Flightless Bird: Rhode Island
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Hello, we just wanted to talk to you quickly before today's show starts. How are you, Monica? I'm good. We have some housekeeping. Housekeeping. Should we tell people it's 8.20 p.m. or is that so dark figuratively and literally? 8.20 is good.

A20 is really good. You know, I just took a walk and I'm very on alert on my walks at night. You have to be. Right? Can I tell you something quickly as well that just happened to me last night? It's very hot here in Los Angeles and I have a little air conditioning unit shoved in my window.

And I woke up about 2 a.m. in the morning, not because of the ghost, but because a skunk had let loose right outside where my intake is. No. And it basically channeled skunk into my room, which I had the door shut because that's what keeps it cool. Oh. Demonic. Absolutely demonic. So, Monica, I am also scared of nighttime here in Los Angeles. Things will get you at the night.

I'm so sorry that happened. Also, I don't know why I want to say this to you, but I think you deserve it somehow. Just cosmically? Well, I think it's more about your love for animals. They feel safe to do that around you. They feel safe to let loose outside the intake of my tiny air conditioning unit. Yeah, they're like, he gets us.

Okay, speaking of wild animals, you are indeed a flightless bird. Yes. And we want to give some updates on the State of the Union. Yes, that's American, isn't it? It's so American. It's so American.

As I think many listeners know, but many probably don't, Armchair Expert is moving to Wondery. We have signed a deal with Wondery, which is very cool and awesome. It doesn't mean anything as far as changing anything up

Listen wise, we will still be available everywhere. You can listen to podcasts. However, what it does change is that it is just going to be the three episodes of armchair that are on the Wondery feed. So that is armchair expert, armchair experts on expert and armchair anonymous.

Those are the shows that will be on the feed. And so that led us to sort of do a conversation about our other beautiful, wonderful shows because they won't be on the feed anymore. So moving forward, what is going to happen is if you want us to listen to our other shows, Flightless Bird and Synced, you will have to sort of

Type it in. It's so easy. I know that it feels hard. It feels very hard. Can I do a metaphor? Please. Flightless bird. I've been preparing to do this. Flightless bird is taking flight. Do you like that? I already, I thought that. I planned that. It's horrible, isn't it?

We all got it. Flightless Bird is going to its own feed. So from next month, if you want to find Flightless Bird, I mean, you can do it right now. If you just search Flightless Bird, wherever you listen to podcasts, you'll find a little feed just for Flightless Bird things. And you can listen to Flightless Bird there. So find that. Subscribe, like and subscribe is what they say in the biz. That's what Calvin says. That's what Calvin says. A little Calvin. Beautiful. Like and subscribe. I can't say it either. I'm like him.

Oh my God. You almost got it out. It's actually hard. I'll grab them real quick. I'm a massive nerd. So I've also made a little link that shows where the new feed is going to be. So it's bit.ly slash flightless bird pod. So that's bit.ly slash flightless bird pod. And there it'll just be linked to where you can find all the flightless birds. The cool thing about it is you can see all the flightless birds in a big row.

And we will continue on as per. That's right. You'll have all the old flightless birds. There'll be new flightless birds. And it'll be so fun. It'll also be easy because some... Oh, here we go. We have a bedtime boy who's going to come say something beautiful. Will you say like and subscribe to Flightless Bird?

Hi, Cal. He's got stage fright. You know what? We're not pressuring because I'm not into that. But if you want to say it, you can. You've got to go to bed if you're not going to say it. Okay. Good night. Good night. Good night, Calvin. I love Calvin so much. We love you. We love the boss of him. Love you.

Night, Calvin. Oh, he really, really did not want to say it. And I really appreciate his lack of succumbing to peer pressure. Yeah, thanks to the power of editing, we can just put it in anyway for an earlier take. Oh, wow. Wow, I'm not for that. I'm going to say on air that I am not for that. Also, Rob, did you get more tattoos this weekend? No, I got them in Chicago. Were you wearing long sleeves? Your arm looks so different right now.

Oh, my God. Wow. Rob's arm looks so cool. He got a lot of new tattoos. He's got a whole sleeve there. Yeah. Wow. Wow.

Cool. Okay, well, like and subscribe if you want to learn about Rob's tattoos. What also is very fun is David has a whole world. You have a world. You have webworm. You have thoughts and prayers that are of your own brain that are beautiful and wonderful. And so I think at this point, also just being very candid with our audience because we love our audience and we're honest, all the other stuff is a lot of work and a lot of time. And so we are going to handover

hand flightless bird over to David and I will also take flight in the other direction. I don't know the metaphor there. Is that like when the bird, what happens with the bird? Well, technically you're sort of, I mean, this is probably a bad metaphor for the show, but you're flying away and I'm sort of diving down to the ground because I don't have wings. But we're going in different directions. You're going up. That's,

I'm going, that's bad. That's not a good. No, that's not right even. I think it's that I'm staying put and that you are flying away off into better and newer lands, which is fun. I'm going to take over this Flightless Bird feed and keep making the show. Going to try a few things. And yeah, thank you. I do have like a world of weird things. And I know there's a few listeners that also dig webware in my little newsletter. And that's another fun thing. But yeah, thanks, Monica. I appreciate it.

I've really enjoyed making this weird show. It's going to be on the armchair feed. It's going to be our last sort of armchair flight list next week. And we'll do a bit of a reflection and recap on things then. But yeah, I've learned a lot about America with you. And I'm going to keep learning about this weird, strange country. I can't wait. I can't wait to hear you. I will be listener number one, subscriber number one on the new feed. I cannot wait. And...

We have this episode and another episode for you. That's sort of our normal thing. And then David will go do his and you will type because I know our listeners can type. We've done research and our listeners can in fact type and they will typify this bird and they will subscribe and it'll be lovely. Yeah, that'd be cool. And yeah, please do subscribe. It's just nice to see you there. And we'll be continuing on every Tuesday as per.

norm just on our own feed. I feel like we've made this more complicated than it actually is. It's actually pretty simple. It's very simple, but it's also important to tell people what's going on because we want to bring people into what's going on. But yeah, time to get into the actual show, which is very fun for today. Oh, here's our beautiful intro and then a theme song. Enjoy.

I'm David Farrier, and New Zealand are accidentally marooned in America, and I want to figure out what makes this country tick. Now, back in episode 89, Chutes and Ladders, I traced the origins of some of America's most iconic board games. Candyland was invented in 1948 by a woman named Eleanor Abbott. So she was a schoolteacher who was in a hospital recovering from polio.

But early on in that otherwise pretty good episode, something truly humiliating happened. Here's a clip from the episode. The company's story starts back in 1923 when three Polish Jewish brothers, Herman, Henry and Halal, founded the Hassenfield Brothers on Rhode Island.

Blink and you might miss it, but here it is on Rhode Island. On Rhode Island. Not in Rhode Island, but on Rhode Island. As in, I thought Rhode Island was an island. In my mind, for my entire life, I'd not only assumed Rhode Island was an island, but I'd assumed it was in New York. Maybe my brain conflated it with Coney Island? Honestly, I don't know what happened.

Since that Chutes and Ladders episode, I've been informed through various channels that Rhode Island is definitely not an island, and it's definitely not in New York. Begging the question, what is Rhode Island? So, get ready to have your mind blown, or more likely, come to the conclusion that I'm a massive idiot, because this is the Rhode Island episode. ♪ Flag bits, flag bits ♪

Okay, so I've got a bone to pick with both of you. Oh, God. You're going to put this on us? Oh, that is rich, David. Sometimes we tune out during these docs.

Well, here we go. Clearly. You know, if I write out these docs, they go through a process. They're being scored by people. They're being edited by people. Then I deliver them to you, Monica and Rob. You're over sitting there, Mr. Fact Checker in the corner.

And then I come out and I say something as bold as on Rhode Island looking like a massive idiot. And there's nothing. Well, you know what probably happened? Because to be fair, I heard it. I heard the episode when we recorded it. I didn't edit on the episode. I didn't notice it. Okay.

Maybe I didn't notice it because sometimes there are weird things you say here. Maybe I just thought that's sometimes how you would say it. Yeah, I chalked it up to that too, semantics thing. Yeah, no, that's fair. Because I think some people do say like, we summer on blah, blah, blah. I think some people say that.

Right, so for clarity, you didn't think Rhode Island was an island. I did not. I do in fact know that it is not an island, but I didn't know if there was like some fun verbiage around it. Yeah, I knew it was not an island. I've been to Rhode Island many times.

And I did not have to get there by boat. There was also some drama in the making of this episode. Because, you know, I put my little script in, I wrote my little introduction, which you all just heard my dulcet tones reading out. And editor Billy jumped in in the comments and I got an alert on my phone saying, excuse me, Coney Island isn't an island either. Yeah.

which is also correct. I thought Coney Island was like a hot dog place. So Coney Island, look, I'm treading on eggshells. I might be getting so many things wrong still, but it used to be an island. It's now a peninsula. It's now connected, but

And Billy walked that back. Okay. Well, to be fair, if it one time was an island, you're doing better than you were with Rhode Island. Although, was Rhode Island originally an island? Look, we're about to find out. Oh, no. Look, it gets complicated. It wasn't ever an island.

The state was never an island. Yeah, because that'd be weird. But, you know, New Zealand comes into this debate as well, because I didn't really think about this a lot until this particular episode. But there are a bunch of places in New Zealand that are named after islands. There's McLean's Island.

And that's just a rural area northwest of Christchurch City. There's Island Bay. That's just a coastal suburb in Wellington. And Green Island is just another suburb in Dunedin. So New Zealand's littered with these things called islands that aren't islands or once were islands and are no longer islands. And it gets very confusing. As a newcomer to New Zealand, I'd argue if you went into New Zealand, Monica,

you'd be like, why are all these places called islands that aren't islands? And it's the same problem I've got here in America. Okay, but yeah, but that's the opposite. You should be used to it. Yeah, isn't New Zealand itself an island? Well, look, I'm glad you raised that because weirdly, yeah, New Zealand is made up of the North Island and the South Island. I'd never thought of New Zealand as an island. It was just the country.

But technically, they call it an island country or an island state. So yeah, I'm from a big old island. You are. But also what you just said, that there's all these places there called islands, but they're not islands, should actually prompt you to have the opposite effect of what happened in this whole thing.

horrible disaster that you made. Embarrassing disaster. Yeah. I think you should have then assumed it wasn't an island because where you're from. Yeah, that's a thought about it in that way, but that should have been. So what you're saying is I'm essentially, I'm even sort of dumber than I first thought. I should have had even more information. I didn't say it. I would never say that, but you did say it. And in making this episode as well about sort of looking into Rhode Island, I

I kind of was thinking about a big flaw conceptually with this whole show. And that is that I'm sort of meant to go out, right, and learn about these topics, come back with this documentary where I'm suddenly elevated to the role of expert. I'd like to make it very clear. I'm an idiot the entire time. I barely scrape through understanding in the documentary what's going on, let alone the entire topic. So I think it's sort of a weird thing, isn't it? Because, yeah, I make these documentaries, but I still know very little at the end of it.

Does that make sense? Oh, God. I mean, I think that's...

I think that's clear. I don't mean to get too philosophical. I think they know. I think it is, right? They know I don't know anything. This is so New Zealand of you to try to be so self-deprecating. You do know more about these topics at the end than you did when you entered, as does everyone who listens. That's the point of it. That isn't a really New Zealand thing because I lost sleep over our Monster Truck episode because I thought I'd researched it so well. I went down and watched a Monster Truck finale. I was there with Dax.

And then, you know, I thought I learned a lot. But then in the episode, you said, how big are the wheels? I had no fucking clue. Like, yeah. And then I like reading feedback because I like punishment. And so many people angry that they're like, you fucking idiot. Like, you didn't know how big the wheels were. I'm like, oh, man, I don't know anything. I sort of know a few things that I've learned. No one can expect you to know absolutely everything. I can't know everything, right? I can't know everything.

Stay tuned for more Flightless Bird. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsors.

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So what I want to say going into this Rhode Island episode, there's going to be things I don't know, but also I learned a hell of a lot and I think we're going to learn a lot together. I know very little about Rhode Island, so I am excited. Oh, okay. Let's get into it.

Early on in researching this episode, one of the first things I discovered is that Rhode Island has an official song. It's called Rhode Island. It's for me.

Music by Maria Day, lyrics by comedian Charlie Hall. It was adopted as the state song in 1996, replacing a tune called Rhode Island, which subsequently became the official state march of Rhode Island instead.

How American is that? A place with a state song and a state march. And as I listened, I scanned the lyrics for clues as to what Rhode Island could be. The boats that line the docks. I see the lighthouse flickering.

To help the sailors see. There's a place for everyone. Rhode Island's it for me. To be honest, all clues pointed to Rhode Island being an island. Boats, lighthouses, sailors, waves, fucking Neptune.

Confused, I knew I needed to talk to an expert, and I stumbled on the perfect one. So my name's Kate. I am a linguist. I write articles. I do a lot of research for academic journals on the history of words or how new words are being added.

As well as having a long time love of Rhode Island and its rich history, Kate the linguist also had a love for language and what words mean. So of course, before we got into the words "road" and "island", I couldn't help myself.

We did an entire episode based on how Americans say math and not maths. Oh yeah, maths. Yeah, it's actually funny. That's one of the few things a lot of the American linguists... We love making fun of British linguists. It's very fun to us to make fun of England. But every now and then we give them one and a lot of the American linguists for some reason do really like maths.

We do enjoy that for some reason. Yeah. It makes sense to us. I can see the argument for why maths makes more sense, but it's also, I really hate saying it phonetically.

She may hate saying maths with an S, but she knows it's correct. But let's not relitigate old topics. I'm here to discuss Rhode Island, two words Kate has spent a lot of time thinking about, because she's spent a great deal of her life in, or is it on, Rhode Island. Tell me a little bit about your history with Rhode Island. So we moved there in 89. I was born in California.

My grandfather had been raised there before World War II and left as a GI and never came back. So it's a complete coincidence I'm there, but I graduated high school there, and then I've floated around eight states. This is my ninth since then. And I always end up back in Rhode Island. It's not one of the stickier states, if you've ever heard that term. It's

how many people stay and how many people come to a state. So Arizona, for instance, is a very sticky state. Rhode Island isn't, but anecdotally, everyone I know has left Rhode Island and has also come back to Rhode Island at some point. There's something we really enjoy about it. I'd noted Kate had said, I always end up back in Rhode Island, not on Rhode Island. So I assumed I had my answer. Rhode Island is a state, not an island.

If only it were that simple. For as long as I've sort of been thinking about America, I've always thought Rhode Island was an island. I've never thought otherwise. So Rhode Island, in a way, is an island because that is the name of what we now call Aquidneck Island, but the other name of it is still Rhode Island. So there's some disagreement about where that came from. One of the earliest explorers in the early 1600s

sailed by, didn't even stop, but he said that there was this beautiful island that reminded him of the Isle of Rhodes off the coast of Greece, off the coast of what was to be the colonies. And no one's quite sure what island he meant. And they seem to think it's this one because they were like, yeah, that seems pretty. And the Dutch came by and called it Roods Island because it looked red, presumably from the fall leaves, a lot of red maples. So we're not sure how it got it, but it did stick.

They kind of converged into a singular etymology that we're not sure really which one was more heavily favored, but that's where that came from. Okay, so two competing theories. An English colonizer scoping things out saw an island off the coast that looked like the Isle of Rhodes. And some Dutch guy called it "Rood's Island" because it looked red from all the autumn leaves, and "rood" is how the Dutch say "red".

And somehow one of those things or two of those things morphed into Rhode Island. Do you think there are many Americans get confused about that? Or is it very obvious to Americans that no, there are islands off Rhode Island that are islands that aren't the mainland? Or is everyone confused like I am?

Everyone is confused like you are. So for one thing, Americans on the West Coast, so as I said, I was born in California. My family is still out here. So when I would tell people Tuesday, but especially before the internet got big when I was still a kid, they 100% thought I meant New York. When I said I was from Rhode Island, I think they thought Long Island.

I told some guy who's from Long Island out here that I was from Rhode Island. He goes, do you mean Block Island? I'm like, that's an island in Rhode Island. He goes, that doesn't make sense. I'm like, you're from 49 miles away from Rhode Island. What are you talking about? I don't think anyone outside of Rhode Island realizes that Rhode Island is named after an island. I think they're just like, oh, that's weird. That's quirky. I don't think any of them know about the islands now. When you make a mistake, it's always kind of comforting to know that others have made the same mistake.

There's a strange comfort found in mass ignorance. But all this confusion, it stems from a long line of confusion. Because before Rhode Island was called Rhode Island, it had a much longer name.

The rest of it was Providence Plantations, and that's the mainland was Providence Plantations, which actually we're the smallest state with the longest name is the state of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. Until 2020, we voted to get rid of plantations because we said it might be historically important, but much like some discussions around Confederate memorials, we felt like it had moved past the need for history and into we have a different connotation of what plantation means now and we need to acknowledge that. So we got rid of it.

Locals tried to get rid of the plantations part 15 years ago, arguing the word symbolized slavery in the colonies. But then a bunch of other people wanted to keep it, saying technically plantation just meant colony, which had nothing to do with slavery. Those people won, voting to keep the name as State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations. And I learned that Rhode Island has a complicated history with slavery.

It's done some really good things. Now, Rhode Island has been very proud of itself, as it should be, for being the first colony to outlaw slavery and then the first army to heed the call from Lincoln in the Civil War. But also historically, because it was on the coast, it also has a lot to answer for when it comes to slavery. It is also one of the top players in the slave trade because of our coastal areas.

With all that in mind, when 2020 rolled around, there was another referendum on the topic, and the Providence Plantations bit was dropped. Essentially because it turns out that yes, the word plantations does have very bad connotations. And this is a lazy segue, but I'm going to use bad connotations to talk about another bit of Rhode Island history I found out about. It's one of the more batshit side quests Flightless Spirit has stumbled on.

So yeah, more on those bad connotations. So you know the Salem witches, the witch trials? So you would think we're only about an hour and a half south of Salem. You would think that that would be the same thing. No, vampires. We have vampires. A famous one is named Mercy Brown and going to her grave in the middle of the woods behind what looks to be an old Quaker meeting house is a rite of passage and it's very creepy and we're very happy about it.

You dropped vampires in very casually there. Are you sort of talking about a funny little myth, or was there a belief that there was a real vampire? No, Mercy Brown was a very real person. She was a little girl we killed. I say we like I was involved. This is hundreds of years ago. I would have done that, Mercy. I promise. Please don't come for me.

So there's a family of vampires and we killed them all. And we were like, oh man, that must have been a mistake because they didn't come back to life. And then the little girl did. So we finished the job and we put a big slab over her. She has a big tomb in the middle of the woods. It has a huge slab on it.

When I was a teenager, I've heard from teenagers who will go there and like, oh yeah, I stood on top of it. I like, I did the, did you try to open? They're like, no, no, I didn't do that. You don't mess with Mercy too much, but no, she was a very real person. There's a very real historical record of this little girl. And she's not the only one, but she is the most famous. Mercy Brown.

Part of something now referred to as the New England Vampire Panic, a predecessor to America's Satanic Panic that would follow a century later. Mercy Brown is one of the earliest ghost stories you hear around the area. Back in the late 1800s, married couple George and Mary Brown of Rhode Island had a lot of bad luck. First, Mary died from tuberculosis, followed by her daughters Mary, then Mercy. Their brother Edwin also started to get sick.

Back then, there was a suspicion that a lot of deaths in one family meant that one of them was possibly undead. So, with a wife and two kids already in the ground, Father George dug them all up. And he and the local doctor decided that Mercy hadn't decomposed as much as the others, ergo she must have been a vampire.

Her heart and liver were immediately removed and set on fire, before throwing the ashes in some water and giving it to Edwin to drink as a kind of vampire vaccine. The vampire vaccine didn't work, and Edwin also died from tuberculosis two months later. This story is largely forgotten, although American band Clutch released a song two years ago called Mercy Brown. It's on their record Sunrise on Slaughter Beach. Before we take a break, here's what the song sounds like.

I gently suggest it could be a contender for a new state song for Rhode Island. Stay tuned for more Flightless Bird. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsors.

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So yeah, I was in shock when she just casually raised vampires. I knew that America and sort of the world believed in witches for a while, but of course, yeah, America also believed in vampires. Wow. I did not know that either. I like that you did a little bit further of a deep dive because when she was talking about it, she said, and then actually she wasn't dead.

It's like, um, I need more info. So, okay. She just hadn't decomposed as much. Yeah. But if you go to visit Rhode Island, which isn't an island, well, there is an island off Rhode Island. I'm more confused. Yeah. So essentially Rhode Island, it is a state which is on the coast. And so off the coastline, there was an island. And when explorers came by colonizers, they saw this island and they were like, oh, this reminds us of this island that we already know kind of

I'm going to call it Rude's Island, Rhode Island. And then the whole state just amassed that name and it all just became Rhode Island. One big fat Rhode Island. What is that island? That is...

Uh-oh, this is the wheels? This is where it's happening. I don't know anything. Aquanick. Aquanick Island. Okay. So that's what the island is now. It looks like there's a handful of little islands off, but that's the big one.

Yeah, there was big debate around what island, because there's a bunch of them out there in the ocean, what island that Dutch explorer saw that made him go, oh, that reminds me of home. But they think it's that one. I think they made a mistake. This is sort of like a math mess, which thank you for bringing it back up. Always. I'm always here to bring that argument up. They should have called it Rhode Island's.

And then it would have included all of those islands and it would have made much more sense. Because I think once you say just island, you get that image in your mind of a little island, don't you? Islands would be much more encompassing. And would make sense.

the actual continental piece still relevant. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. That was a big mistake on their part. It was a huge mistake. It did feel really good to know that in talking to people and her friends that other people do make the same mistake in America. They assume it's in New York and some people do assume it's an island. I think the New York thing is more popular of a misconception than the island thing. I think that's a bit more unique to my idiocy. But it's funny how

You create these images in your head of a place or a thing and you just assume that's what they are. And I just always pictured this little island. It had maybe a Ferris wheel on it. I don't really know how you got to Rhode Island. I thought maybe by ferry or a little bridge or something. And there was definitely be a carnival there and probably a parade. And that's just the image I had in my head. Well, that sounds like a lovely place.

It does, doesn't it? But instead, it's this state that has this little girl buried under a massive slab of concrete because they're afraid that she would come back to life again. Oh, my God. Okay. While I was listening to this, I did have a thought that maybe soon I'm going to create a flightless bird test. And I'm going to ask you questions. And they're going to be facts that you provided. Okay.

Over the course of this series. And I'm going to ask you... How big is a monster truck wheel? Yeah, but I won't be that mean because you didn't know that. It will be something that you did learn. That's actually a really good idea for an episode. What's the state pi from...

Oh, God. Pennsylvania or something. Yeah. Oh, my God. See how sticky the facts are? I think this would be fun to know how much have you actually retained. This is a truly cursed idea, but it will assess how American I have become because

Because we've been doing this now for about almost three years, probably. Wow, that's incredible. And so it'd be nice to know that a few of those things had stuck. Yeah. Or if I'm still as sort of dumb as when I arrived in this country, you know? Yeah, exactly. I'm going to start devising the test now. I don't know if you should study or not. Oh.

This is so annoying. I've got to say, I feel deeply uncomfortable with this idea. At school, I didn't enjoy rote learning for tests. Did you enjoy the whole testing process? I like doing well on tests. So that always felt like good validation as a straight-A gal. But no, I mean, tests suck. They're horrible. I remember a few times, because I sort of thought my whole life would be dictated by how each test went.

And I just remember that horrible feeling where you get one question that you can't get and you start to spiral and just the panic that starts to sink in, that horrible feeling. You don't really get that later in life. There's a very specific fear that comes with that school test, which I'm apparently going to relive via your horrific plan for devising this new test. And it's not even going to be written. You don't even have time to think. It's a verbal test.

I quit. I have a warm-up question right now, only because I just saw Fruit Fly. What episode did we talk about fruit flies? Oh.

Don't say it, Rob. I remember talking about fruit flies sneaking in on a banana or something into the apartment, right? And so it was about, must have been a food-related episode. And that is my answer. It was one of the food-related flight lists. David, context clues. This was a gimme. This is the easiest question you're going to get on the test.

What episode was it in? I think it was Fijoa. Oh, Fijoa, of course. Now I'm worried I'm wrong. No, it would be Fijoa. It's the beautiful Fijoa. Yeah, correct. Yeah.

Oh my God, zero out of zero. And that was a New Zealand episode. My God. Oh no. This does not bode well for the test. I'm going to figure out some revenge for this. I'm going to come up with my own quiz. Are you ready to learn more about the delights of Rhode Island, which is not an island but a tiny state? Yes, I am. Okay, me too.

I'd been thinking more about that clutch song, Mercy Brown, and the child vampire of Rhode Island currently buried under a giant slab of rock. It got me thinking about another small place that loves vampires: New Zealand.

Ten years ago, director Taika Waititi made a movie called What We Do in the Shadows about a group of vampires living in a house in Wellington, New Zealand. My country fell in love with that movie, and eventually America did too, turning it into a TV series. And I also got to thinking about the official state song of Rhode Island. Not the Clutch song, but Rhode Island. It's for me. Listening back,

It struck me how quaint and small the song was. Not the usual bells and whistles, big and brash and American. Instead, it's kind of quaint and cute. Almost like something a New Zealand town would come up with.

And maybe this Rhode Island confusion has just slowly made me slip into insanity, but I can't help but see some similarities between Rhode Island and New Zealand. I mean, even the fact we're both so small. You can't run a marathon in a straight line without going into the ocean or another state is that tiny. I think it's 15 by 35 miles. It's a literal blip on the map, but I do think it's gorgeous. And how both Rhode Island and New Zealand love, nay adore, birds.

New Zealand has the flightless Kiwi. Rhode Island has the near flightless Rhode Island Red.

It's the big red hens and they lay the big brown eggs that get sent all over our county fair at Washington County Fair. We have a whole building of award-winning chickens you can go in and look at. We're very proud. Rhode Island Reds. That's the one. That is our state bird and we are very proud of it. Talking to Kate, I realized that maybe I was falling in love. Falling in love with Rhode Island. Maybe I just felt homesick.

After all, New Zealand is made up of the North Island and the South Island. So it's the smallest state, but it also has so much coastline. I think about 15% of it is coastline. It's almost all islands and beaches. And it has the highest ratio of coastline to total land area, second only to Hawaii. So our state actually gets 5% bigger at low tide every day. Again, not to bang on about it, but you see why people like me think it's just an island.

Water is very important. It is the ocean state. A lot of people are fishermen, lobstermen. They go out for mussels and clams and oysters. For a long time, our state food was, I believe, a quahog. It's a giant clam, okay? And it's not very good. It's pretty rubbery. You take everything out, you chop it up with stuffing, like Thanksgiving stuffing type of stuff, and you put it back in the clam, and you bake it, and it's a stuffy. And we're very proud of it. We take it very seriously.

The Rhode Island stuffy used to be the official state food of Rhode Island, apparently. Today, it's calamari. And with all this talk of clams, finally that whole bit and family guy made sense to me. The bit where the fictional cartoon town of Quahog, Rhode Island, got its name. It was saved by a magic clam who brought him to shore and shared the vision of a new colony, which would be called...

Seth MacFarlane went to a very famous design school, RISD, Rhode Island School of Design, and he wasn't from there and he just thought we were hilarious. Well, I can't decide what to call this place. We'll flip a coin. All right. Heads, Rhode Island. Tails, Kakapupupipishire. Turns out there's a lot of pop culture that references Rhode Island or is inspired by Rhode Island.

Newport is mentioned in Downton Abbey. That's where the fancy Americans are from. They live in Newport. The mansions in Newport, Anderson Cooper, his family is the Vanderbilts and the Vanderbilts famously own mansions there. I mean, I'm pretty sure it's called Vanderbilt Mansion. So Newport is mentioned in pop culture for hundreds of years now. Oh yeah, Taylor Swift has a holiday home in Newport too. And there's something kind of funny about the rich and privileged holidaying in Rhode Island because it was founded by the opposite of that.

Our founding is one of my favorite stories because we were the only ones founded by exiles. We got kicked out of the Massachusetts Bay Colony for trying to be cool with Quakers and Native tribes and stuff like that. And the Puritans did not like that.

So we got regularly kicked out. So we were the only one that was founded as an explicitly secular government. And it was known to this day, it is still sometimes known, but especially back then, we were known as Rogues Island because we would take in criminals. You would take in the Narragansett tribe as criminals.

very offensively considered frequently as a not real tribe, big air quotes, because they were a newer tribe because a lot of them were from other tribes or they were lost or they were mixed or something like that. So we have this big, I'm very proud of this very big criminal kind of reputation that I love.

And that reputation, that reputation of exiles and criminals and rascals, it goes on. It's baked into Rhode Island's DNA in a way. We have somewhat of a reputation of being corruptors.

corrupt. We're almost all Irish and Italian and there are a lot of stereotypes that live in Rhode Island for a reason. And if you ever watched The Departed, the background plot of that whole movie is that they're dealing with the Irish mob in Providence, Rhode Island. So the funny thing about that is we had a famously corrupt mayor that we loved named Buddy and he's the Prince of Providence. I'm not joking at all. It was

It was 22 years ago today, Providence Mayor Buddy Cienci was arraigned in the Plunderdome investigation. Our colleague Jim Terracani had this report back on April 6th, 2001.

Onlookers across the street. Cianci arrives in his limo, besieged by dozens of local, regional, and national reporters. I'm not guilty of these charges. Cianci top aide Artin Kalloyan, charged with bribery, slips into court with his lawyer. In the packed courtroom, Cianci and Kalloyan sit side by side. The court orders Cianci and Kalloyan to surrender their passports. The pair of alleged felons released on $50,000 unsecured bond.

She's joking, but also sort of not joking, as some locals think Buddy, the Prince of Providence,

He did a lot of good for Rhode Island. It was genuinely not a safe or even in a lot of ways pleasant place to be when we first moved to Providence in the 80s. And look, when you're embezzling for a good cause, we seem to be okay with it. We were really pumped when he got out of jail and he really didn't like the cops either. We're a big fan of Buddy, but it's a genuinely safer, cleaner, more tourist friendly. He spent a lot of that money keeping skyscrapers and stuff from being built in certain areas so that there were big parks.

in the middle of the city that he would then pay quite big bands at the time to play for free every Thursday all summer. And it was a huge draw. I mean, high schoolers were coming, tourists were coming and stuff like that. Really, it has become quite the destination. It's been on the rise. We're the second most densely populated state in the country and consistently are now. Hearing about Buddy and so much of Rhode Island's history,

I wonder if there's something about that rebellious spirit. I'm not endorsing the former mayor's embezzlement, but just in a general sense, there's a sense of rebellion in Rhode Island's history you can't help but admire. We were the last colony, the last state to ratify the constitution. We held out forever.

four years because we did not like a lot of things about the centralized government telling us who was allowed to have rights and who couldn't, specifically landowners. And so we held out for a really long time until all the other colonies were forced to stop trading with us.

And we got starved out and the vote was still something like 33 to 32 to finally sign it. We did not fully ratify the Constitution until I believe 2012 or something. I mean, really, really recently. That's so cool. It's like a state of outsiders. Yes. I'm very proud of that. I think it's one of the coolest things. I really enjoy our founding being of Rogues Island. I enjoy that a lot.

I've been talking to Kate for a really long time, and it's time for me to let her get on with her day, to do whatever it is that linguists and history buffs do. As we say our goodbyes, she just wants to make it clear that everyone should visit Rhode Island one day. You don't need a boat. You can get there by land.

I enjoy how we're shockingly welcome, especially by Northeast standards, kind of famously abrasive and loud. And we cuss like sailors and everything. I'm not the only Rhode Islander who knows all this stuff because we love telling you about it. There's a big paper mache house on the side of the highway called Big Blue Bug that is one of our greatest landmarks.

We'll tell you about that. We'll tell you about Del's frozen lemonade. It's just like a slushie of lemons. And we're like, oh, my God, you got to try Del's. Coffee milk. Oh, man. Autocrat. Oh, it's so good. We have this real Napoleon complex about being the littlest one and being forgotten between Boston and New York. And we're like, we say bubbler. Have you heard about how we say bubbler? We really like our weird little traditions and we're very proud of it. And I think it's cute. I think it's very endearing.

Coming from New Zealand, we have a similar complex. We're small, we feel forgotten, and we're always trying to talk about Lord of the Rings and stuff. We latch on to anything we can. One of my very brilliant students that I taught years ago told me, and I had never realized that New Zealanders frequently left off maps and globes.

And Rhode Island is, if you ever look at like some statistic for each state and they're all colored a different way, Rhode Island is like a line off to the side. They won't even bother drawing it in. We're frequently used as the comparison for the size of a piece of a glacier came on, like about the size of Rhode Island. That's what we're really, really known for. And I do feel like New Zealand would get that. I could see that parallel there.

What does it do to the state of mind of Rhode Island when that's what you're thought of as? You're the latest bit of glacier that's fallen off. We are so happy every time we get mentioned. We're like, we are the size of that glacier. That's so true. We're pumped about it, actually. I know you thought it was going that way, but no, we're like, yeah.

Rhode Island Mention. We're pumped. I think that it is an underrated little gem, a little diamond in the rough out there where I think it has skipped over and I think it deserves its day. I think you've done more for the Rhode Island Tourism Board than anyone in the history of the United States. I would be so happy if that were true. I would be very proud to be a part of that.

I came away from that feeling a lot of camaraderie with Rhode Island because I think their attitude and their mindset, they do have that New Zealand mindset. They have little brother energy for sure. If ever a big celebrity comes to New Zealand and they're on our news, and when I was a reporter in New Zealand, I would do this. One of the first questions...

We would say, what do you think of New Zealand? It's in every celebrity report. At some point you have a New Zealander going, oh my God, I love this. I love New Zealand. I love, oh, such a beautiful country. And then it'll be a cut back to the reporter. It's like fishing for compliments. Yeah, they'll be fizzing at the bunghole, like so excited that Bono is saying he loved a glass of wine and Napier or something, you know. It's just, you know, when she was speaking about the problem,

pride she felt when Rhode Islanders compared to a bit of a glacier falling into the ocean. I was like, you're my people. I get that mindset. It's just nice to be mentioned. I really liked her. She was great. Yeah. No, she was so just brimming with information. She was amazing. That was great. But, oh, I'm so embarrassed for Rhode Island and New Zealand right now.

I could see you grimacing a few times in there. Such a little puppy. Like us. Yeah, we want. Yeah, like us. We say bubbles. Like us. I think it just comes from being a bit small on the world stage. We do feel a bit insecure. And so when other people mention us, it gives us validity. We do exist. We are special. I know. But you guys, everyone in New Zealand and everyone in Rhode Island needs to listen to the episode of Acquired on Hermes. Yes.

You have to make yourself exclusive. You don't want to be like, come here, come love me. We say bubbles, ha ha ha. No, you want to be like, it's really small and we're cool and you shouldn't even come here. And then everyone will come.

It is a funny thing. When I got a therapist in America, I had to quit them. Is this when you slammed the computer? The laptop slamming incident of 2022. Yeah, slam the laptop in their face. But a lot of our problems stemmed from the fact, I don't think she understood the culture of New Zealand. She thought I was quite depressed and quite a sad person. But I'm like, no, this is just how New Zealanders are. It's like we just talk down about everything.

And she just didn't get that. And I think that was part of the issue. She just didn't understand. It's just what it's being a New Zealand is like. And maybe that's what being a Rhode Islander is like as well. Yeah. It's just. Sad. It's sad.

There's one thing she did mention there. She mentioned the bubbler and we got talking after the whole math, math things. We got talking about that and she said they call a water cooler a bubbler. A water cooler as in? You know how you gather around the water cooler at the office? Yeah. They call it a bubbler. Right. It's the only place in America if you want to hear a water cooler, this is a fun fact,

If you're traveling around America and you want to hear a water cooler called a bubbler, you've got to go to Rhode Island. It's the only place it will happen. Wait, David, can you do an episode on the water cooler? Oh my God. That's a really fucking good idea. Fascinating. I mean, isn't it just that huge water bottle that's upside down? Yeah. That's what I think of a water cooler as. And I do think of it as an American thing purely because of shows that I see it in, but then maybe it's British. I wonder who invented the water cooler. Look,

I'm going to get onto this. Okay. Because the fact that it took over and it is like, this is a water cooler conversation. It created its own life. You know, we used to have a water cooler in our old newsroom and it was that awkward thing. You'd stand around and it takes so long to come out. You sort of stood there with your little cup as it sort of dribbles out. And then other people come up and like stand around waiting for their little dribble of water. It's such a

It is a nightmare. Those kind of devices, they sort of make the human very small as you're just waiting for this little drip. Please give me a little drip of water. They humble you, the water cooler. They're a humbler. Yeah, they're a humbler and a bubbler. We don't have one in the office, do we, in the attic? There is no water cooler. There's no bubbler. We have some jugs of water, but they're pretty problematic. Every time people try to use them, water just splashes all over the floor. They're not for me.

We're like technically supposed to use them because we're not supposed to use the water bottles because that's for guests and stuff. If I'm filling up the teapot, I'm not supposed to use that. But I do because I refuse to just splash the water all over the floor. I spilled a lot the other day all over the floor trying to use it. It looked really bad and it was embarrassing. I think maybe we need to get a Rhode Island bubbler.

And it's not a bad idea, is it? The other thing I found out about that I didn't put in the episode, it's a super liberal island. I was going to ask this because, well, it's not an island. Oh, shit. I did it again. It's a really liberal state. Rhode Island is a really liberal state, not an island. But they're also very, very Catholic.

Oh, interesting. So they're liberal and very Catholic, which is something quite funny. Well, both of these things are shocking considering the mayor's story. I mean, Buddy sounds like a sitcom. I know. I got into a vortex of watching news reports about him at the time, and he was a real, I mean, rascal is putting it lightly. I mean, he was, yeah, not a great guy, but he loved that city and allegedly did some good things whilst embezzling. So city of the American world. Yeah.

My God. The American way. Too close to home. Such a long history of bringing convicts into office. So embarrassing. I'm embarrassed. It is unusual, but I came away from this really liking Rhode Island. Are you going to go? I want to go. I want to go to the grave of that little vampire girl, that big concrete grave and see what's going on there. Apparently it's very scary. It's got a real bad...

Bad aura around it. And I want to sort of stand there and have a little feel.

And you're going to go to the Ferris wheel and the parade. I'm going to take my little boat over there. All of those things. I have a quiz question for you. Oh, this is horrific. Yes, Robert. Where was the devil's chair? The devil's chair was in, oh my God, the devil's chair was in that little place I went near Florida that had all the seance people in it.

Correct? Correct. You should visit the devil's chair while you're visiting the grave. Oh.

It's a really good idea. It's a really scary chair. Not meant to sit in it, but some people do. Also in my research, because I just want to show people how well researched I am. There was a Mike Myers sketch back in 97 and his character would often riff on things. And he said this line, talk amongst yourselves. I'll give you a topic. Rhode Island. Neither a road or an island. Discuss. Oh. That's funny, isn't it? Rhode Island. That's pretty funny. No, road and island. There was a ding, ding, ding in this because...

I wanted to text you yesterday, I think, or two days ago that maybe we should do an episode on calamari. And then calamari popped up in this episode. Is calamari American? This is a great question and something I would love...

Did you have it in New Zealand? My guess would be no, but... We've got calamari. I mean, I'm a fan of the calamari. I've eaten many a calamari ring. It's Italian. It's the origin. Oh, okay. Never mind. Don't do an episode on it. Don't do that one. But I mean, I would definitely partake in a Rhode Island stuffy, which is...

Possibly one of the worst things I've ever heard of in my entire life. I love that it's called that though They made it so cute sounding stuffy I just googled it and there's a article on Boston comm the headline is explaining the stuffy a uniquely Rhode Island food That's trying to attract tourists. I think trying is doing a lot of heavy lifting there I'm obviously learning about Rhode Island and

But I'm learning a bit about myself in this episode. I don't think I've ever put words to the fact that I guess I hate little brother energy. I find it so off-putting. And I think I know that about myself, but this episode is really solidifying it. Like, oh, that's the thing I really don't like.

Because what is it? I'm just, it's hard to sort of, it's hard to put into words, right? You know, when it's happening, but it's hard to explain what that is. And it is, it is certainly an energy. And I would argue it's the opposite. And I think it's why I feel sort of happy in America sometimes, because it's the opposite of that. I like it when people are

positive and confident confident about things it's the opposite feeling to this little brother energy which is just desperate it's sort of someone desperately seeking validation right yep yep that's exactly what it is there's a desperation to it i have a distrust around little brother energy because i don't think they know who they are because they've defined themselves in connection to something else

If I'm using therapy talk, is it like in a relationship, if you're someone who's anxious, they've got anxious energy, and it's that kind of thing where it can be a bit off-putting because someone's putting all their self-worth in someone else. And when they're not getting it, they become incredibly insecure, which is a difficult thing for them to be doing. But it's that kind of vibe, isn't it? It is. It totally is. And

just have your own opinion. I mean, I guess Rhode Island's trying to have its own opinion, but it's still in connection to New York and Boston. The other side of it, the

The counter is that you can get too confident, right? And it's that thing where you're around energy where it's like too much confidence. Then that becomes too far the other way. You need some like weird healthy thing in the middle. What you need to do, you need to mate America, an American with a New Zealander. And then the child that is born would be like basically the perfect human. We'll have to see. You have some friends. Oh, but they're all with Kiwis, aren't they? Do you know any Kiwis who are married to Americans? No.

Hmm, that's a good question. I know an Australian that's married to me. No, I haven't come into the Kiwi-American fusion yet. I need to find someone and then study their child and see how the child's going. Maybe it's like Voldemort and Harry. It can't happen. This could be like a long-term sort of a 15-year flightless bird project is for me to procreate with an American woman. Yeah, you should. And then just see how that child turns out, whether they're the best of us or whether they...

the worst of us. I don't know. I guess we'll find out. I can't wait. Episode 1053. We'll discover it. Oh, fun. Okay, this was great. Rhode Island, I think we've all become more American. I think we all need to eat a stuffy at some point. If anyone listening is in Rhode Island and can sort of courier over a stuffy, we'd happily consume it on the show. So just send it in to the PO box on the website. Do we have one? Yeah, that seems like that would work.

That would travel well. Be delicious. Yeah, happy Rhode Island, everyone. Happy Rhode Island day. Not an island, it's a state. Not an island, don't forget it. Bye.