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FunTranscript
00:00:00 [Music]
00:00:22 [Radio]
00:00:48 In my world there are two types of people. People who should travel and people who should never travel.
00:00:54 A traveler is someone looking for new, different experiences and meeting new people and sights.
00:00:59 A non-traveler is someone you take on vacation or holiday with you. You get them somewhere different,
00:01:05 they start comparing things to things back at home. This is your clue to leave them at home the next time you travel.
00:01:11 That's why the postcard and the kitchen magnet was invented. Wish you were here, not really.
00:01:16 But anyway, that's just my opinion.
00:01:19 You see these tombs with these big magnificent angels on the top. They're just so beautiful.
00:01:25 They say there's so many angels in the cemetery, you can hear the flapping of their wings.
00:01:31 Ladies and gentlemen, this was the site of the 1984 World's Fair.
00:01:35 It's impossible to describe to you what this neighborhood looked like during the World's Fair.
00:01:40 We knew we were taking a chance. With the internet and information availability,
00:01:44 World's Fair, we knew we were going to be one of the last World's Fairs in existence.
00:01:49 We were really taking a big chance and the politicians went for it.
00:01:54 There was another city scheduling it, one right behind us.
00:01:57 As a result of all this mess, I think 16 or 17 people came to a World's Fair.
00:02:02 We had a fabulous time in New Orleans for six months, going to the same shows night after night.
00:02:07 And the mall shopping center you were in, those were the international pavilions for the World's Fair.
00:02:13 Ladies and gentlemen, you can do whatever you want to do, Josh.
00:02:17 Until I wrap this cord around your neck.
00:02:21 So ladies and gentlemen, New Orleans has one foot in Europe and I think one foot in the United States.
00:02:29 To this day, it's divided into two distinct halves.
00:02:32 We have an American side of the city and we have a French side of the city.
00:02:37 The reason I'm telling you this is that your hotel is on the American side of the city.
00:02:42 But we're going to pass a big main street that we call Canal Street, easily recognized by its beautiful date palms.
00:02:49 Trust me when Josh and I tell you, when you walk across this street, every street name in this city changes.
00:02:56 If you're looking for Bourbon Street and you're standing on the wrong side of the street on the American side, you will never find it.
00:03:03 Forget all that. All you need to do in New Orleans is mind the address numbers.
00:03:08 When the address numbers are getting lower, you know you're going to end up at this big beautiful main street called Canal Street or you're going to run into the Mississippi River.
00:03:17 You will never get lost in New Orleans if you simply mind the address numbers.
00:03:22 And this is our beautiful Harrah's Casino that's undergoing a redo and they're adding another hotel.
00:03:28 I am not a gambler, but I just get the biggest kick out of casinos.
00:03:32 I just got back from Las Vegas. It's amazing what an unlimited budget and fiberglass can do in the middle of a desert.
00:03:38 But anyway, I just get the biggest kick out of it.
00:03:41 One of the times I was there, there were people having cocktails in the crystals of the chandelier.
00:03:46 You're not going to see that every day, a chandelier with arms coming out of it, waving hello to you.
00:03:51 But this is a city-owned piece of property.
00:03:54 Harrah's leases the property from the city and I guess we should call it Caesars now.
00:03:59 How they've officially changed their name, right?
00:04:02 So anyway, this is it.
00:04:03 The big green wedge building to the right side, right in the front corner of the wedge, kind of obscured by those trees, that is our Aquarium of the Americas.
00:04:12 I am not a big fan of fish bowls or zoos.
00:04:15 However, that aquarium, not on this trip, but a future trip, has something no other aquarium has.
00:04:21 We have our famous white blue-eyed alligators, not pink-eyed.
00:04:25 They are not albinos. They are far more rare than albinos, can you imagine?
00:04:29 And it's really interesting to tell future generations that you lived on the planet when it was breathing and living before they stuffed it.
00:04:37 But we always keep one of them here in the aquarium.
00:04:40 Everything in New Orleans is based on food.
00:04:43 Do not stand still too long in New Orleans. Trust me.
00:04:47 If we had our way, our zoo would have a card to tell you where the animal is from and a recipe card to tell you how to take it home and pop it into a gumbo.
00:04:57 So when they opened up the aquarium, we were extra confused because these beautiful yellow fin tunas would go swimming by.
00:05:04 And we'd press our noses against the glass and ask what vegetables it was being served with.
00:05:08 It's just an instinctive thing here in New Orleans.
00:05:11 And aquarium people are very, very serious.
00:05:14 They're a lot of fun to play with.
00:05:15 I'm pretty sure I was a stomach ulcer in a previous life.
00:05:18 I love aggravating people slowly but surely.
00:05:21 But any time I go to the aquarium, they're standing in front of this magnificent white, blue-eyed specimen.
00:05:26 They ask me if they have the matching shoes, belts, and purses in the gift belt.
00:05:30 They just borrow a major fan belt.
00:05:32 Get a grip, it's a white alligator.
00:05:34 So this is the main street called Canal Street.
00:05:37 To the left, the American side of the city.
00:05:39 To the right, the French side of the city.
00:05:42 So look left, that's the 100 block on the American side.
00:05:45 Look right, this will be the 100 block on the French side of the city.
00:05:49 We are going to explore as many neighborhoods as we possibly can in the time allotted.
00:05:55 Unfortunately, we figure about 75 to 90% of the people visiting New Orleans will never take time to see what you're going to see on this tour.
00:06:04 And that truly is kind of a tragedy in its own way.
00:06:08 Now this street is called Canal Street, not Main Street.
00:06:11 You'll still hear that ridiculous story that there's a canal under the street.
00:06:15 That is not true.
00:06:16 The land was appropriated for a canal, but the company went bankrupt long before the first shovel of dirt went into the ground.
00:06:23 So there never was a canal here, even though it right away was slated to be.
00:06:29 Ladies and gentlemen, I'm very big on the human brain.
00:06:32 You know, we all look for 5G phones, sit a kid down and explain synapse of the human brain to them.
00:06:38 What's involved in a human writing its signature?
00:06:41 A million messages are sent.
00:06:43 Humans, unlike most other animals, have the incredible capability of standing in the moment, turning around and looking towards our past, or in the past,
00:06:54 and then turning forward, looking forward to what's going to project for the future.
00:06:58 Most other animals kind of sort of do the same thing, eon after eon, but not humans.
00:07:03 And one thing that you can say about the human brain, it is wired to constantly change.
00:07:09 And along the way, humans invent things like languages, music, the arts, architecture, engineering, medicine, you name it, we pick it up along the way.
00:07:19 And the reason I'm saying this is because as we look to the past a little bit, whenever you see a city that looks like this, and the buildings are three or four stories high,
00:07:28 we're going to go back to technology.
00:07:30 Humans have been messing with metal since the beginning of time.
00:07:33 However, we keep improving it, fine-tuning it.
00:07:36 The steel I-beam we all take for granted every single day wasn't perfected until well after World War II.
00:07:43 So again, and we're continuing to make strides.
00:07:46 The truth is, steel, when you see cityscapes like this, think about technology, hasn't quite advanced yet.
00:07:55 So whatever we're looking at, you can bet your bottom dollar that it was built before the 1889 World's Fair.
00:08:02 We're back to the World's Fair, where Eiffel designs that Eiffel Tower in Paris.
00:08:07 The Eiffel Tower is not built of steel, it's built of cast iron.
00:08:11 I want to make that very, very clear, that's why they're always repairing the same.
00:08:15 So we know now whatever we're looking at, here's exceptions, Stonehenge, Castleton, that's what we're talking about, general building approaches.
00:08:22 And to our left is a beautiful statue of Monsieur Vianville, the founder of Nouvel Arléant,
00:08:29 with an indigenous Indian sitting at his foot in a compulsion mic.
00:08:33 So we know whatever we're looking at is certainly before 1889, because of its height limitations.
00:08:39 The second thing we're going to look for is we're going to take a closer look, look how tiny people look next to our doors in New Orleans.
00:08:46 20-foot ceilings are not uncommon. It's easily missed until somebody points it out.
00:08:52 Then let's take a closer look. They have windows and doors, second, third, and fourth floors that go from the floor to the ceiling.
00:08:59 Over 80% of the building's facade opens to these windows.
00:09:04 Now the building is telling you, "Whatever I am, I'm built for heat, heat, and more heat before the advent of air conditioning and electricity."
00:09:12 You would never design a city like this where you're dealing with snow and ice.
00:09:17 So when you travel on this magnificent marvel called the Earth, always take a moment, even in a photograph,
00:09:22 just take a moment to the building to speak to you and whisper in your ear. It'll tell you everything you need to know.
00:09:28 Another thing in New Orleans is that we're very big on keeping our buildings looking as old as they should.
00:09:36 A lot of people think we're not maintaining our buildings, and that is not true.
00:09:40 We believe that making a building look two weeks younger than it's supposed to is the equivalent of putting too much makeup on your great-great-grandmother.
00:09:49 You're just going to screw the whole thing up. The beauty lies in the cracks and the crevices.
00:09:54 So I want to get that abundant. In fact, we have a historic commission that's very adamant in telling you exactly what to do and what not to do to your buildings before anything is done.
00:10:05 You want to pull in right in this motorcycle.
00:10:10 Now, you know, this is a local driver. There's no excuse for that.
00:10:16 Pull all the way up to the motorcycle and see if he comes out screaming.
00:10:20 With the tassels on it, no less.
00:10:22 Ladies and gentlemen, look to your left. Every city on the planet Earth has an oldest point.
00:10:27 If you live in a small village or a small township, trust me, you have one.
00:10:32 It's interesting when you travel to look for these oldest points.
00:10:35 They give you lots of data points.
00:10:37 This is it for New Orleans. We're fortunate that we have maintained our oldest area.
00:10:42 There was a Native American Indian tribe trading post, multi-tribe, not one tribe, several tribes, and they were located.
00:10:50 They had their shopping center in this area.
00:10:52 In fact, the name for New Orleans was Puponcha, and Puponcha in Native American Indian meant "the place of many tons."
00:10:59 Isn't that a beautiful name for a shopping center?
00:11:02 They didn't have currency. These tribes were very peaceful.
00:11:05 They all got along with each other, and so they came here to trade their goods.
00:11:09 In fact, the founder of New Orleans that we just saw, his statue, came from Canada down the river, but he stopped here.
00:11:16 He didn't go to the mouth of the river, and he saw the big shopping center and said, "This is where we'll put our city here."
00:11:22 And we're called Nouvelle-Orléans. There's already a big city in France called Orléans, France.
00:11:28 It's the second city named in honor of this influential, powerful duke, the Duke d'Orléans.
00:11:33 So they called us Nouvelle-Orléans.
00:11:35 Now this is the deal. There is an explorer and there is a settler, and you need to calm down and try to explain this to students for sure.
00:11:44 They get the two confused, but never the two shall meet.
00:11:47 Say the group of us aboard this bus are explorers.
00:11:50 Our job is to put our king or queen's flags in our back pocket, get on ships just a few times bigger than this bus.
00:11:57 If you think about it, explore the new world, jab your own flag here, there, and everywhere that you could, read a proclamation, and send the information back to Europe.
00:12:06 But there were rules and regulations governing this.
00:12:09 This is going to get real interesting in outer space.
00:12:11 I was just thinking about this the other day.
00:12:14 Remember the movie Alien that everybody forgets?
00:12:17 That, whatever that was, that giant spacecraft, remember, was a mining plant.
00:12:22 They were mining rare earth and stuff from that plant before the monster popped out and ate everybody.
00:12:27 But anyway, and then we landed on the moon, and lo and behold, sure enough, the first thing they do is climb down the water and jab an American flag in the soil of the moon.
00:12:37 And I said to myself, here we go again with the exploration.
00:12:41 But then they read a decree that they were claiming the moon for everybody.
00:12:45 However, that's going to change.
00:12:46 When they find something they're looking for, trust me, that's going to change.
00:12:49 We know there's at least one or two of those rocks out there that it's raining diamonds 24 hours a day.
00:12:55 It's just the way it is.
00:12:56 So I think that'll change.
00:12:58 But one of the rules was you had to find the mouth of a river.
00:13:01 They wanted to find a lake or a lagoon or a ditch.
00:13:04 There were rules.
00:13:05 Find the mouth of the river.
00:13:06 So I just told you Bienville did not go to the mouth of the river.
00:13:09 But he sends information back to Europe about the Indian trading post of the Great River, and the king of France decides to explore to try to find the mouth of the river, the thickest flag there.
00:13:19 Well, they kept bypassing it.
00:13:22 They expected to see white water running into the ocean or, in this case, the Gulf of Mexico.
00:13:26 But they went to Houston, Galveston, Lake Charles.
00:13:29 They went to Biloxi and Mobile.
00:13:31 They couldn't find it.
00:13:32 They kept going back and forth.
00:13:34 And finally, they said, we know it's there.
00:13:36 So they watched a couple of guys in some small boats.
00:13:39 They came back several days later really upset and said, you're not going to believe this.
00:13:44 But that giant river flows through a dark, dank, horrible forest like we've never seen.
00:13:50 With serpents hanging from the branches and some kind of weird thing chasing us through the water, which were alligators, they said, it's the worst place we've ever seen.
00:13:59 It was a swamp.
00:14:00 Can you imagine?
00:14:01 So the river was going through a swamp before going out.
00:14:04 But when he plops his flag in the mouth of the Mississippi River, he's claiming that river and tributary connected to it, tributary to the tributary, and then he waterway connected to that.
00:14:14 He was claiming most of what is the United States today, including the Great Lakes.
00:14:19 It only left a small sliver of land along the eastern seaboard where the 13 original colonies were.
00:14:25 But he had another problem.
00:14:26 He couldn't populate it.
00:14:28 That was the second rule.
00:14:29 Just because you stick your flag somewhere doesn't mean you can hold on to it forever.
00:14:34 You've got to populate it.
00:14:35 So he made the decision to let the eastern seaboard go, including the Great Lakes, but he held on to the west side of the Mississippi River.
00:14:42 So that little three-story building to the left of that church was running what is about 35% of the United States today, not just the state of Louisiana as we know it today.
00:14:53 That territory went from the mouth of that river west of the Mississippi, climbing up the Mississippi all the way almost to Canada.
00:15:00 And so we were running what is about 13 states of the United States right now from that little three-story building until the minute the Americans purchased Louisiana from the King of Queens.
00:15:10 And we can go on from there.
00:15:12 The Great Lakes is a major utilitarian river. A massive amount of barge traffic comes up and down that river.
00:15:19 And the largest towboats that go up and down the river can push 48 barges.
00:15:27 Yeah, 48 barges.
00:15:30 It's a massive amount of cargo that replaces something like 200 semi-trucks and 50-some-odd railroad cars.
00:15:43 I mean, the amount of cargo that travels up and down there is absolutely incredible.
00:15:49 And you can take the Mississippi River or its tributaries, thanks to a series of locks and dams, all the way up to the Great Lakes of America, which then could take you to so many places in Canada.
00:16:07 The vast majority of grain grown in America is grown along the tributaries of the Mississippi River.
00:16:13 And it's all shipped by barge down to somewhere between Baton Rouge and New Orleans and then put on ocean-going vessels and shipped around the globe.
00:16:22 We are, um...
00:16:28 We're going to drive along the Mississippi River for a few minutes.
00:16:39 We're going to see the old State Capitol building, the one that this building replaced, thanks to Huey Long.
00:16:45 This old one dates back from the 1840s. It was the first building and then they added to it. It's built something like a castle.
00:16:53 I should have mentioned that Baton Rouge is an interesting name in itself.
00:16:57 The term "Baton Rouge" means "red stick."
00:17:02 And the way that came about, there was two Native American tribes right here along the Mississippi River.
00:17:09 When the first French explorers came down here, they saw a red stick that was most likely cypress wood.
00:17:17 They saw it from the river and on that cypress wood stick, there was fish hanging off of it and a bear's head stuck to it.
00:17:26 And the thought is that that was the dividing line between the two Native American tribes that lived on here.
00:17:33 And so the French on the river pointed out there and just said, "Oh, look, there's the red stick. That's the marker."
00:17:38 And that's how the name Baton Rouge came about.
00:17:42 Now that's how Baton Rouge got its name, but "Baton Rouge" is another important word in Louisiana culture.
00:17:49 And I'll tell you about that in just a second.
00:17:51 First, look over here on the left and here's the old state capitol building.
00:17:56 Meant to look like an imposing castle over the Mississippi River.
00:18:01 Now it's a museum. It was the state museum, but they built a new one recently, much larger than this.
00:18:17 [inaudible]
00:18:35 So the little music amphitheater.
00:18:38 They do some minor sports teams at the Raising Cane's River Center.
00:18:44 Raising Cane's is from Louisiana. They're famous for their chicken fingers.
00:18:48 I'll tell you about Baton Rouge. Look over on the right though.
00:18:51 Notice the big hill here. That's the USS Kidd on the other side. It's an old World War II battleship.
00:19:00 Now that we're along the river, what I want you to look for is all the things that have been put in place to stop the Mississippi River from flooding.
00:19:08 And everywhere we go, you will see levees along the river, as well as in places that we pass through the river,
00:19:18 look for either doors that close or places that they can slip in concrete barriers to hold the water back.
00:19:27 Everybody's heard of Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana. That wasn't the first hurricane to hit New Orleans.
00:19:34 That was just the first one to cause major devastation in modern times.
00:19:39 But the biggest threat for flooding here is the Mississippi River.
00:19:43 Even this year, back in, what was that, about March, early May, the river was overflowing its banks in several places, so they had to put in those barriers.
00:19:55 Almost all the modern infrastructure, in terms of flood control, that you see along the Mississippi River today,
00:20:03 was put in in the 1930s as a result of the Great Flood of 1927.
00:20:10 It was after that flood that they realized that this fickle beast of the Mississippi was going to do that fairly frequently.
00:20:18 And that's when they built thousands of miles of levees and hundreds of miles of retaining walls with even higher retention barriers.
00:20:29 They also did build lots of retaining ponds.
00:20:33 So if you go outside the main channel of the Mississippi River, there's huge lakes that have been designated as retention ponds
00:20:41 as areas to intentionally flood when the Mississippi River comes up.
00:20:45 Now, most years they'll use it as crop growing areas, but then if they need to, they'll flood the fields and pay the farmers for whatever,
00:20:53 the federal government will pay the farmers for whatever crops they ruin.
00:20:56 And then a year later, it's back to being used.
00:20:59 So that was one of the big steps in building the system.
00:21:03 It started in the 1930s, but really in the 1950s is when most of the infrastructure that was built for the Mississippi River now.
00:21:14 Oh, the other thing that you'll see, baton rouge, the most famous hot sauce maybe in the world is what?
00:21:23 Tabasco.
00:21:25 Tabasco. And Tabasco comes from just outside of New Orleans, St. Ivorville Parish.
00:21:30 And when they harvest the Tabasco pepper, where the sauce gets its name, the farm workers are given a little red stick,
00:21:42 le petit baton rouge, and the color of that red is very specific.
00:21:47 And they walk around the field with that stick and they hold it up to the peppers.
00:21:51 And if the red on the pepper matches the red on the stick, it's time to harvest the pepper.
00:21:58 And then for Tabasco, they take those peppers, they put them into oak barrels, cover them with salt,
00:22:03 and they leave them for, I think it's three years, three, it's either three or five years that they leave them.
00:22:09 And then as they decay, that's where they get the base for the sauce, Tabasco, that's made here in Louisiana.
00:22:38 So this is a brackish lake, meaning that Lake Pontchartrain is due north of the city of New Orleans.
00:22:47 This bridge runs due north-south, we are headed south right now.
00:22:53 And this lake is mostly fresh water, but it mixes with salt water.
00:22:57 And it depends on the tide and how much rain you've gotten around here.
00:23:02 This bridge, does anyone want to take a guess?
00:23:06 Twenty-four miles.
00:23:10 Wow.
00:23:11 I looked it up exactly, that is, in kilometers, that is 38 and a half kilometers.
00:23:18 That's how long we're going to be on this bridge.
00:23:21 That rhythmic bumping, next 38 kilometers.
00:23:26 The original span that we're on was built in 1956.
00:23:30 And then ten years later, they added the span to the left going north.
00:23:35 Slidell is a fairly large town that's just to the north end.
00:23:39 And this saves you about an hour's drive around the bridge.
00:23:45 And although the lake underneath us is not very deep, it's only anywhere between 10 and 25 feet in the deepest spot.
00:23:56 It's all muddy sediment.
00:23:58 So to build this bridge, they had to drive pilings as far down as 250 feet to get enough solid ground down there.
00:24:08 About 30,000 cars use this bridge every day, saving that drive around Lake Pontchartrain.
00:24:25 And we'll talk a little bit about Hurricane Katrina, but our guide today is probably going to go into a lot of the story.
00:24:32 And I don't want you to have to listen to it over and over.
00:24:35 But during Hurricane Katrina, the water popped off several of the spans of this bridge.
00:24:42 As the water rose, it popped up these sections that we're on.
00:24:46 And they repaired that rather quickly.
00:24:52 It's not a matter of if, but when New Orleans was going to flood.
00:25:00 And it was a lot quicker than I expected.
00:25:03 The city of New Orleans is below sea level.
00:25:06 And it's surrounded by levees and dikes.
00:25:10 So when the Mississippi River swells, and when the storm surge comes in and brings Lake Pontchartrain to level up, the levees hold back the water.
00:25:20 But during Katrina, the levees failed.
00:25:23 And then on top of that, the pumps that are the backup for when water does get in, a lot of those failed.
00:25:29 And so it was a combination of errors that caused them.
00:25:34 Over water, on a clear day, you can see the curvature of the earth on this bridge.
00:25:41 If you're looking forward, the bridge falls away below the horizon, proving that the earth is not flat, as Josh firmly believes.
00:26:05 This is a drawbridge so that larger boats can't get through here if need be.
00:26:11 And you can just start to see in the distance in front of us, New Orleans.
00:26:25 Through the haze.
00:26:29 It's no joke, this heat, the temperature today with the heat index is supposed to be somewhere around 115 degrees.
00:26:38 So that would be like 35, I think.
00:26:42 It's a Fat Tuesday.
00:26:48 And the idea of Mardi Gras is you party up until Fat Tuesday.
00:26:53 And Fat Tuesday starts Lent.
00:26:56 And then for 40 days, you are very reverent and you don't do all the bad things.
00:27:03 So you get it out of your way leading up to Mardi Gras.
00:27:06 Mardi Gras and Easter, Mardi Gras is based on when Easter is.
00:27:12 And the dates of Easter can change quite drastically.
00:27:16 Up to, I think, 23 days or something.
00:27:20 So Mardi Gras is a season in New Orleans.
00:27:24 And Mardi Gras season can start as early as January 6th.
00:27:29 That's when it kicks off. January 6th is Kings Day.
00:27:33 And that's the start of Mardi Gras season.
00:27:36 And then it could end with Fat Tuesday in February.
00:27:41 So you have two months there.
00:27:43 Or it can go all the way to the end of March.
00:27:47 Now, in that time, you still have the same amount of parties that the city hosts.
00:27:54 But whether it's spread out over a 23-day period or a 3-month period, changes from year to year.
00:28:01 On top of that, New Orleans is a destination for a lot of people for New Year's Eve.
00:28:11 So you basically have Christmas, you party all the way up to January 6th.
00:28:17 That's what kicks off the Mardi Gras season in New Orleans.
00:28:21 And then you either have 23 days or you have 3 months of Mardi Gras out here.
00:28:26 It is truly a season. And people leave Mardi Gras season just dead tired.
00:28:32 Something funny happened, was set to happen next year.
00:28:38 Mardi Gras next year is going to be very early in February.
00:28:43 And again, the parades are massive.
00:28:46 There's I think 40-something official parades.
00:28:49 That's more than one a day during the short Mardi Gras season some years.
00:28:54 So something funny was supposed to happen next year.
00:28:57 The Super Bowl, which is two weeks of huge parties, was going to be in New Orleans.
00:29:03 And they announced this five years ago and they started telling everybody and started making plans.
00:29:08 And then about, they announced it five years ago and about three years ago,
00:29:12 somebody looked at the calendar and said, "Oh crap. Mardi Gras would have ended the Tuesday before the Super Bowl."
00:29:22 So it would have been basically three months of crazy parties non-stop in New Orleans.
00:29:28 And the city just said, "We can't do it. We gotta have a break."
00:29:31 So next year the Super Bowl was moved to a new stadium that was just built in Las Vegas, Nevada.
00:29:37 And now the Super Bowl is going to be here the next year in 2025.
00:29:44 But when you talk to the locals, after Mardi Gras season, they're just dead tired and they're ready for a little bit of quiet.
00:29:56 I'm going to visit a cemetery later on. And if you notice a New Orleans cemetery later on.
00:30:02 If you haven't already, some...
00:30:05 And if you didn't like any particular meals, it's going to ask you to rate the whole trip.
00:30:12 And Josh and I in one number.
00:30:15 If you were going to take a coach tour, how likely is it that you'd be with Cost Saver?
00:30:19 And he said, "Oh, 10." Well, that's what you need to put.
00:30:21 So anyway, that's all I have to say about that.
00:30:25 Thank you guys for hearing.
00:30:27 And if you have any problems with it, if you like, I'm happy to fill it out.
00:30:31 This is the famous Superdome. They just changed the name of it to Caesars from Mercedes-Benz.
00:30:36 That is where during Hurricane Katrina, maybe you heard about people.
00:30:40 People ended up there. And the reason is, look, the overpasses all lead over towards the Superdome.
00:30:48 So if everything around here is flooded, then you could still get to the Superdome and be dry.
00:30:53 And that was an area of refuge.
00:30:55 It's where the Major League Football team, the New Orleans Saints, play there.
00:31:01 And then the next door is the Smoothing Kink. That's a basketball arena.
00:31:07 They also do big concerts over there in both of those places.
00:31:13 Now, if you remember where we were in Baton Rouge, we saw the bridge, not the Huey Long Bridge,
00:31:20 that showed you how big a ship can get all the way up to Baton Rouge.
00:31:24 Look at the size of this bridge of New Orleans in front of us.
00:31:28 Here you'll have giant ocean-going ships that come up this area.
00:31:34 The deepest part of the Mississippi River is just across the river from where we are now at Algiers Point.
00:31:45 And the river there is 200 feet deep.
00:31:48 So ocean-going vessels can come all the way up here.
00:31:52 And like I said, 200 miles, 100 miles of river lined on both sides make this the largest continuous wharf in the world.
00:32:02 And all those ocean-going ships come right up here to the Mississippi,
00:32:05 offload their cargo from the ocean-going to the river barges, and then they sail up the Mississippi River.
00:32:16 What's that?
00:32:18 Somebody's getting on a cruise ship after this, but I don't think anybody's sailing out of New Orleans, are they?
00:32:30 No.
00:32:31 No, New Orleans has a cruise ship terminal here that is actually right next to the River City Mall and Mardi Gras World.
00:32:40 And yes, New Orleans does have a large homeless population. That's what you see over here.
00:32:46 Just like every city in the world, New Orleans has a homeless population.
00:32:52 This is just kind of where they set up their...
00:32:56 There's a few others around town, but this is the larger of them that we'll see for sure.
00:33:01 Including a section that was championed by Harry Connick Jr., the jazz musician from New Orleans,
00:33:07 that was designed to be affordable homes just for musicians to live in, to bring it back.
00:33:13 So we'll see some of that on our city tour later on today, and we've got a local guy who's going to...
00:33:20 Oh, and I'll take care of the minimum recommended gratuity for the step-on guy,
00:33:26 but if you think he does a great job and you want to give him something extra, you're more than welcome to.
00:33:33 Yeah, this is Mardi Gras World just in front of us. We'll go next to it.
00:33:38 This is also where the big ocean-going cruise ships, as well as the... well, all the cruise ships.
00:33:45 There's now three companies that do cruises up and down the Mississippi River,
00:33:49 including Viking River Cruises. They just started less than a year ago on the Mississippi River.
00:34:01 So yeah, there's Mardi Gras World in front of us.
00:34:04 This is where you might want to come and take a tour and see how they build all the floats.
00:34:08 And then the River City Mall. Nice, typical mall.
00:34:18 They have a food court with lots of choices in there.
00:34:21 And again, it's going to be very hot out there when we open the door.
00:34:25 92 degrees, it's an excessive heat warning, I can see, until 7 o'clock tonight.
00:34:31 So they've got an air-conditioned food court with lots of options.
00:34:38 This big bridge over our heads, look out to the right, you've got a nice view of it.
00:34:44 It's massive. It's called the Crescent City Connection.
00:34:48 As I mentioned earlier, New Orleans has three pretty well-known nicknames.
00:34:56 The Crescent's Bend right out here, that's Algiers Point on the other side,
00:35:01 one of the deepest, or the deepest spot along the Mississippi River.
00:35:06 The other nickname, the City that Care Forgot,
00:35:11 as in when you come to New Orleans, you throw all your cares away and just have a good time.
00:35:16 Or, the Big Easy.
00:35:19 Have you heard those names before?
00:35:24 Yeah.
00:35:25 It's got a barrel blue over in the middle of the road.
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00:39:41 Now this is Cafe Du Monde. Don't get us wrong, we love it to death.
00:39:46 However, I am telling you, service moves between slow and stout.
00:39:51 If you had to bet between a glazier and Cafe Du Monde, put your money on the glazier.
00:39:56 Trust me, it's going to win the race.
00:39:58 So if you have two days to spare, it's wonderful.
00:40:01 Sometimes you'll see a body out blind. It wasn't a murder scene, it was a dead waiter.
00:40:05 And that's why the coffee wasn't moving for 90 days. It just goes on and on.
00:40:09 But I love it, it's just great. But it's just service moves so slow it's painful.
00:40:14 And look at the galleries and balconies over our sidewalks in New Orleans.
00:40:18 Everybody thinks those are so romantic and so cutesy-tootsie.
00:40:22 There's nothing cutesy-tootsie about those things at all.
00:40:25 They're perfect at keeping your building out of the sun for the same reason you wear a baseball visor or a tennis visor or a hat.
00:40:32 And perfect for keeping the facade of your building out of the rain.
00:40:35 We get a lot of rain here in New Orleans.
00:40:38 We still have this to look at here in New Orleans.
00:40:52 Look at those people dazed at Cafe Du Monde. They've been sitting there for six months, that's why they're dazed.
00:40:57 All of those guys had hair when they were in line. I'm telling you.
00:41:01 It's just a thing.
00:41:03 I don't know where they hire these people from, but if they move any slower, trust me, you'd coat them.
00:41:08 It's just, I don't know.
00:41:10 And what a beautiful statue of Joan of Arc coming up in front of the coach.
00:41:15 Joan was from Orleans, France. She was the maid of Orleans.
00:41:19 And so we have this beautiful statue from France in honor of Joan of Arc, the new city maid of the Duc de Orleans honor.
00:41:29 But a lot of people see Joanie on the pony and think the city is stopping, but it isn't.
00:41:34 So whenever you see Joanie on the pony in New Orleans, the fun is just starting.
00:41:38 A lot of people turn around here and go back. Big mistake.
00:41:41 Just follow the horse's butt, and I'm being polite.
00:41:44 Because if you don't, you're going to miss all of this. Jazz bands playing for people while they have snacks and something to eat.
00:41:51 Another jazz band on the other end.
00:41:53 And you continue walking forward and you go into the outdoor food court.
00:41:57 You know where these, it's kind of like the food court, but it's outside.
00:42:01 And then you continue walking down and you'll go into the flea market area where all of your touristy goods are sold at outdoor stalls.
00:42:09 My favorite collectible of New Orleans, and you've surely seen them, are those Mardi Gras masks.
00:42:14 Have you seen them in the stores? Yeah, you will. They're everywhere.
00:42:17 And they're just flooded here.
00:42:19 They're absolutely stunning.
00:42:21 And now they're reproducing the beautiful masks from Venice, Italy.
00:42:25 Masks pack well. They're flat in your luggage.
00:42:28 They don't take up a lot of weight or a lot of space.
00:42:31 I'm telling you, they're a thing.
00:42:32 And if you look closely, you'll see stalls with these masks on the end caps.
00:42:37 And they're absolutely incredible.
00:42:39 One more beautiful than the other.
00:42:41 Never put a mask under glass or matting.
00:42:43 Always just hang them on the wall.
00:42:45 You'll see some coming up to your left, right here.
00:42:49 See the masks on the end?
00:42:51 And they're all ugly when you buy them.
00:42:53 When you take them home, you uncurl them, and you uncurl them correctly.
00:42:56 Just put a mask on the wall and put an old wooden frame, pieces of wood to surround it.
00:43:01 My next favorite souvenir are these hideous voodoo dolls.
00:43:04 You'll see them in the stores as well.
00:43:06 I would buy several dozen of them.
00:43:08 And then go get a box of manila envelopes and start mailing them to anybody you've ever met.
00:43:14 Don't put a note in it. Just let it arrive from New Orleans.
00:43:17 It brings heart attack a whole new meaning.
00:43:20 They'll be screaming, "Why? Why? Why?"
00:43:22 Just put an active construction site.
00:43:24 This is no one's doing anything.
00:43:27 So, ladies and gentlemen, we've left the French Quarter.
00:43:29 This is my neighborhood, the Fauxburg Marigny.
00:43:32 We so-call our neighborhoods using the word "Fauxburg" spelled F-A-U-B-U-R-G.
00:43:38 It sounds like it's German, but it isn't.
00:43:40 "Fauxburg" just means "neighborhood" or "subdivision."
00:43:43 So my neighborhood is called Fauxburg Marigny, which means I live in the Marigny.
00:43:47 Now, there was a canal here at one time.
00:43:50 That is a true story.
00:43:51 And the canal was so "built in," that's why we get this wide space.
00:43:56 My neighborhood is a working-class, blue-collar neighborhood.
00:44:01 It is changing by the hour, which I'm not happy about, but I'm getting older.
00:44:05 But these are the kinds of neighborhoods that I like to explore when I travel.
00:44:10 Remember, wealthy people that own castles and estates can bring foreign things in.
00:44:15 Look at these modest homes to our left.
00:44:17 Two doors and two windows indicate a duplex.
00:44:19 Look at the yellow house to the right.
00:44:21 It's a cutaway view.
00:44:22 Family living on the left, family living on the right.
00:44:25 No hallway. One room behind the other.
00:44:27 And a straight line called the shotgun double.
00:44:30 But you're going to get more of a reality check if you look from middle class down.
00:44:36 So if we were going to Cairo this afternoon, this is the kind of neighborhood that I would like to explore.
00:44:41 The big pile of bicycles coming up on our left is supposed to be a monument to bicycle safety.
00:44:47 Now it's just a pile of trash.
00:44:50 And we're trying to get rid of it.
00:44:51 I think they should change its name to Tetris.
00:44:54 But, so when you go to the meetings, they have it removed.
00:44:58 They have to use polite words like garbage and trash to make them feel better.
00:45:04 It's like, "Pick the crap up and throw it away."
00:45:10 What a mess.
00:45:13 So ladies and gentlemen, notice that the houses are not built directly on the ground.
00:45:17 How smart was that?
00:45:18 We're back to the human brain.
00:45:20 Our technology gets better, but our IQ has been relatively steady for a long while.
00:45:25 They knew that if they built a house on wet soil, without before the advent of pumping and electricity,
00:45:31 that the water in the soil would be whipped up by the foundation.
00:45:34 You didn't mold the mildew growing inside the house.
00:45:36 Everybody would get sick.
00:45:38 By simply lifting these houses about two to three feet off the ground on brick piers,
00:45:44 it produced a very, very primitive but highly effective air circulation system long before electricity was invented.
00:45:52 And it really is quite amazing.
00:45:55 Now, we're going to take a right turn here.
00:45:58 There is a word that we don't use in modern English too much anymore called "rampart."
00:46:03 But every time an American sings the national anthem, the word "rampart" is in there.
00:46:08 Just nobody remembers what it means.
00:46:10 A rampart was a wall.
00:46:12 Look at this green paint.
00:46:13 This is what happens when you shop for paint after cocktail hour.
00:46:16 You end up with something like this, and then you hope you didn't buy the long-term paint.
00:46:22 Easily seen from outer space.
00:46:25 But anyway, so a rampart was a wall, a fortified wall, like a fortification,
00:46:34 normally used for protection of the fence.
00:46:37 And they were basically wooden fences made of tree trunks with little pencil points on the top of them.
00:46:43 This is where our rampart was located in New Orleans.
00:46:46 As Josh makes this curve, we want you to pay close attention to where the landfills are
00:46:51 because this is where the wall was.
00:46:53 That's why we call it Rampart Street.
00:46:55 Everything to our right was an alligator, snake-infested swamp
00:47:00 before a genius, a civil engineer named Baldwin Woods...
00:47:05 [unclear]
00:47:14 So, anyway, and you see the buildings in front of us, the tall buildings straight ahead,
00:47:19 that's where Louis Armstrong grew up in New Orleans.
00:47:22 There were no tall buildings here when Louis grew up in New Orleans.
00:47:26 But this is where the wall was, and everything to the right was a snake-infested swamp
00:47:31 before Baldwin Woods figured out that the snakes and alligators were hanging out because of the water.
00:47:37 "Get rid of the water or displace it," he writes in his notebook,
00:47:40 "and the snakes and alligators will follow the water."
00:47:43 So he's the genius who invented the pumping system to allow the city to expand.
00:47:49 Prior to that, nothing to the right of the city was possible.
00:47:53 However, the night that Katrina paid a visit to New Orleans
00:47:56 and all those walls started busting at the same time,
00:48:00 a major U.S. city like the Titanic will go underwater in a matter of about an hour and a half.
00:48:06 Can you imagine?
00:48:08 Guess where the water stopped?
00:48:10 Exactly at the base of these lamp poles.
00:48:13 It's amazing.
00:48:15 Josh, can we pull over for a second and just, uh...
00:48:18 If you don't want to do it here, we'll do it straight up ahead.
00:48:21 Yeah, yeah.
00:48:26 We're going to pull over from time to time to let traffic go by.
00:48:30 You know, we're just not fond of that single-digit sign language people tend to use these days.
00:48:36 So, ladies and gentlemen, I want to talk about where Lewis lived.
00:48:40 Lewis is an amazing story.
00:48:42 His mother had a nervous breakdown.
00:48:44 No matter how you read the historic run,
00:48:46 whatever happened to that poor woman had happened in a matter of a couple of days.
00:48:51 Grandparents stepped in to handle the children,
00:48:54 but Lewis had a wild hair up his butt,
00:48:57 and Lewis bolted and became homeless.
00:49:00 We figure this was around the age of 13 to 15.
00:49:03 Nobody's really sure, because I don't think he was sure about his birthday.
00:49:07 But anyway, that's up for some discussion.
00:49:10 So, Lewis is living homeless on the streets of that area,
00:49:13 but that was a very important black neighborhood in New Orleans called South Rampart Street.
00:49:18 Lucky for all of us aboard this coach,
00:49:20 that little boy around puberty was leaning his back against businesses
00:49:25 and sleeping in the back of horse carts at night.
00:49:28 But he was listening to jazz music in that neighborhood.
00:49:32 And his brain was like a hard drive,
00:49:34 picking up everything he had heard.
00:49:36 When he put a cornet to his mouth, the world could never be the same.
00:49:40 I do want to tell you a sidebar to Lewis.
00:49:43 There was a childless Jewish white couple living in the midst of that neighborhood,
00:49:48 and they knew that little boy was single or abandoned, whatever happened to him.
00:49:52 So they gave him a little job picking up clothing and tailoring jobs
00:49:56 for the lady and the man to repair.
00:49:59 And one day, she put a ribbon around his neck with a key, a brass key on it.
00:50:04 She said, "Lewis, I know you're macho and you're real brave,
00:50:07 but sometimes New Orleans gets very scary."
00:50:10 She said, "I want you to promise me you know you've been making deliveries for me for a while.
00:50:14 You're going to use this little brass key to open the side door, and that back room is ready for you.
00:50:19 I've prepared you a bed. There's a basin to clean yourself and soap."
00:50:23 And she said, "And there's a bathroom nearby. And promise me you're going to use it."
00:50:29 When he died, they were preparing his body for the funeral.
00:50:33 And the order formed that the funeral director clearly said Catholic.
00:50:37 And then the funeral director runs out when they were prepping his body for his wife
00:50:41 and said, "We're so sorry. You made a terrible mistake."
00:50:44 She said, "What is the mistake?"
00:50:46 He said, "Well, we have Catholic burial, but we went to dress him for putting in his casket
00:50:52 that he's clearly wearing a big Star of David."
00:50:55 And his wife laughed and said, "No, he's Catholic. He wore that Star of David
00:50:59 from the moment that lady gave him that key on that ribbon.
00:51:02 Can you imagine? That probably saved his life."
00:51:05 By the way, they're the ones who bought him his first Coronet, too.
00:51:08 So anyway, I just wanted to tell you that.
00:51:10 Guys, so there's two very, very influential, powerful black neighborhoods at play here in New Orleans.
00:51:17 As we continue on, we have to avoid this area because there's a function going on right now.
00:51:23 We're afraid the bus is going to get stuck in it.
00:51:25 But we want you to look down these side streets, not the fancy houses on this street.
00:51:30 Down any side street, this neighborhood is called Fulburg Tremé.
00:51:35 So I just want to tell you something about this.
00:51:38 The food and the music of New Orleans did not start in the French Quarter.
00:51:42 It started in this neighborhood. Does that make sense? In Lewis's neighborhood.
00:51:46 This is what's responsible for the culture of New Orleans.
00:51:49 New Orleans is the beneficiary of this neighborhood, which I hold in high regards,
00:51:54 including Lewis's neighborhood, but his neighborhood's been buried by high-rise buildings.
00:51:59 The United States goes through the Civil War, and slavery is outlawed,
00:52:04 and then some places go right into segregation,
00:52:08 where they had to have very distinct neighborhoods for blacks and whites.
00:52:12 Let me tell you, this was the hub of New Orleans.
00:52:16 So I'll point it out to you, but I just want you to imagine, it's 1900,
00:52:21 segregation's in full swing in the South, but this neighborhood is humming.
00:52:26 It's alive. It just has a whole rhythm of itself.
00:52:30 And so I have very, very high regards for this.
00:52:32 When I hear a talented young kid in New Orleans, I don't care if it's poetry or art
00:52:37 or singing or playing music, the first question I ask them is,
00:52:41 "What neighborhood were you raised in?"
00:52:43 And whenever they say "Treme," I hit my friends and tap them on the shoulder and say,
00:52:47 "Watch this one. They're going to become one of the superstars of the future."
00:52:51 Does that make sense? Being propelled by the culture of this neighborhood, which is the incubator.
00:52:56 And we can go on from here. So this is our beautiful Esplanade Avenue.
00:53:01 And remember I told you to go home and find your oldest point?
00:53:04 And it's okay. You can keep driving out from the oldest point of your city.
00:53:08 You're going to pass an airport or an Ikea store. It doesn't matter.
00:53:11 In my world, it means humans are doing what humans do. Does that make sense?
00:53:16 You're going to pass the new Home Depots and the Lowe's and all the newest building materials.
00:53:21 And it just means that humans are doing what they do.
00:53:24 And so look at what's going to start happening. We just made our turn.
00:53:29 Look at this outside the window. All of a sudden we're seeing houses with little front yards.
00:53:34 And they're taking up triple and four lots the size of my neighborhood.
00:53:40 What is going on? What has happened? They have hallways.
00:53:43 There aren't any hallways in my neighborhood. Hallways are great, but they take up a lot of space.
00:53:47 The truth is the engineer is sucking the swamp straw.
00:53:50 And he's proving to the world that where alligators used to live, we can start selling this property
00:53:55 and marketing it and turning it over to investors or whatever, developers.
00:54:00 And so that's what I mean. When you head out from any point in the world, from the oldest point out,
00:54:06 you can begin appreciating these paradigm changes that are beginning to occur.
00:54:11 We also need you to take a little bit of a look at these trees.
00:54:15 Now this is the pub. See this little restaurant? Incredible.
00:54:19 You see where this elevated expressway is built?
00:54:22 This used to be a beautiful oak tree parkway. That was the vortex of this neighborhood.
00:54:29 And then they knocked all the trees down and built the elevated interstate system.
00:54:34 My grandfather took me here when I was young enough to sit on his shoulders.
00:54:38 And he told me what was going to happen. We were watching them knock the trees down.
00:54:41 He said, Jim, this is never going to be the same. We need to stop here.
00:54:45 We need to absorb what's happening. Humans are changing.
00:54:48 He says, it doesn't mean it's going to be the same. And as we cross this intersection,
00:54:53 I want you to look left and I want you to look right.
00:54:55 Where artists from this neighborhood are painting these columns like works of incredible art
00:55:00 to remind future generations of what magic happened in this neighborhood, only in this neighborhood.
00:55:07 This is where the neighborhood used to come to celebrate their special events.
00:55:12 But I want to go back to nature. See these trees in front of us? Get a good look at them.
00:55:17 They're called Virginia live oaks. They're only indigenous to the southeast quad of the United States.
00:55:23 As beautiful as they are, that's not why they were planted.
00:55:26 These trees keep their green canopies even if it snows or freezes.
00:55:31 But they're not evergreen. I want to make that clear.
00:55:34 There's leaves on the ground. They just drop a few and grow a few new ones.
00:55:38 The older they get, the bigger the umbrella gets.
00:55:41 And that's why they were planted, to be beautiful but also to keep shade long before electricity was on the drawing boards.
00:55:49 So this is what is facilitating these changes that we're seeing.
00:55:54 It's the technology of Baldwin Woods and his pumping system.
00:55:58 And this beautiful street again is called Esplanade Avenue.
00:56:02 This street, oddly enough, did not flood the night of Hurricane Katrina.
00:56:06 I told you the water stopped at the base of the lamp poles. My neighborhood didn't have an inch of water in it.
00:56:12 Not an inch, but everything else was flooded.
00:56:15 And this street remained both dry. So my friends were calling us, and I'm not surprised.
00:56:19 I said, because this street is the walking path of the ancient Native American Indians.
00:56:24 They didn't use the river. They were scared to death of it.
00:56:27 And they used this walking path to get to Jackson Square.
00:56:33 So they were not going to put their highways in low areas.
00:56:36 And it's just the way it is. So that's what happened.
00:56:39 Although I have to tell you, the water line was right where the sidewalk is on both sides.
00:56:44 Thank heavens this street remained dry because people were waiting and walking in flooded waters to get to this street,
00:56:51 to get out of that God-forsaken water, and then head to Jackson Square like the Indians did to get the help they needed.
00:56:58 So luckily, this stayed relatively dry.
00:57:01 But let me tell you, it was a disaster in both directions.
00:57:05 It's also amazing to me that when a car goes underwater, it's a mini toxic waste dump.
00:57:12 It has transmission fluid, oil, gasoline. Does that make sense?
00:57:16 All that stuff starts leaching out. It's a mess.
00:57:19 Not to mention raw sewage from underneath the streets.
00:57:22 I mean, all that was the weirdest concoction of dangerous stuff you've ever seen in your life.
00:57:28 We're going to stop and activate the Wicked Witch.
00:57:31 There's a lady that doesn't like buses. She's home.
00:57:34 Just get the bus right in and rev the engine.
00:57:37 Pull it, pull it, pull it, pull it. Make sure she can see us.
00:57:40 You've blocked her driveway. That's ten extra points.
00:57:44 The Witch.
00:57:46 And they don't drive, um, you know, they don't drive.
00:57:51 They all have Dyson vacuum cleaners.
00:57:54 And they're very partial to Lexus. Don't ask me why.
00:57:57 But this is just my opinion.
00:57:59 If you've reached a ripe old age and you go out of your way every day to be miserable,
00:58:03 doesn't that tell the rest of the world you must enjoy being miserable?
00:58:07 So why wouldn't we add some more joy to your little life?
00:58:10 Anyway, but we're really not here to talk about the Wicked Witch of Esplanade.
00:58:14 We're going to stop and talk about this second house.
00:58:17 The one that is flying the, um, the one that is flying the Tricolors of France.
00:58:24 Um, you're never going to believe who lived in this house.
00:58:27 And all the art experts, this boy, when he was ejected from his mother's womb,
00:58:32 was artistic from the moment he took his first breath.
00:58:35 But little does he know he's going to become world famous.
00:58:39 His mother's maiden name was Moussin, spelled M-U-S-S-O-N,
00:58:44 and she was from New Orleans and from this house.
00:58:47 She falls in lovey-dovey and moves to Europe to marry her lovey-dovey,
00:58:52 and they produce this child.
00:58:54 He grew up hearing about the stories of his crazy relatives in New Orleans.
00:58:59 And one day he booked a ticket to America.
00:59:01 Can you imagine how exciting that was as a young boy?
00:59:04 And he takes a steam ship to New York and a steam train to New Orleans,
00:59:08 and he spends six months in this house getting to know his nephews, his nieces, and his relatives.
00:59:15 He does a series of 30 paintings when he's visiting this house,
00:59:19 28 to 34, depending on who you want to argue with.
00:59:22 And then he goes to go home to Europe, and he rolls his canvases up very tightly
00:59:27 and puts it in his valise with ribbons tied to it
00:59:31 and goes back to Europe where he becomes a thing.
00:59:34 His name is Edgar Degas.
00:59:36 Can you imagine THE Edgar Degas?
00:59:39 Now this is where things get funny in New Orleans.
00:59:42 Degas had eye problems.
00:59:44 There's a genetic eye problem moving through that family's bloodline.
00:59:49 And Degas--some of you are old enough to remember--
00:59:52 remember some people had to wear those big, thick, dark glasses.
00:59:55 Do you all remember those?
00:59:56 They looked like welding glasses.
00:59:58 And, you know, they'd been making such strides and eye diseases.
01:00:02 You don't see that anymore, so hopefully they have a cure for it.
01:00:05 But he had this condition where if the sun was too bright or too glary,
01:00:10 he would have just beams of white light causing great pain.
01:00:13 In fact, he writes in his diary that every time I stepped out of that very door
01:00:17 you're looking at to your left--can you imagine?
01:00:19 That's the same door Edgar used.
01:00:22 He said, "It's as though someone's lacing my eyes with acid."
01:00:25 He said, "As a result of that, I spend most of my time indoors in New Orleans."
01:00:30 And he said, "I only venture out at night like a vampire."
01:00:34 The truth is it didn't bother him too much in France,
01:00:37 but it bothered him greatly in New Orleans.
01:00:39 Edgar forgot to take a look at the globe.
01:00:42 He comes to New York, and then he takes a train heading south,
01:00:47 and he's getting closer and closer to the equator.
01:00:49 As you get closer and closer to the equator, the nuclear reactor light bulb,
01:00:53 we call it, the sun gets much more intense.
01:00:55 Does that make sense? You've got to be careful with that when you travel.
01:00:58 And that was causing his problem.
01:01:01 So his brother, Rene, who was a little older than he, also lived in this house,
01:01:06 and his family was involved in a cotton trade, which took a nose-dot, by the way,
01:01:11 and they were losing money left and right.
01:01:14 His brother, Rene, marries a beautiful girl from New Orleans called Estelle,
01:01:20 but Estelle is losing her eyesight, can you imagine, on the other floodwater.
01:01:25 And there's a silly rumor that Edgar was falling in love with Estelle.
01:01:30 That's bull. We don't know what Edgar was, and we never will know,
01:01:34 and then they'll answer that question.
01:01:36 He certainly wasn't in love with Estelle.
01:01:38 I think that he was enthralled with her because she's losing her eyesight at such a young age.
01:01:43 Does that make sense?
01:01:45 We're at a loss to explain why Edgar didn't show anybody the paintings,
01:01:50 and I raised my hand and I said, "With all due respect,
01:01:52 they were the Polaroid photographs of his vacation to America.
01:01:56 Why would you sell that of your nephew or your niece or your brother or his wife?
01:02:00 Get a grip." You know what I mean? There were no Kodak cameras anyway.
01:02:04 So I've got to tell you another story.
01:02:07 The woman who owns the building behind the house, see that house down the alley,
01:02:11 runs across the lot?
01:02:13 On a scale of 1 to 10, this woman was so incredible,
01:02:16 she was probably a 16.7 and she knew it.
01:02:20 She was a hotsy-totsy, no question about it.
01:02:23 But the hotsy-totsy is coming to the backyard every day,
01:02:27 and she's reading magazines and newspapers to Estelle,
01:02:31 who can't read newsprint anymore, and everybody thought she was Mother Teresa.
01:02:35 So she was having an affair with Rene behind the bar and wife.
01:02:38 This is a true story.
01:02:40 Wait, it gets worse.
01:02:42 To rub salt into the wound, they buy one-way tickets, no less, to Europe,
01:02:47 and they pack their bags one day and head to the river,
01:02:50 and off they go to Europe to live the life bandango-ditching Estelle with the kids.
01:02:54 Can you imagine?
01:02:56 Edgar said he didn't speak to Rene for over 10 to 12 years when he saw him,
01:03:00 to punish him for leaving Estelle.
01:03:03 The family went to the courts, and they had all the records.
01:03:06 They had the word "de God" expunged from any of the kids' records.
01:03:10 Does that make sense? They just changed everything.
01:03:12 Birth certificates, and they're all buried under the "Moussane" name.
01:03:16 But it's an incredible piece of history.
01:03:19 There is a bird that poops snow-white poop in this block.
01:03:22 It must be a witch bird.
01:03:24 Look at this. It's like they eat paint from Sherwin-Williams and they crap it out.
01:03:30 And I'm so glad they don't live in my neighborhood.
01:03:32 You can't clean it. It comes out like concrete.
01:03:36 See? It's like bombs.
01:03:42 He thinks you're a giant kingfish.
01:03:45 I think you're Sherwin-Williams.
01:03:52 So, the city is beginning to expand, and that's again, you know,
01:03:58 you can just see how cities grow.
01:04:00 Why do they grow in certain directions and not others?
01:04:03 She's such a little prima donna.
01:04:05 That woman with the little bun on her hair.
01:04:07 She's touching the garbage can.
01:04:09 She'll be in a bathtub in the next two days.
01:04:11 Anyway, she's a little prima donna pulling her own garbage can in.
01:04:14 Give me a break.
01:04:18 I can't take it.
01:04:22 The further we get away from the river, the lower and lower the elevation goes.
01:04:26 And that's what Katrina proves for us.
01:04:28 Normally, you go to the river to look down at the river,
01:04:31 but in New Orleans, you go to the river to look up the river.
01:04:34 And so, the oldest -- up to the river, the oldest land is nearest the river.
01:04:39 The French Quarter is seven and a half feet above sea level.
01:04:42 That's what saved my house and my neighborhood from any of Katrina's mess.
01:04:49 And there's a beautiful house coming up on our right.
01:04:52 It's a big house with the two American flags on the front of it.
01:04:57 There is another wood -- oh, you know, I got a ticket the other day.
01:05:00 I haven't had a ticket in my entire life.
01:05:02 Four miles over the speed limit.
01:05:04 Can you imagine?
01:05:05 But the photograph is beautiful.
01:05:07 They took a picture of me.
01:05:08 I don't think Hollywood had cameras that good.
01:05:10 I don't think NASA has cameras that good.
01:05:13 But look at this.
01:05:14 There's a wood called the American Bald Cypress.
01:05:17 That's another tree that's unique to the southeast corner of the U.S.
01:05:22 The tree grows in standing water, and as a result of that,
01:05:26 it's got snakes hanging from it and alligators at the bottom of it.
01:05:29 As a result of that, when you make a house out of this wood,
01:05:32 it is naturally water-resistant and waterproof and insect-resistant.
01:05:37 So don't get me wrong.
01:05:39 When something floods, whether you have five inches of water in your house
01:05:43 or five feet of your water, it doesn't matter.
01:05:46 You've lost everything.
01:05:47 Does that make sense?
01:05:48 It destroys everything.
01:05:49 But I kept telling my friends that these houses, including my house,
01:05:53 were built of cypress.
01:05:55 It could be submerged for 100 years,
01:05:58 and then when they fix the levees and the walls,
01:06:00 you're going to have to get out there and pressure wash it.
01:06:03 You're going to have to prime it and paint it,
01:06:05 but it's designed to be in water,
01:06:07 and that's really what saved and helped us.
01:06:10 This used to be a health food store,
01:06:12 but I think everybody got sick and went away.
01:06:15 Some people are not the healthiest-looking people I've ever seen in that health food store.
01:06:19 I'm not a health food person when I travel.
01:06:21 I hang out in health food stores.
01:06:22 Can you see the Barbies and the Kens?
01:06:24 They're all beautiful and they're gorgeous.
01:06:27 Not here.
01:06:28 Everybody has some kind of jaundice, including the customers.
01:06:31 I don't know if they had bad tofu or what was going on.
01:06:34 Never did figure it out.
01:06:35 Speaking of health, we're going to pull up at a cemetery.
01:06:39 [train noise]
01:06:56 It doesn't matter.
01:06:57 Ladies, just don't walk near driveways
01:06:59 because you have a check-in or a check-out, whatever you call it.
01:07:01 Anyway, ladies and gentlemen, we're under a heat warning.
01:07:06 Advisories are bad enough, but right now we're under a heat warning.
01:07:09 So I'm going to speak to you aboard the bus for a couple of minutes
01:07:12 and then for those of you that want to get out,
01:07:14 if something should happen to you, heat stroke or something,
01:07:17 don't expect one of the three of us to drag you back to the bus,
01:07:20 but we will call 911 and tell them where you are.
01:07:23 I'm just kidding.
01:07:24 I think yesterday they were doing measurements on concrete at 120 degrees
01:07:29 and measurements on thermometer measurements on asphalt at 142 degrees, can you imagine?
01:07:36 So we're just going to talk for a few minutes aboard the bus,
01:07:39 and then it's a little overcast, so that'll work in our favor.
01:07:41 There is a wind blowing. Who cares?
01:07:44 Jets make a lot of wind, too. It's just jet exhaust. It's still hot.
01:07:48 So anyway, let me just tell you something about cemeteries,
01:07:52 and I really should have been a funeral director. I missed my call.
01:07:55 This has been an interest of mine since I was a child.
01:07:58 You're going to read in the touristy books that New Orleans has a perverse relationship with the dead.
01:08:04 This is why all the vampire books are written here,
01:08:07 and the movies are filmed here, interview with a vampire,
01:08:10 having a date with a vampire, whatever the book is of the week.
01:08:14 And they just say that we're possessed with death.
01:08:18 That is absolutely, positively incorrect.
01:08:21 We are not obsessed with the dead,
01:08:24 but we are obsessed with the life that led to the death.
01:08:27 Does that make sense? There's a big difference.
01:08:29 So this is why you might think it's very, very queer that we're going to bring you to our cemetery.
01:08:34 A lot of you may have experienced a recent loss and said, "This is just too weird."
01:08:38 But it's not weird at all, because if we stayed here for any length of time,
01:08:43 dozens of cars are going to come to this cemetery.
01:08:46 You'd really think we were crazy.
01:08:48 And you're going to--like, for Father's Day yesterday,
01:08:50 they might have had a couple of families sitting on the steps of their family tomb,
01:08:54 having wine or a hot dog and chili, or a McDonald's value meal,
01:08:59 and you're going to say, "This is way out of whack."
01:09:02 But we know what it means in New Orleans.
01:09:05 It means it's a special holiday, or it's somebody's birthday or anniversary.
01:09:09 Does that make sense?
01:09:11 So we don't think that these are sad places to visit at all.
01:09:15 Quite the opposite. We're really into visiting quite a bit.
01:09:18 The next thing that you're going to read in the silly books
01:09:21 is that we bury above the ground because the ground is so wet
01:09:26 that if it rained hard,
01:09:29 Aunt Lucy might come floating up to the surface and go down Interstate 10.
01:09:34 This does happen. It does happen.
01:09:37 But it doesn't happen with any frequency.
01:09:39 And that's not why we bury above the ground.
01:09:42 Ladies and gentlemen, there's a word called "perpetuity."
01:09:45 If we bought Microsoft this afternoon, the word--
01:09:50 She's sobering, saying nature is being nature,
01:09:53 and she's going to tell you from time to time or eat
01:09:55 that I can do whatever I want to do.
01:09:57 But I found the whole thing humbling.
01:09:59 As tragic as it was, you're going to sometimes sit back and say,
01:10:02 "It's amazing what nature can do and move things around."
01:10:05 So that is not why we bury above the ground.
01:10:08 We bury above the ground so we give each family a two-bedroom,
01:10:12 perpetual timeshare condominium.
01:10:14 And that's--I hate to use these analogies.
01:10:17 I sometimes say I'm disrespectful. I'm not disrespectful.
01:10:20 I just have a short period of time to spend with you,
01:10:23 so I'm building on analogies. Does that make sense?
01:10:25 I'm kind of, sort of.
01:10:26 So don't write a letter saying he's disrespectful.
01:10:29 I don't mean to be that way.
01:10:30 So when you grow up in New Orleans,
01:10:32 you're going to have access to one of these two-bedroom condos, vertical,
01:10:35 and one of your mother's bloodline, one of your father's bloodline.
01:10:39 And my family, my father's family, was incredibly cheap.
01:10:43 They were so cheap, it was frighteningly cheap.
01:10:46 So we all go to my mother's tomb.
01:10:47 It's a much better neighborhood, much better curb.
01:10:49 It's a whole long story.
01:10:50 Anyway, we avoid my father's tomb like the--
01:10:53 like--anyway.
01:10:55 Yeah, like I was going to go there, but I caught myself.
01:10:58 So anyway, so this is how it works.
01:11:00 And how smart is this?
01:11:02 This is one of 32 cemeteries in New Orleans.
01:11:05 This cemetery averages about 420 burials a year.
01:11:10 Can you imagine how much bigger it would be if we used these tombs just once?
01:11:15 This cemetery is 50 times its size.
01:11:17 --and that guy down the road for centuries, and he said it was okay,
01:11:21 but keep reading what he said, the next paragraph.
01:11:24 He said, "I'm still considering a Catholic body as sacred by the Church,
01:11:29 which means it must be interred accordingly and immediately."
01:11:33 He doesn't want it next to the chemist's rackets in the attic.
01:11:36 Does that make sense?
01:11:37 He still wants the canister or the iron plate.
01:11:40 So he kind of approved what we've been doing in New Orleans.
01:11:43 I understand the Jewish faith is dealing with this issue as we speak.
01:11:46 I know they're working out the details now.
01:11:49 So prior to that, this is how we did it.
01:11:52 I also want to go back to a moment in history.
01:11:55 And, you know, baby boomers were neurotic enough,
01:12:00 but the kids and the grandkids they're raising, super neurotic.
01:12:04 If we don't calm ourselves down with young people,
01:12:07 trust me, we're going to have a generation of neurotics,
01:12:09 and then I can put any money into Social Security or a pension plan.
01:12:12 But, Danny, that's just an observation.
01:12:14 What you need to remind kids today is that nothing is new, Junior.
01:12:18 Suck it up and keep moving.
01:12:20 War in Ukraine, somebody with their button on a nuclear warhead, get a grip.
01:12:25 You have COVID, and you have Mars and SARS and HIV.
01:12:29 Every generation has a taste of these events.
01:12:32 Does that make sense?
01:12:33 It's just the world moving the way it will.
01:12:35 The world moves, and the doctors are working on it.
01:12:39 The diplomats are working on it.
01:12:41 So don't think any of this is unique or unusual to you.
01:12:44 Just go to school, do the best you can do, get out of school, get a good job, and contribute.
01:12:50 Anyway, that's just my opinion.
01:12:52 And the reason I'm saying that is because everybody forgets we had yellow fever in the Southeast.
01:12:56 If you think the Black Plague, or you think polio and measles and all this other stuff was bad,
01:13:02 go to the Southeast.
01:13:04 No one had a clue that the mosquito was involved in supplying a hypodermic needle
01:13:09 because it bores the fossil, jumping from person to person.
01:13:12 But there was a really smart U.S. military doctor who was on the case about the mosquito.
01:13:18 But he couldn't prove it, poor thing.
01:13:20 He writes in his journals, "I know this little sucker is involved in it."
01:13:23 He said, "I just can't prove it. My microscopes aren't that good.
01:13:26 There's bugs living inside of bugs living inside of bugs."
01:13:29 So we had a big military base in Havana, and he transfers there.
01:13:34 And there was a Cuban doctor involved in it, but doesn't get credit.
01:13:37 And they're sitting down at dinner one time, and they both agree that the mosquito was involved.
01:13:42 At the time, the U.S. military was putting soldiers in tents,
01:13:46 what had windows and storm flaps, but no screening, no mesh screening.
01:13:52 And he said, "Wait a minute. We're military doctors. Let's put all the people aboard the bus.
01:13:56 Half of the bus is going to get the regular tent.
01:13:58 We're going to order new tents with screening, and we're going to wait two years,
01:14:02 and we're going to track these men, and we're going to pull their medical files and see who died of yellow fever,
01:14:08 and who didn't, and voila."
01:14:10 That's why we have a big medical center named Dr. Walter Reed Hospital in Washington.
01:14:15 He's the doctor who broke the code.
01:14:17 And hopefully they'll always have a medical center in his name.
01:14:20 And I think that's what happened in New Orleans.
01:14:23 When you start losing 30% of your population in a typical summer cycle, that's a lot of dead people.
01:14:29 And I think that in New Orleans things got so bad that we decided to settle for it.
01:14:35 Does that make sense?
01:14:50 ...questioning my meteorology.
01:14:52 It's going to get very stormy tonight, guys.
01:14:55 Tonight at 8 p.m. we're going to have a real bad storm coming.
01:14:58 8 to about 10.30.
01:15:01 The closer the more the weather will change.
01:15:04 How many people are on that bus?
01:15:09 I just want to point out something.
01:15:11 The young mother behind us, a thousand people look at her every day.
01:15:16 There's a small male infant on the left. It's a male.
01:15:21 And the only thing they knew during the Yellow Fever epidemic was that if you live past your second birthday,
01:15:29 or you visited New Orleans and you survived a second year, you didn't even know you were alive.
01:15:35 Oh, here comes the car. We have to drive away.
01:15:41 [jazz music]
01:15:55 Where are we?
01:15:57 We're in New Orleans. New Orleans. Nollins.
01:16:02 We're not here just to wander the magnificent cities of the dead.
01:16:09 We're on a quest for oven crypts, which are either more horrifying or less horrifying than what you're thinking.
01:16:17 So join me, y'all.
01:16:19 The "y'all" isn't really rolling off the tongue yet. I need to work on that.
01:16:23 [jazz music]
01:16:27 New Orleans cemeteries are full of these above-ground tombs because the city is at sea level and prone to flooding.
01:16:35 You can't just bury a body in the ground in New Orleans. Do you want a soggy coffin floating down the street?
01:16:41 Cemeteries littered with bones. Corpses crawling with crawfish.
01:16:47 Except that's not quite true. It's definitely part of the story, but it's not the whole story.
01:16:53 Yes, in the early 19th century, New Orleans residents and visitors were troubled by the watery conditions in the cemetery.
01:17:00 In 1801, John Pintard wrote, "Water appears on digging in any place one foot below the surface."
01:17:09 And he found the wet conditions at St. Louis Cemetery No. 1, New Orleans' oldest existing cemetery, to be repugnant.
01:17:18 Also, I wasn't joking about those crawfish.
01:17:22 St. Louis No. 1 was basically a crawfish habitat when it was established in 1789.
01:17:28 And Pintard had a little freakout at the idea of crawfish ravaging his dead body.
01:17:34 Something about the crawfish eating him, and then other people eating the crawfish, and it's like a cannibalism kind of situation?
01:17:44 Anyway, what he wanted was for his body to be buried in terra firma. Solid earth. Dry land.
01:17:50 As for me, bury me in the crawfish habitat.
01:17:54 Cha-cha, my tiny cloud friends.
01:17:58 So, burying people in the swampy ground wasn't great.
01:18:03 It was hard to manage, and sometimes coffins would stick up out of the ground.
01:18:08 With diseases like yellow fever sweeping the city, people were dying faster than they could be individually buried.
01:18:16 There are stories of rotting corpses piling up outside the gates of the earliest cemeteries.
01:18:23 Even with that, people continued to be buried one by one underground for many years.
01:18:28 There are still historic cemeteries in New Orleans where people are buried underground.
01:18:33 Sure, the ground here is moist, but bodies aren't washing away.
01:18:38 Okay, fine, major floods and Hurricane Katrina did set coffins adrift, but that happens in a lot of places, not just New Orleans.
01:18:46 So, if flooding isn't the only reason, why all this above-ground burial?
01:18:52 The answer is cultural and practical.
01:18:55 New Orleans was founded in 1718.
01:19:02 Until it was purchased by the United States in 1803, it was run by the French and the Spanish,
01:19:08 both Catholic countries and both countries that had experience burying their dead above ground.
01:19:14 Both France and Spain had been under Roman rule for hundreds of years and had therefore adopted Roman burial traditions.
01:19:21 The Romans buried their dead in above-ground tombs, seeing such tombs as little temples.
01:19:28 But, like everything in life, there is status that was associated with burial, with interment.
01:19:34 If you were wealthy, you were buried in these big above-ground tombs,
01:19:37 but if you were poor or working class, you were buried underground in crematoria called the kitchens.
01:19:44 Nobody wanted to be buried in the kitchens.
01:19:48 To avoid this, Romans would form societies that would build communal mausoleums
01:19:53 for people of lesser means to receive this proper above-ground burial.
01:19:57 Those communal burial structures were actually columbaria,
01:20:00 which means they had a bunch of niches for cremated remains.
01:20:03 Fast forward to New Orleans in 1800.
01:20:07 The Catholic Church doesn't allow for cremation.
01:20:10 They won't allow for that until 1963.
01:20:13 But if you can't cremate everyone and make them small and portable to fit in one above-ground tomb,
01:20:19 what do you do with them all?
01:20:21 Enter the oven crypts.
01:20:25 [music]
01:20:29 You're probably asking yourself, with all this grand, ornate splendor, why are we focusing on this?
01:20:36 There are things about the oven crypts that make my black, little, etho-death heart sing.
01:20:41 Here at St. Louis Cemetery #2, we're just lousy with oven crypts.
01:20:46 They were called fours, which is French for "ovens,"
01:20:49 because, well, they looked like quaint little brick bread ovens.
01:20:53 Not because they roasted the dead. Remember, Catholic Church, no cremation.
01:20:58 These oven crypts, or tombs, were above-ground burial chambers
01:21:02 that were incorporated into the walls of the cemeteries.
01:21:06 Oven crypts have arched brick ceilings.
01:21:09 Oven crypts are typically stacked three to four high,
01:21:13 with each chamber holding one coffined body at a time.
01:21:17 Oven crypts are the gift that keeps on giving, and by that I mean, they're reusable.
01:21:22 According to the rules of burial, a coffin had to remain in here for one year and one day.
01:21:29 That's the time period that it was believed that diseases like yellow fever were no longer dangerous in the dead body.
01:21:36 After the minimum one year and one day has passed, this is opened up.
01:21:41 The desiccated remains are removed from the coffin,
01:21:44 the coffin is disposed of, and the remains are pushed to the back of the chamber,
01:21:50 and the chamber's ready for a whole new coffined body.
01:21:54 Lather, rinse, repeat.
01:21:56 If you were lucky enough to have a freestanding family tomb, the principle was sort of similar.
01:22:02 The body would go in in the coffin, and after a certain amount of time,
01:22:06 the bones would be pushed down in the back, falling through a shaft into a chamber below called a caveau,
01:22:13 where you would hang out with all your other family members.
01:22:16 Which maybe wouldn't be my choice, but more of a visual learner, here's a demonstration.
01:22:22 [Music]
01:22:27 [Music]
01:22:30 [Music]
01:22:43 [Music]
01:22:46 New Orleans was growing faster than cemeteries could keep up, so these oven crypts were a godsend.
01:23:05 Underground burial space was limited, but with oven crypts, after the year was up,
01:23:10 you could make room for your new eternal roommate, whose turn is it to buy toilet paper?
01:23:16 A tablet would often, but not always, be mounted on the outside of the oven crypt,
01:23:21 listing everyone who had been interred inside the chamber.
01:23:24 But sometimes it would just say something generic, like "my husband," which covered a lot.
01:23:30 [Music]
01:23:33 The reason Americans love visiting New Orleans cemeteries is that they're so different
01:23:38 than the cemeteries they have back home.
01:23:41 Your typical American cemetery is a lawn or a park with mostly underground burials.
01:23:47 As much as we love recycling, reusable graves are a concept that's completely foreign to Americans.
01:23:54 Other countries in the world, not so much.
01:23:57 Places like Belgium, Spain, Germany, Singapore, yes, you buy a burial space,
01:24:02 but you only get 15 to 20 years to decompose in it.
01:24:07 Once your time is up, you're out.
01:24:10 Places in Germany, for example, if your family doesn't want to repay for your grave space,
01:24:15 you dig down deeper in the dirt, put your bones down there, new person goes on top.
01:24:20 But in America, it's the law that cemeteries must maintain graves into perpetuity.
01:24:25 That is, forever.
01:24:28 Forever.
01:24:30 Forever.
01:24:33 Forever.
01:24:36 Cemeteries have to make the absurd promise that your grave will be yours forever and ever and ever.
01:24:42 But New Orleans derived all kinds of benefits from breaking that promise, saving space for one.
01:24:50 There are so many reusable oven grips in these historic cemeteries,
01:24:54 and rather than seeing the communal aspect as disrespectful,
01:24:58 it actually allowed everyone the opportunity for a proper burial.
01:25:03 Neighbors, immigrants, and the working class could be buried in tombs owned by benevolent societies,
01:25:09 like this one here, typically large structures made up of 20 or so vaults or crypts at once.
01:25:16 An individual could join a benevolent society, pay monthly or weekly dues,
01:25:20 that upon their death would ensure they got a funeral,
01:25:24 and that their body was interred above ground in a respectful manner.
01:25:28 I personally am all about the oven crypt.
01:25:31 Let's bring them to every big city, putting the needs of the community over the needs of the individual.
01:25:37 In the spirit of community, I will be eaten by crawfish.
01:25:42 Take me, crawfish. I'm here.