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SYSK Selects: How a Flea Circus Works · Stuff You Should Know

0:00
Speaker 1: Hi everyone, It's Josh and for this week's s Y
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Speaker 1: s K Selects, I've chosen How Flee Circuses Work. It's
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Speaker 1: actually one of my all time favorite episodes. By the
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Speaker 1: time we recorded it, there was a ten percent chance
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Speaker 1: that I still didn't know whether Flee circuses are actually
0:19
Speaker 1: real or illusions tricks of the imagination. It was a
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Speaker 1: thrilling experience, to say the least. I hope you enjoyed
0:27
Speaker 1: this episode because it was a fun one to do.
0:32
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of My
0:35
Speaker 1: Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the
0:43
Speaker 1: podcast on Josh Clark and there's Charles w Chuck Bryant,
0:47
Speaker 1: and there's Jerry Rowland and that makes this stuff you
0:52
Speaker 1: should Know the podcast. Yeah, who would have ever thought
0:57
Speaker 1: that we could do more than one podcast on fleas
1:02
Speaker 1: Had I thought about Flee Circuses, I would have thought that, Yeah,
1:05
Speaker 1: we covered it a tiny little bit. I went back
1:08
Speaker 1: and looked just to make sure we weren't being too redundant,
1:11
Speaker 1: and uh, we just sort of mentioned it briefly. But
1:14
Speaker 1: how delightful to dig in even further. Yeah, I mean, like,
1:18
Speaker 1: there's no way that we really got into it because
1:20
Speaker 1: it's one of like the least documented aspects of popular
1:25
Speaker 1: culture I've ever come across. Man, And there's so much misinformation,
1:29
Speaker 1: and you run across people who act like they know
1:32
Speaker 1: exactly what they're talking about, and then you do more
1:35
Speaker 1: research and you find out they really are wrong in
1:37
Speaker 1: a lot of it. It's it's really it was crazy.
1:40
Speaker 1: It was a crazy research. Yeah, and you go to
1:42
Speaker 1: web pages that are solid green with white letters and
1:48
Speaker 1: turned back to tone punctuation. What's that. Yeah, it was
1:53
Speaker 1: a little weird, but yeah, people take us to task
1:56
Speaker 1: on the accuracy of this one. Then we'll be like you,
1:59
Speaker 1: you go do better. So, um, I think we kind
2:03
Speaker 1: of gave it away. The cats out of the bag,
2:06
Speaker 1: and so are it's fleas. We're doing flee circuses. We're
2:09
Speaker 1: talking about flee circuses, and they actually, like I think
2:13
Speaker 1: of flee circus is fairly old timing, but I usually
2:15
Speaker 1: think of him as like the twenties or thirties, maybe
2:18
Speaker 1: even the forties, from like that old tech savery flee
2:21
Speaker 1: circus cartoons or um. But they go way further back
2:25
Speaker 1: than that, or even the concept of of training fleas
2:29
Speaker 1: in some way, shape or form goes even further back
2:32
Speaker 1: than that. Yeah, which will We'll get to it. But
2:34
Speaker 1: training them as a bit of a misnomer, Yeah, that's
2:37
Speaker 1: a stretch for sure. It's sort of like tying and
2:41
Speaker 1: gluing things to fleas and just let them be fleas. Yeah, basically,
2:45
Speaker 1: as you will probably come to the same conclusion, flee
2:49
Speaker 1: circuses are really mean. Yeah, they're cruel. No matter how
2:52
Speaker 1: you feel about fleas, they are. Yeah, they're cruel. Cool
2:55
Speaker 1: acts of barbarity. I think that's how they used to
2:58
Speaker 1: buill it. Actually, yet tiny cruel acts of barbarity comes
3:03
Speaker 1: see Professor long Hair and his flee circus whitchy torments.
3:07
Speaker 1: But they're small, so who cares? Right? Uh So fifteen
3:10
Speaker 1: seventies is uh if this is accurate, we're all going
3:13
Speaker 1: to go all the way back to a man named
3:16
Speaker 1: Mark Scalliot who uh did not have a flee circus,
3:21
Speaker 1: but he was supposedly in London, one of the first people,
3:24
Speaker 1: or perhaps the first person to use a flee as
3:29
Speaker 1: a prop of some sort. Yeah, to basically show off
3:32
Speaker 1: his skills as what as a he was a blacksmith. Yeah,
3:35
Speaker 1: he was a smithy and he made like this really
3:38
Speaker 1: really tiny intricate caller that he put her on to
3:42
Speaker 1: flee and he said, check this out. Yeah, and everyone
3:46
Speaker 1: was I guess because this apparently other people, uh like
3:51
Speaker 1: watchmakers and stuff would would make little tiny watches as
3:54
Speaker 1: well as gimmicks. But I guess the thing they were
3:57
Speaker 1: trying to show is the only thing I can think
4:00
Speaker 1: of is if I can make something this tiny that works,
4:03
Speaker 1: imagine what a real size human watch would look like.
4:06
Speaker 1: It would work even better. But he got kind of
4:09
Speaker 1: famous from it from what I understand, and the idea
4:13
Speaker 1: of using fleas called on kind of kind of well,
4:17
Speaker 1: it took a couple of hundred years. But if if
4:20
Speaker 1: you look into fleas and flee circuses like I just
4:23
Speaker 1: took them for Granted, I never stopped and thought why fleas,
4:26
Speaker 1: But there's actually really good reasons why fleas, And it
4:30
Speaker 1: has to do with For one, fleas used to be everywhere,
4:35
Speaker 1: Like no matter where you lived in the world, you
4:38
Speaker 1: shared your living space with fleas, which must have been
4:41
Speaker 1: pretty awful. But apparently it was just a fact of life.
4:44
Speaker 1: So that's one thing. They're ubiquitous, they're easy to come by.
4:48
Speaker 1: The other one is that fleas are really really good
4:52
Speaker 1: at jumping, and that actually makes them, under the right circumstances,
4:57
Speaker 1: really good for this flee circus idea. Yeah, and we
5:00
Speaker 1: wed you know, if you really want to itch yourself, uh,
5:04
Speaker 1: go to listen to the fleet episode. UM. But they
5:07
Speaker 1: come in a couple of thousand varieties and the ones
5:09
Speaker 1: apparently for circuses are the little flat, reddish brown ones
5:14
Speaker 1: about two point five millimeters in length, and um they
5:20
Speaker 1: can jump though two point five millimeters they can jump
5:22
Speaker 1: sometimes as high as eight nine inches in the air.
5:24
Speaker 1: I saw it to ten where you getting your fleas?
5:29
Speaker 1: That was from the Royal Air Force Experimental Station. They
5:33
Speaker 1: apparently set up some equipment in the sixties and we're
5:35
Speaker 1: photographing fleas jumping. Oh yeah, see here that they said
5:39
Speaker 1: that UM, at the start of a jump, a fleet jump,
5:42
Speaker 1: they experience forces greater than a hundred and forty times
5:45
Speaker 1: out of gravity. Yeah, that's crazy. Yeah. They have these
5:48
Speaker 1: little um what are called elastic cuticles in their legs
5:52
Speaker 1: and they can store a tremendous amount of potential energy
5:55
Speaker 1: and when they release them and they jump, that potential
5:58
Speaker 1: energy turns into connect energy. And since that it's basically
6:02
Speaker 1: this elastic um connector, that's really storing the energy they're
6:08
Speaker 1: not having to use up a lot of their own,
6:10
Speaker 1: so they can jump like this like thousands of times
6:12
Speaker 1: in an hour. And apparently when they jump, I don't
6:15
Speaker 1: I'm sure we said something somewhat contradictory in the actual
6:18
Speaker 1: fleas episode, but the relation of their jumps to their
6:23
Speaker 1: body size, um it compared to humans to be like
6:27
Speaker 1: us jumping over the statue of Liberty or something along
6:31
Speaker 1: those lines, which is very hard to do. It can
6:35
Speaker 1: harder every day. Man. I was kind of thinking about
6:37
Speaker 1: these fleas jumping and like, evolutionarily speaking, why And I
6:43
Speaker 1: guess they're just so small that when a dog goes
6:47
Speaker 1: to scratch or bite at it or whatever animal tries
6:50
Speaker 1: to get the fleet off, they can't just be like, well,
6:53
Speaker 1: let me run away as fast as I can, because
6:56
Speaker 1: the dog's bite will still get it. So they learned,
6:59
Speaker 1: I think, quite really, how to jump and get the
7:02
Speaker 1: heck out of there very very quickly in order to survive.
7:06
Speaker 1: And the coolest fleas make the bionic Man sound when
7:10
Speaker 1: they jump if you listen really close. All the hipster fleas, right,
7:16
Speaker 1: uh so, I guess we should talk about the main
7:19
Speaker 1: dude though, right, who we owe all of us owe
7:22
Speaker 1: a great debt too. I'm not saying his name, you know,
7:25
Speaker 1: you've got to say his name. This is the eighteen
7:26
Speaker 1: twenties and he was an Italian I presario in London
7:32
Speaker 1: named Louis Berte Lotto. Nice. Yes, Yeah, there's so many
7:40
Speaker 1: ohs and t s. I thought I messed it up. No,
7:42
Speaker 1: I know it's a it's an unusual name. Yeah. So
7:45
Speaker 1: he's the guy in London who said, uh, I want
7:50
Speaker 1: to be really famous one day, and my big idea
7:54
Speaker 1: is to take fleas and put them in shows. Yeah,
7:58
Speaker 1: and it worked, It did work. I saw somewhere that
8:02
Speaker 1: the the origination of flee circuses it was um due
8:08
Speaker 1: largely to him. But I didn't really see anybody else
8:11
Speaker 1: cited earlier than him. You know, the watchmaker, the smithy
8:15
Speaker 1: Um Mark, Mark, the blacksmith. He wasn't doing any kind
8:21
Speaker 1: of shows or tricks. Louis Bertelotto Um said, you know what,
8:26
Speaker 1: the fleas aren't props. The fleas are going to be
8:28
Speaker 1: the stars in my show. That's right, And I think
8:31
Speaker 1: he may have been the one who had the the
8:33
Speaker 1: original idea to do this. Yeah, I love our own
8:36
Speaker 1: article said his show was part action, part humor, part
8:39
Speaker 1: social commentary. But I think that was the case. You know,
8:43
Speaker 1: they would uh well we might as well talk about
8:45
Speaker 1: what these things did. They would do everything from high
8:50
Speaker 1: wire x to sword fighting too. Uh. Political and historical
8:55
Speaker 1: re enactments. Yeah, they re enacted the Battle of Waterloo
8:59
Speaker 1: dressed dressed in like military garb. Yeah. They would play
9:02
Speaker 1: a soccer or football. Uh. They would do um high diving,
9:09
Speaker 1: pretty amazing stuff, little pools of water, a little chariots
9:13
Speaker 1: and carriages. Yeah, that was one of the first ones
9:16
Speaker 1: because you know, I think, especially back in the early
9:19
Speaker 1: nineteenth century, people didn't know everything there is to know
9:22
Speaker 1: about fleas like we do today. So the idea of
9:26
Speaker 1: watching a little, tiny, tiny flee like a three millimeter
9:30
Speaker 1: long flea pulling like a hearse or a chariot or
9:34
Speaker 1: a cart um that was you know, hundreds of times
9:38
Speaker 1: its own weight does get any better. It's gonna it's
9:40
Speaker 1: gonna impress you, especially if you're a five year old
9:43
Speaker 1: um chimney sweet who's owned by the guy who bought
9:46
Speaker 1: you from your parents. Yeah. Or I actually looked up
9:49
Speaker 1: some flea circuses on YouTube. Uh, there were those little kids.
9:53
Speaker 1: There was one and I think Denmark in the nineteen
9:56
Speaker 1: fifties that I looked at, I saw that, and like
9:58
Speaker 1: in Telfair, people were just delighted. Oh yeah, I mean
10:04
Speaker 1: I watched some of the videos too, and I noticed that,
10:06
Speaker 1: like my hands were classed together beneath my chin. I
10:10
Speaker 1: think it might have been the perfect post election uh
10:14
Speaker 1: youtubing that I could have done. Actually, yeah, it worked
10:17
Speaker 1: pretty well. Uh so Bert, sorry Bert? His Uh his
10:23
Speaker 1: act was not small if you think, well, sure he
10:26
Speaker 1: did this at some county fairs and side shows. Uh
10:30
Speaker 1: and then his wife made him stop. Yeah, not true
10:32
Speaker 1: at all. He actually got really famous for this. I
10:35
Speaker 1: don't know. I mean they likened him to Elvis Presley.
10:38
Speaker 1: I don't know if he was that big. I think
10:40
Speaker 1: the point the authors making is like that this guy
10:43
Speaker 1: wasn't some some like, he wasn't Internet famous, he was
10:47
Speaker 1: like famous famous, Like he traveled the world doing this.
10:51
Speaker 1: It's good for him, right, yeah, And he didn't. As
10:54
Speaker 1: he traveled the world, people were like, I can do
10:56
Speaker 1: that too. I'm tired of working. I want to do this.
11:00
Speaker 1: But it turns out that from what I can tell,
11:03
Speaker 1: as far as show biz goes, running your own flea
11:06
Speaker 1: Circus has got to be one of the more demanding
11:09
Speaker 1: side shows there there are. Well sure, I mean part
11:12
Speaker 1: of the problem is your performers. Well, first of all,
11:16
Speaker 1: it says in here and this is like again with
11:18
Speaker 1: this research, you just sort of have to take some
11:20
Speaker 1: of these people at their word. But they say that
11:23
Speaker 1: about one in ten fleas can even make the cut, right. Uh,
11:27
Speaker 1: once you find your your champion team of they're they're
11:33
Speaker 1: gonna die and there need to be cared for and
11:36
Speaker 1: traveling all over the world with your prized fleas is precarious.
11:41
Speaker 1: Well yeah, especially um if you're traveling to do shows
11:45
Speaker 1: and colder climbs there aren't fleas, and fleas don't do
11:48
Speaker 1: very well there. Your whole troop may die the night
11:51
Speaker 1: before a show. Can you imagine? But apparently it happened
11:55
Speaker 1: a lot. There was a guy I read and I'm
11:57
Speaker 1: not quite sure who it was, but they he had
12:00
Speaker 1: a a standing gig in I think Switzerland maybe or
12:05
Speaker 1: somewhere somewhat northern Europe and he had to send down
12:09
Speaker 1: no she I'm sorry, she had to send down to
12:12
Speaker 1: Majorca to get um fresh shipments of fleas like every
12:16
Speaker 1: two weeks because hers just kept she couldn't keep them
12:19
Speaker 1: alive any longer than I have offers from all over
12:22
Speaker 1: the world to take my show. But you're afraid of
12:24
Speaker 1: one thing. When you get out of the country, can
12:26
Speaker 1: you get fleas? I went to Sweden and I had
12:28
Speaker 1: to send to Majorca in Spain to get fleas fortnite
12:31
Speaker 1: every fortnight. Who was that? It was a woman, a
12:34
Speaker 1: sword swallower right? Uh? Was that Professor Tomlin No, I
12:39
Speaker 1: can't remember her name, but she's like a legendary sword swallower. Um,
12:43
Speaker 1: Professor Testos, no, Professor Chester, no, none of the professors.
12:48
Speaker 1: And that was another thing I noticed from this too,
12:50
Speaker 1: But I couldn't really find the origin. Apparently, if you
12:53
Speaker 1: had a flee circuses from from like the nineteenth century
12:56
Speaker 1: to the early twentieth century, you the flea master, build
13:00
Speaker 1: yourself as professor whatever. So weird, there's just all these
13:04
Speaker 1: really weird trends. But the in the history of flee circuses,
13:08
Speaker 1: it was like one person would come up with an
13:10
Speaker 1: idea and then they go and show it and for
13:12
Speaker 1: some reason it would attract a bunch of other imitators,
13:15
Speaker 1: and that's that's basically the history of it. I would
13:17
Speaker 1: have built myself as account Oh man, you know that
13:21
Speaker 1: would have broken a new ground. But they would have
13:24
Speaker 1: to pay money, and that says in the nineteen fifties
13:26
Speaker 1: Professor Testo said, we pay six shillings a dozen, although
13:29
Speaker 1: there have been times of shortage when a single flea
13:31
Speaker 1: has cost as much as two shillings. Well you know, also,
13:35
Speaker 1: if you look around today, at which I did, I
13:38
Speaker 1: couldn't find anywhere to buy fleas. You have to send
13:42
Speaker 1: off from overseas um. But I've thought, well, surely there's
13:46
Speaker 1: some weirdo somewhere who's selling fleas to flee circuses and
13:50
Speaker 1: there are none, none whatsoever. Well there is a flee
13:54
Speaker 1: circus in Germany still, yeah, at the Munich October Fest.
13:59
Speaker 1: Where else would you have one? Alright, so you want
14:02
Speaker 1: to take a little break here, Yeah, all right, well
14:04
Speaker 1: let's break. Let's go pick the fleas from our own bodies.
14:08
Speaker 1: I know I'm itching or scratching. Then maybe we can
14:11
Speaker 1: train them to finish this episode for us. So chuck,
14:38
Speaker 1: we we kind of made it as far as Berto Lotto,
14:41
Speaker 1: And there's actually a lot of mystery surrounding that guy.
14:44
Speaker 1: Here's the weird thing. Okay, I'm gonna confess something to you.
14:47
Speaker 1: When I first read this article, I was like, well,
14:50
Speaker 1: here's a stinker. Then I dug in a little further
14:53
Speaker 1: and I was like, oh, I'm being tortured with research
14:57
Speaker 1: to do a stinker. And then the more I did,
14:58
Speaker 1: the more I did, the more I again, I'd find
15:01
Speaker 1: these weird little things that kept popping up that combined
15:05
Speaker 1: create the the the history or the culture of flee circuses.
15:10
Speaker 1: And and the more I came upon these little things
15:13
Speaker 1: and put them together more the more I was just
15:14
Speaker 1: totally delighted. But then I think, like you when I
15:17
Speaker 1: when I finally hit YouTube, it was like, okay, I
15:19
Speaker 1: need to see some of these. Then I was like,
15:21
Speaker 1: I love flee circuses. I could sit here and talk
15:24
Speaker 1: about them all day. Well, we'll try and keep this
15:28
Speaker 1: minutes all day. So I just realized I didn't finish
15:32
Speaker 1: my thought. The um, the weird little thing that I
15:34
Speaker 1: found out about Professor Barlo Dolore you thanks man Um.
15:42
Speaker 1: He just vanished, he disappeared. He was like as famous
15:46
Speaker 1: as as an astronaut, and then all of a sudden
15:49
Speaker 1: he's gone. And there's a guy um who is uh.
15:53
Speaker 1: I think his name is Andy Rich he's like basically
15:57
Speaker 1: the foremost flee circus researcher working today. Hey, and he
16:01
Speaker 1: found Professor Barte Lotto. Apparently he moved to Canada and
16:06
Speaker 1: lived out the rest of his life and anonymity. Wow. Yeah,
16:09
Speaker 1: I have a question. Okay, why do you always use
16:12
Speaker 1: astronaut as a fame indicator? It's uh think it says
16:16
Speaker 1: Simpson's reference. It's Homer was saying somebody was richer than
16:20
Speaker 1: an astronaut. I was going to challenge you and say,
16:24
Speaker 1: name an astronaut. Oh, dude, Jim Lovell No, no, no,
16:28
Speaker 1: name a current astronaut. Oh current astronaut. Well you got
16:30
Speaker 1: Mark Kelly and Scott Kelly. Okay, all right, the twins
16:35
Speaker 1: get back off. Then her their parents called them Project
16:39
Speaker 1: Jim and I. That's cute. But they did not just
16:42
Speaker 1: made that up? Oh really? Yeah? Oh man, that would
16:45
Speaker 1: have been surely somewhat thought of that. If not, I'm
16:49
Speaker 1: going to trade market. Uh yeah, And then you could
16:53
Speaker 1: blackmail them. I feel like you want this nickname. I
16:58
Speaker 1: know you're richer than an astro Alright, So early nineteen hundreds,
17:03
Speaker 1: if you're talking imitators over here in the United States,
17:05
Speaker 1: we had a man named William Heckler, and he was
17:08
Speaker 1: one of the first dudes over here to be a
17:10
Speaker 1: successful flea master. And uh, he did the usual things,
17:15
Speaker 1: made them box and race and juggle. And we're gonna
17:18
Speaker 1: tell you some of these secrets. By the way, if
17:20
Speaker 1: you're wondering how these things are accomplished, just hang in there. Uh.
17:24
Speaker 1: And he said at one point he was bringing in
17:26
Speaker 1: two hundred and fifty dollars uh day or performance in
17:32
Speaker 1: a in a day of performances a day. Yeah, so
17:35
Speaker 1: many many performances. And here's the thing I Philip, I
17:39
Speaker 1: kind of wondered I was because I didn't find it
17:41
Speaker 1: until later in the research, like, well, how do you
17:43
Speaker 1: see this stuff? But you wouldn't have very many people
17:46
Speaker 1: in there. You'd have like ten or fifteen people crowded
17:49
Speaker 1: around a little table for six to ten minutes. You
17:52
Speaker 1: would shuffle them out and bring in the next group. Yes,
17:55
Speaker 1: I saw somewhere that if you were really dedicated to it,
17:59
Speaker 1: I think Cecil Laden Road it on the on the
18:01
Speaker 1: straight dope, that if you were like a really dedicated performer,
18:04
Speaker 1: you could conceivably do fifty ten minute performances a day.
18:10
Speaker 1: So that's basically like ten hours with a ten minute
18:13
Speaker 1: break every hour. And if you're not a really dedicated
18:16
Speaker 1: flea master, then just get out of my face. What
18:17
Speaker 1: do you even bother? Seriously, though, I mean as when
18:20
Speaker 1: we talk about how to do this, it will become
18:24
Speaker 1: clear just how much work this must be. Yeah, alright,
18:28
Speaker 1: well let's talk a little bit about that. Um, every
18:30
Speaker 1: flee is different. And like I said, uh, if you
18:32
Speaker 1: believe the research, about ten percent of the fleezer fit
18:36
Speaker 1: for the job. And it's like we mentioned, you don't
18:39
Speaker 1: really train them. What you do is back in the day,
18:43
Speaker 1: you would take either some silken thread or some really
18:46
Speaker 1: thin gold wire like hopefully you can't even see it,
18:50
Speaker 1: that's sort of the idea, and you tie a little
18:54
Speaker 1: tiny noose of sorts around this fleas neck. And apparently
19:00
Speaker 1: that was really hard to do because when a fleet
19:04
Speaker 1: eats the blood of their master, yeah, which is true.
19:10
Speaker 1: We'll get to that again later, but their next well,
19:14
Speaker 1: so you can't tie it too tight or else they're
19:16
Speaker 1: gonna die and that your prize flee could die. Or
19:19
Speaker 1: if it's too loose, then the flea goes away and
19:22
Speaker 1: the chariot stays behind, and that's no good and you
19:25
Speaker 1: just hear a tiny bionic man sound. That's right. So um,
19:30
Speaker 1: that's very hard Number one. Number two the idea that
19:35
Speaker 1: you have to do that with new fleas every I
19:39
Speaker 1: would guess probably every few weeks if you're on average,
19:44
Speaker 1: because fleas, I mean they live maybe a year. Most
19:47
Speaker 1: fleas live three or four months. It's an old flee.
19:51
Speaker 1: So you've got like a some star performers and they're
19:55
Speaker 1: just they're performing, you know, for a few months or whatever.
19:57
Speaker 1: So you're having to basically constantly us fleas all the
20:02
Speaker 1: time and and again before you even harness them, you
20:05
Speaker 1: have to sort them. So you have to study and
20:07
Speaker 1: observe the adult fleas see which one's like to jump. Um.
20:11
Speaker 1: There's an old legend, uh that apparently came from Professor
20:15
Speaker 1: Heckler's son, if not Professor Heckler himself, who said, Um,
20:20
Speaker 1: you you put a lid over a jar, and you
20:23
Speaker 1: can train them not to jump too high because they'll
20:26
Speaker 1: hit their head on the jar and they don't like
20:28
Speaker 1: to do that. So they learned not to jump, then
20:30
Speaker 1: they've passed their first test. It's not clear whether that's
20:34
Speaker 1: actually hocum or not, but um, that's for for a
20:39
Speaker 1: very long time. That's been part of the lower of
20:42
Speaker 1: training fleas. The problem is, I think you said it,
20:45
Speaker 1: fleas can't actually learn anything. They're not really being trained.
20:49
Speaker 1: They're actually being physically restrained in lots of ways, including
20:53
Speaker 1: that harness and starting with the harness. Well, I don't know, though, Heckler,
20:57
Speaker 1: Professor Heckler that is also said and this was fascinating
21:00
Speaker 1: to me as far as whether or not these fleas
21:02
Speaker 1: can learn anything. He said that he would to get
21:05
Speaker 1: the best fleas, put them in a glass jar. Uh,
21:09
Speaker 1: that's too tall for them to jump out, and he
21:11
Speaker 1: said that he would notice the really good fleas would
21:14
Speaker 1: jump up on the side, fart out a little bit
21:17
Speaker 1: of sticky stuff, whatever that is, and then spend the
21:22
Speaker 1: rest of the time trying and trying to hit that
21:24
Speaker 1: identical spot again to grab hold of the sticky stuff
21:28
Speaker 1: basically a foothold, to be close enough to the top
21:31
Speaker 1: to leap out. Amazing. I don't know if I believe it.
21:35
Speaker 1: He well, yeah, I mean he was a showman, consummist.
21:38
Speaker 1: Showman like you didn't just basically point and be like,
21:41
Speaker 1: look at the fleas, came your money, please leave now,
21:44
Speaker 1: like you were like carrying the show on. Right, you
21:47
Speaker 1: had to tell this this this, You had to help
21:50
Speaker 1: the performance along, your professor, for God's sake. Right, when
21:54
Speaker 1: this guy is being interviewed over the years, I can't
21:58
Speaker 1: imagine he didn't like ham it up in the interviews.
22:02
Speaker 1: So I don't know, like a lot of it's lost
22:04
Speaker 1: too to time, what was true and what wasn't as
22:07
Speaker 1: far as these these old guys go. Yeah, but he
22:10
Speaker 1: Professor Heckler also said when he was picking them out,
22:12
Speaker 1: and he said, stodgy wins are broken to the merry
22:16
Speaker 1: go round harness. Flighty fleas make good dancers. Those with
22:20
Speaker 1: especially strong legs will become kickers, jugglers and chariot racers. Yes,
22:25
Speaker 1: so you've got you've got fleas harness. That's like the
22:29
Speaker 1: first initial thing. But there's other things you need to
22:32
Speaker 1: do to him to write. You can take that harness,
22:34
Speaker 1: and the most basic thing you could do is take
22:37
Speaker 1: that harness and actually hook it up to, like you said,
22:40
Speaker 1: a chariot or or or a merry go round or
22:43
Speaker 1: something like that. And yet people will be like, that's
22:46
Speaker 1: pretty neat, that's cool. But before I could do that,
22:48
Speaker 1: you know, but you could do other stuff too, and
22:51
Speaker 1: a lot of it involves glue unfortunately. So say like
22:54
Speaker 1: you take a tiny piece of um of would or
23:00
Speaker 1: a tiny piece of metal and you glue it to
23:03
Speaker 1: the fleas arms, right, and we should say, once that happens,
23:09
Speaker 1: that's it. That's never that's never coming off for the
23:11
Speaker 1: rest of the fleas life. Yeah, I mean, do you
23:15
Speaker 1: think they even survive that day? I think so. Yeah.
23:20
Speaker 1: I think that they typically survive a few weeks of performing. Okay,
23:24
Speaker 1: so even if they have a little sword glued to
23:25
Speaker 1: their body, yeah, okay, I think they live horrible lives.
23:31
Speaker 1: I mean, basically, we as a species should know more
23:33
Speaker 1: about this because if the fleas of a rise up
23:36
Speaker 1: and become intelligent, like our backs are against the wall
23:39
Speaker 1: for what the flea circus flea masters have done to
23:42
Speaker 1: them glued to the wall, they'll be like, oh, guess
23:45
Speaker 1: whose turn it is? Alright, so go ahead, Oh so
23:48
Speaker 1: you you, um, you glue a piece of stick or
23:51
Speaker 1: something to their arms, and remember already they're harnessed. And
23:54
Speaker 1: then you do the same thing to another flee and
23:57
Speaker 1: then you tie their harnesses down and you just kind
24:00
Speaker 1: of tickle them or do something to stimulate them, and
24:03
Speaker 1: they start waving their arms and it looks like the
24:05
Speaker 1: sword fighting. So that's a really good example of a
24:10
Speaker 1: flee circus. Like you're you're having them do things, and
24:12
Speaker 1: then the flea masters like, well, look at this, this
24:15
Speaker 1: is a sword fight. Everybody see they're doing or fencing
24:18
Speaker 1: or something like that, right en, I've trained them to
24:20
Speaker 1: do so exactly exactly. So there's there's these things where
24:24
Speaker 1: really it's the interaction between a restrained flee, usually with
24:29
Speaker 1: the prop glued to it, defending itself or responding to
24:35
Speaker 1: some sort of noxious or threatening stimuli, and then the
24:38
Speaker 1: flea master coming and saying, oh, they're they're fencing, or
24:41
Speaker 1: they're walking the high wire something or there. This is
24:44
Speaker 1: Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo. Yeah, they would play soccer.
24:48
Speaker 1: Like I said, so what they would do there is
24:50
Speaker 1: they would get a little piece of cotton wool. Uh.
24:52
Speaker 1: They would soak it in something that the fleet doesn't like,
24:55
Speaker 1: some odorous, malodorous thing. Yeah, I looked that up. Like
24:59
Speaker 1: lavender works really well, sit, tranella, cedar oil, those are
25:02
Speaker 1: all lovely. That's a shame. But come to think of it,
25:06
Speaker 1: when you see natural flee sprays, that's what's in natural
25:09
Speaker 1: flee spray exactly, so they would soak it in that
25:11
Speaker 1: stuff and then uh, just the fleet would literally just
25:14
Speaker 1: kick at it to get it away like a little
25:16
Speaker 1: soccer ball. Right, They're either kicking at it to get
25:19
Speaker 1: it away or because they were restrained and when they kick,
25:23
Speaker 1: instead of it propelling the flee away, it's repelling the
25:27
Speaker 1: ball away from them. So if you have them this
25:29
Speaker 1: kind of do that back and forth, then yeah, they're
25:32
Speaker 1: playing soccer. What about juggling, Josh, love it. What you
25:37
Speaker 1: do there is you would glue a flee to its
25:40
Speaker 1: on its back basically and then put another little tiny
25:45
Speaker 1: piece of cotton on their legs and they would kick
25:48
Speaker 1: at it trying to get it off, and apparently would
25:50
Speaker 1: just kind of go up and down and spin around
25:52
Speaker 1: like it was juggling. Amazing. Yeah, and like this is
25:57
Speaker 1: this is uh thanks to Heckler in particular in the
26:00
Speaker 1: United States. Um, he really started hitting the county fairs
26:04
Speaker 1: and um, the the the carnivals. So it became basically
26:10
Speaker 1: part and parcel with the with sideshows the fleet circus.
26:13
Speaker 1: Like basically anytime you went to a decent carnival, there's
26:16
Speaker 1: a flea circus there. Yeah, and I get the feeling
26:18
Speaker 1: that these professors would try and they would try and innovate,
26:23
Speaker 1: they would try and come up with new tricks and
26:25
Speaker 1: new things that would delight people, because you want to
26:28
Speaker 1: keep people coming back, you know, right, So that's where
26:32
Speaker 1: you come up with things like the the high high
26:34
Speaker 1: Wire Act and the flea walls. When it would appear
26:38
Speaker 1: as if a fleet orchestra was playing and fleas were dancing. Yeah,
26:41
Speaker 1: because there's there's other things that fleas respond to. Two
26:44
Speaker 1: besides um citronella, they respond very well the heat. They
26:48
Speaker 1: can sense heat very well, and if it gets too hot,
26:51
Speaker 1: they want to get out of there. So if you
26:53
Speaker 1: apply heat from beneath on say like uh just um,
26:57
Speaker 1: I don't know, a drumhead or something like that, they'll
27:00
Speaker 1: all start hopping around. But if they if they can't
27:02
Speaker 1: get away, if they're harnessed in, then it looks like
27:04
Speaker 1: they're dancing. If you put a little flea orchestra to
27:07
Speaker 1: the side with instruments glued to their their arms at
27:11
Speaker 1: a nice backbeat exactly, then you have fleas playing music
27:15
Speaker 1: and fleas dancing to it. A flea ball. Uh. So
27:19
Speaker 1: this all is delightful and well and good. Um, but
27:23
Speaker 1: what fun is a naked little flea doing these things?
27:26
Speaker 1: If you could have a flee dressed up as Napoleon, right,
27:31
Speaker 1: And that's what they did. They apparently historical figures were lampooned. Uh.
27:37
Speaker 1: They would supposedly get Mexican nuns who had quote nimble
27:42
Speaker 1: fingers tired and eyes deteriorated. I don't see how that
27:47
Speaker 1: makes any sense. So they're these they they're nimble fingers
27:51
Speaker 1: grew tired in their eyes deteriorated as we're making these things. Okay,
27:55
Speaker 1: I thought that was that was a good quality they
27:58
Speaker 1: look for an a Mexican nun seems dress right, How
28:02
Speaker 1: are your nimble fingers feeling? That's kind of tired? They're tired.
28:05
Speaker 1: That's sad. Actually. Then, so they would get apparently these
28:09
Speaker 1: Mexican nuns to make these tiny little costumes, and um,
28:14
Speaker 1: they are still on display today if you go to Uh,
28:18
Speaker 1: how do you pronounce that in England? I mispronounced everything
28:21
Speaker 1: in England. It's spelled Hertfordshire show Cambridge, all right, Cambridge, England.
28:28
Speaker 1: I think it's where that at the Rothschild Zoological Museum.
28:31
Speaker 1: There are two fleas dressed as Mexican fleas on display
28:36
Speaker 1: and right in our lovely Edinburgh, Scotland that we adored
28:39
Speaker 1: so much. Had I known, had I known that there
28:42
Speaker 1: was a museum of childhood there with a flea wedding
28:46
Speaker 1: party dressed up on display, I would have gone in
28:49
Speaker 1: a second, for sure. But yeah, it was a thing.
28:53
Speaker 1: I think it was already a thing in Mexico. And
28:56
Speaker 1: the flea circus masters said, hey, I need to get
29:00
Speaker 1: some of those, so chuck, if you have a bunch
29:04
Speaker 1: of fleas and they're making you money, you want to
29:07
Speaker 1: keep them alive, right, how would you do that? Well,
29:12
Speaker 1: as we all know, fleas or parasitic blood suckers. Uh.
29:17
Speaker 1: And so they would just go down to the blood
29:18
Speaker 1: bank and get a bag of blood right right, and
29:21
Speaker 1: let the fleece swim around in it. Yeah, and they
29:23
Speaker 1: loved it. And know what they would do is and
29:25
Speaker 1: this is like it gives me chills thinking about it.
29:28
Speaker 1: They would roll up their sleeves and stick their arm
29:30
Speaker 1: down there and let the fleas feed on their bodies. Yeah,
29:34
Speaker 1: a couple of times a day. But apparently apparently though
29:38
Speaker 1: it was part of every single show that you would
29:41
Speaker 1: end the show with and now, since these fleet performers
29:44
Speaker 1: have done so great, I shall let them feast on
29:47
Speaker 1: my blood and the crowd would be like you gross,
29:51
Speaker 1: that makes sense. Yeah, it was part of stage pattern,
29:53
Speaker 1: but apparently at least Heckler, but I'm sure others actually
29:57
Speaker 1: did let the fleas feed on them. Uh yeah, I mean,
30:03
Speaker 1: what's a good flee master to do? Well, feed your
30:05
Speaker 1: fleas blood Either that or have like a again, a
30:08
Speaker 1: chimney sweep that you bought from a chimney sweeper to
30:12
Speaker 1: let the fleas feed on. I hope that the episode
30:15
Speaker 1: has come out, but people are going to be really confused, yeah,
30:18
Speaker 1: or it'll be really delightful when it does come out
30:21
Speaker 1: and they'll be like, oh that makes sense. Now, Hey,
30:25
Speaker 1: one more thing about Heckler. So there was a Heckler Sr.
30:29
Speaker 1: And Junior, and apparently Junior kept it going in Times
30:34
Speaker 1: Square until like the late fifties had a flee circus going,
30:38
Speaker 1: and Heckler's flee circus shows up in a scene an
30:41
Speaker 1: Easy Rider. No way. Yeah, I couldn't figure out what's scene.
30:45
Speaker 1: I didn't have time to go check. But there's a
30:48
Speaker 1: scene an Easy Rider where in the background there's Heckler's
30:51
Speaker 1: flee circus, and then they were pushed out of Times
30:53
Speaker 1: Square by peep shows. And then the peep shows were
30:57
Speaker 1: pushed out by Walt Disney and Julie Annie. Yeah, Heckler
31:01
Speaker 1: tried at first to do pants less flee circus. Well
31:06
Speaker 1: it didn't work very well. Yeah, no, one wants that. No,
31:09
Speaker 1: and finally just packed it up. All right, Well, let's
31:11
Speaker 1: take one final break here and we will talk about
31:14
Speaker 1: another kind of flee circus right after this. So check.
31:41
Speaker 1: One thing that I found I'm pretty sure you found
31:44
Speaker 1: it too, was that when you start looking into flee circuses,
31:48
Speaker 1: some people think that there is never such a thing
31:52
Speaker 1: as flee circuses that used real fleas. Yeah. I thought
31:55
Speaker 1: you were going to say, when you start looking into
31:56
Speaker 1: flee circus is there's no going back and you'll never
32:00
Speaker 1: be the same again. That's definitely true too, Like I'm
32:03
Speaker 1: changed forever. Yeah. I always thought that flee circuses were
32:06
Speaker 1: a complete ruse and that there were never any real
32:10
Speaker 1: fleas performing, right, Apparently, No, that's not the case. There
32:14
Speaker 1: have been, and indeed, ours recently as the nineties, there
32:18
Speaker 1: have been flee circuses that used real fleas. Following these
32:22
Speaker 1: traditions that we just mentioned. But if you believe that
32:26
Speaker 1: there are plenty of flee circuses out there that don't
32:29
Speaker 1: use any fleas whatsoever, you're right too, because there's both. Yes,
32:34
Speaker 1: there's the type of flee circus that doesn't use fleas
32:37
Speaker 1: is called a humbug flee circus, and it's all it's
32:41
Speaker 1: all stage magic, it's all illusion, and it's pretty pretty awesome. Actually, yeah,
32:47
Speaker 1: there was a man, a magician named George Tollerton in
32:52
Speaker 1: the nineteen thirties, and he wrote a booklet actually um
32:55
Speaker 1: outlining fake flee circuses and skits that you can do.
33:00
Speaker 1: We're in you're sort of the I mean, while the
33:04
Speaker 1: carnival barking was going on in the real flee circuses. Um,
33:08
Speaker 1: you you really want to take center stage if you
33:10
Speaker 1: have a fake flee circus, because then not only introducing
33:14
Speaker 1: the death defying feats, but then you are are following
33:18
Speaker 1: these fleas, jumping around with mimicking it with your eyes
33:22
Speaker 1: and following it around, you know, by moving your head
33:25
Speaker 1: around as if the audience is looking at some invisible thing,
33:30
Speaker 1: which they are, right right, they are, and you're basically
33:33
Speaker 1: just using your powers of suggestion to get them to
33:37
Speaker 1: think they're seeing what you're saying. Right, Yeah, that's the
33:40
Speaker 1: most like basic humbug flee circus there are, right, sure,
33:46
Speaker 1: but there's one in that that started like that. I
33:49
Speaker 1: guess the genuine stagecraft stage magic um humbug flee circus
33:56
Speaker 1: came about from Michael Benteen, who is a gooon actually right, remember,
34:03
Speaker 1: then explained that what it is the goons showed up
34:06
Speaker 1: in the Monty Python episode. They were the direct predecessor
34:09
Speaker 1: of Monty Python, Spike Milligan and his goons. Yes, he
34:14
Speaker 1: wasn't a hockey playing goon, that's a different thing, or
34:17
Speaker 1: a goon on Scooby Doo or a goony, right, just
34:22
Speaker 1: a regular old goon. Yeah, Michael Benty And he was
34:25
Speaker 1: a British performer and entertainer and he uh in nineteen
34:29
Speaker 1: fifty performed that the h called the Royal Variety Show.
34:34
Speaker 1: I guess I think so. And it was a little
34:37
Speaker 1: you know, fake flee circus apparently pretty elaborate one, yeah,
34:42
Speaker 1: because rather than just using like his power of suggestion,
34:46
Speaker 1: he was using things like magnets and remote control pumps
34:51
Speaker 1: and mechanical devices to really kind of do this exaggerated
34:56
Speaker 1: simulation of a flee doing stuff going through the circuit
35:00
Speaker 1: of his flea circus right, So he would say, have
35:03
Speaker 1: a magnet or a piece of string of something or
35:04
Speaker 1: something pushing a ball or rather pulling a ball up
35:07
Speaker 1: a hill an incline, and he would say that this
35:10
Speaker 1: is the uh, the flea sisyphus and he's pushing this
35:14
Speaker 1: ball up a hill right or um, this is this
35:18
Speaker 1: is my favorite. This gets me every time a flee
35:20
Speaker 1: going up on the high dive board. And then so
35:23
Speaker 1: as he's going up there, the wrongs of the ladder,
35:26
Speaker 1: each one gets depressed, right, so you can see the
35:29
Speaker 1: fleas progress up the ladder gets up to the end
35:32
Speaker 1: of the board, jumps a couple of times, so the
35:34
Speaker 1: springboard goes up and down, and then it makes a
35:36
Speaker 1: springing sound as he jumps off right exactly dives into
35:41
Speaker 1: the water, and there's like this huge splash, which a
35:44
Speaker 1: fleet could never make a splash to begin with, but
35:47
Speaker 1: a huge one. It's just hilarious. Or I like the
35:50
Speaker 1: one the sand table. They would have a little sandbox
35:54
Speaker 1: in the fleet with the fake fleet would invisibly jump around,
35:58
Speaker 1: but it would create a little splash of sand everywhere.
36:00
Speaker 1: He dropped all over the place and again all with magnets,
36:04
Speaker 1: all fakery, Yeah, but really really clever. I get the
36:08
Speaker 1: impression he was not um not terribly old at the
36:11
Speaker 1: time when he first debuted on tv UM and in
36:15
Speaker 1: the grand tradition of flee circuses, some other people saw
36:18
Speaker 1: it and said, I want to do that too, So
36:20
Speaker 1: the Humbug Flee circus took off and became pretty popular
36:24
Speaker 1: and like the second half of the twentieth century. Yeah,
36:28
Speaker 1: I should say popular as far as flee circuses go,
36:32
Speaker 1: which is to say, not very popular, right, popular among weirdos. Yeah.
36:36
Speaker 1: I'm really kind of wondering about this Burt to Loto
36:39
Speaker 1: and his fame, like he might not have been I
36:44
Speaker 1: don't know, I mean just because he traveled the world.
36:46
Speaker 1: I mean, he could have been traveling the world performing
36:48
Speaker 1: in front of you know, sixty people a day. That's
36:50
Speaker 1: not exactly Elvis. It's true. This whole thing is under
36:55
Speaker 1: a cloud of suspicion, is Yeah. Man, it's really tough
37:00
Speaker 1: to figure out the what's from the who's in the
37:03
Speaker 1: winds and the why and the fleas from the magnets. Yeah. Yeah,
37:07
Speaker 1: because once you introduced that humbug ury into it. Everything
37:12
Speaker 1: comes into question. There was, actually, though, there was a
37:16
Speaker 1: book that I want to get. It's a it's a
37:18
Speaker 1: pamphlet basically turned into a book from that a guy
37:22
Speaker 1: named Tom Palmer wrote. It's called the Famous Flee Act
37:26
Speaker 1: and it teaches you everything you need to know to
37:29
Speaker 1: do a humbug flee circus. I just want to read
37:33
Speaker 1: it just for frenzies. You know, Christmas is coming up.
37:39
Speaker 1: I bet you someone out there, I'll send that to you.
37:41
Speaker 1: I was talking to you. No, that just someone else
37:43
Speaker 1: out there. Well okay, uh my call to you. The
37:48
Speaker 1: public listening stuff. You should know. Public is another doing
37:52
Speaker 1: this in october Fest. But somebody needs to bring this
37:55
Speaker 1: back in a big way. Well a woman did in
37:59
Speaker 1: the nineties, but it didn't take for very long. But
38:02
Speaker 1: I mean it was pretty big in the nineties. Um.
38:05
Speaker 1: Her name was what is it, chuck, Maria Fernanda Cardoso.
38:11
Speaker 1: Did you read about her? You should check out her act.
38:14
Speaker 1: You didn't see the video of it. There's like a
38:17
Speaker 1: seven eight minute video of her act and apparently it's
38:20
Speaker 1: just the highlights, so I guess her act was longer
38:23
Speaker 1: and she's a performance artist, so um it was she
38:28
Speaker 1: did it at like different places like she did at
38:30
Speaker 1: the New Museum in New York and um, San Francisco
38:34
Speaker 1: and just kind of some some pretty neat places places
38:37
Speaker 1: you wouldn't expect to see a flee circus, is what
38:39
Speaker 1: I'm saying. I guess. But she used live fleece in
38:44
Speaker 1: the grand tradition of flee circuses and uh made a
38:48
Speaker 1: very beautiful, neat almost circutus so laish flee circus in
38:53
Speaker 1: the nineties. Yeah, but there's a video of it, or
38:56
Speaker 1: there's plenty of videos, I'm sure of it out there. Um,
39:00
Speaker 1: just lock her up and look for the flice circus
39:03
Speaker 1: video with with our thumbs up on it. Yeah. And
39:06
Speaker 1: you know, we kind of joked about this being cruel it. Um,
39:09
Speaker 1: it's easy to to say this is a flee so
39:12
Speaker 1: who cares. But I'm sure there are people that get
39:15
Speaker 1: up in arms about using any sort of you know,
39:18
Speaker 1: mistreating and animal for any kind of or insects, animals.
39:26
Speaker 1: Let's just say for this argument, for sure, for the
39:29
Speaker 1: entertainment of humans. You know, there's probably at least one
39:32
Speaker 1: person out there that thinks this is very cruel thing
39:34
Speaker 1: to do. Know, there's uh, there's apparently um, societies that
39:37
Speaker 1: are dedicated to preventing cruelty to insects in particular. There
39:42
Speaker 1: you haven't, and they have called specifically for flee circuses
39:45
Speaker 1: to be banned outright, And they make a pretty convincing case,
39:50
Speaker 1: especially if you don't allow yourself to stop and remind
39:52
Speaker 1: yourself that these are fleas we're talking about. But they
39:56
Speaker 1: you know, they're held in captivity their whole lives. They're held, um,
40:00
Speaker 1: they're connected by a harness that keeps them held down
40:03
Speaker 1: their entire lives. The tricks that they're performing are actually
40:08
Speaker 1: like stress behaviors, um, and they die probably prematurely. Yeah,
40:17
Speaker 1: well as what went off on fleas in the fleet episode.
40:19
Speaker 1: So I can't really say anything about that. Sure, I've
40:23
Speaker 1: had bad infestations and I had no problem grabbing them
40:28
Speaker 1: between my hands and holding them underwater until they slowly drowned. Right,
40:32
Speaker 1: They're like, please just crush me, and you say, never drown.
40:36
Speaker 1: You can't crush them. You can crush a fleet if
40:39
Speaker 1: you get it's hard eat finger nails, that's your problem.
40:41
Speaker 1: You butt your finger nails too much. Yeah, But you
40:43
Speaker 1: try to smash a flee and he just goes dying.
40:47
Speaker 1: Do do do do do do Yeah, anything else? Um,
40:54
Speaker 1: you can buy flee circuses ready made flee circuses if
40:57
Speaker 1: you want. Well, that's fun. Yeah, um like an ant.
41:00
Speaker 1: Good luck finding fleas is the thing, right, And I
41:04
Speaker 1: think that's it. Man, that's a flee circuses. Just go
41:09
Speaker 1: watch some Flee circus videos on TV or on the
41:12
Speaker 1: computer TV. You're gonna love it. Yeah, it's a good
41:14
Speaker 1: way to just dumb it down and check out. Yeah,
41:18
Speaker 1: it's delightful though too. Uh. Since I said it's delightful
41:22
Speaker 1: if you want to know, that's right, I got all
41:24
Speaker 1: the order I was thinking about flee circuses. If you
41:27
Speaker 1: want to know more about Flee circus's do what I
41:29
Speaker 1: just said. And you can also type those words in
41:31
Speaker 1: the search part how stuff works. And since I said
41:33
Speaker 1: it's delightful. Before it's time for a listener mail, I'm
41:39
Speaker 1: gonna call this what the writer called it, which is
41:42
Speaker 1: pick me for listener mail. Thanks from a teacher. Okay,
41:46
Speaker 1: it's hard to resist, Josh, Chuck and Jerry. And finally
41:49
Speaker 1: writing to you all. I've been listening stuff you should
41:51
Speaker 1: know for years. I think I've listened to nearly every episode,
41:54
Speaker 1: even the ones from the Dark Days. When the discussion
41:56
Speaker 1: lasted fewer than ten minutes and Josh was still looking
41:59
Speaker 1: for his perfect pot casting partner, my sister introduced me
42:02
Speaker 1: to you. So if you picked this for listener mail,
42:04
Speaker 1: please do be extremely cool. If you give my sister
42:07
Speaker 1: Laura a shout, well, that is really nice. If you
42:11
Speaker 1: chuck it is you're feeling very generous regardless. I've been
42:14
Speaker 1: meaning to email my thanks and praise for your work.
42:16
Speaker 1: I was at high school english teacher in Illinois, but
42:19
Speaker 1: recently relocated Chattanooga, Tennessee, where I've been moved on where
42:24
Speaker 1: I moved on to become a community college professor. Uh,
42:27
Speaker 1: a professor. Maybe she could train please. Your podcast has
42:31
Speaker 1: been a great supplemental teaching tool, not to mention, a
42:33
Speaker 1: guaranteed way to keep my mind occupied during long road
42:36
Speaker 1: trips to and from undergraduate and graduate school or while
42:39
Speaker 1: running with my dog. Views the episode on book banning
42:42
Speaker 1: several times while teaching to Kill a Mockingbird or informing
42:45
Speaker 1: students about Banned Book Week. I've also used the episode
42:47
Speaker 1: about police interrogation during a unit featuring Walter Dean Myer's
42:51
Speaker 1: novel Monster, about a boy who was on trial for
42:54
Speaker 1: a crime. He may not have committed that sounds good.
42:57
Speaker 1: It does, and more recently, I use a listener all
43:00
Speaker 1: about the benefits of hunting as an example of how
43:03
Speaker 1: to structure an argument. Let's hear that. I want to
43:08
Speaker 1: hear that argument. We'll shows are right back in. The
43:12
Speaker 1: students got to laugh out of Josh's comments about waiting
43:14
Speaker 1: for the deer to fall over and collecting the dead
43:16
Speaker 1: bodies instead of actually killing the animal. Anyway, Really enjoy
43:20
Speaker 1: the show, look forward to new episodes every week. If
43:22
Speaker 1: teaching doesn't work out for some reason, I think podcasting
43:25
Speaker 1: would be a pretty great career. And that is from
43:28
Speaker 1: Sarah Amato Professor Amato and uh shout out to Laura yep,
43:35
Speaker 1: her sister, Laura Amato or whatever her name is. Shout
43:39
Speaker 1: out not presuming they have the same last name. A
43:43
Speaker 1: modern guy you are anyway, you have a beard. Thanks
43:47
Speaker 1: for teaching and doing what you do, Professor Yeah, and
43:51
Speaker 1: thanks for writing in smart Thinking with the subject line word.
43:56
Speaker 1: If you want to get in touch with us, you
43:58
Speaker 1: can tweet to us. I'm a josh um Clark at
44:02
Speaker 1: Twitter and you can also follow the official s Y
44:05
Speaker 1: s K podcast on Twitter. Can hang out with Chuck
44:08
Speaker 1: at Charles W. Chuck Brian on Facebook or Facebook dot
44:11
Speaker 1: com slash stuff you Should Know if you can send
44:13
Speaker 1: us an email to Stuff Podcasts How Stuff Works dot
44:16
Speaker 1: com and has always joined us at our home on
44:18
Speaker 1: the web. Stuff you Should Know dot Com. Stuff you
44:24
Speaker 1: Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works.
44:27
Speaker 1: For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the iHeart
44:29
Speaker 1: Radio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your
44:32
Speaker 1: favorite shows.