WEBVTT 00:00:02.759 --> 00:00:06.919 The Deep Dive, Monty Python's Flying Circus and 00:00:06.919 --> 00:00:10.039 the Anatomy of Absurdity. Join us for a comprehensive 00:00:10.039 --> 00:00:12.580 deep dive into the creation, controversy and 00:00:12.580 --> 00:00:15.259 enduring legacy of Monty Python's Flying Circus. 00:00:15.740 --> 00:00:18.379 We unpack how six university -educated comedians 00:00:18.379 --> 00:00:20.940 revolutionized British television with stream 00:00:20.940 --> 00:00:23.429 -of -consciousness sketch comedy. From their 00:00:23.429 --> 00:00:25.769 battles with BBC censorship and lost sketches 00:00:25.769 --> 00:00:28.050 to the strange origins of their name and their 00:00:28.050 --> 00:00:30.910 unlikely connection to Elvis Presley, we explore 00:00:30.910 --> 00:00:33.810 what made the Pythons tick. Whether you're curious 00:00:33.810 --> 00:00:36.630 about John Cleese's disdain for the iconic Ministry 00:00:36.630 --> 00:00:39.450 of Silly Walks, Terry Gilliam's bizarre cutout 00:00:39.450 --> 00:00:42.609 animations, the groundbreaking ABC network lawsuit 00:00:42.609 --> 00:00:45.310 that changed copyright law, or how the show accidentally 00:00:45.310 --> 00:00:47.210 named the Python programming language in your 00:00:47.210 --> 00:00:50.070 email spam folder, this deep dive is your shortcut 00:00:50.070 --> 00:00:52.490 to understanding a monumental piece of pop culture 00:00:52.490 --> 00:00:54.590 history. Okay, let's unpack this. If you look 00:00:54.590 --> 00:00:57.310 back at the landscape of late 1960s television, 00:00:57.750 --> 00:01:00.729 especially in Britain, it was an incredibly rigid 00:01:00.729 --> 00:01:03.570 environment. Very formalized. Right. Highly formalized. 00:01:03.689 --> 00:01:05.750 You had these light entertainment programs that 00:01:05.750 --> 00:01:08.150 followed a really strict, almost mathematical 00:01:08.150 --> 00:01:11.269 formula. Setup, punchline, bow. Exactly. The 00:01:11.269 --> 00:01:13.569 setups were polite, the transitions were seamless, 00:01:13.930 --> 00:01:16.010 and the punchlines arrived exactly when you expected 00:01:16.010 --> 00:01:18.430 them to. Right. And then tearing through that 00:01:18.430 --> 00:01:20.409 polite veneer like a chainsaw through a velvet 00:01:20.409 --> 00:01:24.359 curtain comes a completely unkempt man. looking 00:01:24.359 --> 00:01:27.060 like Robinson Crusoe. Oh, the It's Man. Yes. 00:01:27.599 --> 00:01:29.840 Sprinting across a jagged cliff face running 00:01:29.840 --> 00:01:32.879 right up to the camera lens to just gasp the 00:01:32.879 --> 00:01:36.140 word, It's, before immediately being squashed 00:01:36.140 --> 00:01:39.090 by a giant animated Victorian foot. which is 00:01:39.090 --> 00:01:41.989 just such a jarring image. Welcome to the world 00:01:41.989 --> 00:01:44.430 of Monty Python's flying circus. I'm so thrilled 00:01:44.430 --> 00:01:46.650 to dive into this today. Me too. It's a massive 00:01:46.650 --> 00:01:48.870 topic. It really is. We are working from a very 00:01:48.870 --> 00:01:51.650 comprehensive Wikipedia article today, and we're 00:01:51.650 --> 00:01:53.650 going to explore the premise, the incredibly 00:01:53.650 --> 00:01:56.489 fraught production history, the casting dynamics 00:01:56.489 --> 00:01:59.549 and the intense censorship controversies. And 00:01:59.549 --> 00:02:01.450 of course, the massive cultural footprint of 00:02:01.450 --> 00:02:04.189 this groundbreaking show, which originally aired 00:02:04.189 --> 00:02:10.460 from 1969 to 1974. Today is to extract the fascinating 00:02:10.460 --> 00:02:14.419 history of how six men Completely broke the rules 00:02:14.419 --> 00:02:16.740 of television. They really did. It's hard to 00:02:16.740 --> 00:02:18.800 find a comparison for the sheer impact of what 00:02:18.800 --> 00:02:20.960 they achieved Yeah, we throw around the phrase 00:02:20.960 --> 00:02:23.379 ahead of their time a lot when discussing vintage 00:02:23.379 --> 00:02:26.340 media But this group didn't just anticipate the 00:02:26.340 --> 00:02:28.479 future of comedy They essentially engineered 00:02:28.479 --> 00:02:31.379 an entirely new timeline for it. They hacked 00:02:31.379 --> 00:02:34.180 the mainframe of the BBC Basically, yeah, they 00:02:34.180 --> 00:02:36.939 altered the basic atomic structure of what a 00:02:36.939 --> 00:02:39.159 television show could actually be. And they created 00:02:39.159 --> 00:02:42.319 a blueprint for modern comedy that continues 00:02:42.319 --> 00:02:45.780 to echo in our daily lives. So speaking directly 00:02:45.780 --> 00:02:48.300 to you, the listener, whether you are a diehard 00:02:48.300 --> 00:02:50.740 comedy nerd or maybe someone interested in the 00:02:50.740 --> 00:02:52.759 history of television broadcasting. Or just someone 00:02:52.759 --> 00:02:54.560 who uses the word spam without knowing where 00:02:54.560 --> 00:02:57.680 it came from. Right. This deep dive will reveal 00:02:57.680 --> 00:02:59.919 the fascinating mechanics behind the madness. 00:03:00.360 --> 00:03:03.000 So, when you look at the sheer magnitude of the 00:03:03.000 --> 00:03:05.979 Python legacy, what stands out to you the most? 00:03:06.580 --> 00:03:08.199 What's fascinating here is that their legacy 00:03:08.199 --> 00:03:10.979 isn't just about being funny, it's about being 00:03:10.979 --> 00:03:14.180 fundamentally aggressively disruptive. Disruptive 00:03:14.180 --> 00:03:16.889 how? Well, you have to remember... These were 00:03:16.889 --> 00:03:20.069 highly educated, brilliant writers. They looked 00:03:20.069 --> 00:03:22.849 at the architecture of the traditional joke and 00:03:22.849 --> 00:03:26.250 decided to declare war on it. They hated punchlines. 00:03:26.430 --> 00:03:29.389 Passionately. They viewed the standard punchline 00:03:29.389 --> 00:03:32.430 as a creative cop out, just a way to artificially 00:03:32.430 --> 00:03:35.750 end a scene that had run out of steam. So they 00:03:35.750 --> 00:03:39.300 embraced a legacy of absolute creative anarchy. 00:03:39.500 --> 00:03:41.240 But it wasn't just chaos for the sake of chaos. 00:03:41.400 --> 00:03:43.379 Not at all. And that is the crucial part. It 00:03:43.379 --> 00:03:46.599 was an anarchy that was meticulously planned, 00:03:47.099 --> 00:03:50.379 rehearsed and executed. It wasn't just guys goofing 00:03:50.379 --> 00:03:53.319 off on camera. It was a highly disciplined deconstruction 00:03:53.319 --> 00:03:56.360 of television itself. Meticulously planned anarchy. 00:03:56.460 --> 00:03:58.280 That is the perfect way to frame it. Thanks. 00:03:58.340 --> 00:04:00.060 So let's look at how this circus was actually 00:04:00.060 --> 00:04:02.219 assembled because the background of these six 00:04:02.219 --> 00:04:04.960 men tells you a lot about why they were perfectly 00:04:04.960 --> 00:04:06.960 positioned to deconstruct that system. Let's 00:04:06.960 --> 00:04:09.560 get into it. The core group consists of Graham 00:04:09.560 --> 00:04:12.879 Chapman, John Cleese, Eric Idle, Terry Jones, 00:04:13.240 --> 00:04:15.639 Michael Palin, and the lone American of the group, 00:04:15.879 --> 00:04:18.610 Terry Gilliam. The animator. Right. But before 00:04:18.610 --> 00:04:21.550 they became Monty Python, the five British members 00:04:21.550 --> 00:04:24.649 were all navigating the very upper echelons of 00:04:24.649 --> 00:04:27.490 the British comedy scene in the 1960s. And they 00:04:27.490 --> 00:04:31.050 were crossing paths at these incredibly prestigious 00:04:31.050 --> 00:04:34.709 university comedy troops. Specifically, the Oxford 00:04:34.709 --> 00:04:37.129 Revue and the Cambridge Footlights. And that 00:04:37.129 --> 00:04:40.730 university background, it's the skeleton key 00:04:40.730 --> 00:04:43.529 to understanding their entire ethos. Oh, so. 00:04:43.910 --> 00:04:46.470 Because Oxford and Cambridge are the absolute 00:04:46.470 --> 00:04:49.170 bastions of the British establishment. By coming 00:04:49.170 --> 00:04:51.389 up through those institutions, these guys learned 00:04:51.389 --> 00:04:54.370 the language, the mannerisms, and the subtle 00:04:54.370 --> 00:04:56.589 hypocrisies of the British upper classes from 00:04:56.589 --> 00:04:59.089 the inside out. So they weren't outsiders. Exactly. 00:04:59.370 --> 00:05:02.350 They gained the specific intellectual tools required 00:05:02.350 --> 00:05:05.250 to dismantle upper class conventions. If you're 00:05:05.250 --> 00:05:07.750 going to effectively satirize a high court judge, 00:05:07.910 --> 00:05:10.870 a military general, or a BBC executive, it helps 00:05:10.870 --> 00:05:13.470 immensely if you sat in a room with them and 00:05:13.470 --> 00:05:15.189 understand exactly how they speak and think. 00:05:15.430 --> 00:05:17.709 That makes total sense. They weren't outsiders 00:05:17.709 --> 00:05:20.129 throwing rocks at the castle. They were inside 00:05:20.129 --> 00:05:22.470 the castle, rearranging the furniture to confuse 00:05:22.470 --> 00:05:24.610 the king. That's a great analogy. During the 00:05:24.610 --> 00:05:27.649 60s, they were writing and performing on various 00:05:27.649 --> 00:05:31.290 radio and TV shows, most notably The Frost Report, 00:05:31.569 --> 00:05:34.410 hosted by David Frost. Which was a massive show 00:05:34.410 --> 00:05:36.990 at the time. Huge! And this is where their writing 00:05:36.990 --> 00:05:39.769 partnerships really started to solidify under 00:05:39.769 --> 00:05:41.930 an incredibly demanding production schedule. 00:05:42.139 --> 00:05:45.220 And then you have Terry Gilliam, who meets some 00:05:45.220 --> 00:05:47.339 of them while they're touring the United States. 00:05:47.540 --> 00:05:49.779 And eventually they decide to bring all these 00:05:49.779 --> 00:05:51.759 different comedic sensibilities together for 00:05:51.759 --> 00:05:54.759 a new sketch show at the BBC. And the naming 00:05:54.759 --> 00:05:57.480 process for this show, it's just spectacular. 00:05:57.699 --> 00:06:00.120 It perfectly distills their entire philosophy 00:06:00.120 --> 00:06:02.560 of confusion. The naming process is almost a 00:06:02.560 --> 00:06:05.120 sketch in itself. Right. Because at the time, 00:06:05.339 --> 00:06:07.860 the BBC's head of comedy was a man named Michael 00:06:07.860 --> 00:06:10.519 Mills. And he insisted that the word circus be 00:06:10.519 --> 00:06:13.769 in the title. Which they hated. They did, but 00:06:13.769 --> 00:06:16.750 Mills wanted it because the BBC executives internally 00:06:16.750 --> 00:06:19.230 referred to these six guys wandering around the 00:06:19.230 --> 00:06:22.189 offices as a literal circus. And Mills actually 00:06:22.189 --> 00:06:25.290 wanted to call the show Baron von Tuck's Circus. 00:06:25.629 --> 00:06:27.870 Yeah, as a nod to Barry Tuck, the producer who 00:06:27.870 --> 00:06:29.410 was instrumental in bringing them all together 00:06:29.410 --> 00:06:31.949 at the network. But the group hated the idea 00:06:31.949 --> 00:06:34.230 of just being a circus. They didn't want people 00:06:34.230 --> 00:06:36.850 tuning in expecting clowns and trapeze artists. 00:06:37.430 --> 00:06:40.069 So they added the word flying. And there's a 00:06:40.069 --> 00:06:42.430 specific reason for that. Yeah, apparently this 00:06:42.430 --> 00:06:45.110 was right around the time the novelty song Snoopy 00:06:45.110 --> 00:06:47.610 versus the Red Baron was a massive radio hit. 00:06:47.750 --> 00:06:50.629 Oh, right. And the real Red Baron's World War 00:06:50.629 --> 00:06:53.250 I fighter squadron was famously known as the 00:06:53.250 --> 00:06:56.430 Flying Circus. It gave the title a slightly more 00:06:56.430 --> 00:06:58.850 militaristic, erratic feel. Which leads us to 00:06:58.850 --> 00:07:00.870 the actual name they settled on. Yes. Because 00:07:00.870 --> 00:07:02.829 they wanted something that sounded like a truly 00:07:02.829 --> 00:07:06.470 terrible, sleazy theatrical agent. John Cleese 00:07:06.470 --> 00:07:09.310 suggested the word Python. because he felt it 00:07:09.310 --> 00:07:12.110 sounded inherently slimy and slithery. And then 00:07:12.110 --> 00:07:14.490 Eric Idle threw in the name Monty. They later 00:07:14.490 --> 00:07:17.230 explained that Monty made them laugh because 00:07:17.230 --> 00:07:20.750 it immediately evoked Lord Montgomery, the legendary, 00:07:20.810 --> 00:07:22.930 highly respected British general from the Second 00:07:22.930 --> 00:07:24.889 World War. So you mash all of that together. 00:07:25.069 --> 00:07:29.290 A revered World War II military hero, a slithery 00:07:29.290 --> 00:07:32.470 reptile, and a World War I fighter squadron. 00:07:32.670 --> 00:07:35.540 Monty Python's flying circus. It sounds so iconic 00:07:35.540 --> 00:07:38.019 now, but at the time it was just a random collision 00:07:38.019 --> 00:07:41.379 of words. But as much as I love that title, the 00:07:41.379 --> 00:07:43.980 rejected titles they pitched to the BBC are what 00:07:43.980 --> 00:07:46.699 really get me. Oh, they are incredible. They 00:07:46.699 --> 00:07:49.420 seriously pitch names like Wither Canada, The 00:07:49.420 --> 00:07:52.180 Toad Elevating Moment, and my absolute favorite, 00:07:52.459 --> 00:07:55.480 Owl Stretching Time. Owl Stretching Time. Just 00:07:55.480 --> 00:07:57.259 imagine looking at the TV Guide and seeing that 00:07:57.259 --> 00:08:00.279 Owl Stretching Time is on at 1030. It would certainly 00:08:00.279 --> 00:08:03.100 give you pause. But if we connect this to the 00:08:03.100 --> 00:08:05.939 bigger picture, those rejected titles reveal 00:08:05.939 --> 00:08:08.160 exactly what their underlying artistic intent 00:08:08.160 --> 00:08:11.160 was. Which is what? Well, names like Owl Stretching 00:08:11.160 --> 00:08:13.939 Time or The Toad Elevating Moment are structurally 00:08:13.939 --> 00:08:16.800 and linguistically coherent. They follow the 00:08:16.800 --> 00:08:19.970 rules of English grammar. But they are semantically 00:08:19.970 --> 00:08:23.050 meaningless. They're anti -titles. Exactly. The 00:08:23.050 --> 00:08:25.290 naming process reflected their ultimate goal, 00:08:25.589 --> 00:08:28.889 which was to be completely and utterly uncategorizable. 00:08:29.269 --> 00:08:31.350 Right. Because if your show is called the No 00:08:31.350 --> 00:08:33.970 Show, which was another pitch, the audience cannot 00:08:33.970 --> 00:08:36.230 possibly project their own expectations onto 00:08:36.230 --> 00:08:38.649 it. Precisely. They didn't want the audience 00:08:38.649 --> 00:08:41.549 to have any preconceived notions. If you call 00:08:41.549 --> 00:08:44.149 a show the comedy half hour, the audience expects 00:08:44.149 --> 00:08:46.029 traditional jokes. You're setting a trap for 00:08:46.029 --> 00:08:49.110 yourself. Yes. By fighting for a bizarre name, 00:08:49.169 --> 00:08:52.129 they were actively managing expectations. The 00:08:52.129 --> 00:08:54.970 fact that several of these rejected titles eventually 00:08:54.970 --> 00:08:57.409 became the titles of individual episodes later 00:08:57.409 --> 00:09:00.450 on just proves how deeply committed they were 00:09:00.450 --> 00:09:03.509 to this specific brand of absurdity. And then 00:09:03.509 --> 00:09:05.990 there's the theme song. Now you would think a 00:09:05.990 --> 00:09:08.690 show this avant -garde, premiering in 1969 at 00:09:08.690 --> 00:09:10.769 the height of the counterculture movement, would 00:09:10.769 --> 00:09:13.529 commission some crazy psychedelic rock track. 00:09:13.730 --> 00:09:16.490 Maybe something with a sitar. Exactly. But no. 00:09:16.570 --> 00:09:19.409 They chose the Liberty Bell March, a piece composed 00:09:19.409 --> 00:09:21.889 by John Philip Sousa, specifically the version 00:09:21.889 --> 00:09:23.889 performed by the band of the Grenadier Guards. 00:09:24.070 --> 00:09:27.929 It's this incredibly pompous, rigid, brass -heavy 00:09:27.929 --> 00:09:30.610 military march. Which is brilliant for two entirely 00:09:30.610 --> 00:09:32.970 different reasons, one artistic and one purely 00:09:32.970 --> 00:09:35.230 logistical. Let's start with the logistics because 00:09:35.230 --> 00:09:37.750 Terry Gilliam chose that specific Sousa March, 00:09:37.909 --> 00:09:40.250 which was first published back in 1893 for a 00:09:40.250 --> 00:09:42.690 very practical reason. It had fallen into the 00:09:42.690 --> 00:09:45.250 public domain. Yes. I always love when high art 00:09:45.250 --> 00:09:48.269 is dictated by extreme cheapness. It's a tale 00:09:48.269 --> 00:09:51.029 as old as time. Because of the Berne Convention, 00:09:51.230 --> 00:09:52.970 which is an international agreement governing 00:09:52.970 --> 00:09:55.549 copyright and United States copyright law at 00:09:55.549 --> 00:09:58.149 the time, the piece was no longer protected. 00:09:58.370 --> 00:10:01.720 Meaning it was free. completely free. The BBC 00:10:01.720 --> 00:10:04.360 could use it as the theme music without having 00:10:04.360 --> 00:10:07.419 to pay a single penny in ongoing royalty payments. 00:10:07.759 --> 00:10:10.220 It was a completely free asset. But artistically 00:10:10.220 --> 00:10:13.019 it works on a genius level too. Absolutely. You 00:10:13.019 --> 00:10:16.220 have this incredibly self -important militaristic 00:10:16.220 --> 00:10:20.000 march music blaring while Gilliam's bizarre, 00:10:20.440 --> 00:10:23.879 surreal cutout animations squash the title screen. 00:10:23.960 --> 00:10:26.740 Like the giant Victorian foot. Right. The contrast 00:10:26.740 --> 00:10:29.259 between the ridgy audio and the anarchic visual 00:10:29.259 --> 00:10:32.580 immediately establishes a tone of mocking the 00:10:32.580 --> 00:10:34.600 establishment. It tells the audience right away, 00:10:35.320 --> 00:10:37.320 we're going to take everything serious and proper 00:10:37.320 --> 00:10:39.639 and we're going to step on it. Let's transition 00:10:39.639 --> 00:10:42.100 into talking about the cast themselves. Because 00:10:42.100 --> 00:10:44.840 even though the show notoriously avoided using 00:10:44.840 --> 00:10:46.820 recurring characters in the traditional sitcom 00:10:46.820 --> 00:10:50.539 sense, each of the six pythons developed and 00:10:50.539 --> 00:10:53.879 perfected very specific comedic tendencies. It's 00:10:53.879 --> 00:10:56.299 almost like they each had a distinct psychological 00:10:56.299 --> 00:10:58.659 profile they brought to the table. Let's start 00:10:58.659 --> 00:11:01.679 with John Cleese. Visually, he stands out immediately 00:11:01.679 --> 00:11:04.720 because he is six foot five. He towers over almost 00:11:04.720 --> 00:11:07.159 everyone else in the frame. And he utilized that 00:11:07.159 --> 00:11:09.659 physicality to become the absolute master of 00:11:09.659 --> 00:11:11.879 the ridiculous authority figure. Cleese's height 00:11:11.879 --> 00:11:14.200 naturally gave him a commanding presence, but 00:11:14.200 --> 00:11:16.019 it was what he did with that presence that was 00:11:16.019 --> 00:11:19.279 so funny. He specialized in playing intimidating 00:11:19.279 --> 00:11:22.879 maniacs, highly strong bureaucrats, and foreigners 00:11:22.879 --> 00:11:26.179 with outrageous, totally incomprehensible accents. 00:11:26.419 --> 00:11:29.100 Often French or German. Yes. He thrived on playing 00:11:29.100 --> 00:11:31.100 characters who were entirely convinced of their 00:11:31.100 --> 00:11:33.320 own logic, no matter how der - that logic was. 00:11:33.460 --> 00:11:36.200 The perfect example is Mr. Praline, the disgruntled 00:11:36.200 --> 00:11:38.179 customer in the legendary dead parrot sketch. 00:11:38.440 --> 00:11:41.039 Oh, class. He marches into a pet shop to return 00:11:41.039 --> 00:11:44.980 a Norwegian blue parrot that is obviously definitively 00:11:44.980 --> 00:11:49.379 deceased, but he maintains this rigid, hyperarticulate 00:11:49.379 --> 00:11:52.840 outrage against a shopkeeper who refuses to admit 00:11:52.840 --> 00:11:55.860 the bird is dead. It's a masterclass in escalating 00:11:55.860 --> 00:11:58.639 frustration. It really is. But the detail that 00:11:58.639 --> 00:12:01.059 I find so incredibly interesting is about his 00:12:01.059 --> 00:12:03.620 physical comedy. Specifically, the Ministry of 00:12:03.620 --> 00:12:06.860 Silly Walks. Ah, yes. Cleese plays this tall, 00:12:07.139 --> 00:12:09.340 loose -limbed government official in a bowler 00:12:09.340 --> 00:12:12.480 hat doing these spectacularly contorted, high 00:12:12.480 --> 00:12:15.399 -kicking, absurd walks on his daily commute. 00:12:15.559 --> 00:12:18.039 It is arguably their most famous sketch globally. 00:12:18.139 --> 00:12:20.320 Without a doubt. But Cleese actually disliked 00:12:20.320 --> 00:12:22.679 doing it. Why would he hate his most famous sketch? 00:12:22.889 --> 00:12:24.789 It comes down to his philosophy of what makes 00:12:24.789 --> 00:12:27.509 comedy worthwhile. Cleese felt that silly walks 00:12:27.509 --> 00:12:30.610 was just cheap slapstick. Really? Yeah. Yes, 00:12:30.690 --> 00:12:33.470 it generated massive, obnoxious laughs. But he 00:12:33.470 --> 00:12:36.309 felt it lacked a true satirical core. To him, 00:12:36.470 --> 00:12:38.570 the joke wasn't supposed to be, look at the funny 00:12:38.570 --> 00:12:41.320 man walking weirdly. The joke was supposed to 00:12:41.320 --> 00:12:44.539 be a biting satire on the bureaucratic uselessness 00:12:44.539 --> 00:12:47.519 of government ministries. The idea that the government 00:12:47.519 --> 00:12:50.480 would fund an entire department to develop ridiculous 00:12:50.480 --> 00:12:54.759 walks. Ah, so the physical comedy entirely eclipsed 00:12:54.759 --> 00:12:56.279 the intellectual joke he was trying to make. 00:12:56.639 --> 00:12:59.879 Precisely. The visual of his long legs kicking 00:12:59.879 --> 00:13:03.299 up to his ears was so overwhelmingly funny that 00:13:03.299 --> 00:13:06.120 nobody cared about the satire of British bureaucracy. 00:13:06.480 --> 00:13:08.840 They just wanted to see the walk. Exactly. He 00:13:08.840 --> 00:13:11.039 wasn't interested in just falling over or moving 00:13:11.039 --> 00:13:13.980 funny. He wanted to punch up at the system. It's 00:13:13.980 --> 00:13:17.059 a classic creative irony. Creators often resent 00:13:17.059 --> 00:13:19.000 it when the general public latches on to what 00:13:19.000 --> 00:13:21.360 the creator considers to be their least intellectually 00:13:21.360 --> 00:13:24.169 rigorous work. It frustrated him that this piece 00:13:24.169 --> 00:13:26.450 of physical clowning became his defining image. 00:13:26.549 --> 00:13:28.870 It did. That makes a lot of sense. You want to 00:13:28.870 --> 00:13:31.009 be known for your brilliant writing, and everyone 00:13:31.009 --> 00:13:34.850 just wants you to do the funny dance. OK, moving 00:13:34.850 --> 00:13:37.750 on to Michael Palin. The everyman. According 00:13:37.750 --> 00:13:40.009 to the other members of the troupe, Palin possessed 00:13:40.009 --> 00:13:42.470 the widest acting range of the group. He could 00:13:42.470 --> 00:13:45.190 genuinely disappear into roles. He could play 00:13:45.190 --> 00:13:48.029 these diskepting, downtrodden, working -class 00:13:48.029 --> 00:13:50.470 northerners. Which they utilize brilliantly later 00:13:50.470 --> 00:13:53.009 in the Every Sperm is Sacred segment of their 00:13:53.009 --> 00:13:56.190 film The Meaning of Life. Yes. But then, in the 00:13:56.190 --> 00:13:59.649 blink of an eye, he could pivot to playing incredibly 00:13:59.649 --> 00:14:03.049 slick smarmy, self -loathing television hosts. 00:14:03.690 --> 00:14:05.830 Think of the sketch Blackmail, where he plays 00:14:05.830 --> 00:14:08.590 a game show host who exhorts money from the viewing 00:14:08.590 --> 00:14:11.450 audience on live TV. And yet he could also dial 00:14:11.450 --> 00:14:14.629 the energy completely down to play the weak -willed 00:14:14.629 --> 00:14:17.590 put -upon -everyman. Look at the argument clinic 00:14:17.590 --> 00:14:19.850 sketch. Oh, that's a great example. Cleese is 00:14:19.850 --> 00:14:22.909 the aggressive, contradictory, professional arguer, 00:14:22.909 --> 00:14:25.269 but the sketch only works because Palin plays 00:14:25.269 --> 00:14:28.190 the client with such earnest, mild -mannered 00:14:28.190 --> 00:14:30.490 confusion. And of course he's the iconic It's 00:14:30.490 --> 00:14:32.549 Man we mentioned at the start, bursting through 00:14:32.549 --> 00:14:35.029 the screen looking entirely deranged just to 00:14:35.029 --> 00:14:37.129 get one word out before the theme music hits. 00:14:37.429 --> 00:14:40.370 Palin was essentially the glue of the cast. Because 00:14:40.370 --> 00:14:42.909 he was naturally so amiable on screen and could 00:14:42.909 --> 00:14:45.649 play the grounded everyman so convincingly, he 00:14:45.649 --> 00:14:47.750 anchored the absurdity of the others. He balanced 00:14:47.750 --> 00:14:51.960 them out. Exactly. If Cleese represented towering 00:14:51.960 --> 00:14:55.320 apoplectic rage, Palin was the cheerful, sometimes 00:14:55.320 --> 00:14:57.720 befuddled center that the rage was usually directed 00:14:57.720 --> 00:15:00.580 at. You need that contrast. If everyone is yelling, 00:15:00.720 --> 00:15:04.340 it's just noise. Palin provided the quiet baseline 00:15:04.340 --> 00:15:07.139 that made the loud moments pop. Next up is Terry 00:15:07.139 --> 00:15:10.220 Jones. Now, it was gandered practice for all 00:15:10.220 --> 00:15:12.940 the Pythons to dress in drag to play female characters, 00:15:13.379 --> 00:15:15.860 but Teppi Jones was widely considered the absolute 00:15:15.860 --> 00:15:19.179 best at it. The absolute best. What they affectionately 00:15:19.179 --> 00:15:21.779 referred to behind the scenes as the best ratbag 00:15:21.779 --> 00:15:24.720 woman in the business. Yes. When a sketch required 00:15:24.720 --> 00:15:27.919 a screeching lower middle class housewife, Jones 00:15:27.919 --> 00:15:30.690 was the immediate go -to. They internally call 00:15:30.690 --> 00:15:32.710 these characters the Pepperpots. Because they 00:15:32.710 --> 00:15:35.129 thought the silhouette of a typical British housewife 00:15:35.129 --> 00:15:37.789 that era, bundled up in coats and hats, looked 00:15:37.789 --> 00:15:41.090 exactly like a table pepper shaker. Jones's Pepperpots 00:15:41.090 --> 00:15:44.909 were iconic. They were the loudest, the shrillest, 00:15:45.210 --> 00:15:47.190 and the most utterly disheveled characters on 00:15:47.190 --> 00:15:50.389 the show. But his contribution went far beyond 00:15:50.389 --> 00:15:53.370 drag. Oh, absolutely. He also played the completely 00:15:53.370 --> 00:15:56.529 bizarre nude organist who would randomly punctuate 00:15:56.529 --> 00:16:00.190 sketches with dramatic organ chords. More importantly 00:16:00.190 --> 00:16:02.929 though, behind the scenes, Jones was the one 00:16:02.929 --> 00:16:05.269 pulling a massive amount of the creative strings. 00:16:05.600 --> 00:16:08.139 As the show evolved, he essentially took on the 00:16:08.139 --> 00:16:10.740 role of an uncredited director. He was constantly 00:16:10.740 --> 00:16:13.379 pushing for better camera angles and more cinematic 00:16:13.379 --> 00:16:15.419 lighting. Which really set the stage for him, 00:16:15.539 --> 00:16:17.360 eventually drinking their feature films like 00:16:17.360 --> 00:16:20.860 Life of Brian. Right. But contrasting his shrieking 00:16:20.860 --> 00:16:23.480 Pepperpot Housewives with Eric Idle's approach 00:16:23.480 --> 00:16:25.700 to drag is really interesting. It highlights 00:16:25.700 --> 00:16:28.320 the different comedic instincts within the group. 00:16:28.679 --> 00:16:31.100 When Eric Idle played female characters, he played 00:16:31.100 --> 00:16:33.279 them much more straightforwardly. He would just 00:16:33.279 --> 00:16:36.659 alter his voice slightly. a softer cadence rather 00:16:36.659 --> 00:16:39.120 than doing the full falsetto shrieking that Jones 00:16:39.120 --> 00:16:41.600 did. Idle was generally known for playing the 00:16:41.600 --> 00:16:44.240 cheeky, suggestive playboy. Most famously, the 00:16:44.240 --> 00:16:46.759 character in the nudge nudge sketch. Nudge nudge, 00:16:46.879 --> 00:16:49.919 wink wink. Exactly. The guy who keeps aggressively 00:16:49.919 --> 00:16:53.240 hinting at sexual innuendo to a completely oblivious 00:16:53.240 --> 00:16:57.460 man. He excelled at playing slick, crafty salesmen 00:16:57.460 --> 00:16:59.779 who could talk their way out of anything. Another 00:16:59.779 --> 00:17:01.919 crucial detail about Eric Idle is his writing 00:17:01.919 --> 00:17:06.490 process. Cleese and Chapman wrote as a duo. Jones 00:17:06.490 --> 00:17:09.450 and Palin wrote as a duo. But Eric Idle was the 00:17:09.450 --> 00:17:12.069 lone wolf. He wrote entirely by himself. And 00:17:12.069 --> 00:17:15.210 he was also the group's undeniable musical genius. 00:17:15.750 --> 00:17:17.970 He's the one who eventually wrote, always look 00:17:17.970 --> 00:17:20.450 on the bright side of life. How do you think 00:17:20.450 --> 00:17:23.450 writing alone impacted his specific comedic voice 00:17:23.450 --> 00:17:26.240 on the show? Writing alone gave Idle's sketches 00:17:26.240 --> 00:17:28.259 a completely different rhythm compared to the 00:17:28.259 --> 00:17:30.140 rest of the show. When you're writing with a 00:17:30.140 --> 00:17:32.180 partner, you're constantly batting ideas back 00:17:32.180 --> 00:17:34.279 and forth in the room, testing the laughs, adjusting 00:17:34.279 --> 00:17:36.900 the timing. It creates a conversational dynamic. 00:17:37.079 --> 00:17:39.319 A natural back and forth. Right! But because 00:17:39.319 --> 00:17:42.359 Idle was isolated, his writing became highly 00:17:42.359 --> 00:17:45.119 structurally complex, particularly in its linguistics. 00:17:45.220 --> 00:17:48.369 Lots of wordplay. Heavy wordplay. His sketches 00:17:48.369 --> 00:17:51.990 often relied on intricate rapid -fire monologues. 00:17:52.210 --> 00:17:53.750 He didn't have a partner to interrupt him, so 00:17:53.750 --> 00:17:56.269 he would just build these towering edifices of 00:17:56.269 --> 00:17:59.529 verbal gymnastics. It added a layer of sheer 00:17:59.529 --> 00:18:02.410 verbal dexterity to the show that contrasted 00:18:02.410 --> 00:18:04.410 beautifully with the more situational sketches 00:18:04.410 --> 00:18:07.490 of the other pairings. Then we have Graham Chapman. 00:18:07.680 --> 00:18:10.039 Chapman had this brilliant knack for playing 00:18:10.039 --> 00:18:12.640 the ultimate straight -laced figure. The bedrock 00:18:12.640 --> 00:18:14.940 of the sketch. He was often cast as the pipe 00:18:14.940 --> 00:18:17.859 -smoking military officer, the stern police inspector, 00:18:18.019 --> 00:18:21.059 or the serious medical doctor. But his absolute 00:18:21.059 --> 00:18:23.720 genius was that he could be projecting this aura 00:18:23.720 --> 00:18:27.000 of total unshakable authority and then suddenly, 00:18:27.200 --> 00:18:30.220 without any warning whatsoever, snap into completely 00:18:30.220 --> 00:18:32.720 maniacal behavior. And then instantly revert 00:18:32.720 --> 00:18:35.359 back to his sober, dignified demeanor as if nothing 00:18:35.359 --> 00:18:37.619 had happened. Chapman was the ultimate straight 00:18:37.619 --> 00:18:40.140 man, which is a vastly underappreciated skill 00:18:40.140 --> 00:18:42.420 in comedy. To hold a ridiculous premise with 00:18:42.420 --> 00:18:45.500 absolute, unwavering seriousness is incredibly 00:18:45.500 --> 00:18:47.859 difficult. You need that grounding when the world 00:18:47.859 --> 00:18:49.710 around the character is descending into total 00:18:49.710 --> 00:18:51.970 insanity. Right. If the doctor reacts to the 00:18:51.970 --> 00:18:54.369 absurdity, the sketch deflates. The doctor has 00:18:54.369 --> 00:18:57.609 to treat the absurdity as mundane. This foundational 00:18:57.609 --> 00:19:00.069 skill is exactly why they relied on him to play 00:19:00.069 --> 00:19:02.569 the central, ground -in -lead roles in their 00:19:02.569 --> 00:19:05.329 feature films later on, like King Arthur in Monty 00:19:05.329 --> 00:19:07.890 Python and the Holy Grail and the title character 00:19:07.890 --> 00:19:10.829 in Life of Brian. He anchored the narrative so 00:19:10.829 --> 00:19:13.029 the others could spin out of control around him. 00:19:13.210 --> 00:19:16.660 And finally, we have the sixth Python. Terry 00:19:16.660 --> 00:19:18.759 Gilliam, as we mentioned, he was the animator. 00:19:19.140 --> 00:19:21.380 He was a guy secluded in a room, creating those 00:19:21.380 --> 00:19:24.359 surreal, interstitial cut -out animations that 00:19:24.359 --> 00:19:26.740 linked the sketches together. His process was 00:19:26.740 --> 00:19:29.619 fascinating. He would take old Sears robot catalogs, 00:19:29.799 --> 00:19:31.779 clip out illustrations of Victorian machinery, 00:19:32.220 --> 00:19:34.299 gears, and gadgets, and mix them with pieces 00:19:34.299 --> 00:19:37.130 of classic Renaissance art. Like the iconic giant 00:19:37.130 --> 00:19:40.049 foot that squashes the title screen. Yes. That's 00:19:40.049 --> 00:19:42.970 not just a drawing. It's the actual foot of Cupid 00:19:42.970 --> 00:19:45.390 clipped right out of the classic Agnola Bronzino 00:19:45.390 --> 00:19:48.569 painting Venus, Cupid, Folly and Time, which 00:19:48.569 --> 00:19:50.269 is hanging in the National Gallery in London. 00:19:50.789 --> 00:19:53.109 Gilliam's animations were the secret sauce that 00:19:53.109 --> 00:19:55.170 allowed the entire format of the show to work, 00:19:55.190 --> 00:19:56.970 which we'll touch on in a moment. But it's also 00:19:56.970 --> 00:19:59.269 worth noting his on -screen presence. Because 00:19:59.269 --> 00:20:02.230 he was American. Exactly. And because he genuinely 00:20:02.230 --> 00:20:05.690 struggled to perform the exaggerated, hyper -specific 00:20:05.690 --> 00:20:07.990 English accents the others were doing, he ended 00:20:07.990 --> 00:20:10.930 up taking all the grotesque, non -speaking, or 00:20:10.930 --> 00:20:13.390 heavily makeup -reliant roles that nobody else 00:20:13.390 --> 00:20:15.490 wanted. Right. He was the guy in the full suit 00:20:15.490 --> 00:20:17.970 of armor who would randomly walk onto the set 00:20:17.970 --> 00:20:20.619 in the middle of a scene, hit someone with a 00:20:20.619 --> 00:20:23.480 raw plucked chicken and walk off. or he'd play 00:20:23.480 --> 00:20:25.980 a man with a stuffed stoat violently shoved through 00:20:25.980 --> 00:20:28.599 his head. He was essentially the human embodiment 00:20:28.599 --> 00:20:31.059 of his own bizarre animations. When you look 00:20:31.059 --> 00:20:33.299 at all six of these profiles together, this raises 00:20:33.299 --> 00:20:35.920 a really important point about creative collaboration. 00:20:36.680 --> 00:20:40.160 What's remarkable is how this extreme specialization 00:20:40.160 --> 00:20:42.759 allowed the group to avoid redundant writing. 00:20:43.000 --> 00:20:44.940 They weren't stepping on each other's toes. They 00:20:44.940 --> 00:20:48.000 had distinct, highly specialized comedic weapons 00:20:48.000 --> 00:20:50.880 at their disposal. If a sketch needed apoplectic, 00:20:51.000 --> 00:20:53.990 towering rage, They deployed Cleese. If they 00:20:53.990 --> 00:20:56.289 needed a frantic, sympathetic everyman, they 00:20:56.289 --> 00:20:59.450 deployed Palin. If they needed a visual non sequitur 00:20:59.450 --> 00:21:02.009 or pure grotesque weirdness, they deployed Gilliam. 00:21:02.390 --> 00:21:04.349 It allowed them to cover a massive spectrum of 00:21:04.349 --> 00:21:07.470 human absurdity. Which brings us perfectly to 00:21:07.470 --> 00:21:11.140 section three. Breaking the mold. because having 00:21:11.140 --> 00:21:14.039 diverse talent is one thing, but how they actually 00:21:14.039 --> 00:21:16.279 structured the show was the true revolution. 00:21:16.700 --> 00:21:18.900 They completely broke the mold of how a sketch 00:21:18.900 --> 00:21:21.200 comedy show was supposed to operate. Traditionally, 00:21:21.519 --> 00:21:24.200 a sketch has a beginning, a middle, and an end, 00:21:24.460 --> 00:21:27.500 culminating in a punchline. The punchline is 00:21:27.500 --> 00:21:30.710 the release valve for the tension. But the Pythons 00:21:30.710 --> 00:21:34.130 actively hated punchlines. They felt that forcing 00:21:34.130 --> 00:21:37.109 a brilliant, absurd premise to end on a neat, 00:21:37.289 --> 00:21:39.750 tidy joke often ruined the entire concept. It 00:21:39.750 --> 00:21:41.910 was a betrayal of the sketch's internal logic. 00:21:42.130 --> 00:21:45.049 It's true. So heavily inspired by Spike Milligan's 00:21:45.049 --> 00:21:47.430 groundbreaking and arctic comedy show Q, which 00:21:47.430 --> 00:21:49.750 had aired previously, they decided to abandon 00:21:49.750 --> 00:21:51.910 the traditional structure entirely. Instead of 00:21:51.910 --> 00:21:54.109 discrete sketches, they relied on a stream of 00:21:54.109 --> 00:21:55.869 consciousness flow. One sketch would just bleed 00:21:55.869 --> 00:21:58.269 directly into another, often mid -sentence. And 00:21:58.269 --> 00:22:00.589 this is where Terry Gilliam's animations were 00:22:00.589 --> 00:22:04.130 vital. The animations served as the glue. If 00:22:04.130 --> 00:22:06.289 a sketch had run its course and didn't have an 00:22:06.289 --> 00:22:09.509 ending, a giant animated mouth would just descend 00:22:09.509 --> 00:22:12.210 from the sky and eat the actors and suddenly 00:22:12.210 --> 00:22:15.170 you were in a new scene. It's brilliant. And 00:22:15.170 --> 00:22:17.109 instead of relying on recurring main characters 00:22:17.109 --> 00:22:19.670 with catchphrases to anchor the show and build 00:22:19.670 --> 00:22:22.650 a traditional fan base, they relied on recurring 00:22:22.650 --> 00:22:25.470 interruptions. They weaponized the disruption 00:22:25.470 --> 00:22:28.519 itself. That is a great way to phrase it. If 00:22:28.519 --> 00:22:30.759 a sketch was dragging, or if they simply couldn't 00:22:30.759 --> 00:22:33.000 think of a clever way to wrap it up, they would 00:22:33.000 --> 00:22:35.299 literally have Graham Chapman walk onto the set 00:22:35.299 --> 00:22:37.920 dressed as a British army colonel. And he would 00:22:37.920 --> 00:22:40.099 march right up to the camera, look directly at 00:22:40.099 --> 00:22:42.039 the audience and say, stop this, it's getting 00:22:42.039 --> 00:22:45.079 too silly. And he would officially, as an agent 00:22:45.079 --> 00:22:47.539 of the military, Order the sketch to end. Or 00:22:47.539 --> 00:22:50.160 suddenly, the door would fly open and Michael 00:22:50.160 --> 00:22:52.160 Palin would burst into the room dressed as a 00:22:52.160 --> 00:22:54.859 flamboyant cardinal, flanked by two other cardinals, 00:22:55.279 --> 00:22:57.799 and he would shout, Nobody expects the Spanish 00:22:57.799 --> 00:23:00.319 Inquisition, completely derailing whatever scene 00:23:00.319 --> 00:23:03.000 was happening. Or you would just cut abruptly 00:23:03.000 --> 00:23:07.180 to a very proper BBC continuity announcer played 00:23:07.180 --> 00:23:09.880 by John Cleese in a tuxedo, sitting at a wooden 00:23:09.880 --> 00:23:12.319 desk that was inexplicably placed in the middle 00:23:12.319 --> 00:23:15.099 of a dense forest or a beach. And he would simply 00:23:15.099 --> 00:23:18.220 say, and now for something completely different. 00:23:18.700 --> 00:23:20.819 The genius of the Colonel character in particular 00:23:20.819 --> 00:23:23.319 cannot be overstated when we analyze television 00:23:23.319 --> 00:23:26.660 history by writing a character who actively critiques 00:23:26.660 --> 00:23:28.900 and shuts down the sketch from within the show 00:23:28.900 --> 00:23:31.839 itself. The Pythons built a meta layer into their 00:23:31.839 --> 00:23:34.259 comedy that was practically unheard of at the 00:23:34.259 --> 00:23:36.819 time. They were preemptively mocking the television 00:23:36.819 --> 00:23:39.339 critics and the network executives. If a viewer 00:23:39.339 --> 00:23:41.019 sitting at home was thinking, well, this is getting 00:23:41.019 --> 00:23:43.839 stupid, the show beat them to the punch by having 00:23:43.839 --> 00:23:46.180 an authority figure step in and declare it stupid. 00:23:46.660 --> 00:23:48.920 It completely disarmed the traditional dynamic 00:23:48.920 --> 00:23:50.960 between the television program and the audience. 00:23:51.200 --> 00:23:53.640 It made the viewer complicit in the deconstruction. 00:23:53.759 --> 00:23:56.500 And it wasn't just abstract concepts of authority 00:23:56.500 --> 00:23:59.819 they were mocking. They aimed their sights squarely 00:23:59.819 --> 00:24:02.700 at real contemporary politicians of the era. 00:24:02.990 --> 00:24:06.009 The sources show they frequently targeted Reginald 00:24:06.009 --> 00:24:08.809 Modling, who was a very prominent conservative 00:24:08.809 --> 00:24:11.089 politician at the time. They also took aim at 00:24:11.089 --> 00:24:13.329 the Secretary of State for Education and Science, 00:24:13.730 --> 00:24:16.150 a woman who would later become a highly polarizing 00:24:16.150 --> 00:24:18.829 prime minister, Margaret Thatcher. They spoofed 00:24:18.829 --> 00:24:20.730 the conservative party leader and Prime Minister 00:24:20.730 --> 00:24:23.440 Edward Heath. They even broadened their scope 00:24:23.440 --> 00:24:26.059 internationally and went after U .S. President 00:24:26.059 --> 00:24:28.740 Richard Nixon. Now, when we analyze these targets, 00:24:28.819 --> 00:24:30.900 what becomes clear, and we should be very explicit 00:24:30.900 --> 00:24:33.279 about this for the listener, is that the Pythons 00:24:33.279 --> 00:24:35.759 weren't operating as a partisan political action 00:24:35.759 --> 00:24:38.299 committee. Yes, absolutely. We are just relaying 00:24:38.299 --> 00:24:39.940 the targets mentioned in our source material. 00:24:40.319 --> 00:24:42.900 We are not taking any political sides here or 00:24:42.900 --> 00:24:45.259 endorsing these viewpoints. Completely neutral 00:24:45.259 --> 00:24:47.940 reporting on our end. And the source material 00:24:47.940 --> 00:24:50.500 shows their targeting of these figures reflected 00:24:50.500 --> 00:24:54.299 a much broader general anti -establishment ethos 00:24:54.299 --> 00:24:57.079 rather than partisan endorsement. Exactly. They 00:24:57.079 --> 00:24:59.019 were equal opportunity offenders when it came 00:24:59.019 --> 00:25:01.079 to the establishment. They went after the British 00:25:01.079 --> 00:25:04.119 police force, the military brass, the Anglican 00:25:04.119 --> 00:25:08.079 church, the legal system, and even the BBC executives 00:25:08.079 --> 00:25:11.039 who were paying their salaries. Anyone who wielded 00:25:11.039 --> 00:25:14.019 power, authority, or demanded unearned respect 00:25:14.019 --> 00:25:17.140 was considered fair game for ridicule. It was 00:25:17.140 --> 00:25:20.700 less about left versus right and more about anti 00:25:20.700 --> 00:25:23.039 authoritarianism. And that approach naturally 00:25:23.039 --> 00:25:25.920 leads us to how the ultimate establishment, specifically 00:25:25.920 --> 00:25:29.140 the hierarchy of the BBC, reacted to this absolute 00:25:29.140 --> 00:25:31.759 madness airing on their network. because the 00:25:31.759 --> 00:25:34.099 battles between the Pythons and the BBC executives 00:25:34.099 --> 00:25:36.099 are legendary. Oh, they are incredible. Let's 00:25:36.099 --> 00:25:38.319 get into those BBC battles, because the initial 00:25:38.319 --> 00:25:40.619 reception of the show was basically a disaster. 00:25:40.920 --> 00:25:43.180 The very first episode of Monty Python's Flying 00:25:43.180 --> 00:25:45.740 Circus was broadcast on a Sunday evening, October 00:25:45.740 --> 00:25:50.579 5th, 1969 at 10 .55 p .m. And to say it didn't 00:25:50.579 --> 00:25:52.480 land well is the understatement of the century. 00:25:52.839 --> 00:25:56.220 It captured only about 3 % of the total UK television 00:25:56.220 --> 00:25:59.319 watching population. That's roughly 1 .5 million 00:25:59.319 --> 00:26:02.380 people. To put that in perspective, another very 00:26:02.380 --> 00:26:04.859 traditional comedy show airing that same week, 00:26:05.299 --> 00:26:08.440 Dad's Army, pulled in 22 % of the population. 00:26:09.740 --> 00:26:11.900 But the raw viewership numbers weren't even the 00:26:11.900 --> 00:26:15.059 worst part. No, the real crisis came from the 00:26:15.059 --> 00:26:18.210 BBC's internal metrics. The BBC used something 00:26:18.210 --> 00:26:21.109 called an appreciation index. This wasn't just 00:26:21.109 --> 00:26:22.950 a measure of how many television sets were tuned 00:26:22.950 --> 00:26:26.730 in. It was a qualitative score out of 100 based 00:26:26.730 --> 00:26:29.089 on audience surveys to gauge if people actually 00:26:29.089 --> 00:26:31.089 liked, understood, and appreciated what they 00:26:31.089 --> 00:26:33.690 were watching. And how did Python do on the appreciation 00:26:33.690 --> 00:26:36.269 index? It earned the lowest appreciation index 00:26:36.269 --> 00:26:38.829 score in the entire history of the BBC's light 00:26:38.829 --> 00:26:41.069 entertainment programming. People didn't just 00:26:41.069 --> 00:26:43.089 change the channel. The people who stayed to 00:26:43.089 --> 00:26:46.869 watch actively hated it. Internal BBC Demos and 00:26:46.869 --> 00:26:49.029 documents from executives at the time actually 00:26:49.029 --> 00:26:51.950 described the program as disgusting and nihilistic. 00:26:52.210 --> 00:26:54.369 Disgusting and nihilistic. They viewed it as 00:26:54.369 --> 00:26:56.349 an assault on the sensibilities of the British 00:26:56.349 --> 00:26:59.650 public. If you achieve the lowest audience appreciation 00:26:59.650 --> 00:27:03.190 score in the history of a major national broadcasting 00:27:03.190 --> 00:27:06.079 network, how do you keep your job? Does that 00:27:06.079 --> 00:27:08.619 just mean you completely failed at making comedy? 00:27:08.779 --> 00:27:10.740 Well, this raises an important question about 00:27:10.740 --> 00:27:13.200 the nature of true innovation. If you score a 00:27:13.200 --> 00:27:15.819 zero on an established metric, does it mean you 00:27:15.819 --> 00:27:18.819 failed? Or does it mean the metric itself is 00:27:18.819 --> 00:27:21.740 incapable of measuring what you've created? I'd 00:27:21.740 --> 00:27:23.480 say the latter. I would argue it's the latter 00:27:23.480 --> 00:27:26.900 too. They made something so radically new, so 00:27:26.900 --> 00:27:29.160 entirely divorced from the established language 00:27:29.160 --> 00:27:32.039 of television, that the audience literally didn't 00:27:32.039 --> 00:27:35.400 possess the mental tools to process it yet. They 00:27:35.400 --> 00:27:37.799 were speaking a comedic language that hadn't 00:27:37.799 --> 00:27:40.220 been invented until that exact moment. You can't 00:27:40.220 --> 00:27:42.119 appreciate a joke if you don't even realize a 00:27:42.119 --> 00:27:44.380 joke is being told. It took time to teach the 00:27:44.380 --> 00:27:46.200 audience how to watch the show. And while the 00:27:46.200 --> 00:27:48.319 audience was struggling to figure it out, the 00:27:48.319 --> 00:27:51.640 chaos was raging behind the scenes too. John 00:27:51.640 --> 00:27:53.640 Kreese almost didn't even participate in the 00:27:53.640 --> 00:27:55.299 show initially because he was under a strict 00:27:55.299 --> 00:27:57.880 contract with David Frost's production company. 00:27:58.059 --> 00:28:01.019 And the Pythons, being the anarchists they were, 00:28:01.400 --> 00:28:03.799 decided to get back at David Frost for his tight 00:28:03.799 --> 00:28:06.349 grip on their careers. In the second episode 00:28:06.349 --> 00:28:08.529 of the series, during a sketch called The Mouse 00:28:08.529 --> 00:28:11.289 Problem, they actually slipped David Schross' 00:28:11.529 --> 00:28:14.130 real personal phone number onto the screen. Which 00:28:14.130 --> 00:28:17.369 is just a phenomenally reckless prank for 1969. 00:28:17.910 --> 00:28:19.910 Viewers actually called the number and harassed 00:28:19.910 --> 00:28:23.549 him endlessly. And the BBC executives panicked 00:28:23.549 --> 00:28:26.210 and had to scramble to force a re -edit of the 00:28:26.210 --> 00:28:28.289 episode to remove the number before it aired 00:28:28.289 --> 00:28:31.079 again. And that prank was really just the opening 00:28:31.079 --> 00:28:33.420 spurmish in what would become a protracted war 00:28:33.420 --> 00:28:36.000 of censorship. As the show progressed through 00:28:36.000 --> 00:28:38.660 its seasons and began to build a massive devoted 00:28:38.660 --> 00:28:41.319 cult following, particularly among young people, 00:28:41.980 --> 00:28:44.180 the BBC executives started paying much closer 00:28:44.180 --> 00:28:46.079 attention to the content and they really did 00:28:46.079 --> 00:28:48.140 not like what they saw. Not at all. There are 00:28:48.140 --> 00:28:51.000 several famous lost or heavily censored sketches 00:28:51.000 --> 00:28:53.440 that illustrate just how tense the relationship 00:28:53.440 --> 00:28:56.240 got. For example, in a highly intellectual sketch 00:28:56.240 --> 00:28:58.599 about summarizing the works of Marcel Proust, 00:28:59.339 --> 00:29:01.660 the BBC forced them to cut the word masturbating. 00:29:01.960 --> 00:29:03.859 In another famous sketch about a travel agent, 00:29:04.359 --> 00:29:07.000 Eric Idle plays a character with a severe speech 00:29:07.000 --> 00:29:09.380 impediment who consistently pronounces the letter 00:29:09.380 --> 00:29:13.279 C as a B. The BBC completely excised the line 00:29:13.279 --> 00:29:15.480 where he says, what a silly bunt, because the 00:29:15.480 --> 00:29:17.480 phonetic implication was too much for them to 00:29:17.480 --> 00:29:19.579 handle. And it wasn't just dialogue they were 00:29:19.579 --> 00:29:23.059 cutting. They were pulling entire concepts. The 00:29:23.059 --> 00:29:25.460 network totally removed the Undertaker sketch 00:29:25.460 --> 00:29:29.259 from all repeat broadcasts. In that sketch, a 00:29:29.259 --> 00:29:31.779 man goes to an Undertaker to dispose of his dead 00:29:31.779 --> 00:29:34.400 mother and the Undertakers casually suggest eating 00:29:34.400 --> 00:29:37.410 her. The comedic references to necro cannibalism 00:29:37.410 --> 00:29:39.710 were deemed a bridge too far for the viewing 00:29:39.710 --> 00:29:42.069 public. The tension between the creators and 00:29:42.069 --> 00:29:44.750 the network was palpable. The show's producer 00:29:44.750 --> 00:29:46.930 Ian McNaughton was repeatedly called into meetings 00:29:46.930 --> 00:29:49.930 and severely reprimanded by BBC executives for 00:29:49.930 --> 00:29:52.529 not alluding them beforehand to the content of 00:29:52.529 --> 00:29:55.049 sketches like The Undertakers or another sketch 00:29:55.049 --> 00:29:57.509 that blatantly mocked the UK national anthem. 00:29:57.829 --> 00:29:59.710 It reached a boiling point where Michael Palin 00:29:59.710 --> 00:30:02.170 noted in his personal diary that the BBC was 00:30:02.170 --> 00:30:04.569 actively aggressively starting to censored the 00:30:04.569 --> 00:30:07.150 program during its third series, they felt their 00:30:07.150 --> 00:30:09.609 creative freedom was being strangled. And the 00:30:09.609 --> 00:30:12.329 tragedy of this era of television is that because 00:30:12.329 --> 00:30:15.269 of the way archiving worked, which is to say 00:30:15.269 --> 00:30:18.630 it barely worked at all, some of this censored 00:30:18.630 --> 00:30:20.990 or cut material was considered lost forever. 00:30:21.470 --> 00:30:24.990 The BBC routinely wipe their master videotapes 00:30:24.990 --> 00:30:27.809 to save money and reuse the expensive magnetic 00:30:27.809 --> 00:30:30.150 tape for new programs. They didn't view these 00:30:30.150 --> 00:30:32.650 shows as historical artifacts. They viewed them 00:30:32.650 --> 00:30:35.369 as disposable entertainment. But history has 00:30:35.369 --> 00:30:38.599 a funny way of surviving. Years later, some incredible 00:30:38.599 --> 00:30:40.579 discoveries were made by the fans themselves. 00:30:41.079 --> 00:30:43.400 There was a legendary sketch called the Choreographed 00:30:43.400 --> 00:30:46.160 Party Political Broadcast. In it, John Cleese 00:30:46.160 --> 00:30:48.680 plays a very stiff conservative party spokesman 00:30:48.680 --> 00:30:50.900 who is attempting to deliver a serious political 00:30:50.900 --> 00:30:53.539 speech, but he continuously breaks out into ballet 00:30:53.539 --> 00:30:56.420 dancing, being aggressively coached by a flamboyant 00:30:56.420 --> 00:30:59.099 choreographer played by Eric Idle. Because of 00:30:59.099 --> 00:31:01.779 the BBC's tape wiping policy, it was deemed completely 00:31:01.779 --> 00:31:04.940 lost to time. But in 2008, a home recorded tape 00:31:04.940 --> 00:31:07.619 of this exact sketch miraculously turned up on 00:31:07.619 --> 00:31:09.460 YouTube. And where did it come from? It had been 00:31:09.460 --> 00:31:11.579 captured by a dedicated fan off a television 00:31:11.579 --> 00:31:15.220 broadcast on a PBS outlet, WNED TV, all the way 00:31:15.220 --> 00:31:18.329 over in Buffalo, New York. It's a truly incredible 00:31:18.329 --> 00:31:22.549 story of grassroots media preservation. The fans 00:31:22.549 --> 00:31:25.029 essentially saved the cultural history that the 00:31:25.029 --> 00:31:27.349 network actively tried to erase, whether that 00:31:27.349 --> 00:31:29.970 erasure was through deliberate censorship or 00:31:29.970 --> 00:31:31.789 just sheer corporate negligence. Here's where 00:31:31.789 --> 00:31:33.289 it gets really interesting, though. You mentioned 00:31:33.289 --> 00:31:36.940 that. Buffalo, New York, PBS station. That perfectly 00:31:36.940 --> 00:31:41.240 pivots us to section five, going global. Because 00:31:41.240 --> 00:31:44.019 taking this incredibly specific, incredibly British, 00:31:44.539 --> 00:31:47.759 entirely weird show across the Atlantic to an 00:31:47.759 --> 00:31:50.279 American audience was not a smooth process. This 00:31:50.279 --> 00:31:53.359 is a massive uphill battle. Initially, Time Life 00:31:53.359 --> 00:31:55.099 Television, which handled the distribution of 00:31:55.099 --> 00:31:57.480 BBC shows in America, took one look at Monty 00:31:57.480 --> 00:32:00.079 Python and gave it a hard pass. They said, no 00:32:00.079 --> 00:32:02.349 way. This is way too British. The references 00:32:02.349 --> 00:32:04.650 are too local. The pacing is too strange. Americans 00:32:04.650 --> 00:32:07.150 will never, ever understand this. And for a brief 00:32:07.150 --> 00:32:09.549 agonizing moment, Time Life was proven absolutely 00:32:09.549 --> 00:32:12.289 right. During the Python's first major North 00:32:12.289 --> 00:32:16.509 American promotional tour in 1973, their management 00:32:16.509 --> 00:32:19.589 booked them an appearance on live U .S. television. 00:32:20.250 --> 00:32:22.630 They were slated to perform on The Tonight Show, 00:32:22.869 --> 00:32:24.750 which was being guest hosted by the comedian 00:32:24.750 --> 00:32:27.430 Joey Bishop at the time. This was supposed to 00:32:27.430 --> 00:32:29.390 be their big introduction to the American public. 00:32:29.640 --> 00:32:32.859 And it was an unmitigated catastrophe. Eric Idle 00:32:32.859 --> 00:32:35.460 has described the experience in vivid detail. 00:32:36.079 --> 00:32:39.200 They went out and performed 15 minutes of their 00:32:39.200 --> 00:32:42.319 best, most tested material for the studio audience. 00:32:42.900 --> 00:32:45.900 And they received zero laughs. Not a polite chuckle. 00:32:46.359 --> 00:32:49.079 Not a titter. Absolute dead silence in Burbank, 00:32:49.279 --> 00:32:51.700 California. Idle said they were so shell -shocked 00:32:51.700 --> 00:32:54.019 by the failure that they literally ran out onto 00:32:54.019 --> 00:32:55.900 the grass outside the studio after the segment 00:32:55.900 --> 00:32:58.039 and just lay down and laughed hysterically for 00:32:58.039 --> 00:33:00.039 15 minutes because the failure was so monumental. 00:33:00.519 --> 00:33:02.920 The American audience genuinely had no earthly 00:33:02.920 --> 00:33:04.559 idea what they were looking at. It was like they 00:33:04.559 --> 00:33:06.440 were performing in Martian. But the breakthrough 00:33:06.440 --> 00:33:08.740 didn't happen through the traditional mainstream 00:33:08.740 --> 00:33:11.299 late -night networks. It came through an entirely 00:33:11.299 --> 00:33:14.140 different, far more grassroots avenue of American 00:33:14.140 --> 00:33:16.630 television, public broadcasting. Their American 00:33:16.630 --> 00:33:19.549 manager, Nancy Lewis, tirelessly pushed the show, 00:33:19.869 --> 00:33:23.740 refusing to accept defeat. Finally, in 1974, 00:33:24.259 --> 00:33:26.960 a PBS member station in Dallas, Texas, Cara, 00:33:27.339 --> 00:33:30.099 took a massive risk and became the first U .S. 00:33:30.259 --> 00:33:32.579 station to broadcast full episodes of The Flying 00:33:32.579 --> 00:33:35.900 Circus. Dallas, Texas. Yeah. Of all places. And 00:33:35.900 --> 00:33:39.140 it caught on like wildfire. It did. It resonated 00:33:39.140 --> 00:33:42.400 deeply with a specific demographic, a younger 00:33:42.400 --> 00:33:45.099 college educated audience who were actively looking 00:33:45.099 --> 00:33:47.440 for countercultural entertainment that didn't 00:33:47.440 --> 00:33:50.299 talk down to them. The absurdity matched the 00:33:50.299 --> 00:33:53.880 general disillusionment of the 1970s. By 1975, 00:33:54.140 --> 00:33:55.920 thanks to the syndication network, it was often 00:33:55.920 --> 00:33:58.180 the most popular show on PBS stations across 00:33:58.180 --> 00:34:07.660 the entire country. The ABC network saw how huge 00:34:07.660 --> 00:34:09.599 it was getting on public television and bought 00:34:09.599 --> 00:34:11.920 the rights to show select episodes on their wide 00:34:11.920 --> 00:34:14.559 world of entertainment late night showcase. But 00:34:14.559 --> 00:34:17.300 ABC didn't just take the BBC tapes and air them. 00:34:17.500 --> 00:34:19.900 They heavily re -edited them. They chopped the 00:34:19.900 --> 00:34:23.000 episodes into pieces to forcefully insert commercial 00:34:23.000 --> 00:34:25.699 breaks, which, as we discussed earlier regarding 00:34:25.699 --> 00:34:28.239 their stream of consciousness structure, completely 00:34:28.239 --> 00:34:30.400 destroyed the delicate flow that the Pythons 00:34:30.400 --> 00:34:32.800 had so carefully designed. You can't put a soap 00:34:32.800 --> 00:34:34.699 commercial in the middle of a sketch that relies 00:34:34.699 --> 00:34:38.500 on unbroken momentum. The Playthons were absolutely 00:34:38.500 --> 00:34:42.539 furious. So what did they do? Six comedians sued 00:34:42.539 --> 00:34:45.119 one of the largest broadcasting networks in America. 00:34:45.340 --> 00:34:48.380 And this lawsuit is a monumental watershed moment 00:34:48.380 --> 00:34:50.559 in the history of entertainment law and copyright. 00:34:51.190 --> 00:34:54.909 When they sued ABC initially, a lower court judge 00:34:54.909 --> 00:34:57.070 agreed that their artistic rights had technically 00:34:57.070 --> 00:34:59.989 been violated by the crude editing, but the judge 00:34:59.989 --> 00:35:03.309 refused to grant an injunction to stop ABC from 00:35:03.309 --> 00:35:05.309 airing the butchered episodes. The network thought 00:35:05.309 --> 00:35:07.829 they had won. But the Pythons didn't back down. 00:35:08.079 --> 00:35:11.739 They appealed the decision and they won a landmark 00:35:11.739 --> 00:35:13.860 appellate ruling that gave them complete control 00:35:13.860 --> 00:35:16.440 over all subsequent U .S. broadcasts of their 00:35:16.440 --> 00:35:18.699 programs. But from a legal standpoint, didn't 00:35:18.699 --> 00:35:21.679 ABC buy the broadcasting rights? Why wasn't the 00:35:21.679 --> 00:35:23.480 network allowed to edit the content they paid 00:35:23.480 --> 00:35:25.980 for? That is the crux of why this case is so 00:35:25.980 --> 00:35:29.230 vital. The ruling established a powerful legal 00:35:29.230 --> 00:35:31.989 precedent for moral rights for artists and television. 00:35:32.469 --> 00:35:34.949 Moral rights are distinct from economic copyright. 00:35:35.449 --> 00:35:37.989 It's the legal idea that a creator has an inherent 00:35:37.989 --> 00:35:39.889 right to protect the integrity of their work 00:35:39.889 --> 00:35:42.710 from being mutilated, distorted, or fundamentally 00:35:42.710 --> 00:35:45.630 altered by a distributor, even if that distributor 00:35:45.630 --> 00:35:48.610 has paid for the broadcast rights. Wow. The court 00:35:48.610 --> 00:35:51.329 ruled that ABC's edits were so severe that they 00:35:51.329 --> 00:35:53.510 constituted a mutilation of the artist's original 00:35:53.510 --> 00:35:56.619 intent. And furthermore, this grueling battle 00:35:56.619 --> 00:35:58.900 gave the pythons the leverage they needed to 00:35:58.900 --> 00:36:01.280 eventually gain control of their own physical 00:36:01.280 --> 00:36:03.900 master types from the BBC once their original 00:36:03.900 --> 00:36:06.920 contracts expired. They literally wrestled their 00:36:06.920 --> 00:36:08.860 intellectual property away from the corporate 00:36:08.860 --> 00:36:10.880 giants, which is incredible Yeah They fought 00:36:10.880 --> 00:36:13.300 the law and the weirdos won and once they had 00:36:13.300 --> 00:36:15.739 that control their global reach just kept expanding 00:36:15.739 --> 00:36:17.960 in the most bizarre ways I mean they went to 00:36:17.960 --> 00:36:21.500 Germany in 1971 in 1972 and actually produced 00:36:21.500 --> 00:36:24.599 two special brand -new German episodes titled 00:36:24.599 --> 00:36:27.699 Monty Python's Flegender Zirkus For the first 00:36:27.699 --> 00:36:30.199 one, they actually memorized and performed their 00:36:30.199 --> 00:36:33.000 lines in German phonetically. Can you imagine 00:36:33.000 --> 00:36:36.079 John Cleese shouting his apoplectic rages in 00:36:36.079 --> 00:36:39.139 phonetic German? It's mind boggling. And decades 00:36:39.139 --> 00:36:43.059 later, they even supported a 2005 French theatrical 00:36:43.059 --> 00:36:46.860 adaptation of their sketches. Though the translations 00:36:46.860 --> 00:36:49.159 in the French version were interesting. Let's 00:36:49.159 --> 00:36:52.099 just say the famous song Sit on My Face was translated 00:36:52.099 --> 00:36:54.960 into something so incredibly anatomically explicit 00:36:54.960 --> 00:36:57.579 in French that we definitely cannot translate 00:36:57.579 --> 00:36:59.719 it back to English on this deep dive. It just 00:36:59.719 --> 00:37:02.239 proves that the core mechanics of their comedy, 00:37:02.780 --> 00:37:05.239 the disruption of logic, the mockery of authority, 00:37:05.380 --> 00:37:08.480 the embrace of the surreal, translates across 00:37:08.480 --> 00:37:11.219 almost all cultural and linguistic barriers. 00:37:11.519 --> 00:37:13.920 Even if the specific political or cultural references 00:37:13.920 --> 00:37:16.840 have to change, nonsense is a universal language. 00:37:17.079 --> 00:37:19.440 But of all the people across the globe who fell 00:37:19.440 --> 00:37:21.239 in love with this show and spoke that language 00:37:21.239 --> 00:37:23.699 of nonsense, there is one fan mentioned in the 00:37:23.699 --> 00:37:25.780 history books that just absolutely blows my mind. 00:37:25.739 --> 00:37:29.579 Elvis Presley the king of rock and roll yes according 00:37:29.579 --> 00:37:32.480 to his cousin Billy Smith during the final tragic 00:37:32.480 --> 00:37:35.900 months of Elvis's life in 1977 when he was mostly 00:37:35.900 --> 00:37:38.440 confined to his bedroom in Graceland heavily 00:37:38.440 --> 00:37:40.519 isolated and struggling with his health and addiction 00:37:40.519 --> 00:37:43.519 he would sit for hours and hours just endlessly 00:37:43.519 --> 00:37:45.820 chatting with his cousin about his absolute favorite 00:37:45.820 --> 00:37:48.320 Monty Python sketches just visualize that scene 00:37:48.320 --> 00:37:51.210 for a second the cloistered king of rock and 00:37:51.210 --> 00:37:53.829 roll in the deep heart of Memphis, Tennessee, 00:37:54.230 --> 00:37:56.869 sitting in a lavish, heavily draped bedroom, 00:37:56.989 --> 00:37:59.969 analyzing British sketch comedy about dead parrots 00:37:59.969 --> 00:38:03.010 and silly walks. It is a surreal image that I 00:38:03.010 --> 00:38:05.550 think Terry Gilliam himself would be proud to 00:38:05.550 --> 00:38:08.570 animate. It is deeply surreal, almost incredibly 00:38:08.570 --> 00:38:11.269 sad in a way, but it also speaks to the absolute 00:38:11.269 --> 00:38:14.030 universal appeal of the absurd. When the pressures 00:38:14.030 --> 00:38:15.889 of the real world are the crushing pressures 00:38:15.889 --> 00:38:19.039 of immense unprecedented global fame. Elvis's 00:38:19.039 --> 00:38:22.340 case become too much to bear. The pure, unadulterated 00:38:22.340 --> 00:38:25.000 nonsense of Python provides a very specific kind 00:38:25.000 --> 00:38:27.159 of psychological relief. It's a reminder that 00:38:27.159 --> 00:38:29.219 nothing is really that serious. It offers an 00:38:29.219 --> 00:38:31.280 escape into a world where the rules don't apply. 00:38:31.739 --> 00:38:34.019 There is a genuinely beautiful way to look at 00:38:34.019 --> 00:38:37.519 it. Let's move into our final section, the enduring 00:38:37.519 --> 00:38:40.760 legacy. Because for a show that changed the world, 00:38:41.460 --> 00:38:43.420 the flying circus didn't actually last that long. 00:38:43.550 --> 00:38:45.690 John Cleese actually chose to leave the show 00:38:45.690 --> 00:38:48.030 after the third series. He felt the material 00:38:48.030 --> 00:38:49.849 was getting repetitive, that they were starting 00:38:49.849 --> 00:38:52.190 to repeat their own formulas, and he was finding 00:38:52.190 --> 00:38:54.449 it increasingly difficult to work with his writing 00:38:54.449 --> 00:38:57.170 partner, Graham Chapman, who was struggling severely 00:38:57.170 --> 00:38:59.769 with alcoholism at the time, which made the writing 00:38:59.769 --> 00:39:02.690 process erratic. The remaining Pythons did go 00:39:02.690 --> 00:39:05.050 on to produce a shortened fourth series without 00:39:05.050 --> 00:39:07.730 Cleese, but they ultimately decided to end the 00:39:07.730 --> 00:39:10.769 show prematurely. The final episode was broadcast 00:39:10.769 --> 00:39:14.800 on December 5th, 1974. Only 45 episodes were 00:39:14.800 --> 00:39:17.400 ever made. 45 episodes. That is a remarkably 00:39:17.400 --> 00:39:20.519 small output for the impact it had. When we look 00:39:20.519 --> 00:39:22.880 at the legacy, you see the direct DNA of Python 00:39:22.880 --> 00:39:25.239 in almost everything that followed. Lorne Michaels 00:39:25.239 --> 00:39:28.300 has explicitly cited Monty Python as a massive 00:39:28.300 --> 00:39:30.940 foundational influence on the creation of Saturday 00:39:30.940 --> 00:39:32.860 Night Live. They paved the way for that kind 00:39:32.860 --> 00:39:35.300 of late night subversive television. Douglas 00:39:35.300 --> 00:39:37.599 Adams, the legendary author of The Hitchhiker's 00:39:37.599 --> 00:39:40.519 Guide to the Galaxy, actually co -wrote a sketch 00:39:40.519 --> 00:39:43.300 for that fourth series and famously stated he 00:39:43.300 --> 00:39:46.420 spent years just wanting to be John Cleese. They 00:39:46.420 --> 00:39:48.739 influenced the entire rhythm of modern sketch 00:39:48.739 --> 00:39:51.119 comedy, the embrace of the surreal, and most 00:39:51.119 --> 00:39:54.059 importantly, the refusal to talk down to an audience. 00:39:54.260 --> 00:39:56.699 But the legacy leaps completely out of the limb 00:39:56.699 --> 00:39:59.619 of comedy and into the real world in the most 00:39:59.619 --> 00:40:02.710 unexpected ways possible. And if you are listening 00:40:02.710 --> 00:40:04.809 to this right now on a smartphone, a tablet, 00:40:04.869 --> 00:40:07.789 or a computer, you are interacting with the legacy 00:40:07.789 --> 00:40:11.250 of Monty Python. In the late 1980s, a brilliant 00:40:11.250 --> 00:40:13.869 computer programmer named Guido van Rossum was 00:40:13.869 --> 00:40:16.610 creating a new, highly structured programming 00:40:16.610 --> 00:40:19.690 language. He wanted a name that was short, unique, 00:40:19.989 --> 00:40:23.190 and slightly mysterious. He happened to be reading 00:40:23.190 --> 00:40:25.590 the published scripts from Monty Python's Flying 00:40:25.590 --> 00:40:28.250 Circus at the exact time he was developing it. 00:40:28.409 --> 00:40:31.019 So he named the language Python. Today, Python 00:40:31.019 --> 00:40:33.059 is one of the most widely used coding languages 00:40:33.059 --> 00:40:35.659 on the entire planet. It powers massive parts 00:40:35.659 --> 00:40:38.519 of our global digital infrastructure, from search 00:40:38.519 --> 00:40:41.280 engines to artificial intelligence. It is truly 00:40:41.280 --> 00:40:44.539 one of the greatest, most poetic ironies of modern 00:40:44.539 --> 00:40:46.760 history. You have a television show that was 00:40:46.760 --> 00:40:49.360 built entirely from the ground up on chaotic 00:40:49.360 --> 00:40:52.780 absurdism. It was designed to defy logic, to 00:40:52.780 --> 00:40:55.760 break all the rules, and to celebrate total anarchy. 00:40:55.900 --> 00:40:59.099 And yet, it ended up providing the naming convention 00:40:59.099 --> 00:41:03.159 for the highly logical, incredibly rigid, mathematically 00:41:03.159 --> 00:41:05.619 rule -bound digital of infrastructure that runs 00:41:05.619 --> 00:41:09.000 our entire modern world. It is the ultimate subversive 00:41:09.000 --> 00:41:10.679 act. Oh, and it gets better. Think about your 00:41:10.679 --> 00:41:12.840 email inbox. Think about the folder where all 00:41:12.840 --> 00:41:15.420 the relentless, unwanted junk goes. The term 00:41:15.420 --> 00:41:18.780 spam comes directly, 100%, from a Monty Python 00:41:18.780 --> 00:41:21.130 sketch. In the sketch, two customers are sitting 00:41:21.130 --> 00:41:23.250 in a greasy spoon cafe where the menu is read 00:41:23.250 --> 00:41:25.550 out loud and almost every single item includes 00:41:25.550 --> 00:41:28.510 the canned meat spam, egg and spam, egg, bacon 00:41:28.510 --> 00:41:31.409 and spam, spam, egg, sausage and spam. As the 00:41:31.409 --> 00:41:33.530 sketch progresses, a choir of Vikings sitting 00:41:33.530 --> 00:41:35.730 in the cafe starts drowning out all the dialogue 00:41:35.730 --> 00:41:38.150 by loudly, repetitively singing spam, spam, spam, 00:41:38.329 --> 00:41:40.750 spam. Early Internet pioneers in the 80s and 00:41:40.750 --> 00:41:43.550 90s used the word spamming to describe the act 00:41:43.550 --> 00:41:46.389 of flooding a chat room, a bulletin board or 00:41:46.389 --> 00:41:49.130 an email inbox with repetitive unwanted junk 00:41:49.130 --> 00:41:51.869 drowning out the actual conversation exactly 00:41:51.869 --> 00:41:53.989 like the Vikings drowning out the dialogue in 00:41:53.989 --> 00:41:57.369 the sketch. It's a literal linguistic virus that 00:41:57.369 --> 00:42:00.869 leaped off a BBC soundstage in 1970 infected 00:42:00.869 --> 00:42:04.150 early internet culture and embedded itself directly 00:42:04.150 --> 00:42:06.909 into the Oxford English Dictionary and the daily 00:42:06.909 --> 00:42:10.050 vocabulary of billions of people. So what does 00:42:10.050 --> 00:42:12.610 this all mean? Let's synthesize this incredible 00:42:12.610 --> 00:42:16.280 journey. We started with six guys in 1969 who 00:42:16.280 --> 00:42:18.579 took the established polite rules of television 00:42:18.579 --> 00:42:21.610 and threw them completely out the window. They 00:42:21.610 --> 00:42:23.690 experimented with stream of consciousness, they 00:42:23.690 --> 00:42:26.070 eradicated punch lines, they glued it all together 00:42:26.070 --> 00:42:28.590 with surreal Renaissance art cutouts, and they 00:42:28.590 --> 00:42:31.449 mocked everyone from the military generals to 00:42:31.449 --> 00:42:33.989 the BBC executives paying their salaries. They 00:42:33.989 --> 00:42:37.269 were deemed disgusting and nihilistic. They earned 00:42:37.269 --> 00:42:39.329 the lowest appreciation score in the history 00:42:39.329 --> 00:42:41.869 of the network, and they bombed so hard on American 00:42:41.869 --> 00:42:44.110 television that they had to lie down in the grass 00:42:44.110 --> 00:42:46.960 and laugh at their own failure. And yet, they 00:42:46.960 --> 00:42:49.059 fought for their creative rights in federal court, 00:42:49.519 --> 00:42:51.659 they found their audience, and they became a 00:42:51.659 --> 00:42:54.679 cultural juggernaut. A juggernaut that literally 00:42:54.679 --> 00:42:56.960 named the code that likely built the podcast 00:42:56.960 --> 00:42:59.179 app you are using to listen to us right now. 00:42:59.539 --> 00:43:02.139 They prove that uncompromising artistic vision, 00:43:02.380 --> 00:43:05.219 even when it is initially rejected, misunderstood, 00:43:05.599 --> 00:43:08.760 or despised by the mainstream, has the power 00:43:08.760 --> 00:43:12.159 to fundamentally reshape the culture. They didn't 00:43:12.159 --> 00:43:14.860 change their comedy to fit the world. They forced 00:43:14.860 --> 00:43:17.320 the world to understand their comedy. Exactly. 00:43:17.679 --> 00:43:20.239 So to you listening, whenever you have an idea, 00:43:20.320 --> 00:43:22.320 whether it's at work, in your creative life, 00:43:22.400 --> 00:43:24.340 or just a project you're passionate about, and 00:43:24.340 --> 00:43:27.320 you start to doubt yourself, wait, strike that 00:43:27.320 --> 00:43:29.840 whenever you feel like your ideas are too weird 00:43:29.840 --> 00:43:32.159 or too niche, or just won't be understood by 00:43:32.159 --> 00:43:34.179 the people around you, I want you to remember 00:43:34.179 --> 00:43:36.639 this deep dive. Remember that Monty Python's 00:43:36.639 --> 00:43:39.530 flying circus was once deemed unwatchable. too 00:43:39.530 --> 00:43:42.210 strange, and far too British to ever succeed. 00:43:42.570 --> 00:43:45.369 Weirdness, when you commit to it fully and execute 00:43:45.369 --> 00:43:47.710 it with discipline, can literally change the 00:43:47.710 --> 00:43:49.849 world. And I want to leave you with a final thought 00:43:49.849 --> 00:43:52.650 to mull over, building on everything we've unpacked 00:43:52.650 --> 00:43:55.989 today. The Pythons revolutionized television 00:43:55.989 --> 00:43:58.329 precisely because they were able to recognize 00:43:58.329 --> 00:44:01.389 the invisible rules of the medium. The mandatory 00:44:01.389 --> 00:44:04.110 punchlines, the clean continuity, the polite 00:44:04.110 --> 00:44:06.650 endings, the respect for authority, and they 00:44:06.650 --> 00:44:09.199 deliberately chose to break them. Fast forward 00:44:09.199 --> 00:44:13.000 to today. What are the invisible assumed rules 00:44:13.000 --> 00:44:15.840 of the media we consume right now? Think about 00:44:15.840 --> 00:44:18.840 the infinite scroll of TikTok, the algorithm 00:44:18.840 --> 00:44:21.340 driven content on streaming platforms, or even 00:44:21.340 --> 00:44:23.949 the structure of deep dives like this one. There 00:44:23.949 --> 00:44:26.710 is a rhythm and an expectation we all just blindly 00:44:26.710 --> 00:44:29.150 accept as normal. What are those rules? And what 00:44:29.150 --> 00:44:31.690 would it look like if someone today had the courage 00:44:31.690 --> 00:44:34.289 to just stop doing them? Now that is a brilliant 00:44:34.289 --> 00:44:36.510 question to end on. Thank you so much for joining 00:44:36.510 --> 00:44:39.389 us on this exploration into the anatomy of absurdity. 00:44:39.789 --> 00:44:41.869 Keep questioning the rules, keep embracing the 00:44:41.869 --> 00:44:44.190 weird, and we will catch you on the next deep 00:44:44.190 --> 00:44:44.429 dive.