Drunk History (2013–…): Season 3, Episode 1 - New Jersey - full transcript

Lincoln's like,
"Your balloons are fucking awesome."

I want to send them
into the sky so that you can spy.

Fuck, yeah, I will do that.

This is the funnest job ever.

It would be like,
"This and this and this and this,

"then go with this and this
and this and this."

And the other would go,
"You wish, tuna fish."

They're like,
"We hear this thing.

"It's like..."

Oh, my God, this is basically
the sound of the Big Bang.

Boing!



I was born in Jersey.

I was raised in Jersey.

I am definitely going to die in Jersey.

Jersey's fucking
goddamn fucking cold.

And then, the next day it's fucking fine.

And then, like, two days later,
it's fucking cold as shit again.

I love Jersey,

but everything in Jersey pisses me off.

- Let's do a shot.
- Let's do a shot.

You did all that in one? Tess!

And we're on camera.

- Mmm.
- It's delicious.

Oh, giving me more, oh...

- Oh, shit.
- Bless your sweet heart.



Oh, shit.

- You put so much more in mine.
- I did.

Doesn't have a cork.

You only need a cork
if you're not gonna finish it.

Hello, I'm Tess Lynch, and today

we're gonna talk about
the Union Balloon Corps.

So, it's a week into the Civil War.

Thaddeus Lowe is a balloonist.

He's airborne in Hoboken, New Jersey,

and he's like, "Fuck, yes!"

Like, "Ah."

And everything seems great
until... Oh, boom.

Winds hit.

And it's like, "Oh, fuck.

"The fucking winds, you know?"

But, like, the winds? They don't care.

The winds don't care.

They're like,
"We're gonna have you land

"where the fuck we want you to land."

And all of a sudden,

he finds himself blown
into South Carolina.

Like, right in the middle
of Confederate territory.

"Are you serious?"

So he was like, boom,

blown into the hands
of the Confederate mob.

So they freak, and they're like, "Whoa!

"Are you a Yankee spy?
What's your deal?"

And he's just like,
"What the fuck do I do?"

So he has all these papers with him

that basically are like, "Thaddeus Lowe,
important balloon person."

And they're like, "You know what?

"You seem like a cool dude.

"You can go." And he leaves.

Okay, one second.

This is the funnest job ever.

Okay, so basically,

he's just like, "I don't think
this is working out for me.

"The winds keep taking me into, like,
the worst, shitiest neighborhoods."

Like, "I'm done with this."

But then, he gets a call.

But not a call,
because it's back in the day.

So he gets a message,
and it says, "Hey, you."

"I've had my eye on you.

"Why don't you
come on down to Washington?"

And he's like, "Who are you?
Okay, I'll go. Whatever.

"A little trip to Washington sounds good."

So he goes down to Washington
to this, like, fancy room.

All of a sudden, who walks in?

It's fuckin' President Lincoln.

And Lowe's like...

Like, "Oh, holy shit.
Like, President Lincoln.

"I didn't know you were, like,

"you know, keeping tabs
on my balloons and stuff."

And Lincoln's like,
"I have been, and guess what?

"I have heard tell that your balloons
are fucking awesome.

"I want to send them into the sky
so that you can

"spy on the Confederate troops.

"Let's see what you can do.

"You know, put your money
where your mouth is."

Thaddeus Lowe's like,
"Fuck, yeah, I will do that."

Lugs his balloon out,
takes it out to the Washington Mall.

Whoop!

500 feet above ground, boom.

He's like, "I am gonna send
an aerial telegram down."

"Hey, Lincoln. I see you down there.

"It looks pretty cool.

"I see all the, you know,
this and that and whatever."

Boom!

Lincoln is like, "This is awesome.

"Like, I can only imagine what you can do

"for the Union when you're...

"You're all like...

"Above the forces,
and you're just reporting back.

"Thaddeus Lowe,

"I'm gonna task you with making
the first Union Balloon Corps."

So he, like, bands them all together.

Lowe is like, "Check out what I've got.

"I've got, like, a billion balloons.

"I've got the Excelsior, the Constitution,

"the Fucking Whatever.

"The This, the That, the Intrepid!"

They become a, like, balloon force.

It's crazy. It's balloons.

So, Thaddeus takes Lowe and...

Wait, no. What?
That makes no sense.

Are you okay, Derek?

This is what happens with this show.

You get a little...

I'm wobbly.

So he goes, and he spies.

The Confederates were trying their best.

They were like, "Look, if you see us,
we're gonna shoot cannons at you."

He's like, boom!

He's like, "What the fuck?

"Like, you're trying
to shoot me with cannons.

"It's ridiculous, you guys.
I'm way the fuck up here!"

And they're just like...

You know what I mean?
"Like, it's reverse fart noise.

"It's not gonna happen."

What?

Well, fart noise is...

And reverse fart noise is...

Yeah, 'cause gravity.

So, that's basically
the end of it, except...

- That's it.
- No.

- It's not it.
- No.

So he comes home
with all this intel, and he's just like,

"Hey, Lincoln, I took
a bunch of good notes up there.

"What do you think?"

And Lincoln is like, "Oh, balloons!

"What the fuck?
They're the awesomest.

"This is the country's first air force."

And he did. He did.

- He should.
- No, he did.

He should, and he did, and he would.

I'm seeing, like, so many of you.

That's the worst.

These are the people
that created paleontology.

Marsh is like, Einstein isn't invented yet,

but you're no Einstein.

There's actually a place
here in New Jersey

where you can learn to be a wrestler.

That's all I've ever wanted to be.

Fuck.

This is a dream come true.

You might be really good,
or you might be really bad, you know.

It's either one or the other.

Smack the mat, tuck your head.

All right.

Take this to the next level?

- Yeah.
- All right.

Ooh!

One, two, three!

I do vodka because
it doesn't give me a hangover.

You don't have to keep
looking at the camera.

It's, like, a documentary.
I come from The Office.

I was on The Office for three years,

and we look at the camera and go...

Hello, my name is Mark Proksch,

and today we are gonna talk
about the Bone Wars.

A lot of people know this.

The first dinosaur wasn't discovered
until the mid-19th century.

This created kind of a new science.

Two of the first paleontologists

were Othniel Marsh and Edward Cope.

Cope discovers this great
discovery in New Jersery.

New Jersery, not a place.

New Jersey.

The first dinosaur that's nearly complete.

And so the lar...

And so Marsh gets there,
and they tour around.

It's like, "Hey, Cope.
You're a great guy.

"I love you. Thank you so much.

"You're awesome."

And then he goes to the
owners of this site and says,

"Listen, buddies, here's my dollars.

"Dollars good in the eye
of the federal government.

"If you find anymore dinosaur bones,

"don't send them to Cope.

"Send them to me."
And they do that.

Cope finds out about this
and becomes infuriated.

"You were my friend.
I let you come see this site.

"Why would you do that to me?"

Marsh says, "Listen.

"If I can make this work for me,
then bully to me.

"That's what I'm all..."

All about.

And so Cope
then breaks into Marsh's sites

and starts pillaging and stealing.

Marsh finds out about this.

"Fucking livid. What the F?

"What do you think
you're doing, mister man?

"You're not... Why would you..."

And Cope is like, "Listen.

"This is the game we're playing.

"I was here. I found these bones.

"Just 'cause you're not here yet
doesn't mean nothing to me."

Well, Cope finds this dinosaur,

and he starts publishing
all this information.

And Marsh gets there,
and he's like, "Wow, that's...

"I mean, that's neat.

"Um, why did you
put his head on his ass?

"It's supposed to be
on the other end, you dingus!"

Marsh takes the head,

puts it on the tail, and it fits perfectly.

And Marsh is like,
"Einstein isn't invented yet,

"but you're no Einstein."

So Marsh... Oh, no, no, no, no.

Cope is like, "Screw you.

"We are obviously not friends.

"Let the Bone Wars begin."

A race breaks out to discover

new dinosaur fossils in Council...

In Como Bluff, Wyoming.

So you have these two pits.

It's like, "Hey,
this discovery is pretty neat."

And the other would be like...
"Na-uh.

"This and this and this and this,

"then go with this and this
and this and this."

And the other would go,
"You wish, tuna fish.

"This and that was part of this and that."

The other would be like, "Cool your jets."

The two of them discovered
over 140 species of dinosaurs,

but they were, like, fighting,

throwing dirt in each other's pits,

sabotaging their own findings.

Marsh would be like,

"Don't let Cope get a hold of these.
Blow it up."

Just so Cope wouldn't find them.

Cope was like, "Don't let
Marsh get a hold of these.

"Blow these up."

This is insane.

They even had a dirtball fight.

These are two of the people
that created paleontology.

They're acting like spoiled little babies.

Put diapers on 'em!

Give 'em a nuk.

This went on then for 15 years.

And Marsh becomes
the head of U.S. paleontology

because he discovered the most bones

and is like,

"All of the fossils collected by Cope

"belong to the USGS."

That's all Cope had left.

And Marsh was trying to take
that shit away from him.

Cope was like, "Screw you.

"I'm going to fight you on this."

Cope, it turned out,
had been collecting evidence

that Marsh was sabotaging all this science

this entire time,

back to New Jersey, to Como Bluffs.

Cope gives The New York Herald...

all of these notes.

I get delightful when I'm drunk.

The New York Herald
publicizes all this information,

and it ruins Marsh.

I got it. Don't worry, guys.

This war, the Bone Wars,
established paleontology.

But these two, they're children.

Cope was like, "You know what?

"I hate Marsh so much that when I die,

"I want my brain weighed and measured.

"I bet my brain is bigger
than Othniel Marsh's."

And so when he died,
he had his brain cut out.

And then Marsh was like,
"No, I don't want to do that."

Guys, let's eat!

Let's enjoy a mouthfil... Full.

A what?

You want us to enjoy a what?

I mean, I didn't
do myself any favors.

I really just made this drink.
It's like...

You know...

Let's talk about outer space.

Hello, I'm Jenny Slate.

And today we're going to talk about

Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson,

and their beautiful cosmic discovery.

This is my dog's...

Uh, penis,

and then I've also had his balls removed.

- Shame, shame.
- Ah, Reggie.

"Give me back my balls."
You can't have 'em.

I took them away!

But I have a full vagina.

In 1960,

Bell Labs made this, like,
giant listening device for NASA.

But then, by the time
they were ready to use it,

a better thing had been built.

So then it was just, like, by itself,
all by itself in New Jersey.

A lonely horn.

But two scientists,
Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson,

they were like, "Oh, whoa, whoa!
Hold on, hold on!

"If no one's using that, could we use it?"

They were like,
"Come on down to the horn."

So they get to the horn. They're like,

"We are beautiful
scientists with lovely minds,

"and we want to listen
to the sounds between the stars."

Boink. They're like, "Let's go, babe!
Let's listen up!"

Oh, God, I love thinking of them
calling each other "babe."

So they listen, and the sound

is a hundred times louder
than any sound they expected to hear.

It's like...

The universe is like...

"Find out about me!"

So they were like,

"What is this darn sound?"

"It's coming from everywhere
in the sky at once.

"Everywhere, everywhere, everywhere."

And then they were like, "No.

"There's no way a sound could
come from everywhere at once,

"so we have to eliminate
all the other sounds

"that might be, like, interfering."

So, first they thought maybe...

Someone doesn't care about science.

They were like, "It must be coming from,
you know, New York.

"Urban interference, you know.

"New York is a city
with buildings and lights,

"and people and subway
and blah, blah, blah."

So they were like, "Point it there."

Pointed the horn at New York City.

"No, that's not
what we were hearing.

"Forget about you, New York.

"Maybe it's coming
from a military base nearby."

And then they just, like,
point it at the military bases,

but they didn't hear that noise
coming from there.

"No, it isn't it."

So then they were like, "Okay, next.
Maybe it's from the sun."

They point it at the sun,
and the sun was like,

"I'm just the sun. I don't give a shit."

They were like, "It's not the sun.
What the funk is this, man?"

And then they were like,
"We should check our device."

"What if there's something
inside of this thing,

"like, you know, mold or a skeleton

"of a hobo that crawled in there
to get shelter?"

Or whatever.

They look inside the horn.
Guess what?

"This fucking thing
is filled with pigeons."

Houston, we do have a problem,
and it's pigeons.

Arno is like, "You do it, Robert.

"You fucking kill them."

Robert's like, "I don't want to do it.

"You do it."

Guess what they did?

They shot them with a gun.

A shotgun.

Then they were like, "Well, that'll do it."

After they've wiped the bird blood
off of their hands,

they're both like, "RIP these pigeons.

"Let's do this."

Boink. They start to listen.

They're like, "Oh, shit."

They hear it again.

"What the hunk is this right now?"

They don't have the answer.
They don't know what to do.

They listen through the horn for years.

They're going through their papers,
their papers, their papers.

"Ugh, ugh, ugh, ugh, I can't get it."

"Ugh, ugh, there's nothing here."

"Ugh. This one's boring."

"Ugh, this is in another language."

Just being like, "We're never
gonna figure this out."

Finally, they find a study
done by a scientist

whose name is Dicke.

He had this crackpot theory
that the universe,

instead of being infinite,
actually started at some point.

Dicke's like, "13.8 billion years ago,

"aka old as fuck.

"Check your watch.

"I think the universe started with, like,
a crazy explosion, aka the Big Bang."

But they had no way to prove it.

Then these two guys from New Jersey

who have been listening to this
fucking pigeon shit horn...

call him up, they're like,
"We hear this thing.

"It's like...

"Have you ever heard of that before?"

He's like, "Oh, my God. That's it.

"This is what we've been studying.

"Cosmic microwave..."

What is that word?

What is the word?
We know it. What is it?

"Cosmic microwave background radiation."

Okay?

"It's the sound of microwaves
from the Big Bang."

And they were like,
"Yeah, that's it! This is it!

"We got it! We got it!

"This is basically the sound
of the Big Bang."

They wanted to try to find anything,

but what they found
was the sound of everything.

Boing!

I had to unfollow NASA on Instagram
'cause it made me too crazy.

It would just be like,

"This is a picture
of a fucking black hole!"

And I was like... Ahhh!

Okay, let me tell you this.

Penzias and Wilson
get the Nobel Prize for physics.

Everyone fucking flips out,
and they were like,

"Yes, the Big Bang is real.

"It happened. It's real.
You guys did it."

Penzias and, um... And, uh...

Oh, fuck, the other guy.

I just keep thinking of Winslow...

But I know
that's from Family Matters.

Carl.

Carl Winslow discovered the Big Bang.

Derek, what this is right here.

This is the sound of the echo

of the universe being created.

Suck on that for a second.

See how you like it.

Just for a second.

The universe is like,
"Just suck on it for a second."

I'm the fucking universe.
Suck on it for a second.

Tonight,
when I'm through with you,

you will be history!

School out!

Like, school's out of session.

I thought maybe...
Was that all right?