Speaker 1: Thirty years ago, two hikers stumbled across the body while
Speaker 1: hiking in the US Alps. Authorities arrived, quickly evacuating the
Speaker 1: corpse by helicopter and taking it for forensic testing. It
Speaker 1: wasn't uncommon in these parts to lose mountaineers to the peaks,
Speaker 1: but when they unzipped the body bag, what the scientists
Speaker 1: saw was something different and something better than they could
Speaker 1: ever have hoped for. They christened the body Utsi, after
Speaker 1: the mountain range where they found him. Outsie was a
Speaker 1: perfect specimen, having been safely cocooned in snow and ice
Speaker 1: for over four thousand years. Over time, those scientists would
Speaker 1: learn more about his final hours. Piecing together clues from
Speaker 1: the contents of his stomach, his weapons, and an arrowhead
Speaker 1: lodged in his back. It became evident that they had
Speaker 1: a murder mystery on their hands. But before you think
Speaker 1: this is just another true crime story, I want to
Speaker 1: point you to something else that was also interesting. Ootsie,
Speaker 1: you see, was special for another reason. His skin was
Speaker 1: decorated with over sixty lines and crosses, largely concentrated on
Speaker 1: his spine, knees, and ankles, lying right there prone on
Speaker 1: their table, was the world's oldest tattooed mummy. For years,
Speaker 1: the Western world has been debating the merits of tattooing,
Speaker 1: but these days we know more than ever before, and
Speaker 1: the past is telling today. Our knowledge of tattooing history
Speaker 1: stretches back to the fifth century BC. Tattooing has spanned
Speaker 1: the globe. In the case of the ancient Greeks, they
Speaker 1: were used to communicate spy messages, and the Maya, Inca
Speaker 1: and Aztec people's used them for rituals. The Norse and
Speaker 1: Saxon's tattooed their family crests during the Crusades across tattoo
Speaker 1: indicated the desire for a proper Catholic burial in the
Speaker 1: event of death. Tattoos were used as protective charms among
Speaker 1: ancient Egyptian women, and both as medicine and to mark
Speaker 1: criminals in ancient China. But as the world expanded outward,
Speaker 1: conquering cultures began to view tattoos, usually the ones that
Speaker 1: were different from their own, as markers of barbarism and savagery.
Speaker 1: This sentiment would be an everlasting one, as indelible as
Speaker 1: inc history tells us that in fifteen sixty six, after
Speaker 1: a violent encounter with French sailors, A tattooed Inuit woman
Speaker 1: with her child were kidnapped and put on display throughout
Speaker 1: Western Europe. Surviving handbills tell the story of the murder
Speaker 1: of her husband and her capture for audiences. Stories about
Speaker 1: this family devolved into tales of savagery and heathenism, an
Speaker 1: attempt to justify European expansion. Over the course of her captivity,
Speaker 1: this woman's body became a trophy of colonial desire. And
Speaker 1: you can guess what happened next. Audiences clamored for more
Speaker 1: of these human curiosities, and curiosities they got more. Captive
Speaker 1: Native Americans were brought to Europe for display against their will.
Speaker 1: The Europeans used their hostages to spread strategic messages. They
Speaker 1: became living, breathing propaganda machines. There are indigenous identities were
Speaker 1: erased in favor of new stories that would serve the
Speaker 1: colonial agenda. There's nothing more human than wanting to tell
Speaker 1: the stories of our lives, and we do that in
Speaker 1: part through how we decorate ourselves. And sometimes, perhaps in
Speaker 1: the midst of transition or even an identity crisis, we
Speaker 1: find the opportunity to change, to doll ourselves up differently
Speaker 1: and become someone totally new. I'm Aaron Manky and welcome
Speaker 1: to the side show. Their caravan rolled westward, wagons pulling
Speaker 1: toward the sinking march sun Olive Oatman, along with her
Speaker 1: brothers and sisters and their parents, held onto the dream
Speaker 1: of a better life. In the rear view was the
Speaker 1: frontier town of Independence, Missouri. Independence lived up to its name,
Speaker 1: serving as a departure point, not just for the Oatman's
Speaker 1: but for travelers and seekers of all kinds. The territory
Speaker 1: had been part of the Louisiana Purchase, which was the U.
Speaker 1: S government's acquisition of almost one million square miles of
Speaker 1: land that carved out the heart of North America. The
Speaker 1: area had traded hands from the French, giving the States
Speaker 1: the legal right to obtain indigenous lands by treaty or conquest.
Speaker 1: Adding salt to the wound, Congress had recently created the
Speaker 1: Indian Reservation System. They provided funds to relocate indigenous communities.
Speaker 1: There was another step that the American government was taking
Speaker 1: towards systematic displacement and disenfranchisement of millions of Native peoples.
Speaker 1: The Oatman's, though hoped to find home in the Louisiana Territory.
Speaker 1: Manifest destiny was on their minds, and they had plenty
Speaker 1: of company. You see, the Oatman's were part of the
Speaker 1: Brewster Rights, a Mormon splinter sect that believed the Promised
Speaker 1: Land layout in the Rio Grand Valley. They were all
Speaker 1: traveling together, and so they packed their wagons with salt,
Speaker 1: meat and hardtack, trunks of quilts, and the last of
Speaker 1: their few family mementos. Their wagon caravans snaked out of
Speaker 1: town and into a landscape whose rumors had filled their
Speaker 1: heads with visions of heaven and hell. The Brewster Rights
Speaker 1: took to the Santa Fe Trail, a nine mile track
Speaker 1: that cut through blistering hot deserts and jagged, rocky mountains.
Speaker 1: They wouldn't be strangers to drought, lightning storms, or rattlesnakes.
Speaker 1: But here, seven months into their trip, and just eighty
Speaker 1: miles outside their final destination of Yuma, Arizona, their journey
Speaker 1: would come to a catastrophe end. The caravan wanted to stop,
Speaker 1: you see, but Olive's dad, Royce, wanted to push onward.
Speaker 1: The promised Land was just a few miles out of reach,
Speaker 1: So onward the Oatman's went breaking from the pack and
Speaker 1: rolling ahead alone. And it's here, according to Olive's later retelling,
Speaker 1: that her family encountered members of the Java Pie tribe.
Speaker 1: After exchanging pleasantries that quickly grew unpleasant, the family tried
Speaker 1: to move on. A skirmish ensued, and the Oatmans were
Speaker 1: struck down in the carnage. One brother survived and found
Speaker 1: his way to the remaining Brewster rights, while Olive and
Speaker 1: her sister Mary disappeared alive as captives into the Arizona wilderness.
Speaker 1: They were traded to the Mojave people, and it's with
Speaker 1: them that Olive and her sister would live and, according
Speaker 1: to their telling thrive. We know that Olive was given
Speaker 1: both a clan name and a nickname, She was dressed
Speaker 1: in traditional garments, and, as some scholars believe, was allowed
Speaker 1: to come and go as she pleased. We also know
Speaker 1: that within five years time, after a devastating famine and
Speaker 1: the death of her sister, she was rescued and brought
Speaker 1: back to fort Yuma, a post built for the protection
Speaker 1: of trade routes. We can imagine that Olive's return was
Speaker 1: full of emotion for her, but also for the others there.
Speaker 1: White settlers had been perfecting the art of fearing this
Speaker 1: particular predicament for centuries. In fact, there's a whole genre
Speaker 1: of literature dedicated to these tales called captivity narratives. The
Speaker 1: first other group to receive this literary treatment in the
Speaker 1: English language were Muslim pirates from North Africa. When European
Speaker 1: colonizers arrived in North America, they brought the archetype with them,
Speaker 1: With the earliest ones published in six two, the precedent
Speaker 1: for how to interface with the new world had been set.
Speaker 1: Olive's returned to her community of origin was striking beyond
Speaker 1: the fact that she was taken and survived because there
Speaker 1: was something else us. It appeared that she bore a
Speaker 1: mark that outlasted her challenge. Her face had been tattooed.
Speaker 1: She now wore blue lines on her chin that ran
Speaker 1: down from her lips. They were also long, straight lines
Speaker 1: drawn on her arms. Olive's cactus thorn tattoos marked her
Speaker 1: integration into the tribe. They functioned as a visual means
Speaker 1: that expressed tribal affiliation, cultural pride, and personhood. They were
Speaker 1: marks of social organization and religion, and a visual umbilical
Speaker 1: cord connecting worlds seen and unseen, and most importantly, they
Speaker 1: were voluntary. She wasn't immediately forthcoming about her time with
Speaker 1: the Mojave, but where her silence left space, the frontier
Speaker 1: megaphone was eager to fill it. In Contemporary accounts painted
Speaker 1: her time away to be years of torment. It was
Speaker 1: just too difficult for them to believe that she had
Speaker 1: become acculturated, marrying the son of the tribe's chief and
Speaker 1: starting her own family. But now back in her old world,
Speaker 1: she would forever be marked as an outsider, a savage,
Speaker 1: a freak. In eighteen fifty seven, she was on tour
Speaker 1: after a local pastor wrote and published her biography. She
Speaker 1: needed to be palatable, because being palatable meant earning money.
Speaker 1: Pulling back her straight brown hair into a bun and
Speaker 1: wearing a plain dress, she was able to attract audiences
Speaker 1: that otherwise might be put off by women taking to
Speaker 1: the podium. Scholars still debate, though, as to what actually
Speaker 1: transpired over the course of those five years she was gone.
Speaker 1: It's thought that Olive's sense of her own tattoos remained
Speaker 1: unclear throughout her life. As she grew older, she remarried,
Speaker 1: started anew and began veiling her face, But she was
Speaker 1: forever stuck between two worlds, never able to erase her identity.
Speaker 1: Olive Oatman was forever marked, an indelible stain upon her skin.
Speaker 1: But what those marks meant only she knew the truth.
Speaker 1: Any sailor worth their salt had heard about Martin Hildebrand,
Speaker 1: and any sailor worth more than fifty cents could be
Speaker 1: tattooed by him. Martin, an old sea dog himself, was
Speaker 1: the proprietor of not just the first tattoo shop in
Speaker 1: New York City, but the first in the entire nation.
Speaker 1: On the walls of his tavern turned studio hung ready
Speaker 1: made art, poised for the chance to leap from the
Speaker 1: page and onto a lucky body. These designs were his
Speaker 1: biggest money makers. He dealt in crucifixes and Ballerina's, Masonic
Speaker 1: emblems and odd Fellow signs. His most popular, though, was
Speaker 1: a curvy young woman laying across the top of a
Speaker 1: mausoleum with a sleeping willow. By eight, Martin and his
Speaker 1: tattooing partner had completed an ambitious project, a full body
Speaker 1: suit on a local jeweler named Harry Decorsi. They aimed
Speaker 1: to rival, a man who went by the title the
Speaker 1: Tattooed Greek, a protege of P. T. Barnum's, He too
Speaker 1: was covered from head to foot, and purportedly the first
Speaker 1: person to do so for the sake of the stage. So,
Speaker 1: with his new look and a new name, the Tattooed
Speaker 1: Albanian Harry Dicorci took the stage at George Bourbonnell's Dime Museum.
Speaker 1: But these two men soon had copycats. They wouldn't be
Speaker 1: the first men, nor certainly the last to get tattooed
Speaker 1: to earn a profit. In fact, their performances soon lost
Speaker 1: their cutting edge. However, two new acts soon appeared on
Speaker 1: the stage, ones that would stir up both reactions and money.
Speaker 1: Irene Woodward and Norah Hildebrand, the two first and most
Speaker 1: famous tattooed ladies of their day. Irene was billed as
Speaker 1: the first, the one, the only, and appeared on stage
Speaker 1: at George's Dime Museum on March twenty first of eighteen
Speaker 1: eighty two. It's here that she took to the stage
Speaker 1: in a venue not unlike Barnum's American Museum. In fact,
Speaker 1: many of the same folks orbited through the two venues together.
Speaker 1: She draped herself in velvet, silk and lace, and was sold,
Speaker 1: on George's words as a vision of punctured purity. Irene
Speaker 1: was a thrilling provocateur who gave audiences a glimpse of
Speaker 1: flesh the likes of which they had never seen before.
Speaker 1: It was bare, it was colorful, and it belonged to
Speaker 1: a lady. To audiences, this calculus was both ironic and enchanting,
Speaker 1: and it didn't take a language whiz to understand the innuendo.
Speaker 1: It was rumored that Martin had a hand in Irene's making,
Speaker 1: but this has never been confirmed. What history does tell us, though,
Speaker 1: is that a woman with his last name soon appeared
Speaker 1: on stage, a manufactured rival to Irene. A woman by
Speaker 1: the name of Nora killed a brand. Whether this was
Speaker 1: a common law marriage, they were siblings, or they had
Speaker 1: no relationship beyond tattoo artist and customer is a truth
Speaker 1: that's been lost to history, but the association of the
Speaker 1: last name undoubtedly helped. She too, secured a contract at
Speaker 1: the Dime Museum and appeared shortly after Irene, as the
Speaker 1: story went. Nora was born in Australia in eighteen sixty
Speaker 1: and left for private school in New York as a teenager.
Speaker 1: It's here that she would meet her estranged father, a
Speaker 1: sailor and tattooist. They took off west to Utah, and
Speaker 1: once they're settled up on horseback for the final leg
Speaker 1: of their journey. While traveling, it said that they encountered
Speaker 1: and I quote, red skinned devils and even Sitting Bull himself.
Speaker 1: They were taken captive, with Norah's father sentenced to burn
Speaker 1: at the stake and Norah herself to be the chief's concubine.
Speaker 1: But there was a twist. The promotional materials claimed that
Speaker 1: as Norah's father was being tied to the stake, his
Speaker 1: captors noticed his tattoos. With a change of heart, Sitting
Speaker 1: Bull promised Norah's father his freedom if he would tattoo
Speaker 1: his warriors. But when those warriors objected, Sitting Bull was
Speaker 1: said to have changed his mind and ordered the father
Speaker 1: to tattoo Nora from head to toe. She was bound
Speaker 1: tied to a tree, and it said that he worked
Speaker 1: six hours a day for a year, resulting in three
Speaker 1: hundred sixty five designs across his daughter's body. And of
Speaker 1: course something had to give in a fit of madness.
Speaker 1: Norah's father broke his needles, and with that he was
Speaker 1: promptly sanctioned and burned at the stake. It said that
Speaker 1: in the aftermath, Nora was rescued and taken to Denver
Speaker 1: to recuperate. It's here in the hospital, blinded by pain,
Speaker 1: that famed side show manager W. K. Leary discovered her.
Speaker 1: He paid the bill for her trip back to New York,
Speaker 1: where she now miraculously cured from the whole ordeal took
Speaker 1: two stages throughout North America and Europe. But of course
Speaker 1: this was all just a story. These colorful women were
Speaker 1: prime examples of the working class struggle to escape poverty,
Speaker 1: and were more successful than many women of their time.
Speaker 1: But you see the idea and the truth of young
Speaker 1: domestic servants trying to eke out another stream of income
Speaker 1: falls short on intrigue. Tattooed ladies, not just Irene and Nora,
Speaker 1: were exactly that. To this end, the tattooed lady represented
Speaker 1: herself as a victim for profit. Many of these women
Speaker 1: toured with stories of their captivity, torture, and forced tattooing,
Speaker 1: whether or not rural audiences believed that. And again I
Speaker 1: quote savages captured and tattooed these women. They were willing
Speaker 1: to indulge this attractive narrative hook, especially if she was
Speaker 1: going to show them a bit of skin and regale
Speaker 1: visitors with impolite tales of torture that she was forced
Speaker 1: to submit to. You see, the transgressions of a white
Speaker 1: woman's purity couldn't be explicitly mentioned, so it was implied
Speaker 1: in the captivity narratives of the tattooed ladies. Words like
Speaker 1: vile lation and in dignity implied assault. Anything more than
Speaker 1: an implication and innuendo, well, that was considered pornographic. The
Speaker 1: sideshow had long hit on and capitalized on a nineteenth
Speaker 1: century truth, sex cells, and honestly, it's amazing how tattooed
Speaker 1: ladies were able to subvert the social limits imposed on
Speaker 1: them by pretending to comply. They went along with the
Speaker 1: damsel in distress backstories, if only to hide their self
Speaker 1: determined and remarkably autonomous ways of moving throughout the world.
Speaker 1: They were making choices for themselves, rather than relying on parents, husbands,
Speaker 1: or brothers to make those decisions for them. Polite society
Speaker 1: was far more comfortable with tales of violation and victimhood,
Speaker 1: and far less comfortable with the idea that young working
Speaker 1: class women could determine their own future. And in the
Speaker 1: end what they did was powerful in its simplicity. They
Speaker 1: changed their lives and charmed their audiences with just a
Speaker 1: few courts of ink and some stories to tell. The
Speaker 1: nineteen o four St. Louis World's Fair was a beacon
Speaker 1: of hope, welcoming visitors into the new century. At the
Speaker 1: Palace of Electricity, visitors saw the first X ray machines
Speaker 1: and displays of babies and incubators. The fair promised Americans
Speaker 1: that the future was here and that there were limitless
Speaker 1: possibilities and innovation. Just ahead of the thousands of people
Speaker 1: to walk the grounds, two kindred spirits managed to find
Speaker 1: each other in the crowd, Maud Stevens, an aerial artist
Speaker 1: from Kansas, and Gus Wagner, a tattoo artist from Ohio.
Speaker 1: Maud agreed to date Gus as long as he held
Speaker 1: up his end of the bargain. He had to both
Speaker 1: tattoo her and allow her to apprentice him, and he did,
Speaker 1: unveiling yet another tattooed lady. The same year that saw
Speaker 1: the formation of a new social group, an organization called
Speaker 1: I Kid You Not, the American Society for Keeping Women
Speaker 1: in her Proper Sphere. And with that Maud became the
Speaker 1: first known female artist in the United States, inking the
Speaker 1: bodies of rapscallions, and gentle women alike, both on the
Speaker 1: outside and within the confines of the sideshow walls. But
Speaker 1: soon the market began to shift. You see, the tattoo
Speaker 1: gun had been patented a few years before her time,
Speaker 1: allowing the average consumer to ink and be inked. Tattooed
Speaker 1: men and women were becoming more common, and when an
Speaker 1: act is a dime a dozen, demand for it drops.
Speaker 1: But still the sideshow had an undeniable gravitational pull. It
Speaker 1: attracted folks who weren't able to find work elsewhere because
Speaker 1: of their physical limitations, but also those with remarkable talent.
Speaker 1: And as you've seen by how it dealt in both
Speaker 1: trafficked people and autonomous actors all at the same time.
Speaker 1: Together those folks work side by side in a social
Speaker 1: stew unlike anything the world had seen before. One of
Speaker 1: the last tattooed women was a gal by the name
Speaker 1: of Anna May Burlington. As she tells her story, she
Speaker 1: and her sister went to see a traveling side show
Speaker 1: in Wisconsin. Being too poor to escape her small town,
Speaker 1: she accepted an invitation from a worker name Red Gibbons
Speaker 1: to become a tattooed lady and join him in traveling
Speaker 1: the world. So she did just that. She quite literally
Speaker 1: ran away to join the circus. Between nineteen twelve and
Speaker 1: nineteen nineteen, read tattooed Anna's entire body. A lifelong member
Speaker 1: of the Episcopal Church, her full color artwork suited her faith.
Speaker 1: She even had a portrait of George Washington to show
Speaker 1: just how patriotic she was and to suit the times
Speaker 1: she changed her story. Gone were the days of captivity.
Speaker 1: Narratives would had fallen out of style in the wake
Speaker 1: of an industrialized America. In its place was another idea,
Speaker 1: that of maternal impression. Audiences frequently asked Anna how she
Speaker 1: came to look as she did. Was she borne that way?
Speaker 1: And she would tease them with a nod. She claimed
Speaker 1: that her mother had watched too many monster movies in
Speaker 1: her day. It soon became common practice for hospitals to
Speaker 1: quarantine patients with tattoos for fear of disease. Some cities
Speaker 1: banned tattooing altogether for fear of spreading both cancer and criminality.
Speaker 1: It seems that tattoos were still considered unfit for a
Speaker 1: civilized people, and thus still dangerous and even erotic in
Speaker 1: their allure. But for Anna, tattoos were her livelihood. For
Speaker 1: her entire career. She could be seen walking carnival grounds
Speaker 1: and riding circus trains wearing a full length cape, and
Speaker 1: she did this for decades. She traveled with sideshows and
Speaker 1: circuses and exhibited herself in museums. But as the years
Speaker 1: wore on into the nineteen sixties, everything began to change.
Speaker 1: The world was becoming smaller, ideas about bodies were changing,
Speaker 1: and Anna was aging. It's a fear that most women face,
Speaker 1: and the reason that I creams have such a stranglehold
Speaker 1: on society, the terror of becoming invisible with age. But
Speaker 1: for a woman like Anna, who spent her career on
Speaker 1: the road, and who had provided for her husband and
Speaker 1: raised a family, she and her tattoos weren't about to
Speaker 1: fade quietly. As she grew older. The world Anna found
Speaker 1: herself in was not the same one she had bargained for.
Speaker 1: No longer did folks have to pay cash to go
Speaker 1: see freaks. They can now just turn on their television
Speaker 1: sets or go to the movies. There were no long
Speaker 1: lines or bustling crowds to elbow through for a chance
Speaker 1: to suspend their disbelief. The circus parades stopped and audiences
Speaker 1: got smaller. More working opportunities were also opening up for
Speaker 1: folks with disabilities. The side show hit its lowest level
Speaker 1: of popularity in the nineteen forties and fifties, but by
Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties they were back, and Anna was back too,
Speaker 1: and this time she was billed as the tattooed grandmother.
Speaker 1: As the story goes, she was working a side show
Speaker 1: in Dallas when one of the last performers of the
Speaker 1: night called in sick Jack Woods. The sideshow lecturer recommended
Speaker 1: that Anna step up to close out the show, but
Speaker 1: the manager didn't think that she would be a good
Speaker 1: fit due to her advanced age. Jack, determined to save
Speaker 1: the show, got to work. He stepped out to the
Speaker 1: audience and gave Anna an intro that he would never
Speaker 1: live down. He called her the strangest of them all,
Speaker 1: far stranger than anything here on stage, because she's a
Speaker 1: human oddity who was not born a freak. She was
Speaker 1: introduced as a man and made monstrosity with a husband
Speaker 1: who had been so jealous of her that he disfigured
Speaker 1: her body with permanent markings. The side show manager was
Speaker 1: satisfied with this. Anna, however, was not picture this a
Speaker 1: slight elderly woman giving a word whipping to a fellow
Speaker 1: man decades her jr. Anna was livid, and she let
Speaker 1: Jack have it. He was told to never call her
Speaker 1: a monstrosity again. Suffice to say, the act was successful.
Speaker 1: This story was successful, so Anna kept performing, and from
Speaker 1: that night on, unbeknownst to her, Jack kept telling his
Speaker 1: tall tale. He was just careful to keep the volume
Speaker 1: a bit lower so that Anna, one of the oldest
Speaker 1: and most successful tattooed ladies in the world, couldn't hear him.
Speaker 1: In a world where many of us take tattoos for granted,
Speaker 1: it's amazing what sorts of tales they paint for us.
Speaker 1: From captivity narratives to independent women, there has been so
Speaker 1: much more on display than just a bit of ink.
Speaker 1: And I hope today's journey has helped you see that.
Speaker 1: But we're not done just yet. Stick around through this
Speaker 1: brief sponsor break to hear one more tale about the
Speaker 1: side show and maybe find a bit of artistic inspiration
Speaker 1: along the way. For the going price of seventeen dollars
Speaker 1: and fifty cents per foot, Dr Fred Foster Bloodgood sourced
Speaker 1: all kinds of snakes. They were central to his act,
Speaker 1: after all, one in which he pitted these animals against
Speaker 1: human opponents, drawing blood drew audiences, and the average casualty
Speaker 1: rate for the snakes didn't bode well for blood Goods
Speaker 1: slippery acquisitions. For a decade, blood Good worked the carnival circuit,
Speaker 1: shouting from the Bally platform and offering audiences a taste
Speaker 1: of the grotesque. In his words, he offered one of
Speaker 1: the most disgusting, one of the most repulsive, yet one
Speaker 1: of the most interesting attractions ever conceived by the mind
Speaker 1: of mortal man blood Good, who, as you have probably
Speaker 1: guessed correctly at this point, was certainly no doctor, would
Speaker 1: step onto the platform in a lab coat, and then
Speaker 1: his act would go something like this. He would tell
Speaker 1: his audiences the story of Niola, a woman from the
Speaker 1: African continent who was brought here during the Scopes Monkey Trial.
Speaker 1: Of As the story went, she was discovered by scientists
Speaker 1: living in a cave of snakes replicated here in front
Speaker 1: of blood Good as a pit. Niola, who was actually
Speaker 1: a man wearing a long wig, would then face off
Speaker 1: against these reptiles, allowing them to rattle, to bite, and
Speaker 1: to draw blood. The act crescendo would come when Niola
Speaker 1: would pick up one of the larger snakes. She would
Speaker 1: then place its head between her teeth, bite it off,
Speaker 1: and then proceed, according to blood Good, to skin it
Speaker 1: like a banana and devour the rest. Naturally, audiences were
Speaker 1: horrified and probably terribly pleased to be getting their money's worth.
Speaker 1: The world of made freaks like folks performing in blood
Speaker 1: Good snake Pit was simple and its execution, though complicated
Speaker 1: in its design, what he was serving up was a
Speaker 1: departure from the conjoined Hilton sisters or the little tom
Speaker 1: Thumbs of the world. But to understand this, we have
Speaker 1: to understand the social hierarchy among sideshow performers. Born freaks
Speaker 1: reigned supreme on the sideshow circuit, commanding top dollar and
Speaker 1: top billing. Blood Good himself dealt with able bodied outsiders
Speaker 1: through decoration, performance, and sometimes assuming a new identity. They
Speaker 1: would learn a trade and hitch their success to the
Speaker 1: traveling sideshow trains the scholars up though on made freaks
Speaker 1: is just much thinner. They were considered to be less
Speaker 1: valuable with the least sideshow cultural cachet, and they could
Speaker 1: often move between worlds as they pleased. They were easily
Speaker 1: replaceable because their acts were largely theatrical and at the
Speaker 1: bottom most wrong of the side show laddered. The lowest
Speaker 1: of the made freaks were the geeks. The word finds
Speaker 1: its origin in the German word ghek, meaning fool. Maybe
Speaker 1: today the label conjures up images of calculators and pocket
Speaker 1: protectors and algebra class but the original geeks were otherwise
Speaker 1: normal looking folks exhibiting abnormal behaviors like lighting the heads
Speaker 1: off of snakes. So while audiences could point, stare, and
Speaker 1: even laugh at performers with bodies different than there's, the
Speaker 1: geek school was to strike fear into the audience through
Speaker 1: overt action and through subversive suggestion. Absent of all physical markers,
Speaker 1: geeks appeared to be the pinnacle of normalcy, perhaps someone
Speaker 1: you'd otherwise find working as a mailman or a bank teller.
Speaker 1: In this way, these performers confronted those looking at them
Speaker 1: with a very uncomfortable idea. Perhaps the audience members were
Speaker 1: more like the freaks than they cared to admit. Side
Speaker 1: show was written by Robin Minat with narration by me
Speaker 1: Aaron Mankey. Research for the series was by Robin Minator,
Speaker 1: Taylor Haggard Dorn, and Sam Alberty, with production assistants from
Speaker 1: Josh Than, Jesse Funk, Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick. Grim
Speaker 1: and Mile Presents was created in partnership with I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: You can learn more about this show and everything else
Speaker 1: from Grim and mild Over at Grim and mild dot com, and,
Speaker 1: as always, thanks for listening.