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Speaker 1: Hello everybody, and welcome back to the Surely You Can't

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Be Serious Podcast Special Edition five Minutes of Fire. We

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are here talking about the lyrics of We Didn't Start

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the Fire by Billy Joel. We're covering only five minutes

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at a time, which is about to link the song,

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so it works out kind of nicely. So please join

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us as we dive into some new lyrics today.

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Speaker 2: All right, guys, so here are the topics that we're

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going to be covering today.

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Speaker 1: We're gonna be talking about Harry Truman, Doris Day, and Red.

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Speaker 2: China, Harry Truman, Doda de What do you know about

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Harry Truman.

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Speaker 1: Harry Truman was the thirty third President of the United States.

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What you may not know is that he had only

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been vice president for a couple of months before he

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had to take over as president because Franklin Delano Roosevelt

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suddenly died of a cerebral brain hemorrhage unexpectedly. The thing

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that you may not know is that Harry Truman hadn't

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got any information about what was going on with the

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Soviets or the development of the atomic bomb. But four

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months later he was going to have to make the

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decision to drop the bomb on two different cities in Japan.

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Speaker 2: Wow.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. So he was born in eighteen forty four. He

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was a farmer in Missouri. He served in World War One.

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He's got a middle initial of S, and a lot

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of people know, hey, the initials doesn't actually stand for anything,

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it's just S. But as it turns out, it was

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a way that he could be named after both of

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his grandfathers. One of them had the middle name Ship,

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the other one had the first name Solomon, and so

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the S stood basically for both of their names. He

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became vice president for the third term of FDR because

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he had uncovered about fifteen million dollars worth of waste

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that was going on during the war and had solved

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that problem. We start this song with Billy Joel's birth

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right nineteen forty nine. So when he was president in

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forty nine, the Soviets blockaded the western part of Berlin,

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weren't letting anything come in, and so it was Truman's

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idea to go, Okay, you're not going to let us

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drive the fo in, we will airlift it in. And

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so that's what they did. He started airlifting supplies into

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western Berlin and on May ninth, nineteen forty nine. Billy

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Joel was born on May eleventh, nineteen forty nine. Just

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two days later, the Soviets pulled back their blockade because

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of what Harry S. Truman did. Wow, that's incredible. All right,

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tell me what you know about Doris Day.

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Speaker 2: Okay. Doris Day was born Doris Mary Ann Koppelhoff in

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nineteen twenty two. Kopplehoff is not the greatest, right, So

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here's the thing. She began her career as a singer.

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She changed her name to Doris Day after singing the

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song day after day, day after day. So she landed

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her role in a movie called Romance at the High

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Season nineteen forty eight, after impressing the writer and the

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director Afting hearing her song Embraceable U. From there, she

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started several musicals, including By the Light of the Silvery Moon,

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which I know from Looney Tunes and so do you.

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She also started in the movie Calamity Jane and the

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Man Who Knew Too Much, the Alphad Hitchcock classic. Now. Then,

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from that movie she sang her signature song k Sara Sarah,

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but she hated that song when they came to her

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and said, you're gonna sing that. She's like, fine, I'll

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sing this one time and that's it. Well, it became

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her signature song. She's sang in a billion times after that.

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Speaker 1: Right.

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Speaker 2: She also starred in a movie I'll See You in

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My Dreams. Go back to our Patreon episode where we

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did on the Giant song and Pillow Talk with Rock

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Hudson where she became a lifelong friends with Rock Hudson.

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Most people don't know this. She turned down the role

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of Missus Robinson in The Graduate how About that It's

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Been Cool? She turned it down because she didn't like

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the subject matter, and she was dubbed the world's oldest

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vergeon because of her squeaky clean image. She hosted several

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TV shows and became an animal and AIDS activist. Now then,

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she's name checked in We Didn't Start to Fire by

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Billy Joel, Obviously, Wake Me Up Before You Go Go

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by Wham You Make, Wrap Her Up by Elton John

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and dig It by the Beatles. She also did several

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songs with Johnny Ray, who we're gonna be talking about tomorrow. Okay,

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de what do you know about Red China?

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Speaker 1: Okay? There is far too much history for me to

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tell you the whole story about Red China, but I

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will tell you this. It has been Red China for

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about eighty years now. Before that, it was a dynasty

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for about two thousand years, so that's pretty freaking impressive.

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But in nineteen twelve the dynasty was broken up and

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China kind of became the subject of various factions run

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by war lords. And then Shang Kai Shek took over

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and he started running everything as best he could, which

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he made a lot of progress, but he was also

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kind of an asshole, and so the Communists in nineteen

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twenty seven started a war with Shang Kai Shek's Kuming

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Teng government, and that civil war went on for a

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long time. Nineteen thirty seven Japanese War starts as well.

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But then by October first, nineteen forty nine, the Communists

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win and the official proclamation of Communist China takes place.

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Now they called themselves the People's Republic of China, but

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over here in the US we called them Red China

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because they were the Communists. Side note. Nineteen eighty nine,

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when the came out, there were political reforms going on

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in China, and that is when we had the Tenaman

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Square protests and mask. That's it for today, folks. We

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will catch you on our next episode.