- [Kyle] Andrew Jackson, he looks at them
and just says, defend yourselves.
You damned rascals. (belches)
(inspirational music)
- Hello, I'm Drew Droege.
I've had half a bottle of Reposado Tequila,
and today we're talking about the newsboys' strike.
So it's the 1890s.
Also, it's New York.
And there are these kids that are just
rampant up the street.
These little boys that are dirty, filthy,
and they sold newspapers for a living.
They would cry on the streets and they would be like,
extra, extra, read all about it.
I'm a Newsie.
People, they were like, this kid is annoying.
Fine, I'll buy a paper.
It's okay.
Get out of my face.
I'm trying to enjoy my breakfast.
In 1898, the Spanish American War broke out.
And two major publishers
named Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst--
- Namedrop.
- I will, I'll do it.
I'll name drop them.
Hearst and Pulitzer took advantage of this,
and so they raised the price of the newspapers
to 60 cents a bundle.
People were just buying newspapers.
They were like, I've got to find out what's going on.
But then when the war was over,
they didn't lower the price of the newspapers
and people weren't buying as many newspapers,
so the Newsies couldn't make their money back.
And so there were a handful of Newsies,
mainly led by Morris Cohen and Kid Blink.
Kid Blink has a patch over one eye and he looks like a man.
(laughs)
This is really,
this doesn't get easier.
You think you're gonna get a taste for the flavor
and it just gets more and more violent.
(laughs)
Okay, anyway. (chuckles)
They went to Hearst and to Pulitzer and they said,
would you lower the prices back to 50 cents?
And they said, no, we're not gonna do that.
We're not gonna lower the price.
Okay, so that's when, yeah.
So when they were like,
they were just like,
strike!
Strike!
You're not gonna sell that.
No, this is a revolution.
Any of the other Newsies they saw with newspapers,
they would take them and they would rip the papers up.
(grumbling)
(laughing)
William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer
sent men in to go into the streets to try
to control these Newsies.
The Newsies attacked these men.
They attacked the men, they jumped on them.
They were like, uh-uh, no, no, no, no, no, no.
But really what, what really did something was
they all walked and stormed
and held up traffic on Brooklyn Bridge.
Kid Blink is giving a speech and he's saying,
friends and coworkers, we got to stick together like glue.
We, this is a time, this is something we need to do.
Even if you're blind, you have to do this.
Police drove up and they were like,
(cooing)
that's the exact noise the police car made.
(cooing)
Oh wait, there you go.
(cooing)
So the cops were like, you're going to jail.
(intense music)
And these kids were like, what are we gonna do now?
Like we have nothing.
And then Kid Blink shows up.
Wow.
And he is dressed to the nines
and he has a wad of cash.
And he's like, hey, it's not that bad.
We should probably stop doing what we're doing.
We should, you know, we should respect the rules.
We should go back to our lives.
All is good.
So the beret, no, wait.
Morris Cohen was like, I get it.
You've been bought out.
We the, you, they bought you out, look at you.
And so they kicked Kid Blink out of the club.
It was like, you are not cool.
You're a scab and an asshole.
And then Morris Cohen took over.
And said, we're not gonna go down like that.
We're not gonna get bought out.
We're gonna do this.
And so they're growing in numbers.
More and more kids were joining the newsboys' strike.
And it spread to 14 different cities
and people weren't able to buy newspapers.
And so finally, these big wig men were like,
we gotta meet with these kids.
So then,
so then they finally met with Morris Cohen.
He sat down and said, hey.
What do you want?
And the kids were like,
you have to lower the price of the newspapers.
And they said, we're not gonna do that.
And they said, okay, well then you at least
need to buy back the papers that we don't sell.
And they said, okay, we'll do that.
And the kids were like, hurrah.
You can't mess with us.
We have figured it out.
(hums) We win.
It was a wonderful, wonderful time.
Wonderful day.
The Newsies united and created change.
Yay, kids.
- Hello.
I'm Kyle Kinane.
And today we're gonna talk about Andrew Jackson.
The brawler.
Starting early 1800s.
America.
Andrew Jackson's army, they're in Tennessee.
He's an accomplished duelist.
Jackson's been a soldier and brawler my whole time.
I'm a bad ass dude.
So there's a couple of brothers
named Thomas and Jesse Benton.
They're officers in Andrew Jackson's army.
These two brothers, they're a couple of rabble-rousers.
Couple of troublemakers.
Thomas, he's power hungry.
He wants to make it.
He just wants, he wants, he wants, he wants it.
Becomes Jackson's right-hand man.
Jackson likes him so much, he sends him to DC.
Jesse Benton, still in Tennessee.
Probably the regiment, gets in an argument
with another fella under Jackson's regime
by the name of William Carroll.
Some old timey argument.
Jabber jabber jabber, jabber jabber jabber.
No end result.
(chuckles) We're not gonna settle this with words.
All right, let's meet in the field and shoot at each other.
Duel.
So that's it. (laughs)
It's very inefficient, it's very inefficient.
So William Carroll knows he's experienced.
He's like, so listen, Andy, do me a solid,
I'm working onto you.
Can you be on the ones and twos for me?
Andrew Jackson says, you know what?
I'm your second, let's go ahead.
Duel.
So the duel goes down.
10 paced duel.
Turn, spit, shoot, boom.
Carroll gets his thumb blown off.
Still gets one off.
Shoots Jesse Benton in his ass.
Hilarious shot.
(laughing)
People are, they're going, they're like,
did you hear about the duel?
Jesse Benton's got an extra asshole.
(laughing)
Ah all right, all right, get them giggles out.
Ooh yeah. (chuckling)
The word gets all the way back.
Thomas Benton, Jesse's brother,
he's over there, DC, he's hearing about this.
He's like, what?
Where I left, now they're laughing about my name?
And it's because Jackson supported this other guy?
Now Thomas, who's been Andrew Jackson's aid, is furious.
It's Andrew Jackson's fault
for even allowing this stupid duel to happen.
So he's not gonna stand for it.
He heads back to Tennessee
to restore honor to his family name.
Andrew Jackson, back in Tennessee,
he's hearing all this (bleep) talk.
He's upset about all this.
I'm Andrew goddamn Jackson.
I'm gonna whip sense into these Benton brothers.
Literally, he walks around for six weeks
with a bullwhip on his belt.
Says some real passo-agro (bleep).
(whipping)
You know how whips sound, put in a sound effect.
Post production.
Silent take, post produc.
(laughing)
- Okay so do you remember where you are?
- They're all in Tennessee.
Nashville.
September 4th, 1813.
The Bentons are holed up at a hotel.
Other end of the strip.
Andrew Jackson and his good buddy John Coffee,
they're hanging.
They all know why they're there.
They got beef.
Old timey beef, 1800s beef.
Andrew Jackson's like, hey, John.
Your name is indicative of morning activity, John Coffee.
Let's go take a morning stroll.
Let's go get my mail from the post office.
So they take a little stroll around town.
Oh, did it happen to take a circ,
roundabout way in front of the hotel?
Benton brothers posted up like,
yeah, we expected this much.
Andrew Jackson, he looks at them
and just says, defend yourselves.
You damned rascals. (belches)
That was the final moment.
Thomas Benton goes to the sidearm.
Andrew Jackson already has it pulled.
So Thomas, he goes back in the hotel.
Meanwhile, Jesse's coming around sneakily.
There's Andrew Jackson, but he doesn't see that
Jesse's come around the corner.
Fires off at Jackson.
Bang, bang, Jackson, he gets shot twice.
In the wing.
Jackson goes to throw one off at Thomas.
The gun misfires (spits)
and it just farts out a musket.
Burns a hole in his jacket.
Coffee runs in.
Coffee fires a few shots at Thomas.
Oh, I'm being shot at?
What's my safest bet?
Let me just roll down these stairs.
(intense music)
He did that to himself voluntarily and...
(intense music)
Now we've got another Andrew Jackson supporter
that just jumps in out of nowhere.
Stokely Hayes.
He comes in with a sword.
That's a rule.
You don't bring a knife to a gun fight.
This guy, he goes to stab Jesse.
The sword breaks 'cause it hits a button.
(exclaims) What about a knife?
I'll just stab this guy.
Stokely Hayes tackles Jesse,
and this whole showdown, it's a catastrophe.
End result?
Andrew Jackson was a president who would, at some point,
shout at several people in a non-battlefield situation.
(laughing)
- Keep going, I'll do that-- - Oh, just keep going.
Oh, I appreciate your permission.
(chuckles) Where was I?
Oh, crushing that story?
That's where I was, crushing that story?
So it's 20 years down the road.
He writes a letter to Thomas Benton.
Hey, last time I saw you,
I think you left these.
Puts the bullets in the letter, mails them up.
You've had them long enough, you keep them.
Mails them back.
That's...
That's how duels end.
- Hello.
Today we're gonna talk about Mary Dyer.
Mary Dyer and her husband William
moved to Massachusetts from England and they were Quakers,
which is more liberal Puritans.
So William and Mary are like, this is (bleep) fun and great.
The Puritans are the people that settled
in New England in the 1600s.
Puritans were like, the Bible is the word of God.
Like literally, God dictated some notes to his secretary.
Mary was just like,
I've got a little bit of a different take on it.
Hey, you know this thing, the Holy Spirit,
we keep hearing about?
That's within you.
Oh my God, the Holy Spirit's right here?
Yeah, you can just talk to it.
Oh my God, hey, Holy Spirit.
The thing is, what she's doing is illegal.
There is no separation of church and state.
So the guys that ran New England were like, no.
No, no, no, don't go just saying,
oh, here's my interpretation of it,
and have women over for tea.
No, you're undermining the whole thing.
Okay so Mary was banished.
She's like, fine, no big deal.
Banish me, I'm going to Rhode Island.
And what I want is everyone to understand
is what Mary (bleep) did to the Puritan dudes.
She freaked their dicks off, okay?
Because you don't understand.
They're like, didn't we tell you to leave?
She's like, yeah, you did.
But I'm not trying to be a dick but
I'm coming back to ask you,
can you please just have,
you don't have to like be into it,
but can you please have religious tolerance?
And they're like, no.
They said, we're gonna (bleep) kill you.
We're gonna strangle you, noose you.
What do you call that, kill you.
Kill yourself.
Murder you.
Gallows.
- She's gonna get hung.
- Mary was gonna get hung.
She's walking with the guy to the gallows.
And they literally, the noose is around her neck.
And they're like, Mary,
if you promise to leave Massachusetts Bay Colony
and never come back, you can go.
And she was like, okay.
And they're like, all right.
They take the rope off around her neck
and they let her go.
Mary did an amazing thing.
(groans and laughs)
Do you think I should get up?
Mary Dyer comes back to Massachusetts and says,
I'm gonna deal with these laws to their bloody face.
I'm gonna bloody deal with these laws in the face.
In other words, I'm confronting this
(bleep) head (bleep) on.
Honestly, laying on the floor like this
is one of the best times I've had in a long time.
So Mary, she's visiting Quakers in prison.
They were like, thank you, Mary, for coming
'cause we get that you get what we're going through.
She's like, totally.
So the Commonwealth of Massachusetts was like,
stop visiting prisoners.
Stop acting like it's okay.
We gotta (bleep) kill you.
So he walked her to the gallows on Boston Common in 1660.
And they put the noose around her neck.
So she had the rope around her neck, about to die.
She said, no ear can hear.
No tongue can taste.
No heart can understand the joy.
Something like the joy,
(bleep) I don't (bleep) know.
The joy and the treasures
of the blessings and the refreshments.
I don't get what that is.
But the refreshments of God
that I have starting right this (bleep) now.
And then they hung her.
Everyone's watching.
They're like, oh my God, we're on the Boston Common.
We're watching someone die.
That's your problem for being a sick (bleep).
And then King Charles was like, excuse me.
What the (bleep) is everyone doing over at Massachusetts?
I didn't say this (bleep) should get so crazy.
Don't kill people.
That makes you look more like a pussy,
if you didn't know, by the way, dudes.
But she changed the world.
But you'll never hear about it anywhere but here.
- Well now-- - She's in an unmarked
grave on the Boston Common.
And you know whose grave is marked?
(bleep) Jim Morrison.
People fly to Europe to see it.
And he wrote horrible music.