Episode Transcript
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0:00
This
0:01
is ninety nine percent invisible.
0:03
I'm Roman Mars.
0:06
There's a place in South Dakota, just
0:08
off interstate ninety. That's one of those tourist
0:10
attractions that you see hundreds of
0:12
signs for as you approach. They
0:14
count down the miles and list the reasons
0:17
to stop in.
0:18
cowboy boots doughnuts, cheap coffee,
0:20
sixty miles ahead. souvenirs,
0:23
fun for the whole family. That's reporter
0:26
Phil Corbett from a podcast called
0:28
The Wynn. In a few months
0:30
ago, while driving across the
0:32
wide stretching grasslands of South
0:34
Dakota, I aimed the
0:36
wheel off the freeway and followed
0:38
the signs to the ultimate roadside
0:41
stop wall drug.
0:43
We are a fun
0:46
roadside attraction. we're
0:48
slice of Americana,
0:49
you know. This
0:51
is Sarah Houston. Sarah
0:53
owns wall drug with her dad, and
0:55
she is the fourth generation of Houston
0:58
to run this place. It's
1:00
in the small town of Wall
1:02
South Dakota, which sits right
1:05
at the spot where the badlands crumple
1:07
up. Above, the
1:09
great plains silently sprawl
1:11
toward a distant horizon. Sara's
1:15
great grandfather bought this place as a simple
1:17
small town pharmacy during the Great Depression.
1:19
And over nine decades, the family
1:21
expanded this small drugstore to
1:23
take up an entire city block.
1:26
And in addition to its restaurant soda
1:28
fountain donut shop and travelers chapel,
1:30
it is a remarkable purveyor of
1:32
western catch.
1:38
And that is why I stopped. not
1:41
for the cheap coffee, but because wall
1:43
drug is synonymous with
1:45
one of my favorite examples of
1:47
Western Kitchen.
1:49
We are looking at a
1:51
full wall of Jackalope.
1:53
The Jackalope.
1:55
Looks like we've sold some here, but
1:57
we have four rows
1:59
of solid Jackalopes and
2:02
they have their nice wood
2:04
plaques and the
2:07
beautiful Jackrabbits with
2:09
the real antlers. If
2:12
you're not familiar with the Jack this
2:14
magical mythical creature is
2:17
a horned rabbit. And
2:19
though I've seen many lone mounted
2:21
Jackalope heads I am
2:24
struck by the variety, seeing them
2:26
side by side in rows.
2:28
Oh,
2:28
I think his lips are kind
2:30
of purged and he's looking quite perky
2:32
here. I would call this
2:34
guy a little more wirey, and
2:37
then you have the nice kind of more
2:39
wintery Jackalopes. that
2:41
are nice and white, super
2:43
fluffy, and I think
2:45
those ones are extra cute. The
2:49
antlers are of different sizes
2:51
and shapes. The rabbits
2:53
all have different expressions. Some
2:56
rye and knowing others
2:58
calm and wide eyed, but
3:01
all of them with a certain straight
3:03
faced charm. Do you have
3:05
a Jackalope at home --
3:07
Yeah. -- of course. For
3:09
the past seventy years, wall
3:12
drug has been central in the
3:14
spread of this iconic creature.
3:17
I wouldn't wanna say wall
3:18
drug is responsible. I wouldn't
3:20
wanna get too big of a head, but
3:23
we do see a ton of people from
3:25
all over come through
3:28
and here is probably
3:30
the first time that they're seeing, the Jackalope.
3:33
But
3:33
the story of how the Jackalope became
3:35
a mythical mascot of the American
3:37
West, inspiring an app loot river
3:40
of trinkets and songs and
3:42
whiskeys and postcards and tall
3:44
tales. That story goes
3:46
back much further than wall drug.
3:49
The way most people encounter the
3:51
Jackalope is not in the but
3:53
instead on a wall.
3:55
Yeah. A pool hall, a bar,
3:57
a greasy spoon diner, and
3:59
maybe
3:59
your grandfather's basement.
4:01
This is Michael Branch. who wrote a book
4:04
called On the Trail of the Jackalope.
4:06
He spent years
4:08
driving around the American West talking
4:11
to everyone who knew anything
4:13
about Jackalopes in a quest
4:16
to understand where this creature came
4:18
from and why it stuck around
4:20
for so long. According to
4:22
Mike, the first documented taxidermy
4:24
Jackalope was made by two
4:26
young brothers in the early nineteen
4:29
thirties. Ralph and Doug Herrick
4:31
lived on a little homestead outside of a tiny
4:33
town called Douglas, Wyoming out
4:35
on the edge of the prairie. and
4:37
those kids had been taken a taxidermy
4:40
course as a correspondence course through
4:42
the mail. Like many depression
4:44
era families, the young heroics
4:47
hunted and fished to
4:49
help stock the family dinner table.
4:51
And they had been out hunting one day and they bagged
4:53
a jack rabbit. They came back and
4:55
threw it on the floor of their shop, and as the
4:57
story goes, it slid up against some
5:00
deer handlers from a deer that had been
5:02
dressed out not long before. I'm
5:04
not totally understanding the physics of
5:06
this scene, but it's okay. Let's continue.
5:08
And that gave them the idea in that moment
5:10
when they saw that weird hybrid
5:12
thing sitting on the floor of their shop Let's
5:15
mount that thing. And that
5:17
was the first Jackalope head
5:19
mounted on a plaque. This
5:22
was the hoax mount. that
5:24
started it all. These two kids
5:27
taking a taxidermy class through
5:29
the mail apparently they did a pretty
5:31
good job because they brought the
5:33
mount down to the local pub where
5:35
the bar owner paid them ten bucks
5:37
for it. In that particular first
5:39
Jackalope, hung in the old Lebanti
5:41
hotel in Douglas, Wyoming over the
5:43
bar from the nineteen thirties all the way
5:45
through the nineteen seventies. And that was
5:48
That was the rock that got thrown in the
5:50
pond and the Jackalope ripples went
5:52
out from there across the country and across the
5:54
whole world really.
5:58
The Harrick
5:59
Brothers kept making these things,
6:02
and they probably would have remained
6:04
just a local Wyoming oddity if
6:07
not for wall drug, which
6:09
has been selling Jackalopes for
6:11
at least seventy years.
6:14
The reason why drug is such a vital
6:16
part of the story of the
6:18
Jackalope is that it was
6:20
probably the first place that ever commercially
6:22
sold Jackalopes. and they have
6:24
never stopped since. Long before
6:26
the Internet, wall drug
6:28
helped the Jackalope go viral.
6:31
tourists and road trippers from all
6:33
over the world would stop in
6:35
at this roadside emporium and
6:38
see on the wall, this
6:39
rabbit.
6:40
with antlers. As more
6:43
people came into contact with the antler
6:45
rabbit, a torrent of tall tales
6:47
followed. an elaborate mythology
6:49
sprung up around the creature dreamed up
6:52
by many different storytellers. Nobody
6:54
owns the Jackalope, No corporation
6:57
or person is entitled to control
6:59
its distribution, its consumption, its
7:01
interpretation. It is truly
7:03
part of the folk process. According
7:06
to Jackalope lore, the
7:09
creatures are smart and considerably
7:11
dangerous. They only mate
7:13
during lightning storms. And if you
7:15
put out a bowl of whiskey at night, a
7:18
passing Jackalope may finish it off
7:20
and in his drunken bravado.
7:23
he'll believe he can catch bullets
7:25
in his teeth, which is the only
7:27
way hunters can manage to
7:29
bag them. Also, Jackalope
7:31
milk is supposedly a powerful
7:33
aphrodisiac. And even though the
7:35
Jackalope sleeps on its back, it's
7:38
incredibly dangerous to milk one. And
7:40
finally, the Jackalope is the only
7:42
animal that can throw its voice
7:44
like a ventriloquist. If
7:46
you're out camping and you sing around campfire, you'll
7:48
hear that voice coming in from the sage
7:51
of the Jackalope harmonizing with you.
7:55
Throughout history, people have told stories
7:57
about Chimera. The original
7:59
Chimera from Greek mythology was
8:01
a fire breathing monster with lion's
8:03
head, a goat's body, and a serpent's
8:06
tail. Over time, the word has
8:08
come to mean any hybrid creature
8:10
made up of different animal parts. Horses
8:12
with wings, cats with eagle
8:15
heads, fish with fur. When inventing
8:17
something new, the oldest trick in
8:19
the book is to smash two existing
8:21
things together. But the
8:23
Jackalope Chimera distinctly fits
8:26
into the American West. and
8:28
it emerged at a particular moment
8:30
in the west's history. Early in
8:32
the country's western colonization Frontiersman
8:36
and settlers were often seen from
8:38
the east as bumpkins,
8:40
uncultured and immoral
8:42
people. living in a wild
8:45
land. But going into the nineteen
8:47
hundreds, pop culture started
8:49
to romanticize the west. people
8:51
loved stories about heroic
8:53
cowboys living on the prairie,
8:55
the stuff that you'd see in
8:57
Buffalo Bills' Wild West Show. Over
8:59
time, the diverse and complicated
9:02
reality of the west was slowly
9:04
flattened into a simpler and
9:06
more whitewashed myth. part
9:08
of that romantic retelling included
9:10
an interest in the actual western
9:13
tradition of tall tales.
9:15
that language of hyperbole, of
9:18
exaggeration, of larger than
9:20
life. So that's part of what
9:22
we associate with the American West straight is
9:24
this wonderful tradition of extravagant
9:26
folk humor. settlers
9:28
as early as the mid eighteen
9:30
hundreds used humor and
9:32
embellishment. to
9:34
subvert the narrative that they
9:36
were ignorant. I think the tension
9:38
between the east and west and the United
9:40
States from the nineteenth forward is a really
9:42
important part of the story. You know,
9:44
people in the American West who maybe are seen
9:46
as frontiersmen or bumpkins
9:48
or uneducated They say, oh,
9:50
yeah. Well, guess what? I know more than you
9:52
do about something, and it's this.
9:54
I'm gonna fool you with this Jackalope.
9:57
there's a great satisfaction in
9:59
taking someone who is condescending or
10:02
a lead
10:03
and exposing their ignorance
10:05
when busy trying to expose yours. Some
10:07
of
10:08
the Jackalope's allure is that it sets up
10:10
this rules. There are people
10:12
who know and people who
10:14
don't. and a lot of the satisfaction
10:16
comes from playing with that
10:18
line. Telling people a long
10:20
just barely plausible story
10:23
all the while pointing to the
10:25
evidence right there on the
10:27
wall. Like all
10:29
good humorous the Jackalope always keeps a
10:31
straight face, it refuses to
10:33
acknowledge that it's funny in any way. It takes
10:35
itself perfectly seriously. But
10:39
there's a curious thing about horned
10:41
rapids. While we know the origin story of
10:43
the Jackalope, Douglas
10:45
Wyoming nineteen thirty two, There are
10:47
illustrations and descriptions of
10:49
this specific creature going back
10:51
much, much further. For instance,
10:54
There's a Renaissance illustration of a
10:56
squirrel and three rabbits, the central
10:58
one, sporting a crown
11:00
of antlers. Or
11:02
there's a flemish painting from the
11:04
seventeenth century that shows a
11:06
wreath of fruit and flowers
11:08
surrounded by birds, deer, and
11:10
a small horned rabbit. And
11:12
this is not just in Europe. Horned
11:14
rabbits show up all over the
11:16
world. Indigenous people from Mexico and
11:18
the Americas. There are
11:21
horned rabbit tails in the folklore of
11:23
many African peoples. certainly
11:25
all across Europe and then in
11:27
Asia. A horned rabbit is
11:29
even invoked in early Buddhist
11:31
texts. as a way to
11:33
talk about the very nature of
11:35
reality. Basically,
11:37
the Buddha says to his students.
11:39
If you think a horned rabbit exists,
11:41
then you don't understand anything about
11:43
the world or about human consciousness because
11:46
obviously it doesn't exist. And then
11:48
he'd ask his students to
11:51
picture a Horned rabbit. And he'd
11:53
say, well, the Horned rabbit is real to you
11:55
now, isn't it? So if you think the Horned
11:57
rabbit doesn't exist, You don't know anything
11:59
about reality or the nature of the
12:01
mind. So he used it as a tool to
12:03
kind of break down this binary thinking, the
12:05
specific lesson was
12:07
that the horn grab it both does and doesn't exist.
12:10
And that
12:12
line between real and not
12:15
real, blurs with the
12:17
horned rabbit because they don't
12:19
only show up in art and mythology.
12:21
Early cosmographies and natural
12:23
histories will depict the Horned
12:25
Rabbit, and then throughout the late medieval and
12:27
renaissance periods in Europe, the
12:29
Horned Rabbit was actually taxonomized
12:31
as a unique species. It was called
12:33
lepus cornudis. And so
12:35
if rabbits with horns are depicted
12:37
all over the world in an art from nearly
12:40
every continent and in natural
12:42
history, Is there actually
12:44
a lepus Cornutus? A
12:46
taxonomized distinct species? No.
12:49
They were wrong on that. But
12:51
horn
12:52
rabbits actually exist in nature.
12:55
The horned
12:56
rabbit is real,
12:58
real sort
12:59
of.
13:02
Most of what we know about the existence
13:04
of Horned Roberts is thanks to a pioneering
13:07
virologist named Richard Shoppe,
13:09
Shope was born in Des Moines, Iowa in
13:11
nineteen o one. And by the nineteen
13:13
thirties, he was working at the Rockefeller
13:16
Institute at Princeton University. That's
13:18
where he discovered what caused the pandemic
13:20
of nineteen eighteen by
13:22
linking the influenza virus to one he
13:24
observed in pigs. Shoak was
13:26
well established in his field, and he
13:28
was an expert on animal
13:30
to human disease transmission. Shoak
13:33
has two living children. And
13:35
though neither could do an interview for this
13:37
story, his daughter, Nancy,
13:39
shared some of her dad's unpublished
13:42
letters, which were incredible
13:44
to read. Here is Richard
13:46
Shope describing his own
13:48
work in a letter he sent in
13:50
nineteen thirty two to
13:52
his mom.
13:54
February twenty second nineteen thirty
13:56
two.
13:57
You asked what to tell people that
13:59
asked you what
13:59
my work was, Just tell them
14:02
that I work with diseases, the
14:04
causes of which are unknown, trying
14:06
to find the cause and to study the
14:08
pathology.
14:12
At this time, Shoppe had conducted
14:15
research that convinced him that viruses
14:17
could cause certain kinds of cancer
14:19
in mammals. The scientific community
14:21
hadn't caught up with them yet, but that would
14:23
change starting in nineteen
14:25
thirty two. That year, The
14:27
same year, the Herrick brothers mounted
14:29
their first Jackalope in Wyoming,
14:32
Hope started hearing about some
14:34
strange horned rabbits. in the
14:36
Midwest, not the ones the Heryks
14:38
were making, but real
14:40
rabbits that hunters had come
14:42
across on the great plains.
14:44
And so asked these hunters to essentially to start
14:47
mailing him these weird rabbits from the
14:49
Midwest. When the
14:50
rabbits arrived at his lab, Shope could
14:52
see that the rabbits didn't actually
14:54
have horns. They had these gnarly
14:57
disturbing growths that were caused, show
14:59
thought, by some kind of disease.
15:01
show
15:01
collected samples of the groats.
15:04
Then he pulverized them, did
15:06
some, you know, science stuff,
15:08
And as a result, he would get a mix
15:10
of organic material all
15:13
contained in a fluid. And that
15:15
fluid would be strained
15:17
through a porcelain filter. When
15:19
it was strained through that filter, lots
15:21
of genetic material and lots of bacteriological
15:25
material would be filtered out. Shope
15:27
applied that filtered fluid
15:29
to healthy rabbits who then
15:31
developed the same
15:33
growths. So whatever this disease was,
15:35
it was transmissible. But because
15:37
of this filtration process, he was
15:39
able to prove that all the other things
15:41
it might be had been filtered out
15:43
and the only thing small enough to go through
15:45
that porcelain filter was a virus.
15:48
That
15:48
virus that soap extracted is what's
15:50
called a papillomavirus. and that
15:52
can cause these really grotesque
15:54
growths on the animal's
15:56
head, which can look a lot like horns.
16:00
they are pretty terrible to
16:02
look at. I do not
16:04
recommend googling it, but
16:06
basically these growths are
16:08
carcinomas. that sometimes
16:10
grow quite large and
16:12
often on the rabbit's face and
16:14
head. I would definitely say
16:16
that A rabbit stricken with
16:18
papilloma virus is likely to look
16:20
more grotesque and less stylized
16:22
than an actual ejaculate. In
16:24
most cases, growths emerge
16:26
from the rabbit's face or the back of
16:28
its head, but in some instances,
16:30
they grow right out of the
16:32
rabbit's forehead. and look
16:34
uncannily like antlers or
16:36
goat horns. It's
16:38
hard to say for sure, but
16:40
it is certainly possible that these rabbits
16:42
with horns antlers that were showing up
16:44
in Renaissance paintings and
16:46
naturalist fieldbooks were
16:48
depictions of this disease.
16:51
observed in nature.
16:53
Now at
16:55
the time, the scientific community didn't
16:57
believe that viruses could cause cancer.
16:59
as soap wrote in a letter to a colleague. If
17:02
it's true, the observation would hurt lots of
17:04
people's feelings that have
17:05
for a long time considered tumors
17:08
as invariably of non infectious
17:10
nature. Cancer
17:11
isn't contagious. Right?
17:13
Well, show by studying those horn
17:15
rabbits was able to prove that those
17:17
weird growths were caused by a
17:20
virus. And that was a major breakthrough
17:23
because proving that a virus could
17:25
cause cancer in a mammal
17:27
open the way to all kinds of research that was
17:29
gonna turn out to be important to human
17:32
beings. By the
17:34
nineteen
17:34
seventies and eighties, Researchers
17:36
were starting to explore the link between
17:39
papillomaviruses and humans
17:41
and certain kinds of cancer.
17:44
It took years to prove the connection,
17:46
but eventually researchers
17:48
did. And they won the Nobel Prize
17:50
for the Discovery. We
17:52
now know that HPV can cause
17:55
various types of cancer in
17:57
people. But the most prominent example
17:59
is
17:59
cervical cancer. which was a
18:02
huge, huge killer. Over
18:03
ninety percent
18:04
of cervical cancer is caused
18:06
by HBV infection. but
18:09
decades after the work on
18:11
papillomaviruses by Richard Schopen,
18:13
scientists used that early research
18:15
to develop a vaccine.
18:16
If you connect the dots, this leads
18:19
eventually to development of the
18:21
human papillomavirus vaccine,
18:23
the HPV vaccine, which is
18:25
the safest, most effective anti cancer vaccine
18:28
we have ever created. It saves millions
18:30
of lives every year, and it
18:32
would not exist without
18:34
horn rabbits and without a person who was
18:36
curious enough to ask how
18:39
did these weird rabbits come to be the way
18:42
they are?
18:43
Mike lays
18:48
out in
18:50
the book. that there
18:52
is something charming and inexplicable.
18:55
That Richard Choe's work on
18:57
horned rabbits began in
19:00
nineteen thirty two.
19:03
Nineteen
19:03
thirty two is the year that the Herrick brothers
19:06
in that little town in Wyoming
19:08
claimed that they made their first
19:10
Jackalope hoax mail. I don't
19:12
think there's any relationship between those
19:14
two things, but I love the idea that
19:16
in the same year, This river forks,
19:18
and one fork is a kind of
19:20
hoax that is gonna become a staple of
19:22
popular culture. And the other
19:24
fork is this legitimate scientific
19:26
research that is gonna lead to the
19:28
saving of millions of lives. So the Jackalope
19:31
story turns out to be so much
19:33
more complicated than we
19:35
would ever guess when we stick a stamp
19:37
on a tacky postcard or we see
19:39
a taxidermy mount in a
19:41
pool
19:41
hall. The
19:43
Jackalope so artfully inhibits this space between
19:45
the fake and the real. It is
19:47
a true boundary cross center.
19:50
name your incongruity. Right? Is it a rabbit or
19:52
deer? Is it timid or vicious?
19:54
Is it funny or serious? Is
19:56
it ironic or genuine?
20:00
Back at wall
20:01
drug. I amble across
20:03
the courtyard. I pass
20:06
a taxidermy buffalo and the
20:09
threshold the back building and duck into
20:11
a hallway filled with
20:13
remarkable historic photographs. Young
20:16
cowboys on the great plains hold tight,
20:19
tibucking bronchos. Settlers
20:21
traverse the windswept grasslands,
20:23
indigenous families, and
20:25
chiefs posed together in traditional
20:28
garb standing on the land that they've
20:30
inhabited for millennia. And
20:32
this sincere quiet collage of
20:34
deep American history is
20:37
interrupted every twelve minutes
20:39
by a giant animatronic
20:42
T
20:47
Rex. The
20:53
American West can be
20:55
a weird place. Beautiful
20:58
and ugly, sincere
21:00
and commodified serene and
21:03
absurd. And overseeing all
21:06
of it up on the
21:08
wall is the antlered rabbit.
21:11
always with a straight
21:13
face. Alright. I think
21:15
just one final question.
21:17
Is the Jackalope real or
21:19
is it myth? Yes.
21:22
yes
21:36
Coming
21:41
up after the break, I talked with Phil about the
21:43
Jackalope in pop culture and
21:46
how it connects with the long tradition of the trickster.
22:11
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So
23:45
Phil, you're back
23:49
to talk with us a little bit more about
23:51
the Jackalope and its relationship with arts and culture.
23:53
And since your own podcast, the wind
23:55
is about listening and sound and
23:57
music. Let's start with some examples of
23:59
the Jackalope in
24:01
music. Yeah.
24:02
The Jackalope has inspired
24:04
a ton of pop culture.
24:06
In Mike Branch's book, he
24:08
devotes about two pages to
24:10
listening music that mentions the Jackalope. So
24:13
I just started listening through
24:15
all of those bands. Okay.
24:17
Great. So what did you find? There are a ton.
24:19
But just a couple quick highlights to
24:21
play for you. One is
24:24
creepy Jackalope eye by Arizona
24:27
cowpunkband SuperSuckers.
24:40
or here's one from
24:42
your neck of the woods. This is an extra
24:44
noisy track called Jackalope
24:46
Rising by the Phantom
24:49
Lynds. and and they're from beautiful downtown Oakland,
24:51
California. Maybe not downtown, but they're
24:53
from Oakland, California. Exactly.
25:02
The list goes on
25:04
and on and on, but I started
25:06
realizing that a lot of these
25:08
musicians were using the
25:10
Jackalope in their song titles and their
25:12
lyrics, and they were bending
25:14
genre in these really
25:16
interesting ways. Okay. So what do you mean by
25:18
that? Like, a lot of the songs just don't
25:20
neatly fit into, you know,
25:22
pop or punk or black
25:24
metal or whatever, but we're
25:26
instead combining all of
25:28
these different elements into
25:30
one song. Like the Jackalope itself,
25:32
it's hybrid creature. it sort of evokes
25:35
a kind of hybrid musical styles as
25:37
well. Exactly. And and so one of the
25:39
bands that caught my ear was
25:41
simply called Jackalope. Okay.
25:43
A lot of their songs have
25:45
this kind of like eighties,
25:47
new age jazz fusion
25:49
thing going on. And
25:58
they describe themselves as,
26:00
let's see,inth acoustic
26:03
Pankarachi Nappajez. Okay.
26:07
You might need to break that down for me a little bit
26:09
more, but yeah. Go on. So
26:11
it's co fronted by a very
26:13
prominent Native American flute player.
26:16
named R Carlos Nacai. Mhmm. And,
26:18
like, when I say prominent, I mean, you
26:20
know, if you're imagining what Native
26:22
American flu sounds like there's a
26:24
chance here imagining his music. He has,
26:26
like, multiple gold albums, etcetera
26:29
etcetera. And So called
26:31
up R Carlos Nacai to talk
26:33
about the image of the Jackalope
26:35
and, you know, what it means
26:38
to him? I think the first time
26:40
I was ever
26:41
made aware of the Jackalope was
26:43
when I was visiting with friends
26:45
down at the Mojave community
26:48
in Parker, Arizona, and
26:50
there was a
26:52
rabbit
26:52
with horns in one of the shops.
26:54
And I said, what is that?
26:57
Nakai was immediately drawn
26:59
to the Jackalope precisely because
27:01
it is a hybrid creature.
27:04
It crosses the boundary
27:06
between rabbit and deer, and
27:08
there's something just compelling and
27:10
playful about it for that reason. Also,
27:13
Nakai's collaborator in the band,
27:15
Larry Janias, is an
27:17
artist from Yuma, Arizona, and he
27:19
works a lot with chicano
27:21
imagery and ideas of living on
27:23
a border, coming from a bilingual family.
27:26
So we live in two worlds at once
27:28
all of us do. Jackalope is
27:31
that mixture of
27:33
cultural
27:33
awareness. And we go,
27:35
this is something we can have
27:37
a good time with. So we're
27:39
not guy, it's not just about
27:41
mixing cultures. It's also about breaking
27:43
down this line between what's funny and
27:45
what's serious. Exactly. And
27:48
This
27:48
is the other thing about the Jackalope that makes it
27:50
so interesting is that it fits into
27:53
this whole tradition of
27:55
the trickster. which,
27:57
you
27:57
know, you see in cultures all over
27:59
the world. Yeah. I'm
28:00
remembering from the main story how the
28:03
Jackalope is itself as
28:05
trickster with you know, they drink whiskey
28:07
and they catch bullets with their teeth
28:09
and throw their voices and
28:11
even the image of them is used to
28:13
trick. globally easterners to to
28:15
thinking that they're real. But you're saying that
28:17
trickster figures appear in lots of
28:19
cultures. So what are some of those examples? This
28:22
type of character is common in
28:24
indigenous stories. In North
28:26
America, specifically Coyote,
28:28
and in the northwest, the Crowe --
28:30
Mhmm. -- who both have major roles
28:32
in many creation stories
28:35
than Essu in Nigeria, who
28:37
is the Frickster God of the
28:39
Yaraba people. Hermes
28:41
in ancient Greece, Loki
28:43
from Norse mythology, He
28:46
changes form and gender. I mean, the
28:48
definition is fluid, but the
28:50
trickster just shows up everywhere.
28:52
And so I'm familiar with some of those, but,
28:54
you know, what makes a trickster?
28:56
One thing is that they are constantly
28:58
testing what is socially acceptable.
29:02
Sometimes they bridge different realities
29:04
as well. So in some stories, the
29:06
coyote will be able to pass between
29:09
the world the living in the spirit world. Mhmm.
29:11
And they also often
29:13
upend power structures usually
29:16
through mischief. So Michael
29:17
Branch told me that at the core of
29:19
it, the trickster is all about
29:22
crossing lines. Most of
29:24
us live in worlds where
29:27
boundaries are set out for
29:29
us every day, and those
29:31
lines have been drawn for us.
29:33
And there's something exhilarating
29:35
about breaking out of that. Right?
29:37
So elicit boundary crossing.
29:39
That's the forte of the
29:41
trickster. Okay. I'm sorry to get
29:42
some sense
29:43
of what the trickster is all about. But do you have other
29:45
examples of how they operate? So it
29:47
might help to talk about a couple
29:49
examples from more contemporary
29:52
culture. Mhmm. One would be George
29:54
Clooney's character from Oh Brother
29:56
Warehouse. I mean, that is contemporary
29:58
in one sense, but also isn't it based on
30:00
the odyssey, which is not very contemporary.
30:02
Exactly. And Odysseus from the Odyssey
30:05
is one of those ancient trickster
30:07
figures. So in O brother
30:09
where it now Clooney is
30:11
constantly using, you know, his wit and
30:13
embellishment and straight up
30:15
lives to get out of all these sticky
30:17
situations.
30:19
That was my hair.
30:24
Got you surrounded
30:26
there. We're in
30:27
a tight spot. Come on.
30:31
You
30:31
know he starts off in jail and he lies to
30:34
his fellow prisoners about hidden
30:36
treasure so they'll help him go on this big journey to break up
30:38
his ex wife's marriage. Mhmm. And
30:40
throughout the movie, he's super
30:42
smart and resourceful But
30:45
at the same time, he is totally
30:47
fallible -- Yeah. -- which is
30:49
basically how the trickster works.
30:51
Like, very clever, seemingly
30:53
all knowing but then completely
30:55
tripped up by lowly desires like
30:57
hunger or sex or
30:59
jealousy or even curiosity. Yeah.
31:01
It's like the trickster is charming because
31:04
of its fellibility. I'm
31:07
curious if you have a favorite
31:09
trickster. So one of my favorite tricksters
31:11
is one everybody will be
31:13
familiar with, which is bugs
31:16
bunny. I
31:18
never thought about that, but that seems yeah. That's
31:20
right that's right on the money. That makes sense.
31:22
Yeah. because, you know, bugs is constantly
31:25
defeating this bumbling human
31:27
hunter, Elmer Fudd. Mhmm. And
31:29
he does it, you know, not through physical
31:31
strength, but by out smarting him
31:33
and basically playing these elaborate cranks.
31:36
Come on. Oh. Anywhere's words?
31:39
Wabbit. Yeah. Those sliplaps have
31:41
been out style for at least three
31:43
decades. Willie. In
31:45
fact, I wouldn't be caught dead wearing
31:47
those things. Oh, well, I was just about
31:49
to take them off.
31:51
Oh. Oh,
31:51
question. Oh. This
31:54
minute went by. Yeah, doc. That
31:56
sun ain't pulling around. better
31:58
put on some sunscreen. Oh,
32:01
now I
32:02
can't see.
32:04
And if you think about it,
32:06
like, if bugs loses in these episodes,
32:08
he dies. Right. Right.
32:10
Right. And and yet he's just super
32:13
cool, nonchalant. and he
32:15
pretty much always comes out on
32:17
top.
32:17
Right. Another
32:18
thing about it, he's so
32:20
much like the Jackalope. Like, he he's this trickster
32:22
because he's constantly trolling Omurfud,
32:24
but he's also a bit of this chimera
32:26
hybrid because he's this mix between a
32:28
rabbit and a human. Exactly. Yeah. because
32:30
he walks on his back feet, he
32:33
has gloves, He breaks
32:35
down that line between human
32:37
and nonhuman. Mhmm.
32:39
And, like, low key bugs
32:41
also messes with gender. in
32:43
these really understated ways. Like,
32:46
he'll just fluidly play a fem
32:48
version of himself without
32:50
making a big thing of it. or
32:52
sometimes they do make a big deal of it, and he's
32:54
like a fem fatale, like,
32:56
really dolled up as noted
32:58
by Garth and Wayne's World. but
33:01
he he he admits on a hood of a
33:03
car that he's secretly attracted to bugs
33:05
bunny. Did you ever find bugs bunny
33:07
attractive when he put on a dress and play a girl
33:10
bunny?
33:12
No.
33:16
No.
33:20
Neither did I.
33:21
I it's just asking. Yeah.
33:23
And bugs
33:24
is just subversive. You
33:27
know, he's always upsetting power
33:29
structures. And that's
33:31
part of what makes him such a great
33:33
example of a trickster. Mhmm.
33:35
So yeah, I mean, if you haven't had a chance to, you
33:37
know, visit wall drug or see a
33:39
Jackalope on a wall, I
33:41
mean, you've definitely got the vibe
33:44
from bugs. That's fantastic.
33:47
Well, this has been so cool. I I really
33:49
appreciate this deep dive into
33:51
something that I had I just had no
33:53
idea there was so much behind. the
33:55
foe mounted heads that you see in
33:57
kitschy western shops. It's just it's
33:59
been so cool
33:59
to go on this journey with you. Thank you, folk. Really
34:02
appreciate it. Yeah. Thank
34:04
you, Roman.
34:12
Ninety nine percent Invisible Fence
34:13
was reported this week by Phil Corbett and
34:15
edited by executive producer, Delaney Hall.
34:17
Phil makes a podcast
34:19
about listening at a handmade desk in
34:21
the mountains, it's called the wind. If
34:24
you like this story, you might dig the
34:26
episode frontier music,
34:28
but start at the prologue. Listen
34:30
and subscribe. at the wind dot org. Mix this week by a ganache,
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fact checking by Graham Heisha, music
34:34
by Swan Rial. Kurt Colsted is our
34:36
digital director, the rest of the team.
34:40
includes Christopher Johnson, Vivian Lay, Chris Burupe,
34:42
Emmett Fitzgerald, Martine Gonzalez,
34:46
Joe Rosenberg, Jason
34:48
Millione, Jacob Motonado Medina,
34:50
Los Mendon, Sofia Klotzka,
34:52
and me, Woman Mars. Social
34:54
thanks this week to Alyssa Sobo,
34:57
from San Diego State University and Rick
34:59
Houston at ward drug who we also
35:01
spoke to for the story. Thanks also
35:03
to Tom Schoppe and Nancy
35:05
Fitzgerald, who shared their father's letters. We are part of
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the Stitcher and SiriusXM podcast family.
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Now headquartered six blocks north in
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the Pandora building. and
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beautiful. Uptown, Oakland,
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California. You can find the show
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and join discussions about the show on Facebook. You
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can tweet me at Roman Mars and the show at
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as every past episode of ninety 9PI at ninety 9PI
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