Let's get started. So I read Elizabeth and Kathleen. I read your stories. I really enjoyed them first of all. And I read them in a lot of interest. And both in different ways unsettled me a little bit, just sort of imagining a future of that kind of real cognitive change. And so I guess my first question for you two is Elizabeth, do you give a story of neuroscience used to control and shape human minds for the sake of essentially protecting people? And Kathleen, you give us one of neuroscience used to really create human foraging and push a path forward. And to me, those can be two sides of the same coin. They can coexist. Absolutely. And I was wondering if you two also saw a way that you can sort of imagine a future where we're using this technology to enhance the human mind in beneficial ways, but also to constrict it in ways that we may tell ourselves are for the good, may or may not be. I will start by giving an example. In one of my former careers, I was a Montessori teacher and I had my own school.  And I said, have you really thought this through? Because I thought it was a really bad thing to be giving drugs to children that young. He was a little wild at times, but all children are. But she went ahead and did it. And I saw a great transformation for the good. And I realized that the drug was settling his brain down enough so that he could actually start to learn how to read and to function in the environment that he was in, simply because his sensory signals previously to the Ritalin were not getting through in a predictable way. And that was what was making him so hyperactive, basically. So at that point, I learned something about a neuro-technology, so to speak, and how it could be used for good. So yeah, I can see all kinds of ways that it could be used for unsavory purposes, especially if it were not the choice, especially if it could not be further controlled by the user. In other words, if someone decided that everybody needs this particular drug and that we ought to take it and that it's in the water, that's not a good thing. And it could be easy to do. Yeah, I'm in violent agreement. I don't think that there is any form of practical neurology. It was the term we were using on the Hieroglyph message boards that isn't a double-edged sword. I don't think there is any way to start externally fine-tuning the human brain that doesn't have profound cultural implications for good and for ill. One of the things that I was thinking about in creating my story is the history of mental health in the Western world. Getting back, even say from the 1850s when we started to have modern conceptions of humane treatment of the mentally ill and attempting to find cures. But those same structures, which in some ways had the best of intentions behind them, have also been used as tremendous engines of social control and oppression. Social justice activists, homosexuals, suffragettes, any of these women and other people who were trying to step outside of their socially constrained roles would find themselves declared mad and sent off to asylums, where they were tortured into submission more or less. We talk about valuable anti-anxiety drugs like Valium, which were used strongly as an instrument of social control in the 1950s.  That's not addressing the problem. On the other hand, if you have anxiety about getting on an airplane, maybe that's what you need. So just to reduce it to the very crude level of technology that was available 60 years ago. And when you start contemplating the sorts of hacks we can perform upon the human brain now and the real subtlety of knowledge we're obtaining about how brains work and how personality and creativity work, it is both scary and exhilarating simultaneously. Jonathan, do you have any thoughts on this? Well, maybe a comment about known unknowns. Each of these two edges has another couple of edges. So we're glad that the little boy did better on little one. On the other hand, because it's so hard for ethical as well as practical reasons and financial reasons to do a large-scale clinical trial, we don't know whether he would have done as well on caffeine, which some people prescribe to kids who are ADHD first. And we don't know how old was he? He was four. Oh, well, so we don't know how in the next two or three years he would have adapted to well-known little boys for the most part don't do well in classrooms, structured classrooms, little girls tend to do better. And we also don't know since I teach people at Penn who have been on Ritalin in some cases already for 10 years or more. They're going to be on it perhaps for 20, 30, or 40 years or more or anti-depressants like Zola. This is a big public health experiment. So we don't know what's going to happen with these people. And it's a reason, although we're glad he did better, I wouldn't have wanted it for my four-year-old, I have to say. But there is a certain amount of priority that parents have over their kids. I understand that. Asylum is very interesting. I'm also interested in the history of asylums. So we walk out on the street. And it's what Elizabeth says about asylums, of course, true. There were Packard laws in the late 19th century named after a woman who was found insane by a jury in Ohio. And she was insane because she wanted to leave her husband. So the Packard laws were very powerful for many years. And indeed, many people in this country and, of course, in the old Soviet Union, psychiatry has been and may in some parts of the world still be used to oppress people. On the other hand, we go out on the street and we see people who really need to be in an asylum. An asylum is a good thing. It's become pejorative. But it's actually a good thing for people who really need to be protected and cared for properly. So there are a couple of edges for each of these double edges. So how do we begin? Hopefully, we know as a collective as a society like the history of these things, right? And that's maybe a bit of wishful thinking. But I'd like to think that the people. The historians are still arguing about the history. Right, right. And so knowing what we know about the past and knowing how neuroscience and sort of, I mean, really it's the entire history of science is used to oppress people. How are we, are people working on these advances right now sort of actively grappling with some of the negative potential here? Are they actively trying to create a language for the future of the feeling with the ethical consequences of what they're working on? Except for me. So it's for everyone. Well, can I get to go first? So when I first started getting interested in particular but it doesn't years ago in ethics and neuroscience, especially, I did find it hard to get a conversation going with my friends and colleagues who are scientists. I'm not. And people on neuroscience generally weren't interested in talking about the ethical issues. And that was true. And there are people in this room who know this well, because they themselves have worked on these questions. I think that has changed for a lot of reasons in the last eight years. A lot more conversation about it in this building. I've been part of a couple of national research council committees that have to do with national security and neuroscience, which has really forced the issues more and more into the open. So I think there is a greater appreciation of ethical issues in neuroscience now than there was a dozen of 14 years ago. And many of those issues are not new. So I mentioned drug testing, for example. We had a lot of experience with drug testing. It's not new to neuroscience. Some of the cognitive enhancement issues are a little new. But a lot of that is driven by the particular technology, drug or device you're talking about. But I think there's an openness increasingly, more than there was a dozen years ago, to talking about ethical, social, legal issues in neuroscience, among the neuroscientists themselves. As you had mentioned, it is hard to construct a long-term good study on human beings. And they're often unethical. And as far as good goes, I think most studies are probably bad for one reason or another. So that is not well set up. And so it doesn't really yield the information that you want and need. But one of the issues of ethics that concerns me is the fact that we test so many of our drugs on animals. And what are the ethics of that? There are a lot of animal ethics groups. And the more that we learn about animals, the more we understand that this is a very, very bad thing. So I realize that a lot of good comes out of this kind of testing. The death of billions of rats has led to a lot of what we know today about how our senses work. And yet, at what point does that become seriously troubling to the society that we live in? I think that chimps are no longer to be used for any kind of studies at all. That took place last summer. And that was in the United States, anyway. And that's a very good thing. There's a little wiggle room, though, in that policy. For example, if you couldn't test an Ebola drug on a human being first for various ethical reasons, you can still go to chimps because it's such a public health crisis. So there's a little wiggle room. But in general, what you say is true. And then the interesting question is how far along in the evolutionary chain does that go? Is that the camel's nose? And that's what, under the tent, as it were, and a lot of people in science are concerned about that. But also, it's also true that primates are really expensive and hard to deal with. So for the most part, and more difficulty than we are, especially difficulty. So they're probably not a big area. But I think it is an interesting question about how far down the chain of suffering in evolution are we going to go. It seems to me that there's an entire symposium's worth of, not even a panel, but worth of ethical questions here that interlock. What are the ethical consequences of refusing to treat people who could be helped? What are the ethical consequences of forcing treatment upon narrowly atypical people who don't want it? Elizabeth Moon has a fantastic book about this very topic, Speed of Dark. There are issues of bodily integrity. There are issues of civil rights. There's also the issue of, I hate to sound fluffy, but I'm going to, the issue of personal growth. The kid in your class, possibly in a year or two, he would have developed the skills to exert that control on and focus himself. And the question of where we stop teaching cognitive skills and start going immediately to drugs is a really profound and complicated one. Along the lines of when is it acceptable or when can you sort of essentially mandate the use of these things? The use of these sort of technologies on people I know, Kathleen, in your story, part of the, in the backstory to our future role of universal literature, there's lots of upheaval over this idea that, I think the protesters you write say, like, don't force my child to take this drug. Like, don't force my child to do this and that. Do you, you know, where do you, in this for a drug that results in universal literacy, literacy doesn't mean that it's unquestionably good for an individual. I mean, where do you fall on this? If it's something that is so powerful and has so much potential for good, should it be something that we, you know, strongly say you got to do this, like vaccines? Yes, and of course not as things stand now. And because the drug or whatever, the intervention in my story, which purports to help people with dyslexia read is a magic bullet that doesn't exist because dyslexia is a spectrum of differently-brained people and who is to say that these different brains are not, you know, their own, that they can modify as they wish. So, so yeah, there would be parents who would want their child to have that drug and then there would be parents who would not want their child to have that drug and there are people who would and wouldn't. And of course, I think that it should be a matter of choice but in something like that, if you think of, see, literacy is much different than a vaccine for smallpox.  And so in the event that it may not be, you know, good for some people, of course you can't do that. So I think that, and there's also the fact that literacy is a very, very powerful thing. And I think that it would cause huge revolutions in the world, it would cause a lot of change when people can get more information about the world in more mediums that are now available. I think, I prefer to read than watch videos because I can read really quickly. I can only watch videos at maybe four times the speed that they're made. So I can take in information much more quickly with reading. And I can access a greater variety in the distant past of what people thought and said. So I think it's a powerful tool for revolution. And so, yeah, those are some of the issues that I think of in that respect. We feel okay with compelling education and military service, ostensibly for the greater good of civilization. I mean, we feel okay societally. Many of us have different opinions on this. Where do you draw the line in, well, okay, I've got a process that can remove sociopathic tendencies. Well, there goes Wall Street, but that's a different problem. The, you know, where do I draw the line in applying that process? Can I have the court's remand criminals to this procedure to, you know, reform them or make them productive members of society? Save on the, save a little money on the corporate industrial jail complex. And then in that case, how is that process applied? We don't have a good record of social justice in terms of applying prison terms, in terms of applying any of these interventions. And then are you applying it punitively or are you doing it in a sense of actual constructive social progress? If you have somebody who is profoundly depressed and suicidal and you have a treatment that will work, you know, has a 95% chance of curing that person, can their family have them declared incompetent and force them to undergo it? I mean, there are so many, and these are things that might have benefit in the long run and they might thank you for it later, but our concept of personal autonomy is not actually based on, well, you'll thank me for it later. I'll just, we're talking about parenting. So how much? You'll be having a child just like mine. So you can suffer. Exactly. So how much parenting is society allowed to do to adult human beings is a really patent question. I don't know the answers to any of these, which is why I write fiction rather than essays. But fiction is a fantastic space for thinking about the intended and unintended consequences of the intersection between biology and culture. So universal literacy read the story. Besides the fact that a whole lot of oppressive societies, especially female oppressive societies would go away, there are also some art forms that will probably also go away and there would be new clever ways of restricting access that states would impose, right? On authorities would impose, even if you can read, we don't get access to certain websites, right? Which we know is already done. I was thinking though about another sort of bringing one aspect of neuroscience home to the two female science fiction writers I'm sitting next to. I have to, when I was a kid, I was a subscriber to the Science Fiction Book Club. I think it was almost exactly 50 years ago that I started that subscription. But who's counting? It was obviously prenatal. And I think I got six books for a penny and it was Asimov and Heinlein and Philip K. Dick. And you never wanted to say Dick, you want to say Philip K. Dick. There were no female science fiction writers when I was growing up. I think we talked about this last night. There were not. Well, I didn't. They wrote on her initials. Yes, indeed. There were a couple of them who were E.M. or something like that. Right, but you didn't know, right? And years later I realized that Mary Shelley, she started the first big science fiction movement. So there's that thought that it's very interesting for me to be here with two science fiction writers who are women. I also had another thought last night as one of my graduate students at Penn is a historian of science who's working on the fact that for the last 35 years or so, neuroscientists have interested in the question whether there's a gendered brain. Or male and female brains different. And she's working on the development of this question among neuroscientists as a historian. So this is not settled. Oh, it's quite unsettled. It's a huge debate. Leads me to the question, do women write science fiction or think about the future differently for men? Not all women, of course, there's a big overlap. If it turned out that there was a gendered brain which is unsettled, and if we could have a drug that could make me think more like a woman than a man, or maybe write, if I were a writer of science fiction, more like a woman than a man, could I take some of that stuff and write a story and see if it'd be a little different? I think the gender is a social construct for one thing. In part, not entirely. No, not entirely. And in the 60s, I was, and for a long time, the idea was that, of course, everyone's brain is different. That's one thing I'm coming to realize and the other thing is that, the thinking is that everyone's brain is the same, male or female, and so what's this all about? So when more research started coming out, saying that female brains are probably different than male brains, which is usually code for not quite as good, I was a little bit irritated and this is an excuse to limit the education of women, usually, in various ways. But to get back to the question, when women became more visible, there were always women in science fiction, and I know this because I've had access to deep research on this book that I'm writing a conclusion to right now, but they were written out by men. Sometimes, like Fred Pole, who was married to three science fiction writers, at one point said, no, women weren't writing science fiction in those days, in the 40s, 50s.  But because, you know, I really liked Fred. That explains why there were three of them, doesn't it? Yes, exactly. But when women became more visible in science fiction, say in the 70s, there was the impression that women were destroying science fiction, that they were not writing about science, that they were doing soft science fiction about psychological issues or something like that. Yes, they're not, you know, engineering, they're not physics, you know, they're not rockets, we're writing about human beings and relationships. So I think stylistically as a writer, that's what I tend to write about, but I was asked to write a story about space exploration last week, last year, and I thought, well, I don't know much about rockets, I don't know if I'm gonna do this, and then I thought, you know, I know a whole lot about rockets, I know a lot about Werner von Braun, I know a lot about the history of rockets, and things like that. So I went at it at that angle, but I will give it over to Bear because we are starting to have limited time. I'm just gonna say very quickly that women have been writing science fiction for a long, as you say, and in a lot of cases, we don't know the gender or race of early authors because they existed as a signature on a contract. Yeah, the other thing is that there's so much social bias in how stories are read that it's almost impossible to tell objectively what's going on. Charlie Strauss and I can write stories with approximately the same amount of romance and hand-wavium and crunchy scientific bits, but when I do it, it's spec thick, and when Charlie does it, it's hard science fiction. We both remarked on this because we're sort of at the same level in where we're tackling the amount of science and our social criticism, but he's a hard science fiction writer and I'm only occasionally a hard science fiction writer for what it's worth. Anecdata. I think it's time for Q and A, so if you have questions and hand one up first. He's pointing at you. Point at you? Oh, you're looking like who, me? Thank you. Hi, Kevin Bankston. We've been focused on considering the audience and the panel. I wanted to also talk about computers. Common sci-fi, trope, and what will likely be a reality at some point, although when exactly is unclear, is brain-computer interfaces. However, if that technology is anything like, say, internet technology now, it will be riddled with insecurities, could be hacked, could be used to surveil you, could be in the hands of the wrong people used as a tool of social control. This has been talked a lot about in science fiction, I'd say most recently, a plug for a science fiction writer, Rahmez Naam, who's written a great series about some brain-computer interface technology and raises these issues. So I just wanted to ask the panel, ethical or unethical, avoidable or inevitable? If the technology had comparable security to the internet we have today, is that something we want to put in our brain? Thank you. The blue screen of death, you know?  It's a very well-made point and we do have brain-computer interfaces, I mean, direct brain-computer interfaces, not your kids sitting in the backseat with the iPad.  It's pretty amazing stuff. And in terms of prosthetics or controlling really profound depression, we're having some success with this stuff right now. I personally think that anything that can be hacked will be hacked, but on the other hand, there are a lot of people who have worried about automobile computers being hacked and sabotaged and it doesn't seem to be a real problem currently. So I don't know how much of that is paranoia and how much of it is an abundance of caution. I don't know. That's his job under the bus. I think, you know, DBS for Parkinson's symptoms works well for some people for a while. The brain-computer interface stuff is highly mediated. The few experiments there are, it's EEG and TMS and the internet, much more mediated than your relationship to your iPhone. So, you know, it really cool in the laboratory, probably teaching us something about the brain, but I'd have to see the device that was gonna take us to the next step that you might have in mind. I haven't seen it yet. And I would think it would be an entirely new paradigm that it would be much more biological than what you're thinking of as being a computer right now. And distributed, you know, throughout your body, perhaps. And, you know, that's one of the easy images that come to mind, you know, the nanobots or whatever, which would actually be organic in your body, giving information about your health and, you know, what's going on and perhaps even moving to fix it in real time. But I think to associate the issues that we experience with our phones and laptops with intimate devices that are in the body is technically a stretch and a great subject for science fiction because it's a really cool idea and, you know, to think about those issues and to extrapolate what may or may not happen and how strange and weird is society will become. I was interested in the phenomenon of body hacking. Some people are putting in implants themselves. One gentleman can feel electrical fields. That's a choice that he made, but how do you think that's going to change the human brain and what are the ethics of that? Yeah, I'm a neuro skeptic about these things. I think it's really interesting. I think we'll, 10, 20 years from now, we're gonna see this as kind of a blip on the screen. Whatever's going on now is, it's pretty cool. People have been doing this for a while. There's a professor in the UK who's got a thing that lights up when he's near his wife and, you know, it's around her neck and so forth. It's very nice. I'm glad that works out for them. But she's got an implant under her finger that broadcasts. Okay, it's great. But I think I just don't, I don't see that as going, I don't think that's the pathway to whatever's gonna happen particularly. There's some artists doing some cool things, but that's not something, that's an innovation. That's not something that's gonna be disseminated widely. I don't think. But just a guess. I do think that implantable sensors for our physical condition are going to be very tempting within a decade or so. People are gonna think that's great. It's like in my car, I can know what's going on in my car, I can know what's going on in my body all the time. Until people discover that there's very little they can actually do about their medical problem, their deterioration with aging, for example. Not much intervention. You can do a lot of those things yet. So if a lot of you don't know what's going on, then it is to actually do an intervention that is therapeutic. Well, and are you gonna trust iCloud with that data? Because, you know, the other really salient question there. I was struck by somebody mentioned the typological, mistakes you make on the keyboard, which can be known and clearly over 30 years, I'm gonna make a lot more mistakes than the next 30 years, God willing, than I do now. So you're gonna be able to maybe track dementia over a vast population. If you do the data aggregation by seeing how many mistakes people make. I think there are people who are actually working on exactly that. Wouldn't surprise me. Yeah. In terms of body hacking, I think it's a bodily integrity issue. It's your own business. I don't see any, it's like getting your ears pierced. You get to decide if you're gonna do that. Hi, thanks a lot. I'd be interested for you to be more explicit about a sort of meta-level issue here. Of what do you think the role of science fiction should be in forming ethical and policy debates? Did you think about that much when you're writing your stories? Well, you can almost imagine a world where for any given policy or ethical issue, you try to commission a lot of science fiction that helps explore it from a variety of different perspectives. So how would that work? Yeah, that's, I'm sorry, I'm gonna turn. So my mic's in the right direction. That's exactly what I see my job as, actually, is having ethical arguments with myself and public. Yeah, at first I thought, well, this is kind of odd because I look at on literature as being entertainment, basically. And there was an editor who profoundly shaped science fiction in the 40s, John W. Campbell. He basically would tell the authors, like Heinlein, what kind of idea he wanted them to develop in a story and how you should go about it. But there was not any of that with this anthology. I was free to choose my own idea. I was free to develop it in my own way. And I think that it is something that science fiction writers think about profoundly all the time. So usually the issue for me is how to not be preachy. How to let it seem like a real story with a real protagonist, with real issues, how to frame it so that it works as literature as well as information, a set of possibilities. A set of possibilities is what science fiction is usually about. So that's the way I approached it. And I think, from all the stories that I've read in the anthology, that that's pretty much how it turned out. Maybe I have time for one more question, so back there. So I'm wondering to the extent that you've thought about sort of scientific positivity, positivism here. So many of the things that you've been talking about in terms of homosexuality being persecuted as a psychiatric disease or women being treated with hysteria, for hysteria using Valium, are things that the more we know about the brain, the less likely we are to make those sort of errors because there's no empirical basis for them. So I'm wondering if you can discuss that a bit. I think it was social change rather than neuroscience that resulted in the changed attitudes that you just mentioned. So I don't know if there's anything about hard neuroscience that led us in the direction of having more appropriate attitudes toward those populations. In fact, I think the jury is out about how neuroscience is gonna help us or make it more complicated dealing with, for example, violent offenders. That's a big problem because if it does turn out that there are actual, some of my colleagues think that there are some actual identifiable metrics. The kid who starts to pull the leaves off the fly when he's six years old is gonna progress to actually beating up the disabled kid on the playground at age 16. Some people think that you can actually be able to see that when the kid is younger than six even. And if that's true, then what kind of intervention would be appropriate and how much could we require, again, parents to do? Take them out of class, give them special medication. So here we get into minority report kind of territory. I think that, so I don't think we've seen the neuroscience implications yet dealing with different kinds of ways of living. I think we will, but we haven't quite gotten there yet. Yeah, I think that we don't, as he says, I don't think that we know enough about the brain we have the Brain Initiative now in the United States, which is great, and they're handing out money to different projects. I read about one today.  And so I think that this will yield a lot more usable information. And I think that being aware of this research because research doesn't give you any technology, it's just information. So then the way that technology goes is often commercial. So that will be one thing that we will have to look out for. And yeah, the more information we have the more wisely we can use it. But I think that as information kind of dribbles in, it can be totally misinterpreted and used in ways that are inappropriate and dangerous, unethical and the like. Yeah, as both of my esteemed colleagues have said, there's the danger of confirmation bias. You, people will gravitate toward the research that seems to prove what they want to believe. And we pretty much all do this, even those of us who try to be self-aware about it. And oppressive systems are the most reinforcing of confirmation bias because their oppression reinforces their power. As Kathleen was talking earlier about, well all the things about female brains being different seem to say that they're not quite as good. So there is a danger there as well. And I will quickly add that in the 70s, was it the 60s? Well, I think it was in the 70s. Nixon had a gold star panel of physicians evaluate marijuana and to see if it was a bad and dangerous drug. Well, it was to him because he blamed it partly on all of these young people causing a revolution. And so he ignored all of that information and had marijuana scheduled as a schedule one drug. No research has been done in the United States on its properties in human neuroscience, the rest of the body since then. And so there's also politics to consider. And with that, I think we're done. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.


Hello and welcome to the drum history podcast. I'm your host Bart van der Zee and today I'm joined by my friend and former guest on the show, Mr. Chet Falls-Arano. Chet, welcome back on the podcast. It's great to be here. Thanks, Bart. I appreciate it. Yeah, so folks who listened to the podcast last week, this doesn't normally happen this fast, but this week it did. So Lucas van Gretch was just on the show and we were giving you, you know, praising you about your hard work for a lot of different things, but one of which is your Chick Webb book and your studying of the great Chick Webb, who's really kind of a mythical man in the history of drums. And what do you know? I emailed you and it was either now or never because you're going to be going out of town. So we got you on in a matter of days. So yeah, I'm going off to Italy and the internet in Italy is just terrible. So it's good thing we did it before, before otherwise we'd have to wait till I got back to Germany. Yeah, which, you know, we could do, but I always say, why not do it now? Exactly. So I appreciate your quickness. And now people don't have to wait because literally like five, six days ago, people heard about the possibility of an episode. So let's jump in, let's learn about Chick Webb and what made him such a legend and kind of a hero, really. So take it away, my friend. I have to start off with his birth date and that's been argued on several levels. I have his birth date as of 1909. But that's argued. There's also dates of 1905 and there's just various dates. But I go with 1909 because that's what's on his tombstone. And I figure that's got to be pretty correct. But there's a census report that supposedly puts him born at an earlier date. But I don't really hold too much to census reports because they're full of a lot of errors. Even the Census Bureau cites the number of errors that they have. So I go with 1909. He was born in 1909.  The doctor prescribed him to bang on pots and pans to improve his upper body strength. That obviously turned into something because he became a drummer. He had a paper route as a young boy earned the money to buy a set of drums. And he played in and around the Baltimore area. That's where he was born. It's in Baltimore. Well, that's fascinating right off the bat of a doctor prescribing banging on pots and pans. I mean, it's like a movie. Because he was in bed. He was bedridden. And his mother said, the doctor says he needs to improve his upper body strength. He needs to stay limber and flexible. And his mother said, how are we going to do that? He says, well, every kid loves to bang on pots and pans. Let him drum. So that's how it all started. Yeah. Unbelievable. That's so cool. Good for the history of drums in general. We can thank that doctor. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And then as I said, then he bought a set of drums. He played in and around the Baltimore area. His first gig was with the Jazzola Orchestra on the Steamship Cruises in Chesapeake Bay. And there he formed a relationship with John Truhart, who was the banjo player for the Jazzola Orchestra. And they decided to make a move to the Big Apple. Chick was only 16 years old. And John Truhart was nine years as senior, which is quite a number of years. For a 16-year-old, then to be going with a 25-year-old, that's quite a bit of a difference. So they went to the Big Apple. The two of them located in Harlem in a one-room apartment. And like all budding musicians, they had to prove themselves. And so they did that by going to jam sessions in and around the Harlem area. One of the first clubs that they went to was Smalls Paradise. And performing there was Duke Ellington. And in Duke Ellington's band was Johnny Hodges, which was also Chick'sweb's cousin. So that also helped him, I'm sure, to get a start at Smalls Paradise. Also in Duke Ellington's band was a cello by the name of Bobby Stark. And Bobby Stark was also playing in a band, Edgar Dowell's band in Harlem. And Edgar Dowell was auditioning for a club uptown. And Chick went along with him to that audition. But Edgar Dowell's drummer was stuck on a subway. And so Chick was there with him on the audition. And Bobby Stark said, hey, I've got a drummer here that can do it. Well, Edgar Dowell takes one look at little hunchback Chick.  So the club owners said, okay, it's time. And he said, well, can you give me a few more minutes here? My drummer will show up in a few minutes. And he says, well, I have time for bulls***. And he says, no, well, I've got another drummer. He can sit in until my drummer gets here.  So ChickWeb starts starts playing. And it just wins over this club owner, because Chick is just doing high sticking and twirling and besides being a very accomplished drummer, because he was like an instant drummer. He proved himself in Baltimore, but then he also proved himself in Harlem. And Duke Ellington was his mentor. And so that was his first gig was the Edgar Dowell band. And it was just a fluke. He just happened to be at the right time in the right place.  I mean, he was a bit disfigured. And on your outline here, going back a little bit to his earlier days, I just want to touch on how you said in your outline due to his contorted shape friends called him Chick. And that would explain that a little bit more. Well, because because he had crushed vertebrae, his upper body was actually truncated. He was short on the top half of his body. The lower half of his body was normal, but the top half of his body was truncated. And he also kind of moved in kind of a herky-jerky manner. And so his friends, his chums, called him Chick. They nicknamed him as Chick. And that name stuck for the rest of his life, as a matter of fact. And so, yeah, he was physically disabled, but only from a visual standpoint, because he was still able to play extremely well. I mean, his arms were normal, his legs were normal. And so he had to sit high on the set so that he could be seen above this big 28-inch bass drum. And that was the common bass drum of the day. So to be seen above it, he had to sit exceptionally high. And there's rumor of him having an extra pedal, an extra board on his bass drum pedal, so that he would be able to sit up high and be seen above this huge bass drum and still play his fabulous way. I mean, he was just an incredible drummer. Yeah. I mean, I think Lucas in the previous, in last week's Gretsch episode described him as Battle Mad, obviously referring to the drum battles, which we'll get to in a minute, but just in general, the like, I'm gonna do it attitude. Like, nothing's gonna stop me. I mean, he was determined. Nothing stopped this man.  It's really incredible that he was able to muster up that kind of courage and stamina. Meanwhile, being ridiculed, you know, even when he was just getting started there in New York, when he was first getting started in Baltimore, I mean, everybody was ridiculing him because of his appearance because he was, you know, they called him, unfortunately, it's a terrible word that they called him a midget.  Yeah, and it's terrible. But I think nowadays we live in a time where the, any ailment you have, which people can, you know, we live now in a modern time of modern science where you can, and I think people are a little more accepting now and politically correct. But in the mid, you know, my 19 teens or the 1920s, I don't think it was like that, obviously. I think people were mean. I think you would be sent to like stay at a like, like people would send their kids off to like live in like, to asylum, to asylum. Thank you. And so, man, I mean, he had everything against him and clearly he wasn't going to let it hold him down.  That's the first stride against him. He's got a handicap. No, he's physically not attractive to look at. And so therefore, you know, people didn't want to hire him. Yep. Yep. Until they realize how good he is. And then he starts to win people over with his sheer talent. Not even then.  And in fact, Duke Ellington organized Chick's first job as a band leader. He was playing at the Kentucky Club, Duke Ellington was. He was playing at the Kentucky Club and the Black Bottom needed a band. And so Duke Ellington said to him, I've got a great band. And he said, I'll talk Chick into doing it. Chick did not want anything to do with it. He just wanted to play his drums. He did not want to be a band leader. But Bobby Stark and his cousin Johnny Hodges talked him into it. And so he formed the band, the Harlem Stompers. And they played their first gig was at the Black Bottom. What does that entail to be a band leader as a drummer? Like, what would that, would that be choosing like writing out the charts, getting things set up? What would his job be as a drummer band leader? Well, that's what he didn't feel very confident in doing. And that's why he was happy to have John Truhar as his sidekick, because John Truhar was able to cover all those bases, to do arrangements, to do charts, to, you know, to organize the members of the band. And so, you know, he really didn't have the qualifications. That's why he didn't want to do it. He just wanted to play his drums. But Ellington talked him into doing it. And fortunately, he went with it because, you know, he became quite a band leader then. Yeah. I mean, when you think about it, I mean, looking at articles, which we'll get to, you know, a little bit down the road on the timeline. I mean, he was a band leader, he was known as a band leader, he was famous for it. So he, he really, again, he kind of like excelled at every challenge that was put in front of him. Yes, exactly. Exactly. Then the next gig he had was was at the Paddock Club. But unfortunately, that that club went up in flames. I don't know if it was an insurance thing or what, but the club burned down. And so then Chick then took his band to the Savoy. And there he formed a bond with Mo Gale, who was the owner of the Savoy, and with Charles Buchanan, who was the manager of the Savoy. And it was there that he really did, he really took off because he was scheduled Buchanan, scheduled him with the first band battle. You talked about his band battles. His first band battle was with King Oliver and Fletcher Henderson. And he, both of those were well established, especially King Oliver, were well established bands. And he, in the battle, he beat both of them.  You know, he's just incredible. Now, what constitutes a battle? Would it be drummer versus drummer? Or is it like, is it like a clappo meter, where who gets the loudest cheer from the audience? Exactly. It's at the end of the evening, the audience decides via an audience meter who won the battle. And, you know, it was, it was just, it was a pairing off process. And first he beat Fletcher Henderson. And then the next battle, then he had to go up against King Oliver. And, you know, the audience gave him the victory. Then the next thing, the next big thing that happened to him was he was, he was used in a Paramount, Lasky pictures after Sieben. It's a terrible minstrel show. And it's really kind of sad to see him perform in that. But, you know, hey, if you're working your way up to the top, you take, you take what you can get, you know? So, yeah, that's, that's the first one. And the second one was, was a very short clip of him at the Savoy. And it was just a silent clip. And I ended up putting it up on, on YouTube. I started off with this, with this after Sieben. And then I segued into a short clip of, of, of him, silent film, but I put it to music of him, of his, of his orchestra. Yeah.  And if you look at the musicians in his band in the Harlem Stompers, if you look at the expressions on their faces, they do not look very happy doing this.  I mean, it's, yeah, all we can do is kind of shrug and go, I guess it is, you know, we, we can learn from the mistakes of people in the past and move forward. But so on the timeline here, which getting I was about to ask, what about some drums that he's playing? But it looks like we were now getting to a point where he's getting his first endorsement with leading. His first endorsement is with Leedy. Yeah. And actually, it didn't get much of an endorsement. He's in one of the Leedy topics. There's a very short article of him. But, you know, he's not promoted very well within Leedy. The next endorsement was with Frank Wolf drums. And again, the catalogs don't really give him his due. But that set is the iconic set that has that caricature on the bass drum. Yeah. And that was that was a result of a guy by the name of Boy Ten Hove, who was a cartoonist. And he he did all the old jazz greats, Artie Shaw, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong. He has all these caricatures. And Chick liked his caricature so much that he had it put on the front of his bass drum. Yeah. Yeah.  But boy, it's it is good. And it's it's he he sells himself really well, like his face. And he's always smiling. Obviously, he's he means business. We know that it's not all just smiles and happiness, but like he he's putting himself there. And the picture on the bass drum, he's got a crown on. So he knows that he's he's calling himself the king. But he's he's really he knows how to sell himself. He does. You're right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The next big thing then to happen to him is his Ella Fitzgerald. Mo Gale had told him that he really needed a singer. He had Charlie Linton as a singer. But Charlie Linton, if you listen to any of his recordings, he's not a very strong singer. And so he was he was searching for a singer. And his his frontman, Bardu Eli, went to the Apollo amateur night. And he discovered Ella Fitzgerald. And he brought Ella to Chick. And Chick then brought Ella to Mo Gale. And and Mo Gale said no way, because Ella, not that she was horrible looking, but but she was she was a street person. She was a street urchin. She was a wave. And so, you know, when they brought her in, she had she had army boots on and, you know, an old tattered dress. And so you can imagine bringing her into Mo Gale's office. Mo Gale said no way. And Chick Webb said, no, you got to don't look at her, listen to her. Yeah. And he did. And she was hired. Wow. Instantly. I mean, Chick knows that battle of like, don't look at her, listen to her. That's the story of his life, really. And that's his story, too.  Yeah, exactly. You know, it's the same thing. Yeah. Now, duality there. Before we move on here, I want to ask you the question about we have on your timeline, Gladstone Symbol Association. Well, it's a hand sock symbol. And Billy developed that that he developed that with the with the Lady Corporation. And that's where the association started was was when Chick Webb was endorsed by Lady, he took a liking to these hand sock symbols.  And that's the only question that's on on the cut is is these are these sock symbols. They're just handheld symbols that that you can also play on. And it was the beginnings of the hi-hat. There wasn't a hi-hat back in those days. And so they had low boys and these hand sock symbols. Yeah. Would he then keep that like, I'm trying to think of the ease of picking it up and playing and switching. Would he keep that on like his trap table in front of him, basically on kind of on the top of his bass drum and grab it when he needed it and play it? Yeah, yeah. But I don't think he played it all that much. I think there's only like two, two cuts that I've found on YouTube where he actually, where he actually plays them. Yeah. Got it. Got it. I should say, I should have said this at the beginning. Chet is also an expert on Billy Gladstone. So his previous episode is all about Billy Gladstone. So I recommend people checking that one out as well, which kind of dovetails nicely. This is both of your your passions coming together. Welcome locations. Yeah, exactly. That and Gresh. All three of them. Gresh, Gladstone, and Chikweb. Yeah. Yeah. It's a lot of Gretch recently. I was saying before that I hadn't done a lot of Gretch episodes for a long time, but now we're going hard with Gretch in the last couple of weeks, which is great. That's a good thing. Yeah. Carry on here. I think we're moving on to the Apollo Theater. Ella Fitzgerald shows up for the audition night for this talent show, and she shows up wanting to be a dancer. But unfortunately, a pair of dancers called the Edward sisters had appeared as the final act. And so the next thing that occurs is this talent show. Well, Ella says there's no way I'm going to go out there and dance when the Edward sisters, who were very famous dancers in Harlem, had just appeared. She says, there's no way I want to sing. And so, you know, the stage manager says kind of she kind of make rules up as you go here, don't you? And she says, yeah. And so she sings and he says, well, what do you want to sing? And she ends up singing the object of my affection and Judy. And as I said, Bardo Eli was there that night. He heard it. And the rest is history. He brought her then to Chick Webb. Chick Webb brought her to Mogail. Mogail said, no, initially. But then when he heard her saying he's done, you know, he said hire her. But then she needed a lot of care and upbringing because, as I said, she was a street urchin. And so it was Chick Webb's wife that helped Chick to bring her along and to groom her. Yeah. Now, Chick Webb, you said he was married on his personal life. Any info on his wife and meeting her? Was she a musician as well? She was a hostess at the Savoy. And not really that much is known about her. Her name is Sally. Not really that much is known about her. Okay. Just to know that he's married, it kind of, I don't know, that's interesting to know personal stuff like that about someone. Because I think Chick Webb, there is information known and there's your great book, which you're referring to and we'll kind of plug more at the end. But it's really, he again is one of those people where he's just referred to and I think people who don't really dig deep into the history of this stuff, which now they don't need to because you're telling everyone about this stuff. But it fills in the picture of Chick a little bit more than just a, because I think a lot of people don't even know that he suffered that fall down the stairs and he had this back issue. I mean, unless you are kind of told that, you just might think that's an interesting looking guy or some, because you pictures usually see him behind the drum kit. So it's good to fill it out a little bit more. And maybe we check in too. What year is this when we're at the Apollo Theater and the talent show and all that stuff? It's the early 30s. Okay. Gotcha. Great depression is sort of underway, I guess at that point. In full swing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So carry on from there. Next big thing to happen then is Ella and a guy by the name of Van Alexander, who is one of Chick's arrangers, wrote a Tisket, a Tasket. When Chick tried to record it, the execs told him, the record execs told him, there's no way you're not going to do a nursery rhyme. It just won't sell. And Chick said, well, either we do it or I don't record. And so he stood his ground. And fortunately he did because when he recorded it, and it was just an instantaneous hit and was number one for 19 weeks on the record charts. Yeah. It's so interesting how wrong record executives and stuff can be, because I guess they're trying to stay with a formula, but the formula has to change. The way it goes is it's no, we do it this way. Then a Tisket, a Tasket comes out or something like that that you never think would be successful and people love it because they haven't heard anything like it, you know? Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. And he's pulling some weight, man. If he can make threats, not really a threat, but you know what I mean, kind of, I'm not going to do it then. So he's clearly successful and he's pulling some weight. Yeah. This episode is brought to you by Lowboy Beaters. You may be asking yourself, what's wrong with stock beaters? The answer to that is nothing is wrong with them, but pedal manufacturers know they're going to sell pedals to drummers of all genres. So the stock beater has to at least be functional for everything from metal to folk and jazz. But to sound your best, you need a beater that is specifically built for your style of music. If you play punk or metal, you're going to want a wood striking surface. Hip hop or country calls for leather. If you're playing blues, you probably want a felt beater. And the Lowboy Puff Daddy with a lambswool striking surface is great for jazz and Americana tunes. That's why so many of today's top drummers are playing Lowboy. People like Steve Farone, who've played with Eric Clapton, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, and who toured earlier this year with John Mayer. Lester Estelle Jr. from Kelly Clarkson's band is an artist, as is Rashid Williams, who tours with John Legend. I'm a big fan of Lowboy Beaters. I think they're awesome. And I think you guys will like them too, if you haven't checked it out yet. Lowboy is offering 15% off for drum history fans, so you can go to LowboyBeaters.com, use code DRUMHISTORY and get 15% off anything on the website. Again, that's LowboyBeaters.com, code DRUMHISTORY, and you get 15% off his entire site. Was Steve financially doing really well at this point? Is that known? I mean... No. No. I mean, he was doing okay, but he wasn't setting the world on fire. Because this now is moving towards the later 30s, and he's performing at the Paramount Theater. That's where the Tisca de Tascant was initially performed and did really well, and then it just went wildfire all across the country. Interesting. Were recordings like that typically done in a live situation, where the recording of a Tisca de Tascant would be recorded live on a theater and then released, or would they go in studio? I mean... No, it would be in studio. Yeah. Okay. Cool. Cool. And that's neat to think of those old days of the recordings, and I'm sure it's all one take. Let's just get it all right together and... One take, and interestingly, started with a bell. That's how they started a recording. They rang a bell, which is kind of odd. I know. Isn't that sound crazy? Yeah, because you think that is literally the most sharp ringing... Turn on a light. You know what I mean? Flip the light switch or whatever, but a bell. Exactly. Wow. But a bell. Yeah. Isn't that crazy? Yeah. I've never heard of that. When I found that out, I thought that was kind of crazy. They would obviously wait for it to dissipate and... Exactly. Yeah. Okay. That's bizarre. And you know, they did a wax recording. I mean, they were recorded on wax, and then duplicates were made from that wax recording. Sure. So they would pick it up from where the music actually starts. Yeah. Yeah. Early editing, early trimming, but still what a... It's things like that where until someone comes along and says, yeah, we're not doing that anymore. You kind of just... They just keep doing it and doing it. Why are we ringing a bell? Can't we turn on the light? Isn't that an easier way to cue? Or just say, we're recording. Exactly. That's funny. So Chick is... So he's like in his 20s at this point. So he's a grown man doing this, working as a musician, again, beating all the odds against him. So he's doing a great job in his life. I mean, that's for sure. Obviously, I think you said he wasn't being compensated maybe fairly as you would be today, but he's making a living, which is good. He's successful. But the odds are catching up with him because with each performance, his health is deteriorating very rapidly at this point. And in fact, at the Paramount Theater, he had to be carried off stage because he was bleeding profusely. He was just in terrible health. He was just really in horrible health at this point. It's really kind of sad. It is. I mean, obviously, it's the 1930s. It's not the most medically advanced time in history. Well, and he was also quite, I ended up in about not going to the hospital.  I mean, he did not want to go into the hospital. He had a bad experience at hospitals as a child. And so he really didn't take care of himself. And it's really sad. It is sad. That makes me think of, I think Bob Marley had something similar and I don't want to get that wrong, but I believe he had like a cut on his toe or something like that. And he would never get it checked out, would not go to the doctor. And I hope I'm not getting this wrong. But I think that turned into something extremely serious, which something small that could have been fixed, but then it just progressed and progressed. But Chick had something very serious from the beginning, which was kind of his, the albatross around his neck, his whole life. But it's interesting. You wonder what would have happened if he would have gotten checked out. He may have been right though. He may have said, nope, you're staying here. We're going to put you in a bed and you're done. Well, but actually, Mogao insisted that he go to the hospital and he went to the hospital. And the doctor determined that there was a fluid build up in his back. And he, they drained the fluid from his back and it made it even worse.  Yeah. But so he's in very bad health, but he's still battling, correct? The battles are still going on, still battling, still performing, you know, being carried off the stage at the end of the night, but he's still performing. And this is really kind of amazing. Now, this is like I said, this timeframe is very condensed. This is now the late 30s. And this is when he does battle with Benny Goodman. And that was in 1938.  So the year before, he's doing battle with Benny Goodman. And this is a whole new subject to talk about here is a Goodman web battle. And there's been much, much said about it. And, you know, inevitably, the stories tend to grow. Obviously, Krupa was playing with Goodman at the time. And there's been many places where you'll see where Krupa says that he was never cut by a better man. And I really, I'm really not so sure about that. I really kind of feel like it was Krupa's self-effacing demeanor. He, I think he was, he gave Chick a lot of credit. I do believe that the web band cut Goodman. But then again, they were performing at the Savoy, which is Harlem. And although it was a mixed audience, it was predominantly black. There's a video of Norma Miller and Frankie Manning. And they talk about how Chick routed the Goodman band. And I don't think he actually routed. He may have defeated them at the Savoy, naturally, because, you know, that's his home turf. Home court advantage. Yeah. Exactly. Home court advantage, exactly. So I think a lot of times a lot is made of that battle. It's actually more than it should, that's actually due. Yeah. And I think actually it's interesting that you, of all people, are saying that because it just proves that you've got a good perspective on everything, because you clearly love Chick web. But I think you understand that something may have been, you know, he, he, it might have been, again, the home court advantage. He might not have been, it might not have been that big of a upset that history lets on.  Again, because you're the Chick man, but you're also realistic, which I think is good. Yeah. If anybody's going to give Chick the advantage, it would be me. But I can't, I can't really believe that he, that he cut Krupa, you know, maybe Krupa, like I said, he was a very self-effacing person. Yeah. And he was just a really nice guy, unlike Buddy Rich, you know, who was kind of an a-hole. Yeah, like would not, like a bulldog, like wouldn't back down against it. Exactly, exactly. In that situation, Jean would be the gentleman to go, especially because the guy's clearly in poor health, if he passed away the next year, it's like, let him have it. You know what I mean? Be the bigger man, not that he really, we're just, we're guessing now, but not that he was like, you know, through the match or whatever, but No, no, by any means.  And I'm sure, I'm sure the crowd was just going crazy for Chick and going crazy for Benny Goodman too. I mean, Benny Gibbon was the king of swing. I mean, he was the top guy in the country. I may be wrong.  Yeah. And so, you know, and no, Chick was as well. Yes. Yeah. As I said, when we were talking before we started this, I'd like for you to play the cut Liza. You'll hear Chick Webb play. I mean, this is like weeks before he died. And you will not believe the tempo that he plays Liza. It's just incredible. It's a live broadcast from 1938. That's one of the few broadcasts that was recorded live. It's just phenomenal what he plays. Also, I should bring up that this was also the time that Chick got involved with the Gretch Company. He's on the 1939 catalog, the 1941 catalog. He's gone because he's dead. Geez. I know. Isn't that sad? He was just coming to his own when, I mean. What a story.  He was a younger guy. I mean, even nowadays. Yeah, exactly. A new word drummer wouldn't be on the cover of the magazine. I mean, they wouldn't do that. But Gretch, as we learned from Lucas in the previous episode, big deal. I mean, it's a big deal company. So was this more of, as far as we know, a real endorsement? Definitely. He's on the cover of this 1938 catalog. And I think a lot of it had to do also with Billy Gladstone. I'm sure they must have had a relationship that stemmed way back when Gladstone was doing his symbols with the Lidi Corporation. So there's like 10 years in the making there of a relationship. Yeah.  He's got the look. He's doing the big, like nowadays, I think of it as like, oh, that's a great thumbnail to put on YouTube or something, like the little photo that makes people click it. It makes you want to read.  Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Well, that's a shame. So he got some good gear. Do you know any details of the endorsement? Was he just, here's a new drum set or how did that work? Yeah. He had that iconic set with the chicks that go around the perimeter of the drum. It's on all four drums, the snare, the tom-tom, the floor tom and the bass drum. Yep. And again, for the folks who are listening, it is literally, when we're saying chick, I mean, it is a baby chicken, a chick with his logo. And it would be green, correct? Green. It was a white pearl drum with little green chicks going around the center. And I credit John Cohen with that. He was the one that, he's another historian, John was the one that told me that they were actually green. The little chicks were green because they're all black and white photos. So how do you know what color was? But somehow he was able to find out that they were green chicks going around the drum. Which is fascinating. I mean, and that's a pretty tall order. I mean, I think if I called Gretch today and I said, listen, I want a white marine pearl drum set with green little chicks around it. I mean, that's a serious custom order, you know? Yeah. Like to get that inlay. I mean, he must have pulled some weight to get such a drum set like that. Exactly. Exactly. But, you know, he was top guy. I mean, he had this fabulous Tisget at Tasket and he was just, his recordings, he was just a plethora of recordings at that time. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So I mean, we are, we're getting close to his death, right? I mean, we're very close to it. So what happened, you know, from where we were with the battle with Benny Goodman and all that stuff, what happens from there till the end? Well, he was playing a cruise and he was having substitute drummers pitch hitting form on many occasions. They would have to bring in other drummers to cover for him. And he was playing a cruise and he just could go on no further. And he went to Baltimore and he was dead within a matter of days. What was the official, was it just due to his ailment that he was, he's had his whole life? Yeah. Well, it was the tuberculosis of the spine, but it was complications of that. I see. Yeah. Wow. Terrible. I mean, but again, it's terrible, but talk about an amazing life for such a short time. So he was in his 30s, right? I mean, he would have been, how old was he when he died? He died at age 30. Wow. Another one of those, I mean, he's up there with John Bonham, Keith Moon, you get these famous drummers who just died when they're super young. Those were different situations. This was a serious, I mean, tuberculosis of the spine is a different, he wasn't a party, you know, partying hard and stuff. No, no, no. In fact, I think he led a very, very clean life. Which maybe that helped with his longevity that he did have. All right. Well, that's just wild. So I see in some photos that you sent me, there is a, what looks like there's someone, Judith, I believe, was her name working on a Chick Web drum set. Explain the gear, what I'm looking at here. Okay. What you're looking at there is I found a Gretch Gladstone that was painted black. And I didn't know what to do with this drum. I had no idea what to do with it. And I thought, hey, why not make a Chick, a commemorative drum, a commemorative Chick Web snare drum, right? So I got the white pearl and the green sparkle. And I got those from Brooks Tegeler, who's another historian. I'm okay at covering a drum, but cutting out these little chicks, my wife is the artist. And I said, would you do that? And so she cut out all the little chicks to paste on this drum, this snare drum. And then shortly thereafter, I was looking at eBay and I saw the Gooseneck cymbal arm set with the bass drum and the rolling console and the trap table. And so I bid and I got the thing. And I thought, well, why not make, I didn't want, I didn't want to try and recreate the Gretch Gladstone set because I just didn't want to do that. I wanted the set that has the caricature on the bass drum. And that's a Frank Wolf set. So what I did was create a Frank Wolf set. But again, I needed the front head to be painted. Judith is the artist.  Yeah, it looks incredible. I mean, she did a great job, which again, check, I'll put up the photos on the page for this on my website. It'll be on the video so folks can kind of click around and find that. But boy, she did an amazing job on that. Yeah, it's really amazing. And I will say that you, I think it's something to be proud of here. If this is what you paid for that drum set, that's a pretty good deal. It says like 700 bucks for that, that Premier Olympic drum kit pre-war. That's a good deal. That was an incredible deal. I was on pins and needles. I was holding my breath that this thing didn't get bid up, right? Because you know how those things can go, they can just get bid to some astronomical levels. Very quickly. I'm sure you were refresh, checking. Yeah, exactly. Because I had my limit and it wasn't much more than what I had put down there. Yeah, yeah. I mean, really as a fun thing that's kind of an homage to one of your heroes, you don't want to pay $10,000 for nothing you would for something like that. But it was meant to be. I mean, that's just awesome. And then you got that Gretch Gladstone snare drum. It looks like at Guitar Center. Guitar Center. Boy, did they know what they had? Or was this, was that a good deal as well? Yeah, it was a pretty good deal. I ended up paying 900 bucks for that and that was a steal. Yeah, yeah. Okay. You got to know what you're looking for, which you clearly do from doing this because I'm sure people walk around. And I love a lot too. Yeah, in your opinion, why has he become such a mythical man? I feel like I know the answer, but just don't want to hear kind of the experts say it because he really is up there with the legends of drummers, Gene Krupa, Buddy Rich. But we have so few, like Gene and Buddy were so much more documented, you know, why do you think Chick is the legend that he is today? Only 30 years old. 30 years old and look what he accomplished. I mean, he accomplished in 30 years what takes everyone else a lifetime. Yeah. He was able to do it. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Besides being an incredible drummer.  Buddy Rich thought he was just the best. Yeah. And there's something about when people die young, it puts them in a legendary status without a doubt. Exactly. No denying that.  But you know, when Chick died, she was number one in the melody maker's poll for a female singer. She was number one beating Billie Holiday. Chick dies and she goes to number 17. Interesting. What do you think that is? Why do you think that is? Because she didn't have him to nurture her along.  She's just incredible. And you know, I've had people say, well, she was such a great singer. She would have made it anyway. Well, not necessarily true. This was during the Depression, you know, and there were, I'm sure there were lots of great singers during the Depression that, you know, never saw the light of day. Yeah. I think there's something too about musicians where it's not a male-female thing. It's not a black-white thing where certain musicians need other musicians and they need someone else to kind of help build them up and push them forward. And if they don't have that, they don't do as well or they don't do anything. Like they need a bit of a push behind them. And I think that's true today. We all have friends as musicians who, you know, you play in a band with a buddy and then the band, you guys kind of stop playing together, you move on to other musicians. That friend just never plays music again. We all had that happen. So I think on that note, that is the most true thing I think that we can say about him is he is an inspirational story. 100%. 100%. It's 1,000%. Yeah. Yeah. Just to, it's like, okay, if you have a little bit of, I mean, everyone, the drums are not kind to our bodies. Let's be real. It hurts your back, your wrists might hurt. But I mean, if Chick can do it and he's in the night, in the Great Depression, with everything against him. Everything against him. Yeah. You can make it work. And shame on you for whining, right? I mean, look what this guy was able to do.  Come on. Are you kidding? It's a kick in the pants. Look at Chick. Yeah, exactly. So, Chet, this is just awesome. So do you want to tell people if they want to learn more? Because obviously, this is a pretty quick overall look at his life. But about your book, tell us about your book a little bit, which people can get and, you know, more information about that masterpiece right there. Well, I don't know that it's a masterpiece, but it's something that, again, you did help me a lot with this book as well. What's the best place for people to find the Chick web book? Amazon. Amazon. Yeah, that's usually, I ask because sometimes, like, you know, if I can direct people to their website or wherever to kind of cut out the middle man, but let's be real, Amazon is probably the best place to get most stuff. Yeah. Awesome. Well, Chet is kind enough to stick around and do a Patreon bonus episode today. And we're going to talk about the process of researching a drummer, such as Chick web, where there might not be so much information, but he had an experience with Van Alexander who we talked about before, where he got to meet him and learn from him. And he was 99 years old. So I'm excited to learn about that.  So Chet, my friend, I am so happy to have gotten you on in such a quick amount of time. I mean, this was like a two day turnaround. My pleasure. I'm glad we were able to do it. Exactly. Where I was going to say Lucas, he and I talked for like two years before getting him on the podcast. So you were the opposite. But thanks again to Lucas for really kind of, it happened in real time. He said you got to get, we were talking, it was like, you know, Chet is the man for Chick Web. And it's like, well, I'll do an episode with him. And here we are. It's done. Here we are. It's done. Awesome. Chet, well, thank you so much for being here. And I appreciate you sharing your knowledge.


Their present thoughts are past echoes, today is yesterday's tomorrow and the model of societal living began in Mesopotamia, wait to hear this. The Konya plain stretches for hundreds of miles across central Turkey and almost 60 years ago in a remote spot some 30 miles from the regional capital of Konya, a team of archaeologists began exploring two small hills. A fork in a local footpath and two mounds themselves gave the name to the site. Falk, Çatal and Turkish and Mound, Ho'yuk compounds to form Çatal Ho'yuk, Falk Mound. Our emergence back into the world scorched by cataclysm would see Egypt and Mesopotamia rise to great heights in the game of empires. People forced into shelter were the ones who re-emerged and places like Derinkuyu are clearly showing an effort to bunker up large swathes of people and this only happens when there is hostility happening outside in the open. Hundreds of thousands of people lived in these underground cities across this region, the same region the re-emergence occurs and this is an unmistakable pattern of survival. The discovery of these people is the subject of a major archaeological investigation, one which is in full swing in Turkey. Another is the ancient Çatal Ho'yuk site and it's one of the first urbanization models in Mesopotamia's history, it is on UNESCO's World Heritage List and it is one of the clearest windows into the 9000 year old Anatolian lifestyle. The site was discovered in 1958 with the first excavation starting in 1961 and that the site was dated to the Neolithic period over 9000 years ago, archaeologist Newman Arslan from the Çatal Ho'yuk excavation project team says that Çatal Ho'yuk has offered very intriguing data to the world of archaeology, the art, symbolism, the complex societal structure, these kinds of settlements were known to exist in the Near East but not in central Anatolia. Arslan then stated that he believes that the transition from hunting and gardening to the first urban model occurred in Çatal Ho'yuk. We now live in metro policies and we have to follow the urban culture given by those crowded metro policies but the people of Çatal Ho'yuk first tried out the urban city culture here 9000 years ago. The archaeological team noted their societal system saying there was a completely egalitarian societal structure, there was no public spaces, no common meeting areas, there was lots of houses and this shows the importance of working together and supporting each other. Çatal Ho'yuk is a very rare example of a well preserved Neolithic settlement and has been considered one of the key sites for understanding human prehistory for some decades. The site is exceptional for its substantial size and great longevity of the settlement. Its distinctive layout of back to back houses with roof accesses, the presence of large assemblage of features including wall paintings and reliefs representing the symbolic world of the inhabitants. It's here the re-emergence from the cave systems back into societal culture occurred. It's here we find the Venus which assimilates god-like perceptions to the modern times. What do you guys think about Çatal Ho'yuk? One of the first cities to host the re-emergence of our kind, comments below. Thank you for watching.


Hello everybody, welcome back to another AI video. And this one's a quick one. I want to show you how to use Bing, including the new chatbot that they've integrated into Bing, but inside Google Chrome instead of the default Microsoft Edge that they're trying to push you towards. Yeah, that's right. You still don't have to download it. The new tool here is a new extension or Chrome extension. It's called Bing Unchained. And it's pretty simple that you can now use the new Bing, including the chatbot in Chrome. All you got to do is go to this link. I'll put a description in the description below. I'll put a link in the description. Come on, Curtis, use your words. And then you're going to see this little icon in the toolbar. If you do not see that, click on your little Extensions button here and make sure that there's a blue pin beside Bing Unchained. And if you don't see that, click on Manage Extensions and then go to it and then just make sure this toggle is turned on. All right, with that out of the way, I'm going to click on this little blue icon and presto. I'm just going to open up the new Bing.com with the chatbot. And you'll see here that I can ask it anything. And it actually works. So just a heads up. If you do not have access to the new one, because I know they're rolling out access slowly to the new chatbot, you won't be able to see this. But I do have access because I guess I have a Microsoft Windows account or Outlook account. And I guess that gave me access. So there you go, guys. It has everything. And then if you just push down, you'll have the regular search underneath it. But the new chatbot's up and running, guys. Thanks for watching.