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From My Heart radio, it's the Hey Pal podcast, hey, pal, hey, pal. Jared and Dave, we are going to be talking sports. We're so starved for sport. I literally just follow the UPS guy and filmed it.

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So I'm going to put it on live. We're going to be talking entertainment. Julian Edelman, it's football movies who's advancing between Jerry Maguire and Warner.

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I think you got a good water boy. We've got it upset. Should we call next? Dave, we're calling everybody.

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If the Hey Pal podcast series premieres September 29th on the I Heart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Hi, I'm Bethany Van Delft, host of a new podcast, The Ten News, Ten Minutes of News and Fun for the new generation of Curious Thinkers.

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We're here to help you make sense of it all, from current events to science, art and pop culture. We'll talk to experts and special guests and hear from young people just like you. Listen to the 10:00 news starting September twenty nine on the I Heart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts with new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday.

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Welcome to Stuff You Should Know. A production of Radios HowStuffWorks. Hey, and welcome to the podcast, I'm Josh Clark, there's Charles took to Brian over there. Aloha. And he's out there somewhere. Aloha. And this is stuff you should know, like Aliki Lucka that's pronounced.

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Yeah, that's actually a little known fact. That's the Hawaiian way to say Merry Christmas to you.

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I didn't know the story. By the way.

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This pretty interesting. Yeah. Yeah. I have to say, Chuck, before we get started, we have to give a huge shout out huge to a dude. I don't know his name, but he's on Instagram as people that conacher.

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Oh OK. Well maybe that's his name. So what. Maybe so. Or it could be Kai Kanaka who knows. He calls himself the Hawaiian Hillbilly, but he has every time we post an episode he goes on and comments Hawaiian overthrow episode please.

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He's been doing it for like years. Yeah. Yeah. So Curnock Akki, this one is for you man.

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And at long last and now he doesn't have to jump into the big woo.

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All right. So what I'm hoping, though, is that he's not like super well versed in this is just going to be inevitably disappointed, hopefully is something he wants to know more about. So he's been asking for it for that one.

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Well, I'm glad he told us for years, because this is a really interesting and not at all surprising story. No, it's not.

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And basically what we're talking about today is the overthrow of Hawaii. And it turns out that Hawaii, one of the most beautiful states in the union, probably the most beautiful state in the union. The state where you mean I got married.

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In fact, it depends what you're into. Sure, sure. If you're into tropical paradises, there's not much better.

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Somebody from Montana might be like, you can have it.

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These mountains, although I could see Montana people go to Hawaii and be like, I've been wrong, so wrong all my life. And these boots are really uncomfortable.

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Right. So it is a beautiful state. But if you go back not to very far, you will find that there's a lot of arguments you could make that it should not be a state in any way, shape or form.

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Yeah, and I'm curious about the about the current temperature of native Hawaiian people and how they feel about that now.

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Yeah, yeah. Well, we'll get to that eventually. You know, I don't know about the temperature of the Hawaiian people, but I know about some some proposals to help kind of reverse or undo some of the damage that was done, that's for sure.

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And well, I guess we should go back some, many thousands of years and talk about the settling of the Hawaiian Islands by the Polynesian people about, you know, 1500 years ago, maybe a thousand years ago somewhere in there. Yeah. And for many, many hundreds of years, there were the control of Hawaii was by chiefs and then sub chiefs. And these chiefs claimed that they were divine in origin. And they said we have a set of very strict religious rules that we should follow called the Cabu and that, you know, wasn't so popular over the years.

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Well, it depends.

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I mean, like if you were born into that society and that was what you knew, that was just what you knew. But I get the impression that over the centuries, some chiefs and sub chiefs enforced the cop who more than others.

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And one of the big bases of the cop who laws is that there is a strict separation of men and women and men were divine and women were profane and they represented kind of like light and dark. And you have to have you can't have one without the other. So they need each other. But also, men were still definitely favored in that respect. But then if you also go look through Hawaiian history, there are also plenty of female rulers as well.

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So it's a it's really interesting cop who could probably get its own episode. And I'm sure now we know what Kanaka will be commenting on. All right. From now on, actually move it on.

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But it was so they had their own like very strict social stratification in religious laws, for sure.

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Yeah, I think if Emily heard that, she would say Chuck is not divine, but I am profane. So we're halfway there right now.

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I'm profane. Women rarely make history.

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So speaking of making history, this is where a man named James Cook enters the picture in the late seventeen hundreds, the very famous British explorer, he was the most notable, some people say the first European to visit Hawaii. Definitely the most notable because there is some. You could make an argument that the Spanish were there before him at some point. Yeah, they have maps that appear to be Hawaii from the 16th century.

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Yeah. So the Japanese as well. But Cook was the first person to go as an Englishman with. It was a big deal as a coloniser and say, I'm charting this island or these islands are going to name them the Sandwich Islands.

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Yeah, not a great name now because, well, James Cook was well known for loving sandwiches, so sure he was. So actually, it was named for the Earl of Sandwich, John Montagu. I figured it's the very same earl of sandwich, though, that sandwiches are named for. So that guy was really he was an influencer in Hawaii.

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He's known for their sandwiches. Yeah.

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Say, and it's just so Cook visits. He visits a few times and kind of did a lot of traveling while he was there. So he makes one visit and then just starts sort of exploring the islands around Hawaii, eventually comes back kind of on that same trip and gets really aggressive at that point. Not a nice fellow trying to do sort of the the coloniser thing. Here, let me make a deal with you. Let me trade something that isn't very valuable for something that is very valuable, which is to say your land.

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Right.

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And yeah, he was just basically doing the standard Euro Explorer thing, which Eurotrash explorer exploitation, trying to get everybody into craftwork, that whole thing. Right. Yeah.

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So so cook, I guess he overstepped his bounds finally. And he was actually killed in a major battle after some of his his men kidnapped a Hawaiian chief.

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Well, he he did it personally from what I saw. Oh, is that right? He said by his own hand. Not a good move. Not a good not a good move. Because one thing about the Hawaiian Islands, they were ruled by those chiefs and subjects, like you said. But I get the impression that they were they were united largely when it came to the kidnapping of any Hawaiian chief by a European outsider.

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Yeah, like you can fight with your brother, but if someone else picks on your brother, then you've got to you've got to join forces. Who would ever pick on Scott?

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Well, I was thinking of you and me, but. Sure. Oh, brother. Like real brothers, too, right.

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Well Embla blubbers I still have that scar on my palm.

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I actually mine was a squib. I faked it.

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I thought that tasted like high fructose corn syrup. Yeah. You're like chicken sweet blood. It's so sweet like Scott.

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So yeah. Cook is kidnaps this guy. They, they did not respond very kindly to that so they sent a faction down there to attack him and his boats. They were on the beach and that's where he died face down and in shallow water. He was bonked on the head by one chief, I think, and then stabbed by that chiefs kind of attendant. Hmm. Right. Right.

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So this is a this is a huge battle, a momentous battle in the history of Hawaii. It was very important, not just because James Cook died, but because there was a one of the, I guess, low level warriors there, or middle class warriors, I guess, by the name of Kamehameha, fought quite bravely in that battle. And Kamehameha actually went on to become the first genuinely influential Hawaiian chief, maybe the most significant Hawaiian chief of all time, because while he was there fighting the Europeans, it's like, man, these guns, they they work really well.

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And, you know, these Europeans are willing to sell them to you. And he figured out that if he could amass some European support and European weapons, he could get all of Hawaii basically under himself. And that's what he said about doing over the course of a couple of decades.

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Yeah, reading this stuff. And this was the grab store, right. That helped us with this one. Mm hmm. It seems to be sorry.

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No, it was James Michener. Oh, really? No.

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You remember James Michener would write those thousand page epics about like I think he wrote one on Hawaii basically about this Caribs. Oh, so James Mister's, this author write these exhaustive historical fictions and one of them was Hawaii, but they would be like a thousand pages easily. And I was making a joke comment on Webster's research skills.

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Yeah. English major over here flew right over my head. And by the way, a little quick side note that I wanted to mention. I am speaking of epic tomes. I'm reading the Beatles biography from Bob Spetz. That's like a thousand pages. Oh, yeah. And one thing I wish we could have mentioned, I know you hate the Beatles, but one thing I wish we could have mentioned in the pirate radio thing was Radio Luxembourg. There would have been no Beatles without them because independently, Paul, George and John were all on their own listening to Radio Luxembourg.

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And that's what turned them on to music.

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Typically, it's turned me on radio looks and bought me on. Why, I did not see the Beatles making an appearance in this office. So where are we now? Oh, come on. Yeah, come on, man. Oh, I know. What I was going to say was a thread through this I found is that back then Hawaiians were largely under armed.

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In most cases, that's a big thing. And then also, just like with all other colonization from outside European forces, disease basically paved the way for imperialism.

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I'm sure we're even even if they were underarmed and they didn't typically have standing militaries, I should say, the Hawaiians didn't even if they had, there was like a plague that came around in 1833 that killed off half of the population. They think it was yellow fever. Yeah, there was another measles outbreak about 50 years later that killed off another quarter of the population. So when you're dying off in, like, numbers like this, how could you possibly defend yourself, especially against people who have these superior weapons like guns, germs and steel?

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Is Jared Diamond put it?

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Yeah. I mean, it's the it's the same story is is America and the native population here, you know, it's like, hey, we're outsiders and we have guns and here's some smallpox. Oh, yeah.

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But but God decreed that this should be our land because he killed all of you off with these smallpox. Right. Because you have no immunity. It's the same depressing story over and over again. It is.

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So when Kamehameha was was ruling Hawaii, which was really he was firmly entrenched by the almost turn of the century late. Seventeen hundreds he was pushing. And, you know, so much of this boils down to money and class. And he was really pushing for trade with Europe. He wanted the elite holders of Hawaii to kind of remain in that position. He was traditionally religious with the capital and supported that. But he was very much, you know, like let's let's enrich ourselves is sort of the ruling class for for sure.

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But he also and he was also very open to the idea of exploiting European influence for, you know, to strengthen his his kingdom, his house, I guess, is what it's called. He actually had two advisers, Isaac Davis and John Young, Englishmen and a Welshman who were his closest advisors. And apparently I can't remember which one it was.

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But when one of them, whenever they would part company, Kamehameha, would just begin sobbing because he just knew one day that he was going to leave and he just loved him that much. Interesting. Yeah, it is very interesting. It's one of those things where, you know, we were raised as like Anglo Euro American boys in the eastern seaboard of the United States. Right in the Midwest. So when you research history like this, it's just like Hawaiian chief did this and then this Hawaii chief came along.

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But when you start to look into him as we're older, it's it's just always so fascinating to me just how complex and complicated history really is, you know, and just how boiled down typically is presented as.

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Yeah, totally. That's because I don't know. I think teachers do a good job as they can. But when we were in school, the history we were taught was pretty, pretty simplified.

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It is there's also like a real advantage to dehumanizing the people that you've done wrong to centuries, especially when they live in a state of yours.

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Still, it's a good point. Yeah. So under his rule, he managed to sort of sort of unify the kingdom of Hawaii. It wasn't like everyone was completely on board with what was going on, especially with the capital and human sacrifice and some of that stuff that happened.

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No, but they did live under his rule, whether they liked it or not. He was a very strong king.

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Yeah. Because he had guns finally and people didn't. And so they couldn't rise up against him. But after he died is when things got really complicated. Yeah. Because then you had Hawaii landowners, you had white people that own land, and then you had this third group, this really large working class, even though many were killed off. So a lot of people.

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And that really complicated the whole situation. And maybe we should take a break there. We should. All right. We'll take a break and we'll talk about what complicated that even more brought it to this.

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Support for stuff you should know comes from the good people over at Curiosity stream, the streaming service exclusively for documentaries, get smarter TV for your smart TV, or get lost in all the great docs with Curiosity Stream. It's got quite a bit to choose from, Charles. Yeah, that's right.

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I love my documentaries and that's why I love curiosity stream. You can unlock access to thousands of stream documentaries and non-fiction TV shows on history, nature, food technology, science, travel and much more. All at Curiosity Stream.

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Yep, and Curiosity Stream works on just about any device, anywhere, any time. And you can get an entire year of streaming for just fourteen dollars and 99 cents when you sign up using our code stuff. So go to curiosity, stream dotcom and use our promo code stuff. A full year of mind expansion for less than 15 bucks said.

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Hi, everybody. Holly Frye here. Listen, my friends from Head Count just wanted to make sure that everyone knows that September 22nd is National Voter Registration Day. Twenty has come with a lot of uncertainties, but you can make sure you're all set for Election Day by registering to vote, checking your registration or requesting an absentee ballot. Don't worry. Our friends at Head Count Dog have made it easy and they are nonpartisan. So they want everyone to make sure that they are registered and that they are ready to vote come Election Day to get your information.

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Just text the word voter to four zero six four nine or visit head count dog for more info and head count Kishwaukee right through registration. If you're already registered, they would love it if you would take their ME plus three pledge. So make a plan to vote and then get three friends to join you. And if those friends aren't registered, head to head count dog with them and make sure that they do get registered. It takes two minutes to do this, but it has a huge impact.

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Don't wait. Register today and vote on November 3rd.

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So, Chuck, we have this kind of like a brief sketch of what's going on here, we have a native group, the native Hawaiians, who live here, and they are autonomous in running their own show. But then the European explorers have showed up and they are trying to make headway in exploiting this area as best they can commercially for agriculture. At first it was sandalwood and then it moved on to, I think, cattle and then finally like sugarcane.

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And then those European white landowners in Hawaii started bringing in tons and tons of migrant workers in basically like slave labor conditions. So you have these three groups kind of coming together in Hawaii, only one of which was originally there.

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Yeah. And another thing came in, which was missionaries from Europe, Protestant missionaries for the most part. And they did what missionaries do, which was say, hey, you should be Christian and not worship whatever, you know, Hawaiian God you worship.

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And this was a big deal because there were you know, Hawaii had a long, rich tradition, a very sacred tradition of religion. And this was not that at all. But like they do, they were pretty forceful in making sure Christianity took hold among some of the people. And it became a pretty big deal in Hawaii by like the sort of mid eighteen hundreds.

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Yeah, for sure. So just like with other places where the missionaries were kind of like the leading edge of the spear as far as imperialism goes, are they just were the first to kind of breed this and bring Christianity and, you know, civilization to the area. So after they started to make headway and started to change the culture, it it allowed greater entree for for more like commercial interests who had nothing to do with religion. They were just coming to work the land kind of thing.

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Yeah. And 1840, this is when Kamehameha grandson Kamehameha, the third wrote the first real legit Hawaiian constitution.

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There would be many more to follow. Don't worry. This is just the first one. And this one basically kind of kicked carpoolers to the side was a little more Christian, a little more Western, for lack of a better word, and basically said, all right, you can now vote over here. And this is kind of the first entry of what democracy would look like there.

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Yeah, I mean, it created a judicial branch, a legislature like it. It sounded awfully familiar, really, as far as constitutions go. And it was a huge watershed moment because, like you said, it replaced cockapoo with, like you said, Western style democracy, basically, or some version of it. The beginnings of it, I guess. Yeah. And it also would establish this this framework, this foundation for people to point to and be like, oh, no, no, we want to we want to go further and further toward the Constitution, not back toward the old ways.

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So it was like a goal post that was set there that could be pointed to is we don't want a monarchy anymore. Remember, we want this legislature and the judicial branch and all this this stuff that Americans and Europeans are accustomed to working with in.

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Yeah, and also money was a big complicating factor. Like we said, any time money is introduced and there's very valuable land, it's going to get pretty grabby. And that's what happened when the white Europeans and Americans said, wow, this oil over here in the climate of here is great for growing stuff and we're not there. You know, they don't have workers rights laws here. So we can really, really get cheap, cheap labor, if not, like you said, basically enslaved people essentially.

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Yeah. From Asia to work over here and not really paying much money, like bring them over under false pretense, say how great it is, how much money they're going to make and then kind of build them back. It's sort of like signing a record contract and bill you back for all the expenses of getting over there and overcharging for their living quarters, which were terrible. But it's, you know, it's exploitation that we've seen time and time again, right?

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Yeah. It's still going on today. You know, like it's basically human trafficking is what they were doing. Yeah. So one thing about Kamehameha, the House of Kamehameha, when the first Kamehameha, which is an awesomely fun word to say and also just reminds me of Magnum P.I., because that was the club that Ric managed the Kamehameha Club.

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Wow. Yeah. So remember that.

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Oh, man. So I would just kill to be in 1983 hanging out at the bar, the beach bar in that club.

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But anyway, Kamehameha, despite there being like a people, basically every time a successor died, he managed to establish a. Dynasty that lasted until the 1970s, I believe, and the problem was, is that there were no strong succession laws. Yeah, so when a monarch died, in a few instances, there were these periods called interregnums, which is basically like, hey, you know, the government, it doesn't actually exist technically right now. It's kind of a free for all.

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While we figure out what comes next, we got to we got to get this together and decide how to move forward. And in this case, they would have the legislature vote for the ruler. And this wasn't super popular. It led to rioting. Hawaiians were like, no, we we need we kind of didn't mind the monarchy and we need these succession laws to be kind of ingrained.

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I think that that's a real a real telling, a revealing tale about how the Hawaiians felt that they were like, no, we forget the legislature.

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We just need better laws to say who succeeds who as far as the monarchs are concerned, because I think that's what they were used to and that's what they wanted, you know.

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Yeah, but what this ended up doing was kind of there was a real divide here when 1874, I think was when Calarco oa oh Khalayleh coup colleague.

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A practice there a million times I day to collect Kalikow. Yeah.

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I mean I love these words. They're so much fun to say. Oh yeah. Even though we're probably butchering them.

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But I know I'm pretty sure it's Kolache. Oh all right. Kalikow was the new king voted on in 1874 and this was the first real wedge because he had this faction that supported Queen Emma and a real like opposition party was in place. Like people were very, very divided at this point.

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Yeah. Queen Emma was the wife of commander of the 4th, so she had a pretty valid claim on the throne. But the legislature said, no, Callick was definitely our guy. He's now you're your king and you're monarch. And he was an interesting cat, too. He was known as the Merrie Monarch. He was a bit of a bomb. The vaunt hoola had been banned by the the big buzz kill missionaries for decades, like hula hoops or hula dancing.

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I mean, hula dancing.

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Yeah. So so Colliculus said, hey, it's my birthday, let's bring hula back. So he was kind of beloved for that. He played the ukulele, but he was also very corrupt, like he took one hundred and thirty thousand dollar bribe from some Chinese businessmen who wanted an opium licence. And very importantly, his whole jam was little by little the power of the has been eroded too. Well, now it's finally my turn and I'm basically as the figurehead here.

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I want the power back. So I'm going to do that. And instead, there were some white interests that had formed a group known as the Hawaiian League, and they were basically made up of landowners, businessmen, people who had but who are all like white, European and American people who said we actually don't like that idea. And in fact, we're going to make you form a great sign, a new constitution into law. And you're going to do it basically at the at the at gun point.

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And it's going to be called the bayonet constitution, historically speaking.

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Yeah. So the Hawaiian League, they were they had a bunch of different names initially. They were the the missionary not in the missionary league.

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The missionary was the missionary party. Yeah. The missionary thought that was too sexy. Right. So a missionary party became the Hawaiian League, eventually became the Reform Party because who doesn't like reform? And they eventually became because as we'll see, they pushed more and more toward annexation. And I don't know if it was where they officially called the annexation party. Was that sort of like a. I honestly don't know the way that they were introduced. I think I don't know.

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Well, either way, what they did was they said, all right, we know that not many people, we are in underarmed society. So if we're going to do this, we're going to get the guns on our side. And that was where they got the support of the Hawaiian rifles, which was a volunteer military unit. All white people and like you said in July of 1887, is when those Hawaiian rifles got involved and said, sign this new constitution.

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And they did. And so it basically said, you know, how you thought you were a figurehead before. Now you are a genuine, bona fide figurehead. Your power is completely at the pleasure of the legislature, which, by the way, is no longer appointed by you, but elected. And also further, by the way, we Europeans and Americans now have voting rights because you have to be a landowner and literate to vote. So not only do we have voting rights now to elect the legislature to basically do whatever we want, but we've also just excluded all of those migrant Asian laborers that we just brought over because they don't own any land and probably a lot of them can't read.

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So ipso facto, you go play some ukulele for a while, collect you. And thank you very much for Hawaii.

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Yeah, I mean, I got the impression that it was under the guise of, hey, democracy is great. Yeah. And voting is how things should go. But like but we're going to be the ones voting by the way. Exactly.

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Yeah. I mean it definitely was presented like that, like they were trying to liberalize the island but yeah, ultimately it was for their own interests. When you when you really got down to brass tacks, which is Cockney rhyming slang for facts as. So I didn't think that was going to show up either. So in 1891, that is when he died, the aforementioned Kalakaua. Right. Kaleigh Kalakaua. Yeah. And he was succeeded by someone. He chose his sister.

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How are you going to make me queen, Lily?

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Well, Kalani. Yeah, I mean, all right. I think that's right. Yeah. So, yeah. And so she if Kalika had a problem with being a figurehead lelio you Kilani was definitely opposed to the idea of just being like Queen Elizabeth. You know, we're just showing up for state functions and that kind of thing. Like she was she considered herself the ruler of Hawaii. She was the monarch who who was meant to succeed Killik, a fair and square and had a real problem with this.

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And but the problem was that within the four years that Kalika ursine the bayonet constitution, the doors had been thrown so far open for Western interests, business interests in Hawaii, that she basically faced an insurmountable challenge in undoing just the changes that had come in in the last four years. It had been slowly creeping up over the decades, but from their bayonetted constitution forward over those four years between then and when she took over. The changes were insurmountable, basically.

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Yeah. Married to an American two, incidentally.

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Well, that shows you like just how how intermarried American politics in European politics were with Hawaiian politics, literally.

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Yeah. And I don't think we mentioned like this whole time. There are both American and British warships in Honolulu Harbor. Yeah. So like, they've been there the whole time, the military. And I didn't get the idea that they were active at that point. They were just there, kind of parked there.

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Yeah. I think just more to send a signal, but also to keep other interlopers out. I think the British and the Americans basically considered Hawaii theirs. Right.

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Unofficially, but moving toward officially because when you said the door was thrown wide open and change was afoot, it was the Hawaiian League that was really you know, they had flirted with annexation a little bit. But by this point, they were really and this is where they took on the name the Annexation Club. Like I mentioned earlier, they were really, really headed toward annexation, which is where we have to kind of go back over to America and talk about the Tariff Act of 1890 or the MacKinley tariff, which was basically a very protectionist thing.

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Hey, we need U.S. goods to be an industry here to be ramped up. So we're going to charge huge tariffs on goods imported into the U.S. And that meant Hawaiian goods and owners in Hawaii said this is not good for us because this is going to make us raise prices. Sales are going to go down. Our profits are going to go down. And while they were. The annexation club was making hay about democracy being a good thing, it really kind of came down to money.

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Yeah, that's exactly right. With that in that MacKinley tariff, like really kind of forced everyone's hand because like you said, I mean, Hawaii was a sovereign nation and so there were tariffs on the import. Didn't matter that they were American companies. The stuff was being produced in Hawaii. So when it came into America, there was a huge tax slapped on it. So they started saying, OK, we need to figure this out like we need to.

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We need to get Hawaii annexed. And so I get the impression that the Hawaiian League kind of went from there were some people in there that had been saying the whole time, annexation, annexation is definitely the way to go to where that was like the point of the Hawaiian League from that moment forward was getting annexed.

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Fortunately for them, Lily Kelani, whose name just flights in and out of my capability to pronounce she she said, hey, you know what? I don't like all this. I don't like where this is going. I'm going to rewrite the Constitution. I'm going to restore the power of the monarchy. And, you know, your legislature, your legislature can go sit on it because I'm passing this by royal fiat just by me decreeing that it's true. It's true.

[00:33:29]

And when that came out, that news came out that she was planning on doing that. The Hawaiian League said it's go time. Yeah. And as far as the U.S. goes, you know, they they didn't outright say they wanted to annex. It was kind of a tricky situation for them. They didn't want anyone else to get in there right in front of them, of course. But they also didn't. And they didn't want to feel like they did want to be too aggressive with it, like, well, hey, if you're open to it, we'll talk about it.

[00:33:56]

But we're not going to ask you to dance. Right. But it wasn't out of any respect or deference necessarily to Hawaii. It was because they didn't want to tick off the British. Yeah, so. So, yeah. So when Lelio man so when Lily Will Kilani said that she was going to to rewrite the Constitution in this came out, the opposition was really strong and she actually backed down and she announced, OK, I'm definitely not going to do it by royal fiat, but I'm going to do it through normal channels.

[00:34:29]

And it really kind of took the any hostility out of the move. But it was it was too little, too late as far as the Hawaiian League was concerned. And like I said, they decided it was go time. And Chuck, I say it's a good time for us to go to commercial.

[00:34:44]

Let's do it. Hi, I'm Kristen Holmes. I've covered campaigns, Capitol Hill, the White House and everything Washington for CNN. But nothing tops the importance of this upcoming election and my job is to help you make sense of it all. Welcome to Election 101. For the next 10 weeks, we'll figure out the electoral process together. I'll talk to experts, historians and some of you will address the safety of and voting, inform you of deadlines and make sure you know all your options.

[00:35:27]

You'll learn why voter registration is different from state to state and even from person to person. I'll help you figure out how to watch the debates a little more closely and how to get a better read on what the candidates really stand for. Yes, this election year is different and this is a different kind of podcast. Election one. One was created to help you learn how to make the most of your vote this November. Listen to election one of one every Wednesday on the I Heart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[00:36:00]

High people to get here, maybe you know me as mayor put in my new podcast, I'll be talking to people from every field whose ideas and actions will shape an era that is about to begin.

[00:36:10]

We can take this time and use it in a way to bring people together.

[00:36:14]

When people protest in a country that means they still love it enough, but they still believe change is what.

[00:36:19]

I have hope that we are actually going to figure out how to allow people to be free hearted, free thinkers.

[00:36:25]

Listen to the deciding decade on the I Heart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[00:36:40]

All right, so it's go time in Hawaii, Queen Lily Colony has drawn a line in the sand.

[00:36:48]

White men in Hawaii were super worried all of a sudden. And so that annexation club that is now changed names four times, changed their names again and said, all right, now we're the committee of Safety and by Committee of Safety, I mean, we're going to lead a military coup. Right. Which are typically very safe. Yeah. So there was a move basically to collect arms specifically to depose Lelio Kilani. Like that was the point that that this this this this group had.

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I guess it was pretty. If it wasn't like overt, basically everyone knew about it. So much so that a loyalist to really Kilani, his name was Charles B. Wilson. Yeah. He was a loyalist, which we should say. So his name sounds pretty American, Sean. That's for good reason because he was American. And if you go back a couple of monarchs, you will start to see like Germans and Americans and British people in their cabinets.

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Yeah, like guys like foreign minister or secretary of finance. Like just just like it's just, you know, some normal thing. That's how entrenched everything was. So Charles B. Wilson was to Lelio Kilani, the marshal of Hawaii, which, as Ed put it, is kind of like the head of the FBI and the head of the Department of Defense all rolled into one. But he was in charge of the national police, basically, and he found out about this plot and he wanted the plotters arrested for treason.

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Yeah, he called it out and said arrested the committee or whatever they're calling themselves today. And the American members of the cabinet said, no, we're not going to do that because this could break out in violence. So let's all chill out.

[00:38:36]

That all changed on January 17th when there was a shooting. A native Hawaiian policeman was shot trying to prevent delivery of some weapons to the annexation club. He didn't die, but he was shot. And there wasn't like a lot of I mean, James Cook obviously died pretty in a grizzly way, but there wasn't a lot of, like, actual violence and bloodshed that was writing and stuff over the years. But I get the feeling that this shooting was kind of a big, big thing at the time.

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It was I mean, it was the only shooting in the entire overthrow of Hawaii and this entire coup, which makes it significant. But I get the same impression that you had, that Hawaiian society was generally rather peaceful. And so to shoot somebody was a very, very big deal. So much so that the cop got 200 dollars for his his wounds collected by the local community. To me, pretty nice. Pretty good scratch back then. Yeah, I don't I didn't look it up on Westerburg.

[00:39:38]

We should have. Yeah. So the Committee of Safety goes to you know, we mentioned the warships in the harbor. They go to ah the USS Boston that's parked there and go to Captain Wilt's and say, hey, you know what, they're American citizens on the island there. You guys are having a good time just kind of hanging out, playing cards. But there's property that's in danger. There's American citizens that are in danger and there are armed troops like we need you guys in your guns to come on the island.

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And he went, well, all right, come on, guys, let's go. And they all put down their cards and one hundred and sixty two soldiers went ashore. And that was sort of the real turning point as far as an actual American military presence in there, supposedly defending property and American citizens from danger. But it really ratcheted things up as far as conflict goes.

[00:40:34]

Well, yeah, and particularly for your colony to her. She saw American troops coming ashore, establishing a fort like a couple of hundred yards away from the Imperial Palace and in basically creating a presence on native sovereign Hawaiian land. Yeah, and this was at the same time that the the Committee for Safety had run up on the steps of the Capitol building, read a proclamation that the queen had been overthrown, that the monarchy didn't exist any longer, and that she had been deposed and that they were now in charge.

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And combine that from her point of view with the presence of American troops. She's like, OK, I guess the Americans just overthrew me. She didn't know who was working with who. She knew they were armed troops. She didn't really have any kind of standing army or anything like that. So she made a very wise in, in my opinion, very noble decision to say, you know what, I will I will surrender for the moment because I don't want to I want to avoid any unnecessary bloodshed like.

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Anybody who fights for me is going to get wasted by these American Marines, and I don't want to see that happen, so I will surrender. But I'm not surrendering my position to the provisional government. I'll surrender to the United States of America temporarily until they can restore my position, because this is B. S.

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Yeah. And in her statement, we don't read the whole thing, but at the end, she essentially says, I'm doing this for now, until which time I will be reinstated as the authority, at which point everyone just kind of patted her on the head and said, that's that's adorable. Yeah. Do you think that's actually going to happen?

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She said, P.S. B. S and I don't think we mentioned this new provisional government said, all right, we have a president now and his name is Senator Dole, if that name sounds familiar. Sanford's brother James founded the Dole Fruit Company in Hawaii in 1899. So really no surprise how that worked out. Right.

[00:42:36]

So so let's just recap real quick. OK, so there was a group of American and European white business interests, landowners, businessmen who overthrew like during this during a little melee after a cop was shot, ran up onto the Capitol steps, read a proclamation that they were in charge. John John Stevens, who we had mentioned, he was the American minister to Hawaii. He was very much in on this and in league with the Hawaiian League.

[00:43:05]

And he said I, as official representative of the United States, officially recognize you, the provisional government, as the true government of Hawaii no longer recognize the monarch. And that was it. All of a sudden, this island kingdom of Hawaii that had been around for a thousand or more years and had been organized for a couple of hundred years or one hundred or more years, it just didn't exist anymore, poof. Because an American minister recognized a group of other Americans who just said, we claim this place basically as our own.

[00:43:39]

Yeah. And they said, you know, we're voting for this stuff now, doulas president. And like I said, but the royalists are boycotting the elections. So the annexation party, which eventually became the American Union party, they just were winning the elections because it was no contest, basically. Yeah.

[00:43:56]

Which is a I mean, it's a problem. You're in such a pickle with that, you know, like you're like I reject that these elections are even valid on their face. But but then if they just keep holding these elections and other people keep recognize them as valid, then you're so. Well, you know, it was a really sticky, terrible situation for the native Hawaiians and their monarch.

[00:44:18]

Yeah. So Dole and the gang are firmly entrenched at this point. And this is when they can really, really start to go after annexation. It's over in America. You have Grover Cleveland in office and he's like, wait a minute, this this all sounds very kinky and illegal. So I'm going to send an envoy, James Blunt, to Hawaii. You put together a report and and report back to me and let me know what's going on. Blunt went over, put together a report and he said, yeah, it was super illegal.

[00:44:49]

What happened? And so Cleveland said, All right, Queen, if you want, we'll send troops in there to over overthrow the republic and put you back in in a position of queen. But what you have to do is, is you've got to offer amnesty to that committee of safety that overthrew you kind of using our soldiers to begin with. And she probably had whiplash at this point, but she was like, no, I'm not going to do that.

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And actually, those guys should be beheaded if I'm really being completely honest. And so Cleveland kind of slumped down and said, all right, well, I guess we we're not going to do that then.

[00:45:27]

Yeah, he said beheadings are going to yeah. It's going to be tough to get past Congress. So I guess we don't have anything to say here. But you have to kind of hand it to you, Kilani, that I mean, she stuck to her principles. Yeah, she could she could have been restored right now and maybe even back to, like, the pre figurehead version of the monarchy. And she said, no, I'm cutting their heads off.

[00:45:51]

If you put me back is queen. Yeah.

[00:45:54]

At the same time the US Congress gets involved, they said, you know what, we're the ones who investigate people so listened over our guy, John Tyler Morgan and Morgan went over and his report said, you know what? This was not some illegal coup. This was just Hawaii being in Hawaii. This is their politics. This is how they do things. We didn't really do anything wrong. No blood on our hands.

[00:46:19]

It's why this is what they do. No big deal. So the Congress is like good enough for us by this time. Also, Cleveland had been replaced by who is Cleveland successor McKinley. Oh, OK. So the McKinley tariff came before all this, huh? Yeah, it came after all this. No, I got the idea that maybe it was as a senator or something. OK, I might be completely wrong, though. No, but that would make way more sense.

[00:46:47]

But the point is, is that McKinley was much more in favor of annexation than Cleveland was. And so the the United States officially annexed Hawaii as a territory in 1898.

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And this was exactly, exactly what all of those American and European landowners wanted, because especially in America, no longer were they subject to these high tariffs for the imported goods because Hawaii was annexed territory. But, Chuck, they also were in a state, which means that they weren't subject to U.S. laws like immigration, which meant that they could continue up their human trafficking, which meant that in annexed territory, their profit margins were as wide as they've ever been, basically.

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Yeah, I mean, those were I mean, they were terrible in reality, but those were the golden years. If you're a plantation owner in Hawaii because you're basically just making money hand over fist with no oversight. Right. And by the way, I just looked at real quick, McKinley was a House representative when that tariff came out not to thank you.

[00:47:59]

There was a really great Encho correction. We usually don't do this. So when does statehood come on the scene? Because Hawaii didn't become a state until 1959, which was not that long ago now.

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It was. And it was a full 60 plus years after it was annexed and that because they were just fat cats and they were loving it.

[00:48:20]

That's exactly right. The the powerful interests who basically ran the legislature said, hey, you know, we really like Chuck said, we're making money hand over fist. And somebody said, Who's Chuck? He said, just give it a couple of decades. You'll see it's going to knock your socks off.

[00:48:36]

But they had no no desire to be a state because then that meant that the immigration laws would be imposed and they'd have to follow a lot more social and cultural mores that America had established. And it was going to be a bad jam for them. The other thing was here at home, and it was just straight up like racist xenophobia. Yeah.

[00:48:58]

You know, I think I don't know if we said to put a pin in it, but we were talking about all these migrant workers who, you know, had kids and stuff and those kids were born there, eventually became a non-white majority in Hawaii. And they were like, you know, what if we make this place a state? He said they're going to actually these migrant workers are going to gain real voting power and they have a non-white majority.

[00:49:22]

And we really don't want those people in our Congress, in Congress.

[00:49:26]

That was basically the reason they kept away from being a state until 1959. People didn't want people of Asian or native Hawaiian descent in DC in Congress, I guess in that not. Yeah.

[00:49:38]

So it took until March 18th, 1959, to finally become a state, and then it took until 1993 for Congress to pass an apology bill. And this is hysterical and it's so believable. But it points out that they were it was disputed because they were literally arguing about either the blunt report or the Morgan report being more accurate, like 100 years later. Yeah. Can you do Clinton apologizing?

[00:50:06]

Oh, what do I have to apologize for?

[00:50:10]

That was great. So so that Bill actually said that Hawaii or the Native Hawaiians, quote, never directly relinquished to the US their claims to their inherent sovereignty, the U.S. said in 1993 in so in so many words like the United States stole Hawaii. Hawaii is a state because we took it basically back in 1890, the early 80s. Pretty great story. It is. So the you were asking about the pulse of Hawaii today. There's a bill that was introduced in 2000 by Senator Daniel Akaka, and he's since retired, I believe.

[00:50:47]

But the Akaka bill is still around and it basically would extend sovereignty to native Hawaiians in virtually the same way that Native American tribes in the continental U.S. have their own tribal nations. They have their own governments that make decisions for them and they have their own laws and all that. And there's it's just never been passed. There's I don't think there's quite enough support for it or what the hold up is. But we're still languishing right now. Hmm. I haven't been I've got to go at some point.

[00:51:17]

Oh, dude, I would like to live there one day. Yeah. Maybe that's a good place for you, you and you me to retire. It's a it's amazing. So maybe I'll meet up with Connacher. Okay. The Hawaiian hillbilly while we're there.

[00:51:30]

I think with your Magnum obsession, you were destined to just while away with a coconut, with a straw in it, in your hand. Who do I have to. You'll get a refill, this coconut. I used to be somebody. How do you think I got this rainbow helicopter? That's right. Me and I've been to the Magnum house before you took me.

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Does not surprise me. Oh, it's neat. Well, you got anything else about the overthrow of Hawaii? Nope. Well, if you want to know more about the overthrow of Hawaii, there's a lot more out there. It's pretty interesting story in Hawaiian culture is pretty interesting to know that we dug into it.

[00:52:06]

And since I said that it's time for listener mail, I'm going to call this Anvil's.

[00:52:14]

And by the way, this this is from Nolan. Nolan did not point this out, but we heard from many people who said that the smithey was not the blacksmith, but the place their workshop is called the Smithie and Methy.

[00:52:29]

Like, that's the blacksmith. Yeah, that's what I thought. I think they're the Smith, OK, not the Smiths. That's Morrissey and Johnny Moore and Company. That's right.

[00:52:38]

Uh, hey, guys. Loved the episode on blacksmithing. I've been a blacksmith since I was 19. When I bought my first anvil, I started listening stuff you should know during grad school and my anvil was sadly backed away. I had no time to use it, but thankfully it isn't on the shelf any longer. And I found myself sitting next to it while listening to your episode seems silly, but these things have a real personality to them. They're like old friends.

[00:52:58]

I met mine close to a decade ago and it's a one dash zero dash. Sixteen hundred and twenty eight pound Peter. Right. Wow. That means something to the bitties. I was impressed by the Peter, right.

[00:53:11]

Yeah. He is a legendary novelist Smithy. So, uh, one thing on the show I thought I'd mention is about Anvil's. Josh said you want to attach the anvil to a stump to disperse the hammer straight to the earth, which is partially right. Which is partially correct, but missed one beautiful thing about a good anvil, which is its rebound. And Anvil's quality can be measured by the rebound. This is how much force pushes back at you when you strike, because this is a good anvil.

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I'm sorry. Because of this, a good angle hits back when you strike it and a good blacksmith uses this to effectively forge both sides of a workpiece at the same time. I also one thing.

[00:53:51]

I also saw somebody else write in to say that that helps you in swinging a ten pound hammer like like working the rebound to the advantage to totally. He said, you can tell if you have a good anvil by the rebound, by dropping a ball bearing on it or lightly dropping a hammer head and seeing how high it bounces. A dead anvil will have no bounce and only gives a the soft thud. A good anvil bounces back a lot and leaves a ringing in the air.

[00:54:19]

And this is actually where the phrase has a nice ring to it comes from. Oh really?

[00:54:24]

About that. I love that stuff. I love it. Uh, it was a blacksmithing craze. So great job guys. As always, keep it up. I always love tuning in these shows. Can't wait to hear more. And that is Nolan. Thanks, Dylan.

[00:54:35]

You really quenched our thirst for etymology big time.

[00:54:39]

Appreciate, Nolan. Appreciate everybody. All of the Smiths who wrote in to let us know all the stuff we got wrong, but also say, hey, you really got it right.

[00:54:47]

So in farriers, we heard from farriers. Yeah, tons of Ferrier's out there. So we appreciate all of you. And we're fascinated by the work you do, the creed. If you want to get in touch with us, you can send us an email, send it off to Stuff podcast that I heart. Radio dot com. Stuff you should know is a production of radios HowStuffWorks for more podcasts, my heart radio, the radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

[00:55:22]

From My Heart radio, it's the Hey Pal podcast, hey, pal. Hey, pop quiz, Jared and Dave, we are going to be talking sports. We have Julian Edelman on our podcast today. Julian, it's football movies who's advancing between Jerry Maguire and Warner.

[00:55:37]

I think you got a good water boy.

[00:55:38]

Oh, we've got it upstairs. We're going to be talking entertainment.

[00:55:43]

Jeremy Piven. I shouldn't tell the story, but I'm going to anyway, I. I'm going to call my pals. Are you going to call your pal?

[00:55:49]

I'm going to call my pal. Zendaya Tiffany Haddish. Joe Buck. J.J. What? Mr. Kevin Hart. Odell Beckham. Junior. Snoop Dogg. The dogs definitely, you know, hail. Mark Cuban, if you had to quarantine with one person you didn't know, who would you quarantine with? Am I still married? I had cancer.

[00:56:12]

Who should we call next? Dave. We're calling everybody.

[00:56:15]

It's the Apple podcast series premieres September 29th on the radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast. Hi, this is Hillary Clinton, host of the new podcast, You and Me both, there's a lot to be anxious and worried about right now, and it's made so much worse by the fact that we can't be together. So I find myself on the phone a lot, talking with friends, experts, really anyone who can help make some sense of these challenging times like Sarmin.

[00:56:44]

Nasrat, author of one of my favorite cookbooks, or Stacy Abrams, who we know as the woman who should be governor of Georgia. But did you know she's also an award winning romance novelist or Frantz, who has lots to say about everything from athleisure to the American dream? These conversations have been a lifeline for me, and now I hope they will be for you, too. So please listen to you and me both starting September 29 on the I Heart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.