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Hey, and welcome to the peanuts cast. I'm Josh. There's Chuck, Ben sitting in, and this is part two of two, The Deuce, as we call it sometimes, about stuff you should know about peanuts.

That's right. If you remember where we left off, Charlie Brown had just murdered Snoopy and was on the run from the law. No, of course not. We had made up, and surely no one's going to listen to this one first, but just to catch you up, we covered most of Charles Schultz's early life, the birth of peanuts, and we had gotten up to Snoopy character-wise. Here we go with that little black and white Beagle that is probably the weirdest comic character of all time.

Yeah, and we said before he was based on Schultz's Spike, who apparently could eat Razorblades without getting sick. He had another dog.

How did they know that?

I guess Spike ate Razorblades once. By accident. They were like, Oh, okay, he's good. That's what he was in Ripley's Believe It or Not for.

Eating Razorblades.

Yeah, not getting sick. He had another dog named Snuki, just like the Jersey Shore character. And then, apparently, his mom suggested that as she was dying, that if the family ever got another dog, they should name it Snoopy, like S-N-U-P-I, which apparently is a term of endearment in Norwegian. So you put all those together, you mix them up, put them in a blender, blend it, and then regret that immediately, you've got Snoopy.

Yes. Snoopy was a black and white beagle who slept on top of a dog house. Apparently, that came around in '58. For the first few years, Snoopy actually slept in the house. And if you wonder why Snoopy was on top of the house, it's so you could see Snoopy. It'd be very weird to have a cartoon drawn inside of a dog house. So it was just a utilitarian decision. Snoopy was, like I said, one of the weirdest character in comics, I think, because Snoopy had, and my favorite thing about Snoopy was this weird fantasy life that Snoopy lived, where he had these alter egos. I think there were more than 100 Snoopy alter egos that range from being a world famous. It was always world famous, usually. A world famous tennis star. He was a world famous surgeon, an attorney. The Fierce Vulture is one of my favorite alter egos. A world famous author. Joe Cool was one I wasn't super into, actually. It's probably my least favorite alter.

That's funny. My grandma called me Joe Cool because I sent her a card once as a kid and identified myself. I think I signed it as Joe Cool. So she always called me Joe Cool from that moment on.

But the really weird one was the Flying Ace alter ego in which Snoopy was an airplane fighter pilot from World War II that had an ongoing, I was about to say beef, but just ongoing battle with the Red Baren fighter pilot from Germany. And that became a big hit song in 1966. It was a novelty song by the Royal Guardsmen that hit number two in the United States. Wow. Which is... I mean, I had this '45. It was a time, and we've talked about some famous novelty songs in the past, but it was a time when a novelty song could be a legit number 1 hit.

Yeah, or number two, at least.

Yeah.

So that flying ace thing, one of the things that peanuts is known for is it was generally not political. It was much more universal than that. It wasn't so narrow as to discourse on politics.

Right.

But during the Vietnam War, and Charles Schultz, remember, he was a veteran of World War II, very proud veteran. And during the Vietnam War, he gave official approval for the Air Force to use Snoopy as a mascot in Vietnam. I remember that. And at the same time, as it became clear that the United States strategy and involvement in Vietnam was just a catastrophe and disastrous and being led by who were completely amoral, even Charles Schultz became dissatisfied or against the Vietnam War, and he used the World War I flying ace to comment on the Vietnam War. It went as It became as overt as there's one where Snoopy as the World War I flying ace has cursed this stupid war. And eventually it even spilled out from the flying ace. There's strips where Linus and Charlie Brown are discussing the prospect of being drafted. I mean, he got pretty anti-war, as a matter of fact, during the Vietnam era, which was really out of character for not just him, but also for peanuts. But I think that just goes to show how unpopular the Vietnam War was, that even Charles Schultz, this conservative, Methodist, World War II veteran, was speaking out against it through his characters.

Yeah, I think Franklin's dad was in Vietnam during the comic strip.

Exactly, yeah.

And by the way, I think it said World War II instead of World War I, so in show correction.

Oh, did you say II? I'm sorry, I didn't correct you. I really loathe that I missed the chance. Hey, you mentioned Joe Cool. There was an offshoot of Joe Cool from the '90s, wasn't there?

I don't know, was there?

Yeah, you got to mention Joe Grunge.

I wasn't around for Joe Grunge.

I wasn't either, but I mean, I'm aware he existed.

I wasn't aware he existed.

Well, now you know.

It sounds like he rolled with the times. So Snoopy had a family. We mentioned Spike. He had a whole litter that he was born with. Spike Bell Marbles, Olaf, Andy, Molly, and Rover. And Spike was the one that I loved. Spike became, he became arguably a main character in the '90s, basically. But he appeared in 1975, and he always had that hat on, and he had those whiskers that looked like a little Beatnik mustache. Yeah. He lived alone in the California desert, and he was usually by his big cactus. He was an altar of Snoopy in demeanor.

Yeah, for sure. But it's not like Snoopy was high, strong, or up tight. They were very different, though, but I'm not sure how one was a foil of the other. I think they were just different.

Oh, I don't think they were foils. I think Yeah, and I think Snoopy... I mean, I think he was precocious. But again, it almost felt like a spin off within the old thing, within its own thing, because he and Woodstock were commonly... I mean, he would interact with the other characters, but he was often doing his own thing.

Right. Yeah, like you said, with Woodstock. I have a question for you. When you were growing up, did you have the Snoopy Snow cone machine?

I did. You're a lucky kid. I'm pretty sure either that or a friend did. I can't remember.

That stuff was addictive.

I had access to one.

Yeah, same here. I had access to one, but I had to go play at somebody's house to get a Snoopy Snow cone.

I don't think... Maybe I didn't have one. Or if it was, it was a hand me down. I know one thing for sure. My parents didn't go out and buy me that thing new.

Right. They got it at a yard sale, and it hadn't been washed out from the last time?

Probably so.

I got one other little piece of Snoopy Trivia.

All right.

Snoop The Dog. He was nicknamed by his mom because she thought that he looked like Snoopy as a young man.

I could see that.

Totally. Once you hear it, you're like, Oh, my God, he does look like Snoopy.

Yeah, that's very cute.

Yeah, I agree.

And Snoopy the Dog loved smoking some weed.

I don't know. I think that might have been Woodstock, who I say we talk about real quick. You want to?

Sure. I mean, Woodstock, we talked a little bit about Woodstock in the Woodstock Woodstock episode because Woodstock was named for Woodstock because June 22nd, 1970, is when Woodstock the Bird got its name. I think he was around in the cartoon before that but didn't have a name. And there were other birds in the cartoon that preceded Woodstock.

Yeah. And when they finally début Woodstock's name, it's Snoopy hanging out on the roof. And I guess Woodstock had been around for a while. And he said, here he thinks, I finally found out what that stupid bird's name is. You'll never believe it. And apparently, it was absolutely based on Woodstock. And there is an author named Michelle Abate, who wrote a book on Charlie Brown and Analyzing Charlie Brown, Blockhead's Beagles and Sweet Baboo's, New Perspectives on Charles M. Schultz peanuts, where Michelle says, Woodstock represented the younger generation, like hippies, like straight up hippies. That's what Woodstock represented. They where Woodstock was innocent and naive and just childlike and having fun and doing their own thing. And then even more arcanely, the fact that when Woodstock spoke, the only person that could understand Woodstock was Snoopy, and the reader can't. It's just these little chicken scratch lines. Do you remember that?

Yeah, or Woodstock scratch.

So Michela Bate makes the case that Charles Schultz, in some way, shape, or form, is making a commentary on how the older generation can't understand the younger generation. But for him, that was just an unusual nod, a kind nod to the younger generation, who a lot of people his age and from his political bent, didn't think very highly of, but apparently he did.

All right. That's one of those... That's like when I was taking English classes in college, when I was like, okay, if you say so.

It's analysis, it's interpretation.

I love all that stuff.

You can make a pretty good case for it. You can also say it's almost like a fan theory Yeah, well, I think it for sure is, but that's just what commentary is, right? I think, well, it's a fan theory in an academic book form.

Yeah, exactly. That's the only thing that separates fan theory from just printing it in a book or typing it on the internet.

Right. But supposedly, there's one other thing. More than once, Snoopy refers to Woodstock as a hippie bird.

Yeah.

Did that persuade you even further?

No, I didn't think he wasn't non-hippie, but the whole the generational chicken scratch representing... I'm just not sure about that.

Okay, I got you.

But I love it. I love talking about that stuff.

I do, too.

Do you like talking about Peppermint Patty and Marcy?

Love it.

A lot of people love it because a lot of people has become one of these Bert and Ernie things where they're like, Hey, listen, Peppermint Patty and Marcy are clearly gay young girls who just maybe don't know it yet. There's always been fan speculation about that. I think that's fine. That's all well and good. Charles Schultz himself was interviewed in 1997 and said that he understood people talk a lot about that, but he said, Sexuality to him just wasn't relevant to the comic because they were just children. That's not to say that a child can't be gay, but he was like, it was the thing that didn't enter his mind. I don't think he was offended or thought it was weird that people would speculate about that, but it doesn't sound like that was his bent when he drew this very classic tomboy character who was very good in athletics, who was called Sir by Marcy Lucy, which was always very funny to me. But either way, two great characters. One of the favorite things for me with Peppermint Patty was how she would invert names. She called Charlie Brown Chuck. She did the opposite for Lucy.

She called Lucy Lucile. I think at one point, maybe it's Schroeder calls her Patricia. Oh, yeah. Which was a little spin on that. But that's just a fun little character thing that I really enjoyed.

I always loved Peppermint Patty's voice in the TV specials.

Yeah, same.

It was perfect. Yeah. So there was a little strip or a little period of strips where Charles Schultz, who had by this time befriended Billy Jean King as Title IX was being passed or was being discussed, whether it should be passed or not, which allowed equal or demanded equal funding for women's sports in, I guess, just college, right?

I'm pretty sure it was just college, and there was more to it, but I think it was about equal opportunities and funding for college athletics. Right.

Which is nuts because we're talking about the late '70s. Isn't that crazy? But anyway, Billy Jean King, who was a champion tennis star, was also a champion of Title IX. And being her friend and supporter, Charles Schultz drew some peanut strips, basically using Peppermint Patty as a stand-in. And a lot of people are like, See, Billy Jean King was gay. She came out in 1981. So of course, Peppermint Patty was, and that's what Charles Schultz meant. But no, he was using her as a stand-in for a woman athlete, as Billy Jean King was. And in that strip, they're talking about how Peppermint Patty is going to show all the men that she can do anything they can do, and maybe even better, and she's great at sports. And then I think somebody asks Lucy, who's standing there, what she's going to do, because she's no good at sports. And Lucy goes, speak out, so loud that Charlie Brown is doing a summer salt midair. And that was just perfect because you had Peppermint Patty, you had Lucy doing her thing, and then you had Charlie Brown standing in for the bystanding rest of us who are now going to be moved by the arguments in favor of Title IX.

Pretty cool.

Amazing. So some more Peppermint Patty stuff. She was one of three characters who did not go to the same school as the rest of the peanuts gang. Peppermint Patty and Marcy and Franklin lived at the other side of town. So they represented... They never came out and said it, but they represented not poor children, but it was definitely the other side of town type of situation. They had broken homes. They didn't get to go to the same school. I remember when Franklin visits Charlie Brown's neighborhood for the first time, he sees the psych booth, he sees Snoopy on the house, and the great pumpkin is talked about, and he leaves the neighborhood to go home and said, This neighborhood has me shook. It was definitely a demarcation line for Marcy and Franklin and Peppermint Patty. Also, Peppermint Patty, her mom was, I guess, dead. They I never said she's dead, but she said, My mom's not around. Oh, really? Yeah, she lived with her father only, which was a very different thing for a comic back then. Right. One of my favorite things is, even though we never hear parents speak into things, there are references to things parents say.

Peppermint Patty's father always called her a rare gem, which I thought was very sweet.

That is sweet.

Because she wasn't very smart.

So yeah, Peppermint Patty was... She was ground-baking in a lot of ways in that. So yeah, she was a tomboy. She was the daughter of a single parent, her child of a single parent. And then on top of that, she was one of the first comic strip females who made her own way. She didn't need a man. She wasn't there to support the man like Blondey did to Dagwood or anything like that. She was just her own person making her own way by her own terms. And that was another ground-breaking thing. I think she came along in 1966 and people hadn't done that before.

Yeah, she had a crush on Charlie Brown, as did Marcy. Marcy was very soft-spoken and shy. She was very smart. In fact, she's the one, I think, that points out, I feel bad for Pepper and Patty because she was written so unintelligently. Her teacher gave her a plaque at one point for being in the D minus Hall of Fame, and she didn't realize Snoopy was even a dog until 1974. What? When Marcy pointed out, she to say he was a funny-looking kid with a big nose. They write her as really not very intelligent. I always felt bad for Peppermint Patty, but Marcy was always her loyalest friend. I don't know if I said, but also had a crush on Charlie Brown. My favorite cute thing ever because Marcy was the opposite of Peppermint Patty. She was smart and she was not good at sports, whereas Peppermint Patty was the jock. Marcy called the Super Bowl in one comic, The Splendid Bowl, which I just love.

She is pretty great. She didn't have a last name. Peppermint Patty's last name was Rykard. Marcy never had a last name. Some people said that the reason why is because that allowed her to be just this whatever Charles Schultz needed her to be or say or do. But I think very quickly, Marcy's character took over and probably constrained Charles Schultz in a lot of ways because she was just weird little kid who had just her own set of understanding of the world that didn't really fit with anybody else's. It was just totally hers. Like I said, Charles Schultz was once asked, Why does Marcy call Patty, Peppermint Patty, sir. That's so great. Apparently, his response was, I have no idea. Marcy's a very strange little girl.

Again, he's a conduit. I mean, it wouldn't surprise me if that just popped into his head.

Yeah, for sure. I hadn't I realized this, but a lot of Asian-American kids took Marcy to be Asian-American.

Weird. Why?

I don't know. I'm not sure. I guess I don't know. Maybe I don't know. I have no idea. But I saw that in several places.

All right. Well, that feels like a good time for a break.

Oh, yeah, sure.

All right. Well, we'll come back and pick up with Franklin, one of my favorite characters, right after this. On McCartney: A Life in Lyricks, you can hear the stories behind iconic tracks from Paul McCartney's career, like Hey, June. The movement you need is on your shoulder.

The movement you need is on your shoulder. Now, I thought that was me just blocking in. And when I played it to John and Yoko in my music room on my psychedelic piano, I'm sitting facing this way, and they're standing behind me, almost on my shoulder. And they're listening, and I'm so Pleased with myself I'm playing this new song.

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Iheartpodcast update this week on your free iHeartRadio app. In retrospect, revisit pop culture moments from the '80s and '90s and try to understand what it taught us about the world and a woman's place in it. Crying in public, two 20-something college women living in NYC dive into growing up at a time when there was no distinction between what's public and what's private. Best of both worlds. A discussion on work-life balance, career development, parenting, time management, productivity, and making time for fun. Hear these podcasts and more on your free iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcast.

Learning stuff with Joshua and Charles. Stuff you should know.

All right, we mentioned Franklin before as being one of the only three that didn't go to the same school, lived in a different neighborhood. Franklin is very famous, obviously, for being the first Black peanuts character, and that It happened for a very purposeful reason. In 1968, there was an LA school teacher named Harriet Glickman, who wrote a letter to Charles Schultz. This was just after Martin Luther King Jr. Had been assassinated, and she said, We need to overcome the vast sea of misunderstanding fear, hate, and violence, and I think you should draw a black character for peanuts. I think that would be a big step forward and a big move. Schultz initially declined, and it wasn't because he didn't want to, but he said that he thought it might be too patronizing a move. But then thought the better of it after a little bit more thought and some advice from Glickman's neighbor, who was a black man. His name was Kenneth Kelly. And he said, You know what? I see what he's saying about being patronizing. So if you're going to do it, just do it in a very casual way. Don't make it some big revolutionary stand.

Just all of a sudden have this Black kid in there. And that's what he did. Yeah.

And doing that like that would have this twofold effect. One, it would keep Charles Schultz from having to make a big social statement. But two, it would also just show how utterly normal Black kids and White kids commingling was, that there wasn't even any commentary about it. It's just this new character who Charlie Brown met happened to be Black. That was it. And that's how it happened. They met at the beach when Charlie Brown was on vacation with his family, and Can I read the comic strip?

Yeah, go ahead. All right. It's four panels. Charlie Brown's on the beach. I'll actually-Shirt off. He's got his shirt off. You got to take your shirt off.

It was already off.

Okay. So Franklin comes up with a beach ball and says, Is this your beach ball? Second panel, Charlie says, Hey, yeah, thank you very much. Franklin says, I was swimming out there and it came floating by. Third panel, my silly sister threw it in the water. Franklin says, I see you're making a sandcastle, and it's a crooked tower. In the last panel, Franklin says, It It looks crooked. And Charlie said, I guess maybe it is where I come from, I'm not famous for doing things right. Just quintessential Charlie Brown.

I acted all that up, by the way. You guys just couldn't see it.

It was great, but it was a very sweet way to meet. And then Charlie invited Franklin over to his side of town, and that's where Franklin got shook.

These are the strips that we learned Franklin's dad is off fighting in Vietnam. And we learned Charlie Brown's dad is a barber. I don't know if that was the first time or not, but he mentions this in response to Franklin talking about his dad, which, if you'll remember, Charles Schultz's dad was a barber, so I think that's pretty sweet.

I love it. You know what? At the end, I meant at the beginning to read the very first ever strip. Let's save that for the end.

Okay. Sadly, as we can attest, when you do the right thing and promote social unity and harmony, oftentimes, ugly people will say ugly things about it. And Charles Schultz was no exception. He said he didn't get a huge amount of hate mail, but it was very vehement. And that included some of the editors of the papers that his column was syndicated in. He could have lost a significant amount of money had the wrong vibe been struck and a push against him been really founded and carried out among especially Southern newspapers. He was getting letters from editors saying things like, I don't appreciate seeing Black kids and White kids being portrayed in the same school. What universe do you live in, essentially? Where are you getting these far-out ideas? And he just basically, he just shook it off. He was like, Whatever. Some people are going to hate it at first, but they're going to get used to it because I'm not stopping. And he didn't. And he's looked at two different ways for this. One, that, frankly, Franklin was never fully flushed out to the satisfaction of a lot of readers. And then there's another vein where Charles Schultz has looked at it as really putting his reputation and his entire comic on the line by doing this because he thought it was the right thing and that it was groundbreaking and opened the gates for other comic strip artists, particularly the Black ones, to follow in his footsteps.

Yeah, he threatened to quit at one point. There were some papers that said they were going either not run those strips or have them redone. And he said, You're going to print my comics as drawn, or I'm done, or you lose me for everything. And this was to the actual syndication Corporation Company. And so they back down and allowed them to keep going. But one of the cartoonists that was certainly inspired by them that you mentioned was a guy named Rob Armstrong, who did the comic strip Jump Start. And we mentioned that Marcy didn't have a last name. Franklin was another character that didn't have a last name for a while, and eventually got the last name Armstrong, named after Rob Armstrong, the cartoonist, which is just a great tribute. Schultz came to him, They became friends, and he asked him first, If you don't mind, can I use your last name? And of course, Armstrong, What do you say to that? You're just floored, and was very, very touched and honored that he became his last name.

Yeah, for sure.

It's a great story. And by the way, there's a great article about Harry Glickman and her neighbor, Kenneth Kelly. There's a great article in LAAS just from a few years ago about this story, and it shows them still friends today hanging out, and there's a great picture of them with a little holding a Franklin stuffy.

That's sweet. I think Harry Glickman passed in the last couple of years, but that's sweet that they were friends till the end.

Yeah, this was in 2020. Got you. Very cute.

So who else Can we talk a little bit about a couple more slightly minor characters I still think are worth mentioning?

Yeah, we definitely need to mention Pig Pen, who is a very beloved character, even though he almost does nothing.

Yeah, he was another kid who had a great perfect voice in the TV specials. It was raspy. I can't describe it any other way, but raspy, but it fit him perfectly.

Yeah, always dirty, always had the flies and the dust around him. I I think everyone, especially these days, kids are cleaner. But I remember in the '70s, I remember the dirty kids. Yeah, I did, too. It just always seemed to be covered in filth. Yeah.

And there was a strip. So he was introduced in a series of strips starting in 1954, so pretty early on. And he says that he hasn't got a name. He says, People just call me things, real insulting things. And I guess they never changed that. His name is always Pig Pen. But in one of the strips, somebody's like, They just presume that he hates baths, and he goes, No, I really like baths. I just like getting dirty more. So he's like a cool little kid who also I've seen him described as maybe the one that's closest to self-fulfillment and satisfaction and contentment of any of the characters is Pigpen, which is pretty great.

It seems like he's never pining for something like the rest of them are.

No, he just goes and does it or gets it or whatever.

Yeah, and he was in, Dave did the math, 0.5 5, 5% of the comic strips featured Pig Pen. A little over 100 out of almost 18,000.

There's also that Grateful Dead connection. One of the founding members of the Grateful Dead was Ron McNernan, whose nickname was Pig Pen, apparently, because he was a little smelly himself.

Is that how he got the name?

Yeah. Then Sally, man. We got to talk about Charlie Brown's little sister, Sally.

Yeah, with her naturally curly hair. She was always proud of that hair. Like I mentioned earlier, it might have been the previous episode, Lucy was always jealous because Sally, Charlie got this sweet little sister, and she wanted a little sister, not Linas. They all had little crushes, which is sweet. We mentioned Lucy and Schroeder, but Sally had a big crush on Linus, which is very sweet.

Yeah, and one of the other things about Sally that was great was that when she was upset, she would go talk to the school building.

Yeah, and it would talk back.

Yeah, it would have thought bubbles just like Snoopy he does in response to her stuff. One time, I can't remember what she was talking. Oh, she said she was scoled by her teacher for talking in class, but the teacher was mistaken. She hadn't been talking at all, and she was really upset about this. And the school thinks, poor sweet baby. Yeah. Just sweet stuff like that. Sally just attracted that thing.

Well, and the school thing brings up the fact, and I know we talked a little bit about the minimalist style in the first episode, but so many of his panels were just them in front of a brick wall, or them at that psychiatrist stand, or Snoopy's Dog house, or just the pitcher's mouth. It was all just very Spartan, sparse stuff.

Yeah, but it worked. I saw it described as that universe's It's bounded by those four panels and connected by the gutters, the spaces between the four panels, but somehow it just seems like boundless. There's no geography to it. You just are where that moment is taking place. But couldn't possibly imagine the peanuts universe in some mapped-out way.

Yeah, I wonder if that's why it never occurred to me to wonder where they were from.

Yeah.

Have you ever thought about, where Or was peanuts based? I've never even wondered that.

I never thought that or wondered that, but I saw in a number of the essays that they presumed that it was in the Midwest because the seasons, there were definite seasons in peanuts. I think as a kid, that one of the things that really got to me because I love the seasons, too. So to see the peanuts gang hanging out in a pile of leaves or ice-skating or something like that, or it was summer and there was an apple on a tree or something, even Like you said, even though it's minimalist and you can't even begin to imagine where they're from, it would evoke how those kids were feeling. It added an extra layer to the dialog or the action or something like that because you, as as a kid, knew how you felt when you were standing next to a pile of leaves and it was chilly out, and Thanksgiving and Christmas were just coming right down the pike.

So we know it's not peanuts is anywhere USA, except Florida, Southern California, and Hawaii.

Yeah, and I think we said Charles Schultz is from the Minneapolis, Saint Paul area.

Yeah, I'm sure it was just that.

Yeah. I mean, that's generally where it was set. He eventually, I think not too long after getting married the first time, moved to Santa Rosa, California, or Northern California. Santa Rosa is where the Charles Schultz Museum is, and never looked back. But even still, the peanuts gang never suddenly ended up in California. They were still where they were.

That's funny. All right, let's do our final break and finish up with part two of Part Two of peanuts.

Ready for this? We'll be right back in Two and two.

On McCartney, A Life in Lyrx, you can hear the stories behind iconic tracks from Paul McCartney's career, like Hey, Jude. The movement you need is on your shoulder.

The movement you need is on your shoulder. Now, I thought that was me just blocking in. And when I played it to John and Yoko in my music room on my psychedelic piano, I'm sitting facing this way, and they're standing behind me, almost on my shoulder. They're listening, and I'm so pleased for myself I'm playing this new song.

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All that sitting and swiping, our backs hurt, our eyeballs sting, that's our bodies adapting to our technology. Energy, but we can do something about it.

We saw amazing effects.

I really felt like the cloud in my brain dissipated. There's no turning back from me. Make 2024 the year you put your health before your inbox and take the body Body Electric challenge. Listen to Body Electric from NPR on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Do you think Abuelita knows best? Wilmer Valderrama here, executive producer of the podcast, Day My Abuelita, first. And we definitely do. Join us while our host, Viko Ortiz and our Abuelita Liliana Montenegro, play matchmaker for you loving hopefuls out there. Viko? Yes, Wilmer. We are ready for another wild ride. Listen Listen every Thursday as Abuelita Liliana and I meet three single cuties who will vive for a date with one lucky dater. Except to get their heart, they have to went over Abuelita first. How PG is this? Not at all.

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Learning stuff with Joshua. So Chuck, if I can remember all the way back to part one, the first episode in this pairing, An hour and 20 minutes ago. I think I mentioned... How do you know that?

I got a little ticker on my... I got a Timer.

I want one of those.

I got an egg Timer.

Is it a Snoopy egg Timer? It is. So I mentioned that there's no adults in the peanut world, and that if an adult is around, they're either being mentioned, like a real-life adult, or an adult in the peanuts universe, like somebody's parent, Or in the TV specials, you can hear them, but they're off camera. You don't see them. And the only way you hear them is that muted trombone sound effect, right?

Yeah.

There is one strip in the peanuts pantheon, in the 18,000 comic strips, there's one where adults are shown, and even then it's just their legs.

Yeah. And even that, I think, like Franklin was shook, I think peanuts people were shook.

For sure, for a number of reasons. One, this whole series where Lucy is participating in an adult golf tournament for some weird reason, there's way more scenery, way more stuff going on in all the panels, right?

Yeah, it's not a four-panel. Was it from one of the books?

I don't know. It's from 1954, so no, it would have been before the books.

All right. No, it's a Sunday strip. So the Sundays were more than four panels from May 16th, 1954, and In that they're playing golf and stuff. She and Charlie Brown are. Lucy was famously a bad athlete as well because she was always screwing up in right field. But Charlie said she played center field for some reason. Oh, yeah. And in the last panel, it shows them with three or four pair of adult legs standing around. It's almost surreal and disconcerting to see human legs in peanuts.

Yeah.

It's just odd to see.

It is. They're wearing with creases in them and everything. It's not... It ain't right. And I guess- It ain't right. Charles Schultz realized immediately that it ain't right. I can't believe it even got out, but he never did it again.

Yeah, he got death threats.

I'm sure.

How dare you show legs.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, it was a very weird thing. I remember one thing I remember was because I was close to my one grandfather, my mom's dad, before he died. And Charlie Brown and Franklin are always talking their granddads, which I always thought was really great. Yeah.

That is very sweet.

We did mention the TV specials. We went in-depth into the Charlie Brown Christmas special. Do you remember what year it was? What Christmas episode that was?

It was either December fifth or ninth, 1965, when it first- No, I meant ours.

When we recorded our Christmas special where we talked in detail about the Christmas special.

Yeah, December fifth or ninth, 1965.

We had a podcast in 1965?

We have The Way Back Machine. They're all over the place. We have an episode from 720 CE.

Oh, wow. Goodie Clark and Goodie Bryant.

Yeah, that was a wild ride.

I don't remember which Christmas special we had it in, but in one of them, we detail a Charlie Brown Christmas. So we don't have to go over here. But the one surprising thing, if you didn't listen to that app, was that they thought it was going to be a big failure, right?

Yeah. So there was no laugh track, but is a cartoon featuring kids, ostensibly for kids, and there's no laugh track to the jokes. How are the dumb little kids going to know when to laugh? And then it has one of the best jazz soundtracks of all time, Yeah. But that's not exactly what the eight-year-olds are into in 1965, right? So, yeah, the TV executives were like, This is going to go nowhere. And boy, were they wrong?

Oh, man. I mean, There aren't many more iconic Christmas records than that one.

No. And not just Christmas records, the Great Pumpkin Waltz is in there, which is just, for my money, the best one of the whole album. And that whole album is great from the first note to the last.

I shouldn't restrict that to Christmas listening. No. I don't know if it can, though. It would be weird. But I mean, I probably listen to that full record at least 20 times over the month of December. Yeah. Maybe more, probably more than once a day Yeah. If I'm thinking about it.

I'm really almost religious about it because I don't ever want to get sick of it. So I'm really careful how often I listen to it.

Oh, I just pound it. I never get sick of it.

It also has a song that has nothing to do with Christmas, Linas and Lucy, which is what most people who are generally aware of peanuts and aren't hardcore fans consider the peanuts theme.

Oh, interesting. Yeah, and the cultural icon that is the Charlie Brown Christmas tree, and that's become part of the lexicon for a sad little Christmas tree.

Yeah, and you can buy a Charlie Brown Christmas tree, too, and put it on your tabletop, which we've done.

Oh, like a recreation or just a sad little tree?

Well, you could do that and just call your sad little tree Charlie Brown Christmas tree, but you can buy one, and it's like- Like the actual thing? Yeah, it's got like a wooden X that it connects to. It has like a little blue That's amazing. That's a blanket, Linus's blanket that you put around the bottom like he does. It comes with a single red specimen. It's wonderful. You know what, buddy? I know what you're getting for Christmas.

Oh, I could put it next to the leg lamp.

That'd be perfect, actually.

Well, That's great. All right. I mean, we could sit around and talk about peanuts all day long if we're not careful, but we should wrap it up and talk a little bit about the end of peanuts, sadly. Schultz said he was retiring, announced it in December of 1999. He was diagnosed with terminal colon cancer. I don't even think we mentioned that he had a disease throughout most of his career, right? That had hand tremors? Yes.

In 1981, he was diagnosed with essential tremor, which is a tremor that affects you when you try to do something with your hands, most specifically. Like a drawing? Yeah, like drawing seven comic strips a week, every week. And you can actually see very clearly, it's a progressive illness as well, progressive neurological disorder. So it just gets worse with time. And you can see through the progression of peanuts, the lines started getting much more squiggly. But if you look at tests of people with hand tremors, I think the most prevalent test is it's like a circle from the inside out. What the hell is that called? A spiral? A spiral. Thank you. You start at the center and go outward with the spiral, and they'll put that next to somebody who doesn't have an essential tremor and what that looks like. It's just night and day. The fact that he can even continue on for 20 years is amazing. Yeah.

Jeez, unbelievable. Yeah, '99, diagnosed with cancer. He had a big backlog of comic strips that he had drawn, so they were able to keep publishing through his illness until the day after he died, actually, February 12th, 2000. He was 77.

Isn't that remarkable? They both died at the same time, or they both expired at the same time, peanuts and Charles Schultz.

He had that many backlog that it just worked out like that.

Yeah, and he had that many days left.

Yeah, pretty amazing. Unless the family was like, there were 100 more, and they just shoved them in a drawer and said, it's really a great story this way.

I'm hoping that's not the case.

Me too. His family was smart, though, because they said, You know what? We don't think anyone else should ever draw this. Like peanuts should stop because he's not around anymore. And that's what happened. That syndication company, unbelievably, almost honored that request. When you see new peanut stuff now, whether it's like movies and the brand is still a thing, but those those comic strips, if you see them, are all reprints.

Yes, supposedly it's a billion dollar brand. I believe it. And I read a quote from Bill Waterston from Calvin and Hobbes, who basically was like merchandising cartoons and stuff, you can thank Charles Schultz for that.

Amazing. Yeah.

And then we mentioned one more thing before we finished, that there was a tribute to Charles Schultz and peanuts among basically all the working comic strip artists on November 26th, 2022. Very emotional. Yeah. And you can go to the Charles Schultz Museum website, and they have links to all of them. And just some of them are amazing. But a few stood out to me. We talked about the Gil Thorpe one, which now that you've heard these two episodes, go look up that Gil Thorpe, November 26, 2022, comic strip, tribute to peanuts, because finally, Charlie Brown gets to kick the football, and it's just the sweetest thing. I can't believe that they thought of doing that. It was just so perfect. Great. Yeah. There was one from Curtis. You remember we talked about how a lot of Black comic strip artists, He credited Charles Schultz with introducing Franklin as breaking that ceiling for them? Sure. Curtis has one where Curtis, the comic strip character, asks Charlie Brown to hang out, or he goes, Hey, Charlie Brown, what you doing? Charlie Brown goes, Just chilling, homie. Let's hang out. And as they're walking away, Curtis turns to you, the viewer, and is like, That Charlie Brown is a lot cooler than you'd think when he's away from that peanuts strip.

Yeah, it's pretty funny.

Garfield has Snoopy bringing out a 100-year birthday cake.

Yeah, that one's surreal-looking.

And then to me, it is. To me, the one... I give it the most appropriately, awkwardly formal award, Maryworth.

Was that Maryworth? Okay, I thought it was.

So Maryworth is the most bone dry soap opera-y comic strip around to begin with. And just in total Maryworth style, Maryworth is sitting on the couch, and it just explains how this is It's Charles Schultz's 100th birthday, and they're all celebrating it. So happy 100th birthday, Charles Schultz. It's just so just dry.

Yeah, it was very dry. Then Family Circle, I think Jeffie tripped over Sniffy's dead body. That's right.

Which Charlie Brown was on the run from.

I promised I'd read that very first comic strip because it's really emblematic of what Charles Schultz was going after. His debut comic strip for his baby was this. It's a little more crudely drawn, obviously. But panel one, these two kids are sitting on the sidewalk and you see Charlie Brown in the distance walking up. The kid on the sidewalk goes, Well, here comes old Charlie Brown. Then Charlie Brown is walking in front of them. Good old Charlie Brown. Yes, sir. Then he walks by and they're watching him pass and he goes, Good old Charlie Brown. Then the kid on the sidewalk in the last panel says, How I hate him. That was the debut to the world. That's really amazing.

Pretty amazing, everybody. That was a great way to end it, Chuck.

Hey, thanks.

If you want to know more about peanuts, just go start reading peanuts comic strips. Even if you didn't appreciate them, you'll probably learn to like them more just by forcing yourself to. And since I said that, it's time for Listener Mail.

Short and sweet one here. Hey, guys. Hope you're well. Your podcast has been a steady presence in my life. For almost four years, it's got me We won many study sessions and kitchen cleaning weekends over the years. My friend and our partner introduced me to your show, and I'm so thankful she did. Being long distance, it's nice to have something to talk about and learn a few things along the way. Of course, whenever we do see each other, we make it a habit to put on an episode and listen together. I just wanted to say thank you guys for everything you do. You make learning about the common to the obscure exciting and fun, and I look forward to many more years listening to you. Have a wonderful day. This is, of course, for my Canadian, our new friend Olivia Cee in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, North America, planet Earth.

Very nice. Thanks, Olivia. That was very you. What a great one to add to the peanuts episode, Chuck.

Yeah. Yeah.

Well, if you want to be like Olivia and get in touch with us and just say that you appreciate us, we really love to hear that thing once in a while. You can wrap it up, gently caress it on the bottom, and send it off to stuffpodcast@iheartradio. Com.

Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, My Heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. You have a vision, a solution to a social problem. You want to change Ireland for the better, for society. But if you want that vision to become reality, you'll need support. That's where we come in. At Socialentrepreneurs Ireland, we offer direct funding as well as advice and mentoring and other supports. That's how we've helped hundreds of initiatives realize their vision. Apply today at Socialentrepreneurs Ireland. Entrepreneurs. Ie. 20 years changing Ireland. All that sitting and swiping, our backs hurt, our eyeballs sting, that's our bodies adapting to our technology. But we can do something about it.

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