01x06 - Detroit

[bunniefuu]

[Patriotic music]

Dr. John Kellogg says, oh, you should see the corn flakes we're making.

We're making our own cereal.

And Will is saying, oh, no.

I'm not talking right altogether.

Uh, Nader, boss... Ralph Nader.

He's like, well, this is all f*cked up.

And why shouldn't there be safety belts?

So many people would be safer.

And Houdini said, hey! f*ck you!

I'm Houdini!

I'm not that guy you just saw.

Oh, my God.

I have to puke.

♪ ♪

[folk music]

Why do I love Detroit?

Because it's lawless.

[Stammers] And you, and... and you know, it maybe come around to bite your ass in the ass, 'cause your window got broken out and that sucks, and it does, and you go through some hard times.

But the lawlessness is great, 'cause you can just ride your bike to work drinking a beer, just like you're in New Orleans, where you're allowed to.

But you can do that here too.

It's off the chain. It's gonna be amazing.

I love Michigan.

Michigan, that's what's up.

Everyone in Detroit, Judas Priest is better than Iron Maiden, and Iron Maiden is the sh*t.

Hi.

What did you bring?

I brought you this.

Oh, scotch.

As a thank you.

How are you?

Obviously, I love him.

I'm guessing that's a him.

I don't...

I mean, I don't know.

Yeah.

All right, let's do it!

Come on!

Okay, yeah.

Hey, I'm ready, so let's just...

[growling] I wanna do it!

So let's just start.

Hello, I am Paget Brewster, and today we are going to talk about the Kellogg brothers.

In 1876, Dr. John Kellogg created a sanitarium in Battle Creek, Michigan.

Except he was an orator in the Seventh-Day Adventist Church.

He tells his patients, no sex, no meat, no alcohol, no sugar, no, uh, anything, uh, prurient or sensual.

sh*t!

Aren't you guys tired?

Pssht!

Well, can l...

Shh!

All right.

He tells his patients, you need to take at least two solid, ropy poops per day.

In 1880, Dr. John reaches out to his younger brother, Will, who he b*at up the whole time he was growing up, and he says, hey, um, leave that broom company.

I've got this, you know, sanitarium, spa thing.

There's over 1,000 people a week here, hanging out... swimming and doing stuff.

You should just come and, you know, help me out with everything.

And Will says, okay, I gotta get the f*ck out of here.

Will is just sort of this sad little whipping boy for big, famous brother John.

He actually said, "I use my brother as a foot warmer in the winter."

I don't even know what that means.

Like, he b*at him up, and he stuck his feet under him?

So anyway, he has to shave him.

He actually has to call his own brother "Dr. Kellogg"... and has to run the kitchen and has to run the books.

So Dr. John tells his younger brother Will, hey, make something that people would want to eat because no one wants vegetarian food.

So you do this, 'cause I'm busy.

I gotta, you know, do lectures and stuff.

So Will, whose bookkeep... bookkeeping "oppice"...office is next to the kitchen... one night, he's trying to make this stupid vegetarian sh*t.

He leaves the dough out.

He comes in the next morning, and the dough that he left out has molded.

And he's like, oh, God damn it, this sh*t is moldy.

f*ck it. I'm on a budget.

And he puts it through the grinder anyway, and the small amount of mold made that dough flakes.

Corn flakes!

And he's like, hol... Oh, sh*t.

Oh, we made... I made a cereal.

So he tells John, John comes down.

Oh, you know.

And then they start producing this cereal, corn flakes.

Like, corn flakes that we all know... that Will discovered. With mold.

One week, C.W. Post, this industrialist, is visiting, and John says, oh, you should see the corn flakes we're making.

We're making our own cereal.

And Will is saying, oh, no, don't.

I made... I made that.

Don't... you say... and...

[choir sings a dramatic chord]

Oh, oh.

I'm not talking right altogether, but close enough.

C.W. Post steals it, sells it, makes a million dollars.

So Will's like, f*ck you, man.

You f*cked me! You f*cked us!

If we add sugar, we can sell this cereal.

And John says, you can't put sugar on it.

That's not Seventh-Day Adventist.

Who do you think you are?

Will says, oh, you know...

You know who I think I am?

I think I'm the guy who invented f*cking corn flakes.

I'm gonna put sugar on 'em and sell 'em.

And f*ck you.

So he takes his cereal, and he sets up the Kellogg Toasted Flakes Company.

Will makes it a million-dollar enterprise.

And he's like, I'm putting sugar on my sh*t.

f*ck you.

Will wins the name in federal court.

I'm gonna burp.

It's okay.

I hope it's just a burp.

Let's see this closet.

All right.

All these heads, they freak me out.

Yeah, and then the deer.

Well, sorry.

Now, I do have to ask... [laughs]

About this pulp fiction.

Yes.

I just... your beak is touching my...

You want me to help you with that?

This is oddly intimate.

Would you take off all your clothes...

Yes.

And put on my grandmother's halston?

Is it weird?

You actually look... no.

Do you feel like you're looking at your grandma?

No, not at all.

You don't? Okay.

The younger brother, now, finally comes out of his older brother's shadow and becomes a huge American industrialist.

The brothers sue each other back and forth for ten years.

I want the name of Kellogg's.

I want the name of Kellogg's.

I want the name of Kellogg's.

No, I deserve it, I made the...

Whatever.

So Will, this younger brother, wins the name in federal court.

I'm gonna burp.

It's okay.

I hope it's just a burp.

Will is a huge industrialist in the United States.

He invents a bunch of cereals.

Meanwhile, John loses all credibility.

In 1943, John is on his deathbed.

He writes to his younger brother, having not spoken for the past 20 years, and he gave it to his social secretary or whatever... he had no family.

His only family was Will.

She never sent it.

But Will, eight years later... also dying, blind... was told, on his deathbed, your brother wrote a letter eight years ago saying, "I'm sorry.

"I screwed up. I apologize.

"I treated you as a lesser man when in fact, I was the lesser man."

Essentially, that's what he said.

I read it, but I can't remember entirely.

But that's essentially what he said.

Sorry.

Will sat up on his deathbed and said, good God!

Why didn't anyone tell me about this before now?

And he d*ed!

That's just awful.

Yeah.

That's the f*cking worst.

[Munching]

Um, yeah, but... right?

Yeah.

Like, Will was right.

You want to put some sugar on 'em.

Yeah. It is lacking sugar.

Otherwise, it's just mold.

Yeah.

Mold flakes.

I'm good.

Ralph Nader.

The Ralph Nader is responsible for seat belts in cars?

He had the idea to put them in there.

Well, then God bless him.

Ralph Nader.

Cheers to Ralph Nader!

Keepin' us all safe! He's a good guy.

I don't know, actually, what the, uh... when they do public "intoclate"...intoxication.

What's... what's the...

[snickers]

How illegal is it to be drunk in your home?

Can you be so drunk in your home that it's illegal?

Hi.

Today we're gonna talk about Ralph Nader.

He was a Harvard graduate, super egghead.

It was, like, 1965.

Cars were just, like, psychosexual dreamboats.

But, like, there wasn't seat belts.

At the time, like, the car industry, they made a weird stand against safety.

Well, how about we give 'em an option of seat belts or not?

Yeah, but I gotta call the guy, and he's gotta make... you know, we gotta buy the nylon, and someone's gotta design the buckles, and it's a whole thing.

So anyways, so there's, like, no safety sh*t.

And then, like, Ralph Nader, I guess, had a friend, who he was saying, like, that's weird.

Shouldn't there be some kind of option of trying to...

Couldn't I strap myself into the car?

The car flipped over, and his friend was paralyzed.

I'll call him his paralyzed pal.

I guess through a "cursorair"... cursory investigation of safety practices, he's like, well, this is all f*cked up.

And why shouldn't there be safety belts?

It seems like, you know, so many people would be safer.

So he wrote the book Unsafe at Any Speed, which put heat on, uh, General Motors.

So their tactic was to, like, go get Ralph Nader in a compromising position.

Apparently, he shops for food at the supermarket by where he lives.

Gotcha. All right, yeah.

So Nader goes to the supermarket.

You send a couple of those broads over.

And then they got, like, weird, salacious Barbara Eden types... I Dream of Jeannle... to approach him at this supermarket.

You know, Say, mister.

Wanna go for a ride?

Wanna go for a ride in the car?

You wanna go for a ride in the car?

We'll go in the car.

We'll go around the whole neighborhood.

Nader's like, well, this seems odd.

I'm a dork.

There's no way this, you know, Kim Novak, huge-breasted woman, come up to me.

I'm too smart for that.

Something's wrong.

It's gotta be something to do with General Motors.

[Dramatic music]

So he tipped off newspapers and such to be like, Hey, I'm being, you know, harassed like this.

The whole thing blew up for GM.

There's senate hearings where it's like, you... you guys did this?

Yeah, you caught us, I guess.

I guess we did it.

And they had to, like, publicly apologize, which just... just cracks me up, but it happened.

A public apology to Ralph Nader over trying to, like... [laughs]

Blackmail him with... [laughs]

Broads at the supermarket. [Laughs]

We, members of, uh, General Motors, apologize to you, Ralph Nader.

They f*cking paid him almost a $1/2-million settlement.

He used that money to start to finance a group called, like, uh, the Nader Raiders.

Was that the name of it?

Was it the "Raider Naders"?

Or the...

Nader Raiders.

"Raider Naders" would be people that raided Naders.

It was an army of intellectuals that sought out injust... injustices about, you know, corporate evils.

And they were really, like, instrumental in starting, like, even OSHA.

Safe Water Drinking Act, wasn't it?

Freedom of Information Act.

Huge touchstones that are, like, super important.

People think that Ralph Nader is just the guy that blew the election for Gore, and he's just, like, so much more.

Yeah, original, like, nerd warrior.

Hi, Bober.

What a good dog.

There is a moment where I sic him on all of you.

[Patriotic music]

Houdini said, really?

Houdini, shut the f*ck up. Just quiet down.

I know you're skeptical. Let's just do this.

I guess you get a certain amount of pride from it being such a negative place, in a way.

There's a perverse kind of pride.

I guess you always love where you're from, but you're like, is that f*cking stupid?

But sometimes, like, it is a magical place.

Why I really love Detroiters... You gotta go with the spirit.

Nine times out of ten, people count us out.

But nobody ever gives up here.

Nobody ever gives up.

[Sighs]

[Whispering] One, two, three, four...

Hello, everybody!

I'm here to talk about Houdini and his fight against spiritualism with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

[Dramatic music]

After World w*r I, everyone was obsessed with spiritualism.

They felt that religious bits and scientific bits worked together and made spiritualism.

Harry Houdini, the greatest magician escape artist of all time.

Houdini knew spiritualism was bullshit because he had done it himself, when he started out.

He'd send his wife ahead of him, and she was like, I'm a Bible salesman.

Look, our Bibles are better than your Bible.

And through the information that she would give him, he could pretty much tell, like, oh, so, your uncle, who had a mustache, or your so-and-so that had this and that, whatever.

Those people, they're like... [gasps]

He knows exactly what I'm talking about.

Oh, my God. Yeah, he knows.

Houdini and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle became good friends.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, he wrote Sherlock Holmes... and all that stuff.

Arthur Conan Doyle, he was like, spiritualism is the sh*t!

I love it!

This is how everything needs to happen.

This is... whatever this religion is, this needs... everyone needs to know this.

Houdini held his tongue. He knew it was bullshit.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was like, I want you to sit down and have this seance, and I have... my wife is going to speak your mother's words through handwriting.

Really?

Houdini, shut the f*ck up.

Just quiet down.

I know you're skeptical. Let's just do this.

The... one, two, three, four...

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, his wife was like, yay!

We're all here. We're doing this seance.

Let's speak to Houdini's mother.

So then what happened?

Oh!

My son, I'm so happy to speak to you!

Oh, this is so wonderful!

Oh, thank God for you and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle!

Mr. Sherlock...

Okay, well, mother, um... can you read my mind?

[Laughs]

I've always read my son's mind.

This is... this is great!

Uh, um, yes. [Wand clatters]

L... sorry I dropped that wand.

But, yes, I'm gonna put a cross on top of this thing.

She wrote a cross on the top of the thing.

Mrs. Houdini was Jewish.

After Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and his wife f*cked him over, he realized that... who he... one, two, three, four...

He became angry. He's like, f*ck.

I'm going to falsify every f*cking spiritualist that I come across.

Houdini would go around in disguise to every spiritualist medium that he could find and would discredit 'em, like, I wanna talk about my dead son.

And the spiritualist was like, oh, well, your son is so-and-so and doing this.

And he's like, hey! f*ck you!

I'm Houdini!

I'm not that guy you just thought.

f*ck off.

[Whispering] One, two, three.

All right, so what do you wanna know?

What was the "one, two, three"?

Where did that... where did you start doing that?

[Laughs]

I do it so when I know... like, when I'm too drunk...

One, two, three... that I can be... [laughs]

That I can be good to myself, which is not working, but it's fine.

So near the end of his career, Houdini went into a college town.

One of the college students came through and was like, hey, so I hear that you can take any punch in the world.

He was like, yes, I can. Whatever, yeah.

I can take whatever punch you f*cking want.

Okay, well, I wanna test this out.

Thing is, Houdini needs to, like, stretch his muscles.

He didn't have enough time to do that.

The kid just f*cking punches him right there.

And he's like, okay. This f*cking sucks.

[Belches]

I have to put on a f*cking show, because I'm Houdini.

I have to put on my f*cking show for my tour.

He goes onstage and does his show.

104 temperature.

He's f*cking terrible.

One guy who'd seen his show eight times was like, something's wrong.

After the first act, he passes out.

They revive him.

He goes through. He does the second act.

After the second act, he passes out again.

So his wife's like, you need to go to the hospital.

Your appendix has ruptured.

At the same time that Houdini was against spiritualism, he still asked his wife Bess, if I die, I want you to hold a seance every year.

Lf, during the seance, these words come through and whatnot, then you know that it's me.

If not, f*ck you. It's someone else.

He passes out again. They revive him.

[Retching]

So do you feel better?

I feel 100% better.

Show must go f*cking on.

He does the third act. sh*t happens.

After a while... I mean, he's in complete agony.

He's... his, you know, bile...

Everything's coming out of his appendix.

Everything's going wrong.

It's obviously too late for him to deal with it.

He d*ed in Detroit, uh, on Halloween.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was like, it sucks he d*ed.

People think it's because of the punch.

Truthfully, the doctor said like, you know what? He already had appendicitis.

So it's fine.

For ten years, on Halloween, they would have the seance, and they would be there like, oh, Houdini, if you can break through...

It didn't happen.

Houdini's wife Bess is like, you know what?

He's lived on for all these many years, but ten years is long enough to wait for any man.

So I have to extinguish his light.

I apologize.

They still do a seance to see if he can break through, and he still has not.

What's your name?

Hi, my name is Secrets.

Pardon me. [Snickers]

[Both laughing]

Very subtle.

Oh! Look at me!

I'm a "magi-shurans"!

[Laughter]

[Patriotic music]

♪ ♪

You got it.

You got it, baby!

Come on!

You got it!

[Cheering]

Yeah! What?

Whoo!

They're all hacks!

It's easy as balls!

[Cheers and applause]

Easy as balls.

Yay!