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