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Tim Harford

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Tim Harford

Home Depot promotor Official de la Copa Mundial de la FIFA Dos mil veintic seis subjeto es pony belidad.

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Tim Harford

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Tim Harford

Pushkin. This episode will discuss death by suicide if you're suffering emotional distress or you're having suicidal thoughts, Support is available, for example, from the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline in the US or from the Samaritans in the UK. New York City, 1956. A young man goes into a bookstore and asks for a book, I Libertine by Frederick R. Ewing. The bookstore clerk checks their stock. It seems that they don't have a copy right now, but let's see if he can order one. He thumbs through the list of books available from the store's wholesalers. Strange he can't see it anywhere. What's it called? I Libertine, the young man says. And who did you say was the author? Frederick R. Ewing. The clerk still can't find it. Do you happen to know the publisher? Sure, says the customer. Excelsior Press. The clerk keeps looking through his lists. He can't see any mention of Excelsior Press. Are you sure that's the right name? The young man says he's sure. The bookstore clerk can only shrug in confusion. I'm sorry, he says. The book doesn't seem to exist. The young man thanks him and walks away looking disappointed but also strangely amused. Later, another young customer approaches the clerk. I'm looking for a book, he says. It's called I Libertine by Frederick R. Ewing. Oh, says the clerk. Someone else asked about this. I looked for it and it doesn't exist. Sure it does, the customer insists. Freddy Ewing. You know, the noted expert on 18th century erotica. Haven't you heard his radio series on the BBC? The clerk decides to call his wholesaler. It's very odd, says the wholesaler. We've been getting lots of calls asking for I Libertine, but we never heard of it. Or Frederick R. Ewing or Excelsior Press. What on earth is going on? I'm Tim Harford and you're listening to Cautionary Tales. In the middle of the night in a building in Carteret, New Jersey, a man in his mid-30s is talking into a microphone wearing nothing but Fruit of the Loom jockey shorts. It's stiflingly hot because also in this building is a 50,000 watt radio transmitter and there's no ventilation. This is not what Gene shepherd had in mind when he moved to New York with his young family in tow to try to crack the big time. He'd been jobbing around various provincial radio stations starting in his Indiana hometown.

Gene Shepherd

Next, HG Grubbage and the news.

Tim Harford

There's no HG Grubbage. It's shepherd playing the character of a self important newsreader and reading out odd little snippets he's seen in the newspaper. Like the zookeeper whose paycheck was eaten by an elephant, or the man in the Canary Islands who tried to cross the Atlantic in a barrel.

Gene Shepherd

He sailed two yards and turned over twice. Two bystanders rescued him, then two medical attendants were took him to the local psychiatric hospital.

Tim Harford

Sheppard collects these stories, not quite garbage, he calls them, but grubbage. Mostly, though, he doesn't read stuff out. He just talks and talks. No script, no notes at WKRC in Cincinnati. He's fired for too much talking. They just want someone to read out the ads from sponsors and tee up the records. He promises to play more music on his show, so they give him his job back. But he just keeps talking and talking. So they fire him again. He moves to Philadelphia.

Gene Shepherd

The purpose of my program is not to please, but to begin trains of thought. I realize that many things that I do might not be good listening.

Tim Harford

Sheppard's unusual approach piques the interest of a New York radio station who try him out on a Saturday afternoon. In just a few months, he sheds so many listeners that they shunt him into the graveyard Shift from 1am to 5:30 every weeknight. And because the New York studio's closed overnight, he has to broadcast from the sweltering transmitter room in New Jersey wearing only his underpants. Sheppard doesn't mind. He's got four and a half hours to fill every night. A prospect that might be daunting for some broadcasters, but not for Sheppard. Finally, his thoughts have room to breathe.

Gene Shepherd

So the guy hits a on the piano and I went medics, schmittachs, double beatniks, popkins all agreed.

Tim Harford

In the words of his biographer Eugene Bergman, these late night shows are a slow, casual, free floating association of ideas, philosophy and bemused commentary. He tells long meandering stories about his childhood and his time in the army. But is anyone actually listening? His bosses suspect not. They worry that Sheppard's not commercial. He hates playing music or reading out ads from sponsors. They threaten to fire him. Sheppard decides to fight back.

Gene Shepherd

Alright gang, let's show them that there are a few klutzes out there to listen to this drivel all night. All of you go to your grocery store tomorrow and ask for sweetheart Soap.

Tim Harford

The next day, stores in New York shift a surprising amount of sweetheart soap. There's only one problem. Sweetheart Soap isn't actually a sponsor of the radio station. Shepherd chose it at random, just to make a point. He does have listeners, a lot of listeners, and they're devoted. In the dead of the New York night, Shepherd has found his audience. He starts to ruminate on who they are. These night people.

Gene Shepherd

I'm talking about people with that wild tossing in the soul that somehow makes them stay up till three o' clock in the morning and brood. They might get up at 7 the next morning and go to work, but that ain't. That isn't what their life is about. Not a bit of it.

Tim Harford

Sheppard also starts to philosophise about the day people. Their life is about work. They believe in the world of the office, he says. They believe in file cabinets. They're the people in sales meetings with the light of ecclesiastical fervor in their eyes. They believe in what they're selling. Shepherd diagnoses that the day people are suffering from a malaise he calls creeping meatballism, by which he means conformity.

Gene Shepherd

The average person today thinks in certain prescribed patterns. People today have a genuine fear of stepping out and thinking on their own.

Tim Harford

Take the latest model of refrigerator that has a clever design of door that enables it to open from either side. The day people think this kind of progress is great.

Gene Shepherd

By George, we really are getting ahead.

Tim Harford

The night people couldn't care less about which side their fridge door opens. All they want to know is, does

Gene Shepherd

it keep the stuff cold?

Tim Harford

This is the 1950s, remember? Shepard was ahead of his time. What would he have thought of fridges that connect to the Internet?

Whitney Phillips

You need cheese.

Tim Harford

One day, Sheppard's in a New York bookstore trying to get a copy of a book he saw at a friend's house. The bookstore clerk looks through the lists of books he can get from wholesalers and informs shepherd that the book doesn't exist. But Sheppard knows the book exists. He's seen it.

Gene Shepherd

I suddenly became aware that New York is almost entirely a city that really does run on lists.

Tim Harford

The day people believe in lists. If a book's on a bestseller list, it must be good. If it's not on any list at all, it not only can't be good, it can't exist. Sheppard wants to mess with the belief in lists.

Gene Shepherd

What do you say? Tomorrow morning, each one of us walk into a bookstore and ask for a book that we know does not exist.

Tim Harford

Sheppard asks his listeners to suggest a title. He chooses I Libertine and makes up the author's bio on the fly. Frederick R. Ewing, an expert in 18th century erotica who's retired from the Royal Navy and broadcasts on the BBC. I Libertine is going to be an explicit account of the salacious sex lives of every 18th century London aristocrats.

Gene Shepherd

And by the way, Mr. Ewing is quite surprised at the success his book is enjoying, since it was written primarily for scholars, people who won't misunderstand that certain chapters are there for the purpose of scholarly research.

Tim Harford

Listeners write in to tell shepherd what happened when they went into stores to ask for the book. One reports a deliciously satisfying encounter with the puffed up clerk at his local bookstore who always has an opinion on every book. When the listener mentions I Libertine, the clerk knowingly strokes his beard. Ah, yes, Freddy Ewing. It's about time the public discovered him. A student tells Sheppard that he turned in an essay on I Libertine, augmented with quotes from Ewing's BBC broadcasts. He got a B. Superb research. Another listener says he flagged I Libertine to the Archdiocese of Boston and got them to ban. Seems like a perfectly judged prank. Funny and harmless. But there's another angle on the story of I Libertine, which shows it in a different light. We'll pick up Gene Shepherd's story, but first let's meet his modern heirs after the break.

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Gene Shepherd

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Tim Harford

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Gene Shepherd

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Gene Shepherd

guessed it, didn't you?

Tim Harford

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Gene Shepherd

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Tim Harford

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Tim Harford

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Tax Extra

Tim Harford

In 2007, a post on the anonymous online message board 4chan suggested that users send an email to the principal of their local high school. Yesterday afternoon, I came home early to find my son and his friends getting high on something they called jenkum. They urinate and defecate in plastic bottles and leave them to ferment in the sun, then inhale the resulting gas. Surely not. But the email continues. I looked it up on the Internet and apparently this was something invented by African children. That's actually true, kind of Years earlier, in the 1990s, a press agency in Zambia had reported on how tough life was for impoverished street children. Some were seeking a temporary escape by getting high on gases from human waste that had fermented in sewer ponds. The New York Times and BBC picked up the report and included the local term for that fermented sewer water, jenkum. So if an unsuspecting high school principal went to Google and typed in jenkum, they would find the top results did indeed mention African children, and they came from respected news organisations. That made the email seem superficially plausible, though what it said next about jenkom wasn't true at all. Now kids all over the world are doing it. My son says most of his friends at school have tried it. You would hope that most high school principals who received this email will have engaged their brains, done a bit of digging, and concluded that it was clearly a hoax. Most of their students were not fermenting their own excrement in plastic bottles, but there are always people who are ready to panic about what the kids are up to. A sheriff's office in Florida sent out a warning, complete with photos they'd found on the Internet of a teen inhaling from a plastic bottle. Someone had made jencome as a joke from flour, water and Nutella. Local news stations picked up the story.

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Cops are calling it jenkum, or the

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human waste drug, but parents need to

Tim Harford

be aware that kids are calling it

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by the more popular slang term butt hash.

Tim Harford

How could concerned parents tell if their teenager is inhaling butt hash? One news reporter, Earnestly advised parents to smell their children's breath at bedtime. Another asked for action from the U.S. drugs Enforcement Agency. A bemused agent explained that it was hard for the government to regulate people's urine and feces. This all caused much hilarity for the Anonymous users of 4chan. At around this time, the academic Whitney Phillips found out about 4chan from her 18 year old brother. Check it out, he told her. You'll like it. Phillips checked it out and was horrified.

Whitney Phillips

She recalls, there was so much porn and gore, so much offensive antagonistic humor and general foulness.

Tim Harford

It was also confusing with its own language and evident in jokes. Why were people saying an hero, for example? I'll come back to that. Phillips sensed that whatever was happening on 4chan was interesting enough to study. She did a PhD on trolling subculture. The anonymous posters on 4chan self identified as trolls. But what did the word even mean? Phillips soon discovered that there were two etymologies. For some, the troll comes from Norse mythology. Trolls are ugly, malevolent and stupid. They live under bridges and threaten to eat the billy goat's gruff. But others insisted that trolling is a fishing term. It means dangling bait behind a fishing boat. In this sense, trolling is a skilled pursuit. The metaphor of dangling bait certainly seems like a better fit for the Jencome email, which got several satisfying bites from school principals and local news reports. When Phillips asked the 4chan trolls what makes a troll, they told her trolls believe that nothing should be taken seriously. When she asked them what they got out of trolling, they said lulz. Lulz, says Phillips, is an extremely slippery term. Trolls themselves struggle to explain it.

Whitney Phillips

You know it when you see it was the most common definition I heard when conducting interviews.

Tim Harford

But Phillips has a go at defining

Whitney Phillips

lulz, a kind of ambiguous, unsympathetic laughter.

Tim Harford

Phillips spent more and more time getting to know the kind of people who post on 4chan. What she found reflected the split between these two etymologies.

Whitney Phillips

Some trolls are remarkably reflective and intelligent, and some are remarkably not.

Tim Harford

Phillips began to understand the language and the iconography.

Whitney Phillips

She realised I found certain forms of trolling funny, interesting and in some cases, justifiable.

Tim Harford

Rickrolling, for example, came from 4chan, the practice of disguising links. So you end up unexpectedly at the YouTube video of Rick Astley singing never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down. A well executed Rickroll makes a point. We're tempted to click on a link against our better judgment, and Astley is our chastening reward. Why Rick Astley it's just one of those random things that caught on like over 9,000 originally from a melodramatically delivered and mistranslated English dubbed of the Japanese anime Dragon ball Z. It's over 9,000. Over 9,000 took on a life of its own on 4chan as the default joke answer to any numeric question anyone familiar with troll subculture would immediately recognise. Over 9,000. Oprah Winfrey was not familiar with troll subculture. In 2008, she was discussing paedophilia on her show. Some people still weren't understanding the threat to children. She said, let me read you something

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that was posted on our message boards

Tim Harford

from someone who claims to be a member of a known pedophile network. Are you sure about this, Oprah? His group has over 9,000 penises and they're all raping children. So I want you to know they're organized and they have systematic ways of hurting children. Over 9,000 penises became a 4chan classic, an absurdist in joke offensive subject matter. But it also made a worthwhile point. It showed that Oprah could take some random anonymous post on her message board and imbue it with authority as long as it fit her sensationalist narrative. The researcher Whitney Phillips concludes that this kind of trolling performs a useful social function. As she writes in her book this is why we can't have nice Things.

Whitney Phillips

Trolls unearth the biases, hypocrisies and deep inconsistencies that compose mainstream culture.

Tim Harford

Or put another way, Trolls reveal

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it

Tim Harford

all sounds very much like Gene Shepherd's Night people asking bookstores for a book they know doesn't exist. The prank revealed that some archdiocese might ban a non existent book if the title sounds a bit risque that some teachers will call research superb if it reads plausibly like it might have been superb if only the subject were real. The student who got a B for his essay on Frederick R. Ewing wrote to my whole education is probably phony. Sheppard kept up the joke for weeks. A journalist who was in on it, casually mentioned in his column, had lunch with Freddie Ewing today. A listener reported that three players at a bridge party had earnestly discussed I Libertine and concluded they didn't like it. The prank revealed when people were willing to bluff an opinion about a book that was getting buzz rather than admit that they didn't know a thing. Then a publisher who was in on the joke wrote to Sheppard with a proposal. How about writing I Libertine for real? Cautionary Tales will be back in a moment.

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iHeartRadio Ad Host

You know what your customers are doing right this second? The exact same thing. You are listening to me. Which, let's be honest, is kind of flattering. But my point Is, ads on iHeartRadio actually get heard in the car, at the gym, on the couch, while people are walking their dogs. Who's a good boy? Who's a good boy? You're a good boy. That's right there.

Whitney Phillips

You're a good.

iHeartRadio Ad Host

So why not make the next ad about you? Get started today. Call 844-844-IHEART or go to iheartadvertising.com that's 844-844-iheart or iheartadvertising.com do we all need to be detoxing ourselves?

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Before I go asking how can I detox? I have to look inward. Okay, what am I doing? Can I identify at least three ways that my body detoxes and ways to support that? I promise if my message was more dramatic like that, I would have millions of followers and make millions of dollars. So. But I cannot sleep at night trying to sell someone something that their body already does.

iHeartRadio Ad Host

Naturally, we're living in a crazy world now. I think it's a lot of people

Tim Harford

fear a lack of control.

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And as a result of this, this

Tim Harford

is the way of them trying to make sense of the world and try to take control over their own bodies. So by actively doing something, I'm gonna

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Tim Harford

When Whitney Phillips began to study 4chan in 2007, the commonly used phrase an hero was one that confused her. As she discovered it traced back to a teenager who'd killed himself in 2006. One of the boy's friends had posted on an online memorial page a poem mourning his loss. The poem was heartfelt but terribly written. He was such an hero to take it all away. We miss him so that you should know. It goes on with three more mentions of an hero and loving him like an brother. Someone posted the poem to 4chan, where it became one of those random things that caught on. That's comprehensible. It is, after all, an terrible poem. But what happened next was truly awful. Trolls on 4chan tracked down the address of the boy who'd killed himself and published his parents phone number. The parents got prank calls. Kids turned up at the boy's grave to take photos to post on 4chan. There's no worthwhile point to redeem any of this. As Whitney Phillips puts it, the trolls

Whitney Phillips

were either disinterested in or outright blind to the ways in which their mockery exacerbated an already traumatizing experience.

Tim Harford

The trolls of 4chan had told Whitney Phillips that they didn't take anything seriously. They were in it for the lulz. Sometimes, it's true, they happened to make a point while annoying or confusing or offending. People like showing up the gullibility of media when it comes to raising fears about drugs and paedophiles. But making a point wasn't the point. The lulz was the point. Whatever they revealed was just by accident. When a publisher approached Gene shepherd to write I Libertine For Real, he agreed they'd have to rush it out while the buzz was still buzzing. So Sheppard quickly sketched an outline, and they drafted in the prolific sci fi writer Theodore Sturgeon to bash out the prose against a tight deadline. When Sturgeon fell asleep at his typewriter with only one chapter to go, the publisher's wife stepped in to finish it off. None of this sounds very promising Nor does the blurb turbulent, turgid, tempestuous. I Libertine is long out of print, but I was curious and Oxford University's Bodleian Library has almost every book ever published in English. Did it have I Libertine? But of course in hardback and paperback editions. I requested it for the purpose of scholarly research on the paperback cover. A dungeon. A swashbuckling hero in a tricorn hat. A woman in chains, dress ripped, eyes closed, lips sensually parted. Let's check out the prose, shall we? What happened? What happened? It was a tease, a small thing, a nothing, a passatiempe. And she closing her eyes and her lips to show him some childish something. And this blaze, this coruscation, arms full of mouthful of break, burst, spill, crash, silence. It's no mystery why I Libertine is out of print. What is a mystery is why Gene shepherd thought this was a good idea. Getting people to talk about a non existent book was very funny and revealing actually. Then to publish a book that's just schlock doesn't seem that funny or clever or revealing of anything. Except perhaps that Gene shepherd hadn't really understood why his own joke worked. So was I Libertine really as perfectly judged a prank as it seemed? Lets look again from another angle.

Gene Shepherd

Double beatniks, popkins all agree to pinch and all these guys were sitting and they're looking at me.

Tim Harford

Gene Shepherd's free floating late night shows won him some lifelong fans. One likens him to a jazz musician with words. Another recalls he made literature fresh right in front of your eyes. Like a guy making pizza in the window of a restaurant while Sheppard wove his spell by night he spent his days with a mistress. He'd come home to his wife now and then, his son recalls. He'd talk his way back in with a line how it was going to be different from now on. It never was. All he seemed to want was the wife to do his ironing. Nearly half a century after Sheppard went off the airwaves, some recordings of his shows remain. To be honest, it's not always easy to reconstruct his appeal. Like an hero or over 9,000, Shepherd's catchphrases seem to have taken on such a life of their own that you probably had to be there to get them. Like this Excelsior.

Gene Shepherd

Yeah, Fathead.

Tim Harford

He was so fond of that one that it became the title of his biography and Excelsior Press. Any bookstore clerk who knew Sheppard would surely pick up on the clue or this flick lives Flick was a character In Sheppard's meandering childhood stories. One night, Sheppard told his fans, I'll

Gene Shepherd

tell you what you want to do. Just put wherever you can. And the school john or the bulletin board, just one single line. Just say, flick lives. That's all on those Clairol ads on the subway. You know where it says, only her hairdresser knows. You're just right under there. Flick lives.

Tim Harford

The point was simply to mess with the day people. Sheppard's listeners would know why Flick lives was suddenly everywhere. The day people would be confused, and that would be funny. Lulz. In his dead of night shows, Sheppard liked to do something he called hurling invective. He'd ask his listeners to put their radio up against an open window and whisper to them to turn the volume up, up, up, all the way to maximum. Then he'd yell some nonsensical insult.

Gene Shepherd

You filthy pragmatists. I'm gonna get you.

Tim Harford

The point was simply to annoy the day people by startling them awake. Lulz. Sometimes Sheppard would invite his listeners to hold a mill, which meant turning up at a certain place at a certain time and just milling around for a while, doing nothing. Hundreds turned up to these mills. One venue Sheppard frequently chose for a mill was a gallery cafe. The owner later said, I dreaded it. The waitresses dreaded it all. These young people would come. They never ordered, they never left a tip. The regular customers would stay away. The evening was just ruined. It's not in the same league of awfulness as harassing the parents of a kid who took his own life, but still, it's inconsiderate. Not that Sheppard cared. He liked the lulls. When you look at I libertine, in the light of Jean Shepherd's other work, it seems hard to imagine, he thought, far beyond the lulls. The point was simply to annoy and confuse the day people, to waste the time of the bookshop clerks. What it ended up revealing was just by accident. There's a lot to be said for pranks that reveal like Jenkum over 9000 penises or I libertine. But maybe it's harder than we might hope to create the conditions for those pranks to emerge. With Both Gene shepherd and 4chan, they seem to have popped up by happy accident from a wider culture that's mean and self absorbed. Soon after Whitney Phillips began to study trolling subculture, that culture began to splinter. The Anonymous posters on 4chan were also collectively anonymous. Capital A. As 4chan became more and more popular, new posters wanted anonymous, not just to chase the luls but to make a point, they began a campaign against Scientology. Prank phone calls, denial of service attacks, gathering in person outside branches of the church and playing Rick Astley very loudly on a loop. They embraced hacktivism, supporting WikiLeaks, the Occupy movement, and the Arab Spring. The old hands were appalled, Wong complained to Whitney Phillips. Anonymous isn't supposed to represent anything. We did stuff for lulz, not because we care what happens in the world, but that Anon was disappearing, phillips explained.

Whitney Phillips

As hacktivist Anon grew, Lull's anon receded, suggesting that the cultural landscape has room for only one Anonymous at a time.

Tim Harford

Whitney Phillips had found two types of troll, reflecting two takes on etymology, the witless ogre and the bait dangling technique that took subtlety and guile. As Anon ditched the lulz for earnest political activism, the fishing variety understanding of trolling began to fade away. One troll reflected wistfully, the real trolls from way back when are done now. Trolling is just an all encompassing term for being an arse on the Internet. Gene shepherd was onto something with his credo of the Night People, his critique of creeping meatballism. Thoughtless conformity is just as relevant today, and irreverent humor is still the only antidote.

Gene Shepherd

Once a guy starts thinking, once a guy starts laughing at the things he once thought were very real. Once he starts laughing at TV commercials, Once a guy starts doing that, he's making the transition from day people to night people. Once this happens, he can never go back.

Tim Harford

But if you take nothing seriously, you throw out some things that are worth caring about. Compassion, relationships. Sheppard himself never took much interest in his children, his son recalls. He was more interested in talking about himself, his daughter adds.

Whitney Phillips

My father was an a hole.

Tim Harford

As a father, Sheppard left his wife and married an actress. That didn't last because his new wife's career took off and Sheppard couldn't cope.

Gene Shepherd

Don't ever get yourself into a situation where your woman's making more money than you are.

Tim Harford

Sheppard was a tremendously insecure guy, says someone who worked with him. Very narcissistic, even off mic. He couldn't shut up about himself. He was a monomaniac, says another colleague. He was always on. Maybe Sheppard's problem was a lack of self awareness when he mocked the Day People and the conventional way they viewed the world, an old boss recalls. He would rail against the establishment, and yet he desperately wanted the acceptance of that establishment. Sheppard thought he never got the credit his genius deserved, the boss says. Many guys would have achieved his success and been really happy with it. Sheppard, like modern trolls, was all about the lulz, but his boss decided in the end that Sheppard was a deeply unhappy guy. Perhaps the same is true of people who choose to be an ass on the Internet. Key sources for this episode were Excelsior, you, Fathead, by Eugene Berkman and this Is why We can't have Nice Things by Whitney Phillips Cautionary Tales is written by me, Tim Harford with Andrew Wright, Alice Fiennes and Ryan Dilley. It's produced by Georgia Mills and Marilyn Rust. The sound design and original music are the work of Pascal Wise. Ben Nadaf Haffrey edited the scripts. Cautionary Tales features the voice talents of Genevieve Gaunt, Melanie Gutteridge, Ed Goughan, Stella Harford, Jamal Westman, and Rufus Wright. The show also wouldn't have been possible without the work of Jacob Weisberg, Greta Cohn, Corinne Gilliard Fisher, Ben Nadaff Haffrey, Eric Sandler, Christina Sullivan, Keira Posey, and Owen Miller. Cautionary Tales is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you like the show, please remember to share, rate and review. It really does make a difference to us. And if you want to hear it ad free and receive a bonus audio episode, video episode and members only newsletter every month, why not join the Cautionary Club? To sign up, head to patreon.com cautionaryclub that's patreon P-A-T-R-E-O-N.com cautionaryclub.

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Grainger Knows when you're a procurement manager for an office park, you're not managing one building, you're managing all of them. And to stay ahead, you need to see through walls and around corners. Lights about to fail, filters ready to clog H Vac on its last leg. If you wait until something breaks, you're already behind. Count on Grainger for quality products, easy reordering and 24. 7 support. Call 1-800-GRAINGER click grainger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done.

Kohler Cast Iron Ambassador

When Kohler, global design leader in luxurious kitchen and bath products, asked me to be their ambassador for timeless, elegant, durable cast iron, I said, I'm in. Soon after, I was in their Kohler, Wisconsin foundry watching molten iron, poured, enamel applied by hand and the beautiful finished pieces ready to ship. Since 1883, Kohler cast iron has been crafted by incredible artisans and seeing it firsthand gave me a whole new appreciation of for their craftsmanship. Now I'm proud to lend my stamp of approval to my favorite Kohler cast iron products for their durability beauty and enduring style. Shop my curated pics@kohler.com as the Kohler Cast Iron Ambassador, I say, long live Cast Iron.

iHeartRadio Ad Host

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