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[00:00]
A
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartradio. Welcome back to the show, fellow ridiculous historians. Thank you as always, so much for tuning in. Let's hear it for the shiny, beautiful baby boy of our podcast super producer, Mr. Max Williams.
[00:42]
B
I'm not gonna be able to bounce back from that one.
[00:44]
C
I can't give you the retort.
[00:45]
D
I'm just.
[00:45]
E
He's a bouncing baby. You should be able to bounce back.
[00:48]
A
He's just blushing. He's blushing. I think it's sweet.
[00:51]
E
Cherubic.
[00:52]
F
Downright.
[00:52]
E
Cherubic is on. Rubik is the word.
[00:55]
A
That's Noel Brown. I'm Ben Bullen. We are super excited, folks, to talk about a category of invention that's gonna be familiar to a lot of our ridiculous historians in the crowd. Congratulations to all the new parents tuning in. Hope you get some sleep here and there. We understand that's a struggle, but, Noel, when you were a new parent with your child, you and your partner doubtlessly had to do this whole rigmarole about getting advice on RA. Probably had to keep buying clothing or getting hand me downs as the kid just kept. Kept growing.
[01:41]
B
Did you.
[01:42]
A
Did you go to baby showers? Did you all have a baby shower?
[01:45]
E
Oh, yeah, we did. And I've been to maybe one. But I'll tell you, Ben, I say this not in any kind of, like, derogatory way, but that time in my life was so stressful that I have largely, like Men in Black mind erased it from my. As a. But one thing I do remember, Ben, distinctly, is the snot sucker.
[02:10]
A
Ah, yes, and this.
[02:12]
E
I didn't know it was branded, but as our wonderful research associate Ren pointed out, she recently discovered some of these things in attending a baby shower for her sister, who recently had a little one, and mentioned this idea of nasal congestion for the tykes. Well, the answer to that is the snot sucker. And she spelled it out the capital snot. Capital sucker. Capital S. Connected right up to snot. And I just always thought that was a pejorative. But it is, in fact a rubber bulb that you stick into the baby's nose and you squeeze it and it sucks the snot right out of it. She describes it as a Slurpee straw for snot. Not quite how I remember it.
[02:55]
A
Yeah, some of them look like bulbs. They look like the top of a turkey baster.
[03:00]
E
That's the one that I had. Maybe things have come a long way since my time as a new parent. But she also mentions if your baby is sassy and gassy, there's something for that Too. She should have been in baby product advertising. Colic is no match for Wendy the Gas Passer.
[03:15]
A
With an eye.
[03:16]
E
With an eye, which may sound like a character from a Monty Python film, specifically Holy Grail, but it is actually sort of an alien looking fart hose that's packaged up to look cutesy. It's pretty gross. And yet, you know, a comfort to new parents because Rain points out.
[03:35]
A
Efficacious.
[03:36]
E
Exactly.
[03:37]
F
Yeah.
[03:37]
A
Yeah. Because it shows us the parents will do anything to ensure that their newest addition to the family is safe, healthy, is comfortable. And there's a lot of misinformation out there. There's a lot of well intentioned, I'll say it, well intentioned hogwash. And it can be challenging. When you're a parent, you're already, especially in the United States, you're already paying a lot of money for various unexpected expense. So it can be stressful, as we said, to have a bunch of people coming out of the woodwork and saying, I know this thing is 50 to 150 or more dollars, but you absolutely must have it for sure.
[04:23]
E
And I mean, marketers know that they have parents kind of by the jimmies, as you say, Ben. They are in fact a captive audience in terms of like, they gotta have some of the stuff, whether it's their version or another version. Things like car seats. We're gonna get into the history of that. But it occurred to re going to her sister's baby shower and seeing all of these newfangled products targeted at parents who want nothing but to do right by their new babies. That this likely has been the case since the dawn of time. However, parents of yesteryear relied on a lot of anecdotal advice from generations past rather than science to care for their little ones. Which resulted in some admittedly creative, possibly ridiculous remedies for taking care of little.
[05:13]
A
Yeah, yeah. And Ren, we can't thank you enough for this perspective and this excellent research. And we want to represent you accurately to our fellow ridiculous historians. You, like some of us in the crowd tonight, did end up on the receiving end of some of these inventions, particularly those human leashes that attach to a child's back. And this is the beginning of the ridiculous history of. Of baby gear.
[05:46]
G
This is an I heart podcast. Guaranteed human
[05:52]
H
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[07:03]
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Working forest professionals in the US plant more than they harvest while also caring for water, wildlife and more. It's how we grow a sustainable future. Learn more at workingforestsinitiative.com.
[07:40]
A
We got to get to one real quick. Noel this reminds me of an episode I did years ago for my very first official podcast, Car Stuff. Not the most creative name, but it was a fun show. We hope you tuned in. Noel produced a lot of it. We all know about car seats for babies now they're a necessity. There are tons of variations or brands out there, but during the early 1900s, before automobiles were ubiquitous, the car itself was a luxury item for the rich, the decayed aristocracy, you know, the 1%ers of the gilded Age. It wasn't until the Model T came out that the automobile became increasingly mass produced and democratized.
[08:31]
E
Yeah, and in doing so, I mean, we know that safety was not exactly the prime selling point for some of these early automobiles, and in order to make it safer for children, they needed a little bit of modification. So 1930s did, of course, bring a little bit of a hiccup known as the Great Depression. To your point, Ben, nothing great about it. Which means that a lot of the less fortunate folks in the United States were more concerned with feeding their families than getting the latest car. However, after World War II, much like the soft serve craze that we talked about in the last episode, the country was rescued from economic peril and it Gave folks some new options once they settled back in after returning from the war. Families, mothers, fathers, needed larger vehicles to transport themselves and, of course, their growing herd of children and their groceries, of course, to and from their home.
[09:31]
A
Yeah. Cause grocery stores were also modernizing at this point, folks.
[09:35]
E
100%.
[09:36]
A
The days of the counter service are falling into obscurity. And now we've got the supermarket, which is entirely designed to make it easier and more tempting to buy more and more stuff. So you need room in your car.
[09:54]
E
Well, and like we said, Ben, while safety wasn't exactly top of mind for the design of the first Model Ts, neither was it top of mind with the design of the first car seats that were invented during the 1930s by the Bunny Bear Company. What is he, man? Is he a bunny or is he a bear? He needs to make up his mind. It looked like something you might see, a sanatorium, some sort of torture device. It was designed, however, for the fun of the tyke, not for safety. It was made from wood and fabric, and it was designed to, quote, elevate children so they could see their surroundings during car rides.
[10:35]
A
Yeah. And it also did something that we see time and time again in children's toys. It allows you, the tyke, or the brood of the family, to emulate the activities of adults, of your parents, of other grown people you've encountered. That's why children's kitchen toys are so ubiquitous even now. That's why this car seat would include stuff like a dummy steering wheel and maybe some, you know, pretend buttons you could push. Does look like the first model, which came out in 1933 from Bunny Bear. It looks like one of those bring your own lawn chairs that you would have at a concert or a picnic, but from hell. Right, Right. But it's canvas. It's got several straps to keep the tyke in, and it has an elongated rack at the bottom ending with a wooden bar that is probably too far for the aver feet to reach, I hope, based on this image that Ren gave us. But I think it most likely was meant to secure or brace it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[11:57]
E
But it also seems like in the event of a crash, it would just be. I don't know. Ren pointed this out, actually, in the name of the section car seats, AKA the Artist, formerly known as Lil Baby Death Trap. This big old hunk of chunk of wood would likely become a deadly projectile in the event of a car accident.
[12:15]
A
Just like those steering wheels that were so popular in the 40s and 50s that had the torpedo Design pointing at the driver's seat. Oh, dude.
[12:23]
E
Yeah. Final destination. Anybody? Come on.
[12:26]
A
And in the 1940s, a bunch of French guys agreed with me and Noel here. A company called Babanco decided that the current baby car seat models that they were seeing were probably uncomfortable for kiddos. They were also a pain in the keister to install. So they made a new kind of baby car seat. It hooks over the front passenger seat. The shotgun seat. Yep. Babies are still sitting in the front at this period of time. And then you had a single strap across the waist. Now, this is totally in opposition to modern safety standards, because as we know, you're not supposed to put a baby car seat in the front of the car because airbags could really harm a child. But people liked being able to see their kid next to them again, riding shotgun as they drive.
[13:25]
E
And they also, like in the Simpsons opening where, like, little baby Maggie's got their own little honk, honk with Marge and Pops out.
[13:32]
A
Yeah. And they also loved how easy it was to install this. But if you look at a picture of this French baby seat, what you'll see is that the kid is strapped in at the top of the seat, but the seat doesn't go down far enough to put them on the actual car seat. They're just hanging out. Kind of like an extreme mountaineer who straps themselves to the side of a rock face to sleep.
[14:02]
E
Yes, definitely. And equally treacherous.
[14:07]
A
Just so. And we know if we fast forward again, every company is aware there's a huge market for this. Parents will do anything they can for their children. So car seat technology continues to innovate. Go to 1962. We see the Gen A car seat. I am doing the Forrest Gump accent, but it is spelled J E E
[14:29]
E
N A Y. I think that's the only way to say it, Ben. Frankly, this one would be the first model on the market designed for backseat use. And it did have safety in mind. So good on
[14:44]
H
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[16:45]
I
hey everyone, it's Cal Penn. I'm the host of Irsay The Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club. This week on the podcast, I am sitting down with Ray Porter, the narrator of Andy Weir's audiobook project, Hail Mary Massive sci fi adventure about survival and science and what happens when you wake up alone, very far from Earth.
[17:09]
C
I really had to make a decision because I caught myself getting that frog in my throat and starting to get teary as I'm narrating some of these sections and it's like, okay, yo, yo, yo, is this indulgent? And I really thought about it. I was like, no. At this point it would kind of be betraying the trust the author and the listener have in telling this story if I don't go through it. But there's places in this book that that deeply, emotionally affected me and I left it on the mic. That's great because it served the story. People will say like, oh my God, I cried at the end. It's like, yeah dude, me too.
[17:41]
I
Listen to Irsay the Audible and I Heart Audio Book Club on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
[17:54]
E
Moving on, we're gonna get into the idea of, you know, bassinets, cradles. They don't really call them cradles as much anymore. Playpins. All of that is another category of baby gear. The baby box. Exactly. Like a crate for your baby. The first Automatic cradles, however, are colloquially known as rocke were created and patented by a master mechanic and serial tinkerer named John Bolkolt in 1897. He used a clockwork mechanism to automatically kind of swing the bassinet to help lull the baby to sleep. It was born out of a request from his wife, who, being exhausted as a new mother, dreamt of a machine that could rock her baby to sleep so that she could focus on her household chores.
[18:44]
A
I. You know, I think her words, at
[18:47]
E
least according to Bulkhart. Yes.
[18:49]
A
Yeah, according to the official story. But I'm with Ren here. I think it was probably more realistically bu colt spouse saying, why do I have to stay up and rock the kid to sleep? Like, when is it your turn, dude?
[19:05]
E
And so he's too busy tinkering, right?
[19:08]
A
He's like, I'm a serial tinkerer. He got to work, and he was literally investigating this in his garage over in Stevens Point, Wisconsin. And this research he was doing while he was not rocking the baby, by the way, led him to patent the first automated cradle. You can see pictures of this online. You would not have considered it automatic by 2026 standards, because you had to. If you're a parent, you have to hand crank the cradle to start the rocking motion. You're powering up a spring, and then the spring slowly expands over time, Creating that rocking sensation. Still is way better than having to sit there for hours, Just back and forth, for sure.
[19:58]
E
Yeah. And like a lot of these types of things, his original company name was Mega Dry. If descriptive, it was the automatic cradle manufacturing company. It did see some pretty early success, and so he figured that was a good cue to rebrand something a little more pleasant. The Lullaby Furniture Corporation.
[20:17]
A
Way better.
[20:18]
E
Yeah. So by 1930, the company sold three additional products. They had bassinets, a three in one high chair rocker, and a go kart for children that seems super safe, as well as something called the fliver. Fliver.
[20:35]
A
Let's call it the Fliver because of the suvs. Or we could call it the flower
[20:39]
E
if we want to shout out the witch.
[20:42]
A
Yeah. To be clear, that go kart, folks, is not the go kart you're thinking of from Andretti's or something like that. It's just something they could sit in that has wheels.
[20:53]
E
Got it. So more like a power wheel minus the power.
[20:57]
A
Yeah, yeah, just so. And by the end of 1930, the Lullaby Furniture Corporation is just madcap with success. Their gross assets in 1930 are $217,212.14. Which means it's time for our inflation calculator.
[21:18]
E
Oh, can we beep? Can we boop?
[21:20]
A
Oh, we must, we must. There we are. So a little bit north of $270,000 in 1930, thanks to inflation, is now in 2026. $4,240. $200,010.63. Nice one, Rob.
[21:39]
E
Heck, yeah, it is, right? I mean, still modest by today's standards, but they're on the way up. As his success grew, Bull Colt had his share of competitors, of course, entering the market, including an inventor named Luther P. Jones, who came up with this suspended baby hammock situation which could self rock for up to two hours after being wound. I jumped the gun on this one. This was the clock mechanism. So like a wristwatch that you wind and it has power reserve. You wind this up and then it will essentially rock itself for up to two hours with that stored energy. So judging from the illustrations that we have here that REM provided, it was pretty high up and the mechanism on top, you probably would have had to have like some kind of step ladder at the very least, if not a full. A frame ladder to get to.
[22:30]
A
Yeah. And also this is clearly for people who are a little bit more well to do.
[22:36]
E
Dude, big time. This thing is a mess.
[22:38]
A
You know what I mean? Like they're. You can, you can see the design clearly is definitely going to dominate whatever room you put it in, just on an interior decoration room. So you probably need to afford your own specific room in your domicile for this. And then, you know, at some point you'd have to have somebody service the machine, right?
[23:01]
E
Oh, clearly. I mean, it's that level of machine. And the illustration just, it says at the bottom, don't waste time rocking your baby's cradle. Let a motor rock it for you. And when baby wakes, he can watch the wheels go round.
[23:13]
A
Absolutely. And we know that Bull cult soldiered on despite this emerging competition. In 1936, this guy buys an island expressly for the purposes of logging hardwood. A few years later, astute historians, you will remember World War II because Germany invaded Poland, which meant that the Lullaby Corporation, like so many other Allied businesses, shifted to the war effort. And so instead of building baby cradles now, or flivers, they ended up providing Allied countries the raw materials that would later be used to build Mosquito bomber airplanes.
[23:58]
E
Yeah, and they were nicknamed wooden wonders. These airplanes, which I hadn't heard of before, the De Halvaland DH98 Mosquito bomber airplanes, to be precise, could reach a top speed of 400 miles per hour while carrying around £4,000 worth of explosives.
[24:16]
A
Absolutely. Yeah. This is gonna sound kind of crazy when we're saying that these are, you know, wooden planes, but that's where the technology was at the time, for sure.
[24:29]
E
We know a lot about, like, what is it the H.H. hunley or the H.S. hunley? The wooden submarines was also a thing.
[24:35]
A
Oh, yeah. Well, wood is a great way to start building something.
[24:40]
I
Right.
[24:40]
E
It's also real flammable.
[24:41]
A
It's also really. It's not perfect, but it's a great way to start and for sure.
[24:45]
I
So.
[24:46]
A
Yeah. Over time, the wars come and go. The Lullaby Company has several name changes, ownership goes back and forth. Eventually, Lullaby ends their business, but they don't do that until 1995.
[25:06]
I
So.
[25:06]
A
Good on you, Lullaby. I think we've got time for one more we really wanted to talk about. This is crazy. Nola. Max, this reminds me of an infamous viral photo from years and years ago where the controversial, legendary musician Michael Jackson held his baby out of a woman.
[25:30]
E
Simba style.
[25:31]
A
Yes, Simba style. Lion King style. To a bunch of reporters. And I think he wanted it to be a wholesome moment. Look at my child. Look at what I hath wrought. But the reporters and the paparazzi immediately said, what the heck are you doing holding a child out the window?
[25:50]
E
Well, Ben, he clearly wanted it to get fresh air. Required to renew. Renew and purify the baby's blood. Because those who sleep out of doors are stronger children. Ben, he must have been reading. He must have been reading luther Emmett Holt's 1894 book, the Care and Feeding of Children, which made these very claims. That is delightful. That name alone is worth the price of admission. That is talking about them like they're marmots or something.
[26:17]
A
Dr. Holt is a qualified pediatrician. It is tay.
[26:21]
E
I really loved kids. The care and feeding of children.
[26:24]
A
Yeah, it's also a. It's still a practice in parts of northern Europe to bundle a baby up and leave them outdoors in the cold. You know that.
[26:35]
E
So they will die of exposure because they were born the wrong sex or something for their Viking tribe. That's crazy.
[26:42]
A
It's to renew and purify the blood, just like Doc Holt said.
[26:45]
I
I see.
[26:46]
C
I see.
[26:46]
A
If you sleep outdoors, you're a stronger child.
[26:52]
B
Working force professionals in the US Plant more than they harvest while also caring for water, wildlife, and more. It's how we grow a sustainable future. Learn more@workingforceinitiative.com this summer, there are 250
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make it happen happen with experience beyond
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F
switch and get $100 back plus $650 in value in built in plan benefits. That's $750 in your first year guaranteed.
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G
And honestly that hundred dollars back I'm putting it towards the zipline now.
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Exactly. Best switch I ever made.
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This is just one reason to join T Mobile this summer. There are 250 reasons. Find yours
[27:50]
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Savings based on the value of benefits included with experience beyond like entertainment and one year of AAA Classic and DashPass on us. Benefits may require activation CPlan for details get $100 via virtual prepaid MasterCard with eligible ported, no cash access and expires in six months. Issued by Sunrise Banks and a member FDIC. Allow eight weeks
[28:08]
I
hey everyone, it's Cal Penn. I'm the host of Earsync, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club. This week on the podcast I am sitting down with Ray Porter, the narrator of Andy Weir's audiobook project, Hail Mary Massive sci fi adventure about survival and science and what happens when you wake up alone, very far from Earth.
[28:31]
C
I really had to make a decision because I caught myself getting that frog in my throat and starting to get teary as I'm narrating some of these sections and it's like, okay, yo yo yo, is this indulgent? And I really thought about it. I was like, no. At this point it would kind of be betraying the trust the author and the listener have in telling this story if I don't go through it. But there's places in this book that deeply, emotionally affected me and I left it on the mic. That's great because it served the story. People will say like oh my God, I cried at the end. It's like yeah dude, me too.
[29:03]
I
Listen to Irsay, the Audible and I hope Audiobook Club on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
[29:11]
K
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Addy Flabanserin is a prescription medicine for women under 65 with low sexual desire that is distressing to them. Addi is for low desire that happens in all situations and is not caused by a medical condition, relationship issue or medicines. Addi is not for men or to enhance sexual performance. Addie can cause severe low blood pressure and faint. Your risk is higher if you drink alcohol close to your dose. Don't take ADDI if you have liver problems, take certain medicines or are allergic to any of its ingredients. Before taking Addi, tell your doctor about all the medicines you take. If you have had any mental health conditions, are pregnant, planning, pregnancy, or breastfeeding. Side effects may include dizziness, nausea, tiredness, trouble sleeping, and dry mouth.
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[30:34]
E
It does occur to me, Ben, and it probably occurred to the inventor Ernest J. Henry, who patented the first window crib in 1919, that not only was this maybe something that parents might glom onto because of the Holt book, but parents living in small apartments or tenement buildings in New York City, for example, or Chicago or places like that, they might not have had much room. So they take advantage having like a little cage that hangs out the window.
[31:05]
A
Exactly. Because again, these are practical. Yeah, these are not the super well to do people who can dedicate an entire room in a nursery. Often they can't dedicate an entire room to individual bedroom for their older kids. So a lot of these folks during the second wave of the Industrial Revolution leave their homes in rural areas of the country to seek a job opportunity in the big city. And this is compounded by a lot of immigration at the time, mostly from Europe at this point in U.S. history. And those folks automatically go to cities because typically they're going to have a community that pre exists of people who are from their home country. This means that real estate goes through the roof. If you live in a major city at this time, like your Chicago's or your New York's, you were probably living in an apartment. You are probably, as you said, no super super squeezed for any kind of space. You're living in a tenement. Right. You might share a bathroom with an entire floor of people. You got I gotta say it, the the photo that Red has attached here of an actual window crib. It looks like chicken wire, but the baby looks happy. Confused. The baby doesn't look angry is what
[32:37]
E
I Don't think it looks angry. It doesn't look. It looks a little bewildered. And the mom. It's actually kind of a creepy photo, Ben, because the mother's facing away and the way the lighting is, it almost looks like she has no face or something. Like it's a little bit of a. It looks like an art piece, like a disturbing dystopian art piece. Because the. I keep saying the cage, because that's what it looks like. It is essentially a cage like enclosure hanging out the window, God knows how many stories up. And they looked at this as not only a way of saving space, but potentially in the cities of a way of providing their children with fresh air. However, during the Industrial Revolution and the second wave, the air weren't so fresh.
[33:17]
F
Right.
[33:18]
A
Yeah. We have to remember the EPA wouldn't be established the Environmental Protection Agency until 1970 and we don't know how long it's going to be able to stick around in the modern day. So a lot of these folks, and these are all very well intentioned parents, a lot of these folks in the city, they want fresh air for their kiddos, but they are not aware of the invisible dangers in polluted city air. We're talking about toxic byproducts made by the smelting of metal. Chromium, arsenic, benzene, lead, all the nasty stuff in a terrible cocktail. And when they were were purchasing these window cribs, which were relatively affordable by design, they were actually putting their kids, especially like the higher you get as well, they were putting their kids in the front lines, in the atmospheric trenches of stuff that history and health studies have conclusively proven is very, very bad
[34:21]
E
for humans for sure. So it is in fact a wonder that any of our grandparents survived long enough to our parents and allow us to enjoy our own fresh air. Yeah, this is wild. A lot of these inventions, as Ren points out, could be categorized as dumb, bad and even deadly. And there are of course, plenty more where that came from. We're going to talk about just a few more here at the end and then save some for a future tangents and trivia episode.
[34:52]
A
Yeah, yeah. So the window cage, just so you know, folks, mounted just like a window based air conditioning unit, still very common in cities across the planet. So that's kind of its legacy. We talked about how our buddy Johnny B. Buchalt was an inventor or what you called a serial tinkerer wren. Let's talk about one of the other things he invented. He made an automatic cow milker, which is very unpleasant for the Cows. I imagine it latches onto the cow's udders, and it uses a lot of the spring mechanisms that he pioneered for the automatic cradle to squeeze the udder and get the milk out. He called it the Western milking machine. It was super unpopular with cows. I'm being diplomatic, for sure.
[35:44]
E
And that didn't really take off because farmers didn't want to freak their cows out lest they kick the farmers in the teeth. That pollution, though, Ben, we were talking about in American cities was so bad from the late 1800s through the 1920s that carbon emissions actually coated birds in soot, changing the colors of their feathers into this. This day, scientists observe birds to gauge the severity of pollution and other environmental factors that could negatively impact human health. Ben, we've talked about this on stuff that I want you to know. Another way scientists use animals to test for environmental contaminants is at nuclear Superfund sites, like at Savannah river site, near where we live here in Atlanta, Georgia, where legacy nuclear waste from the creation of nuclear warheads was stored and disposed of, contaminating the groundwater and buried in these, like, open pits. And so scientists there, as part of, I believe the Army Corps of Engineers, test wildlife on a regular basis with Geiger counters. They tag them and then find them and then test them to make sure that the decontamination processes are going well and further.
[36:57]
A
Folks, here's another look. This is my favorite example of how crazy the pollution was during the Industrial Revolution. If you go over to England, you see that the soot was so widespread, it actually caused the population of peppered moths to shift their colors. As a species, they used to be pale and speckled. And because the air in their natural environment got so dark and sooty, they. They began to become dark, black forms. So it actually changed the color of some animals. This is nuts. And you also shouted out stuff they don't want you to know. This is a great thing for anybody who's interested in some of the darker sides of pollution. In a previous episode on our sister show, we talk about the idea of lead creating serial killers. So check out a book called Murderland, published 2020, wherein the author Caroline Fraser, talks about the pollution related to smelting and how it could have been the cause of the Pacific Northwest serial killer explosion during the 1970s.
[38:14]
E
We talked about this on stuff that I want you to know very recently.
[38:17]
A
Yeah, and do check out that episode, folks. We know it's a little bit of a dark turn for a show about baby gear, but we hope you enjoyed it.
[38:24]
E
Well, But Ben, this also kind of ties into the notion that pollution from smelting could have led to the downfall of the Roman Empire because of environmental contaminants that led to cognitive decline.
[38:38]
A
Yeah, good call. And also check out our earlier Ridiculous History episode on the fall of the Roman Empire as well as the fall of the Ottoman Empire. And while you're on the Internet, why not give us a nice little rating on your podcast platform of choice and stay tuned for our upcoming episodes?
[38:57]
E
Absolutely. Please do. You can find us on Apple Podcasts where the reviews really go along with way to helping people discover the show. We're also on Spotify and anywhere else you get your podcast. Ben this was a fun one man. A little on the shorter side, but absolutely delightful.
[39:14]
A
Yeah, Big, big thanks to our super producer Max the Bouncing Baby Boy Williams. Bouncing blushing Baby Boy Williams. Big thanks to Alex Williams who composed this track, as well as Dr. Rachel Big Spinach Lance and AJ Bahamas J.
[39:30]
E
Thanks again to Wren for doing the research on this episode. We look forward to hearing more from her in the not too distant future as well. Christopher Haciotes and Eaves Jeffco, thanks to them here in spirit. And Ben, thanks to you man. This was a fun one and a
[39:46]
A
hearty Goo Goo Gaga to all our young ridiculous historians tuning in.
[39:51]
E
We'll see you next time folks. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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Summary6 min read

Ridiculous History – "Oof! A Lot of Baby Gear was Absolutely Ridiculous"

Original Air Date: August 6, 2026
Hosts: Ben Bowlin & Noel Brown
Super producer: Max Williams
Research associate: Wren
Podcast by iHeartPodcasts

Episode Overview

This episode dives into the odd, ingenious, and sometimes dangerous history of baby gear. From snot suckers to automated cradles to the infamous window crib, Ben and Noel (with research from Wren) explore the often absurd journey of innovation in caring for infants and toddlers. Through humorous banter, pop culture references, and a healthy dose of skepticism, the hosts chart how necessity, market forces, and outdated science shaped the baby products of yesterday and today.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Modern Baby Gear Madness

Opening banter: Ben and Noel riff off celebrating producer Max’s "bouncing baby" status and set the tone for a playful but informative look at baby equipment.
The Snot Sucker & Gas Passer:
- Modern baby shower gifts include bulb-style nasal aspirators ("snot sucker") and gadgets like “Wendy the Gas Passer,” described as an "alien-looking fart hose" (02:11–03:15).
- Marketing targets new parents’ anxieties, knowing they're a "captive audience" (04:22).
- Parents today and in the past are pressured into buying gadgets—some useful, some frivolous, all heavily marketed.
- Quote: “Marketers know they have parents kind of by the jimmies.” – Noel (04:22)

2. The Human Leash & Anecdotal Traditions

Early baby inventions: Human leashes and harnesses for toddlers were early attempts at making parenting easier, though sometimes seen as questionable or even humiliating (05:12–05:45).

3. Car Seats: From "Lil Baby Death Trap" to Safety Essential

Car seat origins:
- Early car seats (1930s, Bunny Bear Company) were wooden and fabric contraptions intended to "elevate children so they could see their surroundings," not for safety (09:54–10:34).
- Safety wasn't a design priority; in Ben’s words: “It looked like something you might see in a sanatorium, some sort of torture device” (09:54).
- The seat could become a projectile in a crash: “...the artist, formerly known as lil baby death trap” (11:56).
Evolution:
- In the 1940s, French company Babanco designs an even less safe model—a hanging car seat for the front passenger, with minimal restraints (12:25–13:31).
- Modern safety standards are contrasted with older, questionable designs where kids were "just hanging out" like "extreme mountaineers" (13:31).
- Quote: "The kid is just hanging out. Kind of like an extreme mountaineer who straps themselves to the side of a rock face to sleep." – Ben (13:31)
Real advances:
- The 1962 "Jeenay" car seat is the first with backseat use and actual safety goals (14:06–14:29).

4. Automated Cradles & Rockers

Invention by John Bolkolt (1897):
- Early cradle with clockwork, hand-crank mechanism to rock the baby automatically so parents could do chores (17:53–19:07).
- Ben and Noel joke about marital negotiations and domestic ingenuity ("I'm a serial tinkerer"; "Why do I have to stay up and rock the kid to sleep?").
Business success:
- Bolkolt's company becomes Lullaby Furniture Corporation, expanding into bassinets, "three-in-one high chair rockers," basic go-karts, and "the fliver" (19:57–20:39).
- Inflation context: $217,212.14 in 1930 = ~$4.2m in 2026 (21:18–21:38).
Competition & Innovation:
- Luther P. Jones invents a suspended, self-rocking baby hammock (22:26–23:00).
- These items required significant resources, both in wealth and space— very much for the upper-middle class of their day.

5. Baby Gear Industries and War Efforts

Lullaby pivots to supporting the WWII war effort, providing wood for Mosquito bomber planes ("wooden wonders"), highlighting how industrial shifts affected baby gear companies (23:13–24:15).

6. The Bizarre "Window Crib"

Fresh air fads: Inspired (perhaps mistakenly) by Dr. Luther Emmett Holt’s 1894 child care advice, parents aimed to give infants "fresh air" even in city apartments (25:29–26:41).
Window crib patented (1919, Ernest J. Henry):
- Designed for parents in cramped city apartments, these cages hung out of building windows, like an A/C unit, to provide babies with air and save space (31:04–32:36).
- Photographs show a bewildered baby in a wire cage several stories up; hosts joke it looks like creepy dystopian art.
- The dark side: the "fresh air" was rife with Industrial Revolution-era toxins (chromium, arsenic, benzene, lead) and posed serious danger (33:17–34:21).
- Quote: "[Window cribs] are essentially cages like enclosure hanging out the window, God knows how many stories up...not only a way of saving space, but [giving] children fresh air. However, the air weren’t so fresh." – Noel (32:36–33:17)

7. The Perils of Urban Pollution and Baby Gear

Pollution’s real legacy:
- Industrial air pollution was so severe it could change animal coloring (soot-darkened birds; peppered moths in England) (36:57–38:13).
- The hosts tie in darker topics: lead and pollution's possible connection to societal problems and even crime (38:13–38:24).
- Quote: "It is in fact a wonder that any of our grandparents survived long enough to have our parents and allow us to enjoy our own fresh air." – Noel (34:21)

8. Other Odd Baby and Animal Inventions

Automatic cow milker:
- Bolkolt also invented a spring-loaded "Western milking machine" – unpopular with cows and farmers alike, for obvious reasons (34:52–35:43).

Memorable Quotes & Humor

“Marketers know they have parents kind of by the jimmies...they are a captive audience.” – Noel (04:22)
“Did you go to baby showers?...I have largely, like Men in Black mind erased it from my...One thing I do remember...is the snot sucker.” – Noel (01:42–02:10)
“It looked like something you might see in a sanatorium, some sort of torture device. It was designed...to elevate children so they could see their surroundings during car rides.” – Ben (09:54–10:34)
“The artist, formerly known as lil baby death trap.” – Ren, via Ben (11:56)
“That kid is just hanging out. Kind of like an extreme mountaineer who straps themselves to the side of a rock face to sleep.” – Ben (13:31)
“Don't waste time rocking your baby's cradle. Let a motor rock it for you. And when baby wakes, he can watch the wheels go round.” – Commentary on hammock cradle marketing (23:00)
“It's a wonder any of our grandparents survived long enough to have our parents.” – Noel (34:21)

Notable Timestamps

01:42: Noel’s stressful recollections of new parent life; introduction of snot sucker concept
02:55–03:36: Description of snot sucker and “alien” fart hose (“Wendy the Gas Passer”)
04:22: Critique of baby gear marketing pressure
09:54–10:34: Ugly, unsafe origins of the Bunny Bear car seat
11:56: “Lil baby death trap”—discussion of projectile hazard
13:31: Absurdity of French "hanging" baby seat
14:29: Advent of first safety-focused car seat
17:53–18:44: The first clockwork automatic cradle and its inventor
19:57–21:38: The Lullaby Furniture Corporation’s growth and inflation context
25:30: Michael Jackson’s “Simba style” baby moment—tying in the “fresh air” fad
31:04: The window crib invention and its urban context
36:57–38:13: Pollution’s impact on wildlife and bizarre scientific findings

Tone & Style

The episode is delivered in the hosts' signature blend of humor, skepticism, and historical curiosity. Ben and Noel maintain friendly banter, occasionally poke fun at old-timey misconceptions, and pull in pop culture references ("Final Destination," "The Simpsons," "Lion King Simba style"). They balance ridicule with empathy for parents past and present, always circling back to the broader point: history is as much a record of bad ideas as of progress.

For Further Exploration / Teasers

The hosts tease more in-depth explorations of “dumb, bad, and even deadly” inventions for a future tangents and trivia episode (34:21–34:52).
Cross-promotion: Listeners are recommended to check out related episodes on urban pollution, neurological decline, and environmental history across their broader podcast family.

Credits & Acknowledgments

Research: Wren
Producers and support staff credited throughout the end of the episode
Special thanks to Alex Williams (music), Dr. Rachel “Big Spinach” Lance, and AJ Bahamas J.

Summary:
This episode takes listeners on a wild historical ride through baby gear that’s bizarre, sometimes brilliant, and often dangerous by modern standards. Through laugh-out-loud examples, real research, and sly commentary on human foibles (and marketing cynicism), Ben and Noel make history as entertaining as it is eye-opening.

End of summary.

Loading summary

Transcript158 lines

[00:00]
A
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartradio. Welcome back to the show, fellow ridiculous historians. Thank you as always, so much for tuning in. Let's hear it for the shiny, beautiful baby boy of our podcast super producer, Mr. Max Williams.
[00:42]
B
I'm not gonna be able to bounce back from that one.
[00:44]
C
I can't give you the retort.
[00:45]
D
I'm just.
[00:45]
E
He's a bouncing baby. You should be able to bounce back.
[00:48]
A
He's just blushing. He's blushing. I think it's sweet.
[00:51]
E
Cherubic.
[00:52]
F
Downright.
[00:52]
E
Cherubic is on. Rubik is the word.
[00:55]
A
That's Noel Brown. I'm Ben Bullen. We are super excited, folks, to talk about a category of invention that's gonna be familiar to a lot of our ridiculous historians in the crowd. Congratulations to all the new parents tuning in. Hope you get some sleep here and there. We understand that's a struggle, but, Noel, when you were a new parent with your child, you and your partner doubtlessly had to do this whole rigmarole about getting advice on RA. Probably had to keep buying clothing or getting hand me downs as the kid just kept. Kept growing.
[01:41]
B
Did you.
[01:42]
A
Did you go to baby showers? Did you all have a baby shower?
[01:45]
E
Oh, yeah, we did. And I've been to maybe one. But I'll tell you, Ben, I say this not in any kind of, like, derogatory way, but that time in my life was so stressful that I have largely, like Men in Black mind erased it from my. As a. But one thing I do remember, Ben, distinctly, is the snot sucker.
[02:10]
A
Ah, yes, and this.
[02:12]
E
I didn't know it was branded, but as our wonderful research associate Ren pointed out, she recently discovered some of these things in attending a baby shower for her sister, who recently had a little one, and mentioned this idea of nasal congestion for the tykes. Well, the answer to that is the snot sucker. And she spelled it out the capital snot. Capital sucker. Capital S. Connected right up to snot. And I just always thought that was a pejorative. But it is, in fact a rubber bulb that you stick into the baby's nose and you squeeze it and it sucks the snot right out of it. She describes it as a Slurpee straw for snot. Not quite how I remember it.
[02:55]
A
Yeah, some of them look like bulbs. They look like the top of a turkey baster.
[03:00]
E
That's the one that I had. Maybe things have come a long way since my time as a new parent. But she also mentions if your baby is sassy and gassy, there's something for that Too. She should have been in baby product advertising. Colic is no match for Wendy the Gas Passer.
[03:15]
A
With an eye.
[03:16]
E
With an eye, which may sound like a character from a Monty Python film, specifically Holy Grail, but it is actually sort of an alien looking fart hose that's packaged up to look cutesy. It's pretty gross. And yet, you know, a comfort to new parents because Rain points out.
[03:35]
A
Efficacious.
[03:36]
E
Exactly.
[03:37]
F
Yeah.
[03:37]
A
Yeah. Because it shows us the parents will do anything to ensure that their newest addition to the family is safe, healthy, is comfortable. And there's a lot of misinformation out there. There's a lot of well intentioned, I'll say it, well intentioned hogwash. And it can be challenging. When you're a parent, you're already, especially in the United States, you're already paying a lot of money for various unexpected expense. So it can be stressful, as we said, to have a bunch of people coming out of the woodwork and saying, I know this thing is 50 to 150 or more dollars, but you absolutely must have it for sure.
[04:23]
E
And I mean, marketers know that they have parents kind of by the jimmies, as you say, Ben. They are in fact a captive audience in terms of like, they gotta have some of the stuff, whether it's their version or another version. Things like car seats. We're gonna get into the history of that. But it occurred to re going to her sister's baby shower and seeing all of these newfangled products targeted at parents who want nothing but to do right by their new babies. That this likely has been the case since the dawn of time. However, parents of yesteryear relied on a lot of anecdotal advice from generations past rather than science to care for their little ones. Which resulted in some admittedly creative, possibly ridiculous remedies for taking care of little.
[05:13]
A
Yeah, yeah. And Ren, we can't thank you enough for this perspective and this excellent research. And we want to represent you accurately to our fellow ridiculous historians. You, like some of us in the crowd tonight, did end up on the receiving end of some of these inventions, particularly those human leashes that attach to a child's back. And this is the beginning of the ridiculous history of. Of baby gear.
[05:46]
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[07:40]
A
We got to get to one real quick. Noel this reminds me of an episode I did years ago for my very first official podcast, Car Stuff. Not the most creative name, but it was a fun show. We hope you tuned in. Noel produced a lot of it. We all know about car seats for babies now they're a necessity. There are tons of variations or brands out there, but during the early 1900s, before automobiles were ubiquitous, the car itself was a luxury item for the rich, the decayed aristocracy, you know, the 1%ers of the gilded Age. It wasn't until the Model T came out that the automobile became increasingly mass produced and democratized.
[08:31]
E
Yeah, and in doing so, I mean, we know that safety was not exactly the prime selling point for some of these early automobiles, and in order to make it safer for children, they needed a little bit of modification. So 1930s did, of course, bring a little bit of a hiccup known as the Great Depression. To your point, Ben, nothing great about it. Which means that a lot of the less fortunate folks in the United States were more concerned with feeding their families than getting the latest car. However, after World War II, much like the soft serve craze that we talked about in the last episode, the country was rescued from economic peril and it Gave folks some new options once they settled back in after returning from the war. Families, mothers, fathers, needed larger vehicles to transport themselves and, of course, their growing herd of children and their groceries, of course, to and from their home.
[09:31]
A
Yeah. Cause grocery stores were also modernizing at this point, folks.
[09:35]
E
100%.
[09:36]
A
The days of the counter service are falling into obscurity. And now we've got the supermarket, which is entirely designed to make it easier and more tempting to buy more and more stuff. So you need room in your car.
[09:54]
E
Well, and like we said, Ben, while safety wasn't exactly top of mind for the design of the first Model Ts, neither was it top of mind with the design of the first car seats that were invented during the 1930s by the Bunny Bear Company. What is he, man? Is he a bunny or is he a bear? He needs to make up his mind. It looked like something you might see, a sanatorium, some sort of torture device. It was designed, however, for the fun of the tyke, not for safety. It was made from wood and fabric, and it was designed to, quote, elevate children so they could see their surroundings during car rides.
[10:35]
A
Yeah. And it also did something that we see time and time again in children's toys. It allows you, the tyke, or the brood of the family, to emulate the activities of adults, of your parents, of other grown people you've encountered. That's why children's kitchen toys are so ubiquitous even now. That's why this car seat would include stuff like a dummy steering wheel and maybe some, you know, pretend buttons you could push. Does look like the first model, which came out in 1933 from Bunny Bear. It looks like one of those bring your own lawn chairs that you would have at a concert or a picnic, but from hell. Right, Right. But it's canvas. It's got several straps to keep the tyke in, and it has an elongated rack at the bottom ending with a wooden bar that is probably too far for the aver feet to reach, I hope, based on this image that Ren gave us. But I think it most likely was meant to secure or brace it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[11:57]
E
But it also seems like in the event of a crash, it would just be. I don't know. Ren pointed this out, actually, in the name of the section car seats, AKA the Artist, formerly known as Lil Baby Death Trap. This big old hunk of chunk of wood would likely become a deadly projectile in the event of a car accident.
[12:15]
A
Just like those steering wheels that were so popular in the 40s and 50s that had the torpedo Design pointing at the driver's seat. Oh, dude.
[12:23]
E
Yeah. Final destination. Anybody? Come on.
[12:26]
A
And in the 1940s, a bunch of French guys agreed with me and Noel here. A company called Babanco decided that the current baby car seat models that they were seeing were probably uncomfortable for kiddos. They were also a pain in the keister to install. So they made a new kind of baby car seat. It hooks over the front passenger seat. The shotgun seat. Yep. Babies are still sitting in the front at this period of time. And then you had a single strap across the waist. Now, this is totally in opposition to modern safety standards, because as we know, you're not supposed to put a baby car seat in the front of the car because airbags could really harm a child. But people liked being able to see their kid next to them again, riding shotgun as they drive.
[13:25]
E
And they also, like in the Simpsons opening where, like, little baby Maggie's got their own little honk, honk with Marge and Pops out.
[13:32]
A
Yeah. And they also loved how easy it was to install this. But if you look at a picture of this French baby seat, what you'll see is that the kid is strapped in at the top of the seat, but the seat doesn't go down far enough to put them on the actual car seat. They're just hanging out. Kind of like an extreme mountaineer who straps themselves to the side of a rock face to sleep.
[14:02]
E
Yes, definitely. And equally treacherous.
[14:07]
A
Just so. And we know if we fast forward again, every company is aware there's a huge market for this. Parents will do anything they can for their children. So car seat technology continues to innovate. Go to 1962. We see the Gen A car seat. I am doing the Forrest Gump accent, but it is spelled J E E
[14:29]
E
N A Y. I think that's the only way to say it, Ben. Frankly, this one would be the first model on the market designed for backseat use. And it did have safety in mind. So good on
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Savings based on the value of benefits included with experience beyond like entertainment and one year of AAA Classic and DashPass on US benefits may require activation. See plan for details. Get $100 via virtual prepaid MasterCard with eligible ported, no cash access and expires in six months. Issued by Sunrise Banks and a member FDIC. Allow eight weeks
[16:45]
I
hey everyone, it's Cal Penn. I'm the host of Irsay The Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club. This week on the podcast, I am sitting down with Ray Porter, the narrator of Andy Weir's audiobook project, Hail Mary Massive sci fi adventure about survival and science and what happens when you wake up alone, very far from Earth.
[17:09]
C
I really had to make a decision because I caught myself getting that frog in my throat and starting to get teary as I'm narrating some of these sections and it's like, okay, yo, yo, yo, is this indulgent? And I really thought about it. I was like, no. At this point it would kind of be betraying the trust the author and the listener have in telling this story if I don't go through it. But there's places in this book that that deeply, emotionally affected me and I left it on the mic. That's great because it served the story. People will say like, oh my God, I cried at the end. It's like, yeah dude, me too.
[17:41]
I
Listen to Irsay the Audible and I Heart Audio Book Club on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
[17:54]
E
Moving on, we're gonna get into the idea of, you know, bassinets, cradles. They don't really call them cradles as much anymore. Playpins. All of that is another category of baby gear. The baby box. Exactly. Like a crate for your baby. The first Automatic cradles, however, are colloquially known as rocke were created and patented by a master mechanic and serial tinkerer named John Bolkolt in 1897. He used a clockwork mechanism to automatically kind of swing the bassinet to help lull the baby to sleep. It was born out of a request from his wife, who, being exhausted as a new mother, dreamt of a machine that could rock her baby to sleep so that she could focus on her household chores.
[18:44]
A
I. You know, I think her words, at
[18:47]
E
least according to Bulkhart. Yes.
[18:49]
A
Yeah, according to the official story. But I'm with Ren here. I think it was probably more realistically bu colt spouse saying, why do I have to stay up and rock the kid to sleep? Like, when is it your turn, dude?
[19:05]
E
And so he's too busy tinkering, right?
[19:08]
A
He's like, I'm a serial tinkerer. He got to work, and he was literally investigating this in his garage over in Stevens Point, Wisconsin. And this research he was doing while he was not rocking the baby, by the way, led him to patent the first automated cradle. You can see pictures of this online. You would not have considered it automatic by 2026 standards, because you had to. If you're a parent, you have to hand crank the cradle to start the rocking motion. You're powering up a spring, and then the spring slowly expands over time, Creating that rocking sensation. Still is way better than having to sit there for hours, Just back and forth, for sure.
[19:58]
E
Yeah. And like a lot of these types of things, his original company name was Mega Dry. If descriptive, it was the automatic cradle manufacturing company. It did see some pretty early success, and so he figured that was a good cue to rebrand something a little more pleasant. The Lullaby Furniture Corporation.
[20:17]
A
Way better.
[20:18]
E
Yeah. So by 1930, the company sold three additional products. They had bassinets, a three in one high chair rocker, and a go kart for children that seems super safe, as well as something called the fliver. Fliver.
[20:35]
A
Let's call it the Fliver because of the suvs. Or we could call it the flower
[20:39]
E
if we want to shout out the witch.
[20:42]
A
Yeah. To be clear, that go kart, folks, is not the go kart you're thinking of from Andretti's or something like that. It's just something they could sit in that has wheels.
[20:53]
E
Got it. So more like a power wheel minus the power.
[20:57]
A
Yeah, yeah, just so. And by the end of 1930, the Lullaby Furniture Corporation is just madcap with success. Their gross assets in 1930 are $217,212.14. Which means it's time for our inflation calculator.
[21:18]
E
Oh, can we beep? Can we boop?
[21:20]
A
Oh, we must, we must. There we are. So a little bit north of $270,000 in 1930, thanks to inflation, is now in 2026. $4,240. $200,010.63. Nice one, Rob.
[21:39]
E
Heck, yeah, it is, right? I mean, still modest by today's standards, but they're on the way up. As his success grew, Bull Colt had his share of competitors, of course, entering the market, including an inventor named Luther P. Jones, who came up with this suspended baby hammock situation which could self rock for up to two hours after being wound. I jumped the gun on this one. This was the clock mechanism. So like a wristwatch that you wind and it has power reserve. You wind this up and then it will essentially rock itself for up to two hours with that stored energy. So judging from the illustrations that we have here that REM provided, it was pretty high up and the mechanism on top, you probably would have had to have like some kind of step ladder at the very least, if not a full. A frame ladder to get to.
[22:30]
A
Yeah. And also this is clearly for people who are a little bit more well to do.
[22:36]
E
Dude, big time. This thing is a mess.
[22:38]
A
You know what I mean? Like they're. You can, you can see the design clearly is definitely going to dominate whatever room you put it in, just on an interior decoration room. So you probably need to afford your own specific room in your domicile for this. And then, you know, at some point you'd have to have somebody service the machine, right?
[23:01]
E
Oh, clearly. I mean, it's that level of machine. And the illustration just, it says at the bottom, don't waste time rocking your baby's cradle. Let a motor rock it for you. And when baby wakes, he can watch the wheels go round.
[23:13]
A
Absolutely. And we know that Bull cult soldiered on despite this emerging competition. In 1936, this guy buys an island expressly for the purposes of logging hardwood. A few years later, astute historians, you will remember World War II because Germany invaded Poland, which meant that the Lullaby Corporation, like so many other Allied businesses, shifted to the war effort. And so instead of building baby cradles now, or flivers, they ended up providing Allied countries the raw materials that would later be used to build Mosquito bomber airplanes.
[23:58]
E
Yeah, and they were nicknamed wooden wonders. These airplanes, which I hadn't heard of before, the De Halvaland DH98 Mosquito bomber airplanes, to be precise, could reach a top speed of 400 miles per hour while carrying around £4,000 worth of explosives.
[24:16]
A
Absolutely. Yeah. This is gonna sound kind of crazy when we're saying that these are, you know, wooden planes, but that's where the technology was at the time, for sure.
[24:29]
E
We know a lot about, like, what is it the H.H. hunley or the H.S. hunley? The wooden submarines was also a thing.
[24:35]
A
Oh, yeah. Well, wood is a great way to start building something.
[24:40]
I
Right.
[24:40]
E
It's also real flammable.
[24:41]
A
It's also really. It's not perfect, but it's a great way to start and for sure.
[24:45]
I
So.
[24:46]
A
Yeah. Over time, the wars come and go. The Lullaby Company has several name changes, ownership goes back and forth. Eventually, Lullaby ends their business, but they don't do that until 1995.
[25:06]
I
So.
[25:06]
A
Good on you, Lullaby. I think we've got time for one more we really wanted to talk about. This is crazy. Nola. Max, this reminds me of an infamous viral photo from years and years ago where the controversial, legendary musician Michael Jackson held his baby out of a woman.
[25:30]
E
Simba style.
[25:31]
A
Yes, Simba style. Lion King style. To a bunch of reporters. And I think he wanted it to be a wholesome moment. Look at my child. Look at what I hath wrought. But the reporters and the paparazzi immediately said, what the heck are you doing holding a child out the window?
[25:50]
E
Well, Ben, he clearly wanted it to get fresh air. Required to renew. Renew and purify the baby's blood. Because those who sleep out of doors are stronger children. Ben, he must have been reading. He must have been reading luther Emmett Holt's 1894 book, the Care and Feeding of Children, which made these very claims. That is delightful. That name alone is worth the price of admission. That is talking about them like they're marmots or something.
[26:17]
A
Dr. Holt is a qualified pediatrician. It is tay.
[26:21]
E
I really loved kids. The care and feeding of children.
[26:24]
A
Yeah, it's also a. It's still a practice in parts of northern Europe to bundle a baby up and leave them outdoors in the cold. You know that.
[26:35]
E
So they will die of exposure because they were born the wrong sex or something for their Viking tribe. That's crazy.
[26:42]
A
It's to renew and purify the blood, just like Doc Holt said.
[26:45]
I
I see.
[26:46]
C
I see.
[26:46]
A
If you sleep outdoors, you're a stronger child.
[26:52]
B
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Savings based on the value of benefits included with experience beyond like entertainment and one year of AAA Classic and DashPass on us. Benefits may require activation CPlan for details get $100 via virtual prepaid MasterCard with eligible ported, no cash access and expires in six months. Issued by Sunrise Banks and a member FDIC. Allow eight weeks
[28:08]
I
hey everyone, it's Cal Penn. I'm the host of Earsync, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club. This week on the podcast I am sitting down with Ray Porter, the narrator of Andy Weir's audiobook project, Hail Mary Massive sci fi adventure about survival and science and what happens when you wake up alone, very far from Earth.
[28:31]
C
I really had to make a decision because I caught myself getting that frog in my throat and starting to get teary as I'm narrating some of these sections and it's like, okay, yo yo yo, is this indulgent? And I really thought about it. I was like, no. At this point it would kind of be betraying the trust the author and the listener have in telling this story if I don't go through it. But there's places in this book that deeply, emotionally affected me and I left it on the mic. That's great because it served the story. People will say like oh my God, I cried at the end. It's like yeah dude, me too.
[29:03]
I
Listen to Irsay, the Audible and I hope Audiobook Club on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
[29:11]
K
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Visit addy.com that's a d d y I.com to learn more, including important warnings.
[30:34]
E
It does occur to me, Ben, and it probably occurred to the inventor Ernest J. Henry, who patented the first window crib in 1919, that not only was this maybe something that parents might glom onto because of the Holt book, but parents living in small apartments or tenement buildings in New York City, for example, or Chicago or places like that, they might not have had much room. So they take advantage having like a little cage that hangs out the window.
[31:05]
A
Exactly. Because again, these are practical. Yeah, these are not the super well to do people who can dedicate an entire room in a nursery. Often they can't dedicate an entire room to individual bedroom for their older kids. So a lot of these folks during the second wave of the Industrial Revolution leave their homes in rural areas of the country to seek a job opportunity in the big city. And this is compounded by a lot of immigration at the time, mostly from Europe at this point in U.S. history. And those folks automatically go to cities because typically they're going to have a community that pre exists of people who are from their home country. This means that real estate goes through the roof. If you live in a major city at this time, like your Chicago's or your New York's, you were probably living in an apartment. You are probably, as you said, no super super squeezed for any kind of space. You're living in a tenement. Right. You might share a bathroom with an entire floor of people. You got I gotta say it, the the photo that Red has attached here of an actual window crib. It looks like chicken wire, but the baby looks happy. Confused. The baby doesn't look angry is what
[32:37]
E
I Don't think it looks angry. It doesn't look. It looks a little bewildered. And the mom. It's actually kind of a creepy photo, Ben, because the mother's facing away and the way the lighting is, it almost looks like she has no face or something. Like it's a little bit of a. It looks like an art piece, like a disturbing dystopian art piece. Because the. I keep saying the cage, because that's what it looks like. It is essentially a cage like enclosure hanging out the window, God knows how many stories up. And they looked at this as not only a way of saving space, but potentially in the cities of a way of providing their children with fresh air. However, during the Industrial Revolution and the second wave, the air weren't so fresh.
[33:17]
F
Right.
[33:18]
A
Yeah. We have to remember the EPA wouldn't be established the Environmental Protection Agency until 1970 and we don't know how long it's going to be able to stick around in the modern day. So a lot of these folks, and these are all very well intentioned parents, a lot of these folks in the city, they want fresh air for their kiddos, but they are not aware of the invisible dangers in polluted city air. We're talking about toxic byproducts made by the smelting of metal. Chromium, arsenic, benzene, lead, all the nasty stuff in a terrible cocktail. And when they were were purchasing these window cribs, which were relatively affordable by design, they were actually putting their kids, especially like the higher you get as well, they were putting their kids in the front lines, in the atmospheric trenches of stuff that history and health studies have conclusively proven is very, very bad
[34:21]
E
for humans for sure. So it is in fact a wonder that any of our grandparents survived long enough to our parents and allow us to enjoy our own fresh air. Yeah, this is wild. A lot of these inventions, as Ren points out, could be categorized as dumb, bad and even deadly. And there are of course, plenty more where that came from. We're going to talk about just a few more here at the end and then save some for a future tangents and trivia episode.
[34:52]
A
Yeah, yeah. So the window cage, just so you know, folks, mounted just like a window based air conditioning unit, still very common in cities across the planet. So that's kind of its legacy. We talked about how our buddy Johnny B. Buchalt was an inventor or what you called a serial tinkerer wren. Let's talk about one of the other things he invented. He made an automatic cow milker, which is very unpleasant for the Cows. I imagine it latches onto the cow's udders, and it uses a lot of the spring mechanisms that he pioneered for the automatic cradle to squeeze the udder and get the milk out. He called it the Western milking machine. It was super unpopular with cows. I'm being diplomatic, for sure.
[35:44]
E
And that didn't really take off because farmers didn't want to freak their cows out lest they kick the farmers in the teeth. That pollution, though, Ben, we were talking about in American cities was so bad from the late 1800s through the 1920s that carbon emissions actually coated birds in soot, changing the colors of their feathers into this. This day, scientists observe birds to gauge the severity of pollution and other environmental factors that could negatively impact human health. Ben, we've talked about this on stuff that I want you to know. Another way scientists use animals to test for environmental contaminants is at nuclear Superfund sites, like at Savannah river site, near where we live here in Atlanta, Georgia, where legacy nuclear waste from the creation of nuclear warheads was stored and disposed of, contaminating the groundwater and buried in these, like, open pits. And so scientists there, as part of, I believe the Army Corps of Engineers, test wildlife on a regular basis with Geiger counters. They tag them and then find them and then test them to make sure that the decontamination processes are going well and further.
[36:57]
A
Folks, here's another look. This is my favorite example of how crazy the pollution was during the Industrial Revolution. If you go over to England, you see that the soot was so widespread, it actually caused the population of peppered moths to shift their colors. As a species, they used to be pale and speckled. And because the air in their natural environment got so dark and sooty, they. They began to become dark, black forms. So it actually changed the color of some animals. This is nuts. And you also shouted out stuff they don't want you to know. This is a great thing for anybody who's interested in some of the darker sides of pollution. In a previous episode on our sister show, we talk about the idea of lead creating serial killers. So check out a book called Murderland, published 2020, wherein the author Caroline Fraser, talks about the pollution related to smelting and how it could have been the cause of the Pacific Northwest serial killer explosion during the 1970s.
[38:14]
E
We talked about this on stuff that I want you to know very recently.
[38:17]
A
Yeah, and do check out that episode, folks. We know it's a little bit of a dark turn for a show about baby gear, but we hope you enjoyed it.
[38:24]
E
Well, But Ben, this also kind of ties into the notion that pollution from smelting could have led to the downfall of the Roman Empire because of environmental contaminants that led to cognitive decline.
[38:38]
A
Yeah, good call. And also check out our earlier Ridiculous History episode on the fall of the Roman Empire as well as the fall of the Ottoman Empire. And while you're on the Internet, why not give us a nice little rating on your podcast platform of choice and stay tuned for our upcoming episodes?
[38:57]
E
Absolutely. Please do. You can find us on Apple Podcasts where the reviews really go along with way to helping people discover the show. We're also on Spotify and anywhere else you get your podcast. Ben this was a fun one man. A little on the shorter side, but absolutely delightful.
[39:14]
A
Yeah, Big, big thanks to our super producer Max the Bouncing Baby Boy Williams. Bouncing blushing Baby Boy Williams. Big thanks to Alex Williams who composed this track, as well as Dr. Rachel Big Spinach Lance and AJ Bahamas J.
[39:30]
E
Thanks again to Wren for doing the research on this episode. We look forward to hearing more from her in the not too distant future as well. Christopher Haciotes and Eaves Jeffco, thanks to them here in spirit. And Ben, thanks to you man. This was a fun one and a
[39:46]
A
hearty Goo Goo Gaga to all our young ridiculous historians tuning in.
[39:51]
E
We'll see you next time folks. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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hey everyone, it's Kel Penn. I'm inviting you to join the best sounding book club you've ever heard with my podcast Hearsay, The Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club. Every episode I nerd out with amazing guests and dive into the best new audiobooks available on Audible. It's the book club for your ears. Listen to Earth, Hearsay, the Audible and iHeart audiobook club on the iHeartradio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
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