The Dollop: The Best Bi-Weekly American History Podcast Around
I love car rides and road trips-so much so in fact that my family has a nickname for me, “Astro,” as in the dog for times when my ears perk up like a dog hearing “car ride!” whenever someone is heading out somewhere and often ask to ride along. So earlier this year, when I heard my buddies were riding three hours up to northern Wisconsin for a LAN party, even though I don’t know the first thing about computer gaming, I asked if I could come along.
This lead to me sitting in the back of a van piled high with computer equipment and office chairs-expecting to hit the open road and listen to my own iPod, watch the landscapes as we passed by, or read the novel I had with me. At some point, my friend who was riding shotgun had the aux cord and plugged in his Zune (seriously, he owns a Zune!) and put on some podcast he had downloaded. I wasn’t really paying all that much attention at first until the guys started laughing hysterically up in the front. As I started to make heads and tails out of the story I had only been half-listening to, I started to laugh as well- so hard that I had tears streaming down my face and my side started to buckle.
Coincidentally, on another road trip to northern Wisconsin, my sister’s boyfriend played us episodes of Thrilling Adventure Hour that lulled me into a peaceful ease on the road. Podcasts are neat as a means of experiencing stories. Podcasts like Thrilling Adventure Hour, Welcome to Nightvale, and The Dollop, are scripted and serialized, but are conveyed orally through audio. These scripts and stories are meant to be read out loud to an audience, not read in isolation by a reader like a novel or short story, yet still some podcast formats are stories. They hearken back to a time when radio serials were a primary form of entertainment. They require written conventions and performance conventions as well, such as inflection and diction, or other acting skills.
The Dollop in particular is a “bi-weekly American history podcast” where comedian Dave Anthony compiles a narrative about a story in American history (in many cases an obscure or lesser-known one) and relays that story to his friend, fellow comedian Gareth Reynolds, who has not previewed or previously heard the story. Gareth and Dave then proceed to add in their commentary, with often tear-inducing, side-splitting results. I have really come to enjoy not only the humour of it, but coming away with more knowledge of interesting events and figures.
I’ve compiled a list of my top 5 favorite episodes, available on Spotify and iTunes to check out. The episodes contain explicit language.
5. Episode 20: David Hahn
In this episode, Dave and Gareth discuss David Hahn, the “radioactive boy scout.” Hahn’s father encouraged him to join the scouts to gain discipline after a few explosions around the house. This episode revolves around the teenager who went on to build a nuclear reactor in his mom’s back shed in Michigan. He collected radioactive materials from household items like smoke detectors and watches to make a breeder reactor until a chance encounter with authorities put and end to his experiments.
4. Episode 169: Disco Demolition Night (Live in Chicago)
In this episode, performed in front of a live audience in Chicago, Dave and Gareth discuss the infamous Disco Demolition Night spearheaded by morning radio DJ host/professional Disco-hater Steve Dahl. Albums were thrown like frisbees, although luckily no one was decapitated. Dave also talks about promotional genius Bill Veeck.
3.Episode 64: The Fans of Philadelphia
I looked up this episode after the Philadelphia Eagles won the Super Bowl and saw on the news that the city literally greased the street poles so fans couldn’t climb them (they did anyway). In this episode, Dave and Gareth talk about the grand tradition of throwing batteries, and generally anything one can get a hand on, at sporting events in Philadelphia. It left me with a new appreciation of one of my favorite movies Silver Linings Playbook, which I did not realize was art imitating life in its depiction of an over-the-top, superfan family of Eagles fans.
2. Episode 87: Action Park!
In this episode, Dave relays the story about one of the most terrifying amusement parks (in its dysfunction) ever to operate in the United States. Several people died at Action Park in New Jersey before the park folded. Rides were shoddily constructed, and many park employees were apathetic to the safety and well-being of park-goers. My favorite line, delivered in a caricature of a Jersey accent, is: “Lifeguard doesn’t mean that!” This was in reference to one of the first wave pools in the U.S., dubbed “the grave pool” by park employees and lifeguards.
- Episode 15: Ten Cent Beer Night
Oh, “Ten Cent Beer Night,” the episode from that long drive up to Eau Claire that had me laughing hysterically while stepping out of the van at a gas station clutching my side, probably unnerving fellow pit-stoppers. This episode goes through, inning by inning, the ill-fated “Ten Cent Beer Night” promotion at a Cleveland Indians game in the 1970s. With insufficient security and no system in place to limit sales, things quickly went south, culminating in a chaotic scene that could fit in a dystopian film of baseball players fighting off the crowd with their bats. My favorite line from this episode is the emphatically-delivered “six-per-perchase!”
Honorable Mentions:
Episode 106 The Fenian Raids: This episode covers Irish-American raids on Canada after the Civil War in an attempt to barter it back in exchange for the independence of Ireland from the U.K.
Episode 140 The Pig War (Live in Vancouver): This episode discusses the bloodless war of confusion in which Great Britain and the nascent United States had a passive-aggressive dispute over a small island up near Vancouver. Hilarity ensues in almost a farcical manner.
Episode 150 James Sullivan and the 1904 Olympic Games: This episode has a horse that can make change and count up to twenty, and if that isn’t reason enough to listen talks about the many fires, both literal and figurative, that had to be put out around the 1904 Olympic Games (And World’s Fair, and anniversary celebration of the Louisiana Purchase. This event evidently had an identity crisis)
