Pete asks Ben to translate and pronounce the French in this episode, and Ben asks Pete to explain whether the writing is consistent with other episodes or constructed piecemeal out of half-baked ideas. Along the way they speculate about what musician has sold the most albums, the appeal of Americana in the UK, and whether this was the episode that got Frank Oz to lock into the character of Miss Piggy.

Sources and References:

The history of implementing Martin Luther King Day as a recognized national holiday in the US is surprisingly complicated, and New Hampshire’s reluctance to adopt it is frequently noted. The switch from “Civil Rights Day” to MLK Day happened in 1999, and not — as Pete remembered, two years ago.

Obsolete Video has uploaded a videotaped edition of “Julie on Sesame Street” to YouTube, complete with ads and the insane non sequitur that L.A.’s channel 7 transitioned into the program with: “See late film of a fatal train accident at 11”. The intro to the Broadway segment starts 35 minutes in.

A reproduction of Donald McGill’s “naughty” postcard regarding whether someone has kippled is reproduced on Max & Co’s postcard blog, while an earlier 1892 cartoon of the same punchline from Punch magazine is reproduced in Quote Investigator‘s delving into the history of the source of the joke — even earlier than the 1907 version Ben mentioned from later in the article.

An early version by “The Happiness Boys” of the song in the UK Spot has been uploaded to YouTube, as has Lonnie Donegan performing “Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavour?” on Austrian TV some sixteen years after he released it as a single. The YouTube comment about Wrigley’s ownership of the brand “Spearmint” is underneath the first video, by user “wmbrown6”.