Boo_ep010

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:00:00]:
What follows may not be suitable for all audiences. Listener discretion is advised.

Kat [00:00:06]:
The world is full of stories. Stories of mysteries, of curiosities, of oddities. Join Cat and Jethro Gilligan Toth for the strange, the bizarre, the unexpected, as they lift the lid and cautiously peer ins the box of oddities.

Kat [00:00:35]:
Did you realize this is our 10th episode?

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:00:38]:
10.

Kat [00:00:38]:
It's our 10th episode.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:00:40]:
It doesn't seem like that at all. We're in the double digits, baby.

Kat [00:00:43]:
It's so much fun.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:00:44]:
It's a big deal.

Kat [00:00:45]:
I've been really enjoying watching where we're getting downloads from. That's kind of a trip we've had.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:00:52]:
Brazil.

Kat [00:00:53]:
Brazil we mentioned earlier, I think in our last episode, Iceland. There are people in Iceland that listen to us.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:00:59]:
China.

Kat [00:01:00]:
China. London.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:01:02]:
Yes.

Kat [00:01:02]:
Lots of downloads from London.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:01:04]:
Yeah. It's been so much fun. And getting feedback. Yes. Feedback from the Facebook page. And emails. I got an email from Love City, which is wonderful.

Kat [00:01:16]:
Love City. The city of brotherly love. You mean Philadelphia.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:01:19]:
No, I don't mean Philadelphia.

Kat [00:01:21]:
Oh, you mean. Okay. Washington, D.C. is what you call Love City because it's where we went for our honeymoon going on three years ago. It's called Love City. Love City. Okay.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:01:31]:
Yeah. And we had so much fun. Oh, my gosh. We spent five days museuming and eating.

Kat [00:01:37]:
And in a part of an afternoon, getting screamed at by a hobo. But we don't need to tell that story.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:01:44]:
That was terrifying.

Kat [00:01:45]:
It was a waste of a cookie, I'll just put it that way. Also, we went to the Holocaust Museum, which was fascinating and tragically sad.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:01:55]:
Yeah, it was beautiful and perfect and so upsetting. And it was something I'd never been before. And so I had steeled myself. I was prepared for it, and I was in no way prepared for it, even though, you know.

Kat [00:02:10]:
Yeah.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:02:10]:
But we did get mocked pretty mercilessly.

Kat [00:02:13]:
Well, you. Somebody sneezed you. You yelled out gesinteit. And that was ironic, I thought.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:02:19]:
It's not ironic. You really don't understand what that word means? I think I love you, honey, but I'm gonna buy you a dictionary.

Kat [00:02:29]:
Okay. The museum that we're really looking forward to going to and we haven't done yet is the Mutter Museum.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:02:34]:
Yes. My friend Tony got to go there a couple weeks ago, and I really struggled with the ratio of excited for him and just really resentful. That was inside my heart. I wanted to be, like, 100% jazzed for him, but instead I was really only, like, 12% jazzed for him. And the rest was just like, you know, ire shooting from my eyeballs.

Kat [00:02:57]:
Yeah. And you wanted to poke him with sharp, jaggy things.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:03:00]:
Yeah, I understand. Mostly sticks, so. No, it was good. And I can't wait to go. The motor museum is amazing. And, you know, I'm interested in going to the penis museum now that we've.

Kat [00:03:12]:
In Iceland. Yeah.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:03:13]:
Thoroughly discussed that.

Kat [00:03:15]:
We are such museum geeks. Yeah, it's the box of oddities. We talk about weird things. You know that you've been with us for a couple of episodes, I'm guessing, at this point. And who's gonna go first today?

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:03:26]:
We should figure this out beforehand. Why don't we do this? I don't know. Let's. Let's just do a back and forth thing. So who went last time?

Kat [00:03:36]:
You went first last time.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:03:37]:
I did, yeah. Okay, so you should go first this time.

Kat [00:03:40]:
Okay. You just want to alternate from now on.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:03:42]:
It just seems.

Kat [00:03:43]:
Maybe somebody can send us a suggestion.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:03:46]:
Maybe because we're horrible at this. I mean, we are 100% horrible at deciding we never have change to flip coins. Or we're just. We're really crappy at this part of it. The boxofoddities.com is our website.

Kat [00:04:01]:
The email is curatorheboxofoddities.com Tell me a story, Jethro. I'm going to talk today about famous last words and bizarre deathbed visions.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:04:15]:
Awesome.

Kat [00:04:16]:
Okay.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:04:17]:
I love it. All right. You know how much I love famous last words. And we've talked about this so many times, so I'm excited to see if you found new ones.

Kat [00:04:25]:
Okay. Well.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:04:26]:
Oh, I hate that I just said ones. I'm excited to see if you found some that are new to me.

Kat [00:04:30]:
That was much better talked with the wordy word times.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:04:36]:
I talk good me.

Kat [00:04:37]:
You talk good you.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:04:38]:
I do.

Kat [00:04:39]:
I came across an article that was written about hospice workers and some of the things that they had seen.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:04:44]:
Sure.

Kat [00:04:44]:
At deathbeds. And it got me interested in that and some of the experiences that people have and that led to famous last words. So I thought I'd kind of lump it all together.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:04:55]:
You know it. I love it.

Kat [00:04:57]:
I actually got a book called One Last Hug Before I the Mystery and Meaning of Deathbed Visions, which is by Carlo. I don't know.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:05:12]:
Carlo. What's it called? One last Hug before I go.

Kat [00:05:17]:
Yeah. You can't read this little tiny icon.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:05:19]:
Carla Wills Brandon.

Kat [00:05:21]:
Yes. PhD.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:05:23]:
I like that because the PhD are in bigger font, so that's what you can read.

Kat [00:05:27]:
It's like PhD. According to this book, there are a Lot of common threads throughout this sort of thing. You know, you've heard about near death experiences, the tunnel of light and that sort of thing.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:05:40]:
Right.

Kat [00:05:40]:
And those things happen.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:05:42]:
Sure.

Kat [00:05:42]:
With deathbed visions, but there's so much more. For example, people often talk about going on a trip before they die.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:05:50]:
Oh, okay. Yeah.

Kat [00:05:51]:
Like they're preparing. Yeah. But they'll say, did you gas the car up?

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:05:55]:
Oh. Because probably their brains connect the idea that they're going somewhere with the things that they normally would do in life, getting ready to go somewhere.

Kat [00:06:05]:
So I'm gonna talk a little bit about just a couple of cases from this book. And then I'm gonna talk about famous people and their last words.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:06:11]:
Cool.

Kat [00:06:12]:
And their deathbed visions.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:06:14]:
Okay.

Kat [00:06:15]:
From her book, woman said, I sat on my sister Eleanor's bed. I took her hand and it felt like it was on fire. And she looked around the room and she said, there are so many of them. I see them all. They're all here. There's Fred and Ruth. What's Ruth doing here? Now, Ruth was her cousin. And Ruth had died a week before. But nobody told this woman who was in the bed dying that Ruth was dead. But she saw Ruth beckoning. Ruth beckoning her to the other side. That's not an uncommon situation. It happens quite a bit.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:06:46]:
Right. People do lie to their dying loved ones, often about their dead loved ones.

Kat [00:06:51]:
Yeah. I think it's important that we lie to people who are dying, don't you? Another story from the book. My father had been confined to his bed. My brother suddenly passed away. His death was very unexpected, very premature. As a family, we elected to. With this information from my father. Again, good. Lying to the dead people or the nearly dead people as he was dying.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:07:18]:
I'm sorry. I just made a bumper sticker in my head of, like, my new band, which is called Lying to the Dying.

Kat [00:07:25]:
Lying to the Dying.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:07:27]:
Sorry. I'm sorry. Please tell me more about this thing.

Kat [00:07:31]:
Okay. So the guys, you know, it's pretty close to. To checkout time for his father. And his father said, I used to have three children, now I only have two. And he did not know that his other son had died. They kept that from him because, again, lying to the dying.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:07:47]:
Sure.

Kat [00:07:48]:
We asked him why he said this, and he just looked at us like we were all crazy. And he said, he's right over there. He's waiting for me. He's waiting for me to go. I think that's just weird. There's just no way that they knew these things. But somehow, because the Argument for relatives or seeing people when you're dying. And the argument is, well, the brain's misfiring, lack of oxygen, maybe it's medication, it's the morphine.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:08:13]:
In situations like that where you don't know that those people have passed, it does lead to that, that question, like.

Kat [00:08:21]:
Well, how did they know?

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:08:22]:
They know.

Kat [00:08:23]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:08:25]:
I mean, of course, I think that probably they're just, you know, dying and so they're just talking jibba jabba. But yeah, no, it's interesting.

Kat [00:08:35]:
Reminds me of a near death experience. A woman was in an operating room and died.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:08:42]:
Sure.

Kat [00:08:42]:
And she said her spirit went up through the ceiling and up above the hospital. And she said while she was floating above the hospital, she saw a tennis shoe on the ledge of the top of the hospital that she could not possibly have known was there or had seen. And her husband went up with a couple of the members of her family to check. And there was a tennis shoe on the ledge exactly where she said it was.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:09:08]:
That is fascinating. I'm not denying that. But let's really focus on why there was a tennis shoe on top of this building ledge, because that's just creepy.

Kat [00:09:20]:
How do shoes get on the highway? Do you think that, like, there are people out trolling for hobos and they lost their bait?

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:09:26]:
What is with your obsession with hobos today?

Kat [00:09:28]:
I just love the word hobo.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:09:29]:
I know how that happens because I have done that kind of thing on multiple occasions. I can remember so many times where I was trying to, I don't know, entertain myself or dry something out the window of a moving vehicle and then just lost my grip. And then my dad would have to turn the motorhome around and. Oh, man, did I get scolded.

Kat [00:09:52]:
Didn't you lose your pants out the window one time?

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:09:54]:
I did.

Kat [00:09:56]:
How did that go? Your pants got wet somehow.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:10:00]:
It was one of those things. Yes. We had left the beach, I think, and I, I had put my pants back on and I was trying to drive them out the window. And it was one of those things that I was scared to say, hey, I just lost my pants out the window. So I delayed much longer than I should have. But then my stepmother was like, did I just see something fly out that window? And I was like, I don't know.

Kat [00:10:23]:
It'S just me, pantsless cat.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:10:28]:
We gotta turn this 42 footer around.

Kat [00:10:32]:
And then there's a guy behind you on a motorcycle with pants stuck to his helmet trying to maintain control of his vehicle.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:10:39]:
It didn't turn into planes, trains and automobiles. It was just pants.

Kat [00:10:43]:
Everything turns into planes, trains and automobiles in my little world.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:10:48]:
My little world. The first album from lion to the Dying.

Kat [00:10:54]:
Available now on Sony Records. And Tapes. They don't make tapes anymore. Or records, for that matter.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:10:59]:
That's not true. Of course they make records.

Kat [00:11:00]:
Well, they do. Yes, they do.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:11:01]:
In fact, we have many.

Kat [00:11:02]:
I'm a big vinyl. Most people are just downloading, is my point. Okay, so how about. How about Johan Sebastian Bach?

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:11:15]:
I've heard of him.

Kat [00:11:16]:
Visually blind, suffered respiratory complications.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:11:19]:
Not. Not audio blind.

Kat [00:11:22]:
I'm just quoting this article from someplace Cut and paste.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:11:27]:
I get it.

Kat [00:11:28]:
Psychology Today.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:11:30]:
Okay.

Kat [00:11:30]:
All right. He suffered respiratory complications and had been afflicted by several strokes. He was a musical genius, of course, and he was even able to compose on his deathbed, before thy throne, I now approach, one of his pieces of music. During the hours of his passing, he supposedly regained his vision, got up, and finished writing it. What? And then he died.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:11:55]:
I don't know who. According to who?

Kat [00:11:58]:
Some guy. Looks like a hobo.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:12:00]:
Stop.

Kat [00:12:02]:
It's a fun word. Come on.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:12:04]:
It is.

Kat [00:12:05]:
This is. This is according to an article in Psychology Today.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:12:09]:
I'm just curious where they got that information.

Kat [00:12:11]:
Where they got that information?

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:12:12]:
Like, was there someone else in the room? Why didn't they assist him?

Kat [00:12:15]:
Well, he was. That's a good point. And really, you know, it happened so long ago that it's really kind of hard to prove, and it may fall into the category of urban legend. Fine, ruin my fun.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:12:26]:
I'm sorry.

Kat [00:12:27]:
Steve Jobs.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:12:28]:
Oh, okay.

Kat [00:12:29]:
Steve Jobs, when he was dying, his last words were, oh, wow. Oh, wow. Oh, wow. That's not a real good one, is it?

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:12:37]:
Well, I mean, it could be a lot of things.

Kat [00:12:38]:
Yeah.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:12:39]:
The McRib is back.

Kat [00:12:43]:
Oh, wow, that is exciting. Yeah. Okay, we'll leave that one where it is.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:12:47]:
Okay.

Kat [00:12:48]:
Roger Ebert also spoke about a vision. Roger wasn't really sure if he believed in God or an afterlife or anything like that. He had his doubts. But toward the end, something really weird and interesting happened to him, and he wrote an email to a friend. The week before Roger passed away, he started talking to a friend about visiting another place. And of course, he thought, you know, he was hallucinating.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:13:11]:
And I have a question. Did he have, like, a long illness? Did he. I mean, is it. Was he dying at this point?

Kat [00:13:19]:
He was. He was dying. This was a week before he died.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:13:22]:
Okay.

Kat [00:13:22]:
It was, like, the days leading up to it.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:13:24]:
Right. But was. Was he in the process of dying? Like, did he have Some sort of illness that was taking him.

Kat [00:13:31]:
Yes.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:13:32]:
Okay.

Kat [00:13:32]:
Yeah, he had. He had his jaw removed.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:13:35]:
I don't know. I don't know anything. Robert Ebert. I just know that he was mean about movies that I liked.

Kat [00:13:41]:
Really? What movie did you like that Roger Ebert panned that has made you angry?

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:13:45]:
I'm not angry. I just don't know anything about the man. Please continue with your story.

Kat [00:13:50]:
All right, so the week leading up to his death, he talked to his friend about being visited or actually visiting this other place. And he thought he was hallucinating. His friend thought maybe they were giving him, you know, too much medication, which obviously is a concern and certainly, I'm sure has caused hallucinations.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:14:10]:
Sure.

Kat [00:14:10]:
But the day before he passed, he. He wrote an email to his friend. It just said, this is all an elaborate hoax. And so he wrote back and he said, what's a hoax? And he said, this world, this place, it's all an illusion. He went on to describe that this is just a vastness that we can't even imagine. It's a place where the past, the present, and the future are all happening at the same time. It's all happening at once. We just can't perceive it through our senses. That's fascinating.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:14:40]:
That is really fascinating. You know what else was fascinating was the movie Tommy Boy. And it had so many layers. And obviously, Chris Farley is a genius. And I just feel like 1995's Tommy Boy was very underrated. Roger Ebert panned Tommy Boy.

Kat [00:15:01]:
Well, I'm glad he's dead then, because that was a good movie. I enjoyed it. It was a great Farley Spade vehicle.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:15:11]:
Thank you.

Kat [00:15:13]:
Okay, Sam Kinison, let's move on to him. About 7:30pm on Friday, April 10, 1992, he's driving his Trans Am, his Pontiac Trans Am, from Los Angeles to Laughlin, Nevada. His brother's following along in a van behind him. Now, Sam Kinison, of course, famous for yelling. Yelling. All of his drug use and alcohol abuse, but at this point, he was clean. Sure, he had cleaned up his act. He was sober, driving along. Boom, boom, boom. His brother said that he saw a pickup truck weaving into his lane. And Sam saw it, and he slowed down to about. They estimated 15 miles an hour to try to avoid this. But the kids that were driving the truck, I guess, had been drinking. They hit him. Boom. And the van with his brother pulls over. They run up, and kids in the truck were just minor injuries. No big deal. Sam Kinison gets out of his Trans Am, and it looks like it's Just minor injuries for him as well, too. He had a cut on his nose and on his forehead. And they said, sam, lie down. You need to lie down. So he lies down and he's holding his head. And one of his friends that was in the van with his brother behind him, Carl Labov, laid down with him, and he said. At first, it looked like there were no serious injuries to Kinison. Taking this from an old Rolling Stone article.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:16:32]:
Okay.

Kat [00:16:33]:
But within minutes, he suddenly said to no one in particular, I don't want to die. I don't want to die. Labov later said it was like he was having a conversation, talking to somebody that wasn't there. Some unseen person, somebody else. There was a pause, as if Kinison was listening to the other person speak. And then he suddenly said, but why? And then another pause. And then Kinison said, okay. Okay. Okay. And he. He said, it's so sweet. The last okay was just so sweet and so peaceful. It was if somebody had said the right thing to him to calm him. And then he closed his eyes and died.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:17:09]:
I didn't know that's how Sam Kinison died.

Kat [00:17:11]:
You didn't know that?

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:17:12]:
No. Oh, that's sad.

Kat [00:17:15]:
Yeah. Draw your own conclusions there, I guess. Leads me to my final story.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:17:20]:
Okay.

Kat [00:17:20]:
It's about my mother.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:17:22]:
Okay.

Kat [00:17:23]:
You know this story?

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:17:24]:
I do.

Kat [00:17:24]:
I've told you this story.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:17:25]:
I do. I'm steeling myself right now. Okay. I'm ready.

Kat [00:17:30]:
Usually we tell stories that we haven't shared, but this is one that I've only told a few people. I've told you. And of course, my sister knows she was there and a few other people, but I'm okay.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:17:43]:
It's just. There were certain jokes that I was saving for the end of your last story, and now I can't use them at all.

Kat [00:17:50]:
That was my plan.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:17:51]:
Dang it. Okay, go ahead.

Kat [00:17:53]:
My mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. She fought, and she did really well. But before she got really sick, she took a trip to visit my sister. Before she left, she left my dad a note. Stuck it on the computer screen, a little one of those sticky notes, little post IT notes. Went out and visited my sister. Came back, but apparently the post IT note fell off because he never saw it. A few months went by, she got quite ill, and the last few days of her life, she started seeing things that weren't there. Like she was picking something up out of the air. And we asked her what was going on, and she said, my grandmother was there who had died 20 years before, was there with Fresh biscuits that she had made. My mom loved my grandmother's homemade biscuits.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:18:37]:
The people in your family make good biscuits?

Kat [00:18:39]:
They do. We're biscuit makers from way back. She asked me what. She was just staring off into the corner of her room one afternoon, and I asked her what she was looking at, and she said, who put those draperies there in the corner of the room? And there were no draperies there. When she passed away, it was. There was a blizzard going on, and because of that, the funeral home could not come to get her for a few hours. So we're all sitting in the kitchen and the phone rings. And my dad goes over to answer the phone, and there's nobody there. And so he hangs the phone up and we go back and we're sitting there at the kitchen table and waiting for the funeral home to come and get her. The phone rings again. Nobody there. We're thinking it must be the storm. It's a big, big blizzard. A few minutes later, the phone rings again and there's nobody there. Well, that's weird. So my dad decides he's going to go down into his den and just kind of tidy up and stay busy.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:19:38]:
Yeah.

Kat [00:19:38]:
And while he's doing that, he finds this post it note that had fallen off the screen of his computer the year before. He had not seen this note from.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:19:47]:
When she went to visit your sister.

Kat [00:19:49]:
Right. And the note said, take care of yourself while I'm gone. Don't worry about me. I'll call you when I get there. So there's that.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:20:03]:
That's pretty great.

Kat [00:20:07]:
Yeah. Miss you, Mom.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:20:12]:
But, yeah, I still want to use my jokes.

Kat [00:20:21]:
I know you do, sweetie. I know. You know, the thing is, it was a wonderful experience because it does gives me hope that I'll see her again.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:20:32]:
Right.

Kat [00:20:32]:
You know, and that's a wonderful thing.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:20:34]:
Oh, yeah.

Kat [00:20:34]:
Okay, go ahead and tell your jokes, joke girl.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:20:38]:
No, I'll save it, all right? I'll save it. I'm sure there's something else that I can mock you for later.

Kat [00:20:43]:
There's plenty of opportunity for that.

Kat [00:20:46]:
This is the box of oddities. I said box.

Kat [00:20:50]:
Time for that thing in the middle.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:20:52]:
Misspelled tattoos. Our five favorites. Number five, only God can fudge me.

Kat [00:21:03]:
Number four, thunder only happens when it's raisins. What are these? Autocorrect tattoos.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:21:13]:
Number three, I'm amsao.

Kat [00:21:16]:
Number two, quote It's My Life, John Bovey.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:21:23]:
Oh, my God. I'm gonna call him John Bovey.

Kat [00:21:25]:
From now on, he's John Bovey.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:21:27]:
Oh, and number One, obviously. No regerts.

Kat [00:21:32]:
No regerts.

Kat [00:21:37]:
Oh, the box of oddities with Cat and Jethro Gilligan Toth.

Kat [00:21:44]:
Okay.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:21:46]:
That was fun.

Kat [00:21:47]:
It was. So, of course, the boxofoddities.com is our website. You can get in touch with us by emailing curator@theboxofiodities.com if you have a.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:22:01]:
Misspelled tattoo, we want to see a photo of it.

Kat [00:22:04]:
Yes, please.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:22:05]:
All right. My go time.

Kat [00:22:07]:
Your go time.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:22:07]:
Okay. All right. So this was something I actually didn't know if I was going to be able to turn into a topic. But then as I did a little more research, it was a plethora. I mean, a wealth of information regarding our weird first ladies. And let's start with Julia Tyler. Okay, so Julia Tyler wasn't John Tyler's first wife or first first lady, but when his first wife died and she married into the job, she decided she was going to use this position to make herself famous. This was the earliest Kardashian that we know of. She was in it to win it. So according to the National First Lady's Library, shortly after her marriage, Julia had a very flattering etching of herself made wearing expensive jewels and a fancy dress. And she posed doing, like, an extreme head tilt, which they suspect was kind of like the duck lips of the time.

Kat [00:23:16]:
Ah, sparrow face.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:23:18]:
I'm gonna. I'm gonna start doing it, too. It looks really unco.

Kat [00:23:22]:
She was trying to start her own thing.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:23:25]:
She had labeled it the President's bride, which, of course, is nice. It's a nice reminder of your wedding day. But that was not the plan. She actually had them mass produced and available for sale so everyone could have them in their homes. You need to have the portrait of the President's bride in your home. And I've been looking for something to put in our guest bath. So I think that probably the President's bride would be really nice. Julia also, by the way, was the first photographed first Lady. And she was known to try to get her name in the papers however she could. She befriended reporters and made sure that they were always following. I mean, she enlisted paparazzi.

Kat [00:24:15]:
She was ahead of her time.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:24:16]:
Yeah, yeah. And she would. If they. If press wasn't planning on being at events that she was going to be at. She would call in anonymous tips about how she was going to be arriving and what her dress was gonna look like.

Kat [00:24:31]:
Well, how did she do that? There weren't phones.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:24:33]:
Then she was. She wouldn't call in. She wouldn't use a telephone.

Kat [00:24:36]:
Okay. Good.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:24:37]:
She would let the press know that.

Kat [00:24:40]:
She was going to be anonymously.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:24:41]:
She would? Yeah.

Kat [00:24:42]:
Yeah. Wow. She was devious.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:24:44]:
She knew what was up. She had a goal. She was going for it.

Kat [00:24:48]:
She was playing the media.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:24:50]:
She also became so famous that people would write her directly about pardons if they wanted to be pardoned, or if they wanted federal jobs, they would contact the first lady instead because she had become such a celebrity that people thought that she could get stuff done.

Kat [00:25:09]:
Was that Taylor or Tyler?

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:25:11]:
Tyler.

Kat [00:25:12]:
Tyler.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:25:12]:
Yeah.

Kat [00:25:13]:
That must have pissed President Tyler off. Big time. Bigly.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:25:19]:
Why? Because.

Kat [00:25:21]:
Because he wasn't getting the credit, you know, that he probably feels he deserved.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:25:26]:
Maybe. But I like to think that, I don't know, he found it endearing.

Kat [00:25:32]:
Sure.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:25:32]:
He let the president's bride do what she wanted.

Kat [00:25:35]:
Mm.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:25:35]:
I like him.

Kat [00:25:36]:
Okay, good.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:25:37]:
All right, so Louisiana. Adams or Louisa Adams? Not Louisiana Adams. Louisa Adams. She was John Quincy Adams wife. And she was the first lady. Born in a foreign country. She was born in England, which is in itself not weird. You know, it's just kind of interesting. She played the harp. She wrote satirical plays. She was very interested in the arts. And she raised silkworms.

Kat [00:26:08]:
What?

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:26:08]:
She had a hobby. She was really into raising silkworms.

Kat [00:26:13]:
What is like an ant farm or something?

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:26:15]:
I didn't like that.

Kat [00:26:17]:
I'll be back in a few minutes. I need to go harvest my silkworms.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:26:22]:
I gotta go tend to my worm. Florence Harding. The National First Lady's Library says she grew up surrounded by people who put hexes on their barns to warrant off evil spirits. And she really kind of adopted that idea. The whole practice of, I don't know, barn hexing, juju just really stuck with her. And so she became super superstitious.

Kat [00:26:54]:
Super superstitious?

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:26:55]:
Yep. She was uber superstitious. Let's go that way. She had a clairvoyant that she used called Madame Marcia, who read her zodiac and would go into trances to warn Florence of anyone in the administration who was out to get her husband.

Kat [00:27:14]:
Madame Marcia.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:27:16]:
Yeah.

Kat [00:27:17]:
That doesn't sound medium ish at all.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:27:19]:
Really?

Kat [00:27:20]:
Yeah. You know, I think of, like, names like Zolaak.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:27:25]:
Zolaak. Sounds like a delicious stew. Like, I'm hungry. I need a hearty stew scoop full of Zolag. Can you pass the chili peppers? I'm really hungry.

Kat [00:27:37]:
I'm hungry.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:27:39]:
Where was I? Oh, yes, Zolag. So I would put beans in it and, like, a nice, rich sauce.

Kat [00:27:47]:
First ladies.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:27:48]:
Oh, yes. So Florence was way into quack science. She consulted a homeopathy for almost anything that was physical health related. And it didn't need to be someone who was renowned or well known for these things. I mean, she would. If they rode by a cart with a sign on the side that said Dr. So and so's Magic Cigarettes, she would be like, yes, I am in. Bring it on. And there was also some problems with President Harding having a heart attack and her homeopath saying that it was heartburn.

Kat [00:28:34]:
Heartburn.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:28:35]:
And it didn't go well?

Kat [00:28:36]:
Not enough magic cigarettes, apparently. Maybe.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:28:41]:
So Harding actually died because of incompetence. Because Florence was so into these sciences, These pseudo science. Exactly.

Kat [00:28:52]:
Quackery.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:28:53]:
Quackery, yeah.

Kat [00:28:55]:
Methods of.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:28:56]:
Okay, Quackery. The second album from lion to the Dying. Nancy Reagan, she consulted an astrologer. And not just a little. It was a mere pastime to a certain point. But after Ronald Reagan was shot, she became obsessed. She consulted with an astrologer named Joan Quigley. Just about every time he left the house, she oops, I totally lost my. My place. Okay, so Quigley actually only met the President once, but she actually had a direct line to him through the First Lady. Nancy relied on her for everything when it came to picking out rooms for press conferences, how speeches would go, the State of the Union addresses, takeoffs and landings of Air Force One, ties that Ronald Reagan would wear.

Kat [00:29:58]:
Yeah, I remember hearing about this at the time. It was really controversial because there were some that claimed that Reagan policy was being made by.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:30:10]:
By an astrologer. There was some concern about it. Nancy actually tried to hide her reliance on the astrologer by paying through a third party. But eventually, you know, it got out.

Kat [00:30:23]:
Sure, as it always does.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:30:24]:
Mocked mercilessly by the press. Again, not a weird thing, but an interesting thing. Lou Hoover, who was Herbert Hoover's wife.

Kat [00:30:34]:
Wait a minute. Lou Hoover?

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:30:36]:
Lou Hoover. Yep. She lived in the Grange Village.

Kat [00:30:40]:
That sounds. That sounds.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:30:43]:
To Cindy Lou.

Kat [00:30:44]:
Yeah. That sounds like a Dr. Seuss character. Little Lou Hoover.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:30:50]:
She was the first woman to graduate from Stanford University with a geology degree. She also spoke fluent Chinese.

Kat [00:30:59]:
Interesting.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:31:00]:
It is interesting. If you look at photos of her, she looks like she's. She's modern. She's a modern lady and I want to know her.

Kat [00:31:10]:
She's dead.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:31:12]:
Oh, yeah. For a while now. For a while now. Dolley Madison. When Dolly Madison hit Washington with her husband, nasty rumors started swirling because Dolly was well known throughout the area.

Kat [00:31:29]:
For her snack cakes.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:31:31]:
No. Nope. Well, I mean, you could say for her snack cake.

Kat [00:31:36]:
Really?

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:31:37]:
Yes, that was the word that many people had enjoyed her Snack cake. And that's how she got to know people that got her married to the President.

Kat [00:31:53]:
But. But by the time he married her, wasn't her snack cake stale?

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:31:59]:
No, that's actually. That's a horrible rumor led by the religious right to control women. Snack cakes don't get stale. They just get experienced.

Kat [00:32:10]:
Okay, I see they do.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:32:16]:
She also loved to party. So she would throw parties weekly at the White House and invite the press and invite Congress and stars, the well known actors of the day. The famous of the day. It would be like if, you know, Melania threw parties for Congress and Hollywood and anyone else.

Kat [00:32:43]:
What about Melania's snack cake? How fresh do you think that is?

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:32:47]:
I feel uncomfortable. What's the word that I'm looking for?

Kat [00:32:52]:
Cream filling.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:32:56]:
No, I don't. I don't want to suppose about Melania's snack cake.

Kat [00:33:01]:
Okay. I mean, we've all seen it, right?

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:33:05]:
I haven't.

Kat [00:33:06]:
You didn't see that picture of her with her snack cake?

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:33:11]:
No. Why are you looking at snack cake photos?

Kat [00:33:14]:
It just popped up in my feed.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:33:16]:
And that's not how that happens.

Kat [00:33:18]:
It's not like I'm hungry or anything.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:33:21]:
Uh huh.

Kat [00:33:22]:
Just, you know, snack cake photo popped up on my news feed.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:33:26]:
It's just not how it works.

Kat [00:33:28]:
Well, the snack cake part was blurred out.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:33:32]:
All right then.

Kat [00:33:32]:
But you know, it was there. You could tell it was there.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:33:36]:
Have you been. Have you been researching snack cakes? After I go to bed, I have to.

Kat [00:33:42]:
I have to empty all my cookie folders.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:33:45]:
Oh, wow.

Kat [00:33:46]:
You know, so you don't know that I've been. I've been googling snack cake pictures.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:33:51]:
This has gone straight down the shitter. Okay, yeah, she had big parties. Okay. According to Secret Lives of First Ladies, Bess Truman never wanted Harry Truman to be president. She actually wasn't thrilled that he was in politics at all. And when they moved into the White House, she hated it. She didn't want to live in D.C. she did not want to live in the Capitol even a little bit. Nothing was good enough for her, including Washington D.C. laundromats. She hated the idea that any of her laundry would be cleaned in the Capitol. She wouldn't have it. She packed it up and sent it to Kansas City to be washed and.

Kat [00:34:46]:
Then they shipped it back.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:34:47]:
Yep.

Kat [00:34:48]:
How much did that cost, I wonder?

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:34:49]:
I don't know. But I am sure that it was on the taxpayer's dime.

Kat [00:34:55]:
Kansas City?

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:34:56]:
Yeah. That's where they do the good laundry.

Kat [00:34:58]:
I did not know that.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:34:59]:
No. Going to Kansas City. Kansas that song's actually about doing laundry.

Kat [00:35:04]:
I was not aware of this.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:35:05]:
Yep, Fats Domino got some blueberry pie on his top so that he had to go to Kansas City.

Kat [00:35:13]:
I see. What? Are you drunk? Are you drunk? We need to do a drunk episode.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:35:20]:
Some crazy little Maytags there, and I'm gonna.

Kat [00:35:24]:
No.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:35:24]:
Oh, yeah, drunk one would be fun.

Kat [00:35:26]:
Let's do a drunk episode.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:35:27]:
Okay, so that's. I meant to wrap that up in a better way than singing Kansas City songs, but that was. That's all I got for it. Okay.

Kat [00:35:41]:
Well, I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it immensely.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:35:43]:
It was a dumpster fire.

Kat [00:35:45]:
Well, it happens. It happens. We should just do an episode on dumpster fires sometime as opposed to just doing a show. That is a dumpster fire.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:35:55]:
All right, is it my turn? Because I've got to tell you about a dumpster fire in Ontario once. The Ontario dumpster fire, 1998. There was a dumpster fire off the 4th street and it burned for hours.

Kat [00:36:10]:
The end. The boxofodidies.com is our website. All of our social media feeds are there. Our email address, of course. Again, curatorheboxofoddities.com if you have an idea for a topic, or if you just want to show us a picture of your misspelled tattoo.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:36:27]:
But no snack cakes, please, unless you.

Kat [00:36:31]:
Send them to me privately. Don't tell Cat. Okay, Bye.

Jethro Gilligan Toth [00:36:39]:
Keep flying that freak flag.

Kat [00:36:41]:
Fly it proudly.

Kat [00:36:43]:
And so let it be known that the Box of Oddities belongs to you and its fate is in your hands. Therefore, it's been requested by those of whom I report to to beseech you for assistance. The Box of Oddities is free. We ask but one thing of you to provide a five star rating and a positive review. True, that is two things. However, tis merely a five star rating and a positive review Also. Subscribe to us. Okay, so three things is all we ask. Three things and three things only. Henceforth, the Box of Oddities commits to the telling of stories. Stories of the strange, the bizarre, the unexpected. We wish to offer our deeply felt gratitude and appreciation for your patronage. Theboxofoddities.com Copyright 2018. All rights reserved.