Ridiculous history is a production of I Heart Radio. The Welcome back to the show Ridiculous historians. Thank you as always so much for

tuning in. Let's give a big shout out to the man the myth legend super

producer mr max Williams I am that human being that then has reference yes yes

this is all what we would call technically the truth on Reddit.

That's an awesome subreddit.

It's a weird one.

Well hey, we are in the midst of a conversation already in progress with the wonderful

Eves Jeff Coates and Katie Mitchell of On Theme the

podcast. We are discussing the history of minstrel shows and very problematic and

difficult genre of song known as Cooon songs and we are going to get

back into it and then take it even further than I think any of us expected.

And I'm going to introduce this. I'm Ben Boland in your own background.

Oh yeah, that's me no, that's right. Yeah.

So let's get into it folks.

We're also going to learn about some philosophical dark nights of the soul.

What happens when art becomes commodified.

And this gives us a window into something that I think,

you know, a lot of, a lot of people in the U.S.

are, they maybe only have a surface awareness of it without a full understanding of the complexities.

And I'm just picturing right now, Katie Eves, Noel, Max, I'm picturing this idea of

of Ernest finishing a show, right? The show goes well, he's on tour, and then someone comes to him, maybe a child or something and is saying like, why are you doing this? You know, this kind of like dark night of the soul wrestling with your conscience you said we said that he had a lot of white folks patting him on the back and saying good job

Yeah, that'll make you look deeper than anything.

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