Selects: The Tailesin Massacre

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Just visit att.com slash guarantee for details. Hi, everybody. We're inching toward the end of the year. It's December 10th, 2020 in COVID time. And we are here to tell you about the episode, or at least I'm here, the Taliesin Massacre. It's a massacre that happened at the perhaps Frank Lloyd Wright's greatest work, Taliesin in Wisconsin. And I picked this one because, geez, by this time, I will have long done this in real time. But I am going and have went to the Green Bay Packers, the Atlanta Falcons at Lambeau Field playing the Green Bay Packers. And I knew this game was on the calendar. And I went with my good friend, Adam Pranica, of the greatest generation. And my good friend from high school, Robert Chihaya, and we all met up in Green Bay with Adam's uncle, Uncle Pete Pranica, by the way, who is the voice of the Memphis Grizzlies. So I can say this with confidence, even though it hasn't happened yet. I know I had a great time talking to Uncle Pete because I've long wanted to meet him. And I'm a big fan of the NBA. My mom's from Memphis. And so I know we had a lot to talk about. It's kind of weird because I know this is all true, but it hasn't happened yet. But on my list, I don't know if I made it or not. I guess time will tell. I wanted to go see Taliesin. I know we're playing golf. Whispering Pines. And I know that went well. I don't know how I shot yet, but I know that Whispering Pines is lovely. And it had to be great unless it was pouring down rain. But who cares? Play in the rain. But like I said, maybe I'll follow up and let you know if I actually made it out to Taliesin. I'm not sure if the calendar had enough space. But at the very least, I was well prepared with my knowledge of the Taliesin massacre. And you will be, too, if you listen right now. To Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and Jerry's here. And this is Stuff You Should Know. The long-awaited Frank Lloyd Wright edition. Sort of. Yeah, kind of. I mean, you know, it's not a full biography. But it definitely covers some of his—a very dark period of his life. Oh, yeah. One of the darker periods that any artiste could have. And make no mistake, Frank Lloyd Wright was an artiste. He was an artiste of architecture. Yeah. Have you ever—how many houses of his have you seen or buildings? I've seen a bunch. I've been to Hollyhock in Los Angeles. I've been to a Usonian—I can't remember which one—in Washington by the— one of the—I can't remember what other historic house it's by. They moved it. I've been to—there's a Usonian in Alabama, Chuck, in Florence, Alabama, which is really neat. Been to Fallingwater. Been to Talias in West. I think that's it. Yeah. I've been to a handful myself. I've been to one in Tulsa and a couple in L.A. Of course, the Guggenheim. I think we've both been there. I have not. I have not. Oh, really? Yeah. All the times you've been to New York and all the museums, have you never stepped foot in the Guggenheim? It's true. I've never been in the Guggenheim, sadly enough. I saw a movie where there's a shootout in the Guggenheim. I highly recommend going to the Guggenheim. It's great. Okay. I thought it was George Costanza that designed the Guggenheim, not Frank Lloyd Wright. That's right. He always wanted to be an architect. That's right. My favorite line for that episode is when he talks about the redesign plans of the Guggenheim, and they go, really? He goes, Yeah, it really didn't even take that long. That's right. Yeah. He's saying that he was the one who redesigned it. Like, it's impressive that it was just a really quick job. Right. Yeah, that's a classic. But we're not talking about the Guggenheim today, Chuck. We're not even talking about Hollyhock House. We're talking about, specifically, Taliesin, which is widely regarded as Frank Lloyd Wright's genuine bona fide masterpiece, like his greatest work ever. I think it's said that it's his autobiography written in wood and stone, that it's just him. And not just him in a specific time and place, but for, like, decades worth of work. His earliest work to his latest work all showed up and appeared over time at Taliesin. Yeah, I mean, there's a lot there. It was his home at times. It was his studio, a school. It was his 100-acre estate. This was family land. It was his favorite hill in Wisconsin, in the river valley there, where his Welsh grandparents originally homesteaded. Yeah. And so it was very personal to him. So he did things like make the roof so it doesn't leak water into the offices below, like some of his other properties. Exactly. Yeah. He wasn't one to just move his desk, right? Right. So this particular— This particular house, and it still is. It's a huge, enormous house. I think it's 21,000 square feet. It's a classic example of what's called the prairie style, which is a style of architecture considered to be the first genuine American style of architecture that Frank Lloyd Wright founded back in, I think, the 1890s, maybe the late 1890s. And it takes its inspiration from the surrounding environment. It's meant to blend in with the environment. Work with the environment rather than to dominate it. So there's a lot of horizontal lines, a lot of natural materials, a lot of woodworking. And Taliesin is very much in that style. I think it has 524 windows, which is a lot of windows. And it also has no gutters. There's a lot of cantilevered roofs, which kind of overhang pretty far. So there isn't necessarily a need for gutters. But I read that Frank Lloyd Wright specifically didn't want gutters. Because he wanted icicles to form on the eaves of the roof so he could look out of those 524 windows in the Wisconsin winter and see all the icicles hanging. Ed, do you like the prairie homes, that style? Yeah, yeah, I do. My problem with Frank Lloyd Wright's work is that it's so dated and old-timey that it almost makes me a combination of scared and nauseous. You know what I'm talking about? Sure. Have you ever looked at a wicker wheelchair from the turn of the last century? Yeah, yeah. You just kind of get the creeps from it for some reason. Okay, you get that same feeling. I mean, he did the bulk of his work 100 years ago, somewhere in that range. But it was also very technologically advanced. And he was just doing some really interesting stuff. So the way that— A very dated, once technologically advanced piece of work can kind of cull that weird feeling out of you. But at the same time, I'm in genuine awe of the stuff he did. Like, Fallingwater is one of my favorite houses in the entire world. Sure. I mean, it's gorgeous. I mean, it's just amazing. What about you? Do you like the prairie style? I like them all right. They're fine. Some of them—and, you know, I have some here in the neighborhood that pop up every now and then. Some newer builds are in the prairie style. Mm-hmm. And I like them. I like them more than some other kinds and less than some other kinds. Let's just say that. You like craftsmen? Well, sure. I live in a craftsman. That's my favorite, but— I like craftsmen, too. I think they're good. I mean, I love a highly slick modern home. I don't want to live in one, but I love them. I would not want to live in one, either. Those are hit or miss with me. Like, some of them are just, too, just god-awful. Some of them are just—when they hit the nail on the head, you're like, wow, that's— one of the best houses in anyone's ever designed and built, but they miss, it's almost like documentaries and horror movies. There's a lot of them, but only very, very few like are truly great. That's my, that's my impression of modern homes. Yeah. I'm into, we're into architecture though, as a, as a couple, Emily and I, and we watch a couple of great, well, us too. It's a triad. Well, I guess throw you me in there. And I guess we'd be, of course, but we, we have a couple of shows that we love to watch that are this one called grand designs on Netflix that I highly recommend. And, Oh man, what's the other one? There's this cup, not a married couple, but a pair that travels the world. The great British architecture bake off. No, that's not it. I can't remember what it's called, but grand designs is really good. I mean, and they follow these, you know, sort of impossibly built houses designed and built by these incredible lunatic dreamers who are obsessed with sort of a thing. It seems to be, the common thread is these obsessives and it leads to something beautiful and great, you know, usually for sure. Yeah. So one of the things about Frank Lloyd Wright is that he is including during his lifetime, he's considered one of the greatest architects to ever live. Certainly the most popular, popularly well-known, maybe I guess you'd put it like anybody who's ever heard of any kind of architecture, even vaguely is probably familiar with Frank Lloyd Wright. Agreed. So when he, when he put all of himself into Taliesin, he was building a home for himself and I think it was completed in 1911. And like, it's worth pointing out, he was returning to his childhood home to the Valley where his, his clan like settled. Like if you, if you look around spring green Wisconsin, everybody's got the name Lloyd in there somewhere. Like his maternal ancestors settled that area. And he was literally building on this hill. His favorite hill when he was a child, like you were saying, but he was doing this in the midst of one of the biggest scandals, like any architects ever gone through. Yeah. So as you'll see through this show, and if you know anything about the man, Frank Lloyd Wright had a bit of a wandering eye and a bit of a philandering habit. And he had a, an extramarital affair with a woman named M-A-M-A-H. Mama? Mama? Borthwick. Huh? I don't know. I don't know. I've, I've been testing it out too. I said, Mama. Mama? Sure. Borthwick. And she was, you know, they met in 1903. Wright was in his mid thirties at the time. He was already really famous as an architect and he was commissioned to design a house for her and her husband, Edwin Chaney. And they were, it was going to be built there in Wisconsin, pretty close to Chicago where Frank Lloyd Wright was at the time. She was pregnant in her mid thirties. She was pregnant in her mid thirties at the time with her second child and got really involved in, in sort of working with Frank Lloyd Wright very closely. And that sort of, you know, the, the classic story at first, it starts out platonic. One thing leads to another and before you know it, they're bumping uglies. That's right. Smashing as the younger kids say from what I understand. Yeah, I just heard that for the first time the other day. Didn't know that was a thing. So it's a thing now. So Frank Lloyd Wright by this time had six kids of his own. And he had made a name for himself, like around Chicago, building homes, designing homes for the well-to-do, especially in the Oak Park neighborhood. Apparently just between 1900 and 1910, he designed 50 prairie houses. So he'd made a name for himself. But apparently by the time I think 1908 was when he, no, 1907, when they started their affair, by the time 1907 rolled around, he was getting kind of tired of doing the same thing. It's kind of like he was cursed. Like this, this school of architecture that he developed was so popular that he, that's all anybody wanted. And he had gotten bored with it by that time. So he seems to have been unfulfilled professionally and kind of took it out on his family in about the worst way you could possibly take things out on your family, short of cutting them up with a machete. Yeah. By 1908, it was a pretty much well-known open secret in Chicago and that high society in Chicago that this affair was going on. And he was sort of looked down on from his friends and his neighbors and his peers, different colleagues. His poor wife, Kitty, was long suffering because she kind of stood by his side anyway. And he realized that he really wanted to leave his family. And he did so. He said, And he did. In September of 1909, Frank left with her, went to Europe, left his wife and his six kids behind. And here's one of the more selfish quotes I've ever seen from a husband and father. And this was in his autobiography. He wrote, So he really felt, and you know, those were his words in his autobiography. So he wasn't, he had no illusions about himself, but he very much felt that, you know what, I'm Frank Lloyd Wright and I'm a man and I deserve this by my right. Yeah. So those are two key points. He's a man, so he deserved it. But more than anything, he was a legend in his own mind, which was, which was sustained and verified by the public at large. But he was Frank Lloyd Wright. So more than anybody, he deserved that to go do whatever he wanted. And, you know, whatever the consequences were for other people emotionally, to hell with that. One other thing that I think is worth pointing out is that he had money problems basically his entire life, despite the fact that, I mean, this man designed the Guggenheim. He designed some of the most iconic buildings and houses in the United States. And he had money just coming in by the truckload, but he would spend it as fast as he could get it and then some. So at this point in time, when he was, when he left his family, he apparently left them in financial straits as well. There was, there's a biographer named Paul Hendricks and Paul Hendrickson, I'm sorry. And he points out that there was a $900 grocery bill that was laying on the kitchen counter when, when Frank Lloyd Wright walked in. He walked out on his family, which, I mean, at least pay the grocery bill. So the family that you're leaving in a lurch can eat, you know? Yeah. So his, his mistress left her two kids with her husband. She went on a train to New York City, met Frank at the Plaza Hotel. They had a few days there of, I guess, smashing. And then went to Europe and, you know, he was famous the world over. So it's not like he could lay low. Very famous face. Very famous. Very famous dresser of fine clothing and those hats. So he didn't exactly blend in anywhere he went. So he was found out in Berlin. Chicago Tribune had a headline that said, leave families, semicolon, nice little switch there, elope to Europe. And this whole time, poor Kitty, she says, it appears like any other ordinary mundane affair with the trappings of what is low and vulgar. But there's nothing of that sort about Frank Wright. He is honest and sincere. I know him. My heart is with him. Now I feel certain that he will come back. And that's one of the saddest parts about all this, is she was sort of like, he's just philandering a bit and he'll come back to us. Yeah, it is sad. But also, you know, whatever his kids were thinking, too. Like, well, I guess dad didn't love us enough to stick around. Another, I think, kind of telling clue about Frank Lloyd Wright's enormous arrogance was he called his and, what are we going to call her, Chuck? Mamma? I'm calling her Mamma. Okay. His and Mamma's flight to Europe after abandoning their families, he called it a spiritual hegira, or hegira. And I had not seen that word before. And it turns out hegira, or hegira, H-E-G-I-R-A, is what Muhammad's exodus from persecution in Mecca was called. Yeah. And he left Mecca to go to Medina. Where he founded Islam. And to Frank Lloyd Wright, this is what he and his mistress were doing when they abandoned their families and fled to Europe. Yeah. He thought a lot of himself. He was an SOB, man, plain and simple. I don't, like, he's a classic example of, like, having to compartmentalize the genius of the work and just the complete horribleness of the person, you know? I know. I know. But it can be done. It can be done. And I disagree with anybody who says, you know, there's certain exceptions, I'm sure. But anybody who says, well, this person held some pretty terrible views, so we shouldn't pay any attention to their work from that point on, I disagree with that. I think that there are tons of exceptions to that rule, although there are tons of exceptions to the exceptions to that rule, too, if that's not confusing enough. Well, I think it's a personal decision. If someone wants to never gaze upon falling waters again, then that's their choice. Totally. It's not like I'm going to, you know, grab them by their hair, and like making them look. I would disagree with them in a lot of cases. Yeah, like Manson's music, fantastic. Just beautiful stuff. Really good stuff. For sure. So Frank Lloyd Wright returns to Chicago in 1910. Meemaw stayed behind. She stayed there in Europe for another year because she was getting a divorce from Edwin Chaney. And so she stayed there wrapping that up. Frank moved back with Kitty. He had no intention of staying. And I think it was pretty clear to Kitty at this point because she said, Mr. Wright, I wonder if he made her call her that. Mr. Wright reached here Saturday evening, October 8th, and he has brought many beautiful things, everything but his heart, I guess, and that he has left in Germany. But he came back a bit of a pariah. Oh, just a tad. They were pariahs before. There was a woman who grew up living next door to Meemaw and her children. And she, years later in her diary, recounted a time when her mom refused to give Frank Lloyd Wright cream when he came over from next door to borrow some and said that they were sinners and she wasn't going to help them out at all. So when they left for Europe, made headline news for leaving their families, and then he returns, moves back in with his family, just long enough to plan his next home for him and Meemaw. Like, yeah, the people in his family, his social orbit did not take very kindly to that. Professionals, neighbors, friends, gossip colonists, basically everybody in the Midwest who had anything to do with anything, like, rejected him and Meemaw. Yeah, and to boot, when he gets back, because he needed seed money for his new home, he had a benefactor named Darwin Martin, and he said, hey, listen, I want to build this great cottage, and this affair is long over, and this is going to be a cottage for my mom, and I promise it's not going to be our little smash shack, and so give me $25,000 to get this project going. He got it. He moved into the home with his mistress, and I think by Christmas 1911, they were officially living together there in Greenspring. Yeah, he said, thanks, chump, thanks for the money. And because just trashing Frank Lloyd Wright as a person is a lot of fun, I want to add this detail, too. Darwin Martin, his benefactor, over the course of Frank Lloyd Wright's career, lent Frank Lloyd Wright $75,000 total. And when the stock market crashed in 1929, Darwin Martin lost everything. Like, he was flat broke, went from an extraordinarily wealthy man to just flat broke for the rest of his life. Frank Lloyd Wright never repaid any of that money, but he made sure that when his autobiography came out that Darwin Martin got a free copy. Oh, that's nice. Yeah, he really pulled that out at the last minute, didn't he? All right, so let's take a break, and we'll come back and talk about things taking a turn for the worst a few years later in August of 1914. Stuff you should know. Josh and Chuck. Woo! Hey, everybody. The best pieces in your closet are the ones you can count on, whether you're heading to work or going out or keeping things casual. And this time of year, Quince makes finding something great for everyone else just as easy. This holiday season, it's where you want to shop for yourself and everyone on your list. That's right. And you know what? Quince focuses on high-quality staples made with premium materials like 100% Mongolian cashmere, 14-karat gold, and Italian leather. All timeless, versatile pieces that feel special to unwrap and become everyday favorites long after the holidays. Yeah, plus, everything at Quince is priced 50% to 80% less than similar brands. They work directly with ethical factories and cut out the middlemen so you can give luxury-quality pieces without the luxury price tag. So give the gift of quality this holiday season. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers or go to quince.com where you can get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available, in Canada and the UK as well. And when Quince asks you where you heard about them, let them know it was stuff you should know. It's the best way to support the show. Okay, Chuck, so let's just go ahead and get in the way back. Well, I don't want to see this. We'll just talk about it. We'll leave the way back machine out of this one, okay? So on Saturday, August 15th, 1914, around lunchtime, actually exactly at lunchtime, Mamma Borthwick, Frank Lloyd Wright's mistress, longtime mistress, was sitting down for lunch on a terrace at Taliesin with her two kids. To his great credit, Edwin Chaney, her ex-husband by this time, was not interested in keeping Mamma from seeing her children as punishment. So they went to visit pretty frequently. And this was a time when they were visiting. So the three of them were sitting down to lunch. John, I think he was 10, and her daughter, Martha, who was eight, and Mamma were sitting down to lunch on the terrace, okay? Just put that in your pin. Put that pin in your hat and smoke it. So, wow, really mixing metaphors. So they're out on the terrace. Inside in the dining room, there are five of Frank Lloyd Wright's employees, Emile Burdell, Thomas Brunker, David Lindblom, Herbert Fritz, and William Weston, and then Weston's son, Ernst. So they were all sitting down to eat. I think put a pin in maybe both of these scenes. And we'll tell you a little bit about the handyman of the property named Julian Carlton, who in the weeks and months leading up to this date had been acting really weird. He was aggressive. He was getting in arguments with other people. He was acting very strangely. He said, he started sleeping with a hatchet and a sack beside his bed. He was married and his wife, you know, verified this stuff. He was talking about killing people and there was rumor that he was being let go and that he and his wife were already had basically a train booked to Chicago to look for other jobs. So this is sort of the mindset of what's going on with Julian Carlton at the time of this lunch. Right. So Julian was actually, so he was a handyman. But at this point, he also helped out, helped his wife Gertrude. When she was cooking, he would serve. So he served lunch to Mama and then he served lunch to the five employees in the dining room. And then as they were, they started to eat, he approached William Weston, the foreman of the whole jam. William Weston was a pretty important guy around Taliesin and asked if he could go get some gasoline out of the shed, I guess, because he was going to clean some rugs with it. With gasoline. With gasoline, yes. I guess that was a good idea. That was a thing back then. Sure. That's some old-timey rug cleaning, if I've ever heard of it. But so Weston said, sure, sure, of course, go ahead. And things went really, things went downhill really quickly from that moment on. Yeah. So I appreciate you leaving this part to me. Carlton comes back. Oh, I'll fill in. Don't worry. He's got the gasoline and he also has an ax. And the sequence is a little bit unclear. I've seen both ways of which happened first. But he slaughtered, he slaughtered Mama Borthwick and her kids on the porch and then poured gasoline under the dining room doors and trapped them in the room and set the dining room and therefore the house on fire with everyone trapped inside. It gets even worse than that, though. After he had slaughtered Mama and her kids with the ax and set the house on fire, he went around to a window, a dining room window, where the people who were trapped in the dining room that had just been set on fire were jumping to safety from. And as they jumped to safety, he ran after them and killed them with the ax. He would finish them off. Sometimes they were on fire and he would hit them in the head with the ax and killed them. And there were nine people who were dining that day and he managed to kill seven of the nine. Three people survived the initial assault, the fire and then the picking off with the ax. The first guy who got away was named Herb Fritz. He was a draftsman, a younger guy. I think he was still a teenager who went on to become an architect, I believe. But he was the first one to jump through the window. And so he was able to get pretty far away from Julie and Carlton before Carlton noticed that people were jumping through the window and came around to pick him off with the ax. That's right. William Weston got out of the window. Carlton hit him with the ax, thought he was dead, but he wasn't dead. In the meantime, Fritz, like you said, he didn't even, Carlton didn't even know he was gone. So he actually managed to get to the neighbors and contact authorities, which ended up being, you know, ended up sort of saving a lot of the house because they helped put it out. And the other guy who managed to at least get out the window was David Lindblom. He escaped with Fritz. So Fritz and Lindblom, like when they ran to that house, it was like a half a mile away, which is really significant that Lindblom was able to do it because he was burned so badly that he didn't even know died from his burns. And yet, one of the last things he did on earth was to run a half a mile to get help at the house, the nearest house with a phone. Yeah. So, you know, people get there, they put out the fire. Hours later, Carlton was discovered in the basement of the house in an asbestos lined boiler room. He went down there to die in the fire, but also doubled up by drinking a bottle of hydrochloric acid to make sure he did the job. And neither one of them work. He actually survived both of those things. I actually saw that he was in the furnace because he was trying to survive the fire and he didn't drink the acid until he knew he was discovered. Oh, see, I saw the opposite, that he went down to the furnace because he wanted to die in the home. Huh? Yeah. The reason the furnace made sense to me or that he was trying to survive in the furnace is that if he couldn't escape from the house, that would be the safest place because it was the middle of August and the furnace wasn't on. So, it would have conceivably protected him or else it would have turned into that bronze bowl torture thing. You know, the bronze bowl that you put a human being in and light a fire under the bowl? Yeah, I remember that. Sounds like a pretty horrible way to die. Either way, yes, it should be restated that Julian Carlton drank what he thought was a lethal dose of hydrochloric acid. Like, that's how he chose to try to end his life. Yeah. So, there was never any motive really rooted out. Clearly, looking back now, he suffered from some kind of mental illness. I don't think you can just all chalk it up to a grudge over being fired because of his behavior over the previous weeks and months. And, you know, it's just one of those things. It was a time where they weren't diagnosing things like that. So, he clearly had some form of mental illness, I think. And they never conclusively determined a motive. But like I said, his wife testified that said, you know, we were headed to Chicago. We were going to get work. And he ended up dying. But he couldn't eat, basically, because he had torn up his stomach lining and his throat so badly with that hydrochloric acid. He died seven weeks later in jail from starvation. Yeah. Another interpretation I saw is that he had purposefully starved himself because the acid didn't work, that it wasn't just that he couldn't eat, but that he wouldn't eat and that he died from self-imposed starvation. Either one's pretty terrible stuff. Just a brutal, brutal crime. Yeah. And I mean, I agree with you. I think he clearly was mentally ill, not just from the act that he carried out, but also the fact that he'd been ranting and sleeping with an ax for weeks leading up to it. But I think his perceived treatment or outright treatment around Taliesin, coupled with the idea that they had been dismissed and that was going to be their last day, is, I guess, what drove him over the edge. Yeah. So, Frank, you mentioned or you've noticed, we haven't mentioned him. He was in Chicago at the time. He was working, kind of finalizing everything on the construction of Midway Gardens there in Chicago, working with his son, John Lloyd Wright, who is his second oldest. And in the autobiography of John Wright, called My Father Who Was on Earth, said he remembered an unnatural silence when the phone call came in, except for his father's labored breathing. And then he came back in the room and he said, what's happened, dad? And his father said, John, a taxi. Taliesin is on fire. Right. And if you're not too big on Frank Lloyd Wright, you might be like, well, what about the people who were murdered? In his defense, he apparently hadn't learned about that yet. And he learned that there were some gruesome, grisly murders of a lot of people he cared about, but from reporters who were shouting questions to him as he was going to the train station to take the train from Chicago over to Spring Green. Yeah. So, Chicago newspaper headline reads, The End of Lawless Loves. You know, sort of a, sort of a sensational and cold way to treat these murders, I think. Yeah. But they had been, you know, they had been all over their affair for years now. And then Chuck, one other thing about Julian Carlton. Have you ever been on that site, findagrave.com? Yeah, sure. Okay. So I was on findagrave.com. Part of the purpose for those who don't know is like to kind of memorialize, like leave a tribute or something to the person. The dead person. And sometimes it's very sweet, but other times it's very awkward. And this was an awkward case because there was like a little icon that clearly shows up on every page on findagrave.com. But it said, what's one thing you'll always remember when you think of Julian? I'm like, probably the axe murder slash arson, the killing of seven people. See, I would have put, he could really get a stain out of a rug. Right. With gasoline. Yeah. Very, very good at that. You want to take a break? Yeah, let's take a break. And we'll talk a little bit about Frank's later years right after this. Hey, everybody, the best pieces in your closet are the ones you can count on, whether you're heading to work or going out or keeping things casual. That's right. And you know what? Quince focuses on high quality staples made with premium materials like 100% Mongolian cashmere, 14 karat gold and Italian leather. Yeah. Plus everything at Quince is priced $50. 80% less than similar brands. They work directly with ethical factories and cut out the middleman. So you can give luxury quality pieces without the luxury price tag. Download the Quince app for app exclusive offers or go to quince.com where you can get free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK as well. You know, the holidays come with this expectation that you're supposed to feel happy and excited and grateful. But what if that's not true for you? Maybe you feel less like yourself this time of year, or maybe you're dealing with family stress or loneliness or anxiety, or you just feel overwhelmed. Yeah. And you know what? Even when you know that talking to someone might help, you're giving yourself reasons to delay seeking care. Like, you know, it's probably too expensive. What if it doesn't even work? Where would I even start? I'll deal with it after the holidays. But everybody, you have to be this way. Getting help with RULA is easier than talking yourself out of it. And here's why. With RULA, sessions can cost an average of $15 with insurance, and they show you your costs up front. 93% of RULA patients report symptom improvements, which is pretty amazing. For sure. Also, finding the right therapist is easy with RULA because their providers specialize in over 90 conditions and can offer support for life's major stressors. You can sign up, find a great therapist in as little as five minutes, see that cost, and appointments are available as soon as the next day. If you've been telling yourself you'll deal with it after the holidays, you don't have to wait. Head to RULA.com. That's R-U-L-A.com and take the first step. So this murder really, and of course the fire, really, really took a toll on Frank Lloyd Wright. For the next, you know, 20 years, he really struggled. With his work, he struggled for his freedom from the press, obviously. I mean, he was always in the press, but it was worse now than ever. And he did not suffer long romantically, though. He took up very quickly with a woman named Maude Miriam Hicks Noel. She went by Miriam. And she was an artist. She was a morphine addict. She was a fangirl. She, they had a, a terrible, terrible, abusive relationship. It seems like kind of both ways, like a bit of a Sid and Nancy type thing going from everything I could read. There were terrible people on both sides. Yeah. So they, he met when she was very young. She said he hadn't been with me 10 minutes before he said, you're mine. And they had a 10 year courtship that was very, very dysfunctional, very miserable. And when he got divorced in 1922 from Kitty, he decided at some point to marry, I think about a year later to marry Miriam with that old mistake, thinking things would be different once they get married. And that's not at all how it went. They ended up splitting up, I think, six months later, something like that. He said that to oppose her now in the slightest degree meant violence. That's how, how bad the relationship had become. So it was, I get the impression from this, this biographer, Paul Hendrickson, the book he wrote, by the way, is called Dreams and Furies of Frank Lloyd Wright. And it's like 600 pages, I believe. But he, he does not paint a very flattering picture of Miriam at all. No, no, not at all. And like I said, they, they were not good for each other. It seems like in 1924, after his divorce from Miriam, he gets married a third time to Olga Ivana. Her name was Olga. Henzenberg. She was married. She was a dancer. They met at a ballet where she was performing. And they actually had another kid. Frank had a seventh child with her, a little girl in 1925. And Miriam comes back, though, and kind of tries to wreck their marriage, too. Yeah, she, like, when they had their baby, she showed up at the hospital and made a scene, which is a pretty nasty move. She refused to give him a divorce. She, like, would talk to the papers about him. She teamed up with Olga's ex-husband or soon-to-be ex-husband. She definitely worked against him, but I guess eventually either got bored or was bought off or just kind of went away because, from what I can tell— So, Olga and Frank managed to carve out a happy married life for themselves from the 1920s—yeah, 1924 when they got married onward. I guess by the time—once Miriam left the picture, they were able to kind of settle in until Frank's death in 1959. Yeah, and Miriam actually got him arrested at one point under the Mann Act, M-A-N-N, which was a law, federal law, that prohibits transport of women and children across state lines. For the purposes of debauchery or prostitution. Yeah. And I'm not really sure how that happened. It did not stick, obviously. He spent a couple of nights in jail, and then the charges were dropped. But he went into a long, dry spell work-wise, did not get hired a ton over a certain period of time, and then from the 30s to 59, when he died, he did some of his best work, maybe perhaps of his career. Absolutely. It was during that time he did Taliesin West, which, like I said, you, me, and I went to. We went out to Scottsdale and visited with our friends Blair and Aaron out there, who are Scottsdale peeps. And we went to Taliesin, and it was just—Chuck, dude, have you been to that one? Haven't been to Taliesin West, no. It's really, really cool. Just the little—just so many details about it. And there's a lot of fountains, which is really refreshing in the desert. It's just a really great, neat little place, for sure. And little, I use that in the absolute wrong way. It's pretty big. It's cozy. It's a charming place, for sure. Yeah, and of course, he did the Guggenheim after that. Falling water was in there. He did falling water. Yeah. So it was a very productive period of his life. Maybe—should we do more on Frank Lloyd Wright in the future, or is this it? No, no. We'll do the In True Stuff You Should Know style and just chip away at different parts about his life. And then do a full biography on him years down the road. All right. That sounds good. I thought of another place I went, a Frank Lloyd Wright place. There's a Florida Southern College—or university, I'm sorry—is a Frank Lloyd Wright Design Campus. It's amazing. I'll have to check that out, too. You should check it out. There's like this really great covered walkway that you walk around everywhere, and it's just—it's really neat. You just feel immersed in Frank Lloyd Wright. It's not just, you know, one building or one house. It's a whole campus. I love it. If you want to know more about Frank Lloyd Wright, then just go out after the pandemic ends and start visiting some of his houses. And since I said after the pandemic ends, let's optimistically go on to Listener Mail. No, no, sir. No Listener Mail today. I think today we should take a little bit of an opportunity to talk for a few minutes about our book. Everyone's been really patient while we've plugged the presale of this book. I think by the time this comes out— Mm-hmm. The book will be out. Is that right? Is this after the 24th, probably? Yeah. Jerry can make it so. I think it is, but if not, it's just before. And I finally got the books delivered to my house in hardcover edition, and I got to hold it in my hand, as have you. And, dude, it's great. I'm really proud of the work that we did, along with Flatiron, our co-writer Nils, who's just an amazing dude. Yes, and our— Our illustrator, Carly Monardo, who did just an amazing job throughout the book of bringing, like, just passages that you didn't even think of just suddenly kind of came to life through her illustrations. Yeah, I mean, there's an illustration of Momo. There's an illustration of my daughter. Mm-hmm. There are nice little Easter eggs in there. You know, we haven't talked a lot about the contents of the book. There are—we had a lot of fun with the notes at the bottom, the footnotes. Uh-huh. It's really became kind of a fun part of the book. We mentioned—I don't even—at the lost count how many podcasts we mentioned, but we notate those in the end. Yeah, and there were plenty that we missed. Like, I did another, like—I shouldn't have done this, but I did another, like, fine-tooth comb, like, just scrape through of every word in the book. Of course you did. To see, you know, what podcasts we needed to link to, and I was like, oh, man, I found, like, 50 of these so far, and I emailed and was like, is it too late? I had to add footnotes or podcast footnotes, and they're like, yes, that time has come. As you were holding the book? So maybe in the second edition. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Can we get these reprinted? I have the number here, actually. We have listed in the book—or referenced in the book, we have 274 references to other podcasts. Mm-hmm. But here's a few of the chapters. We did one on Murphy beds, one on backmasking, one on aging, one on donuts. That's a great chapter. I love it. I love that chapter. What else? Kamikaze, demolition derbies. It's, like, stuff you should know in book form. It is, definitely. And as we've said, like, none of these are just, like, an entire podcast. It's more like, you know, we took maybe the history of something or, you know, just one aspect of one of the things and kind of dove into it and fleshed it out like that. So hopefully we'll be able to turn these into full-size, like, podcast episodes one day. That's kind of our intent. But even if we don't, I think the book, like, really— It really covers them in an enjoyable way. Totally. Jack Kevorkian. Mm-hmm. That was a good one, too. Keeping Up with the Joneses. That's one of my favorite ones. Yeah. Yeah. There's, like, 27 just amazing chapters in there. Each one's better than the last. And then, astoundingly, it starts back over, and somehow chapter one is better than chapter 27. But, you know, if you haven't bought it yet, I highly encourage you to. It makes a great gift, even if the person doesn't even know who we are. It's in the great tradition, I think, of the great bathroom readers. You can pick it up at any point in the book and read any chapter. And it's just a lot of fun. My daughter even likes it because of the pictures, and she loves looking at the back and going, there's you and Josh. I know. It's very cute. It is cute. So one other thing I want to say is, like, we really appreciate you guys who have already pre-ordered the book or who will buy the book or who bought the audio book that's available, too. But if you can't—if you're like, I just don't have the money right now, or I don't feel like spending the money, I just like the podcast, that's fine, too. Like, we're not mad at you. No. But we appreciate the people who have supported us by buying the book. So thank you very much to everybody who has or will buy our book, because that's very kind of you, and it means a lot to us. And you can look forward to a kids' version coming soon. Yes. Right? Yeah, eventually. We're taking the same 27 chapters and kiddifying it, but without being patronizing. So that'll be a really cool book. No, we're taking the swear words out. The chapter on Mezcal didn't make the cut in the kids' book. I know. I think—I mean, I think this book is appropriate for kids as young as, like, probably 12 years old. It's not like it's— Oh, yeah, 12. It's not like it's dirty or anything. It might just be a little advanced for younger kids. But we're going to make sure that the younger kids have their version, too. Yes. It'll make every 12-year-old who reads the adult book really want Mezcal. So anyway, thanks to everyone. Anyone who's bought it, it's called Stuff You Should Know, an incomplete compendium of mostly interesting things. You can get it wherever books are sold. Of course, we encourage you to buy from independent bookstores if you can to try and keep them in business. Yep, for sure. I guess that's it, huh? That's it. Okay. Well, thanks, everybody, for hearing us out about our book spiel. And if you bought the book or the audiobook, thank you. If you can't, again, we love you anyway. So don't worry about it. And if you want to get in touch with us, you can send us an email to stuffpodcast.com. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple Podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. I finally figured out my mom's superpower. It's Ear Tasker. Mom describes what she needs done. Then taskers make offers based on what she wants to spend. Now I know how her shelves got mounted, how her house stays clean, and how the yard is always neat while mom's busy working. She's definitely my favorite superhero. Download the Ear Tasker app and post a task for free. Ear Tasker. Get anything done. So, everyone on board? Yeah, I think so. You can't see it, but everyone in this room is nodding. They all agree the launch plan's perfect. But Julie has an idea how it can be even better. So she asks, Hey, Co-Pilot, gather the past three months of retail sales reports, surface key insights, oh, and build a deck outlining a partner strategy by tomorrow morning. Morning, team. I found a way to improve the plan. Check slide four. Get help with complex tasks with Copilot Cowork. Microsoft Copilot. Work lives on. Whether you're commanding the room or the open road, modern icons know it isn't just about going the distance. It's about how you arrive. 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