Speaker 1: History Verses is a production of I Heart Radio and
Speaker 1: mental Flaws. You often hear Theodore Roosevelt described as larger
Speaker 1: than life, which I think we can all agree is
Speaker 1: pretty accurate. And as with many other larger than life characters,
Speaker 1: there are plenty of myths and misconceptions surrounding tr some
Speaker 1: of which were encouraged and perpetuated by Roosevelt himself. As
Speaker 1: Kathleen Dalton writes in Theodore Roosevelt's A Strenuous Life, he
Speaker 1: sought to keep his inner life and less attractive traits
Speaker 1: well hidden. He also encouraged his friends and authorized biographers
Speaker 1: to tell an upbeat, socially acceptable, stiff, upper lipped version
Speaker 1: of his life. Many of his friends and biographers obliged him.
Speaker 1: Dalton goes on to say that the guardians of his
Speaker 1: story would edit or destroy letters they deemed embarrassing, and
Speaker 1: would even hide the family secrets to present a better
Speaker 1: picture of Roosevelt's life. A lot of his fact checking
Speaker 1: stuff is to do with his legacy. There he really
Speaker 1: intertwined because these myths and legends are such a part
Speaker 1: of the story. That's mental flass. Is fact checker Austin Thompson,
Speaker 1: who has been taking a magnifying glass to stories on
Speaker 1: Mental Flasses website and to our YouTube videos for years,
Speaker 1: and he looked at every script of this podcast too.
Speaker 1: He knows better than many how complicated unraveling the truth
Speaker 1: behind history can be. So for this final bonus episode
Speaker 1: of History Versus, I couldn't wait to get him on
Speaker 1: the phone to debunk some tr myths and talk fact
Speaker 1: checking one of the most famous figures in history. I
Speaker 1: found an absolutely brilliant nineteen twelve New York Times article
Speaker 1: about Theodore Roosevelt which was saying, if you had four
Speaker 1: experts who swore that he boiled his grandmother and hat
Speaker 1: her in the eighteen nineties, he would come back with
Speaker 1: documentary proof because she actually died of the eighties. Just
Speaker 1: a quick break, or to say that. When Austin was
Speaker 1: fact checking the script, he realized that he'd misremembered what
Speaker 1: the article said. It was actually twenty experts not for okay,
Speaker 1: carry on. If you have people who swear under oath
Speaker 1: that he had a meeting with Standard Oil at this date,
Speaker 1: he would come back with a dated photograph of him
Speaker 1: talking to a mother's congress. I think I d has
Speaker 1: to do with that he does come to the White
Speaker 1: House and all the history from a perspective of being
Speaker 1: a historian. So he knows that he's great. He knows
Speaker 1: his great, everyone's His entire life has been clear. He
Speaker 1: is great. He can produce dated evidence for anything you
Speaker 1: might say he did. I think it's because he wanted
Speaker 1: to control his historical view in a way that other
Speaker 1: people wouldn't. But nowadays we wouldn't think. Is that weird.
Speaker 1: When we were putting these episodes together, the general process
Speaker 1: went like this. I came up with the themes for
Speaker 1: each episode, then put together outlines that pulled together a
Speaker 1: ton of information around those themes. In each outline were sources, quotes,
Speaker 1: and beats that I wanted to hit, along with pieces
Speaker 1: of the interviews I conducted that I wanted to include.
Speaker 1: Then the writer, sometimes me, sometimes another Mental Falls staffer,
Speaker 1: would use that outline to write the script, which would
Speaker 1: go through an editing process where myself and members of
Speaker 1: the production team would weigh in and make tweaks, and finally,
Speaker 1: before I recorded, the script would go to Austin and
Speaker 1: he'd dig in, and I mean really dig in. Not
Speaker 1: only did he find errors, Hey I'm not perfect, but
Speaker 1: He would also nearly always find some new piece of
Speaker 1: information or interesting story that I want to include. As
Speaker 1: I was researching Theodore Roosevelt and looking at all sorts
Speaker 1: of things, two things that struck me about them that
Speaker 1: when we fact checking a lot easier. The other one
Speaker 1: made it basically impossible. He mythologizes, but you can get
Speaker 1: so much information about him from other sources that aren't him.
Speaker 1: Would be like, you spent five minutes with him ten
Speaker 1: years ago, you're suddenly writing a book the time I
Speaker 1: spent with Theodore Roosevelt, the family he's staying with in Germany,
Speaker 1: who's saying, oh, he's going to be president. That all
Speaker 1: exists independent of anything he did. So he is in
Speaker 1: control of his image to a certain extent. But there's
Speaker 1: such a world that you can pretty much verify most
Speaker 1: things he's saying. And then the other thing that makes
Speaker 1: it harder is the change that we've talked about is
Speaker 1: the changing views of Theodore Roosevelt. That's like if you
Speaker 1: read something from the nineteen tenth it is a different
Speaker 1: perspective than if you read something from the n It's
Speaker 1: lucky because with Theodore Roosevelt, we have so many of
Speaker 1: his primary documentar aation, but it's still really hard to
Speaker 1: sort of sift through all of that to say that
Speaker 1: was this person saying that about Vietore Roosevelt because this
Speaker 1: is actually how it is, or just because that was
Speaker 1: the prevailing view at the time. Also, socio culturally, we
Speaker 1: like to think of history is this great monolithic thing.
Speaker 1: It happened, and now we can just kind of go
Speaker 1: back and look at bits and pieces of it. We
Speaker 1: as a culture don't. I don't think we really like
Speaker 1: to view history is having trends, that there are differences
Speaker 1: in how history is being viewed from one day to another,
Speaker 1: one culture to another. We're not talked to think of
Speaker 1: history in that way. So when you're fact checking something
Speaker 1: like the podcast scripts, do you usually try to go
Speaker 1: for the primary documentation first, or in the case of
Speaker 1: Theodore Roosevelt, when you know that he did not like
Speaker 1: to write about things that were difficult, like, for example,
Speaker 1: he didn't include his first wife in his autobiography at all.
Speaker 1: Are you looking elsewhere when you're fact checking, Well, it
Speaker 1: depends on the thing. I mean, you know, he's there
Speaker 1: to tell a story, so as long as you read it,
Speaker 1: no wing read what he says, knowing this is the
Speaker 1: story he wants you to hear. Then I always like
Speaker 1: to go back to primary sources because there's just gave
Speaker 1: r so many of them, and as I said, so
Speaker 1: many of the people who even interacted with him briefly
Speaker 1: would be writing books about the events that happened. It
Speaker 1: is when you get into more sort of obscure, especially
Speaker 1: obscure leaders or figures in history, that it does start
Speaker 1: to really became I'm a problem of how much weight
Speaker 1: are you willing to put on the secondary source. I'm
Speaker 1: sure if you read some of my podcast suggestions, there
Speaker 1: are times when it will be really awkwardly suggested, saying
Speaker 1: this person said this, and that's because I mean, it's
Speaker 1: maybe true, but these other sources say it's aren't necessarily
Speaker 1: as strong. So we often go back and forth and
Speaker 1: play like a little bit of like is this okay?
Speaker 1: What do you think about this phrasing? Because we don't
Speaker 1: want to mislead anybody, right, we want to make sure
Speaker 1: that we're that we're being accurate. I have spent ages,
Speaker 1: like I don't even know how long, debating whether a
Speaker 1: single word is correct, because it's like it does make
Speaker 1: a difference Do you want to get into some myths
Speaker 1: now or do you do you have other thoughts? I
Speaker 1: think I don't think I've got anything else that I
Speaker 1: wanted to talk about the process of fact checking. It's
Speaker 1: just kind of like you go through documents and then
Speaker 1: you try to decide is this reasonable? Is this accurate?
Speaker 1: Does this person say what this person says? Is this
Speaker 1: person correct? Is this person citing some lost documentation that
Speaker 1: was found at the top of a monastery and how
Speaker 1: during Resbekistan and then be monastery burned down, So you're
Speaker 1: relying entirely on them. It's hard tr myths coming up
Speaker 1: after the break. In the course of making this podcast,
Speaker 1: we came across a number of tr myths and misconceptions,
Speaker 1: some of which we touched upon briefly in the regular episodes,
Speaker 1: and some we just didn't have time to get to.
Speaker 1: So we figured we'd finish up this season digging deeper
Speaker 1: into a few of them. And if you're going to
Speaker 1: take onto your myths and misconceptions, you might as well
Speaker 1: start at the beginning. Everyone knows that Theodore Roosevelt was
Speaker 1: a sickly asthmatic kid who, after a directive from his father,
Speaker 1: built his body to the point where he had cured
Speaker 1: himself of asthma. Right, well, not so fast. According to
Speaker 1: Door Roosevelt, that is what's happened. But there's a really
Speaker 1: interesting paper from a couple of years ago. The misunderstood
Speaker 1: asthma of Theodore Roosevelt makes meritical interesting. So it says, no,
Speaker 1: the as moment away when he was somewhere between twelve
Speaker 1: to fifteen, and that's about the age you'd expect the
Speaker 1: asthma to lighten itself up, even if he was doing
Speaker 1: absolutely nothing. As the paper notes, this phenomenon is well
Speaker 1: recognized by clinicians today but was unknown in Tears time.
Speaker 1: Looking back at Tiers inference, it is tempting to speculate
Speaker 1: about how his misplaced sense of accomplishment may have influenced
Speaker 1: his thinking about what else he might achieve if he
Speaker 1: set his mind to solving new problems. In reality, his
Speaker 1: asthma didn't fully go away, and in fact, it sometimes
Speaker 1: reared its ugly head later on in his life. When
Speaker 1: Edith was in labor Alice, his daughter Alice remarked something
Speaker 1: like the train and my father came in wheezing. As
Speaker 1: he rushed to be by her side. He had asthma
Speaker 1: attacks throughout his entire life, but they were not as bad.
Speaker 1: According to the article. At the time, and for all
Speaker 1: of Theodore Roosevelt's life, asthma was thought to be psychosomatic.
Speaker 1: The idea that they thought at the time asthma was psychosomatic,
Speaker 1: I think probably was a really big part of why
Speaker 1: Theodore Roosevelt wanted to proclaim himself as having cured his asthma.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is a guy who thinks basically every
Speaker 1: thing is weaker than he is. So if he's truly
Speaker 1: viewing that his asthma is entirely in his head, I
Speaker 1: can make sense to me why he would then pretend
Speaker 1: that it wasn't. That's my opinion on the matter. But yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: this is one of my favorites. So there is a
Speaker 1: photo floating around on the Internet in which Theodore Roosevelt
Speaker 1: is writing a moose. So did Theodore Roosevelt ever write
Speaker 1: a moose? Well, not that we know you spent a
Speaker 1: lot of you spent a lot of time in Maine.
Speaker 1: So but now the picture is definitely fake, But it
Speaker 1: was never supposed to be viewed as real. It was
Speaker 1: from a New York Tribune and if you just take
Speaker 1: the picture by itself, it won't manly. That's awesome, But
Speaker 1: the whole stick is cast writing an elephant, Theodore Roosevelt
Speaker 1: writing a moose, and Woodrow Wilson writing a donkey. It's
Speaker 1: for the president, and they were whatever the n version
Speaker 1: of photoshopped was onto the animal of the respective party.
Speaker 1: And then I can only imagine someone found a copy
Speaker 1: of that picture and Theodore Roosevelt manly and went with it.
Speaker 1: But I think it's kind of interesting about that picture, though,
Speaker 1: is since that was debunked several years ago, is there's
Speaker 1: a secondary myths that has since emerged that the New
Speaker 1: York Tribune made up that picture as a way to
Speaker 1: help Roosevelt. Where that's not true either that there's no evidence,
Speaker 1: I mean, yea, in the picture, Theodore Roosevelt is bigger
Speaker 1: than the other two, But there's nothing in the New
Speaker 1: York Tribune to suggest that it's being done to support
Speaker 1: Roosevelt at the expense of the other candidates. But it's
Speaker 1: just a sort of weird secondary myth that emerged after
Speaker 1: the first myth was debunked. It says a lot about
Speaker 1: the president by what kind of myths surround them as
Speaker 1: we go back. So George Washington, he's not telling a lie.
Speaker 1: Abraham Lincoln, he's beating three hundred people in a wrestling match.
Speaker 1: It's a myth, but we still want to attach because
Speaker 1: it's truthfulness and ruggedness on the frontier. Meanwhile, the great
Speaker 1: myths about William how it's taffed is he gets stuck
Speaker 1: in the bathtub. So it's I think it's says a
Speaker 1: lot about Roosevelt. The misconceptions, almost all of the misconceptions
Speaker 1: we're going to be going through, they have to do
Speaker 1: with how manly he is. He by force of will
Speaker 1: he punked his asthma. He wrote a moove, and I
Speaker 1: think that saizz a lot, not about Theodore Roosevelt, but
Speaker 1: about how our view of Theodore Roosevelt he shaped. So
Speaker 1: one thing that you will often see floating around it
Speaker 1: has to do with when tr was sworn in after
Speaker 1: William McKinley was assassinated. So tr was on vacation in
Speaker 1: the mountains. McKinley takes a turn for the worse. He
Speaker 1: barrels down to Buffalo to try to make it to
Speaker 1: the president's side. The president dies and TR is sworn in.
Speaker 1: In some guy's house in Buffalo on not a Bible.
Speaker 1: And so the myth is, or the popular conception is
Speaker 1: that tr is the first president who was not sworn
Speaker 1: in on a Bible. Yeah, most of those facts are
Speaker 1: fine until you get right to the end with the
Speaker 1: Bible back. The story is just that they were in
Speaker 1: such a rush they couldn't grabbed a Bible. But the
Speaker 1: guy whose house it was Amsy Wilcox. He commented later
Speaker 1: that there were there were modes of Bibles around the house.
Speaker 1: It just didn't occur to anyone to use the Bible
Speaker 1: because that was not the tradition in the area they
Speaker 1: were in at the time. So you do have earlier
Speaker 1: that definitely didn't do a Bible. John Quincy Adams says
Speaker 1: explicitly in his diary it was on a book of law.
Speaker 1: And then they there is sort of hit or mask
Speaker 1: who's on a Bible, because most people weren't explicit in
Speaker 1: recording that until later. So I think it's the interesting
Speaker 1: one is after Theodore Roosevelt, but Calvin Coolidge when he's
Speaker 1: inaugurated after the death of Harding, he to the exact
Speaker 1: same thing, that they had a Bible at hand, but
Speaker 1: it wasn't used because that wasn't the tradition of the area.
Speaker 1: So it just would not have occurred to anyone that, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: we need to use this Bible until later. So, yes,
Speaker 1: Theodore Roosevelt was going in without a Bible. No, he
Speaker 1: wasn't the first. And despite what some seem to think, No,
Speaker 1: there's absolutely zero meaning to such a thing other than
Speaker 1: nobody thought of it half the time. But then you know,
Speaker 1: like when he was actually elected of his own accord,
Speaker 1: wasn't he sworn in on a Bible at that point? Yes,
Speaker 1: he wasn't making any point, it's just in upstate New York,
Speaker 1: they didn't use bibles in Nobody thought anything of it
Speaker 1: until afterwards, and they're like, oh, yeah, that's how you
Speaker 1: do it in the rest of the country. Okay, I
Speaker 1: have one more note here for something that, um, it's
Speaker 1: just a question mark. Tattoo question mark, And I feel
Speaker 1: like we have to talk about it because we've talked
Speaker 1: about it before. It's like cat choose and judicial recall.
Speaker 1: Those are the two stories I've been hoping to avoid. Okay,
Speaker 1: So the rumor goes that Theodore Roosevelt had a tattoo
Speaker 1: on his chest of the Roosevelt family crest, and it's
Speaker 1: everywhere but dot dot and I'll let you take it
Speaker 1: from there. Probably not, but maybe is that enough. So
Speaker 1: I spent I don't even want to think how long
Speaker 1: trying to figure out did he have a tattoo? And
Speaker 1: in the end, my guess is probably not, because there
Speaker 1: are clear descriptions of him doing things they're chested when
Speaker 1: a tattoo would have been notable, but nobody commented on
Speaker 1: end not being said, they might just not have commented
Speaker 1: on it. And there aren't many pictures of like a
Speaker 1: shirtless Roosevelt during this during the time period where he
Speaker 1: said to have the tattoo. I was really hoping that
Speaker 1: I could find his autopsy report, but turned out he
Speaker 1: didn't have enough, say after he died. So that's that's
Speaker 1: the kind of thing you have to Yeah. It just
Speaker 1: goes to show the lengths that you will go to
Speaker 1: to figure something out. Yeah. And so I then tried
Speaker 1: to trace the myth back and I don't think I
Speaker 1: was able to get the myth before the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 1: So there's like a fifty year gap where there's no
Speaker 1: mention of Theodore Roosevelt having a tattoo, then it just
Speaker 1: kind of appears, and I've never, despite lots and lots
Speaker 1: of looking, been able to close that gap. So that
Speaker 1: is not proof that he he didn't have a tattoo,
Speaker 1: but I'm pretty confident he didn't because, as I said,
Speaker 1: there were times when people are describing his bare chest
Speaker 1: and the tattoo would have been no are they and
Speaker 1: they didn't comment on it. Yeah, so we end where
Speaker 1: we begin tattoo question mark. Yeah, basically, are you sick
Speaker 1: of Theodore Roosevelt yet? No, I'm not sick of Theodore
Speaker 1: Roosevelt because he's just interesting. I mean, safely. It's such
Speaker 1: a good person for the first season of this podcast,
Speaker 1: because I'm thinking it's there aren't that many people who
Speaker 1: have reinvented themselves so many times. Most people are fairly
Speaker 1: consistent in their lives. Theodore Roosevelt, he was like never
Speaker 1: more than five six years at any one thing in
Speaker 1: his entire career, which makes him a very interesting person
Speaker 1: to research, and you just keep learning new things about him.
Speaker 1: I Mean, one of the things I find amazing about
Speaker 1: Theodore Roosevelt is that his entire life he just kind
Speaker 1: of he just kind of overshadows everyone around him. People
Speaker 1: at the time, we're saying William McKinley was essentially the
Speaker 1: next Lincoln. He was viewed as a truly great president.
Speaker 1: And now William McKinley, who yeh, he makes list of
Speaker 1: the most forgotten presidents. And that's because or Roosevelt is
Speaker 1: just this force of nature that everything around him is
Speaker 1: dimmed by his incredible head. Or Roosevelt miss yeah, a
Speaker 1: very bright light. A huge thanks to Austin Thompson for
Speaker 1: hopping on the phone to chat and for fact checking
Speaker 1: every episode of this podcast. I truly could not have
Speaker 1: done it without him. And with that, we're wrapping up
Speaker 1: this first season of the podcast. I have to be honest,
Speaker 1: we did not intend to stick with tr this long.
Speaker 1: We had initially planned to launch a new season in June,
Speaker 1: and then COVID nineteen happened and messed up all of
Speaker 1: our best laid plans. But I'm happy to announce that
Speaker 1: we'll be back in early one with a brand new
Speaker 1: season of the podcast, although it's going to be slightly
Speaker 1: different than what we did for this first season. First,
Speaker 1: we're going to be changing the name of this feed
Speaker 1: so that we can put all of our mental last
Speaker 1: podcasts here, though, we'll only be doing one season at
Speaker 1: a time, so don't worry, we won't be spamming you. Also,
Speaker 1: rather than bring you another season of History Versus, we're
Speaker 1: going to explore a different topic with a different host.
Speaker 1: But I promise it's incredibly compelling, and the host is
Speaker 1: someone you've heard on this podcast before, and there is
Speaker 1: a bit of a tr connection, so stay tuned. History
Speaker 1: Versus is hosted by me Aeron McCarthy. This episode was
Speaker 1: written by me, with fact checking by Austin Thompson. The
Speaker 1: executive producers are Aaron McCarthy, Julie Douglas, and Tyler Klang.
Speaker 1: The supervising producer is Dylan Fagin. This show is edited
Speaker 1: by Dylan Fagan and lowbro Anti. For transcripts, photos, and
Speaker 1: even more about Theodore Roosevelt, check out our website and
Speaker 1: Mental floss dot com slash History Versus. History Versus is
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio and Mental Floss. For
Speaker 1: more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your
Speaker 1: favorite shows.