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Speaker 1: Hi, everybody, check here with the Greatest Show on Earth

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Speaker 1: wrangling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus. You say, no, stuff

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Speaker 1: you should know the podcast. That's right. It's Saturday, and

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Speaker 1: that means it's time for another SELECX and this one

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Speaker 1: is from May twenty eighteen. P T. Barnum Colon More

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Speaker 1: Complicated than You've Heard. And I picked this one, you

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Speaker 1: guys for two reasons. One because I believe in this episode,

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Speaker 1: I predicted that Hugh Jackman would play the man in

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Speaker 1: a movie one day, one of my two predictions, along

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Speaker 1: with Jared from Subway being a creep. And the other

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Speaker 1: reason I picked it out is because I finally saw

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Speaker 1: the movie The Greatest Show on Earth recently with my daughter,

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Speaker 1: and I didn't like it so much. I didn't think

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Speaker 1: it was that good, so I'm sorry to anyone who

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Speaker 1: had a part in that movie. My daughter loved it,

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Speaker 1: my wife loved it. I just thought it was okay.

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Speaker 1: But this episode is great, so I hope you enjoy. P. T.

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Speaker 1: Barnum Colon More Complicated than You've heard. Welcome to Stuff

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Speaker 1: You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, There's

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Speaker 2: Charles W. Chuck Bright, There's Jerry Hello, Hello, Hello, Hello.

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Speaker 1: Jerry's got a top hat on.

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Speaker 2: I know, I don't know why she's trying to be

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Speaker 2: all mister monopoly or P. T.

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Speaker 1: Barnum.

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Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I forgot he wore a top hat allegedly.

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Speaker 2: Oh no, he did. I saw a picture of it.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, Hugh Grant certainly did. Hugh Grant, Hugh Jackman, Hugh Laurie.

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Speaker 1: I think it's h l No, it's Clive Owens you're

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Speaker 1: thinking of. Yeah, Hugh Jackman Man, where's that top hat?

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Speaker 1: Like a champ?

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Speaker 2: He does. I don't know how much you went on

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Speaker 2: the internet for this one, because this is a pretty

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Speaker 2: comprehensive article actually, but The Greatest Showman really set the

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Speaker 2: Internet on fire Man and a lot of like it

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Speaker 2: really brought out a lot of people saying like, whoa, whoa, whoa,

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Speaker 2: whoa whoa whoa whoa Yeah, whoa Yeah, this is the

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Speaker 2: the very definition of the word fantasy.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, it seemed like that movie was can be best

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Speaker 1: described as a musical whitewashing.

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Speaker 2: Mm hmm in every sense of that word.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, so let's destroy it. Yeah, I mean, after reading this,

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Speaker 1: I didn't think, like man P. T. Barnum, what a

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Speaker 1: complete a hole.

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Speaker 2: No, he was just a lot more complicated than that,

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Speaker 2: and get a lot of stuff that you just shouldn't

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Speaker 2: just pass over because you can't figure out lyrics to

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Speaker 2: what rhymes with racism.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean he was. He was definitely an enigma

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Speaker 1: and seems like he did some good. But also I

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Speaker 1: mean he was a hustler man.

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Speaker 2: For sure. So this is what I didn't fully understand

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Speaker 2: until researching this. Chuck. He was. He's known as the

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Speaker 2: greatest showman, right, m But there were plenty of other

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Speaker 2: showmen out there at the time, which makes sense because

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Speaker 2: you have to have something to compare be compared to

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Speaker 2: to be the greatest, right. But I guess I just

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Speaker 2: assumed he was like the first or the originator. No,

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Speaker 2: he was not the first showman. He was a great showman.

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Speaker 1: Yeah.

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Speaker 2: What he really left his mark on was introducing America

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Speaker 2: to pure unadulterated hucksterism, sure, and using it for marketing.

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Speaker 1: Humbug that's what he called it.

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Speaker 2: And he had he had a lot of quotes, some

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Speaker 2: were some were definitely something he said like every crowd

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Speaker 2: has a silver lining, which means you can shake it

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Speaker 2: out of him and get some money from a bunch

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Speaker 2: of people. Right, Yeah, the one about a sucker born

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Speaker 2: every minute that's never been successfully attributed to him one

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Speaker 2: hundred percent.

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Speaker 1: Well yeah, and one thing is for sure, and is

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Speaker 1: that his autobiography is I think if you order it,

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Speaker 1: it comes with a salt lick, so you can just

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Speaker 1: lick on that salt while you're reading it.

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Speaker 2: Right. I don't know what that means, but that seems

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Speaker 2: like something that they would do.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean he I think when the man is

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Speaker 1: writing about himself, it's like, you know what, you may

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Speaker 1: just want to believe a third of this.

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Speaker 2: Oh take it with a grain of salt, but so

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Speaker 2: much so that you need an actual salt lick.

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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I got it, now, I got it.

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Speaker 2: So So there is one quote that I think kind

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Speaker 2: of describes this guy best, or at least his philosophy,

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Speaker 2: and it also kind of reveals like you can't call

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Speaker 2: him harmless, but also the intentions were not entirely evil,

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Speaker 2: right Right. He had a quote that said that people

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Speaker 2: don't mind being deceived so long as they're being amused

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Speaker 2: at the same time.

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Speaker 1: Which is kind of true.

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Speaker 2: It does, and it largely lets him off the hook

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Speaker 2: as far as being a huckster. Right, But the thing

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Speaker 2: that The Greatest Showman really glossed over, just outright ignored,

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Speaker 2: was that a lot of the the amusements that he

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Speaker 2: was presenting to the public were extraordinarily degrading to people

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Speaker 2: at the time. They were super racists. There were just

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Speaker 2: a lot of There was just a lot of exploitation.

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Speaker 2: He made his money not just by hustling Americans, but

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Speaker 2: by exploiting other Americans too. Right, Yeah, and again, like this,

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Speaker 2: a lot of this is contextual. It's not necessarily fair

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Speaker 2: for later generations to judge previous generations, although it's really

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Speaker 2: fun to do. But yes, you could say, like this

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Speaker 2: guy was exploited of even even in compared even compared

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Speaker 2: to like his contemporaries. Right, perhaps, so he is just

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Speaker 2: this very complex character who I think you and I

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Speaker 2: can agree he was not an evil person. He just

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Speaker 2: did some horrible things here or there.

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Speaker 1: Should we go back in time? Yes, all right, let's

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Speaker 1: go back to the beginning. Let's hop in the way

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Speaker 1: back machine, which is appropriately steampunky right now, Yeah, it

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Speaker 1: takes many forms. I don't know if people realize that.

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Speaker 2: It has a clock without the glass and you can

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Speaker 2: see the parts inside, but it doesn't actually function. It

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Speaker 2: so strictly for decoration.

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Speaker 1: So let's go back to eighteen ten, back to Bethel, Connecticut,

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Speaker 1: where this man was born, mister Phineas Taylor Barnum. He

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Speaker 1: had sort of a mixed family life. I mean, he

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Speaker 1: was they point out in this article. He was firmly American.

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Speaker 1: His great great great grandfather came over from England as

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Speaker 1: an indentured servant in the seventeenth century. Eventually became a landowner.

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Speaker 1: But they didn't It's not like they had a ton

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Speaker 1: of money. His dad, Filo great.

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Speaker 2: Name, yeah, all these are great names, was he was.

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Speaker 1: Not super successful, so it was kind of up to

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Speaker 1: young pt to make his own way in life.

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Speaker 2: Right. Yeah. His father was a farmer, which introduced Phineas

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Speaker 2: to the idea that he really hated like manual, mindless work.

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Speaker 1: Now, he didn't like doing that farm work.

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Speaker 2: But that's not to say he didn't like work. He

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Speaker 2: just liked very specific kinds of work where his energies

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Speaker 2: were appropriately chanting.

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Speaker 1: Builking people out of money.

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Speaker 2: Sure, yeah, I mean that that was kind of it.

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Speaker 1: He liked.

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Speaker 2: He was the definition of the word enterprising, right, she

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Speaker 2: could figure out a way. He could look at something literally,

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Speaker 2: look at something that you couldn't you could almost not

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Speaker 2: give away, you certainly couldn't sell, and turn it into

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Speaker 2: pure profits. Like he got into lotteries for a little

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Speaker 2: while once, right.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean he went to work. He left the farm,

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Speaker 1: went to work at a country store and realized quickly, like,

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Speaker 1: just because you're in the country doesn't mean there aren't

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Speaker 1: like swindlers and cheaters out here. So he kind of

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Speaker 1: learned some of the tricks of the trade there. His

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Speaker 1: old man died when he was fifteen, and he was

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Speaker 1: kind of his mom had his mom had to get

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Speaker 1: a job, but he was basically like, all right, it's

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Speaker 1: kind of up to me now to provide for my family.

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Speaker 1: So he moved got that another job as a store clerk,

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Speaker 1: and as you said, got into lotteries.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, and he was early on pursuing a career at clerkship,

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Speaker 2: which I guess is a thing, but yeah, so there

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Speaker 2: was this he saw easy money and lottery, so he

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Speaker 2: set up on himself. Apparently when he was working for

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Speaker 2: these owners of the store, they were away at one point,

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Speaker 2: and he got his eyes on some tin kitchen ware

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Speaker 2: that just would not sell. So he took some other

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Speaker 2: stuff that wouldn't sell at that store. These things weren't his,

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Speaker 2: by the way, and he traded them for a bottle collection,

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Speaker 2: which I guess was the thing that people wanted at

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Speaker 2: the time. Yeah, and he put those things up as prizes, right,

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Speaker 2: and he started a lottery and these were the prizes,

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Speaker 2: and there were cash prizes. But he ended up selling

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Speaker 2: like a thousand tickets or something like that in this

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Speaker 2: little town store based on these prizes and some cash prizes,

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Speaker 2: saying like half of all tickets were going to be winners,

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Speaker 2: and you might win a bottle or you might win

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Speaker 2: like a tin muffin pan, but you could also win

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Speaker 2: this cash. And so these things that had just been

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Speaker 2: sitting on these shelves forever were suddenly turned into something

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Speaker 2: valuable thanks to his marketing expertise. And this is while

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Speaker 2: he's still a teenager.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, we've covered this in something before that lotteries were

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Speaker 1: a thing back then that someone could just cook up.

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Speaker 1: You know, it's not like the lotteries we have today,

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Speaker 1: Like these sanctioned, sanctioned ways of stealing people's money. Right,

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Speaker 1: But back then you could just cook up a lottery

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Speaker 1: in a small town and be like, you know what

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Speaker 1: I've got. It was almost like a Ponzi thing, like

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Speaker 1: I can raise money, give away some of that money

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Speaker 1: and prizes, and then keep the.

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Speaker 2: Rest, right. I think that was in our lotteries episode.

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Speaker 2: Oh really yeah?

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Speaker 1: Okay, Well, in order to do that, though, you have

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Speaker 1: to be a natural born salesperson, which is what he was.

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Speaker 2: You really do and like lotteries would played like a

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Speaker 2: theme throughout his early career, like that's how he ended

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Speaker 2: up making his initial I don't know fortune's the right word,

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Speaker 2: but that's how he staked himself and his family was

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Speaker 2: through lotteries and working in stores and then eventually owning

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Speaker 2: stores like general stores, grocery stores, that kind of thing.

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Speaker 2: But the lotteries are where he made his money. And

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Speaker 2: he actually figured out that you could make more money

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Speaker 2: with less work than having to go to the trouble

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Speaker 2: of setting up a lottery. Like you said, anybody could

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Speaker 2: just set up a lottery by taking tickets from somebody

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Speaker 2: else's lottery and selling them further out at an increased price.

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Speaker 2: But then he figured out one more thing, Chuck. You

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Speaker 2: didn't even have to go out and sell these things yourself.

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Speaker 2: You could hire other people to sell them even further out.

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Speaker 2: All you had to do was give them the tickets

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Speaker 2: and collect the money that they brought. So he ended

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Speaker 2: up making money by basically expanding other people's lotteries for

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Speaker 2: a while.

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Speaker 1: That's right. And in the middle of this, and he

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Speaker 1: had moved to Brooklyn at this point, he's kind of

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Speaker 1: hopping all over the place there in the northeast.

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Speaker 2: But uh, and and to be fair, we're hopping kind

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Speaker 2: of all over his early life right now. Yeah, chronologically.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. So in this time period, he met who

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Speaker 1: would become his wife, a woman named Charity Hallett, who

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Speaker 1: he described in his autobiography as a fair, rosy cheeked,

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Speaker 1: buxom girl with beautiful white teeth. Did I mention she

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Speaker 1: had big.

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Speaker 2: Boobs, right, but those teeth.

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Speaker 1: Man. So they would get married, and I think they

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Speaker 1: had four daughters. But during all this time he did

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Speaker 1: he had a little Josh Clark in him, because you mean, well,

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Speaker 1: he was writing letters to local papers that weren't getting published.

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Speaker 1: So he said, you know what, I'm going to start

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Speaker 1: my own paper. Yeah, he clarked himself a paper.

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Speaker 2: I'll see you all in Hell media.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and much like yourself, you started your own paper,

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Speaker 1: which was kind of cool.

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Speaker 2: Sure. I mean like, if people won't print your crank ideas, yeah,

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Speaker 2: go start your own paper.

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Speaker 1: It's like if you want to get your manifesto out

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Speaker 1: there and.

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Speaker 2: Either yeah, either become you and Obama esque, which we

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Speaker 2: don't recommend, or start your own paper.

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Speaker 1: That's right. And his was called Herald of Freedom, which

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Speaker 1: is terrible. And this is where it gets a little

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Speaker 1: weird because he kind of went after people, was eventually

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Speaker 1: hit with a libel suit and spent sixty days in jail.

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Speaker 1: But that sold a lot of papers, and he was

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Speaker 1: also hailed as a hero because apparently he was legitimately

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Speaker 1: exposing corruption.

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Speaker 2: Right, So to me, Chuck, that one really stood out

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Speaker 2: because it shows just how huge this guy's life story is. Yeah,

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Speaker 2: that even if you make a movie out of it, all,

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Speaker 2: the best you can hope for is to pick like

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Speaker 2: five or six or ten different things and try to

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Speaker 2: find a thread throughout him. Right, Whether that's an accurate

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Speaker 2: portrailer or not, it can't possibly be, because this guy's

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Speaker 2: life was just so enormous and he did so many things,

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Speaker 2: and he was such an outsize character that a lot

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Speaker 2: of times you either vilify him or glorify him, and

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Speaker 2: it was much more a combination of both of those things.

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Speaker 2: And I think that example really says it all. Like

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Speaker 2: he had his notions, and he started his own paper

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Speaker 2: and ended up going to jail and subscription boosted, so

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Speaker 2: ended up making money from it. But at the same time,

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Speaker 2: he was legitimately trying to call out corruption in this

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Speaker 2: town that he cared about. So his character was much

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Speaker 2: more complex than you get just from just about any

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Speaker 2: source unless you read biographies about him.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, agreed. So finally he says, I'm sorry, Connecticut said

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Speaker 1: no more lotteries in Connecticut. So he's like, all right,

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Speaker 1: what am I doing here if I can't do this

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Speaker 1: little scam?

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Speaker 2: He's like, I love this town, but not that much.

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Speaker 1: So in eighteen thirty four he left the paper, shut

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Speaker 1: that down, moved his family to New York City and

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Speaker 1: should we take a break? Perfect, All right, we're in

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Speaker 1: New York City and we'll be back right after this.

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Speaker 3: If you want to know, then you're in luck. Just

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Speaker 3: listen to josh selfus.

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Speaker 1: No stuff you sho.

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Speaker 2: No, I got a falafel.

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Speaker 1: Is it good?

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Speaker 2: It's pretty good?

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Speaker 1: Is it from the halal guys? Uh?

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Speaker 2: Huh of course, man, who else are you going to

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Speaker 2: get a falaffel from?

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Speaker 1: That's good stuff? Yeah? Uh so, Man, this guy really

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Speaker 1: just reading through this thing. He did so many.

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Speaker 2: Jobs, right, he was a factotem.

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Speaker 1: Dozens and dozens of jobs through his lifetime.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, and I'm glad he didn't just stick to clerking, right,

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Speaker 2: or even lottery. He had this thing like something about

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Speaker 2: show business attracted this guy. Oh yeah, I don't know

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Speaker 2: what it was. Maybe nobody but him knows what it was.

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Speaker 2: Maybe he doesn't even know what it was. But he

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Speaker 2: was attracted to the idea of like wowing and amusing

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Speaker 2: and amazing crowds. And he did that pretty early on.

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Speaker 2: I think he was twenty five when he got into

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Speaker 2: exhibiting a human being who he purchased and owned for

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Speaker 2: a while, which, by the way, does not show up

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Speaker 2: in the Greatest Showman.

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Speaker 1: Right, And this is after in New York he started

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Speaker 1: a boarding house for a while. Yeah, and co owned

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Speaker 1: a grocery store for a while.

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Speaker 2: Right.

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Speaker 1: And so like his life is full of him just

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Speaker 1: trying to do these kind of regular things and then

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Speaker 1: being like Nope, gotta go buy a lady and put

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Speaker 1: her on display.

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Speaker 2: Right, this is after Chuck. By the way, he had

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Speaker 2: come down with smallpox for a while.

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Speaker 1: Oh did we miss a smallpox?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Like, this guy had a

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Speaker 2: huge life. Let's get to Joyce Heath right, Yeah, because

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Speaker 2: she is a very controversial part of P. T. Barnum's life.

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Speaker 2: She was the first, his first foray into show business.

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Speaker 2: And there's no other way to put it. Like he

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Speaker 2: purchased her. She was a slave and elderly slave who

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Speaker 2: he purchased from another promoter who had been touting her

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Speaker 2: as General George Washington's nurse maid. Yes, from when George

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Speaker 2: Washington was a child. This is eighteen thirty five, right,

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Speaker 2: you did as she was supposedly one hundred and sixty

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Speaker 2: one years old.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, so he negotiates a price. He went and saw her,

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Speaker 1: and she was blind, she had no teeth, she was

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Speaker 1: partially paralyzed, but she could talk and tell her story.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, she told stories about young George as a boy.

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Speaker 1: Oh yeah, and to be fair, she was already being exploited.

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Speaker 1: It's not like he which is not great. But it's

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Speaker 1: not like Barnum introduced this into her life.

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Speaker 2: No, he just purchased her and took it over. Yeah,

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Speaker 2: it took over the exploitation money.

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Speaker 1: For a thousand dollars, and he toured with her until

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Speaker 1: she died, not that long later, just like a year later,

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Speaker 1: not even in eighteen thirty six. He made a lot

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Speaker 1: of dough and it was it was sort of a

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Speaker 1: watershed moment for him where I think he was like,

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Speaker 1: wait a minute, I've realized that I can get people

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Speaker 1: in a room by cooking up these stories and getting

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Speaker 1: things in the newspaper and printing these posters, and even if,

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Speaker 1: like if business was down, he would do these crazy things,

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Speaker 1: like one of them when business was down, appearing with Heath.

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Speaker 1: At one point he accused her of being a robot

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Speaker 1: what they called at the time an automaton.

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Speaker 2: In an anonymous letter to the editor in a newspaper.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, a robot made of whalebone, rubber and springs. So

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Speaker 1: everyone was like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Not only is she

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Speaker 1: George Washington's nurse maid, but she's really a robot.

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Speaker 2: Right. What that did was it got the people who

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Speaker 2: had been avoiding going to see her, because even at

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Speaker 2: the time, people were like, this is pure exploitation. This

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Speaker 2: woman is being exhibited like a giraffe would be or

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Speaker 2: something like that. She's an old lady's working her ten

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Speaker 2: to twelve hours a day. Some people think that he

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Speaker 2: worked her to death, literally, And so there was part

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Speaker 2: of the press that was saying a reporting on this

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Speaker 2: with great distaste. So there's a segment of American society

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Speaker 2: who would not be caught dead seeing George Washington's one

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Speaker 2: hundred and sixty year old nursemaid, but they would conceive

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Speaker 2: a go see an autonomaton if that's really what was

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Speaker 2: going on. So he managed to dupe the very people

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Speaker 2: who were critical of this exploitation that he was undertaking.

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Speaker 2: He got everybody in that one.

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Speaker 1: Well, yeah, and it gets even worse. Finally, when she

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Speaker 1: passed away, he actually sold tickets to a public autopsy

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Speaker 1: in a saloon so people could come look at this

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Speaker 1: poor woman's insides. And this is where it was finally revealed.

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Speaker 1: Doctor said, she's maybe like eighty eighty one years old at.

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Speaker 2: Most, right, And this was so Jane McGrath kind of

359
00:19:38,480 --> 00:19:42,320
Speaker 2: walks past, like what a controversy this was, Like this

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Speaker 2: guy had been like very much touting that she was

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Speaker 2: the nurse maid, like he supposedly had the bill of

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Speaker 2: sale to George Washington's father for her, so like he

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Speaker 2: was saying, like, this is legitimately one hundred and six

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Speaker 2: year old woman. So in this autopsy that he charged for.

365
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Speaker 2: When it was exposed that she was actually half that age,

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Speaker 2: it was there was a bit of disgrace there, and

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Speaker 2: he had to learn to roll with the punches. And

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Speaker 2: it was about this time that that he basically said

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Speaker 2: to himself, you can you can take this as a

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Speaker 2: lesson and go on the straight and narrow, maybe get

371
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Speaker 2: back into clerking. Yeah, or you can double maybe triple

372
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Speaker 2: and quadruple down on this and and see where that goes.

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Speaker 2: And he chose the ladder of the two for sure.

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Speaker 1: That's right. He sure did. The next thing that he did,

375
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Speaker 1: the next person that he kind of took under his

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Speaker 1: wing was his greasy greasy wing, was someone called yea,

377
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Speaker 1: why is it spelled that way?

378
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Speaker 2: That is the Italian spelling of signor.

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Speaker 1: Oh, well, let me turn it on then nice antonio antonio,

380
00:20:59,680 --> 00:21:00,960
Speaker 1: And an extra bit in.

381
00:21:00,920 --> 00:21:03,439
Speaker 2: There, signor antonio is another way to say.

382
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Speaker 1: Well, sure if you're a dullard.

383
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Speaker 2: I'm a bit of a dullard, chuck. I think you

384
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Speaker 2: know that after ten years.

385
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Speaker 1: So this guy, we're really milking that ten year thing.

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Speaker 2: Hum. I've got my SYSK ten year Army shirt on.

387
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Speaker 1: I see that. It's really nice.

388
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Speaker 2: Thank you. I've been working on my bucksomeness.

389
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Speaker 1: You're quite buxom. So Senior Antonio was a balancer. He's

390
00:21:28,920 --> 00:21:32,800
Speaker 1: one of these guys like a plate spinner, walked on stilts, juggles.

391
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Speaker 1: He could throw things in the air and catch them

392
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Speaker 1: very fast.

393
00:21:37,400 --> 00:21:38,680
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's like a hippie.

394
00:21:39,200 --> 00:21:41,800
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. He would be on tour with he'd have

395
00:21:41,880 --> 00:21:44,360
Speaker 1: those little sticks what are those called, devil sticks?

396
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Speaker 2: Devil sticks or a hackey sack, any of those things.

397
00:21:47,640 --> 00:21:49,280
Speaker 1: Yeah, he pull a hacky sack out of his ear

398
00:21:49,359 --> 00:21:52,000
Speaker 1: at any moment. So this guy, he said, all right,

399
00:21:52,000 --> 00:21:54,760
Speaker 1: you need to be my newest client. I will make

400
00:21:54,760 --> 00:22:00,159
Speaker 1: you famous. Change your stage name from Signor Antonio to

401
00:22:00,240 --> 00:22:05,200
Speaker 1: Senor Vivala because that's a little more I don't know, exciting.

402
00:22:05,760 --> 00:22:09,320
Speaker 2: I guess I like Senor Antonio. Yeah I did too.

403
00:22:09,520 --> 00:22:10,560
Speaker 2: It's a lateral move.

404
00:22:11,520 --> 00:22:13,879
Speaker 1: Here's the thing, though, is there were a lot of

405
00:22:13,960 --> 00:22:16,119
Speaker 1: dudes out there spinning plates, so he it wasn't like

406
00:22:16,200 --> 00:22:20,760
Speaker 1: he was so unique. But Barnum thought, you know what,

407
00:22:20,800 --> 00:22:23,479
Speaker 1: I think you're better than the rest. So here's what

408
00:22:23,520 --> 00:22:26,320
Speaker 1: i'll do. And again this is just another example of

409
00:22:26,320 --> 00:22:29,840
Speaker 1: how how good he was at promotion. He said, I'll

410
00:22:29,880 --> 00:22:33,880
Speaker 1: do a free performance for a theater and I'll even

411
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Speaker 1: be your assistant on stage. And people came, and so

412
00:22:37,680 --> 00:22:40,360
Speaker 1: the theater said, all right, I guess if people come

413
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Speaker 1: for free, they'll pay.

414
00:22:42,359 --> 00:22:45,600
Speaker 2: I think I think what he was saying was he Yeah,

415
00:22:45,640 --> 00:22:47,200
Speaker 2: I think that's exactly I think you're right.

416
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Speaker 1: He just wowed them enough.

417
00:22:48,359 --> 00:22:50,200
Speaker 2: I think that's that's the impression I have.

418
00:22:50,359 --> 00:22:50,919
Speaker 1: Yeah.

419
00:22:50,960 --> 00:22:55,320
Speaker 2: But even still, despite Vivala being genuinely good, he was

420
00:22:55,359 --> 00:22:59,680
Speaker 2: I think head and shoulders above most of his contemporary spinners.

421
00:23:00,119 --> 00:23:00,359
Speaker 1: Yeah.

422
00:23:00,640 --> 00:23:02,800
Speaker 2: I think people saw in the press, oh there's a

423
00:23:03,000 --> 00:23:06,040
Speaker 2: really good plate spinner. We saw a plate spinner at

424
00:23:06,520 --> 00:23:08,720
Speaker 2: the at the office last week. So I'm not going

425
00:23:08,800 --> 00:23:11,160
Speaker 2: to go anywhere to see another plate spinner. I'm certainly

426
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Speaker 2: not going to pay.

427
00:23:12,359 --> 00:23:12,840
Speaker 1: Yeah.

428
00:23:12,880 --> 00:23:15,640
Speaker 2: So Barnum had a pretty good idea, But I actually

429
00:23:15,680 --> 00:23:19,960
Speaker 2: came out of an uncomfortable situation that fell into his

430
00:23:20,080 --> 00:23:23,480
Speaker 2: lap with Roberts, another plate spinner.

431
00:23:24,400 --> 00:23:27,720
Speaker 1: Yeah, so this is a rival plate spinner who apparently

432
00:23:27,760 --> 00:23:30,119
Speaker 1: would go to produce on the West Coast. Yeah, he

433
00:23:31,119 --> 00:23:35,800
Speaker 1: was a crip and he would go to Vivala's performances

434
00:23:35,800 --> 00:23:39,280
Speaker 1: and heckel him. I guess you call that plate spinning.

435
00:23:39,160 --> 00:23:41,560
Speaker 2: Boo, terrible plate spinning.

436
00:23:41,280 --> 00:23:44,639
Speaker 1: Stuff like that, And so P. T. Barnum cooked up

437
00:23:44,640 --> 00:23:46,320
Speaker 1: a thing where he was like, all right, I'll offer

438
00:23:46,359 --> 00:23:51,399
Speaker 1: one thousand American dollars to anyone who can perform the

439
00:23:51,520 --> 00:23:56,080
Speaker 1: Vivalas act in public. Roberts accepted. But here's what really

440
00:23:56,119 --> 00:23:59,000
Speaker 1: happened is he got together with Roberts and they all

441
00:23:59,040 --> 00:24:04,000
Speaker 1: three hatched a plan to do these kind of staged competitions.

442
00:24:03,560 --> 00:24:05,640
Speaker 2: Right, so they promoted in the.

443
00:24:05,600 --> 00:24:07,719
Speaker 1: Place spinning competitions.

444
00:24:07,119 --> 00:24:10,320
Speaker 2: East Coast, West Coast played spinning rivalry is going on

445
00:24:10,440 --> 00:24:13,840
Speaker 2: right now. Everybody's going to come see this, and everybody did.

446
00:24:14,320 --> 00:24:19,639
Speaker 2: And in that first performance, Roberts, as was staged, conceded

447
00:24:19,680 --> 00:24:22,960
Speaker 2: he could not replicate Vivala's act. It was too good.

448
00:24:23,520 --> 00:24:27,600
Speaker 2: But I would love to see Vivala replicate my act.

449
00:24:27,680 --> 00:24:31,280
Speaker 2: And I challenge you, Senor Vivalla, to replicate my act

450
00:24:31,600 --> 00:24:35,080
Speaker 2: tomorrow night at this same theater, and they kept going

451
00:24:35,119 --> 00:24:39,080
Speaker 2: back and forth like that, with this staged rivalry that

452
00:24:39,119 --> 00:24:43,879
Speaker 2: they made some cash off of, thanks to Barnum's ingenuity.

453
00:24:43,760 --> 00:24:46,720
Speaker 1: They did. Finally, in eighteen thirty six, the circus comes

454
00:24:46,760 --> 00:24:50,400
Speaker 1: into the picture. He joined a traveling circus. Barnum did

455
00:24:50,800 --> 00:24:53,240
Speaker 1: as a ticket seller, which I take it to mean

456
00:24:53,280 --> 00:24:55,639
Speaker 1: he doesn't sit in a booth and sell tickets, but

457
00:24:55,680 --> 00:24:57,240
Speaker 1: he goes around town selling tickets.

458
00:24:57,400 --> 00:24:59,920
Speaker 2: Yeah, like chambers of commerce or something like that.

459
00:25:00,080 --> 00:25:02,760
Speaker 1: Yeah, And of course he got a little commission off

460
00:25:02,760 --> 00:25:05,280
Speaker 1: this thing, so he was making some dough.

461
00:25:05,320 --> 00:25:08,240
Speaker 2: Vivoala joined the same circus as a performer.

462
00:25:08,320 --> 00:25:11,080
Speaker 1: Of course they were attached at the hip at that point.

463
00:25:11,240 --> 00:25:13,960
Speaker 2: No, that was Changinang bunker you're thinking of.

464
00:25:15,800 --> 00:25:16,760
Speaker 1: That's a dad joke.

465
00:25:17,200 --> 00:25:18,000
Speaker 2: It totally was.

466
00:25:20,800 --> 00:25:23,719
Speaker 1: And this one I thought was a little bit weird.

467
00:25:23,880 --> 00:25:28,560
Speaker 1: Apparently the circus proprietor, a guy named Turner, was into

468
00:25:28,560 --> 00:25:33,240
Speaker 1: practical jokes and not very good ones. Because this practical

469
00:25:33,320 --> 00:25:36,919
Speaker 1: joke was he convinced a crowd that Barnum was the

470
00:25:36,960 --> 00:25:40,639
Speaker 1: reverend e from Avery who had been acquitted of murder.

471
00:25:40,640 --> 00:25:43,159
Speaker 1: But everyone thought that this guy had committed murder, and

472
00:25:43,200 --> 00:25:45,640
Speaker 1: back then, no one knew anyone looked like so he said,

473
00:25:45,680 --> 00:25:49,199
Speaker 1: this guy is from Avery, and he almost got lynched.

474
00:25:49,240 --> 00:25:53,800
Speaker 2: Apparently, Yeah, like from Avery's name was not very well

475
00:25:53,920 --> 00:25:56,399
Speaker 2: liked in the area. He was, at the very least

476
00:25:56,880 --> 00:25:59,960
Speaker 2: he through having an adulterous affair with a young woman

477
00:26:00,000 --> 00:26:03,400
Speaker 2: and had induced her to kill herself, or at worst

478
00:26:03,800 --> 00:26:07,720
Speaker 2: had murdered her to prevent her from having his illegitimate child. Yeah,

479
00:26:07,720 --> 00:26:10,280
Speaker 2: but he's going to quit it. Right, Andy's a reverend,

480
00:26:10,280 --> 00:26:15,040
Speaker 2: did we mention? So, yeah, the crowd, like, according to Barnum,

481
00:26:15,040 --> 00:26:15,840
Speaker 2: almost killed them.

482
00:26:15,920 --> 00:26:17,679
Speaker 1: It's a real funny joke, I know.

483
00:26:17,920 --> 00:26:22,600
Speaker 2: But then later on, Jane says that Barnum got even

484
00:26:22,640 --> 00:26:25,200
Speaker 2: with him with his own practical joke. I could find

485
00:26:25,560 --> 00:26:30,920
Speaker 2: nothing anywhere, including in Barnum's autobiography that mentions that.

486
00:26:31,040 --> 00:26:33,600
Speaker 1: I think he covered his toilet and saran wrap.

487
00:26:34,400 --> 00:26:37,200
Speaker 2: No crude, that's so nasty.

488
00:26:38,680 --> 00:26:40,159
Speaker 1: No, No, he gave him an upper decker.

489
00:26:40,920 --> 00:26:43,000
Speaker 2: Gross, that's even worse.

490
00:26:44,280 --> 00:26:47,479
Speaker 1: So apparently these guys got into business together and it

491
00:26:47,520 --> 00:26:50,520
Speaker 1: became a thing where people would go see the circus,

492
00:26:50,560 --> 00:26:53,679
Speaker 1: where the two ring masters would would kind of go

493
00:26:53,760 --> 00:26:56,760
Speaker 1: at each other with these practical jokes. Right, that became

494
00:26:56,800 --> 00:26:57,080
Speaker 1: a thing.

495
00:26:57,840 --> 00:27:02,240
Speaker 2: So there's a transition going on, another transition now he is.

496
00:27:02,760 --> 00:27:07,359
Speaker 2: He started out store clerking, lotterying, went got into show

497
00:27:07,400 --> 00:27:12,480
Speaker 2: business where it's like basically a Colonel Tom to different performers. Yeah,

498
00:27:13,160 --> 00:27:16,600
Speaker 2: and then now he's transitioning into the circus. But by

499
00:27:16,640 --> 00:27:19,359
Speaker 2: now he's been like married to the road about as

500
00:27:19,400 --> 00:27:22,000
Speaker 2: much as he's been married to Charity as well. And

501
00:27:22,040 --> 00:27:25,560
Speaker 2: from all accounts, like he was very much in love

502
00:27:25,600 --> 00:27:29,320
Speaker 2: with her and they were like he was faithful and

503
00:27:28,520 --> 00:27:31,359
Speaker 2: they were a real couple. But he was on the

504
00:27:31,440 --> 00:27:33,600
Speaker 2: road a lot. There's just no if ands or butts

505
00:27:33,640 --> 00:27:35,600
Speaker 2: about it. He was out there on the road quite

506
00:27:35,600 --> 00:27:38,720
Speaker 2: a bit. So transitioning to a circus was basically the

507
00:27:38,800 --> 00:27:41,400
Speaker 2: same thing. It was just a little bigger of an outfit.

508
00:27:41,480 --> 00:27:43,439
Speaker 2: So it was like a step up. But you got

509
00:27:43,480 --> 00:27:45,800
Speaker 2: to also keep in mind here that he's spending a

510
00:27:45,840 --> 00:27:48,400
Speaker 2: lot of time on the road at a time when

511
00:27:48,560 --> 00:27:51,040
Speaker 2: travel was really long and really tough.

512
00:27:51,800 --> 00:27:54,800
Speaker 1: That's right, And so he eventually decides working for someone

513
00:27:54,840 --> 00:27:57,359
Speaker 1: else's circus is for the birds. I'm going to start

514
00:27:57,400 --> 00:28:00,240
Speaker 1: my own. You buy some horse and wagons, going to

515
00:28:00,280 --> 00:28:03,640
Speaker 1: get a clown. You gotta have a clown. I think

516
00:28:03,680 --> 00:28:08,360
Speaker 1: he still had Vivala at the time. Yeah, and started

517
00:28:08,800 --> 00:28:12,879
Speaker 1: Barnum's Grand Scientific and Musical Theater. Toured all over the

518
00:28:12,880 --> 00:28:17,040
Speaker 1: place for a little while, and then they disbanded. Right,

519
00:28:17,560 --> 00:28:19,200
Speaker 1: nothing ever seemed to work out for very long.

520
00:28:20,359 --> 00:28:23,760
Speaker 2: No, I think that he got fed up and says

521
00:28:23,760 --> 00:28:27,960
Speaker 2: with some of the rivalries with other showmen that they,

522
00:28:28,320 --> 00:28:31,000
Speaker 2: you know, you would build your whole circus around like

523
00:28:31,080 --> 00:28:33,040
Speaker 2: an act, and all of a sudden, the act would

524
00:28:33,040 --> 00:28:35,240
Speaker 2: be like, I'm sick of this, I'm sick of being

525
00:28:35,280 --> 00:28:37,359
Speaker 2: on the road. I'll see you later, and all of

526
00:28:37,400 --> 00:28:39,320
Speaker 2: a sudden your circus would fall apart. I think they

527
00:28:39,320 --> 00:28:43,920
Speaker 2: were kind of tenuous outfits, right, but he he The

528
00:28:44,000 --> 00:28:47,280
Speaker 2: thing about Barnum was like something about this called to him,

529
00:28:47,320 --> 00:28:49,960
Speaker 2: like he would when his circus collapsed and he was

530
00:28:50,000 --> 00:28:51,880
Speaker 2: out in the middle of the country on the road

531
00:28:52,560 --> 00:28:54,840
Speaker 2: and he had to go back home. The first thing

532
00:28:54,840 --> 00:28:57,600
Speaker 2: you would do is start figuring out his next circus

533
00:28:57,680 --> 00:28:59,880
Speaker 2: or his next act or whatever it was. He would

534
00:28:59,920 --> 00:29:07,800
Speaker 2: go back out again. He was in indefatigable, into fatigueable

535
00:29:08,920 --> 00:29:09,680
Speaker 2: in that sense.

536
00:29:10,160 --> 00:29:12,480
Speaker 1: Uh. Yeah, So I mean we'll quickly speed through the

537
00:29:12,520 --> 00:29:16,360
Speaker 1: next couple of years. He did a little steamboat circus

538
00:29:16,360 --> 00:29:19,760
Speaker 1: for a little while along the Mississippi River. That didn't

539
00:29:19,760 --> 00:29:22,400
Speaker 1: come along. He tried to do a respectable business again,

540
00:29:23,480 --> 00:29:26,920
Speaker 1: went into business with a guy who manufactured a grease

541
00:29:28,880 --> 00:29:31,400
Speaker 1: paste in Cologne. That did it all right for a

542
00:29:31,400 --> 00:29:34,920
Speaker 1: little while, but then that failed. Uh, and then this

543
00:29:35,000 --> 00:29:39,480
Speaker 1: whole time, he still feels that pull to the tent. Right.

544
00:29:39,520 --> 00:29:43,520
Speaker 2: He sold illustrated bibles for a little while. Yeah, finally,

545
00:29:44,000 --> 00:29:48,440
Speaker 2: here's the thing he wanted stability, like being out on

546
00:29:48,480 --> 00:29:54,960
Speaker 2: the road was tough, s Steve Perry, right, but he

547
00:29:55,200 --> 00:29:59,160
Speaker 2: wanted this to be tied to show business in some way. Yeah,

548
00:29:59,200 --> 00:30:03,960
Speaker 2: finally one and I think the eighteen forty one he

549
00:30:05,720 --> 00:30:10,160
Speaker 2: had another big break or another big vision. There's a

550
00:30:10,480 --> 00:30:14,120
Speaker 2: place in New York, a museum and what you would

551
00:30:14,280 --> 00:30:17,560
Speaker 2: call today a museum that was up for sale in

552
00:30:18,480 --> 00:30:20,040
Speaker 2: I'm not sure where it was, but it was in

553
00:30:20,040 --> 00:30:23,640
Speaker 2: New York, right, yes, And it was called Scudder's American Museum.

554
00:30:23,680 --> 00:30:28,040
Speaker 2: And Barnum heard that Scudder wanted to get out and

555
00:30:28,320 --> 00:30:31,960
Speaker 2: was putting the whole collection up for fifteen grand, which

556
00:30:32,000 --> 00:30:34,280
Speaker 2: is a substantial amount of money and definitely more money

557
00:30:34,280 --> 00:30:37,280
Speaker 2: than Barnum had. But he said that's it. Right there.

558
00:30:37,800 --> 00:30:40,040
Speaker 2: I can have a permanent place where people come to me,

559
00:30:40,720 --> 00:30:43,840
Speaker 2: and I can be home with my wife and daughters.

560
00:30:44,120 --> 00:30:48,040
Speaker 2: But I can still have this daily interaction with show business.

561
00:30:48,240 --> 00:30:49,200
Speaker 2: I got to buy that.

562
00:30:49,080 --> 00:30:53,640
Speaker 1: Thing, well, and it will also accomplish this is I

563
00:30:53,680 --> 00:30:58,600
Speaker 1: can still have my freak show performers. But because it's

564
00:30:58,600 --> 00:31:02,200
Speaker 1: a museum, somehow it has a little bit more respectability

565
00:31:02,720 --> 00:31:06,720
Speaker 1: because apparently at the time, theaters weren't like they are today.

566
00:31:06,920 --> 00:31:10,040
Speaker 1: It wasn't like we're going to the theater. Theaters could

567
00:31:10,040 --> 00:31:13,959
Speaker 1: be a little bit like a second tier entertainment.

568
00:31:14,040 --> 00:31:19,000
Speaker 2: Right, It was like hoypolloy, tawdry crowds went to the theater. Yeah,

569
00:31:19,080 --> 00:31:21,400
Speaker 2: that was associated with like Burlasque or something like that,

570
00:31:21,640 --> 00:31:25,320
Speaker 2: or even like humanodities exhibition stuff like that. That was

571
00:31:25,440 --> 00:31:30,040
Speaker 2: theater stuff. A museum like scudders, like respectable people could

572
00:31:30,080 --> 00:31:33,280
Speaker 2: go there. So what Barnum did was he bought a

573
00:31:33,360 --> 00:31:35,760
Speaker 2: museum and then dragged it down into the mud.

574
00:31:36,280 --> 00:31:38,800
Speaker 1: Right and this hold the way he financed the museum,

575
00:31:38,840 --> 00:31:41,080
Speaker 1: I didn't fully understand, to be.

576
00:31:41,080 --> 00:31:44,080
Speaker 2: Honest, Do you want me to explain it if you want,

577
00:31:44,880 --> 00:31:46,440
Speaker 2: or we could just say he ended up with the

578
00:31:46,520 --> 00:31:49,520
Speaker 2: museum in eighteen forty one through a lot of work.

579
00:31:49,880 --> 00:31:52,320
Speaker 1: And I think that's fair enough because it is a

580
00:31:52,320 --> 00:31:54,640
Speaker 1: little bit like you know, Robin Peter to pay Paul.

581
00:31:55,440 --> 00:31:57,960
Speaker 1: It wasn't just a straight up purchase. Let's just say that, right.

582
00:31:58,000 --> 00:32:00,800
Speaker 2: But so one thing that you can say about this museum,

583
00:32:00,800 --> 00:32:06,000
Speaker 2: which he renamed Barnum's American Museum, it was a big success.

584
00:32:06,160 --> 00:32:08,240
Speaker 2: And one of the reasons it was a big success

585
00:32:08,360 --> 00:32:14,240
Speaker 2: was because he was he tirelessly worked at finding new

586
00:32:14,320 --> 00:32:19,400
Speaker 2: and interesting ways to market the thing, right, Yeah, and

587
00:32:19,480 --> 00:32:23,880
Speaker 2: by I'm not sure exactly when, but by a very

588
00:32:23,920 --> 00:32:26,520
Speaker 2: short time after he opened it, I think that same

589
00:32:26,600 --> 00:32:32,240
Speaker 2: year in eighteen forty one, he was he charged twenty

590
00:32:32,280 --> 00:32:36,200
Speaker 2: five cents a person for admission. He had something like

591
00:32:36,400 --> 00:32:40,720
Speaker 2: four thousand visitors a day. And he took this thing,

592
00:32:41,040 --> 00:32:43,320
Speaker 2: like I say that he dragged the Ward Museum down

593
00:32:43,360 --> 00:32:46,680
Speaker 2: in the mud. He definitely added and expanded to the

594
00:32:46,720 --> 00:32:49,719
Speaker 2: definition of museum. And then he also had this lecture

595
00:32:49,760 --> 00:32:52,560
Speaker 2: hall where he had like performances that you would see

596
00:32:52,600 --> 00:32:54,920
Speaker 2: like in a circus or something like that. And he

597
00:32:55,040 --> 00:32:59,160
Speaker 2: turned this place into an emporium just something huge in

598
00:32:59,840 --> 00:33:03,160
Speaker 2: an norm as spectacle and something like eight hundred and

599
00:33:03,200 --> 00:33:07,280
Speaker 2: fifty thousand pieces were on display in his museum, so

600
00:33:07,360 --> 00:33:09,640
Speaker 2: you definitely got your quarter's worth for sure.

601
00:33:10,000 --> 00:33:12,600
Speaker 1: Yeah, and those are just the pieces he also, I mean,

602
00:33:12,640 --> 00:33:16,120
Speaker 1: as far as the circus element, he had everything covered.

603
00:33:16,160 --> 00:33:21,520
Speaker 1: He had dancers, musicians, plate spinners, ventriloquists. Well you got

604
00:33:21,560 --> 00:33:24,000
Speaker 1: to have the plate spin He had little people, he

605
00:33:24,080 --> 00:33:27,840
Speaker 1: had big people. He had ladies with beards, and robots

606
00:33:27,880 --> 00:33:32,120
Speaker 1: and puppets and animals, he had drafts and grizzly bears.

607
00:33:32,160 --> 00:33:36,600
Speaker 1: Like he really had everything humming on all cylinders at

608
00:33:36,600 --> 00:33:37,000
Speaker 1: this point.

609
00:33:37,320 --> 00:33:39,959
Speaker 2: Yeah, he really did. And again there was still there

610
00:33:40,040 --> 00:33:42,480
Speaker 2: was a whole thread of like, you know, there are

611
00:33:42,720 --> 00:33:46,920
Speaker 2: people being exploited, there were people who were complicit in that,

612
00:33:47,040 --> 00:33:51,600
Speaker 2: there were people who were Anyone who came to the

613
00:33:51,680 --> 00:33:57,680
Speaker 2: museum was gawking at, you know, the weirdness of these

614
00:33:57,720 --> 00:34:00,440
Speaker 2: other people or whatever, which again today is very odd

615
00:34:00,480 --> 00:34:04,280
Speaker 2: to us, but at the time was still odd. Like

616
00:34:04,320 --> 00:34:06,320
Speaker 2: that's the thing that I think it's lost on people.

617
00:34:06,440 --> 00:34:09,080
Speaker 2: Like there were side shows and things like that, but

618
00:34:09,920 --> 00:34:15,200
Speaker 2: Barnum took it to an extraordinary degree and really ran

619
00:34:15,280 --> 00:34:18,480
Speaker 2: with it and became extremely rich as a result. Actually,

620
00:34:19,360 --> 00:34:21,960
Speaker 2: should we take a break, I'm ready to all.

621
00:34:21,960 --> 00:34:24,200
Speaker 1: Right, the museums humming along. We're gonna take a break.

622
00:34:24,320 --> 00:34:25,319
Speaker 1: We'll be back right after this.

623
00:34:25,680 --> 00:34:29,120
Speaker 3: If you want to know then you're in luck. Just

624
00:34:29,320 --> 00:34:36,720
Speaker 3: listen up to selfus.

625
00:34:38,920 --> 00:34:52,560
Speaker 2: Stuffus, Okay, we're back.

626
00:34:53,360 --> 00:34:56,560
Speaker 1: Yeah. So we mentioned earlier about the humbug, this kind

627
00:34:56,560 --> 00:35:01,200
Speaker 1: of hucksterism in his biography there or auto biography, which

628
00:35:01,280 --> 00:35:04,719
Speaker 1: was rewritten by himself by the way, after people read

629
00:35:04,719 --> 00:35:08,280
Speaker 1: the first version and said, what a jerk. Yeah.

630
00:35:08,360 --> 00:35:11,680
Speaker 2: Yeah, he was like just openly boastful and braggered about

631
00:35:11,680 --> 00:35:14,400
Speaker 2: how much he exploited people and how much he duped

632
00:35:14,440 --> 00:35:15,440
Speaker 2: the American public.

633
00:35:15,480 --> 00:35:17,120
Speaker 1: He turned it down a little bit in this in

634
00:35:17,160 --> 00:35:22,120
Speaker 1: the revision, but he did talk a little bit about

635
00:35:22,160 --> 00:35:24,920
Speaker 1: being slightly embarrassed about kind of how shameless he was.

636
00:35:25,560 --> 00:35:27,719
Speaker 1: But then again in the next line he would say,

637
00:35:28,000 --> 00:35:30,400
Speaker 1: but you know what, this is how everyone is in

638
00:35:30,440 --> 00:35:32,879
Speaker 1: my business. I'm just better at it than them.

639
00:35:32,960 --> 00:35:38,920
Speaker 2: Basically, yeah, he said, he said, oh, there's a great quote.

640
00:35:38,920 --> 00:35:43,600
Speaker 2: I can't find it anywhere though where Basically if he oh, here,

641
00:35:43,600 --> 00:35:47,919
Speaker 2: it is if his advertising was quote more audacious than

642
00:35:47,920 --> 00:35:51,240
Speaker 2: his competitors, it was not because I had less scruple

643
00:35:51,280 --> 00:35:54,719
Speaker 2: than they, but more energy. Far more ingenuity and a

644
00:35:54,760 --> 00:35:56,640
Speaker 2: better foundation for such promises.

645
00:35:56,800 --> 00:35:58,239
Speaker 1: He thought a lot of himself, He.

646
00:35:58,239 --> 00:36:00,560
Speaker 2: Definitely did, but he also worked pretty are at it,

647
00:36:00,600 --> 00:36:03,600
Speaker 2: for sure. And I think if you, if you compared

648
00:36:03,680 --> 00:36:07,520
Speaker 2: apples to apples at the time, Barnum's jam was way

649
00:36:07,560 --> 00:36:09,320
Speaker 2: better than anybody else's jam.

650
00:36:09,480 --> 00:36:14,040
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. So uh. He had three really big

651
00:36:14,080 --> 00:36:18,160
Speaker 1: successes in a row with his with his museum here.

652
00:36:18,719 --> 00:36:21,040
Speaker 1: The first one was called the Fiji Mermaid f e

653
00:36:21,200 --> 00:36:25,719
Speaker 1: e j ee. This was in eighteen forty two, and

654
00:36:25,800 --> 00:36:27,600
Speaker 1: this was a big, a big deal. He got a

655
00:36:27,600 --> 00:36:31,279
Speaker 1: man named Levi Lyman or Levy Lyman. He was an

656
00:36:31,280 --> 00:36:35,239
Speaker 1: old colleague of his, and he said, here's what I'll do.

657
00:36:35,520 --> 00:36:38,239
Speaker 1: You're gonna you are now, doctor J. Griffin. You're a

658
00:36:38,320 --> 00:36:43,279
Speaker 1: naturalist for the British Lyceum of Natural History, which was

659
00:36:43,320 --> 00:36:47,840
Speaker 1: not a real place, and you were the you were

660
00:36:47,880 --> 00:36:51,360
Speaker 1: in ownership of what we'll call the Fiji Mermaid, which

661
00:36:51,560 --> 00:36:55,480
Speaker 1: was a what did we call it in the taxidermy

662
00:36:55,840 --> 00:37:00,000
Speaker 1: rogue taxidermy, Yeah, it was rogue taxidermy. It totally was

663
00:37:00,000 --> 00:37:02,480
Speaker 1: I could jackalobe, except what was it? It was a

664
00:37:02,520 --> 00:37:06,839
Speaker 1: head of a baboon torso of an orangutang and a

665
00:37:06,920 --> 00:37:08,840
Speaker 1: fishtail just for good measure.

666
00:37:09,160 --> 00:37:11,759
Speaker 2: Yeah, and as far back as they can tell, it

667
00:37:11,880 --> 00:37:15,600
Speaker 2: was probably made by a Japanese sailor in the eighteen twenties,

668
00:37:16,160 --> 00:37:18,880
Speaker 2: and it passed through a few hands before Barnum finally

669
00:37:18,960 --> 00:37:20,480
Speaker 2: leased it and put it on display.

670
00:37:20,560 --> 00:37:21,759
Speaker 1: I wonder where that thing is now.

671
00:37:22,200 --> 00:37:26,440
Speaker 2: I looked. I don't know there are other Fiji mermaids

672
00:37:26,440 --> 00:37:26,759
Speaker 2: out there.

673
00:37:26,840 --> 00:37:27,120
Speaker 1: There was.

674
00:37:27,360 --> 00:37:29,200
Speaker 2: It was like kind of a thread of rogue tax

675
00:37:29,280 --> 00:37:31,759
Speaker 2: at ermy in the mid nineteenth century, and I think

676
00:37:31,800 --> 00:37:34,600
Speaker 2: Harvard has one on display. But I look to find

677
00:37:34,600 --> 00:37:38,480
Speaker 2: out where PT. Barnums is and I can't find it.

678
00:37:38,480 --> 00:37:41,200
Speaker 1: It's probably like on Richard Branson's headboard or something.

679
00:37:41,840 --> 00:37:43,880
Speaker 2: It may have actually burned up in one of the

680
00:37:43,960 --> 00:37:46,920
Speaker 2: many fires that plagued P. T. Barnum's life.

681
00:37:47,120 --> 00:37:49,600
Speaker 1: Things are going to get fiery here in this last

682
00:37:49,640 --> 00:37:50,040
Speaker 1: bit too.

683
00:37:50,200 --> 00:37:53,960
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, anyway, let's get back to the Fiji mermaid though. Okay, okay,

684
00:37:54,000 --> 00:37:59,720
Speaker 2: So Doctor J. Griffin is touring with this supposedly touring

685
00:37:59,760 --> 00:38:04,600
Speaker 2: with this mermaid, right sure, and Barnum, but the guy's

686
00:38:04,600 --> 00:38:07,560
Speaker 2: actually not out there touring. Barnum basically creates out a

687
00:38:07,560 --> 00:38:11,080
Speaker 2: whole cloth a tour of this mermaid, writes letters about

688
00:38:11,120 --> 00:38:14,839
Speaker 2: how great this thing is in different people's names, and

689
00:38:14,880 --> 00:38:17,840
Speaker 2: then mails them to friends that live around the country

690
00:38:17,880 --> 00:38:22,480
Speaker 2: and asks them to mail those letters in to newspapers

691
00:38:22,480 --> 00:38:25,600
Speaker 2: in New York talking about how this thing has to

692
00:38:25,640 --> 00:38:26,840
Speaker 2: be seen to be believed.

693
00:38:27,080 --> 00:38:29,920
Speaker 1: Yeah, so people came far and wide to see this

694
00:38:30,440 --> 00:38:31,520
Speaker 1: piece of taxidermy.

695
00:38:32,400 --> 00:38:35,120
Speaker 2: Yeah. And by the way, this whole Jay Griffin thing,

696
00:38:35,560 --> 00:38:38,320
Speaker 2: like this guy was posing as him. He was giving

697
00:38:38,400 --> 00:38:44,320
Speaker 2: public lectures made up as a naturalist, a British naturalist,

698
00:38:44,320 --> 00:38:47,799
Speaker 2: and he was an American promoter. He had nothing to

699
00:38:47,840 --> 00:38:49,759
Speaker 2: do with He was just making all this stuff up,

700
00:38:49,760 --> 00:38:52,120
Speaker 2: but he would give like public lectures on it. I

701
00:38:52,200 --> 00:38:54,759
Speaker 2: love it, like the audacity. It's amazing.

702
00:38:55,280 --> 00:38:58,520
Speaker 1: So the second big victory was when he met up

703
00:38:58,520 --> 00:39:01,560
Speaker 1: with a four year old named Charles Stratton. He was

704
00:39:01,600 --> 00:39:05,839
Speaker 1: a little person, his cousin actually, and he stopped growing

705
00:39:05,880 --> 00:39:08,600
Speaker 1: when he was two feet tall, and he changed his name,

706
00:39:08,760 --> 00:39:12,840
Speaker 1: rebranded him as General Tom Thumb, and that name probably

707
00:39:12,880 --> 00:39:15,879
Speaker 1: rings a bell. They became very famous together. He said,

708
00:39:15,920 --> 00:39:20,760
Speaker 1: he was eleven years old, and they were a media

709
00:39:20,800 --> 00:39:22,120
Speaker 1: and ticket selling sensation.

710
00:39:22,600 --> 00:39:26,120
Speaker 2: Yeah. They would be like invited in to meet like Royalty,

711
00:39:26,160 --> 00:39:30,200
Speaker 2: whatever country they toured. He was a huge hit at

712
00:39:30,239 --> 00:39:34,080
Speaker 2: the museum. It was like a big deal for both

713
00:39:34,120 --> 00:39:38,360
Speaker 2: Barnoman and Charles Stratton. That's right, a sensation, that's the

714
00:39:38,360 --> 00:39:39,200
Speaker 2: best way to put it.

715
00:39:39,480 --> 00:39:43,160
Speaker 1: In the final big victory of the trifecta. When he

716
00:39:43,239 --> 00:39:47,359
Speaker 1: was in Europe with Stratton, he heard of Ginny Lynn.

717
00:39:47,400 --> 00:39:49,880
Speaker 1: She was a Swedish opera singer, and this was the

718
00:39:49,960 --> 00:39:51,319
Speaker 1: kind of thing where he was like, you know what,

719
00:39:52,120 --> 00:39:56,000
Speaker 1: she doesn't have a beard. She's all she is is

720
00:39:56,040 --> 00:40:00,400
Speaker 1: a talented singer, but she's amazing and this would really

721
00:40:00,520 --> 00:40:03,520
Speaker 1: legitimize me if I did like a straight up act

722
00:40:03,680 --> 00:40:07,080
Speaker 1: for a change. So even though she's big over here,

723
00:40:07,120 --> 00:40:08,719
Speaker 1: they don't know about her in America and she could

724
00:40:08,760 --> 00:40:10,560
Speaker 1: blow up there. So I'm going to offer her a

725
00:40:10,640 --> 00:40:13,760
Speaker 1: thousand dollars per performance, which was a ton of money

726
00:40:14,080 --> 00:40:16,839
Speaker 1: and a big risk, but he made about a half

727
00:40:16,880 --> 00:40:19,680
Speaker 1: a million dollars with her or more. Who branded the

728
00:40:19,680 --> 00:40:24,680
Speaker 1: Swedish Nightingale by trotting her around the United States, and

729
00:40:25,560 --> 00:40:29,120
Speaker 1: she was like beyond a sensation in the United States.

730
00:40:29,280 --> 00:40:30,960
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was another thing too. I mean, like she

731
00:40:31,040 --> 00:40:33,520
Speaker 2: was pretty big in Europe, but I don't think she

732
00:40:33,640 --> 00:40:36,400
Speaker 2: was well known, if known at all, in America, but

733
00:40:36,480 --> 00:40:39,040
Speaker 2: by the time she showed up for the tour starting

734
00:40:39,080 --> 00:40:42,480
Speaker 2: in eighteen fifty, he had managed to get, like you said,

735
00:40:42,520 --> 00:40:46,279
Speaker 2: just turn her into a national sensation, like people had

736
00:40:46,320 --> 00:40:51,600
Speaker 2: like Beatlemania for this lady. Yeah, this article says that

737
00:40:51,640 --> 00:40:54,560
Speaker 2: she was not a very nice person. I didn't see

738
00:40:54,560 --> 00:40:57,720
Speaker 2: that anywhere else, and I actually saw that. So after

739
00:40:57,840 --> 00:41:01,520
Speaker 2: the contract between her and barn was up in eighteen

740
00:41:01,560 --> 00:41:05,600
Speaker 2: fifty one, she continued to tour America with like an

741
00:41:05,640 --> 00:41:09,720
Speaker 2: actual orchestra, I believe, And she made three hundred thousand

742
00:41:09,800 --> 00:41:14,839
Speaker 2: dollars in eighteen fifties money from this whole American tour

743
00:41:15,239 --> 00:41:18,680
Speaker 2: and donated every single penny of it to Sweden's public

744
00:41:18,719 --> 00:41:21,840
Speaker 2: school system, which I oh, really burgeoning at the time. Yeah,

745
00:41:22,040 --> 00:41:24,400
Speaker 2: so I don't know what Jane was talking about, but

746
00:41:25,000 --> 00:41:28,880
Speaker 2: I think she just kind of didn't find America very cultured,

747
00:41:29,000 --> 00:41:32,759
Speaker 2: is what I get. But apparently Jane didn't like that.

748
00:41:33,040 --> 00:41:35,879
Speaker 1: Well, America probably wasn't very cultured in eighteen fifty.

749
00:41:35,960 --> 00:41:38,080
Speaker 2: Right, but I thought that was pretty neat. Man. She

750
00:41:38,120 --> 00:41:40,560
Speaker 2: took all that money and donated it to the public

751
00:41:40,560 --> 00:41:41,840
Speaker 2: school system in Sweden.

752
00:41:42,120 --> 00:41:42,920
Speaker 1: Man, that's crazy.

753
00:41:43,160 --> 00:41:46,440
Speaker 2: But yeah, so Barnum was not legitimized thanks to that.

754
00:41:46,480 --> 00:41:48,640
Speaker 2: I think it actually didn't go all that well. But

755
00:41:48,760 --> 00:41:53,480
Speaker 2: he did enrich himself thoroughly through Jenny Lynn, for sure.

756
00:41:53,640 --> 00:41:56,239
Speaker 1: That's right. But he would go broke again because he's P. T.

757
00:41:56,360 --> 00:41:59,840
Speaker 1: Barnum and that's what he does. In the eighteen fifty

758
00:42:00,200 --> 00:42:03,120
Speaker 1: he bought up a lot of land near Bridgeport, Connecticut

759
00:42:03,360 --> 00:42:06,760
Speaker 1: because he wanted to make east Bridgeport. That happened in place.

760
00:42:07,719 --> 00:42:10,560
Speaker 1: He invested in it in the Jerome Clock Company, wanted

761
00:42:10,560 --> 00:42:13,640
Speaker 1: to relocate it to east Bridgeport. It was not a

762
00:42:13,680 --> 00:42:17,399
Speaker 1: smart thing to do. The company went bankrupt, and all

763
00:42:17,440 --> 00:42:19,600
Speaker 1: of a sudden he was broke again. And this is

764
00:42:19,719 --> 00:42:23,560
Speaker 1: fire number one. He moves out of his mansion because

765
00:42:23,600 --> 00:42:26,200
Speaker 1: he's broke, and then when after he had moved out,

766
00:42:26,280 --> 00:42:27,279
Speaker 1: the mansion burned down.

767
00:42:27,840 --> 00:42:29,720
Speaker 2: Right, But if he had to move out, you would

768
00:42:29,920 --> 00:42:34,160
Speaker 2: think that he had relinquished ownership. So why does it

769
00:42:34,200 --> 00:42:37,880
Speaker 2: matter as far as his life goes? Oh, unless he

770
00:42:37,920 --> 00:42:40,760
Speaker 2: had a bunch of money stuffed into the insulation or something.

771
00:42:41,160 --> 00:42:42,960
Speaker 2: I don't know, breaking bad thing going on.

772
00:42:43,120 --> 00:42:45,160
Speaker 1: It might have just been a footnote or something, or

773
00:42:45,200 --> 00:42:48,160
Speaker 1: he may maybe he did no I guess if he

774
00:42:48,200 --> 00:42:50,200
Speaker 1: had moved out then Yeah, I didn't own.

775
00:42:50,120 --> 00:42:52,600
Speaker 2: It's I just thought that was a little weird.

776
00:42:52,840 --> 00:42:53,480
Speaker 1: Yeah.

777
00:42:53,560 --> 00:42:56,360
Speaker 2: So he he was in debt, like big time, like

778
00:42:56,440 --> 00:43:01,680
Speaker 2: broke bankrupt, in debt because of this terrible clock company thing,

779
00:43:01,719 --> 00:43:05,239
Speaker 2: which you should always take as a reason to never

780
00:43:05,280 --> 00:43:07,960
Speaker 2: put all of your eggs in one basket, which I

781
00:43:07,960 --> 00:43:12,240
Speaker 2: guess is what he did. But he managed to emerge

782
00:43:12,239 --> 00:43:16,839
Speaker 2: from debt after I think five years, and he ended

783
00:43:16,920 --> 00:43:22,440
Speaker 2: up during this time he pawned his museum, but he

784
00:43:22,520 --> 00:43:26,600
Speaker 2: also put the name of the museum in his wife's name,

785
00:43:26,920 --> 00:43:30,040
Speaker 2: who was not bankrupt, and so they were able to

786
00:43:30,040 --> 00:43:33,680
Speaker 2: make some income off of the lease for the museum.

787
00:43:33,760 --> 00:43:36,359
Speaker 2: And then when he managed to buy the museum back

788
00:43:36,400 --> 00:43:39,560
Speaker 2: after five years, he just went like right back to it,

789
00:43:39,840 --> 00:43:41,720
Speaker 2: like like he didn't miss a beat.

790
00:43:42,000 --> 00:43:44,320
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean this ten year period from eighteen fifty

791
00:43:44,320 --> 00:43:47,520
Speaker 1: to eighteen sixty he went broke. He did the smart thing,

792
00:43:47,560 --> 00:43:50,080
Speaker 1: like he said, with his wife. He started giving lectures

793
00:43:50,080 --> 00:43:53,960
Speaker 1: about making money. He went on tour again with Tom

794
00:43:54,040 --> 00:43:57,799
Speaker 1: Thomb He got a dead whale. He bought a dead

795
00:43:57,840 --> 00:44:01,480
Speaker 1: whale and said, surely people will pay money to see this.

796
00:44:01,680 --> 00:44:06,319
Speaker 1: So he was still doing all this crazy stuff. He

797
00:44:06,320 --> 00:44:11,000
Speaker 1: bought a hippopotamus, he bought two beluga whales. Like, it's

798
00:44:11,120 --> 00:44:13,520
Speaker 1: just crazy the things that he was doing.

799
00:44:14,160 --> 00:44:16,480
Speaker 2: Also, Chuck, we have to say that the title of

800
00:44:16,520 --> 00:44:19,640
Speaker 2: the lecture tour the Art of money getting.

801
00:44:21,680 --> 00:44:23,440
Speaker 1: It's not even the art of making money, the art

802
00:44:23,480 --> 00:44:25,560
Speaker 1: of money getting. Yeah.

803
00:44:25,960 --> 00:44:32,200
Speaker 2: So so the the he's his stars starting to rise again.

804
00:44:32,200 --> 00:44:35,000
Speaker 2: At the very least, his fortunes are reversing from from

805
00:44:35,280 --> 00:44:37,200
Speaker 2: you know, just doing any kind of work he can

806
00:44:37,200 --> 00:44:41,440
Speaker 2: get his hands on. And then all along this way,

807
00:44:41,560 --> 00:44:44,080
Speaker 2: like Barnum was a pretty he was what's known as

808
00:44:44,120 --> 00:44:48,719
Speaker 2: a Jacksonian Democrat, Jax Andrew Jackson was a populist president,

809
00:44:49,160 --> 00:44:55,799
Speaker 2: and he was I think, didn't we lay he was

810
00:44:55,840 --> 00:44:58,040
Speaker 2: the one who was responsible for the trail of tears, right,

811
00:44:59,280 --> 00:45:02,960
Speaker 2: I'm pretty sure that was Andrew Jackson. It was remember

812
00:45:03,000 --> 00:45:05,480
Speaker 2: our two part on trailer tears. I do, Okay, So

813
00:45:05,800 --> 00:45:09,200
Speaker 2: he was he was p T. Barnum was of this

814
00:45:09,320 --> 00:45:12,839
Speaker 2: man's party. He was a Jackson supporter. And then the

815
00:45:12,880 --> 00:45:18,680
Speaker 2: Civil War breaks out and all of a sudden, Barnum

816
00:45:18,719 --> 00:45:23,600
Speaker 2: has this like total conversion. He was not like an

817
00:45:23,600 --> 00:45:30,759
Speaker 2: outright bigoted racist who worked to keep African Americans. Enslaved

818
00:45:31,239 --> 00:45:34,680
Speaker 2: worked as a Confederate sympathizer anything like that. He was

819
00:45:34,719 --> 00:45:40,000
Speaker 2: fairly unremarkable and pretty normal. Like, for example, at his museum,

820
00:45:40,280 --> 00:45:42,040
Speaker 2: if you were black, you couldn't come in. It was

821
00:45:42,080 --> 00:45:44,680
Speaker 2: a segregated museum. But that was like a lot of

822
00:45:44,719 --> 00:45:46,880
Speaker 2: businesses at the time. So he was a very normal

823
00:45:46,960 --> 00:45:50,719
Speaker 2: pedestrian person as far as his politics go, and and

824
00:45:51,000 --> 00:45:55,600
Speaker 2: socially as well. But something happened around the time of

825
00:45:55,640 --> 00:45:59,080
Speaker 2: the Civil War and he converted and actually became an abolitionist,

826
00:45:59,680 --> 00:46:05,880
Speaker 2: huge union supporter and just basically became patriotic and dedicated

827
00:46:05,920 --> 00:46:09,640
Speaker 2: this idea of preserving the Union and abolishing slavery.

828
00:46:10,160 --> 00:46:13,160
Speaker 1: Yeah, and he used that museum as a sort of

829
00:46:13,200 --> 00:46:17,480
Speaker 1: ground zero for his cause. He had speeches, he had

830
00:46:17,520 --> 00:46:22,320
Speaker 1: plays that sort of endorsed this. He had Southern copperheads

831
00:46:22,360 --> 00:46:26,359
Speaker 1: that were protesting outside. They threatened his life, and then

832
00:46:26,400 --> 00:46:27,920
Speaker 1: he said, at this point, you know what, I might

833
00:46:27,960 --> 00:46:31,600
Speaker 1: as well just get into politics legitimately. And in April

834
00:46:31,640 --> 00:46:34,960
Speaker 1: of eighteen sixty five he actually won an election to

835
00:46:35,040 --> 00:46:38,960
Speaker 1: the Connecticut General Assembly, where he worked really hard to

836
00:46:39,040 --> 00:46:44,160
Speaker 1: ratify the thirteenth Amendment and supported another cause to allow

837
00:46:44,360 --> 00:46:46,560
Speaker 1: the rights of black people to vote in Connecticut.

838
00:46:46,840 --> 00:46:51,600
Speaker 2: Yeah, so he was legitimately dedicated to the cause of abolition,

839
00:46:51,760 --> 00:46:54,600
Speaker 2: which is totally bizarre. Right, And about this time, too,

840
00:46:54,719 --> 00:46:58,200
Speaker 2: is when the revisions to his autobiography are starting to

841
00:46:58,239 --> 00:47:03,280
Speaker 2: get much more contrite, much less boastful, and even more apologetic.

842
00:47:04,520 --> 00:47:08,279
Speaker 2: So he like something happened and he was converted to

843
00:47:09,160 --> 00:47:11,239
Speaker 2: the right side of history. I guess you could call it,

844
00:47:11,280 --> 00:47:11,520
Speaker 2: you know.

845
00:47:11,800 --> 00:47:14,440
Speaker 1: Yeah, So here's where fire number two comes in. After

846
00:47:14,880 --> 00:47:18,279
Speaker 1: a few months after this election, his museum burned down

847
00:47:19,000 --> 00:47:23,040
Speaker 1: along with the animals and the exhibit, which is super sad. Yes,

848
00:47:23,200 --> 00:47:26,200
Speaker 1: this is the first of like two animal fires. He

849
00:47:26,239 --> 00:47:28,080
Speaker 1: opened a new museum a couple of months after that.

850
00:47:29,120 --> 00:47:32,680
Speaker 1: Three years later that museum burned down. Didn't want to

851
00:47:32,719 --> 00:47:38,040
Speaker 1: rebuild that one. And then finally in the eighteen seventies, like,

852
00:47:38,120 --> 00:47:41,320
Speaker 1: it took a long long time before he became the P. T.

853
00:47:41,480 --> 00:47:46,279
Speaker 1: Barnum that most people know as the big circus guy, right,

854
00:47:46,400 --> 00:47:47,719
Speaker 1: the Greatest Show on Earth guy.

855
00:47:48,600 --> 00:47:52,520
Speaker 2: Yeah, he hooked up with Barnum and Bailey after hooking

856
00:47:52,640 --> 00:47:56,040
Speaker 2: up with a guy named William Cameron Coope or Coop,

857
00:47:56,360 --> 00:47:59,040
Speaker 2: I'm not sure which one it is, but he had

858
00:47:59,120 --> 00:48:03,440
Speaker 2: pt Barnum's Grand Traveling Museum, men Agerie, Caravan and Circus.

859
00:48:03,719 --> 00:48:05,360
Speaker 1: Yeah, a little wordy that was.

860
00:48:05,360 --> 00:48:09,200
Speaker 2: Eighteen seventy one. And then did you cover the eighteen

861
00:48:09,239 --> 00:48:14,080
Speaker 2: seventy two fire. No, there was another fire that killed

862
00:48:14,080 --> 00:48:19,120
Speaker 2: other circus animals that the winter at the Winter Camp,

863
00:48:19,560 --> 00:48:22,400
Speaker 2: which is on the side of where Madison Square Garden

864
00:48:22,480 --> 00:48:25,400
Speaker 2: is right now. There's a horrific fire in the Winter

865
00:48:25,520 --> 00:48:28,239
Speaker 2: Camp in eighteen seventy two killed a bunch of other

866
00:48:28,320 --> 00:48:32,719
Speaker 2: circus animals, which this this is why, this is one

867
00:48:32,760 --> 00:48:37,440
Speaker 2: of the reasons why years later Barnum and Bailey's Wrinkling

868
00:48:37,480 --> 00:48:41,200
Speaker 2: Brothers circus went away was because of animals.

869
00:48:41,520 --> 00:48:43,799
Speaker 1: Yeah, and he, I mean he was by the time

870
00:48:43,840 --> 00:48:47,040
Speaker 1: this fire happened. That the what was it called the

871
00:48:47,680 --> 00:48:53,200
Speaker 1: Hippotheatron I think so he he was very successful with

872
00:48:53,280 --> 00:48:58,120
Speaker 1: that circus. He started with Coop or Coup. They made

873
00:48:58,120 --> 00:48:59,719
Speaker 1: about four hundred grand in the first year and it

874
00:48:59,719 --> 00:49:01,840
Speaker 1: was a very he first circus to kind of do

875
00:49:01,880 --> 00:49:03,880
Speaker 1: the traditional thing that we all think of is travel

876
00:49:03,920 --> 00:49:09,400
Speaker 1: by train, acrobats, clowns, exotic animals, stuff like that, And

877
00:49:09,400 --> 00:49:12,279
Speaker 1: that's when it officially was called the Greatest Show on Earth.

878
00:49:12,920 --> 00:49:19,520
Speaker 1: So the hippo theatron such a strange word, burns down

879
00:49:19,680 --> 00:49:23,960
Speaker 1: and then he's visiting his friend in England, John Fish,

880
00:49:24,000 --> 00:49:28,200
Speaker 1: and this is when his wife, Charity passes away, and

881
00:49:28,280 --> 00:49:31,360
Speaker 1: as Jane put it, he was supposedly too grief stricken

882
00:49:31,400 --> 00:49:34,239
Speaker 1: to return for her funeral. But the grief must have

883
00:49:34,280 --> 00:49:38,840
Speaker 1: subsided quickly because he secretly married Fish's daughter at sixty

884
00:49:38,880 --> 00:49:41,040
Speaker 1: three years old. He married twenty two year old Nancy

885
00:49:41,080 --> 00:49:44,440
Speaker 1: Fish about three and a half months later after his

886
00:49:44,480 --> 00:49:48,560
Speaker 1: wife passed. No word about her teeth, no or her

887
00:49:49,280 --> 00:49:50,520
Speaker 1: bras's eyes, So.

888
00:49:51,560 --> 00:49:55,279
Speaker 2: They got married secretly fourteen weeks after Charity died, and

889
00:49:55,320 --> 00:49:57,560
Speaker 2: then when they came to the US, they had a

890
00:49:57,560 --> 00:50:04,520
Speaker 2: public wedding nine months after that. So, yeah, he married her,

891
00:50:04,640 --> 00:50:07,160
Speaker 2: and I guess he was with her until his death.

892
00:50:07,000 --> 00:50:10,600
Speaker 1: Right, Well, yeah, in eighteen sixty or I'm sorry seventy five,

893
00:50:11,400 --> 00:50:14,200
Speaker 1: he took a break from the circus, got back into

894
00:50:14,200 --> 00:50:18,040
Speaker 1: politics and became the mayor of Bridgeport for a little while.

895
00:50:18,400 --> 00:50:20,759
Speaker 2: Na East Bridgeport, though he's talking trash.

896
00:50:20,520 --> 00:50:23,799
Speaker 1: About the Bridgeport And apparently he gets a little on

897
00:50:23,920 --> 00:50:27,200
Speaker 1: his high horse now because even though he was a drinker,

898
00:50:27,520 --> 00:50:30,560
Speaker 1: pretty heavy drinker for a while, he quit drinking and

899
00:50:30,600 --> 00:50:37,399
Speaker 1: then campaigned against like Sunday sales and saloons and kind

900
00:50:37,440 --> 00:50:39,080
Speaker 1: of got a little self righteous, it seems like.

901
00:50:39,320 --> 00:50:43,760
Speaker 2: Yeah. He also sponsored the Comstock Law in Connecticut, which

902
00:50:43,800 --> 00:50:48,560
Speaker 2: banned contraception, which puts a lot of onus onto the ladies.

903
00:50:49,840 --> 00:50:53,120
Speaker 2: And it was in place apparently till nineteen sixty five.

904
00:50:54,040 --> 00:50:57,400
Speaker 2: And there's a really important word in there, Chuck sponsored,

905
00:50:58,120 --> 00:51:00,520
Speaker 2: Like that means you're the person who brought it to

906
00:51:01,480 --> 00:51:05,400
Speaker 2: the General Assembly. You didn't just vote yes on it.

907
00:51:05,440 --> 00:51:08,320
Speaker 2: Sure if you're the one who said, everybody, everybody, let's

908
00:51:08,360 --> 00:51:11,560
Speaker 2: ban contraception for one hundred years. Yeah, and it was

909
00:51:11,600 --> 00:51:15,200
Speaker 2: successful actually, So yeah, he was. He was a weird

910
00:51:15,280 --> 00:51:19,280
Speaker 2: dude with a lot of different weird thoughts about things

911
00:51:19,520 --> 00:51:21,839
Speaker 2: that were sometimes very contradictory over time.

912
00:51:22,800 --> 00:51:26,000
Speaker 1: And then finally, ironically here at the very end of

913
00:51:26,040 --> 00:51:30,560
Speaker 1: this podcast, in eighteen eighty, he partnered with one James A.

914
00:51:30,680 --> 00:51:34,120
Speaker 1: Bailey for P. T. Barnum's Great London Combined.

915
00:51:35,040 --> 00:51:37,480
Speaker 2: It's a terrible name for a circus, worst.

916
00:51:37,200 --> 00:51:39,839
Speaker 1: Circus name ever. Then you had the word circus in there,

917
00:51:40,960 --> 00:51:45,040
Speaker 1: and this is when he got Jumbo the elephant, which

918
00:51:45,600 --> 00:51:50,320
Speaker 1: it was Jumbo was a legendary attraction until eighteen eighty

919
00:51:50,320 --> 00:51:52,719
Speaker 1: five when Jumbo was killed by a train.

920
00:51:53,080 --> 00:51:54,560
Speaker 2: And probably caught fire too.

921
00:51:55,040 --> 00:51:57,400
Speaker 1: And did you know we were just in Boston that

922
00:51:57,560 --> 00:52:00,600
Speaker 1: Tuff's University their mascot is Jumped the Elephant.

923
00:52:00,760 --> 00:52:01,640
Speaker 2: No, I didn't know that.

924
00:52:01,960 --> 00:52:06,520
Speaker 1: Yeah, my buddy Robert explained that to me. And apparently

925
00:52:06,640 --> 00:52:11,319
Speaker 1: Barnum was one of the early what do you call

926
00:52:11,320 --> 00:52:12,960
Speaker 1: the people who give universities a lot of.

927
00:52:12,960 --> 00:52:18,600
Speaker 2: Money endowment and donors, grant person.

928
00:52:18,840 --> 00:52:21,400
Speaker 1: Sure he was all of that. What is that word?

929
00:52:21,440 --> 00:52:22,439
Speaker 2: I know what you're talking about.

930
00:52:22,560 --> 00:52:25,520
Speaker 1: He was all that to Toughs, and so Jumbo the

931
00:52:25,560 --> 00:52:28,839
Speaker 1: Elephant became their mascot. And I think because it does

932
00:52:28,880 --> 00:52:32,920
Speaker 1: say in here he he displayed Jumbo's preserved hide and skeleton.

933
00:52:33,360 --> 00:52:36,280
Speaker 1: I think it was, or maybe is on display at Toughs.

934
00:52:36,440 --> 00:52:39,040
Speaker 1: Oh wow, I'm not sure if it still is, but

935
00:52:39,080 --> 00:52:40,080
Speaker 1: I think at one time it was.

936
00:52:40,320 --> 00:52:42,880
Speaker 2: So it a minute. This guy also gave a substantial

937
00:52:42,920 --> 00:52:45,000
Speaker 2: amount of money to help found a university.

938
00:52:45,680 --> 00:52:48,279
Speaker 1: I don't know found, but to the university.

939
00:52:47,880 --> 00:52:50,040
Speaker 2: That's a benefactor. Is that the word benefactor?

940
00:52:50,120 --> 00:52:51,640
Speaker 1: Yeah? Maybe the found it. I'm not sure.

941
00:52:51,640 --> 00:52:54,319
Speaker 2: At the timeline there, man, that's that's really crazy. He

942
00:52:54,360 --> 00:52:58,280
Speaker 2: did a lot of stuff. So go jumbo's, Yeah, fighting

943
00:52:58,360 --> 00:53:01,400
Speaker 2: jumbo's or the passificggressive jumbos.

944
00:53:01,000 --> 00:53:02,960
Speaker 1: Or what the stomping jumbos.

945
00:53:03,400 --> 00:53:04,879
Speaker 2: There you go, that's pretty good.

946
00:53:05,480 --> 00:53:08,000
Speaker 1: So Barnman Bailey weren't together for too long. Initially they

947
00:53:08,120 --> 00:53:12,160
Speaker 1: parted ways, but then again joined in eighteen eighty seven,

948
00:53:13,640 --> 00:53:16,160
Speaker 1: ultimately finally for the Barnman Bailey circus.

949
00:53:16,400 --> 00:53:18,760
Speaker 2: Yep, they broke up and then they got back together,

950
00:53:18,880 --> 00:53:22,319
Speaker 2: and then it stayed that way until twenty sixteen, I think,

951
00:53:22,360 --> 00:53:24,160
Speaker 2: and then the circus finally closed down.

952
00:53:24,440 --> 00:53:25,839
Speaker 1: I went to that thing as a kid. I think

953
00:53:25,840 --> 00:53:29,399
Speaker 1: we talked about that. Sure I did too, And now

954
00:53:29,520 --> 00:53:31,600
Speaker 1: we will only go to the Big Apple Circus, as

955
00:53:31,640 --> 00:53:34,880
Speaker 1: you know. And I took a long break because Emily

956
00:53:34,880 --> 00:53:38,840
Speaker 1: and I were tired of going, and then now we

957
00:53:38,920 --> 00:53:40,440
Speaker 1: got a kid. My mom was like, you know, you

958
00:53:40,440 --> 00:53:41,399
Speaker 1: got to start going again.

959
00:53:42,480 --> 00:53:42,960
Speaker 2: You have to.

960
00:53:43,120 --> 00:53:44,040
Speaker 1: So we went this year.

961
00:53:45,040 --> 00:53:45,600
Speaker 2: How was it.

962
00:53:46,440 --> 00:53:49,960
Speaker 1: Oh, it's okay. You know, I'm not the biggest circus guy.

963
00:53:50,160 --> 00:53:50,840
Speaker 1: I've realized.

964
00:53:51,000 --> 00:53:53,920
Speaker 2: Are you afraid of clowns? No? Not these. Are you

965
00:53:53,960 --> 00:53:55,000
Speaker 2: afraid of acrobats?

966
00:53:55,000 --> 00:53:59,320
Speaker 1: I could take these clowns? No, And actually the acrobats

967
00:53:59,320 --> 00:54:02,000
Speaker 1: at the Big Apples circus or the uh, the the

968
00:54:02,040 --> 00:54:05,440
Speaker 1: what's it call it's the famous ones, the family.

969
00:54:05,600 --> 00:54:08,000
Speaker 2: Oh, the Flying Zamboni's.

970
00:54:07,480 --> 00:54:09,640
Speaker 1: Yeah, or was it Zamboni's not Zamboni's.

971
00:54:11,080 --> 00:54:12,800
Speaker 2: I don't remember. It's something like that.

972
00:54:12,680 --> 00:54:14,640
Speaker 1: But it's them. It's still still that family.

973
00:54:14,719 --> 00:54:16,200
Speaker 2: Wow, that's really that's something.

974
00:54:16,320 --> 00:54:17,799
Speaker 1: And they you know, they did a great job. But

975
00:54:18,160 --> 00:54:19,560
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, I'm just kind of

976
00:54:20,239 --> 00:54:22,600
Speaker 1: about a third of the way through, I'm looking at

977
00:54:22,640 --> 00:54:23,320
Speaker 1: my watch.

978
00:54:23,080 --> 00:54:26,920
Speaker 2: You know, Oh, I gotcha. I've seen a couple of

979
00:54:26,960 --> 00:54:29,239
Speaker 2: cirqued is so late. Those are the last circuses I saw.

980
00:54:29,400 --> 00:54:30,320
Speaker 1: Yeah, those are okay.

981
00:54:30,400 --> 00:54:32,840
Speaker 2: But we saw the Michael Jackson one in Las Vegas,

982
00:54:32,840 --> 00:54:34,480
Speaker 2: and man alive, was it good.

983
00:54:34,760 --> 00:54:36,720
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a Michael Jackson cirque.

984
00:54:37,040 --> 00:54:39,399
Speaker 2: Yes, dude. And I have to tell you, like I'm

985
00:54:39,400 --> 00:54:43,560
Speaker 2: not some diehard Michael Jackson fan, but you don't have

986
00:54:43,640 --> 00:54:47,640
Speaker 2: to beat this to appreciate this. It is amazing, Like

987
00:54:47,640 --> 00:54:50,319
Speaker 2: like it's worth going to Vegas to go see who's

988
00:54:50,560 --> 00:54:53,520
Speaker 2: Michael jack turning around and going home. I don't know,

989
00:54:53,880 --> 00:54:55,680
Speaker 2: there's probably a few I'll bet we hear from some

990
00:54:55,760 --> 00:54:58,320
Speaker 2: Michael Jackson anti Michael Jackson fans.

991
00:54:59,520 --> 00:55:04,000
Speaker 1: Finally, eighteen ninety P. T. Barnum has a stroke during

992
00:55:04,000 --> 00:55:08,480
Speaker 1: a performance. He has one weird, strange wish at the

993
00:55:08,560 --> 00:55:12,160
Speaker 1: end of his life is to have his obituary published

994
00:55:12,200 --> 00:55:13,040
Speaker 1: before he dies.

995
00:55:13,760 --> 00:55:14,200
Speaker 2: Yeah.

996
00:55:14,360 --> 00:55:15,200
Speaker 1: I don't know why I did that.

997
00:55:15,239 --> 00:55:18,759
Speaker 2: Maybe do I don't know either. I think I don't know.

998
00:55:18,840 --> 00:55:21,120
Speaker 2: But that's a heck of a way to end this podcast.

999
00:55:21,400 --> 00:55:24,360
Speaker 1: So maybe he wanted to feel the public outpouring or something.

1000
00:55:25,400 --> 00:55:28,080
Speaker 2: It could be that. Or he wanted to proofread it

1001
00:55:28,200 --> 00:55:30,440
Speaker 2: or something. I don't know. But if he wanted, if

1002
00:55:30,440 --> 00:55:32,640
Speaker 2: that was what he was after, why didn't they just

1003
00:55:34,960 --> 00:55:37,399
Speaker 2: send it to him ahead of time they actually publish it.

1004
00:55:37,840 --> 00:55:38,680
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's weird.

1005
00:55:39,080 --> 00:55:42,960
Speaker 2: Yeah, well we'll find out one day when we die

1006
00:55:43,000 --> 00:55:44,200
Speaker 2: and go to having to meet P. T.

1007
00:55:44,320 --> 00:55:44,960
Speaker 1: Barnum.

1008
00:55:46,360 --> 00:55:51,880
Speaker 2: Agreed, So you got anything else? Nope, there's probably tons

1009
00:55:51,920 --> 00:55:54,480
Speaker 2: more that we missed. And if you know something about

1010
00:55:54,480 --> 00:55:57,799
Speaker 2: PT Barnum that we didn't know, let us know. We'll

1011
00:55:57,840 --> 00:56:01,960
Speaker 2: just add to this guy's story over time. In the meantime,

1012
00:56:02,040 --> 00:56:04,800
Speaker 2: if you want to read this great article by Jane McGrath,

1013
00:56:04,880 --> 00:56:08,320
Speaker 2: type MPT Barnum in the search bar at how Stuff Works.

1014
00:56:08,320 --> 00:56:10,760
Speaker 2: Since I said search bars time, for listener mail.

1015
00:56:12,960 --> 00:56:16,760
Speaker 1: All right, I'm gonna call this Unibomber follow up. Oh good,

1016
00:56:17,360 --> 00:56:18,239
Speaker 1: I was into that one.

1017
00:56:19,200 --> 00:56:22,200
Speaker 2: The yeah yeah, that was a good episode. Thought that

1018
00:56:22,280 --> 00:56:25,640
Speaker 2: was a good tenth anniversary episode. Milk.

1019
00:56:27,280 --> 00:56:30,680
Speaker 1: Hey, guys, congratulation on ten years milk, Milk. I look

1020
00:56:30,719 --> 00:56:32,640
Speaker 1: forward to many more. Listened to Unibomber and thought it

1021
00:56:32,640 --> 00:56:35,640
Speaker 1: would share something that covers a related, if somewhat different,

1022
00:56:35,640 --> 00:56:37,840
Speaker 1: aspect of the story. About ten years ago, when I

1023
00:56:37,880 --> 00:56:40,960
Speaker 1: was still a wee law student taking a legal ethics course,

1024
00:56:41,440 --> 00:56:44,480
Speaker 1: one of the situations we discussed was Ted Kaczinski and

1025
00:56:44,520 --> 00:56:48,560
Speaker 1: the ethical dilemma his lawyers faced. Criminal defendants had the

1026
00:56:48,560 --> 00:56:52,120
Speaker 1: absolute right to dictate certain aspects of their representation, like

1027
00:56:52,160 --> 00:56:54,200
Speaker 1: whether or not to fleet guilty, but there are other

1028
00:56:54,280 --> 00:56:57,560
Speaker 1: aspects of the representation that the lawyer controls, the most

1029
00:56:57,560 --> 00:57:00,920
Speaker 1: notable being trial strategy. While lawyers should always listen to

1030
00:57:01,000 --> 00:57:05,480
Speaker 1: clients overall goals, sometimes as necessary to override at client's

1031
00:57:05,520 --> 00:57:08,960
Speaker 1: wishes on how to achieve their goals, but because the

1032
00:57:08,960 --> 00:57:12,920
Speaker 1: client's desired strategy is either legally incorrect, unethical, or simply

1033
00:57:12,920 --> 00:57:17,240
Speaker 1: ill advise, Kazinsky's case presented an interesting ethical problem for

1034
00:57:17,280 --> 00:57:20,200
Speaker 1: the attorneys because he refused to allow them to pursue

1035
00:57:20,240 --> 00:57:23,440
Speaker 1: what they perceived to be his best defense and his

1036
00:57:23,560 --> 00:57:26,480
Speaker 1: only hope of avoiding the death penalty, namely claiming he

1037
00:57:26,560 --> 00:57:30,000
Speaker 1: was not guilty by reason of mental disease, known as

1038
00:57:30,040 --> 00:57:33,440
Speaker 1: the insanity defense. The conflict was that, on one hand,

1039
00:57:33,840 --> 00:57:36,960
Speaker 1: his attorneys had a duty to zealously represent him, but

1040
00:57:37,040 --> 00:57:40,800
Speaker 1: Kazinsky objected, so vehemanly to the chosen defense. At one

1041
00:57:40,800 --> 00:57:45,480
Speaker 1: point he attempted to go pro say aka, represent himself,

1042
00:57:45,720 --> 00:57:49,160
Speaker 1: which would have been an utter disaster. As you noted,

1043
00:57:49,200 --> 00:57:51,600
Speaker 1: he pled guilty, so we'll never know what they would

1044
00:57:51,600 --> 00:57:53,400
Speaker 1: have decided to do had he conned a trial. But

1045
00:57:53,800 --> 00:57:56,560
Speaker 1: his case is one which most lawyers had thought about

1046
00:57:56,640 --> 00:58:00,480
Speaker 1: or discussed at some point in their careers. That is

1047
00:58:00,520 --> 00:58:04,680
Speaker 1: good Fordham Walk go Rams, And that is from Deb.

1048
00:58:05,400 --> 00:58:09,360
Speaker 2: Thanks Deb, appreciate that. Yeah, I remember, we're kind of

1049
00:58:09,360 --> 00:58:11,800
Speaker 2: saying like his whole thing was he didn't he pluged

1050
00:58:11,800 --> 00:58:15,160
Speaker 2: guilty because he didn't want to plead insane, because his

1051
00:58:15,280 --> 00:58:19,040
Speaker 2: ramblings would have been the ramblings of a convicted insane madman.

1052
00:58:19,200 --> 00:58:20,160
Speaker 1: Yeah, very interesting.

1053
00:58:21,280 --> 00:58:24,120
Speaker 2: Well again, thanks Deb. We always love hearing from lawyers

1054
00:58:24,160 --> 00:58:27,280
Speaker 2: out there that whole joke about lawyers at the bottom

1055
00:58:27,280 --> 00:58:29,400
Speaker 2: of the sea being a good start. We have always

1056
00:58:29,400 --> 00:58:32,120
Speaker 2: found it tasteless. Sure, so get in touch with us.

1057
00:58:32,480 --> 00:58:35,040
Speaker 2: You can send us and Jerry an email to Stuff

1058
00:58:35,080 --> 00:58:39,240
Speaker 2: podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.

1059
00:58:40,760 --> 00:58:43,640
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For

1060
00:58:43,720 --> 00:58:47,920
Speaker 1: more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

1061
00:58:48,000 --> 00:58:49,880
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.