Speaker 1: Guess what will? What's that mango? So this week I
Speaker 1: was watching Dr Seuss with my kids and I started
Speaker 1: wondering where did Dr SEUs get his inspiration? I mean
Speaker 1: between the green eggs and him, or like a grinch
Speaker 1: who actually steals Christmas an elephant who hatches an egg
Speaker 1: exactly like Like, they're wonderful ideas, but they are not normal.
Speaker 1: So I looked it up and uh, here's what he
Speaker 1: had to say about it. Quote. I get all my
Speaker 1: ideas in Switzerland, near the forka pass. There's a little
Speaker 1: town called Gletch, And two thousand feet up above Gletch
Speaker 1: there's a smaller hamlet called Ubergletch. I go there on
Speaker 1: the fourth of August every summer to get my cuckoo
Speaker 1: clock fixed. And while the cuckoo is in the hospital,
Speaker 1: I wander around and talk to the people in the streets.
Speaker 1: They are very strange people, and I get my ideas
Speaker 1: from them. Of course, so apparently he hated the question
Speaker 1: where do you get your ideas? And you got to
Speaker 1: ask so much This is the answer he came up with.
Speaker 1: But today's nine Things is all about everyone's favorite doctor,
Speaker 1: Doctor SEUs, So let's dive in good y, hey their
Speaker 1: podcast listeners, Welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson
Speaker 1: and as always I'm joined by my good friend man
Speaker 1: Ticketer and sitting behind that soundproof glass refusing to eat
Speaker 1: his breakfast, even though you know what we've provided him with,
Speaker 1: what a box and a fox. I think he might
Speaker 1: prefer it with a boat and a goat. I guess so. Well,
Speaker 1: that's our friend and producer Tristan McNeil. And actually he's
Speaker 1: on the other side of some new soundproof glass. So
Speaker 1: much happening here at how stuff works that we're actually
Speaker 1: in a brand new studio. I think they called this.
Speaker 1: They call it a whisper room, Is that right? Yeah,
Speaker 1: but they haven't named it after rock Star yet. Okay,
Speaker 1: so we have we have Bowie, and we have Eno
Speaker 1: and now we're waiting to name this one. Huh. Okay,
Speaker 1: all right, Well we'll let Tristan decide what that's gonna be,
Speaker 1: because he's pretty bossy. All right, Well, man, go back
Speaker 1: to are a topic. I know you're a fan of
Speaker 1: Dr SEUs. I'm a huge fan of Dr SEUs. But
Speaker 1: do you have a favorite fact about him? Definitely? So
Speaker 1: you know, we've both read a lot of little things
Speaker 1: about him over the years, and there's so many cute
Speaker 1: facts like he, uh, he wore bow ties because they
Speaker 1: were harder to spill soup on, or he actually had
Speaker 1: hundreds of hats that he kept hidden, but he pulled
Speaker 1: him out for dinner parties. But my favorite thing about
Speaker 1: him is that his doctor told him he had to
Speaker 1: quit smoking, and he had this little pipe that he used,
Speaker 1: but instead of smoking with it, he potted a little
Speaker 1: p plant in it, and a friendly like some people
Speaker 1: say it's a strawberry plan. Some people say it was
Speaker 1: like a radish plant. I guess, But whatever the case was,
Speaker 1: whenever he had an urge to smoke, he'd actually take
Speaker 1: out a little medicine dropper and feed his little pipe. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I just think it's one of my favorite little facts
Speaker 1: about him. Yeah, I like that. But you know, the
Speaker 1: thing I always get stuck on is the fact that
Speaker 1: he didn't have any kids, and apparently he and his
Speaker 1: wife Helen had tried to conceive but they couldn't. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it actually heard that, And also that he was scared
Speaker 1: of kids, like he had this quote, you make them,
Speaker 1: I amuse them. Well, I think he thought they were unpredictable,
Speaker 1: and you know, found them a little hard to be around.
Speaker 1: But he'd also get annoyed when his friends would talk
Speaker 1: endlessly about their kids, so he made up a couple
Speaker 1: of his own, just to drop in a conversation. I
Speaker 1: had never heard that. Yeah, sometimes he'd signed their names
Speaker 1: on this Christmas card, so you might see, you know,
Speaker 1: his and his wife's name, but then also kids like
Speaker 1: Norval and Wally and Wickersham and Snud of course. But
Speaker 1: the pride of his family was little Chrysanthemum Pearl, the
Speaker 1: daughter he'd boast about the most, and apparently she was
Speaker 1: super precocious for an imaginary child at least, and made
Speaker 1: a quote most delicious oyster stew with chocolate frosting and
Speaker 1: flaming Roman candles. He even dedicated a book tour the
Speaker 1: five hundred Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins. That's really funny, and
Speaker 1: I've actually never heard that before. Actually, speaking of things
Speaker 1: I hadn't heard before, there's this story that Mark Mancini
Speaker 1: wrote for Mental Fluss, and it's about the time Teddy
Speaker 1: Roosevelt traumatized a young Theodore geisl which which is I
Speaker 1: guess Dr Seuss real name. That's right, you know, because
Speaker 1: SEUs was actually his middle name, and it's supposed to
Speaker 1: be pronounced I think zoice, right, Yeah, that's right. It
Speaker 1: was a pen name he adopted over the years, and
Speaker 1: even though people mispronounced it, he kind of liked it
Speaker 1: better as Zeus because it rhymed with mother goose, so
Speaker 1: he accepted the mispronunciation. But uh, back to my stories. So,
Speaker 1: during World War One, the Boy Scouts started selling war
Speaker 1: bonds to help the forces abroad, and a young Teddy
Speaker 1: Geyzell decided to join in the efforts and prove his patriotism.
Speaker 1: He was actually of German heritage, so he felt he
Speaker 1: had something extra proven. Remember this is when like sauerkraut
Speaker 1: was being rebranded as Liberty cabbage, so there's a lot
Speaker 1: of anti German sentiment. Anyway, As part of Troop thirteen
Speaker 1: of Springfield, mass geis Ll sold over a thousand dollars
Speaker 1: worth of bonds. And this is way back in Yeah
Speaker 1: that's a lot of money. Yeah, certainly, so, like any fundraiser,
Speaker 1: his grandparents actually kicked in a lot of dough to help.
Speaker 1: But he did so well that the Boy Scouts decided
Speaker 1: to honor him and nine other boys for their work,
Speaker 1: and they sent Teddy Roosevelt to town. But the problem
Speaker 1: was they only gave tr like nine medals, and when
Speaker 1: Dr Seuss walked on stage, he was the last one
Speaker 1: to get his, and Teddy Roosevelt didn't have a medal
Speaker 1: for him, so he just yelled what's this boy doing here?
Speaker 1: And then this other parent like instead of explaining the situation,
Speaker 1: he just whisked him off and uh, and apparently Dr
Speaker 1: SEUs was just totally humiliated. That's like, that's kind of
Speaker 1: sad though. Yeah, I mean, I guess it is kind
Speaker 1: of an honor to get barked up by Teddy Roosevelt,
Speaker 1: but it must have been in volmer. Yeah. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: one thing I love about Dr SEUs is that that
Speaker 1: wasn't the only time he actually got in trouble. And
Speaker 1: this is kind of a well known story, but back
Speaker 1: when he was in college at Dartmouth, he was actually
Speaker 1: kicked off the college humor paper for being caught with
Speaker 1: a bottle of gin. And that this was during prohibition,
Speaker 1: of course, and he was actually the editor in chief
Speaker 1: at the time, and his grandfather was a brewer, so
Speaker 1: if anyone could get his hands on alcohol during that time,
Speaker 1: it would be Geyzell. But but that didn't stop him
Speaker 1: from writing and drawing. And it's actually when he started
Speaker 1: playing with pseudonyms, and he continued work under names like
Speaker 1: THEO Lessa, which is his name backwards, THEO fast as
Speaker 1: SEUs or Rosetta Stone and then of course later Dr Seuss.
Speaker 1: And also I don't know if you knew this, but
Speaker 1: he did a stint at Oxford after college. He was
Speaker 1: doing his masters there. I had no idea he'd spent
Speaker 1: time in Oxford. Yeah, that's actually where he met his
Speaker 1: first wife. But then he returned to the US to
Speaker 1: start his work as an illustrator. But why don't we
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about some of our favorite books? Definitely,
Speaker 1: So one book I loved as a kid and I
Speaker 1: had actually heard a political rumor about was Marvin K. Mooney,
Speaker 1: Will you please go Now? And it's about someone telling
Speaker 1: little Marvin the millions of ways he can and should
Speaker 1: definitely go, and then at the end he finally leaves.
Speaker 1: But the rumor I had heard about it was about
Speaker 1: Richard Nixon. So it came out two months after Watergate,
Speaker 1: which is what made people think the two were connected.
Speaker 1: Though it's highly unlikely that SEUs could have written it
Speaker 1: and put it out in time to coordinate with that.
Speaker 1: I mean, SUSI used to work for eight hours a
Speaker 1: day on his books, and it often took him like
Speaker 1: a year and a half to two years to be
Speaker 1: happy with them. So it was more of a happy coincidence,
Speaker 1: but one that he was actually happy to indulge. And
Speaker 1: when the book came out, he sent a copy of
Speaker 1: the book to his friend, the political humor columnist Art
Speaker 1: buck Walt, and uh, he crossed out the name Marvin K.
Speaker 1: Mooney and added Richard M. Nixon throughout it. And buck
Speaker 1: Walt actually printed the whole book as a column, which
Speaker 1: you know, only hidened the rumors. But what's funny is
Speaker 1: that the book keeps resurfacing from time to time, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, with new politicians in his place. So it
Speaker 1: was actually used for Mubarak in Egypt recently, and Maureen
Speaker 1: Dowd referenced it in relation to the Clintons. Wow, I
Speaker 1: had not heard that before. All right, well, here's something
Speaker 1: I had learned while researching The Cat and the Hat.
Speaker 1: This week, not every week, you get the research. That's
Speaker 1: what I love about her jobs. But Apparently the inspiration
Speaker 1: started with an article in Life magazine. Now this was
Speaker 1: in nineteen fifty four, and it was by a writer
Speaker 1: named John Hershey, and this is from biography dot com.
Speaker 1: So Hershey writes, quote, in the classroom, boys and girls
Speaker 1: are confronted with books that have insipid illustrations depicting the
Speaker 1: slicked up lives of other children, all feature abnormally courteous,
Speaker 1: unnaturally clean boys and girls. In bookstores, anyone can buy brighter,
Speaker 1: livelier books featuring strange and wonderful animals and children who
Speaker 1: behave naturally and sometimes misbehave. So an editor read that
Speaker 1: and invited Dr SEUs over. And at the time he
Speaker 1: was more of an ad exact and a political cartoonist,
Speaker 1: and he said, write me a book that kids can't
Speaker 1: put down. And the Cat in the Hat is the
Speaker 1: result of that conversation. That's pretty awesome. I've actually read
Speaker 1: something about how one of the things Dr SEUs is
Speaker 1: proudest of was killing off the boring Dick and Jane series,
Speaker 1: I think so I read that too, and he really
Speaker 1: tried to infuse a bit of mischief, and he wanted
Speaker 1: the kids to be inspired by the cat. You know,
Speaker 1: to revolt against authority, but not too much. They of
Speaker 1: course clean up the mess at the end of the story.
Speaker 1: But the other funny thing I learned was that the
Speaker 1: fish in the story, who's you know, kind of the
Speaker 1: kid's conscious, but is also a doomsday character. He was
Speaker 1: modeled after Cotton Math or you know that the Puritan minister.
Speaker 1: And like you said, you know, SEUs really worked hard
Speaker 1: at that book, and it's not easy to make something
Speaker 1: come pelling with less than two hundred and fifty words.
Speaker 1: But after a year and a half's worth of work,
Speaker 1: the book published and it was an immediate bestseller. I
Speaker 1: love that. But let's take a quick break and then
Speaker 1: do our last two facts. Welcome back to Part Time Genius.
Speaker 1: Now we're talking about doctor SEUs, so Mango. Obviously, there's
Speaker 1: too much to cover, No way we could cover this
Speaker 1: in just one nine things. We might have to come
Speaker 1: back to this as a full length episode at some point.
Speaker 1: But but what do you want to cover for your
Speaker 1: final fact? So, I mean, I know there's a lot
Speaker 1: to say about the lorax or the sneeches and how
Speaker 1: it was actually written because it inspired the civil rights movement,
Speaker 1: but uh, the story I want to talk about is
Speaker 1: that without doctor SEUs we wouldn't actually have the Barren
Speaker 1: Steine Bears. Really. Yeah, So apparently the Barren scenes were
Speaker 1: inspired by a New Yorker profile of doctor SEUs that
Speaker 1: was just written about how he's launching this new imprint
Speaker 1: for Random House. And apparently once they submitted their entry,
Speaker 1: he took to the couple immediately, and of course he
Speaker 1: had lots of notes for them. He actually shortened their
Speaker 1: author's names from Stanley and Janice to stan and jan
Speaker 1: so they kind of had where that sous r. And
Speaker 1: he asked them to make their rhymes in the books
Speaker 1: with more consonants and less contractions because it was easier
Speaker 1: for kids. He also thought kids want more details from
Speaker 1: the books, so so he actually asked them to think about,
Speaker 1: like what type of tobacco does Papa Bear smoke, which
Speaker 1: you know is one of these details that kids might love,
Speaker 1: but it's funny to think about because you know, you
Speaker 1: don't want to talk to kids about tobacco. But mostly
Speaker 1: he tried to get the story to move, and he
Speaker 1: asked them to put something compelling on every page. And
Speaker 1: the Berenstein's first they wanted to do a follow up
Speaker 1: book about penguins, but their book did so well that
Speaker 1: they've actually done hundreds of books ever since. I remember
Speaker 1: seeing this, uh, this interview about why they chose to
Speaker 1: write about bears, and I think it was stand that said,
Speaker 1: you know, something to the effect of, you know, we
Speaker 1: we chose bears because they can stand up on hind
Speaker 1: legs and they look good in clothes or something like that.
Speaker 1: I like that. I mean, it's also funny to me
Speaker 1: that SEUs commissioned this very sweet book on bears and morals.
Speaker 1: But the books he actually loved the most for those
Speaker 1: by Maury Sendak, because they're darker and more of what
Speaker 1: he related to as a kid. Yeah, but what's your
Speaker 1: last fact? All right? Well, like you said, there's so
Speaker 1: much good stuff about Dr. Sus. I definitely think we
Speaker 1: can do a full episode on the Grinch who Stole
Speaker 1: Christmas Eve. So this is super short of all Dr
Speaker 1: Seus's many accomplishments. Do you know what he was most
Speaker 1: proud of? I don't know. Maybe that Gerald mcboying Boyne cartoon,
Speaker 1: or or that he was the first person to win
Speaker 1: a Pulitzer for writing children's books. He would think, I mean,
Speaker 1: that seems like a pretty decent accomplishment. But you know,
Speaker 1: the thing he was proud of stuff was donating the
Speaker 1: lion waiting pool at the San Diego Zoo, Like so
Speaker 1: who's actually had a history with zoo's And he of
Speaker 1: course wrote the book If I Ran the Zoo, which
Speaker 1: you know, is famous for the first use of the
Speaker 1: word nerd. So we have him to you know for that,
Speaker 1: that's a big one. But his dad also managed the
Speaker 1: zoo when he was a it and he'd go down
Speaker 1: and draw the animals there and it's part of where
Speaker 1: he learned to love to draw. That makes me smile,
Speaker 1: and it's definitely something I didn't know before today's episodes.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna give you the trophy, thank you so much,
Speaker 1: but actually, you know what, I think Dr Seuse deserves
Speaker 1: the trophy. So we're just going to voice this to
Speaker 1: Dr Seuse. Thank you guys for listening, and we'll be
Speaker 1: back with a full length episode tomorrow