Stuff You Should KnowWhen a man named Cliff packaged book summaries in yellow and black booklets he changed the way kids learned. But was he just creating a cheat code?
Welcome to stuff you should know a production of iHeartRadio.
Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too. And this is the brief overview of Cliff Notes.
We're not going to do the Exhausted Encyclopedia documentary length Cliff's Notes episode.
Nope, we are doing the brief overview of Cliff's Notes. I said it wrong the first time. It's never been cliff notes. It's Cliff's notes.
Yeah, I mean the first thing we should probably say, because Jerry and the pre show banter even got it wrong. Even though I said, Jerry, we're doing an episode on Cliff's notes. She said, I used to get cliff notes. It's not cliff notes. I used to say cliff notes too in high school. But it is Cliff's notes, as in the person's nameless Cliff. As we'll soon found find out. It used to an apostrophe, then it just became cliffs two words notes without an apostrophe. Then it became cliffs notes all one word, but with that end capitalized.
So stylish.
But it has never been cliff notes.
No, but everyone basically in the world calls it cliff.
Notes, right, and we should tell everyone what this is. If you don't know, I do know that they went around the world a little bit, but it feels like a very American thing. It is a study aid. It's basically sort of I was about to say a cliffs Notes version of the book, because it's so in the lexicon now. But it's like if you went to read a book in high school in the eighties, like The Scarlet Letter, and you're like, oh God, do I really have to read the Scarlet Letter? You would go to a store and you would buy this yellow and black, very thin pamphlet. I don't remember how much they were then, they're only about eight ninety nine now. Yeah, And it would contextualize the work. It would summarize the work, give the character descriptions, basically everything you needed to know the night before to pass the test or write the paper.
Yeah, and like you said, it's entered the lexicon. Most people can recognize it just that from that yellow and black cover it looks like a minute Work album cover. Yeah, or Striper Striper, Yes, very nice. Maybe that's where Striper got it maybe. And then yeah, most people in America know what we're talking about. I do wonder how well known it is around the world, though.
I mean, I think it ended up going to thirty nine countries. But it just feels like a very lazy American thing, especially for gen xers, to be like, I'll just get that and that's fine.
Yeah, because it's been long, basically from the outset, criticized for being this thing that students read and use instead of actually reading the material, the book that they're supposed to read. That actually ran a foul. I guess of what the guy who invented these things intent was. He always said, no, this is not what that's for. You're supposed to read the regular book. You're supposed to read the Scarlet Letter, Chuck, and whether you like it or not doesn't matter. And then you get the cliffs notes and you understand it that much more fully. That was the point.
That's right. And of course we're talking about Keith Hilla Gas. Oh I'm kidding. Clifton Heath kill A Gas. His name was cliff a gentleman was a true corn Huskers. We'll see. He was born in nineteen eighteen out in the rural sticks of Nebraska. His father was a mail carrier and he was a very smart kid, and I would assume a smart adult because he studied physics and math at Midland Lutheran College and then was going to grad school for physics and geology at the University of Nebraska, Go corn Huskers, Okay, but dropped out in nineteen thirty nine to marry a classmate named Katherine Gallbraith, at which time he got a job at Long's College Books as a clerk, and that company would later become the Nebraska Book Company.
Yeah, so, long story short, Cliff Hill of Gas was a very smart guy. I saw that he was said to read five books a week basically his whole life.
Or did he just read five quick summaries?
I don't know. I just don't know because he's dead now and we can't ask him.
That's right. But he worked at the NBC Nebraska Book Company up until World War Two when he went to the Army. He was a meteorologist for the Army Air Corps. So again, pretty smart dude ended up a captain and his wife, Catherine, worked as a clerk for the Manhattan Project, so she was sharp as attack as well.
Yeah. Also, I want to give big ups. Are we still saying big ups? Heck.
Yeah, man, we're old people. We can say whatever we want.
I want to give big ups to Olivia who helped us out with this, because there is not a lot of information on cliff Notes out there. Yeah, it's like it's just not out there. You can get like the like appropriately enough to brief overview of cliff Notes in its history, but to really dig in and get the details, you got to get out there. So thanks to her for that.
She did it. I think she broke into the estate of the Hillo Gas estate and stole a diary. She did, I think so.
Yeah. And then also I want to give big ups to Mental Flows too because they did some really good reporting on it, to some good digging.
Yeah for sure. All right. So back to Cliff Hillogas he was in the army. Then after the war he went back to his old job at the Nebraska Book Company.
And we knew you'd be crawling back.
Yeah, And he helped transform them into a wholesale textbook distributor, and he ended up sort of traveling all over the country buying and selling used textbooks. When a little trip to Toronto, Canada ended up being quite a good thing for the course of his life, right.
Yeah, depending on who you're talking about. It wasn't that good of a thing for named Jack Cole, the guy who we had dinner with in Toronto, who was a bookstore owner. And Jack Cole was like, hey, man, I'm gonna let you in on this business opportunity. I have these condensed pamphlets that basically are analysis of Shakespeare's place. I publish sixteen of them, and I think the quote from Cliff Hillogas was Jack Cole said yes, I know, yeah, he said, I want you to be the American distributor of these pamphlets, which I call Cole's Notes. And Clifton Hilligas said, all right, I'll give it a shot, and started selling these things, publishing them and selling them in America. And what happened from Cole's Notes.
Chuck, Well, the first thing we should say is he took a great risk. And I'm not like, you know, weighing in one way or the other of the ethics of any of this. But Hillogas did take upon great financial risks. Huh. He got a loan for four thousand dollars to make this happen close to fifty grand today, and printed up thirty three thousand copies of these Cole's Notes himself, and he and his wife Catherine and their three young kids, like packed and shipped these things in their house, out of their home for a little while, and we're selling pretty good. And then what happened.
Josh, Well, yeah, so they were paying royalties to Jet Cole. That was the setup, and within the first year, I guess Hilla Gas was like nuts to that, I'm just going to rename these things cliff Notes Cliffs Notes. So they went from Cole's Notes to cliffs Notes. I think the Cole was heard to say and Cliff was like, I can't hear you. I'm done in Nebraska. So I just see people gloss over this all the time like it's I just don't understand why it's not at all controversial because he clearly just took he just lifted the intellectual property of Jet Cole and took it as his own. To be fair, he re wrote and phased out the Cole's Note stuff, but the whole concept and even basically the name was the same.
Yeah, I would argue that maybe the name is intellectual property, but I think in a court of law a judge would say, like you can't claim like doing a condensed version of a book as like an original idea that no one else can do, because there were summaries before this. They didn't invent the idea of a literary summary, you know what I'm saying.
Yeah, but if law and Order has taught me anything, it's that you can't predict what a judge is going to rule.
No, that's true, but and I do. I'm not like going to bat for Cliff. I'm just saying that I don't think that's one of those ideas you can say, like I hold the idea for condensing a long novel into a shorter version.
No, I understand, And I'm not trying to like gun him down. I just hadn't gotten my gotcha today, so that was right.
I do feel bad for Cole though, if it helps.
I do too, and nowhere what his his his reaction was or what he did. I made up his quote of that was right. But yeah, everybody just walks right past that stuff.
Yeah for sure.
And I refuse to well people.
I feel like everyone is called out online for doing something like this, but old old Cliff gets a pass, I guess because everyone got through school because of him.
Yeah, that's the thing. So, yeah, this is not to paint him as a bad guy. If you want to know about him. He treasured letters that he got from students thanking him for helping them get through school, which you and I can attest. Getting a letter and email like that is really great. So I guess that makes us really great too. If I'm saying that that makes him a good guy, that's wonderful. That really worked out.
Yeah, he sold a lot of these pretty quickly, though. I do like how Olivia, but he gradually phased out the original material, right, It seemed like that happened within that first year. Yeah, but he was I also couldn't find when he stopped paying the royalties. It was that during the first year or two.
I'm guessing when it became cliff notes. He yeah, stopped paying royalty probably right.
But nevertheless, between the start of when he started doing that in August of nineteen fifty eight and just yet six months six months later, at the end of that year, he had sold fifty eight thousand copies of these book summaries and pamphlets, and by nineteen sixty four, but six years later, he was doing it. He was doing all this on the side from the Nebraska Book Company. He was able to quit that job by sixty four, and just the sixties were a big decade period. He quit that job in sixty four. He changed the name in the sixties from Cliff's Notes without the apostrophe to cliffs Notes, Big, big deal. And then he got divorced in nineteen sixty six and got remarried.
Yeah. Later on he got remarried to a woman named Mary. Yeah, and I guess he adopted her two kids. Another thing that shows he's a stand up guy. Really, the only blemish on his entire lifetime is how he treated Jack Cole.
That's true. But did those kids biological father get royalties on those children?
Named them Cliff's kids. They were originally Jack Cole's because he stole his wife Mary.
Oh man uh, And everyone just glosses right over there. Should we take a break? Sure, all right, we'll take an early break here because this one's probably a little bit shorter, and we'll talk about the early days of that company right after this.
We los so much stuff from Josh and shuck stuff futi. So we should say, despite legendarily reading five books a week, Hilly guests didn't write any of the cliffs notes. He was more like the business guy. He Yeah, he had the ide you would put in scare quotes, and he was running the whole operation. He had the vision for it, right, So he hired other people and initially hired literature teachers like hardcore, like hardcore, like they have crew cuts and wear like army boots and stuff like that kind of lit teacher. But he realized something very quickly that I'm sure developed. A hardcore lit teacher who's been teaching the same books, been teaching a Scarlet Letter for I think we should not mention a single other book besides a Scarlet Letter in this episode. What do you think?
Agreed?
All right, let's give it a shot. These hardcore lit teachers who have been teaching a Scarlet Letter or the Scarlet Letter, sorry for twenty years. Technically I just named another book, Chuck for twenty years. These people know too much, They understand the book too well, they know all the details that they just get mired down when they're writing a synopsis or something. It's just too intense for the audience, which is high school and call it reads usually undergrad readers.
Yeah, he was like, well, pump your brakes. I'm trying to sell these to lazy kids, exactly like broad Overview. Please. He ended up with grad students, mainly saying that they did the best work, which makes sense too, that's right. But we mentioned the iconic yellow and black design. That was something Cliff thought of himself. I remember the Mountain Cliffs even being on the editions I had when I was, you know, a student in the eighties. I don't think they have that anymore, but they have these yellow and black stripes. They just it looks. I mean, it's a genius branding move, just to do that simple little thing. Because Cliff's Notes were so identifiable from from across a bookstore the night before a test or something, you could zoom over to that, that spinning rack of yellow and black pamphlets.
Yeah, they would. You'd walk in the bookstore and they'd call to you, don't bother come by, Yeah, exactly. So one of the big things. I didn't know this, but one of the big reasons Cliff Notes became the brand that it is today, which is to say iconic, is because they advertised a lot in the sixties and they very wisely went to where their readership was. They advertised in seventeen, they advertised in Playboy, they advertised in well, the Scholastic Journal. I don't know how much of a return on investment they got on that. But they also advertise in college newspapers bingo. Yeah, and so like if you're if you're going to high schoolers and college kids and saying, hey, we have something that you it's going to keep you from having to read a scarlet letter, the scarlet letter, like don't you want that? And they say, yes, I want that so bad. Like it just it just rooted that business and simultaneously made it take off like a rocket.
That's right. And you would open up the scarlet letter Cliff notes and it would say the letter is a the end.
That's why I keep a scarlet letter.
Yeah, probably could is it is literally a A for awesome, No, not quite. One thing Cliff had in his corner was all his work for the Nebraska Book Company and being a traveling salesperson and all these relationships he had with bookstores because he owned the market for this eighty percent of the market for guides to literature belonged to Cliff. Because that was just it. I mean I think I think for a long time, I mean, competitors would come along, and we'll talk about that, but I think he had a number of years, maybe even decades, where everyone was just like, well, no, there's already cliff Notes, Like why even bother m.
He owns it, right, That wasn't enough to keep people from coming along as competitors. But it does seem like they really didn't start to emerge until much much later in history. Yeah, like decades and decades on.
Yeah, for sure.
One of the things that cliss Notes have long been criticized for, though, is like they write they write the book on the scarlet letter, and that's that. Like what you are reading could have been written by a grad student in nineteen sixty eight, even though you just bought this thing like last week. That's not the case any longer. It's changed hands, and as it's changed hands several times, they've definitely been dusted off and brushed up in all those idioms. But for a very long time it was like this is really old fashioned stuff, especially like the language they use, the points they're making a lot of. One of the things that cliss Notes was known for is putting works of literature specifically the Scarlet Letter into a historical context, and that can change as people understand history more. But if you don't go update it, it's the understanding of it.
Eighteen sixty eight, Yeah, for sure. You know we mentioned the sixties. You just mentioned sixty eight for crying out loud. Yeah, being a kind of a big decade for the business. It was toward the end of that decade that things got a little rocky. It was around nineteen sixty nine that a couple of things happened to sort of dampen the business, I guess a little bit. And this is something I didn't know, but apparently starting in nineteen sixty nine and through the first, you know, bit of the seventies, the classics people are like, Hey, all these new teachers came along and're like, hey, we don't need to read the Scarlett Letter anymore. We're going to read another unnamed book that's a little more current. And so the classics kind of fell off a little bit. And apparently a lot of high schools and colleges started the past fail thing. So a kid wasn't as incentivized to ace a test, they were just incentivized to pass a test. So They're like, I don't even need the cliff notes. I can just kind of fake my way through and pass this thing. As a result, they dropped about a million bucks a year in sales up until like the mid seventies, when they were like, oh my god, what were we thinking. We got to put the scarlet letterback on the reading list, and we have to grade these kids according to their grade. This past failed thing is not doing anyone any favors.
It's chaos.
It's chaos.
Yeah. Not only did they drop a million in sales, they dropped a million units in the middle.
I thought that was sales.
No, Like, the number of sales that they made dropped from two point eight million to one point eight million.
Oh, I was pretty sure that was dollars. But and I'm sure if you're positive that it's units, I will move on.
Seventy eight percent positive.
Oh okay, Well that tracks because I was twenty two percent pots okay.
Yeah. And Cliff Hill of Gas was like, you hippies right for that huge loss in sales for the mid seventies. Yeah. So there was another stumble that they made Cliff's cassettes, which was a good idea if you ask me, totally. It was cliff Notes, but in a cassette version that your kids could pop into their Walkman and walk around listening to you.
Want to be lazier in?
Yeah, exactly. You don't even have to walk around. You can lay there and listen to this stuff with your eyes closed, in your hands soaking in Paul Mallin.
If you don't want to read the Scarlet Letter, and you don't want to read the forty seven page summary, how about you just pop in that cassette and lay on your bed and smoke some.
Grass, yeah, and listen to Ed Asner tell you what the Scarlet Letter means.
Oh boy, was that planned or did you just come up with that ad?
I just came up with that.
Oh that's so great. This was only about a six month thing. It did not go over well despite being a pretty good idea that got me thinking about just audio books or books on tape and when that was a thing. Apparently that started in nineteen thirty two. Oh yeah, yeah, the American Foundation for the Blind opened up a recording studio, So it was a thing, but I feel like it didn't really take off until much, much, much later.
Until the Walkman. Did you have a Walkman by the way.
Ah, yeah, of course I did.
Nice. I did too. I associated specifically with my cassette of Huey Lewis and the News.
Sports one of the great records of all time.
Yeah, it is really good.
I don't think I ever had a disc man.
I didn't either.
I think I went straight from Walkman to cheese. I guess iPod as far as walking around.
Oh yeah, I never had an iPod. I went from Walkman to iPhone.
I guess I had the first iPod.
Wow.
So yeah, I had the first, not the you know, not Steve Jobs's iPod, but you know, the first, the first edition. I still have it. It still works.
Oh do you really? Wow, that's really saying something.
Yeah. I put pictures of it on my Instagram not too long ago actually, because I found it, charged it, and I just put up the opening screen because you know, the first Walkman had everything in alphabetical order just on the screen when he opened it. Yeah, and boy it was eight, eight or nine bands locked in time from I guess like two thousand or something whatever that was.
Yeah, I didn't have one of those.
I'm sorry. I'm gonna get you a maybe a Nano no need.
Those things were tiny though. They were like the size of a thumb of steak.
Yeah, or a square of chocolate.
Actually, yeah, there you ca Yeah, we'll keep going right.
Yeah. I mentioned Hillograss was a true corn Husker. He kept that company in Nebraska. He felt very strongly about that and donated ten percent of its profits to Nebraska organizations. Was a big curator of the art, So the Museum of Nebraska Art was a big one that benefited from his stealing that idea from coal and they have. If you've ever looked up, like, hey, what does this guy look like? Anyway, you might see a bronze statue of him, and that is from that Museum of Nebraska Art.
Yeah, he's standing up in some bushes like a creep with a book open.
What else? What happened in nineteen eighty three?
He this is this? This? I think this also kind of puts a certain like that it paints a picture of this guy. That's what I'm trying to say. At age sixty five on the dot, he retires, Okay, yeah, like that's just the kind of guy he was. But he didn't actually retire. He just stepped down from company president to the head of the board of directors. Yeah, and he still went into the office every day.
Yeah, and he instead of calling him mister hilligas they said, you can come a cliff.
Right, he would show up in like a smoking jacket and ascot after he retired.
Exactly, but he'd still called the shots.
Right. But that's just I mean, I can totally because don't forget he was trained in geology, math physics, like he had a certain way of looking at things for sure.
Yeah. That a couple of years later, in nineteen eighty five, that was a Chicago Tribune article. So this is mid eighties. They had a staff of about twenty five people, and they had published two hundred and twenty five five guide books or book guides rather sixty million copies in circulation. And yes, I nailed it, thirty nine countries in circulation, and apparently there were some countries that used them to help teach American English in different.
Countries, sure, especially the English used by Americans. In nineteen sixty.
Eight, that's right. By the end of the eighties they were taking in about eleven million bucks a year, which is pretty good. Scratch it, just about twenty eight today twenty eight million. Yeah, that's even better scratch, And by the end of the millennium in nineteen ninety nine, at the age of eighty one, he sold it off. He was like, all right, I'm eighty one. I want to live out my remaining years as a super rich guy and not just a medium rich guy. So he sold to IDG Books, who was a publisher of the Four Dummies guides that everyone knows, and he sold for only fourteen million, which kind of surprises me. Fully retired and sadly died a couple of years later at eighty three from complications of stroke.
I've always wondered what that is like guys in particular, retiring and then dying like very soon after that. It's kind of a thing. And even if you don't die, you can, like a lot of people just get like really sick for a while afterwards. And I don't know if it's like you've been running on adrenaline last five years or what the deal is, but it's like when you finally your body finally resets, like I don't have to go to work anymore. Something happens to you.
Are you saying this personally to me? So I, yep, can consider this as I.
Wait my future retiring choke.
It was bought and sold a few more times, though. In two thousand and one, John Wiley and Son's bought the brand. They changed the name this time. This is when they squashed it together as Cliff's Notes with the Capitol NY. Then Houghton Mifflin Harcourt bought it in twenty twelve, and then Course Hero bought it in twenty one.
Yeah, yeah, that makes sense to courts heroes a online tutor. Essentially, they have courses and their heroes for it.
And one final thing before we take the break, is it is I think the New York Times and the Early aughts did a report and they found that it's not just lazy high school kids that are buying these books. They found out it's lazy adults in book clubs. They want to participate in the book club, but they maybe don't have the time to read the Scarlet Letter, so they'll get the cliff Notes so they can go and have some wine and talk about the abridged version.
Right, you can tell the ones that read the cliff Notes of the Scarlet Letter because they're the ones who thought it was really good.
That's right, And it's also the yellow and black is sticking out from their fanny.
Fact, they have a little piece of it in their teeth.
Right, all right, shall we take our second break? Yes, all right, we'll be back and pick up on where we are today with Cliff and his notes. We loss so much stuff from Josh and Shook.
Still fui.
All right, as promised, we're going to talk about Cliffs Notes today. You can still buy these pamphlets. Like I said, I looked up online if you want to buy the scarlet letter and hold it in your hand. I think it was eight ninety nine somewhere a little less. But they're kind of in that ballpark.
Aren't they used? Though they're not newly printed.
I don't know. I mean they saw them on Amazon that still could be used.
I guess that was my take that they're used, But who knows.
Maybe I do know that their main source of income now is the website that offers most of this stuff for free, which is weird that they also have a fee model.
Yeah, so you can subscribe to Cliffs Notes today for I think nine dollars a month or thirty six bucks a year, and you get all of the free stuff, but you can also download it as a PDF, so if you learned better by like reading on print or on paper, you would need to do that. But they also have other stuff too. There's like much more in depth guides and analysis and stuff like that behind their paywall. So it's not like you're just a total sucker for paying for free cliffs Notes, because they have a bunch of stuff that's not just free.
Yeah, and I got, we're not going to go through this list, but Olivia was kind enough, I think because she needed to fulfill a word count to list out what you get in the actual free version of let's say, the Scarlet Letter. And my take is that you get a pretty good like summary and chapter by chapter thing and character analysis and all that stuff. But it's just even a lesser version than the more or robust paid monthly.
Right, and I mean it's even more. It's like there's pretty good detail in it. Like for their their analysis of The Scarlet Letter, they talk about how the Scarlet Letter fits into dystopian fiction in general, yeah, or how Big Brother in the Scarlet Letter can be compared to Hitler stallin yeh, or when hester Prinne develops news speak, what all that means.
Yeah, exactly, an a biography of George Orwell, the writer of the Scarlet Letter.
That's right. Yeah, there's a bunch of stuff. I went in and poked around, and it is a lot of free stuff. Like you could write a numerous really good slam dunk papers on the Scarlet Letter just from the free stuff that they have available. So I'm a little curious too what their business model is, because it doesn't really make sense to me unless it's a portal two course Hero. Now that I think about it, I'll bet it is. I'll bet they get you with the free stuff and then they get you into course Hero, and they turn you upside down and shake you by your ankles until all the change falls out of your pockets?
Do you want to be a better student for nine books a month? So we should talk a little bit more about the elephant in the room, which is that this is just a way for kids to cheat. I mean, the other elephant is we haven't discussed our own cliff notes. Cliff notes use I will volunteer my own. You don't have to answer, I've never used them. Okay, Well, go ahead and just make me look bad right before I say that I leaned on them.
No worse than that. I never I didn't even bother to use the cliff notes. I didn't read the material either.
Oh.
I was just a really, really lame high school student. In high school, I was not good at all. I didn't blossom until college.
Okay, I do remember that now. But you were setting me up to look like a chump.
I No, I didn't saved you, thank you like hester I did it in the Scarlet Letter.
That's right. I did use cliff notes, not exclude. I was always a believer, and this is not right, kids of I love to read. I was an English major, for heaven's sake. No, so I love to read, but I wanted to read what I wanted to read. Emily still sort of challenges me, not on just reading, but like Chuck only does what he wants to do, that kind of thing. That's not the best trade, everybody, you should not be like Chuck. But I wanted to read what I wanted to read. I didn't want to read the Scarlet Letter. So I got the cliffs notes and you know, probably peruse the Scarlet Letter. The books that I was like, I totally want to read that I can't think of another book.
Title, the Scarlet Letter.
Yeah, I would read that Scarlet Letter. I wouldn't read the one they assigned to me. So I did use cliff notes. I did that was in high school. Did not use them in college as an English major because I felt like it was time to get a little more serious and I chose that major willingly, so I should probably do the work. And that was only work in college I really really enjoyed was reading and writing. So I didn't use him in college. But all that to say, the elephant in the room is like, is this just for lazy kids? And you mentioned that Hilligas was like no, but how would he enforce that or encourage that?
Rather with a stern note? Yeah, at the beginning of every copy of cliff Notes, he had a little note. His signature was next to it too. He said that a thorough appreciation of literature allows no shortcuts, and students who use them to avoid reading the actual material or having to go into class for discussion groups about the material are denying themselves the very education that they are presumably giving their most vital years to achieve. And I feel like he took a bit of an utopian approach to how he viewed his customers. But surely there was some out there. I do wonder if there was a single cliff Notes buyer who read that note and was like, you know what, I'm going to change my wage. I'm abusing these things.
I doubt it, but I'm sure there were students like I did, at times where a book was a little over their head and they used the cliff Notes as intended to help with the book.
I saw also that some teachers did that. They actually suggested cliffs Notes for some students, which meant that your teacher thought you were a dip stick.
Well. Teachers also were on record as using it for lesson planning, sometimes because they didn't want to read the scarlet letter either.
That's really hilarious. That's so missus Kravopple, it totally is. And then a lot of them actually used cliff Notes for the opposite reasons. They would know like like, if you're a high school English teacher, there's a handful of the scarlet letters that you've assigned during the year, and you assigned the same scarlet letters over and over again, year after year, so you probably know the cliffs Notes on those things. By heart, so you can very easily pick out when somebody is not only using the cliffs Notes, but way worse than that, it's actually plagiarizing the cliffs Notes. That was the low laziest thing you could possibly do. Prior to chat GPT writing your your paper for you.
Yeah, this is coming from two gen xers, and we wrote the book on how to get away with lazy.
Yeah. I didn't even read the material or the cliffs Notes. That's pretty lazy.
Yeah. Certain universities took charge. In nineteen ninety seven, Villanova pulled cliff Notes from their college bookstore. Other bookstores maybe didn't sell them, but they're the only one that Livy could find at least that actually pulled them off the shelves.
Yeah. They were famously sent in a hit squad that ended up trashing the bookstore and tore up all of the cliffs Notes. And when they left, they threw flash bang grenades into the bookstore as they take.
Off, and yellow h Hut Cliff did not like this, and they took out a full page ad. I guess he was passed away by this point, but the company didn't like this, and they took an ad in the Villanova student newspaper called it censorship, and the college just like they can still mind these things anywhere. This is sort of a symbolic gesture calm down.
Yeah, we kind of touched on and we didn't say it like overtly, But there were a lot of teachers out there who were okay with cliff Notes, and some who even encouraged their use. That seems to have come along like a generation after cliffs Notes came out, which is not coincidental because a lot of those people who grew up to be English teachers and English professors used cliff Notes when they went through school themselves, so at the very least they had a certain fondness of it, and at best they were like, this is actually super helpful as a reference material.
Yeah, for sure. And if you have a set of cliffs Notes that you have read recently from later in the company's story, you're like, hey, man, I didn't see any note from cliff saying these aren't shortcuts. Ps enjoyed the shortcut. This didn't have anything in it. I think the minute he sold that company, they were like, let's get rid of that note. Yeah, it's a real dragon. Not only that, like our advertising should actively encourage the fact that this is a shortcut.
Yeah, that's pretty much what they did.
Let's own it.
Yeah, and they did own it. I think they kind of walked it back a little bit, so there's like a watered down version of his note essentially saying the same thing. But they definitely did. They said the the unspoken part out loud. I guess is how they put it.
Yeah, for sure. Is this Here's the big question though, and I'm glad Livia posed this question, like is it bad to use cliffs notes and the very idea of like do kids need to read the Scarlet Letter or is the only reason they're reading the Scarlet Letter to just not look like a dipstick when someone brings up the Scarlet Letter, like do you just need to be acquainted with this stuff as a cultural touch point in life or to get a Jeopardy answer correct or I'm sorry, Jeopardy clue correct.
Man.
We almost got our membership provoked. And you know this is me speaking. I think, yeah, like you should read these books, and a lot of people are on record saying yeah, I mean, not necessarily just a scarlet letter, but it's called I believe there's a literature scholar from the University of Kentucky named Alan Nadell that calls it the labor of witnessing, Like to actually read the thing is the thing. It's not reading the Wikipedia, I think that was. She found a redditor East t X Josh that said, it's like reading the Wikipedia on Beethoven's ninth but not listening to it. There's something about experiencing the thing that is different and valuable.
Yeah. Yeah, and reading all this chuck made me realize how much I missed out by not reading all those books in high school. You still can, buddy, right, So I went on a couple of like I searched books you should read before you die, and that brought up humorous lists, and there's some that appear on all the lists. And I'm still searching for which the Scarlet Letter I'm going to read?
Right, but single book?
Yeah, if you have any recommendations for one to start with, let me know.
Well, you know it would be fun. As our mutual friend Joey Siara of the Henry Clay People who are friends, who wrote that and performed the theme song to our television show and still a good friend. I'm going to see he's going to Glengarry with me this weekend.
Very nice.
He is a Moby Dick aficionado and collects copies and versions of that, and he said that is the best book of all time. He said, it's not my favorite book. He said, it's the best book.
You mean the Scarlet Letter, the one with the Great White Way.
Oh, that's right, I got the name wrong. I'm so sorry.
Yeah, all right, yeah, I saw that one and I was like, I don't know, I read It'd be fun if we both read that, Okay. I have a feeling you're going to be like, you're still reading that two years from now.
But well, let's put it this way. Joey gave me a copy probably two years ago, and it sits untouched.
Okay, Shell, all right, do you give me a two year head start and then you start and we'll finish at the same time and talk about it.
I gotta put down this Mike Campbell book of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, and the Rim one before that, and the mud Honey one before that I'll read is these rock books. I need to put them all away. And by the way, those are all called The Scarlet Letter. My story in Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.
Right, and also Chuck, I mean, if rock and Roll rot your brain reading about rock and roll really does?
Should we mention one more point that teachers make or I'm sorry that a problem with study guides. Some people are like, hey, these study guys just give you one lens look through to view this thing. And what you need to do is read the book and go to a class and hear it from a teacher. But some people say, yeah, but that teacher is just looking at it through their lens. I disagree. As an English major, in my classes, the teacher would present perhaps their analysis, and then say this is what other people think, and what do you think?
Right? And you have to have read the cliffs Notes to say you think. What else you want to talk about any of these parodies or spin offs or competitors?
Yeah, I mean we can just mention kind of quickly. Spark Notes became the biggest competitor in like nineteen ninety nine. There's one called Schmoop found it in two thousand and eight that became a pretty good competitor.
That's pretty good. I went and read some of their stuff. It's much more loosely written, like what's up with YadA YadA YadA. Oh really, what's up with that letter?
A interesting? I do want to mention this one spoof at least Thug Notes.
Yeah, it's great.
Did you watch any of these?
That's the one on Doctor Jekyl and mister Hyde.
Yeah, I think give me the car letter Man.
I got it too. We both went.
Down Thug Notes.
I was talking about the movie.
Oh right, right, right. It's a YouTube series from comedian Greg Edwards. He plays a character, a PhD named Sparky Sweets, who summarizes a commentary on one hundred different books. They're generally about five minutes long, and it's a comedy thing, you know, it's thug Notes. He does African American vernacular and breaks down these books in a fun way, in a very quick way. But he's got three point one four million subs, and if you watch one of these, like you did, you will soon learn like it's a joke, but he's laying down some real truth on some of these as well.
Oh yeah, like when you finish watching one of these thug Notes, like you understand what that book was about, like fully, Like he does a great job with it. But yeah, there's just this whole stick to it. That's pretty awesome too.
Yeah. I watched a few of them, but the one on the Scarlet Letter by George Orwell. At the end in the analysis, he explains he talks about censorship and book burning and stalinism and double talk and all that stuff in a very fun way. And I can only think that, like, there might be young students that identify with with Greg Edwards and what he's doing, that it might provide a little real insight and inspiration, I hope. So, even though it's.
Just a joke, did you say that? Did you say the name of his character on thug Notes?
I did?
I love it. I guess that's about it.
Huh, that's all I got on cliff Notes.
Okay, I think man. Hats off to us, Hats off to Olivia, hats off to Mental Floss, Hats off to Sparky Sweet's PhD. We made it through cliffs Notes.
Hats off to Nathaniel Hawthorne.
Yeah, and hester Print too. Yeah, let's see, since we took our hat off to hester Print, of course, that means it's time for listener mail.
Hey guys, this is about Broadway. My name's Reagan. I've been a listener for ten years. My husband Paul, and I love to listen to you guys while we cooked dinner, and we listen to reruns on long car trips. I'm writing in Because Broadway the Broadway episode because I am a theatrical costume designer and I wanted to offer some more insight about previews that you guys were discussing. Previews have a cool function where they are actually used by the production team to keep changing, like Josh said, and fine tuning a show based on audience feedback, especially on a brand new show. New lines and music may even be written and added during the process. Changes can also include restaging and cutting or adding technical elements like costumes for props. However, Chuck was right and that toward the end of previews the show will be frozen by the director, which means no further changes are allowed to be made, and it's after that time that critics will be invited to attend during previews after they're frozen before opening night. Got it so that totally clears it up. Thanks for doing such a great job covering Broadway. Really touched me to hear about the theater world on my favorite podcast, because I listen to you guys almost daily in the costume shop. And that is from Reagan McKay, interim costume shop manager at the Roundhouse Theater.
Wow, that's awesome. I think we talked about the Roundhouse Theater, didn't we.
It sounds familiar.
I hope we did. Thank you very much, Reagan. We love it when we hear from experts in the field about an episode we talked about, especially when they say we got it right. And if you want to be like Reagan and send us an email where you're like, hey, I know what I'm talking about, and you guys did a good job. We love that kind of thing. You can send it to Stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
