And One Ring to Bind Them

[00:00] Let's get all your beers opened up.
[00:02] Coalson.
[00:03] Sounded so refreshing when you did it.
[00:10] You sure you're drinking hams?
[00:12] That's not usually the sound that people make.
[00:22] We're never going to get the ham sponsorship.
[00:25] I'll cut a sound post.
[00:26] It's where all the big money is.
[00:28] That's right.
[00:30] It's in the bottom shelf beer.
[00:35] This bottom shelf podcast is brought to you by the Bottom Shelf Beer.
[00:39] Thanks.
[00:44] Since we're going with fun facts,
[00:46] Corey Joseph plays the steel pan.
[00:51] We should hook him up with David West.
[00:53] That's right.
[00:54] Just for the listeners, a steel pan is a musical instrument
[00:58] that originated from Trinidad and Tobago.
[01:01] It's a drum.
[01:04] Kind of what it sounds like.
[01:06] Yeah.
[01:07] What's the metal that it's made out of?
[01:09] I think it's steel and I think it's kind of in a form of a pan.
[01:12] Can you tell me where Trinidad and Tobago is?
[01:14] It's an island off the Toboggan coast.
[01:25] It's where they make sleds.
[01:29] Is it Tobago or Tobago?
[01:31] Tomato.
[01:32] Tomato.
[01:36] Tobago, Tobago.
[01:37] Use that every time for now.
[01:39] Just replace this tomato.
[01:40] Joey, let's call the whole thing off.
[01:45] Coalson, do you have an under-Google bowl for us this week?
[01:48] I do.
[01:49] That was the plan.
[01:58] I'm super excited.
[01:59] You told us we had to.
[02:01] He said we signed up for it.
[02:04] In the end, it's going to be better and more true than Google can give you.
[02:10] I was listening to Music at Work the other night
[02:16] and one of my favorite songs of all time came on
[02:19] and I got super excited and I was just singing, belting it out while making cocktails.
[02:26] You should never come to my bar. It's really annoying.
[02:30] Heard it through the grapevine.
[02:32] And I was thinking to myself, where does that phrase come from?
[02:36] I heard it through the grapevine.
[02:39] So I figured I would ask my friends, my colleagues, my co-hosts,
[02:46] heard it through grapevine.
[02:47] So to define it would be, you heard it through the rumor mill?
[02:55] Yes.
[02:56] Is that a thing?
[02:57] Well, at least in the song.
[02:58] So he hears that his girlfriend's going to break up with him before it comes out.
[03:04] But I assume that it's a phrase before Marvin Gaye came up with it, right?
[03:10] You mean the California raisins.
[03:12] The reason it's one of my favorite songs of all time is because of the California raisins.
[03:17] And I'm not kidding.
[03:21] So I had all the figurines.
[03:23] I got them from Hardee's and I built a styrofoam stage
[03:27] and I put little Christmas lights in the styrofoam page
[03:30] and I had speakers and I would play out of my Walkman,
[03:34] heard it through grapevine with the little characters on the styrofoam stage.
[03:38] So Jason, remember last show when we fixed Coalson?
[03:42] It's clear that we got a lot of work to do here.
[03:45] Yep, I told you.
[03:47] You won that bet.
[03:52] Okay, go ahead.
[03:54] I was going to suggest that certainly pre-telephones or what have you,
[04:02] a way that things would spread was through people who work together
[04:08] and so labor farmers, you're on the farm together
[04:14] and it's just like an easy shorthand for everybody who works kind of in the same place
[04:21] but spread far apart maybe.
[04:26] Okay.
[04:28] I like that.
[04:29] I was thinking maybe we go back to Greek times.
[04:33] The Greeks loved their wine.
[04:35] Grapes, maybe the grapevine stems from people sharing a glass of wine
[04:42] in addition to the dirt.
[04:44] I like that too.
[04:47] The Greeks also loved their grape leaves.
[04:49] They wrap everything in grape leaves.
[04:51] Everything.
[04:52] Potentially secret messages.
[04:55] Who knows?
[04:56] Yeah, maybe.
[04:58] Maybe they did use grape leaves for secret messages.
[05:03] That's not bad actually.
[05:05] That's pretty good.
[05:09] And so there it would be literally you heard it from the grape vine.
[05:13] Like maybe they wrote it on the...
[05:15] Yeah.
[05:17] Or they made...
[05:18] Did they make ink from...
[05:21] Squids.
[05:24] Yeah, like grape juice as ink at some point or something?
[05:27] It seems like you'd be able to, right?
[05:29] Yeah, probably would be.
[05:31] Have you tried to get red wine out of carpet, bro?
[05:33] Exactly, exactly.
[05:35] Yeah.
[05:36] The only thing I can think of, maybe you know how you make the telephone things
[05:42] with the cans and the twine?
[05:44] I always think of the same thing.
[05:45] Yeah.
[05:46] Maybe they use grapevines.
[05:48] Oh, yeah.
[05:49] That's the first one.
[05:50] Would that work?
[05:52] Sure.
[05:53] I don't see why not.
[05:54] Could you conduct a wave?
[05:55] Why not?
[05:56] It's organic.
[05:58] Okay, that's probably the winner then.
[06:00] That's a relief.
[06:02] It's not.
[06:03] Oh, I like it.
[06:04] I like it.
[06:05] I like secret messages on grape leaves way more.
[06:07] That's way more James Bond than the idiotic treehouse club thing
[06:12] that I can't...
[06:14] So basically before you had whatever wire or whatever they...
[06:19] Is this pre-wire?
[06:21] Well, I mean, you know, there was a time when wine and string was...
[06:27] I mean, that's something that you make that has value.
[06:30] It's expensive.
[06:31] I'm not sure that grapevines actually have any value.
[06:34] Except when they have grapes on them.
[06:37] And then once that happens.
[06:39] Right.
[06:40] Yeah.
[06:41] Okay.
[06:43] Then you get your chat on.
[06:46] Like across the field.
[06:48] It would just be like, pick up your side of the grapevine.
[06:51] We got to talk about some stuff.
[06:53] I don't think that's true, but I love the image of it.
[06:56] Yeah.
[06:57] Somebody's flagging somebody down.
[07:00] They have to pick up the other...
[07:05] All right, so if we're either going ancient Rome,
[07:10] Pliny the Elder, or we're going...
[07:13] I think we're going...
[07:15] I'm leaning more towards Greece.
[07:17] Oh, Greece. Okay.
[07:19] I had trouble with this one, I'll be honest.
[07:21] The whole time I'm just imagining these California raisins
[07:26] singing and a young Jon Coalson.
[07:29] Young Jon Coalson.
[07:33] Some styrofoam and some Christmas lights.
[07:36] Right.
[07:37] So we otherwise were going with like...
[07:40] Is this like American?
[07:43] You were thinking like immigrant labor or slaves
[07:49] working with grapevine.
[07:54] Yeah, I don't know.
[07:56] Like the south...
[07:59] There wasn't a lot of grapes.
[08:01] It was more...
[08:03] I don't...
[08:04] I guess I don't know.
[08:05] I don't think of the south as a place where we grow a lot of grapes.
[08:08] I mean, they do grow grapes down there, but they're very sweet.
[08:13] Yeah, you get Moscato and things from down there because of the...
[08:18] But you can...
[08:19] Like Florida grows grapes, right?
[08:21] You're like, you know, to this day, right?
[08:23] Is that not true?
[08:24] I have no idea.
[08:28] Yeah, I mean, I guess...
[08:30] They grow eating grapes, not wine grapes.
[08:33] Yeah, because the thing is those grapes end up being...
[08:36] Higher sugar content, so it makes the wine sweet,
[08:39] but you can make grapes out of those things.
[08:41] So it's possible the south was growing grapes.
[08:45] I mean, I know they grow grapes currently in Charleston
[08:48] and Savannah and those sort of things.
[08:52] And they grow them in Indiana too.
[08:54] Yeah, sure.
[08:56] Coalson, I got good news for you.
[08:58] Okay.
[08:59] It's about the California raisins?
[09:01] It is.
[09:02] Okay, good.
[09:03] You can buy all...
[09:04] You can buy a lot of 32 of them on eBay for $27.
[09:08] Well, I think I have all of them from the original.
[09:11] I think I got the...
[09:12] Well, then you can sell them and you'll be $27 richer.
[09:15] I think I have the original four and then the seven
[09:19] that came afterwards when they reintroduced them.
[09:22] The other four or the seven did sports and stuff.
[09:29] Like there was the surfer and they had...
[09:32] They weren't savers.
[09:33] Yeah, skateboards.
[09:34] And one ring to bind them.
[09:40] You may be shocked, but the condition is used.
[09:45] Does it come with a styrofoam stage?
[09:47] Maybe Coalson's the one selling this.
[09:49] Have you checked?
[09:50] The actual seller is here.
[09:54] Yeah.
[09:55] Just a fun fact.
[09:56] Victor Oledipo is an accomplished singer.
[10:01] Fun fact.
[10:02] Did you do that at the All-Star Game?
[10:05] Yeah.
[10:08] It's still fun.
[10:09] Fair enough.
[10:10] Huh.
[10:11] Okay.
[10:12] Well, we were wrong.
[10:14] Oh, Harper was kind of close.
[10:18] You weren't right with your secret bond, Great Weaves.
[10:21] Surprisingly.
[10:22] In his autobiography, Up from Slavery,
[10:25] Burger T. Washington says that slaves in the south
[10:29] kept up to date on current events by what was termed
[10:33] the Grapevine Telegraph.
[10:36] And so basically they would like...
[10:38] Somebody would go to the post office
[10:40] and like linger a bit and hear the news
[10:42] and then come back and sort of tell people
[10:45] as he went back to his master's house or whatever.
[10:53] Although, the New York Public Library contends
[10:56] that the phrase derives from the infamous Grapevine Tavern
[11:00] in New York City's Greenwich Village.
[11:02] During the Civil War, it was a popular hangout
[11:05] of Union officers and Confederate spies.
[11:07] It was the ideal place to get news and information,
[11:10] or in the case of spies and politicians,
[11:13] the ideal place to spread rumors and gossip,
[11:15] lead into the popular phrase,
[11:17] heard it through the Grapevine.
[11:19] Mm.
[11:20] So that makes sense.
[11:22] How does the first one even...
[11:26] Like, why Grapevine?
[11:29] Yeah, that's...
[11:30] It doesn't say.
[11:31] It doesn't say, right?
[11:32] No.
[11:33] And like, I'm not going to mess with Booker T.
[11:36] I'm not going to mess with Booker T.
[11:38] Yeah, he said it.
[11:39] No, I like the idea, because the idea that
[11:42] sort of the slaves knew stuff before the masters did.
[11:45] Like, that's cool. I enjoy that.
[11:47] Yeah, I do enjoy that.
[11:49] And definitely there's precedence for that.
[11:52] So maybe it's a combination of the two.
[11:57] Well, I mean, you know, it started with the Grapevine Tavern,
[12:00] but then, you know, the Grapevine Telegraph popularized that terminology,
[12:08] like using Grapevine as like a term for the channels of spreading information.
[12:16] It's another one we would never would have just get there.
[12:19] I mean, I think we did. I think...
[12:22] Well, yeah. No.
[12:24] I mean, that's interesting, right?
[12:26] Sure.
[12:27] Apparently, it did catch on in other countries.
[12:29] Australia, they had the Bush Telegraph,
[12:31] which they took from the Grapevine Telegraph,
[12:37] which at least according to these citations was, you know,
[12:43] how blacks in the South were getting news during this war.
[12:47] That's interesting.
[12:49] Yeah, so there seems... I've found this other thing where like,
[12:51] maybe it comes from just the way that they strung the telegraph wires
[12:55] looked like the same things they used to train grapevines.
[12:59] And so that's where it came from.
[13:01] There you go.
[13:03] But the common thing seems to be that it came about,
[13:06] the terminology came about during the Civil War.
[13:08] Yeah.
[13:09] Or thereabouts as an informal means of communication of details of the war, basically.
[13:15] Anything about California and winemaking?
[13:21] Now have a come across that yet.
[13:23] Not so much in the Civil War.