Citation Needed - Paul Bunyon

Episode Date: September 27, 2023

Paul Bunyan is a giant lumberjack and folk hero in American[2] and Canadian folklore.[3] His tall tales revolve around his superhuman labors,[4][5] and he is customarily accompanied by Babe the Blue Ox, his pet and working animal. The character originated in the oral tradition of North American loggers,[2][4][5] and was later popularized by freelance writer William B. Laughead (1882–1958) in a 1916 promotional pamphlet for the Red River Lumber Company.[6] He has been the subject of various literary compositions, musical pieces, commercial works, and theatrical productions.[2] His likeness is displayed in a number of oversized statues across North America.[7][8]

but then just tell them it's for a party of 10. No, no, it's still just me, but I promise they won't notice on the check. Hey, there he is. Oh, hey guys, we recording early this week. Usually I'm not the last one here. No, no. The rest of us came a little early

because we wanted to talk to you about something. Oh, okay, what did you guys want to talk about? Well, Tom, you know, my ass say this week is on Paul Bunyan. Yeah, sure. I think I saw that. What? Have you ever heard of Paul Bunyan's story, Tom? I mean, I guess not, no.

Yeah, so all the Paul Bunyan stories are either about how much he eats or his very freakish physical strength. Nah, yeah, fun. That should be a good episode. What did you guys want to talk about? Ha! Tom, are you Paw Bunyan? You have to tell us. What? Of course I'm not Paw Bunyan.

Don't be silly. Tom, it's okay. We just just wanna know the truth, man. That's all. They're on to us, Blue. They're on to us. Ah! Ah! Cecil, I'm sorry, man, I know you guys were close.

I think part of me knew it all along. So much makes sense now, right? Like the pancakes. Like the pancakes, thank you. Pancakes. Hello and welcome to Citation Needed. Podcast will be chosen subject for a single article about it on Wikipedia and pretend we're experts. Is this the internet?

And that's how it works now. I'm Heath and I'll be your host because I'm Paul. Paul Bungeen's Paul. I'm tall. Anyone want toen's tall. I'm tall. Anyone want to do any japes about that? Real quick, folks. Give you a second. It's not that.

And I'm, no, we're done. I wasn't actually giving you space for that. God damn it. I'm generous. I'm joined by a guy who puts the pot in Home Depot and the guy who puts the logger in logger. Noah and C-Saw. See, Heath, you're tall. I'm joined by a guy who puts the pot in Home Depot and the guy who puts the logger and logger. Noah and C-Saw. See, Heath, Yerf tall, I'm high.

It's the same thing. It's just that I am graceful. Okay. See? And I only get active between 45 and 55 degrees Fahrenheit. So that's makes sense. Oh, ho, ho, ho, ho. Important range.

Great joke. And we'll have a guy who puts the, uh, puts the soy and soyer and a guy who puts the, what's the soy and soyer and the guy puts the, Tom in soyer. You know, honestly, I'm just super relieved that's the Tom Sawyer reference he's just to make about me. So I guess now I'm relieved I wasn't named Jim. That was a good. Yeah, I'm a good boy. Yeah, I'm a good boy.

Yeah, I'm a good boy. Yeah, I'm a good boy. Yeah, I'm a good boy. Yeah, I'm a good boy. Yeah, I'm a good boy. Yeah, I'm a good boy. Yeah, I'm a good boy. Yeah, I'm a good boy.

Yeah, I'm a good boy. Yeah, I'm a good boy. Yeah, I'm a good boy. Yeah, I'm a good boy. Yeah, I'm a good boy. Yeah, I'm a good boy. Yeah, I'm a good boy. Yeah, I'm a good boy.

Yeah, I'm a good boy. Yeah, I'm a good boy. Yeah, I'm a good boy. Yeah, I'm a good boy. Yeah, I'm a good boy. Yeah, I'm a good boy. Yeah, I'm a good boy. Yeah. I don't know how that happened. You had named the essay about how to just script. Paul, so podcast listener, I must have fucked up and added a second bunion. Today, we're going to be talking about Paul Bunion, the first spelling, and American tall tale, about a lumberjack so large that he could cut down entire forest at trees with one swing of his axe. The story came out of the American logging camps and was passed down from veteran lumberjacks and wood camp workers to newer green horns.

The stories were often told around campfires in the northern forests of the United States. Okay, so what you're saying though is that Eli's citation needed essays are just carrying on a proud American tradition. Exactly. Oh, Noah. In 1916, a promotional pamphlet by the Red River lumber company written by freelance writer William B. It's either loghead or laughhead, laugheed.

I don't know. He helped popularize the character to the people outside of the logging profession. And I feel like it's loghead then, right? It sounds like that sounds right, but it could be laugh feed. Maybe he was Scottish. I don't know. And it was this author that really gave a lot of the current characteristics to Paul Bunyan. Yeah. If you're ever wondering how grandma got taken in by QAnon, keep in mind that her dad was pretty sure a giant in his big blue ox handled most of this country's logging. So you know, we'll grace everybody, little grace.

Honestly, those is a much more wholesome and like less homoerotic lumberjack hazing ritual than I would have guessed that. Right. Yeah. Sure. Now, this isn't the first appearance of the Paul Bunyan legend in print. That had been traced to an issue of the Gladwin County record in that paper, the local news section about the area of Beaverton, quote, Paul Bunyan is getting ready while the water

is high to take his drive out. There's a third spelling. Come on. No, it's an eye. Anyway, Paul Bunyan is getting ready while the water is high to take his drive out. There's a third spelling. Come on. No, it's a guy. Anyway, Paul Bunyan is getting ready while the water is high to take his drive out and quote, now this is probably an inside joke among loggers at the time and not many people outside of lumberjacks would have known who this was referring to. But I mean, I know who Paul Bunyan is and I can't make answer tales of it so sure.

Yeah. right. Right. Now, some scholars actually don't believe that Paul Bunyan is real folklore because many of the stories that were in print are very different from the stories passed down through oral tradition. In fact, a lot of the Paul Bunyan tales are more like children's stories. They call this appropriation of the original story, fake lore. The stories of Babe, his giant ox, and his size are fabrications

by these later authors. Okay, yeah, it doesn't seem a little too convenient. This giant human being somehow finds the one giant blue ox in the world. And their eyes like meet across a smoke-filled room. Like, fuck. I just got a pause on the word scholars. These are like, I mean, yeah, there's someone out there who spent like four years sweating a dissertation on the historicity of the like the brawny paper towel guys. It's been unemployed since Benagons went out of business.

Yeah, let's use the word scar. Tall tales are often told as if the narrator is part of the story. And they're meant to be embellished. These stories in particular were told originally around campfires and they would be full of lumberjack jargon. These stories were also something of a one-up game where one person would finish, and the next person would start a new and more fantastic tale of Paul. Often, these tales were told of the good old days of logging, and

often of a place far away and distant from the current camp. Okay, so like, Trump supporters except in their case, the faraway places reality. I got it. Right. I'm popping. The good old days. Yeah, lumberjacks always pine in a wave. The good old days. Pine. That's true. You can't do a psychosexual depiction of someone working on their dissertation backstage at Benagans and then do a tree pun, Tom. You have to pick a lay line. Eli, that one was, that one was for you. Oh, leave it to Eli to beach about that, right? Right. What an ash show. I don't know what's going on. I don't know what's going on. I don't know what's going on. I don't know what's going on.

So let's first talk about the stories of Paul Bunyan. So like all good tales, Paul's story starts when he's just an infant. Paul was not pushed through the birth canal. Instead, he was delivered to the doorstep of his parents by a fail-anx of five storks because he was so large. His parents, of course, had to feed this enormous baby so they had to have 14 cows just to get enough milk for Paul's daily needs. Okay, at Google the output of a cow, that means they had a baby, a baby, drinking

about 100 gallons a day of milk. Well, to be fair, that was the food pyramid until 1998. Like, we grew up with that. It was the lower left section. There was a lot of milk. It really was a soap- Staying in a safe amount of milk. Hey, and then here's your double pint, schooner, a schooner.

Yes, schooner. Podcast listener. You do TGI Fridays. If you're under the age of 40, you have no fucking idea how much we were told milk was a part of hell, you do TGI Fridays. If you're under the age of 40, you have no fucking idea how much we were told milk was a part of hell. He died. All of the idea.

This pyramid rocked you by the American dairy company. Yeah. Yeah. Make a milk sandwich with your meat. Uh, Paul's parents decided there was famous commercials to get milk. Yeah. That was a whole campaign. This whole campaign to get you to Yeah, that was a whole campaign. This whole campaign to get you to hanker for a hunk of cheese, too.

Yep. Yep. Some of them are reasonable. I don't know why you're defending one of them now. That's good. All right. To bring up the cheese ones, those are. Cheese is known to prevent death by any cause.

Paul's parents decided to try to hide Paul from the rest of the town. No mention why, but they did, and they built him a huge cradle. They placed this cradle off the coast of Maine, and they waved power this thing to rock the giant kid to sleep each night. Paul probably pissed that his cradle was powered by clean energy started jumping up and down in it and he caused a 70 foot title wave that crashed in Lynn and wiped away coastal towns and villages. Okay, doesn't it feel like the townspeople should have been asking a few more questions before it got to that point? Like, do you think it's going to destruction? It is nice when an origin story begins

with a rural genocide. I rescind my wholesome kind. Right. I rescind. Sad that their hellish monster child wiped out the coast of Maine, the family moved inland to the forest and woods of Maine. Wait, wait, the whole family survived the title. They did call me.

Yeah, they like, I think they might have put them a few towns over. They might have had surfboards on them. I'm not sure. While there, he took up logging and farming to help out his family. At one point, he was plowing a field with two large oxen. When they got to the end of the field, instead of just turning them, Paul would pick them up both at the same time with the plow and turn them around so they could plow the next row.

Well, then it seems like I'd dick move to involve the oxen at all, right? Just push the fucking plow and you damn show off. Jesus, what work are they even doing? Other stories, talk not about Paul's size, but his speed. It was so fast he could blow out a candle. And before the room went dark, he would be in bed with the cover zone. It's relatively easy to do in the daytime. Okay,'t specify. Right. So you're right. He also shot a bear once

and he was so impatient to see if he hit it, he ran to see. And he moved faster than the bullet. And when he got to the bear, the buckshot hit him in his own ass. What? But he wouldn't even like knocked all that buck shot off course when he ran. The story doesn't add up. He ran out of his way around. He had to go around. Heath, that bear, Richard, Bruce, Cheney. It's all coming together.

Paul grows up and eventually becomes in some stories, seven feet tall. In others, he towers above the tree tops. He was so large that he would call on the other lumberjacks for dinner, he would knock down 60 acres of trees. Even when he talked at a normal level, he would shake the limbs from trees. Because Paul was so big and so strong, the story is also just taken to the logistics of keeping him fed. It is fucking adorable that they're telling themselves an insane story about a giant who bellows micro bursts and everyone just like nods along, but then they feel they

need to clarify the feeding details so it doesn't begin to seem pretty good. Yeah, exactly. Why is there a team of lumberjacks with him if you do not get it? He's just yelling. Paul just shout for a while. No, no. Cruise of cooks would have to cook mountains of pancakes every morning just to keep Paul and the other lumberjacks and camp fed. According to one story, the flower seller was so big, the one cook that lost and nearly starved before he was found.

I feel like he could have eaten flour. Right? Make yourself a little thing of bread. Other stories revolved around how bad or ingenious some of these cooks were. One cook was really underqualified or English as he basically boiled all the food. Or as the stories put it, did most of the work with a ladle. One year, a sled full of peas fell through the ice, and from that point, he would just scoop up the lake water, boil it, and serve pea soup.

So like the playing board games with heath of cooking, got it? Okay, sure, there you go. Counts, technically. Another story is about sourdough Sam. Instead of using chemical leavening like baking powder, Sourdough Sam used, you guessed it, yeasted sourdough. They said he made everything except coffee out of sourdough. He kept a sourdough in barrels, and I guess he tightened the lid on one of them too much

and it exploded, taking off one of his arms and legs in the process. Okay. much and it exploded, taking off one of his arms and legs in the process. Okay, I think we were all rooting for that same thing to happen to one of those tick tock people during the COVID lockdown. You're sourdough and you're banana bread. Nobody fucking cares. It's so mean. Okay, tell me no one loves to have a carer package of baked goods. He is without telling me no one left to a carer package.

Nobody did. me no one left you a carapackage. Nobody did. The griddle they needed to feed Paul at his crew was so large you couldn't see across it when their food was cooking because it produced so much steam. They had to prepare batter in large concrete mixer drums and poor these barrels out with cranes. No mention in any of the stories of how they turned the pancakes over. A Trubbyshe catapult not here. In any case, in order to make the pancakes, I had to oil up the griddle.

So one of the cooks would strap ham to his feet and skate across the entire griddle to grease the top. Right, to grease the down. Sure. Why does it have to be pancakes though? Why is that the only food that lumberjacks can eat in any of these stories? Also, I'm just, I really think there's a lot of problems with this story.

It seems like the demand for wood is unsustainable in the smooth hours that they're describing. You like a much higher body count cliffered the big red dog in a lot of ways. It was an ex. The stove was so big that had to clear 40 acres every day just to keep it low. Never mind. It all checks out.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, The loaves of bread were so big that they would eat just the inside of the bread and they would use the crust for a bunkhouse for the men. The donuts were so big that the crew had to carry them each on two large poles between two men. And they would also roll these gigantic donuts down the tables to get each one out of the

kitchen. So here's my thing though, why does the food have to be bigger? Right, I mean, could you like, instead of one donut, it's a thousand times as I just couldn't we just do a thousand fucking donut? Yeah. Certainly would solve the sort of sycophine bread baking problem. Yeah, absolutely not. As a man who gets sad when I'm finishing every one of my meals, the answer is bigger and more.

Yeah, that is the American way. Yeah, no, you're right. Once, a visitor came to Paul's camp and saw a bunch of men using logging sleds and rolling what appeared to be logs into a cellar of the cook house. When they opened the door, there was a huge cloud of steam, and then the crew rolled in another batch. When the stranger inquired as to why the camp stored logs in the cellar, the clerk replied and I quote,

those ain't logs, Mr. Them sausages, end quote. Okay. Also, what are you doing here? Fucking journalism doesn't random stranger walking around in our area. But I thought that lumber smelled delicious at all. Yeah. Where do they get the giant intestines? I get it.

Yeah. There were a lot more octin to be getting in the story. I was telling you. Yeah. You're the one that was left. Yeah. The bake in the men ate was served daily and came from the side of a 1,600 pound pig. Oh, okay.

Would never mind it all checks. Yeah. Now I feel stupid. The one the moon pits that the men discarded were so numerous they had to have a team of horses removed the pits daily. The pits were so numerous that the chipmunks that ate them grew as large as tigers. The coffee grounds. Is that also brown? It's back from growth is the lack of lack of free very large prudence. Okay, but that's fucking adorable. A tiger size chill on absolutely.

That now. The coffee grounds were also a problem and they had to shovel them for hours just to get them loaded onto a sled. After a bit, the crew decided it was easier just to build a new camp every month than it was the Holloway the trash. Okay, and that's Cecil is the most American sentence ever written. In it else, it is. The soup kettle in the camp was so big

that they automated the stirring by hooking a steamboat paddle wheel up and use that. Okay, they can't keep doing all this. This story has to end with Paul Bunyan getting like pushed out onto a giant ice flow to die, right? Like, an ice flow called Canada. I don't know.

I don't know. How do they not kill this guy? So you guys know if you tell Lucinda the story about a tiger size chipmunk, she's going to take a fucking super villain turn on genetic engineering, right? She doesn't listen to the show. We all keep this to ourselves, okay? Listen to the wall of the Supreme Court on Monkback. I'm here for your next.

Paul also had a gigantic ox named babe. He found babe during the winter. And originally the ox was white, but it was so cold and the snow so blue that it turned the ox's fur that color. Babe grew as fast as Paul. One night, Paul put the ox into the barn for the night, woke up the next day, found the entire barn is gone. So he went looking for it and he found that the ox had grown so much in the night that the barn was just stuck on his back, almost like a nuisance as he graced in the field.

That's funny looking guy. The ox grew to become a giant. While some story suggests that he was seven foot tall at the horn. Yeah, so about two feet bigger than a regular ox. Yeah, like Paul was two feet bigger than a normal dude. So, yeah, impressive. Just as tall as Paul at seven foot, other suggests he was seven ax handles tall and others that his horns were seven ax handles tall and others that his horns

were seven ax handles wide tip to tip. Okay, that's just a weird. Axe handle. Aren't they different? I mean, if you're in a logging camp, he is the union. He wasn't Paul Bunyan's ax enormous. I hope he had a regular size X. Yeah, it's in a hole between two fingers, you know. The ox was not only large but mythically strong. Well, it would be weird if it just had regular sized ox strength. The fat ass. Just crumbles in the soup. Super easy.

He gets ox laying on the ground. Can't even breathe. Yeah, I tried to drag it so far away. Wait, wait, wait, what's going on? What's going on? You wish it was a bug. For instance, one way Paul would peel the bark from a tree was to chain the ox to the log and then grab a hole to the bark and then mush the animal forward.

When it moved, it would pull the log and the bark would come right off. Okay, I feel like whoever told that story had never seen a tree before. I think you're right. One time he had to move a whole house so he chained the house to the ox and pulled it where it needed to go. No, that story's bullshit. Movers are not that competent. Then he came back and he dragged the seller to the house the next day. In another story, Paul is having a hard time navigating a road with his haul of logs.

So he decides to tie a chain to each end of the road. He ties one chain to Babe and then he holds the onto the other one. And when Babe walks, he and his ox straighten the road out and making the travel much easier. All right. Now we're getting into some Spanish magical realism here. I feel like Paul's gonna ascend to heaven like Ramellos the beauty any second now. Great.

Obviously, making a harness for the ox was something of a problem. Yeah. Okay. Story doesn't even make sense if they don't address the horn. Yeah, thank you. Ridiculous. How would they have done that? Oh, well, let me tell you, so one of Paul's crew used a log slide to simultaneously kill

200 deer that were at a watering hole. And then they used the 200 skins to make babes harness. Got it. Show that part in the cartoon, you fucking cowards. Yeah. Kill one giant deer. That's weird. 200 deer if you don't have to. Another time, babe and Paul were called upon to solve a log jam in the Wisconsin River.

The men cut down too many trees and the entire river was just clogged. So Paul backed babe up to where the logs were and then he shot the ox in the ass with a 30 30. Babe mistook the bullet for flies and then started spinning his tail. He spun his tail so fast, he reversed the flow of the river and the logs floated back up river as well, releasing the log jam. Oh, hey, the big strong giant guys here to help us. Are you gonna grant? Oh, no, you're torturing your animal and defying God instead. Okay. Cool. Unfortunate side note, the wind speed necessary to reverse an entire river just from blowing air across the top of the water was so intense and extinguished all life for hundreds of hilarious folks. Emiles. Yeah. Paul hired a blacksmith for his camp called Bigel.

That's the entire name. Maybe it's a choose your own adventure. I don't know. Okay, feels like a slurgot. Take it out. Like Keith's introduction to the episode. Right. Exactly. No, like I what?

How did that angle to? Tom Sawyer. Anyway, anyway, well, I guess, I guess, I guess Mark Twain did that. Anyway, we're still moving on. Anyway, Big ol was so strong that when he hit his hammer on the anvil, you could hear it across the county. He was the only blacksmith strong enough to shoot Bade. In one story, he had to carry only two of Bade's shoes for a mile. And every single step

he made, he sunk into the ground knee deep. And he was walking over solid rock. The ox's shoes were so heavy that every time Big ol' changed them, he had to open up a brand new metal mine or iron mine. So now just everybody is a giant who's super duper strong. It's 1919 people were dying from the flu at this point in history. The first flu is just taking us out. Yeah, here I like to think that the babe here was the seven foot tall version of the ox, but just with like, really enormous feet.

Just like getting huge. That's how maybe they were just really heavy shoes like made out of like neutron star materials or something. They're like regular shoe size, you know? Paul also had a cow named Lucy, and she was so big that she provided all the camp's milk for cheese and butter. Okay, yeah, when Paul turned vegan,

they needed almonds the size of meteors. I'm gonna make all the milk for cheese and butter. Okay. Yeah. When Paul turned vegan, they needed almonds the size of meteors. Just for the cough. Just for the cough. One winter, the cow ate all of the pasture, and she wandered into the spruce forest and ate it. The men used her milk as cough syrup. Anyway, the tall also had a dog named Elmer. And one night, thought of her to rat in his cabin, so he threw his axe at it. The tall also had a dog named Elmer. And one night, thought of her to rat in his cabin. So he threw his axe at it. Sorry, can we circle back to the cough syrup? Yeah. Sure.

Have a hard and old time. I didn't want to interject. The spruce sap was a cough syrup. When they do in weird, like, drug stuff, I had to google this too. Yeah. Yeah. Spruce sap through the cough syrup. Spruce sap was a cough syrup back then. So the idea of being she ate all the spruce and then she her milk becomes cough syrup. You can finish any Paul Bunyan story with

back. Bear. Also, also, also oxen are clove and footed. So unlike horses, they have to have two shoes for each foot. Sorry, well, we're kidding fun facts. Okay. Okay, earlier. And they're not coach chipmunk.

Dive from a jibway word. A jitter mood. That means he who descends from the tree head first. They're always. What? No, I'm not. Paul also had a dog named Elmer. So one night he heard a rat in his cabin.

So he threw an axe at it. When he woke up, he found his dog cut into. So he sewed the dog back together. Paul did this in the dark, where he didn't notice when he sewed the two ends of the dog back together, he didn't realize that he had sewn the hind legs pointing up, and it turns out that this innovation, the dog incredible stamina.

Let me finish. He would run on two legs until he tired, and then he would flip over and run on the other two. Now, don't you feel stupid? So, so, sorry. Did people fucking hate animals back then? Oh, yes. Oh, yes.

Oh, yeah. I think right when this was happening, some guy was like putting a monkey's head on back to the head of one little puppy onto the shoulder of another dog for some no reason. Yeah. Paul had a logger in the camp with the greatest name ever, shot Gunderson. This guy was so good at log spinning. You know, when a lumberjack stands on a log in the water and he spins it with, like, no discernible reason. Yeah, that anyway, he was so good at that that he

could spin the log so fast they would slide right out of their bark again, not trees. Maybe they're thinking of bananas or maybe the basis of these stories. There's got to be some reason for that spinny thing. It's like in the competitions, right? Yeah, I know why they do it. I'm like, I'm like, yeah, I think a big big dog spin. I'm gonna make that sound otherwise just the reason to make that sound. Okay, Paul has to answer. Also employed a bookkeeper named Johnny Inkslinger. He had so much writing to do that he invented a fountain pen by attaching a large hose to a barrel of ink. One year he decided to save Paul some money by not crossing his teeth or got it dotting his eyes and he saved Paul nine barrels of ink.

Okay. I'm not sure. Why would a large guy that's a cow didn't need to write more words? What the hell were you doing here? Okay. Well excuse the only Jew at the campfire for trying to include his profession. No, you've been sitting there for hours, listening, wanted to get a little, little action in there.

Fellas, Fellas, I've got one. Have I ever told you? I have a, all bunions account, Moishishwats. Got in so many adventures, the government owed him money. I'm sorry, I didn't kill a dog. Richard, I know you love that one where you get where you got killed the dog, but that's mine. Some of the stories are not as cute or aggrandizing as the one where he hurled an axe with deadly force at a random noise in the dark that turned out to be a dog.

Okay. And then taped him upside down. Yeah. The dark. Yeah. I think that was worth wasting a candle over. One year Paul hadn't paid the crew and he found out that he had no money in the camp, quickly said that they had been cutting down government pine and then each person quote,

they're upon seized what camp property lay nearest his hand and made off no two men taking in the same direction. Thus, Bunyan cleared his camp without paying his men a cent for their labor and quote. Cool. Yeah, that one ended with Bill Maher and Drew Barry Moore setting up her own mercenary logger game. Right after that. Good times. Moore's story has to come, but first we're going to take Well, how much flour can you sell me? No, I don't want the number your wholesaler.

I want to just buy it from you. Yes, I'll hold. Hey, Cecil, what's the matter? Yeah, man, your face is doing that thing. You know, it does like when I bent the fridge. You bent the fridge? Oh yeah, a whole lot, actually. It's this week's podcast.

It's all about Paul Bunyan and Babe, the big blue ox. And I'm gonna have to cook for all of a man. Why? Well, isn't Eli gonna manifest them in some kind of psychosexual fugues state? Ah, I don't think so. He tends not to do things that are like relevant. Yes, thank you, Tom.

Besides, if you got a lot of people to cook for, why don't you just try Hello Fresh? What's Hello Fresh? It's America's number one meal kit. Kickstarter fresh fall routine with hello fresh. Hello fresh handles all the meal planning and shopping to deliver everything you need to cook up a tasty meal right at home. They do the hard part and you get to take the credit. I don't know guys, a giant guy and an ox. They're all gonna want different stuff. It's not just well when it comes to options, honestly, more is more.

That's why Hello Fresh's menu includes 40 recipes and over 100 add on items to choose from every single week. That's a lot of choice, but is it actually fresh? It sure is. When you get Hello Fresh, you know you're getting top notch produce since it travels from the farm to your door in less than seven days. It's true. I became a hello fresh customer long before they were a sponsor. They took the hassle out of cooking

and the variety means I'm never bored. That's why I, Tom Curry, personally indoors, hello fresh as a product and vow to protect their honor should it ever be questioned. Again, you just need to do the first part. I meant what I said. Okay, guys, that sounds good, but where do I sign up? Just go to hellofresh.com slash 50 citation and use the code 50 citation for 50% off

plus 15% off the next two months. So I go to hellofresh.com slash 50 citation and use the code 50 citation for 50% off plus 15% off for the next two months. That's right. All right, thanks, I guess. Hey, we could just not let Eli write the ads anymore, too. I mean, write them ourselves. You.

Yeah, that sounds boring. Absolutely not gross. Okay. So, like, what will you do if someone questions the honor of Hello Fresh? You don't even wanna know, man. You don't wanna know. I That's some damn good coffee lefty. Thank you. Thank you

People tell us one about Paul But you oh you want to hear what about Paul puttinian, do you? I ever tell you about his sandwiches Nah, people tell us about him. What about him? There's so big to cut him Paul would just lay him across to Mississippi and wait for a tugboat to split him clean through. Oh, yeah. Oh, that's all right. But did you know about his glasses? No, no, tell us. He made him out of church windows, and if he set him over on the sill they'd burn down the next town over.

Ha ha ha! New big. One time he killed his dog. Sorry what? Oh he thought there was a mouse and he threw an axe and he just killed it. What the damn hell are you talking about, mate? Uh, let me finish. But, but then he sowed him back together,

but, but he did it upside down. This is not the format. So then, then, when the dog wanted to run upside down, and he had to, and then he would have to flip over to run more if he wanted to. Now how would that work? It makes no sense. I ask questions about your guys, is how would a boat cut a sandwich? Anyway, that's not how boats work.

Like, why are we questioning mine? And when I want to switch pants to none? No, man, you're the one that brought the dog, killer, you sleep with him. He didn't die, he just lives a life of regret. You didn't even listen to the story. Okay. And we're back. When we left off, we still hadn't learned anything about the family dynamic within the

bungee family. That's existential. If funny you should ask, Paul also had a brother, a younger brother, named Cored Wood Pete. Now, this whole story is made up by one mayor trying to get some tourism in a small town of Boston, Minnesota.

And it's much more recent than the old folklore of Paul Bunyan, but I thought I'd included it anyway. It was so, so wait. So we're on now to the Paul Bunyan apocrofa. He was much smaller than Paul. He was only four foot nine. Evidently, he never had enough to eat as a child because Paul was so voracious.

There's a charming detail of malnutrition. Followed Paul from his home state in Maine to Minnesota and took a job as a lumberjack in Paul's camp. They called him cordwood Pete because of his size and he was more suited to chopping cordwood for the fire than chopping down lumber. If this was a Pixar movie, he would be the villain. He would. Yeah, for sure. 100% good fun.

One legend is that he borrowed his brother's axe one day and swung it. It was the axe is so heavy that the momentum just spun him around like a gimli finishing move. When the axe finally stopped spinning, little cordwood Pete had cleared a hundred acres of forest. The next day, the railroad hired Pete to clear a path for the railroad and with one swing and a lot of spinning, he leveled 50 miles of woods in a straight line. And like Thor's hammer, when Pete had to give the axe back to his brother,

he's not nearly coming close to that kind of production. I feel like I'm going to hear about how well cordwood Pete's recovery is going in the Bunyan family Christmas card. You know, you hear that? What's that sound? Oh, that's nothing. That's just a tiny man spinning like a deck wielding whirling dervish puddings through every living thing for miles until he, you know, winds himself down and probably vomits everywhere, but yeah, that's supposed to be cute. That's supposed to be cute.

Come to Boston, Minnesota. Yeah. Okay. Cecil, question. Did Paul have any cousin? Thank you, Keith. Yes, he did. Paul had a cousin named Tony Beaver.

Got the idea. These stories are a little older and appeared in a print in 1930s. Tony lived in the mountains of West Virginia and he was eight feet tall and he had a pair of oxen named Hannibal and Goliath or any. He evidently grew melons of unusual size like the size of a fridge. Nice. I don't think that exists.

That's true. Guys, he also had huge nuts. Peanuts, that is, they were the just giant size, I guess. One year, River overflowed and it had rained for several days, and it was going to wash away the village. Unlike Paul, who basically wiped out half a mane and didn't give a fuck, Tony Beaver decided to help the people. He gathered the people at his peanut warehouse, and he had them carry his nuts to the river,

and there everyone cracked his nuts into the water, and they started floating. Then he added barrels of molasses to the water and the water slowed and eventually stopped damned up by his sticky nuts. Hey, Taisal, buddy, my friend. When your story has sticky nuts from a guy named Beaver that damn up a river, I'm going to need you to include that factoid a bit earlier in the assay, okay? There's good guys to kind of of thing that needs time to breathe. Yeah.

The problem was that the town's downriver were now in trouble because they didn't have this tributary to rely on the water anymore. When they came to Tony to complain about his nut blockade, he cracked a piece off of the dam and he ate it. And then he shared it with the town's folk who partook of his nuts. And thus the invented peanut bread. All right.

Great day for word plays. There's so much good word play that day. All right. Cecil, if you had to summarize what you've learned in one sentence, what would it be? I only did this to tell this story because next week they're going to be teaching it is fact in Florida. Are you ready for the quiz? Let's do this.

All right, I got one. What is the best name for a movie about damning up the river with Tony Beaver sticky nuts? Hey, levy to beaver. Nice. levy to beaver. Nice. Be come what may see the brittle rascal. That's good.

I didn't make a joke and I need you to congratulate me for that. They're also good. They're also good. I'm going to go with secret answer E all the above. Oh, it is, it is. It is a E all the above. All right, Cecil, the tales of Paul Bunyan nicely dealt with the intake part of the food equation.

Oh no. Jesus. What do they do with the presumably enormous shiths left behind? Hey, well in West Virginia, they made him a center. Oh, oh, oh, hey, that's they made him a center. Oh, yeah, I was thinking I'd be a secret answer B. They made it West Virginia.

Yeah, yeah. All right, Cecil. Paul Tails still live large in the minds of the American people. Which of the following is a real book available for sale on Amazon right now. Yikes. Yikes. Yikes. The erotic adventures of Paul Bunyan. Okay. The Paul Bunyan's mistress by Fiona free man.

Oh, God. See what? A horny raptor in King Arthur's court. What? Yeah, or D? The way the shadow wolves, the deep state in the hijacking of America, by Steve Tsegall. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha I believe D is correct. There's no way that's real. Correct, Cecil. It's all of them. I was actually very much aware of D. Eli, you stomped him.

You are the winner. I am. And you know what? I would like a little taste of Tom next week. Little taste of Tom. And you're sticky nuts. Don't say it like that. Well, for Cecil Noah, Eli and Tom,

he thank you for hanging out with us today. We'll be back next week and Tom will be an expert on something else. Between now and then you can hear us on cognitive dissonance, God off movies, skating atheist, skeptic rat, and D&D minus. And if you'd like to join the ranks of our beloved patrons of the arts, you can make a per episode donation at patreon.com slash citation pod. And if you'd like to get in touch with us, listen to past episodes, neckths on social media, particularly show notes, check out citation pod dot com. If you like to get in touch with us, listen to past episodes. Next, it's on social media.

Take a look at show notes, check out citationpod.com. Hey Cecil, any word? Yeah, he called this morning. I apologize for freaking out in the moment, but he's glad the truth is out there now. I bet. Yeah. So, what's he gonna do? He's not sure. He said he needs time to think.

And in the meantime, he's gonna eat a stack of pancakes so big that he'll run a railroad over it. I don't know what that would mean. Me neither, dude. I don't know either. Who is that? So wait, so we're on now to the Paul Bunyan apocrofa. Yeah. Chicago deep dish pizza of the bunion family.

Just leaving the nice area to talking through this so there's nowhere to make. Just leaving the nice area. So I can make sense. Call back. Call back. Call back. Call back. She kind of did. You are on a separate track, Eli Bosnick. You cannot talk for the rest of the episode, too. That's all so possible.