Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - Rubber Ducks

Episode Date: January 2, 2023

Alex Schmidt is joined by comedian Billy Wayne Davis (new special 'Testify') and comedy writer/performer Zac Oyama ('Dimension 20' on Dropout.tv) for a look at why rubber ducks are secretly incredibly fascinating. Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources, handy links, and this week's bonus episode.

Rubber ducks, known for being yellow, famous for being floaty. Nobody thinks much about them, so let's have some fun. Let's find out why rubber ducks are secretly incredibly fascinating. Hey there, folks. Welcome to a whole new podcast episode, a podcast all about why being alive is more interesting than people think it is. My name is Alex Schmitz, and I'm not alone. I'm starting off 2023 with two wonderful guests. Billy Wayne Davis is back on the show. He has a new comedy special out.

It is called Testify, and it's fantastic. One of my favorite descriptions of the American South I've ever heard. An incredible whole run at the end that I won't spoil. Testify is the title. You can get it through a wonderful website for all kinds of comedy specials called 800-lb Gorilla, or get it on Prime Video, YouTube, Google Play, a bunch of other services that I will link. Billy is also touring his stand-up all over the American South in February. He'll be in Nashville, Tennessee, Huntsville, Alabama, Asheville, North Carolina, and Atlanta, Georgia,

Tennessee, Huntsville, Alabama, Asheville, North Carolina, and Atlanta, Georgia, and maybe more shows after I tape this. I don't know. Go to bwdtour.com to see that, and I'll have that linked as well. I'm also joined by a new guest. Zach Oyama is a wonderful comedy writer, performer, everything else, and I hope you know him from Dimension 20. Also on all sorts of other shows from Dropout.tv, which is a fantastic independent ad-free comedy streaming service that's worth checking out. Also, I've gathered all of our zip codes and used internet resources like native-land.ca to acknowledge that I recorded this on the traditional land of the Canarsie and Lenape peoples. peoples. Acknowledge Billy and Zach each recorded this on the traditional land of the Gabrielino or Tongva and Keech and Chumash peoples, and acknowledge that in all of our locations, native people are very much still here. That feels worth doing on each episode, and today's episode is about rubber ducks, which is a patron-chosen topic, a topic chosen by people

who support this podcast. And I want to give many thanks to the listener who suggested it, especially because their username on Patreon is Rubber Ducky. I don't know their actual name. I just know they're called Rubber Ducky and they suggested Rubber Ducks and people were like, that duck is talking about something I want to know. So here we are, the episode happened, and I'm so glad it did because it turned out there is so much here. So please sit back or lay back in your bathtub, right? I don't know if people listen to podcasts in the bathtub. If you are, shout out if you are. Enjoy the suds and potentially the topic. Either way, here's this episode of Secretly Incredibly Fascinating with Billy Wayne Davis and Zach Oyama.

I'll be back after we wrap up. Talk to you then. Zach, Billy, it is so good to have you both on. And of course, I always start by asking guests their relationship to the topic or their opinion of the topic. So either of you can start, but how do you feel about rubber ducks? Personally, I did not grow up with a rubber duck in the house. I think I saw them mostly in cartoons and on TV shows and things like that. mostly in cartoons and like on TV shows and things like that.

I, you know, I like to take a bath, but I've just never had a rubber duck around to, to, you know, uh, partake in the bath with. That's such a vague question.

Like what's your relationship with rubber ducks? Cause it is like, well, I've heard of them. Do you know what I mean? Right. But i will say this is weird like i've always liked like they're they're soothing like just in the bathtub whatever whoever put that together it is it's nice and it to this day as an adult i have a toddler so I've always thought it's soothing and then I'm from East Tennessee and I don't know how you usually do some deep incredibly weird research so

this is part of why I love this thank you I mean that I mean that as a compliment I do that is not high praise um it's right up my alley uh but did you find not to spoil or anything but the knoxville tennessee what they do in knoxville tennessee every year uh no they would it was a radio station or something like that would just dump a bunch of them in the tennessee river and then whichever and everyone they had like a number on the bottom of them. Oh. And then whoever crossed it first, they got like, if their number matched, they won, you know, whatever it was, through like a boat or whatever the sponsor was, you know, East Tennessee stuff where it's like, I want a truck and a trailer. Wow.

So I have an odd or I guess I do have a relationship with rubber ducks at most. That's amazing. It's some hillbilly nonsense, but it was fun. It's fun. Also, the bonus show is going to be all about some accidental dumping of rubber ducks into the ocean. I like that there's also some on purpose. Right. Because it's like, it's basically pollution to dump rubber ducks in water

and it's still like cute we're all like ah look at the cutest pollution i've ever seen yeah well they like scooped them up i will give the hillbillies like it was like you know it was like fishing too at the end there all right let's go get them too now and then it's like that's they didn't just leave them that's good yeah i'm sure something got away and i i think i have a similar relationship to you guys with it i had to like text my brother before this and ask if we had a rubber duck because he says we did not but there's such a pop culture thing of like everybody especially kids have rubber ducks that i sort of had an invented memory of having one but no it's just all over the culture that's all it is my son has a couple but i made

because i think because i was just like i like that so i made yeah that's cool i think if i was a parent i would get one yeah i'd be like here you go yeah and maybe for me because i now that i think about it he does not care about that duck. He's got a bunch of other toys. So it's just in the back. It's for me. With these ducks, I think we can dive into the historical origins of them. And on every episode, our first fascinating thing about the topic is a quick set of fascinating numbers and statistics. And this week, that's in a segment called... So math me, Alex, like you're up on eels

Math me, Alex, like I'm stainless steel Hey, Alex, math me And that name was submitted by Johnny Davis. Thank you, Johnny. We have a new name for this segment every week. Please make them as silly and wacky and bad as possible. So submit yours to SifPod on Twitter or to SifPod at gmail.com. Thank you, Johnny.

You nailed that. You nailed it. That was perfect. Thank you. Yeah. It's I have lived in North Carolina before. So I think I communed with. I thought Hootie was here.

Yeah. Yeah. I'm from Alabama as well. So I, you know, it takes me, it sort of takes me back. Well, well, folks with Duck History, just a few numbers this week, and they are all years. The first one is 1839. That is when American inventor Charles Goodyear developed vulcanized rubber. And people probably know the name Goodyear from tires.

But if people have heard the tires episode of the show, too, we talked about vulcanized rubber. That's where they combine rubber with sulfur and they heat it. That makes it stronger and less flexible. So you get applications like vehicle tires. The vulcanized rubber that starts a industrialized rubber industry in Europe and in like colonized North America. Europe and in like colonized North America. And according to the Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, New York, companies started making rubber toys in the late 1800s. And the first rubber ducks were made of like solid rubber, very thick, tough rubber.

And they were supposed to be either chew toys for animals or they were supposed to be like teething toys for human kids. Gosh. Gosh. Huh. You just bet your whole life on like the strangest things. You know, someone was like, that was their dream. Oh, like professionally? Yeah, like what people's jobs are is so strange.

Yes. Or they're just like, well, somebody when somebody's like man i think i can sell this it's like do you have a dog or a kid well i got what you need they both got teeth it looks like a duck everyone loves chewing on a duck there's some sort of that makes sense just like some part of your brain is like, I kind of want to chew on that. And I still, I get, you know. The bill, like the bill does look like you. But this is like before Daffy. So it's not even, you're not even like. Also, I love like this is around the time where like't talk, like, they talk about when things are invented.

Like, well, they put rubber with sulfur, and now it's, like, amazing. You're like, yeah, but, like, why'd they do that? Like, what were, like, like, that is an act, like, a bunch of people probably got f***ed up or died because of that. Like, they were just, like. It doesn't sound safe. No. And it doesn't sound safe and doesn't sound like it smells good it's like he invented it and you're like what's that mean he's like let's just move on let's just right there's there's no way that process smells good oh that's what i thought too i was like rubber and sulfur yeah yeah rubber a substance that famously burns very pleasantly

i have a lot of rubber candles uh yeah it's really good good because you guys smell awful and you look sick you look really sick none of you god what have y'all been doing oh that's cool mr goodyear i blimp whatever i don't care you hurt my nose that is no one talks about that yeah and and off all this there's a quick within the numbers big takeaway because takeaway number one for the show modern rubber ducks are not made of rubber i'm sorry like i i had never really put this together but now now that i read it of course it makes sense like they're not made of rubber anymore the name is just an antique thing from when they were first made of rubber and like a modern floaty duck is made of plastic. It's not made of rubber.

That's true. I got your back on that. That's true. Thank you. I wonder, I would love to see, like, what does, huh, if you had them side by side, could you tell which one was plastic, which one was rubber? Yeah.

I'm trying to think of what it looks like. For one thing, the especially like heavy solid rubber ones did not float. So like when kids were first playing with these rubber duck toys, it, you know, you could use it in the bath, but you would constantly just be picking it up from the bottom of the tub. Yeah, this is just, it sounds like it's just a completely different thing from what we know. Yeah. It's like very 1800s vibes to me. It's like, here's your thick slab of rubber that's duck shaped and the dog's been biting it. Like, okay, cool.

Cool, cool. And if you drop it, it can break your foot. So be careful. I don't even have any toys. My dog has a toy. Oh, sure. It's a flame. 1800s, you have like, what, a stick? It my dog has a toy oh sure it's a flame 1800s you have like what a stick or it's not really a toy it's like that dog either gnaws on that thing or me so we got

so that is a good choice yeah yeah i'm being a good parent i got the dog a toy when i'm and as far as these modern ones i'm gonna link a short youtube video where they show a factory where these are getting made and the video is not like super thrilling but it's molded vinyl plastic and they also usually put like a metal weight in the bottom about 50 grams of weight and so that way it floats upright like there's weight in the. It's not so much weight that it sinks, but it's enough that it stays upright. Like we think of a duck swimming. So if you flip it upside down, it'll flip back over to not drown. Because you don't want to spoil the illusion. Right. Just children being like, my duck died. It's like, no, it's fine. Okay, great. And then it flips over. My duck died. Okay, like no it's fine okay great and then it flips

over my duck died okay no it's fine like that's all the bath time it's just that exchange that is speaking of like someone's job like that's what they did for a couple days so they talked about that a lot of product testing for keeping the duck up yeah i don't think it matters like no it matters we can't be psychologically damaging these children i don't it's like this is sulfur is in this my lungs hurt from making these i don't have the capacity yeah our babies smoke cigarettes what are you talking about cigarettes that thing that's good for your t-zone yes our kids smoke that yeah that's they drink and they drink and snort coca-cola their t-zone oh yeah i saw there's

like old ads where it's doctors claiming cigarettes are good and your t-zone is this made-up thing they said about cigarettes back in the day right unless you put them out right here don't put them out yeah but that's a that's a thing that i finally have noticed basically that a rubber duck today not made of rubber it's molded vinyl plastic usually hollow and the name's just an antique thing we never changed it it's stuck around though it. It's stuck. Really stuck, yeah. Some things don't stick. Most things don't. That one did. It's so synonymous. Yeah, they especially got plastic going in the 1940s.

So we have the name. It's just kind of lingered for a long time, like 80 years. Huh. It's really weird. Well, and the next number is another year. It is 1917. So the year 1917. It's during World War I, but not relevant. This is when back in the U.S., writer H.L. Mencken published a long list of fake

facts about the history of U.S. bathing, especially bathtubs at home. And bringing this up because rubber ducks are a bath toy now. but if you try to research like the history of American bathing, you consistently just get fake facts from one list by H.L. Mencken in 1917. Like there is real information out there, but a bunch of it is stuff he made up for fun. And was it known to be fake at the time? Like he just was being like funny or was this was like, to be fake at the time? Like he just was being like funny or was this was like, or did people think it was real? Yeah. A lot of people thought it was real. And like, I think he thought he was being clever or like making a good point about fake news or something, but it just ended up creating a bunch of myths. The main myth is that president Millard film more popularized bathtubs, but that's not true. That's just made up.

Man, everything is bullshit. That is amazing. Yeah. He's like, this is obviously, like, hilarious. I'll just, it's like he was doing The Onion. Right. He's like, this is funny. This is funny.

People will know. And then he's like, someone told him, he's like, hey, did you know that? And he's like, oh, no, that's not. Oh. Yeah. Because he worked for like a real newspaper. So he just put it in the real newspaper and people said, oh, it must be true. And it's really poorly done. Yeah.

Oh, that's tough. You're just like, no, I think I made up and uh that's too hard to explain now and right i've realized a different lesson than i thought i was going to sure if you fart in the bathtub it's carbonated it makes it carbonated i read it in the paper i read that in the paper you guys it's a fact yeah that's how that's how coca-cola does it it's a fact that's how Coca-Cola does it it's farts bathtub farts

fill up a bathtub with syrup and sugar and a bunch of pharmaceutical cocaine and then you just fart in the bathtub people love it blend and then as far as like real information, I'm going to link historian Jacqueline S. Wilkie of Luther College, because she says that until like the first half of the 1900s, most Americans either didn't have a home bathtub or they had a home bathtub and they didn't have a way to heat the water easily.

had a home bathtub and they didn't have a way to heat the water easily. So like across a lot of American history, people have either just kind of not bathed for long periods of time or they took like short baths in cold water and got straight out. So as far as like rubber duck toys in the late 1800s, people were not thinking like, how do I have a toy to sit in the bath all the time? That was not such a thing. I want to sit. I want to play in here.

It's nice. They're like, no, I'll get hypothermia. Yeah. Yeah. I would rather be just smelly and disgusting for weeks at a time than get into a cold bath. I guess I get it. You know, you're warm. The dirt in your field keep you warm like a dog.

the dirt in your filth keep you warm like a dog a filthy dog it's like a little like a little layer of clothing dirt i don't know i lived in the northwest for a while and it gets cold and dark and wet for months you don't shower as regularly as you as most and then you start talking to other people and you're like yeah i'll go a couple days. And you're like, it's because you get warm and you're like, I'm not even going to chance taking these clothes off. I'm not. Drying off with a towel is too dangerous. Yeah, it is. Yeah, you're exactly like that moment where I'll just take a. Yeah, it is.

It's I could see that. yeah it is it's i could see that but also like once again like who's the salesman who's gonna be like cold tub in your house right now cold tub everyone needs one right oh weird i don't know it's the same as the creek but it's in your house you know probably don't have like plumbing you have to like get buckets to like throw it outside. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of cases. You could go to the river and just, you know, it does all of it for you.

Yeah. Yeah. So that's like, that's another part of the origin of rubber ducks here is that like, as far as the floating bath toy we think of, they needed to make bathing pleasant and not horrible first. And it took some decades it took some time that is funny you don't think about a learning curve for bathing people are like oh man how do you do this god so i hate cleaning myself right plus i feel like it takes some peer pressure of everybody else being clean

most of the time for you to need to you know like like once everybody's dirty you can just kind of blend in you can be like yeah it's cool we all smell the same so then everyone else cleans himself and then you're just like well man are we really doing this maybe they invented it just because the old sulfur ass because they're like he's got to that guy he's got to go vulcan oh good year vulcan man like he's god he smells bad you've been making some cool stuff you ever thought about making i don't know sort of like a tub anything like that is there anything there soap could you do a soap like a combined some like lie with i don't know like lavender like all the lavender in the world could you do that magic man and there's one more number here for the rest of the takeaways the next number is it's a specific date, February 25th of 1970.

So February 25th, 1970, that's the air date of the first Sesame street episode featuring the rubber ducky song where the character he sings about is rubber ducky. A classic. That is a classic. Yeah. It premiered on the first episode. No, the, the show started in late 1969.

And then within a few months, that first season, uh, there was a, the show started in late 1969 and then within a few months that first season there was the song. Even that. That's a pretty amazing first season. They were coming out with classic hits. That's tough. Plastic Ducky wouldn't work. I don't think.

Plastic Ducky, you're real weird. Kind of wish that you were rubber. Yeah, right. That all brings us into takeaway number two. Rubber ducks existed for several decades and got reinvented a few times before Sesame Street made the floaty yellow kind, the standard kind. I think I had kind of thought Sesame Street invented it a little bit, almost like made that a thing in the world. But it turns out they were just basically writing a realistic kid.

Like a kid would play with a rubber duck in the tub and we'll have Ernie do that. Like, great. Oh, okay. So they're just hanging out. They were just commenting. Yeah. So art was imitating life. Exactly.

Yeah. There you go. There we go. Sometimes it's blurry. It's like, who did it first? And now in this one, life. People are like, we need one more song for this episode. I'm going to go take a bath and think about it.

And the key sources here, it's a piece for Benel Floss by Jake Rawson. episode, I'm going to go take a bath and think about it. And the key sources here, it's a piece for Benel Floss by Jake Rawson, and then the UK Science Museum in London, and the Strong Museum in Rochester, New York. Because we talked about like rubber toys, and then there's a flip here where they start getting made out of plastic. The like very first industrial plastics are in the late 1800s, but then early 1900s, there's stuff like Bakelite and Perspex and a few other hit common plastics. And so toy makers start making their rubber toys and other things like that out of plastic pretty often. And so the combination of plastic and good baths and an existing rubber toy industry of these like solid chew toy ducks that combines to create a plastic floating duck for the bathtub synergy gentlemen synergy

i i feel like i've learned it 30 times probably in my life but when people talk about making plastic i'm still like well i still don't really understand where it comes from or what it is but petroleum yeah like and that in about four minutes will leave my brain no it's uh that's when people are like i drive a prius i don't beep oil um That's when people were like, I drive a Prius. I don't beep oil. But it's like, that whole Prius is made out of oil, you guys. The whole thing is plastic.

There's a lot in there, yeah. You know, it's steps. Yeah, because we'll talk in the bonus about an accidental spill of rubber ducks. It's basically an oil spill. It's basically oil being spilled into the water, but it's adorable and it doesn't coat the animals like it's better but it's still what they just get they can just eat them so it doesn't coat them it's just inside not outside so they're pretty they're still pretty you seen the dawn commercial where they get dawn soap and they clean the rubber duckies off of a little baby duck. It's sweet. It's nice.

There goes my hero. It's really good for that, Don. It is good for that. If I was a seabird and I got covered in rubber ducks, I would feel really betrayed by my own kind. I'd be like, come on, we're all birds here. What are we? What is this?

You are my friends, my brethren. Say something. I see you silently sitting there in shame, floating head up no matter what. And they're so smiley, like they're so happy visually. You sicken me. Yeah. And then, yeah, like a few different people invent this thing. And before Sesame Street, there were various patents starting popping up in the 1920s. And in the early 1930s, an inventor in Maryland named Eleanor Shanahan developed a yellow duck toy

that squirts water out of its mouth. Like you dunk it in water, fill it with water, and then you squirt water out of it. There was also late 1930s, the Disney company, they made a whole set of bath floater toys of their characters. And far and away, the top sellers were a Donald Duck toy and a female character named Donna Duck, who they later named Daisy Duck. But like there was, there was, I had no idea. It really threw me. Yeah. Classy.

They're like, it's, we got to use all the same letters for Donald Duck, but just get rid of a couple. It's going to be way easier. Yeah. She was a typo. They were just writing a normal document, and then we made a character shoot. What's her name? Dawn.

Uh. Uh. Donna. Perfect. That's perfect. Donna. Mrs. Donald Duck. I guess it is the Mickey Minnie logic, right?

Like, just an extremely minor change. Just a slight tweak, but even less than Mickey and Minnie. Yeah. Yeah, it's more like, are y'all brother and sister? Like, what's going on? Are y'all twins? Yeah, is your dad, like, Don? That is weird.

So there's, like, this weird situation where all kinds of different americans are independently inventing and buying floating duck toys for the bath like just everyone kind of is doing it all at once and then in 1947 a key inventor sort of formats it it's a sculptor named peter ganine and he is famous for a few things he did some of the first big chess sets where there's human faces carved into the pieces but his other big achievement is patenting a design for a vinyl plastic duck toy that is bright yellow it squeaks it looks like the modern rubber duck that came around 1947 wow that's me i did that that. Me. Look it up. I also put heads on the chest.

I feel like it's such a trivial understanding of inventing stuff, but as a person, as a writer or whatever, where you have to write drafts of stuff and like kind of comb through you know like come up with what feels like a bunch of stuff i think it'd be kind of a nice life to just kind of make up like one thing you know it's like obviously it's more complicated than that to like come up with a floating duck toy or or chess pieces with faces on it but i think i could get i could really get behind just sort of thinking in that zone and just be like that's the end of it it's a chess

set with faces yeah just one phrase that's the whole thing like yeah what if we was doing chess and it was like humans instead of like you know this and that's that's a good day's work i'm gonna quit my job i got this also like you said inventor like that is like is that your job or is this like something you're just like doing and then like when one takes off you're like yep i'm an inventor like i don't yeah yeah because you shouldn't technically call yourself a comedian until you get paid to do it. It's kind of like the vague rule that's unwritten. You're not an inventor until you've sold your invention. Is that?

I feel like that's. I don't know. I feel like that's a respectable rule where people are like, I'm an inventor. What you done yet? Well, nothing yet. I've got some they're like, I'm an inventor. Like, what you done yet? You're like, well, nothing yet. You know, I've got some stuff that's hadn't caught on yet. You haven't. Then you just.

Then you're just a guy who kind of thinks of stuff, I think. Yeah, you still work at that bar is what's going on. That is fascinating. I'm an inventor. What you got? Nothing yet. You're like, okay. Yeah.

I'm an inventor. What you got? Nothing yet. You're like, okay. Yeah. Cause like, and this guy, he was apparently like professionally a sculptor is one way of describing him. Cause he did like other sculptures, but a lot of them were essentially giants animals. And it seems like he was sculpting at a time when we hadn't invented a lot of shapes of

stuff. If that makes sense. You know, like we hadn't come up with some stuff that a sculptor could just do and that's an invention they got triangles they got spheres but what else i think shapes been around a while i don't know what you're talking about but how do you recombine the shapes to make others like look what i invented it's a triangle i call it a triangle that That'll never work. You need four sides. This guy's over there. He's like, I can sculpt this.

You're a fool, John Triangle. That'll never be popular. Another gig. It's like Sculptor is another, I think, until you've moved some pieces. I think you're just a guy in his garage. Making a bunch of heads just kind of being weird just kind of being like what are you doing with that chainsaw you're like i'm just making some art you're like ah i don't know that was our firewood yeah could you could you artist some

firewood there and with with the commercial end there's like this guy does a really interesting thing where for one thing he sold literally millions of these like he he claims he sold 50 million five zero oh now he's gonna sue our ass off uh i got money i got crazy duck money. The canine estate is knocking on our door. Invent this. Invent this. But he did that, and then also he did his patent in 1947, and I couldn't find why, but he let it lapse in 1961. Like, he just stopped cashing in on this. And so then from there, like, his duck had become super popular, and other toy makers copied it because they didn't have to pay him for it.

So that also popularized this style, like the yellow, the friendly face, everything like that. Oh, that's interesting. Do you think he just missed the deadline? That's entirely possible. Yeah. Like he just forgot or something. Yeah. That is so funny just to be able to like just have everything so set up for you and then like,

have like, just like one little thing you have to do. Yeah. Just like, Oh, what's that? Oh, what's today?

What's today? I messed up. I had like one errand a year and I messed it up. Oh, now back to the, back to the sculpting board. That inventor and other people, they made this a huge phenomenon. So then 1969, Sesame Street premieres. And within a few months, they write just Ernie doing a thing lots of kids do, playing with their rubber duck and liking it.

And then they also sold the song as a single, and that record sold over a million copies. It made the Billboard Top 20 charts in 1971. And that from there really cemented this. Like, from then on, that's what people think of with a rubber duck. But they didn't invent it at all. They were like, this is a thing we noticed. And then that's where we got it. It's just funny to imagine being like 21 on the top 20. And like, you're like, what's 20. And like, you're just like this musician who's just been like trying

forever. And like, you almost got it. And then rubber that, that's the song that beats you out. rubber that that's the song that beats you out well surely i lost to a human musician and then you look into it and no no they weren't made of felt right all right off of that we're going to a short break, followed by the big takeaways. See you in a sec. I'm Jesse Thorne. I just don't want to leave a mess. This week on Bullseye, Dan Aykroyd talks to me about the Blues Brothers, Ghostbusters, and his very detailed plans about how he'll spend his afterlife. I think I'm going to roam in a few places. Yes,

I'm going to manifest and roam. All that and more on the next Bullseye from MaximumFun.org and NPR. Hello, teachers and faculty. This is Janet Varney. I'm here to remind you that listening to my podcast, The JV Club with Janet Varney, is part of the curriculum for the school year. Learning about the teenage years of such guests as Alison Brie, Vicki Peterson, John Hodgman, and so many more is a valuable and

enriching experience. One you have no choice but to embrace because yes, listening is mandatory. The JV Club with Janet Varney is available every Thursday on Maximum Fun or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you. And remember, no running in the halls. Thank you. And remember, no running in the halls. Well, and there's one more main takeaway here, and this gets us beyond the toy use quite a bit. Takeaway number three. Rubber ducks are now a global protest symbol.

And that's due to a Dutch art piece that was used for memes about Tiananmen square. Wow. I mean, I know that's how did they get there? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. This is,

they're a global protest symbol because of a Dutch art piece where the art piece was a basically giant sculpture of a rubber duck that can float in a city harbor or a city waterway. Oh, I've seen those. Yes. And then it got turned into a useful meme in the run-up to the anniversary of Tiananmen Square on Chinese social media. Wow. You know, they have to speak in code about stuff because they don't. Yeah.

Eh, best of. It's cool. It's cool. It's cool. It's cool they have to use a duck to be like, hey, our government, right? It's a duck, though. It's just a duck. Yeah, we made this soothing. No other meaning to me.

Soothing, soothing symbol. And this meme here, so it begins with an art piece that becomes a phenomenon because in 2007, it was a Dutch sculptor named Florentijn Hoffman. And he just called it rubber duck, but it's a giant rubber duck that floats in like the city's waterway or harbor. One of them was about 59 feet tall, but he built a new one in each city when he did it. And he did the first one in Amsterdam, then several other cities all over the world, Baku, Azerbaijan, Osaka, Japan, Sao Paulo, Brazil. And then in 2013, he put one

up in the harbor of Hong Kong. That's where this started. That got the attention of the Chinese public. They were like, hey, look at this fun rubber duck in Hong Kong Harbor. That's great. Oh, so it was just like a fun art piece at first. And then he did it in Hong Kong where stuff was going haywire. Gosh. Because he did it in the first part of 2013. And then every year since June 4th, 1989, there's been like, especially pro-democracy

people in China wanting to commemorate this anniversary, June 4th, 1989, because that's when the Chinese government sent the military in to attack and kill demonstrators in Tiananmen Square. There's never been an official death toll from a death count. But that's also where the famous tank man photo comes from, where it looks like it's one man standing in front of several tanks. And because people in China need to talk about it in code and around government censorship, there quickly became a meme on the social media service Weibo, where they took the tank man picture and replaced all the tanks with this giant rubber duck. Because it was like, I know this from pop culture,

I can make a code out of it, it's also just a funny picture. And then 2013, that's how people talked about Tiananmen Square, was a rubber duck picture. Wow. Which is a whole thing. It's a whole rabbit hole. Which proves censorship works, doesn't it? It works.

Always works. People, you know. People will never find a way to talk about the things they want to talk about. Another way to symbolize things. There'll be no other way to use one symbol to communicate. It's really interesting to think about like the, the path, like I'm sure when this artist made these rubber duckies, you know, these big giant rubber ducks, like there's, how could you ever imagine that that would be the life it takes, you know?

Uh, so strange. Yeah. Yeah. And it also led to new censorship of text on Chinese internet because, especially on Weibo, which started in 2009 and started after Twitter was shut down in the country. People, you know, like writing about Tiananmen Square found a lot of interesting code to describe it. For instance, the event was June 4th. And so they started calling it May 35th event was June 4th. And so they started calling it May 35th because May 35th, if you like keep counting into June, it's like I'm a, I'm 11 and 13 months old or whatever when you're 12.

Yeah. Right. Uh, and people did like 63 plus one for six, four. And like, there was all sorts of clever text for that. And so there's this cat and mouse game of censors, like eliminating different phrases from Chinese internet. And in 2013, they had to eliminate the phrase big yellow duck and other phrases referencing a rubber duck. Like you couldn't talk about that concept on Chinese internet because it was enough of a code phrase to refer to this meme and refer to the event. Just innocuous. Yeah. And the likelihood that people would say big yellow duck

and mean an actual big yellow duck is very low. True. It's fair. But okay, let's compare that. Citizens have to do that because the government's just like, they can't even say like big yellow duck. People are like, you go to jail if you say that. To like the GOP

people being like, let's go Brandon and making up a code for something that they can be like, you can say F you, you can say F you like you can say that, but no one cares. You can say the thing you want to mean here. You can say the thing, you can say it.

No one cares. And most of the people that voted for him will also say that with you. We don't like him that much. It's like a thing. And they're like, oh, it's a code. They don't know. They were like, you don't have to have a code. You don't have to.

Right. And then you look at people being like Big Yellow Duck. People are like, you're going to jail for saying big yellow duck. Right. Truly. Yeah. The let's go Brandon thing is like, no, but I am clever. I'm actually clever.

No, you can say it. No, but I'm telling you I'm clever. Right. And then it's like, oh, you're clever because you thought of it. And they're like, absolutely not. Someone else did. Someone else did. We're not sure who did.

We don't know. Just heard other angry people saying it. I like that, that other people like me were saying it. I was like, yeah, say it together. That's wild. That is wild. It is. That's wild. That is wild.

It is. And it's also, you know, 2013 is not that long ago, but also this has lived on in not just the political discourse of China. But in China, there's huge protests right now for various reasons, including COVID restrictions. But before that, there were major protests, especially by students in Hong Kong over the past few years. And rubber ducks were consistently spotted in the crowds of people or drawn on signs. It remained a potent symbol of, please, more democracy. Please, let us have more say in our government. Even though it's getting further and further away from the meme, and also it's a rubber duck, it's completely silly. Wow. What a path. Yeah. It's potent there. Here, it's a rubber duck. It's completely silly. Wow. What a path. Yeah.

Like it's potent there. Here it's a thing Ernie plays with. Wow. Quack. Quack. Quack. Quack. Quack.

Quack. Quack. Ducks fly together. Get Emilio. Send him to Hong Kong. He's not vaxxed, so. Oh, is he out? Okay.

Damn it. Well, I don't know if that's true. Okay. You never know. Me and Billy got so sad for a moment there. We were like, ah. I did. I was like, oh, that's.

It's so believable. But, you know, Charlie could have just stole all the vax stuff. He's like, I just put them all in me. Well, he's got tiger blood in him. I will say, I saw him a couple, about a year ago at a Gelson's in Malibu, and he looks fantastic. Oh, that's great. Yeah. Okay.

It did. It made me feel good. I don't know why. I was like, my aunt, and I was like, hey, there's Charlie Sheen. She's like, he looks great. I was like, he really does. All right, good for him. Like healthy, you know what I mean?

Not just like he's attractive. But like he looked healthy and like took together and stuff. It's always good when someone is like, when you're just like a little worried about how hard someone's partying and then they like, are like, oh, okay, you're just like a little worried about how hard someone's partying and then they like are like, oh, OK, you're just you figured it out. We were like really proud of it. It was a funny moment where we're like we got back. Wow. I'm proud of that.

Multi-billionaire. Turns out a hundred million dollars. You can get your straight. Oh, yeah. When and with this duck symbol, it has also spread beyond China. And with this duck symbol, it has also spread beyond China. There's a whole thing going on in Thailand in the past few years, where there are a lot of protests against their current government, because it's like, theoretically, a constitutional monarchy, but it's really a military dictatorship. It's led by a man named Prayuth Chan-ocha, a general. But starting around 2020, protesters there started carrying large inflatable rubber ducks in protests for democracy against this dictatorship. And at one protest, the authorities responded with tear gas and with water cannons. And so then people used the giant rubber ducks

as shields and actually were able to protect themselves somewhat from that attack from the authorities too and then that also drew more attention to it because then there were photos after of people with like a bedraggled rubber duck after this attack and you know then people notice they're like oh something happened it is the silliest stuff like that's the way to protest kind of someone being outrageous and a dictator like that is like the absurd kind of protest really does work that's why fascism and stuff goes after comedians and comedy and all that pretty pretty quick because you just point and laugh and everyone's like yeah that is you are being silly stop that you know what i mean that's how that yeah you shine a light on stuff yeah it works really good yeah i'm picturing like a like american revolution tattered american flag but it's a rubber duck like it's like it's a potent symbol just like conive grenade, like tear gas bouncing off its chest.

This plastic doesn't run. This duck head always floats straight up. You can try to drown this duck, but it will always pop back up. My grandpa was full rubber. What's that last one mean? I don't know. It's just on a roll. As opposed to what? What are you?

He was a dog toy. My grandpa was a dog toy. His family's come a long way. We didn't make it to the bathtub to die here. We didn't make it to the bathtub to die here. We started out in the dog bed.

And then, and like, hopping around the rest of the world, it's spread enough that there's like conservative conspiracy theories about protest rubber ducks. Because in Russia, there were anti-Putin protesters who started carrying them around 2017. In 2018, a Russian opposition leader got arrested for displaying a rubber duck in his window, like a giant rubber duck. And then also in the country of Serbia, they have an illiberal government led by a guy named Aleksandar Vucic. And protesters carried rubber ducks against a riverfront development he was corruptly involved in. And then also in the Serbian language, the word for duck also means fraud. It's a word called patka. And so that was like a double meaning in that language in that country. And in both Russia and Serbia, the governments claimed

that this was like the ducks were a sign that outsiders were pushing the protests and that they were astroturfed and faked. Like the Russians said it was a sign of U.S. influence. And the Serbian leader said, I don't believe in coincidences. If someone tells me that different people have thought of the same symbol in Belgrade, Brazil and Moscow, don't expect me to believe it. End quote. And he claimed it was like the globalists were doing this because of the rubber ducks good good good

it's just I mean like the logic there feels flawed of like well they didn't think of it independently yeah it does at the same time like maybe someone saw it somewhere and that's why they thought of it no because of the internet yeah right that couldn't be it once again if you're on the side of being like hey you

gotta go arrest that guy for what he's got a duck in his in his front window and it's like and it's messing something up it's like ruining like the ac is dangerous in some way right oh no no it's um it means he doesn't like the president so and i have to arrest it okay so i have to okay this job's not what i thought this was gonna be at all so like once again you're just like, I don't, I'm just gonna, I'm gonna head out. I'm gonna, that's like how I, it's like, that's how I quit being a car salesman, too. It's like, I was just like, I'm gonna go.

This is not, lunch isn't for an hour. And I was like, oh, I can't. I've been here for three hours. You guys were like, might be the worst people I've ever met. And I'm a stand-up comedian. Yeah, because that, and that Russian opposition leader he was jailed for 25 days so you know

for like 25 days in that jail it was like did you hear what that guy's in for come on man that guy's messed up well like when he told people he's like I had a big old fake duck in the window. And they're like, oh, so like he's like a serial killer. He can't tell people what he really did.

Like that dude's insane. Yeah. Like he's just. And then just. He bought something and displayed it. Yeah. And like the last last story with this is protest ducks are so common that in one country they've been used by the right wing and for essentially fascism. But in Brazil, because that was the Serbian leader mentioned Brazil in 2015, some pro business, pro big business demonstrators put up a 40 foot rubber duck in Sao Paulo.

There was a Portuguese message stamped on it that means no more paying the duck. It turns out there is a Brazilian Portuguese idiom where to pay the duck means to pay for someone else's mistakes that just already existed. But this was a duck opposing the Brazilian president, Dilma Rousseff, who was the leader of the main liberal party. She got impeached. The next major election, they elected Jair Bolsonaro. So in Brazil, he's a great guy, friend of the show. Yeah.

That COVID riddled man. He's great. He's just a good guy. He's a good dude. Yeah. I was going to have him on the show. He has canceled 15 different times because he got COVID. But it's, you know, one of these days.

Well, he loves helping people. That's how I got it. But yeah, and then like in that specific case and only that case, the Dutch artist who we remember way back before came up with this first symbol. He spoke out and accused the Brazilians of copyright infringement because he's on the side of like the left and positive policies and so this one time he was like i'm stepping in wow yeah but no offense to dude but that's out of your hands you didn't write a song you just made a big old duck you know what i mean like that's not it's not bruce springsteen telling someone to not use their music at his camp yeah it's not like the estate of tom petty being like knock that off you cannot have this yeah he's just like hey you can't you can't do a big duck either that That's my art. Yeah. There's a, yeah, it's like, I don't know, man.

No, no, no. You didn't even come up with that. That's a Portuguese thing they're used in too. And there's, they're kind of being clever with it. And you're like, no, that's an art. They're doing an art, even though I don't like it. I don't like the point of it, but they're also doing an art they're doing an art even though i don't like it i don't like the point of it but they're also doing an art so hey i know damn it

it is interesting how it just like how it blends with all the different cultures that have ducks and well and then ducks have many different like some, some people are like, I don't like this duck. And other people are like, ducks are great. And other people are like, give me that duck. I ain't paying for that duck. You're just like, okay. All over the place. Yeah.

Yeah, this made me want to do an episode on regular ducks. There's just a lot going on there. I don't know much about it, you know? You should. Yeah. Because I was about to say i realized uh recently because i went and did this uh they do like treadmill marathons for charity oh yeah run like a mile or two it's it's kind of fun and i realized that what kick-started my fitness

as an adult or like the running part was i saw a story where this this duck like ran a whole marathon like this guy and his duck just kind of walked a whole marathon oh and i remember being like i should probably do more you know the duck can do it i mean that did i mean it was like like it wasn't even like a it was like you know a kind of funny realization but also like i mean but seriously though like it's essentially wearing flippers. That duck just kind of walked it. Yeah. I can do that, I think.

What a hero duck. Never even followed up. Could have been a fake story, you know. He carried him, yeah. Yeah. It actually flew. Yeah. Even so, that's impressive.

It's 26 miles. It's a long flight. Yeah. Folks, that is the main episode for this week. My thanks to Zach Oyama and Billy Wayne Davis for making this topic go swimmingly. Or if we're more accurate to the plastic toy, floatingly. Anyway, I said that's the main episode because there is more secretly incredibly fascinating stuff available to you right now. If you support this show on Patreon.com. Patrons get a bonus show every week where we explore one obviously incredibly fascinating story related to the main episode. This week's bonus topic

is a 1992 rubber duck spill that changed our understanding of world oceans and climate change. Visit SIFpod.fun for that bonus show, for a library of more than 10 dozen other bonus shows, and to back this entire podcast operation. And thank you for exploring rubber ducks with us. Here's one more run through the big takeaways. Takeaway number one, modern rubber ducks are not made of rubber. Takeaway number two, rubber ducks existed for several decades and got totally reinvented before Sesame Street made the floaty yellow kind the standard kind. And takeaway number three, rubber ducks are now a global protest symbol due to a Dutch art piece used for memes in China.

Those are the takeaways. Also, please follow my guests. They're great. And I'm going to try to boil it down to just one URL for each of them because that's the easiest for you, right? First up, BWDtour.com. easiest for you, right? First up, BWDtour.com. That's Billy Wayne Davis's website, BWDtour.com, that has tour dates for his upcoming stand-up shows, including shows in the American Southeast. Also, it has a link to Testify. You'll just see all caps, the word Testify on there.

Testify is Billy Wayne Davis's new stand-up special. And then the other URL from my other guest this week, dropout.tv. There's all sorts of ways to find Zach Oyama, and that's spelled Z-A-C is how he spells his first name, Zach Oyama. But if you go to dropout.tv, you will unlock an entire wonderful streaming service of comedy. Zach Oyama is on the cast of Dimension 20, which is a tremendous comedy tabletop role-playing game show. Just great. Many research sources this week. Here are some key ones. Special thanks this week to the Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, New York. Strong as a last name. I'm not saying the museum has big muscles. The Strong National Museum of Play. Also further resources from the St. Neots Museum in Cambridge, sure, in the UK, also the UK Science Museum in London, plus articles from

JSTORDaily, Vox.com, Slate, Mental Floss, find those and many more sources in this episode's links at SIFpod.fun. And beyond all that, our theme music is Unbroken Unshaven by the Budos Band. Our show logo is by artist Burton Durand. Get that on a t-shirt if you'd like to at SifPod.store, which is a merch venture in partnership with Topotico. Special thanks to Chris Souza for audio mastering on this episode. Extra, extra special thanks go to our patrons, our supporters, our members. I hope you love this week's bonus show our patrons, our supporters, our members. I hope you

love this week's bonus show. And thank you to all our listeners. I'm thrilled to say we will be back next week with more secretly incredibly fascinating. So how about that? Talk to you then. you