Rubber Ducks

Episode notes

Alex Schmidt is joined by comedian Billy Wayne Davis (new special ‘Testify’) and comedy writer/performer Zac Oyama (‘Dimension 20’ on Dropout.tv) for a look at why rubber ducks are secretly incredibly fascinating.

Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources, handy links, and this week’s bonus episode.

LINKS FOR THE GUESTS:

• Billy Wayne Davis’s new stand-up special Testify
• Billy Wayne Davis’s website and tour dates
• Dropout.tv
• Dimension 20 on Dropout (feat. Zac Oyama!)

RESOURCES USED TO INFORM THE EPISODE’S LAND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT:

• native-land.ca
• U.S. Department Of Arts And Culture
• The True Native New Yorkers Can Never Truly Reclaim Their Homeland (Smithsonian)
• Mapping Manahatta: 10 Lenape sites in New York City (6sqft)
• “Finding Lenapehoking” (YouTube / Hudson River Maritime Museum)

RESEARCH SOURCES:

• Rubber Duck: You Make Bath Time Lots of Fun (The Strong National Museum Of Play)
• What a 1917 prank about the history of the bathtub can tell us about modern hoaxes (Vox.com)
• When Americans Started Bathing (JStor Daily)
• Wise Quacks: A History of the Rubber Duck (Mental Floss)
• The history of the rubber duck (St. Neots Museum)
• The Age of Plastic: From Parkesine To Pollution (UK Science Museum London)
• House To Home YouTube Channel: “How Are Rubber Ducks Made?”
• Stanford Research into the Impact of Tobacco Advertising: Collection: T-Zone
• “Big Yellow Duck,’ “May 35th,’ and Other Words You Can’t Use on China’s Twitter Today (Slate)
• How A Rubber Duck Meme Sidestepped Censorship on Tiananmen Square Anniversary (KQED San Francisco)
• Why China is banning ‘big yellow ducks’ on the anniversary of Tiananmen Square (The Week)
• Our Favorite Picture From Around the World This Month: January 2018: Taiwan: “Rubber Duck,” a 59-foot-tall inflatable sculpture created by Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman, was on display for a month in Kaohsiung. (National Geographic)
• The story behind the iconic ‘Tank Man’ photo (CNN)
• How COVID Policies and Party Politics Set the Stage for the Protests in China (The New Yorker)
• Giant rubber ducks become symbol of Thai pro-democracy rallies (The Guardian)
• Why Thai students use rubber ducks, dinosaurs and three-finger salutes as protest symbols (Australian Broadcasting Corporation News)
• US plots to ‘overthrow Putin with a rubber duck’ (The Times Of London)
• Russian activist in jail for giant duck protest (BBC News)
• How the rubber ducky became a potent protest symbol (The Sydney Morning Herald)
• Brazil’s restive rich draft a duck to protest president (Reuters)
• Rubber duck artist’s team alleges plagiarism by Brazil protesters (BBC News)
• Meet the famous duck who ran the Long Island Marathon (Running Magazine Canada) — this is the duck Billy describes.

Peter Ganine’s 1947 patent:

“Rubber Duck” by Florentijn Hofman, in Hong Kong’s harbor, 2013:

The 2013 “Tank Man” meme on Weibo: