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This is Later with Lee Matthews,
the Lee Matthews Podcast More What You Hear

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Weekday Afternoon's on the Drive. So
great to have Moroka on again. Award

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winning correspondent for CBS Sunday Morning,
also a producer of the show The Henry

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Ford's Innovation Nation on Saturday Mornings.
He's also the author of the book All

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the Presidents Pets, a historical novel
about the White House pets and their role

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in presidential decision making. But one
of his more closer to his heart is

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his podcast Mobituaries. Moroka is joining
us MO. Great to have you along

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again, Lee. I am very
happy to be back with you. So

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Mobituaries it's all about obituaries, which
I harken back to my grandmother and that

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was the first thing she always read
in the newspaper. And it wasn't until

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later years I realized she's looking for
people. She knows. That's so funny.

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Well, my father was the first
section he read. He wasn't looking

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for people, he knew. He
just was really swept up in these stories

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of people's lives. And I know
it's a weird word to use it,

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the obituaries, but there's a kind
of romance to them, a kind of

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sweep. It's like a trailer for
an Oscar winning biopeck. If it's done,

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if it's written right, and obviously
if the person had a dramatic life,

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but everybody's life has drama. But
that's very funny how your grandmother read

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them? Yeah, Now, this
podcast is my way of taking a second

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look at people and things. We
did one on a kind of banana that

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died out in the nineteen fifties,
but taking a second look at these people

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and things that I think didn't get
to send off they deserved the first time.

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Some of them are short, and
some of them i've read are very

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long and flowery. I remember reading
one. Evidently the fellow had been a

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watch tinkerer, and everything in the
obituary was referring to a term that watchmakers

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would know. For instance, he
read you laid at his life, Well,

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he was always wound up tight and
ready to go, that kind of

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thing, And it went on and
on that paragraph or paragraph. Yeah.

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Yeah, I think the people who
write these have a great time. I

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think obituary, I don't think it's
a It looks at the at the newspapers

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that we still have it's a great
beat that means the dead beat. But

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they love it because you're basically writing
for every section of the paper. And

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I find that with the podcast.
You know, our first episode out now

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is about famous people who died on
the same day, because I've always been

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kind of interested in that, like
who gets top billing. Like I think

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we all remember in twenty oh nine
when Barah Faucett and Michael Jackson died on

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the same day, And some of
your older listeners may still remember when John

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Adams and Thomas Jefferson died on the
same day, and it was a July

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fourth, and it was the fiftieth
anniversary to the day of the signing of

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the Declaration of Independence. That sound
you just heard his thunder, Well,

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you could not have been more ironic
with that event. No, you could

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not, you know. Or yeah, I mean it's it's you know.

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And then and then James Monroe,
our fifth president, died five years later

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to the day, but that kind
of doesn't count. It's like, dude,

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I know you're trying to get in
this club, but it's like the

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fiftieth anniverse, the fifty fifth anniversary
just doesn't have a ring to it.

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Moroka Award winning correspondent for CBS Sunday
Morning. His podcast is Mobituaries. It's

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about the art of obituaries, and
it is an art, isn't it.

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It is an art, of course, It's yeah, it's telling someone's story.

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There's a million different ways to do
it. You know. This season

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we have Peggy Lee, Oh I
think is sort of undersung if you will.

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I mean, she kind of ruled
the nineteen fifties along with Sinatra.

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She was both like an extremely popular
singer and really innovative and also a real

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artist I mean, which is I
know, kind of a lofty term.

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But her granddaughter, you know,
shared tapes that have never been played before

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that we include this season. We're
also doing the death of the mid Atlantic

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accent, which is kind of the
name given to that accent. Anytime you

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watch a black and white movie,
that's the voice that they're using that seems

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so alien to us today. I
wanted to find out what was the origin

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of that accent and why it died
away and died away after the World War

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II. For the most part that
began dying away. Brando really drove a

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straight estate through its heart when he
showed up on screen because he talked like

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a real person. I think that
was because of the theater, the theatrical

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training at the time. You actually
had to enunciate many of your words so

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you could be heard in the back
row. You know. I love that.

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You know that that is indeed true, that that accent could carry to

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the back of the house, back
to the theater without microphones. However,

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what I learned is that the accent
was real though it wasn't invented, So

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people did in big parts of the
Northeast. Regular people and not just rich

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people, talked that way, and
they weren't taught that in school. It

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was just the way that they spoke. And linguist John mcwardour, who's a

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columnist for the New York Times,
is on that episode and said, you

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know, even the so called lower
classes talked like that. So Jackie Gleeson,

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if you really listen to him and
the Honeymooners, he's going Naughton,

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yeah, calling him Norton. Yeah, you know, he because they had

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Norton. And so the people of
all social classes in big parts of the

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country dropped their rs and for instance. So it's it's really interesting. I

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know another accent you don't hear anymore. And that's the old Southern accent.

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My grandparents spoke that accent, and
it was the oh I do to Claia,

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I love the Magnolias at this time
of the year. I mean everything

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you see in the old Southern movies
where they're actually making fun of that accent,

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but they really spoke that wave.
Well it's yeah, I mean it

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is interesting. And coln with the
wind because Vivian Lee, who's so amazing,

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she has that accent that you're describing. And oddly enough, Clark Gable

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was one of the few leading men, along with Gary Cooper and Spencer Tracy

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and a few others, who actually
kept there rs. So he said,

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he doesn't say, frankly, mydea, I don't give a damn. Frankly,

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my dear, I don't give a
damn. So he was sort of

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a forerunner in a way to the
way more modern actors spoke. But one

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thing about the Southern accent that John
mcwarter says is that part of the reason

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that Southerners dropped their rs at the
end of sentences is that a lot of

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the slaves that had been brought over
from West Africa todd were raised speaking of

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language. Their native languages didn't include
rs, so they themselves were pronouncing words

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without what mcwarter, who himself is
black, says is black English didn't have

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ours at the end of those sentences
of those words, and that that sort

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of bled into the way that white
people in the South spoke. So I

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thought that was really interesting. Oh, I have no doubt that that that

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has a lot of the influence,
had a lot of the influence. Now

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you see Moroka and mobituary. See
how many rabbit holes this takes you down?

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Love rabbit holes, Love rabbits.
I love love rabbit holes, unless

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I'm trying to build a house on
top of them. You've studied obituaries so

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much, I imagine that you would
not have any trouble at all writing one.

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I could write a handbook on being
a pallbear. You know, put

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the put the tall guy in the
middle. H never tried the European style.

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You're asking for. Trouble. Careful
some of the handles they will break

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off. Make sure you don't bang
it against another tombstone. Uh so uh,

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when you're writing mobituaries, Wait,
wait, wait, you have to

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stop for a second. This is
so interesting. First of all, I

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have to admit to you my first
impulse when you're telling you this is God,

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how many times have I been asked
to be a pallbearer? And then

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I suddenly started getting a complex,
thinking have I really not been a good

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friend? But then I thought,
well, wait a minute, maybe it's

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a good thing that I have been
asked. Yeah much, because I don't.

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I haven't been around that much death. But yeah, it's anyway,

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So you really know pall bearing?
Well, yeah I do. I could,

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and I joke about it every time
I am asked to Hey, hey,

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back with wait, could you be
a Paul bear? Yeah? I

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could write a handbook on being a
pallbearer. I've done it so much.

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Uh but uh, you know with
mobituaries, do you lift with the legs?

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Do you lift with the legs?
You you try to lift with the

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legs, and you want the tall
guy in the middle. You don't want

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him on the end because then everything
else is off balance. The funeral home

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people you need too tall guys then
right just about yeah, And the funeral

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home people are always very specific about
you don't know where the head is and

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the head has to go a certain
place. So they're always telling you,

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okay, turn it this way,
and and and and then you see in

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the movies of the European style where
they go up on the shoulder. You

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don't want to do that. You
don't want to do that. It's too

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heavy. That's so interesting. Do
you know when I worked at Pizzeria Munos,

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they would always say, you know, put the tray over the head,

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right like like on the shoulder,
because there was a temptation early on,

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when I was nervous at everything,
would that I drop everything to do

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it underhand and hold it almost in
front of me. And they're like,

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no, you can't do that.
You've got to poist the thing up.

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So you're saying with the body with
the coffin, you really should poist it

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up. You shouldn't, that's you. You should not. You should not

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know. It's heavy, and it's
it's angled. It's just no, just

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keep it, keep it at the
belt level. You know about waste level.

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You what about is it underhand or
overhand? It is overhand. Overhand

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is the best way. Underhand You're
gonna twist your wrist. And if you

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have to turn while you're carrying it, oh, you're gonna twist your wrist

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so you can. You can get
a rotator cup. You could. I'm

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sorry. We can go on and
on and I got another interview. I

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got to get to mo Roca mobituaries. Catch the podcast everywhere you get podcasts

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and the iHeartRadio app. Thanks for
joining us, Thanks leading, thanks for

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listening to Later with Lee Matthews,
the Lee Matthews Podcast, and remember to

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listen to The Drive Live weekday afternoons
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