WEBVTT - How a Flea Circus Works 0:00:00.280 --> 0:00:03.520 Make your business official with Google and Squarespace. When you 0:00:03.600 --> 0:00:07.120 create a custom domain and a beautiful business website with Squarespace, 0:00:07.320 --> 0:00:10.360 you receive a free year of business email and professional 0:00:10.400 --> 0:00:14.200 tools from Google. It's the simplest way to look professional online. 0:00:14.600 --> 0:00:17.959 Visit squarespace dot com slash Google to start your free 0:00:17.960 --> 0:00:21.560 trial and use our offer code works w O r 0:00:21.680 --> 0:00:24.959 k S for ten percent off your first purchase Google 0:00:24.960 --> 0:00:29.960 in Squarespace, make your professional, make it beautiful. Hey, everybody 0:00:29.960 --> 0:00:32.800 in the greater San Francisco Bay Area, we're also looking 0:00:32.840 --> 0:00:35.640 at you. Oakland. We are coming out to Sketch Fest 0:00:35.720 --> 0:00:38.000 this year again for the second year in a row, 0:00:38.040 --> 0:00:41.120 and we're doing it rare Sunday afternoon jam, so that 0:00:41.200 --> 0:00:44.640 is Sunday, January at one pm. You can come see 0:00:44.720 --> 0:00:47.440 us live and tickets are gonna go fast, So go 0:00:47.520 --> 0:00:51.440 to s F Sketch Fest dot com and just click 0:00:51.479 --> 0:00:53.360 on the little ticket links or look at the lineup 0:00:53.360 --> 0:00:56.160 and follow us there and we can't wait to see everyone. 0:00:56.160 --> 0:00:58.880 It's one of our favorite cities to perform in and 0:00:59.120 --> 0:01:02.280 uh go to s F Sketch Fest dot com Oakland, 0:01:02.320 --> 0:01:07.360 San Francisco. We will see you soon. Welcome to stuff 0:01:07.400 --> 0:01:16.360 you should know from how Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, 0:01:16.400 --> 0:01:19.080 and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's 0:01:19.160 --> 0:01:23.759 Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry Roland and that 0:01:23.840 --> 0:01:29.000 makes this stuff. You should know the podcast. Yeah, who 0:01:29.000 --> 0:01:31.800 would have ever thought that we could do more than 0:01:31.840 --> 0:01:37.360 one podcast on fleas? Had I thought about flea circuses, 0:01:37.440 --> 0:01:40.200 I would have thought that. Yeah, we covered it a 0:01:40.360 --> 0:01:42.679 tiny little bit. I went back and looked just to 0:01:42.680 --> 0:01:45.920 make sure we weren't being too redundant, and uh, we 0:01:46.040 --> 0:01:49.280 just sort of mentioned it briefly. But how delightful to 0:01:49.320 --> 0:01:51.800 dig in even further. Yeah, I mean, like, there's no 0:01:51.880 --> 0:01:54.560 way that we really got into it because it's one 0:01:54.600 --> 0:01:59.880 of like the least documented aspects of popular culture I've 0:02:00.000 --> 0:02:03.160 ever come across, man, And there's so much misinformation, and 0:02:03.440 --> 0:02:06.640 you run across people who act like they know exactly 0:02:06.640 --> 0:02:08.800 what they're talking about, and then you do more research 0:02:08.840 --> 0:02:10.840 and you find out they really are wrong in a 0:02:10.880 --> 0:02:13.640 lot of it. It's it's really it was crazy. It 0:02:13.720 --> 0:02:15.839 was a crazy research. Yeah, and you go to web 0:02:15.840 --> 0:02:26.560 pages that are solid green with white letters punctuation. What's that? Yeah, 0:02:26.600 --> 0:02:29.320 it was a little weird, but yeah, people take us 0:02:29.320 --> 0:02:32.239 to task on the accuracy of this one. Then we'll 0:02:32.280 --> 0:02:36.560 be like you, you go do better. So um, I 0:02:36.600 --> 0:02:39.200 think we kind of gave it away. The cats out 0:02:39.200 --> 0:02:42.120 of the bag, and so are it's fleas. We're doing 0:02:42.160 --> 0:02:45.680 flee circuses. We're talking about flee circuses, and they actually, 0:02:46.080 --> 0:02:48.519 like I think of police circus is fairly old timey, 0:02:48.600 --> 0:02:50.720 but I usually think of him as like the twenties 0:02:50.800 --> 0:02:53.120 or thirties, maybe even the forties from like that old 0:02:53.520 --> 0:02:57.400 tech savery flee circus cartoons or um. But they go 0:02:57.680 --> 0:03:01.520 way further back than that, or even the concept of 0:03:01.520 --> 0:03:04.919 of training fleas in some way, shape or form goes 0:03:05.000 --> 0:03:07.840 even further back than that. Yeah, which will we'll get 0:03:07.880 --> 0:03:10.600 to it. But training them as a bit of a misnomer, Yeah, 0:03:10.600 --> 0:03:14.280 that's a stretch for sure. It's sort of like tying 0:03:14.320 --> 0:03:18.520 and gluing things to fleas and just let them be fleas. Yeah, basically, 0:03:18.960 --> 0:03:22.360 as you will probably come to the same conclusion, flee 0:03:22.360 --> 0:03:25.600 circuses are really mean. Yeah, they're cruel. No matter how 0:03:25.720 --> 0:03:28.959 you feel about flease they are. Yeah, they're cruel, cruel 0:03:28.960 --> 0:03:31.840 acts of barbarity. I think that's how the East to 0:03:31.840 --> 0:03:36.400 buille it. Actually, Yeah, tiny cruel acts of barbarity comes 0:03:36.400 --> 0:03:40.000 see Professor long Hair and his flee circus which torments 0:03:40.920 --> 0:03:43.920 but they're small, so who cares? Right? Uh? So fifteen 0:03:44.040 --> 0:03:47.320 seventies is uh. If this is accurate, we're all gonna 0:03:47.360 --> 0:03:50.040 go all the way back to a man named Mark 0:03:50.160 --> 0:03:54.520 Scalliot who uh did not have a flee circus, but 0:03:54.600 --> 0:03:58.040 he was supposedly in London one of the first people, 0:03:58.160 --> 0:04:03.040 or perhaps the first person to use a flee as 0:04:03.080 --> 0:04:06.000 a prop of some sort. Yeah, to basically show off 0:04:06.000 --> 0:04:09.240 his skills as what as a he was a blacksmith. Yeah, 0:04:09.240 --> 0:04:11.880 it was a smithy. And he made like this really 0:04:12.000 --> 0:04:16.280 really tiny intricate caller that he put around to flee 0:04:16.440 --> 0:04:20.280 and he said, check this out. Yeah, and everyone was. 0:04:21.000 --> 0:04:25.360 I guess because this apparently other people, uh like watchmakers 0:04:25.400 --> 0:04:28.040 and stuff would would make little tiny watches as well 0:04:28.480 --> 0:04:31.159 as gimmicks. But I guess the thing they were trying 0:04:31.200 --> 0:04:33.479 to show is the only thing I can think of 0:04:33.560 --> 0:04:35.680 is if I can make something this tiny that works, 0:04:36.400 --> 0:04:38.880 imagine what a real size human watch would look like. 0:04:39.480 --> 0:04:43.120 It would work even better. But he got kind of 0:04:43.160 --> 0:04:46.720 famous from it from what I understand, and the idea 0:04:46.760 --> 0:04:50.520 of using fleas called on kind of kind of well, 0:04:50.560 --> 0:04:53.400 it took a couple of hundred years. But if if 0:04:53.440 --> 0:04:57.039 you look into fleas and flee circuses, like I just 0:04:57.080 --> 0:04:59.719 took him for granted, I never stopped and thought why fleas, 0:05:00.200 --> 0:05:04.160 But there's actually really good reasons why fleas, and it 0:05:04.200 --> 0:05:07.760 has to do with For one, fleas used to be everywhere, 0:05:08.320 --> 0:05:11.159 Like no matter where you lived in the world, you 0:05:11.600 --> 0:05:14.960 shared your living space with fleas, which must have been 0:05:14.960 --> 0:05:17.480 pretty awful. But apparently it was just a fact of life. 0:05:17.800 --> 0:05:21.080 So that's one thing. They're ubiquitous, they're easy to come by. 0:05:21.320 --> 0:05:25.680 The other one is that fleas are really really good 0:05:25.720 --> 0:05:30.040 at jumping, and that actually makes them, under the right circumstances, 0:05:30.440 --> 0:05:33.840 really good for this flee circus idea. Yeah, and we 0:05:33.839 --> 0:05:37.680 we you know, if you really want to itch yourself, uh, 0:05:37.880 --> 0:05:41.200 go to listen to the fleet episode. Um. But they 0:05:41.279 --> 0:05:43.200 come in a couple of thousand varieties, and the ones, 0:05:43.240 --> 0:05:47.760 apparently for circuses are the little flat, reddish brown ones 0:05:48.120 --> 0:05:53.400 about two point five millimeters in length, and um, they 0:05:53.400 --> 0:05:55.560 can jump though two point five millimeters. They can jump 0:05:55.640 --> 0:05:57.600 sometimes as high as eight nine inches in the air. 0:05:57.960 --> 0:06:00.880 I saw it to ten. Oh, well, where you getting 0:06:02.400 --> 0:06:06.640 that was from? The Royal Air Force experimental station. They 0:06:06.680 --> 0:06:09.320 apparently set up some equipment in the sixties and we're 0:06:09.320 --> 0:06:12.680 photographing fleas jumping. Oh yeah, see here that they said 0:06:12.720 --> 0:06:15.559 that um, at the start of a jump, a flea jump, 0:06:15.960 --> 0:06:18.520 they experienced forces greater than a hundred and forty times 0:06:18.560 --> 0:06:21.920 out of gravity. Yeah, that's crazy. Yeah. They have these 0:06:21.960 --> 0:06:25.839 little um what are called elastic cuticles in their legs 0:06:26.040 --> 0:06:29.040 and they can store a tremendous amount of potential energy, 0:06:29.080 --> 0:06:32.200 and when they release them and they jump, that potential 0:06:32.279 --> 0:06:35.880 energy turns into kinetic energy. And since that it's basically 0:06:35.920 --> 0:06:41.360 this elastic um connector that's really storing the energy, they're 0:06:41.400 --> 0:06:43.320 not having to use up a lot of their own. 0:06:43.400 --> 0:06:45.800 So they can jump like this, like thousands of times 0:06:45.839 --> 0:06:49.159 in an hour. And apparently when they jump. I don't 0:06:49.200 --> 0:06:51.880 I'm sure we said something somewhat contradictory in the actual 0:06:52.000 --> 0:06:56.360 Fleas episode, but the relation of their jumps to their 0:06:56.400 --> 0:07:00.720 body size, um, it compared to humans of like us 0:07:01.240 --> 0:07:05.200 jumping over the Statue of Liberty or something along those lines, 0:07:05.279 --> 0:07:09.560 which is very hard to do, ken harder every day. Man. 0:07:09.920 --> 0:07:12.080 I was kind of thinking about these fleas jumping and 0:07:12.080 --> 0:07:17.640 like evolutionarily speaking why, And I guess they're just so 0:07:17.720 --> 0:07:21.640 small that when a dog goes to scratch or bite 0:07:21.680 --> 0:07:24.440 at it, or whatever animal tried to get the fleet off, 0:07:24.880 --> 0:07:27.600 they can't just be like, well, let me run away 0:07:28.200 --> 0:07:30.920 as fast as I can, because the dog's bite will 0:07:30.960 --> 0:07:33.640 still get it. So they learned, I think, quite literally, 0:07:34.040 --> 0:07:36.920 how to jump and get the heck out of there 0:07:37.040 --> 0:07:40.840 very very quickly in order to survive. And the coolest 0:07:40.840 --> 0:07:45.880 fleas make the Bionic Man sound when they jump if 0:07:45.960 --> 0:07:50.280 you listen really close. All the hipster fleas, right. Uh so, 0:07:50.720 --> 0:07:54.040 I guess we should talk about the main dude though, right, 0:07:54.680 --> 0:07:56.680 who we owe all of us owe a great debt too. 0:07:57.040 --> 0:07:58.760 I'm not saying his name, you know, you've got to 0:07:58.800 --> 0:08:00.960 say his name. This is the eight teen twenties, and 0:08:01.280 --> 0:08:06.440 uh he was an Italian impresario in London named Louis 0:08:07.080 --> 0:08:13.920 Berte Lotto nice. Yes, yeah, there's so many ohs and 0:08:13.960 --> 0:08:15.840 t s. I thought I messed it up. No, I 0:08:15.880 --> 0:08:19.000 know it's a it's an unusual name. Yeah. So he's 0:08:19.040 --> 0:08:23.720 the guy in London who said, uh, I want to 0:08:23.760 --> 0:08:27.760 be really famous one day, and my big idea is 0:08:27.800 --> 0:08:32.160 to take fleas and put them in shows. Yeah, and 0:08:32.200 --> 0:08:37.160 it worked. It did work. I saw somewhere that the 0:08:37.160 --> 0:08:42.080 the origination of flee circuses it was um due largely 0:08:42.120 --> 0:08:44.800 to him. But I didn't really see anybody else sighted 0:08:44.920 --> 0:08:51.679 earlier than him. You know, the watchmaker, the smithy, Um Mark, Mark, 0:08:51.760 --> 0:08:55.600 the blacksmith. He wasn't doing any kind of shows or tricks. 0:08:55.679 --> 0:09:00.319 Louis Berte Lotto Um said, you know what, the fleas 0:09:00.320 --> 0:09:02.560 aren't props. The fleas are going to be the stars 0:09:02.559 --> 0:09:05.440 in my show. That's right, And I think he may 0:09:05.480 --> 0:09:07.520 have been the one who had the the original idea 0:09:07.600 --> 0:09:10.360 to do this. Yeah, I love our own article said 0:09:10.400 --> 0:09:15.040 his show was part action, part humor, part social commentary. 0:09:15.240 --> 0:09:18.000 But I think that was the case. You know, they would, uh, 0:09:18.040 --> 0:09:19.760 well we might as well talk about what these things did. 0:09:19.800 --> 0:09:24.880 They would do everything from high wire x to uh 0:09:24.960 --> 0:09:30.240 sword fighting too, uh. Political and historical re enactments. Yeah. 0:09:30.280 --> 0:09:33.840 They re enacted the Battle of Waterloo dressed dressed in 0:09:33.960 --> 0:09:38.560 like military garb. Yeah. They would play a soccer or football. Uh. 0:09:38.600 --> 0:09:43.760 They would do um, high diving, pretty amazing stuff, the 0:09:43.760 --> 0:09:48.240 little pools of water. They would a little chariots and carriages. Yeah, 0:09:48.280 --> 0:09:50.520 that was one of the first ones. Because you know, 0:09:50.920 --> 0:09:53.600 I think, especially back in the early nineteenth century, people 0:09:53.600 --> 0:09:56.400 didn't know everything there is to know about fleas like 0:09:56.480 --> 0:10:00.680 we do today. So the idea of watching a little, tiny, 0:10:00.800 --> 0:10:05.679 tiny flee, like a three millimeter long flee pulling like 0:10:06.000 --> 0:10:09.920 a hearse or a chariot or a cart um that was, 0:10:10.120 --> 0:10:13.160 you know, hundreds of times its own weight. Any better, 0:10:13.320 --> 0:10:16.120 it's gonna it's gonna impress you, especially if you're a 0:10:16.160 --> 0:10:19.280 five year old Chimney sweet who's owned by the guy 0:10:19.320 --> 0:10:22.600 who bought you from your parents. Yeah. Or I actually 0:10:22.600 --> 0:10:26.400 looked up some flea circuses on YouTube. Uh there were 0:10:26.480 --> 0:10:28.920 just little kids. There was one and I think Denmark 0:10:28.960 --> 0:10:31.560 in the nineteen fifties that I looked at. I saw 0:10:31.600 --> 0:10:34.679 that and like in Telfair, Yeah, people were just delighted. 0:10:36.040 --> 0:10:38.760 Oh yeah, I mean I watched some of the videos too, 0:10:38.760 --> 0:10:41.840 and I noticed that, like my hands were classed together 0:10:42.640 --> 0:10:44.840 beneath my chin. I think it might have been the 0:10:44.840 --> 0:10:49.920 perfect post election uh youtubing that I could have done. Actually, yeah, 0:10:50.080 --> 0:10:56.000 it worked pretty well. Uh so Bert sorry, Bert, his 0:10:56.280 --> 0:10:59.120 uh his act was not small if you think, well, 0:10:59.160 --> 0:11:02.559 sure he did this at some county fairs and sideshows 0:11:03.240 --> 0:11:05.640 uh and then his wife made him stop. Yeah, not 0:11:05.679 --> 0:11:08.719 true at all. He actually got really famous for this. 0:11:09.200 --> 0:11:11.920 I don't know. I mean they likened him to Elvis Presley. 0:11:12.000 --> 0:11:14.240 I don't know if he was that big. I think 0:11:14.280 --> 0:11:16.480 the point the authors making is like that this guy 0:11:16.600 --> 0:11:20.840 wasn't some some like, he wasn't Internet famous, he was 0:11:20.880 --> 0:11:23.520 like famous famous, Like he traveled the world doing this. 0:11:25.120 --> 0:11:27.360 It's good for him, right, Yeah, And he didn't. As 0:11:27.360 --> 0:11:30.200 he traveled the world, people were like, I can do 0:11:30.280 --> 0:11:33.640 that too. Tired of working, I want to do this. 0:11:34.120 --> 0:11:36.480 But it turns out that from what I can tell, 0:11:36.880 --> 0:11:40.000 as far as showbiz goes, running your own flee circus 0:11:40.040 --> 0:11:42.920 has got to be one of the more demanding side 0:11:42.960 --> 0:11:46.200 shows there there are. Well sure, I mean part of 0:11:46.200 --> 0:11:49.920 the problem is your performers. Well, first of all, it 0:11:49.960 --> 0:11:52.520 says in here and this is like again with this research, 0:11:52.880 --> 0:11:54.199 you just sort of have to take some of these 0:11:54.200 --> 0:11:57.000 people at their word. But they say that about one 0:11:57.040 --> 0:12:01.079 in tin fleas can even make the cut, right. Uh. 0:12:01.160 --> 0:12:06.840 Once you find your your champion team of they're they're 0:12:06.920 --> 0:12:10.160 gonna die and there need to be cared for and 0:12:10.240 --> 0:12:15.600 traveling all over the world with your prized fleas is precarious. Well, yeah. 0:12:15.720 --> 0:12:19.680 Especially um, if you're traveling to do shows and colder 0:12:19.760 --> 0:12:22.920 climbs there aren't fleas, and fleas don't do very well there. 0:12:22.960 --> 0:12:25.840 Your whole troop may die the night before a show. 0:12:25.920 --> 0:12:29.439 Can you imagine? But apparently it happened a lot. There 0:12:29.480 --> 0:12:31.320 was a guy I read and I'm not quite sure 0:12:31.320 --> 0:12:35.040 who it was, but they he had a a standing 0:12:35.120 --> 0:12:40.960 gig in I think Switzerland maybe or somewhere somewhat northern Europe, 0:12:41.320 --> 0:12:44.160 and he had to send down No she I'm sorry, 0:12:44.320 --> 0:12:47.560 she had to send down to Majorca to get um 0:12:48.280 --> 0:12:51.439 fresh shipments of fleas like every two weeks because hers 0:12:51.480 --> 0:12:53.800 just kept She couldn't keep them alive any longer than Yes, 0:12:54.600 --> 0:12:56.360 I have offers from all over the world to take 0:12:56.400 --> 0:12:58.840 my show, but you're afraid of one thing when you 0:12:58.840 --> 0:13:00.560 get out of the country, can you at fleas? I 0:13:00.559 --> 0:13:02.319 went to Sweden and I had to send to ma 0:13:02.400 --> 0:13:06.200 Yorka in Spain to get fleas fortnite every fortnight. Who 0:13:06.280 --> 0:13:09.880 was that? It was a woman a sword swallower right? Uh? 0:13:10.040 --> 0:13:13.400 Was that Professor Tomlin? No, I can't remember her name, 0:13:13.440 --> 0:13:18.400 but she's like a legendary sword swallower. Um professor tests No, 0:13:18.480 --> 0:13:22.160 Professor Chester. No, none of the professors, And that was 0:13:22.200 --> 0:13:24.439 another thing I noticed from this too, but I couldn't 0:13:24.440 --> 0:13:27.560 really find the origin. Apparently, if you had a flee 0:13:27.640 --> 0:13:30.480 circuses from from like the nineteenth century to the early 0:13:30.480 --> 0:13:35.280 twentieth century, you the flea master, build yourself as professor 0:13:35.200 --> 0:13:38.760 or whatever. So there's just all these really weird trends. 0:13:38.800 --> 0:13:41.800 But the in the history of flee circuses, it was 0:13:41.840 --> 0:13:44.160 like one person would come up with an idea and 0:13:44.200 --> 0:13:46.600 then they go and show it and for some reason 0:13:46.640 --> 0:13:49.360 it would attract a bunch of other imitators, and that's 0:13:49.440 --> 0:13:51.360 that's basically the history of it. I would have built 0:13:51.440 --> 0:13:55.400 myself as account oh man, you know, that would have 0:13:55.480 --> 0:13:58.080 broken new ground. But they would have to pay money. 0:13:58.120 --> 0:14:01.200 And this says in the nineteen fifties professors still said 0:14:01.320 --> 0:14:03.360 we pay six shillings a dozen, although there have been 0:14:03.400 --> 0:14:05.800 times of shortage when a single flea has cost as 0:14:05.840 --> 0:14:08.679 much as two shillings. Well, you know, also, if you 0:14:08.800 --> 0:14:12.360 look around today, at which I did, I couldn't find 0:14:12.360 --> 0:14:15.880 anywhere to buy fleas. You have to send off for 0:14:16.000 --> 0:14:20.160 um overseas um. But I've thought, surely there's some weirdo 0:14:20.520 --> 0:14:24.640 somewhere who's selling fleas to flee circuses and there are none, 0:14:25.760 --> 0:14:30.160 none whatsoever. Well, there is a flee circus in Germany. Still, yeah, 0:14:30.240 --> 0:14:33.800 at the Munich October Fest. Where else would you have one? 0:14:35.080 --> 0:14:39.480 Oh it's Mimi Gono, that was her name, the flee circus, 0:14:39.560 --> 0:14:42.560 uh woman? Okay, yeah, alright, so you wanna take a 0:14:42.600 --> 0:14:46.040 little break here, Yeah, all right, well let's break. Let's 0:14:46.040 --> 0:14:49.000 go pick the fleas from our own bodies. I know, 0:14:49.080 --> 0:14:51.480 I'm I'm itching or scratching. Then maybe we can train 0:14:51.560 --> 0:15:19.440 them to finish this episode for us. So, Chuck, we 0:15:19.440 --> 0:15:21.760 we kind of made it as far as Bertie Lotto, 0:15:21.960 --> 0:15:24.000 and there's actually a lot of mystery surrounding that guy. 0:15:24.920 --> 0:15:27.040 Here's the weird thing. Okay, I'm going to confess something 0:15:27.080 --> 0:15:30.560 to you. When I first read this article, I was like, well, 0:15:30.760 --> 0:15:33.800 here's a stinker. Then I dug in a little further 0:15:33.880 --> 0:15:37.360 and I was like, oh, I'm being tortured with research 0:15:37.440 --> 0:15:39.120 to do a stinker. And then the more I did, 0:15:39.240 --> 0:15:41.120 the more I did, the more I dug in, I'd 0:15:41.120 --> 0:15:43.760 find these weird little things that kept popping up that 0:15:44.360 --> 0:15:49.480 combined create the the the history or the culture of 0:15:49.600 --> 0:15:53.120 flea circuses. And and the more I came upon these 0:15:53.120 --> 0:15:54.880 little things and putting them together more the more. I 0:15:54.920 --> 0:15:57.480 was just totally delighted. But then I think, like you 0:15:57.800 --> 0:16:00.000 when I when I finally hit YouTube and it was like, okay, 0:16:00.040 --> 0:16:01.800 I need to see some of these. Then I was like, 0:16:02.160 --> 0:16:04.920 I love flee circuses. I could sit here and talk 0:16:04.960 --> 0:16:09.160 about him all day. Well, we'll try and keep this 0:16:09.200 --> 0:16:12.640 all day. So I just realized I didn't finish my thought. 0:16:12.920 --> 0:16:15.440 The um the weird little thing that I found out 0:16:15.480 --> 0:16:24.000 about Professor bar Lolo, thanks man Um, he just vanished, 0:16:24.080 --> 0:16:28.120 he disappeared. He was like as famous as as an astronaut, 0:16:28.440 --> 0:16:30.600 and then all of a sudden he's gone. And there's 0:16:30.600 --> 0:16:34.560 a guy um who is uh. I think his name 0:16:34.600 --> 0:16:39.080 is Andy Rich. He's like basically the foremost Flee circus 0:16:39.080 --> 0:16:44.840 researcher working today. And he found Professor Berto Lotto. Apparently 0:16:44.880 --> 0:16:47.160 he moved to Canada and lived out the rest of 0:16:47.160 --> 0:16:50.680 his life and anonymity. Wow, yeah, I have a question. 0:16:51.360 --> 0:16:54.720 Why do you always use asked not as a fame indicator, 0:16:55.320 --> 0:16:59.960 it's uh, it's as Simpsons reference. It's Homer was saying, 0:17:00.000 --> 0:17:03.880 somebody who's richer than an astronat. I was gonna challenge 0:17:03.880 --> 0:17:08.239 you and say, name an astronaut. Oh, dude, Jim Lovell No, no, no, 0:17:08.400 --> 0:17:11.400 name a current astronaut. Oh current astronat We got Mark 0:17:11.480 --> 0:17:16.400 Kelly and Scott Kelly. Okay, alright, t get back off. 0:17:16.520 --> 0:17:19.879 Then her their parents called them Project Jim and I, 0:17:20.560 --> 0:17:22.720 oh that's cute. But they think they not just made 0:17:22.720 --> 0:17:25.919 that up? Oh really? Yeah? Oh man, that would have 0:17:25.960 --> 0:17:29.919 been surely someone as I thought of that. If not, 0:17:30.000 --> 0:17:33.320 I'm gonna trade market. Uh yeah, and then you could 0:17:33.720 --> 0:17:38.960 blackmail them. I feel like you want this nickname. I 0:17:39.000 --> 0:17:43.480 know you're richer than an astro. Alright, So early nineteen hundreds, 0:17:43.520 --> 0:17:45.760 if you're talking imitators over here in the United States, 0:17:45.760 --> 0:17:48.520 we had a man named William Heckler, and he was 0:17:48.560 --> 0:17:50.879 one of the first dudes over here to be a 0:17:50.920 --> 0:17:56.200 successful fleamaster. And uh he did the usual things, made 0:17:56.200 --> 0:17:59.280 them box and race and juggle. And we're gonna tell 0:17:59.320 --> 0:18:00.760 you some of these secret it's by the way. If 0:18:00.760 --> 0:18:04.480 you're wondering how these things are accomplished, just hang in there. Uh. 0:18:04.480 --> 0:18:06.959 And he said at one point he was bringing in 0:18:07.040 --> 0:18:12.240 two hundred and fifty dollars uh day or performance in 0:18:12.320 --> 0:18:15.959 a in a day of performances, a day. Yeah, so 0:18:16.040 --> 0:18:19.639 many many performances. And here's the thing if lee I 0:18:19.720 --> 0:18:21.840 kind of wondered I was, because I didn't find it 0:18:21.920 --> 0:18:24.040 until later in the research, like, well, how do you 0:18:24.080 --> 0:18:26.800 see this stuff? But you wouldn't have very many people 0:18:26.840 --> 0:18:29.560 in there. You'd have like ten or fifteen people crowded 0:18:29.600 --> 0:18:33.200 around a little table for six to ten minutes. You 0:18:33.200 --> 0:18:35.800 would shuffle them out and bring in the next group. Yes, 0:18:36.000 --> 0:18:39.320 I saw somewhere that if you were really dedicated to it. 0:18:39.359 --> 0:18:41.439 I think Cecil Adams wrote it on the on the 0:18:41.480 --> 0:18:44.680 Street dope that if you were like a really dedicated performer, 0:18:44.760 --> 0:18:50.320 you could conceivably do fifty ten minute performances a day. 0:18:50.359 --> 0:18:53.920 So that's basically like ten hours with a ten minute 0:18:53.920 --> 0:18:56.440 break every hour. And if you're not a really dedicated 0:18:56.440 --> 0:18:58.200 flea master, then just get out of my face. What 0:18:58.280 --> 0:19:00.800 do you even bother? Seriously, though, I mean is when 0:19:00.840 --> 0:19:04.280 we talk about how to do this, it will become 0:19:04.359 --> 0:19:08.480 clear just how much work this must be. Yeah, alright, 0:19:08.520 --> 0:19:10.640 well let's talk a little bit about that. Um, every 0:19:10.640 --> 0:19:13.240 flee is different. And like I said, uh, if you 0:19:13.280 --> 0:19:16.160 believe the research, about ten percent of the fleezer fit 0:19:16.440 --> 0:19:19.920 for the job, and it's like we mentioned, you don't 0:19:19.960 --> 0:19:23.320 really train them. What you do is back in the day, 0:19:23.400 --> 0:19:26.960 you would take either some silken thread or some really 0:19:27.000 --> 0:19:30.320 thin gold wire, like hopefully you can't even see it, 0:19:31.000 --> 0:19:34.920 that's sort of the idea, and you tie a little 0:19:34.960 --> 0:19:41.080 tiny noose of sorts around this fleezer neck. And apparently 0:19:41.160 --> 0:19:45.159 that was really hard to do because when a fleet 0:19:45.240 --> 0:19:51.320 eats the blood of their master, which is true, we'll 0:19:51.320 --> 0:19:54.480 get to that again later, but their next well, so 0:19:54.560 --> 0:19:56.879 you can't tie it too tight or else they're gonna 0:19:57.200 --> 0:19:59.640 die and your prize flee could die. Or if it's 0:19:59.640 --> 0:20:03.360 too loose, then the flea goes away and the chariot 0:20:03.400 --> 0:20:06.280 stays behind, and that's no good. And you just hear 0:20:06.280 --> 0:20:11.399 a tiny bionic man sounds right, So um, that's very hard. 0:20:11.840 --> 0:20:16.159 Number one. Number two the idea that you have to 0:20:16.240 --> 0:20:21.240 do that with new fleas every I would guess probably 0:20:21.320 --> 0:20:25.399 every few weeks if you're on average, because fleas, I 0:20:25.400 --> 0:20:29.600 mean they live maybe a year. Most fleas live about 0:20:29.600 --> 0:20:32.960 three or four months. So you've got like a some 0:20:33.200 --> 0:20:37.080 star performers and they're just they're performing, you know, for 0:20:37.160 --> 0:20:39.400 a few months or whatever. So you're having to basically 0:20:39.480 --> 0:20:44.600 constantly harness fleas all the time, and and again before 0:20:44.640 --> 0:20:46.600 you even harness them, you have to sort them. So 0:20:46.680 --> 0:20:49.560 you have to study and observe the adult fleas see 0:20:49.600 --> 0:20:52.840 which one's like to jump. Um. There's an old legend, 0:20:53.440 --> 0:20:57.240 uh that apparently came from Professor Heckler's son, if not 0:20:57.320 --> 0:21:01.919 Professor Heckler himself, who said, um, you you put a 0:21:01.960 --> 0:21:05.119 lid over a jar, and you can train them not 0:21:05.240 --> 0:21:07.359 to jump too high because they'll hit their head on 0:21:07.400 --> 0:21:09.399 the jar and they don't like to do that. So 0:21:09.440 --> 0:21:12.320 they learned not to jump. Then they've passed their first test. 0:21:13.400 --> 0:21:17.920 It's not clear whether that's actually hocum or not, but um, 0:21:17.960 --> 0:21:21.880 that's for for a very long time, that's been part 0:21:21.880 --> 0:21:24.840 of the lower of training fleets. The problem is, I 0:21:24.840 --> 0:21:27.960 think you said it, please can't actually learn anything. They're 0:21:27.960 --> 0:21:32.119 not really being trained. They're actually being physically restrained in 0:21:32.160 --> 0:21:35.560 lots of ways, including that harness and starting with the harness. Well, 0:21:35.600 --> 0:21:39.560 I don't know, though, Heckler. Professor Heckler that is also said, 0:21:39.880 --> 0:21:42.160 and this was fascinating to me as far as whether 0:21:42.240 --> 0:21:45.199 or not these fleas can learn anything. He said that 0:21:45.240 --> 0:21:46.800 he would to get the best fleas, put them in 0:21:46.840 --> 0:21:50.480 a glass jar. Uh, that's too tall for them to 0:21:50.560 --> 0:21:53.080 jump out. And he said that he would notice the 0:21:53.200 --> 0:21:57.520 really good fleas would jump up on the side, fart 0:21:57.560 --> 0:22:00.880 out a little bit of sticky stuff, whatever that is, 0:22:01.480 --> 0:22:03.679 and then spend the rest of the time trying and 0:22:03.720 --> 0:22:07.200 trying to hit that identical spot again to grab hold 0:22:07.200 --> 0:22:11.040 of the sticky stuff basically a foothold to be close 0:22:11.160 --> 0:22:14.879 enough to the top to leap out. Amazing. I don't know, 0:22:14.880 --> 0:22:17.239 hope I believe it. He well, yeah, I mean he 0:22:17.280 --> 0:22:21.120 was a showman, consummist, showman, Like he didn't just basically 0:22:21.160 --> 0:22:23.639 point and be like, look at the fleas, came your money, 0:22:23.920 --> 0:22:27.880 please leave now, Like you were like carrying the show on, right, 0:22:27.920 --> 0:22:30.560 you had to tell this this this, You had to 0:22:30.600 --> 0:22:33.880 help the performance along, your professor, for god's sake, right, 0:22:34.280 --> 0:22:38.080 when this guy is being interviewed over the years, I 0:22:38.119 --> 0:22:42.320 can't imagine he didn't like ham it up in the interviews. 0:22:42.480 --> 0:22:44.359 So I don't know, like a lot of it's lost 0:22:44.400 --> 0:22:47.840 too to time, what was true and what wasn't as 0:22:47.880 --> 0:22:50.880 far as these these old guys go. Yeah, but he uh, 0:22:50.920 --> 0:22:53.159 Professor Heckler also said when he was picking them out, 0:22:53.200 --> 0:22:56.760 and he said, stodgy wins are broken to the merry 0:22:56.760 --> 0:23:00.640 go round harness flight he fleas make good dancers. Those 0:23:00.680 --> 0:23:05.119 with especially strong legs will become kickers, jugglers and chariot racers. Yes, 0:23:05.920 --> 0:23:09.480 so you've got you've got fleas harness. That's like the 0:23:10.040 --> 0:23:12.359 first initial thing, but there's other things you need to 0:23:12.400 --> 0:23:14.680 do to them. To write. You can take that harness, 0:23:14.680 --> 0:23:17.520 and the most basic thing you could do is take 0:23:17.560 --> 0:23:20.359 that harness and actually hook it up to, like you said, 0:23:20.359 --> 0:23:23.280 a chariot or or or a merry go round or 0:23:23.320 --> 0:23:26.280 something like that. And yeah, people will be like, that's 0:23:26.280 --> 0:23:28.800 pretty neat, that's cool. But before I could do that, 0:23:28.920 --> 0:23:31.320 you know, but you could do other stuff too, and 0:23:31.359 --> 0:23:34.719 a lot of it involves glue unfortunately. So say like 0:23:34.840 --> 0:23:40.320 you take a tiny piece of um of wood or 0:23:40.359 --> 0:23:43.000 a tiny piece of metal and you glue it to 0:23:43.760 --> 0:23:48.160 the flea's arms, right, Yes, and we should say once 0:23:48.200 --> 0:23:52.000