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Selects: PT Barnum: More Complicated Than You've Heard · Stuff You Should Know

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Speaker 1: Hi, everybody, check here with the Greatest Show on Earth
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Speaker 1: wrangling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus. You say, no, stuff
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Speaker 1: you should know the podcast. That's right. It's Saturday, and
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Speaker 1: that means it's time for another SELECX and this one
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Speaker 1: is from May twenty eighteen. P T. Barnum Colon More
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Speaker 1: Complicated than You've Heard. And I picked this one, you
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Speaker 1: guys for two reasons. One because I believe in this episode,
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Speaker 1: I predicted that Hugh Jackman would play the man in
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Speaker 1: a movie one day, one of my two predictions, along
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Speaker 1: with Jared from Subway being a creep. And the other
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Speaker 1: reason I picked it out is because I finally saw
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Speaker 1: the movie The Greatest Show on Earth recently with my daughter,
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Speaker 1: and I didn't like it so much. I didn't think
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Speaker 1: it was that good, so I'm sorry to anyone who
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Speaker 1: had a part in that movie. My daughter loved it,
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Speaker 1: my wife loved it. I just thought it was okay.
0:47
Speaker 1: But this episode is great, so I hope you enjoy. P. T.
0:49
Speaker 1: Barnum Colon More Complicated than You've heard. Welcome to Stuff
0:57
Speaker 1: You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.
1:06
Speaker 2: Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, There's
1:09
Speaker 2: Charles W. Chuck Bright, There's Jerry Hello, Hello, Hello, Hello.
1:17
Speaker 1: Jerry's got a top hat on.
1:19
Speaker 2: I know, I don't know why she's trying to be
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Speaker 2: all mister monopoly or P. T.
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Speaker 1: Barnum.
1:28
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I forgot he wore a top hat allegedly.
1:32
Speaker 2: Oh no, he did. I saw a picture of it.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, Hugh Grant certainly did. Hugh Grant, Hugh Jackman, Hugh Laurie.
1:39
Speaker 1: I think it's h l No, it's Clive Owens you're
1:43
Speaker 1: thinking of. Yeah, Hugh Jackman Man, where's that top hat?
1:46
Speaker 1: Like a champ?
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Speaker 2: He does. I don't know how much you went on
1:51
Speaker 2: the internet for this one, because this is a pretty
1:53
Speaker 2: comprehensive article actually, but The Greatest Showman really set the
2:00
Speaker 2: Internet on fire Man and a lot of like it
2:03
Speaker 2: really brought out a lot of people saying like, whoa, whoa, whoa,
2:06
Speaker 2: whoa whoa whoa whoa Yeah, whoa Yeah, this is the
2:12
Speaker 2: the very definition of the word fantasy.
2:16
Speaker 1: Yeah, it seemed like that movie was can be best
2:19
Speaker 1: described as a musical whitewashing.
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Speaker 2: Mm hmm in every sense of that word.
2:25
Speaker 1: Yeah, so let's destroy it. Yeah, I mean, after reading this,
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Speaker 1: I didn't think, like man P. T. Barnum, what a
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Speaker 1: complete a hole.
2:36
Speaker 2: No, he was just a lot more complicated than that,
2:39
Speaker 2: and get a lot of stuff that you just shouldn't
2:43
Speaker 2: just pass over because you can't figure out lyrics to
2:47
Speaker 2: what rhymes with racism.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean he was. He was definitely an enigma
2:55
Speaker 1: and seems like he did some good. But also I
3:00
Speaker 1: mean he was a hustler man.
3:02
Speaker 2: For sure. So this is what I didn't fully understand
3:05
Speaker 2: until researching this. Chuck. He was. He's known as the
3:09
Speaker 2: greatest showman, right, m But there were plenty of other
3:13
Speaker 2: showmen out there at the time, which makes sense because
3:16
Speaker 2: you have to have something to compare be compared to
3:20
Speaker 2: to be the greatest, right. But I guess I just
3:23
Speaker 2: assumed he was like the first or the originator. No,
3:26
Speaker 2: he was not the first showman. He was a great showman.
3:29
Speaker 1: Yeah.
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Speaker 2: What he really left his mark on was introducing America
3:34
Speaker 2: to pure unadulterated hucksterism, sure, and using it for marketing.
3:40
Speaker 1: Humbug that's what he called it.
3:42
Speaker 2: And he had he had a lot of quotes, some
3:44
Speaker 2: were some were definitely something he said like every crowd
3:48
Speaker 2: has a silver lining, which means you can shake it
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Speaker 2: out of him and get some money from a bunch
3:53
Speaker 2: of people. Right, Yeah, the one about a sucker born
3:57
Speaker 2: every minute that's never been successfully attributed to him one
4:00
Speaker 2: hundred percent.
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Speaker 1: Well yeah, and one thing is for sure, and is
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Speaker 1: that his autobiography is I think if you order it,
4:09
Speaker 1: it comes with a salt lick, so you can just
4:12
Speaker 1: lick on that salt while you're reading it.
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Speaker 2: Right. I don't know what that means, but that seems
4:17
Speaker 2: like something that they would do.
4:19
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean he I think when the man is
4:23
Speaker 1: writing about himself, it's like, you know what, you may
4:25
Speaker 1: just want to believe a third of this.
4:29
Speaker 2: Oh take it with a grain of salt, but so
4:31
Speaker 2: much so that you need an actual salt lick.
4:33
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I got it, now, I got it.
4:37
Speaker 2: So So there is one quote that I think kind
4:39
Speaker 2: of describes this guy best, or at least his philosophy,
4:42
Speaker 2: and it also kind of reveals like you can't call
4:45
Speaker 2: him harmless, but also the intentions were not entirely evil,
4:51
Speaker 2: right Right. He had a quote that said that people
4:55
Speaker 2: don't mind being deceived so long as they're being amused
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Speaker 2: at the same time.
5:00
Speaker 1: Which is kind of true.
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Speaker 2: It does, and it largely lets him off the hook
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Speaker 2: as far as being a huckster. Right, But the thing
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Speaker 2: that The Greatest Showman really glossed over, just outright ignored,
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Speaker 2: was that a lot of the the amusements that he
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Speaker 2: was presenting to the public were extraordinarily degrading to people
5:21
Speaker 2: at the time. They were super racists. There were just
5:26
Speaker 2: a lot of There was just a lot of exploitation.
5:30
Speaker 2: He made his money not just by hustling Americans, but
5:33
Speaker 2: by exploiting other Americans too. Right, Yeah, and again, like this,
5:38
Speaker 2: a lot of this is contextual. It's not necessarily fair
5:41
Speaker 2: for later generations to judge previous generations, although it's really
5:45
Speaker 2: fun to do. But yes, you could say, like this
5:49
Speaker 2: guy was exploited of even even in compared even compared
5:53
Speaker 2: to like his contemporaries. Right, perhaps, so he is just
5:56
Speaker 2: this very complex character who I think you and I
5:59
Speaker 2: can agree he was not an evil person. He just
6:03
Speaker 2: did some horrible things here or there.
6:06
Speaker 1: Should we go back in time? Yes, all right, let's
6:08
Speaker 1: go back to the beginning. Let's hop in the way
6:10
Speaker 1: back machine, which is appropriately steampunky right now, Yeah, it
6:15
Speaker 1: takes many forms. I don't know if people realize that.
6:17
Speaker 2: It has a clock without the glass and you can
6:21
Speaker 2: see the parts inside, but it doesn't actually function. It
6:24
Speaker 2: so strictly for decoration.
6:32
Speaker 1: So let's go back to eighteen ten, back to Bethel, Connecticut,
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Speaker 1: where this man was born, mister Phineas Taylor Barnum. He
6:41
Speaker 1: had sort of a mixed family life. I mean, he
6:43
Speaker 1: was they point out in this article. He was firmly American.
6:46
Speaker 1: His great great great grandfather came over from England as
6:49
Speaker 1: an indentured servant in the seventeenth century. Eventually became a landowner.
6:57
Speaker 1: But they didn't It's not like they had a ton
6:59
Speaker 1: of money. His dad, Filo great.
7:01
Speaker 2: Name, yeah, all these are great names, was he was.
7:04
Speaker 1: Not super successful, so it was kind of up to
7:07
Speaker 1: young pt to make his own way in life.
7:11
Speaker 2: Right. Yeah. His father was a farmer, which introduced Phineas
7:17
Speaker 2: to the idea that he really hated like manual, mindless work.
7:21
Speaker 1: Now, he didn't like doing that farm work.
7:23
Speaker 2: But that's not to say he didn't like work. He
7:26
Speaker 2: just liked very specific kinds of work where his energies
7:29
Speaker 2: were appropriately chanting.
7:31
Speaker 1: Builking people out of money.
7:32
Speaker 2: Sure, yeah, I mean that that was kind of it.
7:34
Speaker 1: He liked.
7:35
Speaker 2: He was the definition of the word enterprising, right, she
7:38
Speaker 2: could figure out a way. He could look at something literally,
7:41
Speaker 2: look at something that you couldn't you could almost not
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Speaker 2: give away, you certainly couldn't sell, and turn it into
7:48
Speaker 2: pure profits. Like he got into lotteries for a little
7:51
Speaker 2: while once, right.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean he went to work. He left the farm,
7:54
Speaker 1: went to work at a country store and realized quickly, like,
7:57
Speaker 1: just because you're in the country doesn't mean there aren't
8:00
Speaker 1: like swindlers and cheaters out here. So he kind of
8:03
Speaker 1: learned some of the tricks of the trade there. His
8:05
Speaker 1: old man died when he was fifteen, and he was
8:09
Speaker 1: kind of his mom had his mom had to get
8:11
Speaker 1: a job, but he was basically like, all right, it's
8:13
Speaker 1: kind of up to me now to provide for my family.
8:16
Speaker 1: So he moved got that another job as a store clerk,
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Speaker 1: and as you said, got into lotteries.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, and he was early on pursuing a career at clerkship,
8:26
Speaker 2: which I guess is a thing, but yeah, so there
8:29
Speaker 2: was this he saw easy money and lottery, so he
8:33
Speaker 2: set up on himself. Apparently when he was working for
8:35
Speaker 2: these owners of the store, they were away at one point,
8:40
Speaker 2: and he got his eyes on some tin kitchen ware
8:44
Speaker 2: that just would not sell. So he took some other
8:47
Speaker 2: stuff that wouldn't sell at that store. These things weren't his,
8:50
Speaker 2: by the way, and he traded them for a bottle collection,
8:54
Speaker 2: which I guess was the thing that people wanted at
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Speaker 2: the time. Yeah, and he put those things up as prizes, right,
9:00
Speaker 2: and he started a lottery and these were the prizes,
9:03
Speaker 2: and there were cash prizes. But he ended up selling
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Speaker 2: like a thousand tickets or something like that in this
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Speaker 2: little town store based on these prizes and some cash prizes,
9:14
Speaker 2: saying like half of all tickets were going to be winners,
9:17
Speaker 2: and you might win a bottle or you might win
9:19
Speaker 2: like a tin muffin pan, but you could also win
9:22
Speaker 2: this cash. And so these things that had just been
9:24
Speaker 2: sitting on these shelves forever were suddenly turned into something
9:27
Speaker 2: valuable thanks to his marketing expertise. And this is while
9:30
Speaker 2: he's still a teenager.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, we've covered this in something before that lotteries were
9:35
Speaker 1: a thing back then that someone could just cook up.
9:39
Speaker 1: You know, it's not like the lotteries we have today,
9:41
Speaker 1: Like these sanctioned, sanctioned ways of stealing people's money. Right,
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Speaker 1: But back then you could just cook up a lottery
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Speaker 1: in a small town and be like, you know what
9:50
Speaker 1: I've got. It was almost like a Ponzi thing, like
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Speaker 1: I can raise money, give away some of that money
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Speaker 1: and prizes, and then keep the.
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Speaker 2: Rest, right. I think that was in our lotteries episode.
10:01
Speaker 2: Oh really yeah?
10:02
Speaker 1: Okay, Well, in order to do that, though, you have
10:04
Speaker 1: to be a natural born salesperson, which is what he was.
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Speaker 2: You really do and like lotteries would played like a
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Speaker 2: theme throughout his early career, like that's how he ended
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Speaker 2: up making his initial I don't know fortune's the right word,
10:17
Speaker 2: but that's how he staked himself and his family was
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Speaker 2: through lotteries and working in stores and then eventually owning
10:24
Speaker 2: stores like general stores, grocery stores, that kind of thing.
10:27
Speaker 2: But the lotteries are where he made his money. And
10:29
Speaker 2: he actually figured out that you could make more money
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Speaker 2: with less work than having to go to the trouble
10:36
Speaker 2: of setting up a lottery. Like you said, anybody could
10:39
Speaker 2: just set up a lottery by taking tickets from somebody
10:43
Speaker 2: else's lottery and selling them further out at an increased price.
10:48
Speaker 2: But then he figured out one more thing, Chuck. You
10:51
Speaker 2: didn't even have to go out and sell these things yourself.
10:53
Speaker 2: You could hire other people to sell them even further out.
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Speaker 2: All you had to do was give them the tickets
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Speaker 2: and collect the money that they brought. So he ended
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Speaker 2: up making money by basically expanding other people's lotteries for
11:06
Speaker 2: a while.
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Speaker 1: That's right. And in the middle of this, and he
11:09
Speaker 1: had moved to Brooklyn at this point, he's kind of
11:11
Speaker 1: hopping all over the place there in the northeast.
11:14
Speaker 2: But uh, and and to be fair, we're hopping kind
11:17
Speaker 2: of all over his early life right now. Yeah, chronologically.
11:21
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. So in this time period, he met who
11:24
Speaker 1: would become his wife, a woman named Charity Hallett, who
11:28
Speaker 1: he described in his autobiography as a fair, rosy cheeked,
11:32
Speaker 1: buxom girl with beautiful white teeth. Did I mention she
11:36
Speaker 1: had big.
11:37
Speaker 2: Boobs, right, but those teeth.
11:40
Speaker 1: Man. So they would get married, and I think they
11:44
Speaker 1: had four daughters. But during all this time he did
11:49
Speaker 1: he had a little Josh Clark in him, because you mean, well,
11:54
Speaker 1: he was writing letters to local papers that weren't getting published.
11:58
Speaker 1: So he said, you know what, I'm going to start
12:00
Speaker 1: my own paper. Yeah, he clarked himself a paper.
12:03
Speaker 2: I'll see you all in Hell media.
12:06
Speaker 1: Yeah, and much like yourself, you started your own paper,
12:09
Speaker 1: which was kind of cool.
12:10
Speaker 2: Sure. I mean like, if people won't print your crank ideas, yeah,
12:14
Speaker 2: go start your own paper.
12:16
Speaker 1: It's like if you want to get your manifesto out
12:17
Speaker 1: there and.
12:19
Speaker 2: Either yeah, either become you and Obama esque, which we
12:22
Speaker 2: don't recommend, or start your own paper.
12:24
Speaker 1: That's right. And his was called Herald of Freedom, which
12:27
Speaker 1: is terrible. And this is where it gets a little
12:29
Speaker 1: weird because he kind of went after people, was eventually
12:34
Speaker 1: hit with a libel suit and spent sixty days in jail.
12:38
Speaker 1: But that sold a lot of papers, and he was
12:40
Speaker 1: also hailed as a hero because apparently he was legitimately
12:44
Speaker 1: exposing corruption.
12:45
Speaker 2: Right, So to me, Chuck, that one really stood out
12:49
Speaker 2: because it shows just how huge this guy's life story is. Yeah,
12:56
Speaker 2: that even if you make a movie out of it, all,
12:58
Speaker 2: the best you can hope for is to pick like
13:01
Speaker 2: five or six or ten different things and try to
13:03
Speaker 2: find a thread throughout him. Right, Whether that's an accurate
13:06
Speaker 2: portrailer or not, it can't possibly be, because this guy's
13:10
Speaker 2: life was just so enormous and he did so many things,
13:13
Speaker 2: and he was such an outsize character that a lot
13:16
Speaker 2: of times you either vilify him or glorify him, and
13:21
Speaker 2: it was much more a combination of both of those things.
13:23
Speaker 2: And I think that example really says it all. Like
13:26
Speaker 2: he had his notions, and he started his own paper
13:29
Speaker 2: and ended up going to jail and subscription boosted, so
13:32
Speaker 2: ended up making money from it. But at the same time,
13:34
Speaker 2: he was legitimately trying to call out corruption in this
13:38
Speaker 2: town that he cared about. So his character was much
13:42
Speaker 2: more complex than you get just from just about any
13:46
Speaker 2: source unless you read biographies about him.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, agreed. So finally he says, I'm sorry, Connecticut said
13:55
Speaker 1: no more lotteries in Connecticut. So he's like, all right,
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Speaker 1: what am I doing here if I can't do this
14:01
Speaker 1: little scam?
14:02
Speaker 2: He's like, I love this town, but not that much.
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Speaker 1: So in eighteen thirty four he left the paper, shut
14:07
Speaker 1: that down, moved his family to New York City and
14:11
Speaker 1: should we take a break? Perfect, All right, we're in
14:14
Speaker 1: New York City and we'll be back right after this.
14:16
Speaker 3: If you want to know, then you're in luck. Just
14:20
Speaker 3: listen to josh selfus.
14:26
Speaker 1: No stuff you sho.
14:32
Speaker 2: No, I got a falafel.
14:44
Speaker 1: Is it good?
14:44
Speaker 2: It's pretty good?
14:45
Speaker 1: Is it from the halal guys? Uh?
14:47
Speaker 2: Huh of course, man, who else are you going to
14:49
Speaker 2: get a falaffel from?
14:50
Speaker 1: That's good stuff? Yeah? Uh so, Man, this guy really
14:55
Speaker 1: just reading through this thing. He did so many.
14:59
Speaker 2: Jobs, right, he was a factotem.
15:02
Speaker 1: Dozens and dozens of jobs through his lifetime.
15:05
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I'm glad he didn't just stick to clerking, right,
15:09
Speaker 2: or even lottery. He had this thing like something about
15:13
Speaker 2: show business attracted this guy. Oh yeah, I don't know
15:17
Speaker 2: what it was. Maybe nobody but him knows what it was.
15:20
Speaker 2: Maybe he doesn't even know what it was. But he
15:22
Speaker 2: was attracted to the idea of like wowing and amusing
15:27
Speaker 2: and amazing crowds. And he did that pretty early on.
15:33
Speaker 2: I think he was twenty five when he got into
15:38
Speaker 2: exhibiting a human being who he purchased and owned for
15:42
Speaker 2: a while, which, by the way, does not show up
15:44
Speaker 2: in the Greatest Showman.
15:46
Speaker 1: Right, And this is after in New York he started
15:49
Speaker 1: a boarding house for a while. Yeah, and co owned
15:51
Speaker 1: a grocery store for a while.
15:53
Speaker 2: Right.
15:54
Speaker 1: And so like his life is full of him just
15:57
Speaker 1: trying to do these kind of regular things and then
16:00
Speaker 1: being like Nope, gotta go buy a lady and put
16:02
Speaker 1: her on display.
16:03
Speaker 2: Right, this is after Chuck. By the way, he had
16:06
Speaker 2: come down with smallpox for a while.
16:08
Speaker 1: Oh did we miss a smallpox?
16:11
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Like, this guy had a
16:13
Speaker 2: huge life. Let's get to Joyce Heath right, Yeah, because
16:17
Speaker 2: she is a very controversial part of P. T. Barnum's life.
16:22
Speaker 2: She was the first, his first foray into show business.
16:26
Speaker 2: And there's no other way to put it. Like he
16:28
Speaker 2: purchased her. She was a slave and elderly slave who
16:33
Speaker 2: he purchased from another promoter who had been touting her
16:36
Speaker 2: as General George Washington's nurse maid. Yes, from when George
16:41
Speaker 2: Washington was a child. This is eighteen thirty five, right,
16:45
Speaker 2: you did as she was supposedly one hundred and sixty
16:48
Speaker 2: one years old.
16:50
Speaker 1: Yeah, so he negotiates a price. He went and saw her,
16:54
Speaker 1: and she was blind, she had no teeth, she was
16:57
Speaker 1: partially paralyzed, but she could talk and tell her story.
17:01
Speaker 2: Yeah, she told stories about young George as a boy.
17:05
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, and to be fair, she was already being exploited.
17:09
Speaker 1: It's not like he which is not great. But it's
17:13
Speaker 1: not like Barnum introduced this into her life.
17:16
Speaker 2: No, he just purchased her and took it over. Yeah,
17:19
Speaker 2: it took over the exploitation money.
17:22
Speaker 1: For a thousand dollars, and he toured with her until
17:26
Speaker 1: she died, not that long later, just like a year later,
17:29
Speaker 1: not even in eighteen thirty six. He made a lot
17:32
Speaker 1: of dough and it was it was sort of a
17:36
Speaker 1: watershed moment for him where I think he was like,
17:38
Speaker 1: wait a minute, I've realized that I can get people
17:44
Speaker 1: in a room by cooking up these stories and getting
17:48
Speaker 1: things in the newspaper and printing these posters, and even if,
17:53
Speaker 1: like if business was down, he would do these crazy things,
17:57
Speaker 1: like one of them when business was down, appearing with Heath.
18:01
Speaker 1: At one point he accused her of being a robot
18:05
Speaker 1: what they called at the time an automaton.
18:08
Speaker 2: In an anonymous letter to the editor in a newspaper.
18:10
Speaker 1: Yeah, a robot made of whalebone, rubber and springs. So
18:14
Speaker 1: everyone was like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Not only is she
18:17
Speaker 1: George Washington's nurse maid, but she's really a robot.
18:21
Speaker 2: Right. What that did was it got the people who
18:25
Speaker 2: had been avoiding going to see her, because even at
18:28
Speaker 2: the time, people were like, this is pure exploitation. This
18:32
Speaker 2: woman is being exhibited like a giraffe would be or
18:35
Speaker 2: something like that. She's an old lady's working her ten
18:38
Speaker 2: to twelve hours a day. Some people think that he
18:41
Speaker 2: worked her to death, literally, And so there was part
18:45
Speaker 2: of the press that was saying a reporting on this
18:48
Speaker 2: with great distaste. So there's a segment of American society
18:52
Speaker 2: who would not be caught dead seeing George Washington's one
18:55
Speaker 2: hundred and sixty year old nursemaid, but they would conceive
18:59
Speaker 2: a go see an autonomaton if that's really what was
19:03
Speaker 2: going on. So he managed to dupe the very people
19:08
Speaker 2: who were critical of this exploitation that he was undertaking.
19:12
Speaker 2: He got everybody in that one.
19:14
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, and it gets even worse. Finally, when she
19:17
Speaker 1: passed away, he actually sold tickets to a public autopsy
19:21
Speaker 1: in a saloon so people could come look at this
19:24
Speaker 1: poor woman's insides. And this is where it was finally revealed.
19:29
Speaker 1: Doctor said, she's maybe like eighty eighty one years old at.
19:33
Speaker 2: Most, right, And this was so Jane McGrath kind of
19:38
Speaker 2: walks past, like what a controversy this was, Like this
19:42
Speaker 2: guy had been like very much touting that she was
19:45
Speaker 2: the nurse maid, like he supposedly had the bill of
19:49
Speaker 2: sale to George Washington's father for her, so like he
19:53
Speaker 2: was saying, like, this is legitimately one hundred and six
19:55
Speaker 2: year old woman. So in this autopsy that he charged for.
19:58
Speaker 2: When it was exposed that she was actually half that age,
20:03
Speaker 2: it was there was a bit of disgrace there, and
20:06
Speaker 2: he had to learn to roll with the punches. And
20:08
Speaker 2: it was about this time that that he basically said
20:12
Speaker 2: to himself, you can you can take this as a
20:16
Speaker 2: lesson and go on the straight and narrow, maybe get
20:18
Speaker 2: back into clerking. Yeah, or you can double maybe triple
20:23
Speaker 2: and quadruple down on this and and see where that goes.
20:27
Speaker 2: And he chose the ladder of the two for sure.
20:30
Speaker 1: That's right. He sure did. The next thing that he did,
20:33
Speaker 1: the next person that he kind of took under his
20:35
Speaker 1: wing was his greasy greasy wing, was someone called yea,
20:46
Speaker 1: why is it spelled that way?
20:48
Speaker 2: That is the Italian spelling of signor.
20:51
Speaker 1: Oh, well, let me turn it on then nice antonio antonio,
20:59
Speaker 1: And an extra bit in.
21:00
Speaker 2: There, signor antonio is another way to say.
21:03
Speaker 1: Well, sure if you're a dullard.
21:07
Speaker 2: I'm a bit of a dullard, chuck. I think you
21:09
Speaker 2: know that after ten years.
21:11
Speaker 1: So this guy, we're really milking that ten year thing.
21:14
Speaker 2: Hum. I've got my SYSK ten year Army shirt on.
21:18
Speaker 1: I see that. It's really nice.
21:20
Speaker 2: Thank you. I've been working on my bucksomeness.
21:23
Speaker 1: You're quite buxom. So Senior Antonio was a balancer. He's
21:28
Speaker 1: one of these guys like a plate spinner, walked on stilts, juggles.
21:34
Speaker 1: He could throw things in the air and catch them
21:36
Speaker 1: very fast.
21:37
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's like a hippie.
21:39
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. He would be on tour with he'd have
21:41
Speaker 1: those little sticks what are those called, devil sticks?
21:44
Speaker 2: Devil sticks or a hackey sack, any of those things.
21:47
Speaker 1: Yeah, he pull a hacky sack out of his ear
21:49
Speaker 1: at any moment. So this guy, he said, all right,
21:52
Speaker 1: you need to be my newest client. I will make
21:54
Speaker 1: you famous. Change your stage name from Signor Antonio to
22:00
Speaker 1: Senor Vivala because that's a little more I don't know, exciting.
22:05
Speaker 2: I guess I like Senor Antonio. Yeah I did too.
22:09
Speaker 2: It's a lateral move.
22:11
Speaker 1: Here's the thing, though, is there were a lot of
22:13
Speaker 1: dudes out there spinning plates, so he it wasn't like
22:16
Speaker 1: he was so unique. But Barnum thought, you know what,
22:20
Speaker 1: I think you're better than the rest. So here's what
22:23
Speaker 1: i'll do. And again this is just another example of
22:26
Speaker 1: how how good he was at promotion. He said, I'll
22:29
Speaker 1: do a free performance for a theater and I'll even
22:33
Speaker 1: be your assistant on stage. And people came, and so
22:37
Speaker 1: the theater said, all right, I guess if people come
22:40
Speaker 1: for free, they'll pay.
22:42
Speaker 2: I think I think what he was saying was he Yeah,
22:45
Speaker 2: I think that's exactly I think you're right.
22:47
Speaker 1: He just wowed them enough.
22:48
Speaker 2: I think that's that's the impression I have.
22:50
Speaker 1: Yeah.
22:50
Speaker 2: But even still, despite Vivala being genuinely good, he was
22:55
Speaker 2: I think head and shoulders above most of his contemporary spinners.
23:00
Speaker 1: Yeah.
23:00
Speaker 2: I think people saw in the press, oh there's a
23:03
Speaker 2: really good plate spinner. We saw a plate spinner at
23:06
Speaker 2: the at the office last week. So I'm not going
23:08
Speaker 2: to go anywhere to see another plate spinner. I'm certainly
23:11
Speaker 2: not going to pay.
23:12
Speaker 1: Yeah.
23:12
Speaker 2: So Barnum had a pretty good idea, But I actually
23:15
Speaker 2: came out of an uncomfortable situation that fell into his
23:20
Speaker 2: lap with Roberts, another plate spinner.
23:24
Speaker 1: Yeah, so this is a rival plate spinner who apparently
23:27
Speaker 1: would go to produce on the West Coast. Yeah, he
23:31
Speaker 1: was a crip and he would go to Vivala's performances
23:35
Speaker 1: and heckel him. I guess you call that plate spinning.
23:39
Speaker 2: Boo, terrible plate spinning.
23:41
Speaker 1: Stuff like that, And so P. T. Barnum cooked up
23:44
Speaker 1: a thing where he was like, all right, I'll offer
23:46
Speaker 1: one thousand American dollars to anyone who can perform the
23:51
Speaker 1: Vivalas act in public. Roberts accepted. But here's what really
23:56
Speaker 1: happened is he got together with Roberts and they all
23:59
Speaker 1: three hatched a plan to do these kind of staged competitions.
24:03
Speaker 2: Right, so they promoted in the.
24:05
Speaker 1: Place spinning competitions.
24:07
Speaker 2: East Coast, West Coast played spinning rivalry is going on
24:10
Speaker 2: right now. Everybody's going to come see this, and everybody did.
24:14
Speaker 2: And in that first performance, Roberts, as was staged, conceded
24:19
Speaker 2: he could not replicate Vivala's act. It was too good.
24:23
Speaker 2: But I would love to see Vivala replicate my act.
24:27
Speaker 2: And I challenge you, Senor Vivalla, to replicate my act
24:31
Speaker 2: tomorrow night at this same theater, and they kept going
24:35
Speaker 2: back and forth like that, with this staged rivalry that
24:39
Speaker 2: they made some cash off of, thanks to Barnum's ingenuity.
24:43
Speaker 1: They did. Finally, in eighteen thirty six, the circus comes
24:46
Speaker 1: into the picture. He joined a traveling circus. Barnum did
24:50
Speaker 1: as a ticket seller, which I take it to mean
24:53
Speaker 1: he doesn't sit in a booth and sell tickets, but
24:55
Speaker 1: he goes around town selling tickets.
24:57
Speaker 2: Yeah, like chambers of commerce or something like that.
25:00
Speaker 1: Yeah, And of course he got a little commission off
25:02
Speaker 1: this thing, so he was making some dough.
25:05
Speaker 2: Vivoala joined the same circus as a performer.
25:08
Speaker 1: Of course they were attached at the hip at that point.
25:11
Speaker 2: No, that was Changinang bunker you're thinking of.
25:15
Speaker 1: That's a dad joke.
25:17
Speaker 2: It totally was.
25:20
Speaker 1: And this one I thought was a little bit weird.
25:23
Speaker 1: Apparently the circus proprietor, a guy named Turner, was into
25:28
Speaker 1: practical jokes and not very good ones. Because this practical
25:33
Speaker 1: joke was he convinced a crowd that Barnum was the
25:36
Speaker 1: reverend e from Avery who had been acquitted of murder.
25:40
Speaker 1: But everyone thought that this guy had committed murder, and
25:43
Speaker 1: back then, no one knew anyone looked like so he said,
25:45
Speaker 1: this guy is from Avery, and he almost got lynched.
25:49
Speaker 2: Apparently, Yeah, like from Avery's name was not very well
25:53
Speaker 2: liked in the area. He was, at the very least
25:56
Speaker 2: he through having an adulterous affair with a young woman
26:00
Speaker 2: and had induced her to kill herself, or at worst
26:03
Speaker 2: had murdered her to prevent her from having his illegitimate child. Yeah,
26:07
Speaker 2: but he's going to quit it. Right, Andy's a reverend,
26:10
Speaker 2: did we mention? So, yeah, the crowd, like, according to Barnum,
26:15
Speaker 2: almost killed them.
26:15
Speaker 1: It's a real funny joke, I know.
26:17
Speaker 2: But then later on, Jane says that Barnum got even
26:22
Speaker 2: with him with his own practical joke. I could find
26:25
Speaker 2: nothing anywhere, including in Barnum's autobiography that mentions that.
26:31
Speaker 1: I think he covered his toilet and saran wrap.
26:34
Speaker 2: No crude, that's so nasty.
26:38
Speaker 1: No, No, he gave him an upper decker.
26:40
Speaker 2: Gross, that's even worse.
26:44
Speaker 1: So apparently these guys got into business together and it
26:47
Speaker 1: became a thing where people would go see the circus,
26:50
Speaker 1: where the two ring masters would would kind of go
26:53
Speaker 1: at each other with these practical jokes. Right, that became
26:56
Speaker 1: a thing.
26:57
Speaker 2: So there's a transition going on, another transition now he is.
27:02
Speaker 2: He started out store clerking, lotterying, went got into show
27:07
Speaker 2: business where it's like basically a Colonel Tom to different performers. Yeah,
27:13
Speaker 2: and then now he's transitioning into the circus. But by
27:16
Speaker 2: now he's been like married to the road about as
27:19
Speaker 2: much as he's been married to Charity as well. And
27:22
Speaker 2: from all accounts, like he was very much in love
27:25
Speaker 2: with her and they were like he was faithful and
27:28
Speaker 2: they were a real couple. But he was on the
27:31
Speaker 2: road a lot. There's just no if ands or butts
27:33
Speaker 2: about it. He was out there on the road quite
27:35
Speaker 2: a bit. So transitioning to a circus was basically the
27:38
Speaker 2: same thing. It was just a little bigger of an outfit.
27:41
Speaker 2: So it was like a step up. But you got
27:43
Speaker 2: to also keep in mind here that he's spending a
27:45
Speaker 2: lot of time on the road at a time when
27:48
Speaker 2: travel was really long and really tough.
27:51
Speaker 1: That's right, And so he eventually decides working for someone
27:54
Speaker 1: else's circus is for the birds. I'm going to start
27:57
Speaker 1: my own. You buy some horse and wagons, going to
28:00
Speaker 1: get a clown. You gotta have a clown. I think
28:03
Speaker 1: he still had Vivala at the time. Yeah, and started
28:08
Speaker 1: Barnum's Grand Scientific and Musical Theater. Toured all over the
28:12
Speaker 1: place for a little while, and then they disbanded. Right,
28:17
Speaker 1: nothing ever seemed to work out for very long.
28:20
Speaker 2: No, I think that he got fed up and says
28:23
Speaker 2: with some of the rivalries with other showmen that they,
28:28
Speaker 2: you know, you would build your whole circus around like
28:31
Speaker 2: an act, and all of a sudden, the act would
28:33
Speaker 2: be like, I'm sick of this, I'm sick of being
28:35
Speaker 2: on the road. I'll see you later, and all of
28:37
Speaker 2: a sudden your circus would fall apart. I think they
28:39
Speaker 2: were kind of tenuous outfits, right, but he he The
28:44
Speaker 2: thing about Barnum was like something about this called to him,
28:47
Speaker 2: like he would when his circus collapsed and he was
28:50
Speaker 2: out in the middle of the country on the road
28:52
Speaker 2: and he had to go back home. The first thing
28:54
Speaker 2: you would do is start figuring out his next circus
28:57
Speaker 2: or his next act or whatever it was. He would
28:59
Speaker 2: go back out again. He was in indefatigable, into fatigueable
29:08
Speaker 2: in that sense.
29:10
Speaker 1: Uh. Yeah, So I mean we'll quickly speed through the
29:12
Speaker 1: next couple of years. He did a little steamboat circus
29:16
Speaker 1: for a little while along the Mississippi River. That didn't
29:19
Speaker 1: come along. He tried to do a respectable business again,
29:23
Speaker 1: went into business with a guy who manufactured a grease
29:28
Speaker 1: paste in Cologne. That did it all right for a
29:31
Speaker 1: little while, but then that failed. Uh, and then this
29:35
Speaker 1: whole time, he still feels that pull to the tent. Right.
29:39
Speaker 2: He sold illustrated bibles for a little while. Yeah, finally,
29:44
Speaker 2: here's the thing he wanted stability, like being out on
29:48
Speaker 2: the road was tough, s Steve Perry, right, but he
29:55
Speaker 2: wanted this to be tied to show business in some way. Yeah,
29:59
Speaker 2: finally one and I think the eighteen forty one he
30:05
Speaker 2: had another big break or another big vision. There's a
30:10
Speaker 2: place in New York, a museum and what you would
30:14
Speaker 2: call today a museum that was up for sale in
30:18
Speaker 2: I'm not sure where it was, but it was in
30:20
Speaker 2: New York, right, yes, And it was called Scudder's American Museum.
30:23
Speaker 2: And Barnum heard that Scudder wanted to get out and
30:28
Speaker 2: was putting the whole collection up for fifteen grand, which
30:32
Speaker 2: is a substantial amount of money and definitely more money
30:34
Speaker 2: than Barnum had. But he said that's it. Right there.
30:37
Speaker 2: I can have a permanent place where people come to me,
30:40
Speaker 2: and I can be home with my wife and daughters.
30:44
Speaker 2: But I can still have this daily interaction with show business.
30:48
Speaker 2: I got to buy that.
30:49
Speaker 1: Thing, well, and it will also accomplish this is I
30:53
Speaker 1: can still have my freak show performers. But because it's
30:58
Speaker 1: a museum, somehow it has a little bit more respectability
31:02
Speaker 1: because apparently at the time, theaters weren't like they are today.
31:06
Speaker 1: It wasn't like we're going to the theater. Theaters could
31:10
Speaker 1: be a little bit like a second tier entertainment.
31:14
Speaker 2: Right, It was like hoypolloy, tawdry crowds went to the theater. Yeah,
31:19
Speaker 2: that was associated with like Burlasque or something like that,
31:21
Speaker 2: or even like humanodities exhibition stuff like that. That was
31:25
Speaker 2: theater stuff. A museum like scudders, like respectable people could
31:30
Speaker 2: go there. So what Barnum did was he bought a
31:33
Speaker 2: museum and then dragged it down into the mud.
31:36
Speaker 1: Right and this hold the way he financed the museum,
31:38
Speaker 1: I didn't fully understand, to be.
31:41
Speaker 2: Honest, Do you want me to explain it if you want,
31:44
Speaker 2: or we could just say he ended up with the
31:46
Speaker 2: museum in eighteen forty one through a lot of work.
31:49
Speaker 1: And I think that's fair enough because it is a
31:52
Speaker 1: little bit like you know, Robin Peter to pay Paul.
31:55
Speaker 1: It wasn't just a straight up purchase. Let's just say that, right.
31:58
Speaker 2: But so one thing that you can say about this museum,
32:00
Speaker 2: which he renamed Barnum's American Museum, it was a big success.
32:06
Speaker 2: And one of the reasons it was a big success
32:08
Speaker 2: was because he was he tirelessly worked at finding new
32:14
Speaker 2: and interesting ways to market the thing, right, Yeah, and
32:19
Speaker 2: by I'm not sure exactly when, but by a very
32:23
Speaker 2: short time after he opened it, I think that same
32:26
Speaker 2: year in eighteen forty one, he was he charged twenty
32:32
Speaker 2: five cents a person for admission. He had something like
32:36
Speaker 2: four thousand visitors a day. And he took this thing,
32:41
Speaker 2: like I say that he dragged the Ward Museum down
32:43
Speaker 2: in the mud. He definitely added and expanded to the
32:46
Speaker 2: definition of museum. And then he also had this lecture
32:49
Speaker 2: hall where he had like performances that you would see
32:52
Speaker 2: like in a circus or something like that. And he
32:55
Speaker 2: turned this place into an emporium just something huge in
32:59
Speaker 2: an norm as spectacle and something like eight hundred and
33:03
Speaker 2: fifty thousand pieces were on display in his museum, so
33:07
Speaker 2: you definitely got your quarter's worth for sure.
33:10
Speaker 1: Yeah, and those are just the pieces he also, I mean,
33:12
Speaker 1: as far as the circus element, he had everything covered.
33:16
Speaker 1: He had dancers, musicians, plate spinners, ventriloquists. Well you got
33:21
Speaker 1: to have the plate spin He had little people, he
33:24
Speaker 1: had big people. He had ladies with beards, and robots
33:27
Speaker 1: and puppets and animals, he had drafts and grizzly bears.
33:32
Speaker 1: Like he really had everything humming on all cylinders at
33:36
Speaker 1: this point.
33:37
Speaker 2: Yeah, he really did. And again there was still there
33:40
Speaker 2: was a whole thread of like, you know, there are
33:42
Speaker 2: people being exploited, there were people who were complicit in that,
33:47
Speaker 2: there were people who were Anyone who came to the
33:51
Speaker 2: museum was gawking at, you know, the weirdness of these
33:57
Speaker 2: other people or whatever, which again today is very odd
34:00
Speaker 2: to us, but at the time was still odd. Like
34:04
Speaker 2: that's the thing that I think it's lost on people.
34:06
Speaker 2: Like there were side shows and things like that, but
34:09
Speaker 2: Barnum took it to an extraordinary degree and really ran
34:15
Speaker 2: with it and became extremely rich as a result. Actually,
34:19
Speaker 2: should we take a break, I'm ready to all.
34:21
Speaker 1: Right, the museums humming along. We're gonna take a break.
34:24
Speaker 1: We'll be back right after this.
34:25
Speaker 3: If you want to know then you're in luck. Just
34:29
Speaker 3: listen up to selfus.
34:38
Speaker 2: Stuffus, Okay, we're back.
34:53
Speaker 1: Yeah. So we mentioned earlier about the humbug, this kind
34:56
Speaker 1: of hucksterism in his biography there or auto biography, which
35:01
Speaker 1: was rewritten by himself by the way, after people read
35:04
Speaker 1: the first version and said, what a jerk. Yeah.
35:08
Speaker 2: Yeah, he was like just openly boastful and braggered about
35:11
Speaker 2: how much he exploited people and how much he duped
35:14
Speaker 2: the American public.
35:15
Speaker 1: He turned it down a little bit in this in
35:17
Speaker 1: the revision, but he did talk a little bit about
35:22
Speaker 1: being slightly embarrassed about kind of how shameless he was.
35:25
Speaker 1: But then again in the next line he would say,
35:28
Speaker 1: but you know what, this is how everyone is in
35:30
Speaker 1: my business. I'm just better at it than them.
35:32
Speaker 2: Basically, yeah, he said, he said, oh, there's a great quote.
35:38
Speaker 2: I can't find it anywhere though where Basically if he oh, here,
35:43
Speaker 2: it is if his advertising was quote more audacious than
35:47
Speaker 2: his competitors, it was not because I had less scruple
35:51
Speaker 2: than they, but more energy. Far more ingenuity and a
35:54
Speaker 2: better foundation for such promises.
35:56
Speaker 1: He thought a lot of himself, He.
35:58
Speaker 2: Definitely did, but he also worked pretty are at it,
36:00
Speaker 2: for sure. And I think if you, if you compared
36:03
Speaker 2: apples to apples at the time, Barnum's jam was way
36:07
Speaker 2: better than anybody else's jam.
36:09
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. So uh. He had three really big
36:14
Speaker 1: successes in a row with his with his museum here.
36:18
Speaker 1: The first one was called the Fiji Mermaid f e
36:21
Speaker 1: e j ee. This was in eighteen forty two, and
36:25
Speaker 1: this was a big, a big deal. He got a
36:27
Speaker 1: man named Levi Lyman or Levy Lyman. He was an
36:31
Speaker 1: old colleague of his, and he said, here's what I'll do.
36:35
Speaker 1: You're gonna you are now, doctor J. Griffin. You're a
36:38
Speaker 1: naturalist for the British Lyceum of Natural History, which was
36:43
Speaker 1: not a real place, and you were the you were
36:47
Speaker 1: in ownership of what we'll call the Fiji Mermaid, which
36:51
Speaker 1: was a what did we call it in the taxidermy
36:55
Speaker 1: rogue taxidermy, Yeah, it was rogue taxidermy. It totally was
37:00
Speaker 1: I could jackalobe, except what was it? It was a
37:02
Speaker 1: head of a baboon torso of an orangutang and a
37:06
Speaker 1: fishtail just for good measure.
37:09
Speaker 2: Yeah, and as far back as they can tell, it
37:11
Speaker 2: was probably made by a Japanese sailor in the eighteen twenties,
37:16
Speaker 2: and it passed through a few hands before Barnum finally
37:18
Speaker 2: leased it and put it on display.
37:20
Speaker 1: I wonder where that thing is now.
37:22
Speaker 2: I looked. I don't know there are other Fiji mermaids
37:26
Speaker 2: out there.
37:26
Speaker 1: There was.
37:27
Speaker 2: It was like kind of a thread of rogue tax
37:29
Speaker 2: at ermy in the mid nineteenth century, and I think
37:31
Speaker 2: Harvard has one on display. But I look to find
37:34
Speaker 2: out where PT. Barnums is and I can't find it.
37:38
Speaker 1: It's probably like on Richard Branson's headboard or something.
37:41
Speaker 2: It may have actually burned up in one of the
37:43
Speaker 2: many fires that plagued P. T. Barnum's life.
37:47
Speaker 1: Things are going to get fiery here in this last
37:49
Speaker 1: bit too.
37:50
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, anyway, let's get back to the Fiji mermaid though. Okay, okay,
37:54
Speaker 2: So Doctor J. Griffin is touring with this supposedly touring
37:59
Speaker 2: with this mermaid, right sure, and Barnum, but the guy's
38:04
Speaker 2: actually not out there touring. Barnum basically creates out a
38:07
Speaker 2: whole cloth a tour of this mermaid, writes letters about
38:11
Speaker 2: how great this thing is in different people's names, and
38:14
Speaker 2: then mails them to friends that live around the country
38:17
Speaker 2: and asks them to mail those letters in to newspapers
38:22
Speaker 2: in New York talking about how this thing has to
38:25
Speaker 2: be seen to be believed.
38:27
Speaker 1: Yeah, so people came far and wide to see this
38:30
Speaker 1: piece of taxidermy.
38:32
Speaker 2: Yeah. And by the way, this whole Jay Griffin thing,
38:35
Speaker 2: like this guy was posing as him. He was giving
38:38
Speaker 2: public lectures made up as a naturalist, a British naturalist,
38:44
Speaker 2: and he was an American promoter. He had nothing to
38:47
Speaker 2: do with He was just making all this stuff up,
38:49
Speaker 2: but he would give like public lectures on it. I
38:52
Speaker 2: love it, like the audacity. It's amazing.
38:55
Speaker 1: So the second big victory was when he met up
38:58
Speaker 1: with a four year old named Charles Stratton. He was
39:01
Speaker 1: a little person, his cousin actually, and he stopped growing
39:05
Speaker 1: when he was two feet tall, and he changed his name,
39:08
Speaker 1: rebranded him as General Tom Thumb, and that name probably
39:12
Speaker 1: rings a bell. They became very famous together. He said,
39:15
Speaker 1: he was eleven years old, and they were a media
39:20
Speaker 1: and ticket selling sensation.
39:22
Speaker 2: Yeah. They would be like invited in to meet like Royalty,
39:26
Speaker 2: whatever country they toured. He was a huge hit at
39:30
Speaker 2: the museum. It was like a big deal for both
39:34
Speaker 2: Barnoman and Charles Stratton. That's right, a sensation, that's the
39:38
Speaker 2: best way to put it.
39:39
Speaker 1: In the final big victory of the trifecta. When he
39:43
Speaker 1: was in Europe with Stratton, he heard of Ginny Lynn.
39:47
Speaker 1: She was a Swedish opera singer, and this was the
39:49
Speaker 1: kind of thing where he was like, you know what,
39:52
Speaker 1: she doesn't have a beard. She's all she is is
39:56
Speaker 1: a talented singer, but she's amazing and this would really
40:00
Speaker 1: legitimize me if I did like a straight up act
40:03
Speaker 1: for a change. So even though she's big over here,
40:07
Speaker 1: they don't know about her in America and she could
40:08
Speaker 1: blow up there. So I'm going to offer her a
40:10
Speaker 1: thousand dollars per performance, which was a ton of money
40:14
Speaker 1: and a big risk, but he made about a half
40:16
Speaker 1: a million dollars with her or more. Who branded the
40:19
Speaker 1: Swedish Nightingale by trotting her around the United States, and
40:25
Speaker 1: she was like beyond a sensation in the United States.
40:29
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was another thing too. I mean, like she
40:31
Speaker 2: was pretty big in Europe, but I don't think she
40:33
Speaker 2: was well known, if known at all, in America, but
40:36
Speaker 2: by the time she showed up for the tour starting
40:39
Speaker 2: in eighteen fifty, he had managed to get, like you said,
40:42
Speaker 2: just turn her into a national sensation, like people had
40:46
Speaker 2: like Beatlemania for this lady. Yeah, this article says that
40:51
Speaker 2: she was not a very nice person. I didn't see
40:54
Speaker 2: that anywhere else, and I actually saw that. So after
40:57
Speaker 2: the contract between her and barn was up in eighteen
41:01
Speaker 2: fifty one, she continued to tour America with like an
41:05
Speaker 2: actual orchestra, I believe, And she made three hundred thousand
41:09
Speaker 2: dollars in eighteen fifties money from this whole American tour
41:15
Speaker 2: and donated every single penny of it to Sweden's public
41:18
Speaker 2: school system, which I oh, really burgeoning at the time. Yeah,
41:22
Speaker 2: so I don't know what Jane was talking about, but
41:25
Speaker 2: I think she just kind of didn't find America very cultured,
41:29
Speaker 2: is what I get. But apparently Jane didn't like that.
41:33
Speaker 1: Well, America probably wasn't very cultured in eighteen fifty.
41:35
Speaker 2: Right, but I thought that was pretty neat. Man. She
41:38
Speaker 2: took all that money and donated it to the public
41:40
Speaker 2: school system in Sweden.
41:42
Speaker 1: Man, that's crazy.
41:43
Speaker 2: But yeah, so Barnum was not legitimized thanks to that.
41:46
Speaker 2: I think it actually didn't go all that well. But
41:48
Speaker 2: he did enrich himself thoroughly through Jenny Lynn, for sure.
41:53
Speaker 1: That's right. But he would go broke again because he's P. T.
41:56
Speaker 1: Barnum and that's what he does. In the eighteen fifty
42:00
Speaker 1: he bought up a lot of land near Bridgeport, Connecticut
42:03
Speaker 1: because he wanted to make east Bridgeport. That happened in place.
42:07
Speaker 1: He invested in it in the Jerome Clock Company, wanted
42:10
Speaker 1: to relocate it to east Bridgeport. It was not a
42:13
Speaker 1: smart thing to do. The company went bankrupt, and all
42:17
Speaker 1: of a sudden he was broke again. And this is
42:19
Speaker 1: fire number one. He moves out of his mansion because
42:23
Speaker 1: he's broke, and then when after he had moved out,
42:26
Speaker 1: the mansion burned down.
42:27
Speaker 2: Right, But if he had to move out, you would
42:29
Speaker 2: think that he had relinquished ownership. So why does it
42:34
Speaker 2: matter as far as his life goes? Oh, unless he
42:37
Speaker 2: had a bunch of money stuffed into the insulation or something.
42:41
Speaker 2: I don't know, breaking bad thing going on.
42:43
Speaker 1: It might have just been a footnote or something, or
42:45
Speaker 1: he may maybe he did no I guess if he
42:48
Speaker 1: had moved out then Yeah, I didn't own.
42:50
Speaker 2: It's I just thought that was a little weird.
42:52
Speaker 1: Yeah.
42:53
Speaker 2: So he he was in debt, like big time, like
42:56
Speaker 2: broke bankrupt, in debt because of this terrible clock company thing,
43:01
Speaker 2: which you should always take as a reason to never
43:05
Speaker 2: put all of your eggs in one basket, which I
43:07
Speaker 2: guess is what he did. But he managed to emerge
43:12
Speaker 2: from debt after I think five years, and he ended
43:16
Speaker 2: up during this time he pawned his museum, but he
43:22
Speaker 2: also put the name of the museum in his wife's name,
43:26
Speaker 2: who was not bankrupt, and so they were able to
43:30
Speaker 2: make some income off of the lease for the museum.
43:33
Speaker 2: And then when he managed to buy the museum back
43:36
Speaker 2: after five years, he just went like right back to it,
43:39
Speaker 2: like like he didn't miss a beat.
43:42
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean this ten year period from eighteen fifty
43:44
Speaker 1: to eighteen sixty he went broke. He did the smart thing,
43:47
Speaker 1: like he said, with his wife. He started giving lectures
43:50
Speaker 1: about making money. He went on tour again with Tom
43:54
Speaker 1: Thomb He got a dead whale. He bought a dead
43:57
Speaker 1: whale and said, surely people will pay money to see this.
44:01
Speaker 1: So he was still doing all this crazy stuff. He
44:06
Speaker 1: bought a hippopotamus, he bought two beluga whales. Like, it's
44:11
Speaker 1: just crazy the things that he was doing.
44:14
Speaker 2: Also, Chuck, we have to say that the title of
44:16
Speaker 2: the lecture tour the Art of money getting.
44:21
Speaker 1: It's not even the art of making money, the art
44:23
Speaker 1: of money getting. Yeah.
44:25
Speaker 2: So so the the he's his stars starting to rise again.
44:32
Speaker 2: At the very least, his fortunes are reversing from from
44:35
Speaker 2: you know, just doing any kind of work he can
44:37
Speaker 2: get his hands on. And then all along this way,
44:41
Speaker 2: like Barnum was a pretty he was what's known as
44:44
Speaker 2: a Jacksonian Democrat, Jax Andrew Jackson was a populist president,
44:49
Speaker 2: and he was I think, didn't we lay he was
44:55
Speaker 2: the one who was responsible for the trail of tears, right,
44:59
Speaker 2: I'm pretty sure that was Andrew Jackson. It was remember
45:03
Speaker 2: our two part on trailer tears. I do, Okay, So
45:05
Speaker 2: he was he was p T. Barnum was of this
45:09
Speaker 2: man's party. He was a Jackson supporter. And then the
45:12
Speaker 2: Civil War breaks out and all of a sudden, Barnum
45:18
Speaker 2: has this like total conversion. He was not like an
45:23
Speaker 2: outright bigoted racist who worked to keep African Americans. Enslaved
45:31
Speaker 2: worked as a Confederate sympathizer anything like that. He was
45:34
Speaker 2: fairly unremarkable and pretty normal. Like, for example, at his museum,
45:40
Speaker 2: if you were black, you couldn't come in. It was
45:42
Speaker 2: a segregated museum. But that was like a lot of
45:44
Speaker 2: businesses at the time. So he was a very normal
45:46
Speaker 2: pedestrian person as far as his politics go, and and
45:51
Speaker 2: socially as well. But something happened around the time of
45:55
Speaker 2: the Civil War and he converted and actually became an abolitionist,
45:59
Speaker 2: huge union supporter and just basically became patriotic and dedicated
46:05
Speaker 2: this idea of preserving the Union and abolishing slavery.
46:10
Speaker 1: Yeah, and he used that museum as a sort of
46:13
Speaker 1: ground zero for his cause. He had speeches, he had
46:17
Speaker 1: plays that sort of endorsed this. He had Southern copperheads
46:22
Speaker 1: that were protesting outside. They threatened his life, and then
46:26
Speaker 1: he said, at this point, you know what, I might
46:27
Speaker 1: as well just get into politics legitimately. And in April
46:31
Speaker 1: of eighteen sixty five he actually won an election to
46:35
Speaker 1: the Connecticut General Assembly, where he worked really hard to
46:39
Speaker 1: ratify the thirteenth Amendment and supported another cause to allow
46:44
Speaker 1: the rights of black people to vote in Connecticut.
46:46
Speaker 2: Yeah, so he was legitimately dedicated to the cause of abolition,
46:51
Speaker 2: which is totally bizarre. Right, And about this time, too,
46:54
Speaker 2: is when the revisions to his autobiography are starting to
46:58
Speaker 2: get much more contrite, much less boastful, and even more apologetic.
47:04
Speaker 2: So he like something happened and he was converted to
47:09
Speaker 2: the right side of history. I guess you could call it,
47:11
Speaker 2: you know.
47:11
Speaker 1: Yeah, So here's where fire number two comes in. After
47:14
Speaker 1: a few months after this election, his museum burned down
47:19
Speaker 1: along with the animals and the exhibit, which is super sad. Yes,
47:23
Speaker 1: this is the first of like two animal fires. He
47:26
Speaker 1: opened a new museum a couple of months after that.
47:29
Speaker 1: Three years later that museum burned down. Didn't want to
47:32
Speaker 1: rebuild that one. And then finally in the eighteen seventies, like,
47:38
Speaker 1: it took a long long time before he became the P. T.
47:41
Speaker 1: Barnum that most people know as the big circus guy, right,
47:46
Speaker 1: the Greatest Show on Earth guy.
47:48
Speaker 2: Yeah, he hooked up with Barnum and Bailey after hooking
47:52
Speaker 2: up with a guy named William Cameron Coope or Coop,
47:56
Speaker 2: I'm not sure which one it is, but he had
47:59
Speaker 2: pt Barnum's Grand Traveling Museum, men Agerie, Caravan and Circus.
48:03
Speaker 1: Yeah, a little wordy that was.
48:05
Speaker 2: Eighteen seventy one. And then did you cover the eighteen
48:09
Speaker 2: seventy two fire. No, there was another fire that killed
48:14
Speaker 2: other circus animals that the winter at the Winter Camp,
48:19
Speaker 2: which is on the side of where Madison Square Garden
48:22
Speaker 2: is right now. There's a horrific fire in the Winter
48:25
Speaker 2: Camp in eighteen seventy two killed a bunch of other
48:28
Speaker 2: circus animals, which this this is why, this is one
48:32
Speaker 2: of the reasons why years later Barnum and Bailey's Wrinkling
48:37
Speaker 2: Brothers circus went away was because of animals.
48:41
Speaker 1: Yeah, and he, I mean he was by the time
48:43
Speaker 1: this fire happened. That the what was it called the
48:47
Speaker 1: Hippotheatron I think so he he was very successful with
48:53
Speaker 1: that circus. He started with Coop or Coup. They made
48:58
Speaker 1: about four hundred grand in the first year and it
48:59
Speaker 1: was a very he first circus to kind of do
49:01
Speaker 1: the traditional thing that we all think of is travel
49:03
Speaker 1: by train, acrobats, clowns, exotic animals, stuff like that, And
49:09
Speaker 1: that's when it officially was called the Greatest Show on Earth.
49:12
Speaker 1: So the hippo theatron such a strange word, burns down
49:19
Speaker 1: and then he's visiting his friend in England, John Fish,
49:24
Speaker 1: and this is when his wife, Charity passes away, and
49:28
Speaker 1: as Jane put it, he was supposedly too grief stricken
49:31
Speaker 1: to return for her funeral. But the grief must have
49:34
Speaker 1: subsided quickly because he secretly married Fish's daughter at sixty
49:38
Speaker 1: three years old. He married twenty two year old Nancy
49:41
Speaker 1: Fish about three and a half months later after his
49:44
Speaker 1: wife passed. No word about her teeth, no or her
49:49
Speaker 1: bras's eyes, So.
49:51
Speaker 2: They got married secretly fourteen weeks after Charity died, and
49:55
Speaker 2: then when they came to the US, they had a
49:57
Speaker 2: public wedding nine months after that. So, yeah, he married her,
50:04
Speaker 2: and I guess he was with her until his death.
50:07
Speaker 1: Right, Well, yeah, in eighteen sixty or I'm sorry seventy five,
50:11
Speaker 1: he took a break from the circus, got back into
50:14
Speaker 1: politics and became the mayor of Bridgeport for a little while.
50:18
Speaker 2: Na East Bridgeport, though he's talking trash.
50:20
Speaker 1: About the Bridgeport And apparently he gets a little on
50:23
Speaker 1: his high horse now because even though he was a drinker,
50:27
Speaker 1: pretty heavy drinker for a while, he quit drinking and
50:30
Speaker 1: then campaigned against like Sunday sales and saloons and kind
50:37
Speaker 1: of got a little self righteous, it seems like.
50:39
Speaker 2: Yeah. He also sponsored the Comstock Law in Connecticut, which
50:43
Speaker 2: banned contraception, which puts a lot of onus onto the ladies.
50:49
Speaker 2: And it was in place apparently till nineteen sixty five.
50:54
Speaker 2: And there's a really important word in there, Chuck sponsored,
50:58
Speaker 2: Like that means you're the person who brought it to
51:01
Speaker 2: the General Assembly. You didn't just vote yes on it.
51:05
Speaker 2: Sure if you're the one who said, everybody, everybody, let's
51:08
Speaker 2: ban contraception for one hundred years. Yeah, and it was
51:11
Speaker 2: successful actually, So yeah, he was. He was a weird
51:15
Speaker 2: dude with a lot of different weird thoughts about things
51:19
Speaker 2: that were sometimes very contradictory over time.
51:22
Speaker 1: And then finally, ironically here at the very end of
51:26
Speaker 1: this podcast, in eighteen eighty, he partnered with one James A.
51:30
Speaker 1: Bailey for P. T. Barnum's Great London Combined.
51:35
Speaker 2: It's a terrible name for a circus, worst.
51:37
Speaker 1: Circus name ever. Then you had the word circus in there,
51:40
Speaker 1: and this is when he got Jumbo the elephant, which
51:45
Speaker 1: it was Jumbo was a legendary attraction until eighteen eighty
51:50
Speaker 1: five when Jumbo was killed by a train.
51:53
Speaker 2: And probably caught fire too.
51:55
Speaker 1: And did you know we were just in Boston that
51:57
Speaker 1: Tuff's University their mascot is Jumped the Elephant.
52:00
Speaker 2: No, I didn't know that.
52:01
Speaker 1: Yeah, my buddy Robert explained that to me. And apparently
52:06
Speaker 1: Barnum was one of the early what do you call
52:11
Speaker 1: the people who give universities a lot of.
52:12
Speaker 2: Money endowment and donors, grant person.
52:18
Speaker 1: Sure he was all of that. What is that word?
52:21
Speaker 2: I know what you're talking about.
52:22
Speaker 1: He was all that to Toughs, and so Jumbo the
52:25
Speaker 1: Elephant became their mascot. And I think because it does
52:28
Speaker 1: say in here he he displayed Jumbo's preserved hide and skeleton.
52:33
Speaker 1: I think it was, or maybe is on display at Toughs.
52:36
Speaker 1: Oh wow, I'm not sure if it still is, but
52:39
Speaker 1: I think at one time it was.
52:40
Speaker 2: So it a minute. This guy also gave a substantial
52:42
Speaker 2: amount of money to help found a university.
52:45
Speaker 1: I don't know found, but to the university.
52:47
Speaker 2: That's a benefactor. Is that the word benefactor?
52:50
Speaker 1: Yeah? Maybe the found it. I'm not sure.
52:51
Speaker 2: At the timeline there, man, that's that's really crazy. He
52:54
Speaker 2: did a lot of stuff. So go jumbo's, Yeah, fighting
52:58
Speaker 2: jumbo's or the passificggressive jumbos.
53:01
Speaker 1: Or what the stomping jumbos.
53:03
Speaker 2: There you go, that's pretty good.
53:05
Speaker 1: So Barnman Bailey weren't together for too long. Initially they
53:08
Speaker 1: parted ways, but then again joined in eighteen eighty seven,
53:13
Speaker 1: ultimately finally for the Barnman Bailey circus.
53:16
Speaker 2: Yep, they broke up and then they got back together,
53:18
Speaker 2: and then it stayed that way until twenty sixteen, I think,
53:22
Speaker 2: and then the circus finally closed down.
53:24
Speaker 1: I went to that thing as a kid. I think
53:25
Speaker 1: we talked about that. Sure I did too, And now
53:29
Speaker 1: we will only go to the Big Apple Circus, as
53:31
Speaker 1: you know. And I took a long break because Emily
53:34
Speaker 1: and I were tired of going, and then now we
53:38
Speaker 1: got a kid. My mom was like, you know, you
53:40
Speaker 1: got to start going again.
53:42
Speaker 2: You have to.
53:43
Speaker 1: So we went this year.
53:45
Speaker 2: How was it.
53:46
Speaker 1: Oh, it's okay. You know, I'm not the biggest circus guy.
53:50
Speaker 1: I've realized.
53:51
Speaker 2: Are you afraid of clowns? No? Not these. Are you
53:53
Speaker 2: afraid of acrobats?
53:55
Speaker 1: I could take these clowns? No, And actually the acrobats
53:59
Speaker 1: at the Big Apples circus or the uh, the the
54:02
Speaker 1: what's it call it's the famous ones, the family.
54:05
Speaker 2: Oh, the Flying Zamboni's.
54:07
Speaker 1: Yeah, or was it Zamboni's not Zamboni's.
54:11
Speaker 2: I don't remember. It's something like that.
54:12
Speaker 1: But it's them. It's still still that family.
54:14
Speaker 2: Wow, that's really that's something.
54:16
Speaker 1: And they you know, they did a great job. But
54:18
Speaker 1: at the end of the day, I'm just kind of
54:20
Speaker 1: about a third of the way through, I'm looking at
54:22
Speaker 1: my watch.
54:23
Speaker 2: You know, Oh, I gotcha. I've seen a couple of
54:26
Speaker 2: cirqued is so late. Those are the last circuses I saw.
54:29
Speaker 1: Yeah, those are okay.
54:30
Speaker 2: But we saw the Michael Jackson one in Las Vegas,
54:32
Speaker 2: and man alive, was it good.
54:34
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a Michael Jackson cirque.
54:37
Speaker 2: Yes, dude. And I have to tell you, like I'm
54:39
Speaker 2: not some diehard Michael Jackson fan, but you don't have
54:43
Speaker 2: to beat this to appreciate this. It is amazing, Like
54:47
Speaker 2: like it's worth going to Vegas to go see who's
54:50
Speaker 2: Michael jack turning around and going home. I don't know,
54:53
Speaker 2: there's probably a few I'll bet we hear from some
54:55
Speaker 2: Michael Jackson anti Michael Jackson fans.
54:59
Speaker 1: Finally, eighteen ninety P. T. Barnum has a stroke during
55:04
Speaker 1: a performance. He has one weird, strange wish at the
55:08
Speaker 1: end of his life is to have his obituary published
55:12
Speaker 1: before he dies.
55:13
Speaker 2: Yeah.
55:14
Speaker 1: I don't know why I did that.
55:15
Speaker 2: Maybe do I don't know either. I think I don't know.
55:18
Speaker 2: But that's a heck of a way to end this podcast.
55:21
Speaker 1: So maybe he wanted to feel the public outpouring or something.
55:25
Speaker 2: It could be that. Or he wanted to proofread it
55:28
Speaker 2: or something. I don't know. But if he wanted, if
55:30
Speaker 2: that was what he was after, why didn't they just
55:34
Speaker 2: send it to him ahead of time they actually publish it.
55:37
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's weird.
55:39
Speaker 2: Yeah, well we'll find out one day when we die
55:43
Speaker 2: and go to having to meet P. T.
55:44
Speaker 1: Barnum.
55:46
Speaker 2: Agreed, So you got anything else? Nope, there's probably tons
55:51
Speaker 2: more that we missed. And if you know something about
55:54
Speaker 2: PT Barnum that we didn't know, let us know. We'll
55:57
Speaker 2: just add to this guy's story over time. In the meantime,
56:02
Speaker 2: if you want to read this great article by Jane McGrath,
56:04
Speaker 2: type MPT Barnum in the search bar at how Stuff Works.
56:08
Speaker 2: Since I said search bars time, for listener mail.
56:12
Speaker 1: All right, I'm gonna call this Unibomber follow up. Oh good,
56:17
Speaker 1: I was into that one.
56:19
Speaker 2: The yeah yeah, that was a good episode. Thought that
56:22
Speaker 2: was a good tenth anniversary episode. Milk.
56:27
Speaker 1: Hey, guys, congratulation on ten years milk, Milk. I look
56:30
Speaker 1: forward to many more. Listened to Unibomber and thought it
56:32
Speaker 1: would share something that covers a related, if somewhat different,
56:35
Speaker 1: aspect of the story. About ten years ago, when I
56:37
Speaker 1: was still a wee law student taking a legal ethics course,
56:41
Speaker 1: one of the situations we discussed was Ted Kaczinski and
56:44
Speaker 1: the ethical dilemma his lawyers faced. Criminal defendants had the
56:48
Speaker 1: absolute right to dictate certain aspects of their representation, like
56:52
Speaker 1: whether or not to fleet guilty, but there are other
56:54
Speaker 1: aspects of the representation that the lawyer controls, the most
56:57
Speaker 1: notable being trial strategy. While lawyers should always listen to
57:01
Speaker 1: clients overall goals, sometimes as necessary to override at client's
57:05
Speaker 1: wishes on how to achieve their goals, but because the
57:08
Speaker 1: client's desired strategy is either legally incorrect, unethical, or simply
57:12
Speaker 1: ill advise, Kazinsky's case presented an interesting ethical problem for
57:17
Speaker 1: the attorneys because he refused to allow them to pursue
57:20
Speaker 1: what they perceived to be his best defense and his
57:23
Speaker 1: only hope of avoiding the death penalty, namely claiming he
57:26
Speaker 1: was not guilty by reason of mental disease, known as
57:30
Speaker 1: the insanity defense. The conflict was that, on one hand,
57:33
Speaker 1: his attorneys had a duty to zealously represent him, but
57:37
Speaker 1: Kazinsky objected, so vehemanly to the chosen defense. At one
57:40
Speaker 1: point he attempted to go pro say aka, represent himself,
57:45
Speaker 1: which would have been an utter disaster. As you noted,
57:49
Speaker 1: he pled guilty, so we'll never know what they would
57:51
Speaker 1: have decided to do had he conned a trial. But
57:53
Speaker 1: his case is one which most lawyers had thought about
57:56
Speaker 1: or discussed at some point in their careers. That is
58:00
Speaker 1: good Fordham Walk go Rams, And that is from Deb.
58:05
Speaker 2: Thanks Deb, appreciate that. Yeah, I remember, we're kind of
58:09
Speaker 2: saying like his whole thing was he didn't he pluged
58:11
Speaker 2: guilty because he didn't want to plead insane, because his
58:15
Speaker 2: ramblings would have been the ramblings of a convicted insane madman.
58:19
Speaker 1: Yeah, very interesting.
58:21
Speaker 2: Well again, thanks Deb. We always love hearing from lawyers
58:24
Speaker 2: out there that whole joke about lawyers at the bottom
58:27
Speaker 2: of the sea being a good start. We have always
58:29
Speaker 2: found it tasteless. Sure, so get in touch with us.
58:32
Speaker 2: You can send us and Jerry an email to Stuff
58:35
Speaker 2: podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
58:40
Speaker 1: Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For
58:43
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