American History w/ R. Vaughan (bonus episode)

It’s one of the newest countries in our earth’s existence. It has snowballed into a behemoth at breakneck speed. It’s no secret, in my homeland we are master marketers among other things. Some refer to this popular place as the home of the American Dream or the land of milk and honey, the land of the free, the home of the brave, where freedom rings from sea to shining sea. We’ll learn the ins and outs of American history with Richard Vaughan on this week’s episode of FYI.

Transcript

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[Music][Applause][Applause][Music] hello hello hello and welcome to this the bonus episode of FYI we're here chatting about American history with a good old American Boy a good old boy as say yeah although I'm 100% British Isles my four names I mean if if I use the Spanish system of surnames Pap those mother's maiden name yeah vau Adams Campbell Crosby vaugh is Welsh Adams is English any relation to founding fathers Adams over there maybe hey you never know distant relatives but Adams is a very common name that's true that's true V Adams is English Campbell is Scottish and Crosby's Irish okay so I cover the British aisles so would you be considered a wasp or no see I get confused with what exactly is a a white Anglo Saxon Protestant well first of all the Irish are predominantly Catholic oh okay so there could be a fourth of my line that is not wasp okay okay okay because this is a term you'll hear in the United States he's very waspy he's a wasp right but it's interesting when I first moved to Spain one of the questions I used to ask people when I met them was what nationality are you because in the States oh my father's German my mother's part Irish yeah and here when I got to Spain I'm like oops um Spanish no but you say no no Bas they say my father was in Bas country my mother's father was andalan my mother's mother was from Galia but there it's like I'm part German part American Indian you're like whoa whoa stop and usually somebody who's got a lot of mix we call him a mut yeah a mongel or a mut yeah always had the Mediterranean blood as you know my ital Sicilian and Spanish my family even though they think they're very different they're a lot more similar than they like blood from from Alia and from Sicilia yeah so I'm definitely I definitely have Arab blood could be definitely definitely some moish uh if you see a picture of my dad on his passport he looks Arab well you know my best friend in Tulsa Oklahoma when I was a teenager was half Cherokee half German oh wow interesting Max and my girlfriend my first steady girlfriend was three qus Italian and one quarter Irish oh okay yeah yeah it's it's it's interesting because you'll meet a lot of people from they're not from those places but they do have family from those places so it's funny when people say I'm American yeah with blood from some other place but I think that's also what has been one of the secrets of the success of the United States everybody's welcome got people yeah from everywhere yeah K is how you say in Spanish a Melting Pot guys it's not a salad it's a Melting Pot a salad everything remains in its original the Tomato still the Tomato the carrot still the carrot Bou here first generation usually is not has not melted yet right if you remember Godfather 2 mhm you remember it when when VTO Corone is Young yeah you know it's in Little Italy sure you say and so everybody was Italian absolutely and you even Martin scorsi said he goes the people who live on your block in Sicily would live in the same building with you in New York so you just literally brought the whole neighborhood over that's right that's very typical of immigration MH it's and uh it was very helpful for American Immigration but those children of those people often went off and lived they broke free yeah they broke free and and also those ghettos kind of disappeared because you can't live in New York wherever you want you can live wherever you can afford so it gets to a point where it's like you want to live there well the price just tripled of for example in around Paris you have the ghetto of the algerians and Moroccans and things and they they have third generation still living in the same ghettos that's weird yeah cuz in the states usually we become I hate to say Americanized like you know you keep your Traditions yeah I still listen to Raphael in my house and we ate F and P but yeah you know that's that's one of the things I love about the United States nobody has ever made me say like I'm like I'm Spanish I'm Italian and I'm American you don't have to choose you can be American and your heritage is still your heritage so one thing doesn't take away from the other thing it adds to it if anything people usually don't even notice or or ask about these things I mean I lived in a in a neighborhood in Houston when I was little when I was in my first three years of primary school I would say half of my half of the people were Jewish oh okay yeah it seemed that a the post apoc apocalypse post um War yeah the Holocaust yeah I got you a lot of people from the East that managed to get out of Europe The Colony moved down to Houston oh I believe it sure if you look at the class pictures when I was 8 years old half of the people look very Jewish right like Eastern European Jewish sure sure as Kazi Jews and and so I for me it was natural normal my two best New York is Jew York yeah I mean if you don't like Jewish people you're in the wrong City but you know in New York you see a lot of the the htics oh they're or they're different though I don't even think the Jewish people like them but any case it's a it's a mixture but Spain originally was that way too Spain originally had well well with the Jews as well I would say maybe 10% more even 20% of the people who live in Spain have Jewish blood sure because so many in 1492 when the Catholic monarchs expelled the Jews they gave them the choice of staying and converting and converting and so and many more a lot a lot of Jews converted or converted on paper quote unquote and later secretly yeah I'll convert don't worry it's that or leave well I I'll convert but see Spain is also a melting pot because you have Germans the vandals and the swbs and the Visigoths yeah and the at truskin even Valencia back in the like literally everybody's been on this B goes way back I mean the Kelts the iberians the kelt iberians the and you can see all those influences too the moish in I mean that's one of the cool things everybody's left their Mark yeah you know you go down to Cordova and you're like oh my goodness what happened here like yeah wow it's it's incredible um and all right well I want to we let's pick up a little bit where we left off that's a very teacher phrase there let's pick up where we left off we were talking about the Civil War and this was a huge Turning Point obviously in American history how long did it last I excuse my 4 and A2 years 61 to 65 the north the Yankees as we were called were victorious yeah and how did that change change I mean we know slavery was abolished after that but as you said it wasn't just about slavery it was about keeping the union together yeah well the South suffered terribly and the South didn't wake up until 80 years later really okay from the point of view of dynamism of a dynamic in fact the dynamic wakeup of the South coincided with the introduction of air conditioning in the 1950s a interesting no it's it's because the the climate down there leads to a of Lethy sure Alia is the same how do you expect people to run around in 38 degree weather but you see Al media is dry yeah whereas the americ South is humid Goa so you've got you know 35° 40° and it's humid you take a shower and you're Sweating Bullets instantly yeah it's like you didn't even shower sure I know that New York is extremely human and that has a incredible impact on productivity yeah yeah makes you you drag your ass around it's normal but with the introduction of air conditioning the South woke up Atlanta New Orleans Dallas Atlanta a major center now it's airport Jacksonville Florida Tampa Columbia South Carolina a lot of just grew but the the most important thing after the Civil War was it was the industry necessary to maintain the war from the north then was in a position to be P really powerful and that began what we call the the great Barons and magnates Andrew Carnegie gotcha John Rockefeller you know the banking system steel uh railroads railroads we see which are all part of the infrastructure of constructing and and we see to build California the go California Gold Rush also made California strong sure people were flocking there from and there was a lot of immigration from Scandinavian countries and from Ireland okay and from Italy but Italy came a bit later Ireland suffered the the potato blight oh right in 196 yeah the they they were mono cultivating cultivo monocultivo oh they only had one crop potatoes gotcha 1 million Irish people died of hunger oh wow I another million immigrated to the United States and they basically immigrated to Boston and to New York oh I there I was going to say I know where half of them are Leonardo Caprio in the movie SC say he movie right the of Wall Street or no it's the uh is it the wolf of no it's the one with gotcha The Departed no no no no no he say he's in he's his new Robert dairo oh the Irishman what's the name of the Irish actor who's won the Academy Awards three times the Irish for my left foot and I'm trying to think of his name I I know who you're talking about and I'm drawing a blank all right but any case they were fighting Clans the clan Clan is the New York yeah yeah Gangs of New York Gangs of New York Daniel de Lewis yeah Daniel de Lewis all right I knew it would come to me is it strange because he's Irishman but he played the Italian yeah and what a great what a great job he did huh well he's a spectacular actor excellent excellent actor but you see the um the industrialization the United States was so big MH Irish and Italian and immigrants were going to New York especially and Boston including my family but Scandinavian you see Scandinavia Norway and Sweden suffered the same type of potato blight oh I didn't know that and they went into Chicago and out into the Midwest gotcha so Minnesota Wisconsin Iowa MH lot of and parts of ill you have a lot of blondes and blueeyed Scandinavians there and now that I think about it I have some friends who were Icelandic and and they were good farmers and they were the ones who really opened up Iowa Nebraska the south of what is now our our bread B Bread Basket yeah there's a very good novel called Giants in the earth that is talks about I was going to ask you that any for further reading or any series you can recommend I mean something simple where they can follow along w wikipedia well so much has happened though how I mean really so much has happened in 250 years yeah world I mean Wars world war wars our own personal Wars The Great Depression which yeah I mean that was another turning point I imagine in the world not just in the United States yeah but you know they had to connect California by rail right and so to finance the railways FES across such an enormous expanse of territory yeah they gave one mile on each side of the rail to the local people oh like a grant of sorts a grant so they they would create settlements and it was a way of financing the railroads wow wow so they say listen you want a railroad you're going to live here but we'll work together to get it up you get it up and so that created a an a national Market from Co connected the country it was their first internet so to speak and of course that was Andrew Carnegie with the steel industry and uh and then Henry Ford right Thomas Anderson they called them the robber barons as you said right they were called sometimes they were ruthless JP Morgan I think you had to be yeah well it was the Wild West quote unquote like you had to take or be taken I mean not even that I mean even Fred Kellogg to create Kellogg's cereals I mean or Mars Bars you know they they were ruthless sure sure and now that's why there's still Brands known Brands household names today and so that took us that's what a period of American history that is called Manifest Destiny oh I remember studying that yeah and that means there was a Destiny for America that was manifest I mean it was a very incredible optimism right ruthless optim this was about what time what decades was this between 1875 and 1910 okay I would say just before the second world first world war first world war right and um and that it's epitomized the greatest by Teddy Roosevelt the American imperialism because the the Spanish American war Kuba M was in 1898 it lasted seven weeks so yeah it was a short one yeah but they suddenly the United States gain control of Cuba Puerto Rico the Philippines and Guam it kind of gave us our wings so to speak or he gave us a conviction say wait we got this everybody's falling in line yeah yeah MH uh and so that that began and the construction of the Panama Canal right oh wow sure which was originally being done by the French and then we took over the French tried after the success of the Suez Canal for the French they tried in Panama but because of the different climate mosqu I mean there was tons of problems yellow fever they gave up and then uh the United States in around 1902 went down and started until 1914 now they started their imperialist ways because Panama was part of Colombia okay and they managed to break it away and create an the United States created Panama its own I was to say it's its own it's it's its own country but yeah who's calling the shots yeah right and so they built that canal and and and then what a feat huh yeah amazing but it was incredible cuz the world was very very it the world gross World product a br m m Bruto in 1914 before the outbreak of the first world war was not equaled until 1956 oh wow so it was just a boom in every sense of the word yeah there was a lot I mean the Titanic was one of the right epitomes of this boom it was like the T the Tower of Babel kind of thing we were like we're going to build bigger stronger we're we we didn't see any limitations to our growth and then the silly first world war broke out because of competing imperialism among European monarchs sure sure rich people sending poor people to fight yeah and that destroyed everything and that brought in ideologies communism socialism anarchism anaros syndicalism all kinds of crap right you name it and um and then we we went in then Germany was suffering during the 1920s because of the hyperinflation they suffered not only the Versa treaty at the end of the first which left them pretty hands tied yeah and so it was it was a spawning ground for people like Adolf Hitler gotcha yeah yeah and then the rest is history we know what happened in the 1930s right and also in 1929 with st I was going to ask you how did that I mean I I know it affected the world but how was how did it affect the United States oh it was 30% unemployment 30% wow my grandfather says he remember remembers they were poor as dirt and he remembers they had eels in the bathtub and those were e those those were to eat they had live eels angilas yeah in the back he goes because that's all we had and he goes and I don't eat eel to this day you see my parents were born in the early 1920s which means they lived the the best years of their youth The Roaring 20s right is when well it was called The Roaring 20s up to 1929 gotcha it was before gotcha okay no between well of course there's nothing roaring after 19 yeah yeah that was October 1929 but they Roaring 20s because there was a boom in the United States after it was a boom in France as well there was a boom in several several places and Germany was coming out of its hyperinflation MH but the uh depression the stock market crash and the resulting depression just it threw the world off track really basically and it set up set things up for the later second world war and what what do you think was I mean I know there are many C what do you think caused uh bad spending bad Investments or was it no on purpose or much too much Euphoria in in in the stock markets because it was a booming times yeah so people we can't fail everything's going to go up it always happens it happens every 15 years right you you go back to to the Netherlands in the n in the 17th century the Tulip bu yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah tulipan you know the Tulip sure should I remember but it always happens the crash of 199 1896 the bank panics of 18 right 54 every every so 30 years or so there's some kind of it's human nature right it's a pendulum of sorts too it swings both nature the intelligent people who are doing their homework withdraw in time and the rest are putting their money in sure sure they say the the best time to make money is during a crisis that's what they say if you have it to invest that's when opportunity they say you know that's when there's opportunity everywhere you just have to have the money to invest idea whatever whatever it is to make it happen interesting and let me ask you about the American dream where did this whole idea come from the fact that if you worked hard in this country you could have your white picket fence your two-car garage because it's basically true yeah well but what was it something that would that came through like literature or where did we get where did this the literature came from the reality reality didn't come from literature okay because when the Europeans began to penetrate into the land mass that is North America I mean I repeat the Indian population was extremely sparse yeah they were not really yeah an important impediment MH the poor Indians I mean I feel sorry they were there but they weren't taking up any of the land basically hunter gatherers they were doing their thing it was the steel age meeting the Stone Age mhm or Bronze Age gotcha see it was just like 6,000 year difference mhm in development gotcha yeah yeah and so and so they moved in and they they always saw there was it created optimism poos we can do it yeah which is that gung-ho American and there was very little government there was there was no aristocracy okay right there was no cast system like in India yeah yeah or really no you could never move into another no matter what you did yeah and it's basically still the same well in Spain sometimes I feel like it's that way if you're not in the club if you don't have a kuny you're yeah you're not coming in it is true that in Spain it's as important who you know as to what you know yeah it's true contacts here so so important but in the United States there's this and they've said it since the beginning my father's a perfect example of it the American dream a guy 16 years old kid not a guy crosses from Spain from a little farm town a little Hamlet goes to Queens New York City Starts working at a factory starts learning the language washing dishes at the World's Fair now he's retired he's got his two-car garage kids through school so you know people now say oh the American dream is dead well I'm like well my dad I mean I've seen not just my dad my whole family my family has had a successful Bakery 75 years a Sicilian Bakery my grandfather set up his own Pharmacy and became very wealthy wasn't his goal to become wealthy but was to help people and have his own thing but he was successful so if you want to work hard you can make it happen in the United States and you can in Europe now m but it's it there's still more of a pessim not a pessimism but just a skepticism in Europe that it's you know I remember when I came to Spain and I started doing started just at the beginning dabling one of my students 57 years old the colonel in the military he said Richard I don't know why you're in Spain you can't get rich and be honest at the same time oh and I said San his name was Sancho said I refused to believe that and he was wrong yeah well I don't think I mean that's a very blanket statement as we say you know well I'm sure some people could do it the right way you know without screwing people over or yeah my father told me when I moved to Spain 20 years ago he said Alberto in Spain if you're going to steal don't steal 50 EUR steal 50 million all right that's what he told me he goes if you're going to do anything illegal like that they'll go after the guy who who steals 50 but if you steal 50 million you'll get a slap on the wrist perhaps yeah okay a slap on the wrist is an expression that means a very light punishment yeah you know I think he was half joking but I've seen a lot of people like how much money did this guy get away with yeah but you know to finish a little bit on the United States uh the depression lasted the entire decade of the 30s I mean my my parents lived their best years from age 9 to age 19 in the depression wow and the only thing that got us have depression was the second world war and so my father after living 10 years in the Depression had to go be come to Europe as a pilot fighting in the war where was he stationed in in England he was a photo reconnaissance pilot take pictures over Germany wow he had to go fly there take pictures of potential targets fly back they developed the film sent the bombers and he had to go back to see if they if they hit their target target so he had to put his life in Risk just to you know figure they were shooting at him he had to fly alone wow because they had to be surprised see got it reconnaissance is one of the hardest things cuz you got to be undetected but these many of these targets were very fortified mhm with anti-aircraft gotcha yeah yeah so he almost well the whole French Co I mean you saw those big guns that were that Hitler and his troops had put up everywhere but then after the war the United States passed a bill a bill is in proor they call it called the GI Bill the GI General infantry is GI no Gi Oh okay GI is a word for a soldier but it means government issue oh oh cuz I think gii Joe right famous All American Soldier I mean this technical bureaucratic word government issue yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah and that's for the soldier and they passed the GI bill which every Soldier coming back from the war had the right to do their um college education for free oh wow for free Uncle Sam States is expensive Uncle Sam would pay and that changed America because suddenly instead of 5 or 10% of people doing higher education it was 30 to 40% wow so that made us a smarter country so to speak it created the beginning of the uh American the Boom the real boom which was World War II that post World War too well you're a boo my mother too baby boomer generation which I guess things were going well so people had a lot of kids yeah also the rest of the world was destroyed oh right right yeah yeah Dres in you any City you went to I mean Russia Japan ja sure China yeah yeah Great Britain even you know and uh France and so the United States had incredible advantage and we kind of showed our military might there and people will debate whether dropping the bomb was necessary unnecessary but I think there people saw don't play with the United States yeah don't bet against the United States you you'll always lose but my father was when the war ended he was sent to Berlin the day after he spent one month in Berlin and then they sent him to Munich and he stayed there for two months at practicing with new plan different planes because he was going to be sent for the invasion of Japan oh so they had him training new planes to W to go to Japan wow so when Harry Truman they call it the Pacific Theater I love what they the Pacific I'm like is there a show going on here or what European theater the Pacific Theater yeah so when Truman dropped those two bombs my father was ecstatic he's like I can go home maybe yeah well that's why a lot of people who defend it say how much longer do you want the war to go on yeah the thing is the Japanese Never Surrender yeah and so if they wanted to end the war what what we call the unconditional surrender they would have to invade Japan and they were comic they didn't their own life didn't matter they had kamakazi P said I will risk my own life to kill five Americans if I have to give them away my own life yeah yeah and so um the calculation was that 1 million American soldiers would die and 2 million Japanese okay so 3 million people would die in the evasion of Japan and so Truman said well okay well let's let's but you know Japan also are we we have time yeah we're good sure sure sure yeah I have I have a lunch in six minutes well whenever whenever you got to wrap up I can go on this is a great conversation ja was also frightened because the Soviet Union was sending the Red Army into Manchuria and the Korean Peninsula with the idea of crossing the Sea of Japan okay and that scared them as much or more than the bombs and with this I'll rest my case well I'm just going to ask you one more question really interesting and also it's something I think you're giving it to us in layman's terms that somebody who's not very familiar with American history they can follow along I want to ask you this what's your favorite patriotic song cuz you know we love our you said God Bless America America the Beautiful yeah uh I love and I'll gladly stand up next to her and defend her still today you know my favorite is doesn't have words it's the Stars and Stripes Forever by John Philip Susa oh beautiful March got to love it that's military marks that I've always liked I got to say something I've been in Spain for 20 years but when I hear those songs those patriotic songs you know I get goosebumps I even get choked up sometimes you can take the boy out of America but you can't take America out of the boy all right so you become very patriotic in your I am I've always been I've always I feel very lucky to have grown up in the United States the education I received the opportunity so uh yeah okay I I can pick out some things I don't like especially now yeah but we won't get into that that we'll leave that for another podcast all right all right thank you so much to everybody who listened thank you to Richard vaugh and it's been a pleasure chatting with you on this week's episode of[Music] FYI[Music] a[Music] la[Music] n[Music] la[Music]