Latest / Dirt Nap City - History's Most Interesting Dead People / The Flying Wallendas - Families That Fly Together Sometimes Die Together

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The Flying Wallendas - Families That Fly Together Sometimes Die Together · Dirt Nap City - History's Most Interesting Dead People

• 0:06
  SPEAKER_01: Hello everybody.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, Venus FlyChat.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_01: WKRP.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_01: Did you like that one?
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_01: I did.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_01: I did.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_01: That was smooth as well.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_02: You're consistently smooth today.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_02: Welcome to another episode of Dirt Knap City.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_02: The show about interesting dead people.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_02: This is season four, episode two.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_02: I'm Alex.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_02: I'm here with my friend Kelly.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_02: What's going on, Kelly?
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I'm doing pretty well.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_01: This might not actually be episode two of season four.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_01: It is season four, but um, I wouldn't commit to what episode it is yet.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_02: Let's just try this.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_02: Episode three, episode four, episode five.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_02: You want me to edit in the right one?
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_01: I guess I could just use AI to replace your voice.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_01: Episode 1B, 2B, or not 2B.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_01: Episode 68 of Dirtnap City.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_02: We are gonna hit a hundred episodes this year.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, we were just talking.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe we'll wear tuxedos for that.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe we'll have uh a band.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, champagne.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_02: Definitely have champagne.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, we gotta do something big.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_01: I agree.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_02: For our hundredth episode.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_02: Now we count the dead ends as episodes, is that right?
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_02: That's right.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_02: They're episodes.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_02: They are episodes.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_02: I'm just saying.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_02: Because the first season we didn't have dead ends.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_02: Actually, the first two seasons, I don't know.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_01: I think it was a season three thing.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_01: I think you're right.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_01: But and and season one was actually kind of short.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_01: I think we only did like 20 episodes in season one.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I don't even think we did that many.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_01: But we're committed.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_01: We're committed.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_01: We started it in October of 2000 or 2022, I think.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_01: So I think we're committed now.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_01: We're we're we're a machine.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_01: We crank these episodes out.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_01: This is 60 minutes got started.
• 1:55
  SPEAKER_01: If you um if you are if you are a company or a individual with lots of money and you want to sponsor this before it gets lapped up by the big media, um, you better do it now.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_01: Because I have this is the season we're gonna get lapped up.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_02: What are you waiting for, Elon?
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_02: Let's go.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_02: What's a billion here and a billion there, right?
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_02: That's right.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_02: If you throw a billion dollars our way, we would improve our show by five percent.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_02: I yeah, I'm I feel like that's pretty solid.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, for sure.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_02: What are we talking about today?
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_02: I have uh so I'm breaking some rules today.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_02: Uh-oh.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know if you recall Rob Halbert style.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_02: But you know, but that was breaking the law, and one time I broke a rule on this show, and you said, Hey man, no rules just right.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_02: Just like Outback.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_02: And then Outback adopted that as their as their slogan after you had had said that, I think.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um fact check me on that, but I I was calling you uh you had the nickname Bloom and Onion way back in high school.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_02: Well, you said no rules just right.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_02: I think the first time I broke the rule was wasn't really a rule, it was just unspoken that we would do one person at a time.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_01: Was it was it uh the two Siskel and Ebert?
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_02: I think I think I did Siskel and Ebert.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_02: And I said I'm gonna talk about more than one person because I thought maybe if we doubled it, we could get through these faster.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_02: We're eventually gonna get to everybody.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_02: It's our goal.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_02: And yeah, and then I think after that there was another the next very next episode, I did another duo.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_02: Shields and yardell.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_02: I can't remember who it was, but we did another two, and I think I've done a couple of pairs.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_02: You also did the pilgrims, which was like, you know, a hundred people.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_02: So good good call.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_02: So today I'm gonna break that rule again.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna do a whole family of people.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_02: Oh okay.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_01: Wait, is this a is this a uh person one or a dead end one?
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, it's a family one.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's a new category.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_01: We have a whole category, okay.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_01: That's it.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_01: Oh well then.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_01: Let me try this on for size.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_01: Dirt Nap City, the podcast about interesting dead families.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, yes, but the family isn't dead, like the family lives on, but there's a lot of people in that family that are dead and um and cursed, you might say.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_02: Oh.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_02: Now, here's the thing.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_02: So often I talk about hey, some people are are reluctant to listen to this show because they they hear the word dead and they think we're gonna be talking about death, and we say, No, no, no.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_02: It's that's not the way it is.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_02: We usually talk about their life, and then the fact the fact that their their their life is over means their story has been written, and that's why we do it.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_02: We don't focus too much about the dead.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_02: Today, I'm gonna break that rule.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_02: Oh man.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_02: The death is the thing today.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_02: The death is what makes these people interesting.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_02: Um, because um they had interesting deaths.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, is this the Von Erich brothers?
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_01: No, no, it's a whole family of people.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, well, they were brothers, that's family.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, but kind of similar in that they died in front of people.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_01: Hmm.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_02: Uh circus performers?
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, circus performers.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_02: You're right on the right track.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_02: Is this the Ringling Brothers?
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_02: No.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_02: No.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I don't think the Ringling Brothers were a family in the sense that uh I mean they were related, but I those were just two guys.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_02: I wouldn't have been had this whole build-up about families if it was the Partridge family.
• 5:46
  unknown: No, no, no.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, if it were only the Partridge family that had uh had grisly deaths in front of people.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_02: Do you have another clue?
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_02: Um they were um circus performers, like you said, in the twentieth century, and and their name is almost I would say synonymous with the act that they do.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um I don't know, is trapeze?
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_01: Is that considered uh No, it's not trapeze, it's high wire walking.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_01: High wire walking.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_01: Oh wow.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_01: I is it like the flying muchachos or something like that?
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, you're so close.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_02: I thought you were gonna say the flying burrito brothers, but uh do you know them?
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_02: Is that who it is?
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_02: No, it's do you know them?
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_02: That's a band.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's okay.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, it's not them.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_02: Uh the flying wilendas.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_02: The flying wilendas.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_02: Have you heard of the flying willendas?
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, and you get it?
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_02: You get their name?
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_02: Will end, huh?
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, I don't think anybody has put that together.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_02: Wallenda will end well.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_02: Wallenda Wallenda poorly.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, seriously.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm gonna talk about uh some of these.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_02: Uh it's a it's a really interesting family that uh all went into kind of the family business, and many of them met uh untimely, very public um demise.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_02: And they not use nets.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_02: That's that's right.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_02: That's right.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_02: That was their thing, is that they don't use nets.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_02: So we're gonna talk about all that stuff.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, first of all, this is I'm afraid of heights.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_02: I'll just get that out of the way.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_02: So even talking about this makes my hands clammy.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know if you can see my hands.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, uh clammier than normal pouring with sweat right now, cold.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I get clammy just thinking about this.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_02: In fact, me so clammy, the one guy um who who carries on from the Walenda, we won't spend too much time talking about him because he's living, and that's that's a cardinal rule of this show.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_02: You can't break that rule.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_02: No, no.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_02: But Nick Willenda is the guy that still does these things.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_02: Whenever he does something like on Discovery Channel, I have to record it and then watch it later once I've heard that he made it.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_02: Like I do not watch this stuff live.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_02: I just what's an example of something he's done?
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_02: Walked across the Grand Canyon on a high on a high rope on a tightrope?
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_02: He does crazy stuff like that.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, they all do crazy stuff like this.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_01: Is this um do they do slack lines as well?
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_01: Well what do you mean by slack lines?
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_01: Well, slack line is is a little thicker kind of webbing material that people walk across.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um type ropes.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_02: Is it a rope or is it a metal thing?
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_02: No, it's it's ropes with the with the bar, with the with the balance bar.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_02: Pole.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_02: The pole is what they call it.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_01: Is that what they call it?
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_01: Is that the technical term?
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_02: Balance pole, yeah.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_02: Let me tell you a little bit about uh circus life and uh these Walendas, and then uh at the end we can decide uh whether or not this is a life worth uh that's uh maybe on a higher plane than the one we're living, or maybe it was a uh waste of their time.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_02: It is until you fall.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_02: Right, right.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_02: So Carl Walenda is kind of the patriarch of all these people, and he was born in 1905 in what was then Prussia, but like the German Germany area, and uh died in 1978 in Puerto Rico doing uh a stunt.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um at at 73 years old.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_01: 73 he was still Walenda, still Wallendine.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so maybe you maybe you might think, well, maybe 73 isn't the right age to be walking across a wire.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so I feel like I'd retire before that, right?
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_02: If I did that for a living.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_02: So he actually started his family act with a his brother and some of his friends, including his future wife.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_02: But Walendas have been in the circuses like in Germany since 1780.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_02: They're just kind of a circus family, have been doing all kinds of different things in the circus.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_02: Um, the main thing that the Walendas, in be when they were still in Germany, were known for was the four-man pyramid.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and four-man pyramid would be where you've got two guys um walking on the wire, spaced out from each other, and then on their shoulders would be like a board, and then on that board would be another guy, and then on his shoulder, uh, I don't know how the four-man worked.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_02: Um, I guess it was three people and then a board and then a guy, and then that person would usually either be on a uh bicycle or on a chair, something like that.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_02: On the board balancing above.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_02: So it'd be probably the four-man pyramid would be three people on the wire, all have a board on their shoulder, and then on that board would be another person balancing on either a chair or a bicycle.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_02: And this this wire would be, you know, 50, 60 feet off the ground, and it'd be under a big top where there's all kinds of other things going on, right?
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_01: And people would see this and say, How will this end?
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_01: Oh I wonder how this will end uh later.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_02: They've turned that four-man pyramid into a seven-man chair pyramid.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_01: So was it all men at this point?
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_02: There weren't there weren't women involved?
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_02: There would usually one woman that was either um behind that had just done something, or maybe she was the the first the person on the top of the pyramid.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe she was lighter weight.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_02: So the seven-person chair pyramid would be uh uh uh uh three, two, wait, seven would be four, two, one, right?
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_02: Four people on the on the wire, they have board a board on their shoulder, and then there's two people on that board, and then they have a board, and there's a person like on a chair, um, and that's the seven seven chairs, and that top person's probably juggling too.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, right.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_02: Well, they toured all over Europe and uh a little bit around the world in 1928.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_02: They came to Cuba, and uh, you know who was there?
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_02: It was John Ringling.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_02: John Ringling.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_02: John Ringling was uh the owner uh of the uh circus, and we talked about them a little bit.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_02: We talked about Barnum, P.T.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_02: P.T.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_02: Barnum that bought the circus from them.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_02: 1928.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_02: Uh he saw them in Cuba and he said, You guys have to come to America.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_02: I think there's a big market there for you.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_02: So at that time they were they were doing these stunts with a net under them.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_02: Well, they came to Madison Square Garden in New York, and their net was lost in transit.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_02: So they said, Screw it, we'll do it without a net.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_02: Show must go on.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_02: And they got a standing ovation, and they realized that's what people were crazy about was watching them do it without a net.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_02: And from then on, they never really used a net at all.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_01: Isn't that a isn't that a famous expression, too?
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_01: Show must go on.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that one, but uh no, no, working without a net.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah, yeah.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_01: That's kind of what how we do these shows.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_01: Without a net, yeah.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean if I script.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, if I fell backwards right now, I would hit the ground.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_01: We don't even have an outline.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_02: We we just work without a net, man.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, who needs nets?
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_02: And this is live.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know how many people know that, but when you Yeah, we do this 6 a.m.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_01: on Thursdays, thanks to uh Al Al from Austin.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_02: Well, not just that, but when you click play, it texts us.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_02: And we gotta drop it.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and then try to remember what we talked about the other times that we did this.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_02: So when you click on this episode, we probably do it, I don't know, a thousand times.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we just hope two people aren't listening at the same time.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_01: That's the key.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_02: And we've had that before, and it hasn't gone well.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_01: Where you're jumping from episode Yeah, I mean, we're like the flying Willendas at that point.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_02: So they used to be called the Great Willendas.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, but uh there was a show they did in Akron, Ohio, and they almost collapsed.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_02: The whole thing almost collapsed.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_02: They all grabbed this when they start to fall.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_02: I think that the move that you do is you just try to grab the wire.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that makes sense.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_02: And they all were able to, all seven of them kind of grab the wire and didn't fall.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_02: And because they were flying to do that, the press called them the flying Walendas.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_02: Because you think about it, they're not supposed to be flying, they're supposed to be walking across a there's nothing about this that they're not acrobats.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_02: There's nothing about this that should make them have to fly.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_02: Because that one time they flew down, they paper called them the flying wilendas, and the name stuck.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe that's what cursed them.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_02: Ah, they're really the great Walendas or the very steady the steady Valend Willends.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_01: There was a lot of there was a lot of pushback, as I recall.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of people wanted them to go back to the original name, and they actually got these red hats made that said make the Walindas great again.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_02: So do you know anything about the kind of famous, although I don't didn't know a lot about it, uh, circus fire in 1944.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_02: There was a big circus fire in Connecticut that killed 168 people.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_02: That's a huge tragedy.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_02: That's a lot of people.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_02: None of the Walendas were killed in this incident, but they were there.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_02: So there was a there was a big circus uh tour in 1944 or in the 40s, and um here's what's interesting about these tents would come to town, right?
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_02: They these big tents, and they would waterproof these tents.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_02: And back the technology in 1944 for waterproofing tents was gasoline.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_02: Well, yes, they would take paraffin wax and soak it in gasoline.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, really?
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_02: They would paint the big top with the with this mixture of wax and gasoline because those substances are both hydrophobic.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 16:39
  SPEAKER_02: So water would just run off of it, you know?
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_02: Well, that's fine and well, except for then inside the tent, they would use like hay and straw, right?
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_02: Torches, you know, cigars.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_02: Somebody in Connecticut that show they think um threw a cigarette out and it hit this, it hit this hay, and the whole thing went up in in flames.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_02: Well, you know, prior to that show, the trains were late and they had to cancel like the two o'clock show.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_02: And in circus lore, missing a show is bad luck.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_02: They say if you miss a show, something is bound to happen.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_02: So they've got this canvas coated with 1800 pounds of wax and six thousand gallons of gasoline.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_02: Um well, while the Walendas were performing, this thing goes up in flames.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_02: And you know how they uh they didn't have any sophisticated like fire alarm or anything like that.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_02: What they would do whenever there was an emergency, the band leader noticed the fire and he signaled the band to play Stars and Stripes Forever.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_02: And then the circus, when you play Stars and Stripes Forever, that's a sign of distress.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's um, I mean, is that universal for all circuses?
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_01: It's like code red, yeah.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_01: So although probably not for like French circuses.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_02: They're not gonna play Stars and Stripes Forever.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know if that's universal or just American, but so that alerted the circus workers to you know get the big cats and get them out and you know start evacuating.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_02: Um, once the fire started raging, it was interesting.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_02: The people, the the the the crowd, um, they started just running.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_02: A lot of them were running in circles instead of just escaping out of the tent.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_02: This the tent was like in a circle, and people were running in circles looking for their friends and family, right, and not exiting.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_02: Some people just stayed in their seats because they thought, well, you know, they're gonna take care of this, they're gonna put it out.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_02: Those people were not saved.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_02: Um uh there was uh do you do you did you ever hear the name Emmett Kelly?
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_02: He was like a famous clown.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_02: And uh uh he's probably the only he you you kind of if you think of clowns back in the you know early 20th century.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_02: Was he a sad face clown?
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, yes.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, and there was a picture of him in the paper like um putting out a fire or something, and that day was known as the day the clowns cried.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_02: Oh in fact, do you remember that guy Charles Nelson Riley that used to be in game shows in the 70s?
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, uh, he was actually at that show, he was 13 years old.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_02: Wow, and his um Hollywood Squares with all the right well he was he snuck out that day, and his mom yelled to him like as he was running away.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_02: She said, I hope the circus burns down or something like that.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_02: And then it did.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_02: Um I wonder if she was Nelson or Riley.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_02: So she was uh he Charles Nelson Riley ended up being like a Broadway director, and he could never go to the theater.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_02: Like he would always direct, and then when the when the show when when there were crowd came, he could never sit because that he was like had PTSD from that day.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_02: He could never sit in like a crowded theater um because of that.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_02: So it was it was kind of a famous thing, but the Willendas weren't killed or anything, but they were on the high wire when all that happened.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_02: They were doing that chair thing, the seven uh man pyramid, they got down, but that might have kind of started the uh the ball rolling of the the curse of these guys.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that not a good day.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_02: So before I go on, do you know how the just the physics of tightrope walking works?
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um I'm gonna guess.
• 20:37
  SPEAKER_01: Let me just say that the thing has to be taught.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_01: The the line has to be taught.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_01: And you wear like ballet slippers or your barefoot so your feet kind of like drape over the edge a little bit to give you grip.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_02: In the practice sessions, a lot of them do barefoot and they put the wire between their big toe and their first toe.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_02: But most of them wear those like real thin ballet slipper kind of things so they can kind of feel it, right?
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_02: And then they hold the balancing pole that I mentioned before, which is really long.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_02: And that increases what they call rotational inertia.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_02: So that's the same thing that's at work, like when figure skaters put their arms in uh spin really fast and spin really fast.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_02: This is the opposite of that.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_02: By by by uh distributing the mass out uh really wide, it makes it where um it's you're you're making constant adjustments and it's like counterbalancing you, right?
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_01: So it's the pole makes those adjustments because it's a bigger, it's a longer um fulcrum or a longer surface.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_02: And actually the pole even has weights on the end of it.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_02: I don't I don't know how how probably not a lot, maybe a one or two pounds, but it's so it would require more torque to tip your.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_02: Over, right?
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_02: Ah, okay.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_02: And even if you did tip over, you would do it slowly.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_02: So the bigger that balancing pole is, the slower you would try to tip, which gives you time to correct yourself.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_02: So if you ever watch somebody that's balancing, or even if they just have their hands out, like the more you're doing the same thing.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you're doing the same thing.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_02: And the the taller you were, you probably have a better chance of like if you start to go, you still have time to to um to correct yourself, right?
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_02: So and a lot of them carry that balancing pole low to have a low center of gravity.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_02: You wouldn't want to carry it up high by your shoulders, you want to carry it low by your knees.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_02: So it's not, I mean, it's still dangerous, you know.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_02: And as somebody who's afraid of heights, I mean, I can't even imagine doing it.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_02: But physically, it's something that can be done.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_02: And even if you're in the wind, with you have the balancing pull, you ought to be able to do that.
• 22:57
  SPEAKER_02: If you're not scared, you ought to be able to do it physically without any problems.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_02: As long as you're in good shape and you're able to correct yourself, anybody can really learn to do it.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_02: It's not any trick to it.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I mean, it's it's a physical action, just like any kind of athlete would do.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_01: So you learn and you get muscle memory.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_02: So it takes like exactly.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_02: It takes, but it takes a lot of courage, but it's not impossible to do this.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_02: Well, their big accident, the first big accident of the Wallendas came in 1962.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_02: And and between, you know, the I just mentioned that 1944 circus and 1962.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, they're going all over the country and different pockets.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_02: The Carl, the the the Patriarch, but then other Wallendas kind of in their little um would go around to different circuses and do all these all these uh high wire acts.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, they were very popular family.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_02: Nobody really knew anything about them, but if you went to the circus, chances are you were gonna see a Wallenda.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_02: They were they were a headliner.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_02: They were a circus headliner.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_02: It was something that you go into the circus, that's one of the people you're going to see.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_02: Well, in 1962, they did a show in Detroit at the Shriner's Auditorium at the State Fairgrounds, and the front guy from the Seven Man Pyramid, he stumbled.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_02: Oh no.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_02: And then the whole thing collapsed.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_02: Three of the guys remember they're working without a net.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_02: No net, yeah.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_02: Three of the guys uh fell, including Carl's son-in-law Richard and his nephew Dieter.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_02: Carl himself injured injured his pelvis.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_02: His adopted son Mario was paralyzed from the waist down.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_02: His sister Jana, who was in the back, she wasn't part of the seven, but she was she had just done a trick.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_02: So she was like, she let go to fall into a safety net.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_02: So that was good.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_02: They did, they rushed out a safety net, but she bounced off the safety net and her head uh uh slammed onto the pavement, so she got a head injury.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_02: She did live.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_02: Well, you know, that family performed the next night.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_02: Like minus the the people that died, they just performed the next the next and then they did the seven-man pyramid a year later.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_02: Now they didn't do it a lot after that.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_02: They did it the accident was in 1962, they did it again in 63, they did it again in 1977, the family then, and they did it again in 1998.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_02: Of course, Carl wasn't around for the 77 or the 98, but they that's something that they still trot out every now and then.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_02: Um in 2017, the new um generation of Willendas, they tried an eight-man uh pyramid.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and I say man, there was it was um the great grand, the great so that guy Nick I was talking about, he's the great grandson, the great granddaughter Liliana.
• 26:12
  SPEAKER_02: Uh everybody got injured, all eight people, including Nick, got injured in that one.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_02: Liliana broke every bone in her face.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, they fell?
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_02: Oh yeah, oh yeah.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_01: That was in 2017.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_01: So they never considered the whole no-net thing.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it seems like, yeah, that was uh that was something you did in the 40s or the 50s, but come on.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_02: No, that is a core tenant of the Walendas.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_02: Now, so the the great-grandson Nick, who's still around and he does uh about one a year, he does some big thing.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_02: Like he was the one that went across the Grand Canyon.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_02: He was doing something on the Today Show in I think 2019, and they made him use because they said, Look, this is our network policy.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, we need a you need a net.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_02: And he stubbornly agreed to to that because that was the only way to put it on TV, but right he was mad about it.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_02: Um his daughter, his sister, who had just broken her face a couple years earlier, she I think was on a harness.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_02: I think he was kind of mad about that too.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_02: Or maybe he thought that was okay, but yeah, that's kind of their core thing.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_02: No, the net thing, you might think it's controversial, but Carl himself said that he thought that if you um that the safety net created overconfidence.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_02: There's some psychology to it.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_02: If you knew there was a net there, you wouldn't concentrate as hard.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_02: And he thought the net caused injuries, not prevented them.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_02: Now the data would probably show otherwise.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_02: Like everybody in the family was killed without a net, so maybe they would have lived, but uh yeah, you never know.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_01: Well, so so I've um I have two thoughts.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_01: One is I wonder why you couldn't have like an airbag that inflates instantly, kind of like in a car, if you need it.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, there's some there's some trigger that if technology, right?
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_01: So if you start to fall, there's something that triggers this airbag.
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_01: I guess you might as well just have a net at that point, right?
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, because it's interesting.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_02: He didn't he doesn't say that, like I would have thought the reason they don't do a net is it's not as oppressive, right?
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_02: And that whole thing about oh, they got a standing ovation without a net.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_02: I would have thought maybe the crowd thinks that if you have a net, it's not that impressive.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_02: But no, he thought he really believed that if you had a net, you wouldn't, you would you know, be more you'd be less careful.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_02: You're forced to stay up there or die.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_02: So if you had the airbag, it would probably be the same thing.
• 28:42
  SPEAKER_01: So my second question, which I think is more relevant, and I'd love to hear from the audience that's listening right now.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_01: I think I can say, and I don't I'm not judging that one or the other is better.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_01: I honestly would rather watch them with a net because I would be completely, you know.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_01: I think I think a lot of people like to see danger where there's real risk of death or real risk of injury, and I don't.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_01: Like that's just not my vibe.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_02: It's not something that I think you're right until it does happen, and then people are not okay with it.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_02: Like you think about like NASCAR, you know, say that NASCAR, but then when accidents do happen in NASCAR, um people don't like it, and they they don't usually then watch the next race, and it have usually it have has trouble kind of coming back.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_02: Um but I'm with you, man.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_02: I like I said, I have to record them, find out he's okay, and then watch it.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's probably goes back to the days of the Christians against the lions, right?
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_01: Or the gladiators fighting each other.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_01: Those people that were watching, at least in today's world, are depicted as bloodthirsty.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_01: They're depicted as wanting to see people die.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_01: They wanted to see decapitations, they wanted to see the lion rip the person to shreds, or vice versa, right?
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_01: And and so at what point did we go beyond that as a species?
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, when do we get more kind of civilized about that?
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, or are we?
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, I don't know.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_01: But I feels like it feels like in 20, I'm I'm with the network on that.
• 30:17
  SPEAKER_01: No, we if you want to be on our show, uh, you are gonna have a net.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_01: Sorry, right?
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_01: Sorry, right?
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_02: So let me tell you about some of these other tragedies that happen within this family.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_02: So remember the big the big one happening where like where like half of the act died was in 1962.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_02: 1963 in Omaha, Carl's sister-in-law, Yeta, she fell 50 feet and died.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_02: She was swaying on top of a glass pole in her in her stunt, and um she fainted while she was up there.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_02: Oh goodness.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_02: So that's not good.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and but after the Detroit incident, she had said, When I fall, I want to be dead.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_02: Like she didn't, she thought she didn't want to do paralyzed or injured.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_02: I don't want to break every bone in my face, I don't want to be paralyzed, I just want to be dead.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_02: But it she didn't say if I fall, she said when I fall, I want to be dead.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_02: Now maybe I don't know uh if she spoke English that well.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe there's a translation thing, but I think it's interesting.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_02: When I fall, I want to be dead.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_02: And she was.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_01: She did.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_02: In 1970, uh, our boy Carl was 65 years old and went to the Tolula Gorge in uh just north of Atlanta.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_02: You've been there?
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_02: I've heard of it.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_02: I've heard it's beautiful, beautiful waterfalls.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_02: Uh he was 750 feet in the air.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and at that point, a net is pointless, anyways, right?
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_03: Right, right.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_02: Uh he walked 1,300 feet, which is like 40 uh uh what's that?
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_02: Oh that's a 400, it's almost a quarter mile, right?
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think 5,000 feet is a mile.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_02: So so it's yeah, it's like a quarter mile.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_02: Uh 750 feet in the air.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_02: He walked a quarter mile.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_02: There were 30,000 people there to watch it, and he did two headstands during the crossing.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_02: That's the part usually where I check out when they start doing messing with that kind of stuff.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_02: Like that's just asking for it, right?
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, taunting.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_02: You you just have to have so much faith in that pole and physics, just to have faith in the physics, right?
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_02: Uh in 1972, he went to a uh the the baseball football stadium in Philadelphia, Veterans Stadium.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_02: So he walked across the stadium at the top of the stadium, that's 160 feet high, 640 feet across.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_02: And that's what he would do.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_02: He did the Astrodome.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_02: Oh wow.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_02: Go to these stadiums, he would walk across, you know, on a with obviously no net, and all the fans are there to watch.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_02: So that's where I get mad though.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_02: I'm there to watch a ball game, you know.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, this was during like the seventh inning stretch or something, or I guess, or uh maybe between games of a doubleheader.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_02: But if I go to Tolula Gorge, okay, I know what I'm seeing.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_02: But if I just bought tickets to a baseball game and now he comes, now he's kind of like invading my force.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you're forced to see this thing that you might not want to see.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_02: And what am I gonna do?
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_02: Get a hot dog while he's doing this?
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I kind of gotta watch.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_02: Uh in 1972, in West Virginia, his son-in-law Chico, died.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_02: He was climbing the pole just to get up to the to the wire, and he touched a live electric wire while he was climbing the pole.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_02: So one hand on the metal ladder, and he accidentally touched a live electric wire, and he fell 60 feet, just was electrocuted and fell bad.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, who who puts a live electric wire right next to the the pole that you're calling bad stagecraft?
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_01: It really is.
• 34:05
  SPEAKER_01: That really is.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_02: I feel like here's the thing that's crazy about that is that Carl, that was his son-in-law, he was on he was 67 years old, and he was on the wire when it happened.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_02: Like he was up there on the wire, and his son-in-law was walking up, so he had to finish the walk after he just watched his son-in-law get electrocuted.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_02: He had to finish the walk and after seeing it happen.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_02: He didn't fall, and he was 67 years old.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_02: Like, that's yeah, that's hardcore.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_02: In 1974, he went to King's Island.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_02: You ever been to King's Island in Ohio?
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_02: It's a theme.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I've yeah, I've heard of it, but I've not been there now.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_02: He was 69 years old and he got the world record that uh day, he walked 1800 feet across.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_02: Um, that record was broken in 2008 by his great-grandson Nick.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but uh 1800 feet across, and you know, he was like at the at the theme park, so he's basically walking across the entire theme park over everybody's head.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, if you can picture like the gondolas that they have, you know, take you from one side to the other.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_01: He's basically walking along roller coasters, going through the loop of the roller coaster.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_02: Well, he met his he met his uh entered Dirtnap City in 1978 in Puerto Rico.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_02: He was doing a um walk between two hotel towers.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_02: He was 73 years old, and he was uh they had a wire between two hotel towers.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_02: Unfortunately, there's a video of this.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_02: It was on they showed it on the news.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_02: Unfortunately, I watched it, I wouldn't recommend it.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_02: Um but it was instructive.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, so he was about halfway there, and the the wire started moving kind of back and forth, and you don't normally see that.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_02: Usually, oscillating server.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it started moving, yeah, back and forth a little bit, and he knew something was wrong.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_02: But you know, like I said, the the way that inertial works, it gives you time to kind of adjust yourself, but the wire wouldn't stop, and so he leaned forward to grab like to steady the wire.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_02: He's an old man though, and then he fell and he tried to grab the wire on his way down, and he didn't make it.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_02: Well, they said that maybe it was the wind, but he had done tons of windy walks before, and the wind shouldn't matter, believe it or not, with with the the physics that I described.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_02: The wind shouldn't matter.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_02: It was a faulty rig.
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_02: They had it, they had it rigged wrong.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_02: Where um where you know, I don't know the details, but so it shouldn't have shook like that.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_02: Shouldn't have shook like that.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, but his grandson, great-grandson Nick, finished went back to Puerto Rico and finished that walk in 2008 with his mom, who would have been Carl's granddaughter.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_02: Two of them went in 2008 and finished it.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_02: Dang.
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_02: All the Walendas are buried together at uh in the same area at a cemetery in Florida, and there's just tons of them that uh that are all buried.
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_02: But you know, he he was criticized for his show must go on attitude, you know, and some said he had a lack of regard for for safety.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_01: But well, you know, what else you look at look at what he does, yeah.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_01: Look at his career and and a few years.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_02: In that world, we talked about this with with um when we talked about evil can evil, yeah.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_02: That was season one.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, if that's your world, that's your world, and you don't you don't think about you can't be too concerned with things about well, we better not do this, or that would have been respectful, or whatever.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_02: That's their job, and that's what they do.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_02: And uh, while it seems crazy to us, I can kind of see if you put yourself in their headspace how they would have that show must-go-on attitude.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, this is what we do.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_02: He said, our life is show business.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_02: Without show business, we don't survive and we just have to exist.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I mean, that's that's their lifeblood, right?
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_02: The famous quote that Willenda had that is you hear about just life in general, as a quote, is um, and I've heard this in numerous business settings and uh different environments like this.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_02: It's life is on the wire and everything else is just waiting.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_02: The idea that you know, sometimes we're we all have these big moments in life, yeah.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_02: And those are what makes us that's the real life part.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_02: Everything else is waiting for those big moments to happen.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, prep.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_02: Everything else is prep.
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, everything else is just prep and waiting.
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_02: But you know, there might be 20 times in our life that we're called on to do big things, everything else is just prep and PR and promotion for those 20 things, right?
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_02: Now for us, we almost have over a hundred almost a hundred.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_02: We're getting there, yeah.
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, but we're in it right now.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_02: You say life is a podcast and everything else is just waiting.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_02: Everything else is just static.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_01: So, what do you think about this guy, man?
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, well, first of all, I I'm not I'm not that keen on the circus.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_01: Like I've never been, I mean, I'm impressed with what those people do, but it it feels very dated to me.
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't feel like the kind of entertainment I would enjoy.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_01: But I have mad respect, right?
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_01: I think I think, like you said, the idea that he drove this family into what became a successful dynasty in that area, and that they must have all loved it.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_01: It must have been what they thought about constantly.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_01: And and you know, I think it's one of those things where you get bit by the bug, and Carl, he got bit by the bug, and he offered that up.
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_01: And you were talking about adopted children, you were talking about children in law, you were talking about you know, extended family and and probably people that weren't blood related as wives.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 40:20
  SPEAKER_01: I I respect that.
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_01: I think, and and I kind of respect that lady that said when she hits the ground or when she falls, she wants to, she wants to die.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_01: I you know, if you're gonna go out, go out doing what you love.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, he currently has eight great grandchildren that do high wire walking today.
• 40:37
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, that's that's uh you're right, it's a it's a dynasty.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_02: Um I don't know if the seven person pyramid makes a lot of sense, but uh apparently the physics works, and every time one of these things happen, it's because something's not hooked up right.
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_01: Some other factor that they didn't check.
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_01: They didn't do that, they didn't do that prep.
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_02: Now the fainting, you know, that that could happen, right?
• 41:05
  SPEAKER_02: That's what I would worry about.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_02: And I would probably faint every time I went up there.
• 41:08
  SPEAKER_02: So well, I guess not, it would only happen once.
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_02: It could only only happen once.
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I didn't know how this will end uh, but it was uh it was entertaining.
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_02: You know what his wife said about after he died, she said, you know, all he thought about, she said, um they were talking about how um the power of positive thinking, and she said, you know, all he thought about for three straight months prior to that accident was falling, and he put all his energy into not falling, not into walking the tightrope.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_02: And she she kind of said that if he would just focus on the the the you know the the mind on task kind of thing, right?
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, doing rather than focus on failing.
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_02: So you can take that out of the there's a lot of metaphors that could be that sounds like victim blaming.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_02: Well, you know, that was his wife.
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_02: She was she was mad about it.
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_02: But um I don't know.
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_02: Of all the circus things that are dangerous, um, where where does high wire walking act?
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_02: You got your um well you got your what do you got?
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_02: Your fire breathing, right?
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_02: Fire breathing, yeah.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_02: You got your big cats, yeah, um, playing with tigers and lions.
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you got your uh wall of death.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_02: Do you know what that is?
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_01: No, what is that?
• 42:36
  SPEAKER_02: That's the one where you got the the bicycles or the motorcycles.
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, going in the circle, really quickly.
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_01: Going in the circle, yeah.
• 42:42
  SPEAKER_02: And then there's the one that's the the same thing, but it's in a cage.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_02: They called that the globe of terror, right?
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_02: Oh man.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_02: You've got that, you've got the uh aerial things, the trickies, right?
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_01: People getting shot out of cannons.
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you've got sword swallowers, yeah, sword swallowers, elephant axe.
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you've got the um yeah, I would say the sword swallowing is is uh probably pretty dangerous.
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and there's no like trick to that.
• 43:13
  SPEAKER_02: You know, it really does involve sticking a blade down your throat.
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_02: Oh goodness.
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_02: There's a sword sword swallowers association that they have on their website like a list of medical complications from sword swallowing.
• 43:30
  SPEAKER_02: From sword swallowing that you gotta that you gotta watch for.
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_02: Um there was a guy that um swallowed a lit neon rod one time and it put a uh almost put a hole in his throat.
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_02: Oh.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_02: Um but he recovered and is still performing.
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_02: Like none of those guys just quit.
• 43:47
  SPEAKER_02: They all have that show must go on.
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I'm sure these people also have a higher tolerance for pain and fear than we do.
• 43:57
  SPEAKER_01: But I guess most dangerous.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_01: The most dangerous um is probably the the clowns because you know they kind of mess with the audience and in today's world the audience could pop a cap at you pretty quickly.
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_02: That's true.
• 44:12
  SPEAKER_01: That's true.
• 44:12
  SPEAKER_01: That's true.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_02: So overall, I think the circus is kind of a a dead thing, like I mentioned in uh in uh the PT Barnum.
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_02: Although when the b when the circus when Ringling Brothers closed its doors in 2017, the last place they went was um that Connecticut um I think it w I don't remember if it was Hardford, but it was the same town where um where they had that attack in 1944, so they're gonna be able to do that.
• 44:41
  SPEAKER_02: They did it as a tribute.
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, they did intentionally.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I I can say uh even if even if it was here I I I don't know that the circus is dead, it's just changed, right?
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_01: Now now what you have is Cirque or Cirque de Soleil.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you have these more sophisticated shows with more technology and more timing.
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_01: I think the traditional circus is is kind of dead because you don't have first of all, all the animal stuff, you know, people don't tolerate that as much as they used to with regard to how people treat animals.
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_01: And then second of all, I think we aren't as barbaric as we used to be, and we don't go there to see the thrill of those guys getting their heads splatted.
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we w we we'd rather see the the grace and pageantry of of something a bit more sophisticated.
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_01: I could be talking out both sides of my mouth, but that's how I think.
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_02: If you heard that there was that Nick Willendo was coming to your uh town and walking over your house, uh would you shut the blinds uh not want to see, or would you look up and see uh I'd get my drone and put it right in his face.
• 45:48
  SPEAKER_02: What's up, Nick?
• 45:51
  SPEAKER_02: Well, he still performs and gets hurt all the time and uh and keeps coming back for more because as we have learned on this show, the show must go on.
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_02: It must.
• 46:03
  SPEAKER_02: Bye.
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_00: They landed on the ground under tents and trapeze.
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_00: They were told that they fell.
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_00: Such beauty and grace, that the flying ones would be the name on their case.
• 46:45
  SPEAKER_00: And the fine folks of Akron forever be safe.
• 46:51
  SPEAKER_00: They flew through the air, like the wings of a prayer, and they all walked away amidst the gunstairs.
• 47:02
  SPEAKER_00: Children revisited their fall nightmares, never would stop, never surrendered, they live like they die.