Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know.
Speaker 2: A production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 3: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's
Speaker 3: Chuck and it's just us today. Jerry's out on vacation.
Speaker 3: I mean, she's at a conference, and this is the
Speaker 3: stuff you should know.
Speaker 1: That's right, This was your idea, and something about it
Speaker 1: just smacks of kind of classic stuff you should know
Speaker 1: where we talk about a bygone era in a way.
Speaker 3: And so yeah, we're talking about world's fairs today. Depending
Speaker 3: on where you are in the world, you might call
Speaker 3: them international expositions, universal expositions, you might just call them
Speaker 3: expose if you're pressed for time. Sure, And I thought, maybe, Chuck,
Speaker 3: we would just do this entire episode in gibberish that
Speaker 3: only you and I can understand.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a great idea.
Speaker 3: This is the one. We're finally gonna do.
Speaker 1: It, all right, let's do it.
Speaker 3: On second thought, let's not do it. Let's not do
Speaker 3: it all right. So well, let's set the stage then
Speaker 3: in plain English. It's hard to kind of understand now,
Speaker 3: because we live in a world, and generally grew up
Speaker 3: in a world that if we didn't have internet when
Speaker 3: we were kids, we still had television, cable television, no less.
Speaker 3: Before that, generations had radio and then yes, now today
Speaker 3: we can basically go anywhere see anything, even stuff you
Speaker 3: don't want to see, because everyone generally has access to
Speaker 3: the internet, right. Yeah, before all of this, like being
Speaker 3: exposed to new ideas, new things, seeing what the latest
Speaker 3: cutting edge stuff was, that was not a common thing
Speaker 3: for the average person, Like you just did not see
Speaker 3: that kind of stuff, and that was generally the role
Speaker 3: that World's fairs played.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was that, And like every time I was
Speaker 1: reading about the different ones from the different nations, it
Speaker 1: was very much like, hey, look at how great we're doing, right,
Speaker 1: you know, Like I mean obviously trying to supur commerce
Speaker 1: and trade and stuff like that, but a lot of
Speaker 1: it was sort of showing off.
Speaker 3: It was showing off. It was showing off, like all
Speaker 3: the technological prowess and all the future ideas that are
Speaker 3: coming down the pike that each country was working on.
Speaker 3: There was lots of corporate exhibits eventually, and it sounds
Speaker 3: to me like a cool place to have been. Yeah,
Speaker 3: Like if I had a big list to pick from
Speaker 3: of stuff I could go time travel too, I would
Speaker 3: probably go to a couple of these.
Speaker 1: Oh all right, so Woodstock, the inauguration of Jimmy Carter
Speaker 1: and the World's Fair.
Speaker 3: That's right. Well, let's get into the history of this,
Speaker 3: shall we.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because they didn't start as World's fares. If you
Speaker 1: want to track the prehistory, you got to go to
Speaker 1: the National Affairs. Sure, England was holding these in the
Speaker 1: seventeen hundreds, barely. I think seventeen fifty four was the
Speaker 1: first real one when the what would later be the
Speaker 1: Royal Society for Arts, but before they got Royal, I
Speaker 1: guess they were just the Society for Arts. They had
Speaker 1: different shows and it was sort of like, I mean,
Speaker 1: this was the seventeen hundred, so it was the technology
Speaker 1: of the time was like, hey, look at this cool
Speaker 1: new loom, or look at this new cool way we
Speaker 1: can press cider.
Speaker 3: Yes, and there was this kind of this new idea
Speaker 3: called industrial arts, which was essentially designing and inventing new technology.
Speaker 3: And yeah, it was old timey, but for the time
Speaker 3: it was pretty cutting edge. And this is what laid
Speaker 3: the kind of the foundation for the idea of what
Speaker 3: a World's Fair is all about, which is, look at
Speaker 3: all the technological progress we're making. It I saw that
Speaker 3: it was essentially inextricably tied together with the industrial Revolution,
Speaker 3: that that's really what kind of gave them the oomph needed, you.
Speaker 1: Know, steampowered oomph.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1: I guess not yet, but steam is coming. Don't worry.
Speaker 1: France would get involved. They saw what England was doing
Speaker 1: where they're like, well, we can't let them best us.
Speaker 1: So they started holding theirs also in the late eighteenth century,
Speaker 1: and both of them again were like marketing themselves sort
Speaker 1: of abroad but also to their own people, like hey,
Speaker 1: look at how great we're doing the rest of France.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you can feel good about being French. Yeah, in
Speaker 3: France becomes like basically the apex of world's fairs eventually
Speaker 3: or international expositions. But England kind of took the crown
Speaker 3: back first. And Prince Albert, Queen Victoria's husband, who was
Speaker 3: of German ancestry or what we now call Germany and
Speaker 3: who we have to thank for Christmas. So thank you
Speaker 3: Prince Albert. Oh yeah, he hosted the Great Exhibition of
Speaker 3: the Works of Industry of All Nations in eighteen fifty one,
Speaker 3: and this was what basically everyone who knows about world's
Speaker 3: Fairs knows anything about Worlds Fairs, says this was the
Speaker 3: first World's Fair.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, one calls it the Great Exhibition of the
Speaker 1: Works of the industry of all nations, right except for
Speaker 1: us because we're being technical. Because everyone calls it the
Speaker 1: Crystal Palace exhibition because that's where they built the Crystal Palace.
Speaker 1: It was in Hyde Park from May to October eighteen
Speaker 1: fifty one. And they wanted a real you know, and
Speaker 1: you'll see this as a trend, like they really wanted
Speaker 1: to knock people's socks off when they arrive and when
Speaker 1: you arrived at this you know, kind of glorified greenhouse.
Speaker 1: And in fact it was built by a greenhouse builder
Speaker 1: named Joseph Paxton. But it was eighteen acres of glass
Speaker 1: and iron and steel and it was it created eight
Speaker 1: miles of display space, and it was like super impressive.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was a real ring and ding ding greenhouse.
Speaker 3: I mean, an eighteen acre greenhouse is not easy to make, right,
Speaker 3: So yes, it knocked everyone's socks off for sure. You
Speaker 3: said there's eight miles worth of display space inside. So
Speaker 3: it was also capable of holding fourteen thousand exhibits. Yeah, man,
Speaker 3: about half of them were from Britain, and one of
Speaker 3: the reasons that Prince Albert wanted to do this is
Speaker 3: because he wanted to drum up interest in Europe in
Speaker 3: particular for imports from Britain.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he was like, hey, we got a bunch of
Speaker 3: good stuff. Once you come over and see it, and
Speaker 3: then you can place your orders on your way out
Speaker 3: the door.
Speaker 1: I wonder if they could you really place orders? I'll
Speaker 1: bet you d you think so.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So there was about five hundred and sixty exhibits
Speaker 3: from the US, and one of them was the cult
Speaker 3: repeating pistol, and I guarantee you could have been like,
Speaker 3: I want to order some of those, give me some
Speaker 3: right now so I can shoot in the air in
Speaker 3: the Crystal Palace.
Speaker 1: I bet you could have left there with a cult
Speaker 1: repeating pistol if you had enough money.
Speaker 3: Probably yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah. But I promised steam, and that is that first
Speaker 1: one is where the steam engine was officially debuted, as
Speaker 1: well as the automated cotton mule. Sure for spinning France.
Speaker 1: You know, I think you said US had five sixty.
Speaker 1: France had seventeen hundred and sixty exhibits. In addition to
Speaker 1: the cult repeating pistol. Did you mention chewing tobacco? I
Speaker 1: did not, And that's where we debuted as a nation. Hey,
Speaker 1: look what we've come up with, chewing tobacco, which I
Speaker 1: imagine we stole from indigenous peoples here.
Speaker 3: Yes, but we really kind of americanized that the person
Speaker 3: running that booth had to dance back and forth, pumping
Speaker 3: its fist like a prospector the whole.
Speaker 1: Time, right, and dance on maybe artificial legs, because artificial
Speaker 1: legs were debuted by the United States there.
Speaker 3: That's right. We really just had one exhibit and they
Speaker 3: were everything compressed together.
Speaker 1: Guy dancing on artificial egg shooting his pistol in the
Speaker 1: air to in tobaccy.
Speaker 3: Yep, that's exactly right. So yeah, this is obviously a
Speaker 3: huge hit. It actually made money for the organizers, which
Speaker 3: was not the case for all the world's fairs to come.
Speaker 3: But because of that a lot of people around the
Speaker 3: world were like, hey, I want to get in on this,
Speaker 3: and Paris said we're first. There was one in Dublin,
Speaker 3: there was one in Cork, there was one in Munich,
Speaker 3: there was one in New York. But really everything kind
Speaker 3: of moved over to Paris when they said we're over here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. I mean the other ones were legit
Speaker 1: World's Fairs. I think the one in New York in
Speaker 1: eighteen fifty three through I think November eighteen fifty four.
Speaker 1: That was a long one July to November. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: Exhibition of the Industry of All Nations. In that case,
Speaker 1: they did okay, but they were They clearly copied the
Speaker 1: Crystal Palace. They built their own there in Bryant Park,
Speaker 1: but they lost money. I think the first US one
Speaker 1: to make any kind of hey was the one in
Speaker 1: Philly in eighteen seventy six.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, that was a centennial exhibition where the typewriter
Speaker 3: was invented Alexander Graham Bell demonstrated the telephone. There was
Speaker 3: also the largest steam engine ever. Yeah, apparently still holds
Speaker 3: the record. It was a seven hundred tons steam engine
Speaker 3: called the Corliss Engine. It took sixty five railroad cars
Speaker 3: to deliver it to the exhibition in Philadelphia, and when
Speaker 3: they turned it on, all of the machines at the
Speaker 3: World's Fair came to life because they were all being
Speaker 3: powered by the steam engine in the center of the
Speaker 3: whole place.
Speaker 1: That's a pretty fun little knock your socks off moment.
Speaker 3: It is pretty cool.
Speaker 1: I think, like everyone's standing around. Well, I guess it
Speaker 1: was still it wasn't powering lights at the time, was it. No,
Speaker 1: not yet, Okay, because we're yeah, that happens, it's coming,
Speaker 1: everybody coming.
Speaker 3: Yeah, But this whole thing it really I mean, it
Speaker 3: attracted ten million people and it was a it was
Speaker 3: a big one. So I guess I got ahead of myself.
Speaker 3: Paris hadn't come. Yeah, I'm just really excited about Paris
Speaker 3: taking over for some reason.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean they took over in a big way.
Speaker 1: They hosted eight of them between eighteen fifty five and
Speaker 1: nineteen thirty seven, and a lot of theirs like most
Speaker 1: other nations when they hosted, the government kind of really hosted.
Speaker 1: In America, it was a lot of like corporate entities
Speaker 1: from the beginning along with the government, but Paris really
Speaker 1: took it to a political sort of apex by like
Speaker 1: Napoleon really was showing off in the first and second ones,
Speaker 1: like look how great I am, and look at all
Speaker 1: the great things I've done. The third one, I think
Speaker 1: in eighteen seventy eight, was like, hey, you know, we're
Speaker 1: doing fine. We've recovered from the Franco Prussian War and
Speaker 1: all this internal violence of the Paris Commune, and like
Speaker 1: we're still doing great, look at us.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I mean that was a big part of
Speaker 3: those European ones. Like you said, the Paris ones also
Speaker 3: more charmingly, had fountains, Like almost all of them had
Speaker 3: a really cool fountain, and a lot of those fountains
Speaker 3: are left over. There's one from eighteen eighty nine called
Speaker 3: the Fountain of Progress, and it is the first water
Speaker 3: feature to have electric lights inside that shined up from underwater,
Speaker 3: which to me is still quite impressive.
Speaker 1: You had, do you think when they debuted it, they
Speaker 1: were like, and we're gonna have Jacques stand in the
Speaker 1: fountain while we turned it on. We're pretty sure it's
Speaker 1: gonna work, right.
Speaker 3: No one likes shock anyway, so don't worry.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it all worked out for shock though. Now. But
Speaker 1: I'm still like when I see a swimming pool light,
Speaker 1: I know it's housed in a thing, but I don't know.
Speaker 1: It all just vaguely makes me nervous.
Speaker 3: It does, for sure, I get that. But the ones
Speaker 3: in the fountains, they never make me nervous. They just
Speaker 3: look so cool to me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because you're not in the fountain.
Speaker 3: No, no, so it doesn't matter if it's like buzzing
Speaker 3: with electricity.
Speaker 1: Have you ever been to Rome, Italy?
Speaker 3: Have It's one of my favorite towns.
Speaker 1: Seen that Trevy Fountain? I do?
Speaker 3: Is that the one with all the yes? I have?
Speaker 1: Yeah? You didn't go to Rom and not see the Trivyountain? Right?
Speaker 3: Yeah? It was pretty amazing. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think that has lights in it.
Speaker 3: I'm sure it does.
Speaker 1: Or at least around it. The thing was lit up.
Speaker 1: I was there at night and it wasn't dark.
Speaker 3: I was there during the day, so I couldn't tell you.
Speaker 1: Okay, I gotcha.
Speaker 2: So.
Speaker 3: One of the other things that happened at the eighteen
Speaker 3: eighty nine Exposition Universal was that the Eiffel Tower was debuted,
Speaker 3: and we talked about this in depth. We did a
Speaker 3: twenty twenty episode on the Eiffel Tower.
Speaker 1: That's right, but just a couple of points as a refresher.
Speaker 1: It was a contest about one hundred entrants and Gustav
Speaker 1: Eiffel won it along with his colleagues, and they proposed
Speaker 1: at the time what was going to be the It
Speaker 1: was I think the tallest building in the world at
Speaker 1: about one thousand feet and people, you know, the people
Speaker 1: of the world loved it, but the people of Paris
Speaker 1: did not like it very much, right.
Speaker 3: No, they wanted to get rid of it, and it
Speaker 3: almost got torn down. I think in nineteen oh nine
Speaker 3: it came as close as it ever has and they said, no, no,
Speaker 3: we're going to use this as a radio telegraph station.
Speaker 3: So people in pairs were like, all right, as long
Speaker 3: as it's serving purpose, you know, because I can't remember
Speaker 3: who said it, but someone said that something that doesn't
Speaker 3: actually function can never truly be beautiful. Oh really, Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's something along those lines.
Speaker 1: Yes, So like form overfunction basically.
Speaker 3: Function over form or function and form function.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, sure, I think we're saying the same thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: oh we are speaking in code now, that's right. It
Speaker 1: finally happened. They also had what was called the Hygiene
Speaker 1: Palace at that expo, which sounds super gross, it does,
Speaker 1: but it was you know, it was at a time,
Speaker 1: you know, it was eighteen eighty nine, So hygiene, you know,
Speaker 1: we're talking like life saving hygiene, not like how to
Speaker 1: smell less. So they showed like hospital stuff, medical stuff,
Speaker 1: how to raise They had real babies and showed like,
Speaker 1: here's how you raise a baby properly, right.
Speaker 3: And then also speaking of babies, they made a full
Speaker 3: scale reproduction of the tower at the Madeline Hospital for Foundlings,
Speaker 3: which is where in Paris if you had a child,
Speaker 3: this is where you would leave it for somebody else
Speaker 3: to take over if.
Speaker 1: You didn't want the child.
Speaker 3: Right, Yes, exactly right. And they even had like a
Speaker 3: model of a baby and everything. And I don't know
Speaker 3: why they chose to include that, but.
Speaker 1: They did, I don't know, maybe get the word out.
Speaker 3: I guess so, because that was Yeah, they were trying
Speaker 3: to get the word out in the hygiene Palace, for sure.
Speaker 1: It's interesting when you can look back at a thing
Speaker 1: like that and it can be both sort of the
Speaker 1: greatest thing and the saddest thing all at once.
Speaker 3: You know, sure, yeah, yeah, yeah we should, Yeah we
Speaker 3: should build one. Yeah, well, it's funny you mentioned that
Speaker 3: I started one this morning. You can come over and
Speaker 3: help me finish it.
Speaker 1: Awesome. That expo was very profitable. They made a ton
Speaker 1: of money on it. And I don't think we said
Speaker 1: at the beginning, like from the beginning, these world's fairs,
Speaker 1: a portion of the money that they make on these
Speaker 1: has gone or at least in the United States, has
Speaker 1: gone into funds that help that still help fund like
Speaker 1: industrial arts programs for students.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that first Crystal Palace exhibition has a fellowship fund
Speaker 3: that helps people in industrial design get through grad school
Speaker 3: still today. From that's all from eighteen fifty one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, should we break or should we talk about the
Speaker 1: nineteen hundred expo?
Speaker 3: Let's talk about the nineteen hundred. So because just to
Speaker 3: kind of keep this contained for a second, basically, these
Speaker 3: biggest ones, the ones that really made the biggest splash,
Speaker 3: are still contained in Europe, largely Great Britain and France.
Speaker 1: Okay, all right, I agree this one had the nineteen
Speaker 1: hundred attracted fifty million people.
Speaker 3: That's crazy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean these are nineteen hundred people, so they're
Speaker 1: getting that many people. Yeah, I mean you can get
Speaker 1: fifty million people pretty easily together now in any given.
Speaker 3: Space, for sure, it's like nothing, But it was.
Speaker 1: A big deal back then. And again showcasing Paris is
Speaker 1: like sort of one of the leading modern cities. They
Speaker 1: debuted something pretty cool there called the Cinerama, which they
Speaker 1: still have these, and they have one of these in Atlanta,
Speaker 1: The Cyclorama in Atlanta is this kind of thing where
Speaker 1: you go in this sort of immersive theater experience where
Speaker 1: they have projections but also paintings and it's like a
Speaker 1: three hundred and sixty degree screen. In their case, they
Speaker 1: simulated a balloon ride because it sounds like balloons were
Speaker 1: all the rage at the time.
Speaker 3: For sure. They also had an actual balloon race, a
Speaker 3: long distance bloon race is part of the exposition. Yeah,
Speaker 3: that reminded me when I was reading about the Cineorama.
Speaker 3: When we did our Salt Lake City show that one time.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, before the show, during the afternoon, I was
Speaker 3: walking around downtown Salt Lake and I ended up in
Speaker 3: like the main Mormon temple, and one of the things
Speaker 3: they have there as an exhibit is a it's basically
Speaker 3: three hundred degrees. It's not three hundred and sixty, but
Speaker 3: it is really close, like high def movie screen that
Speaker 3: is right there in your face. Cool of Brigham Young
Speaker 3: like receiving the message from God. It was so disorienting
Speaker 3: that I ended up like staggering out of there in
Speaker 3: the middle of it, like I couldn't take it.
Speaker 1: It was just overwhelming, the message or the three hundred
Speaker 1: degree I guess a.
Speaker 3: Little bit of both, but I think the more the
Speaker 3: whole three hundred degree thing. It's interesting, the most immersive
Speaker 3: video experience I've ever seen by far.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm wondering. I haven't been to the sphere in Vegas,
Speaker 1: but I'm wondering if I mean, it looks super cool.
Speaker 1: But I wonder if there is any sort of like,
Speaker 1: oh boy, this is too much kind of feeling.
Speaker 3: Probably, I mean, it's Las Vegas.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's true, that's all too much.
Speaker 3: So one of the great things about the nineteen hundred
Speaker 3: Exposition came from the United States. It was an exhibit
Speaker 3: by American black scholars including W. E. B. Du Bois
Speaker 3: and Booker T. Washington, who attended and basically said, here
Speaker 3: is all the progress that black Americans have made since
Speaker 3: the end of slavery. It sounds really cool.
Speaker 1: Yeah. They had books, they had inventions, they had art,
Speaker 1: they had just straight up photographs of like, look, we
Speaker 1: have black nuns in the United States, we have black soldiers,
Speaker 1: we have black college students. And then apparently W. E. B.
Speaker 1: Dubois was sort of the early USA today because he
Speaker 1: loved making infographics, and he made info graphics showing like
Speaker 1: their literacy rates were rising, they were they owned taxable property,
Speaker 1: and these were from actual Georgians I think, right. And
Speaker 1: then also like, hey, our literacy is so good among
Speaker 1: Black Americans, like we're better than Romania and Russia at
Speaker 1: this point.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they that if I went and looked at some
Speaker 3: of Dubois's infographics, and they're really interesting, Like he came
Speaker 3: up with some really interesting ways to cram a bunch
Speaker 3: of data and the one page visually. So it's worth
Speaker 3: looking up, especially if you like colorful things.
Speaker 1: Oh I do, and that is very USA today. Shall
Speaker 1: we break now? Yes, all right, we will be right
Speaker 1: back after this.
Speaker 2: Well, now we're on the road driving in your Chuck
Speaker 2: want to learn a thing or two from Josh Chuck.
Speaker 3: It's stuff you should.
Speaker 1: Know, all right, all right, so we're back more world's fairs.
Speaker 1: Latin America's get involved now. I think this is after
Speaker 1: they had freed them spelled themselves from Spanish rule early
Speaker 1: nineteenth century. They wanted to again show like, hey, we're
Speaker 1: doing pretty well. Not only were they sending factions to
Speaker 1: other world's fairs like in Europe and the United States,
Speaker 1: but Cordoba and Buenos Aires, Argentina, had their own. Santiago,
Speaker 1: Chile had their own. And this was like between the
Speaker 1: eighteen seventies and eighteen eighties.
Speaker 3: Yeah, at the time there's a lot of tension though,
Speaker 3: apparently between the country's boosters who are like, look at us,
Speaker 3: like we don't need Spanish rule. We're doing all this cool,
Speaker 3: interesting stuff and we're inventing all this stuff, and then
Speaker 3: others there were like, no, the point of this is
Speaker 3: to like sell ourselves as sources of raw materials right
Speaker 3: in places where you can over throw regimes to grow
Speaker 3: bananas more cheaply.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think that that was a big point, right, like, hey,
Speaker 1: we can actually make stuff here. We're not just to
Speaker 1: be sort of looted for what we can provide you precisely.
Speaker 3: And then the people who made money from the country
Speaker 3: being looted, they were the ones who are like, no, no, no,
Speaker 3: we need to just show off how easily were looted.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. There were you know, speaking of looting, there
Speaker 1: were World's fairs and places that were colonized at the time.
Speaker 1: There was one in eighteen eighty three to eighty four
Speaker 1: in Calcutta, Kingston, Jamaica had one in eighteen ninety one
Speaker 1: Hanoi had one in nineteen oh two, and this was
Speaker 1: you know, hey, look at the local culture, but also
Speaker 1: like clearly coming from the colonizer side, like look how
Speaker 1: great they're doing thanks to.
Speaker 3: Us, right exactly? Okay, So there were like they spread
Speaker 3: all over the world because they were so impressive, and
Speaker 3: they really did bring a lot of attention and industry
Speaker 3: and business in exports from these countries that were hosting
Speaker 3: these things. Like they were not just vanity projects. There
Speaker 3: really were big returns on them, and the US got
Speaker 3: back in the game. I don't know if it was
Speaker 3: the first one after the Philadelphia one, it could have been,
Speaker 3: but far and away in the United States, the most
Speaker 3: famous world fair was the Chicago World's Fair of eighteen
Speaker 3: ninety three, the World's Columbian Exposition. It was a pretty
Speaker 3: good World's Fair, if I do say so myself.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and if you're one of the gazillions of people
Speaker 1: who have emailed us over the years to do one
Speaker 1: on the Chicago World's Fair and HH Holmes the Serial Killer,
Speaker 1: we should probably do a standalone episode on that, because
Speaker 1: this is just going to be a sort of a
Speaker 1: quickie yeah, on Chicago, And I know there's a lot
Speaker 1: more to it than this, So I guess that's me
Speaker 1: saying prepare to be disappointed a little bit. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: more like a preamble to like there'll be a deeper
Speaker 1: episode coming, because a lot of people have asked for
Speaker 1: this over time. It is, you know, mainly known for
Speaker 1: the fact that HH Holmes, serial killer was kidnapping young
Speaker 1: women who traveled to that Chicago fair and had his
Speaker 1: murder castle in Inglewood. And there was a great, great
Speaker 1: book called The Devil in the White City, which I
Speaker 1: still haven't read, but everyone said it's just amazing. It's
Speaker 1: by Eric Larson, and it's on the list.
Speaker 3: As far as popular histories go. It is easily in
Speaker 3: the top five. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Man, they did read this.
Speaker 3: So good, so readable. He does such a great job
Speaker 3: of putting you there, and it is like it does
Speaker 3: cover HH Holmes and all the terrible stuff he does
Speaker 3: in depth, but it also covers the fair in depth.
Speaker 3: It's just it was an amazing thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So we're going to cover the fair not so
Speaker 1: in depth, but we're going to mention a few things.
Speaker 1: For sure. This is where we got cracker jacks. This
Speaker 1: is where we got the dishwasher. Sure, this is where
Speaker 1: we got the modern zipper, which they called a clasp
Speaker 1: blocker at the time.
Speaker 3: We did an episode on that too in twenty twenty.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 3: What else The ferris wheel came from the eighteen ninety
Speaker 3: three expedition, which very quickly after that became like a
Speaker 3: staple of world's fares. And it was very appropriately designed
Speaker 3: by George Washington Gale Ferris Junior, who was from Pittsburgh,
Speaker 3: and the first one he designed was two hundred and
Speaker 3: sixty four feet tall, thirty six cars and offered a
Speaker 3: twenty minute ride in exchange for fifty cents, which is
Speaker 3: about eighteen dollars today. And you could see the whole
Speaker 3: dang fare from the top of that ferris wheel, and
Speaker 3: it blew people's minds.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I thought it was. When I was reading this,
Speaker 1: I thought it was interesting that they became a thing,
Speaker 1: but like more like a at least in the United States,
Speaker 1: more like a fair grounds or a carnival thing. And
Speaker 1: just more recently, like the past, like fifteen or twenty years,
Speaker 1: I feel like went back to this original idea, put
Speaker 1: like a huge ferris wheel in a downtown city just
Speaker 1: so you can see stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and bear in mind. Also at the time we
Speaker 3: kind of take it for granted now, But in the
Speaker 3: same way that you, the average person was not exposed
Speaker 3: to cutting edge techne and new ideas and awesome new
Speaker 3: products and stuff. People, especially in the Midwestern United States,
Speaker 3: we're not exposed to a view of two hundred and
Speaker 3: sixty four feet like this is an extremely novel experience
Speaker 3: for most of the people who attended that fair.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, for sure, Atlanta's got one. You ever been
Speaker 1: on that one?
Speaker 3: No? I have not. I haven't been on a ferris
Speaker 3: wheel in a long long time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, London has the eye, Atlanta has theirs.
Speaker 1: It's you know, it's it was fun to take Ruby
Speaker 1: when she was little, but like, there's no reason for
Speaker 1: you to go on it.
Speaker 3: Okay, good to know, even the London I have you
Speaker 3: been on that one?
Speaker 1: I haven't been on that. But hey, there's a Ted's
Speaker 1: Montana Grill right there. The Tabernacle's right there. So if
Speaker 1: you got tickets to see a show at the Tabernacle,
Speaker 1: go eat at Ted's Montana Grill, have a Beisenberger check
Speaker 1: right on the ferris wheel, and then you've done it.
Speaker 3: We're going to see Echo and the bunnymen in May,
Speaker 3: so we'll ride the ferris whee.
Speaker 1: Remind me about that before it happens, because I might
Speaker 1: meet you there.
Speaker 3: I just did, right.
Speaker 1: No, man, that's in May. You got to remind me, like.
Speaker 3: Three days I will. Maybe we can ride the ferris
Speaker 3: wheel together, you me, you, me, and Emily.
Speaker 1: Oh man, our Instagram would blow up? Would you believe it?
Speaker 3: I think I just blew some people's minds by saying you, me, you, me,
Speaker 3: and Emily.
Speaker 1: Yeah, people get duck confused a lot. This is way
Speaker 1: off target because we were just talking about something that
Speaker 1: reminded me of it. But I had a funny Simpsons
Speaker 1: reference last night.
Speaker 3: Wait a minute, you're about to go on a tangent
Speaker 3: because those aren't allowed on our podcast.
Speaker 1: Do you ever make a joke that you know no
Speaker 1: one else will get? But so it's really a joke
Speaker 1: for you of.
Speaker 3: Like eighty percent of the time.
Speaker 1: Maybe I was watching or Emily was gone last night,
Speaker 1: so Ruby and I had a daddy daughter night in
Speaker 1: which we usually like order cheeseburgers and watch a like
Speaker 1: an action movie or something cute. And I showed her
Speaker 1: speed last night. Huh, And I queued it up and
Speaker 1: I was like, you're gonna love this. I'm not going
Speaker 1: to tell you anything about it, and she was like, no, wait,
Speaker 1: will you at least tell me the name of it.
Speaker 1: I know it's called the Bus that Couldn't slow Down?
Speaker 1: And she was like really, and I went, no, it's
Speaker 1: a Simpson's joke. And then she wouldn't just let it go.
Speaker 1: She had me explain the whole thing, which you know,
Speaker 1: fell in deaf ears. But it's one of my all
Speaker 1: time favorite kind of Simpsons jokes.
Speaker 3: I don't remember that joke.
Speaker 1: It was Homer was describing a movie that he had
Speaker 1: just seen and he was like, oh, yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: bus whose speed couldn't slow down because if it had
Speaker 1: less speed it would blow up and the speed would
Speaker 1: cause it to whatever. And he said speed like eight times.
Speaker 1: And yeah, they asked him what the name of it was.
Speaker 1: He said, the Bus that Couldn't slow down.
Speaker 3: Man, that show just keeps on giving doesn't know.
Speaker 1: Speed holds up pretty good too.
Speaker 3: By the way, Oh yeah, Keyunu Reeve's short hair is
Speaker 3: really great in that movie.
Speaker 1: Yeah he was hunky and it's like, uh yeah, it
Speaker 1: really it was. I mean, it's so action packed. It
Speaker 1: was it was great. I enjoyed it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Dennis Hopper is a bad guy, crazed bad guy
Speaker 3: is pretty much timeless.
Speaker 1: He's great, And I remember the bus stuff, but that's
Speaker 1: just the middle part. I forgot the whole first part.
Speaker 1: In the last part, which was also tons of action.
Speaker 3: I don't remember that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, go back and then watch it. We'll watch it
Speaker 1: before we go. In the ferris Wheel.
Speaker 3: We just did a mini crush, I know we did.
Speaker 1: Where are we? Oh, we're back at eighteen ninety three,
Speaker 1: because that's where electricity really came in.
Speaker 3: Right, Yes, that was another big thing in Devil in
Speaker 3: the White City. They really went behind the scenes. I
Speaker 3: think there was a huge struggle between George Westinghouse and
Speaker 3: Thomas Edison to get the contract to light the eighteen
Speaker 3: ninety three World's Fair in Westinghouse won yes, and he
Speaker 3: lit this fare up in Yeah, it was gorgeous. I
Speaker 3: didn't see it, but I read Eric Larson's description and
Speaker 3: it sounded just totally amazing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that sounds cool. That's also where Chicago really got
Speaker 1: a lot of its beautiful architecture that we love today. Yeah,
Speaker 1: with their neoclassical buildings, A lot of more temporary at
Speaker 1: the time, and that's why they called it the White City,
Speaker 1: but it really influenced the design going forward to promote
Speaker 1: that bows arts style. Is that how you say yeah thanks?
Speaker 1: And also if you're wondering like did they do that
Speaker 1: at other fairs? That's we got art deco from the
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty five exhibit in Paris.
Speaker 3: Yes, And a little traveler's tip here, if you ever
Speaker 3: find yourself in New Zealand, I think the northern part
Speaker 3: of it to you yourself a favor and go visit.
Speaker 3: Napier is a small town. I don't remember what part
Speaker 3: of New Zealand it's in, but you really can't miss
Speaker 3: anything in New Zealand. It's not that big. And it
Speaker 3: suffered an earthquake and I think nineteen thirty one and
Speaker 3: like the whole downtown was leveled. So they were like, well,
Speaker 3: what style is in right now? Oh? Art Deco, So
Speaker 3: they rebuilt their entire downtown in Art deco, all these
Speaker 3: amazing different buildings and amazing different colors and they have
Speaker 3: preserved it like perfectly.
Speaker 1: Oh man, I love art deco. I got to check
Speaker 1: that out.
Speaker 3: Oh yes, this is the Art Deco town known internationally
Speaker 3: as the Art Deco.
Speaker 1: Had never heard of it. I thought you were going
Speaker 1: to recommend the River Tour, the architectural tour in Chicago.
Speaker 3: I didn't take that one. That sounds kind of cool, though.
Speaker 1: It's awesome for like a big, sort of large mass
Speaker 1: tour thing. It's really great.
Speaker 3: Did Faris Buehler go on that in the movie? Because
Speaker 3: I know he was on a boat at some point,
Speaker 3: or they showed people on a boat.
Speaker 1: I don't know if there's a shot of that or not.
Speaker 3: All right, well let's just say there is.
Speaker 1: Okay, but I did it, Chuck Buehler did.
Speaker 3: Okay. Oh yeah, So that was eighteen ninety three, Like
Speaker 3: we said, go read that book. You will not regret it.
Speaker 3: And then jumping forward a little bit, but staying in
Speaker 3: the United States, there was a Saint Louis World's Fair
Speaker 3: in nineteen oh four. Have you ever seen meet me
Speaker 3: in Saint Louis?
Speaker 1: Chuck, No, I take it that was you. That added
Speaker 1: that was a terrible sat a terrible musical.
Speaker 3: Yes it was. It was like I didn't want to
Speaker 3: be I didn't want to exist for those couple of
Speaker 3: hours while I was sitting there watching this play. It's
Speaker 3: so dumb and the music is so stupid and everything
Speaker 3: about it is just terrible. Where do you see this
Speaker 3: at the Fox?
Speaker 1: Wow? So like of a Broadway revival?
Speaker 3: Yeah, in this period of American history, I just find
Speaker 3: creepy and I don't really like it anyway. You know,
Speaker 3: there's a lot of like susaphone music and stuff like that. Okay,
Speaker 3: So and this is like a whole thing set at
Speaker 3: that time and it's just it's not good dude.
Speaker 1: Wow, all right.
Speaker 3: Okay, So don't see it.
Speaker 1: Okay, go see Hell's Kitchen instead or Operation Mincemeat.
Speaker 3: Okay. But also there's a lot of misconstrued facts, I guess.
Speaker 1: But yeah, this sounds like a bit of a I
Speaker 1: don't know. I don't like the nineteen oh four exhibit
Speaker 1: because they they said a lot of people say, like
Speaker 1: that's where the hamburger came from, and the hot dog
Speaker 1: and the ice cream cone, and some of that stuff
Speaker 1: is partly true.
Speaker 3: Right, Yes, hot dogs were first served in buns at
Speaker 3: the nineteen oh four fair, but hot dogs already existed, right,
Speaker 3: ice cream cone wasn't invented there, But this is where
Speaker 3: the first place where a lot of people saw ice
Speaker 3: cream cones. For the first time.
Speaker 1: It sounds like a bunch of junk food.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it definitely was. Cotton candy was debuted at the
Speaker 3: nineteen oh four Fair, and I feel like there's a
Speaker 3: nice little twist to the inventor, don't you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he sold it as fairy floss. His name was
Speaker 1: William J. Morrison and he was in fact a dentist.
Speaker 1: I think that's one of those little fun facts that
Speaker 1: people like to throw around. Absolutely true. But it was
Speaker 1: also doctor Pepper debuted there, jello puffed ry cereal. It
Speaker 1: sounds just like a bunch of like American junk.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is where a lot of it came from,
Speaker 3: for sure. And then also just we might edit this
Speaker 3: part up, but just between you and me, the first
Speaker 3: electric plug and socket debuted there too, which is pretty
Speaker 3: say significant. But I want to give a little hat
Speaker 3: tip to Livia for explaining what an electric plug and
Speaker 3: socket does, which allowed lights and appliances to be safely
Speaker 3: attached to and detached from a central power supply.
Speaker 1: Oh man, that is best.
Speaker 3: That's the dedication that we can expect from Livia.
Speaker 1: And also you can get way more in depth information.
Speaker 1: We kind of did a whole episode that covered this
Speaker 1: kind of thing in twenty nineteen our episode on human
Speaker 1: zoos and how awful they were, right, but they had
Speaker 1: stuff like that here, like Native villages and that's in
Speaker 1: quotes where they had very offensive, sort of misleading exhibits
Speaker 1: about Indigenous Americans and Filipinos and Africans and yeah, just
Speaker 1: a sort of a bummer of a world spare, I.
Speaker 3: Think, yeah, for sure. Yeah, they would basically be like, hey,
Speaker 3: let's take every single racist conception or misconception and attitude
Speaker 3: what we have toward all these different groups and bring
Speaker 3: them to life. Yeah, that's exactly what it was. So yeah,
Speaker 3: that was it was a good episode, and that it was.
Speaker 3: It explained it pretty well, but it was definitely a
Speaker 3: bummer of an episode for sure.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but you could wash it all down with the
Speaker 1: doctor Pepper, So what could be wrong?
Speaker 3: That's right, and give somebody a big smile and like
Speaker 3: half of your teeth are missing?
Speaker 1: All right. I think we're at our second break point,
Speaker 1: and we'll talk about sort of the next wave of
Speaker 1: worlds fares and then kind of the death of worlds
Speaker 1: fares right after this.
Speaker 2: Well, now we're on the road, driving in your truck.
Speaker 2: Want to learn a thing or two from Josh Chuck.
Speaker 2: It's stuff you should know, all right.
Speaker 3: So after World War One, worlds fares became less common
Speaker 3: and less successful. I blame uh going off of the
Speaker 3: gold standard, right, but there's still plenty that came along
Speaker 3: that you'll if you know anything about World's fares, pay
Speaker 3: any kind of attention to it. You'd be like, no,
Speaker 3: there was Expos sixty seven in Montreal, or there was
Speaker 3: Expos seventy in Osaka, Japan. Yes, yes, we'll get to
Speaker 3: all those. But the general point is here is that
Speaker 3: they were less successful because people started to see radio,
Speaker 3: there were movies, or they started to listen to radio.
Speaker 3: Movies became widespread and very popular. And then simultaneously to that,
Speaker 3: there were so many World's fairs to choose from. No
Speaker 3: matter where you were in the world, you might be
Speaker 3: in a large air, a large city that has multiple
Speaker 3: World's fairs competing with one another, in the same region,
Speaker 3: certainly the same country. That happened, and it became a
Speaker 3: bit of a mess. So this group called the Bureau
Speaker 3: International Expositions, the BIE, established in Paris. Of course, they
Speaker 3: said we're going to step in, We're going to start
Speaker 3: regulating these events. We're going to take this mess. We're
Speaker 3: going to mash it into a Devil's Tower plateau of
Speaker 3: mashed potatoes. We're going to create something coherent out of it.
Speaker 1: Wow. Nice ref Yeah, they established some rules. Well, the
Speaker 1: first rule was like, unless it's officially sanctioned by US,
Speaker 1: it's not even a World's fare. So you got to
Speaker 1: go through US. It can't be more than six months.
Speaker 1: You can't run these things for nine twelve months. You
Speaker 1: got to have a theme, like get it together. Everyone
Speaker 1: like a party with a theme is so much better. Sure,
Speaker 1: And since then, this was in nineteen twenty eight, there
Speaker 1: have only been fifty World's Fairs since. I guess they
Speaker 1: established in nineteen twenty eight, but nineteen thirty one is
Speaker 1: when they officially started sanctioning them, and there's only been
Speaker 1: fifty since then.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah. Can you imagine some poor guy who's like, hey,
Speaker 3: this isn't an official World's fair, wants their money back.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So after the Cold War started these things you kind
Speaker 3: of mentioned itset. They seem to be like different countries
Speaker 3: saying like look at how great we are. That was
Speaker 3: a huge part of World's fairs that were during the
Speaker 3: Cold War. Especially between the American and the Soviet pavilions. Yeah,
Speaker 3: they were like basically like, here's the stage where we
Speaker 3: can show the rest of the world how much better
Speaker 3: we are than you Russia and vice versa.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely, A little fun fact we got to throw
Speaker 1: in there. Do you remember the Montreal Expos which are
Speaker 1: now the Washington Nationals in Major League Baseball? That name
Speaker 1: came from the Montreal Expo that happened in nineteen sixty seven. Yep,
Speaker 1: it's fun little fact. New York had a couple of
Speaker 1: big ones and queens. They had one in thirty nine
Speaker 1: and forty. The World of Tomorrow was a big theme,
Speaker 1: and the debut things like air conditioning, television, nylon stockings
Speaker 1: pretty good. They debuted a robot that smoked cigarettes named
Speaker 1: Electro who had a dog, a robot dog named Sparko,
Speaker 1: And this was kind of notable, mostly for well, for
Speaker 1: those things, but also the fact that they were able
Speaker 1: to put a bunch of money into reclaiming Flushing Meadows
Speaker 1: in Corona Park, which at the time was a dumping
Speaker 1: ground for ash and just a really gross spot. But
Speaker 1: you know, when you fly, if you see men in black,
Speaker 1: are you fly over it? It's where the New York
Speaker 1: Mets used to be, and you would see that big
Speaker 1: steel globe from Men in Black very famously that was
Speaker 1: the New York World's Fair in thirty nine and forty.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I looked at pictures of electro and he looks
Speaker 3: like a nineteen thirty nine robot for sure, huge barrel chest.
Speaker 3: And then like like I a little bit like mister Roboto,
Speaker 3: but a little less detailed in the face, but he
Speaker 3: does smoke cigarettes. I saw it.
Speaker 1: It's nice.
Speaker 3: One of the other things about World Fairs, too, is
Speaker 3: depending on what the world was doing, Like for example,
Speaker 3: if they were about to enter a world war or
Speaker 3: were already embroiled in one, it could make some awkward stuff.
Speaker 3: Like Germany was going to open a pavilion at the
Speaker 3: nineteen thirty nine World's Fair, and after they invaded Czechoslovakia,
Speaker 3: the rest of the war was like, no, you're not
Speaker 3: allowed here at this World's Fair. The UK, poland Czechoslovakia
Speaker 3: a few other countries that were already involved in World
Speaker 3: War Two had pavilions there, and so like stuff that
Speaker 3: was going on in Europe was being reflected in the
Speaker 3: World's Fair.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, we're heading back to Queens because I
Speaker 1: mentioned they had two there, and they had their second
Speaker 1: one there in sixty four sixty five, and this was
Speaker 1: a pretty pretty big one too. I think this is
Speaker 1: where that spear came from, was the sixty four sixty
Speaker 1: five if I'm not mistaken. This is where computers really
Speaker 1: made their first big go. IBM had a huge they
Speaker 1: had like an acre acre size spot display, They had
Speaker 1: a This is where where Walt Disney really made a
Speaker 1: big splash.
Speaker 3: Two.
Speaker 1: I think they debuted It's a small the literal it's
Speaker 1: a small world ride there, mm hmm, which is pretty cool.
Speaker 1: And then if you've ever been to the Magic Kingdom
Speaker 1: in Orlando and rode or ridden the Carousel of Progress
Speaker 1: that need its debut there. That was ge you know,
Speaker 1: and if you've ever written it, it's clearly like a like, hey,
Speaker 1: look what's going to happen not too far from now.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And they did one for the state of Illinois too,
Speaker 3: and I looked that up and apparently they created an
Speaker 3: animatronic talking abe Lincoln, which I believe ended up giving
Speaker 3: rise to the Hall of Presidents.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, just to the creepy era things you can
Speaker 1: do at Disney.
Speaker 3: It really is. One of the other things is that
Speaker 3: the nineteen sixty four World's Fair was so g whiz
Speaker 3: look at the future that Isaac Asimov, the great science
Speaker 3: fiction writer, was prompted to write an essay yeah, about
Speaker 3: what the World's Fair in twenty fourteen, fifty years in
Speaker 3: the future would look like. And he got some right.
Speaker 3: He missed the mark a little bit, like, for example,
Speaker 3: he got right that robots will neither be common nor
Speaker 3: very good in twenty fourteen, but they will be in existence.
Speaker 1: That's certainly true. They're getting better now. But twenty fourteen robots,
Speaker 1: the one I had was not very impressive.
Speaker 3: Did it smoke cigarettes?
Speaker 1: Though it did? Well? It did, we did.
Speaker 3: That's the key to a good robot.
Speaker 1: I had to have a smoking Buddy's.
Speaker 3: Right, what else, chuck? What else did he say?
Speaker 1: Well, this one is interesting because it sounds like he
Speaker 1: got it just right, but just you know, you'll have
Speaker 1: to hear the after the afterward he said that society
Speaker 1: will suffer mental, emotional, and socio psychological consequences from our technology.
Speaker 1: And if you read that, you think, man, he'd nailed
Speaker 1: it in nineteen sixty four, like right on the head.
Speaker 1: But he had a different take than that. He was like, no,
Speaker 1: that's going to happen because it's going to be like
Speaker 1: Wall E basically where nobody works because robots are doing everything,
Speaker 1: and we're gonna suffer from what he called enforced leisure.
Speaker 3: Mm hm.
Speaker 1: And everyone's just going to be lazy and it's going
Speaker 1: to be awful. And he said the most glorious single
Speaker 1: word in the world will have become work. It's cute.
Speaker 3: He missed that mark a little bit for sure.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So the nineteen sixty four World's Fair was basically the
Speaker 3: last great World's Fair that the United States ever threw.
Speaker 3: There have been plenty of great World's Fairs since then,
Speaker 3: but as far as the US is concerned, sixty four
Speaker 3: was the last good one. Sixty two in Seattle that
Speaker 3: gave us the space needle. It was called the Century
Speaker 3: twenty one Expo, and ten million people showed up. And
Speaker 3: this kind of showed the beginning of a trend of
Speaker 3: declining attendants in the fairs that were thrown in America,
Speaker 3: because this was about the time that Americans decided that
Speaker 3: we wanted to stop being informed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, we're not bagging on any of
Speaker 1: these cities and any of their World's Fairs. It's just
Speaker 1: sort of a fact that this is when attendance really
Speaker 1: started to win. Some of them lost a lot of money.
Speaker 1: We love that space needle, but ten million people isn't
Speaker 1: like two years later in New York there were fifty
Speaker 1: six million, right. And that brings us to New Orleans
Speaker 1: and the Louisiana World Exposition of nineteen eighty four. New
Speaker 1: Orleans is one of my favorite cities in the world, truly, truly,
Speaker 1: deep down, I love New Orleans. Nice, but they put
Speaker 1: on a pretty shoddy World's Fair in nineteen eighty four.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it was really heavy on the New
Speaker 3: Orleans culture, Like they have a lot to show scroff
Speaker 3: as far as that's concerned. The amphitheater there was designed
Speaker 3: by Frank Geary. The parts that were done well were
Speaker 3: just little magical spots, right, Yeah. But there are also
Speaker 3: lots of parts that were like asphalt and concrete thoroughfares
Speaker 3: that just kind of looked like like just something you
Speaker 3: might stumble upon in a park in a small town
Speaker 3: at some point, like with the booths set up along
Speaker 3: each side. Some of the actual design struck and buildings
Speaker 3: were very very bland. And then one of the main
Speaker 3: reasons they wanted to throw this was because they wanted
Speaker 3: to revitalize New Orleans as a town where you could
Speaker 3: just come outside of Marti Graus, outside of JazzFest, like
Speaker 3: you can just come anytime and it'll be fun. So
Speaker 3: the riverfront that they were promoting was largely abandoned, was
Speaker 3: pretty run down, and this is where they built the
Speaker 3: World's Fair area, so you could kind of see the
Speaker 3: reality of the area at the edges pretty clearly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean some of the stuff wasn't even finished.
Speaker 1: So this isn't just us again, like with our opinions
Speaker 1: on things like when you have two massive alligator statues
Speaker 1: atop the Wonder Wall and Bayou Plaza and they're not
Speaker 1: done and along their backs there's not even you know,
Speaker 1: alligator scales and it's just the metal structure that was underneath.
Speaker 1: It's not great. It was unfinished. They you know, if
Speaker 1: you were from New Orleans and Louisiana, you probably had
Speaker 1: a great time. A lot of people had a great time,
Speaker 1: but they you know, Ronald Reagan didn't even go. I
Speaker 1: think the president almost always goes or had always gone
Speaker 1: to attend the opening, less than ten million people went,
Speaker 1: and they lost a ton of money on it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And so to be fair, like, this wasn't just
Speaker 3: New Orleans faulty. They were victims of this long standing
Speaker 3: or this trend. Yeah, I guess it was long standing
Speaker 3: by then of American attendance being pretty shoddy. Yeah. The
Speaker 3: Knoxville World's Fair, which gave us the Sun's Fear, which
Speaker 3: is that one that was held two years before Epcot
Speaker 3: came along two years before, and it built itself as
Speaker 3: a permanent World's Fair. Not fair, Nope. The Olympics were
Speaker 3: being held in La that same year, and it was
Speaker 3: sucking a lot of the enthusiasm and energy over to
Speaker 3: the West Coast plus Louisiana and surrounding states like Texas,
Speaker 3: where you would rely on a lot of your visitors
Speaker 3: to come from their local economies just went in the
Speaker 3: toilet because the oil industry hit a huge bust time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I think the organizers for the New
Speaker 1: Orleans Fair went bankrupt. They lost more than one hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty million bucks. Creditors apparently allegedly got back eight
Speaker 1: cents on the dollar. And it was it was such
Speaker 1: a bus that they canceled the nineteen ninety two World's
Speaker 1: Fair in Chicago. Yeah, it was. It was not great.
Speaker 3: No, But like we said that, there have been plenty
Speaker 3: of There were plenty of non American thrown World Fairs
Speaker 3: that were outstanding. One of the ones that frequently gets
Speaker 3: pointed to is Osaka in nineteen seventy. And this is
Speaker 3: about the time. So Europe kind of kicked it off.
Speaker 3: It spread throughout the world. America did its best to
Speaker 3: kind of take over for a while, and then it
Speaker 3: moved east. The kind of the epicenter of where World's
Speaker 3: Fairs are held moved from the to the Middle East
Speaker 3: and East generally more often than not these days. And
Speaker 3: Osaka seventy seemed to kind of kick that off.
Speaker 1: Yeah. They debuted Imax movies in nineteen seventy and Osaka
Speaker 1: with a seventeen minute film called Tiger Child. I think
Speaker 1: to the twenty ten Expo in Shanghai, I think has
Speaker 1: the record right of visitors, seventy three million people, the
Speaker 1: largest of all time. So that's you know, they're certainly
Speaker 1: not dead. I was wondering at some point a couple
Speaker 1: of years ago, like what happened to the World's fairs,
Speaker 1: and you know, they're just happening in a big, big
Speaker 1: way in places like Shanghai, so it's not as much
Speaker 1: on my radar. And also I think things like CEES,
Speaker 1: the Consumer Electronics Show and other sort of specific industry
Speaker 1: expos and trade shows have sort of dampened the appetite
Speaker 1: for these, you think.
Speaker 3: For sure, but they are still around. Osaka is going
Speaker 3: to hold another one or I'm sorry it held another
Speaker 3: one in twenty twenty five. There's one in Belgrade Survior Belgrad,
Speaker 3: can't remember which what you say, that's coming in twenty
Speaker 3: twenty seven, and then Riad, Saudi Arabia is I think
Speaker 3: the furthest Out one that's already scheduled for twenty thirty,
Speaker 3: so it's definitely still happening. I would like to go
Speaker 3: to one, just to see what the heck's going on.
Speaker 3: I'd like to go to the Bellgrade one.
Speaker 1: Oh, that'd be cool.
Speaker 3: And also just one other thing, I want to just
Speaker 3: shout out Expo seventy in Osaka. That is where Umi's
Speaker 3: aunt and uncle met. Oh nice, yeah, I thought so too.
Speaker 3: He was a smoking robot, she was a showgirl.
Speaker 1: Classic story.
Speaker 3: You got anything else? I got nothing else all right,
Speaker 3: Well that's it, everybody. That's World's Fairs. I guess we'll
Speaker 3: see you in Belgrade in twenty twenty seven. And until then, Chuck,
Speaker 3: I say, it's time for listener mail.
Speaker 1: That's right. We heard from a lot of people about
Speaker 1: our short stuff on the mcguffin. We're talking about that,
Speaker 1: which was pretty it was pretty fun. I think it
Speaker 1: was kind of appropriate that we couldn't quite define it,
Speaker 1: cause it's quite hard to define.
Speaker 3: Okay, fair enough, but we heard.
Speaker 1: From a writer director legit. Hey guys, I'm a writer
Speaker 1: director from lat I could share how I've always viewed
Speaker 1: the mcguffin. When you're trying to develop a film plot,
Speaker 1: you might have a specific location or scenario that you
Speaker 1: want your characters to end up in, but sometimes you
Speaker 1: can't think of a natural way to get them there.
Speaker 1: So that's where you throw into mcguffin. In fact, if
Speaker 1: you're really in the zone while you're writing, you can
Speaker 1: use it as a placeholder even and say, like the
Speaker 1: protagonist stops by the house to grab a mcguffin, only
Speaker 1: to find a dead body in the art. One of
Speaker 1: the reasons it can be difficult to identify a mcguffin
Speaker 1: from a specific movie is because the writer might be
Speaker 1: disguising it to avoid what could be perceived as lazy screenwriting.
Speaker 1: One of the more obvious examples is a character needing
Speaker 1: to find the secret map that leads to the treasure
Speaker 1: or the next clue. That is from Josh Beck, writer director,
Speaker 1: And like I said, we heard from a lot of people.
Speaker 1: One was kind of funny. We heard from somebody who
Speaker 1: kind of said, I don't care what George Lucas says.
Speaker 1: R two D two is not a mcguffin. It's the
Speaker 1: plans that are mcguffin, because the person is never the mcguffin,
Speaker 1: it's the object. And I had the great sorrow to
Speaker 1: write this person and say, I'm sorry to break it
Speaker 1: to you, but Archie dtwo is an object and not
Speaker 1: a person. I know it's true, though, Like if the
Speaker 1: whole point to this writer's email was hey, it's not
Speaker 1: the person, it's the object, it's like, well, and android
Speaker 1: isn't a person.
Speaker 3: So I feel like then Josh backed you up that
Speaker 3: the mcguffin is totally irrelevant to what you care about
Speaker 3: in the whole thing, and that it's kind of like
Speaker 3: this thing that gets you to the thing that's the point,
Speaker 3: which is basically what you were saying. Yes, okay, so
Speaker 3: the first time when you brought it up in some
Speaker 3: other episode and that short stuff, you stuck to your gun,
Speaker 3: So it sounds like you were right. But then all
Speaker 3: of those people out there who are like Multi's falcon
Speaker 3: is the quintessential example of the mcguffin, that is just wrong.
Speaker 3: Then that's not true. Yes, it's the point of the
Speaker 3: whole thing. Everything everyone's doing is centered around getting their
Speaker 3: hands on the Maltese falcon. Nothing else matters. There's no
Speaker 3: interpersonal stuff that really matters. That is the point of everything.
Speaker 3: So it can't possibly be a mcguffin.
Speaker 1: Is But is the Maltese falcon itself important? Like yes, well,
Speaker 1: what what does it do?
Speaker 3: It gives you riches beyond measure?
Speaker 1: Oh okay, it's like yes.
Speaker 3: And it's irreplaceable. It's its own thing. It's it is
Speaker 3: not a mcguffin, And I don't ever want to talk
Speaker 3: about mcguffins again after this. I'm so sorry that I
Speaker 3: ever brought it up.
Speaker 1: We also heard from a lot of people who pointed
Speaker 1: out the Big Bang Theory TV show thing where they
Speaker 1: say that Indiana Jones was a mcguffin himself. That's because
Speaker 1: if he was not a part of that movie, like nothing,
Speaker 1: nothing would have mattered, Like the the Nazis would have
Speaker 1: opened up the arc and it would have killed them
Speaker 1: all and nothing would have changed.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know about that, because it ended up
Speaker 1: in his hands and ended up in the storage. But
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 3: That's a huh. I hadn't thought about that point. Wow,
Speaker 3: that Chuck Laurie, he's amazing.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Did I ever tell you about the time we were
Speaker 3: in Los Angeles and it was the day after Charlie
Speaker 3: Sheen's meltdown and like the entire future of like that
Speaker 3: whole show was up in the air. We just happened
Speaker 3: to be in LA that one day, and I just
Speaker 3: happened to be walking at the McDonald's that John Cryer
Speaker 3: happened to go to and started stress eating like a
Speaker 3: McMuffin in his Mercedes.
Speaker 1: A mcguffin. Now I remember you telling me that story.
Speaker 1: That is incredible.
Speaker 3: Think about the timing, all the different little things that
Speaker 3: had to happen to just bring me to pass to
Speaker 3: see that one guy whose issues were on the world
Speaker 3: stage right then yea, it was nuts. Yeah, So I
Speaker 3: hope he's doing better.
Speaker 1: Oh, he's doing fine.
Speaker 3: Good. Well, that was Josh who wrote in, And thanks
Speaker 3: to everybody who wrote in about mcguffin's. We did get
Speaker 3: a lot of great emails from everybody, so thank you.
Speaker 3: And if you want to write us a great email,
Speaker 3: whether you're a writer or director, both neither doesn't matter.
Speaker 3: We want to hear from you. Send it off to
Speaker 3: Stuff Podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com.
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