10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite

Summary

Podcast Summary: Stuff You Should Know – "10ish Instances of People Doing Things Out Of Spite"

Release Date: January 30, 2025
Hosts: Josh Clark and Chuck Bryant
Produced by: iHeartPodcasts

In this engaging episode of "Stuff You Should Know," hosts Josh Clark and Chuck Bryant delve into various historical and modern instances where individuals acted out of pure spite. Through vivid storytelling and insightful analysis, they explore the motivations behind these actions and their broader implications. Below is a detailed breakdown of the key discussions, notable quotes, and conclusions drawn throughout the episode.

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1. Nuns Cutting Their Noses to Protect Against Vikings

Timestamp: [02:29] – [05:59]

The episode opens with a grim historical account from 867 CE, recounting the harrowing tale of Saint Abi the Younger and her fellow nuns at Coldingham Monastery in Scotland. Faced with relentless assaults by Viking raiders intent on violating their chastity, Saint Abi proposed a desperate and self-mutilating solution.

Chuck Bryant: "Saint Abi said, come, nuns, let's go sit around and talk. To prevent ourselves from losing our chastity, from being raped by these Vikings, we're going to cut off our own noses."

In an act of extreme self-preservation, the nuns mutilated themselves, hoping that the Vikings, deterred by their altered appearance, would spare them. Tragically, when the Vikings arrived, they did not relent but instead burned the monastery down, resulting in the deaths of all the nuns.

Discussion Points:

• The distinction between protecting oneself and acting out of spite.
• The historical context of Viking raids and their impact on monasteries.
• The profound personal sacrifice made by the nuns under dire circumstances.

2. Henry Clay Frick vs. Andrew Carnegie: A Tale of Rivalry

Timestamp: [07:03] – [09:58]

Hosts shift focus to the intense business rivalry between industrial magnates Henry Clay Frick and Andrew Carnegie. Initially partners in the steel industry, their relationship deteriorated, leading to a series of spiteful actions.

Chuck Bryant: "Anything you can do, I can do bigger and better."

Frick consistently undermined Carnegie, including competing by building an even grander mansion right across from Carnegie’s. Their animosity culminated when Carnegie, nearing the end of his life, attempted to reconcile. Frick, however, rebuffed this gesture with a scathing response.

Frick's Response: "Tell him I'll see him in hell, where we are both going."

Discussion Points:

• The dynamics of business partnerships turning into personal grudges.
• Frick’s relentless efforts to outdo Carnegie as a form of personal vendetta.
• The long-term effects of such rivalries on their legacies and the steel industry.

3. Saddam Hussein’s Spiteful Mural of George H.W. Bush

Timestamp: [10:27] – [12:57]

Chuck and Josh examine Saddam Hussein's peculiar act of embedding an unflattering mosaic of former U.S. President George H.W. Bush in the lobby of the Al Rashid Hotel in Baghdad. This mural served as a constant reminder of Hussein's disdain and anger towards Bush.

Chuck Bryant: "It's like there's some sledgehammers and I need a good tile guy in Baghdad. The sledgehammers head. Don't mess with Texas engraved on them."

After the Gulf War, Hussein ensured that every visitor to the prestigious hotel would walk over Bush’s likeness, symbolizing his contempt and desire for retribution.

Discussion Points:

• The use of public art as a means of political expression and personal spite.
• The cultural and psychological implications of embedding a political enemy in everyday spaces.
• The eventual destruction of the mural during the subsequent Iraq War, symbolizing the fall of Hussein’s regime.

4. Ross Township’s Over-the-Top Christmas Display

Timestamp: [32:39] – [36:57]

The hosts recount the story of Bill Ansell from Ross Township, Pennsylvania, whose extravagant Christmas light display became a source of neighborhood contention. Initially welcomed, his display quickly escalated to an overwhelming spectacle that disrupted the peace and aesthetics of the community.

Chuck Bryant: "Santa urinating in the front yard, a choir that was beheaded, Frosty the Snowman getting run over by a car."

When the township authorities ordered Ansell to dismantle his display, he retaliated by creating an even more bizarre and offensive arrangement of lights and sculptures. This act of spite not only defied local regulations but also created an untenable living situation for his neighbors, leading to ongoing disputes.

Discussion Points:

• The balance between personal expression and community standards.
• How excessive displays can transform from festive to bothersome.
• The psychological impact of living next to someone who operates out of spite.

5. Prince’s Name Change: A Battle Against Warner Brothers

Timestamp: [37:06] – [40:38]

One of the most notable instances of spite discussed is musician Prince’s renowned decision to change his name to an unpronounceable symbol in 1993. This bold move was a direct challenge to his record label, Warner Brothers, as he sought greater artistic freedom and ownership over his work.

Chuck Bryant: "Prince... he was trying to humiliate Warner Brothers, make life harder for them. And he did all this, as you said, out of spite."

Prince's symbolic name change was not only a form of protest but also a strategic maneuver to terminate his contract without financial repercussions. Despite his efforts, Prince eventually re-signed with Warner Brothers decades later, highlighting the complexities of such feuds.

Discussion Points:

• The intersection of art, personal freedom, and contractual obligations.
• The effectiveness of symbolic gestures in corporate disputes.
• The long-term impact of Prince’s actions on artist-label relationships in the music industry.

6. The Plum Island Pink House: Architecture of Spite

Timestamp: [42:11] – [46:28]

The episode features the infamous Plum Island Pink House in Massachusetts, a quintessential example of a spite house built in response to a divorce dispute. After the couple separated, the husband demanded an exact replica of their original home, specifying the location without regard for practicality.

Chuck Bryant: "So he built it on Plum Island. At the time, there was no one else living there, no fresh water, no electricity. It was just the worst place you could build a house."

The resulting pink house sat isolated in a marshland, symbolizing the bitterness and resentment of its creator. Although inhabited for several decades, its remote location and impractical design made it a lasting testament to anger-fueled architecture.

Discussion Points:

• The psychological and emotional motivations behind building a spite house.
• The practical challenges and consequences of constructing a home purely out of revenge.
• The legacy and preservation efforts surrounding such unique architectural endeavors.

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Conclusion

Josh Clark and Chuck Bryant effectively illustrate how spite can drive individuals to extreme and often destructive actions, across various contexts and eras. From self-mutilation to architectural oddities, these stories serve as cautionary tales about the corrosive effects of anger and revenge. The episode not only entertains but also prompts listeners to reflect on the motivations behind human behavior and the long-term repercussions of acting out of spite.

Notable Quotes:

• Chuck Bryant: "Don't hate somebody is like drinking poison and expecting them to die." ([06:08])
• Chuck Bryant: "Be a good neighbor, everyone be a good neighbor to your neighbor. That's all you got to do." ([36:32])

Listeners are left with a deeper understanding of the multifaceted nature of spite and its enduring impact on personal relationships and societal structures.

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Stay Informed and Engaged: For more intriguing insights and well-researched episodes, subscribe to "Stuff You Should Know" on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Transcript

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[Chuck Bryant]

Welcome to Stuff youf Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck. And this is stuff you should know. And this episode Chuck just made fun of, even though I took pride in helping to assemble it.

Oh, it's fine. It's a top 10. We haven't done those in forever. No, it's always kind of a fun throwback. And it seems like we never do 10 with our three act structure. Nine is probably a great number, but I guess we'll see what happens. Right?

Let's see what happens. So you know the old saying cut off your nose to spite your face?

Yes, and I feel like we did this on an Internet roundup or something. Maybe. It sounded really familiar.

This story did.

It did. Okay, not to you.

No, as a matter of fact it was all new to me. But that doesn't mean we didn't do it already.

Yeah, but you would remember this one because it involves self mutilation.

So just want to put out there that this actually has nothing to do with that phrase. And I'll explain why that phrase doesn't actually have anything to do with this.

Oh really?

But I guess I should probably say that we're starting this episode out in like the worst possible way with a really downer of a story that may or may not have to do with spite. So I say we just go Ahead and start that now.

Yes, there is a book, and this is, as the story goes, the book, in 1904 called A Dictionary of Saintly Women. The story is that Viking berserker raider types came pillaging southward to the British Isles at one point. Well, not at one point in 867 CE specifically. And while they were doing their berserkering and ravaging of the villages and things, there was obviously the kind of thing that would happen, would be assaults on people physically, sexually and otherwise. And so when they went to a monastery in Scotland, the Coldingham Monastery, the lead nun, Saint Abi the Younger, said, hey, here's what we'll do. We want to keep our chastity and our covenant to God. It's a big deal for us nuns. We should cut off our noses to keep that from happening, because they won't assault us then.

But not to spite our faces. To spite the Vikings.

Yeah. Not even to spite. I think. I think it's to protect themselves from sexual assault.

Sure.

I mean, this is all horrific.

It is horrific. Yeah. No, I'm not saying, like, this is a laugh riot or anything like that. I'm just saying.

No, no, no, I didn't think you were.

Anyway, back to the horrific story. Saint Abi said, and she wasn't a saint at the time, but this certainly helped her case later on. She said, come, nuns, let's go sit around and talk. I have something to say to you. To prevent ourselves from losing our chastity, from being raped by these Vikings, we're going to cut off our own noses. I'm going to cut off my lip, and maybe I'll inspire you to do the same. And the rest of the sisters said, yes, let's do that. And they did. And there's actually old, like, wood cuttings and there's at least one stained glass panel of this happening. And it's gory. Even as a wood cutting, it's gory.

Yeah.

And when the Vikings showed up, they found these nuns missing their noses, bleeding, missing their lips, just in. In quite a state. And they were like, we're just going to move on to the next monastery and see what we find there. The nuns, however, were not. Their lives were not spared, were they?

Yeah. It gets even worse because what the Vikings did was burn the place down with them inside and killed them all.

Yeah. But there's a different way of looking at this, and that is that these nuns protected their chastity, which, as you said, is, like, really, really important. They're known as the Brides of Christ. And that's one of the reasons why they're chaste, why they're meant to die virgins and is because they have given themselves to Christ or to God. So as long as they're chaste and they die chaste, then they have fulfilled this covenant. Even if it's not by their own will or decision that they lose their virginity. If they lose it through force, it's still not quite the same as dying chaste. So they managed to come out on top, religiously speaking. So that's that story. Oh. The reason why it doesn't have anything to do with cutting your nose off to spite your face is because that phrase means that you are doing something in revenge to somebody else or to harm somebody else, but you're actually harming yourself much worse than you are them.

Yeah. And they just burned them down. They didn't spite anybody.

Right. So that's a heck of a way to kick off what was supposed to be a semi light hearted top 10 list.

Yeah. Oh wait, but doesn't it mean to spite your own face?

Right, so you're harming yourself.

Yeah, I got you.

You see what I'm saying?

Yeah, I just got confused.

It's kind of like there's another saying that hating somebody is like drinking poison and expecting them to die.

I've never heard that.

It's a good one. It really gets the point across. It makes you not want to hate or stew or something about someone else.

Wow, that's really good. I like that.

Thanks a lot. I just made it up.

Look at you dropping nugs. All right, let's talk about Henry Clay Frick. Because he was a gild, I don't know about robber baron, but he was at very least a mogul. And along with Andrew Carnegie they made quite a lot of money together as partners in the steel industry. That relationship went south and Carnegie got him out of the picture, got Frick out of the picture and to the point where Carnegie was sued and Frick actually won a lawsuit and won compensation and everything. But it wasn't like he was like, all right, we're all even now. He hated Andrew Carnegie for the rest of his life.

Yeah, anytime like Carnegie's companies, I can't remember which steel company was he owned. But anytime there was like some misstep or bad decision or business went awry, Frick would send a note like chiding him or taunting him for having made a terrible decision, like just constantly kept it up. There was, I think Carnegie build a mansion in New York And Frick was like, oh, yeah, I'm gonna build an even bigger one right down the street just to show you up. Like, would not let it go.

Yeah, for sure. Anything you can do, I can do bigger and better. And so you would think at the end of their lives they could just let bygones be bygones. And that's what Andrew Carnegie tried to do when he was in failing health. Said, can you get in touch with my old partner, Frick, Mr. Henry Clay Frick, and tell him he's got a great name and tell him that I'd like to meet up with him and patch this thing up before we're gone off of this earth. And so they brought the letter. He dispatched his personal secretary, James Bridge, to send this to Frick personally. And Frick apparently balled up the letter and threw it back at him and said, tell him I'll see him in hell, where we are both going.

Yeah, great comeback.

I'll meet him in hell.

Yeah. His other thing that he was said to have said was not until he admits that I'm the Mary and you're the Rhoda.

Oh, man. If you. I know you're getting into some old TV and you always have been, but if you. Do you have Criterion, the Criterion Channel streamer.

No.

Highly recommended, by the way. Like, it's really the only great one out there as far as quality stuff. But they have old Mary Tyler Moore or maybe that was on Max, I can't remember. But anyway, Emily and I started watching old Mary Tyler Moore episodes, like the.

Original where she worked at the TV station.

Yeah. And it is. I watched a little bit when I was a kid, but man, it is so good. And it's so funny and charming and witty and like, still great. It holds up.

Those shows used to like just be written so well too, and acted too.

She was so good.

I can't remember. There's one episode where I think Ted.

Yeah, Ted Knight.

He was doing. He was doing something and it was so ridiculous and preposterous, but he was playing it straight so well that the. The rest of the cast just started cracking up. And like, they couldn't not. They did it in every take and it ended up kind of in the show. It's some classic, like, well known episode. But check that one out. Make sure you. You see that one too.

Oh, so good. Ted Knight. And who's the woman who played Rhoda?

Valerie Bertinelli. No, Valerie.

Oh, it's killing me. Valerie Harper.

There you go.

Valerie Harper. Ed Asner. It's like. It's really a great, great show. And Mary Tyler Moore is just a gem of a human. I hope she's still good as a person.

Sure.

I watched the documentary about her. It's worthwhile.

Oh, really?

Yeah, it's excellent, in fact.

All right, I'll check it out.

Yeah. Quite a woman.

Well, thanks for the recommendation.

Hey, sure. I feel like we've killed some time. Should we do a third and then take a break?

I think that's a great idea, Chuck.

All right, we're going to talk about Saddam Hussein. And Saddam Hussein didn't like one. George H.W. bush, who was the guy who said his name that way because of the first Gulf War.

Yeah. He said, sure, I invaded Kuwait, but that doesn't mean you have to come over here and liberate Kuwait. And George Bush said, yes, we do. And as a result, after this war, Saddam Hussein was still in power. And he apparently was willing to use his power in all sorts of weird ways and tacky ways, frankly. And one of the ways he did that was he had a mosaic mural, an unflattering mosaic mural of George Bush laid into the floor of the entrance of the Al Rashid Hotel, one of the nicest hotels in Baghdad, if not the nicest. And the whole reason was it also said Bush is criminal on it, too. And the reason was that anyone coming into this well traveled hotel would walk right over George Bush's face.

Right. And if you walked around it, you were given a bad room.

Right. Or taken out back and shot one of the two.

Did you look at a picture of this?

I did. It is an unflattering portrait, but you can totally tell who it is.

You totally tell who it is. It's big old George Bush Sr. Right there on the floor of the hotel of the lobby. It's a very strange thing to see in a nice hotel.

Yeah.

But W came along later on, went back to Iraq for the, you know, the war there on the basis of weapons of mass destruction that did not exist.

Right.

And he had them smash that up. And he's like, daddy, I'm not gonna let him do that to you. Here's some sledgehammers. And so they went in there and they smashed that thing up and chiseled it up and supposedly laid a portrait of Saddam. They didn't do that in mosaic tile, did they?

I don't think so. From what I saw, it looked just like a picture. I didn't see a close up of it. I just saw it.

Yeah. I couldn't find one either.

Like the head was out of proportion with the body.

It's like, here's some sledgehammers and I need a good tile guy in Baghdad.

Right. The sledgehammers head. Don't mess with Texas engraved on them.

They probably did.

But yeah, I mean, that's spiteful, right? To make a mosaic portrait of one of your sworn enemies so that your people walk all over him?

I think so. To ruin your hotel lobby. Your nicest hotel lobby.

Yeah. All right, so we have a definitive example of spite.

That's right.

Well, then I think that means we should take a break while we're ahead.

All right, we'll be right back with three more. Want to learn about a pterosaur and call a pterodactyl how to take a perfect boob and all about fractals. Genghis Khan, Attila the Hun, the Lizzie Borden murders, and the Cannonball Runs. Gonna explain everything to your brain. Explosives, Chuck and Jaws. This stuff you should know. Word up, Jerry.

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[Chuck Bryant]

Okay, Chuck, I guess we should, at this point decide which one we're not going to do if we're doing three, three and three.

Well, I think the Beatles one has the least amount of meat on the bone.

All right, I was going to skip that one too. Or suggest we do.

Great.

And if you did it, I was just going to not talk. I was going to skip it either way.

Well, I mean, we can just quickly say that at one point after the Beatles break up, John Lennon wrote a song where he talked a lot of trash about Paul McCartney. So everyone knows that story. It's a very, very famous story. But the one that's really interesting to me is Ford versus Ferrari, because that is a terrific movie that I highly recommend.

Is it on Criterion Channel?

I doubt it, but I'm sure you can stream it somewhere. The great James Mangold directed it and I'm always a fan of his work. He did the new Bob Dylan movie.

What else?

He did the last Indiana Jones movie, which was better than the one before.

What else?

I don't know. James Mangold's good. He sort of has a very varied resume, which I always appreciate in a director.

Yeah, I was gonna say that's all over the place. For sure.

Yeah.

So I guess if you've seen Ford versus Ferrari, you're familiar with this story.

I am, and I do recommend it. He also did the Wolverine movie and the Logan movie. So, yeah, he's all over the place.

Okay, so I'm going to tell this story then, because I haven't seen that movie, so this was new to me.

Ooh, you'd like it.

Okay, so in the 60s, Henry Ford II, who was the successor president of the Ford Motor Company, and I guess probably a relative of Henry Ford's, he decided that he wanted Ford to get into racing just to basically, like make Ford, just to expand the brand, basically. Rather than just giant land yachts. We also make really fast cars, too.

Totally.

He also was like, you know, I know that there's probably easier ways to get into racing than to build race cars. And that is, let's just buy Ferrari. Like, they were already known around the world for building cars that were just fast as all get out.

That's right. And their very famous founder, Enzo Ferrari, pitched a deal for 18 million bucks for 90% interest in the company. And as the movie portrays it, this isn't in this article, but as the movie portrays it, if I'm not mistaken, and I'm not sure if it's true or not, but at least it was in the movie. I don't see why they would make this part up, is that he was using that deal to get a better deal from Fiat. So playing one against the other, which will really make someone mad in business.

Sure.

Apparently, when Ford showed up to sign the paperwork, Ferrari said that, you know what this Ford assembly line, this bureaucracy that you've got in this company is? This is not how we do it over here. So no deal.

Right. And Ford was not very happy about this. Right?

Of course not.

So out of spite and to get back at Ferrari, and I think also to get into racing, too, Ford decided to build their own race car, which came out to be the Ford GT40. And I went and looked it up. I'm not a car dude, but I am like, this is an amazing car.

I'm the same way, man.

And in fact, it actually did best Ferrari at le Mans in 1966. And you can buy that car, at the very least, the original body that won le Mans in 1966 for a cool $675,000 from a. It looks like a private owner in Jacksonville, Florida.

Wow. Jacksonville.

It's beautiful.

So they won first, second, and third. So they really bested Ferrari. They also won in subsequent years. So they swept in, or not swept, but they won in 66, 67, 68, and 69.

That's a sweep.

Well, I meant not sweep first, second, and third place necessarily, or they may have. I don't know. But I think we should do one on the 24 hours of Le mans because I'm not a car race guy, but that, to me, is the most interesting one.

Yeah, because they just drive around and around and around for 24 hours to see who can go the furthest. Right?

Yeah. I think it's pretty cool.

It's an endurance race, if I were.

And it's not just like a, you know, a Circular NASCAR thing. You know, they're driving through streets, right.

And every once in a while, it starts to get boring. They just push pedestrians out in there, see what happens.

Exactly.

So there's a little more to this story, a little separate spoke that Ferrari had going on at about the same time or a couple years earlier. Our friends at Mental Floss pointed out that Lamborghini actually was founded out of spite to Ferrari.

Yeah. Apparently, the founder of Lamborghini, John Smith, his name was Ferruccio Lamborghini, he was a tractor maker in the 60s, and he had a Ferrari. And he was like, this clutch is kind of janky. And as the story goes, he got in touch with Enzo Ferrari and was like, hey, I think I can help make your clutch better because you got this problem here with this spawn divot, and I can help make that thing better. And apparently, as the story goes, Ferrari did not receive that phone call. Well. And was basically like, get lost.

Yeah. He said, stick to making tractors. Lamborghini. Who's ever heard of Lamborghini?

Exactly. What a weird name for a car, right?

So Lamborghini was like, well, I'm just gonna go make my own car. And in 1963, I believe he started making Lamborghinis with the help of five workers who had recently been fired from Ferrari. That's how he established his car company. And had Enzo Ferrari not rebuffed him, we would never have that classic Garfield poster from the 80s where he's standing next to a Countach.

Right, the Countach. You and I are not car guys, but, like, if I see a Lamborghini on the street or something, or like the old Magnum Ferrari, I love that stuff.

Tinkle yourself a little bit.

I mean, you know, I'm not a sports car guy, but I just can't help but see those and think, like, what a. What an amazing machine.

That is gorgeous. Those Magnum Ferraris you can get for a song these days. I mean, they don't work very well, but, like, how much? I don't know. I'm going to guess anywhere between 10 and 50 grand.

Yeah. I mean, considering how much they were. That is a song, you know.

It is. And they're so small, too. Like, I'm not sure either one of us could fit in one of those.

Yeah, I mean, I think every guy. I mean, Thomas Magna fit in him, but.

Yeah. I think that was a stunt double half his size.

Really? Well, he was. When it showed him in the car, his knees were up toward his chin a bit.

So, like, by his ears.

Yeah. Because he was a tall guy. But that Ferrari. I feel like for guys of our generation, that Ferrari and the Porsche from Risky Business are like top two of the top five probably dream cars.

Was that a 944? 911?

It was the. No, in the 911. It was the 928.

I'm not familiar with that one then.

Yeah, it had the lights that popped up. It was one of the not as lauded versions, I think, but, man. And it's just something about that movie. It just sort of locked it in. I mean, it's like a little hatchback. It's not even that special hatchback when you look at it now.

Yeah. For grocery shopping.

Exactly.

How many have we done for this thing? We just did one, right?

Oh, yeah. We got to get going.

Okay. All right, let's get going. Because it turns out that there was a road in China made out of spite.

That's right. And I feel like I've seen this in more than one place in the world where.

Oh, really?

Yeah. Not even necessarily a road, but like, where, like. Well, you don't want to give up your house, so we're just going to build these skyscrapers all around it, Right?

Sure. Did you see pictures of this, though?

Oh, yeah. This is the extreme. Because this happened in China to this couple in 2012. The man's name was Luo Bogan Boggan. Bogin. He and his wife refused to. You know, they tried to come in and take their house to make a highway, and they were like, no, we're not going to do it. You didn't offer us enough money. And so we're not going anywhere. And so they built. I mean, if you visualize. If you're visualizing a house literally sort of in the middle of a. Of a road, and the road goes around it. That's what they did.

Yeah. Like, it wasn't even a roundabout. It's just that the road widened and kind of curved in a bulge on the sides around this house. Literally in the middle of a highway. Even worse, even more reckless, if you ask me. They kept electricity going to this house, so there's an electrical pole in the middle of the highway, too. Totally unmarked.

It doesn't look real.

No, it doesn't. It does. Not at all, does it? And if you want to see what we're talking about, the Atlantic has a good photo spread called the House in the Middle of the street from 2012.

Yeah. I mean, this is the most extreme case of something like this that I've heard you Know, it didn't take long for them to give in, obviously, because it was, well, dangerous and awful. And so they got, they did eventually give in and got a larger offer than they originally asked for. But I don't get the feeling that they thought they won.

No, they definitely didn't. So I looked into this a little further. It was a five story house that they had just built for 95 grand. When the provincial government said, you need to move because we're building a highway through here. And they weren't the only ones who had kind of tried to stick it out. So they were also aware that they could not leave their house. They had to stay in their house 24 hours a day because if they left, the government would come and bulldoze their house while they were gone and be like, ts, what are you gonna do? And they had no choice. But just holding out was kind of a protest. And to draw attention to this generally unfair practice because I mean, any government can exercise eminent domain, but typically you want to give at least market value.

Yeah, I mean, it's really egregious. When you look at this picture, it's.

Nuts because they were on their porch, like a second floor balcony, and they're looking down and you're looking down, not at a front yard, you're looking down at the road. Like it went right around this house.

Yeah, through it practically.

Yeah. So that was a spiteful road.

That was a spiteful road. And now we're going to talk about a spiteful statue. That's right. Because in Germany, between the towns of Bonn and Buell, there's the old Rhine river and the Rhine river bridge that connects the two. And so the little bridge man, or the Bruechen. Manchen. Bruechenmen. It's kind of a mouthful is the little bridge man. And that is a sculpture of a guy sort of bent over sticking his butt out. And that became the subject of a lot of contention, eventually backfiring. Is that right?

Yeah. So the story went that in the late 19th century, I think December 17, 1898, this bridge between Bonn and Buell, which was supposed to be a joint construction project between the two, ended up being paid for entirely by Bonn, because Buell was like, we'll use the bridge, but we're not going to pay for it. You go ahead and pay for it.

Yeah.

And so under wraps until this unveiling of the bridge was a. That little statue of a little man carved into the bridge with his butt sticking out, basically mooning Buell. Mooning Bule can you imagine just the hilarity of seeing that?

Yeah.

When it was unveiled.

But like I said, it backfired because that statue became a bit of a local icon. So it was on banknotes, it was on. People took pictures of it. It was on local postcards, and it was a little tourist attraction. But what they did was they put a tax on the bridge, but only attacks going one way and not back into your own place.

Right.

So what happened was from the Buhl side, they could see the statue because it was pointing. You know, their butt was pointing at them. So they got all the benefits of seeing this thing without having to pay to cross the bridge to see it. If you're on the other side and you wanted to go, like, actually see this statue, you had to pay to get across.

Yeah. And you can believe that anytime you had out of town guests visit, you had to take them to go see the little bridge man.

Go see the Buttman.

So, yeah, they ended up. What was supposed to be a joke at the expense of Buell ended up to be an actual expense for the city of Bonn because they had to pay this fee to get onto the bridge. But supposedly they're friendly rivals still. Or they were. Now, I think they're one town. Kind of like Budapest. There's Buda and Pest, and it's separated by the river, but it's still one city now. Yeah, same thing.

And that's what Bonneville interested.

That's how I understand it. So this. You can still see the little bridge man, but he's not the original. The original was almost destroyed in the Second World War. The bridge was at least. But they were able to get their hands on the statue and get him out of the Rhine. They put him back on the rebuilt bridge. But then some local youths in 1960 destroyed that, so now there's a recreation of it on the bridge.

Little punk rockers.

Yeah, little punks, at least.

Yeah.

So that's. That was a little bridge man made out of spite.

All right, And I think that's break number two. And we'll be back to finish up with three more right after this. Wanna learn about a pterosaur and call a pterodactyl how to take a perfect boob and all about fractals, Attila the Hun, the Lizzie Borden Murders and the Cannonball Run Explodes. Chuck, this stuff you should know. Word up, Jerry.

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[Chuck Bryant]

All right, we're gonna talk about. And I've seen stories sort of like this, but this one seems to take the cake when a Christmas display goes too far and all of a sudden people are neighbors, are like, hey, this is getting out of hand. It's too bright. Or it's, you know, people are driving in to see these things now and I can't even get down my own street right? And this happened in the mid-2000s in Ross Township, Pennsylvania, when a dude named Bill an electrician key named Bill Ansell did a pretty audacious Christmas display in his front yard there in Ross Township, such that people were driving in and neighbors started to get annoyed.

Yeah. And actually the way that this neighborhood was arranged is a cul de sac. But in the center of the cul de sac was Bill Ansel's house. So with his light display you, it, it was just kind of like driving through a holiday light display because you just drive past and go all the way around and come back on the other side and leave kind of perfect. Actually it was perfect and Bill Ansel definitely thought it was perfect. But like you said, the neighbors were like, man, come on, this is a hundred thousand watts of Christmas joy. It's, it's just, it's too much. So can we do something about this? Bill Ansel apparently was not the type to take criticism. Well, sounds like it. I think he actually was required to take down the holiday display by the town. Yes. I think they cited him for an out of season decoration or something like that. Right. So he took it down, but in short order he put up a new display and specifically designed it so that the neighbors regretted ever asking him to take down the original joyous display. And he did this chuck, out of spite.

That's right. And apparently left it up year round. Santa urinating in the front yard, A choir that was beheaded, Frosty the Snowman getting run over by a car. Also up in lights. F. Ross Township. Yeah, just right there in string lights. A sign that said this display is dedicated to Ross Township. Shame on you for destroying my display that brought so much joy and happiness to so many people.

There was also a warning, a sign that said Ross Township, don't touch any of this property. If you do, there will be bloodshed.

Is that true?

Yeah.

Okay.

No, it totally is. And there was another one. I read an interview with 2020 with the neighbors who were like, this guy actually wrote a sign. I didn't see what he said, but he came up with the disparaging sign for the deceased wife of Tom White, one of the neighbors. The day after she died he put up some sign disparaging her. So this guy was definitely off the chain with this thing. And I mean like he would stay up at night and hit metal with sledgehammers to make noise. He had floodlights pointed directly in the neighbors houses. And I mean living like that's bad enough, but they said something that stuck out to me that I hadn't thought of. That's like, this is a living nightmare when you Have a neighbor like that.

Yeah.

And you sell your house, anytime you have a showing, they're going to turn around before they even get out of their car. That's like you're trapped. They were totally trapped there. And despite the township fining him, despite court orders, like you said, he kept it up year round and he kept it up for years.

Yeah. And then he built a killdozer.

Yes. I thought that there was definitely a parallel between those guys too.

Yeah. Be a good neighbor, everyone be a good neighbor to your neighbor. That's all you got to do. You don't have to. You can go above and beyond if you want, but just be like base level good.

Sure. And if you do, if your neighbors come to you with a complaint about some special thing that's special to you, rather than going off the handle, maybe say, well, let's figure out a compromise because this is really important to me.

Yeah. And let's not tank everyone's property values. We're all in this together.

Sure. And if they're like, no, we insist you take it down, then you do something out of spite. At least give them a fighting chance.

That's right. This was super spite.

Plus, we want to thank not just our friends at 2020, but our friends at Mental Floss too, for pointing that one out to us.

That's right.

So I think we got a couple more. Right.

That's right. We'll move on to Prince Rogers Nelson, AKA Prince, AKA for a little while, the artist formerly known as Prince. Because very famously, Prince changed his name in 1993 when to an unrecognizable symbol. It was sort of the symbol for man and woman and it had some other flourishes and had kind of been tweaked and redesigned over the years. It was on different pieces. You know, he had a guitar shape like that previously. I think it was on his motorcycle and Purple Rain, maybe.

Oh yeah.

But it was a symbol that had been around his world for a while. And Prince said, yep, that's my name now. And everyone thought he was. Yeah, don't wear it out. Cause you can't say it. So that's impossible. But I think at the time, I remember everyone just thought it was Prince being Prince and being strange and being eccentric. But it is now pretty widely accepted that he did that to spite Warner Brothers Records because he was in a record contract he didn't like for numerous reasons.

Yeah. And it was a very lucrative contract. A lot of people were playing like the world's smallest violin for Prince at the time.

He had resigned it too, by the.

Way, 20 years later. Resigned with the same company. And I saw.

No, no, no. He resigned before this one. This was the second. He resigned a third time later.

I got you. Okay. Did not realize that, but this is like $100 million contract is worth $215 million today. It was a big fat contract.

Yeah.

The thing is, is Prince, I saw like when he died, when they went into his audio archives, they're like, he could release an album like every month for the next 50 years or something like that. He had that much stuff recorded and he wanted to release music really quickly and with high turnover. And Warner Brothers is like, no, you're going to flood the market. You're going to shoot yourself in the foot. You can only release X number of albums every, say, 12 months. So like one a year maybe, or something like that. Yeah, he didn't like that. And then apparently Warner Brothers owned the rights to his songs too, which I'm quite sure he really, really didn't like. So to get out of his contract, he thought, well, okay, the contract is between Prince and Warner Brothers. I'm going to change my name and maybe the contract won't be valid any longer. I'm not sure how much he actually believed that because Prince wasn't a dumb person at all.

Yeah.

But at the very least, he was trying to humiliate Warner Brothers, make life harder for them. And he did all this, as you said, out of spite.

That's right. He also wrote the word slave on his cheek in a lot of performances at the time, and it didn't work. He had to see the contract through, which just another few years, I think. In 2000, it expired. And then he was Prince again. And like you said, you know, bygones were bygones, I guess, because he re signed yet again 20 years later with Warner Brothers.

Yeah. One of the things that Warner Brothers 2 had to do, Chuck, was they had to send out digital files to the media. And this is the 90s, because there was no way to. There was no, like, combination of keys on the keyboard to make this symbol. So they had to send a digital image of the symbol for the, like newspapers or magazines or whatever to insert into their articles about Prince. And then finally the media was just like, we're just going to call them the artists Formerly Known as Prince. And Prince was like, damn it.

Right. Work around.

Yeah, exactly. So RIP Prince, man, He was pretty great.

Yes. My friend and your friend Scotty got to. To go to his final performance, the solo Atlanta performance. At the Fox Theater just days before he died. And it always makes me so mad because Scotty didn't even really love Prince. Yeah, no, I'm glad he got to go.

He just showed up there like, how did I get here?

That's one of those we almost went and pulled the trigger to scalp tickets and it was just like. I don't know why we didn't. Because it was special enough to be a piano solo concert by Prince. I was like, man, we gotta go. And we didn't. And then he died.

Yeah, we were going to do the same thing. And that's actually a. Well, we weren't going to scalp. We were going to go. And I don't remember why we didn't, but that's kind of par for the course for me because I did that with Prince, I did that with Pink Floyd, I did that with Stevie Ray Vaughan, and I did that with the Grateful Dead. I was just like, I'll see him next time.

I saw Prince when I lived in LA in the late 90s or I'm sorry. Yeah, I guess it was early 2000s and that was amazing. Just being able to see him once with a full band. It was something else.

Yumi saw him for some tour, I think, Musicology tour. And she was like, hands down, the best show I've ever seen.

Yeah, boy, what a loss.

Apparently he was quite the dancer.

He was. I also saw Tom Petty on that last tour. I saw him quite a few times, but I was really glad to be at that last one.

Yeah, he was cool. He was one of those guys that you appreciate the older you get. You know what I mean?

One of the best. He's one of my faves.

Great. Let's move on to the pink House. Chuck.

The last of the last John Mellencamp.

No, that's a little pink house. This is just the pink house.

That's right. This is another image search quality or image search worthy kind of thing to look up. If you're at a place where you can do that, just type in Plum Island Pink House, and you will see a quite large pink house sitting in the middle of nothing.

Just a desolate marshland.

Yeah.

And it's. It's just looking at it, it's very eerie. Especially now it's abandoned. It's kind of ramshackle and run down. But it was built on Plum island and it's considered one of the all time great examples of a spite house. And a spite house is basically any house wall structure that's built to get under someone Else's skin. Right. So sometimes it's built to block their view. We talked about Henry Clay Frick building a mansion that was bigger than Andrew Carnegie's that would be considered a spite house. And in America, they go back at least until 1806. That was the earliest one I could find. But this one on Plum island off the coast of Newburyport, Massachusetts, which, by the way, is one of the more charming towns in the entire country.

Oh, I've never been there.

Oh, it's wonderful. That's where this pink house is. And there's a great backstory to it that makes it a spite house made out of spite.

A lot of times these spite houses happen when a couple gets divorced. It should come as no surprise, or I should say, probably couples with a lot of money get divorced. Because what I've learned is in order to have a spite house, you have to be rich.

Right?

Oh, I'm just gonna build that huge house to get back at someone. It's a very privileged position to be in, for sure. So, you know, I am judging. But in 2015, there was a New York Times article that talked about this thing that was built, like you said, in the middle of nowhere. It said it was overlooking a vast landscape of pristine salt marsh. And it apparently happened in 1925 when a couple got divorced, and the wife said, all right, we can get a divorce, but you have to rebuild an exact duplicate of the house we live in. If you're kicking me out of it because I love it so much. And he went, no problem. And so he built it, and he said, you didn't say where? And he said it just like that, I bet.

Yep, he did. So he built it on Plum Island. At the time, there was no one else living there, no fresh water, no electricity. It was just the worst place you could build a house. And he said, there you go. There's your spite house. And he walked away rubbing the dust off of his hands. Or what do you call that?

Yeah, that.

Whatever.

Clapping the dust off your hands.

Yeah. We need to come up with a name for that, right?

Yeah. A Sniglet.

Yeah. So, yeah, that's how it ended. And the. The story went that she lived there for a while and sold it, and it actually was inhabited, weirdly enough, by a succession of people up until 2011.

Yeah. I mean, I guess if you're a loner and you like nature, it's not the worst place to be. I just saw a sunset picture. It looked pretty nice in that sense.

Yes, it did. But it's Just, I mean, like, the sea off of Massachusetts can be fairly unforgiving. So, you know, this is an old house from the 1920s. Like, you're. It's going to probably be kind of drafty depending on the time of year.

Yeah. And I'm sure upkeep on that thing is you're probably repainting that thing every couple of years, right?

Yes. But you would have to paint it pink or else everybody in Newburyport would hate you.

Yeah, you would have to. Apparently it was lived in until 2011 and then eventually was sold to the Parker River national wildlife refuge in 2012. And you can't get to it now. It's off limits to the public. But they're trying to make it an official, like, protected house so it will stand forever.

And it was made out of spite or was, Chuck?

I don't know. Well, some people say that that was just an urban legend and it was just a family who lived out there.

Right. Which is a much less interesting story.

So we're just going to spite whatsoever.

We're gonna go with spite house for that one.

Agreed.

All right, well, that's it for things done out of spite. We hope you enjoyed it. And since I said we hope you enjoyed it, it's time for listener mail.

So another recent one from Automat. I love this real time stuff. This, you know, I mentioned some sort of episode on currency and how it affects things. And this is from Tree.

Tree. Okay, awesome.

Not a tree, but tree.

Tree.

Hey, guys, Chuck, specifically you mentioned in the Automat episode, you were trying to formulate it, something around how change affects things, our currency. Rather look into the situation in Zimbabwe that might help. Where it was too expensive to import metal coins. They had adopted the US Dollar. It was too expensive to import the metal because of weight. So there was a huge change shortage because store owners couldn't give shoppers change. Shoppers would have to purchase additional items to try and get their total purchase as close to the whole dollar amount. And he sent a New York Times article. And that, my friend, tree is exactly what I was talking about as something that could be a part of that episode. So I appreciate that direction. And that is specifically Tree Marchshink.

Great name. Tree.

Tree Martsink from South Carolina.

Thanks a lot. That's a good one. And I remember we talked a little bit about Zimbabwe's hyperinflation.

Oh, yeah.

Where people were like, showing up with actual wheelbarrows of cash because it was just going nuts.

That was crazy. I remember that.

Great, great example. Yeah, we got to do that episode.

Yeah, there's. There's got to be more to it, for sure.

Well, if you want to be like tree and fill us in on something we've said we want to know about, we love that kind of thing. You can send us an email to stuff podcastheartradio.com.

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[Josh Clark]

You listen to your favorite shows. Do you want to see into the future? Do you want to understand an invisible force that's shaping your life? Do you want to experience the frontiers of what makes us human? On tech stuff, we travel from the mines of Congo to the surface of Mars, from conversations with Nobel Prize winners to the depths of TikTok to ask burning questions about technology, from high tech to low culture, and everywhere in between. Join us Listen to tech stuff on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Joel, the holidays are a blast, but the financial hangover? That can be a huge bummer. If you are out there and you're dreading the new statement email that reveals the massive balance that you may have racked up. Well, you could use our help.

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[Joel]

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