Speaker 1: Hey folks, Aaron here. Over the past six months, we've
Speaker 1: dug up a lot of fascinating stories and gone on
Speaker 1: an adventure that has spanned centuries. Honestly, who could have
Speaker 1: imagined just how powerful the history of the American side
Speaker 1: show actually was. But that journey brings us to the
Speaker 1: present and to a very important question. Where is the
Speaker 1: Side Show heading next? My teammates Robin and Taylor are
Speaker 1: back today bringing you something a little bit different. Honestly,
Speaker 1: it's a story that you don't want to miss. And
Speaker 1: now on with the show. Hey Taylor, good to see
Speaker 1: you over here. Hi friend, we meet again. So this
Speaker 1: is the first time listeners are meeting you on the
Speaker 1: side of the mic. It sure is. I am Taylor Haggerdorn,
Speaker 1: producer over here. I've been lurking doing some research behind
Speaker 1: the scenes through it this see in of Grim and
Speaker 1: Mild Presents. So, Taylor, we are officially coming to a
Speaker 1: close for this season. This last episode marks the end
Speaker 1: of our sideshow story. It does, but but we've got
Speaker 1: some good news for everyone. Though we might be closing
Speaker 1: out this season for Grim and Mild Presents, there's a
Speaker 1: really big takeaway for us and for the listeners, The
Speaker 1: physical side Show story isn't over yet. That's totally right.
Speaker 1: So while this has been a history show, the side
Speaker 1: Show itself isn't history. It's still alive, it's still evolving,
Speaker 1: and it really has proven itself to be this totally
Speaker 1: dynamic institution that continues to shape itself in response to
Speaker 1: the current moment. I mean, even as we're recording this. Oh,
Speaker 1: that's so true, and that reminds me. I got an
Speaker 1: email the other day that I want to share with you.
Speaker 1: So if you remember episode seven, we talked about Bloomington, Normal, Illinois,
Speaker 1: is this really important training ground for acrobats from across
Speaker 1: the world. But what we didn't get to talk about
Speaker 1: in that episode is that Illinois State University, which is
Speaker 1: based in Normal, Illinois, has the oldest and longest running
Speaker 1: collegiate circus in the United States. They've been performing since nine.
Speaker 1: So this email that came in was announcing a return
Speaker 1: to the Big Top this year for the first time
Speaker 1: since COVID shut everything down. Oh. I love that. I
Speaker 1: know you and I have both been wondering. We've been
Speaker 1: talking about, you know, where we could go and experience
Speaker 1: some of these things I've been learning about for the
Speaker 1: past year. I mean, don't get me wrong, you know me.
Speaker 1: I love books, and I love archives, and I love
Speaker 1: being a general super sleuth. But what I really love
Speaker 1: is getting up and close and personal to experiencing the
Speaker 1: real deal. I couldn't have said about her. I feel
Speaker 1: the exact same way. You know. Really, early on in
Speaker 1: our research, I had been looking out for the real deal,
Speaker 1: you know, thinking maybe there's this living person out there
Speaker 1: who could help us tell the story not only where
Speaker 1: the side show has been, but where it's going. And
Speaker 1: then I sent you this piece that this Gale published
Speaker 1: in Box. You know, as our project was evolving and
Speaker 1: we started thinking, oh gosh, are we going to interview
Speaker 1: folks for this? Who can we bring on to help
Speaker 1: us tell this story? We just kept chatting about this piece,
Speaker 1: so it became evident that we just had to talk
Speaker 1: to her. It's exactly right. So we called up the author.
Speaker 1: We sure did so without further ado. We would love
Speaker 1: to hear from Kim Kelly, which me, are you interested
Speaker 1: in here? I'm a bunch of things. Kim's a journalist
Speaker 1: and community organizer, but recently she's become someone new, freshly
Speaker 1: minted down on the sandy shores of Coney Island. She's
Speaker 1: conjured and alter ego by the name of Greta the
Speaker 1: Lobster Girl. I've always been interested inside show history, just
Speaker 1: because they've always been interested in human history, you know,
Speaker 1: especially in like the weirder dustier corners. Of course, you
Speaker 1: know Sid has fed the bill now, I know that
Speaker 1: you can't see her, but Kim's inked just about head
Speaker 1: to toe. She's got a guillotine, a lit match, a
Speaker 1: Molotov cocktail. She's all tatted up in a way that
Speaker 1: would make any union buster quiver. But though she's tattooed
Speaker 1: all over, she still had some prime real estate left
Speaker 1: to fill. So she found herself a tattoo artist and
Speaker 1: got to work that there for four and a half
Speaker 1: hours and get a big old lobster etched into my ribs.
Speaker 1: Kim was born with extrodactility. It's the same genetic mutation
Speaker 1: carried by the Styles family, the Lobster family from our
Speaker 1: last episode. About one out of every nine babies is
Speaker 1: born with it. It often causes limbs to fuse and truncate,
Speaker 1: but it affects everyone differently. For Kim, that means she
Speaker 1: was born with eight fingers, with two of her digits
Speaker 1: on her left hand merged into one. Once I learned
Speaker 1: how to paint my nails like, it's fine, and I'm
Speaker 1: still pretty good at paint in my nails as long
Speaker 1: as I have you know, oh cute tip with no abolish,
Speaker 1: but everyone needs that. Growing up in New Jersey, she
Speaker 1: lived in a tiny working class community and went to
Speaker 1: school with the same handful of kids until she was
Speaker 1: a teenager. And as a kid, her claw was a
Speaker 1: non issue. When you're around the same kids for the
Speaker 1: first half of your life, everyone just got over it.
Speaker 1: I mean, it wasn't really that interesting because I saw
Speaker 1: like it was doing everything they were. The thing is,
Speaker 1: I did never made a big deal out of it,
Speaker 1: because I was like, well, this is well, what do
Speaker 1: you want? You want me to grow more? I tried
Speaker 1: and life was pretty good, but becoming a teenager is
Speaker 1: never that easy. She eventually went to a new school,
Speaker 1: and there she had to confront a whole flock of
Speaker 1: new faces, teachers and students who probably meant well but
Speaker 1: weren't quite sure how to accommodate her. I was just
Speaker 1: trying to figure out how to fit in, and I
Speaker 1: had to go to typing class and I sat down
Speaker 1: and I was like, oh, this is gonna be a problem.
Speaker 1: I went up to the T shirt and was like, hey,
Speaker 1: I can't do this and just kind of like waggled
Speaker 1: my fingers at her and she looked shell shocked, like
Speaker 1: oh um okay, Like, well, we'll figure this out. And
Speaker 1: the accommodation that they offered was like, okay, well you
Speaker 1: can sit off to the side and like you can
Speaker 1: look at the keyboard for tests. I basically bullied them
Speaker 1: into letting me drop the class and do homemak instead.
Speaker 1: So then I just spent the rest of the year
Speaker 1: using the sewing machines to alter my band T shirts.
Speaker 1: Worked out great. She eventually made her way out of
Speaker 1: New Jersey and into the world. She hung around in
Speaker 1: the metal scene, touring as a roadie before signing a
Speaker 1: lease in New York City. She was working as a writer,
Speaker 1: getting byelines from big name publications on topics ranging from
Speaker 1: music to labor rights to disability issues and sometimes you
Speaker 1: should know work and play intersect for Kim in really
Speaker 1: amazing ways. It was her partner, her Coney Island Baby
Speaker 1: as she calls him, who told Kim something really interesting. Now.
Speaker 1: Remember that old saying about running away to join the circus, Well,
Speaker 1: at one time there was a lot of truth to it.
Speaker 1: People did indeed do that, but Kim didn't need to
Speaker 1: take any drastic measures to get a taste of that
Speaker 1: circus life. Instead, herner told her that she could go
Speaker 1: and roll inside shows school and one right in Coney
Speaker 1: Island at that So Kim set her sights on enrolling,
Speaker 1: and even better, she thought, if she could get paid
Speaker 1: to do it. So she pitched the story and an
Speaker 1: editor gave her the green light, and just like that,
Speaker 1: it was go time. It was a muggy summer morning
Speaker 1: on Coney Island. The air smelled like salt and hot
Speaker 1: dog grease. Kim was sleepy, nervous, and didn't know what
Speaker 1: to expect, and as it happens, she didn't have to
Speaker 1: wait long to find out. I was definitely the only hustler.
Speaker 1: They're handful of people. It was such a cool mix,
Speaker 1: and some of them still in touch with There is
Speaker 1: a husband and wife duo from I think Massachusetts there
Speaker 1: and maybe they're fifties or something. They're retired and they're
Speaker 1: just kind of daredevils. They're very cool, uh, there was
Speaker 1: a magician's assistant from Colorado who had been doing amateur
Speaker 1: fire eating and had managed to poison herself at one point,
Speaker 1: so she wanted to learn how to do it for real.
Speaker 1: There was a magician from France. There was a chaos
Speaker 1: magician from Chicago. Came in. Her classmates were welcomed in
Speaker 1: by the head of school. At one point he was like, oh, now,
Speaker 1: do we have any natural boards here? And I raised
Speaker 1: my hand and never kind of turned looked to me
Speaker 1: and were like, WHOA, And I don't think they've ever
Speaker 1: had a natural born show up to take the classes.
Speaker 1: She suddenly found herself sitting a little bit taller, like
Speaker 1: it was the first sort of little lightning bolt moment
Speaker 1: where it was like, oh, this is so in this
Speaker 1: strange little world, like I'm like, I'm coming out on top.
Speaker 1: While her hand never felt like much of a detriment here,
Speaker 1: it was definitely an asset. This aspect of my existence
Speaker 1: has always been a little bit of a thorn in
Speaker 1: my side is actually regarded as something that's positive and desirable.
Speaker 1: Even for the next week, she found herself working on
Speaker 1: a bunch of new skills fire reading, sword swallowing, hammering nails,
Speaker 1: upper nose, and setting mouse traps with her tongue, just
Speaker 1: to name a few. The difference between sideshow and magic
Speaker 1: is this ship is real, like you're really sticking tenant
Speaker 1: is a steel down your throat or putting a burning
Speaker 1: torch in your mouth or walking on glass. You just
Speaker 1: have to figure out the way to do it that
Speaker 1: it won't kill you. But it wasn't just the tease
Speaker 1: of mortal injury that made this experience so exciting. It
Speaker 1: was also the fact that Kim showed up here at
Speaker 1: Coney Island at a pivotal moment in the history of
Speaker 1: American entertainment. Coney Island isn't what it used to be.
Speaker 1: In fact, it's far from it. Coney Island is a
Speaker 1: neighborhood in Brooklyn, but it was also once one of
Speaker 1: the most famous amusement destinations in the world. It was
Speaker 1: Disney World before while Disney was out of diapers, and
Speaker 1: the side show was a main draw. But the side
Speaker 1: show as we remember it in this series has fallen
Speaker 1: out of fashion in some of the most spectacular ways. Today.
Speaker 1: The side shows, with all of the trains, the glitz,
Speaker 1: the glamour, the larger than life characters have almost all
Speaker 1: but disappeared. When I go to the circus today, I
Speaker 1: feel it akin to going to colonial Williamsburg, that it's
Speaker 1: as much a um, a step back in history, museum
Speaker 1: piece as it is an actual form of entertainment. This
Speaker 1: is Dr Robert Thompson, or Bob as he likes to
Speaker 1: be called. I'm a professor of popular culture at Syracuse University.
Speaker 1: We still have traveling circuses, and we still have sideshows,
Speaker 1: but he says they're stuck in time. They just can't
Speaker 1: compete anymore. I can get way better entertainment watching nine
Speaker 1: episodes of squid Game in a row than I can
Speaker 1: watching a bunch of dogs jumping through hoops. I again
Speaker 1: apologize to the circus industry. Bob studies the history of
Speaker 1: mass entertainment television specifically, He's been doing this since the
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties, back when ABC, CBS and NBC Reigns, Supreme
Speaker 1: and weekly TV sides were a north star from millions
Speaker 1: of people. I can tease Bob about watching TV for
Speaker 1: a living, and there's a lot of truth to it,
Speaker 1: but his journey has been far more expansive. And here
Speaker 1: you mean he is far from a professional couch potato,
Speaker 1: he's a curious seeker, a professional time traveler. They quickly
Speaker 1: became apparent. To understand television, you really had to understand
Speaker 1: what had happened in radio. To understand radio, you had
Speaker 1: to understand what happened in vaudeville. To understand vaudeville, you
Speaker 1: had to understand what happened in the circus. That leads
Speaker 1: to the side show. The enduring appeal of the side show,
Speaker 1: Bob says, was that you saw stuff there that you
Speaker 1: just couldn't see anywhere else, and the fact that it
Speaker 1: came straight to your hometown was a huge deal in
Speaker 1: This formula worked for a really long time, But as
Speaker 1: the twentieth century ticked on, the American side show began
Speaker 1: to lose its hold on our attention and to lose
Speaker 1: its sparkle. The American entertainment diet was growing. There were
Speaker 1: now more in different kinds of excitement and write in
Speaker 1: our own homes too, And at the same time, conversations
Speaker 1: around disability were beginning to change. Back in the heyday
Speaker 1: of the side show, you aren't necessarily going to see
Speaker 1: disabled folks just kind of going about their day because
Speaker 1: there are very few options for that day. You're either
Speaker 1: staying at home with relatives, or you're institutionalized, or maybe
Speaker 1: you're able to participate in society if your disability was
Speaker 1: deemed acceptable. But really, the side show is one of
Speaker 1: the very few options for people who are disabled to
Speaker 1: work and get out in the world, and also for
Speaker 1: you know, people who weren't to see people disabilities out
Speaker 1: in the world. Famously, disabled President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed
Speaker 1: the Social Security Act, in which secured general welfare rights
Speaker 1: for all Americans. Medicine has advanced as a disability rights
Speaker 1: movement has made major gains. I think it's less yeah,
Speaker 1: it's less exotic to see someone who's missing a couple
Speaker 1: of bits and pieces on his stage. And in trying
Speaker 1: to protect performers, laws started cropping up outlong human exhibitions.
Speaker 1: Often this caused willing performers to lose their livelihoods. As
Speaker 1: all of these changes were implemented, Kim says, the general
Speaker 1: public began to feel more conflicted about human spectacles. Not
Speaker 1: only were they not sure if it was right to
Speaker 1: go see them, the visitors weren't sure if they wanted
Speaker 1: to be seen at the side show, and at the
Speaker 1: same time, travel was becoming easier too, and more and
Speaker 1: more car more on our road than last year, and
Speaker 1: there will be more next year. Highways have been around
Speaker 1: for a minute, but thanks to a federal push, we
Speaker 1: began to more seriously strive for roadway connectivity. In the
Speaker 1: post Second World War economic boom, people were taking to
Speaker 1: the roads in flashy new cars, recreating harder and faster,
Speaker 1: and in greater numbers than ever before. By the late
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties, more than seventy five percent of American households
Speaker 1: owned a car. Starting in nineteen sixty seven, over forty
Speaker 1: miles of interstate were constructed under the Federal Highway Administration.
Speaker 1: People didn't have to wait until the circus train showed
Speaker 1: up once a year. Now they could go find fun
Speaker 1: on their own. But in all of that, in the slippery,
Speaker 1: shifting tectonic plates of culture, one thing didn't change, the
Speaker 1: acute truth that time and attention was money, something of
Speaker 1: course that P. T. Barnum had mastered. I think Barnum,
Speaker 1: for the most part, really understood the sense that human
Speaker 1: beings liked to see things that would amaze them, and
Speaker 1: I suppose that's part of what defines us as humans
Speaker 1: is that we are curious and we are constantly looking
Speaker 1: for new stimulation. Barnum's legacy is, as you know by now,
Speaker 1: really complicated, but we can't deny that he was in
Speaker 1: the right at the right time to do what he did.
Speaker 1: What Barnum did was to simply bring together all kinds
Speaker 1: of things that were happening in the relatively young country
Speaker 1: of the United States in an era where industrialization, a
Speaker 1: new technologies, new audiences coming from all over the world
Speaker 1: in waves of immigration. All of that stuff was happening
Speaker 1: at once, and his visionary DNA, the double helix of
Speaker 1: fact and fiction that made him so rich and so infamous,
Speaker 1: can still be seen threaded throughout almost all of one
Speaker 1: century media. In fact, the side show as pe Team
Speaker 1: Barnum engineered it has simply relocated to our television sets
Speaker 1: Enter Reality TV, SMI Jam, First Person Voted off the
Speaker 1: Island Sorry. The genre has been kicking around since the
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties, and when it appeared, audiences loved the upclose
Speaker 1: and personal feel and the surprise element of it too.
Speaker 1: They clung to the alert of authenticity that they felt
Speaker 1: unscripted television could give to them. After all it was
Speaker 1: a look into other people's lives, and it's gone through
Speaker 1: many evolutions and mutations since then. Today, reality TV is
Speaker 1: a veritable treasure trove of characters. Flip through the channels
Speaker 1: and you'll find every kind of head turner, from Island
Speaker 1: Castaways two Giant Cakes, from rich Housewives to supernatural huntings,
Speaker 1: all with the press of a button. And these shows,
Speaker 1: without a doubt, have long been starmakers. They've created fortune,
Speaker 1: they've launched careers, and famously, as we saw in the
Speaker 1: presidential election, even political campaigns and baked into this kind
Speaker 1: of TV is something Quintus actually barnems clever editing big personalities,
Speaker 1: dramatic storylines which altogether make for some pretty potent optical catnip.
Speaker 1: I mean all this stuff that was completely fabricated from
Speaker 1: start to finish, because once Barnum got ahold of you,
Speaker 1: you may have been a real, living, breathing human being,
Speaker 1: but you became the actor in a very complex fiction
Speaker 1: of they're making not yours. When you agree to go
Speaker 1: on Jerry Springer, when you agreed to go on the
Speaker 1: Real World back then, you were essentially agreeing to be
Speaker 1: an actual person going onto something called reality but you
Speaker 1: were inserting yourself into a dramaturgical setting that someone else
Speaker 1: was controlling. There's a whole genre of shows where the
Speaker 1: body is center stage. Sometimes those bodies are being celebrated,
Speaker 1: and sometimes they're suffering is put on display, and other
Speaker 1: times it's somewhere in between. And maybe you've tuned into
Speaker 1: some of the programming yourself. You know My six Pound Life,
Speaker 1: My Strange Addiction, seven Little Johnston's, the Gypsy Sisters. On
Speaker 1: these shows, the cameras work like a thousand electronic barnums.
Speaker 1: They direct and even exploit our attention so that we
Speaker 1: see exactly what they want us to see. They brought
Speaker 1: us into shock, into awe, and into amazement. And it's
Speaker 1: worth acknowledging too that some of the people featured in
Speaker 1: these shows, such as Little People, Big World, are also
Speaker 1: the executive producers. This gives them varying degrees of control
Speaker 1: over their stories. We can see them as modern day
Speaker 1: air as of performers like Lavinio, Warren Zip and Frank Lentini,
Speaker 1: just to name a few. French philosopher Guide de Board
Speaker 1: wrote that we live in a world united by our
Speaker 1: consumption of two d images. He is a term for this,
Speaker 1: the society of spectacle. Here, he tells us our reality
Speaker 1: has been fractured into pieces, pieces which in turn become commodities.
Speaker 1: We work hard at appear in a certain way every
Speaker 1: time we post for a selfie or agonize over the
Speaker 1: perfect caption we perform. Performance, of course, has always been
Speaker 1: a part of social engagement, but it wasn't always captured
Speaker 1: in two dimensions. Debor proposes that we have become a
Speaker 1: world of isolated people, united only through collective exposure to
Speaker 1: the same pictures. Debor died, but his words still hit
Speaker 1: close to home at a time when we live our
Speaker 1: collective lives on the digital stage. You see long Gone
Speaker 1: or the side show barkers, but we still use their language.
Speaker 1: We still have platforms. It's just that now instead of
Speaker 1: the bally shouting for attention above the crowd, we are
Speaker 1: the ones doing the work. The folks who we all
Speaker 1: watch on these new pocket sized platforms Instagram, TikTok, YouTube
Speaker 1: are becoming the main character of their own stories. As
Speaker 1: gen Z likes to say, one person is no longer
Speaker 1: in charge of the narratives of many, as Barnum was
Speaker 1: in the case of choice, heth and in the case
Speaker 1: of Julia Pastrana, Sarkee Bartman, and countless other people who
Speaker 1: became ensnared in the Traveling sideshow world. Creators, the performers
Speaker 1: are taking back control. They produce their own content, they
Speaker 1: control their own storylines, and they make their own money.
Speaker 1: And by they, I am very likely talking about you
Speaker 1: and me. In September of the Washington Post published the
Speaker 1: story of twenty two year old Coparanga Tatoyo, a woman
Speaker 1: from the Tattoo indigenous community deep in the Amazon Rainforest.
Speaker 1: Conaparanga is her own content. She posts about her day
Speaker 1: to day life, her community, and her cultural traditions. Conaparanga
Speaker 1: has over six point four million followers, a sizeable audience
Speaker 1: Barnum could have only dreamt of. People come to learn
Speaker 1: from her, They see things they haven't seen before, and
Speaker 1: straight from the source. In the old school side show world,
Speaker 1: we've heard countless tales of Indigenou people being conscripted into labor.
Speaker 1: They've been given new names, wildly fabricated stories, and no
Speaker 1: exit plan. It's hard not to be struck by how
Speaker 1: much smaller our world has become. And now who gets
Speaker 1: to control of the story As viewers Bob says, this
Speaker 1: desire to have our attention captured is programmed into who
Speaker 1: we are. Human beings are always going to want to
Speaker 1: be amused, and I think they're probably always going to
Speaker 1: enjoy being amused more than they enjoy doing this stuff
Speaker 1: that they have to do. So Uh, entertainment is always
Speaker 1: going to be with us. I think entertainment, like sex
Speaker 1: and eating and keeping warm are is one of the
Speaker 1: properties of things human beings are always going to be
Speaker 1: looking for. Kim, on the other hand, puts it more simply.
Speaker 1: I mean, hughes are pretty simple. From the dawn of time,
Speaker 1: we wanted to see other people do crazy shit. If
Speaker 1: you were alive today, I'd have my money on Barne
Speaker 1: being out in Palo Alto somewhere, trading in his coat,
Speaker 1: tails for a hoodie and caviare for red bull. He
Speaker 1: would be knee deep in the trenches of attention economics,
Speaker 1: fine tuning those algorithms that riddle our brains with feel
Speaker 1: good hits of dopamine. He would be making big money
Speaker 1: to keep us scrolling for our next fix, and he
Speaker 1: would be very very good at it too. Barnum was
Speaker 1: able to capitalize on our very human need for novelty,
Speaker 1: and now we hold his legacy in the palm of
Speaker 1: our hands. And as for the quite literal, quite physical
Speaker 1: entity of the Side Show itself, it continues to evolve,
Speaker 1: and Kim is now part of that legacy. She would
Speaker 1: have stayed on at Coney Island Side Show had the
Speaker 1: pandemic not shuttered its doors, but she says, the form
Speaker 1: and the community will continue to innovate as technology does
Speaker 1: it always has. Over the course of the coronavirus pandemic,
Speaker 1: performers have moved into more digital spaces, making a little
Speaker 1: bit of magic in an otherwise dark time. I hope,
Speaker 1: and I think that there's always going to be an
Speaker 1: Apple date to see something a little weird and see
Speaker 1: something a little freaky. It's one thing to watch a
Speaker 1: performance on your laptop on your phone, but there's another
Speaker 1: to feel the flames on your cheeks and see the
Speaker 1: sweat pouring down someone's face when they're walking on glass.
Speaker 1: Now you can't replicate that until that time comes again.
Speaker 1: Kim keeps busy. She hasn't been keeping up on her
Speaker 1: new skills, but that's okay, yeah, right. All my nails
Speaker 1: have gone all rusty this past year from my blockhead routine.
Speaker 1: I gotta guess some new nails, COVID casualties. What we
Speaker 1: do know to be true that whatever form the Sideshow
Speaker 1: next takes and continues to take, the audience will be waiting.
Speaker 1: It just might look a little bit different. But as humans,
Speaker 1: we just can't help ourselves. For better or for worse,
Speaker 1: we can't look away. This season of Grim and Mild
Speaker 1: Presents couldn't have happened without my troop of amazing colleagues,
Speaker 1: including and not limited to, Taylor Aggernorn, Sam Alberty, Aaron
Speaker 1: Minky and her friends over at iHeart Media, Alex Williams,
Speaker 1: Josh Thane, and Jesse Funk. I'm Robin Minteer, your host
Speaker 1: today and writer and producer of the series. To learn
Speaker 1: more about the side show, head on down to Coney
Speaker 1: Island or visit the P. T. Barna Museum in Bridgeport, Connecticut,
Speaker 1: or even the Barnam Archives at Tufts University. And while
Speaker 1: you're there, go say hi to Jumbo. A special thanks
Speaker 1: to Casta Alba, Carl Nellis, Dr Bob Thompson, and Kim Kelly,
Speaker 1: who all helped give this season just a little more shine.
Speaker 1: But Grim and Mild Presents isn't over yet, and if
Speaker 1: you stick around for just a few more minutes, we'll
Speaker 1: give you a preview of what's ahead. Everyone loves a
Speaker 1: good story, and since you're listening, chances are you're also
Speaker 1: fond of pirates. From sailing the high seas and buried
Speaker 1: tre pisure to swilling rum and singing shanties, pirates have
Speaker 1: come to represent a lot about the human spirit. Through
Speaker 1: the centuries, we've fallen in love with adventure, danger and exploration. Honestly,
Speaker 1: we never tire of hearing about pirate life. In Sweden,
Speaker 1: for example, there's a story that's been handed down from
Speaker 1: generation to generation, and like other pirate tales the world over,
Speaker 1: people love it so much they don't care whether it's
Speaker 1: true or not. The story goes that back in the
Speaker 1: fifth century, there was once a mighty Scandinavian king with
Speaker 1: a lovely daughter, young Princess a wildness. Beauty was such
Speaker 1: that her father, King Sanartis, locked her away in a tower.
Speaker 1: For her protection, of course, and to ensure that no
Speaker 1: ordinary man could easily scale the tower, he surrounded it
Speaker 1: with deadly snakes and traps. While many men failed. Prince
Speaker 1: Alf of Denmark succeeded in breaching the castle and then
Speaker 1: asked the king for his daughter's hand in marriage, to
Speaker 1: which the king agreed. They had a problem. Though the
Speaker 1: princess had vanished from the tower, you see, a Wilda's
Speaker 1: beauty was matched only by her feistiness and sense of independence.
Speaker 1: With her mother's help, the princess had made her escape,
Speaker 1: accompanied by her strong willed handmaidens and other young women, who,
Speaker 1: much like the princess, were also promised to men they
Speaker 1: had never met. They dressed as sailors and made off
Speaker 1: with a ship, deciding to explore the world, and during
Speaker 1: their travels, the women came across a pirate ship that
Speaker 1: had recently lost its captain. Enamored with a Wilda and
Speaker 1: her crew, the men voted her to be their new leader,
Speaker 1: knowing that her father still searched for her. A Wilda
Speaker 1: and the other women wore helmets to hide their long hair.
Speaker 1: The princess, pirates and her crew earned a fierce reputation
Speaker 1: raiding many merchant ships on the Scandinavian seas, and like
Speaker 1: all pirates, they soon had a bounty on their heads.
Speaker 1: The King of Denmark placed his son alf in charge
Speaker 1: of the navy sent him to eliminate the troublesome pirates.
Speaker 1: The prince quickly located them, and a great battle ensued.
Speaker 1: While his crew engaged with a Wilda's, he and the
Speaker 1: princess faced each other, swords drawn. They dueled, neither of
Speaker 1: them getting the better of the other. Having become impressed
Speaker 1: with her rival and seeing something familiar about him, a
Speaker 1: Wilda removed her helmet. The prince instantly recognized the princess
Speaker 1: and dropped to one knee to propose, which she accepted.
Speaker 1: Of course, the battle ended and a wedding took place instead.
Speaker 1: A Wilda's pirate ship and Alf's naval fleet returned side
Speaker 1: by side to Denmark. The newlyweds were welcome to Denmark
Speaker 1: with a lot of fanfare. A message was sent to
Speaker 1: King Sanartis, who was also pleased with the marriage. A
Speaker 1: Wilda and Alf went on to have a daughter together,
Speaker 1: and it was said that she was just as beautiful
Speaker 1: and fierce as her mother, And when the king died,
Speaker 1: the couple ruled long and well and all. Our fictional
Speaker 1: introduction story is the stuff worthy of a Disney movie.
Speaker 1: We're about to embark on a different sort of journey
Speaker 1: a historical adventure into the most legendary real life rogues
Speaker 1: of the seas. I'm Aaron Mankey, and welcome two pirates.