The Ridiculous History of Vending Machines

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Ridiculous History of Vending Machines

Podcast Information:

• Title: Ridiculous History
• Host/Author: iHeartPodcasts
• Description: History is beautiful, brutal, and, often, ridiculous. Join Ben Bowlin and Noel Brown as they dive into some of the weirdest stories from across the span of human civilization in Ridiculous History, a podcast by iHeartRadio.
• Episode: The Ridiculous History of Vending Machines
• Release Date: April 1, 2025

---

1. Introduction

The episode begins with host Ben Bowlin and co-host Noel Brown introducing the topic of vending machines, setting the stage for an exploration into their quirky and varied history. They humorously engage with their super producer, Max Williams, highlighting the show's lighthearted and conversational tone.

2. Early Beginnings: Hero of Alexandria’s Holy Water Vending Machine

The discussion kicks off with one of the earliest known vending machines, invented by Hero (also known as Heron) of Alexandria around 1st-century Egypt. This ingenious device dispensed holy water in temples, operating mechanically without human intervention.

• Ben Bowlin [08:05]: "Our story begins with a guy named Hero or Heron or Heron of Alexandria. In ancient Egypt, this guy purportedly invented the first vending machine... it was selling holy water, of course."

• Noel Brown [10:14]: "Hero comes from a Greek word that means protector or defender... he was very much responsible for the kind of proto vending machine."

Hero’s machine utilized a clever mechanism where a coin’s weight triggered the release of a preset amount of holy water, ensuring controlled usage and deterring fraud.

3. Vending Machines in the Victorian Era: Tobacco and Snuff

Transitioning to the 18th century, the hosts delve into the advent of vending machines in England, particularly focusing on "honor boxes" used to sell tobacco and snuff. These machines represented a significant step in the commercialization and ubiquity of vending machines.

• Ben Bowlin [15:11]: "These things were early vending machines that were operated via coin, and they were used to sell tobacco and snuff."

• Noel Brown [18:30]: "One of the classic styles of vending machines that you see less and less of these days is the cigarette machine with the big old clunky... pull things."

The hosts discuss how these machines not only provided convenience but also posed social and health challenges, such as the ease of access to tobacco products, even for minors.

4. The Rise of Newspaper and Stamp Machines

By the mid-19th century, vending machines expanded their inventory to include newspapers and stamps, addressing the needs of a growing literate population and the burgeoning postal system.

• Ben Bowlin [19:02]: "In the 19th century, we see the introduction of stamp and newspaper vending machines."

• Noel Brown [20:15]: "Simon Denham was another innovator responsible for creating a stamp dispensing machine in 1867."

These machines were strategically placed in train stations and post offices, optimizing their placement where consumers naturally needed these items.

5. Early Innovations: Postcard Vending Machines

In 1883, Percy Everett revolutionized vending machines by introducing systems that dispensed postcards, marking a departure from selling only consumables. This innovation highlighted the adaptability of vending machines to cater to diverse consumer needs.

• Ben Bowlin [22:11]: "In 1883, Percival Everett was the first to truly innovate some of these previous iterations into a form much more resembling modern vending machines."

• Noel Brown [23:10]: "These vending machines are able to sell all kinds of stationery, right?"

The placement of postcard machines in locations like train stations capitalized on travelers' needs, enhancing the machines' practicality and profitability.

6. The Golden Age of American Vending Machines

The early to mid-20th century marked the golden age of vending machines in the United States, with a surge in popularity driven by industrialization and increasing factory populations.

• Ben Bowlin [43:03]: "Vending machine manufacturers realized that they can up their profits by selling more sophisticated products."

• Noel Brown [44:38]: "The coffee vending machines... only in hospitals and courthouses."

The hosts emphasize the role of vending machines in factory settings, offering employees quick access to refreshments without the need for extensive break facilities.

7. Technological Advances: Coin Validation and Cashless Payments

A significant focus is placed on the technological advancements that enabled vending machines to evolve beyond simple coin-operated devices. Early machines employed mechanisms to detect counterfeit coins based on weight and metal composition.

• Ben Bowlin [53:55]: "The reason that coins in the United States have ridges on them... is because they wanted to prevent fraud in vending machines."

• Noel Brown [55:19]: "They were using... a magnetic tape head mechanism... to verify that it was an authentic dollar."

As vending machines modernized, they incorporated digital scanning technology and cashless payment systems, reflecting broader societal shifts towards digital transactions.

8. Vending Machines Around the World: Japan’s Unique Offerings

The conversation shifts to Japan, renowned for its innovative and eclectic range of vending machines. These machines go beyond beverages and snacks, offering everything from fresh ramen to quirky items like used panties.

• Noel Brown [63:25]: "Japan is known for having really interesting and weird stuff in its vending machines, which are absolutely everywhere."

• Ben Bowlin [64:13]: "There are vending machines for bugs... and other strange items."

The hosts highlight Japan’s cultural openness and technological prowess, which have fostered a vending machine landscape rich with variety and novelty, catering to diverse consumer desires and societal norms.

9. The Future of Vending Machines

Looking ahead, Ben and Noel speculate on the future trajectory of vending machines, anticipating further integration of advanced technologies such as cryptocurrency payments and enhanced security features.

• Noel Brown [59:13]: "You'll start seeing machines like the way that cars stopped having CD players or the way laptops stopped having disk drives."

• Ben Bowlin [60:31]: "We are going to see vending machines continue because they satisfy some basic human needs."

They also discuss the potential for vending machines to adapt to a cashless society, integrating mobile payment systems like Apple Pay and other digital authentication methods.

10. Conclusion

Wrapping up the episode, the hosts reflect on the enduring relevance and adaptability of vending machines throughout history. From dispensing holy water in ancient temples to serving as hubs for modern automatons, vending machines have continuously evolved to meet human needs and technological advancements.

• Noel Brown [72:28]: "I'm excited. So he actually also composed and beep booped this very theme that you hear in your very ears."

• Ben Bowlin [73:10]: "Thanks to Jeff... and thanks to everybody who has run into a weird vending machine. Please post pictures."

The episode concludes with a humorous nod to the show's ongoing adventures in uncovering the bizarre and fascinating stories behind everyday objects, encouraging listeners to engage and share their own encounters with peculiar vending machines.

---

Notable Quotes:

• Ben Bowlin [08:05]: "Hero of Alexandria... invented the first vending machine."
• Noel Brown [10:14]: "He was very much responsible for the kind of proto vending machine."
• Ben Bowlin [15:11]: "Early vending machines were used to sell tobacco and snuff."
• Noel Brown [22:36]: "Percival Everett’s invention transformed vending machines into modern forms."
• Ben Bowlin [53:55]: "Coins have ridges to prevent fraud in vending machines."
• Noel Brown [63:25]: "Japan's vending machines sell everything from ramen to used panties."

This episode of Ridiculous History offers a comprehensive and entertaining journey through the evolution of vending machines, highlighting their cultural significance, technological milestones, and the often humorous roles they play in society.

Transcript

[Ben Bolan]

Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you as always, so much for tuning. And let's hear it for the man, the myth legend, our super producer, Mr. Max Williams. Excuse me, I'm gonna.

[Noel Brown]

I don't know.

[Ben Bolan]

Yeah. Remember how I started saying Zanzibar instead of we all just went with it?

[Noel Brown]

I think I stole huzzah from Lauren Vogelbaum. Actual facts, Lauren. Actual facts, Vogelbaum.

[Max Williams]

But I mean, I think we should bring Zanzibar back to be like Cahokia.

[Noel Brown]

I sometimes via text, say huzoo.

[Ben Bolan]

Well, we're going to put a quarter in our local podcast, vending machine. That's ridiculous history.

[Noel Brown]

And hopefully our snack doesn't get stuck and we have to shake that thing because that's part of the history of vending machines, too.

[Ben Bolan]

And hopefully we're talking about today we're only touching a vending machine for snacks as we are going to learn vending machines vend a lot of things.

[Noel Brown]

Ridiculous stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Ben Bolan]

You're Noel Brown. I'm Ben Bolan. I think before we teamed up with our research associate, Jeff Bartlett, we were all kind of curious about where vending machines come. Come from because nowadays they're ubiquitous and no, you know, if I'm in Japan, there. There are countless vending machines if. If you and I are walking through, let's say. What's that?

[Noel Brown]

The airport.

[Ben Bolan]

The airport.

[Noel Brown]

They have vending machines for everything at the airport. Snacks like, you know, sandwiches, high value electronics. Yes, exactly.

[Max Williams]

Condoms.

[Ben Bolan]

And. And good. I think it's a good thing that there are condoms in vending machines. You know, in the.

[Noel Brown]

When you want to join the Mile.

[Ben Bolan]

High Club, which is actually.

[Noel Brown]

And be safe about it.

[Ben Bolan]

Yeah, actually, the Mile High Club has. It sounds cooler than it is. We are a PG13 show.

[Noel Brown]

Keep your secrets.

[Max Williams]

I mean, plain bathrooms are awful just to use. They're awful. They're so small.

[Ben Bolan]

They flush so aggressively.

[Noel Brown]

Like, it gives me a start every time. It's like I feel like I'm going to get sucked. Sucked out of the planes in that little hole.

[Ben Bolan]

It's the pause too, because you hit the flush button and then there's like two or three seconds before it just evacuates.

[Noel Brown]

Yeah, right.

[Max Williams]

It has to be that aggressive, though, because it shoots it out over the. Over the. Like out into the air instantly. You know, it really does.

[Ben Bolan]

No longer true.

[Noel Brown]

I didn't think so.

[Ben Bolan]

No longer true.

[Noel Brown]

Oh, good. Although I did see a meme. I guess it's not really a meme. More of an Internet Video of cruise ships just straight up mass dumping waste into the ocean. And it's legal as long as they're a certain distance offshore.

[Max Williams]

Dave Matthews. Tour bus stuff.

[Ben Bolan]

Right, right, right.

[Noel Brown]

On the. On the. The water taxi in Chicago. Never forget, never forget, never forget.

[Ben Bolan]

Also, cruise ships are one of the few things that are currently not sold in a vending machine, and that's probably just due to the size of the cruise ship.

[Noel Brown]

This is very true, Ben, but I would argue or that there are vending machines on many cruise ships.

[Ben Bolan]

I know. And I want a vending machine that sells vending machines. You know what I mean? Wake up.

[Noel Brown]

That is a pretty awesome art installation idea. It's a vending machine that sells tiny replicas of vending machines with different stuff in them. So you can get like, the snack vending machine and then collect them all. Like Pokemon.

[Ben Bolan]

I'll be honest.

[Max Williams]

Sorry. I'm not meaning to take us even further off, but it reminds me of that season one Rick and Morty episode where they're jumping through universes.

[Ben Bolan]

Interdimensional cable.

[Max Williams]

No, it's not that one. See, it's actually the one where you first meet evil Morty. Spoilers this first season, though. But it's like it's a rotation of four things. It's humans, pizza, phone, and chairs. So in one universe, it's like a chair talking into a human. Ordering. Sitting on a pizza, ordering. It's harder to do them all.

[Ben Bolan]

It's all four iterations of those. Right. And we see there this. What was I going to say? Oh, I was going to mention this. We have to. At the top. A little while back, I can't remember how long ago, Noel, you and our pal Matt Frederick and a couple other folks visited Meow Wolf. We all went together and they had Megamart. Yes, Megamart Omega Mart. And they had a very interesting spin on vending machines.

[Noel Brown]

Psychedelic vending machines. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

[Ben Bolan]

And what I think we're all surprised to learn is that vending machines are actually pretty old.

[Noel Brown]

Cyrus the Great of Persia was a conqueror, and he tried to increase his empire by marrying Timyris, the widow of the king of the Massengeti people. She refused his offer, and so he decided that he would invade her kingdom instead. Turns out that was a big mistake. Listen to the latest episode of Noble Blood, available now. Listen to Noble blood on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Ben Bolan]

Dressing. Dressing. Oh, French dressing. Exactly.

[Noel Brown]

Oh, that's good. I'm A.J.

[Ben Bolan]

Jacobs, and my current obsession is puzzles. And that has given birth to my podcast, the Puzzler.

[Noel Brown]

Something about Mary Poppins?

[Ben Bolan]

Exactly.

[Noel Brown]

This is fun.

[Ben Bolan]

You can get your daily puzzle nuggets delivered straight to your ears. Listen to the Puzzler every day on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Noel Brown]

I'm ready to fight. Oh, this is Fighting Words. Okay, I'll put the hammer back. Hi, I'm George M. Johnson, a best selling author with a second most banned book in America. Now more than ever, we need to use our voices to fight back.

[Ben Bolan]

Part of the power of black queer.

[Noel Brown]

Creativity is the fact that we got us, you know, we are the greatest culture makers in world history. Listen to Fighting Words on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Hi, I'm Bob Pittman, chairman and CEO of iHeartMedia. I'm excited to introduce a brand new season of my podcast, Math and Stories from the frontiers of Marketing. I'm having conversations with some folks across a wide range of industries to hear.

[Ben Bolan]

How they reach the top of their.

[Noel Brown]

Fields and the lessons they learned along the way that everyone can use. I'll be joined by innovative leaders like chairman and CEO of Elf Beauty, Tarang Amin, legendary singer, songwriter and philanthropist Jewell.

[Ben Bolan]

Being a rock star is very fun, but helping people is way more fun.

[Noel Brown]

And Damian Maldonado, CEO of American Financing.

[Ben Bolan]

I figured out the formula, I just have to work hard.

[Noel Brown]

Then that's magic. Join me as we uncover innovations in data and analytics, the math, and the ever important creative spark, the magic. Listen to math and magic on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

[Ben Bolan]

Our story begins with a guy named Hero or Heron or Heron of Alexandria. In ancient Egypt, this guy purportedly invented the first vending machine. And it was not selling snacks, it was not selling cruise ships, nor condoms. It was selling holy water, of course.

[Noel Brown]

Because for when you need some in a pinch. This is a smart fellow. He was a mathematician, an engineer, and obviously an inventor. He, among many other incredible innovations that still kind of remain very, very relevant today, invented the wind wheel, which is, you know, obviously kind of a. Certainly something that's been developed to generate hydroelectric power and wind power, et cetera. He published some very detailed schematics of a device called the Alo pile, also known as Hero's engine.

[Ben Bolan]

Mm. Yeah. And that was a. That was like a steam powered mechanism. Some of his ideas clearly come from earlier Greek inventors and mathematicians. And when we, whenever we talk about Hero of Alexandria, we have to acknowledge That a lot of his original stuff has been lost to time. It makes me wonder whether our pal Ben Thompson from Badass of the Week has covered Hero. Like, imagine being so cool that your name becomes a noun or a descriptor for other cool people.

[Noel Brown]

Is that. Is that true? Is this the hero that that is referencing?

[Ben Bolan]

I don't know. I always assumed.

[Noel Brown]

Okay, maybe. Yeah. He certainly was scientifically and innovatively heroic. And if you want to dig in a little beyond the scope of what we're going to talk about today to his life, you can check out a great profile on the famous people.com hero of Alexandria. You can just search it there. Really great site and great resource.

[Ben Bolan]

I'm looking it up. Hero comes from a Greek word that means protector or defender, and it later gets adapted into Latin. Yeah, I don't know. You know, what, would he have just been named Hero as like, like before or after hero became a byword for being awesome?

[Noel Brown]

It's a good question, Ben. But of his many innovations, he was very much responsible for the kind of proto vending machine. And it certainly didn't involve all of the same electronics and, you know, ability to use different types of payment. You know, the thing you can slide the dollar into and it's have it spit back out at you over and over and over again. But it did accept a coin. This thing very much was way ahead of its time.

[Ben Bolan]

Yeah, let's put on our how stuff works hats and get a little deeper here. The coin would be inserted into a slot. From there, it would fall onto a pan. The pan is connected to a lever. The lever opens a valve through which holy water flows out, and the pan keeps moving under the weight of the coin until eventually the coin slides off. We know that there wasn't really any. Any kind of like governmental oversight on ensuring this was holy water.

[Noel Brown]

Exactly. Some quality control there.

[Ben Bolan]

Right. They didn't really have QA at that level, but the. The mechanics make sense. Right. And these have to be coins of a certain weight to. To operate the mechanism.

[Noel Brown]

Well, I mean, I would imagine that coins back then would have been pretty beefy.

[Ben Bolan]

I imagine so as well. It's also a clever way of finding counterfeit coins. Possibly after the coin slides off the pan, the lever raises back to its normal starting state, which closes the valve, which stops the flow of water. Now, Hero, or Heron or Herod as he's sometimes called, did not describe this as a vending machine. And he didn't say, you know, this is going to be an awesome way to sell Nestle Crunch bars in the future. He said this is a sacrificial vessel. And the entire reason this first vending machine exists is not to make it easy for people to buy stuff. It is to limit the amount of holy water people can use at an ancient temple.

[Noel Brown]

Like, they want to limit the supply, reduce the circulation, so they have ultimate control over holiness.

[Ben Bolan]

Yeah. Kind of like if you're in a. If you're in a public restroom and there's, you know, there's a specific timer on the hand dryer. Right. Or the air dryer.

[Noel Brown]

Oh, sure. Or in Europe, and I'm sure in Japan and many other countries, a lot of public restrooms are pay. And that money is used, I would imagine, to help the upkeep of the facility. And consequently, those bathrooms are some of the cleanest I've ever encountered. I think when you have a little bit of a literal buy in, it might make you behave a little better, you know?

[Ben Bolan]

Yes, there is definitely some. There's definitely some psychology at play there. For the pay to. I almost said pay to play. Public restrooms.

[Noel Brown]

Pay to pay.

[Ben Bolan]

Yeah. Right. Yes, yes. If we fast forward to. I mean, fast forward quite a long time. Max, give us a fast forward queue. Boom. We're in the 18th century. We're in England now. Hero of Alexandria is long gone. But the idea of vending machines is having a moment. There are these things called. Had you ever heard of this, Noel? They were called honor boxes.

[Noel Brown]

No, no, tell me about honor boxes.

[Ben Bolan]

I mean, they're their vending machines with a fancier name.

[Noel Brown]

Sounds like something you would pay your indulgences into for the church. You know, put your money in the honor box for absolution.

[Ben Bolan]

Or like a weird Victorian euphemism for.

[Noel Brown]

It does sound like a glory hole kind of situation. I'm not going to lie. Sorry, say the quiet part out loud.

[Ben Bolan]

But the otter box, now I can't get it out of here.

[Noel Brown]

That's a phone case. That's great. The honor. I thought you said otter box.

[Ben Bolan]

Oh, the otter box is a different thing.

[Noel Brown]

They're pretty good, solid cases, and we're not sponsored by them.

[Ben Bolan]

Yeah, yeah. We just use them. So these things were early vending machines that were operated via coin, and they were used to sell tobacco and snuff. Snuff. For anybody not born in the. In the 1700s. Snuff is a thing where, like, every time you see someone in a film take out a small container and then sniff it really quickly, if it's.

[Noel Brown]

It's either snuff or cocaine, then they're. But yeah, right, right. In Victorian times, I mean, people would literally dab, dab, dab the snuff onto their hand and like take a rip of it, you know, I mean, it's wild. It's such finely ground tobacco that you would sniff. It seems so gross to me. I mean, it's wild that people would. Seems like their nasal passages would get real funky real quick. Yeah.

[Ben Bolan]

You know, we're not a judgmental group here on ridiculous.

[Noel Brown]

That's still a thing too, by the way. I think people really.

[Ben Bolan]

I would think it exists. I think it's judgmental. But we are curious.

[Noel Brown]

It does exist. Yeah. Snuff is still a thing. You can.

[Ben Bolan]

It's.

[Noel Brown]

It's sort of like old timey, but it's considered smokeless tobacco. Finely ground or pulverized leaves. It is snorted or sniffed into the nasal cavity. And that is still done today by a certain type, I imagine.

[Ben Bolan]

Okay.

[Noel Brown]

Yeah. Is it fancy? Do they wear white gloves? Why they do it? It just seems like so Victorian to me.

[Ben Bolan]

Right. You know, they have to wear a Peru. Can you use snuff while you're not wearing, you know, men's leggings or stockings? Look, we're not a judgmental group, but we are curious. So if you are, if you are, or if you know someone who engages with snuff, just tell us about it on our Facebook group, ridiculous Historians. Anyway, look, so, yes, the first vending machine, probably holy water. The next boom of vending machines, probably tobacco. Not that far a walk. Okay, walk us through it.

[Noel Brown]

I can't. That's too far.

[Ben Bolan]

So. All right, these things are. These honor boxes are portable brass mechanisms, contraptions really, and they are a huge boon for the tobacco industry overall. They are our next big step in the commercialization and the emerging ubiquity of vending machines as a concept.

[Noel Brown]

Kind of makes sense if you think about it, because if you. Maybe it's an age thing, but in my mind, one of the classic styles of vending machines that you see less and less of these days is the cigarette machine with the big old clunky, you know, slot machine type pull things, you know, makes a really good chunk sound. And you still will see them at bars and taverns. And there are more modern ones that I've seen mainly in Europe, but in America, if you see them at all, it's going to be the super old timey style one which had to have evolved, you know, from these, these honor boxes, at least in some way.

[Ben Bolan]

A hundred percent, yeah. And there, you know, now that I'm thinking about it, those are so old school. I remember a lot of them are.

[Noel Brown]

Actually old because they. I mean. Yeah, yeah.

[Ben Bolan]

I remember one of my relatives told me years back now that that was the way to know you were in a bad place. They told me that's a little broad, but okay.

[Noel Brown]

I'm glad they were looking out for you.

[Ben Bolan]

If you see one of those machines run. Yeah. You're in a place you shouldn't be.

[Noel Brown]

You are in grave danger.

[Ben Bolan]

Right. It was a little intense, but I'm sure the. Those intense intentions were noble. In the 19th century, the 1800s, we see the introduction of stamp and newspaper vending machines. And do you guys remember back when people.

[Noel Brown]

Other old school thing, you don't see any. Well, you do sort of see those newspaper boxes every now and again and not nearly as much as you used to.

[Ben Bolan]

No, no. Back. I was gonna say, do you. Do you remember when people read newspapers?

[Noel Brown]

Yeah, it's quaint almost these days. And as we know, a lot of those legacy newspapers are certainly struggling with. With that. With the circulation of their physical print copies. And they really rely a lot on like bespoke subscriptions for the people that actually want a real paper to hold, you know, and the, the Sunday Times and all of that good stuff.

[Ben Bolan]

Tell us a little bit about Richard Carlisle.

[Noel Brown]

He was the one responsible for these newspaper boxes in 1822. He actually came up with these in order to do a little, I don't know, workaround to avoid censorship by distributing the papers through automated means.

[Ben Bolan]

Yeah. And this is, this is huge. We're seeing a resurgence of things like this through some local initiatives here in Atlanta, Georgia, where we record this podcast. There are these, like, everybody has a little free library now.

[Noel Brown]

Talking about the little, little boxes, little.

[Ben Bolan]

Band, little band book libraries.

[Noel Brown]

Oh, well, yeah, there's certainly that. There's. That's. That's awesome. I love.

[Ben Bolan]

Those are repurposed old newspaper vending machines. Aha.

[Noel Brown]

So I don't think I've seen those, but I have certainly seen in lots of different cities those kind of little mailbox sty, like leave a book, take a book kind of boxes.

[Ben Bolan]

Free libraries for sure.

[Noel Brown]

Yeah, exactly. That's exactly what you're talking about, Ben. But he is doing this because he's able to kind of sort of skirt the authorities by distributing banned materials through these boxes. Simon Denham was another innovator who's responsible for creating a stamp dispensing machine. In 1867, he patented it. And that was Kind of the next step of vending evolution. It represented the first fully automatic vending machine. And this is just kind of just you know, snowballed from there.

[Ben Bolan]

Yeah, yeah, this is cool because already we're learning so much more about vending machines. So just to. Just to recap, we've got holy water. The limiting of holy water. Not selling it, just like keeping people from using all of it at once. Then we've got tobacco and snuff, which I still think mystifies both of us. And then what?

[Noel Brown]

Right?

[Ben Bolan]

And then we have fighting against censorship, and then we have people selling stamps. So naturally, it would make sense that the rest of the world looked around and said, what else can we put in these machines?

[Noel Brown]

Anything. Sky's the limit. And it truly was the limit. In 1883, a guy named Percival Everett was the first to truly innovate some of these previous kind of iterations of the vending machine into a form much more resembling what we know today as modern vending machines. Machines and these dispense postcards. So this would be that kind of. This, the curlicue kind of design, right?

[Ben Bolan]

Okay.

[Noel Brown]

You have a thing and then a little curly cue and then another thing and then another thing like a corkscrew. And the mechanism turns and causes the thing in the front to drop, you know, out of the front of the thing into a trough that you can then reach down and grab it.

[Ben Bolan]

That's cool. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And this is kind of old school vending machine approach that I personally associate with auto repair shops, weirdly enough, because you go into the waiting room and then there you go.

[Noel Brown]

Or oil change places.

[Ben Bolan]

Yeah, yeah. Oil change places as well. And they'll have the vending machine with the elderly cheez its and the vintage M&Ms.

[Noel Brown]

Aged, if you please, Ben.

[Ben Bolan]

Aged very well. Heaven forfend that we would ever disparage the noble lineage Cheez IT company of Cheez its. So, all right, this design you're describing there, Percival's invention. These vending machines are able to sell all kinds of stationery, right. Envelopes, but also note paper postcards. And as this stuff propagates throughout train stations and post offices, we see that there's something crucial in the vending machine concept here. It's location. Right? A vending machine that sells envelopes just on insert random street corner here, that's not going to do as well as a machine that sells envelopes at the literal post office. It's not. You know, if you're at a railway station, you want to send a Postcard to friends or family. That's where a vending machine comes in, right?

[Noel Brown]

Yeah. Or if you're at the train station waiting for a train, it's a perfect place to have a little snacky machine. Which is what we start to see in the UK with the establishment of. I love the term I'm about to say, by the way, sweet meat Automatic Delivery Company in 1887. Sweetmeat meat, of course. Or maybe you don't know. It refers to like a treat. You know, a piece of candy is a sweet meat.

[Lauren Vogelbaum]

Are your ears bored?

[Noel Brown]

Yeah.

[Lauren Vogelbaum]

Are you looking for a new podcast that will make you laugh, learn and say que?

[Ben Bolan]

Yeah.

[Lauren Vogelbaum]

Then tune in to locatora radio season 10 today.

[Noel Brown]

Okay.

[Lauren Vogelbaum]

I'm Diosa. I'm Mala, the host of Locatora Radio.

[Noel Brown]

A radiophonic novella, which is just a.

[Lauren Vogelbaum]

Very extra way of saying a podcast. We're launching this season with a miniseries, totally nostalgic, a four part series about the Latinos who shaped pop culture in the early 2000s. It's Lala checking in with all things Y2K 2000s. My favorite memory, honestly, was us having our own media platform. Platforms like Mundos and MTV Tres. You could turn on the TV, you see Thalia, you see JLo, Nina Sky, Evie Queen, all the girlies doing their things, all of the beauty reflected right back at us.

[Ben Bolan]

It was everything.

[Lauren Vogelbaum]

Tune in to locatora radio season 10.

[Noel Brown]

Now that's what I call a podcast.

[Lauren Vogelbaum]

Listen to Locatora Radio Season 10 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever.

[Noel Brown]

You get your podcast.

[Lauren Vogelbaum]

Hey, y'all, it's your girl, Cheekies. And I'm back with a brand new season of your favorite podcast, Cheekies and Chill. I'll be sharing even more personal stories with you guys, and I know a lot of people are gonna attack me. Why are you gonna go visit your dad? Your mom wouldn't be okay with it. I'm gonna tell you guys right now. I know my mother and I know my mom had a very forgiving heart. That is my story on plastic surgery. This is my truth. I think the last time I cried like that was when I lost my mom like that. Like, yelling. I was like, no. I was like, oh. And I thought, what did I do wrong? And as always, you'll get my exclusive take on topics like love, personal growth, health, family ties, and more. And don't forget, I'll also be dishing out my best advice to you on episodes of Dear Cheekies.

[Noel Brown]

So my fiance and I have been together for 10 years. In the first two years of being together, I find out he is cheating on me. Not only was with women, but also with men. What should I do?

[Lauren Vogelbaum]

Okay, where do I start? That's not love. He doesn't love you enough. Because if he loved you, he'd be faithful. It's going to be an exciting year and I hope that you can join me, listen to Cheekies and Chill Season four as part of the My Cultura Podcast network. Available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Noel Brown]

Welcome to Pod of Rebellion, our new.

[Ben Bolan]

Star Wars Rebels Rewatch podcast.

[Noel Brown]

I'm Vanessa Marshall. Hi, I'm Tia Surkar. I'm Taylor Gray.

[Ben Bolan]

And I'm Brody.

[Noel Brown]

But you may also know us as Harrison Doula, Spectre 2, Sabine Wren, Specter 5, and Ezra Bridger, Specter 6 from Star Wars Rebels.

[Ben Bolan]

Wait, I wasn't on Star Wars Rebels. Am I in the right place? Absolutely.

[Noel Brown]

Each week we're going to rewatch and discuss an episode from the series and.

[Ben Bolan]

Share some fun behind the scenes stories. Sometimes we'll be visited by special guests like Steve blum voices Zabarelio's Spectre 4, or Dante Bosco, voice of Jaquel and many others.

[Noel Brown]

Sometimes we'll even have a lively debate.

[Ben Bolan]

And we'll have plenty of other fun.

[Noel Brown]

Surprises and trivia too.

[Ben Bolan]

Oh, and me. Well, I'm the lucky ghost cruise stowaway who gets to help moderate and guide the discussion each week. Kind of like how Kanan guided Ezra in the ways of the Force. You see what I did there?

[Noel Brown]

Nicely done, John.

[Ben Bolan]

Thanks, Tia.

[Noel Brown]

So hang on cuz, it's going to be a fun ride. Cue the music.

[Ben Bolan]

Listen to Potter Rebellion on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We ready to fight?

[Noel Brown]

I'm ready to fight. Is that what I thought it was? Oh, this is Fighting Words. Okay, I'll put the hammer back. Hi, I'm George M. Johnson, a best selling author with the second most banned book in America. Now more than ever, we need to use our voice to fight back. And that's what we are doing on Fighting Words. We're not going to let anyone silence us. That's the reason why they're banning books like yours, George. That's the reason why they're trying to stop the teaching of black history or queer history. Any history that challenges the whitewash norm or put us in a box. Black people have never ever depended on the so called mainstream to support us. That's why we are great we are the greatest culture makers in world history. Listen to Fighting Words on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. You hear him say that in Monty Python sometimes.

[Ben Bolan]

It's funny you say that. I was just watching some excellent Monty Python interviews last night.

[Noel Brown]

Yeah, they're the best. I mean, the Flying Circus. There's still sketches that I come across that I haven't seen, and it's like the British equivalent of Kids in the hall, kind of like the Flying Circus is phenomenal. If anyone has. Some people don't even know it exists. Like, they know the movies and stuff, but they don't know there's a.

[Ben Bolan]

Just not even the parrot sketch.

[Noel Brown]

The parrot sketch. I guess maybe that's true. Yes. I'm saying a lot of people don't maybe realize how deep a catalog it is. Oh, yeah. And what a wealth of treasures there is to find.

[Ben Bolan]

Yes. Yeah, agreed. I would love to see a Monty Python sketch about a vending machine.

[Noel Brown]

Or there's one in particular. The one I remember learning sweet meats from was, there's a sketch about this company that's, like, debuting this new box of chocolates, and each one of them is more unpleasant than the next. And one of them is called Crunchy Frog, and it's crunchy because it's got the bones in it still. And, like, there's another one where, like, it's like you take a bite of it and it shoots steel bolts out into your cheeks, piercing the cheeks from the inside, and they call it a sweet meat.

[Ben Bolan]

I remember this because you can tell that the pythons got together and sometimes they just wrote a list of phrases or a riff on an idea, and then they built a sketch around it. What I was going to say is we could do a pretty cool sketch about vending machines. We just need accounting to pay for a vending machine. And we'll do it, you know, because we are people in the United States, and American ingenuity really comes into the foreground in the late 1800s, thanks to the Thomas Adams Gum Company. These guys make gum vending machines in 1888.

[Noel Brown]

Yep. And they were really popular in New York City on, you guessed it, train platforms. And this truly set off the. I guess we've said this multiple times. Again, this is the one that set off the vending machine craze. But no, this really did it. The Pulver Manufacturing Company added a little fun twist to these gum vending machines by including little toys and little figurines. Basically. I don't know how Much action you were gonna get out of them. I'm picturing like, those really sad wrestling figures that, like, you're just tiny and.

[Ben Bolan]

Don'T move at all with no points of articulation.

[Noel Brown]

100.

[Ben Bolan]

Yeah, but this is still cool.

[Noel Brown]

Cool.

[Ben Bolan]

So cool.

[Noel Brown]

This is entertainment is what it became, you know, not just crucial everyday items. Now it's like the sky's the limit, truly.

[Ben Bolan]

Yeah. Yeah. What I was going to say is this is straight seahorse teeth. You know, it's. It's never.

[Noel Brown]

I want a vending machine that sells seahorse teeth.

[Ben Bolan]

Yeah. And hot cheese. So we. We see this. This idea again. Like we've been continually returning to this concept that one could indeed sell anything, limited only by the size of the thing being sold and the finances of the potential customer. If we go to 1893, just a few years later, we'll see a German chocolate manufacturer with a name I absolutely adore. Stolberg. Stolberg sold their chocolate in vending machines. They also sold, of course, chewing gum, cigarettes, matches, and soap. I feel like someone in the executive room or somewhere in the boardroom at Stolberg made this machine up for them.

[Noel Brown]

Sure. Well, you know, it's whatever it takes. I mean, if you think about it though, Ben, it totally makes sense that this as a concept has been around for so long. I mean, to me, it's like the earliest idea of this would be literally putting something on a table and a little, you know, dish to put your money in and trusting people to pay for the items they take. Which, by the way, in I believe it's Switzerland, there are like honor system vending machines for like, cheese and stuff on these like, hiking trails up in the. Up in the Alps and Swiss Alps.

[Max Williams]

To jump in here real quick, it's not a vending machine. But one thing I find really cool in Seattle is it's the public transit is on honor system.

[Noel Brown]

Basically.

[Max Williams]

Like there's is you pay for the ticket and you tap it on. Somebody charges you for the ride, but there's nothing stopping you. You can just walk on. And I think the design behind it is like, if somebody needs to get somewhere, it doesn't have the money. You'd rather than just walk onto the train.

[Noel Brown]

Yeah. Than getting shot for like fair jumping at in New York like that.

[Max Williams]

Or like not be able to go to work to make money.

[Ben Bolan]

Sure. Yeah.

[Max Williams]

And so then it's just like, you know, and for. For me, I'm like, I like that and I pay for it every single time because.

[Noel Brown]

And. And the proof is in the pudding as far as like what funds are being generated and are they able to sustain themselves. It's like a public service like that shouldn't be operated like a profit, you know, making business.

[Ben Bolan]

Shout out to the post office.

[Noel Brown]

Post office. Got some problems, y'all. I'm gonna get on my post office, you know, soapbox again. I just, and I, when I say it's got some problems, it's because of funding but. And also like who buys stamps anymore? Everyone's ships things or, or you know, Amazon I'm sure has put an absolute dent.

[Max Williams]

Part of it's a cell phone, it's a law. But I'm not, I'm not gonna get the soapbox either.

[Noel Brown]

What do you mean by cell phone?

[Ben Bolan]

The post office has been sabotaged.

[Noel Brown]

Yeah.

[Max Williams]

There's a law that was passed almost two decades ago now, Ben, that basically they have to backfund retirement funds like a ridiculous amount. And what it does is it just keeps it. It turned a department that had been profitable forever to this what it is now.

[Ben Bolan]

Ooh, we should do it.

[Max Williams]

Some people believe that this was intentional to get rid of the post.

[Ben Bolan]

I'm one of those people.

[Noel Brown]

Too. Maybe Ben.

[Max Williams]

That's the guy.

[Noel Brown]

Maybe Ben. This is more stuff they don't want you to know, but this is news to me and I'd love to find out more. But as we roll into the 20th century, we're gonna get to answering some of those questions that I know y'all have out there, like how does the machine know your money is real? We'll get into that in a bit. But the kind of more modern vending machine boom came after the 20s, when up to that point in America at least penny candies had kind of been really the only game in town. Which you know isn't gonna make you a pile of money. But when you're selling full priced items like food products or cigarettes, a packet of cigarettes, that's. That's when the money really started, starts to flow and you'll see whole businesses selling their stock entirely through networks of vending machines.

[Ben Bolan]

Oh, before we move on, I've got to say it ridiculous historians, you may find this befuddling as well. And Noel, Max, I think you guys will enjoy this. Do you know what these penny candy or hard candy products were called in the uk?

[Noel Brown]

Sweet meats.

[Ben Bolan]

Boiled sweets.

[Noel Brown]

Boiled sweets, yeah. Another very off putting, very British.

[Ben Bolan]

It's like barley water or spotted dick. What are the other ones? Oh man, it's so strange with, oh, brown sauce.

[Noel Brown]

Treacle tarts. Yeah.

[Ben Bolan]

What's going on with that? What's up with that?

[Noel Brown]

Sounds like poo poo. When I hear treacle, I think of poo poo and pee pee.

[Ben Bolan]

I don't know why imagine. I'm just imagining the idea of, would you like a boiled sweet and a trinkle tart?

[Noel Brown]

So sounds like something the child catcher would say.

[Ben Bolan]

Yeah, it sounds like someone should look into that. Anyhow, we have reached a pivotal point as you described there. Vending machine manufacturers realize that they can up their profits by selling more sophisticated products. Right, Right. A pack of cigarettes takes more work than boiled sweets or hard candy.

[Noel Brown]

So weird.

[Ben Bolan]

It's such a weird phrase. Anyway, so you could easily, for a time, you could easily go to a cigarette vending machine and buy cigarettes, even if you were too young to do so. This is a health problem. This is also a social problem. And the cigarette machines come before the soda machines. I always imagine a Coca Cola machine or a Pepsi machine when I think of vending machines. They didn't come around until 1937.

[Noel Brown]

Well, and especially since the Coke vending machine. Those are proprietary. Not always, but they'll be owned and distributed by the Coca Cola Company. And so they serve also as fantastic advertising. It's this massive lit up, you know, thing, the logo, like at the bus station or whatever. That's what they're designed to do, is to be like a beacon of the Coke Company out in the world.

[Ben Bolan]

Yeah. And we obviously, as three. Three Americans, three Georgia boys, we have a bit of a bias toward Coca Cola. We're going to be honest about that. But we're not.

[Noel Brown]

It's better than Pepsi. I mean. Sorry, it just did. Pepsi tastes weird. Pepsi is off.

[Ben Bolan]

Oh, my gosh.

[Noel Brown]

I like other Pepsi products. Pepsi, the.

[Ben Bolan]

The Cola is not good, man. I gotta tell you, it's a real cultural divide here in the U.S. you know, you go too far in one direction and all of a sudden you're in Pepsi country.

[Noel Brown]

I don't trust any place that only has Pepsi products. I'm drawing a line in the.

[Ben Bolan]

Not even Pizza Hut.

[Noel Brown]

Don't care for it.

[Ben Bolan]

Wow. All right, well, choose your battles. I got your back, Coca Cola. Regardless of whether you love them or hate them, Coca Cola was the first company to sell their bottled drinks in vending machines. And I love that point about advertising because it's probably a big part of their success. And now we get to the early twinklings of World War II. The US begins building up its defense industry.

[Noel Brown]

And now you can buy handguns in vending machines. We're heading in that direct in y'all as a country. Sorry. Not to be political, but I could, I could see it. It's like something that would be an idiocracy.

[Ben Bolan]

Yeah, they'll probably put them in the Coke or the Pepsi machines, like the pre existing machines. Do you want a Fanta or do you want a firearm or a Glock? Right. So as the US enters into a wartime economy, they have this tremendous boom in factories. Right. In industrialization, in around the clock production of things that will be use in war. The people who are in charge of these factories and these plants, they say, all right, we can't have employees working for 12 plus hours without a refreshment break and we're not going to pay for a full time cafeteria staff. So what about vending machines?

[Noel Brown]

Exactly. I really, really love the term automat because it just makes me think of like the old school, I believe it was Greek automatons, you know, the automated man or whatever. And it's such a nostalgic thing. I think it's maybe Hopper painting like nighthawks at the diner. I think is one where there's this classic, you know, scene of like a New York City automat, you know, where you have like the little windows you put your money in and then your pie is behind this little window with a metal handle. It's just so charming to me. And now we're starting to see, see stuff like that kind of come back into popularity with like some of these like revolving sushi restaurants that are so popular and fun.

[Ben Bolan]

Sure, yeah. Or there are a lot of restaurants that use these specific vending machines where you, you put in the money, you put in your yen or whatever and then you select the thing you want to eat. And it doesn't give you the thing, it gives you a ticket and you take the ticket it to a counter or you, you know, you walk up to the counter and someone hands you the food. It's a, it's kind of a hybrid relationship between vending machine and actual customer service. I love an automat. It's just a cool vibe. And during the 1940s and the 1950s here in the US vending machines were largely concentrated in plants and in factories. This is where, you know, this is where you think of the break room vending machine.

[Noel Brown]

Right.

[Ben Bolan]

If you've ever had one of those. And they always had these Lance crackers of a certain age.

[Noel Brown]

Yep. I always can judge like whether a company is going to be cool to work for by whether they have like free Snacks or a vending machine in the break room. Having the vending machine just strikes me as being so cheap. And that is not a company I would wish to work for there.

[Ben Bolan]

Yeah, having a vending machine for the employees like that always strikes me as saying, we don't especially love you, so. But, you know, no judgment. We have little judgment. A little judgment. We're curious. Yeah, let's be accountable. A little bit of judgment. Because we have had vending machines in our operation in the past, and I think the statue has expired here. So I can tell you this, Noel. The whole reason we had vending machines in the Buckhead office is because our office manager, Michael, owned a vending machine company.

[Noel Brown]

You're joking. I remember Michael. Yeah, that was the earliest of days.

[Ben Bolan]

He's doing well. He's doing well.

[Noel Brown]

He's in touch. I always liked him. I remember when I first met Mike. As he went by, we installed in one of the weird offices that we were converting into a podcast. Podcast studio. In the earliest days of podcasting, literally, we just. There was this open window and then traffic noise outside. It was like a high rise, you know, upper floor building. And we just like took a bunch of egg crate foam and like, stapled it to plywood and like shoved that in the window. And like, that was. Man, it was so punk rock back then. Podcasting.

[Ben Bolan]

But still better than the glass.

[Noel Brown]

Oh, yeah. It was so, so, so noisy.

[Ben Bolan]

So, so. All praise due to our colleague and our friend Mike Campbell. Moving into the vending machine industry is a naturally American thing to do. America takes the idea of the vending machine and for a while, they run with it. We could argue that now China and Japan have accelerated the vending machine boom, the that the United States pursued. By the end of the 1950s. There are vending machines throughout the US and they're selling not just prepackaged food, but they're selling freshly prepared stuff. To your point about automats, now we see another innovation in the world of soft drink vending machines. Refrigeration. Refrigeration is a huge game changer because I don't care, Noel, what people think about Pepsi or Coke. I'm just not European enough to enjoy it at room temperature.

[Noel Brown]

You know, I will house a DC at room temperature with lemon time. No, no, no. DC a Diet Coke.

[Ben Bolan]

No, I mean with lemon. Because Europeans put lemon. Lemon.

[Noel Brown]

That's the thing. Okay, I did not know that, but I am headed to Europe next month, so maybe I'll give that a try. Yeah, only if I'm really thirsty. And for me, if. If it's bubbly, a bubbly drink, I can drink at room temperature because in some weird way, the bubbles are like a stand in for it being cold. But drinking flat, room temperature soda is akin to death. It is just absolutely miserable. Oh, yeah, yeah.

[Ben Bolan]

No, no. It needs the effervescence. It needs the carbonation.

[Noel Brown]

Does Ben, we're talking about refrigeration.

[Ben Bolan]

Yeah. Yes, yes, we are. We are. They keep us on task there. There's another curious thing that has been missing from the vending machine race for a long time. It's not until the 1940s that coffee vending machines are developed.

[Noel Brown]

So cool. I mean, all the moving parts in that, like someone had to figure out what. How to automatically grind the beans. And then, you know, you put the cup in and then it makes you a perfect serving size. You know, when I think of. Tell you what I think of, Ben, is hospitals.

[Ben Bolan]

Oh, yeah.

[Noel Brown]

The. The coffee vending machines. You really. Only in my mind, I think you always see in hospitals and courthouses.

[Ben Bolan]

Yeah, hospitals, courthouses. I would add again, auto body shops maybe.

[Noel Brown]

Usually the auto body shops these days have like a little free coffee, like service, kind of.

[Ben Bolan]

Yeah. See, going back to our point about is the snack free or do you have to pay for it?

[Noel Brown]

This is where you're paying with your time, that's for sure.

[Ben Bolan]

The only real currency this, this is get to something that we foreshadowed. We have a lot of stuff we want to get to. We may not get to all of it, but you planted a nice seed there earlier, Noel. The Achilles heel of all vending machines is their ability to figure out whether the money being put in there is actual money or actual fax money. Shout out to Lauren.

[Lauren Vogelbaum]

Are your ears bored?

[Ben Bolan]

Yeah.

[Lauren Vogelbaum]

Are you looking for a new podcast that will make you laugh, learn and say que?

[Ben Bolan]

Yeah.

[Lauren Vogelbaum]

Then tune in to locatora radio season 10 today.

[Noel Brown]

Okay.

[Lauren Vogelbaum]

I'm Diosa. I'm Mala, the host of Locatora Radio.

[Noel Brown]

A radiophonic novella, which is just a.

[Lauren Vogelbaum]

Very extra way of saying a podcast. We're launching this, this season with a miniseries, totally nostalgic, a four part series about the Latinos who shaped pop culture in the early 2000s. It's Lala, checking in with all things Y2K 2000s. My favorite memory, honestly, was us having our own media platforms like Mundos and MTV Tres. You could turn on the TV, you see Thalia, you see JLo, Nina Sky, Evie Queen. All the girlies doing their things. All of the beauty reflected right Back at us, it was everything. Tune in to locatora radio season 10.

[Noel Brown]

Now that's what I call a podcast.

[Lauren Vogelbaum]

Listen to Locatora Radio Season 10 on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Noel Brown]

Welcome to Pod of Rebellion, our new.

[Ben Bolan]

Star Wars Rebels Rewatch podcast.

[Noel Brown]

I'm Vanessa Marshall.

[Ben Bolan]

Hi, I'm Tina. Tia Sircar.

[Noel Brown]

I'm Taylor Gray.

[Ben Bolan]

And I'm John Lee Brody.

[Noel Brown]

But you may also know us as Harrison Doula's Spectre 2, Sabine Wren, Spectre 5, and Ezra Bridger, Spectre 6 from Star Wars Rebels.

[Ben Bolan]

Wait, I wasn't on Star Wars Rebels. Am I in the right place? Absolutely.

[Noel Brown]

Each week we're going to rewatch and discuss an episode from the series and.

[Ben Bolan]

Share some fun behind the scenes stories. Sometimes we'll be visited by special guests like Steve blum voices Zabarello Specter 4, or Dante Bosco voicing Jai Kell and many others.

[Noel Brown]

Sometimes we'll even have a lively debate.

[Ben Bolan]

And we'll have plenty of other fun.

[Noel Brown]

Surprises and trivia, too.

[Ben Bolan]

Oh, and me. Well, I'm the lucky ghost crew Stowaway, who gets to help moderate and guide the discussion each week. Kind of like how Kanan guided Ezra in the ways of the Force. You see what I did there?

[Noel Brown]

Nicely done, John.

[Ben Bolan]

Thanks, Tia.

[Lauren Vogelbaum]

So hang on.

[Noel Brown]

Cause it's gonna be a fun ride. Cue the music. Foreign.

[Ben Bolan]

Rebellion on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Lauren Vogelbaum]

Hey, y'all, it's your girl, Cheekies. And I'm back with a brand new season of your favorite podcast, Cheekies and Chill. I'll be sharing even more personal stories with you guys, and I know a lot of people are gonna attack me. Why are you gonna go visit your dad? Your mom wouldn't be okay with it. I'm gonna tell you guys right now. I know my mom. Mother. And I know my mom had a very forgiving heart. That is my story on plastic surgery. This is my truth. I think the last time I cried like that was when I lost my mom like that, like, yelling. I was like, no. I was like, oh. And I thought, what did I do wrong? And as always, you'll get my exclusive take on topics like love, personal growth, health, family ties, and more. And don't forget, I'll also be dishing out my best advice to you on episodes of Dear Cheekies.

[Noel Brown]

So my fiance and I have been together for 10 years. In the first two years of being together, I find out he is cheating on me. Not Only with women, but also with men. What should I do?

[Lauren Vogelbaum]

Okay, where do I start? That's not love. He doesn't love you enough. Because if he loved you, he'd be faithful. It's going to be an exciting year and I hope that you continue. Join me, listen to Cheekies and Chill season four as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Noel Brown]

My name is Brendan Patrick Hughes, host of Divine Intervention.

[Ben Bolan]

This is a story about radical nuns in combat boots and wild haired priests trading blows with J. Edgar Hoover in a hellbent effort to sabotage a war. J. Edgar ga was furious.

[Noel Brown]

Somebody violated the FBI and he wanted.

[Ben Bolan]

To bring the Catholic left to its knees.

[Noel Brown]

The FBI went around to all their.

[Ben Bolan]

Neighbors and said to them, do you think these people are good Americans? It's got heists, tragedy, a trial of the century, and the God damnedest love story you've ever heard. I picked up the phone and my thought was this is the most important.

[Noel Brown]

Phone call I'll ever, ever make in my life. I couldn't believe it. I mean, Brendan, it was divine intervention.

[Ben Bolan]

Listen to Divine intervention on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Noel Brown]

We'll call back to our buddy hero, our ancient innovator, the beginning of this whole story. And you'll recall his holy water venue machine. You just put point in a slot and it like fell and the weight of it was what triggered the mechanism that opened the valve that then squirted out holy water. That is a, you know, to your point, Ben, about you, you mentioned that maybe there was a way to you could determine if money was counterfeit because in those days it would have had to be down to the exact weight probably or a very close exact way because they certainly didn't have any way of visually the whole point was to not have a person there. And so they didn't have any kind of scanning technology, which is what we're about to get into. So his machine had to like really sensitively tuned I would think where if he wanted to make sure people weren't just throwing a rock in there, you know, a flat rock, that it had to have enough weight to it or be exact enough weight. And maybe I'm giving him too much credit, but that is sort of a rudimentary way of thinking about maybe pre technology that could scan ways of determining whether money was real. It would have to be like, it would be the exact right circumference you know, only then could it go down the slot, you know, to get into the mechanism to trigger the treat.

[Ben Bolan]

Think of all the, think of all, all the comic strips and old cartoons of a little scampy Dennis the Menace type kid string. Putting the, putting a string around a quarter and then dropping in the vending machine, getting their thing and yoinking it out. This is a hidden history fact that you only get for listening through the rest of the show. The reason that coins in the United States have ridges on them, the quarter and the dimes, it's because they wanted to prevent fraud in vending machines. An American Quarter has 119 ridges. Dimes have 118 ridges.

[Noel Brown]

It's so cool that the earliest forms of these, they could build a mechanism that could detect that because they certainly didn't have any kind of, you know, electronic scanning ability. You know, we get a little further into still very rudimentary, but a little more advanced technology. When they started accepting dollars, dollar bills have, I think they still are, maybe it's a QR code now or, sorry, an rfid, but were embedded with a piece of magnetic tape that had information embedded on it. And these early machines that took a buck could scan that to verify that it was in fact an authentic dollar.

[Ben Bolan]

Yeah, they were using, it was similar to eight track technology. Early vending machines had this magnetic tape head mechanism that determined whether a single $1 bill had the correct amount of iron content.

[Noel Brown]

But the issue, yeah, I got it kind of wrong. I thought it was detecting that little strip that was embedded inside. Maybe that was later. This is even cooler and more rudimentary. It was scanning for a certain element in the dollar. That's insane.

[Ben Bolan]

Isn't that wild? Yeah. And there's this arm race between the Dennis Menaci, the Dennis Menaces and the people who don't want to get ripped off with their vending machines. Because later laser printers can use iron laced ink to make counterfeit dollars in what we would call an entirely unnecessary and ridiculous scam.

[Noel Brown]

Yeah, that's true. Yeah. I gotta wonder, like, are people actually profiting off of counterfeit money? It just seems like that is a scam that is going to catch up to you sooner than later. Right.

[Ben Bolan]

Especially in an increasingly cashless society.

[Noel Brown]

Also true. Also true. So starting in the 1990s, we start to see digital scanning technology. I guess you could call it maybe an early form of location, low resolution, low pixel count. Digital photography. Yeah.

[Ben Bolan]

Yeah. This is really cool. Right. The device is looking for specific patterns. And if your dollar doesn't have that pattern, it will not be accepted. This is the real reason why crumply dollar bills often don't work in a vending machine. I always thought it was just because I hadn't been neat enough enough with my folding money.

[Noel Brown]

No, I mean, I think that probably has something to do with it too, but it. Yeah, if it's. If the image is distorted like that because of all the different crumples, then the scanner is not going to be able to read it, especially in an older machine.

[Ben Bolan]

And of course, we are coming to you live in 2025 from the threshold.

[Noel Brown]

Of the future of our live album. It's going to be a double LP. Ridiculous history. Live in 2025. Five.

[Ben Bolan]

Yeah. It's going to be super relevant in 2028. We'll probably still be doing this show. Do you think so?

[Noel Brown]

I would hope so. I'd like to think so.

[Ben Bolan]

Yeah, I'd like to think so, too.

[Noel Brown]

Let us know.

[Ben Bolan]

What do you think, Max? Are you down? Do you want to hang out with us for a few more years?

[Max Williams]

So how refer to this show as. I'm like, yeah, we do two episodes a week with a classic every week until the sun absorbs the earth.

[Noel Brown]

There you go.

[Ben Bolan]

Yeah, there you go. That's some dark robot.

[Noel Brown]

That's a good deadline. I'm cool.

[Max Williams]

Like, it's one of these things where it's like. I don't know that. That's not me saying if I want to or not. It's me more just saying, Okay, I am.

[Ben Bolan]

I'm.

[Noel Brown]

You are bound. You are bound.

[Ben Bolan]

It's true. Not to be too bromancy, but I actually thought of you, Max, when I was. I was watching something earlier and I am putting a screenshot in the chat for later anyway.

[Noel Brown]

Whoa.

[Ben Bolan]

Yeah, love.

[Noel Brown]

No.

[Ben Bolan]

You're on the chat too? No.

[Noel Brown]

Okay, I look forward to the secret.

[Ben Bolan]

So we're not going to spend too much time on the future of vending machines. Please know your cultural mileage may vary.

[Noel Brown]

Yeah, I mean, for sure. I guess when we're talking about the future, we're talking about the way payment forms have changed and will change. I mean, I don't know if you've seen these, but I guess you could call these vending machines. And lot of gas stations. You'll see these crypto machines. Have you seen these? I don't know who uses those. It seems like somebody pulled. Pulled a fast one with that. I don't think it really took off.

[Ben Bolan]

Okay, explain this to me because I've seen them. You and I haven't talked about them. What are they really?

[Noel Brown]

You're able to deposit and withdraw crypto from the blockchain on them supposedly. But I've never seen one in use literally ever. Like why, why would you need that? You do it all online. That's the whole point of crypto. But anyway, sketchy. It's weird. Like I said, I think someone pulled a fast one, had a little fly by night operation. But what we are going to start seeing is for vending machines to have more and more flexible payment options. Like I do love most vending machines that you see now you can do the Apple pay tap to pay and that's just becoming increasingly a thing that you're going to start seeing on everything. Not to mention vending machines that use ultraviolet violet scanners to authenticate cash, measuring the amount of glow that gets emitted. Genuine nodes contain fluorescent ink. So it's going to glow. It's almost like a forensic way of looking for bodily fluids at a crime scene. But increasingly, as we to your point Ben. Are becoming more and more and more of a cashless society, even a cashless world, you're going to start seeing machines like the way that cars stopped having CD players or the way that laptops. Laptop stopped having disk drives, you know. Oh, that's a good, I don't know.

[Ben Bolan]

Those are two really good comparisons for this. We, we are going to see vending machines continue because they satisfy some basic human needs, right? The number one being the need for food and water or something like food or something like water or the need for speed. Speed or the need for speed. And it's all motivated by the vending machine manufacturers need for greed.

[Noel Brown]

That's very good, Ben.

[Ben Bolan]

That's very freestyle.

[Noel Brown]

Well played my friend. Well we, I think you mentioned this at the top or maybe in a conversation we had off Mike but you know, you, you, you are a fan of Japan. The country and the country of Japan is and has long been considered like since it's kind of, I don't know, reinvention of itself, you know, after it was sort of decimated by some bombs that we drop, you know, just a beacon of technology and innovation. And within that you're seeing some really weird and innovative uses of vending machines. Like think claw machines as well, arcades. They've always been on the cutting edge of that. We didn't even talk about how pinball machines kind of came into being around the same time as the New York City kind of vending machine boom, but bending again. Japan is known for having really interesting and Weird stuff in its vending machines, which are absolutely everywhere. And I'm excited to go in about a year. But you've been a bunch of times. Can you just set the scene? Like, how common are these things? Are they literally everywhere? What is in them?

[Ben Bolan]

Yeah, I cannot wait for you guys to go with me on the next trip. We are going to have such a time. And as long as we have a couple of coins, we're never going to be thirsty or in need of socks. Right? Right. By far the most common vending machines in urban areas of Japan are beverage machines. They'll sell coffee, they'll sell soda. They'll sell something I still don't quite understand named Picari sweat.

[Noel Brown]

Yeah, I've seen that in the Asian markets in Asia. It's an energy drink. No, sorry, it's a sports drink, like electric ultra light kind of replenisher or whatever. That's all.

[Ben Bolan]

I know it's a weird one, but, you know, again, who are we to judge? I do have an interesting conspiracy about vending machines in Japan. You don't see a ton of machines selling prepackaged snacks, and that's because restaurants are likewise ubiquitous. So you don't want to take money from the restaurant. That's my idea. But I did earlier. I think it was. Was. Oh, gosh, it must have been February. I ran into a pizza vending machine. Noel.

[Noel Brown]

Like hot pizza dispensed like an entire pie or a slice.

[Ben Bolan]

Yeah, yeah. It made a pizza.

[Noel Brown]

It makes it for you. So this is taking the automation aspect of it to a whole new level.

[Ben Bolan]

This is wild. But that's not even the, you know, what we're setting up here is when you and Max and I, and maybe you as well, ridiculous historians head back to Japan. Those are the bare. Like, those are the low threshold of weird vending machines. We've heard tell of vending machines for bugs. I haven't seen that, but I believe it because there are a lot of. There are a lot of strange vending machines in Japan.

[Noel Brown]

Have you heard of the Japanese used panty vending machine and bust.

[Ben Bolan]

We had to mention it. Right. Tell us a little.

[Noel Brown]

Well, you know, in Tokyo, I think in particular there was a brief period of time and I don't know, I just remember when it was reported or when I first read about it, maybe in the early 2000s or maybe even late 90s, where you could buy women's used undergarments from a vending machine to feed some kind of, you know, a fetish.

[Ben Bolan]

Yeah, yeah. I've Never personally seen those. And I think you make a. I. I think you make a good point because. Because it was a story that was reported in the West. It was very much a real thing. But I don't know if they're around anymore. Exactly.

[Noel Brown]

There's a great article on tech. Tech in Asia. Sorry, I'm trying to read the URL techinasia.com the death and digital resurrection of Japan's used panties vending machine. So, yeah, it's definitely gets in the mix, but, you know, let's get wholesome with it. There's also, like amazing vending machines that sell kind of like the old coin op where you put a stack of quarters in and turn a crank and then you get a little toy inside a plastic bubble. Those are everywhere in Japan with all kinds of stuff.

[Ben Bolan]

Exactly. There are entire. Almost like 24 hours. Our laundromat areas. You know, if you've ever been to a place where you've got washers and dryers and they're all automated, there's no staff there, you just go in, you put your coins in, you do your laundry. There are places like that in Japan entirely for gachapon.

[Noel Brown]

Makes sense. And same as, like claw machine parlors, you know?

[Ben Bolan]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just so. Just so we also.

[Noel Brown]

Sometimes there'll be a combination where they'll have like half claw machines and half gachapons.

[Ben Bolan]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Noel Brown]

Combination there, right.

[Ben Bolan]

There are also ramen vending machines.

[Noel Brown]

We talk ramen, not just prepackaged ramen. Right? Yes.

[Ben Bolan]

Yeah, yeah. Hot ready to eat ramen. There are also food ticket machines. There are weird, not quite gambling things where you can put in some money for a mystery prize. And it could be, you know, it could be like a. A picture of a A. Or it could be a Nintendo switch.

[Noel Brown]

There you go. Yeah, Like a blind box, you know.

[Ben Bolan]

Yeah, exactly.

[Noel Brown]

I've seen these vending machines, or I guess they're kind of considered a game, where it's like this one giant glass enclosure with a single massive stuffed animal suspended by a little string. And the game is you put in, you know, it's going to be more of a premium than the smaller item, claw machines. And you get the opportunity to, like, operate these scissors that like, will snip the string. And if you can snip the string, you get this one giant prize. The whole question of, like, the investment of actual funds and the comparison to how much the thing that you've won is actually worth is a discussion unto itself. But it is fun to find places, though, where it doesn't feel like the machines are rigged. But Ben, we talked, talked about used panty machines and the kind of mythology of that. You're also going to see things like adult item vending machines, though not typically in the courtyard of the public square because they're pretty. If I'm not mistaken, Ben, Japan has a bit of a modesty still, even with its forward facing advertisement, it's a little bit wholesome. Right?

[Ben Bolan]

Well, again, I would say it goes back to low key. Yeah. So back in the day, as we established earlier, there was this realization that the best way to sell stamps or to sell postcards is to put the machine in a place where people need stamps and need postcards.

[Noel Brown]

So the naughty machines are probably more likely to be in like the naughty shops.

[Ben Bolan]

Yes, in the naughty.

[Noel Brown]

In the naughty districts. Yes.

[Ben Bolan]

Right, right, right. Straight up Shinjuku. But we also know that you can see, you can see the same struggle that the US had with tobacco vending machines in Japan. You know, like alcohol vending machines.

[Noel Brown]

Sake machines.

[Ben Bolan]

Right, right.

[Noel Brown]

We don't have those here.

[Ben Bolan]

Really? We don't at all.

[Noel Brown]

No alcohol vending machines. Completely illegal in the United States.

[Ben Bolan]

Now in Japan there are still cigarette vending machines, but there's a much more robust law about it. You have to have an ID and a special card.

[Noel Brown]

It'll also have to be scanned and validated by the technology.

[Ben Bolan]

Right. Big brother is watching you. Here's the thing. I think we have to wrap now, but I think the best idea we had so far is a vending machine that sells vending machines.

[Noel Brown]

Yes. Tiny vending machine.

[Ben Bolan]

Yeah, I'm writing that down.

[Noel Brown]

And within those are tinier vending machines.

[Ben Bolan]

It's just vending machines all the way down. It's Matroshka dolls. And I can't wait to explore new parts of the world with you guys and to find the weirdest vending machines we can. What would you love in a vending machine? Oh, I know, I already. I know you too well. I know what vending machine you would love. You'd love a synth vending machine.

[Noel Brown]

Yeah. And that's, you know, the thing about that is like I've certainly been to shops that, that you can put anything in a vending machine. And I've certainly seen in some like boutique type places, whether they be record stores or music stores, they'll have a vending machine that they'll have some fun little items inside, you know, where it's like you can get like a little grab bag item like of some weird local Art or something like that. And I just think that's so fun. But yeah, a synth vending machine would be rad, though. I would hope that it wouldn't just drop it, you know, into the cat chasm for me to go.

[Ben Bolan]

No, no. It needs to build up before it drops the beat.

[Noel Brown]

Right. That's good. I want it to be handed to me by a little robot arm with fingerless gloves on.

[Ben Bolan]

Sure, Max. What about you, Vending machine? What's your dream vending machine?

[Noel Brown]

Oh, man.

[Max Williams]

Dream vending machine. That is a good question. I, I, I, like, for years it would have been coffee, but I'm caffeine free now because I'm a psycho.

[Ben Bolan]

It's okay. We're, we can still be friends.

[Max Williams]

I don't know. Um, I, I, maybe tea. I'm, I'm getting really into tea. I was also thinking vending machine, but then also we used to have those and they sucked. So let's go on PlayStation Store and get my video games. So I don't know, I would like a vending machine that I could buy more versions of myself because that's awesome. More Max we had in this world, the better.

[Noel Brown]

Triska Maxis.

[Ben Bolan]

I love it. Yeah, I like it. I dig it. Tell us what your dream vending machine would be. Visit us on our Facebook page. Ridiculous Historians. Yes, we are still working to get our social media platforms back.

[Noel Brown]

We've got a plan. We're going to stick Max on. We've been discussed. Max, you weren't present at this meeting, but we're sticking Max on the on the medic boys to get our handle back.

[Ben Bolan]

I straight up told. This was weird. I know you got it, Noel, but I straight up told our folks in marketing you have to burn the village to save the village. And they let me get away with saying that on a work call.

[Noel Brown]

Well, you know, what are they gonna do?

[Ben Bolan]

Well, hopefully they will join us in future episodes and we hope you do as well. Thank you so much for tuning in, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you as always to Our super producer, Mr. Max Williams, as well as his biological brother, Alex Williams, a mad composer who word word on the street has, has it that he just recently drifted through town.

[Noel Brown]

I'm actually gonna see him this very evening. He's coming over to the studio to do some beep booping. I'm excited. So he actually also composed and beep booped this very theme that you hear in your very ears. Huge thanks to Christopher Haciotes and Eve Jeffcoats here in spirit.

[Ben Bolan]

Big, big thanks, of course, to AJ Bahamas Jacobs. And you're right. You're right, Max. We gotta get him back on. Get the back together. Big thanks. Yeah, he'll do it.

[Noel Brown]

He likes us.

[Ben Bolan]

Yeah, we're all right. Big thanks to Badass, the Badass Imperator, Ben Thompson, Rachel Big Spinach, Lance, and.

[Noel Brown]

I think Jonathan Strickland, the Quizzter.

[Ben Bolan]

Oh, oh, from earlier.

[Noel Brown]

And a regular dude from time to time.

[Ben Bolan]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, Jonathan is still a little heated with us folks behind the curtain because he wrote an entire Quister segment and we just did not do it when we were in the Middle East.

[Noel Brown]

Well, I think it's a. He's got it in his back pocket for next time. It means he won't have to do as much prep. Geez, Ben, thanks to you. This was a really fun conversation. Ooh.

[Ben Bolan]

And thanks to our research associate, Jeff. Thanks to.

[Noel Brown]

For the good conversational fodder. Good job, Jeff. Thank you very much.

[Ben Bolan]

And thanks to everybody who has run into a weird vending machine. Please post pictures.

[Noel Brown]

I want to see weird. Like the anthropomorphic vending machines with arms and legs that come alive at night and have a whole, like, inner life, you know, like a toy story, but with vending machines. 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. Cyrus the Great of Persia was a conqueror and he tried to increase his empire by mar. Marrying Tomyris, the widow of the king of the Massengeti people. She refused his offer, and so he decided that he would invade her kingdom instead. Turns out that was a big mistake. Listen to the latest episode of Noble Blood, available now. Listen to Noble blood on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Ben Bolan]

Dressing. Dressing. Oh, French dressing. Exactly.

[Noel Brown]

That's good.

[Ben Bolan]

I'm A.J. jacobs, and my current obsession is puzzles, and that has given birth to my podcast, the Puzzler.

[Noel Brown]

Something about Mary Poppins?

[Ben Bolan]

Exactly.

[Noel Brown]

This is fun.

[Ben Bolan]

You can get your daily puzzle nuggets delivered straight to your ears. Listen to the Puzzler every day on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Noel Brown]

I'm ready to fight. Oh, this is fighting words. Okay, I'll put the hammer back. Hi, I'm George M. Johnson, a best selling author with the second most banned book in America. Now more than ever, we need to use our voices to fight back.

[Ben Bolan]

Part of the power of black queer.

[Noel Brown]

Creativity is the fact that we got us you know we are the greatest culture makers in world history. Listen to fighting words on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast. Hi, I'm Bob Pittman, chairman and CEO of iHeartMedia. I'm excited to introduce a brand new season of my podcast Math and Stories from the Frontiers of Marketing. I'm having conversations with some folks across a wide range of industries to hear how they reach the top of their fields and the lessons they learned along the way that everyone can use. I'll be joined by innovative leaders like Chairman and CEO of Elf Beauty Tarang Amin, legendary singer, songwriter and philanthropist Jewel.

[Ben Bolan]

Being a rock star is very fun, but helping people is way more fun.

[Noel Brown]

And Damian Maldonado, CEO of American Financing.

[Ben Bolan]

I figured out the formula. I just have to work hard then that's magic.

[Noel Brown]

Join me as we uncover innovations in data and analytics, the math and the ever important creative spark, the magic. Listen to math and Magic on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast.