Stuff You Should KnowThe last meal of the executed is a longstanding tradition. Listen in today to learn about the dark history and modern practice of this culinary curiosity.
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Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck and Jerry's here too, and this is Stuff you should Know, part of the very Grim edition.
That's right. All star writer Livia helped us with this, so you know it's going to be great. I'm just trying to butter Livia up so she knows how much we appreciate her.
Sure. This topic though, is like she did a good job with it. But it's one of those things where people are all morbidly fascinated with it, right. It's just kind of one of those things where you might talk about at a party or something like that, what would be your last meal kind of thing.
Yeah, but when you dig into.
It, you're like, man, this is a dark topic. Yeah, because at the end of the day, what you're talking about is ultimately a ritual that surrounds the execution of a human life. Yeah, and when you really start to dig into and look at it seriously and look at like last meals that people actually had, or why we give people last meals that kind of stuff, it's just it's grim. I mean, there's no other word to describe it. It's a grim, grim topic.
So it is buckle up, and it's easy to while you're sort of researching all this about the food, to forget what happens just after the food.
I thought you're gonna say, get hungry.
No, but I found myself over and over being like, oh right, and then there was a firing squad, or then they were hanged, or then they were put in the electric chair.
How many times did you forget?
Two more times? I've forgot six, six times, five times?
Whoever.
No, it's just it was sort of a constant reminder. So this one won't be, you know, as full of laughs as usual.
Probably every time we say that it turns out to be a laugh riot.
Can we go back in time?
Yeah, I was gonna say, we probably should get historical because people have been eating last meals for a very long time. Apparently the Code of Hammurabi was the first to describe not last meals but capital punishment execution by the state. Right, Yeah, it's not, they didn't say. And also, by the way, they can have some unleavened bread or something as a last meal. It's not until I believe the Romans, the ancient Greeks, and the Chinese, I guess contemporaneous Chinese where last meals first start appearing in documentation.
Yeah, there are other examples that weren't necessarily like you're going to be executed for a crime, like Roman gladiators supposedly feasted pretty well because they might die. Aztecs would give the people who were going to be ritually sacrificed a big feast because they knew what was coming next. And the woman named Linda ross Meyer, who she's going to come up quite a bit because she's done a lot of studying on this stuff, had a paper in two thousand and eight where she said, you know, I think a lot of this is based on the Last Supper of Christ, and you'll see that kind of throughout, whether it's seventeenth century England or twenty first century America, where someone may just request the Eucharist as their last meal.
Yeah, and not only that being the last meal. Apparently the more religious the group is, the more likely they are to ritualize.
Executions, which is surprising, I guess, but maybe not not.
Really if you think about like the state executing somebody and you take it to like an Orwellian level, this that's just so dispersonal and dispatching. It just gets to the point it's an execution done next, you know. Yeah, it makes sense to me that religious types would be like, no, we've got to like add this ritual to it, to that ritual to it to give it meaning, you know, or else it's what's the point of it kind of thing aside just taking a life.
No, that's that's a good point. Like the Puritans, certainly they almost have like celebrations of like, hey, you're you're going back to God, so let's throw a party.
Can't you just see the condemned like getting elbowed in the ribs like.
Wright Man lighting up.
It's a party.
Yeah, look easy for you to say, goody, goody Clark, goody.
Yeah, I guess Clark will do. Yeah, I can't think of anything better, So.
Goodie Bryant, you just fire it right back at me.
Trying to Puritan up the you know Clark. Oh sure, I guess you could spell with a Y and an E or something weird like that.
Yeah, they're goodie Mather.
Yeah you can all right. So yeah, the Puritans were big time into that kind of thing, but they were far from the only ones to hole kind of like a communal or at least a bit of a feast, a communal meal or a feast. I guess Germany was really big on ritualizing it as well, which makes sense because they were pretty big into Protestantism by this time. This is the eighteenth century when Frankfurt used to give out the hangman's meal, which is a pretty lavish feast.
Yeah, sounds like it. There was one they described in seventeen seventy two from a murderer named Susannah Margaret Brandt, who had and this is kind of gross to read out loud, but there were six officials to eat this meal with Susannah. But it was three pounds of fried sausages.
Check.
So far not too bad. Ten pounds of beef doesn't say I was prepared six pounds of baked carp It's koy you realize twelve pounds of carp is COI I don't think I knew that.
Yeah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna that's a hill I'll die on. I'm probably wrong. I realized in the last episode in Mad I did bad math right off of the Big Bat. But this is I'm gonna stay with this fact.
Well there's no math involved in baked carp No, but I could you should be wrong. Twelve pounds of larded roast veal.
That's a new one to me.
Soup, cabbage, bread, a sweet, and eight and a half measures of seventeen forty eight wine. I tried to find out what a measure was in seventeen forty eight. The best I could find that it was like five or six pints. But I don't know if that's right or not. It's a lot.
Who knows? So a lot of wine, yeah, for sure. And that's an ongoing thing, Chuck. You know, getting the person drunk before you execute them used to be like a long standing tradition, and not just in Europe, you know, like the I believe the INCA when they sacrificed children just basically left them out to die of exposure. They would get them high usually or possibly drunk on some sort of wine. And as we'll see, that is not something that's a part of executions today. That that is there's just something wrong with that. We've decided, even though it makes a lot of sense. But I guess if you're trying to exact retribution, you want that person like fully cognizant of what's happening to them when it's happening to them. But that's a kind of a new idea from what I can tell.
Yeah, the same as the last cigarette. You know, you have the sort of image in your head of the firing squad, like someone going and putting a cigarette in someone's mouth. But even cigarettes, you know, if they're if they're not on the prison menu as far as being allowed, then they don't allow it.
That's right. I wondered, I wonder why I was researching this. If I would I if I could have a last cigarette, if I were being executed, if I would do it, and I decided I wouldn't, I wouldn't die feeling like, oh man, I'll let this get to me again, So I just wouldn't do it.
Oh, good for you. That means you've really quit.
Yeah, agreed. If you wouldn't smoke a cigarette right before your execution, you've quit smoking cigarettes.
That's a good It's sort of a baggy T shirt, but not bad.
Well, the big baggy T shirts are back, the ones from the nineties. Everybody's wearing those now. Yeah, so you could fit that on it, are they really? Yeah?
All right, because I couldn't tell because you've been messing with me a lot.
No, Oh, it's true. Somebody wrote in it was like, please stop doing that.
I didn't understand what she meant at first, but I was like, oh, you mean when like Josh said something and he says, I'm just kidding. Yeah, she seems you pretty mad about it.
Yeah, she didn't like that at all, So like.
Twelve year old boys, that's true, which I took as a compliment. In London, there was a tradition of and this was in I guess the like late seventeen hundreds, early eighteen hundreds. I think there was a tradition of letting the prisoner actually like have friends over and celebrate and then when they stepped up to the gallows, they would have a quote great bowl of ale to drink at their pleasure as their last refreshment in life.
Yeah, that's one of the suggested origins for falling off the wagon. That you were taken to the trawls in a wagon, remember, and then yeah, get off the wagon to have that last drink. Button's right. They decided that probably wasn't it.
In the US, this came about formally sort of at the end of the nineteenth century when public executions and big sort of hey, let's everyone meet in the town square and watch someone be hanged, was replaced by a little more private affair, a little more standardized, with not as many people around, and they started some prisons started publishing in newspapers because it sold papers what people wanted to eat.
Yeah, and they kind of had to because if not, then that's just again the state executing people because the state can or the states decided the point of an execution is it's the states carrying it out on behalf of the community. And so since they stopped involving the community directly by saying you can come watch this person be killed because we're killing them for you, they have to. They had to share enough details to say, we did this for you guys, and here's the details of what happened. And one of the things that kind of came out of that custom and new custom in the I guess late nineteenth century, is sharing what the person requested for their last meet.
Yeah, and then what followed was like, should we still do this? You still hear about this stuff every now and then, but it's not as codified. I don't think. Some states used to have websites that had details like this. Texas stopped doing that in the early two thousands because people complained. Arizona apparently still has a web page even though the last last information informational entry was I think in twenty fourteen. So this idea that people want to hear about this has always been intriguing slash controversial.
Right by the way. Texas stopped doing it because people complained that they were taking up too much of the internet with those details. Because they execute so many people.
I mean, you can't talk about executions without talking Texas. That's true.
Spell it without the ex in both Texas and execution.
Yeah, and we're gonna talk about Texas again later of course.
Uh, yes, should we take our early break, Yeah, let's do it. Well, we're gonna do it, everybody, Okay, so Chuck. There's some some questions about the purpose of last meal, like it's one of those things that you know, it's not a part of people's everyday life, and when it is, it's you know, arm's length enough these days, Like we were saying that it's just it could be a part of party conversation even but it's if you stop and think about it, like there's a good question, like why why would you do that? There's a very famous, uh quote, I guess from a guy who was executed in Arkansas in I think the nineties, who said, it doesn't make any sense because you're basically putting it's like putting gasoline in a car that's got no motor, that there's no reason for this person to need food. Right, we eat technically so that we can make it through the next day and the next day and the next day. It's like how we gain energy. Once you're executed, you don't need that energy any longer. So why would we feed people a last meal? If it makes no sense If you step back and look at it as a purely functional thing.
Yeah, if you're we can go back to Meyer, who, like I said, has studied a lot on this, and she has a few reasons that you know, and all of these are plausible because it's the kind of thing where there is no like quote, you know, correct answer, but so people can sort of speculate. And she said, you know, like you kind of hinted at earlier, like it it would just be extermination and have no meaning. So people like to attach meaning to things. It might be help the prison officials make them feel better, like hey, like it's nothing personal, it's my job. Here's this nice meal.
Yeah, not in like a direct way like they that's why the officials are doing it, but almost like it's there's a subtext to it.
Right, Yeah, exactly, this one makes a lot of sense. Maybe it's even like a tool to keep the prisoner passive and like, hey, you know, like the threat that that could go away if you don't behave yourself on the way out.
Yeah. And there's a guy named Brent Cunningham who wrote a really good article on this in Lapham's Quarterly, and he kind of concluded something that dovetails with what Meyer was saying, that we were showing that the person has humanity, so it's adding meaning to the whole process. But his was kind of a darker take on it, that we're adding meaning to the process because we have stripped the person of their humanity so thoroughly while they were in prison, they were in number, they were like kept in a cage, they were not allowed to do stuff without permission. That by allowing them a last meal, we're re bestowing humanity back on them, so we see them as a person again, so we can then kill them to get the maximum retribution out of killing them. Right, Does that make sense, Like we're humanizing them so we can get the most satisfaction out of their death, because if they're not humanized, then there's no free will, there's no We're just killing like a machine or something like that, so there's not as much closure, I guess as if we if we didn't give them a last meal. That was his take, and that really resonated with.
Me totally, Like, enjoy that steak, buddy, because you know you're getting what's coming to you. That kind of attitude.
Hopefully they don't say things like that to people while they're eating that last steak, But it's socially speaking. You.
Yeah, I was talking about like the person at home, not necessarily the server.
Of the state. I know you are, but I could not let that one pass and not jump on it.
Refusing a last meal is something that happens all the time and always has as an active protest. There was one person named Lawrence Hayes who was on death row but I think eventually was found innocent and was a member a founding member of Campaign to End the Death Penalty who basically said, yeah, I wouldn't have taken a last meal because it's a gimmick just to make us feel better about this like terrible process.
Yeah.
And then there there is one study of close to two hundred and fifty people who are executed over about a four year period in the two thousands found that twenty nine percent of people who insist they were innocent declined to last meal, compared to eight percent who said not, Like, yeah, I did it. Yeah, so that's a pretty big dif.
Yeah, that's a huge difference too. And it makes sense too. I wouldn't want anything from the people who are about to unjustly kill me. I wouldn't want to be in their dead at all. Yeah, that's what I'm guessing one of the reasons why they would protest it. At least that's why I would.
Yeah, and I think to draw a little more attention.
Plus I would also kind of manipulate them into offering me a cigarette, so I could be like, no, I don't want it, you can keep your stupid cigarette.
Yeah, and then say, and I used to love smoking.
Right, but you guys ruined it for me.
There are a few legal scholars a guy named Andrew Davies, Sabrina Atkins, and Sarah Gerwig Moore who about thirteen years ago and twenty ten looked at sort of the rules on the books in the thirty five states who are still punishing capitally and twenty ten, two of them hadn't executed anyone, even they were still allowed to in decades, and they didn't have protocols. Of the remaining thirty three. Fifteen had no specific rules of that last meal. Some had suggestions. Five states had spending limits from fifty bucks in Cali all the way to fifteen dollars in Oklahoma. Georgia had some specifics like, hey, if they want a lobster, we're going to go down and get it at Public's. We're not going to fly it down for Maine or something like that. Sure, and then I think a few states three of them would deny the meal altogether and said, you're gonna like, you'll get a last meal, but it's going to be whatever is on the prison menu, Like nothing special for you.
I know, couldn't you when you be like, man, cabbage really had to be cabbage tonight tonight? It just seems, you know, like it's that to me is worse than denying a last meal altogether. For some reason. It's just I don't know, I can't quite put my finger on it, but just being like, nope, you get what everybody else gets for your last meal. I just feel like it's worse than saying no, you can't have one at all for some somehow.
Yeah, And it's not you know, you sort of get the idea from movies that they like, you know, wipe their mouth with from the lobster and then like get up and walk down the hall toward the execution chamber, right, And that's not happening. Basically, It's usually like the day before because I imagine executing someone on a big I mean, some of these meals, as we'll see, are humongous. It's probably not a good idea for a lot of reasons.
Yeah, I can actually interfere with the effects of the drugs that they use to execute people, now, you know. Yeah, and again, remember we said that like, the more religious a group is, or like state or something like that, more likely they are to ritualize executions. And apparently that study also found that the more fundamentalist Christian the state population was, as well as the least amount spent per prison in MA overall, and the ones with the largest prison populations where those three dovetailed, they typically were the most generous with the last meals.
Yeah, really interesting.
But Meyer had a word for that. She called it retributive ritualism. And you're not supposed to say it like porky pig. You just say retributive ritualism.
That's funny. I see. I knew there would be a joker to in here. That's in good taste. Sure, Texas, which we said we would get back to, they changed things in twenty eleven. Before this is they were one of the states that were like in you just get the regular prison food whatever that is. But what really changed was when a man named Lawrence Russell Brewer, there's always three names requested, and I'm going to read all of these because this is sort of indicative of how ridiculous these meals can get. Two chicken fried steaks, triple cheeseburger, an omelet with ground beef, tomatoes, onions, bell peppers, and jalapenos, fried okra with ketchup, three fajitas, pint of bluebell ice cream, a pound of barbecue with a loaf of white bread, a meat lover's pizza, three root beers, and peanut butter fudge with crushed peanuts. Yeah, a whole slab of it. Brewer refused to eat the food, and it seems like it was sort of the waste of time and money. Really got under the skin of a Texas State Senator name John Whitmyer, and he had kind of had enough at that point and was like, no, we got to cut this off. This is a ridiculous privilege that shouldn't be allowed.
Yeah, he spotted an easy way to energize his base. So he wrote to the Texas Criminal Justice Division and said so he said something like, quote, is it is extremely inappropriate to give a person sentenced to death such a privilege, and that he pointed out, and this is very important that Lawrence Russell Brewer, who was one of the white supremacist scumbags who dragged James Lee Boyd to death behind a pickup truck in the nineties, that he never gave James Lee Boyd the opportunity for a last meal. That was his reasoning, and that is very sound reasoning. But what John Whitmer, the state senator from Texas, is missing is that one of the points of a last meal is for the state to show that it's murder. Its execution of this person is different from the crime that the person's being executed for the state is saying like, you have to die, but we can still treat you humanly even though you didn't treat your victim humanly, and so it elevates the state morally. And that seemed to be totally lost on John Whitmyer, because one of the reasons he saw for not giving somebody that meal is that they hadn't given that to their victim, that opportunity.
Yeah, it's really interesting to think of it that way.
Yeah, but it worked, and they stopped serving last meals in Texas thanks to again Lawrence Russell Brewer, one of the white supremacists comebacks who dragged James Lee Boyd behind a pickup truck to death.
That's right. When this happened, there was a former inmate who cooked these last meals as part of his job in prison, and then I think afterward even named Brian Price, who said, you know what, I'll continue to make these meals. It won't cost the state a penny. But Texas said, no, thank you, We're not going to take you up on that offer. And apparently Price got a lot of emails from people like supporting him and saying, you know, we think he did the right thing and making a humane effort at least, and ended up writing a cookbook called Meals to Die For.
Yeah, you said there'd be some tasteless joke or tasteful jokes in here. That was not one of them.
I mean, that was Brian Price's joke. Right.
I know we can distance ourselves from that. Yeah, but yeah, he cooked two hundred and eighteen last meals in ten years again in Texas. Right, And I guess when he was offering to do this for free, like he was no longer a prisoner, but he was willing to come to the prison yeah, and bring his own ingredients and cook on his own time, and the state still said no. And again, the reason why they said is that it's not really money, it's the sentiment behind the whole thing that they're opposed to, so they turned them down. But in his book, he kind of chronicled with some of the people typically asked for, and cheeseburger in French fries is like one of the biggest or one of the most frequent requests. But also there were those ones that were kind of fancy, like lobster, shrimp or something like that people wanted as their last meal. But because he had to work from the ingredients in the prison kitchen, they didn't have lobster or shrimp typically on hand, so he would just try to get creative with it. And apparently at first this was his job. He was tasked with this, and he wasn't very comfortable with it because he believed in the death penalty, and I think he felt a bit like a scumbag cooking for a scumbag he was about to die. And then he had a conversation with a guy whose job it was to clean up the execution room after executions, and he said that cleaning up the actual execution room itself never really bothered him. What bothered him was cleaning up like the tear stains and the lipstick stains off of the window to the execution room that the family members left behind. That that really stuck with us. And so that conversation with that guy really stuck with Price, and it kind of changed his view of the whole thing, so that he started to think of imagining the person he was cooking for as one of his family members because he was thinking of the family and apparently eventually changed his mind on the death penalty altogether.
Oh wow. Yeah, So we talked about what you would call like status food. He said, shrimp and lobster and you know, like caviare and you know, stuff like that. That's a common request.
I said, fancy food.
Yeah yeah, but Livy called it status food.
Yeah, no, I know that's what it's supposed to be called.
And I would agree, And it is fancy. I mean, what's fancier than a sea spider?
Right? Is sea cockroach?
Was it cockroach?
Yeah?
Oh okay, I thought were spiders anyway, not literally thought they were spiders.
There are sea spiders and they're one of the most terrifying things on this planet.
Oh sure, oh man, but not as tasty as a lobster. Probably not you into lobster.
I like lobster. It's fine. I'm not like Gaga for it, but yeah, I'll eat. I'll ead a good lobster. I public's lobster bisc out of a plastic container the other day, So yeah, I guess I do kind of like lobster.
Oh man. They sell this wish you in the name of the company. There's a chowder, a claim chowder, and a lobster bisc then the frozen aisle.
I'm not tried. I know what you're talking about them?
Is that the one? It's good you drop the whole bag in boiling water and just let it sort of flaw itself and cook.
I think they also make a gumbo, and if it's the same company, the gumbo's not that good.
M the bisk and the chowder are good.
Okay, I'll try them because I gave up on them after the gumbo because I really wanted some gumbo. I was like score when I saw it and I made it, and I was like, I still want gumbo.
I will love lobster and like a bisk or certain other things, but I don't know that I've ever ordered a lobster or like a lobster tail.
Oh, I have Red Lobster.
Probably, so for real, that was like too fancy for us.
The really, you don't go to Red Lobster for the actual seafood. You go for the salad with their rants dressing, which is off the chain, or and or their cheddar biscuits, which if you get them when they're fresh, they're really good.
Do you want to know something funny. One of the only times I've literally ever eaten at Red Lobster was with you.
When did we eat at Red Lobster?
We went? I think when Discovery owned us. I think we went in Silver Springs, Maryland when we were there for a meeting or something. You were like, let's go to Red Lobster. Let's go to Red Lobster.
I actually remember that now.
Yeah. And we had those Cheddar biscuits and man, those are good.
They are God, I'm glad you're one and only Red Lobster experience with me.
Then, Yeah, it was too that was too ritzy for us as a teacher kid.
Yeah, and you know, they just needed what to spend their money on in red lob service. Part of it it.
Was probably a special meal for you guys there, right, yeah or not?
Yeah? I mean we typically Mom made like chicken, ola king and pepper steak and stuff like. Sure. You know, it occurred to me, Chuck, as we were having this conversation that we're talking about food and food we love. Is that distasteful to talk about that have that kind of tangent in an episode about last meals and executions?
I don't think so. It just it can live it as its own little side conversation.
I just wanted to gut check it.
Yeah, I think we're okay. But how we got started on that was status foods or symbolic requests. So you know, we're going to talk about some of these over the years that have been made symbolically. There was a murderer named Victor Figure in Iowa, I think the last Iowa and the last federal inmate to be executed previous to Timothy. They yeah, exactly, as for a single olive with a pit saying he hoped that the fruit of the tree of peace would grow from his grave, and he.
Kind of got his wish because it was thirty seven years before somebody was executed federally.
Yeah. What about Gary Gilmour famously from the book to the Executioner song in movie.
Yeah, he was executed in Utah, and one of the reasons why he became so famous was twofold one, he insisted that he'd be executed by firing squad, which Utah was one of the few states that still had that on the books, and that's how they executed him. And then two by refusing to appeal his death penalty despite the entire Apparently there's a lot of public sentiment against commuting this guy's sentence, but he was like, no, I want to go along with it, So he was. I guess there was enough public attention on it that he was given the special privilege of having friends and family visit. And I guess Johnny Cash called up and sung to him over the phone.
Yeah, that was his uncle had snuck in Jack Daniels and this guy. Somehow his defense attorney arranged for Johnny Cash to call and Johnny Cash sang a Stonewall Jackson's hall called don't be Angry. That apparently he kind of dueted with Gary Gilmour over the phone man. That guy was so cool, Johnny.
Yeah, he had a real thing for prisons though, didn't he.
Oh yeah, sure, I mean he You know, he performed in prisons very famously because he was in prison at one point himself.
Yeah, and sometimes I mean he would go to the trouble like if he was a little hard up, he'd go to the mall and find that little room where they keep shoplifters and perform for them once in a while as well.
I know, you're kidding. He didn't get me this time.
I wasn't trying.
I was so close though.
No. Yeah, that Johnny Cash took it upon himself to go sing for shoplifters at the mall when he couldn't find a prison gig.
I mean, it sounds ridiculous when you say it like that.
Wow, I can really sell it.
Huh. Yeah, you're good at what you do. Let me say that, thanks, Chuck. What else? James Edward Smith was executed in nineteen ninety and requested voodoo dirt. It's called Rakunda dirt, and they said dirt. Yeah, they said no, you can't have that. He wanted to prevent his soul from remaining on earth as a ghost. They said, no, have yogurt instead, and he said, all right, well you will be haunted by me then for three hundred years.
And he was apparently a voodoo priest. I saw a self professed voodoo priest, so I don't know what that means, but yeah, he was not very happy that they wouldn't give him that.
Should we go through a few more of these.
Yeah, there's one that we just could not do this episode and not mentioned because it's one of the most messed up things that we'll talk about today in a podcast about messed up things. A guy named Ricky Ray Rector who was executed under presidential candidate Bill Clinton's watch when he was a governor of Arkansas, and Ricky Ray Rector had always been a little bit cognitively challenged. He went on a killing spree basically over four days, he killed five people, just randomly in most cases, and then before the cops could get to him, he tried to end his own life by turning the gun on himself, but he missed and he made himself like apparently he then had the cognition or cognitive abilities of a kid about the age of four, from that point on, and that's the shape he was in when he went to trial.
Yeah, lobotomized him basically, yeah, accidentally. Yeah.
So the advocates for him said, no, we don't execute people who are cognitively challenged. If they can't understand what's going on, why they're being killed, we don't kill them. That's just what we do in the United States. And Bill Clinton said no, we're going to do this anyway, and they did, Chuck, They executed Ricky Ray Rector in nineteen ninety two. And that's not the that's not the thing about this story. There's something that's just about as haunting as it can get.
Yeah, because while he was eating the meal, there was a pecan pie was part of that meal. He pushed it aside and said, I want to save that for later.
That was the understanding of what was happening to him. He knew he was going to get executed, but he was saving the pcompie for afterward.
Yeah.
Isn't that nuts? Yeah, So that's Ricky Reer recordor what about John Wayne.
Gacy Gaysey was a one time manager at Kentucky Fried Chicken, So he got Kentucky Fried Chicken original recipe French fries. He got some fried shrimp too, got a pound of straw Berry's and some diet coke. I went through and looked at a lot of other people in lists, and one thing I found weirdly, And of course I'm sure you could find it if you really really searched. But I saw a lot of Burger King and Pizza Hut. But I didn't see one McDonald's.
Oh weird.
Yeah, And I don't know if it was just the you know, the the twenty or thirty that you know, I kind of scanned through on the internet, but a lot of Pizza Hut, pizzas and Burger King cheeseburgers.
Probably because most prisons have a McDonald's in him and we just on the outside don't know it, you know, like a hospital of like a Chick fil a. Right, So there's one more I think we should talk about before we move on, if you don't mind.
Sure.
Philip ray workman, Okay, did you hear his case or see his Yeah?
This is the vegetarian.
Yeah, he his for his last meal. He wanted a vegetarian pizza be delivered to any homeless person nearby the prison, and the warden and the prison officials said, no, we don't contribute to charity, so no, we're not going to do that. And Philip ray Workman said, well, I'm not going to eat anything then, but it's Tennessee, right, Yeah, And so his story got out. Apparently between the time he requested and was denied and the time he was executed, it made it into the media what he'd done and what the response had been, and apparently around the country people on the day of his execution ordered vegetarian pizzas and had them sent to homeless shelters all around Tennessee.
Yeah that's pretty neat. Yeah, I agree. Should we take our second break? Sure? All right, let's take another break, and we're gonna wrap it all up after this. So we talked a little bit about booze and cigarettes. That was a long tradition for you know, hundreds of years, and then kind of went away basically when prison started saying like, hey, you can't have cigarettes smoking his band and booze is just not a good idea to let people drink alcohol, and people still request it from time to time. I think there was a guy in our very own state of Georgian twenty fifteen who wanted a six pack of beer and that was it, and they said no and gave him a meal of fish and grits and beans and coleslaw and cookies and fruit punch instead. What about elsewhere around the world, and that limits it just a handful of countries, because America is one of just a few democratic, industrialized countries that still put people to death.
Yeah, a few, meaning exclusively or specifically three. There's South Korea, Japan, and the United States.
That's right.
And I don't know if this is better or worse. But in Japan, if you're on death row, you don't know the day you're going to be executed until the day you're going to be executed. Which what would you want?
Jeez, I don't know.
I don't either answer that. I don't know. There's yeah, I don't, I do not know. Imagine like if you did existential trivia and that was a existential trivia question.
I would want to know, actually you would, huh, because otherwise I would just constantly be wondering when.
Yeah, but if you know, then you're you're counting down the days and do that. Okay, all right, I got you good. I think it's good to know yourself like that. Yeah, But so they don't know when they're going to be exec but when they do, they can have whatever they want to eat. Apparently they're very liberal with that that idea, and that if they don't specify anything, they'll be given cigarettes, drink which I take to mean booze, and cake, which Japanese cake is delightful.
Yeah. China is sort of all over the map, and we probably don't even know really what happens to be honest these days. But there are witnesses from like the eighties that's say, like, hey, I saw a mass execution where people were just chained to a post and given a hard boiled egg. Other times bleak. Oh it's yeah, as bleak as it gets. Other times, like there was a soldier in nineteen eighty eighty five who was apparently given a pretty good meal of like meat dumplings. There are other reports of prisoners eating with their executioner, which is not unique to China, that that was sort of an old tradition back in the day as well in different countries.
Yeah, called Saint John's blessing.
Yeah. So, and it just seems like there is no hard and fast rule in China. It could either be a very sort of lavish thing or almost nothing at all.
Yeah, and just real quick before we move on that Saint John's blessing, like it was a socially prescribed thing where before you were executed, you drank with your executioner, like the two of you hung out. Put yourself in that situation. Imagine being on either side of that equation, Like, how would you make it through that.
As the executioner or as.
The as the condemned.
Yeah, I don't know. That's tough stuff.
Sorry, I know I keep getting philosophical here.
I know I don't have answers for all these but you.
Are answering them quite well, if you ask me.
I appreciate it. One thing I wondered was and I know the answer, so I actually don't wonder. But Timothy McVeigh wanted two pints of Ben and Jerry's Mint chocolate chip and was given that. But you know, Ben and Jerry's is a very sort of progressive lefty company, and I'm sure they didn't like that association.
Yeah, they're very anti bombing.
Well, I mean, i'm sure they're probably anti capital punishment, but no, I don't know if they would want that association of like being tied to a capital punishment.
Probably not. They probably don't bandy that about.
Well, there's nothing they can do about it, though, It's like, could they protest that? I mean, I guess it could protest it, but you can't. You can't say who can can't eat your ice cream? So at the end of the day that I'm sure they would have no leg to stand on.
But also then you're denying this person their last thing. And yeah, it's Timothy McVeigh, but if it were somebody else, did you want to be in that position? As the company'd be like, no, you can't have that, sure, because we don't agree with them killing you.
Yeah, I'm sure they just didn't like that pressure. Speaking of press, Olivia had a few more little nuggets here for us various sort of weird slash terrible things that have happened over the years or interesting things. One of them in nineteen eighty five, two weeks after South Carolina executed their first prisoner in twenty two years, Pizza Hut ran a commercial that showed again Pizza Hut, showing an inmate ordering pizza for the last meal. This executed person had requested pizza, and so they kind of tied it back to that, and they got a lot of heat for that, and they took the commercial down.
I think we talked about this in our Death Penalty episode, Yeah, one of our Death Penalty episodes. There's a blog called dead Man Eating that ran from two to twenty ten, and it just tracked last meal requests, which is another thing, like they're frequently requests. They don't necessarily say what the person got. It's the request, that's the thing that's always been published.
Yeah.
And then Amnesty International ran an ad campaign that's just haunting. It's images of the last meals of five different prisoners who were executed and then found innocent.
Yeah. I mean that makes a statement for sure. There was also a book in twenty eleven ISH from a photographer named Jonathan cam Boris called The Last Meals Project, and I don't think these were people who were proven innocent, but he superimposed last meals on photographs of the executed prisoner, So you know, another social statement for sure.
Yeah, I remember Chuck reading it. There was I think a New Yorker article on Cameron Willingham. He had a third name in there. Somewhere, but he was executed and they are pretty sure he was innocent, not a great guy, but probably did not start the fire that killed his family, but was executed anyway. And I remember there was a quote in there that always stuck with me. One of the Supreme Court justices said that if there was ever clear evidence that an innocent person had been executed wrongly, that that would cause a constitutional spasm that would be really tough to require from him and probably immediately lead to the cessation of the death penalty. And when you stop and think about that Amnesty International ad campaign where they've got five people whose last meals they're showing, who were later found to be innocent, Like we now know five people at least have been executed and then later found to be innocent, and yet we still have the death penalty. It's not even a topic of conversation that just that sticks out to me because that quote always suck to me. It suck with me, and it's just I don't know. It was just worth mentioning. And also it was worth mentioning because that article on Cameron Willingham was just insanely good because not only is it about his case and also calls out how Arson is just like Arson investigation is just junk science and people are executed based on that evidence. Huh, yeah, it's good. I can't remember what it's called. Just look up New York and Cameron Willingham, I can't remember his middle name.
Have we done one on Arson, I don't know. I don't think we have. That would be interesting because I always wonder how they find the source of those fires.
I remember talking about Arson being junk science before, so we've talked about something supper club fire. Maybe no, it was long before that. No, okay, you got anything else.
I got nothing else. I mean, you know, this was dark for sure, but we hope it was in the good taste in which it was intended. Yeah, there are also articles out there that are a little more fun to read about people's last meals, non executed, but people who knew, you know, famous people who knew they were on the way out, and like, what's the very most special thing that they wanted to eat? Like Julia Child having French onion soup. Stuff like that.
Oh man, a good French onion soup.
Yeah, so maybe go read those instead would be my recommendation.
You go, well, since Chuck made a great recommendation everybody. That means it's sound for listener. Maw.
I'm gonna call this cussing dentist because you know I talked about my doctor cursing and how much I enjoyed that, and so this guy wrote in he said, hey, guys, I want to tell you about my cussing dentists. The first time I went to this guy's practice, I hadn't been in years, and the hyghgenis brings me in for X rays in a cleaning and eventually she tells me she's going to go grab the dentist sad cavities. I'm in the dental chair, the lights on my face. I hear footsteps behind me, and an upside down mask disembodied head slowly comes into my field of vision. He glances up to my X rays and looks back down. No introductions, no anything, and just says, hmm, open up, so open my mouth. He starts poking around with a little mirror tool. I'm panicking about that. Hmm what did he see in those X rays? Is something wrong? My anxiety is growing and he's taking a long looking around my mouth. Finally he says, uh, yeah, We're gonna have to pull all of these effing things out. There was a comedic beat, and then he pulled his mask down, revealing a sly, goofy grin. I laughed so hard and nearly choked, and then he finally introduced himself as the dentist. I'm not sure how he picked up on my hey it's okay to swear around me a vibe so quickly, or if that's just how he greets all of his thirty somethings male patients, but it was the best first impression I ever had with any medical professional, and I recommended him to literally everyone I know. That's my story. Thanks for the show. You guys are both true legends and stuff you should know is my all time favorite card. Listen that is Ryan and Maine and oh Man, Ryan, I wish you had permission to out this dentist because I would go to Maine to get to go see this dentist. What a great sense of humor. Gonna have to pull all these effing things out?
Who who could it be? Is it like John c Riley, d MD, or the guy who played He Had No the guy who played j Peterman on Seinfeld. I could see him.
That'd be great. Sure, yeah, I love that.
Let's go with that guy then, all right, okay, Oh, and also just want to give a quick update to everybody. Remember Corey's choice in charge.
Yeah, yeah, we we influenced Spotify.
Yeah, so remember Corey wrote in and said that Millie Vanilli and what was the other.
One, don't remember the initial one.
I don't remember either, but they were two very disparate oh, owner of a Lonely Heart. They both showed up in Spotify search together and he said it was probably because you guys. So let's do a test, and we tested Black Sabbaths, war Pigs and Barry Manilow's even Now, And in short order, people started writing in with screencaps of their Spotify searches, where if you searched Barry Manilow, Warpigs was the second thing that came up you searched war Pigs, Harry Mandela was between three and five, and that was clearly our influence. So that's pretty awesome.
Yeah, I don't know, I mean, how do we use this power?
I don't know. We'll figure it out, but yeah, for good, agreed, we should probably do it for good?
All right?
Okay, Well, if you want to get in touch with us like Ryan Ryan did, you can send us an email 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.
