Pod Insights Stuff You Should Know Dolls and Dolls, Guys! About this episode In this special Christmas Day episode, we get cuddly with one of the all-time great holiday gifts, dolls! Where did they come from? Why are the so cute? Why are they sometimes creepy? Why do they tell us to do things we don’t want to with their minds?
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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1:06 Speaker 00 Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio.
1:16 Josh Clark? Hey, well, I should say Merry Christmas and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Cherry's here too. And we bid you good tidings. We're decking your halls and giving you lots of joy on this festive day. Yeah.
1:33 Speaker 03 Yeah, we're decking your halls if you give us consent, of course, to do so.
1:37 Josh Clark? Sure.
1:38 Speaker 03 We would never deck halls just willy nilly.
1:41 Josh Clark? No, I mean, oh.
1:44 Speaker 03 We're good guys.
1:45 Josh Clark? That's right. Wow, this, this got odd very quickly.
1:51 Speaker 03 This is our annual sort of toy episode and we've covered some specific dolls in the past, notably Cabbage Patch Kids. And you had the brainstorm, like, what about just dolls? What the heck is up with those weird little things?
2:05 Josh Clark? I sat up in the middle of the night, one night and went dolls. And he was like, what happened?
2:13 Speaker 03 And she was holding a Chatty Cathy.
2:17 Josh Clark? That's right. Oh, I can't wait to get to that part. Oh, my gosh. Yeah, we're talking about dolls themselves, and it is a pretty broad category, but actually, it's a little more specific than I realized, Chuck. And one of the things that right off the bat that I had no idea about is that there's almost no specific definition of dolls. No one can can make an actual set definition. The reason why is because you're like, well, what about this? Well, what about that? Anytime you try to alter the definition to please everybody, it's it's the best example of how you can please some people some of the time, but not everybody ever. That old saying.
2:57 Speaker 03 Yeah, that old saying. The definition that we agreed on was that a doll is a toy. And we all know what a doll looks like. It's a it's like a model of usually a human type figure.
3:10 Josh Clark? I saw that it has to be human to be considered a doll.
3:13 Speaker 03 Sometimes it's a baby. Sometimes it's a grown up. It's not an action figure. We kind of covered that difference in our G I Joe episode. But what a doll specifically is beyond just looking like a human is it aids in kids' development. There have been plenty and plenty of studies over the years that have reinforced the fact that dolls teach kids a lot of things, a lot of great things, empathy and and patience and recognizing emotions among many other things.
3:41 Josh Clark? Yes. So just real quick, that excludes that definition excludes things like puppets. Like you said, action figures, statuettes, but it also, I think, very weirdly excludes animal dolls, like stuffed animals.
3:55 Speaker 03 Okay.
3:56 Josh Clark? Okay. And then one other thing I would add to the definition is that they have to be in some way, shape or form, huggable.
4:03 Speaker 03 Okay.
4:04 Josh Clark? And that's it.
4:06 Speaker 03 So recognizing emotions is a big one for kids as long as holding on to dolls like because a lot of times the kid will be like the surrogate for what the kid might be feeling. You know, Chatty Cathy is feeling bored or angry, and that means the kid's not comfortable saying that to the parent. So they talk through the doll, but not in a creepy way.
4:27 Josh Clark? Is Chatty Cathy your go to doll?
4:30 Speaker 03 Hmm, so far. I'll move on to Betsy Wetsy soon enough.
4:34 Josh Clark? Chatty Cathy is pretty fun to say.
4:36 Speaker 03 Yeah.
4:36 Josh Clark? Another thing, this is also, I think Playroom Collective laid out some good examples. And these are some of the ones that they said. Another one is practicing caregiving, where it can be anything from changing the doll's diapers to comforting the doll when it's sad or scared. And that teaches emotional availability, teaches problem solving. And then it also requires perspective taking. Because just because the doll is scared or sad, doesn't mean the kid feels that way, right? Right then? So that means that the kid is learning how to put themselves in other people's shoes and understand how other people can feel differently than how you can at the time. And it helps with empathy.
5:18 Speaker 03 Yeah, they can put themselves in their tiny little one-inch shiny patent leather shoe.
5:23 Josh Clark? That's right.
5:24 Speaker 03 That Chatty Cathy has.
5:25 Josh Clark? Right.
5:27 Speaker 03 If you, you know, wanna talk about traditional gender roles, we're gonna talk a lot about that because dolls have long been associated with girlhood. That wasn't always the case. It started by like the 1940s. By the turn of the century, toys were kind of marketed, you know, to boys and girls equally. But in the 1940s, they were like, hey, we could probably sell a lot more stuff if we really market one thing to girls and one thing to boys. And then all of a sudden, we're buying twice as much stuff.
5:58 Josh Clark? Isn't that nuts? That's, that's apparently where gendered toys came from.
6:01 Speaker 03 Totally.
6:02 Josh Clark? Around that same time, too, pink became the color for girls and blue for boys. And it didn't come from nowhere. We've talked about it before, but it used to be the opposite, where pink was for boys and blue for girls, because pink was a red tone and red tones were considered too harsh for girls at the time.
6:19 Speaker 03 That's right. I never thought of pink being a red tone, but it totally is.
6:23 Josh Clark? Yeah, for sure. You can't deny it, Chuck.
6:27 Speaker 03 There was a study in 2017 that more than, this is interesting, more than three quarters of the people that were surveyed said it was really good to encourage girls to play with like boys toys or do boy things. But, and it went up to 80% for women and millennials saying that, but when it came to boys, only 64%. So there are far fewer families saying, you know, William, you should play with your doll. Reference to Free to Be You and Me, the great song, William Wants a Doll. And there are way, way more families telling their girls, like, you should go play with trucks or roughhouse.
7:01 Josh Clark? Yeah, go jump off that dirt pile.
7:03 Speaker 03 Yeah.
7:05 Josh Clark? So yeah, that clearly means we have a long way to go still. But there, you know, there are a lot of dolls that have made headway in empowering girls, showing that women can take like male jobs in male dominated fields. Like Barbie has a million different careers, a lot of them like engineering and science and technology. She's been to space for God's sake. And I think American Girl dolls, there's one, one girl at least who has a backstory where she has lesbian aunts who live in Australia randomly enough. And then of course Chuck, we couldn't possibly talk about how Earring Magic Ken wasn't a groundbreaking doll.
7:47 Speaker 03 Yeah, I mean, Earring Magic Ken came out in 1993. You take one look at Earring Magic Ken and it's pretty clear that it's a queer coded doll. He has his, his diamond stud earring in one ear. He's wearing a purple mesh crop top. There was some controversy surrounding the necklace he wore that I won't even get into because this is a Christmas episode, but you can look it up if you want.
8:11 Josh Clark? I saw that too.
8:12 Speaker 03 And of course Mattel was like, that's preposterous. This is a kid's toy. But it was very hot in the gay community, selling out all over the place. Maybe the hottest selling, well, definitely the hottest selling Ken doll of all time. Maybe the best selling of all time, Mattel won't say, but it sold for six months like any ordinary sort of special release Barbie and evidently sold like hotcakes.
8:37 Josh Clark? Yeah. And one other feature that was often overlooked, he had a pull cord that made him talk and the only thing he said is, the boys are out tonight.
8:47 Josh Clark? So Chuck, I say we move on to the history of dolls. You want to talk about that or even where the word doll came from?
8:54 Speaker 03 Yeah, this is something I didn't know. It's a doll was a nickname for Dorothy. I always thought Dot was the only nickname for Dorothy. But apparently dating back to like at least the 16th century, there was a weird thing happening where people would substitute L's for R's. So Harold could be Hal, Mary could be Mal or Molly, and Dorothy could be Doll.
9:15 Josh Clark? Yeah, it was a bigger trend than slap bracelets is today.
9:18 Speaker 03 Wow.
9:19 Josh Clark? So the earliest use of the word doll goes back to the 1500s. And it was a pet name for a girlfriend or spouse, right? You didn't just have to be named Dorothy and that be your nickname. It was extended.
9:31 Speaker 03 Give me a doll.
9:32 Josh Clark? Yeah.
9:33 Speaker 03 Doll face.
9:34 Josh Clark? For, yeah, exactly. Right. So you're like, it's a term of endearment for a girlfriend or a spouse. A century later, it became an insult for a loose woman. So everybody got dumped apparently. And then by around 1700, it was finally used to describe a child's toy, to say, this is a doll. And people are like, well, wait a minute. What about stuffed animals? What about marionettes?
9:57 Speaker 03 And someone said, you think a puppet is a doll?
10:01 Josh Clark? Yeah.
10:01 Speaker 03 They said.
10:02 Josh Clark? What kind of psycho are you?
10:03 Speaker 03 So many people think that they're going to have to explain that on a podcast one day.
10:07 Josh Clark? They're like, you think a hot dog is a sandwich?
10:09 Speaker 03 Why has that doll got strings coming out of it?
10:13 Speaker 03 Well, speaking of strings, uh, yeah, there's some strings in these dolls, ancient dolls, Egyptian paddle dolls that date back to the Middle Kingdom, like 2000 to 1800 BCE. They were a flat piece of wood, so they weren't, you know,
10:29 Speaker 03 human shaped as far as three dimension, uh, three dimensionality goes. But they were cut like a woman's torso and they had tattoo like designs and hair made up out of bead strings. But archaeologists are like, this isn't really a doll doll. I think it was more like a percussion instrument for like religious rituals. You could shake that thing.
10:50 Josh Clark? They do think in the ancient world that dolls played dual roles. One was for rituals, like you were just describing, and then also that they were for play. In the same way that dolls can develop children today. They were used to kind of indoctrinate kids into culture and society. And they're basing that in part on how there's still dolls like that around today. Like the Akua Ba of the Fonte and Akon people of Ghana. They have ritual dolls that kids also play with at the same time.
11:19 Speaker 03 Yeah, well, the dolls in ancient Rome were definitely sort of the early Barbies because they were not baby dolls. They were dolls that looked like grown up Roman women. And the girls who played with them were like, it was, it was just like having a Barbie. It was like, here is what we think the idealized image of a Roman woman is, a wife and a mother. And here, go play with this thing and try and look like that one day.
11:44 Josh Clark? So even before the Romans, they found dolls in Greek burials. And the reason why they found them is because girls would play with dolls. When they got married, they would consecrate, they would sacrifice essentially the dolls to Artemis in exchange for fertility in their marriage. And then if they never got married, they were buried with their dolls.
12:08 Josh Clark? Isn't that bittersweet?
12:11 Speaker 03 Kind of just bitter.
12:12 Josh Clark? Oh, okay.
12:13 Speaker 03 I'm looking for the sweet. I guess you're buried with your toy that you loved.
12:16 Josh Clark? Yeah, that's the sweet part for sure. It's like the nougat of that situation.
12:21 Speaker 03 All right, I'll take it. All right, we promised talk of Aerosmith and their great, great, great song Ragdoll.
12:29 Josh Clark? I thought the same thing, too.
12:32 Speaker 03 Coming up and see me.
12:34 Josh Clark? That's a new version of an old scene.
12:38 Speaker 03 Oh, I guess that song's okay. That was late Aerosmith. They put out a bunch of songs like that for a while.
12:43 Josh Clark? Oh, I can't imagine how bad the subtext is, though.
12:47 Speaker 03 Oh, sure. I never really thought about that, but you're right. I think, I don't know if there is an Aerosmith song where there wasn't a sexual subtext.
12:54 Josh Clark? I don't think so either. They were really into sex.
12:57 Speaker 03 Oh, no, that Love in an Elevator song. That was just talking about elevators going up and down.
13:02 Josh Clark? That's right. Sponsored by the Otis Corporation.
13:05 Speaker 03 That's right.
13:07 Speaker 03 Oh, man, I'm glad you could call that up. Rag dolls, not Aerosmith, but you know, the little floppy dolls made out of fabric and not, you know, hard dolls that you can bang against the wall. They have been around for a long, long time, since the ancient world, but because they're made out of things like, you know, cloth and linen and cotton and things like that, they would disappear before our very eyes over thousands of years. So there's not a ton of examples of those, but there are some, right?
13:36 Josh Clark? Yeah, but it also raises the question, like, how long have humans been playing with dolls? We have no idea for that very reason, because almost certainly dolls would have been made out of perishable materials very early on. But yeah, the oldest we found is 2,000 years old, Chuck. It was found in a trash pile in Egypt, and it was linen stuffed with some papyrus, had some paint on it at one point, but now all that's left, there's a single bead that was once attached to its hair. So, but it's 2,000 years old, so give it a break, you know?
14:10 Speaker 03 Yeah, sure, of course.
14:12 Josh Clark? But what about in North America? There's a doll that says, I'm the oldest, and everyone says, yes, you are.
14:17 Speaker 03 Yes, that's right. There is a rag doll, the oldest rag doll in North America, it belonged to a little girl who was blind named Clarissa Field from Massachusetts. And the girl, the actual girl, was born in 1765. And I think this is a great deep cut band name. She named her doll Bangwell Putt.
14:36 Josh Clark? Yeah, that is a great band name for sure.
14:38 Speaker 03 Cause no one will know what it is, except for the rare stuff you should know listener and they'd be like, "Bruh, you named your band Bangwell Putt after the oldest rag doll?"
14:46 Josh Clark? Right. Or visitors to the Paco Madoc Valley Memorial Association in Deerfield, Mass., which is where it's kept now.
14:54 Speaker 03 Yeah, I guess they would know that. But they're the, I guess you could call it creepy looking. I didn't find it that creepy, but this dog, this dog, this doll has no facial features. There's just a blank face. But there are 10 individually sewn fingers and thumbs, which might be a reason that young Clarissa, like I mentioned, she was blind and it might've sort of indicated the importance of touch for her.
15:23 Josh Clark? Yeah, I saw that the no face rag doll may have actually evolved out of the tradition from corn husk dolls, which didn't have faces because some of the northeastern North America tribes had legends about why the corn goddess removed the face of the corn husk doll because she was getting too vain. That's why corn husk dolls don't have a face and that's possibly why rag dolls don't have a face either, like Bangwell Putt.
15:54 Speaker 03 Like Bangwell Putt. And to be clear, no facial features. There's a face, but there's no eyes, nose, or mouth, or, you know, eyebrows. All the things that make a face.
16:03 Josh Clark? What about eyelashes?
16:05 Speaker 03 No eyelashes, no pimples, no freckles.
16:08 Josh Clark? Pores?
16:09 Speaker 03 No frinkles, no wrinkles, no pores. What else is on the face? I'm looking at my face.
16:15 Josh Clark? Um, nose hair?
16:17 Speaker 03 Beard, nose hair, mustache?
16:20 Speaker 03 Alright, I think we covered it.
16:21 Josh Clark? Okay. I know for a fact we left something like the mouth out, something super glaring.
16:27 Speaker 03 Oh, I said mouth and inside the mouth, everything counts as mouth. So don't come at me with teeth and tongue.
16:33 Josh Clark? Exactly. I'm glad you said that, Chuck.
16:35 Speaker 03 That should be on the shirt. Don't come at me with teeth and tongue. It's the Stuff You Should Know way.
16:40 Josh Clark? Yeah.
16:41 Speaker 03 What about Victorian dolls?
16:44 Josh Clark? Well, this is where really where doll obsessions, I think, kind of start to take off. Because up to this point rag dolls, like you gotta be a pretty niche collector to be collecting like 18th century rag dolls. Victorian dolls is where people are like, gimme all of these. And one of the reasons why is because doll making became a real art by the 15th century. And the seat of it originally was Germany. They had dachemachers, which are doll makers. And they were for aristocratic families who were the only ones that could afford these things because they were works of art.
17:22 Speaker 03 Yeah, works of art that very keenly looked like them. They really showed their sort of obsession with their own selves and their own class. They were made from porcelain and not because that was just some superior material. They were literally made from porcelain because they thought that represented the ideal skin tone, that porcelain white. They were dressed very fashionably, obviously. They had human hair wigs, apparently from the hair of working class girls. And they were true status symbols.
17:55 Josh Clark? Yeah, like you would, you would be painted with them, a portrait that's pretty big status symbol at the time, right?
18:02 Speaker 03 Yeah, for sure.
18:03 Josh Clark? So one of my favorite things, so Dave helped us with this. Thank, big head tip to Dave and Merry Christmas, Dave. And apparently around the time of Prince Albert's death, he was trapped in a can. He died in 1861. It's Queen Victoria's husband, by the way. Like funerals and mourning like became all the rage. We often associate like mourning and death stuff and memento mori with Victorians, and this is why. And so dolls were not immune to this trend and little girls were given death kits to use with their dolls.
18:41 Speaker 03 Yeah, so like here's your doll and here's your little baby coffin and your little outfit that you should wear. And they would, you know, when you play doll, you play all kinds of facets of life. And that's one of the things about dolls that you'll see over and over is, you know, whether you're pretending to be a. Uh, you know, cooking dinner in your home or you're doing other household things or you're, you know, now you're mourning because somebody has died. So you're sort of acting out and these things that you would do later as adults, which again is another sort of important facet of dolls.
19:14 Josh Clark? But today it's like if your kid is acting out a funeral with their doll, it would be eye catching, attention grabbing, I think.
19:22 Speaker 03 Yeah. I mean, you might sign them up for therapy or something when in fact I think it's a pretty normal thing.
19:27 Josh Clark? I think it is too, but it would definitely make you stop and say like, hey, what, what, what you doing with your doll right now?
19:34 Speaker 03 Yeah, for sure.
19:35 Josh Clark? Like you wouldn't just pass the room and see it and just walk off shaking your head and laughing and be like, my kid.
19:40 Speaker 03 Yeah, they do the darnedest things.
19:43 Josh Clark? I want to hear though, if anybody has a kid and they've ever found their kid performing a funeral for their doll, I want to hear about it.
19:50 Speaker 03 Yeah, that'd be a good listener mail.
19:52 Josh Clark? So dollhouses also really kind of came around at this time too, like the dollhouse as we think about it.
19:58 Speaker 03 Yeah.
19:59 Josh Clark? And that was thanks to the Victorians and that's why dollhouses are always very nice and big, uh, because they were basically what the Victorian aristocracy thought that houses should look like at the time. And again, remember you said that Victorian girls were being trained to how to behave in society through their dolls. Same thing with the dollhouse too. It's like, here's the scullery, here's the bathroom with indoor plumbing. Like these are all the things you need to demand and expect when you grow up and get married.
20:29 Speaker 03 Yeah. Ring this bell if you're hungry.
20:31 Josh Clark? Hi.
20:32 Speaker 03 So, you know, we talked a little bit about the complicated history of, um, of race and, and facial features when it comes to race and skin tone and stuff like that with dolls. And so we have a whole kind of robust section here on the history of, uh, black dolls because it's a pretty complex story.
20:50 Josh Clark? Yeah.
20:51 Speaker 03 As far as race and self-image goes. And the first, um, one we're going to talk about is called the Topsy Turvy Doll. It's a really good example, um, because it was a doll that had two heads. It had a long skirt to conceal sort of one side. Um, one head was white, one head was black. And, you know, depending on which way you held the doll, you were playing with a white doll or a black doll. And people, you know, there isn't. Text that says exactly why this thing was invented. But everyone pretty much agrees, like scholars that have studied this thing is that it originated in the antebellum South. They were made by enslaved black women as dolls for their daughters. And the idea is, hey, we have to take care of the white kids during the day.
21:36 Speaker 03 And then we have to take care of our own children at night. And if dolls are to represent what you are to be doing when you grow up, or maybe later on in your life, then you'd need a two-headed doll to care for the white doll in the day and the black doll at night.
21:51 Josh Clark? Yeah. That's not the worst of how the whole thing started. The Jim Crow South, the Jim Crow era, saw the rise of a lot of very racist dolls that were available. You could buy from catalogs like Montgomery Ward, which is not surprising. But the thing to understand about that is that this helped lay the groundwork for reinforcing social norms about the inferiority of black people in America and the superiority of white people in America. And it wasn't like, hey, kid, don't forget, black people are inferior, white people superior.
22:32 Josh Clark? It was much more subtle and much more pervasive than that through dolls. Like, the black dolls were not particularly cute. They were sometimes ugly. They certainly weren't accurate representations of black people or black kids.
22:47 Speaker 03 Yeah.
22:48 Josh Clark? White dolls were. They were very pretty. They were collector's items. They were gorgeous in a lot of cases. They were the doll that you wanted. And that sent the signal to black kids being raised in America at the time. Like, if you're black, you should feel pretty much about yourself, how you feel about this doll. And you should feel about white people, how you feel about this doll. Very pretty, huh?
23:08 Speaker 03 Yeah, exactly. I mean, it makes it all the more nefarious, I think, because these are children.
23:12 Josh Clark? Right.
23:13 Speaker 03 Like, the more subtle it is, the more nefarious it is. And this culminated in the 1940s with what was called the Doll Tests from Mamie and Kenneth Clark. It was a pretty groundbreaking experiments where they traveled all over America, and they would give little black kids two dolls that were identical to one another, except for the skin tone. And then they would ask them a lot of questions, like, "Give me the doll that's a nice doll. Give me the doll that you think is a nice color." And overwhelmingly, the positive traits from these little black kids were assigned to white dolls, and the negative traits were assigned to black dolls. And the saddest part about all this is when they asked kids, "Give me the doll that looks like you",
23:54 Speaker 03 a lot of these little kids were ashamed to admit that they looked like the black doll, and they would, like, start crying and run from the room because they couldn't even admit it.
24:04 Josh Clark? Yeah. So this was-
24:06 Speaker 03 Just brutal.
24:07 Josh Clark? It is brutal, but it also was this groundbreaking research that the Clarks created.
24:12 Speaker 03 Yeah, for sure.
24:13 Josh Clark? And it was so groundbreaking and so convincing that the NAACP came to them and said, "Hey, can we use this in these cases?" They had five cases going on that eventually got attached into the Brown versus Board of Education case that the Supreme Court eventually heard. That was successful with the 9-0 decision to overturn segregation in public schools. That's how convincing these Doll Tests were, that they were cited in some of these cases, and Kenneth Clark testified at some of the cases as well, and wrote up the social science testimony that the Supreme Court considered in the case.
24:51 Speaker 03 Yeah, pretty amazing result from that study. Sarah Lee Creach was a dollmaker, I guess, who created the Sarah Lee doll in 1951, and that was the very first realistic black baby doll produced in the US. But not to be outdone, during the Black Power Movement, Baby Nancy came along. And that was kind of in the middle of the 65 Watts riots. It was a black owned company called Shindana Toys. And it was the very first doll with realistic Afrocentric features. It was not like, hey, let's, let's run a run of white dolls and then just change the skin tone and color them brown.
25:32 Speaker 03 This Baby Nancy was a, you know, a little black baby doll and it was a really hot selling doll in LA and beyond. I think the production couldn't keep up that year because they were such a hot sellers.
25:44 Josh Clark? Yeah, it was a great success for sure. And the Sarah Lee doll, again, this is the first like semi-accurate doll, but there was still a lot of features that weren't quite what, what black children look like. The Baby Nancy was like unmistakably had cute, tight little curls. And it was like, this is the first like legitimate African-American doll anyone's ever made. I thought that was pretty cool.
26:10 Speaker 03 Yeah, it's amazing. Very cute doll, actually.
26:13 Josh Clark? So, um,
26:14 Speaker 03 I mean, I'm not into dolls because, you know, I play with trucks.
26:17 Josh Clark? Okay.
26:18 Speaker 03 But if I played with dolls, Baby Nancy might be my doll.
26:21 Josh Clark? I can't remember. Did you have a cabbage patch?
26:24 Speaker 03 Uh, I did, uh, sort of. We, we bought a bunch of them, uh, when they were handmade by the original Xavier Roberts guy.
26:33 Josh Clark? Creepy pantyhose dolls, right?
26:35 Speaker 03 Yeah. And they, they assigned a couple of them to me as mine, but they were never like in my room. And it's not like I was like, oh, don't put that in my room. I don't know why they did that. It was weird. They were like, here's Scott's two and your two, and here's Michelle's.
26:48 Josh Clark? And don't touch them.
26:50 Speaker 03 I know. I think they're worth a little bit of money.
26:52 Josh Clark? Oh, I'm sure.
26:53 Speaker 03 My, I do remember mine as a little boy and a girl and it's, uh, their shirts. And I guess the doll, whatever they were, was my little TV star or something like that.
27:02 Josh Clark? Hmm.
27:03 Speaker 03 So I don't even know what that means.
27:06 Josh Clark? Um, let's say, hey, let's move along to paper dolls or do you want to take a break now?
27:12 Speaker 03 Let's take a break and I'm going to look up and see how much those, uh, Xavier Roberts dolls are worth of mine and I'll see if I can list them on eBay and I'll be right back.
27:33 Speaker 04 I'm Malcolm Gladwell, host of Smart Talks with IBM. I spoke with Dr. Lara Jayhai of Cleveland Clinic about how advanced computing is helping shorten the path from medical discovery to treatment.
27:46 Speaker 05 The moment that there is a compound that someone in a lab thinks it would be effective to treat a certain disease, it takes about 10 to 13 years from that moment to when that drug is on a shelf for a patient. A big part of that gap could be computationally solved. Better simulation of compounds, designing drug trials that are more efficient, that would finish faster. That was the motivation to bring computational tools and technology closer to biomedical researchers.
28:20 Speaker 04 Learn more about how Cleveland Clinic and IBM are using AI and quantum computing to revolutionize biomedical research at ibm.com/smarttalks.
28:45 Josh Clark? Okay, we promised to talk about paper dolls. And what kind of Grinch Scrooges would we be if we just didn't deliver on that?
28:54 Speaker 03 That's right.
28:55 Josh Clark? So, yeah, paper dolls were this trend from, like, the apex was from 1890 to 1920. But, I mean, you could find them pretty easily into the 1970s, and they're still around today in different forms. But they were, like, think about this. What trend can you think of, Chuck, that lasted for 30 years? This is a huge, huge trend.
29:20 Speaker 03 Grunge?
29:21 Josh Clark? No. Grunge, I will say, was 10 years tops.
29:27 Speaker 03 Pet Rocks?
29:30 Josh Clark? Pet Rocks is maybe, maybe two.
29:35 Speaker 03 That's it. I got nothing else.
29:36 Josh Clark? Okay, that's what I'm saying. That's how massive a trend paper dolls were from the late 19th century to the early 20th.
29:44 Speaker 03 Hot pants?
29:46 Josh Clark? Okay, there you go. Daisy Dukes, they've been huge since the 70s, definitely.
29:51 Speaker 03 So a paper doll is a doll that you cut out. And the fun thing about paper dolls was, and I guess is, if you're still into them, is they would come with different outfits and things, and you would cut out the different outfits and put them over the doll. And that was the fun of it, is you could change the clothes, but it wasn't real clothes, because it was just sort of free, because it came in the magazine or newspaper or whatever.
30:15 Josh Clark? But that was the only fun of it. Don't even try to have any other fun. Just put the outfits on and sit there.
30:22 Speaker 03 Yeah, that's kind of it.
30:23 Josh Clark? But luckily, there was a bunch of new outfits, and they were always coming, because this whole thing was basically a way to get people to go buy your newspaper or your magazine, or in some cases, buy your product, like Pillsbury products. You would get a set of these collectible paper dolls in new outfits. And for 30 years, people would go buy Pillsbury everything, because they had the best paper dolls.
30:49 Speaker 03 Yeah, this still continues. I just realized that at one point, my friend Meredith, who worked in the fashion industry, got Ruby for Christmas a little, it's like a little fashion kit, and it's kind of like paper dolls, except they're already, it's magnetized and they're pre-cut, but the whole idea is that you can put together all these different outfits and like, kind of learn about fashion. So it's not that different than paper dolls.
31:11 Josh Clark? No, this is plastic.
31:13 Speaker 03 Yeah, and she enjoyed that for a while.
31:16 Josh Clark? Oh, good. Who was that that gave her that present?
31:19 Speaker 03 My friend Meredith, her auntie Meredith. She and Ruby are big buds.
31:22 Josh Clark? Meredith?
31:24 Speaker 03 Yeah, I think you've met Meredith, maybe.
31:25 Josh Clark? All right.
31:26 Speaker 03 Yeah, you have at New York Live Shows.
31:28 Josh Clark? Okay. Well, great pick, Meredith.
31:31 Speaker 03 Yeah.
31:32 Josh Clark? So I say we move on to famous dolls of the 20th century, Chuck. This is the part I've been waiting for. This is the reason we did this episode.
31:42 Speaker 03 You gotta start, and we're not gonna spend too much time on Cupid doll, except to mention that the Cupid doll was kind of the first big doll of the 20th century in 1912, right?
31:51 Josh Clark? Yeah, and the great mayo too, by the way.
31:55 Speaker 03 Oh, yeah, I tried the Cupid mayo because of you.
31:57 Josh Clark? What'd you think?
31:58 Speaker 03 It was great. It's not gonna replace Dukes for me, but a very good mayo.
32:02 Josh Clark? It shouldn't. You can love both.
32:04 Speaker 03 Yeah, I do.
32:05 Josh Clark? I think Cupid was huge, so huge that it took Mickey Mouse to topple them. Him, her, it, I think?
32:14 Speaker 03 Mickey Mouse isn't it.
32:15 Josh Clark? No, no, no, Cupid.
32:17 Speaker 03 That's, they're both its.
32:18 Josh Clark? Oh, okay. So, yeah, well, Mickey Mouse is an owl, a mouse.
32:22 Speaker 03 Yeah, but he's in it. He's living in that gutter with a clown.
32:25 Josh Clark? Okay.
32:26 Speaker 03 In the sewer gutter.
32:28 Josh Clark? So along after that, I think Cupid doll was, I mean, I know Steamboat Willie came out in the 20s. I'm not sure when it was actually Mickey Mouse, Mickey Mouse, right? So Cupid doll was on top for a while, but even if Mickey Mouse hadn't come along, Raggedy Ann would have eventually come and pulled little Cupid doll by her little couple hairs on the top of her head down from the top spot and took it over.
32:53 Speaker 03 That's right. Raggedy Ann and her little brother Raggedy Andy were big hits. I had Raggedy Ann and Andy when I was little. It was a children's book from cartoonist Johnny Gruel. He made it for his daughter. It's very sweet. Dolls came out a couple of years later in 1920, but they had movie appearances. They had a TV show. They had a Broadway musical in the 80s.
33:15 Josh Clark? What was it about?
33:17 Speaker 03 I don't really know. Raggedy Ann, I guess.
33:20 Josh Clark? Okay.
33:22 Speaker 03 It was called, it was called. It might've been called Raggedy Ann Ragdoll or something Ragdoll. I didn't look too much into it. I don't think it ran too long.
33:29 Josh Clark? Aerosmith did the score.
33:31 Speaker 03 I'm pretty sure. They did the book too.
33:33 Josh Clark? So one other thing about Raggedy Ann, you know, Annabelle from The Conjuring series?
33:39 Speaker 03 Yeah, I never saw that, but I know what you're talking about.
33:42 Josh Clark? You never saw The Conjuring?
33:43 Speaker 03 Oh.
33:45 Josh Clark? Oh, you're gonna like it, dude. It's one of those very few modern, like, good ghost movies.
33:53 Speaker 03 All right.
33:53 Josh Clark? It's good. Like goose pimple stuff. Good.
33:59 Speaker 03 I'm gonna conjure up some goose pimples for myself then.
34:02 Josh Clark? I think, and The Conjuring 2 was okay, but the first one's very good. I'll be very surprised if you don't like it.
34:07 Speaker 03 I'll check it out. Most of my doll scary movies have been Child's Play and Megan.
34:13 Josh Clark? Okay. Child's Play's coming up. Don't worry about it.
34:16 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah.
34:17 Josh Clark? Okay. Megan was pretty good, too.
34:19 Speaker 03 Yeah, Megan was fun. Wasn't so scary.
34:21 Josh Clark? No, it's no Conjuring for sure.
34:23 Speaker 03 Yeah.
34:24 Josh Clark? So now we come to Betsy Wetsy. Just wait for your Chatty Cathy. Let's talk about Betsy Wetsy first.
34:31 Speaker 03 Yeah, Betsy Wetsy was, well, let's just say this. Betsy Wetsy could drink.
34:37 Josh Clark? Yeah, she'd drink you under the table.
34:40 Speaker 03 Could pee pee herself? Betsy Wetsy could cry. I was about to say real human tears, but no. Could cry fake tears.
34:47 Josh Clark? Yeah.
34:48 Speaker 03 This was from a company called Ideal in 1937, and Ideal got sued a few times because
34:55 Speaker 03 they had other dolls out there that could cry and that could pee themselves and drink. But apparently Ideal was like, but can they do all of that?
35:04 Josh Clark? Right. And yeah, Betsy Wetsy was a huge smash hit. I think she was most popular in the 50s, but you could find her on the shelves through the 80s. And you would give her a little bottle. She had a tube running through her, so the bottle of whatever, hopefully water if you were a parent and not actual milk, would go through her little tube and come out the other end. And then you would get to change her diaper, maybe give her a bath or something like that.
35:32 Speaker 03 What fun.
35:32 Josh Clark? And start all over again.
35:34 Speaker 03 That's right. Not to be undone in the early 90s, Magic Potty Baby came out. And I think I remember this actually because
35:42 Josh Clark? I do not.
35:42 Speaker 03 This was a, it didn't PP itself, but there was a toilet that came with it. And it was all about toilet training, of course, but the toilet would fill up with this, you know, fake yellow liquid, or it wasn't fake, it was a real yellow liquid. I guess fake urine. I hope it was fake urine. I never tasted it. And the doll would sit on it and then you would flush it and it would disappear back into its, its temporary holding tank.
36:07 Josh Clark? Yeah. And you're like, oh, that sounds kind of weird. Go watch the ad for Magic Potty Baby. And for some reason, it's, it's just, it's, it's even more bizarre when you see it in person.
36:18 Speaker 03 Yeah, agreed.
36:20 Josh Clark? Um, okay, Chuck. I think now it's time for Chatty Cathy, which I didn't realize was a follow-up a year after Barbie came out. And this was a Ruth Handler joint, too.
36:31 Speaker 03 That's right. Uh, this was a Mattel product along with Barbie. And, you know, Chatty Cathy, it was Chatty and talked. So you would pull a string and there were, I think, 11 initial phrases.
36:43 Speaker 06 I hurt myself. Please brush my hair.
36:47 Josh Clark? That was a great Chatty Cathy.
36:48 Speaker 03 That was it. That was Chatty Cathy.
36:51 Josh Clark? Um, Chatty Cathy, get this, was not the first doll to talk. It's as far back as Thomas Edison in, I think, 1890. He tried his hand at one and he had, uh, different dolls that said a few different things. But we turned up a clip of the doll that, um, read, um, I guess the Lord's Prayer. And I, Chuck, we have to share it because I haven't laughed out loud in a really long time.
37:21 Speaker 03 Yeah, we don't play clips a lot. Uh, so I think we're in probably legally okay to play this clip. So Jerry, can you run that?
37:30 Speaker 07 Oh, my baby, don't please. I pray the Lord my soul to take. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take. Amen.
37:49 Josh Clark? So
37:49 Speaker 03 Wow.
37:51 Josh Clark? Like, imagine that coming out of a doll you're holding, and it's dark. Like, there's no light in your room because it's nighttime and your doll starts saying that.
38:00 Speaker 03 Yeah, or imagine, as you're just in a dark room and hear that, and you turn on your Edison bulb, and that's the only thing in there.
38:07 Josh Clark? Right. It's just sitting in the rocking chair, looking at you, rocking slightly back and forth. Or even worse, it's sitting in the wicker wheelchair in the corner of your room for some reason staring at you.
38:17 Speaker 03 Your biggest fear.
38:18 Josh Clark? Yeah.
38:20 Speaker 03 Uh, yeah, pretty good stuff.
38:22 Josh Clark? I agree. So Chatty Cathy, back to her. She was actually an inspiration for a very famous Twilight Zone episode, Living Doll. Do you remember that one?
38:32 Speaker 03 I don't remember that, but I did watch the clip.
38:35 Josh Clark? It's good. So this was Talky Tina, and this is like three years after Chatty Cathy came out. Very clearly Chatty Cathy.
38:42 Speaker 03 Yeah.
38:43 Josh Clark? And she has this kind of protective feeling around her kid and doesn't like the kid's parents. And at one point, they pull the doll's cord and she says, "My name is Talky Tina and I'm beginning to hate you."
39:01 Josh Clark? It's a really good Twilight Zone episode, which I can't really think of a bad Twilight Zone episode, but this one is particularly good.
39:08 Speaker 03 Yeah, it was good.
39:09 Josh Clark? I found two other things about, or one other thing, I guess, about Chatty Cathy. Did you see the voice thing I sent?
39:15 Speaker 03 I did not.
39:16 Josh Clark? So June Faraday, who was the voice of Rocket J Squirrel on Rocky and Bullwinkle, and Cindy Lou Who on the Grinch Christmas special, she was the first voice of Chatty Cathy.
39:29 Speaker 03 All right.
39:29 Josh Clark? And then they re-released Chatty Cathy in 1970, and the voice was Maureen McCormick, who played Marcia on The Brady Bunch.
39:36 Speaker 03 Oh. Marcia, Marcia, Marcia.
39:39 Josh Clark? Trivia Masters, if you're looking for a new question.
39:42 Speaker 03 Yeah.
39:43 Josh Clark? Merry Christmas.
39:44 Speaker 03 Yeah, that no one will know. Unless they listen to Stuff You Should Know.
39:47 Josh Clark? Yes, that's right.
39:49 Speaker 03 Yeah, we should talk about Polly Pocket for a minute because that was a miniature doll. It was a British inventor named Chris Wiggs who built a mini dollhouse for his daughter out of a makeup compact in the early 80s. And Mattel was like, this thing's great. And they licensed Polly Pocket as a doll in the early 90s. And all of a sudden, many toys were a big craze. And we mention this because you may see a movie coming to a theater screen near you because Barbie was such a big hit, obviously. Reese Witherspoon and her production company has optioned this away. I don't know about away from Lena Dunham, but Lena Dunham was originally attached a few years ago and is no longer attached.
40:30 Speaker 03 And so they're trying to make Polly Pocket into a movie starring Lily Collins, Phil Collins' daughter.
40:36 Josh Clark? Yeah.
40:39 Josh Clark? What about American Girl dolls? Did you know about the origin of them? They came from an elementary school teacher in Wisconsin named Pleasant Roland, which is a great name.
40:47 Speaker 03 That's Jerry's nickname.
40:49 Josh Clark? Yeah, it is.
40:51 Speaker 03 Jerry Pleasant Roland.
40:52 Josh Clark? Yeah, but Pleasant Roland wanted to teach kids about history, I guess specifically girls. And she started releasing them in 1986, these American Girl dolls. And at first, they were just mail order and they were expensive too. 65 bucks in $19.86, which is like $100,000 today, I'm guessing. But they were a big seller right off the bat and eventually you could find them in stores too.
41:17 Speaker 03 Yeah, like their own stores, you know, their flagship stores. And I just encourage anyone that has dollophobia, which we'll get to in a minute, to dare walk by or through an American Girl doll store.
41:30 Josh Clark? That is quite a dare.
41:32 Speaker 03 Yeah, that's not a dare, actually, because that's not funny if you have a real fear like that.
41:36 Josh Clark? Yeah, I was looking that up. We'll talk about it in a second, but it is some real deal stuff. It does not sound pleasant.
41:42 Speaker 03 Yeah, and you know, American Girl dolls look sort of real, but that ain't nothing like what's coming out of FEO Schwarz and companies like Reborn and companies like Ashton Drake because they are making. These realistic baby dolls, we finally on this last trip to New York on fall break. I'd always wanted to go to F A O Schwarz in New York City. And we did, we, we took a trip through F A O Schwarz and I, I recommend it. I mean, it's very, very busy. So don't go in there if you have any sort of fear of crowds. Cause that is one of the most packed places I've ever been in. But eventually we wandered over to where they had their baby, like real baby doll display.
42:24 Speaker 03 And I held one of these things, man, and it is very surreal and weird because it seems like a real baby.
42:31 Josh Clark? Yeah, like down to like the, the little veins in their temples, the little capillaries. And the smell, did, did the, did the one you hold smell of like talcum or anything?
42:41 Speaker 03 Yeah, they smell and look like babies, like full stop.
42:44 Josh Clark? Yeah. And they even have weight to them too, like heft. So they're so realistic that these things are, this is what is often used as like a movie prop for like a long shot or something like that. Not a close up.
42:55 Speaker 03 For a close up, if you're Bradley Cooper in a Clint Eastwood movie.
42:59 Josh Clark? Oh, really? Which one?
43:00 Speaker 03 The American Sniper, there's a very famous scene where he's clearly holding a fake baby.
43:05 Josh Clark? I didn't know that.
43:06 Speaker 03 Just check it, check it out on YouTube. It's hysterical.
43:09 Josh Clark? Okay, but, but people collect these things. I mean, they are essentially like works of art. They're usually made individually. They're not mass produced. Some of them I've seen referred to as museum quality pieces. So they can run hundreds of dollars, probably more than that for some of them. But there's other things that people do with them too. There's role playing, like just for fun, treating them as if they're alive. Cause again, they look a lot like a live baby or infant.
43:39 Josh Clark? Some people use them to fill an emotional void.
43:41 Speaker 03 Right.
43:42 Josh Clark? And then apparently they're also useful for Alzheimer's patients, patients and dementia patients. And when I first saw this, I was like, that sounds pretty mean, actually.
43:54 Josh Clark? They don't tell the, the patient that this is a real baby. They're like, here, hold this doll, but the doll is so lifelike that it can trigger memories. And pleasant emotions in Alzheimer's patients who now remember raising their own kids. Or taking care of their own kids. And then also just the feel of holding a baby can have all sorts of positive benefits for people with Alzheimer's and dementia too.
44:18 Speaker 03 Yeah, I looked that up. I mean, it's sort of pluses and minuses. It can definitely help reduce dementia cause agitation and stuff like that.
44:26 Speaker 03 All in a non-pharmacological way, which can be good, but there are critics that say like, you gotta be real careful how you do this because it can also reduce dignity and give the impression that like a reinforced like viewing people with dementia like they're children. So you just gotta do it the right way, is what I've read.
44:46 Josh Clark? Yeah, there's, I'm sure there's a myriad wrong ways to do it, too.
44:52 Speaker 03 Sure.
44:53 Josh Clark? So that was a great, great call out, Chuck.
44:56 Speaker 03 Yeah.
44:57 Josh Clark? Do you remember My Buddy?
44:59 Speaker 03 My Buddy and Me?
45:01 Josh Clark? Mm hmm.
45:01 Speaker 03 My Buddy.
45:02 Josh Clark? Mm hmm.
45:03 Speaker 03 My Buddy.
45:04 Josh Clark? Mm hmm.
45:04 Speaker 03 My Buddy, My Buddy and Me. Something like that.
45:07 Josh Clark? That was close, close enough.
45:09 Speaker 03 That was the, uh, what do you call that? When you got a song?
45:13 Josh Clark? An earworm, uh, earworm.
45:15 Speaker 03 No, no, no, the jingle. Yeah, that was the jingle. Everyone screaming, jingle. Uh, it was very infectious. I still remember it for the most part, all these years later. Uh, that was the inspiration for Chucky from Child's Play, but that was a doll that came out in 1985. That was, um, kind of during the Cabbage Patch Kid craze. They were like, hey, what about a doll that's made specifically for boys?
45:37 Josh Clark? Right.
45:37 Speaker 03 And listen to this. Hasbro Senior Vice President of Marketing, Steven Swartz, in 1985, told the Boston Globe this. Uh, my buddy is positioned as macho. Like it's soft macho, but still macho. Like we show them climbing trees, riding their bikes. We didn't position it like a girl doll, like soft and sweet. It's macho, but soft macho.
45:57 Josh Clark? Right. He was wearing all these medallions with his chest hair poking through.
46:01 Speaker 03 Yeah.
46:02 Josh Clark? So that was, uh, thanks to our friends at Metal Floss who turned up that quote, which is priceless.
46:07 Speaker 03 Yeah, I should have read it in a Boston accent, but oh well.
46:10 Josh Clark? No, I think you, you got it. It was great.
46:12 Speaker 03 I missed an opportunity.
46:13 Josh Clark? That was Philly, right?
46:15 Speaker 03 Uh, well, that was for the Boston Globe, but I don't know. Oh, you mean my accent?
46:19 Josh Clark? Mm-hmm.
46:20 Speaker 03 No, no, no, no. That Philly accent's much different.
46:22 Josh Clark? Oh, okay. Um, yeah, you didn't say yinz.
46:26 Speaker 03 Yeah, and he would go out after and have a hoagie.
46:29 Josh Clark? So, like you said, he was the role for, or the model for Chucky from Child's Play?
46:33 Speaker 03 That's what they say. They didn't never confirm that.
46:36 Josh Clark? It's pretty, it's pretty close, like Talky Tina, Chucky.
46:39 Speaker 03 Yeah.
46:40 Josh Clark? These things are close enough to just draw some assumptions here.
46:43 Speaker 03 Yeah, agreed.
46:44 Josh Clark? So we talked about fear of dolls, and I'm glad you already kind of touched on the fact that this is quite serious. This is a genuine phobia. I know to people who don't have it, it can sound like, well, fear of dolls. It almost sounds like something you could make a movie out of. If you have a fear of dolls, a petiophobia, um, like you can get a full-blown panic attack. You may avoid places where you think there may be dolls. It's not just dolls, it can be mannequins too. Um, there's all sorts of reasons that you can have petiophobia. Um, but one of the, the causes behind it, or possible causes behind it, is having like a traumatic experience with a doll, or say like with a ventriloquist dummy or something like that.
47:27 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah.
47:28 Josh Clark? It just didn't land correctly, and now you're traumatized for the rest of your life, um, without serious counseling, uh, because you have this fear of dolls.
47:38 Speaker 03 Yeah, for sure. Um, you know, you used to publish, uh, when we were doing like, uh, image lists on the old HouseOfWorks.com days, your list of, uh, scary-looking toys.
47:48 Josh Clark? That thing is just gone.
47:50 Speaker 03 Isn't it not on the web anymore?
47:51 Josh Clark? No.
47:52 Speaker 03 Oh, well, that's probably good. Uh, but a lot of these things are creepy-looking, and a lot of them are dolls. Um, and, you know, they didn't mean to make them creepy-looking. Uh, I think this just, you know, some decision is made, like... Like Little Miss No Name in 1965, Margaret Keen's big eyes was a big deal. And so we're like, why don't we make a doll with those big giant eyes? And they did, and it's terrifying.
48:17 Josh Clark? She is terrifying, again unintentionally. I think also part of it, she has like, like shadow under her eyes. She's supposed to be kind of gaunt because she's a panhandling child who wears a burlap sack and has a tear running down her cheek. And unintentionally terrifying.
48:34 Speaker 03 She's called Little Miss No Name?
48:35 Josh Clark? Yes.
48:35 Speaker 03 It's awful.
48:36 Josh Clark? It is awful, but this was like a serious, like, release of a doll in 1965. So, um, yeah, there's, there's, and there's plenty you can come up with. I would, I would suggest just go looking up terrifying dolls, knockoff dolls, or knockoff toys is always a little fun rabbit hole to go down. But they're not inherently creepy is the thing. And the reason we know that is because there's kids out there who will play with what older people will consider creepy doll, but it, the kid doesn't think of it that way. So if you ever see a kid legitimately playing with a creepy doll, do not go up to that kid and be like, that doll's really creepy, because that's how humans start to think of things as creepy. And if they don't think of their doll as creepy, it is not your place to tell that kid
49:21 Josh Clark? that doll is creepy.
49:23 Speaker 03 Yeah, for sure.
49:24 Josh Clark? There's a Instagram account of a mom who has been documenting her daughter Briar with her doll Creepy Chloe. And Creepy Chloe definitely lives up to her name, but Briar plays with her like she is any other doll. It's very cute.
49:40 Speaker 03 Yeah, just resist the urge, parents.
49:43 Josh Clark? Yes.
49:44 Speaker 03 Stifle.
49:45 Josh Clark? If you want to know, if you want to know, um, yeah, I, can't you see Briar like growing up and sitting in her dorm, smoking pot one day and be like, no, I understand why my mom always threw her hand over her mouth and walked out of the room when I was playing with Creepy Chloe.
50:00 Speaker 03 Or why didn't she ever tell me? It might be the other way of thinking about it. Yeah.
50:05 Josh Clark? So, um, just real quick, the thing that usually explains why we're creeped out by dolls is the uncanny valley. We won't get into that because it's pretty deep, but we did do an episode on the uncanny valley you can go find.
50:16 Speaker 03 It's a good one.
50:17 Josh Clark? Yeah. You can find it on stuffyoushouldknow.com, by the way.
50:21 Speaker 03 That's right.
50:22 Josh Clark? You got anything else on dolls or Christmas or anything like that, buddy?
50:25 Speaker 03 Nothing.
50:27 Josh Clark? Well, I'm glad we did this one.
50:29 Speaker 03 Me too.
50:29 Josh Clark? Thank you for coming in from home this morning on Christmas morning to do this.
50:34 Speaker 03 That's right. All my gifts are still waiting. I told them just not touch them.
50:39 Josh Clark? Okay.
50:39 Speaker 03 Even the one that's ticking and I'll be right back.
50:40 Josh Clark? Well, hopefully your orange rolls aren't cold or anything like that. So let's, let's go home. Let's go to our homes, not our shared home.
50:48 Speaker 03 Yeah.
50:49 Josh Clark? That's something else.
50:50 Speaker 03 Yeah, that's for New Year's.
50:52 Josh Clark? And we'll wish everybody a Merry Christmas, huh?
50:55 Speaker 03 Yeah. I hope everyone has a great holiday and I hope you're with ones you love. And if you're spending Christmas in a less than ideal way, we are always thinking about you for real.
51:05 Josh Clark? Very nice, Chuck. And I don't think we'll do listener mail, huh?
51:09 Speaker 03 Nah, nuts to that, as you say.
51:11 Josh Clark? Yeah. Well, if you want to say Merry Christmas or Happy New Year or Happy Holidays or anything, hi, whatever, you can send it via email to [email protected] .
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