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How Lion Taming Works · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from House Stuff Works
0:04
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark.
0:14
Speaker 1: There's Charles W. Chuck Pritt. Uh. This is Stuff you
0:17
Speaker 1: should Know. Yeah. Uh, this Josh is another episode of
0:23
Speaker 1: the Summer of Sam. Are are Oh this kid is good? Yeah?
0:29
Speaker 1: Our friend Sama t Garden is programming our show here
0:32
Speaker 1: and there, Hey and Samson and haw Lian Taming Works,
0:36
Speaker 1: which is also written by Debbie Ronca my buddy, Yeah
0:40
Speaker 1: from New Jersey roller Derby Debbie as I call her,
0:43
Speaker 1: I don't call her that, No, you don't. I call
0:46
Speaker 1: her deb friend if calor roller Derber Debby. You did
0:50
Speaker 1: it perfectly the first yea roller Derby Debby, that would
0:53
Speaker 1: just get difficult. Yeah, um, well, right on, this one's
0:58
Speaker 1: just gonna be great then because there's a good article too.
1:00
Speaker 1: That's right, and you can read Debbie's also flog at
1:02
Speaker 1: freak Girl dot com. That's quite a plug. Um. And
1:06
Speaker 1: then where are we at with Saam? So Sam has
1:08
Speaker 1: now selected how lion Taming works? What was the first one?
1:12
Speaker 1: I can't remember. It was a couple of weeks ago.
1:14
Speaker 1: He's done too. Man, it was awesome, but we actually
1:16
Speaker 1: recorded a couple that he had not heard yet that
1:18
Speaker 1: he also had on his list just by chance. We're
1:21
Speaker 1: gonna attribute those to him, just just the ones that
1:24
Speaker 1: we saw afterwards. But anyway, thanks Sam, this is a
1:27
Speaker 1: good one. We'll put chuck. Um. Well, let's see. Uh,
1:32
Speaker 1: I have a bit of an intro. Have you ever
1:35
Speaker 1: heard the idea that the Simpsons have a tendency to
1:37
Speaker 1: predict the future? Uh no, okay, Well let me enlighten you. Um.
1:44
Speaker 1: There was an episode called Um Homer h O m r.
1:50
Speaker 1: Season twelve, Episode nine, excellent episode. It's where Homer Um.
1:54
Speaker 1: Basically they find out that Homer is a crayons stuck
1:57
Speaker 1: in his brain, a crayon crayon, Yeah, from childhood, and
2:01
Speaker 1: they were They removed it, and his i Q just
2:02
Speaker 1: immediately doubles classic. In two thousand seven years after Homer Um,
2:07
Speaker 1: a German lady age fifty nine, Um was going to
2:10
Speaker 1: get surgery to cure her chronic headaches. They found a
2:14
Speaker 1: pencil that was stuck up there from childhood. Did she
2:17
Speaker 1: stuck up there? Yeah, when she was a kid and
2:20
Speaker 1: apparently forgot they found they removed the pencil. She's fine.
2:25
Speaker 1: People are wacky, Yeah, but isn't that weird? Yeah? Sure, okay, UM,
2:30
Speaker 1: here's another one. Let me see what you think about this.
2:32
Speaker 1: Um Homer uh in the Treehouse of Horror nineteen who
2:38
Speaker 1: definitely didn't see that one. Really? I quit watching it
2:41
Speaker 1: after that season twenty UM, he goes to vote for
2:45
Speaker 1: Obama on election Day and the UM well, it's it's
2:48
Speaker 1: a takeoff of Dive de Bold, the the UM voting
2:53
Speaker 1: machines that had so many problems. He goes to vote
2:56
Speaker 1: for UM Obama and instead it starts owning a bunch
3:00
Speaker 1: of times for McCain. Okay, so the next I guess
3:05
Speaker 1: that year, a woman from West Virginia said that she
3:08
Speaker 1: checked the box next to Obaba and it just automatically
3:11
Speaker 1: switched over to McCain. This is after this thing came out, okay,
3:15
Speaker 1: which would mean it's predicting. Probably most chilling is UM
3:20
Speaker 1: comes from Springfield with the S spelled is a dollar sign.
3:23
Speaker 1: The subtitle is or How I Learned to Stop Worrying
3:26
Speaker 1: and Love Legalized Gambling. Season five, episode ten, Springfield gets
3:30
Speaker 1: a casino, Mr Burns Casino Great One, and in it
3:34
Speaker 1: are two characters who are obviously based on Siegfried and
3:37
Speaker 1: Roy and they're with their white tiger, Anastasia. She loves
3:41
Speaker 1: the city. Yeah, um and uh anastalgia. Um flashes back
3:48
Speaker 1: to when she was caught in the wild by Siegfried
3:51
Speaker 1: and Roy shot her with the trick Lizer gun, and
3:53
Speaker 1: Um spits out her little bubble pipe and her little
3:57
Speaker 1: beanie and attacks one of them. Yeah. This is a
4:01
Speaker 1: full ten years before the attack of Roy. Horn In
4:05
Speaker 1: two is Outan three during a show at the Mirage
4:08
Speaker 1: in Las Vegas, where Um one of their white tigers
4:12
Speaker 1: attacked him. Monte Core attacked Roy and basically just ended
4:17
Speaker 1: their career, right then. Yeah, I think on that one, like,
4:21
Speaker 1: if you're gonna write a Simpsons episode aping sick Green, right,
4:24
Speaker 1: what else are they gonna do? You're gonna have the
4:25
Speaker 1: line need him or the tiger. I'm sorry, you raise
4:27
Speaker 1: an excellent point here, but it's still it is. But
4:31
Speaker 1: you raise a very good point, and the point is, Um,
4:35
Speaker 1: I think everybody who sees someone interacting with the tamest
4:39
Speaker 1: wild animal you could possibly imagine still will not be
4:44
Speaker 1: surprised if that animal kills the person. Yeah, because, as
4:48
Speaker 1: Jack Hannah put it, very um appropriately, I think and
4:52
Speaker 1: Jack Hanna he was the original Steve Irwin. Right, uh, yeah, sure. Um.
4:58
Speaker 1: He said you can train a while animal, but you
5:00
Speaker 1: could never tame a wild animal. And that's a really
5:03
Speaker 1: big important point in the world of I guess lion taming. Yeah,
5:09
Speaker 1: and another famous lion trainer, slash Tamer. We're going to
5:12
Speaker 1: probably interchange those words. Said you can't tame a lion
5:16
Speaker 1: because if you did that, there would be no act. Yeah, okay.
5:20
Speaker 1: Part of the part of the act and part of
5:22
Speaker 1: the thrill of this for people is the fact that
5:24
Speaker 1: these are wild beasts and if it was just it
5:26
Speaker 1: was a penguin, it wouldn't be very exciting. No, it wouldn't.
5:31
Speaker 1: I'd like to see that a train penguin. Well, yeah,
5:33
Speaker 1: I'm putting your mouth in it, head in its mouth
5:35
Speaker 1: and cracking of wi fun. Yeah, it would be. Um,
5:40
Speaker 1: it would be really mind blowing if the penguin was
5:42
Speaker 1: dressed like a lion tamer and you were treating it
5:44
Speaker 1: like a lion. Okay, I've got another lion tamer quote
5:48
Speaker 1: for you, then, smart guy, all right, Gunther Gebble Williams. Yeah,
5:52
Speaker 1: he was the one I saw growing up at the
5:54
Speaker 1: Wrinkling Brothers. He said, a wild animal is like a
5:56
Speaker 1: loaded gun. It can go off at any time. So
5:59
Speaker 1: let's end the intro with that. Okay, let's talk about
6:02
Speaker 1: lion taming. You you brought up a really good point,
6:04
Speaker 1: Chuck Um. The if you are in this world these days,
6:09
Speaker 1: it's not lion tamer, it's lion trainer or wild animals trainer. Yes,
6:14
Speaker 1: because none of these people think that they have a
6:16
Speaker 1: tame animal on their hands. Now. It's sort of the
6:18
Speaker 1: hubris of some of these early jerks. Um that we'll
6:22
Speaker 1: talk about right now. Uh. Eighteen nineteen was kind of
6:26
Speaker 1: when it all got going. Frenchman named Ari Martine Um, Yeah,
6:31
Speaker 1: hey to our French listener. He was a retired horse
6:34
Speaker 1: trainer and he thought, you know what, I'm gonna try
6:37
Speaker 1: and work with a tiger, which is very different than
6:40
Speaker 1: what anyone's ever seen before. And he had a method
6:43
Speaker 1: where he worked himself into the cage little by little,
6:48
Speaker 1: like just my presence. Then I'll stick an arm in,
6:51
Speaker 1: then I'll stick my head in. Take a couple of scratches,
6:54
Speaker 1: yeah here and there, and then eventually he found himself
6:57
Speaker 1: earning the trust of the big cats over time, and
7:00
Speaker 1: he would find himself completely in the cage. So he
7:04
Speaker 1: was the first first dude period. I think first American.
7:08
Speaker 1: He was the first known what you would call lion tam. Yeah,
7:11
Speaker 1: the first American was a guy named Isaac van Amburke
7:15
Speaker 1: and he was around in eighteen thirty three, and he
7:19
Speaker 1: was what I meant when I said jerks, because he
7:22
Speaker 1: would apparently like beat these cats with crowbars and use
7:26
Speaker 1: very violent tactics. Yeah, and he he had a pretty
7:29
Speaker 1: good um excuse for it or um justification? Is that sarcasm? Yeah, okay, Yeah,
7:37
Speaker 1: he was. He was a biblical guy and he would
7:40
Speaker 1: actually act out Biblical scenes with these animals. And his
7:44
Speaker 1: big defense was Genesis One, and God said, let us
7:49
Speaker 1: make man in our image after our likeness, and let
7:53
Speaker 1: them have dominion over the fish of the sea, the
7:56
Speaker 1: vowel of the air, over the cattle, and over all
7:59
Speaker 1: the earth and over everything. Creeping that creep us upon
8:03
Speaker 1: the earth creep And I just like the Bible saying
8:06
Speaker 1: creep us. Yeah, it's pretty cool, and it just kind
8:09
Speaker 1: of goes on. It's like, really it's one big, one
8:11
Speaker 1: run on sentence and you can't help but wonder, um
8:14
Speaker 1: if Van Amberg would say the whole thing or just
8:17
Speaker 1: be like just read generous this one. Yeah, his big
8:21
Speaker 1: His finishing move was sort of insult to injury. After
8:24
Speaker 1: he would do all this stuff. And of course he's
8:25
Speaker 1: not beating them with a crowbar in front of people,
8:28
Speaker 1: but apparently that's how he trained them to begin with
8:31
Speaker 1: out of fear and injury. And he would finish his
8:35
Speaker 1: shows by making the lines lick his boots. Oh man,
8:38
Speaker 1: what a sure I know after all that after suffering
8:42
Speaker 1: at his hands. You know, it would be awesome would
8:44
Speaker 1: be to see the steam Man of the Prairie beat
8:46
Speaker 1: the tar out of Van Amberg. You can reference our
8:49
Speaker 1: exoskeleton cast for that one, right, yeah, all right, Um,
8:53
Speaker 1: have you seen Fast, Cheap and out of Control? Uh? No,
8:57
Speaker 1: is that about robots? You gotta see that. It's Errol
9:00
Speaker 1: Morris documentary and it was about a topier gardner, a
9:05
Speaker 1: robot scientist, and a lion tamer and how all these
9:11
Speaker 1: things sort of intertwined. There was one more, a mole
9:14
Speaker 1: rat specialist. And in the movie, Dave Hoover was the
9:16
Speaker 1: lion tamer and Errol Morris also worked in because Hoover
9:20
Speaker 1: was a huge fan of Clyde Beattie. Uh. And Errol
9:24
Speaker 1: Morris worked in this old black and white footage and
9:26
Speaker 1: Clyde Beatie was almost the fifth character of that documentary.
9:29
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, it's really really great. Okay, I have
9:31
Speaker 1: a really good, um wild Animal Tamer documentary. All right,
9:36
Speaker 1: let's here. Um you introduced me to this one. It's
9:38
Speaker 1: called Cat Dancers. Have you heard of it now? Oh?
9:40
Speaker 1: My gosh, it is. It's so heartbreaking, it's ridiculous. It's
9:45
Speaker 1: about this group of people who like have their own
9:47
Speaker 1: thing going on and um, love one another and love
9:52
Speaker 1: their big cats, and then just things keep going wrong. Really,
9:56
Speaker 1: it's a really great documentary. It's one of the best
9:58
Speaker 1: I've ever seen in my entire of life. Yeah, I'll
10:01
Speaker 1: see this one out there too. Was one of my favorites. No,
10:04
Speaker 1: Fast Cheaping out of Control. Okay, well there it's both
10:07
Speaker 1: on the table. It's crazy though, that this podcast features
10:10
Speaker 1: two of our favorite documentaries, Fast Cheaping out of Control
10:14
Speaker 1: and Cat Dancers. Look for a quiz question on that one.
10:17
Speaker 1: You can get those on Netflix. So Clyde Batty, who
10:21
Speaker 1: was Dave Whoever's hero, was around in the nineteen twenties. Um,
10:25
Speaker 1: he used a pistol and a whip. Yeah, to keep
10:27
Speaker 1: things in line and I think the pistol was like
10:30
Speaker 1: a sound scare less than like a threatening thing. You
10:35
Speaker 1: go through a lot of lions shooting him in the
10:38
Speaker 1: chest that it gets expensive. But he was performing at
10:41
Speaker 1: this um at this the peak of this um lion tamers,
10:48
Speaker 1: you think of an old timey lion tamer um the
10:52
Speaker 1: peak of the appreciation from the public. Sure, because a
10:55
Speaker 1: lot of these guys they shaped the public expectations, but
10:59
Speaker 1: they were also responding to him, and the public has
11:02
Speaker 1: had a role in shaping how lion tamers lion trainers
11:08
Speaker 1: um interact with their cats. And Beattie was kind of
11:11
Speaker 1: the last of the pistol shooting whip crack in chair guys,
11:17
Speaker 1: the old guy, Yeah, Hooever actually explains the chair and
11:20
Speaker 1: Debbie's right on the money. Um, if you've ever wondered
11:23
Speaker 1: why they point a chair at a lion, it's because
11:26
Speaker 1: apparently these big cats have a have a one track
11:29
Speaker 1: mine or they're single minded, and so the four points
11:32
Speaker 1: uh of the chair legs confuse it. And uh, that's
11:36
Speaker 1: what Hoover said, So I believe it. Well, that's awesome. Yeah. Um,
11:40
Speaker 1: So you've got on Remartine who starts everything out very
11:44
Speaker 1: gently using trust yeah, um, and basically just exposing himself
11:50
Speaker 1: to these large cats. He did trust falls right and
11:53
Speaker 1: the cat would catch him. Um. And uh. Then you
11:57
Speaker 1: have um van Amberg come and along Isaac van Amberg. Uh,
12:02
Speaker 1: basically just beating the tar out of these things and
12:05
Speaker 1: using a very different method fear and clide. Batty kind
12:09
Speaker 1: of carries that torch. And then after Beatty things change
12:13
Speaker 1: and you have modern lion trainers like Siegfried and Roy
12:17
Speaker 1: Gunther Gebel Williams. Is that how you say his name? Yeah,
12:22
Speaker 1: you're the German speaker going to billions. This just my
12:27
Speaker 1: eye blied. Yeah, he uh, like I said, he was
12:30
Speaker 1: the one like that was very big in like the
12:31
Speaker 1: seventies and eighties when I was growing up, right, And
12:33
Speaker 1: apparently he was in an American Express commercial. Yeah yeah,
12:37
Speaker 1: with a leopard hanging over him, the Duneley fomb without
12:41
Speaker 1: at days probably I would imagine. Um. But so you
12:46
Speaker 1: you have the then you have this kind of transition
12:48
Speaker 1: to the modern lion trainer, which was actually a circle
12:51
Speaker 1: back to the beginning a little more genteel. Well, that's
12:55
Speaker 1: just that it's like using trust, not using beatings. Um
13:00
Speaker 1: and basically just spending time with your animal to let
13:04
Speaker 1: it get to know you. Yeah, and the whip they use.
13:07
Speaker 1: Even if you see a whip these days, they're not
13:08
Speaker 1: whipping the animal. The whip is to just to sort
13:11
Speaker 1: of like, hey, this is my space, this is your space. Yeah,
13:15
Speaker 1: my spaces over your exactly spaces over there. Uh. So
13:42
Speaker 1: let's talk about the psychology of all this stuff. Yeah,
13:45
Speaker 1: animal psychology and people psychology, because it's really not that
13:49
Speaker 1: much different. Be of Skinner as a person psychologist, very
13:53
Speaker 1: famous one. Yeah, he created the Skinner Box, that's right,
13:56
Speaker 1: and his children in it. Oh is that what's his face?
14:00
Speaker 1: I don't know. I thought you're talking about the kid
14:02
Speaker 1: that was kept in isolation Arthur. Oh, um baby Albert Albert. No, No, No,
14:07
Speaker 1: that's totally different. That was fear extinction that they were studying.
14:11
Speaker 1: This is conditioning that Skinner was all about. Um. So,
14:14
Speaker 1: operant conditioning is what we're talking about. And that's basically, ah,
14:19
Speaker 1: connecting a behavior with a signal um and giving the
14:23
Speaker 1: animal a reward. Yeah. It's like it's pretty much a
14:26
Speaker 1: one to three cycle. Yeah, it's it's basically saying like, um,
14:30
Speaker 1: you did something that's any even remotely close to what
14:33
Speaker 1: I want you to do. So here's some food, and
14:35
Speaker 1: now you can have the animals attention. Yeah, like, oh
14:39
Speaker 1: where did that come from? Right now? Um, you kind
14:42
Speaker 1: of shape that behavior where it's like, come on, let's
14:45
Speaker 1: let's try turning to the right, and then if they
14:48
Speaker 1: move to the right, they get a little bit of food,
14:50
Speaker 1: and maybe if they turn all the way the right,
14:53
Speaker 1: they get a bunch of food. Um. And then you have,
14:56
Speaker 1: say you're leading him with a stick. Um, so eventually
15:00
Speaker 1: you remove the stick and replace it with something like
15:03
Speaker 1: a snap or a clap or hey, yes, you hear
15:08
Speaker 1: a lot of that, and all of a sudden you
15:09
Speaker 1: have an animal that can turn into circle when you
15:12
Speaker 1: do what you just That's right, and that's called classical conditioning. Well,
15:15
Speaker 1: it starts with opera and moves into classical conditions. Operate
15:19
Speaker 1: than capturing, than shaping than classical condition and capturing and
15:22
Speaker 1: shaping are part of opera. Exactly. Uh should we talk
15:28
Speaker 1: about Christian the line? I guess I don't see how
15:31
Speaker 1: we can. It is real people, if you've seen this
15:34
Speaker 1: on the YouTube, it is not made up. Are you
15:37
Speaker 1: sure like you realize what you're saying here? Man? Dude,
15:42
Speaker 1: it's as real as like anything in history that happened.
15:46
Speaker 1: Like I've seen the documentary about it well, and I
15:49
Speaker 1: don't think it was Christopher Guests who directed it. Uh,
15:54
Speaker 1: I can't remember the name of it. Christian the Lion,
15:56
Speaker 1: something like that. Um, you've seen it on YouTube. In
15:58
Speaker 1: nineteen the nineteen sixty nine, late sixties, Um, a couple
16:03
Speaker 1: of Aussies, John Rindell and Ace Bork, bought a lion
16:08
Speaker 1: from a department store in London. Harrod's didn't know they
16:12
Speaker 1: sold lions back then, Harrods does. It was sort of
16:17
Speaker 1: the head of London at the time. It was like
16:19
Speaker 1: the swinging sixties and these dudes were known for having
16:21
Speaker 1: this lion and like throwing parties and stuff. It was
16:24
Speaker 1: like pretty cool. And uh, the lion got bigger, of course,
16:28
Speaker 1: and they had to release into the wild with the
16:31
Speaker 1: help of the born Free people. And then there's of
16:33
Speaker 1: course the famous video where they went um to visit
16:37
Speaker 1: this lion. Like it was it years later. It was
16:42
Speaker 1: seventy three or two, I think two. I'm not sure
16:45
Speaker 1: when they released him, but it was. It was quite
16:46
Speaker 1: a while later, and there was a few years the
16:49
Speaker 1: line jumps up in like hugs the guys. It was amazing.
16:51
Speaker 1: It was pretty amazing. Are you sure it's real? I'm
16:56
Speaker 1: as sure that that's real as that you're real. Huh.
17:01
Speaker 1: Otherwise that the biggest hoax has been pulled over the world,
17:05
Speaker 1: I don't know about that. I think the Howard Hughes
17:07
Speaker 1: biography is tops Christians. That was pretty good. Um, But
17:12
Speaker 1: as Debbie points out, for every Christian the Lion, there's
17:14
Speaker 1: a sig Freed and Roy, yes, which we already kind
17:17
Speaker 1: of covered, but I think we should go a little
17:19
Speaker 1: more into it. Yeah, there's some different theories out there.
17:22
Speaker 1: So in two thousand and three, they were, um, Siegfried
17:25
Speaker 1: and Roy were doing their thing and apparently they had
17:27
Speaker 1: like I think three thousand of these performances under their
17:31
Speaker 1: belts already. Yeah, they were working with Manticre or Monta
17:35
Speaker 1: Core sorry, who was one of their tigers, um, who
17:40
Speaker 1: they'd raised from a cub and he was now seven
17:42
Speaker 1: years old. Um, so they knew this this tiger intimately,
17:47
Speaker 1: like they were its parents for all intensive purposes. Yeah,
17:50
Speaker 1: and that's one of the keys to with line taming
17:52
Speaker 1: is that you raised them from a cub. They're not
17:55
Speaker 1: going on and getting these tigers from the savannah that
17:58
Speaker 1: are grown and then taming them. So the Simpsons were
18:01
Speaker 1: wrong in their respect. But um so during this performance, uh,
18:06
Speaker 1: something happened. Um, montcor grabbed Roy Um by his wind
18:13
Speaker 1: pipe and dragged him off stage from the outset. Um. Roy,
18:19
Speaker 1: by the way, is now partially paralyzed and as a
18:22
Speaker 1: crushed trachea because of this. But from the outset, from
18:25
Speaker 1: the moment he regained consciousness, Roy said, do not destroy Monticore.
18:31
Speaker 1: He was like he something happened. He wasn't trying to
18:34
Speaker 1: hurt me, he was trying to protect me, and he
18:37
Speaker 1: was just dragging me away from whatever it was. Roy
18:40
Speaker 1: suggested that possibly he had a stroke and that freaked
18:43
Speaker 1: out the tiger. Tiger picked up on it. Um. It's
18:46
Speaker 1: also been theorized that a woman This is almost like
18:50
Speaker 1: the lone gunman theory. Actually, this is the one. I
18:53
Speaker 1: believe a woman with a beehive hair do, sitting towards
18:56
Speaker 1: the front row or possibly in the front row, was
18:59
Speaker 1: like the stretched it and confused the tiger. Yeah, um,
19:02
Speaker 1: which I guess maybe the tiger was trying to get
19:05
Speaker 1: Roy away from the beehive. Well what happened? The accounts
19:08
Speaker 1: I read is that this tiger became transfixed on this
19:11
Speaker 1: lady and like started walking towards the lady, and so
19:16
Speaker 1: Roy jumped in between them, and uh, the tiger grabbed
19:22
Speaker 1: ahold of his wrist at this point and Roy bopped
19:24
Speaker 1: him on the nose with the microphone was going release, release,
19:28
Speaker 1: and he released him and he fell backward at that point,
19:31
Speaker 1: and I think that's when the tiger, the tiger you
19:36
Speaker 1: want to say, lying, that's when he thought that Roy
19:39
Speaker 1: was in trouble because it was a big brujah all
19:41
Speaker 1: of a sudden with him falling over. People rushed out
19:44
Speaker 1: there in the confusion. They think that he grabbed him
19:47
Speaker 1: like you would grab a baby kitten around the neck
19:49
Speaker 1: to pull it off stage. So that's I believe that
19:52
Speaker 1: that sounds sensible. But he didn't let go like they
19:56
Speaker 1: sprayed him when this fire extinguisher and they beat him
19:58
Speaker 1: with the fire extinguisher until he let go, and UM
20:03
Speaker 1: cut his uh what do you call it the wind pipe? Yeah, no,
20:08
Speaker 1: but the bleeder the jugular. Yeah. Well, Roy is still alive.
20:12
Speaker 1: He survived UM and they actually UM had a final
20:17
Speaker 1: performance in two thousand nine, six years later with Monticor
20:20
Speaker 1: with mont Core because he's still alive. Yep Um, and
20:23
Speaker 1: he was at the Secret Garden and Dolphin Habitat. I've
20:27
Speaker 1: been there. It's pretty awesome. Where is this It's in Vegas.
20:31
Speaker 1: I can't remember what hotel it's at, but well, the
20:35
Speaker 1: Mirrage is where they performed, but I feel like they
20:40
Speaker 1: if it's it may be at the rush Um. I
20:42
Speaker 1: can't remember. It's also possible it was at another place.
20:45
Speaker 1: But anyway, they have like their lions and a couple
20:48
Speaker 1: of tigers. They have a bunch of stuff. And it's
20:51
Speaker 1: sad because it's a small zoo, but I'm sure these
20:54
Speaker 1: animals are treated better than the average animal at a zoo.
20:58
Speaker 1: But I mean they're in these enclosed habitats. Well, they
21:01
Speaker 1: get investigated just like modern circuses do. I think their
21:05
Speaker 1: routine checks by which government agency? Is it the U
21:09
Speaker 1: s d A. U s DA does that they do circuses, zoos,
21:12
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. Um. The thing is is, if
21:15
Speaker 1: you're an animal welfare group, you probably don't think the U.
21:18
Speaker 1: S d A is doing enough. And even if they
21:21
Speaker 1: are following the letter of the law, you probably think
21:23
Speaker 1: the letter of the law isn't strong enough. And supposedly
21:26
Speaker 1: every single major circus in the United States has been
21:29
Speaker 1: cited for violating the Animal Welfare Act. Um. So I
21:33
Speaker 1: think the whole concept behind lying, taming, and lining training
21:37
Speaker 1: is fascinating for most people. But then you take another
21:41
Speaker 1: step further and you're like, these are wild animals and captivity,
21:44
Speaker 1: Like what are you doing? Yeah? Why is your head
21:46
Speaker 1: in its mouth? Exactly? And I'm glad you brought that
21:50
Speaker 1: up because then in the introduction there's a pretty good
21:52
Speaker 1: description of what a lion can do. A lion's mouth
21:55
Speaker 1: can open up wider than your head is tall a
21:58
Speaker 1: foot every centimeters. It's also, um, capable of crushing a
22:03
Speaker 1: bull spine. I love that reference that that just sounds tough.
22:07
Speaker 1: It is to spine of a bull. Yeah, um and
22:10
Speaker 1: uh the clause are about three inches long. Pretty serious stuff.
22:14
Speaker 1: So I mean, yeah, this is very serious stuff if
22:17
Speaker 1: you're a lion trainer. But at the same time, it's like,
22:21
Speaker 1: you know, how do you justify having this act? What's
22:25
Speaker 1: the act for? What's it doing? Yeah? Is it is
22:28
Speaker 1: it protecting? Is it conserving? What is it raising awareness?
22:31
Speaker 1: I think people are demanding more explanation than they did,
22:34
Speaker 1: and say the time of Clyde Beattie. Well, yeah, because
22:37
Speaker 1: back then it was fun to poke in pride things
22:39
Speaker 1: that you thought were unusual and exotic, and there wasn't
22:43
Speaker 1: a lot of respect for it. Like the initial circuses
22:45
Speaker 1: before they were these acts were I think they had
22:47
Speaker 1: horse acts, but it was mainly like, look at these
22:50
Speaker 1: animals and cages that you've never seen before, and look
22:54
Speaker 1: there's a pigmy, yeah, a bearded lady and that guy
22:58
Speaker 1: stinks so um And I think Isaac van Jerk was
23:02
Speaker 1: the first guy to put his head in the mouth too, right, right,
23:03
Speaker 1: he was. Unfortunately the lion didn't finish that job, right man.
23:31
Speaker 1: We have like a whole suite of circus arts stuff
23:35
Speaker 1: human cannonball yeah, um man, we've got to. We have
23:39
Speaker 1: several others circus arts. Yeah, that's what it's called. If
23:42
Speaker 1: you even look on the channel, it's an entertainment house
23:45
Speaker 1: stuff first dot com slash arts, slash circus Arts. It
23:49
Speaker 1: has a sub channel circus arts subchannel at how to first,
23:53
Speaker 1: because that's the kind of site it is. And if
23:55
Speaker 1: you go to that subchannel, you don't even need to
23:57
Speaker 1: do that. You can go to the search bar on
23:58
Speaker 1: the homepage at house Star dot com and type in
24:01
Speaker 1: lion Taming and it'll bring up this article. Yeah, I
24:04
Speaker 1: think we know we talked about something else because I
24:06
Speaker 1: mentioned that I go to the Big Apple Circus when
24:09
Speaker 1: it comes through town. Yeah, I remember talking about that.
24:12
Speaker 1: And that's the one where they have like like a
24:14
Speaker 1: horse they stall the equestrian show, and like dogs jumping
24:17
Speaker 1: through hoops. But other than that, it's like clowns and
24:20
Speaker 1: jugglers and uh like the circus all a beats of strength,
24:25
Speaker 1: no animals, no big cat people on the road from
24:27
Speaker 1: the law. Yeah, it's not like the gaudy Ringling Brothers. Now,
24:31
Speaker 1: I haven't seen the circus and I can't even tell
24:33
Speaker 1: you how Like you should you and you should check
24:35
Speaker 1: out the Big Apple Circus. Oh yeah, yeah it's neat
24:37
Speaker 1: all right, we'll check it out. It's like very small
24:39
Speaker 1: and intimate. It's like it feels like what you might
24:41
Speaker 1: expect the circus a hundred years ago to be. Like,
24:43
Speaker 1: will you send me an email when it's coming? I will, Okay, okay,
24:48
Speaker 1: I said search part. By the way, all right, so
24:50
Speaker 1: that means listener mail. Yeah, this is from I'm gonna
24:57
Speaker 1: call this um we help someone kick heroin? Did you
25:00
Speaker 1: read this awesome. Um Hey, guys, have been meaning to
25:03
Speaker 1: write you for a very long time. I've been listening
25:05
Speaker 1: to you pretty much since day one, learning and loving
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Speaker 1: every step of the way. However, it was almost a
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Speaker 1: year ago I chose to check myself into drug treatment. See.
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25:25
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Speaker 1: but I did beg the staff to let me listen
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Speaker 1: to you guys. To my amazement, my doctor was a
25:46
Speaker 1: fan of yours and approved it. Awes, So while I
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Speaker 1: was going through the worst of the worst of it,
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Speaker 1: you were both there with me. I will spare you
25:53
Speaker 1: the details. So August Fifte is not only I think
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Speaker 1: we've both seen the side feld where Laden's dating the
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Speaker 1: guy is kicking heroin. Did she Dad? Got kicking your Yeah,
26:03
Speaker 1: don't you remember. I don't remember that used to kick
26:05
Speaker 1: that one up. Sorry, go ahead. Uh So now August
26:08
Speaker 1: fifte is not only my birthday I'm twenty nine this year,
26:11
Speaker 1: but also my first birthday off drugs. Oh congratulations. I
26:14
Speaker 1: want to thank you for what you've done for me,
26:16
Speaker 1: and I'm gonna go back and listen to them all again. UM.
26:19
Speaker 1: I know it is a lot to ask, but a
26:21
Speaker 1: shout out would make my day. Dude and Elaine Turley, Elaine,
26:27
Speaker 1: don't tell me that's a coincidence. Well, it's a. It'spelled
26:30
Speaker 1: than a. She says, simplified from Elaine Turley. That's awesome,
26:34
Speaker 1: and then she says, ps. Marines are the few and
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Speaker 1: the proud. Female marines are the fewer and the prouder.
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Speaker 1: So way to go, man, Yeah, I want to say, man,
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Speaker 1: I mean, lady, that's pretty awesome. Yeah. Yeah, you kicked
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Speaker 1: heroine with us. That's amazing. Yn'tn think about that? Um? Wow, man,
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Speaker 1: that was a mind blower. Chuck, pretty good one. Uh.
26:55
Speaker 1: If you have a mind blowing story that relates to us,
26:58
Speaker 1: even if it doesn't, that's cool. But if it does, wow,
27:01
Speaker 1: that's even better. Um. You can tweet to us at
27:05
Speaker 1: s y s K podcast and so Twitter handle uh
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Speaker 1: an email to Stuff podcast at Discovery dot com for
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