This is Later with Lee Matthews, the Lee Matthews Podcast More What You Hear
Weekday Afternoon's on the Drive. So great to have Moroka on again. Award
winning correspondent for CBS Sunday Morning, also a producer of the show The Henry
Ford's Innovation Nation on Saturday Mornings. He's also the author of the book All
the Presidents Pets, a historical novel about the White House pets and their role
in presidential decision making. But one of his more closer to his heart is
his podcast Mobituaries. Moroka is joining us MO. Great to have you along
again, Lee. I am very happy to be back with you. So
Mobituaries it's all about obituaries, which I harken back to my grandmother and that
was the first thing she always read in the newspaper. And it wasn't until
later years I realized she's looking for people. She knows. That's so funny.
Well, my father was the first section he read. He wasn't looking
for people, he knew. He just was really swept up in these stories
of people's lives. And I know it's a weird word to use it,
the obituaries, but there's a kind of romance to them, a kind of
sweep. It's like a trailer for an Oscar winning biopeck. If it's done,
if it's written right, and obviously if the person had a dramatic life,
but everybody's life has drama. But that's very funny how your grandmother read
them? Yeah, Now, this podcast is my way of taking a second
look at people and things. We did one on a kind of banana that
died out in the nineteen fifties, but taking a second look at these people
and things that I think didn't get to send off they deserved the first time.
Some of them are short, and some of them i've read are very
long and flowery. I remember reading one. Evidently the fellow had been a
watch tinkerer, and everything in the obituary was referring to a term that watchmakers
would know. For instance, he read you laid at his life, Well,
he was always wound up tight and ready to go, that kind of
thing, And it went on and on that paragraph or paragraph. Yeah.
Yeah, I think the people who write these have a great time. I
think obituary, I don't think it's a It looks at the at the newspapers
that we still have it's a great beat that means the dead beat. But
they love it because you're basically writing for every section of the paper. And
I find that with the podcast. You know, our first episode out now
is about famous people who died on the same day, because I've always been
kind of interested in that, like who gets top billing. Like I think
we all remember in twenty oh nine when Barah Faucett and Michael Jackson died on
the same day, And some of your older listeners may still remember when John
Adams and Thomas Jefferson died on the same day, and it was a July
fourth, and it was the fiftieth anniversary to the day of the signing of
the Declaration of Independence. That sound you just heard his thunder, Well,
you could not have been more ironic with that event. No, you could
not, you know. Or yeah, I mean it's it's you know.
And then and then James Monroe, our fifth president, died five years later
to the day, but that kind of doesn't count. It's like, dude,
I know you're trying to get in this club, but it's like the
fiftieth anniverse, the fifty fifth anniversary just doesn't have a ring to it.
Moroka Award winning correspondent for CBS Sunday Morning. His podcast is Mobituaries. It's
about the art of obituaries, and it is an art, isn't it.
It is an art, of course, It's yeah, it's telling someone's story.
There's a million different ways to do it. You know. This season
we have Peggy Lee, Oh I think is sort of undersung if you will.
I mean, she kind of ruled the nineteen fifties along with Sinatra.
She was both like an extremely popular singer and really innovative and also a real
artist I mean, which is I know, kind of a lofty term.
But her granddaughter, you know, shared tapes that have never been played before
that we include this season. We're also doing the death of the mid Atlantic
accent, which is kind of the name given to that accent. Anytime you
watch a black and white movie, that's the voice that they're using that seems
so alien to us today. I wanted to find out what was the origin
of that accent and why it died away and died away after the World War
II. For the most part that began dying away. Brando really drove a
straight estate through its heart when he showed up on screen because he talked like
a real person. I think that was because of the theater, the theatrical
training at the time. You actually had to enunciate many of your words so
you could be heard in the back row. You know. I love that.
You know that that is indeed true, that that accent could carry to
the back of the house, back to the theater without microphones. However,
what I learned is that the accent was real though it wasn't invented, So
people did in big parts of the Northeast. Regular people and not just rich
people, talked that way, and they weren't taught that in school. It
was just the way that they spoke. And linguist John mcwardour, who's a
columnist for the New York Times, is on that episode and said, you
know, even the so called lower classes talked like that. So Jackie Gleeson,
if you really listen to him and the Honeymooners, he's going Naughton,
yeah, calling him Norton. Yeah, you know, he because they had
Norton. And so the people of all social classes in big parts of the
country dropped their rs and for instance. So it's it's really interesting. I
know another accent you don't hear anymore. And that's the old Southern accent.
My grandparents spoke that accent, and it was the oh I do to Claia,
I love the Magnolias at this time of the year. I mean everything
you see in the old Southern movies where they're actually making fun of that accent,
but they really spoke that wave. Well it's yeah, I mean it
is interesting. And coln with the wind because Vivian Lee, who's so amazing,
she has that accent that you're describing. And oddly enough, Clark Gable
was one of the few leading men, along with Gary Cooper and Spencer Tracy
and a few others, who actually kept there rs. So he said,
he doesn't say, frankly, mydea, I don't give a damn. Frankly,
my dear, I don't give a damn. So he was sort of
a forerunner in a way to the way more modern actors spoke. But one
thing about the Southern accent that John mcwarter says is that part of the reason
that Southerners dropped their rs at the end of sentences is that a lot of
the slaves that had been brought over from West Africa todd were raised speaking of
language. Their native languages didn't include rs, so they themselves were pronouncing words
without what mcwarter, who himself is black, says is black English didn't have
ours at the end of those sentences of those words, and that that sort
of bled into the way that white people in the South spoke. So I
thought that was really interesting. Oh, I have no doubt that that that
has a lot of the influence, had a lot of the influence. Now
you see Moroka and mobituary. See how many rabbit holes this takes you down?
Love rabbit holes, Love rabbits. I love love rabbit holes, unless
I'm trying to build a house on top of them. You've studied obituaries so
much, I imagine that you would not have any trouble at all writing one.
I could write a handbook on being a pallbear. You know, put
the put the tall guy in the middle. H never tried the European style.
You're asking for. Trouble. Careful some of the handles they will break
off. Make sure you don't bang it against another tombstone. Uh so uh,
when you're writing mobituaries, Wait, wait, wait, you have to
stop for a second. This is so interesting. First of all, I
have to admit to you my first impulse when you're telling you this is God,
how many times have I been asked to be a pallbearer? And then
I suddenly started getting a complex, thinking have I really not been a good
friend? But then I thought, well, wait a minute, maybe it's
a good thing that I have been asked. Yeah much, because I don't.
I haven't been around that much death. But yeah, it's anyway,
So you really know pall bearing? Well, yeah I do. I could,
and I joke about it every time I am asked to Hey, hey,
back with wait, could you be a Paul bear? Yeah? I
could write a handbook on being a pallbearer. I've done it so much.
Uh but uh, you know with mobituaries, do you lift with the legs?
Do you lift with the legs? You you try to lift with the
legs, and you want the tall guy in the middle. You don't want
him on the end because then everything else is off balance. The funeral home
people you need too tall guys then right just about yeah, And the funeral
home people are always very specific about you don't know where the head is and
the head has to go a certain place. So they're always telling you,
okay, turn it this way, and and and and then you see in
the movies of the European style where they go up on the shoulder. You
don't want to do that. You don't want to do that. It's too
heavy. That's so interesting. Do you know when I worked at Pizzeria Munos,
they would always say, you know, put the tray over the head,
right like like on the shoulder, because there was a temptation early on,
when I was nervous at everything, would that I drop everything to do
it underhand and hold it almost in front of me. And they're like,
no, you can't do that. You've got to poist the thing up.
So you're saying with the body with the coffin, you really should poist it
up. You shouldn't, that's you. You should not. You should not
know. It's heavy, and it's it's angled. It's just no, just
keep it, keep it at the belt level. You know about waste level.
You what about is it underhand or overhand? It is overhand. Overhand
is the best way. Underhand You're gonna twist your wrist. And if you
have to turn while you're carrying it, oh, you're gonna twist your wrist
so you can. You can get a rotator cup. You could. I'm
sorry. We can go on and on and I got another interview. I
got to get to mo Roca mobituaries. Catch the podcast everywhere you get podcasts
and the iHeartRadio app. Thanks for joining us, Thanks leading, thanks for
listening to Later with Lee Matthews, the Lee Matthews Podcast, and remember to
listen to The Drive Live weekday afternoons from five to seven and iHeartMedia Presentation