Speaker 1: Hi everyone, It's Josh and for this week's s Y
Speaker 1: s K Selects, I've chosen How Flee Circuses Work. It's
Speaker 1: actually one of my all time favorite episodes. By the
Speaker 1: time we recorded it, there was a ten percent chance
Speaker 1: that I still didn't know whether Flee circuses are actually
Speaker 1: real or illusions tricks of the imagination. It was a
Speaker 1: thrilling experience, to say the least. I hope you enjoyed
Speaker 1: this episode because it was a fun one to do.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of My
Speaker 1: Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the
Speaker 1: podcast on Josh Clark and there's Charles w Chuck Bryant,
Speaker 1: and there's Jerry Rowland and that makes this stuff you
Speaker 1: should Know the podcast. Yeah, who would have ever thought
Speaker 1: that we could do more than one podcast on fleas
Speaker 1: Had I thought about Flee Circuses, I would have thought that, Yeah,
Speaker 1: we covered it a tiny little bit. I went back
Speaker 1: and looked just to make sure we weren't being too redundant,
Speaker 1: and uh, we just sort of mentioned it briefly. But
Speaker 1: how delightful to dig in even further. Yeah, I mean, like,
Speaker 1: there's no way that we really got into it because
Speaker 1: it's one of like the least documented aspects of popular
Speaker 1: culture I've ever come across. Man, And there's so much misinformation,
Speaker 1: and you run across people who act like they know
Speaker 1: exactly what they're talking about, and then you do more
Speaker 1: research and you find out they really are wrong in
Speaker 1: a lot of it. It's it's really it was crazy.
Speaker 1: It was a crazy research. Yeah, and you go to
Speaker 1: web pages that are solid green with white letters and
Speaker 1: turned back to tone punctuation. What's that. Yeah, it was
Speaker 1: a little weird, but yeah, people take us to task
Speaker 1: on the accuracy of this one. Then we'll be like you,
Speaker 1: you go do better. So, um, I think we kind
Speaker 1: of gave it away. The cats out of the bag,
Speaker 1: and so are it's fleas. We're doing flee circuses. We're
Speaker 1: talking about flee circuses, and they actually, like I think
Speaker 1: of flee circus is fairly old timing, but I usually
Speaker 1: think of him as like the twenties or thirties, maybe
Speaker 1: even the forties, from like that old tech savery flee
Speaker 1: circus cartoons or um. But they go way further back
Speaker 1: than that, or even the concept of of training fleas
Speaker 1: in some way, shape or form goes even further back
Speaker 1: than that. Yeah, which will We'll get to it. But
Speaker 1: training them as a bit of a misnomer, Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: a stretch for sure. It's sort of like tying and
Speaker 1: gluing things to fleas and just let them be fleas. Yeah, basically,
Speaker 1: as you will probably come to the same conclusion, flee
Speaker 1: circuses are really mean. Yeah, they're cruel. No matter how
Speaker 1: you feel about fleas, they are. Yeah, they're cruel. Cool
Speaker 1: acts of barbarity. I think that's how they used to
Speaker 1: buill it. Actually, yet tiny cruel acts of barbarity comes
Speaker 1: see Professor long Hair and his flee circus whitchy torments.
Speaker 1: But they're small, so who cares? Right? Uh So fifteen
Speaker 1: seventies is uh if this is accurate, we're all going
Speaker 1: to go all the way back to a man named
Speaker 1: Mark Scalliot who uh did not have a flee circus,
Speaker 1: but he was supposedly in London, one of the first people,
Speaker 1: or perhaps the first person to use a flee as
Speaker 1: a prop of some sort. Yeah, to basically show off
Speaker 1: his skills as what as a he was a blacksmith. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he was a smithy and he made like this really
Speaker 1: really tiny intricate caller that he put her on to
Speaker 1: flee and he said, check this out. Yeah, and everyone
Speaker 1: was I guess because this apparently other people, uh like
Speaker 1: watchmakers and stuff would would make little tiny watches as
Speaker 1: well as gimmicks. But I guess the thing they were
Speaker 1: trying to show is the only thing I can think
Speaker 1: of is if I can make something this tiny that works,
Speaker 1: imagine what a real size human watch would look like.
Speaker 1: It would work even better. But he got kind of
Speaker 1: famous from it from what I understand, and the idea
Speaker 1: of using fleas called on kind of kind of well,
Speaker 1: it took a couple of hundred years. But if if
Speaker 1: you look into fleas and flee circuses like I just
Speaker 1: took them for Granted, I never stopped and thought why fleas,
Speaker 1: But there's actually really good reasons why fleas, And it
Speaker 1: has to do with For one, fleas used to be everywhere,
Speaker 1: Like no matter where you lived in the world, you
Speaker 1: shared your living space with fleas, which must have been
Speaker 1: pretty awful. But apparently it was just a fact of life.
Speaker 1: So that's one thing. They're ubiquitous, they're easy to come by.
Speaker 1: The other one is that fleas are really really good
Speaker 1: at jumping, and that actually makes them, under the right circumstances,
Speaker 1: really good for this flee circus idea. Yeah, and we
Speaker 1: wed you know, if you really want to itch yourself, uh,
Speaker 1: go to listen to the fleet episode. UM. But they
Speaker 1: come in a couple of thousand varieties and the ones
Speaker 1: apparently for circuses are the little flat, reddish brown ones
Speaker 1: about two point five millimeters in length, and um they
Speaker 1: can jump though two point five millimeters they can jump
Speaker 1: sometimes as high as eight nine inches in the air.
Speaker 1: I saw it to ten where you getting your fleas?
Speaker 1: That was from the Royal Air Force Experimental Station. They
Speaker 1: apparently set up some equipment in the sixties and we're
Speaker 1: photographing fleas jumping. Oh yeah, see here that they said
Speaker 1: that UM, at the start of a jump, a fleet jump,
Speaker 1: they experience forces greater than a hundred and forty times
Speaker 1: out of gravity. Yeah, that's crazy. Yeah. They have these
Speaker 1: little um what are called elastic cuticles in their legs
Speaker 1: and they can store a tremendous amount of potential energy
Speaker 1: and when they release them and they jump, that potential
Speaker 1: energy turns into connect energy. And since that it's basically
Speaker 1: this elastic um connector, that's really storing the energy they're
Speaker 1: not having to use up a lot of their own,
Speaker 1: so they can jump like this like thousands of times
Speaker 1: in an hour. And apparently when they jump, I don't
Speaker 1: I'm sure we said something somewhat contradictory in the actual
Speaker 1: fleas episode, but the relation of their jumps to their
Speaker 1: body size, um it compared to humans to be like
Speaker 1: us jumping over the statue of Liberty or something along
Speaker 1: those lines, which is very hard to do. It can
Speaker 1: harder every day. Man. I was kind of thinking about
Speaker 1: these fleas jumping and like, evolutionarily speaking, why And I
Speaker 1: guess they're just so small that when a dog goes
Speaker 1: to scratch or bite at it or whatever animal tries
Speaker 1: to get the fleet off, they can't just be like, well,
Speaker 1: let me run away as fast as I can, because
Speaker 1: the dog's bite will still get it. So they learned,
Speaker 1: I think, quite really, how to jump and get the
Speaker 1: heck out of there very very quickly in order to survive.
Speaker 1: And the coolest fleas make the bionic Man sound when
Speaker 1: they jump if you listen really close. All the hipster fleas, right,
Speaker 1: uh so, I guess we should talk about the main
Speaker 1: dude though, right, who we owe all of us owe
Speaker 1: a great debt too. I'm not saying his name, you know,
Speaker 1: you've got to say his name. This is the eighteen
Speaker 1: twenties and he was an Italian I presario in London
Speaker 1: named Louis Berte Lotto. Nice. Yes, Yeah, there's so many
Speaker 1: ohs and t s. I thought I messed it up. No,
Speaker 1: I know it's a it's an unusual name. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: he's the guy in London who said, uh, I want
Speaker 1: to be really famous one day, and my big idea
Speaker 1: is to take fleas and put them in shows. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and it worked, It did work. I saw somewhere that
Speaker 1: the the origination of flee circuses it was um due
Speaker 1: largely to him. But I didn't really see anybody else
Speaker 1: cited earlier than him. You know, the watchmaker, the smithy
Speaker 1: Um Mark, Mark, the blacksmith. He wasn't doing any kind
Speaker 1: of shows or tricks. Louis Bertelotto Um said, you know what,
Speaker 1: the fleas aren't props. The fleas are going to be
Speaker 1: the stars in my show. That's right, And I think
Speaker 1: he may have been the one who had the the
Speaker 1: original idea to do this. Yeah, I love our own
Speaker 1: article said his show was part action, part humor, part
Speaker 1: social commentary. But I think that was the case. You know,
Speaker 1: they would uh well we might as well talk about
Speaker 1: what these things did. They would do everything from high
Speaker 1: wire x to sword fighting too. Uh. Political and historical
Speaker 1: re enactments. Yeah, they re enacted the Battle of Waterloo
Speaker 1: dressed dressed in like military garb. Yeah. They would play
Speaker 1: a soccer or football. Uh. They would do um high diving,
Speaker 1: pretty amazing stuff, little pools of water, a little chariots
Speaker 1: and carriages. Yeah, that was one of the first ones
Speaker 1: because you know, I think, especially back in the early
Speaker 1: nineteenth century, people didn't know everything there is to know
Speaker 1: about fleas like we do today. So the idea of
Speaker 1: watching a little, tiny, tiny flee like a three millimeter
Speaker 1: long flea pulling like a hearse or a chariot or
Speaker 1: a cart um that was you know, hundreds of times
Speaker 1: its own weight does get any better. It's gonna it's
Speaker 1: gonna impress you, especially if you're a five year old
Speaker 1: um chimney sweet who's owned by the guy who bought
Speaker 1: you from your parents. Yeah. Or I actually looked up
Speaker 1: some flea circuses on YouTube. Uh, there were those little kids.
Speaker 1: There was one and I think Denmark in the nineteen
Speaker 1: fifties that I looked at, I saw that, and like
Speaker 1: in Telfair, people were just delighted. Oh yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: I watched some of the videos too, and I noticed that,
Speaker 1: like my hands were classed together beneath my chin. I
Speaker 1: think it might have been the perfect post election uh
Speaker 1: youtubing that I could have done. Actually, yeah, it worked
Speaker 1: pretty well. Uh so Bert, sorry Bert? His Uh his
Speaker 1: act was not small if you think, well, sure he
Speaker 1: did this at some county fairs and side shows. Uh
Speaker 1: and then his wife made him stop. Yeah, not true
Speaker 1: at all. He actually got really famous for this. I
Speaker 1: don't know. I mean they likened him to Elvis Presley.
Speaker 1: I don't know if he was that big. I think
Speaker 1: the point the authors making is like that this guy
Speaker 1: wasn't some some like, he wasn't Internet famous, he was
Speaker 1: like famous famous, Like he traveled the world doing this.
Speaker 1: It's good for him, right, yeah, And he didn't. As
Speaker 1: he traveled the world, people were like, I can do
Speaker 1: that too. I'm tired of working. I want to do this.
Speaker 1: But it turns out that from what I can tell,
Speaker 1: as far as show biz goes, running your own flea
Speaker 1: Circus has got to be one of the more demanding
Speaker 1: side shows there there are. Well sure, I mean part
Speaker 1: of the problem is your performers. Well, first of all,
Speaker 1: it says in here and this is like again with
Speaker 1: this research, you just sort of have to take some
Speaker 1: of these people at their word. But they say that
Speaker 1: about one in ten fleas can even make the cut, right. Uh,
Speaker 1: once you find your your champion team of they're they're
Speaker 1: gonna die and there need to be cared for and
Speaker 1: traveling all over the world with your prized fleas is precarious.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, especially um if you're traveling to do shows
Speaker 1: and colder climbs there aren't fleas, and fleas don't do
Speaker 1: very well there. Your whole troop may die the night
Speaker 1: before a show. Can you imagine? But apparently it happened
Speaker 1: a lot. There was a guy I read and I'm
Speaker 1: not quite sure who it was, but they he had
Speaker 1: a a standing gig in I think Switzerland maybe or
Speaker 1: somewhere somewhat northern Europe and he had to send down
Speaker 1: no she I'm sorry, she had to send down to
Speaker 1: Majorca to get um fresh shipments of fleas like every
Speaker 1: two weeks because hers just kept she couldn't keep them
Speaker 1: alive any longer than I have offers from all over
Speaker 1: the world to take my show. But you're afraid of
Speaker 1: one thing. When you get out of the country, can
Speaker 1: you get fleas? I went to Sweden and I had
Speaker 1: to send to Majorca in Spain to get fleas fortnite
Speaker 1: every fortnight. Who was that? It was a woman, a
Speaker 1: sword swallower right? Uh? Was that Professor Tomlin No, I
Speaker 1: can't remember her name, but she's like a legendary sword swallower. Um,
Speaker 1: Professor Testos, no, Professor Chester, no, none of the professors.
Speaker 1: And that was another thing I noticed from this too,
Speaker 1: But I couldn't really find the origin. Apparently, if you
Speaker 1: had a flee circuses from from like the nineteenth century
Speaker 1: to the early twentieth century, you the flea master, build
Speaker 1: yourself as professor whatever. So weird, there's just all these
Speaker 1: really weird trends. But the in the history of flee circuses,
Speaker 1: it was like one person would come up with an
Speaker 1: idea and then they go and show it and for
Speaker 1: some reason it would attract a bunch of other imitators,
Speaker 1: and that's that's basically the history of it. I would
Speaker 1: have built myself as account Oh man, you know that
Speaker 1: would have broken a new ground. But they would have
Speaker 1: to pay money, and that says in the nineteen fifties
Speaker 1: Professor Testo said, we pay six shillings a dozen, although
Speaker 1: there have been times of shortage when a single flea
Speaker 1: has cost as much as two shillings. Well you know, also,
Speaker 1: if you look around today, at which I did, I
Speaker 1: couldn't find anywhere to buy fleas. You have to send
Speaker 1: off from overseas um. But I've thought, well, surely there's
Speaker 1: some weirdo somewhere who's selling fleas to flee circuses and
Speaker 1: there are none, none whatsoever. Well there is a flee
Speaker 1: circus in Germany still, yeah, at the Munich October Fest.
Speaker 1: Where else would you have one? Alright, so you want
Speaker 1: to take a little break here, Yeah, all right, well
Speaker 1: let's break. Let's go pick the fleas from our own bodies.
Speaker 1: I know I'm itching or scratching. Then maybe we can
Speaker 1: train them to finish this episode for us. So chuck,
Speaker 1: we we kind of made it as far as Berto Lotto,
Speaker 1: And there's actually a lot of mystery surrounding that guy.
Speaker 1: Here's the weird thing. Okay, I'm gonna confess something to you.
Speaker 1: When I first read this article, I was like, well,
Speaker 1: here's a stinker. Then I dug in a little further
Speaker 1: and I was like, oh, I'm being tortured with research
Speaker 1: to do a stinker. And then the more I did,
Speaker 1: the more I did, the more I again, I'd find
Speaker 1: these weird little things that kept popping up that combined
Speaker 1: create the the the history or the culture of flee circuses.
Speaker 1: And and the more I came upon these little things
Speaker 1: and put them together more the more I was just
Speaker 1: totally delighted. But then I think, like you when I
Speaker 1: when I finally hit YouTube, it was like, okay, I
Speaker 1: need to see some of these. Then I was like,
Speaker 1: I love flee circuses. I could sit here and talk
Speaker 1: about them all day. Well, we'll try and keep this
Speaker 1: minutes all day. So I just realized I didn't finish
Speaker 1: my thought. The um, the weird little thing that I
Speaker 1: found out about Professor Barlo Dolore you thanks man Um.
Speaker 1: He just vanished, he disappeared. He was like as famous
Speaker 1: as as an astronaut, and then all of a sudden
Speaker 1: he's gone. And there's a guy um who is uh.
Speaker 1: I think his name is Andy Rich he's like basically
Speaker 1: the foremost flee circus researcher working today. Hey, and he
Speaker 1: found Professor Barte Lotto. Apparently he moved to Canada and
Speaker 1: lived out the rest of his life and anonymity. Wow. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I have a question. Okay, why do you always use
Speaker 1: astronaut as a fame indicator? It's uh think it says
Speaker 1: Simpson's reference. It's Homer was saying somebody was richer than
Speaker 1: an astronaut. I was going to challenge you and say,
Speaker 1: name an astronaut. Oh, dude, Jim Lovell No, no, no,
Speaker 1: name a current astronaut. Oh current astronaut. Well you got
Speaker 1: Mark Kelly and Scott Kelly. Okay, all right, the twins
Speaker 1: get back off. Then her their parents called them Project
Speaker 1: Jim and I. That's cute. But they did not just
Speaker 1: made that up? Oh really? Yeah? Oh man, that would
Speaker 1: have been surely somewhat thought of that. If not, I'm
Speaker 1: going to trade market. Uh yeah, And then you could
Speaker 1: blackmail them. I feel like you want this nickname. I
Speaker 1: know you're richer than an astro Alright, So early nineteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: if you're talking imitators over here in the United States,
Speaker 1: we had a man named William Heckler, and he was
Speaker 1: one of the first dudes over here to be a
Speaker 1: successful flea master. And uh, he did the usual things,
Speaker 1: made them box and race and juggle. And we're gonna
Speaker 1: tell you some of these secrets. By the way, if
Speaker 1: you're wondering how these things are accomplished, just hang in there. Uh.
Speaker 1: And he said at one point he was bringing in
Speaker 1: two hundred and fifty dollars uh day or performance in
Speaker 1: a in a day of performances a day. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: many many performances. And here's the thing I Philip, I
Speaker 1: kind of wondered I was because I didn't find it
Speaker 1: until later in the research, like, well, how do you
Speaker 1: see this stuff? But you wouldn't have very many people
Speaker 1: in there. You'd have like ten or fifteen people crowded
Speaker 1: around a little table for six to ten minutes. You
Speaker 1: would shuffle them out and bring in the next group. Yes,
Speaker 1: I saw somewhere that if you were really dedicated to it,
Speaker 1: I think Cecil Laden Road it on the on the
Speaker 1: straight dope, that if you were like a really dedicated performer,
Speaker 1: you could conceivably do fifty ten minute performances a day.
Speaker 1: So that's basically like ten hours with a ten minute
Speaker 1: break every hour. And if you're not a really dedicated
Speaker 1: flea master, then just get out of my face. What
Speaker 1: do you even bother? Seriously, though, I mean as when
Speaker 1: we talk about how to do this, it will become
Speaker 1: clear just how much work this must be. Yeah, alright,
Speaker 1: well let's talk a little bit about that. Um, every
Speaker 1: flee is different. And like I said, uh, if you
Speaker 1: believe the research, about ten percent of the fleezer fit
Speaker 1: for the job. And it's like we mentioned, you don't
Speaker 1: really train them. What you do is back in the day,
Speaker 1: you would take either some silken thread or some really
Speaker 1: thin gold wire like hopefully you can't even see it,
Speaker 1: that's sort of the idea, and you tie a little
Speaker 1: tiny noose of sorts around this fleas neck. And apparently
Speaker 1: that was really hard to do because when a fleet
Speaker 1: eats the blood of their master, yeah, which is true.
Speaker 1: We'll get to that again later, but their next well,
Speaker 1: so you can't tie it too tight or else they're
Speaker 1: gonna die and that your prize flee could die. Or
Speaker 1: if it's too loose, then the flea goes away and
Speaker 1: the chariot stays behind, and that's no good and you
Speaker 1: just hear a tiny bionic man sound. That's right. So um,
Speaker 1: that's very hard Number one. Number two the idea that
Speaker 1: you have to do that with new fleas every I
Speaker 1: would guess probably every few weeks if you're on average,
Speaker 1: because fleas, I mean they live maybe a year. Most
Speaker 1: fleas live three or four months. It's an old flee.
Speaker 1: So you've got like a some star performers and they're
Speaker 1: just they're performing, you know, for a few months or whatever.
Speaker 1: So you're having to basically constantly us fleas all the
Speaker 1: time and and again before you even harness them, you
Speaker 1: have to sort them. So you have to study and
Speaker 1: observe the adult fleas see which one's like to jump. Um.
Speaker 1: There's an old legend, uh that apparently came from Professor
Speaker 1: Heckler's son, if not Professor Heckler himself, who said, Um,
Speaker 1: you you put a lid over a jar, and you
Speaker 1: can train them not to jump too high because they'll
Speaker 1: hit their head on the jar and they don't like
Speaker 1: to do that. So they learned not to jump, then
Speaker 1: they've passed their first test. It's not clear whether that's
Speaker 1: actually hocum or not, but um, that's for for a
Speaker 1: very long time. That's been part of the lower of
Speaker 1: training fleas. The problem is, I think you said it,
Speaker 1: fleas can't actually learn anything. They're not really being trained.
Speaker 1: They're actually being physically restrained in lots of ways, including
Speaker 1: that harness and starting with the harness. Well, I don't know, though, Heckler,
Speaker 1: Professor Heckler that is also said and this was fascinating
Speaker 1: to me as far as whether or not these fleas
Speaker 1: can learn anything. He said that he would to get
Speaker 1: the best fleas, put them in a glass jar. Uh,
Speaker 1: that's too tall for them to jump out, and he
Speaker 1: said that he would notice the really good fleas would
Speaker 1: jump up on the side, fart out a little bit
Speaker 1: of sticky stuff, whatever that is, and then spend the
Speaker 1: rest of the time trying and trying to hit that
Speaker 1: identical spot again to grab hold of the sticky stuff
Speaker 1: basically a foothold, to be close enough to the top
Speaker 1: to leap out. Amazing. I don't know if I believe it.
Speaker 1: He well, yeah, I mean he was a showman, consummist.
Speaker 1: Showman like you didn't just basically point and be like,
Speaker 1: look at the fleas, came your money, please leave now,
Speaker 1: like you were like carrying the show on. Right, you
Speaker 1: had to tell this this this, You had to help
Speaker 1: the performance along, your professor, for God's sake. Right, when
Speaker 1: this guy is being interviewed over the years, I can't
Speaker 1: imagine he didn't like ham it up in the interviews.
Speaker 1: So I don't know, like a lot of it's lost
Speaker 1: too to time, what was true and what wasn't as
Speaker 1: far as these these old guys go. Yeah, but he
Speaker 1: Professor Heckler also said when he was picking them out,
Speaker 1: and he said, stodgy wins are broken to the merry
Speaker 1: go round harness. Flighty fleas make good dancers. Those with
Speaker 1: especially strong legs will become kickers, jugglers and chariot racers. Yes,
Speaker 1: so you've got you've got fleas harness. That's like the
Speaker 1: first initial thing. But there's other things you need to
Speaker 1: do to him to write. You can take that harness,
Speaker 1: and the most basic thing you could do is take
Speaker 1: that harness and actually hook it up to, like you said,
Speaker 1: a chariot or or or a merry go round or
Speaker 1: something like that. And yet people will be like, that's
Speaker 1: pretty neat, that's cool. But before I could do that,
Speaker 1: you know, but you could do other stuff too, and
Speaker 1: a lot of it involves glue unfortunately. So say like
Speaker 1: you take a tiny piece of um of would or
Speaker 1: a tiny piece of metal and you glue it to
Speaker 1: the fleas arms, right, and we should say, once that happens,
Speaker 1: that's it. That's never that's never coming off for the
Speaker 1: rest of the fleas life. Yeah, I mean, do you
Speaker 1: think they even survive that day? I think so. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think that they typically survive a few weeks of performing. Okay,
Speaker 1: so even if they have a little sword glued to
Speaker 1: their body, yeah, okay, I think they live horrible lives.
Speaker 1: I mean, basically, we as a species should know more
Speaker 1: about this because if the fleas of a rise up
Speaker 1: and become intelligent, like our backs are against the wall
Speaker 1: for what the flea circus flea masters have done to
Speaker 1: them glued to the wall, they'll be like, oh, guess
Speaker 1: whose turn it is? Alright, so go ahead, Oh so
Speaker 1: you you, um, you glue a piece of stick or
Speaker 1: something to their arms, and remember already they're harnessed. And
Speaker 1: then you do the same thing to another flee and
Speaker 1: then you tie their harnesses down and you just kind
Speaker 1: of tickle them or do something to stimulate them, and
Speaker 1: they start waving their arms and it looks like the
Speaker 1: sword fighting. So that's a really good example of a
Speaker 1: flee circus. Like you're you're having them do things, and
Speaker 1: then the flea masters like, well, look at this, this
Speaker 1: is a sword fight. Everybody see they're doing or fencing
Speaker 1: or something like that, right en, I've trained them to
Speaker 1: do so exactly exactly. So there's there's these things where
Speaker 1: really it's the interaction between a restrained flee, usually with
Speaker 1: the prop glued to it, defending itself or responding to
Speaker 1: some sort of noxious or threatening stimuli, and then the
Speaker 1: flea master coming and saying, oh, they're they're fencing, or
Speaker 1: they're walking the high wire something or there. This is
Speaker 1: Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo. Yeah, they would play soccer.
Speaker 1: Like I said, so what they would do there is
Speaker 1: they would get a little piece of cotton wool. Uh.
Speaker 1: They would soak it in something that the fleet doesn't like,
Speaker 1: some odorous, malodorous thing. Yeah, I looked that up. Like
Speaker 1: lavender works really well, sit, tranella, cedar oil, those are
Speaker 1: all lovely. That's a shame. But come to think of it,
Speaker 1: when you see natural flee sprays, that's what's in natural
Speaker 1: flee spray exactly, so they would soak it in that
Speaker 1: stuff and then uh, just the fleet would literally just
Speaker 1: kick at it to get it away like a little
Speaker 1: soccer ball. Right, They're either kicking at it to get
Speaker 1: it away or because they were restrained and when they kick,
Speaker 1: instead of it propelling the flee away, it's repelling the
Speaker 1: ball away from them. So if you have them this
Speaker 1: kind of do that back and forth, then yeah, they're
Speaker 1: playing soccer. What about juggling, Josh, love it. What you
Speaker 1: do there is you would glue a flee to its
Speaker 1: on its back basically and then put another little tiny
Speaker 1: piece of cotton on their legs and they would kick
Speaker 1: at it trying to get it off, and apparently would
Speaker 1: just kind of go up and down and spin around
Speaker 1: like it was juggling. Amazing. Yeah, and like this is
Speaker 1: this is uh thanks to Heckler in particular in the
Speaker 1: United States. Um, he really started hitting the county fairs
Speaker 1: and um, the the the carnivals. So it became basically
Speaker 1: part and parcel with the with sideshows the fleet circus.
Speaker 1: Like basically anytime you went to a decent carnival, there's
Speaker 1: a flea circus there. Yeah, and I get the feeling
Speaker 1: that these professors would try and they would try and innovate,
Speaker 1: they would try and come up with new tricks and
Speaker 1: new things that would delight people, because you want to
Speaker 1: keep people coming back, you know, right, So that's where
Speaker 1: you come up with things like the the high high
Speaker 1: Wire Act and the flea walls. When it would appear
Speaker 1: as if a fleet orchestra was playing and fleas were dancing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because there's there's other things that fleas respond to. Two
Speaker 1: besides um citronella, they respond very well the heat. They
Speaker 1: can sense heat very well, and if it gets too hot,
Speaker 1: they want to get out of there. So if you
Speaker 1: apply heat from beneath on say like uh just um,
Speaker 1: I don't know, a drumhead or something like that, they'll
Speaker 1: all start hopping around. But if they if they can't
Speaker 1: get away, if they're harnessed in, then it looks like
Speaker 1: they're dancing. If you put a little flea orchestra to
Speaker 1: the side with instruments glued to their their arms at
Speaker 1: a nice backbeat exactly, then you have fleas playing music
Speaker 1: and fleas dancing to it. A flea ball. Uh. So
Speaker 1: this all is delightful and well and good. Um, but
Speaker 1: what fun is a naked little flea doing these things?
Speaker 1: If you could have a flee dressed up as Napoleon, right,
Speaker 1: And that's what they did. They apparently historical figures were lampooned. Uh.
Speaker 1: They would supposedly get Mexican nuns who had quote nimble
Speaker 1: fingers tired and eyes deteriorated. I don't see how that
Speaker 1: makes any sense. So they're these they they're nimble fingers
Speaker 1: grew tired in their eyes deteriorated as we're making these things. Okay,
Speaker 1: I thought that was that was a good quality they
Speaker 1: look for an a Mexican nun seems dress right, How
Speaker 1: are your nimble fingers feeling? That's kind of tired? They're tired.
Speaker 1: That's sad. Actually. Then, so they would get apparently these
Speaker 1: Mexican nuns to make these tiny little costumes, and um,
Speaker 1: they are still on display today if you go to Uh,
Speaker 1: how do you pronounce that in England? I mispronounced everything
Speaker 1: in England. It's spelled Hertfordshire show Cambridge, all right, Cambridge, England.
Speaker 1: I think it's where that at the Rothschild Zoological Museum.
Speaker 1: There are two fleas dressed as Mexican fleas on display
Speaker 1: and right in our lovely Edinburgh, Scotland that we adored
Speaker 1: so much. Had I known, had I known that there
Speaker 1: was a museum of childhood there with a flea wedding
Speaker 1: party dressed up on display, I would have gone in
Speaker 1: a second, for sure. But yeah, it was a thing.
Speaker 1: I think it was already a thing in Mexico. And
Speaker 1: the flea circus masters said, hey, I need to get
Speaker 1: some of those, so chuck, if you have a bunch
Speaker 1: of fleas and they're making you money, you want to
Speaker 1: keep them alive, right, how would you do that? Well,
Speaker 1: as we all know, fleas or parasitic blood suckers. Uh.
Speaker 1: And so they would just go down to the blood
Speaker 1: bank and get a bag of blood right right, and
Speaker 1: let the fleece swim around in it. Yeah, and they
Speaker 1: loved it. And know what they would do is and
Speaker 1: this is like it gives me chills thinking about it.
Speaker 1: They would roll up their sleeves and stick their arm
Speaker 1: down there and let the fleas feed on their bodies. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a couple of times a day. But apparently apparently though
Speaker 1: it was part of every single show that you would
Speaker 1: end the show with and now, since these fleet performers
Speaker 1: have done so great, I shall let them feast on
Speaker 1: my blood and the crowd would be like you gross,
Speaker 1: that makes sense. Yeah, it was part of stage pattern,
Speaker 1: but apparently at least Heckler, but I'm sure others actually
Speaker 1: did let the fleas feed on them. Uh yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: what's a good flee master to do? Well, feed your
Speaker 1: fleas blood Either that or have like a again, a
Speaker 1: chimney sweep that you bought from a chimney sweeper to
Speaker 1: let the fleas feed on. I hope that the episode
Speaker 1: has come out, but people are going to be really confused, yeah,
Speaker 1: or it'll be really delightful when it does come out
Speaker 1: and they'll be like, oh that makes sense. Now, Hey,
Speaker 1: one more thing about Heckler. So there was a Heckler Sr.
Speaker 1: And Junior, and apparently Junior kept it going in Times
Speaker 1: Square until like the late fifties had a flee circus going,
Speaker 1: and Heckler's flee circus shows up in a scene an
Speaker 1: Easy Rider. No way. Yeah, I couldn't figure out what's scene.
Speaker 1: I didn't have time to go check. But there's a
Speaker 1: scene an Easy Rider where in the background there's Heckler's
Speaker 1: flee circus, and then they were pushed out of Times
Speaker 1: Square by peep shows. And then the peep shows were
Speaker 1: pushed out by Walt Disney and Julie Annie. Yeah, Heckler
Speaker 1: tried at first to do pants less flee circus. Well
Speaker 1: it didn't work very well. Yeah, no, one wants that. No,
Speaker 1: and finally just packed it up. All right, Well, let's
Speaker 1: take one final break here and we will talk about
Speaker 1: another kind of flee circus right after this. So check.
Speaker 1: One thing that I found I'm pretty sure you found
Speaker 1: it too, was that when you start looking into flee circuses,
Speaker 1: some people think that there is never such a thing
Speaker 1: as flee circuses that used real fleas. Yeah. I thought
Speaker 1: you were going to say, when you start looking into
Speaker 1: flee circus is there's no going back and you'll never
Speaker 1: be the same again. That's definitely true too, Like I'm
Speaker 1: changed forever. Yeah. I always thought that flee circuses were
Speaker 1: a complete ruse and that there were never any real
Speaker 1: fleas performing, right, Apparently, No, that's not the case. There
Speaker 1: have been, and indeed, ours recently as the nineties, there
Speaker 1: have been flee circuses that used real fleas. Following these
Speaker 1: traditions that we just mentioned. But if you believe that
Speaker 1: there are plenty of flee circuses out there that don't
Speaker 1: use any fleas whatsoever, you're right too, because there's both. Yes,
Speaker 1: there's the type of flee circus that doesn't use fleas
Speaker 1: is called a humbug flee circus, and it's all it's
Speaker 1: all stage magic, it's all illusion, and it's pretty pretty awesome. Actually, yeah,
Speaker 1: there was a man, a magician named George Tollerton in
Speaker 1: the nineteen thirties, and he wrote a booklet actually um
Speaker 1: outlining fake flee circuses and skits that you can do.
Speaker 1: We're in you're sort of the I mean, while the
Speaker 1: carnival barking was going on in the real flee circuses. Um,
Speaker 1: you you really want to take center stage if you
Speaker 1: have a fake flee circus, because then not only introducing
Speaker 1: the death defying feats, but then you are are following
Speaker 1: these fleas, jumping around with mimicking it with your eyes
Speaker 1: and following it around, you know, by moving your head
Speaker 1: around as if the audience is looking at some invisible thing,
Speaker 1: which they are, right right, they are, and you're basically
Speaker 1: just using your powers of suggestion to get them to
Speaker 1: think they're seeing what you're saying. Right, Yeah, that's the
Speaker 1: most like basic humbug flee circus there are, right, sure,
Speaker 1: but there's one in that that started like that. I
Speaker 1: guess the genuine stagecraft stage magic um humbug flee circus
Speaker 1: came about from Michael Benteen, who is a gooon actually right, remember,
Speaker 1: then explained that what it is the goons showed up
Speaker 1: in the Monty Python episode. They were the direct predecessor
Speaker 1: of Monty Python, Spike Milligan and his goons. Yes, he
Speaker 1: wasn't a hockey playing goon, that's a different thing, or
Speaker 1: a goon on Scooby Doo or a goony, right, just
Speaker 1: a regular old goon. Yeah, Michael Benty And he was
Speaker 1: a British performer and entertainer and he uh in nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty performed that the h called the Royal Variety Show.
Speaker 1: I guess I think so. And it was a little
Speaker 1: you know, fake flee circus apparently pretty elaborate one, yeah,
Speaker 1: because rather than just using like his power of suggestion,
Speaker 1: he was using things like magnets and remote control pumps
Speaker 1: and mechanical devices to really kind of do this exaggerated
Speaker 1: simulation of a flee doing stuff going through the circuit
Speaker 1: of his flea circus right, So he would say, have
Speaker 1: a magnet or a piece of string of something or
Speaker 1: something pushing a ball or rather pulling a ball up
Speaker 1: a hill an incline, and he would say that this
Speaker 1: is the uh, the flea sisyphus and he's pushing this
Speaker 1: ball up a hill right or um, this is this
Speaker 1: is my favorite. This gets me every time a flee
Speaker 1: going up on the high dive board. And then so
Speaker 1: as he's going up there, the wrongs of the ladder,
Speaker 1: each one gets depressed, right, so you can see the
Speaker 1: fleas progress up the ladder gets up to the end
Speaker 1: of the board, jumps a couple of times, so the
Speaker 1: springboard goes up and down, and then it makes a
Speaker 1: springing sound as he jumps off right exactly dives into
Speaker 1: the water, and there's like this huge splash, which a
Speaker 1: fleet could never make a splash to begin with, but
Speaker 1: a huge one. It's just hilarious. Or I like the
Speaker 1: one the sand table. They would have a little sandbox
Speaker 1: in the fleet with the fake fleet would invisibly jump around,
Speaker 1: but it would create a little splash of sand everywhere.
Speaker 1: He dropped all over the place and again all with magnets,
Speaker 1: all fakery, Yeah, but really really clever. I get the
Speaker 1: impression he was not um not terribly old at the
Speaker 1: time when he first debuted on tv UM and in
Speaker 1: the grand tradition of flee circuses, some other people saw
Speaker 1: it and said, I want to do that too, So
Speaker 1: the Humbug Flee circus took off and became pretty popular
Speaker 1: and like the second half of the twentieth century. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I should say popular as far as flee circuses go,
Speaker 1: which is to say, not very popular, right, popular among weirdos. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I'm really kind of wondering about this Burt to Loto
Speaker 1: and his fame, like he might not have been I
Speaker 1: don't know, I mean just because he traveled the world.
Speaker 1: I mean, he could have been traveling the world performing
Speaker 1: in front of you know, sixty people a day. That's
Speaker 1: not exactly Elvis. It's true. This whole thing is under
Speaker 1: a cloud of suspicion, is Yeah. Man, it's really tough
Speaker 1: to figure out the what's from the who's in the
Speaker 1: winds and the why and the fleas from the magnets. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because once you introduced that humbug ury into it. Everything
Speaker 1: comes into question. There was, actually, though, there was a
Speaker 1: book that I want to get. It's a it's a
Speaker 1: pamphlet basically turned into a book from that a guy
Speaker 1: named Tom Palmer wrote. It's called the Famous Flee Act
Speaker 1: and it teaches you everything you need to know to
Speaker 1: do a humbug flee circus. I just want to read
Speaker 1: it just for frenzies. You know, Christmas is coming up.
Speaker 1: I bet you someone out there, I'll send that to you.
Speaker 1: I was talking to you. No, that just someone else
Speaker 1: out there. Well okay, uh my call to you. The
Speaker 1: public listening stuff. You should know. Public is another doing
Speaker 1: this in october Fest. But somebody needs to bring this
Speaker 1: back in a big way. Well a woman did in
Speaker 1: the nineties, but it didn't take for very long. But
Speaker 1: I mean it was pretty big in the nineties. Um.
Speaker 1: Her name was what is it, chuck, Maria Fernanda Cardoso.
Speaker 1: Did you read about her? You should check out her act.
Speaker 1: You didn't see the video of it. There's like a
Speaker 1: seven eight minute video of her act and apparently it's
Speaker 1: just the highlights, so I guess her act was longer
Speaker 1: and she's a performance artist, so um it was she
Speaker 1: did it at like different places like she did at
Speaker 1: the New Museum in New York and um, San Francisco
Speaker 1: and just kind of some some pretty neat places places
Speaker 1: you wouldn't expect to see a flee circus, is what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. I guess. But she used live fleece in
Speaker 1: the grand tradition of flee circuses and uh made a
Speaker 1: very beautiful, neat almost circutus so laish flee circus in
Speaker 1: the nineties. Yeah, but there's a video of it, or
Speaker 1: there's plenty of videos, I'm sure of it out there. Um,
Speaker 1: just lock her up and look for the flice circus
Speaker 1: video with with our thumbs up on it. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: you know, we kind of joked about this being cruel it. Um,
Speaker 1: it's easy to to say this is a flee so
Speaker 1: who cares. But I'm sure there are people that get
Speaker 1: up in arms about using any sort of you know,
Speaker 1: mistreating and animal for any kind of or insects, animals.
Speaker 1: Let's just say for this argument, for sure, for the
Speaker 1: entertainment of humans. You know, there's probably at least one
Speaker 1: person out there that thinks this is very cruel thing
Speaker 1: to do. Know, there's uh, there's apparently um, societies that
Speaker 1: are dedicated to preventing cruelty to insects in particular. There
Speaker 1: you haven't, and they have called specifically for flee circuses
Speaker 1: to be banned outright, And they make a pretty convincing case,
Speaker 1: especially if you don't allow yourself to stop and remind
Speaker 1: yourself that these are fleas we're talking about. But they
Speaker 1: you know, they're held in captivity their whole lives. They're held, um,
Speaker 1: they're connected by a harness that keeps them held down
Speaker 1: their entire lives. The tricks that they're performing are actually
Speaker 1: like stress behaviors, um, and they die probably prematurely. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well as what went off on fleas in the fleet episode.
Speaker 1: So I can't really say anything about that. Sure, I've
Speaker 1: had bad infestations and I had no problem grabbing them
Speaker 1: between my hands and holding them underwater until they slowly drowned. Right,
Speaker 1: They're like, please just crush me, and you say, never drown.
Speaker 1: You can't crush them. You can crush a fleet if
Speaker 1: you get it's hard eat finger nails, that's your problem.
Speaker 1: You butt your finger nails too much. Yeah, But you
Speaker 1: try to smash a flee and he just goes dying.
Speaker 1: Do do do do do do Yeah, anything else? Um,
Speaker 1: you can buy flee circuses ready made flee circuses if
Speaker 1: you want. Well, that's fun. Yeah, um like an ant.
Speaker 1: Good luck finding fleas is the thing, right, And I
Speaker 1: think that's it. Man, that's a flee circuses. Just go
Speaker 1: watch some Flee circus videos on TV or on the
Speaker 1: computer TV. You're gonna love it. Yeah, it's a good
Speaker 1: way to just dumb it down and check out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's delightful though too. Uh. Since I said it's delightful
Speaker 1: if you want to know, that's right, I got all
Speaker 1: the order I was thinking about flee circuses. If you
Speaker 1: want to know more about Flee circus's do what I
Speaker 1: just said. And you can also type those words in
Speaker 1: the search part how stuff works. And since I said
Speaker 1: it's delightful. Before it's time for a listener mail, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna call this what the writer called it, which is
Speaker 1: pick me for listener mail. Thanks from a teacher. Okay,
Speaker 1: it's hard to resist, Josh, Chuck and Jerry. And finally
Speaker 1: writing to you all. I've been listening stuff you should
Speaker 1: know for years. I think I've listened to nearly every episode,
Speaker 1: even the ones from the Dark Days. When the discussion
Speaker 1: lasted fewer than ten minutes and Josh was still looking
Speaker 1: for his perfect pot casting partner, my sister introduced me
Speaker 1: to you. So if you picked this for listener mail,
Speaker 1: please do be extremely cool. If you give my sister
Speaker 1: Laura a shout, well, that is really nice. If you
Speaker 1: chuck it is you're feeling very generous regardless. I've been
Speaker 1: meaning to email my thanks and praise for your work.
Speaker 1: I was at high school english teacher in Illinois, but
Speaker 1: recently relocated Chattanooga, Tennessee, where I've been moved on where
Speaker 1: I moved on to become a community college professor. Uh,
Speaker 1: a professor. Maybe she could train please. Your podcast has
Speaker 1: been a great supplemental teaching tool, not to mention, a
Speaker 1: guaranteed way to keep my mind occupied during long road
Speaker 1: trips to and from undergraduate and graduate school or while
Speaker 1: running with my dog. Views the episode on book banning
Speaker 1: several times while teaching to Kill a Mockingbird or informing
Speaker 1: students about Banned Book Week. I've also used the episode
Speaker 1: about police interrogation during a unit featuring Walter Dean Myer's
Speaker 1: novel Monster, about a boy who was on trial for
Speaker 1: a crime. He may not have committed that sounds good.
Speaker 1: It does, and more recently, I use a listener all
Speaker 1: about the benefits of hunting as an example of how
Speaker 1: to structure an argument. Let's hear that. I want to
Speaker 1: hear that argument. We'll shows are right back in. The
Speaker 1: students got to laugh out of Josh's comments about waiting
Speaker 1: for the deer to fall over and collecting the dead
Speaker 1: bodies instead of actually killing the animal. Anyway, Really enjoy
Speaker 1: the show, look forward to new episodes every week. If
Speaker 1: teaching doesn't work out for some reason, I think podcasting
Speaker 1: would be a pretty great career. And that is from
Speaker 1: Sarah Amato Professor Amato and uh shout out to Laura yep,
Speaker 1: her sister, Laura Amato or whatever her name is. Shout
Speaker 1: out not presuming they have the same last name. A
Speaker 1: modern guy you are anyway, you have a beard. Thanks
Speaker 1: for teaching and doing what you do, Professor Yeah, and
Speaker 1: thanks for writing in smart Thinking with the subject line word.
Speaker 1: If you want to get in touch with us, you
Speaker 1: can tweet to us. I'm a josh um Clark at
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Speaker 1: s K podcast on Twitter. Can hang out with Chuck
Speaker 1: at Charles W. Chuck Brian on Facebook or Facebook dot
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