Graffiti: So Cool It’s A Pillar of Hip Hop

Graffiti – the good kind, done with lots of style and skill – developed when some kids in NYC took up cans of spray paint and started to figure out how to outdo one another. They laid down styles that are so fine they’re still being used by artists today. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:04Josh Clark?

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• 1:47Speaker 04

  Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio.

• 1:56Josh Clark?

  Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and we are doing a wild style today here on Stuff You Should Know. One of those episodes where it's like this, this topic is cooler than we are, but we're going to give it our best to try to get across how neat it really is.

• 2:14Speaker 05

  Oh, man. I'm not gonna say when. Maybe you can guess, but there's one portion of this that it'll be the most like middle-aged white dude thing ever.

• 2:24Josh Clark?

  Okay, I'm looking forward to it because I can't guess.

• 2:27Speaker 05

  Okay, I'll see. You'll probably know when I go into my voice.

• 2:29Josh Clark?

  Okay. Is it that old witch voice that you like to do?

• 2:33Speaker 05

  No, no, no, no. You'll know the voice.

• 2:35Josh Clark?

  All right. Is it an Italian thing?

• 2:38Speaker 05

  No, not Italian.

• 2:39Josh Clark?

  All right. I'll figure it out then. We're talking graffiti, obviously Chuck. I don't know if everybody knows that.

• 2:45Speaker 05

  Yeah. I mean, we covered some of this in our hip hop episode for sure, but this is one of the pillars of hip hop culture, as we'll see, but graffiti needed its own thing. And graffiti in the United States, we basically think of as sort of a late 60s East Coast thing. And this isn't one of those things. I do see where Livia put in like cave drawings, but I'm not even gonna talk about that.

• 3:09Josh Clark?

  Sure.

• 3:10Speaker 05

  Because I was like, come on, Livia. But very good point here in Mexico in like the 1930s where mural art and sort of public art during the Mexican Revolution was a big thing. And so Chicano kids in the 1930s sort of brought that same style to LA and other cities.

• 3:29Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 3:29Speaker 05

  In the 1930s and 40s, before the spray can was invented, but I feel like that is a genuine sort of precursor to what we know as modern graffiti.

• 3:38Josh Clark?

  Yeah, because they were, well, they were writing on walls. Sometimes they were using paint and brushes. Markers didn't exist. Spray cans didn't exist yet, but they were using what they had. A lot of times just to tag their neighborhood is like this, this turf belongs to this gang. But they added flourishes that kind of gave rise to some of the details and touches that are still around in graffiti today. So it is definitely a valid river that flowed into this larger river that flows into the ocean of graffiti that's on planet Earth, which would be the hip hop culture.

• 4:15Speaker 05

  I mentioned the spray can. That's obviously a vital part of graffiti. That was invented in 1949 by a paint owner in Illinois, a paint company owner named Ed Seymour and his wife. And I tried to find her name. What's her name?

• 4:28Josh Clark?

  Bonnie.

• 4:29Speaker 05

  Oh, I couldn't find it. You found Bonnie?

• 4:31Josh Clark?

  I had to look really hard, yes, but I found it. Bonnie. Isn't that a lovely name?

• 4:35Speaker 05

  Nice work. Yeah, I do love the name Bonnie. But they said they were trying to coat radiators with an aluminum coating, so they invented the spray can. And right away, like, you know, people that were protesting, or maybe artists on the down low, because you can hide a can pretty easily, you can work with it very quickly. It works on a lot of different kinds of surfaces. So all of a sudden, spray cans, you know, really paved the way.

• 5:01Josh Clark?

  Yeah, Potsie from Happy Days famously was a clandestine artist using spray paint.

• 5:07Speaker 05

  Oh, really?

• 5:07Josh Clark?

  No.

• 5:07Speaker 05

  I don't remember that one. I could, hey, I could have seen that being a Happy Days episode.

• 5:12Josh Clark?

  Yeah, but.

• 5:13Speaker 05

  Wouldn't have been Potsie.

• 5:14Josh Clark?

  Yeah, exactly. Maybe Ralph Mouth might have gotten talked into trying it and then just freaked out, but.

• 5:19Speaker 05

  Probably would have been Richie.

• 5:21Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I guess so. Man, that was such a good show.

• 5:23Speaker 05

  Like a real lesson learner episode.

• 5:25Josh Clark?

  Yep. Yeah, and the Fonz, who you'd think would be like a spray paint graffiti artist like Vandal, is the one who talks to Richie. He's like, that's not cool. So there's a lot of advantages to using spray paint. That's why graffiti really kind of started. This is like where its roots really took root. Markers are another thing that people use. And most people think of spray paint with graffiti, but markers are important. And they didn't come around until the 1950s. So you had spray paint before you had markers, which is surprising to me. And if you want a nice little trivia question, Magic Marker was the first marker for commercial sale, starting in 1953.

• 6:09Speaker 05

  That makes sense, because that's became sort of the proprietary eponym, in a way.

• 6:14Josh Clark?

  Exactly. Yeah, for sure.

• 6:15Speaker 05

  Not so much anymore, I feel like, but in our era, for sure.

• 6:19Josh Clark?

  Yeah, because it's fun to say.

• 6:21Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's a marker that creates magic.

• 6:23Josh Clark?

  Exactly.

• 6:25Speaker 05

  I didn't really consider markers as graffiti, but then I was like, yeah, like every, everything like on the inside of a MARTA train or a New York subway car, like that's all marker.

• 6:34Josh Clark?

  All marker. Yeah, it is. It's very important for what's called hand style, as we'll see.

• 6:39Speaker 05

  That's right, but we need to talk about cornbread, right?

• 6:42Josh Clark?

  Yeah, so there's a guy named Daryl McCray, who will tell anybody who sits still long enough that he was the person who invented graffiti.

• 6:49Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 6:49Josh Clark?

  And he makes a really good case. Unfortunately, there's some other people who are doing the same thing at the same time, but you could still say Cornbread, which was his handle, his tag, was one of the very first people who took up graffiti, starting in 1965.

• 7:07Speaker 05

  Yeah, he was but a 12-year-old. He's a Philly guy and he was in juvie and

• 7:14Speaker 05

  in juvie, he said, I don't want this white bread. I want cornbread. My grandmother made cornbread and I love that stuff. So he got the nickname Cornbread.

• 7:21Josh Clark?

  I don't think he got the cornbread, though.

• 7:23Speaker 05

  I doubt if he got the cornbread. That's, that's very labor intensive to make cornbread.

• 7:26Josh Clark?

  For sure.

• 7:27Speaker 05

  I mean, compared to just opening up a bag of white bread, you know?

• 7:30Josh Clark?

  Also, though, I think at places called Youth Development Center, they don't give you your preferred food. They give you what you're going to eat.

• 7:38Speaker 05

  Yeah, like Oliver Twist style.

• 7:40Josh Clark?

  Yeah, no requests, please.

• 7:42Speaker 05

  No more. So he took that nickname, started writing it on the walls there at his institution that he was in. And then when he got out in 1967, he would take to the streets of Philly, writing his name, Cornbread, especially like if he knew that his sweetie pie was on the bus, he would write it along the bus route so she could see that and be impressed.

• 8:04Josh Clark?

  Sometimes running alongside the bus.

• 8:07Speaker 05

  Yeah, like while it was going. Other bus lines, and that was sort of the, you know, the beginning, along as we'll see, and you know, which was already happening in Spanish Harlem, of sort of the early point of graffiti, which is like a name, you know, later on they would call it a tag. And the point was to get that out in as many places as you could and, and like, you were super cool if you did it in like a very risky or hard to reach place, like the Wall in front of the cop shop or the top of a water tower or something like that.

• 8:38Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And so you add in the flourishes that Chicano kids came up with in the 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s in LA. With getting your tag out there as many places as you can, that's the, that is definitely the beginning of, of graffiti. And this is where most people point to as the start of the whole thing. In the 60s and 70s in New York City, all of this started to blossom. All these things kind of came together and just the right hands and graffiti became a thing, just slowly but surely. Like you said, some of the first people were just writing their names and they would come up with this tag.

• 9:16Josh Clark?

  And some of the earliest tags came from Spanish Harlem where you would have your nickname and then a number like Turk 182. And Turk would be your nickname. 182 would be the street you hailed from. I think Turk 182 is entirely made up. I don't think it was a docu-drama. But one of the first two was Julio 204 and Taki 183.

• 9:40Speaker 05

  Yeah, Taki 183, Taki was a nickname, a Greek nickname for Demetrius, still is. But Taki was a, this was in like 69 or 70, was a delivery worker. So Taki went all over the city. So it was a really good way to get the Taki 183 tag all over the place. And it got so far and wide that Taki was actually part of a New York Times article in 1971. And all of a sudden it inspired people saying, hey, like this is the cool new thing to do on the street.

• 10:11Josh Clark?

  Yeah, or else they hated Taki 183 for defacing New York all over the place.

• 10:16Speaker 05

  Good point.

• 10:17Josh Clark?

  That same year that the article on Taki 183 came out, there was the first graffiti crew kind of came together. Writer's Corner 188, they met at the corner of Audubon and 188th Street, 188th Street, as they say in New York. And the crew was called WC 188. And it was like one of the first ways that people started sharing different style tips and kinds of markers that did different things. It was just the first way that. Different people doing the same thing came together and figured out how to do it better.

• 10:49Speaker 05

  Yeah, and like I said, it was sort of a quantity over quality thing for a while. I think that's sadly kind of part of it now a little bit. When I see graffiti around Atlanta, there's some really good stuff and also some, some really kind of not, not so great tags that I see a lot.

• 11:07Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and more often than not, it's the not so great ones, right? Kind of like watching adults skateboard.

• 11:14Speaker 05

  Oh, God. Yeah, I mean, man, Atlanta just doesn't have the skateboarders. That's a West Coast thing. I never see, I always see those guys trying to do the tricks, but they never land the tricks.

• 11:24Josh Clark?

  Exactly. That's exactly like junky tags, which is, I think, called toy in the graffiti world.

• 11:33Speaker 05

  Oh, really? Toy if your tag is just sort of not great?

• 11:35Josh Clark?

  Yeah, if it's just junky amateurish graffiti, it's toy graffiti.

• 11:40Speaker 05

  Well, I wonder if these people are like, hey, man, I'm not such a great artist. Lay off. I'm trying.

• 11:45Josh Clark?

  Well, they would say, stop doing what you're doing and go do something else then, because the streets are made for good graffiti.

• 11:52Speaker 05

  Not toys.

• 11:53Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 11:56Speaker 05

  The subway was where things got really a little more like artistic, I guess. Riding on a subway train in New York, you could obviously get your name out, you know, to more people because that subway's going all over the place.

• 12:09Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 12:10Speaker 05

  It's also risky and as we'll see, like, risk is a big, you know, I mentioned like the, the wall in front of the police station, like, risk is a big, big part of it. Because like, as you'll see, like, when they made great efforts in the, in the 70s and 80s in New York to, to stop this stuff, it wasn't like they were like, oh, boy, we better stop doing this graffiti. It was sort of like, game on, man. Like, this is what we're looking for. Like, now we know they're after us, so it makes it even more sort of challenging and risky.

• 12:39Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I mean, these early graffiti artists were by definition juvenile delinquents to a person. So the idea of adding more challenges to them just played exactly into their whole ethos. Ethos, I could never remember.

• 12:54Speaker 05

  And to be clear that with this, I just wanna, if you don't understand, they're not spray painting the moving subway cars. They would break into the rail yards at night. And all of a sudden, you have this huge canvas just sitting there.

• 13:03Josh Clark?

  Yeah, exactly. And like you said, a lot of people would see it because that subway car the next day would be traveling all over New York. So that was a big deal. And that's kind of what you think of when you think of late 70s, early 80s graffiti in New York. Subway cars is kind of traveling all over the place with really cool, colorful graffiti on them.

• 13:23Speaker 05

  Totally.

• 13:24Josh Clark?

  Do you wanna take an early break, or you wanna keep talking and get into some different kinds and styles?

• 13:30Speaker 05

  Maybe let's break down the styles first.

• 13:32Josh Clark?

  All right, let's do it. So it turns out there's three categories of graffiti in order of easiness to increasing hardness. It's gotta be a better way to put it, but I'm leaving it there. There's tags.

• 13:46Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 13:47Josh Clark?

  Which Olivia calls very sternly, "basic identifying signs." I love that one.

• 13:53Speaker 05

  Well, tags didn't come along till 1990, the word.

• 13:55Josh Clark?

  Right, but essentially, it's your signature. It's your nickname, spelled out in a very stylized way, specific to you. That's what hand style is. And then when you use your hand style to put up that nickname in a certain stylized way on the wall, that today, at least, that's a tag. That's one of the three kinds of graffiti.

• 14:19Speaker 05

  Yeah, and before, they called it tagging in 1990, back in the day, as they say. They would call it hitting, maybe, or bombing, or just writing.

• 14:27Josh Clark?

  Yep.

• 14:27Speaker 05

  Throw-ups, terrible name, is the next kind. It can incorporate your tag. It's like your signature, but it's usually more than that. It's tag plus. A lot of times, it's multi-color, like two or three colors, maybe even more if you've got the time. It's, you know, it's more, just simply said, it's kind of more artistic.

• 14:47Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and they're almost always like bubbly letters from what I can tell.

• 14:52Speaker 05

  Uh, yeah, unless it's the, the block style, which I, I like.

• 14:56Josh Clark?

  Yeah, Blockbuster?

• 14:57Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 14:58Josh Clark?

  I like those as well. Those are, um, it's a different style. They're not throw-ups. It's a kind of a style that could be used in throw-ups. And they're a lot of times used on, um, using rollers, but they're really large letters. A lot of times they're more straight than bubbly, which is the differentiation, like you were saying. I like Blockbuster too, Chuck.

• 15:16Speaker 05

  Yeah, me too. Uh, and then you've got the, the best kind, when you might get a whole subway car and many hours to decorate the thing or a whole wall. And those are called, uh, pieces, just like you would call an art piece, a piece. Cause it is an art piece.

• 15:30Josh Clark?

  For sure. Um, they're way more detailed, way more colors. They have all sorts of crazy cool effects, like fades from one color or another. They might have sparkles on them. They might somehow have like a chrome effect. Um, there's a lot more decoration to them. They're just amazing. That's probably what most people think of when they think of graffiti or pieces.

• 15:50Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 15:51Josh Clark?

  And these all are, they get, they start out easy. Like you just practice doing tags. Then you move on to throw-ups and then you move on to pieces eventually. And so they also take different amounts of time. Like, once you get good at tagging, you can do this in like, less than a minute. Maybe five if you're just starting out. It can take a, a minute if you're really, really good and have been doing it a long time to put a throw-up up. Can take 15 minutes if you're still figuring out your way. Those pieces, this surprised me. They can take days to do with multiple crews working on the same thing. It can still take days. And if you're just one dude making a piece, a masterpiece, it can take months, weeks and months to, to get it done.

• 16:35Josh Clark?

  Which, I mean, if you're doing this illicitly, like on a wall somewhere, having to go back like night after night to, to do this and not get caught, that's, that's rather thrilling, if you ask me.

• 16:47Speaker 05

  Well, and the, uh, just the, the time investment for something that a third of the way through or halfway through or toward the end could get, could go away.

• 16:55Josh Clark?

  I thought about that too, man. That's gotta hurt.

• 16:57Speaker 05

  That would really suck.

• 16:59Josh Clark?

  What about wild style? I referred to it early on.

• 17:03Speaker 05

  Uh, wild style is obviously super stylized. It's where you get sort of the overlapping, uh, letter patterns. Um, it's usually fairly bright and like you mentioned, like a lot of shading, uh, maybe a 3D effect. Uh, a lot of times these pieces have wild style involved.

• 17:21Josh Clark?

  Right. Yeah. It's kind of like the, the most advanced form, I guess, just because it's so, it's just, it's really hard to do and it's the most intricate usually, but it's also kind of like gone beyond what most people appreciate as graffiti, um, where they have no idea what this thing says. Like other graffiti artists can read it, but the average person is just like, oh, look at that mishmash of colors. It's kind of like, um, how, uh, metal bands, uh, logos have kind of evolved to where you're like, I have no idea whose album this is. It's very much similar that wild style is. But one thing that stuck out to me, Chuck, wild style, I'm like, I, I, that probably came around in maybe the nineties at the earliest.

• 18:05Josh Clark?

  It's from the seventies too. Like all of this stuff is from the seventies. So in the seventies in New York City, the general guidelines for what constitutes graffiti still today were laid out and established by those people. Like it's still followed today. Um, I think that's amazing. You know, I thought it'd be added piece by piece over the decades, but no, they figured it out pretty much right out of the gate.

• 18:29Speaker 05

  Yeah, that's cool. I love it. Uh, and then if you've ever seen like, uh, and this is a little more west coast, like the old English style or like the, the western saloon lettering, uh, that's known as cholo style, uh, a word that, you know, is sort of associated with, um, like gang culture, like Mexican gang culture. Uh, but that developed from that Chicano writing culture on the west coast and then spread around. Like you, you can see that on the east coast, but it's definitely, I feel like more west coast thing. And that, that looks super cool too.

• 18:58Josh Clark?

  No, it definitely does. Um, there's also, they use a lot of characters, cartoonish characters of like gang bangers with bandanas like almost over their eyes, that kind of dude.

• 19:07Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 19:08Josh Clark?

  They show up a lot. Uh, it just seems like there's a lot more cartoon figures in cholo style than say like New York graffiti. There was one more style that I ran across called anti-style or ignorant style. And essentially, it's like what most people would call toy. It's just primitive, it's amateurish, but it's done on purpose because it's done by graffiti artists, a lot of whom are actually really good, who are like, this has gotten totally out of control. Have you seen this wild style stuff? We need to like, get back to basics and just have fun with this again. And so they're kind of trying to recapture what the earliest graffiti artists from like the 70s were doing as they, when they figured it out as they went along. A lot of people hate it, can't stand it. They think it's

• 19:51Josh Clark?

  just a dumb idea. But from what I can tell, if you're a good artist, doing purposefully primitive work, it's actually pretty cool looking.

• 20:00Speaker 05

  All right. Should we take that break?

• 20:02Josh Clark?

  I do want to take that break, Chuck.

• 20:04Speaker 05

  All right, let's go get our spray cans, shake them up, and we'll be right back.

• 20:22Josh Clark?

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• 21:22Speaker 06

  First thought is like, wow, how are we going to do all this?

• 21:25Josh Clark?

  Hey, this is Josh and Chuck from Stuff You Should Know.

• 21:28Speaker 05

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• 21:44Speaker 06

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• 21:52Josh Clark?

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• 22:15Josh Clark?

  AT&T, connecting fans to what they love. Connecting changes everything. AT&T.

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• 22:28Josh Clark?

  Sure.

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  Yeah, because it's a process. There's always something you could do or buy or update. The only question is, what's next? For us, our animals just wear out our rugs so quickly. It's usually a new rug.

• 22:39Josh Clark?

  Well, Chuck, whether you need a rug or whatever is next for you, you can go to Wayfair. It's the smart place to get it.

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• 23:37Speaker 05

  All right, so we mentioned markers early on. And obviously, like I said, inside, like on the wall of a subway car, a lot of times, maybe not even inside, but if you just want to provide detail for a larger piece on like the exterior of a subway car or wall or something.

• 23:53Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 23:53Speaker 05

  You could use a marker. And in the early days, Pilot, Marks a lot, and Drymark, D R I, and Sanford King Size were, they were very broad tip markers, so those were some of the early markers that were the most popular. And you could also refill a lot of those with different kinds of ink. So the, you know, the felt was just sort of the instrument and you could put whatever color or mixed colors if you wanted to.

• 24:17Josh Clark?

  For sure.

• 24:18Speaker 05

  And they would also like make their own stuff. It's a very sort of DIY style of art where they were making their own tools and components, maybe like shoe polish bottles and stuff like that.

• 24:28Josh Clark?

  Yeah. You also mentioned that it's one of the four pillars of hip hop. There's technically five as far as Afrika Bambaata is concerned. And that would be knowledge is the fifth pillar, like knowledge of self, knowledge of where you come from, your history, real KRS-One stuff, you know?

• 24:47Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 24:47Josh Clark?

  And so as being a part of hip hop culture, I don't know if we said the other ones, emceeing and DJing and breaking.

• 24:53Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 24:54Josh Clark?

  And graffiti and knowledge, those are the five pillars of hip hop. And like the other stuff, like emceeing and DJing and all that, and breaking in particular, there's a real competitive element to graffiti. Like where you can go so far as you end up in a war with other artists where you're spraying over their stuff.

• 25:14Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 25:14Josh Clark?

  You're spraying over your stuff and that is not, you're not supposed to do that. Like if you spray over somebody's stuff, it better be terrible work and you better be really good at it. Because that's a huge flex, I guess you would say if it was 2024.

• 25:29Speaker 05

  Yeah, for sure. It has also intersected with other art forms over the years. In the 1980s, there was a comic artist named Von Bode, who was very influential to this culture. He had a couple of characters, Puck and Cheech Wizard. He came up with, I think he came up with these characters like in the 1950s.

• 25:51Josh Clark?

  Wow.

• 25:52Speaker 05

  But then in the 60s, they were in like self-published comics and then went a little more, and when I say mainstream, obviously not mainstream mainstream, but like 72 to 75, they're in the National Lampoon, so a little more mainstream.

• 26:05Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 26:05Speaker 05

  And if you think you've heard that name before, that sounds familiar.

• 26:10Speaker 05

  You might have heard the song Sure Shot by the Beastie Boys. "I'm like Von Bode, I'm a Cheech Wizard, never quittin', so you won't listen."

• 26:18Josh Clark?

  Very nice. Well said.

• 26:20Speaker 05

  Yeah, I knew I had heard that before. I was like, that's been in a song. I know it.

• 26:24Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and Cheech Wizard is essentially like a giant wizard hat with some legs coming out of it. That's Cheech Wizard, and he's like a wise, smart-ass kind of, well, wizard hat. And I don't, I didn't see why, but for some reason graffiti culture just loved that stuff. So Cheech Wizard shows up, and Puck the Lizard show up in a lot of graffiti from the 70s and 80s. And then one of the other influences I saw that Cheech Wizard or Von Bode had, his lettering for his comics, he like, from what I can tell, he came up with bubble letters and that that made its way into graffiti, directly from Von Bode's comics.

• 27:03Speaker 05

  Oh, graffiti and the book covers of math books of Gen X kids.

• 27:08Josh Clark?

  Yep.

• 27:09Speaker 05

  I was big into the bubble lettering.

• 27:11Josh Clark?

  Yeah, using those pens with like the five different colors that you can click down.

• 27:16Speaker 05

  Yeah, I was okay at it. I definitely used those pens. I remember G's giving me a lot of trouble and S's giving me a lot of trouble.

• 27:25Josh Clark?

  Those were hard.

• 27:26Speaker 05

  But I tried.

• 27:28Josh Clark?

  How was your

• 27:29Speaker 05

  I kept that?

• 27:30Josh Clark?

  bubble queue?

• 27:31Speaker 05

  Oh, God. Is that a thing?

• 27:35Josh Clark?

  It is now.

• 27:36Speaker 05

  That doesn't sound possible.

• 27:36Josh Clark?

  I think I just laid down the gauntlet for somebody to come up with that.

• 27:40Speaker 05

  Oh, wow. So graffiti starts to spread around the world.

• 27:45Speaker 05

  Britain in the late 70s, Amsterdam, in particular, in the Netherlands and their punk scenes in the late 70s. They started doing some of this stuff.

• 27:53Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 27:54Speaker 05

  And then it also helped spread because of media a little bit. I mean, most of it was fairly underground media at the time, unless it was some like news report that had a scathing report. But there was a photographer named Henry Chalfont.

• 28:07Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 28:07Speaker 05

  Who did a few projects, one of which I highly recommend watching.

• 28:10Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 28:11Speaker 05

  On YouTube, a documentary from 1983 called Style Wars, which is a really good watch.

• 28:15Josh Clark?

  It's one of those ones where you're like, I feel cooler just watching this thing.

• 28:19Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 28:20Josh Clark?

  He just turned the, he turned the camera, he and the director, Tony Silver, who worked together. They turned the camera on these graffiti artists and just had them talk and show what they were doing and explain why they were doing this. And then interspersed is like, like breakdancing from the Rocksteady Crew when they were just starting out. Like, it's just super cool. Like, this captured time capsule, like moment in time. Where this is all starting. They, they totally, like, Henry Chalfont, like, got it. He was like, we need to document this because this is going to be important.

• 28:55Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's amazing. I mean, there's, there's other things like photographs and this and that. But when you look at the birth of a, of a new art form and sort of a burgeoning culture, to have this, this sort of one document so like perfectly capture this moment in time, like you were talking about. It's, I mean, that, that should be in like the Library of Congress, like that kind of stuff.

• 29:15Josh Clark?

  For sure.

• 29:16Speaker 05

  Or whatever. What's the film version of that? I can't remember the name of it.

• 29:19Josh Clark?

  The Fiberry of Fombus?

• 29:21Speaker 05

  Yeah. Wow.

• 29:23Josh Clark?

  Um, I know, that deserved a wow. I'm really scraping the bottom of the barrel here in year 17.

• 29:31Josh Clark?

  Oh, so you said that it was, it was like a document, right?

• 29:35Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 29:36Josh Clark?

  It actually is kind of referred to in graffiti culture still today. Like if somebody's starting out and they're like, what should I go? What can I learn from? One of the things that people will refer them to is Star Wars. Because again, these, these like essential guidelines were laid down at this time.

• 29:52Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 29:52Josh Clark?

  So you can still learn a ton from watching Star Wars. Or Henry Chalfont got into a couple of other projects too. One with a photographer named Martha Cooper called Subway Art. I've also seen newbies referred to that book too. And then another one with another photographer, James Prigoff, called Spray Can Art. So Henry Chalfont had a real impact on like documenting this stuff.

• 30:17Josh Clark?

  That still is important today.

• 30:19Speaker 05

  Yeah, he was, it was kind of like, it made me think of the guy, I can't remember his name, but the, the famous photographer who captured the Southern California skateboard culture early on. Because they seem like kind of the only people doing that in such a sort of artistic and profound way.

• 30:35Josh Clark?

  Right. Oh, yeah, for sure.

• 30:36Speaker 05

  Good stuff.

• 30:37Josh Clark?

  Two other things to call out, there's a photographer named Gordon Matta Clark, who documented in photographs, just like tags all around New York City. Has a pretty cool, I think they make showings of his photographs sometimes. And then the movie Wild Style actually came out a year before Star Wars, 1982. It's considered the first hip hop movie ever. I think it was a Fab Five Freddy project, but it has the Rocksteady Crew. One of the rare early woman graffiti artists, Lady Pink, she's in it. And then King Ad Rock is in it before he was called King Ad Rock, before the Beastie Boys.

• 31:13Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 31:13Josh Clark?

  But there's a ton of, like, the whole premise of this, it's a, it's a movie, like a fictional movie. But the whole premise is this guy's being hired to.

• 31:23Josh Clark?

  Well, I guess put up some graffiti by this, I can't remember, another dude or a company or something like that.

• 31:28Speaker 05

  All right, I'll check that out.

• 31:30Josh Clark?

  Thanks.

• 31:31Speaker 05

  So, you know, we mentioned graffiti as art because graffiti is art, but as far as being accepted into like the legitimate art community, that that sort of happened in fits and starts over the years. There was a, I guess the first academic article about graffiti was in 1969 in the Urban Review by Herbert Cole was called Names, Graffiti and Culture.

• 31:52Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 31:53Speaker 05

  And then a few years later, in 1972, a big deal happened when, or a big deal for that culture at least, Hugo Martinez is a student activist at City College in New York, and he helped start a collective called United Graffiti Artists with a bunch of Puerto Rican teen graffiti artists. And that was sort of the first collective where he was like, hey, do this stuff on canvas because this is art. And they had an exhibition at City College and then the very first graffiti art gallery show at the Razor Gallery in Soho that same year.

• 32:25Josh Clark?

  Right, yeah, they became really influential. The next year, in 1973, choreographer Twyla Tharp, she had the United Graffiti Artists do basically the scene decorations for her performance in Chicago. I can't remember what it was called, but weirdly, the the dance was choreographed to Beach Boys music with graffiti in the background. It was a real mishmash.

• 32:52Speaker 05

  Wait, did you say Beastie Boys music?

• 32:54Josh Clark?

  No, I said Beach Boys. And the whole time she just kept going Twyla, Twyla, Twyla while she danced.

• 33:01Speaker 05

  That's good. You're getting better.

• 33:04Josh Clark?

  Yeah, it comes and goes.

• 33:07Speaker 05

  We did mention, you know, obviously, the other side of the coin is there is, and still are people that think this is just vandalism. They think it's just like urban decay happening before our very eyes. And in the early 70s, New York got on board that line of thinking, at least the government did, when Mayor John Lindsay declared a war on graffiti. That following year in 72, the city council said it's illegal to even carry an aerosol can in a public facility. And then in 75, they created the Transit Police Graffiti Squad.

• 33:43Speaker 05

  And, you know, they're cleaning up subway cars, but like I said earlier, all this, all this was, was like game on. Like, there's not a single graffiti artist that was intimidated or scared out of doing what they were gonna do because of this. If anything, it heightened it.

• 33:57Josh Clark?

  Yeah, another example of that is they outlawed selling spray paint to teenagers in New York City.

• 34:05Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 34:05Josh Clark?

  And so graffiti artists were like, oh, okay, we'll just start stealing it. That's cheaper anyway. So stealing your spray paint became like just a part of graffiti in New York in the, in the seventies and eighties.

• 34:16Speaker 05

  Yeah, not condoning that.

• 34:17Josh Clark?

  Well, I said, they were juvenile delinquents and I wasn't kidding.

• 34:21Speaker 05

  Ed Koch, famous New York mayor in the late-ish seventies and seventy-seven, was very anti-graffiti. And would razor wire the subway yards, had guard dogs. He had cops, like, staking out houses and following kids home from school.

• 34:36Josh Clark?

  That's nuts, man.

• 34:37Speaker 05

  Yeah, that's just nuts.

• 34:39Josh Clark?

  So I think, I don't know if Koch, yeah, I think Koch was still mayor at the time. They came up with the Metro Transit Authority's Clean Car Program. And this one actually had an impact. This was beyond razor wire and German shepherds. Like, this was, if we find a train car has been hit overnight with graffiti, it's not going to go back out there until that graffiti is cleaned off.

• 35:01Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 35:02Josh Clark?

  So imagine, like, working all night or whatever and getting your, your piece up. And it gets cleaned off before it even leaves the transit station. So that actually worked. And by nineteen eighty-nine, apparently, like, whole car graffiti was just not around anymore in New York. Like, you can still see it on, on cars, but they used to use the entire car. There was a really famous one by Futura Two Thousand and Dandie, which is called Brake. And it's considered one of the greatest full subway car masterpieces anyone's ever done. It's beyond description. Just go look up Brake by Dandie and Futura Two Thousand.

• 35:45Speaker 05

  What did you think of it?

• 35:46Josh Clark?

  I thought it was amazing, because it just completely departed from any kind of, I know how just ridiculous I sound right now. It departed from any kind of convention. It used all sorts of new elements and stuff that I hadn't seen anywhere else. And you really had to kind of examine it. In detail and then also stepping back to kind of take the whole thing in.

• 36:07Speaker 05

  I didn't love it.

• 36:08Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I mean, I could see that.

• 36:10Speaker 05

  But that's art, you know?

• 36:11Josh Clark?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 36:12Speaker 05

  Or let's say this, I've seen a lot of other stuff that I thought was like, maybe it just appealed to me more. I was about to say it was way better, but that's again, it's just in the eye of the beholder.

• 36:21Josh Clark?

  Man, that was a really great way to put it.

• 36:23Speaker 05

  So, thank you. I appreciate that. Again, I mentioned earlier that it was a sort of a DIY community when how I like figuring stuff out, sharing tips and tricks with one another. And from the beginning, they would use various nozzles from other types of cans or, you know, caps, they would call them, from different products to provide different ways of painting. I know that, you know, when you spray that, I don't use the stuff, but that Easy Off Oven Cleaner, you know, sprays that big wide area. So they started using that to achieve the same effect with paint. And they, they, I mean, they were a real, I guess when they were buying the paint, made a difference in the, the profits of Rustoleum and Crylon over the seventies for sure.

• 37:06Josh Clark?

  Yeah, but Rustoleum and Cryon were, Crylon were specifically avoiding marketing or making their products attractive to graffiti artists.

• 37:15Speaker 05

  They couldn't do that.

• 37:16Josh Clark?

  No, this was, this is, no, you did not want your, your brand being accused of, of catering to graffiti artists at the time.

• 37:26Josh Clark?

  But it was still pretty good. It was useful. And one of the reasons why is because they were both chock full of lead up until the late seventies. And lead does all sorts of great stuff for spray paint. It makes it dry faster. It makes colors brighter. It's more durable. It's moisture resistant. So when the lead got taken out, that was a real bummer for graffiti artists. Yeah, I mean, I could see that having a huge impact.

• 37:51Speaker 05

  Yeah, you know, in Europe, they did market, there were a couple in the nineties, the Montana and Molotow brands of spray paint actually target street art markets and have all kinds of like, you know, weather resistant paints and crazy colors and different effects with their caps. So they, they embraced it and basically said, hey, come buy our stuff.

• 38:12Josh Clark?

  Yes, but if you're a purist in America, you probably are still using Rustoleum or Crylon.

• 38:18Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 38:19Josh Clark?

  One of the other things that really kind of evolved that helped things along was not having to take the spray nozzle off of Easy Off anymore and having nozzles that were designed and sold for graffiti art, like all sorts of different kinds of nozzles that do all sorts of different kinds of things.

• 38:38Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, you know, fat lines and skinny lines, different caps achieve those effects. They had calligraphy caps. If you've ever been in a paint store and looked at, you know, sometimes you can even spray a little piece of cardboard they have there on the wall.

• 38:53Josh Clark?

  Lucky.

• 38:54Speaker 05

  But, you know, sometimes it's a little round pinhole, but sometimes it's a it's a slot. And those are calligraphy caps, like a horizontal line. I never knew that.

• 39:03Josh Clark?

  I think those are big and cholo graffiti, too.

• 39:06Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 39:07Josh Clark?

  Needle caps, they make splatters. So if you want like controlled drips, you don't want uncontrolled drips or unintentional drips, but you might want your piece to have some drip look to it. So you would use needle caps. They also add texture to the lines because they there's like a like a splattery haze that when you step back just kind of softens the lines a little bit from the needle caps. It's pretty cool.

• 39:31Speaker 05

  Should we take our second break?

• 39:32Josh Clark?

  I think we should.

• 39:34Speaker 05

  All right, we'll come back right after this.

• 39:51Josh Clark?

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• 40:00Speaker 05

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• 40:13Josh Clark?

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• 40:29Speaker 05

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• 40:54Josh Clark?

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• 41:17Speaker 05

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• 41:30Josh Clark?

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• 41:46Speaker 05

  All right, if you've been putting off car shopping because it sounds like a whole thing, buying your car online on AutoTrader makes it way easier, like almost easier than ordering your coffee easier. Really?

• 41:57Josh Clark?

  Yeah, you can search through tons of cars online, compare prices, check out financing and trade-in options, all from your couch, or your office, or wherever. And if you want to start online but still hit the dealership for a test drive, you can do that, too. Really?

• 42:11Speaker 05

  Yeah, that's what's great about it. It's flexible, everybody. You can start online, finish at the dealer. Start at the dealer, finish online. Your info stays with you, so you're not starting the process from scratch.

• 42:21Josh Clark?

  And unlike other sites, you're working with local dealers, so you've got real people helping behind the scenes. And when you're ready, you can pick your car up or have it delivered. Really?

• 42:30Speaker 05

  So whether you know exactly what you want or you're still scrolling, trying to find out if you want heated cup holders or more horsepower, AutoTrader's got options that fit how you want to buy. Buy your car online on AutoTrader. Really?

• 43:03Josh Clark?

  So if you wanted to get into this kind of thing, there's a place to start and it's called developing your hand style. And that is your own personal way of writing your, your tag essentially. And graffiti artists will come up with like their own entire alphabets that they just designed themselves. And there's a really great website. It's super useful if you do want to get into graffiti called bombing science.com. They have a post of 61 different graffiti artists and their alphabets essentially that they've created for their tags. And it's really cool. Some of them, you're like, I have no idea what letter that is, but even still, there's this super neat

• 43:47Josh Clark?

  that people have put this much thought into it and come up with a font essentially, their own personal font that they use for graffiti. And the way that you do that is by practicing it to develop your own hand style. And that is essentially step one. And you do that not on a wall or any public place, or even with paint. You start out with pens and markers figuring it out.

• 44:08Speaker 05

  That's right. And now we're going to give you some tips.

• 44:12Josh Clark?

  Oh, okay. There we go.

• 44:14Speaker 05

  You're going to want to shake that can up, guys. Got to shake it really, really good. All kidding aside, you do want to shake that can up because that's what makes the, the, the paint flow really well. Don't shortchange that shake.

• 44:30Josh Clark?

  I feel like I'm, I'm speaking for a lot of listeners and saying that I'm, I can't help but feel a little forlorn that you're not doing this whole list in that voice.

• 44:39Speaker 05

  All right, I'll, I'll keep going.

• 44:40Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 44:41Speaker 05

  Step two, guys, can control. So this is how you're going to avoid those unwanted drips. Get a feel for that pressure. It's going to determine how quickly you're going to move that hand to achieve that, the end result that you're after.

• 44:55Josh Clark?

  Very nice. Can control, it's called.

• 44:58Speaker 05

  And then finally, guys, you're, you're really going to want to adjust that distance from the wall. If you, if you're closer, it's going to be thinner. It's going to be more saturated. It's going to be great for outlines. Step a little further away, it's going to diffuse out. It's going to cover a wider area. It's just science, guys.

• 45:15Josh Clark?

  Very nice, man.

• 45:17Speaker 05

  All right, and scene.

• 45:19Josh Clark?

  So, yes, the upshot of all this is figuring out the nozzle pressure and the distance from the wall are basically the two most basic things that you can understand and learn about graffiti, but it's also the things that come up the most.

• 45:34Speaker 05

  That's right, and some of the rules, which I kind of like to see, you don't tag churches, you don't graffiti churches, you don't graffiti schools, you're not supposed to at least. Hospitals, you're not supposed to do this to someone's house, or their car, or certainly a headstone at a cemetery, or nature, like trees and rocks. You don't, those big rocks in Central Park, you don't, you don't tag those. That's not what you're supposed to do. And of course, you don't snitch, because you know what they get.

• 46:03Josh Clark?

  They get a stitch or two, from what I understand.

• 46:06Speaker 05

  That's right.

• 46:07Josh Clark?

  Yeah, there's a story of an artist named Kope Two, who is still considered legendary, but he was accused of snitching and just like overnight, his reputation just went into the gutter.

• 46:18Speaker 05

  Oh, wow, yeah, I imagine.

• 46:20Josh Clark?

  Yeah, they don't, they, they don't take snitching lightly, for sure. And then there's other things, too, like, we've basically been focusing on spray paint, for good reason. I mean, it's the, the first medium, they're the, the most used medium, and then there's markers and all that, but there's other stuff you can do that's considered graffiti, too. You can get yourself some sort of poster, get some wheat paste and stick it up, like an old timey handbill that you might see.

• 46:46Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 46:46Josh Clark?

  You can make stickers, a lot of people make stickers. You can come up with stencils, like a real Banksy. And all of these things have like the advantage of most of the work being done at home, in a studio, out of sight, not in public. And then you can throw them up pretty quickly and, and move on and not get caught. I think that makes it a different form of graffiti in that sense, but it's still, I mean, it's still street art at the very least.

• 47:13Speaker 05

  Yeah, I think so. And then Livia dug up this thing called reverse graffiti, which I had never heard of.

• 47:18Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 47:19Speaker 05

  And she used a very good example, like when you use your finger to write "wash me" on a dusty car, you're, you're using an, you know, an inverse of something to create an image. So, a lot of times, it's like,

• 47:34Speaker 05

  It's like a political statement, maybe, or maybe to call attention to like pollution or the environment or something like that.

• 47:40Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 47:41Speaker 05

  And it's also one where they're saying like, hey, I'm cleaning a surface technically. I'm not defacing anything, so come at me.

• 47:48Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and they'll still just come along and be like, oh, no, we're gonna, now we're gonna clean this wall now that you've done this.

• 47:54Speaker 05

  Now you put something beautiful up.

• 47:56Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 47:56Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 47:57Josh Clark?

  So, over the years, some people have really kind of made the jump into like mega mondo fame, like art world fame, who started out as graffiti artists. One of them was Jean-Michel Basquiat. A lot of people point to him as a wildly successful artist who started out in graffiti. Semo was his tag. He started out in the late 70s with a friend named Al Diaz. By the 80s, his paintings were some of the most expensive in the art world, and he was friends with Andy Warhol. And by 1982, he had a solo exhibition. This is like a graffiti artist. This is a huge leap for somebody to make, and I think he might have been the first.

• 48:41Josh Clark?

  I think he came before Keith Haring.

• 48:44Speaker 05

  Yeah, Basquiat had a pretty good indie movie made about him. I think it was Jeffrey Wright that played him back in the maybe 90s. It was really good. But yeah, you mentioned Keith Haring too. They were friends. We were just in New York for fall break, and the family went to MoMA and the Whitney, and we saw Basquiat's and obviously Warhol's, and some Keith Haring stuff in person, which is always a thrill.

• 49:07Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 49:07Speaker 05

  And Keith Haring, I know we've talked about before, but he started drawing in chalk on the, like when they would take a advertisement down on the subway walls, there would be this like backboard there, and he would put his art up there and was very famous initially, at least for the Radiant Baby was kind of his tag. And if you don't know the Radiant Baby, like if you looked it up, you'd probably seen it somewhere before. It's very famous.

• 49:32Josh Clark?

  Yes. Yeah, it's like a crawling silhouette with like, um, light lines coming off of it.

• 49:39Speaker 05

  Yeah. And very sadly, uh, Jean-Michel Basquiat would pass from a heroin overdose in the late eighties. And Keith Haring, um, died, uh, from complications from AIDS and HIV, I believe in 1990.

• 49:52Josh Clark?

  I read an interview with Basquiat. It must've been in like 1988 because the interviewer, it was like he got up no less than two or three times to go shoot heroin in this rather short interview. Like he could not, not do it. He would've gotten sick like that quickly.

• 50:08Speaker 05

  Jeez.

• 50:09Josh Clark?

  There's also, uh, Shepherd Ferry is very famous, um, for his Andre the Giant Has a Posse stickers that he made. And then also for his Hope poster of Barack Obama during the 2008 election.

• 50:23Speaker 05

  Yeah. Shepherd Ferry. Good work.

• 50:25Josh Clark?

  Yep. What, and we've mentioned Banksy, right?

• 50:29Speaker 05

  Uh, yeah. I mean, do we have to talk about Banksy?

• 50:32Josh Clark?

  No, there's a couple of other ones that I want to call out that are still working today.

• 50:36Speaker 05

  Yeah, let's do that.

• 50:37Josh Clark?

  So Donnie White, he's an overlooked one. He was the one who, uh, with Futura 2000, did that full car called Brake. But he hung out with Keith Haring and Basquiat and Kenny Scharf in Futura 2000. Like he was a, uh, he never really made the leap to the major art world. He was like a old school underground, um, artist.

• 50:58Speaker 05

  Yeah. And I, did you mention, no, you didn't mention Lady K. Who'd you mention earlier?

• 51:03Josh Clark?

  Lady Pink.

• 51:04Speaker 05

  Oh, Lady K. Lady K is different. Lady, uh, K is, uh, French, I believe, right? In Paris?

• 51:09Josh Clark?

  I believe that's where she was born. And she might be working there still, either Paris or New York.

• 51:14Speaker 05

  Yeah. Very cool stuff there, too.

• 51:16Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And then also, so check out her stuff and then check out Renz, R E N S, who's working in Copenhagen. It is. Mind numbing how amazing this work is. Like, I just can't even imagine conceiving of a lot of it, let alone being good at it.

• 51:33Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's beautiful, beautiful stuff. It's really like, I'm looking at some of them now, man. It's, that's amazing.

• 51:40Josh Clark?

  And then there's one called Kidalt, who is a vandal, actually. Like, purposefully vandalizes luxury brand stores who have collaborated with graffiti artists for their brands. They don't like that, so they will, like, it's not really like pieces that they're putting up. It's more like huge, huge vandalizations of, of these stores.

• 52:05Speaker 05

  Oh, wow.

• 52:06Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 52:07Speaker 05

  Oh, that's, is that the one that's like, uh, like stores that are kind of co-opting graffiti as like the cool thing? He'll go hit them?

• 52:13Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 52:13Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 52:13Josh Clark?

  Kidalt.

• 52:14Speaker 05

  Yeah, but they're, they're probably like, great.

• 52:17Josh Clark?

  Oh, yeah, I'm sure. Oh, wait, you mean the stores?

• 52:20Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 52:21Josh Clark?

  I don't know, I've heard that they don't like Kidalt very much.

• 52:24Speaker 05

  Oh, really?

• 52:24Josh Clark?

  Mm-hmm. And then lastly, the, um, I want to call out Apothecary, who never really got off the ground. Um, that's Yumi's tag from when she got into this. She's always been interested in b-boy culture, so of course she came up with graffiti, a graffiti tag. And I think she realized like fairly early on, this is way too long, Apothecary, to, um, to use as a tag. So I don't think, I think it kind of petered out fairly early on.

• 52:51Speaker 05

  I'm gonna have to tell Emily that, because, uh, I mean, obviously Apothecary's right up her alley, so.

• 52:55Josh Clark?

  Yeah, for sure.

• 52:56Speaker 05

  That's funny.

• 52:57Josh Clark?

  Uh, you got anything else?

• 53:00Speaker 05

  I got nothing else. I'm gonna work on my, my tag and come up with a, a tag and a font.

• 53:04Josh Clark?

  Nice. Yeah, get busy on your hand style, yo.

• 53:07Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 53:08Josh Clark?

  Uh, since, uh, we were just talking about hand style again, I think that means it's time for listener mail.

• 53:16Speaker 05

  Yeah, this is from Ben in Connecticut, who's been listening for quite a while and recently heard our Selects episode, The Great Finger and The Wendy's Chili Caper. I remember that one. It was incredible. We were commenting about the way Letterman and Leno covered that and that Letterman was funnier. You know, no surprise there for me at least. I assume you as well.

• 53:41Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 53:42Speaker 05

  And then Josh mentioned Leno's well-known love of cars to differentiate the late-night hosts. However, guys, David Letterman is well-known within the Indy car racing world as one of the owners of Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing. The team won the Kart Indy Championship in 1992, the year the team was founded, and has won the Indy 500 twice with drivers Buddy Rice in 2004 and Takuma Sato in 2020. So while Leno may be more well-known for his love of automotive history and tinkering with race cars, David Letterman is also well-known within the automotive world. And that is from Ben in Connecticut. So I think the takeaway there is Letterman owns Leno once again.

• 54:23Josh Clark?

  Yeah. What was, who was that, Ben?

• 54:27Speaker 05

  Yeah. And it's so low-hanging fruit to bag on Leno. So I don't think I'm original or cool for doing so.

• 54:34Josh Clark?

  I don't know. But it's, I mean, you still mean it.

• 54:37Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 54:38Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Thanks a lot, Ben. That was a very arcane fact that I definitely hadn't heard. And I also just realized that arcane would be a great tag, too. R- cane.

• 54:51Speaker 05

  Well, you and Yumi went out together and did this, like Arcane and Apothecary together. They'd be like, who is this new power couple in your feedie?

• 54:59Josh Clark?

  This crew is amazing. What hand style.

• 55:02Speaker 05

  I know. And I'd say, guys, you got it just right.

• 55:07Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Thank you for doing that voice. You really, I think you saved the episode.

• 55:11Speaker 05

  I kind of stole that from Eddie Murphy when he used to do the white voice.

• 55:15Josh Clark?

  Oh, is that who that was?

• 55:17Speaker 05

  Yeah, just a little bit.

• 55:18Josh Clark?

  I was gonna guess Johnny Carson on helium doing George W. Bush.

• 55:25Josh Clark?

  Yeah, go back and listen. You'll be like, oh, my God. Well, I think that's it. Yes, Ben, thank you very much for that email, Ben. And if you want to be like Ben and get in touch with us, we love that kind of thing. You can send it off to [email protected].

• 55:43Speaker 04

  Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

• 55:59Josh Clark?

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• 57:29Speaker 00

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