the field

3:28

of battle. Maybe, maybe, maybe drunken in the end. It's

3:31

going to involve the King's men. How

3:34

many of the King's men are there? Six.

3:36

Oh, RIP John. Yeah. Well, what I would

3:38

do is I'd have grabbed some kind of

3:40

rope that, you know, that like

3:42

suspended a chandelier and I'd try to swing across

3:44

the room, but I would have been too heavy

3:46

and wouldn't, I would have lost my grip. Too

3:50

heavy. You just, the chandelier goes up. The chandelier went

3:52

way up and I'd, wow. You just land on a

3:54

table and the King's men are just looking at you.

3:56

Yeah. Yeah. I hate when that happens. One of them

3:58

like just stabs me with. quickly stabs you with

4:01

a sword. But you're saying

4:03

today's animal should yearn for that quick release that

4:05

you would get in in

4:07

the king's head. Well this is one of

4:09

the questions that I have. Do today's animals

4:12

yearn? For death, for death. Do

4:16

maybe the omnivists will finally answer this

4:18

theological question? When

4:21

your puppy looks at you is it thinking, kill

4:23

me, kill me, kill me, kill me. I

4:25

mean I know already such

4:28

a large portion of our listeners are

4:30

like on, right up on

4:32

the edge of their chairs ready to be super

4:35

duper offended by the next thing I say or

4:37

by probably this whole episode. You're gonna get animal

4:39

protective services called on you now. You're gonna hit

4:41

for the cycle. But you know animals

4:44

are surrogate children for a lot of people

4:46

and I think the more, the

4:50

more urban you are, the

4:52

more you might have a

4:54

tendency to be a dual

4:56

income no kids with two pugs

4:59

that bark the whole day when you're gone. I'm

5:02

not. And poop on the floor. We

5:04

just cleaned up cat poop. You

5:06

did, oh no I did. When

5:08

I say we I mean I laughed because it wasn't my

5:10

cat. Well so here's the thing about the cat that lives

5:12

in this house. The cat

5:14

that lives in this house has never wanted

5:17

to be in this house. It has always wanted to

5:19

be outside killing birds. It offers

5:21

no comfort or solace. It

5:23

just stares out the window making that sound

5:26

at birds in the bird feeder. So it

5:28

is a duty not a companion. And this

5:30

and it puts duty on the carpet. This

5:32

cat would have been born

5:34

under a barn and it would

5:36

have lived its long short intense

5:39

life. Killing fowl rats. Killing fowl rats or songbirds.

5:41

Yeah or songbirds right. But it should have been

5:43

killing rats under a corn crib. And

5:46

then it would have I don't know been eaten

5:48

by a coyote or maybe it would be queen

5:50

of the cats. But

5:52

this cat does not deserve a human name. It

5:55

should never have been named. It should never have

5:58

it honestly should never have existed. But should

6:00

never have come out of the corn crib. But now,

6:02

but I could we came down here to

6:05

our bunker and she had

6:08

pooped enormous poop

6:11

piles on the

6:13

floor three different places and For

6:16

me that feels like Kind

6:18

of a deal-breaker But for the

6:21

for the women who live above the bunker

6:23

is she still part of the family in

6:25

some sense? Oh my god, we talk about

6:27

her more than we talk about politics or

6:29

weather The cat is a

6:31

constant topic of conversation. That's an interesting

6:33

take on the rise in pet ownership It's

6:36

a it's a conversational crunch. There it is. It's

6:38

something to talk about. Here comes the cat. Look

6:40

at the cat. We made the mistake of turning

6:42

weather into a cliche. So now

6:44

nobody can be like it may rain later Hey, look

6:46

at this. When you're on the train. When cloud came

6:48

over. Absolutely,

6:51

the cat walks in the room and it's all

6:53

we can talk about and we talk to the

6:55

cat and the cat ignores us. I kind of

6:57

thought there was a kind of a 50-50 dog

6:59

cat divide in America and that is not true.

7:02

No, it's pretty stark of

7:04

pet owners. 49% are dog. 24%

7:08

are both. They have both a dog and a cat. 23%

7:10

are cat. So both out numbers

7:12

just cat and dog out numbers cat more

7:15

than two to one. Wow. So you really

7:17

are kind of a put-upon minority when you're

7:19

cleaning up your your cat poop. I think

7:21

I mean it's understandable and I think that

7:23

I don't know if that's a statistic that's

7:26

changed but I going on Instagram

7:28

alone dogs really

7:30

are a source

7:33

of fascination for people and I just think that it's For

7:36

the most part dogs are devoted to you unless you

7:38

have a husky. I don't want to annoy cat people,

7:40

but I think dogs are on average

7:42

in aggregate more companionable and so in

7:44

a world where people want an animal

7:46

in the house that's part of the

7:48

family and is giving you something emotional

7:50

and not just Well,

7:53

here's who eats the scraps or here's who

7:55

barks at burglars. Yeah, which is

7:57

important. Somebody's got to eat the scraps and

7:59

bark. the burglars. I mean particularly

8:01

if you like if you have

8:03

like a like a hundred and

8:05

ten pound Rottweiler or or a

8:07

Rhodesian Ridgeback that you let nuzzle

8:11

your newborn baby for

8:13

Instagram video content. I

8:16

feel like that dog real

8:18

you hope it's a member of the family.

8:20

We only see the videos where the baby

8:22

survives. That's right. It's pretty much guaranteed. I'm

8:25

not I don't think there's anything pernicious about

8:27

the rise of pet culture except that I

8:29

don't like the phrase fur baby. But you

8:31

know I don't want to hear fur baby

8:33

ever again. You're an even-tempered you know guy

8:35

right down there you just throw those pitches

8:37

right down the middle you're not gonna want

8:40

to get on the side. Hey do you have

8:42

a baby? I love you. Do you have a

8:44

puppy? I love you. I'm so open-minded John I

8:46

like puppies and babies. Yeah. Can

8:48

you imagine can you imagine a

8:50

hotter take? Do you recognize

8:53

that pet culture has changed? Not just

8:55

the adoption of fur baby but I

8:57

mean living in Seattle you see it

9:01

like a multiplicity of voice. I mean first of all you can look

9:03

at the numbers in 1988 56% of American households had a pet now

9:08

it's like 70% like it's

9:10

a dramatic change in our lifetime. That

9:12

is. And the culture around it is

9:14

a big change too because it's a

9:16

place to spend money now. Exactly like it's now

9:19

a you know a hundred

9:21

two hundred million dollar industry it's a

9:23

it's bigger than that it's an enormous industry like

9:25

I think now tens of millions

9:27

of Americans work in some pet related

9:29

industry somehow and so you

9:32

will see bumper stickers that say my

9:34

grandbaby is a miniature schnauzer and

9:37

you realize these people's

9:39

kids these people are so so

9:42

hurt about not having grandkids

9:44

because they have double income no kids

9:46

Seattleite children right that they're gonna pretend

9:48

they're happy with the miniature

9:52

schnauzer grandbaby it

9:54

is not a grand grand baby people say grand dog this

9:56

is my grand dog my grand

9:58

dog you say But it's not

10:01

just subjects anymore that in an era

10:03

of shrinking family size, animals

10:05

are filling in for kids. And

10:09

that's a pretty big change. So that's

10:11

the biggest change. Like in 1970, two-thirds of

10:13

Americans, 25 to 49, lived in a household

10:15

with a spouse and kids. So

10:17

two-thirds of Americans, 25 to 49, spouse and kids. Today

10:21

that number is 37%. It's

10:24

nearly been cut in half. Oh my God. I have no

10:26

idea. I mean, part of that is people

10:29

having kids later or, well,

10:31

I guess it can't be because that goes all the way to 49. I

10:36

guess it's fewer people in our work. It's fewer people having

10:38

kids in their 20s and 30s, I guess. Yeah,

10:41

I was in my 40s before I had a

10:44

child. You snuck in there. But

10:48

that's remarkable. I want to

10:50

know how

10:53

these statistics are different in Japan. To

10:56

me it feels worldwide just judging

10:58

by the number of amazing looking

11:00

designer dogs I see being walked

11:03

by Asian families in Seattle parks.

11:05

But I wonder if cats aren't a

11:07

larger portion of the

11:09

statistics in Japan. All the cats in

11:11

Japan live in cafes. I'm just going

11:13

on Instagram videos here. They all live

11:15

with owls and hedgehogs for some reason.

11:18

Did you ever know anybody that had a bird? Yeah.

11:22

I'd never watched this change

11:24

in pet culture because we

11:26

never had, until I was a teen,

11:28

we did not have a dog. We had budgies and

11:31

we had a goldfish named Bob. Oh, budgies are wonderful.

11:33

And they all died, which is kind of a good

11:35

primer on pet death, I think, when it's not

11:37

a mammal. Yeah. I

11:40

hate to marginalize our feathered

11:42

friends, our finny friends. Did you let

11:44

your budgies out? Did they fly around the house? Yeah, they flew

11:46

around the room. But when they fly around the house, it kind

11:48

of just means they go kind of back and forth. Like a

11:51

psycho, yeah. I had a guinea

11:53

pig. Aren't those the worst,

11:55

though? My guinea pig was the best. Nice.

11:57

Cinnamon toast. He used to sleep in bed with

11:59

me. That's an amazing name for a

12:01

guinea pig. He would cuddle He would cuddle

12:03

with the cat the cat and he thought

12:06

that they were that they were related You

12:08

could have invented Instagram. I know back in

12:10

the day, but we always had a cat

12:13

and then my mom really loves sight hounds

12:15

which are dogs that It's

12:18

one of the small breed of small of

12:21

the breeds of dogs that don't care whether you live

12:23

or die What they

12:25

want to do is is hunt a

12:27

wolf at a distance And

12:31

and so if you have a wolf problem Like

12:34

no if you have a wolf from your screwed the wolf's

12:36

got to be at a distance Well, that's your neighbors have

12:38

to have a wolf. Yeah a nearby wolf problem because

12:41

we had borzois and borzois are not

12:44

Really cuddly. I mean their noses will put

12:46

out an eye I mean, that's my kids

12:48

dream dog my younger kid wants a borzo

12:50

because they're their muzzles are so long on

12:53

Instagram. Yeah, their elegance is

12:55

unsurpassable And

12:57

in short bursts they can run 65 miles an hour

13:01

I was breakable though don't don't

13:03

don't lean on your borzo Well, you

13:06

can't break them because they have their

13:08

their whole hindquarters are like a spring

13:10

like they spring like a gazelle Like

13:12

a mousetrap. Yeah, but but otherwise like

13:14

they don't cuddly no

13:17

And you know in huskies people on Instagram

13:19

love huskies because they're beautiful But

13:23

huskies also do not really care. No about

13:25

you my cousins had huskies husky

13:28

and basically It

13:30

just wanted to eat the chain-link fence in the backyard.

13:33

Yeah, they're trying to get out the

13:35

matter how much you You

13:37

cannot give them the more eyes of you I

13:40

mean the anthropomorphizing is kind of an interesting

13:42

part of this because you know 97%

13:45

of pet owners now say their dog is part of the family Or

13:48

pet owners say that fish owners say that and so

13:50

I don't know if that number would have been that

13:52

way In the mid 20th

13:54

century, you know, like is your dog part

13:56

of the family? Well No,

13:59

except or yes, but... It'd

14:01

be so interesting to know

14:04

the statistics of, like all

14:06

the dog owners in the 70s, how many of

14:08

them ever let the dog in the house? Because

14:11

I knew a lot of dog owners

14:13

and most of them never let the dog in

14:15

the house. Yeah, and you're from Alaska. Yes.

14:18

He is pissed right now. No, but

14:21

they... There were two kinds of dogs, yeah. They

14:23

had dog houses that were, they filled with straw

14:25

and the dogs seemed... Think about Pluto.

14:28

He's leaning with his head out of his little

14:30

dog house and he's... Literally why they're eating dog

14:32

house. Yeah, why would the word

14:34

exist? Right. Why would you be

14:36

in the dog house if somebody was mad at you?

14:38

And Snoopy lies on top of it even when it's

14:41

snowing. Is Snoopy ever portrayed as

14:43

being in the house? Yeah, I think there's

14:45

a series of running gags where he's got

14:47

stuff down there. Like he's got a Steinway

14:49

piano and he's got a shirt collar. Oh,

14:51

in his house, yeah, but in ever in

14:53

Charlie Brown's house. I think sometimes,

14:55

but you're right. Not very often. Don't

14:59

they sometimes watch TV with Snoopy there? Uh,

15:02

no. We're gonna need some scholars to hook

15:04

us up here. Peanut scholars. But it does

15:06

seem like, yeah, it was accepted that the

15:08

dog in the house is kind of the

15:10

exception or the special occasion. Right. Whereas

15:12

now you could go to jail if you left your dog

15:14

in your yard all night and it gets too cold. Really?

15:18

Oh, too cold. Maybe not here in Burien. I mean, I

15:20

remember... I remember Peter wanted me to do an ad for

15:22

this. Like they had read that I was a dog owner.

15:24

Would you do an ad for not leaving your dog out

15:26

in the yard? And I'm like, I'm

15:28

definitely in favor of that, but I don't know if I want to

15:30

be in a PETA ad. Yeah,

15:33

right. I guess the Go-Go's were and they

15:35

survived. The Go-Go's have survived. But they were naked in the

15:37

ad. Hello? And Peter... Why did I

15:39

not see that? We'd rather Go-Go naked than wear fur,

15:41

remember? But Peter did not want me to be naked

15:43

in the ad, no matter how many times I asked

15:45

him. I'd be shivering nude

15:47

in a doghouse like, you wouldn't do this

15:49

to Jeopardy's Ken Jennings, would you? I was

15:51

on a date in the 90s

15:53

with the girl when we went back to her

15:56

house and she had a big dog and that

15:58

dog was on everything. On the couch. on,

16:00

slept with her in bed, but

16:03

also like grabbed food off

16:05

the counter, and

16:07

I was appalled. And it

16:09

was a large dog, and she was not in

16:11

control of this dog. She had no... the

16:14

relationship was very much that the dog

16:16

was dominating the environment, and

16:19

my feel... I remember very distinctly feeling like,

16:21

this is an unsafe environment for you, and

16:24

it is an unappealing environment for

16:26

me. Nowadays, I think that's

16:29

much more... That's the average person. Yeah, but

16:31

in 1998, I was astonished.

16:36

Like, wow! She

16:38

was ahead of the curve. Well, like, I just

16:40

felt like the basic primer of

16:42

dog ownership is, don't let the dog

16:45

dominate you. Yeah, like, like what?

16:48

And she, you know, like a lot of dog

16:50

owners thought it was funny or charming, like, oh,

16:52

if I leave a piece of chicken on the

16:54

counter while I'm cooking, it'll be on. We should say

16:56

the world's most obvious thing now, so that we don't

16:58

get a hundred people telling us the world's most obvious

17:00

thing, which is that when you're annoyed with a pet,

17:02

you're really annoyed with the owner. You know, these are

17:05

all... these are training issues. John and

17:07

I are not blaming dogs and cats for pooping

17:09

by the table here, or... Well, about

17:11

the pooping. Or eating chicken off the

17:13

carpet. No, it's 100%

17:15

true that it's bad ownership, and

17:18

a failure to understand what

17:20

dogs and cats want. More people having

17:22

pets means more people are gonna feel

17:24

pressured to own a cat for the gram, or

17:26

because all your kids friends do, or because

17:29

that was a cute breed in a movie, and those are not the best

17:31

reasons to buy it. Thought you may

17:33

not be ready for pet ownership, and it

17:36

may not... it may be that 70% of America should

17:38

not have a pet. I

17:40

think I've talked about a friend I had who

17:43

was like a hundred pound... Gown.

17:47

A hundred... well, no, she was very

17:49

strong. She was a lifeguard. Wow. But

17:51

she was small, and she

17:53

owned a wolf hybrid that

17:55

outweighed her, and had no...

17:57

no one had ever talked to her.

18:00

her about, first of all, don't

18:02

own a wolf hybrid under any circumstances,

18:04

but don't own a wolf hybrid if

18:06

you live in an apartment and

18:09

don't own a wolf hybrid unless you're

18:11

prepared to work eight hours

18:13

a day to keep the wolf hybrid

18:16

engaged. And to

18:19

be, make sure you're its boss, because

18:21

that's not a dog you want, or that's not a

18:24

creature that you want to have

18:26

be your boss. Most

18:28

people have good relationships with their pets,

18:30

and I think most of the anthropomorphization

18:32

that goes on is pretty benign. I

18:34

think most pet owners probably do project

18:36

emotions onto their pets, but

18:39

pets are not particularly... Like,

18:41

the pet is just thinking, when do I

18:43

get kibble next? And the pet is

18:46

not thinking, boy, I could stare into her

18:48

eyes forever while we watch Great

18:50

British Bake Off. Like, this

18:52

is the perfect life. But

18:55

how do we know? Exactly. How

18:57

do we know? All parties are happy in

18:59

this transaction. And

19:01

let's pretend it's not a transaction. Sure, pet

19:04

spending is up 293% in

19:06

the last few decades, and this includes crazy things like

19:13

people having their own fridge for their dogs. There's

19:15

always New York Times trend pieces about the

19:17

rise of doggy oncologists and

19:20

whatnot, doggy psychics. And

19:22

it's fun to laugh at the rich. Let's always

19:25

laugh at the rich. Oh,

19:27

rich. But it's

19:29

a big change. There's a book about

19:31

this that speculates the inflection point seems to be... By

19:33

the numbers, the inflection point seems to be around 1998.

19:37

And that seems very hard to map onto any

19:39

particular... That's when

19:42

family size shrunk moment, or that's

19:44

when the media started... That's

19:47

when Disney started anthropomorphizing doctors. It seems

19:49

ill-fitted for that, but it's pretty well-fitted

19:51

for the internet takes over, people

19:54

get lonelier. So it's

19:56

some combination of, I want

19:58

to have cute photos to post and I... don't have a

20:00

girlfriend right now. Plus, um,

20:04

you know, just the bowling alone thing of

20:06

communal America going away and

20:09

people no longer having lodge

20:12

night, bowling night, uh, sewing

20:14

circle, whatever it is and your,

20:17

your dog and its walks

20:19

and needs kind of become

20:21

that. Well, when did

20:24

dog parks specifically

20:27

arrive on the scene? Because he used to be first

20:29

in Portland and Austin, then 30 years later. I

20:33

mean, I had never seen a dog park and

20:35

then there was one which seemed like a novel,

20:38

uh, Oh, that's a good idea. Put all

20:40

those people in a cage. Cause

20:43

you know, cause they're the way they aren't

20:45

controlling their dog in a normal park is

20:47

a drag. Right. And then all of a

20:50

sudden there were dark parks everywhere and insatiable

20:52

demand for dog parks, dog owners complaining. There's

20:54

not enough dog parks. Well, yeah, right. There

20:56

were dog parks in New York city. Yep.

20:59

Amazon campus has Astra turfed dog parks so that

21:01

you can bring your dog to work. I

21:04

mean, your dog to work, bring your dog to work as

21:06

part of the culture. I think, and I think this is

21:08

not American things. I just read a thing about how in

21:10

the UK dogs in pubs are kind of ubiquitous now. And

21:12

I don't think, I mean, maybe in, I don't

21:15

think in 1890, that's what you were going to see.

21:17

Well, so this is what gets me sideways, right? I

21:19

mean, for the most part, if you want to stare

21:22

into your dog's eyes while you're watching British baking show,

21:24

that's fine. But when dogs started arriving in restaurant, the

21:26

dogs in the store and the dogs in the restaurant,

21:28

I mean, the dog in a store, like walking around

21:30

a store, I feel like as long as it's not

21:33

peeing on the floor, like fine, whatever a dog in

21:35

a store, who cares, but a dog

21:37

in a restaurant. And, and I

21:39

think my problem with it is not that the dog

21:41

is up in my

21:44

business, but that I don't know if

21:46

I come sit in a restaurant when

21:48

the last time there was a dog either

21:52

like up on a chair, licking off the

21:54

table or, you know, you see all that

21:56

and it's like, well, and people's reaction, I

21:58

had a guy say. to me, what does

22:00

it matter to you if the dog licks off

22:03

of my table? I want to know how that

22:05

story started. What did you do to elicit that

22:07

remark? Well, the guy had a dog licking

22:09

the table and I said, Hey, man,

22:13

like your dog's licking the table. Get your dog

22:15

down. You know, and my, my daughter's got a

22:17

hand on my shoulder like dad, dad. And

22:20

the guy's like, what do you care? And I'm

22:22

like, it's a restaurant table. Like the next time

22:24

I come in here and they seat me at

22:26

that table, all I'm going

22:29

to think about is, you know, the casual

22:31

wipe down that that table has received between

22:33

the last time a dog was licking it

22:36

and probably a dog tongue is

22:38

just as clean as a human tongue. If

22:42

that human likes to eat other animals

22:44

poop off the ground. And

22:46

maybe it does. We could be in Germany. It happened.

22:49

The, uh, I was at a eating

22:51

dinner in LA last week and there was a dog at the

22:53

next table and we were just overjoyed. Oh, of

22:55

course you were. Because you, there was a dog

22:58

to pet. You pitch right down the middle of

23:00

the culture. You're like, Oh, I love everyone. Someday

23:02

when I'm president, you can be

23:04

my dog. How would you feel if the

23:06

dog had been licking off, licking food off

23:08

the A small number of dogs are ruining it for everyone.

23:10

And that's why there should be rules. But this was an

23:13

outdoor patio in LA. You could totally have a dog there

23:15

in that part of the restaurant. Where did you fall on

23:17

the, uh, the comfort animal?

23:20

Oh, you probably went right down the middle on it. Didn't

23:22

you? There

23:25

are tons of people who are, uh, yeah,

23:28

getting their dog into the grocery store by saying, this is

23:30

my emotional support animal. And that's why

23:32

stores have started to put up. Nope. Therapy

23:35

animals only. We're not falling for that. And

23:37

airplanes, I think was my thing. You

23:40

see it on planes. So do you remember like the first

23:42

time you saw an animal on a plane? I was like,

23:45

they're going to arrest you at the border. Yeah.

23:47

My, my thing was, but now I'm next to

23:49

a dog half the time I fly. Do you

23:51

remember the comfort Turkey? Yeah. And going up and

23:53

down the aisle poopin. Well, and then just that

23:56

photograph, that classic photograph of the plane at 35,000

23:58

feet. And

24:00

the turkey is like kind

24:02

of looking out the window from the wind.

24:04

The turkey had the window seat. And I

24:06

was like, I think we've really, the culture

24:09

has jumped the shark. Like if there was

24:11

a moment that I felt Rome was,

24:13

was on its way to burning. Turkey on a plane.

24:15

It was Turkey on a plane. I just think I'd

24:17

be delighted with the Turkey on a plane if it

24:19

was a well-behaved Turkey. I do feel like if you

24:22

are paying to be on a plane, you

24:25

should be able to bring an unlimited amount of

24:27

Turkey. No, it should, you should not have to

24:29

sit next to someone who has an animal. That's

24:31

why the turkey was by the way. That's exactly

24:33

right. But if I were in

24:36

the aisle and they, and the person in the middle was

24:38

like, that's my Turkey. I don't

24:40

know. I don't, I'm not sure. I have a cure

24:42

for you being a grump about this. Like as annoying

24:44

as modern pet owners are, and

24:46

boy, they sure are sometimes. Yeah. Go

24:48

to any pet free internet community. And

24:51

it's, it's the equivalent of these kind of, you

24:53

know, the broken people and the child free communities.

24:56

They're always like, get your spawnlet out of my

24:58

restaurant while your crotch goblins should not be running

25:00

around the airport, like these kind of broken people.

25:02

Yeah. There is this for pets as well. Oh,

25:04

I don't want to be part of any community

25:06

that would have me. But

25:09

like, if you spend 30 seconds reading

25:11

some pet free community, you will be

25:13

like, I am now 100% for bringing

25:16

unlimited dogs everywhere just because it annoys

25:19

these awful, awful people. Now I should say

25:21

I love all

25:24

animals, all of God's creatures. Really? I

25:26

do. I sit in the window and I watch

25:28

the birds. I'm so thrilled

25:30

about the squirrels and raccoons and possums

25:33

and coyotes that are in

25:35

my ravine and in my yard.

25:37

I, I sit and

25:39

watch for owls with binoculars. I'm

25:42

like all about animals,

25:45

deer, but in the wild

25:47

moose and eagles,

25:49

the majestic eagle, it

25:52

is a majestic bird. But I do feel like

25:54

if a dog breed, if

25:57

a dog has been bred to the point that it intervention

26:00

to breathe, or

26:02

if a dog is so old it cannot

26:04

see or walk, or

26:07

if an animal poops on the floor

26:09

of your recording studio more than three

26:11

times, there,

26:14

it starts to be a question, like,

26:17

what's, what are we doing?

26:20

We're really like, if these animals were happy

26:22

in the wild, what are the pros and

26:24

cons of kind of pretending

26:26

they're part of a household,

26:28

you know? Because there's

26:31

been a movement recently recognizing,

26:33

I think probably since 1998, recognizing that we

26:38

can keep people alive, we

26:41

can keep their heart beating and the

26:43

blood pumping as they lay in bed

26:46

for years, longer than it might be a

26:48

good thing. And often where

26:51

they never wake up, often where

26:53

they're potentially in pain,

26:56

potentially in agony. But

26:58

in the case of my dad, when he

27:00

lay dying, I talked

27:03

to the doctor and said, you know,

27:06

what has happened? Give me the actual straight scoop.

27:08

And the doctor said, well, we can keep him

27:10

alive. And I said, that's not what I'm asking.

27:13

And he said, and we went back and forth. I was like,

27:15

tell me how long you can keep him alive. And he was

27:17

like, two years, four years.

27:19

This guy loves a mad scientist challenge.

27:21

And I said, will he ever wake

27:23

up again? And he said, no. And

27:26

I said, could he breathe on his own? Probably

27:28

not for more than a half an hour. Okay,

27:31

this is key information. But

27:35

there are people that would

27:37

have kept my dad alive. But

27:40

my dad had been very specific that he didn't want

27:42

to be kept alive. And he was

27:44

right. For half an hour when they took

27:46

the machines off of it. And

27:48

I think the assisted suicide movement, which we've

27:50

also never done on the omnibus. Have we

27:52

not? I don't seem like it's

27:55

got to be coming. It's very, it's very

27:57

important, I think. But we did, we did

27:59

composting burial. But our relationship to death has

28:01

been changing, I think, kind of

28:03

going back a little bit from

28:06

the extremes that we were capable

28:08

of to recognizing like, but is

28:10

that moral, is

28:12

that a net positive? Grandma

28:14

has been, you know, we have to turn her four

28:16

times a day to keep bedsores from

28:18

happening, and at no point prior to the

28:21

last 40 years, or the last 20 years,

28:23

would we have had the ability to keep

28:26

her living, and why are we doing that? And

28:29

yet we're also doing it with our pets, I

28:31

think. Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned pet death, because

28:33

not only is that the thing that Gen Z

28:35

likes to think about the least, it is also

28:38

the subject of this entry. Pet

28:40

death! Ding ding ding ding ding! We're

28:42

only 832 bars and... We're

28:47

measuring the show in four beats now? Four beats, yeah.

28:49

Yeah, that's my new thing. And also, we're in C

28:52

major in 4-4 time. Watch

28:54

me for the changes, and stop talking about

28:56

how you don't like dogs at restaurants. No,

28:59

we're 27 minutes into the show, and now

29:01

we've arrived at the Rainbow Bridge. We finally

29:03

arrived at what happens to our pets when

29:05

they go, because as you say, like our

29:08

attitudes toward household animals

29:10

has been changing, and,

29:12

you know, in the main, it's kind of been good.

29:14

We never had a... I never had a dog die

29:16

when I was a kid, like I lost budgies and

29:19

fish, but who cares? Did you wrap them in a paper towel

29:21

and put them in the trash, or did you bury them? Yeah,

29:23

pretty much. I think the fish was a burial at sea, I

29:25

think. Yes, of course. If

29:28

you know what I mean.

29:30

And, you know, that's kind of a

29:32

good way to get a kid in touch with

29:34

a matter of fact realities of death without

29:37

the troublesome emotional component. We

29:41

sent a few fish down into the

29:43

great beyond with a lot

29:45

of solemnity. People have a hard time

29:47

with... I mean, people have always had a hard time

29:49

with dead animals. Alexander the Great, when his horse Bucephalus

29:51

died, he was heartbroken and named a city after him.

29:54

The ancient Egyptians were mummified with... you know,

29:56

had their cats and dogs and baboons and

29:59

monkeys and gazellas. I'll mummified

30:01

with them so they can go with them to

30:03

the next world. It ended up being Hank Williams

30:05

Jr.'s nickname. Wait, which

30:08

one? Hank Williams Jr., his

30:11

nickname was Bosephus. Oh, yes,

30:13

that's right. That's right. Yeah,

30:16

in honor of Alexander the Great's horse,

30:18

Bosephus. But

30:23

the dog boom actually means

30:25

that the awareness of

30:27

the sadness that

30:30

is an animal shelter and the broader

30:34

swath of Americans willing to adopt a rescue

30:36

dog means that in the 1990s,

30:38

10 million animals were being euthanized

30:41

a year in America. In the when?

30:44

In the 90s. So this is before the

30:46

no-kill shelter movement? Yeah, exactly, 10 million a

30:48

year. Which no-kill shelter movement has its own

30:50

problems as well, I think. But

30:54

today, that number is now 670k a year. It's

30:58

like 1 15th. We're putting down

31:00

1 15th of the animals we used to. But

31:04

we're doing the forced sterilization.

31:07

Which helps, although it's not the state of

31:09

all. But it's eugenics, in any other word,

31:11

if we're going

31:14

to anthropomorphize the animals. Bob Barker

31:16

is a eugenicist, wow. But

31:19

wow, so the number, because that was...

31:22

I'm doing it a year, that's insane. Our childhood,

31:25

the culture

31:28

was if the pet

31:30

gets picked up by animal control, it's

31:33

going to the

31:35

fiery beyond in short order. And it was portrayed

31:37

as a cold reality of life. Like you go

31:40

to Lady and the Tramp and they have a

31:42

dog walking off to the chair, like in kind

31:44

of a darkly comic fashion. Yeah.

31:47

The literary work that pretended to imagine the world

31:49

from an animal's point of view would be like

31:52

a novelty like. We all think

31:54

that killing dogs is great. But boy, if

31:56

you were a cocker spaniel of the pound,

31:58

you'd be bummed out. Have you ever thought of that?

32:00

Sure. That was how

32:02

much the culture has shifted. Yeah, the

32:05

gallows. Because today, does

32:07

the dog die.com will warn you about

32:09

over 180 different triggers in

32:12

books and movies so that you never accidentally

32:15

start a movie in which someone

32:17

is held under water or

32:19

there are mannequins or

32:22

an LGBT character is outed. So

32:24

whatever the phobia or trauma that

32:26

the viewer brings, you can

32:28

choose to totally avoid that thing. But the one they

32:30

chose to name the site after, the prevalent one in

32:33

the culture that hurts the most people, is

32:35

not, is a dog dying. Not a child,

32:38

not a child pretending, you

32:40

know, death being portrayed on screen. But that's the plot

32:42

of where the red fern grows and

32:45

Old Yeller, right? I mean, we think

32:47

about this, I think that's why. It was a cliche.

32:49

We read those books like, as

32:53

a rite of passage. I was thinking about this this

32:55

morning. I think we've oversold that a bit. Like you

32:57

mentioned Old Yeller and Where the Red Fern Grows. And

33:00

I guess there's also Sounder. I mean,

33:03

Watership Down, they're rabbits dying right in the lab.

33:07

There's, it's just not that many, not that

33:09

many classic books in which the, the

33:13

cute animal character dies. But in

33:15

Disney, like, Bambi's Parents Die. That's

33:17

true. Parents dying is a huge

33:19

Disney trope, but they're always animals.

33:21

Maybe the idea is that's how you deal with feelings

33:25

about human death as you make it sad

33:28

mommy elephant crying or a

33:30

baby deer crying. But the plot of revolving

33:34

around the protagonist being an

33:36

orphan, that is a huge, you

33:40

see that throughout literature. And

33:42

maybe used to be more common when life spans were shorter,

33:45

right? Right, a lot of

33:47

people dying in pub fights. Swinging

33:50

from chandeliers. But you're saying

33:53

that the two books that I named

33:55

are the only real major books? Well,

33:57

here's my thing. I named the same

33:59

two. And after a moment's thought, I

34:01

remembered founder, because I'm a good ally and I don't

34:03

just remember books about white people, I'm like you. Sure.

34:06

But I'm kind of done then. I think

34:08

the idea that all kids' books have a tearjerker,

34:12

heart-string-tugging scene where

34:14

a dog dies is maybe a little overstayed.

34:16

Well, except they named the site after it,

34:18

so it must be enough that they didn't

34:21

call it like mannequins of beer in the

34:23

movie. Do mannequins of beer.com. I

34:25

didn't know that was actually a thing. If

34:27

it exists, there is a genzephobia of it.

34:29

What if something had a hole in it? What if it had several holes

34:32

in it? Oh no. You would lose your

34:34

mind. I'm starting to freak. You would be a tryptophobic

34:36

or whatever those people are. Is that

34:38

one of the categories? Something has a hole

34:40

in it? Yeah, have you not seen this

34:42

internet revulsion against things that have a few small

34:44

holes? Like a balloon

34:47

or like a jacket? I

34:49

mean, my jackets have small holes in them. Maybe

34:51

like a gourd or a fruit or something that

34:53

has kind of a Swiss cheese-like organic design. I

34:56

don't know what. What about Swiss

34:58

cheese? Oh, that's worse. It's one of

35:00

my favorite cheeses. You're triggering me now by mentioning a

35:03

cryptanaphobic cheese. Well, now here you are, Mr.

35:05

Right Down the Plate. You're teasing people with

35:07

phobia. I just know young people will never

35:09

listen to this show, so I'm safe. That's

35:12

not true. No one under 30 has never heard of

35:14

them. There's all those genz LGBTQ kids

35:16

that are the love of the show. Yeah,

35:19

that have decided that we're their beloved uncles.

35:22

And we are. Yes. Because we're

35:24

good allies except for mannequin phobic people. Yeah, and

35:26

they're a genetic dead end that we should not

35:28

reproduce. They should all go to

35:30

child's free Reddit. Well, you know, one thing you

35:32

could do is protect your home by putting a

35:34

mannequin outside of each door that keeps at least

35:36

no people in sight. I want a sighthound that

35:38

watches mannequins at a distance. Did

35:41

you ever notice, there was a real

35:44

hipster thing 20

35:46

years ago to rescue dogs from Mexico.

35:48

Yes, I think that's a dope thing,

35:51

right? I guess so. People would go

35:53

to Mexico, they'd see their street dogs

35:55

everywhere, they would find some little, you

35:57

know, kind of short legged. dog

36:01

and they would say, I'm

36:03

going to do everything in

36:06

my power to bring you back to America

36:08

and feed you cold cuts for the rest

36:10

of your life. And

36:12

it involved all these shots,

36:14

this transportation, this paperwork. There's even that

36:16

urban legend where it turns out to

36:18

be a rat. Do you remember this

36:20

one? Where somebody gets a chihuahua from

36:22

Tijuana? Does that mean a rat? I

36:26

never understood. And I knew a handful

36:28

of people that had like a Mexican rescue dog and

36:30

I was like, of all the things to

36:32

do, of all the ways

36:34

to spend your money and your energy,

36:37

like there are ... Have you ever been to Chile?

36:40

Like there are dogs everywhere. I think that's

36:42

part of it is that a lot

36:44

of these people are from parts of the US that have

36:47

a rescue dog shortage. We've become so

36:49

good at this that Seattle and Austin and Portland have

36:51

to import rescue dogs from

36:54

Appalachia and Kauai and Ensenada because

36:56

we're just not producing enough. I

36:58

should full disclosure that

37:01

this morning on my way to

37:03

the bunker, I got an email from

37:05

my mom because she has

37:07

an alert for rescue

37:12

Norwegian forest cats because

37:17

Norwegian forest cats are

37:20

these like 18 pound

37:23

enormous cats. That

37:25

everyone regrets? And she thinks that

37:27

I should have a Norwegian forest

37:29

cat. They're very friendly

37:32

and they're very huge. And

37:35

so whenever a Norwegian forest cat

37:38

shows up at a local shelter,

37:42

she sends me an alert. It's not a

37:44

notice, it's an alert. Quick, quick,

37:46

quick. Because apparently

37:48

the Norwegian forest cats, they're going to

37:51

go like hotcakes. Yeah. Every person that's

37:53

like, this is more cat than I

37:55

can handle, there's someone else like me

37:57

or in this case, my mom, acting

38:00

as a proxy who are

38:02

saying what this house needs to be a home

38:04

is a comically large cat.

38:06

But they're not overweight cats. They are 18 pounds

38:08

of muscle. Because

38:11

they look like little ocelots or something. Yeah,

38:14

and I think they were bred to

38:16

kill, I mean, it might be bred

38:18

to kill wolves. To kill capybaras. To

38:21

kill the Norwegian capybara. Roaming

38:24

the tundra. So as

38:27

much as I sit and goof on

38:29

this, I'm actually pretty

38:31

close to this culture. You're a future part

38:33

of the problem. And there have

38:35

been a couple of Norwegian Forest Cats that I

38:38

found very appealing. And I said, I called

38:40

the pound, and it's not a pound

38:43

anymore, but I called the shelter. The

38:45

shelter was like, what do I do

38:47

about getting this Norwegian Forest Cat? And

38:50

they said, here's the

38:52

interview process. Yeah, this happened to our friends

38:54

when they were trying to get a rescue

38:56

dog. And I said, interview? We're going to

38:58

visit your house a few times and see

39:00

how the adoption is going. And by the

39:02

time I even got my head around that,

39:04

they were like, it's gone. But

39:06

another time, I had rats under my barn. And

39:10

I went to these no-kill shelters

39:13

where they had animals that could

39:15

not hack it in the world. They

39:18

just couldn't be pets for whatever

39:20

reason. Because there was a cat named

39:24

Luigi who

39:26

was extremely violent. And

39:30

they said, Luigi is a

39:32

murderer. And the

39:35

only place he could really be happy is

39:37

living under a barn. But he's in Seattle,

39:39

and there are no barns. And I said,

39:41

I have a barn. And

39:44

I went to visit Luigi. He

39:46

was a beautiful cat. You explained the

39:48

situation. And the woman that was working

39:51

there who

39:53

said, oh, Luigi is a wonderful cat,

39:55

then showed me the

39:57

beep. She

40:00

was needing stitches, scars on her

40:02

arms, and one across her cheeks

40:05

that she had sustained. But she's still

40:07

working there. She's still working there. She

40:09

still believed that Luigi should live. And

40:12

you know, when I interacted with Luigi, I petted

40:14

him, I talked to him. He

40:16

seemed like a cool guy. Like

40:19

a chill dude. Until he's not, right?

40:21

But then she had a gash, like

40:23

a scar that she

40:25

would bear the rest of her life across

40:27

her face because Luigi

40:30

had decided. And at

40:32

that time I had a two year old daughter. And

40:34

I was like, if it was just me, like

40:37

Luigi and I, we could figure it

40:39

out. Against the world. But there's no

40:41

way I'm gonna have a cat walking around here. Even

40:44

if it kills six rats a day, I would

40:47

rather my daughter interact with rats than

40:50

get like permanently scarred by a

40:52

cat. We resisted an exotic pet show at the State

40:54

Fair in Puyallup. Have you ever been to this thing?

40:57

It's good for people watching, but

40:59

you know, everybody's buying rats and

41:01

iguanas and chameleons and snakes. The

41:03

base player in the long winters had a tarantula.

41:07

All these places, I'm sure the dealers are

41:09

pretty motivated to unload these things. In

41:12

particular, one guy had a bunch of lizards that seemed to have

41:14

bred out of control and he was giving them away. But there

41:17

are just long sheets about how you, by the way, you're gonna

41:19

regress this test. It's

41:22

gonna be so much trouble. It seemed like

41:24

fun for five minutes when you imagined yourself

41:26

owning a tarantula slash chameleon slash

41:29

whatever. Everybody wants a capybara,

41:31

but who knows what the downsides of

41:33

capybara are? There was a capybara there

41:35

wandering around a sawdust filled enclosure. So

41:39

I never had a, you know, we talked about literary

41:41

dog deaths and that's kind of where I got my

41:43

head around, boy, you're gonna lose your dog, was in

41:46

where the red fern grows as an old yeller because

41:48

we didn't, you know, my mom's dogs

41:50

didn't die until I was already in college. But

41:53

it's a hard thing for people, you

41:56

know, the New England Journal of Medicine

41:58

did a study on this that said the average pet

42:00

owner will have acute grief for

42:02

a full year after their pet dies. That's

42:04

on average. Sometimes

42:06

the symptoms are severe as a heart

42:08

attack. The hormones, the

42:11

cortisol or whatever it is racing, pretty

42:13

much simulates a heart attack

42:15

in the severe cases. Unlike when grandma dies or

42:17

you lose a kid or a spouse or some

42:19

awful tragedy like that, there's really no support system.

42:22

Society is not built to sympathize

42:24

for someone who just

42:27

lost their retriever because

42:30

everybody knows when you buy a pet, when

42:32

you buy a pet, it means you're kind of buying a

42:34

dead pet. We got

42:37

our first dog when my son, old

42:39

son was born and a friend of

42:41

my dad's, he was a guy who

42:43

was his law partner for a while and kind

42:46

of a famously cantankerous libertarian who

42:48

would always just say just

42:50

awful wrong things. He's the reason

42:52

why my gun-hating dad now has

42:54

a Glock and a concealed carry

42:56

permit. This guy said, you bought

42:59

a dog that's the same age as your baby and

43:01

we were like, yeah. And he was like, great.

43:04

Your dog will die precisely when

43:06

your child is the most vulnerable. You

43:08

just gave your 10-year-old kid a dead

43:10

dog. You were like, thanks Harry. Thanks

43:13

for that insight. Well, I need to out

43:15

myself again because when my cat Louis got

43:17

hit by a car, I was 40 and

43:21

I wept for 10 days.

43:23

You were inconsolable. I

43:26

could not bear that

43:28

Louis had died and I buried him

43:31

in my garden with a headstone and

43:34

I would go cry at his grave

43:37

by myself. I read a lot of people

43:39

reporting that it's worse than, for whatever reason,

43:41

subjectively, than it is worse than their memories

43:43

of losing a parent or whatever. And

43:46

it comes with the guilt that it's worse than

43:48

the memories of losing a human

43:50

family member. My dad died the year

43:52

before and I wept for

43:54

him in the hospital and

43:59

did not weep again. And then Lewis

44:01

died and I wept for over a

44:03

week. What kind of dog was Lewis? Have you ever talked about with

44:05

a cat? Oh No,

44:08

I'm imagining someone being sad I was like well

44:10

I can't be a cat Lewis was that was

44:13

one of these where I was standing At my

44:15

I walked in my front door and this kitten

44:18

Tiny kitten the size of a coffee cup

44:21

Followed me up on my porch meowing at me.

44:23

I said who are you? Get

44:26

out of here and the cat meowed

44:28

at me in such a way that

44:30

I was like All right

44:33

I'll put out a bowl of milk for you

44:35

But you better be gone by the time I

44:37

get back from my doctor's appointment or whatever. Yeah,

44:39

put out some milk came home and there

44:43

was Lewis and I Meowing

44:45

at me on the porch and I was like you just

44:48

are here because of the milk That's

44:50

correct. That's true of all pets scat

44:52

And then my sister showed up and

44:54

she said who is this incredibly cool

44:56

cat like this cat is rad I

44:58

was like, all right You

45:00

can come in the house But you're an

45:03

outside cat because I don't want to

45:05

I don't want you pooping in the house and

45:07

Lewis and I had a wonderful Life together, but

45:09

then Lewis first he got attacked

45:11

by another cat And

45:14

I ran him to the vet like in

45:16

absolute trauma But then, you

45:18

know six months later he got hit by a

45:20

car and I just I felt so bad Cuz

45:23

I felt bad. I should have never let him

45:25

outside Lewis should have been like other cats. He

45:27

should have shit a box Stinking

45:30

up my hole downstairs and he should have

45:33

walked on my face in Dawn,

45:35

which is what he wanted to do Sit

45:38

on my face and meow at me and

45:40

I was the one I'm guilty of

45:43

not of Not wanting

45:45

that in my life You're really not

45:47

selling cat ownership to me a skeptic. They'll

45:49

sit on your face in the morning if you let them The

45:53

even in the time when people were less

45:55

sentimental about their pets, you

45:57

know children and pets were often inseparable

46:00

and so that leads to all this generational

46:04

trauma around old yeller and kids

46:06

losing their pets and And

46:09

it's led to people imagine, you know ways to

46:11

soften that You know

46:13

you get the myth about taking the dog the pet

46:15

to the farm upstate You know kind

46:17

of a comforting lie that would be told to kids.

46:19

He went to live on a farm I say that

46:21

all the time mostly about my friend and religion is

46:24

little help here in the West just because You

46:26

know our religions are handed down from a time

46:28

when we were not sentimental about animals and therefore

46:31

we assumed they had no souls and

46:33

therefore theology is very clear that God

46:36

or gods may Save

46:40

humans in some kind of an afterlife blessed

46:42

afterlife But not their

46:44

animals the Christian Trinity is silent on

46:46

what happens to your dog Yeah,

46:49

yeah, and pretty implicit that you

46:52

know that dogs are not that the

46:55

children of God in the same way that and you

46:57

know and the problem is as as

47:00

the What do you call? What

47:02

do you call the membership of a

47:04

church the congregation? There's

47:07

a better word, right? The

47:09

word I'm trying to think of brethren the

47:11

pot quality the people in the pews are

47:13

the not the laity there the there the

47:17

There is a word for medrics. We'll say you're crying,

47:19

you know as the congregation changes and becomes more Emotionally

47:23

invested in the day. Well, of course heaven will

47:25

have my pets You know

47:27

Christianity has had to adopt and you get this

47:29

kind of new age you well, we don't know

47:31

Yeah, God probably wants you to be happy and

47:33

therefore sure Will be

47:35

there heaven is what will make you heaven

47:37

is what make you tithe I think because

47:39

yeah because why would you go to a

47:41

heaven that was somebody else's version of happiness?

47:43

Have you seen the twilight zone where? This

47:46

seems like an early attempt to envision this idea

47:49

because it's from the early 60s I think it's

47:51

written by Earl Hamner who later created the Waltons

47:53

based on his own Appalachian

47:55

the answer to the question have I

47:57

seen the twilight zone ellipses is yes

48:00

Yes, every episode, six times. This

48:02

is the one where the guy's out hunting with

48:04

his pooch. It's a coonhound kind of a thing.

48:06

And some accident happens. The guy

48:09

realizes he's dead and an angel says, you

48:11

know, come this way, but you can't bring

48:13

your dog. And he says, nope, I'm going to the other

48:15

place. I'd rather be there than without

48:17

my beloved hound. Wait, Satan takes

48:19

dogs? Well, that's what, am

48:21

I gonna give away the twist ending of this

48:23

60 year old Twilight Zone? Yeah, why not? Then

48:25

he goes down the road and he finds real

48:27

heaven and they're like, oh no, that was Satan.

48:31

He was trying to trick you. How could it be heaven

48:33

without dogs? Wait a minute. You're

48:36

saying that Satan, like,

48:38

lives? Mascareids as

48:40

St. Peter? That

48:42

seems like really tricky. Well, keep

48:44

in mind the average dead deceased

48:46

has not, will not recognize St.

48:48

Peter. Oh.

48:50

So he can say whatever he wants. Satan can. Yeah,

48:53

he's the father of lies. And you won't be like,

48:55

you don't look like St. Peter in my Bible stories.

48:57

Oh, I see. I see. That,

48:59

I mean, that just introduced a new

49:02

wrinkle into walking down the hallway to

49:04

the light. He is

49:06

the father of lies, John. But what if going

49:08

into the light is the wrong move? What if

49:10

Satan's down there with a flashlight? Two angels are

49:12

at the pearly gates. One only tells the truth,

49:15

one only lies. What one question can you ask

49:17

to ensure the salvation of your soul? I wonder

49:19

how many people look down the corridor to the

49:22

light and don't actually turn around and look behind

49:24

them where there's a big door that says heaven.

49:28

Anyway, in the absence of theology on

49:30

this point, people are kind of left

49:33

to imagine their own comforting fate

49:36

for their pooches and

49:38

beloved animal companions, which

49:40

leads us to, I think, possibly

49:43

the omnibus debut of

49:46

Dear Abby and Ann Landers. Yeah. Who

49:49

could really be their own show. Oh, I

49:51

loved them. Dear Abby's

49:53

the one we're gonna talk about here in

49:55

the 1950s. She got fed

49:57

up with the lousy advice call a woman named Pauline.

50:01

They're sisters, you know. No, yeah. She won't all get

50:03

to it. She got fed up with the advice column

50:05

in the San Francisco Chronicle and wrote in saying, this

50:08

bites I could do better and wrote

50:11

a few columns and it turned out she could and was

50:13

immediately hired, pissing off

50:15

her sister Esther, her

50:17

twin sister. And I think they might have like

50:19

the like one is Esther Pauline and one is

50:21

Pauline Esther. Yeah, that's weird, right? Pauline Esther, that's

50:24

a cool punk name. Plastic

50:27

having just been invented. Jewish families all

50:29

over America were naming their daughters after...

50:31

Polly. After different kinds of synthetics.

50:36

She had just been hired. She'd

50:39

won a contest to write advice for

50:41

the Chicago Sun and was royally pissed

50:44

that she had kind of invented this cool niche

50:46

for herself and her sister had just jumped on

50:48

the bandwagon. And it was Dear

50:50

Abby that was the copycat? Dear Abby's the copycat. Wow.

50:53

You were a Dear Abby house, right? Because I

50:55

think that... Didn't the Times have... What did the

50:57

Times have? In Anchorage, we had the Anchorage Times

50:59

and the Anchorage Daily News and one had one

51:01

and one had the other. So I read them

51:03

both. It must have been the same here, but

51:06

I thought maybe the PI had Ann Landers and

51:08

the Times had Dear Abby. I think of the

51:10

PI as being an Ann Landers paper. But Ann

51:12

Landers always seemed like the off-brand one to me.

51:15

Like that's what they would go to for the punchline,

51:17

like, yeah, well go tell Ann Landers. But

51:20

in real life, you would see Dear Abby

51:22

posted everywhere. Well, but so that's the thing.

51:24

Dear Abby was the institutional one and Ann

51:26

Landers was the renegade. Oh, I thought maybe

51:28

it was the other way around. I felt

51:30

like Ann Landers was the one that was

51:33

in the liberal paper and Dear Abby was

51:35

in the conservative paper. It's true. The Pacific

51:37

Stars and Strides, which is probably the newspaper

51:39

I read more than any other growing up

51:41

overseas, was a Dear Abby paper. But

51:43

they also had Dr. Ruth. So

51:45

hard to say. What's going on with our

51:47

servicemen and women? By the time Dr. Ruth

51:49

came around, I was already on to Miss

51:51

Manners. I wasn't listening to her. You were

51:53

on to Hello Ease and Dan Savage. I

51:56

did not need advice from those old Manners.

51:58

I needed Ann Landers to tell me. exactly

52:00

how many candlesticks I should have at a birthday

52:02

party. By the time we got to the 90s

52:04

there were new kind of edgier versions of these

52:06

advice columns, probably in hopes of getting young people

52:08

to read the paper. Dance Savage being the premiere.

52:10

Exactly. But, dear

52:13

Abby, it's really hard to overstate how

52:15

much of a vector dear Abby and

52:17

Ann Landers were from 20th century American

52:20

culture. Absolutely. Because they had an audience,

52:23

let me if you add up all their subscribers,

52:25

they had an audience of hundreds of millions of

52:27

people and that dwarfs even

52:29

the Tonight Show or whatever you think.

52:32

Except for maybe the Tonight Show or the

52:34

TV Guide, what was the way to reach

52:36

all Americans? And weirdly, it was these advice

52:38

columns that were next to

52:40

the comics or something, a part of the paper

52:42

that everybody read, including kids like you and me.

52:45

It was Marilyn Voss-Sevant in Parade

52:47

Magazine alongside Ken Jennings. Well, yeah, I've talked

52:49

about this before, I think. But the one

52:51

book of mine that sold the most was

52:53

because there was a Parade Magazine cover package on

52:55

it. And this is in the year of our

52:57

Lord 2015. And

53:00

there are still more eyeballs on Parade Magazine

53:02

than on all late

53:05

night and new shows put together. You

53:07

know, like, you know, I

53:09

would have been excited about going on Terry

53:11

Gross or The Daily Show, but my publisher

53:13

was just like, oh, no, you want dear

53:15

Abby. They did. You want the cover of

53:18

Parade Magazine. But I don't know if you

53:20

remember, I absolutely remember that if dear Abby

53:22

answered a letter, you could

53:25

reference it to other people and they

53:27

would know what you meant. That's a

53:29

great measure of it. It would be

53:31

like a water cooler thing like who

53:33

saw Family Ties last night. Did you

53:35

see the letter from the woman that

53:38

thinks her husband is cheating on her? But maybe

53:41

it's just that he joined a motorcycle gang and

53:43

it's like everybody would have read it and have

53:45

a feeling about it. So,

53:48

Ken, let me stop you right there. I know

53:50

that you care about your sleep and I

53:52

care about mine. And I'm about to tell

53:54

you about a thing that has really improved

53:57

my sleep of late. What is that? It is

53:59

the miracle. Miracle-made sheet set that I

54:01

got in the mail not that long ago. I'm

54:03

picky about sheets I know can you what can

54:05

you tell me that will sell me on these

54:07

cuz I'm a bit of a skeptic right now

54:10

I'm I'm tilting my head

54:12

slightly askew. I see you are

54:14

because we're in the same room

54:16

Well, let me tell you about

54:18

them miracle-made sheets are silver infused

54:20

fabrics inspired by NASA They're

54:24

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54:26

That's also antimicrobial How

54:28

do you make antimicrobial sheets? Well, that's

54:31

the thing about about

54:33

silver infused fabrics Yeah,

54:36

silver than natural antibacterial. That's right

54:38

The you know traditional bed sheets

54:40

harbor more bacteria than a toilet.

54:42

Oh, don't tell me that Yeah,

54:44

it leads to acne to allergies

54:46

stuffy notices stuffy notices and stuffy

54:48

noses I hate getting stuffy notices

54:50

I do too and

54:52

they offer an entire line

54:54

of self-cleaning antibacterial bedding Sheets

54:57

pillowcases comforters and they

54:59

prevent 99.7%

55:02

of bacterial growth and This

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is one of my favorite things require

55:07

up to three times less laundering. Well,

55:09

that's nice. Yeah, it's nice good for

55:11

the earth So

55:13

anyway, I I've been enjoying

55:15

these sheets quite a bit

55:17

and I can confirm I

55:20

haven't had any allergies and at night.

55:22

I'm very I'm very I

55:24

don't feel too hot. I don't feel too

55:26

cold The sheets have a very nice sateen

55:28

finish. I've been

55:30

loving it Sounds like luxurious like five-star

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hotel quality sheets, but at a much more

55:35

reasonable price So here's what I'm gonna do

55:37

not just for you, but for everyone listening

55:40

Are you now do you have permission from

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the miracle made company? I reached out to

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make this offer I reached out to him

55:46

and I said hey look I'm having such

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a great time with your sheets I'd like

55:50

other people to to to be able to

55:52

share this experience and what did they think?

55:54

They said what they what they're offering. Okay,

55:57

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55:59

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thank you Miracle Made for sponsoring this

56:53

episode. Mindy

56:56

and I still talk about online advice columns. You

56:59

know, the outrageous letters that get written in. I

57:01

don't know if, this just proves I'm a bad

57:03

person so now I'm not going to be a

57:05

baby and puppy kissing president. But the only letters

57:07

I like in advice columns are one where the

57:09

writer is the awful, blinkered person who doesn't know

57:11

it. Right. That's what you want.

57:14

And the columnist is, you know. It gets to

57:16

be like, hey, there's a famous one where

57:18

somebody writes into, I think this is

57:20

Amlanders and says, you know, two gay

57:22

men, two men moved across the street from

57:24

me. They're clearly a couple. Like

57:28

this sucks. How do I save my neighborhood?

57:30

What rights do I have? Yeah, how do

57:32

I save my neighborhood? And Amlanders famously says,

57:34

you could move. Yeah, well, this is what

57:37

made Amlanders, I remember. She was

57:39

an ally. She was pro-gay rights

57:41

at a time when that seemed radical and

57:43

especially from like a woman, you know,

57:46

matronly looking woman. Yeah, you know, because they

57:48

were, you know, they were both progressive Jewish

57:50

women of their generation. Right. And

57:52

so it's not a surprise, but like middle America was just like,

57:54

hey, this lady with the big hair says I should think twice

57:56

before I bully X, Y, or Z

57:59

person. Yeah. with that. Well,

58:01

I, you know, I got a thing, you know, I'm,

58:03

I, I subscribed to the New York Times and they,

58:06

if you let them, will send you 14 emails

58:08

a day. Yes. And

58:10

I turned most of them off. I don't

58:12

want to see an email about New York

58:15

Times cooking every

58:18

day, but I kept the ethicist. Um,

58:21

they have that. That's their advice column. Yeah, their

58:23

advice column. And the, and I got an email

58:25

this morning from the ethicist and the letter was

58:27

from someone who said, I owe $700 to a

58:30

car rental place, but they haven't

58:35

built my credit card and

58:37

I've called them three times to try and pay

58:39

them this What's the

58:41

cutoff? What do I need to do now? How

58:43

do I get this $700 to this car rental

58:45

place? And I was thinking, and

58:48

I didn't read the ethicist's reply, but I was

58:50

like, isn't this God

58:53

saving you $700? How many

58:55

times does an ethical person try to pay a

58:57

bill that actually they haven't been invoiced for? Now

58:59

that you say this, I am realizing that advice

59:01

columns are basically our modern equivalent of going to

59:04

a rabbi, you know, where

59:07

you want to know, rabbi, what must I

59:09

do? Yeah. What does the Tom Hald say

59:11

on that? I still have this $700 of

59:13

ill gotten gains, rabbi, you know, and we

59:16

don't have that. So we have online

59:18

advice columnists or, or judge John

59:20

Hodgman or something. Um, here's

59:22

a list of things that appeared in Dear Abby

59:24

and Ann Landers over the years that kind of

59:27

changed America. Uh, without

59:29

them, we would not have pink ribbons for breast cancer.

59:31

Uh, yeah, I mean,

59:33

they didn't think of it, but it was some campaign that

59:35

like first got a hundred, you know,

59:38

10 million eyeballs in a advice column. The idea

59:40

of a, the whole idea of adoption reunions

59:42

like, um, you know, support

59:45

groups and lists for people to track down

59:47

their birth parents did not exist.

59:49

Uh, the recipe for pecan pie that everyone

59:51

makes is a Dear Abby, pretty

59:54

much all urban legends, uh, the hook on the

59:56

door of the car where you're making out. That's

59:58

a Dear Abby thing. Yeah. That's

1:00:00

like that's kind of the urtext. I don't think there's

1:00:02

an earlier citation than a than a Dear Abby letter

1:00:06

The candy tampering on Halloween never happened in

1:00:08

real life But has been cropping up in

1:00:10

Dear Abby and Landers since the 80s convincing

1:00:12

everyone it's real The

1:00:14

the person blinking their headlights behind you and

1:00:17

then you kill they kill you Yeah,

1:00:19

and then they kill you and then but who survives to write

1:00:21

the letter Dear dear Ann

1:00:24

Landers. This is my ghost Nine

1:00:26

people died on a bus I was driving. Do you not

1:00:28

know the servant legend? They're flashing their lights behind you The

1:00:30

person's terrified and keeps speeding up and finally they get forced

1:00:32

to the side of the road and the person's like there's

1:00:34

a guy In your backseat with a knife every time I

1:00:37

flash my lights. He got down. Do you

1:00:39

not know this one? No, that's terrifying. You should have

1:00:41

read more You should have

1:00:43

read more Ann Landers. I was on a on a

1:00:45

country road in Vermont one

1:00:47

time and a car came up behind me

1:00:49

and like

1:00:52

close and It was

1:00:54

a twisty road no place to pull off and

1:00:56

so I sped up and the car

1:00:59

stayed too close as I

1:01:02

sped up and I sped up faster and the

1:01:05

car remained You know too close

1:01:07

to my back bumper and I started to get afraid

1:01:11

and so I really started to gun it and He

1:01:14

just stayed right on me and I'm

1:01:16

going around these, you know, Vermont country Corners

1:01:18

and turns and ups and downs and it you

1:01:20

know, and it starts to be really I'm

1:01:23

like hectic. Yeah, and then you're

1:01:26

afraid frantic. You're not hectic. I'm frantic. He's

1:01:28

hectic. It's hectic It's I'm frantic and then

1:01:30

he turns on his rollers and he's a

1:01:32

cop and he pulls me over for speeding

1:01:35

And I said this always worked I said you pushed

1:01:37

me to speed and we said we sat and had

1:01:39

an argument and of course it was Vermont So he

1:01:41

let me go dear New York Times at the same

1:01:45

Just to finish the list of other things with our which

1:01:48

The pencil test for whether or not you need to wear

1:01:50

a bra that's a famous and Landers column No that one

1:01:52

what you don't know the pencil test do I need to

1:01:54

wear a bra? Well, I have a pencil Let's

1:01:57

put it up and you can guess what the pencil test is.

1:01:59

I can't What oh if you can

1:02:01

put it under your boobs and pencil

1:02:04

say well no my pencil drops So

1:02:06

I'm you're cool to be brawlers the

1:02:09

footprints in the sand poem I mean

1:02:11

these are all things that had appeared in

1:02:13

somebody's church newsletter or some evangelical You

1:02:16

know TV preacher had mentioned it, but you

1:02:18

know footprints in the sand gets a hundred million

1:02:20

eyeballs on do because it's got She just carried

1:02:23

you yeah that one. I see that's nice the

1:02:25

it is. Thank you the The

1:02:28

argument about whether toilet paper should go over or

1:02:30

under that was the that was a 15,000 letter

1:02:33

column for Ann Landers I still get screamed at

1:02:35

about this What's what side are

1:02:37

you? I'm not gonna say I don't want to get

1:02:39

screamed at you're clearly the renegade minority side I'm always

1:02:41

gonna get over is better. I'm gonna get screamed at

1:02:43

by people with pets Oh, it turns out America 7030

1:02:46

over so you can you can safely say over. I never

1:02:49

said over Yeah, I know that's what I'm saying. You're the wrong

1:02:51

one. That's why you're that's why you're being a coward of

1:02:56

That famous list of kind of apocryphal

1:02:58

elections that were settled by one vote

1:03:00

every election day And I

1:03:03

think you're happy would run something about how

1:03:05

we'd be speaking German now if not for

1:03:07

the one vote of blah blah Mecklenburg in

1:03:09

Pennsylvania never happened totally a historical, but like

1:03:11

to this day Hundreds of

1:03:13

millions of Americans think that's why you vote to

1:03:15

keep us from speaking Pennsylvania

1:03:18

Dutch, yeah, that's why the Biden

1:03:20

presidency is completely illegitimate one vote

1:03:22

in Atlanta You

1:03:25

got to find me one more vote of Pennsylvania. I want to

1:03:27

speak German And I think

1:03:29

maybe most famously of all live laugh love That's

1:03:34

something we would that's it just changes

1:03:36

the mind of America certainly changed what

1:03:38

Airbnb's were decorated The number of words

1:03:40

you see on living room walls has

1:03:42

dramatically risen live laugh love You know

1:03:44

that's interesting when I was growing up.

1:03:46

You never saw words exactly you wouldn't

1:03:49

go in somebody's house, and it would

1:03:51

be like Compassion yeah, I

1:03:53

love the fireplace sign of any kind

1:03:55

except maybe put the toilet seat down

1:03:57

or you know don't there's no pee in

1:04:00

Lawyer exactly what's the one of

1:04:02

our.don't up being on the seats.

1:04:05

Oh. There's always

1:04:07

some embroidered thing about knocking on the seat

1:04:09

if you sprinkle when you think obedient cream.

1:04:11

The see: My friend had our new yo.

1:04:14

that's pretty. I don't think that's the canonical

1:04:16

one I have. I definitely have a little

1:04:18

a portrait of a weasel in a jacket.

1:04:20

Hanging on clothes sucks. Above

1:04:23

my toilet? Does that remind you to to

1:04:25

am. No. I'm not

1:04:27

sure why it's a good how I didn't

1:04:30

buy it. It's first fidget appeared after a

1:04:32

former and one nights some point I'd sit

1:04:34

there. Weasel must have appeared. Why is it

1:04:37

in a jacket and why is it on

1:04:39

Slow walkers on always be hanging by it's

1:04:41

scruff and you'd get more letters from animal

1:04:43

rights people. Anyway, so

1:04:45

in a time before it is it basically

1:04:48

so the nets that your email forwards and

1:04:50

then social media did about how like. When.

1:04:53

Or something so good you immediately want to tell a

1:04:55

hundred people like. There

1:04:57

was support and a mimeograph

1:04:59

folklore under under current. Demimonde

1:05:02

of of the stuff, mostly made

1:05:04

up. And. It would always bubble to

1:05:06

the surface in a newspaper. a bicycle. And

1:05:09

this one's unusual because of. What's

1:05:12

familiar to the topic of our search? on

1:05:14

like three hours in a World in February?

1:05:16

Nineteen Ninety Four. A

1:05:18

Dear Abby rid of this is no

1:05:21

longer the original Pauline Lederer would have.

1:05:23

her name was the just now you

1:05:25

know her daughter Genius in February over

1:05:28

Ninety Nine for I would have been

1:05:30

a college sophomore although I was in

1:05:32

Europe sorting a Mormon missions our own.

1:05:35

I. Was taken a couple gap years for the

1:05:37

lord. I was not

1:05:39

reading Dear Abby sinuses. We.

1:05:42

Did you think what are the odds you register out? Be calm.

1:05:44

I. Was on drugs and. Since.

1:05:46

Ever of energy Ninety Four owners

1:05:48

can read dear that's detailed stoners

1:05:50

I read middle drives these of

1:05:53

and reader advertise eyes peeled like

1:05:55

says I read the newspaper every

1:05:57

day even on drugs. they

1:05:59

get it personally drug. Yeah, you have to know

1:06:01

what's going on in the world and I'm sure

1:06:03

I would have read this column. Dear

1:06:05

Abby gets a letter from a reader

1:06:07

who just calls himself an old

1:06:10

softie from Grand Rapids, Michigan.

1:06:12

To this day, we don't know who an old

1:06:14

softie was. Advising Dear

1:06:17

Abby that it is a very comforting thing that's been

1:06:19

making the rounds. For anybody who's lost a pet, you're

1:06:21

going to want to read this. It's called the

1:06:23

Rainbow Bridge. And it's

1:06:25

always called a poem, but there's really

1:06:27

nothing, it's just kind of a longish paragraph,

1:06:31

with very little that is poetic about it either

1:06:33

in form or in approach. Are

1:06:37

you going to read the Rainbow

1:06:39

Bridge? Maybe Mark Miles can put down

1:06:41

some comforting music here. Yeah, a little bit

1:06:43

of, I don't know, well, is that should

1:06:45

this be kind of dramatic romantic music or

1:06:48

should it be benign sort of? Yeah, it

1:06:51

would be benign. I'm hearing flute.

1:06:53

I'm hearing the strings. Just

1:06:55

this side of heaven is a place called

1:06:57

Rainbow Bridge. So it's

1:07:00

not heaven, it's an aneurysm. This has a

1:07:02

little bit of rhythm to it. Just this

1:07:04

side of heaven is a place called Rainbow

1:07:06

Bridge. But it's going to break down in

1:07:08

a second, so don't get wetted to your

1:07:10

quick track. When an

1:07:12

animal dies that has been especially close to

1:07:14

the animal. When an animal dies that has

1:07:17

been especially close to someone here, so not

1:07:19

all animals. Your pet goes to Rainbow Bridge.

1:07:22

There are meadows and hills for all of our special friends

1:07:24

so they can run and play together. There is

1:07:26

plenty of food, water, and sunshine, and friends

1:07:29

are warm and comfortable. Seems like the plenty

1:07:31

of food is going to be some of

1:07:33

the pets. No, all

1:07:35

pets are vegetarians in

1:07:37

Rainbow Bridge, I think. Or,

1:07:40

yeah, it's tricky. We don't really get into

1:07:42

the nuts and bolts of how Rainbow Bridge,

1:07:44

the ecosystem operates. All the animals

1:07:46

who have been ill and old are restored to health and

1:07:48

strength. Those who were hurt are

1:07:50

made better and strong again, likely remember them before they

1:07:52

go to heaven. They are happy and

1:07:55

content, except for one small thing, they each

1:07:57

miss someone very special to them who had to

1:07:59

be left behind. Oh my god. What

1:08:01

a curse. This is not a twist. I thought

1:08:03

I was going to say they missed their

1:08:05

testicles, but no, they missed their owners. Perhaps

1:08:08

they've been restored, uh, uh,

1:08:11

reproductively as well. But now the owner that

1:08:13

misses its pet now is even sadder. Yes.

1:08:17

Uh, this is, this makes pet owners into a suicide cult.

1:08:19

They all run and play together. No, see, they're

1:08:21

happy. They all run and play together. But the

1:08:23

day comes when one suddenly stops and looks into

1:08:25

the distance. His bright eyes

1:08:27

are shining. His body shakes. Suddenly

1:08:30

he begins to run from the herd, rushing

1:08:32

over the grass, his legs carrying him faster

1:08:34

and faster. And when you, it

1:08:36

switches to you, and when you and your special

1:08:38

friend finally meet, you cuddle in a happy hug,

1:08:40

never to be apart again. You and

1:08:42

your pet are in tears. Your hands

1:08:44

again cuddle his head and you look again into his trusting

1:08:46

eyes. So long gone from life, but

1:08:48

never absent from your heart. And then

1:08:50

you cross the rainbow bridge together. What if your

1:08:52

pet is a tarantula? The tarantula's not going to

1:08:55

do any of that. What if you had eight

1:08:57

pets? If a tarantula ran at me across a

1:08:59

field, I would not say, hooray, I'm in heaven.

1:09:01

Well you wouldn't even see it. You would continue

1:09:03

on to heaven and the tarantula would be like,

1:09:05

but he didn't. But I'm, hold

1:09:07

on, hold on. I'm slowly

1:09:10

creeping toward the bridge. Also

1:09:12

a budgie. I

1:09:14

mean, is that who you'd want to

1:09:16

be reunited with? It says pet in

1:09:18

kind of an open-minded way, but it

1:09:21

seems to imply dogs, probably cats, and

1:09:23

maybe rabbits, if I'm feeling

1:09:25

generous. No, but it's the horse people. Oh,

1:09:27

that's true. The horses and the goats and

1:09:29

the... Yeah, right, because it could be farm

1:09:31

people, yeah. The comfort turkeys. No, this is

1:09:34

1994. You think this would

1:09:36

be too late for a Dear Abby

1:09:38

column to just grab America by the

1:09:40

throat and force it into compliance. But

1:09:43

that is exactly what happens. This is,

1:09:45

it doesn't seem to be that original.

1:09:47

The rainbow bridge is drawn from Norse

1:09:49

mythology. The

1:09:51

idea of a meadow

1:09:54

where people and their dogs can be together

1:09:56

is, it's not real Native American

1:09:59

myth, but it's kind of... white projection of Native

1:10:01

American myth, the happy hunting ground of the

1:10:03

19th century. Is it like a, it's a

1:10:05

rainbow. That's what a rainbow is, it's a

1:10:07

bridge. They see it in the sky and

1:10:09

the Norsk, and they're like, oh, that's gotta

1:10:11

be, that's gotta go to

1:10:13

Valhalla or whatever. It's,

1:10:15

you know, it's obviously draws from Isaiah 11,

1:10:17

where all, you mentioned the animals eating each

1:10:19

other, but no, you know, in Paradise the

1:10:22

animals are all friends. Sure, the lion lays

1:10:24

down with the lamb. He's eating a kale

1:10:26

Caesar for some reason. There's

1:10:29

no anchovies there. But you know,

1:10:31

and it's, you know, it's just kind of a wish

1:10:33

fulfillment for pet owners. In fact, it seems, I would

1:10:36

not have spotted this, but it seems very closely

1:10:39

drawn from a sequel to

1:10:42

a million selling book I've never heard of. The

1:10:44

biggest Canadian seller of its day was

1:10:46

Marshall Saunders' book, Beautiful Joe, about a

1:10:49

real life lab, no, a real life

1:10:52

mix, a dog that had a

1:10:54

brutal owner, a cruel owner who

1:10:56

had, it's really awful, trigger warning,

1:10:58

cut off its ears and tail. And then

1:11:00

finally, Although that's how they actually turn the

1:11:04

hippos into fighting dogs. Right, maybe that's what

1:11:06

I want. Doberman pinchers, that's how we used

1:11:08

to think a proper

1:11:10

Doberman pincher would be, cut off its

1:11:12

ears and tail. You, anyway,

1:11:14

this dog then finds happiness later in life with a

1:11:17

good owner, it's kind of a, and it's from the

1:11:19

point of view of the dog. So it's a black

1:11:21

beauty, but for a put upon street dog. And this

1:11:23

thing sold a million copies on both sides of the

1:11:25

border. It was a huge hit. One

1:11:28

out of every five Canadians must have bought it. They've probably

1:11:30

heard of it today. Margaret Marshall Saunders who

1:11:32

wrote it had two smart marketing things. One,

1:11:34

she said it in Maine, not Canada, so

1:11:37

Americans would buy it. And number

1:11:39

two, she changed her name to Marshall Saunders. She

1:11:41

dropped the Margaret because then people would think

1:11:43

it wasn't by women. And then as we've

1:11:45

talked about before, book buyers of both sexes might

1:11:47

pick it up. Yeah, so book by women is

1:11:49

not gonna get sold in the United States. Women

1:11:52

by book, by books by women, both genders by

1:11:54

books by men. And Maine is the Canada of

1:11:56

America. It is, that's the closest part of America

1:11:58

that a Canadian thinks. can imagine is

1:12:01

Maine. Well, and people in Michigan and Minnesota

1:12:03

are yelling at us now. No, it's us.

1:12:06

That's probably true. It probably is them. I

1:12:08

take it back. But

1:12:11

there's a sequel to this book where beautiful

1:12:13

Joe does go to paradise and it

1:12:15

is kind of a meadow-like waiting room where everybody

1:12:17

waits for their owners to rejoin them so they

1:12:20

can go to heaven. A meadow-like waiting

1:12:22

room. Or maybe it's a waiting room

1:12:24

like meadow, right? You're just describing

1:12:26

hell again and again. No! That

1:12:29

is not a meadow. It is a waiting room. Don't

1:12:31

you see Beetlejuice? I guess that's true. It's

1:12:34

the one from Twin Peaks with the Dancing Dwarf

1:12:37

and the Red Curtains. I never saw Twin Peaks. Let's

1:12:42

rock. So, when this runs

1:12:44

in Dear Abbey in February 1994, it turns

1:12:46

out to be pretty new. Enough

1:12:48

people have recognized it that they tell Dear Abbey, oh yeah,

1:12:50

like this is, I think this is

1:12:52

posted on the bulletin board at my vet hospital. I

1:12:55

saw this in my shelter or whatever

1:12:57

it was. Now

1:13:00

that we have, this is in the internet era so

1:13:02

we can actually see when it debuted online. In

1:13:05

fact, it was not on Usenet before January 1993. So

1:13:08

it's like a year old in internet terms when Dear Abbey picks it

1:13:10

up. The person who posted it on

1:13:12

a rec arts dog says,

1:13:15

oh yeah, I just saw this in the Mid-Atlantic

1:13:17

Great Dane Rescue League newspaper and I thought it

1:13:19

was very sweet and thought you guys might enjoy.

1:13:22

I'm a long time subscriber to the

1:13:24

Mid-Atlantic Great Dane Rescue newsletter. I don't

1:13:26

get the MAGDRL ad anymore. But

1:13:29

anyway, it's out there enough that other people recognize it.

1:13:31

And Dear Abbey says, hey, I don't know who wrote

1:13:33

this. If anyone in my reading audience can verify the

1:13:36

authorship, please let me know. And

1:13:38

in the following years, no fewer than 15 people

1:13:40

try to register the Rainbow Bridge with

1:13:44

the US Copyright Office, all

1:13:47

claiming to have written it. And

1:13:49

it would probably be a mystery today who wrote

1:13:52

Rainbow Bridge, except that this is one of

1:13:54

the rare cases where we have actually been

1:13:56

able to track back whatever the viral poem

1:13:58

is. I sound like you're part

1:14:01

of the cultural anthropology or archaeology group.

1:14:03

I'm going to take credit for the work of

1:14:06

a Tucson art historian named

1:14:08

Paul Kundalaris. I

1:14:11

think I'm reading that right. Does he have his own

1:14:13

express, the Kundalaris express? Kundanaris. I'm

1:14:15

sorry. I don't want the Greek to get

1:14:18

angry at me. He's

1:14:20

a art historian from Tucson. He's a

1:14:22

cat owner and he's a member of

1:14:24

what's called the order of the good

1:14:26

death, which seems to be one of

1:14:29

these green burial adjacent groups. That's going to, you know,

1:14:31

we're death positive. We're no longer going to hide it

1:14:33

behind a curtain. Let's be frank about

1:14:35

this. Let's be modern. Um, let's

1:14:38

have a better attitude towards death by being more

1:14:40

open. And he's actually written a book

1:14:42

about pet cemetery. So he's kind of interested in the,

1:14:44

as a pet owner. That's Stephen King you're talking about.

1:14:46

Right. I'm thinking of Steve. When I mentioned Maine, I

1:14:49

forgot. No,

1:14:51

this is a, this guy just happens to be interested

1:14:54

in both death culture and he's a pet lover. And

1:14:56

so he obviously writes a book about

1:14:58

pet cemeteries. And in

1:15:00

the, you know, the 30 years since dear Abby ran

1:15:02

this poem, it's now everywhere. You know, you go to

1:15:04

a high end pet cemetery,

1:15:06

which is now a thing that exists and there will be a

1:15:08

big granite tablet at the,

1:15:10

at the gate with the

1:15:12

inspiring text of the rainbow bridge, as if

1:15:14

it's, as if it's from a Buddhist sutra

1:15:17

or something, and not from a 1994 dear Abby column. Wait

1:15:20

a minute. Uh, you said high

1:15:22

end pet cemetery. You're burying the lead

1:15:24

here. No, this is

1:15:26

a thing. There are high end pet

1:15:28

cemeteries. Absolutely. I

1:15:30

think it's, it's, so that implies there are

1:15:32

low end pets. Well, that would be like a

1:15:34

backyard, you know, uh, or,

1:15:37

or just kind of a plate, you know, there

1:15:39

are places historically, like, um, if you go to

1:15:41

the Presidio in, uh, San Francisco, just right by

1:15:44

the end of the golden

1:15:46

gate, there were enough servicemen, people, servicemen and women stationed

1:15:48

there for long enough that kind of an impromptu pet

1:15:51

cemetery popped up, but it's all, you know,

1:15:53

pieces of age, very aged plywood and,

1:15:55

and yeah, and painted rocks marking the

1:15:58

graves. Whereas today. I

1:16:00

think cemeteries realize this is a profit center and

1:16:02

they will set aside an area for people's beloved

1:16:04

animal companions next to real cemeteries Yeah, and they're

1:16:07

and they're a dedicated ones as well and

1:16:09

it's not unusual to see this Quote

1:16:12

unquote poem post it as if

1:16:14

it's a scriptural text, right? You

1:16:16

know, it'll be appears in sympathy cards commonly for

1:16:18

people who have lost it It's kind of ubiquitous

1:16:21

and I had I had never heard of it

1:16:23

until recently. Are you aware of the rainbow bridge?

1:16:25

No, no, I'd never I mean, it's the type

1:16:27

of thing that I may have read that day

1:16:30

Yeah, or may have read a hundred times and

1:16:32

it just bounces off of me because no is

1:16:34

a thing This is not a thing that I

1:16:36

would like if for instance in the death of

1:16:39

Lewis, I did not I

1:16:41

don't think Expect

1:16:43

to be reunited with Lewis Nor

1:16:46

would I have asked if I had if I

1:16:48

was talking to a genie and had three wishes.

1:16:50

I Would

1:16:54

focus those wishes on some other

1:16:56

sets of of hopes and

1:16:58

dreams This is your this is your

1:17:01

baseline for whether you're interested in something is whether it

1:17:03

would make these three three wishes to a genie Cut-off.

1:17:05

That's when you remember facts. I think Right,

1:17:08

I mean isn't that isn't that like we don't have

1:17:10

unlimited space Yeah No I care about

1:17:13

really and if it's not something I care about

1:17:15

enough to talk to a genie about I Feel

1:17:18

like my cutoff is similar, but it's not a genie It's

1:17:20

just any kind of cocktail party

1:17:22

anecdote like is this actually a story

1:17:24

and I I'm like you I could have read the rainbow

1:17:26

bridge a hundred times and then like yep one of these

1:17:30

That's right. Thank you all mark because it does fall into

1:17:32

the one of these Footprints on a

1:17:34

sand and some of these things are very you

1:17:36

know the desiderata About changing

1:17:38

things I cannot change or whatever Yeah, I think

1:17:40

things I cannot change or the courage to change

1:17:43

the things I can but that's a little a

1:17:45

a poem Not originally.

1:17:47

I mean it was kind of a it was just kind

1:17:49

of a self-help prayer of the 1930s

1:17:52

Oh the same with that first they came for

1:17:54

the whatever poem from Martin. What's his name? You

1:17:57

Know that's a serious topic, but it's the same kind of

1:17:59

a. Inspiring. Text that.

1:18:02

To. Seems to be. Everywhere. All at

1:18:04

once. Footprints. On and on the sand.

1:18:07

But. The Strike. It's very interested in this poem

1:18:09

and tries to track down the authorship. And.

1:18:11

Again, The dozens of people are

1:18:13

claiming to have written it. Was

1:18:16

an organ, grief counseling and policy dogs to also

1:18:18

the age of the beginning of the age of

1:18:20

self publishing. So people writing books, trying to get

1:18:22

people to buy their Rainbow Bridge book in which

1:18:25

they are trained to have written at you know

1:18:27

One One Book claims. And

1:18:30

indigenous man an elder and us

1:18:32

put on his special storytelling mass

1:18:34

boys and he told me. That

1:18:37

the the some the some monique wisdom of

1:18:39

the Rainbow Bridge in oh dear because he

1:18:41

knows you can connected to the native culture

1:18:43

sefton absolute your why people to buy a

1:18:46

little bit. And the he's not claiming that

1:18:48

he wrote, he's claiming that he stole it

1:18:50

from a Native American financing. He's a good

1:18:52

ally. He denied it. Know he's a He's

1:18:55

promoting it exists at all to places such

1:18:57

as so. There's no shortage of people claiming

1:18:59

they wrote this, which is really interesting to

1:19:01

be psychologically, because obviously they can't all be

1:19:04

right. For the Rainbow Bridge is not an

1:19:06

example of. A collective.

1:19:08

Know. Where are you at

1:19:10

A union thing Where everyone I'm a culture

1:19:13

Suddenly word for word started reciting of the

1:19:15

thing about a dog you this is in

1:19:17

the afterlife voice what do you think didn't

1:19:19

do These people believed that they wrote it

1:19:22

I'm having a hard time even imagining mean

1:19:24

there's all that kind of fraud that feels

1:19:26

like they're the people are delusional and know

1:19:28

you know the and I could have written

1:19:31

this. Yeah it's like our our but bald.

1:19:33

Body. Road coming to America. The actually

1:19:35

bought a bunch of money. But.

1:19:39

Ah, But I.

1:19:41

Don't know that mean there's so many people

1:19:43

in the world now, but there are. Frauds.

1:19:46

Who are so delusional that they think they

1:19:48

wrote it? But I feel like if someone

1:19:50

claims to have written this beautiful work. All.

1:19:53

You would have to do is read for

1:19:55

other pieces other right path of of. editing

1:19:58

you know it's It's one thing to

1:20:01

be Katrina in the Waves and have written

1:20:03

one hit and not a ton of hits,

1:20:05

but you could listen to the music of

1:20:07

Katrina in the Waves and determine whether the...

1:20:10

Whether they're walking on sunshine or whether it

1:20:12

fits into the rest of their ears or

1:20:14

whatever. Right. That's

1:20:17

an interesting question. Is there any band where the one-hit

1:20:19

wonder is so unsuspected that you would listen to everything

1:20:21

else and be like, this must

1:20:23

be fraud. There's no way. One

1:20:26

could make the case that all of

1:20:28

the Smith's catalog was written by one

1:20:30

band, and then How Soon Is Now

1:20:33

was written by a different band that was actually

1:20:35

good. Oh,

1:20:38

see, I'm gonna... Wow. Yeah.

1:20:41

Now all the people that were writing the

1:20:44

angry letters about dogs... It's all the same

1:20:46

people. You're

1:20:48

good. You have not added anyone to your... New

1:20:50

paragraph. You have not added anyone to your list.

1:20:54

But this guy is so fascinated with

1:20:56

this idea of who wrote this thing that he

1:20:59

is tracking down every lead, and he finally finds

1:21:01

in an online chat somebody being like, well, the

1:21:03

first time I heard it was this woman, the

1:21:05

Scottish woman named Edna Clyde, had given it to

1:21:07

a friend. And of all the

1:21:10

lists he's seen, this is the only woman who

1:21:12

has been mooded as an author and the only

1:21:14

non-American. The rest are all American men who are

1:21:16

like, yeah, I did this and that tracks, I

1:21:18

guess. And so on paper,

1:21:20

he's like, this is the least likely authorship, but...

1:21:23

And yet? Yet, then he

1:21:25

can never find an Edna Clyde,

1:21:28

but he is able to find an Edna

1:21:30

Klein recce, and he's like, well, that's the

1:21:32

closest thing. Is there anything to suggest that

1:21:34

this could be the same woman? And luckily,

1:21:36

she has recently in her later

1:21:38

life, has self-published a book

1:21:41

called Zanussi and Jack, which is

1:21:43

about losing her husband to Alzheimer's at the

1:21:45

same time as, you know,

1:21:47

her beloved dog gets doggy cancer or

1:21:49

something. Oh. And so it's

1:21:51

kind of a... And I don't know if he bothers to

1:21:53

read this book to see if the text matches up, but

1:21:56

he thinks this is a woman Who

1:21:59

writes...? Sentimental. Texts about

1:22:01

that and I'm pets rec. This is

1:22:03

the best lead I've had. much better

1:22:05

than this. the Somme and a surface

1:22:07

everything as rights and he goes to

1:22:09

some trouble the track her down and

1:22:11

is shocked to find. This

1:22:14

is we're not getting into a covert

1:22:16

like I think in January of one

1:22:18

he twenty one. Or he

1:22:20

publishes an article about having tracked

1:22:23

her down at age eighty two.

1:22:26

And. He calls or news like this is an odd question. But.

1:22:29

There's a text the goes around about

1:22:31

a about a pet afterlife called the

1:22:33

Rainbow Bridge. Is. A possible your the

1:22:35

author. And blight. There's a sharp intake

1:22:38

of breath and she says. How

1:22:40

on Earth did you find me? And.

1:22:44

She tells him the stories s

1:22:46

s in Nineteen Sixty Nine so

1:22:48

fully the the Sixty Five Years

1:22:50

ago. Like you know, thirty Five

1:22:52

years before he gets to Dear

1:22:54

Abby. She

1:22:56

is a young girl. She's a nineteen

1:22:59

year old living in Inverness when her

1:23:01

beloved yellow Lab major died. And

1:23:03

see a she abuse your that a sentimental

1:23:05

girl Her her Scottish family had many a

1:23:07

dog. But. For some reason, she had always

1:23:10

had a very close attachment. To.

1:23:12

To me it's a major and was kind of a

1:23:14

louis like thing where she did not realize how irreplaceable.

1:23:17

He. Was in her life and she just fell

1:23:19

apart. You know? she just grieved and grieve

1:23:21

for weeks and months. And finally

1:23:23

she goes where mother and says you know

1:23:25

what do I do. And

1:23:28

her mother says, will Smitty write down how you're

1:23:30

feeling. So she grabbed

1:23:32

a notebook and starts. you know, turnstile

1:23:34

Blankly some starts writing. And

1:23:37

then realizes she's got her sisters not broken. There's

1:23:39

already like a journal entry or a shopping list

1:23:42

or a homework assignment on the back. And

1:23:44

but she's already ripped out. The stage is

1:23:47

like Op's so she erases on the back.

1:23:49

her sisters. You know, what could have been

1:23:51

a literary masterpiece? we'll never know of any

1:23:53

non ten and rights in longhand. Kind of

1:23:55

just in a burst of inspiration. Word for

1:23:58

word, the text about the Rainbow Bridge. You

1:24:00

know, imagining? When.

1:24:02

A what where she would like to think major is now

1:24:04

and she shows a to her mother. And

1:24:07

her mother says off my darling girl

1:24:09

you know you're very special rate Scottish

1:24:11

as isn't that amazing I really i

1:24:14

really solid of a of a darling

1:24:16

god on a very special be who

1:24:18

usually and but you know those are

1:24:20

Irish accents we're it's ours are true

1:24:23

for your beauty salons. Has. A

1:24:25

Secret of Seducers Max Dark. You have to

1:24:28

start saying. My. Money been.

1:24:30

Asked. My money been an

1:24:32

advantage of the earth but her

1:24:34

mother says but assault but it's

1:24:37

so messy. And. You

1:24:39

said using a uses uses a rewrite it and she

1:24:41

does not wanna she does not want to rewrite of

1:24:43

So to this day. Its. Scrawled and

1:24:46

messier script on the back of was

1:24:48

on a race thing of her sisters

1:24:50

of the actual documents. Because it still

1:24:52

exists she's able to sell to send

1:24:54

a know. And

1:24:56

the second the second he heard her talking about

1:24:59

and he really likes is t sense authorship in

1:25:01

a way that he had not with any of

1:25:03

his other are he's also a disturbance in the

1:25:05

force but when she sent in the thing is

1:25:07

he was like oh he not one hunter Carbon

1:25:09

fourteen data. So how's effect like this is it

1:25:12

It says on the bag you know as a

1:25:14

pound of milk the stick of butter and is

1:25:16

like we don't sell milk by the pound anymore

1:25:18

it's versa. And. I think she was

1:25:20

kind of a believer. You know, like what she has

1:25:22

a story with August later in life her dad and

1:25:24

when her dad died. She. She told

1:25:26

police she was walking by his coffin. And.

1:25:29

See you know, just feeling heartbroken And then

1:25:31

she heard a voice say. Let

1:25:33

me. yeah, it's. It's

1:25:36

it's it's it's an open. It's

1:25:38

all Garcia. Said

1:25:41

she hears a voice as if it's

1:25:43

saying and worry. A. Single be

1:25:45

outlets. And

1:25:47

because it's you know? Clearly

1:25:50

that's gotta be her dad because he was

1:25:52

Scottish and the voice you there's a saying

1:25:54

dunno worry a single a single be out

1:25:57

of it and was a list everything will

1:25:59

be alright. He.

1:26:01

Wanted Are you calling Malaysia? Siren Song

1:26:03

Some weird Scottish dialect Now far as

1:26:06

The Hardy A single, the other. It's

1:26:08

a new album by the Long Winters.

1:26:11

Okay of thing will be as so she

1:26:13

had to so she has these other experiences.

1:26:15

This is kind of a genuine believer in

1:26:17

a in another world a better world size.

1:26:20

But. He always felt over the years like this thing

1:26:22

she'd written was to private to share. You know he

1:26:24

really did not function as a are like everybody else

1:26:26

was like and of course I immediately. Started.

1:26:29

Sending a difference if you know? Yeah, I

1:26:31

mean we submitted to my local newspaper and.

1:26:34

Know I mean just like my grief about about

1:26:36

Louis I never talk about it except now I've

1:26:38

talked about it is to fifty thousand people around

1:26:40

the world but as is the first time you've

1:26:42

ever run up on of me be I mean

1:26:44

I do to be willing or confessional shows than

1:26:46

that yeah but it's been fifteen years and feel

1:26:48

like email what am I gonna do Keep Louis

1:26:51

a secret sit I'll give us a diary entry

1:26:53

like she did not think of it is attached

1:26:55

to our some into private to share but over

1:26:57

the years one friends would be like you know

1:26:59

I just miss muffin so mods or what am

1:27:01

I going to do it up cc she would

1:27:03

be like. You know what? I'm

1:27:05

going to send you something and she would take

1:27:07

out up a manual typewriter or maybe later and

1:27:09

I B M selectors. She would pull out her

1:27:11

old thing and she would tap tap tap out

1:27:13

of types, copy and centered around tattoos and at

1:27:15

some points. Somebody. Must

1:27:18

have said. You know what? What helped me?

1:27:20

My friend Edna sent me this. I'm going

1:27:22

to send the sound of my kids after

1:27:24

their puppy died or you know. Yeah and

1:27:26

so it starts to get around as part

1:27:28

of this mimeograph demi mind of a of

1:27:30

folklore and they poured eyes to get these

1:27:32

emails from my dad all the time. But

1:27:34

this happened. And ninety four. So with this

1:27:36

would have been before. Forward re forward re

1:27:38

forward. A sort of literally been a xerox

1:27:40

of a mimeograph of a ditto. Yeah, stuck

1:27:42

to your sexual. be a veterinarian. says.

1:27:45

Doors and yeah, right, I feel like I

1:27:48

got those for my dad to like a

1:27:50

lot of his movies. Grass is ever get.

1:27:52

like Cut Out, Ziggy or Cassie Strips. That's

1:27:54

what. That's what Twenty Cents or Grandparents were

1:27:56

for. Send you. To. Send you a

1:27:58

zero chassis strip that. Oh, in an envelope,

1:28:01

you're saying. Yeah, exactly. It

1:28:03

really resonated with your life or something you'd

1:28:05

been joking about. Back.

1:28:08

Like, if you ever go to a Jeopardy tape, and

1:28:10

I know you have, we have

1:28:12

a little hall of fain out in the lobby where

1:28:14

the studio audience can mill around,

1:28:16

and because Jeopardy is such a 20th century

1:28:19

creation. Yeah, you have a whole, like a

1:28:21

trophy case. And because, yeah, all the Emmys,

1:28:23

and because of generationally who are audiences, there

1:28:25

are so many, like, strips there. It's like,

1:28:27

here's a Lockhorn strip where they're fighting about

1:28:29

Jeopardy. Here's a family circus

1:28:31

where Jeffy says something precocious about

1:28:33

Jeopardy. Not me! Yeah,

1:28:36

not me watches Jeopardy. Anyway, and

1:28:38

Edna has no idea this thing is

1:28:40

circulating because she has moved to India

1:28:42

and later to an olive orchard in

1:28:44

Spain. Seminy Christmas. She

1:28:46

has no idea that it's

1:28:48

gone viral and- Edna's lived

1:28:51

an amazing life. Apparently, a

1:28:53

surprisingly well-traveled Inverness sloth. But

1:28:56

she always was going to keep her quiet. Unlike

1:28:59

all the other people claiming credit, she was never

1:29:01

going to be like, yeah, that

1:29:03

was me. That was about major. Don't hide your light under

1:29:06

a bushel. Edna.

1:29:08

But Paul's

1:29:11

article caught some, you know, Paul's article, which I

1:29:13

think he thought was a good thing for his,

1:29:15

what's it called? The Order of the Good Death,

1:29:17

which is published on his little

1:29:19

death weirdo website. That has a readership

1:29:22

of eleventeen people. The National Geographic picked

1:29:24

it up and now Wikipedia correctly attributes

1:29:26

the poem, the

1:29:29

text, whatever it is. But

1:29:31

she hasn't reaped the whirlwind

1:29:34

of the millions of

1:29:36

dollars that have been generated? She's

1:29:38

now 82 and just kind of feels

1:29:40

like kind of benignly baffled

1:29:42

by the whole thing and I

1:29:44

think is glad that it's brought people some

1:29:47

comfort. But she seems very unsentimental because when

1:29:49

National Geographic asked her, you know, how will

1:29:51

you be reunited with major? What are your

1:29:53

plans for your own passing? She

1:29:56

just says, oh, we're good. I've had

1:29:58

30 dogs since major. That's

1:30:00

yesterday's news. No, I think

1:30:02

she, I assume she's still planning on seeing

1:30:04

Major again, but her plan

1:30:07

for her death, she says, she told National Geographic, we're

1:30:09

going to be scattered in the North Sea. We'll

1:30:11

be food for the seals. Yes. The

1:30:14

circle of life. I was at a party the other

1:30:16

day and somebody said, I want

1:30:18

to be whale food. And

1:30:20

I said, whales don't eat. You

1:30:23

would be incidental whale food, like maybe

1:30:25

you'd be eaten by shrimp. I

1:30:28

think you'd be eaten by fish that then get eaten

1:30:30

by krill that then get eaten by

1:30:32

a whale. Exactly. But

1:30:35

I felt like whale food was

1:30:37

a weird way to think about, like, here's how I

1:30:39

want to die. I mean, Edna's from Scotland. Does she

1:30:41

know something we don't? Does she know that seals would

1:30:43

just go after bodies like that? She's

1:30:46

a matter of fact. But with seals,

1:30:49

right, your ashes fall to

1:30:51

the clams and then the seals

1:30:53

get the clams. That's exactly right.

1:30:55

There's an intermediate step. It's clams.

1:30:58

So Edna's still with us as of this recording. You know,

1:31:00

by the time you listen to this in the far future,

1:31:02

she has joined Major, who's been

1:31:04

waiting. He waited in the meadow for, you know,

1:31:06

at least 69, 40. Geez,

1:31:09

poor Major. 60 years he's been waiting

1:31:11

in the meadow. Although I

1:31:13

guess he's running around happily

1:31:16

with pet giraffes, but he's got that

1:31:18

emptiness in his heart, his little dog

1:31:20

heart. Do you think Esawit, our adopted

1:31:22

elephant, will go to the, does

1:31:25

that count as animal ownership? Will he

1:31:27

go to the rainbow bridge because of

1:31:29

all the good-hearted people who sponsored his

1:31:31

adoption online? Won't Esawit outlive

1:31:33

us all? Don't elephants live to be

1:31:35

400 years old? I'm sure

1:31:37

I read that on a dentist's office wall. Buy a parrot.

1:31:39

Buy an African gray parrot if you don't want your children

1:31:42

to weep. Then they'll just weep

1:31:44

because it probably dipped their fingers. Because it's

1:31:46

constantly going, ahh! And

1:31:50

that concludes the Rainbow Bridge.

1:31:53

Entry 1028.EC0319. Certificate

1:31:59

number 29- 9-8-1-0 in the Omnibus. Futureling,

1:32:05

social media died an inglorious death just

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as all of your pets. But

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social media is waiting for us in a meadow

1:32:12

with all the other apps. All your tweets that

1:32:15

you deleted. And we will

1:32:17

all be returned to the health of Twitter in 2011.

1:32:21

When you die, you see a black X

1:32:24

dissolve into a blue bird that spreads its

1:32:26

wings to welcome you. It's

1:32:28

before retweeting. It's

1:32:30

back when Favstar was how you knew you had

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done a good thing. You get all your Favstar

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and clout points back. None

1:32:37

of us have more than 1,200 or 12,000 followers

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and they're all our friends. But

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when you are in that Eden,

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look for at omnibusproject, at Ken

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Jennings, at John Roderick, at

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You can email us, even now,

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at the [email protected] and that email

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will go to live in the

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verdant meadow of Ken Jennings' inbox.

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You can send us real mail, P.O.

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Box 55744, Shoreline, Washington, 98155, and your actual mail

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will go to the verdant meadow of

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Ken Jennings' shopping bag. You don't

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have any mail today. Isn't

1:33:18

this episode already like two hours long? Oh,

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it's getting there, yeah. You

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can hang out with other futurelings and you

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can, and should, go

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to the verdant meadow

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of patreon.com/omnibusproject where all

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They frolic and gamble in a light

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breeze. That's right. And they're

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waiting for you and they will be so excited.

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As soon as you give us your verdant money.

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Their little tails will wag and they will rush

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to you across the field for a warm embrace.

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That's patreon.com/omnibusproject.

1:33:55

Listeners, from our vantage point in your distant past,

1:33:57

we have no idea how long our civilization has

1:33:59

been. survived. We

1:34:01

hope and pray that the catastrophe fear may never come.

1:34:04

The worst comes soon though, this recording,

1:34:06

like all our recordings, may be our

1:34:09

final word. But if

1:34:11

Providence allows, we hope to be back with you soon for

1:34:13

another entry in Omnibus.