Dirt Nap City - History's Most Interesting Dead People
Dirt Nap City is the podcast about history's most interesting dead people. In each episode, Alex and Kelly dive into the life of a famous person that you have heard of, but probably don't know much about. Our stories are about actors, entrepreneurs, politicians, musicians, inventors, explorers and more! We also cover things that used to be popular but have fallen out of favor. Things like pet rocks, drive in theaters, Jolt Cola, and many other trends of yesterday make up our "dead ends". But whether we are talking about interesting historical figures or past trends, the show is funny, light-hearted, entertaining, informative and educational. You will definitely learn something new and probably have some laughs along the way. Everyone will eventually move to Dirt Nap City, so why not go ahead and meet the neighbors?
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Dirt Nap City - History's Most Interesting Dead People
Brewing a Legacy - The Story of Arthur Guinness
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In this episode, we dive deep into the extraordinary life and lasting legacy of Arthur Guinness, the visionary entrepreneur whose name became synonymous with Ireland’s most iconic brew. Long before Guinness was a global powerhouse, Arthur was a determined young brewer with a bold vision, setting up shop in Dublin and making one of the most famous business moves in history: signing a 9,000-year lease on the St. James’s Gate Brewery.
Discover how Arthur transformed the brewing landscape during the 18th century by shifting his focus away from traditional ales to perfect the dark, creamy porter that would eventually become the world's most famous stout. We trace his journey from modest beginnings to establishing an empire that reshaped Irish culture, industry, and global trade.
Beyond the barrel, this episode explores the profound social and philanthropic impact of the Guinness family. Arthur Guinness was more than a master brewer; he was a committed community leader who championed social welfare, supported local schools, and helped fund healthcare initiatives long before employee benefits and corporate social responsibility were standard practice. We look at how his values laid the groundwork for generations of philanthropic efforts that influenced Dublin’s economic and social framework for centuries.
We also explore the origins of the famous "Guinness Book of World Records" - from it's humble beginnings as a book so settle bar bets - to how Alex ended up with over 50 editions of the book in his library!
Join us as we unpack the fascinating history, shrewd business decisions, and enduring cultural impact of the man behind the pint. Whether you are a history buff, an aspiring entrepreneur, a beer enthusiast, or simply curious about Irish history, this episode offers an engaging look at how one man’s ambitious bet built a legendary legacy that continues to pour around the world today.
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Dirt Nap City is the podcast about the most interesting dead people in history.
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Someday we'll all live in Dirt Nap City, so you should probably go ahead and meet the neighbors!
Hey Alex, you know, today in modern society, especially here in the U.S., we take a lot of things for granted, don't you think? Oh yeah, yeah, we do. We do. What are some things? What are some things we take for granted?
SPEAKER_01I think we take for granted um transportation. Um did um clean water. Yeah, I think we take for granted uh food that's not gonna kill us. Um yeah, yeah. I mean, I think the modern world is um the modern world really isn't trying to um to kill us as much as it used to.
SPEAKER_00Well, you you actually hit the nail on the head with the clean drinking water. And we've talked about this a little bit. We've talked about the fact that a lot of times disease was linked to, what did you call it? The the um miasma. Miasma, yeah. People thought that it was something floating in the air, but it was really viruses and germs and and uh bacteria that was getting to people, but that stuff wasn't visible and people didn't know about it. Well, prior to the 1800s, and I'm talking now about a country that uh we've both been to, Ireland. Most of the major cities prior to the 1800s did not have clean drinking water. They had cholera, they had typhoid, and a lot of this had to do with drinking contaminated water, you know, water with with with feces, with disease, with um all kinds of stuff.
SPEAKER_01Especially as cities got bigger, you would think that it just like the water treatment is amazing. Talk about something we take for granted.
SPEAKER_00Yes. Well, you know what their solution was back then beer.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I was you know what I was just gonna say beer. Um I was just talking to somebody the other day about this, about beer, how people would drink beer just because it was uh safer. Safer. Yeah, uh, did you hear this thing about uh the George Washington beer?
SPEAKER_00No, no, tell me about it.
SPEAKER_01So recently this um so recently the Smithsonian uh was going through some of George Washington's journals and before George Washington was in the army, he was a brewmaster.
SPEAKER_00Oh, okay. Like Samuel Adams.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so he was uh they were looking through his journals and they found his recipe on how he makes beer. And the Smithsonian took that and they went to this local um uh brewery, like a local, like a brew pub, um, a women-owned brew pub in DC, and they said, Hey, make this deal for you. We're we're gonna give this recipe to you if you can make this. And they said they had to take a lot of liberties because it would just say like one quarter yeast, but it wouldn't say like a quarter, what a quarter pound or quarter cup, a quarter, right? So they had to like infer what it meant. Um, so they made a beer and you can go to this this uh brewery and um like I said, it's like a it's like a brew pub. You can go in DC right now and you can drink George Washington's original recipe, and then they made another one that's like that takes that but makes a more modern, more palatable taste because they said it's not that good, but the modern one is actually quite good. But they said that this where it fits into what you're talking about, they said that it only had like 1.5% alcohol. And children would drink this, you know. Everyone was drinking beer because it was safe, and it they said you can't get drunk on 1.5 percent. I think even like in Colorado, the 3-2 beer won't really, you know, you have to drink a lot of beer to even get a buzz.
SPEAKER_00And this is you got the altitude, you got the altitude there, so that that that combines. But yeah, it's it it was not considered a vice um in the seven 1700s. It was just what you had because the water was was uh contaminated, risky, and you know, the monks had been doing this, the Germans had been doing this, the Irish were doing this, the Brits were doing this. Well, in 1759, there was a guy, um, he was 34 years old at the time in 1759. He received a hundred dollars in a um uh was passed down to him from his grandfather or his father, I forget, uh, who who who left him the I say a hundred dollars, a hundred, a hundred uh pounds at the time, right? It was an inheritance. And it was from his godfather, actually. And with that, he started one of the biggest, most profitable, and most well-known brands of beer in the world. Do you know who I'm talking about? Was it Augustus Bush? Arthur Guinness. Oh, Arthur Guinness, of course, you just went to uh Irish Irish, Irish guy, yeah. And one of the smartest things he did. Now you've been to you've been to the Guinness Brewery. Do you remember the name of the place where it's at? James's Gate.
SPEAKER_01Okay.
SPEAKER_00Uh Saint St. James's Gate. And in uh 1759, when he was 34 years old, he signed a lease. Um, now this is confidence. This guy signs a lease, our Arthur Guinness signs a lease for 9,000 years at 45 pounds annual rent. No, what a great deal. Yes.
SPEAKER_01And and he controlled for inflation at all, just like he still pays, they still pay 45 pounds.
SPEAKER_00I I I believe so. I believe so, yes. I believe not. Um the the the whatever it is, it it's you know, you look at the size of this place. St. James's Gate is a huge, huge space. Um, the reason he picked this area to to brew his beer was the water. There was uh the the the Liffey River nearby. There were natural springs there, and there was actually there had been a brewer at this location prior to him coming there um that had gone out of business, and he he basically chose it because some of the equipment was already there. It is an impressive plant. It is, and we're talking about 2026, but at the time, um, you know, Arthur, this is 1700s, he's born in uh Kildare, County Kildare, and he sees this property and he realizes that um he's got an opportunity to brew something. Now, there was a lot of issues going on because a lot of uh beer at that time was imported from London, was coming over from England, and the Irish wanted to have their own style of beer and they wanted to have their own beer that they could be proud of. So they chose um initially, actually, Arthur Guinness was brewing ales, he was brewing more traditional English beers, but what became popular was the porter, and this came from these street porters uh in London, and in 1799 he uh converted, you know, in 1759 he took the the gamble, had some success, and in 1799 he converted to primarily focusing on porter. Now you think of Guinness, it's a very, very distinctive dark uh brew, has a very thick, thick, foamy head. Delicious. Um it is, and it's even better in Ireland for some reason. There's just something about being over there and having it. Um But what Guinness and his family did was despite a lot of pushback, a lot of competition, uh, there were strikes that were happened happening. There were also a lot, there was a lot going on with loyalists to the British and people who wanted Ireland to be its own country and its own in independent entity. And so that played a lot in this whole story of the Guinness family as to whether or not you supported staying within the um United Kingdom or being independent. Um they had they had thugs that would go out and break um that would they would destroy the casks that the beer was being shipped in if you were on the wrong side or they thought you were on the wrong side. But the way Guinness really was successful was he set up an economic engine and he set up a workplace that became they call St. James's Gate a city within a city. He hired um people that were traditionally going to have really bad jobs, poor, poor people that couldn't afford um health care. He gave them free medical care, he gave them dental care, he had child care, he had um paid holidays, he had weekends off. All of this stuff was something that had never been done before in Ireland, and it's particular specifically in the brewing industry. And what did that gain him? It gained him loyalty, not only from his employees, but from their families, because the healthcare was not just for the employee, it was for the entire family that could come in. He had schools and daycares that would um tend to the children of the employees, and he created this culture within uh St. James's Gate in Dublin that was almost like today, people want to work for some of these really fast-growing tech companies, you know, like it's a prestige job to work for Apple or to work for Tesla or SpaceX or Facebook or whatever. This was the prestige job in Ireland at that time, and specifically in Guinness. His other big thing that he did was he didn't stay in Ireland, he started shipping this globally, and he found a way to um make it ship well. Now, at the time, you you mentioned Louis Pasteur earlier. There was no pasteurization. There was there was no real way to refrigerate this stuff. The way he got around that was the extra stout. So, you know, you've heard it called Guinness Extra Stout. That that extra stout, which gives more hop, contains more hops and has a higher alcohol content, actually makes it um more stable and able to survive longer, longer shipping. So he was able to ship to the Americas, he was able to ship to Africa, he was able to ship to Asia. And actually, are you think of um Guinness as being more of a European thing? Um, there's a huge connection with Guinness in Nigeria. Nigeria has uh is a big fan of Guinness. And if you look at they if you look at their ad campaigns through the years, I don't know if you went into the room when you were at the brewery where they run all the old ads, but they have specific campaigns built for Africa, and they really pushed the beer over there. It it became kind of a big culture, and then the third component, you know, in addition to his um treating the treating his people well, being focused on exporting outside of Ireland, the third one was marketing, right? When you think about Guinness, what do you think of in terms of marketing and their ad campaigns?
SPEAKER_01Well, I don't it's a tough one because I don't know.
SPEAKER_00I'm gonna say it, I'm gonna say it, and you're gonna say, oh yeah. Okay the toucan. The two can with the Guinness balanced on its on its uh beak. Right? No, I don't I don't I don't know what you're talking about. Oh I think if you saw it, you would. You see this on bars all the time. They were one of the first companies to do a lot of advertising, and their big slogan was Guinness is good for you. They would show No, that doesn't look familiar to me.
SPEAKER_01I'm looking at this right now. The lovely day for a Guinness with the two can with the I've never seen that before.
SPEAKER_00Wow. Well, um, they act they actually hired an agency out of London to do their their ads for them. Um, and this was in the late 1800s when they started doing this advertising. And the whole take on it was that the animals would be a little more memorable and a little more cute, and so they decided to um actually use the toucan as their mascot. They also used the harp as a mascot that had been since the ancient days.
SPEAKER_01That's what I think of when I think of Guinness, is the harp.
SPEAKER_00Um, the other one is that was pretty famous that was in a lot of their ads was a um uh sea lion. It would be balancing a Guinness on its nose. Have you seen that before? Does that sound familiar? No. Yeah, if you if you if you typed in sea lion and Guinness, you would you would see that as well.
SPEAKER_01Um these ads were something that I would have seen looking at magazines in the 70s and 80s in the US?
SPEAKER_00Absolutely, absolutely. They they still and and these are these. Well, you know, there was Goofus and Gallant. Gallant Gallant drank a lot of Guinness back in the day. I'm sorry, Goofus drank a lot of Guinness back in the day. Um it was it was um it was kind of just a groundbreaking company to advertise their um to advertise their wares, their their beer, in a way that was lighthearted. Nobody had done this before, and it stood out. You know, if you think about uh Britain and Ireland being kind of like grey and dark and rainy, they used these tropical images of toucans with bright colors, and it really stood out, and it kind of made them very, very popular and famous.
SPEAKER_01Um so yeah, if you're German beers are often like they use images of like monks and sixteenth century stuff, like like like wheat and hops and barley, you see pictures of that stuff, you don't see you don't see a lot of personality in it, and you don't see what it is. No, yeah.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_00Not something that you the monasteries do for fun, yeah. Well, um the other couple of things that kind of came out of Guinness that really helped stand it apart. Now, do you are you familiar with the uh one minute and 59.5 seconds or 119 seconds rule?
SPEAKER_01This is how long you have that the bartender's supposed to leave it sitting before you're allowed to drink it. And there's a place where they put it that you're not allowed to breach that and touch it, right? Correct, correct.
SPEAKER_00So so the way they pour a Guinness in Ireland, and the way and this was according to Guinness's official standards, um, the bartender would take a glass, it's a tulip glass, is what it's called, hold it at a 45 degree angle, pull the handle, and fill it to three-quarters full, right up to the golden harp logo. So that was kind of where they would stop. Then they would set it to rest for 119.5 seconds. That's a minute and 59.5 seconds. Yes, and when it got to that mark, they would um pick it back up, put it under the tap, and push the tap away, which um caused the nitrogen. It was basically how long it took the nitrogen bubbles to go to the bottom and then come back up within the bottle. And it was what when you do that, that gives you that creamy white head. And then they would pour just a tiny bit more in by pushing the um pushing the handle backwards, which comes out slower, and that's where you get that um cap, that white, foamy cap that goes over the top. And I don't know if you remember, you can actually like you can actually shake the glass a little bit, and that foam is almost like jello, it just kind of like moves back and forth.
SPEAKER_01Um it's like ice cream, man. I love that stuff.
SPEAKER_00Good things come to those who wait, was kind of the tagline they used there. Um along those lines, when you drink a Guinness, do you know about splitting the G? Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01I think we talked about this on a previous episode, maybe.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, do you want to you want to explain it for everyone that hasn't heard of this?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, because that's with the pint, with the the pint glass would always have the Guinness on it. Right. Right. Guinness, right? The tulip glass, yep. Right. And you would drink until the G is split in uh in in half.
SPEAKER_00Right right along the um the middle of the G, the the the the part, you know, when you draw a G, the little um horizontal line. That's where it's supposed to be. And the the idea was it was kind of a little bit of a bar drink. Um, you have to do that on your first sip, you can't pause, you can't uh take a second sip, you have to do it in one go. And if you got it, you got bragging rights. If you didn't get it, you had to buy the next round. That's how the how the Irish did it.
SPEAKER_01Is that something that other people can see, or only you can see when you're drinking it?
SPEAKER_00Nobody can see it when you're drinking it. I mean, you can't really see it. It's it's kind of a it's just an honor system. Well, when you set it down, you can see it, right? So you you do it and then you set it down, and that's where you see how you did. So you don't nobody knows how you did until you set the until you set the glass down. Um are you ready to look at this? Um, you know, my son and I tried several times and we got it very, very close, but never exactly on it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01So you so you don't yeah you end up getting, you know, it's not something you probably get better at, it's probably something you get worse at.
SPEAKER_00Well, and and the thing is, Guinness is Guinness is very heavy. It isn't a light beer, and it it it will it will hit you pretty hard. You know, I don't know that the alcohol, I don't even know what the alcohol content is. Like I think it's a little more than a you know 5% beer, but I think it's just all those hops and all those heavy ingredients will just make you feel pretty bad if you have too much. Right. Um the the you the other thing that they did with the advertising was um they would come up with these songs and jingles that all talked about how Guinness was good for you. So the toucans in their Nest degree, Guinness is good for you. Try some today and see what or what not a toucan can do.
SPEAKER_01This is interesting though, because a few weeks ago you talked about cigarettes and how they were getting in trouble by yeah like m using cartoon images and saying that things were good for you, and this is kind of doing the same thing, but we look at this finally and we look at cigarettes as like an evil thing. Here do you where do you come down on this?
SPEAKER_00Well, I think there's a lot more public um public outlash against smoking than there is against alcohol. You know, I feel like alcohol is still socially acceptable, whereas smoking is become less so. Um I I don't know why that is. You know, they're both bad for you in some way, especially in excess. I think I think alcohol also, if you do it in moderation, you can live a healthy life with it. Smoking in moderation just ruins your lungs. That's all it does, right? And so um I don't know. I don't know how I and also the time period was different. We're we were talking about with cigarettes and advertising and cartoons, this was mass media on television during the 1960s and 70s, whereas this um these ads for Guinness took place in the 1800s, early 1900s. So these were magazine ads and stuff like that. So kids were already drinking anyway, so it didn't matter. They were, they were. It was, you know, the water would kill you, so why not? Um, so the last thing I want to talk about with regard to Guinness is the book, the book of world records. Now, how much do you know about the Guinness Book of World Records?
SPEAKER_01Well, not 15 feet from here. I have every Guinness book world records for the last like I don't know, 50 years probably.
SPEAKER_00So up to 2026?
SPEAKER_01Uh, probably up to 2022 or 2023 when my son aged out of that. I used to get them all the time when I was a kid, and then we started buying my son. So there might be a gap in the 90s or something when I was too old and he wasn't born.
SPEAKER_00But uh yeah, um, I was there's always that picture of the lady with the long fingernails and and the Asian lady, and then there's the two guys, really heavy guys on motorcycles on little scooters.
SPEAKER_01Well, and you know, and they stopped a lot of that stuff. They stopped um they stopped a lot of the food stuff because people were hurting themselves trying to get in the book. So they stopped a lot of the dangerous things or they stopped publicizing it. Um, I don't think they have like the world's fattest person anymore or things anything that would like promote um not being healthy, I think they they don't do anymore. But there's a lot of really weird things that you think, well, nobody that's probably the only person that's ever done that, you know?
SPEAKER_00Right, right, right. I can f I can flip this cup, the record for flipping this cup and catching it with a coin on my left pinky. But what's about that is very specific.
SPEAKER_01When you're a kid and you're reading that, a lot of them seen attainable. Like, oh, I can do that. If I just dedicated myself to plate spinning or, you know Um what was it with Marathon Dancing is the one that you have?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01If I just dedicate myself, I could get in this book. Um but then you know that seems empty because we don't know none of those people are famous.
SPEAKER_00You've got uh what's the guy, the hot dog eating guy that just uh broke the record. Yeah, um he's famous. Well, do you know the origins of the Guinness Book of World Records? I don't. Let me tell you, in 1951 there was a guy named Hugh Beaver. Sir Hugh Beaver, by the way. He was a he was a sir. Um he was a managing director at the Guinness Brewery, and he was out on a shooting party. This is 1951. They're they're hunting for uh um game birds. And he missed a shot of a golden plover, which is a game bird. And then he got into an argument with the hosts of the shooting party about the fastest game bird in Europe. Was it the golden plover? Was it the red grouse? What was it? He started to realize that these these arguments that would pop up in pubs all the time about um, you know, what's the tallest tree, what's the um fastest land animal, what's you know, whatever. Um these things were popping up all the time, and he thought it would be great to have a book of quirky records and trivia that they could use as a pr as a promotional tool for Guinness to help bartenders settle disputes. I love it. That was how they brought about the Guinness Book of World Records. First edition was in 1955. So if you have fifty of them, you have almost all of them. I mean, I guess there's seventy, what, seven seventy uh something now of them now, or maybe eighty. But when he found a publisher, it was Norris and Ross McWerder. They were twin brothers that ran a statistic and find uh statistic agency, fact-finding agency in London, and they agreed to do the fact-finding and help him publish this book. And so at first, you know, you just mentioned some of the things that were and were not in the book. At first, it was just um things that you might argue about in a pub. Like nature, you know, they were things that were um animal, things like that. Yeah, yeah. It wasn't it wasn't any of these uh records that people were trying to do. Um but the book sold out. It um its first book, its first edition was 198 pages. It was a giveaway, they gave it away at these pubs, uh sponsored by Guinness, and by Christmas it had become they started selling it because it was so popular, and it became the number was number one bestseller in nineteen fifty-five um in the UK because it was so popular. In nineteen fifty-six they launched a US edition. Um, they started translating it into other languages, and they continued, you know, it continued to grow, got bigger and bigger, was still associated with Guinness, and then in the 70s, that's when they really started switching over from scientific, environmental, um human facts into more stunts and bizarre feats of endurance and stuff like that. So you know, large pizza, yeah, sword swallowing, all that kind of stuff started to be more of a thing during the 70s. Well, eventually the book was uh sold off to another publisher, but they maintained the name Guinness Book of World Records.
SPEAKER_01I was gonna say I remember at when I was at Guinness Brewery, I remember going in the gift shop expecting to see like that I could buy the book too, and they they didn't it was no references to that book anywhere that I could see, so I figure they must have sold that. But the name because of the name recognition is still there, huh?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, that's right. And it's it was something that was already so popular they didn't want to rename it. So when the when the publishers bought it, and it's still going on, but ultimately, you know, if you think about um Arthur Guinness back in 1759, a guy signing a lease for 9,000 years is either genius or crazy, and I think I think he fell into the genius category for sure.
SPEAKER_02At St. James's Gate he drew his line. Arthur stood with iron spine, nine thousand years the paper said, Long as the river keeps its bed. Through stone and smoke, the word ran far from Dublin dock to every bar, he signed his name, he held a key, and set the stove upon the sea, Arthur Gennett, for a tear, Arthur gets black and sweet, nine thousand years at St. James's Gate, along the long lead that's to display, Arthur gets it, it's got you barrels rolled on foreign ground to every port that could be found to call it short they asked for more and more and more The Cast went out, I stayed and rained across the code of the land take the chain. His name went where the ghost would fly and left the dark mark on the sky after cannot be after kinetic sweet nine thousand years, lava least, after kinetic. And whipped at every passing line.
