301 - Disney: The Man, the Myth, the Popsicle

I just want to start off this blog post thanking everyone for the emails, the reviews, and all the love we have gotten these past two seasons and change. Ryan, Greg, and I never imagined we would catch on so quickly and make friends with different people and podcast. From the bottom of our black (Ryan and I) and French (Le Greg Tilton de InDepth Media) hearts, thank you all.

Now that’s over with, this Disney episode was a little sad for me personally. It marks the end of the beginning in my book. When Ryan and I sat down to hash out this podcast, we knew that Disney was going to be our first episode and it has been our most popular and talked about part of our podcast. When we brought Greg on board, he loved the idea and we just ran with it. We thought it was very fitting to end with the man, Walt Disney himself, and I am glad we did.

To me, the biggest myth to cover if he was actually cryogenically frozen. I knew the rumor to not be true, but I was glad Ryan covered the topic in the way that he did. One thing I love about the show is how Ryan takes things from that science perspective and works it out in a scientific-esque method. It hurts my brain sometimes to follow him, but at the end of his explanations I always feel a tiny bit smarter. Maybe over the next 15 years I’ll have half a brain if I keep hanging out with him.

We had a listener write in about Disney firing people over the smutty film. That myth has been propagated so much over time that I knew it would be close to impossible to find concrete evidence about its authenticity. Of all the topics we discussed, that was the one I was sure we weren’t going to find an answer.

The last topic I want to mention is about Mickey Mouse being Walt’s sole creation. I knew that Oswald the Lucky Rabbit came before Mickey and I’ve heard it mentioned that he was “borrowed” from another artist. But in my own opinion, I still give Walt all the credit in the world. He still managed to transform this rodent in white gloves and red shorts into an icon that he has become today. Maybe I’m just being biased there but I’m a bleeding heart for the mouse house. I shit pixie dust and I’m proud to admit it. 

One thing worth mentioning after the episode went live, I discovered this Reddit thread where it goes into more detail about Walt Disney being racist or anti-Semitic. Check it out if you have some free time.

We here at Rumor Flies hoped you enjoyed this episode. We don’t have anything planed around Disney at the moment but you can expect something down the pipeline. Also, you can look forward to our video supplement at the end of the season when I take my penalty shot of a buffalo colada due to my brain fart from this episode. Right before it makes me vomit, I hope we never lost sight of one thing: that it was all started by a mouse.

-Josh