- The Lakota "Indrians" saw Lewis and Clark.
They're like, we're gonna fuck your shit up.
And so they were like, oh, we might need
to be dicks about this.
- Now, Williams Jennings Bryan was so excited.
- Oh, my God...
I'm gonna destroy you as a witness.
- And Dolly Parton thinks,
"Jolene," that is the name
of a fucking country and western song!
- I mean, have you heard my accent?
I mean, yeah, I guess it's pretty evident.
Somebody asks, you know, hey, man, where you from?
I'm like, man, I'm from fucking Nashville, dude.
I'm fucking... you know, where shit's happening.
- Yeah, this is a really, really big small town.
You see people on downtown Broadway,
and they've got, like, giant green-ass cowboy boots
and big fucking hats... they know how stupid they look.
They don't care. It's Nashville.
- You are a man. Holy shit.
Thank you, buddy.
That's a fucking cowboy right there.
- Hello.
Today, we're gonna talk about Dolly Parton
and Porter Wagoner.
Porter Wagoner had his own television show in Nashville.
On his show, he sang songs,
and he also had what they called "a girl singer"
named Norma Jean.
But Norma Jean left the show.
Enter Dolly Parton.
And Dolly Parton just thinks, oh, shit,
he heard the songs that I sent him for Norma Jean,
and wants me to write more songs.
And Porter Wagoner sits her down and is like,
hey, I want you to be on my show,
and you'll be the girl singer, 'cause you're a girl.
Over the course of the next six years,
they just, like, kill it.
13 duet albums, 18 hits, and everyone loves them.
And she wants to have a solo career,
but every time she writes a song,
he's like, you gotta do it this way.
I'm the boss. It's my fucking show.
You will do it how I say.
I'm Porter Wagoner. It's The Porter Wagoner Show.
You're my girl singer.
Okay, I guess I'll follow along 'cause I have to,
'cause you're the boss.
But her solo... Like, none of her songs
are doing that well in her solo career.
And one night, she signs an autograph
with this little auburn-haired girl.
She says, hey, darlin', what's your name?
And the girl says, Jolene.
And she says, Jolene?
Jolene!
Jolene, Jolene.
That is the name of a fucking country and western song!
And that is her first huge fucking hit.
Everyone is like, we like that song.
Dolly Parton.
So...
- They clapped.
- But they bought the record.
And now she's gotta tell Porter Wagoner
she's gotta go and do her own thing.
And she doesn't know how to tell him.
So she decides, I gotta write a song.
Because that's how... When you're Dolly Parton,
that's how you express yourself.
She sits him down, and she sings to him.
I will always love you...
I will always love you.
Fact...
It's probably the most beautiful song
that's ever been written.
And if you... if you listen to that song,
in the course of that song she makes this promise
to Porter Wagoner...
I will always love you.
And he says,
that is the most beautiful thing
I've ever heard in my life.
That's the best song you've ever written.
Of course you can go.
This is so fun.
This is the most fun I've ever had in my life.
I'm gonna literally Instagram this shit right now.
Where's my phone?
She goes to New York City,
and she walked straight into the RCA offices.
Yeah, it's me, Dolly Parton.
Here's what's about to happen.
I'm leaving The Porter Wagoner Show.
I'm getting brand-new producers.
I will be bridging country music and pop.
I'm gonna be in movies.
Are you in, or are you out?
Back me or back the fuck off.
And they're all like, cool, we're in.
Yeah. Absolutely, we're in.
Yeah, you're... yeah, you're fucking Dolly Parton.
Yeah, great. Let's do this shit.
And she does exactly what she said she would do
to those RCA executives.
She starts recording pop music.
And Porter Wagoner...
Porter Wagoner only thought about himself.
Porter Wagoner sues Dolly Parton.
Basically says, I want 15% of what you did,
I want 15% of what you're doing,
and I want 15% of what you're gonna do.
And Dolly Parton is like, fuck!
Porter Wagoner, just chill.
Chill out, man!
So she's like, let's settle out of court.
And Wagoner's like, cool, I'll take $1 million.
I'd like $1 million.
What does she do next?
Um, only makes her first movie.
Dolly Parton is making 9 to 5.
She's making Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.
She's crushing it.
Porter Wagoner, during this time,
he's off blowing money.
He's giving jewelry out to the women and shit like crazy.
He buys a fucking orange grove!
He owes the IRS $500,000.
But Dolly Parton made a promise to Porter Wagoner
that she would always love him.
And she did...
and buys his entire music catalogue from him
for millions of dollars.
She helped him out when he was destitute.
Finally, when he gets back on his feet,
Porter Wagoner tries to buy his music catalogue back
from Dolly.
And she sends him a fax, and the fax just says,
you can have it all back for free.
Love you, Dolly.
Oh, boy. I am real drunk.
In 2007, Dolly Parton has a premonition
that she needs to go to Porter Wagoner.
Porter Wagoner was dying.
She went to his death bed.
She sang to him.
And she lived up to that promise
until his, and I'm sure to her,
dying day.
- Williams Jenning Bryan says,
you scumbag!
You know what a fucking scumbag you're being right now!
- If you go and get a science textbook in Tennessee,
you still have an off chance of getting a sticker
that is right over the part that says "evolution."
I mean, we're not backwards, but people are religious.
- Hello.
Today, we're going to talk about the Scopes Monkey Trial.
In 1925, in Dayton, Tennessee,
the economy was tanking.
George Rappleyea was a lawyer.
One day, he saw an open letter in the newspaper.
The ACLU, which is a new organization,
offers to represent any teacher
that wants to challenge the new Tennessee state law
that forbids the teaching of evolution.
This gives George an idea.
Hey, if someone locally challenged this law,
it could become the trial of the century,
and it could help the economy in our shitty little town
that nobody knows about.
George Rappleyea, who I want to call "apple yay,"
because it's the only way I can remember his name.
Apple. Yay!
But his name is Rappleyea.
- Right. - Don't call him "apple yay."
Okay, I call him Rappleyea.
So they pitch this idea to John Scopes,
of the Scopes Monkey Trial.
Isn't it terrible that there's this law?
You're a science teacher.
- Yeah. I'm a football coach.
I also took...
I'm a football coach. I also teach a little science.
And I personally believe in evolution.
The ACLU, they hire the greatest defense attorney
probably ever... Clarence Darrow.
Public schools should teach science and facts.
That's... that's what I think.
William Jennings Bryan comes in to fight
for the Tennessee state statute, which he inspired.
You can't teach evolution.
Yeah, legally, you can't teach it.
On the first day of the Scopes Monkey Trial,
Williams Jenning Bryan...
Why does that not sound like I'm saying it right?
Williams...
Jenning...
Bryan...
says to the court,
if evolution wins, Christianity goes.
And to that, Clarence Darrow argued that,
Scopes isn't on trial.
Civilization is on trial.
This was like a boxing match.
This was the trial of the century,
and for the first time, people were able to hear a trial
on their radios.
There was a point in the trial
in which Clarence Darrow asked scientists to explain
the theory of evolution.
But the judge in the Scopes Monkey Trial
was John Raulston, and he believed,
I have been called on by God
to be the judge in this case.
So I don't care what all these scientists have to say.
They can't give testimony.
So Clarence Darrow decided,
okay, all of my witnesses, they can't give testimony,
so I'll ask someone who's an expert on the Bible
to give the testimony.
Hey... William Jennings Bryan.
I know you're on the other side of this case,
but why don't you go on the witness stand?
And I'll question you about the Bible.
Now, Williams Jenning Bryan was so excited about this.
He was like, oh, my God.
I'm gonna destroy you as a witness.
I will go on the witness stand.
Now, the judge didn't want him to do this.
The judge was presi... Prejudential.
When Clarence Darrow puts William Jennings Bryan
on the Bible, he asks,
do you believe all the stories of the Bible literally?
And the first answer of Williams Jenning Bryan is,
yes, the Bible is literal.
I believe in it literally.
And then, asking him specific questions...
Where did Cain's wife come from?
He made Adam and Eve, and then all of a sudden
there are other people, and Cain finds a wife.
Where did... where did Cain's wife come from?
Williams Jenning Bryan gets flustered and says,
well, I-I leave that up to you agnostics to find out.
That's all Clarence Darrow needed.
So you're not interpreting the Bible literally.
Clarence Darrow goes on to destroy
Williams Jenning Bryan on facts.
- Are you still spinning, or how do you feel?
- Well, I'm...
I'm dizzy. - Mm-hmm.
- I feel weird.
I feel like I think I know where I'm going, and then,
I get utterly confused about
where I thought I was going.
I know...
I'm gonna get Facebook responses for this.
This was the complete destruction
of Williams Jenning Bryan.
And Williams Jenning Bryan looks like a fool.
But Williams Jenning Bryan knows,
I have the most amazing closing argument to make.
- So the entire country listening to the radio agrees
Clarence Darrow just mopped the floor...
with Williams Jenning Bryan.
But Williams Jenning Bryan has
the most amazing closing argument to make.
Unfortunately for him, Clarence Darrow also knows
that he probably has a pretty amazing closing argument.
So when the judge asks, Clarence Darrow says,
I don't want to make a closing argument.
By law...
Williams Jenning Bryan
now cannot make his closing argument.
He was like, you scumbag!
You know what a fucking scumbag you're being right now.
He was just humiliated,
and now he can't even make the closing argument
he's been working on for the entire trial.
Because he knew that, at least in the minds
of those listening to the trial on the radio,
he had won, and that's all he wanted.
Because he knew he was gonna lose.
He wanted to lose so that a higher court could decide
on this bigger law.
Six days after the trial, Williams Jenning Bryan died,
and the press reported that Williams Jenning Bryan
didn't die of diabetes,
he died of a broken heart.
- Do you think they were right?
- No, I think he died of diabetes.
Perfect ending.
- What comes to mind about Lewis and Clark?
- Hey, man, they made the fucking trip!
I wish I had enough balls to fucking walk that far
and do what they done, you know?
I mean, that's hard-core.
Hello.
Today, we're gonna talk about Lewis and Clark.
- So Thomas Jefferson was president.
He's like, yeah, I'm gonna take...
I'm gonna double the expanse of America.
I don't know what's out there. - Yeah.
- I have no idea. - Well, what is out there?
- I'm gonna buy it.
So he bought it, and then he had this dude who was his friend
named... - Meriwether Lewis.
- Jefferson is telling them, we bought this land.
Explore it. Make me a map.
Here's your deal.
- Like a bank, make friends with the fucking Indians.
- Here's the deal with Meriwether Lewis, though.
He was such a bummer.
- He was such a bummer. - He was such a bummer.
So Lewis is tasked with picking a partner,
and he picked Clark.
Uh, Lewis says, like,
there's no one I would rather explore
this fucked up territory with than you.
They wanted to find a waterway passage
to the Pacific Ocean.
So they started in Missouri.
- They're seeing these beautiful fucking,
like, valleys and rivers and mountains
and gorgeous rock faces and valleys,
and these crazy plains that go on forever.
And there they fucking are.
- So they were like, this is ours now
because we bought it from the fucking French.
- So they're on the river, and they hear,
the next tribe over are assholes!
- They're... dude. They're total dicks.
I remember this, yeah.
- The Lakota "Indrians" saw Lewis and Clark,
and they were ready to kill them.
They were like,
we're gonna fuck your shit up.
And so they were like, oh, we might need
to be dicks about this.
- The chief of the Lakota tribe sees that it's about to be
a stab-on-stab brawl at the riverbank,
and he says, everyone chill out.
Chill out. You know what?
You guys can stay, as long as the women and children
come and look at you.
- Ew, that's creepy.
- They were able to stay with the Lakota tribe
for almost two weeks.
And so each of Lewis and Clark's men
got, like, four wives. - Yeah, they were like,
later days, I'm gonna go check out these...
- Like, hookers. - All the hooker wives.
- And sure enough, everyone on the expedition...
- They got fucking crazy STDs.
- Crazy VD. And Lewis,
he would have to give them a mercury tonic.
- Mercury on your genitals! Come on!
- It's crazy poisonous!
- I don't mean to, like, complain,
but that sounds awful.
They'd gone 1,000 miles.
They still had 1,000 miles more
before they even got to the coast.
And they stop at the Hidatsa and Mandan tribes.
One particular squaw...
Her name was Sukod-go-weeya...
She was 16 years old. - Let's call her Sacagawea.
- Here's the deal, Sukod-go-weeya,
she joined Corps of Discovery
along with her French fur trader husband,
who maybe won her in a bet.
She said,
I'm the only person that speaks any language,
I'm pregnant as fuck,
I'm gonna have this baby, I'm gonna help you.
Oh, no, I'm starting to get the spins.
Do you have the spins? - No, I'm good.
- I do. - So we... the man...
So the Mandan tribe was very kind to the...
Lewis and Clark tribe.
They got to the source of the Missouri River,
which was like a trickle.
Okay.
- Bless you. - Thank you.
Where is the Northwest Passage?
This is the source of the Missouri River?
Are you kidding?
I've been following this for 1,000 fucking miles!
Wait, wait, wait.
Meriwether, are you okay?
- They realized at that point,
they saw mountains upon mountains upon mountains.
They had to get horses.
- Ah, this is a fucking great epic journey!
- Really? Two fingers?
Oh, one. Oh, okay, one.
Okay, good. - Just onesies.
- Mm-hmm.
On his 31st birthday,
Lewis wrote in his journal that,
I have not done enough for the American people.
I have not made myself proud.
He felt like he hadn't done anything of worth.
- And that sucks.
He should be stoked on his life, and he's not.
He's fucking depressed as shit.
Which I fucking get as a human in Los Angeles.
- They finally, finally... After what, like, two years...
They find the shore of Oregon.
It was an ocean unlike anything they expected.
And they are weeping with tears.
Like, oh, oh, exclamation party!
Joy! - Oh, joy!
The sea! - We found it.
We found the sea.
- Who gives a shit?
You're so drunk!
- You're drunk, you fucking whore.
- They came back afterward, and when they got back,
it was like, yay!
- But you didn't do this one thing.
Madison was like this:
Can... can you real quick go fuck yourself?
- He essentially was like, give me the journals.
No, you cannot have money.
And Lewis was like, I can't deal with this!
- So Meriwether Lewis is in a cabin in Tennessee,
and he just gives up.
And then, two gunshot wounds later...
he's dead.
- I think Meriwether Lewis...
Lewis Meriwether... Killed himself.
- Personally, I think Meri... Meriwether Lewis was killed.
Who shoots themselves twice in the head?
- Manic depressives. - Explain to me...
how someone shoots themself twice in the fucking head.
- Well, you do this.
You sit in a fucking dumb-ass cabin in Tennessee...
- Uh-huh. Uh-huh.
- And you think, I didn't do shit with my life.
- Sure, sure, sure.
- Clark, my best friend, has a wife and kids named after me.
- Yeah, yeah. Oh, it's crazy. - I have nothing.
People think I'm gay. - So, like, I'm good.
- You shoot yourself in the head.
- I'm good. I'm done. I'm good.
- I feel like Lewis is like if Morrissey had a blog
and a canoe.
Don't know how my shirt became totally unbuttoned.
I didn't... I didn't unbutton a button.
- Oh, you're gonna say we did it, right?
- None of them are buttoned. - Legal.
- Thanks, button fairy.
Ugh. - Here's the thing.
Who gives a fuck?