Walt Disney World Resort is the perfect escape, and now as an adult, you can experience it in an entirely new way. At Disney's Animal Kingdom Theme Park, Journey to a distant world where floating mountains defy gravity, where nature comes alive in a brilliant bioluminescent glow and mystical rivers flow, where you can fly on the back of a mountain banshee and feel it breathing beneath you. Welcome to Pandora, the world of Avatar. Walt Disney World Resort provides what you need to know before you go on Disney World Dotcom valeted mission in Park Reservations required entertainment and offerings subject to change without notice.

Relive the nostalgia of Disney or create some new memories. Now's the time to escape to your happy place at Walt Disney World Resort. Visit Disney World dot com slash history for more.

Do rats like to be tickled? How can help solve climate change? And when it comes to creativity or the arts and sciences are really so different.

Hi, I'm Andy Thomas here from NPR as well in the World podcast recently named. I heard the best podcast for Kids and Families and an hour show. Guy Raz and I bring you the latest scientific discoveries all wrapped up in an audio cartoon for your mind. It's eyes up, screen down, jaws dropped. Listen to Wow in the world on the I Heart radio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to stuff you missed in History Class, A production of I Heart Radio.

Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Fry. And I'm Tracy Wilson. So in part one of this two parter, we talked about Duke Kahanamoku, whose early life and how he went from being an unknown Hawaiian kid to finding himself the star of the 1912 Olympics in Stockholm, Sweden, or at least one of the stars. There were a few others. Today, we are going to talk about what happened to Duke after that sudden onslaught of fame and how it really wasn't quite what Duke expected.

We are going to pick up right where we left off.

So if you skipped part one, you might feel a little lost here.

Duke Kahanamoku, his love of outdoor sports, helped popularize beach volleyball in Hawaii and beyond, as well as aquaplaning, it's riding a boards being towed by a motorboat. He was invited to join the outrigger club that had once forbidden his membership. And he did accept that he knew that it would help further all of the sports that he loved so much if he joined.

Yeah, he really had a big sense of like all eyes being on Hawaii and spreading Hawaiian culture in ways he could do that. And he seemed to be willing to let bygones be bygones in a variety of instances if it would help any of that and help Hawaii in his eyes. But one of his most famous surfing feats, which continued to put Hawaii on the world stage, happened in 1917. And the story is that he served a wave for a mile or more.

That distance has shifted over the years. There is no exact way to measure it at the time because he was out in the water catching waves. It wasn't like he was on a course. And as Kahanamoku legend grew over the years, so did the length of this ride in various accounts. But it was really quite impressive. It probably was at least a mile, possibly more. And this event is nicknamed Kahanamoku, quote, Long Ride. And Kahanamoku later said of it, quote, I never caught another wave, anything like that one.

It is a golden one that I treasure. And I'm grateful that God gave it to me.

There were two significant deaths that happened not long after that famous moment in August 1917. Duke's father had a heart attack and died almost instantly at the age of just 48. And of course, this was emotionally harrowing, but it also put Duke in a position of being responsible for the rest of the family. Three months after that, Queen Lillian Galani died after a stroke. And Duke, who was perhaps Hawaii's most famous resident at that time, was asked to be a pallbearer at her funeral.

And of course, if you are paying attention to the timeline, we're in World War One time. And during World War one, Duke contributed to the war effort in his own unique way. He toured the US doing swimming exhibitions to raise money. And these exhibitions also included instructions in life saving, which to me is kind of the neatest part. The Olympics, of course, had been canceled and that was a huge blow to an athlete who was celebrated by the world, but who was also struggling financially just to maintain amateur status for games that were no longer happening.

He did move into a job eventually as an underwater inspector for the Public Works Department while he was in Washington, D.C. during this tour and also awaiting orders to be called up for service. Duke Cunningham, who became ill with the flu that was rapidly spreading around the world at that time, he was actually in really bad shape when a former girlfriend intervened and got him some medical attention when he got home. As the war was ending, Duke had lost more than 20 pounds and he looked, in his own words, like a ghost.

I mean, we've talked about that pandemic flu being really hard on otherwise young, healthy people. A lot of the time, it took him a long time to recover fully. And once he did recover, he continued to compete, is a swimmer. But his performance, even after he had trained and regained his strength, was not what it once was.

Duke spoke about how cross training, specifically in rowing, had not really been the right thing for his swimming muscles, and the press was kind of unkind. There were articles skewering Duke and accusing him of basically being a big baby. One was so unkind calling out Duke dropping out of a competition. As a matter of laziness, the Duke actually filed a libel suit in the spring of 1920. Prince Edward, who would later become King Edward the eighth, and his cousin Louis Mountbatten, arrived in Hawaii and they wanted to learn how to surf.

Everyone knew that Duke was the person to teach them, and he did. He took them to ride waves in canoes and on his surfboard. Prince Edward found the whole thing thrilling and, quote, jolly good fun. He also told Duke it was the first time he had been able to get away from all the news cameras and security. Just as quickly as the Hawaiian press had turned on Duke for not winning races. It lauded him for making this connection with the prince and representing Hawaii so well.

Also in 1920, Duke, who had refocused and really started retraining and started winning races again, was once again chosen for the US Olympic team that traveled to Antwerp, Belgium. This trip actually had kind of a harrowing moment early on when the athletes were boarding their ship in New Jersey and they saw on the docks dozens of coffins carrying the bodies of U.S. soldiers who had been killed. During the war, the ship they took, the Princess Matika, was dirty, it was in poor repair, there were a lot of issues around it that got reported to the Olympic Committee.

It was that bad. There were rats and other problems. But Kahanamoku helped keep the team spirits aloft by playing his ukulele and singing in the evenings. And when they arrived in Antwerp, there were more reminders, though, of just how much the war had impacted everything.

One of the biggest ones for Duke was that Cecil Healey, who had been a competitor and a friend, had been killed in action. Kahanamoku once again medaled in the same two events as he had in 1912. Those were the hundred meter freestyle and the freestyle relay. This time, he took home gold medals in both the conditions that he was swimming in were not favorable for him at all. The water was very cold, estimated to be below 60 degrees Fahrenheit or fifteen point six degrees Celsius.

And that makes it even more impressive that Duke not only won the 100 meter finals, he also broke his own world record. He came in at one minute, four tenths of a second. And remember, this is meters, not yards. If you're thinking about that 100 yard record that we talked about earlier, starting his swimming career. That race actually didn't stand, though there was controversy about whether another swimmer had interfered with a third competitor and it had to be restaged, Duke still won, but not as fast as that first time.

And then he immediately took a nap under the stands and once again, almost missed the final four, the 200 meter relay.

I love the. If there were an Olympic napping competition, Duke Kahanamoku would win gold, silver and bronze every time he was so good at maps. Duke may have also played for the U.S. water polo team at those Olympics as a substitute. There is no evidence one way or another, and there are different versions of the story. Duke said on a few occasions that he jumped into the water because a couple of the US players had turned blue in that very cold water we mentioned and had to be removed.

Another member of the U.S. swim team, Helen Maemi, gave a different account that the swimmers basically formed an ad hoc team when the polo team refused to play in the chilly conditions and that they were such a mess because they didn't even know the rules of the game that the referee, quote, was laughing so hard he nearly fell off the high chair he was sitting on.

The rosters for this particular match are incomplete, so we will never know what really happened. 19 20 was also the year that Duke introduced the idea of surfing as an Olympic sport. So it would seem that things were going beautifully. Duke was 30. He had solidified his standing as the champion. He had continued to really do Hawaii proud, but he didn't have any real career plans or training. He took a couple of jobs.

He fell back on the tourist trade, but he just wasn't financially comfortable in the nineteen twenties, even though he was still swimming competitively. Duke, trying to figure out a way to make his way in the world, shifted gears to start an acting career. Starting in nineteen twenty two.

He lived primarily in Los Angeles for this new job and over the eight years between 1922 and 1930, he acted in more than two dozen movies. He had actually had a bit part well before this in the 1950s in Hobart, Bosworth film The Beachcomber playing a native Hawaiian who saves the main character from drowning. So this was a way he could earn money that wouldn't compromise his amateur athletic status. But the move to California was also emotionally really heavy. He had to leave behind his close knit family.

It was just a hard decision. There had been so many ups and downs for him and the press. And regarding his financial standing, the whole thing was just complicated and had a whole lot of layered, conflicting feelings.

Yeah, multiple people have commented in various places about how uncomfortable he was talking about money. So the fact that he was struggling was like this double layer of just problematic stuff.

But we are going to talk about how things played out for him in Hollywood. And we're going to do that after we first pause for a sponsor break.

Support for stuff you missed in history. Class comes from Lord Jones, makers of the world's finest seaweed products. If like pretty much everybody, you're really honing your self care routine, do yourself a favor and let Lord Jones show you just how good it feels to bring CBT into the mix. This is the absolute gold standard in CBT products. So Lord Jones is really the only name you need to know. You can boost your evening wine down with a relaxing soak using their best in class CBT infused bath salts, or treat yourself with a head to toe royal glow with the Lord Jones luxurious and calming face and body products.

I woke up kind of on the wrong side of the bed this morning. So what I got to my desk, I put on a little Lord Jones high CBD formula body bomb, and I just took a minute massage that into my neck and shoulders. Got myself a little more relaxed before I started my day. For years, people in the know have been using Lord Jones premium CBD products in their self care. Why not see what they can do for you?

Go to Lord Jones dotcom slash history class to get twenty five percent off your first order. That's Lord Jones dotcom flash history class for twenty five percent off your first order. Lord Jones dotcom slash history class.

Support for stuff you missed in history class comes from Lord Jones, makers of the world's finest CVT products featured in The New York Times, people Vogue, Vanity Fair and more. There's a reason so many people are talking about Lord Jones, not only with Lord Jones, one of the first premium CBD brands on the market and in stores, but their longtime commitment to quality has scored them a long list of celebrity fans. Whether you're famous or not, though, we've had a long 12 months.

If you want to wind down from the year that was Lord Jones, CVT products have you covered inside and out. I am a big fan of their body body lotion. It absorbs beautifully and it has this really nice, earthy fragrance that I really enjoy. Lord Jones uses only the finest hemp derived CBD cultivated right here in the USA. All products are lab tested to ensure purity and consistency. If you'd like to experience what everyone's talking about, go to Lord Jones dotcom slash history class to get twenty five percent off your first order.

That's Lord Jones dotcom history class for twenty five percent off your first order. Lord Jones dotcom slash history class.

So Kahanamoku had envisioned being a film star, but it pretty quickly became apparent that Hollywood was not ready for a non-white lead in movies, so he was relegated to small parts. He didn't stay in California, though, because he really appreciated all of the outdoor sporting opportunities it offered. He started working at the Santa Monica Beach Club as a lifeguard to make ends meet and as a side effect. He helped popularize beach volleyball there. He also gave swimming and surfing lessons to actors to make extra money.

And he joined the Los Angeles Athletic Club so he could use their facilities to train because he really wanted one more Olympics. In 1924, Duke, who at this point was 34, participated in the Olympics in Paris. His younger brother, Sam, had also qualified in the same event, and the Kahanamoku brothers swam the 100 meter freestyle. This time, Duke won a silver. His competitor, Johnny Weissmuller, took home the gold. And yes, that's the same one who went on to play Tarzan in films.

The press had played up this rivalry between the two swimmers and Duke had wanted to beat him, but he was also really gracious about it. Sam Kahanamoku won the bronze. And incidentally, Duke and Sam's brother David was also on the U.S. swim team that year. Yeah, that was all oh, all Kahanamoku year for the Olympic swim team.

There is a story that came up later on there. Like you said, the press tried to play this up as like this big rivalry, and they ended up really to be pretty good friends. And there had been stories that Duke and Sam were trying to, like, intimidate Weismuller on the deck, which doesn't sound quite right. But then Weismuller later said, no, Duke just told me, like, let's get the top three for the U.S. However, it plays out just as long as we all get there together, which seems a little more in line with what we know about him.

But after the 1924 Olympics, Duke returned to Los Angeles and in another crossover with a previous show topic, he signed an acting contract with Adolph Zucker's famous players, Laski Corp., which of course, became more well-known once. Its name was Paramount Studios. And we mentioned earlier that he appeared in more than two dozen films. But the actual number is unknown due to the fact that many films from that era were not preserved and have been lost to time.

And because Duke sometimes appeared in parts that were so small, they did not merit a credit. There is no way to get an accurate number. There are people who have gone through films have been like, I think that's Duckhorn Moku in the background, but I'm not positive. That's how uncertain it is. But he did become lifelong friends with famous director John Ford during this time, after appearing in some small parts in a couple of Ford's movies.

One of the surprising ways that Duke made headlines was an event that took place in 1925. The fishing yacht Thelma, helmed by cigar store owner Myron Bland, had ventured out despite danger flags flying in the harbor off Corona del Mar, Dukan. His friends happened to be camping on the beach that weekend, and Kahanamoku saw the yacht get slammed by a huge wave and capsize. He immediately grabbed his surfboard and paddled out to the boat, where passengers were just tangled up in the ropes and equipment.

He managed to get three people onto the board and started paddling back to shore. His friends met him in the water and then relayed these rescued boaters to safety.

Duke made two more trips, rescuing a total of eight people himself to other bystanders. Seeing what Duke was doing had also made rescue runs in a total of 13 people were saved, but five drowned that day. And while the people rescued spoke of Duke as this wizard and a savior who had plucked them from the clutches of death when he was questioned about how he managed to rescue so many people, the Hawaiian athlete really did not say much true to form.

His only response was, I do not know it was done. That's the main thing by a few tricks. Perhaps later that same day, when the warning light on the jetty was knocked out, it was once again Duke and his friends who sacrificed their own safety to restore it rather than risk other boats meeting the same fate as the Thelma.

It was thanks to the events at Corona del Mar that day, that paddleboards became standard equipment for lifeguard stations. While commenting on this outcome, Duke noted that, quote, Some good sometimes comes from the worst of tragedies. And that was a huge story. But throughout his life, Duke actually rescued a lot of people from drowning as part of his surf club that we mentioned. He and his friends routinely helped people who had gone out too far and found themselves struggling.

And while he was preparing for his first Olympics, he had rescued a man in Atlantic City who had passed out from intoxication and fallen into a pool. He had also saved another surfer on that same beach at Coronado, ma'am. But that fishing boat made huge news. It was in the papers all over the world.

So finally, Duke realized he was just not going to make it big in L.A. and he also missed home desperately. He was heading into his 40s and he went back to the islands in early 1930. He rekindled his love of surfing and spent time with his family. And he once again assumed the role of tour guide and beach companion to any famous people who visited. He found work as the superintendent of Honolulu, Hawaii, where the city's government was housed.

This job was touted as a sort of honorary greeter position, but the reality was that he was doing labor to maintain the grounds in the building, like literally mopping floors, mowing lawns, painting things, general upkeep.

Duke later called this job official toilet cleaner. Duke tried out for the 1932 Olympics, but he didn't make the team, he was 41 during the trials. His legs just didn't have the stamina for the 100 meter race anymore. He would start strong, but then finish in a more disappointing way. He helped out with the running of the games in Los Angeles. And it's sometimes reported that he was an alternate on the water polo team. But there's really no official record to substantiate that.

When Duke got back to Oahu after those Olympics, his superintendent job was eliminated. And at that point they offered him the position of janitor and he turned that down. He took a job instead as the manager of two gas stations for union oil, saying to the offer, heck, yes, I'm not too proud to pump gas. Duke had another job change in nineteen thirty four that year. He was elected sheriff of the city and county of Honolulu.

He served in that role for 25 years. He was re-elected 13 times. And this may seem like kind of a strange move, but when he was still young, Duke's father had moved into a job on the police force. So there was an element of family continuity in this dedication to serve. Additionally, in the years leading up to Duke's first election, there had been a lot of ongoing racist tension between native Hawaiians and the white population that had moved to the island, including a lot of the military men that were stationed there.

This most famously manifested in the tragic Thalia Massie case when Massee, who was a Navy wife, falsely accused five men, some of whom were native Hawaiian, of beating and sexually assaulting her. That case may be an episode. When I'm feeling mentally strong enough for it, it is very ugly. While Duke was not a particularly ambitious or power hungry man, though, he had a way of putting people at ease and getting along with everyone. So as the sheriff's race was coming up, he kind of offered a choice for someone that might help ease the tensions in Honolulu.

And after he was elected for the first time, he took out an ad space in all of the papers, thanking the people for his win and promising to try to live up to their trust. He may not have been ambitious, but Duke was also not afraid of hard work. And this sheriff position was a really good match for him. He worked to improve the local jail. He made it a point to visit jails and police stations and other cities when he traveled to kind of gauge areas where Honolulu could improve.

One of his ongoing projects that just he could not get support for it was that he was like, we need a new jail. This one is really not good enough, in part because when he first started, everybody escaped from it like it was apparently just easy to walk out of it. And he was like, why even have it take a very long time to get support for that move? In 1936, Duke's mother, Julia, died. And this was, of course, very difficult for Duke and all of his siblings who just adored her.

And when she was laid to rest, it is said that the family had two full truckloads of flowers brought to her grave.

We are about to get to the time in Duke's life when he met and befriended heiress Doris Duke. Before we get into that, we will hear from some of our sponsors.

This episode is brought to you by Clorox. Listen.

At our house, we've been, you know, hanging out inside a lot, maybe getting a little bit stir crazy now and again. So one of the things I started to do is just go out for a little walk now and again through our neighborhood. And that means that, like, I love it and I get some fresh air and I get to see the world, although it's pretty quiet out there for us. But it also means that when I come home, I'm trailing in whatever I have traipsed through in the great out of doors and on the sidewalks where I live.

And I don't want any germs to, you know, get tracked into our house. And I certainly don't want them to be tracked onto our floors were our pets can have access to them. And so to combat these things, I have been counting on Clorox disinfecting mopping floors. These mopping floors kill ninety nine point nine percent of germs. That includes the covid-19 virus. And they're easy and they're safe to use on multiple floor types. I don't have to worry about damaging anything.

And moreover, I don't have to worry about germs.

The clots work when used as directed on hard non-porous surfaces, kills sars-cov-2 covid-19 virus.

In the mid 1930s, Duke became friends of the woman who is unlike anyone he had ever met, even though he had at that point spent time with royalty and innumerable icons, he had had dinner at one point with Amelia Earhart. But this was Doris Duke and Doris had first traveled to Hawaii when she was 22 on her honeymoon. She was a tobacco heiress who had come into millions at the age of 12. She also had like kind of staggered payouts throughout her life as she matured and she lived her life seemingly without any restrictions.

And Doris and the Kahanamoku family became very, very close. And she soon purchased land on Oahu near them, where she built the first million dollar home there. That was designed by Marion Sims Wyeth. And it was named Shangrila.

Duke's brother Sam taught Doris to surf, but she was linked romantically to both Sam and Duke. Rumors really swirled that while her husband, diplomat James A.. Cranwell, was staying in the continental U.S. to tend to his career, Doris and Duke were essentially living as a couple in Hawaii. Doris became pregnant at the end of 1939 or early 1940, and the paternity of that child, who died not long after she was born has been debated ever since. But Duke was then in a relationship with dance instructor Nadine Alexander in 1940 and the couple married in August of that year.

This has led some people to speculate that Doris Duke was more likely to have been involved with Sam Kahanamoku. Doris later loaned Duke and the Dean money for the purchase of a home.

Yeah, she was really very close with the entire family. And Duke and Nadine were genuinely, deeply in love. Nadine was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, and had actually swooned over photos of Duke in the papers as a teenager. She was 15 years younger than he was, and she ended up in Honolulu when she took a job teaching ballroom dance at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel. It said that the two of them just loved almost more than anything else to just dance together, which is so sweet.

But this marriage was perceived by some as a betrayal on Duke's part of his Hawaiian heritage. It was even used against him in the 1940 election, insinuating that he was now a. Hawaiian. That was a criticism he was actually getting from both sides of the political divide. He still won that election, but he also switched political parties from Democrat to Republican after the Democratic Party representatives spoke about being disillusioned about Duke following his marriage. Duke was generally I mean, we keep talking about how beloved he was and he was well supported by voters from both parties.

That switch really did not change much.

When Pearl Harbor was bombed on December 7th, 1941, Duke and the dean were eating breakfast at the Outrigger Canoe Club. Duke called an acquaintance to make sure it was a real attack and not the local military base running some kind of a training maneuver. When he confirmed what was happening, he and the dean made a run for the safer shelter of City Hall.

Because of his position as sheriff, Duke Kahanamoku had to oversee the really inadequate city morgue and inspect potential dig sites in case a mass burial plot was needed. Duke went on to set up a citywide alert system in case the additional attacks followed that one. Following the war, he became a supporter of statehood for Hawaii.

This obviously was not something everyone wanted. He also signed a deal for his name to be used in marketing for Aloha shirts made by clothing company Cisco Casuals. This was not the first such deal he signed, but it was one that had him touring the continental U.S. to promote the product with Nadine at his side.

In 1955, Duke had a heart attack and spent 10 days in an oxygen tent. He recovered and was sent back home with instructions to follow a limited diet. But according to the team, he didn't always follow that. From that point on, Duke had a number of health issues, including asthma and ulcers, which the Dean believed were the result of his keeping his emotions bottled up. Yes, she definitely made clear that she thought him being nice to everyone all the time, no matter what they did to him, was part of the source of his health issues.

In 1956, he went to the Olympics again, this time not as an athlete. He was 66 at that point, but as a representative of the United States. And he watched as many of the swimming events as he could. He was apparently really blown away by the swimmers, one that they're their bathing costumes had gotten sleeker and allowed them to be faster in the water. But also, he said to have been really, really wowed by their training regimens.

And when the games were over, Duke Nadine toured Asia together.

On August 21st, 1959, Hawaii gained statehood. And while this was something that Duke had supported afterwards, he watched throngs of people move to the islands, Waikiki quickly grew into a tourism village, he might have started wondering if that had really been the right move. Things took an even more troubling turn when the sheriff's office was eliminated in a city reorganization. That meant that Kahanamoku was out of a job. He was eventually given a job as the city's official greeter, but that paid less than nine thousand dollars a year.

That pay or lack of it was recognized as wrong by a lot of people. There was no lack of awareness regarding just how much Duke had done on the world stage to promote Hawaii and represented in the best possible light. And at that point, he had been doing that for almost 50 years, and yet he was taking home just a little over five hundred dollars a month after taxes as he approached his seventieth birthday.

And it was the need for a more substantial income than that. That led Duke with the help of talent manager Kema wylder Mikveh to open a restaurant and nightclub called Duke Kahanamoku, who was, of course, that was in Waikiki to get in on the tourist trade and to help drum up business. Mikveh hired Don Ho to play things picked up. Mikveh also organized surfing contests branded with Duke's name to keep public interest in Kahanamoku growing. In March 1962, Duke spent a week and a half in the hospital for his stomach ulcers.

Two months later, after he took a hit to the head on his catamaran, he found he was unable to stand and he was rushed to the hospital with a diagnosis of a blood clot that necessitated emergency brain surgery. Duke was inducted into the swimming and surfing halls of fame in the second half of the 1960s. This was an honor, but it was also when he really didn't have much time to enjoy. In 1967, his ulcer's had gotten so bad that he needed several blood transfusions and he had to have an operation that removed almost half of his stomach.

He recovered. But on January 22nd, 1968, Duke had a heart attack while he was working on his boat, and he died in Honolulu at the age of 77.

His ashes were, of course, sent into the ocean in a ceremony where they were escorted on a surfboard atop an outrigger canoe. It was flanked by several more canoes.

It said that hundreds of surfers paddled out with them when his family and friends got to a point where they couldn't go any further. Nadine dropped the box containing his ashes into the water. Duke was inducted into the U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame in 1984, six years later, a statue of Duke was dedicated at Waikiki on his one 100th birthday. There had been efforts to erect a statue of him when he was alive, but that whole thing made Duke really uncomfortable, and he was pretty relieved when the plan fell apart.

At the dedication ceremony for the statue, Nadine told the crowd, quote, I hope you will all come to the beach and visit him because he doesn't want to be lonely. Another statue of Duke went up in Australia in 1994, also with Nadine to champion the project, Duke received numerous other posthumous honors, including having his image on a U.S. Postal Service stamp, which happened in 2002 before Nadine died in 1997. She set up a non-profit, the Outrigger Duke Kahanamoku Foundation, which funds the preservation of Hawaiian water sports and grants scholarships to students from the islands.

In a move that remains controversial among Duke's family, she bequeathed trademark rights to his name and likeness to the foundation visiting Oahu.

It's easy to see how important Duke Kahanamoku was and is to Hawaii and how he's become the iconic embodiment of the spirit of Aloha. But when you think about the entire culture and subcultures that have been born of Duke's influence in Hawaii and beyond, it's really staggering. His casual fun approach to surfing really defined the sport. And in turn, that same vibe defined the skateboarding culture that sprang off from it. Entire companies that manufacture boards, clothing, footwear, et cetera, all of that intended to capture that feeling have been launched and a lot of them to great success because, of course, everyone wants to have that cool and relaxed style and feel.

And you can draw a line straight back through history to that laid back beach culture. And Duke Kahanamoku, he impacted Hawaii and other more concrete ways as well. If you have ever visited the Pearl Harbor National Memorial in Honolulu, which is quite a thing, you have benefited from the work of Duke Kahanamoku. He raised money for that permanent tribute to the USS Arizona. Part of what made Duke Kahanamoku so winsome was just his endless modesty when he competed with a club or a team.

He always wanted to celebrate the group rather than himself, even though he was easily the strongest swimmer among them. And after his first famous wins and his first official races in 1911, he said that it was the waters of Oahu that were really to be credited, quote, Our water is so full of life, it's the fastest in the world. That's all there is to it. I love that he gives the water credit for think, oh, it's the water, it's great, I really love him.

Yeah, me too. Me too. Well, we'll talk about how much we love him in our Friday episode. But, yeah, there's they're more fun stories about him that didn't quite fit into this these two episodes. So on Friday, I'll try to pepper a couple more of those in. But for now I have two emails about Grand Central Station. The first is from our listener, Caitlin, who writes, Hi, how are you?

Tracey, I just finished your episode on Grand Central Station. And I agree. I miss traveling so much. This will come up in our other one, but it really is Grand Central Terminal. She writes. In college, I spent a semester in New York working at a Broadway theater about 200 yards from Times Square. There were two possible routes from the subway for my student housing, take two trains and walk from the north, avoiding Times Square, or take only one train and cut directly through the square.

Naturally, I did the latter. This horrified my boss, who was a born and bred New Yorker, but I told him I'm in it for the stories. Josh, later that day, a pigeon flew directly into my face. It nearly got tangled in my hat. So grain of salt on the practicality of my advice just got a story out of it. I hope you enjoy my avian encounter, Caitlyn. I do. It's fantastic. Also makes a recommendation.

And then we also got a note from our listener, Christopher, who writes, Dear Holly and Tracy, my husband and I are longtime listeners and first time email letters to your show. We started listening to your show during weekend trips we took to visit family while we were both in grad school in 2017. And we've been hooked ever since. We literally can't find any more episodes in the archives that we haven't heard. So now we await each episode quite eagerly.

We just finished your episode on the history of Grand Central and loved every second of it. We are huge fans of the Grand Central Complex in its history. We both grew up along the Metro North commuter lines. I grew up on the Hudson line in Dobbs Ferry and he grew up in the New Haven line in Larchmont. When I was a child, it was a big deal. Whenever I got to take a train into the city and enter Grand Central, usually to see a Broadway show.

Your podcast alluded to the structures Bhosale design. Yet there's really no way to capture the feeling of grandeur when you step out of the train platform into that main space with the vaulted ceiling and astronomical design, which fun fact is actually accidentally drawn backwards. As a teenagers, college students, young adult, the clock in the center was always the assumed place to meet up with folks, never even a question. My mom worked in the city and she is a fellow history buff.

She never hesitated to share stories about the building's history, like the ceiling restoration or how the building was saved from the same fate as Penn Station, due in large part to the work of Jackie Kennedy. One piece of info that my mother always reminded me about the structure is that the building is Grand Central Terminal, not station. The reason for this is that no trains go through the station. Every train either originates or terminates there. I wouldn't be a dutiful son if I didn't mention that is, I believed you switched between terminal and station at several points during the podcast.

I thought it was an interesting point about why the building is actually a terminal. I think we switched it over when it transitioned to terminal, but I could be wrong. I'm not above messing those up, that's for sure. Thank you so much for the work you are doing.

Your podcast was a vital part of getting my husband and me through a PhD in law school respectively. Boy, congratulations to both of you. You shine a light on formerly marginalized stories are those that are often framed as ancillary to big history. And it's such important work. Warmest regards, Christopher, Christopher and Jordan. This is such a sweet email and I love it.

And I love hearing about people that are native New Yorkers that love New York as much as I do. Probably more so. Thank you so much for sharing all of that. I hope I didn't mess up those those stations and terminals, but I probably did.

If you would like to write, do as you could do. So that email is history podcast it I heart radio dotcom. You can also find us on social media at MTT in history. And if you would like to subscribe to the podcast, it's easy as pie.

You can do it on the radio app, at Apple podcast or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

Stuff you missed in history class is the production of I Heart Radio for more podcasts from My Heart radio visit by her radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

You may not imagine many black people when you think about the old West, but on the Black Cowboys podcast, journalist Erin Burnett tells the untold story of the West like the fact that one in four cowboys were black, black men and white men riding together across the wide open plains. The Cowboys enjoyed a rare equality among men uncommon at that time in America. Listen to Black Cowboys with Erin Burnett on the radio and Apple podcasts. Or wherever you get your podcasts.

Sometimes you need a good cry. And we know just the podcast for that. Crying in Public, a weekly podcast hosted by four 20 something college women living in New York City follow along while they discuss growing up in a time where there's no distinction between what's public and what's private. When you're hooking up with a guy, what are your takes on keeping your socks off? It's funny. It's enlightening. It's the Crying in Public podcast. Listen on the I Heart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts.