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Dr. Seuss: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly · Stuff You Should Know

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should Know from how 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 Bryant, there's Jerry over there. And
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: this is the Doctor Sois Cast, our final episode of
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: this year two eighteen. So long in the books Dr
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: Sois Dr Sois. That's right, you know, it's funny. Well
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: we'll get to that. All right, everything that's funny can wait? Yep,
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: we're gonna talk serious. Dr SEUs was an author of
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: children's books. He was so great and also kind of racist. Chuck,
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of stuff in here. I wish I
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: didn't know. I know. I think we're about to ruin
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: Dr Seuss at the end of the year, right after
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: the holidays. Uh yeah, but well let's just talk about
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: the man. Okay, so um, we are talking. We keep
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: saying Dr Sois. Everybody knows him as Dr Seuss, but
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: apparently the correct pronunciation is Sois and and the guy
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: would know because Sois is actually his middle name. His
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: name is Theodore Sois Geisel or Giesel? Is it geisel
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: er Giesel? It would be Geisel in German. That you
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: go with a second vowel, So Theodore sois Geisel. Yeah,
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: and uh, it's sort of when I saw that, everyone
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: basically was like SEUs until he eventually was like fine,
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: like I can't fight this fight any longer. Well, they're like,
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: we'll spell it differently then. But they reminded me of
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: Joe Theisman. Oh yeah, the very famous story of the
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: quarterback Joe Theisman who changed his spelling or his pronunciation
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: to Theisman to ron with Heisman, right, which I think
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: is the story. I think that's true. No, No, I
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: think that's true. Real. Yeah, what do you think that
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: was just like an old football tale. No, I've never
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: heard of though, you're just being funny. Oh no, that
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: that really happened, and that really came back to bite
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: him in the rump when his thigh bone broke opened.
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: He's like, I guess my knee would have busted if
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: he had just kept that these is that not okay?
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: Too soon? So we're obviously once we get into Joe
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: thisman leg breaking talk, we're talking about dr Sis. That's,
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: like I said, Theodore Soyce geisl Um, who is I
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: can't really think of a children's book author that is
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: more widely known maybe Charles Schultz. Maybe I think is
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: like a comic strip guy. Children's children's book like Judy Bloom. Sure,
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: but I don't know if I call her children's book
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: young adult like children's book. I guess the baron stain
• 2:52
  Speaker 1: bears not the barren steam bears. Yeah. I would say
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: that Teddy geisl huh holds that distinct for sure. At
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: the very least, his work, his drawing is just immediately
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: recognizable his style. Yeah, I mean that font we you
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: we use that font for our Live Christmas show shirts
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: on the obyright. No, it's not his. In fact, I
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: looked it up. I was kind of curious. I was like,
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: what is that great font that he uses for his
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: book titles? And I don't know what he used. He
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: probably just handrew it, I imagine. But um, now there
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: are fonts called uh so ice doctors s o O
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: s font or grenched that you can you know you
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: can gank that sure did for Christmas shirts. I haven't
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: heard that word and forever gan I think I was
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: wearing like Huge Jenko's the last time I heard the
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: word gang ganked my milk off my tray bringing it
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: back time. I use it too, so should we go
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: back to the beginning, Yes, back to Springfield, mass Choose
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: it's a nineteen o four, that's right, March two. As
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: a matter of fact, fellow Pisces uh dr Soyce was
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: born h Teddy Geisel and his grandpaps had come from
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: Germany in the mid eighteen hundreds bought a brewery because
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: they were good Germans. They knew all about beer and originally,
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: get this, the name of the brewery was Combak and Geisel,
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: and they locally called it come Back and Guzzle. I
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: love that, and then awesome in German, less whatever that
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: would be. I think it'd be comeback in Geisel. Uh So.
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: He moved here and it would end up becoming the
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: Springfield Breweries Company, which his father then ran um And
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: this is really like we did. He even did a
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: show on prohibition, and it never really hit home to
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: me some of the repercussions of that. I was just like,
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: people can't drink, But I never thought about a family
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: business just being shut down. That was a good episode,
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: it was, But that's what happened that, you know, Prohibition
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: came along. They had this successful brewery in their family.
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: They're like, sorry, you're no longer in business, Go find
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: another job. These guys, Yeah, who were secretly drinking right, Yeah,
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: so um had the job, that is, his father did
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: get was eventually became the supervisor of the town's parks. Yeah,
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: kind of cool. And um there's a myth, an incorrect myth.
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: From what I understand, one of the parks had a
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: zoo in it, and so a lot of people say
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: that drawings of the animals were some of the first
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: at the zoo were some of the first drawings that
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: little Ted came up with. No, his father became superintendent
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: of the parks when he was already a grown man.
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: But well not a grown man. He was definitely not
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: a little kid at the zoo. Did he go to
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: the zoo and draw animals? Or is that all false?
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: I think it may be all false, but I'm making
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: that part up. I just from what I read, he
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: was grown enough that he wasn't a little boy drawing
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: pictures of animals at the zoo like people think. Interesting. Uh,
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: I thought it was as well. I love busting myths. Barra,
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: you should do a show. Uh. So World War one
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: comes along, which I've been I've been doing a lot
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: of World War one reading lately with the really anniversary
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: of the Armistist Armisists. Yeah, uh, really interesting. I didn't
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: know much about it. It's a pretty serious war man brutal.
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: Everything I know about is from the Wonder Woman movie. Yeah,
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: I kid. Uh. So they were German, uh that the
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: Geisls were, like we said, and so in the United
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: States during World War One there was a lot of
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: anti In fact, for a long time, actually there was
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: a lot of anti German sentiment in the US right there,
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: like we're not German, we just like beer. Yeah, and
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: her name is Geisl. Uh. So everyone it was clear
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: that they were German, and so, uh, you know, there
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: was there was I get the feeling that he, you know,
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: felt like he was like picked on and laughed at
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: peas because he was German. Right, So if you can't
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: beat him, join them. Turn that same kind of bigotry
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: onto others will find. Right. So he starts at a
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: very early age in high school um drawing cartoons, writing essays,
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: funny essays, satirical essays. And he started using a pen
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: name very early on, maybe because he was German, and
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: he just reversed his last name and he became THEO.
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: La Sigue. Yeah. Actually, one of my favorite books, um,
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: Hooper Humperdink Not Him, is written by Theo Lasigue. Yeah.
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: I always was like, I always thought this was a
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: doctor's shus book, and then I saw this and I'm like,
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: it was a doctor's sus book. Do you ever read
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: that one? I don't think so. What's it called? Hooper
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: Humperdink Not Him. It's about this kid who's throwing a
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: birthday party, and everybody's invited to the greatest birthday party
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: you've ever seen in your life, except for poor Hooper Humperdink,
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: and I think he gets invited finally at the end
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: where your parents like we should probably get Josh this
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: go ahead and get them ready, right, pretty much, there
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: actually was a birthday party I wasn't invited to. It
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: really was like, I'm Hooper Harperdink. Oh well, you know.
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: My deal was I wasn't allowed to go to boy
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: girl parties for a while, so but you were still invited, right, Yeah.
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: But that was even worse because I was invited and
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: I was like I had to say, no, I can't
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: go because there's girls there, right, I got you. I mean,
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: how humiliating is that? Especially in college. Yeah, and they
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: were like, uh, what's wrong with girls? I'm like, I
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: don't know. As my parents, he seemed great to me.
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: The smell nice. Um alright, So he reversed his name
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: became La Siege. I went to Dartmouth College, and, like
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: many many famous um humorist I guess you could call him,
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: he wrote for the His college humor magazine was called
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: The jack O Lantern, and it was just like, really
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: solidifies that college humor magazines really have produced some of
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: the brightest comedic minds that in this country over the years.
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: You know, um, yeah Letterman. I think he worked at
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: National Lampoon's, didn't he Jan certainly did the Harvard Lampoon.
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure um Letterman did as well, at the
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: very least a lot of his writers did. Okay, fine, okay,
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: well we'll settle on that that version of the truth.
• 9:24
  Speaker 1: But he got kicked off of the magazine staff when
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: he was caught drinking on campus during prohibition, which is
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: kind of awesome. Yeah, I bet it wasn't for him.
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: What do you mean? Oh, but he was like, well,
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: I want to be on the magazine staff. This is terrible.
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: This is an unjust Yeah, not awesome for him, right yeah, yeah,
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: I thought you meant he wasn't doing the drinking or something. Right.
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: This did nothing to cut his career off though, No, no, no,
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: he just adopted a new pseudonym. Yeah, sois right s
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: e U s s again, but he pronounced it sois.
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: But he was the only person who did. Um. So
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: he did graduate from Dartmouth in I think, which also
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: further goes to show that he was so if he
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: graduated college in that his father's brewery wouldn't have been
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: shut down until I don't remember when prohibition started, but
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: he would. He was obviously not a young kid necessarily
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: dumb animals. Um. But he Uh. He went on to
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: Oxford to I guess pursue a higher degree. Um. I
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: think he was going to be a teacher, was his
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: original intent, and he didn't like Oxford, but Oxford brought
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: him to his wife, Helen Palmer, his first wife, his
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: first wife, and um, they met and she actually had
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: a really great influence on him by saying, uh, I
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: think you are maybe going to be a better artist
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: than a teacher, and kind of pushed him toward that,
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: and he ended up pursuing a career in art, largely
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: because of her influence. Yeah, and he sort of did
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: the student thing. He he worked on a novel, and
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: he traveled around Europe and was sort of uh doing
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: and he was with Helen of course this whole time.
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: They eventually get married and then he went to work
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: for a magazine called Judge drawing once again like political cartoons,
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: humor cartoons acted. This is where he added the doctor
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: to his name as sort of a joke because he,
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: I guess did not get that doctorate degree or whatever
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: he was pursuing. No, he didn't, but later on in life,
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: Dartmouth did bestow an honorary degree to make him an
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: official doctor. When are we going to get one of those?
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: I've been waiting a long time, chuck. And are they
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: as worthless as I think they are? Totally? Yeah, I
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: mean sure you'll get like the discounted Wendy's that they offered.
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: But that's that's really the only perk aside from saying, like,
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: I'm a doctor. Can you really call yourself that? Though? Sure?
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: Like only chumps do that, right, Like you have to
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: call me doctor now, dude. You you will see me
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: telling people to call me Dr. Clark. I'll just I'll
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: be more personal. I'll be Dr Josh like a chiropractor.
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: I could see you going off and getting your PhD
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: one day. Yeah, yeah, I want from Bowling Green State
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: University and the backdoor version pretty much. Yeahs um alright.
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: So he got the doctor on the name became Dr
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: Syce and from then on he he never wrote under
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: his given name again, he was always doctor. Sois from
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: that point for it? Do we take a break? You
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: can see me getting a PhD? Yeah? This late in
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: my career. Yeah, this mid in my career. Huh am
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: I like Natalie Portman or something? Yes, all right, let's
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: take a break. All right, Natalie Nat, I wish right.
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: I'll bet Natalie Portman hates being called Nat. Do you
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: think she seems like the type of Natalie who would
• 13:12
  Speaker 1: hate being called Nat? Let's find out, Dr Portman. Natalie Portman,
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: will you please get in touch with Listen and let
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: us know whether you're cool with being called Nat or not? Well, hey,
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: since we're on that big shout out to Mr Mark Ruffalo,
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: it was basically the male Natalie Portman. Yeah, he tweeted
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: out our Navajo Code Talkers episode which means that he's
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: aware of this podcast and we're huge fans. So if
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: you're listening, man, thanks yeah a lot. Not just aware,
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: he liked it, he encouraged people to listen to it.
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: He wasn't like, steer clear of this piece of poop.
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: This is a good podcast, is what he was saying. Man,
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: I remember when I saw You Can count On Me
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: for the first time. Oh my god, that movie correct me.
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: It was such a good movie. Yeah, not just the
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: first time, like just every time you watch that movie.
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: It's wonderful. It's really great. So I have another show
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: called movie Crush. Mr Ruffalo would love to have you on.
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: We'll just leave it there, alright. So um, alright, here's
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: what happens. Teddy Geist starts doing ads yeah, and does
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: quite well. Yeah. I mean, if you're an ad illustrator,
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: you you basically do what you're told the client says,
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: this is what we want. He was the kind of
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: artist who, because of his distinctive style, his style is
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: what the clients wanted. So as an ad illustrator, he
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: became nationally famous. Yeah, which is crazy to think of now,
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: it really is. His first big break was for something
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: called flit It was a bug spray. And if you
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: look at the flit ads, they have a picture of
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: the flit and it was that old timey Tom and
• 14:50
  Speaker 1: Jerry Pump candidates like couldn't be more poisonous? Out like
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: a cloud of noxious smoke that formed like a skull
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: and crossbones in the air. Basically, right, that's what he
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: was drawing stuff for. And he came up with a
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: catchphrase because he wasn't just illustrating, he was also copyrighting
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: in these ads, and he came up with quick Henry
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: the flit, and that just became a national catchphrase, like
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: where's the beef? Right, like somebody's pestering You're just like
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: to somebody else, Quick Henry the flit. That's how I
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: probably would have used it. But um, so he became
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: known for that, and then a second egg campaign made
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: him even bigger. Oh right, so he did flit for
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: seventeen years, dude, which is like I thought, yeah, sure,
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: he did that for a couple of years. I mean
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: there's almost two decades of doing those ads, made a
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: lot of money, kept him you know, uh nice and
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: employed through the through the Great Depression. And then this
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: one's even weirder. Uh. He went to work for Standard Oil,
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: who had s O Oil and s O Gas and
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: this was s O Marine, which was their boat oil. Yeah.
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: He has this pr idea to create a a fake navy,
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: the Sious Navy, the Sious Navy, which is nothing. He
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: just made it up out of nowhere to promote the
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: s O Marine oil. Yeah, and it worked, yeah, because
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: he basically drafted people into his navy. He would draw
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: like famous figures um like say eleanor Roosevelt or something
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: like that, dressed up in the suit the Sious Navy
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: uniform or whatever, and it became a thing like people
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: wanted to be in it, so they would apply to
• 16:26
  Speaker 1: be in it. And I guess so would hold the
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: party every year and just pull out all the stops
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: and there would be this lavish sious Sious Navy party.
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: You know, it's called the Sious Navy Luncheon and frolic.
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: That sounds so like. Uh. They had two thousand admirals
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: and they included among them, uh, Vincent Astor and Guy Lombardo,
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: famous band leader. And as this is a grabstar article.
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: As Ed put it, they were what you would call
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: like tastemakers today, like wealthy, influential Americans wanted to be
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: in this fake navy, to go to this luncheon and
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: frolic And he wrote these little navy story booklets and
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: it astonishingly it was a big deal and it actually worked.
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: And when you look at him there, they look like Dr.
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: Seuss books. Like, it's not like he changed his style. No, no,
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: this is the thing, like he became famous for famous
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: and saw it after for his style. Yeah, exactly. And
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: weirdly enough, he said that the only reason he went
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: into children's books initially was because his standard oil contract
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: didn't forbid it. Like that was some of the work
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: that he was allowed to do on the side. He
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: never he was like, it's not like I had a
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: great thing for kids. Well he even said very famously
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: multiple times, um, that he didn't write for kids. He
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: wrote for people. And he also famously said, you have kids,
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: I'll entertain them, right. Yeah, he didn't want kids, did
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: not want kids, and he never had him, so his
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: which came true. So um. He he was already pretty
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: famous by the time World War two came around, um,
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: and he actually volunteered to become a soldier, but he
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: was sent to Hollywood to work at what was called
• 18:09
  Speaker 1: Fort Fox. Yeah, this was strange. I mean I had
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: heard of the Signal Corps. Um, well, the Signal Corps
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: is everything from code like a code and code breakers
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: all the way to psychological operations. Oh, I thought the
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: Signal Corps was just like the people that made documentaries
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: and stuff. This was a division within the Signal Corps.
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: And so he was basically in this this um, this
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: division with Frank Capra and some other like screenwriters, actors,
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: like basically anybody who had anything to do with visual
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: entertainment was put into this group in Hollywood on the
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: Fox lot at what was called Fort Fox, and he
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: Um that's where he spent most of the war, although
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: there was a fascinating story about a time when he
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: went to Europe as he had to go get approvals
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: for a documentary he had worked on from all the
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: high ranking generals in Europe. So we went from headquarters
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: to headquarters throughout Europe. And while he was in Luxembourg
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: he visited some of his friends and he Um basically
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: got the skinny they think on the Ghost Army, you
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: know the Ghost Army where they had inflatable tanks and
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: like that. It was meant to make America's military look
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: way bigger than it was. And these guys were running
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: psychological operations. Well Dr SEUs was friends with some of
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: the higher ups in the Ghost Army, and they think
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: that they showed him on a map like where to
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: go to go see some of these Well, in between
• 19:39
  Speaker 1: the time he left and the time he got there,
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: that was suddenly behind enemy lines at the Battle of
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: the Bulge literally started around him, around him while he
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: was yeah, and he was like I was just driving
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: around thinking like it was just hard to find friendly
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: troops like as part of combat. But he ended up
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: inadvertently spending three days ten miles behind enemy lines during
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: the Battle of the Bulge and just barely made it
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: out with his life. Yeah, he was rescued by the
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: Brits um but he would eventually become a lieutenant colonel. Yeah,
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: in his short stint as a late thirty year old,
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: he's like think thirty eight when he first went in,
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: which really kind of interesting piece of backstory. Well, he
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: he was we left out a pretty pretty big part
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: of his formative years early on in his career was
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: he wanted to become he wanted to have a say,
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: in the direction America took in World War Two, and
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: he was very much in favor of going to war
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: against the Nazis and Japan and Italy and um. One
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: of the reasons why he was in favor was because
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: he was extremely anti fascist. He hated fascism. And he
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: got a job at a liberal magazine I think a
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: newspaper actually called PM that was founded in New York
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: and it was founded with the Eye too to basically
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: call p all out who are pushing other people around.
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: It's a very liberal, very anti fascist, very pro um
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: World War two. They didn't call it that at the time.
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: And it was very anti isolationists too. And Dr Seuss
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: was drawing editorial cartoons, very political editorial cartoons, about seven
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: days a week for this magazine. UM. And he did
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: some really good work in it actually. Well yeah, and
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: then in the in the army he actually made films.
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: He was he was making documentaries right alongside Frank Capra. Uh.
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: He had one series of training videos called Private Snaffoo
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: that were animated, UM. But they were the work of
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: Chuck Jones. Actually, it's just so crazy about all this
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: talent that's like in the army producing these things at
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: the time, but he he went on to make live
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: action documentaries UM. One called Your Job in Germany, another
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: called Our Job in Japan. UM. MacArthur stopped the release
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: of Our Job in Japan. Uh and apparently UM General
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: Patton stormed out of a screening of one of the
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: other ones. And I couldn't find the word but it said,
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: he uttered one loud curse word. Oh you couldn't find it? No,
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: do you? Did you? It was b s Okay, what
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: are you trying to think? What it would be? Sure?
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: I was like, but one word. So it wasn't the
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: F word unless it was just a very just long
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: drawn out like you know, alright, bs, that makes sense,
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: which I don't understand. I don't know what the problem was.
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: But they were both the our Job in Japan or
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: your Job in Germany, Yeah, was about occupation post post occupation,
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: UM life in Germany or Japan and what Yeah, you
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: can watch Your Job in Germany on YouTube. Yeah, and
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: and our Job in Japan too. Yeah. So he he
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: recut those basically kind of rewrote and recut those later
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: on and retitled them Hitler Lives and Designed for Death. No,
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: he didn't. They were recut around him without his say
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: oh no, no no. He and his wife later got
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: those films and recut them and won an Academy award. Yeah,
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: I had read that a producer went and and did
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: some recutting against their wishes and made it way worse
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: than they originally intended. Oh well, that may have happened,
• 23:16
  Speaker 1: and then maybe they then later on we recut it,
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: got the Oscar for their version. I don't know, but
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: we left out a lot actually because he Um he
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: was actually had previous to the army, had already written
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: children's books. Like he went fully into this because of
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: a ship trip that he took. Let's let's walk it
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: back a little bit. They went on a transatlantic voyage
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: aboard the MS uh Kung's home and apparently the ship's
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: engine had this beat, this hypnotic throbbing sound that just
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: really stuck with him and it got into his head,
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: and so he started composing rhyming couplets that matched with
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: this rhythm, kind of like, uh, that's my S S
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: Kung's home impression, all right. Well, it ended up being
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: what's called anapestic t traanmeter, which is what he would
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: make his career on this poetic meter. You know what?
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: That made me think of Chuck um that, Like, I've
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: never heard those words together in my life. But no
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: one ever taught me how to read a Doctor Seuss book.
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: It's almost like we have some ingrain thing in our
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: brain to read things in that kind of rhythm or rome,
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: you know what I mean? Or is it just like
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: my parents read that to me and that's where I
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: picked it up from. But who taught them? I taught
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: anybody how to read something in rhymes. It's just like
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: you just and even when you when you when you're
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: not reading it in the right rhythm, your brain realizes
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: it and corrects you and you go back and reread
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: it the right way. Like when you get to the
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: next line, you're like, oh wait, that's out a beat
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: or whatever. Like you figure it out naturally, And I
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: wonder why we're geared toward that. Yeah, it's funny too,
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: because obviously read a lot of kids books every night now,
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: and some of them are great, and some of them
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: just like they'll do a word that doesn't quite rhyme,
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: and I'm always like, come on, or they'll stuff too
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: much in a line and it's not like graceful in
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: the read, I'm like, man, this is lame. Do better
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: orange and door hinge. Hey, that's not bad. Well that's out, okay.
• 25:27
  Speaker 1: Very famously can rhyme something with orange, which I found
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: out because I think I said nothing rhymes with orange,
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: and well everyone's always said that because that's true. Well
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: I meant it door hinge. That's funny. So he created
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: a children's book on that anapestic t trameter called and
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: this is a story no One Can Beat that was
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: later changed and published in ninety seven as and to
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: think that I saw it on Mulberry Street because he
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: had an old friend that he ran into from Dartmouth
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: that turned out to be a children's book editor at
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: Vanguard Press. So I read an account of the story,
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: and the person saying telling the story said, had he
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: been walking on the other side of the street that day,
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: he may have never become a children's author. Like it
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: was that fateful um. He his friend from Dartmouth was
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: a new children's book editor at Vanguard, you said, And
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: it was so new that he was looking for material.
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: And Dr Seuss happened to be walking around with the
• 26:26
  Speaker 1: manuscript on him and just happened to be down there
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: and they ran into each other and this book got
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: published and that was the one where he first made
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: his name as a children's book writer. You're right, and
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: shout out to Stephen Barr, book agent. That's right. Uh
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: So this, this uh antipastic to traametter is what he
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: basically stuck with the rest of his career. He would
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: alter it here and there, use other meters here and there,
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: but this is where he you know, as Ed said,
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: that was his bread and butter. And it's very waltz
• 26:56
  Speaker 1: like you can count it off in three or four time,
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: and it just was sort of perfect for kids books.
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: And with that first kid's book, Um, and to think
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: I saw in the Mulberry Street Apparently it's about a
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: kid named Marco who sees a horse and cart on
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: the street and as he's retelling it, it just becomes
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: this bigger and bigger and more like bizarre and grand
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: thing that he saw. Um. And this will come back
• 27:21
  Speaker 1: later on in the episode. Yeah. So he's writing these books.
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: He's doing okay. Uh. He had his fourth book was
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: called Horton Hatches the Egg. I think that's where we
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: first meet Horton. Um. But but he wasn't like lighting
• 27:34
  Speaker 1: the world on fire. And then that's when he goes
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: in the army. Right, and let me tell you the
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: story about getting caught in the Battle of the Bulge. Again,
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: here we go. So he makes it through World War two,
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: he escapes with his life from the Battle of the Bulge,
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: and when he comes out of World War Two, he goes,
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: um right back to writing books. And he he wrote
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: a few more in the forties. Um. I believe he
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: wrote yourl the Turtle, which I know is an allegory
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: for Hitler, and he was on record say yeah, apparently
• 28:04
  Speaker 1: the early drafts of it he had drawn a Hitler
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: mustache on yoursal the Turtle. It's about anti authoritarianian Is
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: that Hitler or Michael Jordan's. Does he have a Hitler mustache?
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: He did very famously, and that this one Haynes Stevie
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: commercial and everyone was like, uh, someone not told him.
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: I don't I didn't see that. I'll have to show
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: you picture. I had my head in the sand like
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: I was Charles Limberg or something. Oh, that's a nice
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: circular reft. It's just for you and me. Um. So
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: he was writing some more and he was. I mean,
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: he was selling like thousands of copies every every time
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: he released a book. He was a known children's author.
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: He had already established his his style as something that
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: was pretty recognizable around the United States. But it wasn't
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: until the mid fifties that things really changed for him.
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: Oh wow, it is a Hitler mustache. There's no taken that.
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: It's it's a decision. Um. So I think in nineteen
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: fifty five there was a book written called why Can't
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: Johnny Read? Right? And a guy named Rudolph Flesh And
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: I realized what we've jumped over. We'll get back to
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: I'm not ready for you yet, right, Um, a guy
• 29:19
  Speaker 1: named Rudolph Flesh It was this, Yeah, f l e age,
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: it would be a good one though. Yeah, you'd have
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: to call yourself Rudy too. And anyway, Rudolf Flesh Um,
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: he wrote Why Can't Johnny Read? And it was basically
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: like an indictment of the American public school system, the
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: education system, and how we taught kids to read. And
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: it was equally an indictment of like Dick and Jane,
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: and the way that kids used to read or be
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: taught to read was just basically, here are words on
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: a page, memorize them. This is a red ball. This
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: is the word read. Don't be an idiot red ball
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: say it's kind of the worst way to teach kids
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: stuff it is. And the guy in the article said, um.
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: He wrote an article in Life later on too, he said,
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: you know, he would be a great children's book author
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: to teach kids how to read? Is Dr Seuss? He
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: hates kids, He's already writing books for kids. Why but
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: if he just directed that toward actually teaching them how
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: to read, that be that kids would definitely want that.
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: And it turns out that, um, an editor I think
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: at Houghton Mifflin or somebody wherever, wherever Dr SEUs was
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: writing at the time under Mifflin dunder Mifflin, what you
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: got me? Um? He said, that's actually a pretty good idea.
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: And that's where we got the cat in the hat.
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: That's right, it was. It was originally meant as a
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: reading primer. I think there were words and and very
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: famously his editor bet him after that that he could
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: not write a book with only fifty words. And he went,
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: take this book green eggs and ham and shove it
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: and shove it and give me my fifty dollars, right,
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: and that is supposedly true. His editor bet him that
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: he could not do so, and that's where green eggs
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: and Ham came from. Yeah, and it's fifty words exactly,
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: that's right. Um. So he at this point he went
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: from ed says, he went from being a well known
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: children's author to probably the best known children's author in
• 31:16
  Speaker 1: the world. Yeah. He'd shown not only could he write fun,
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: whimsical um stories with the disguised moral lesson in the
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: middle of it too, um, with great illustrations and hand
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: drawn fonts and all, that he could actually teach the
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: world's children how to read English at least. Yeah. And
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: then from that success he he wrote, uh, that same year,
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: how the Grinch stold Christmas? That's a big year man,
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: So so Cat the Hat and the Grinch of the
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: same year, right, yeah, okay, yeah, which is just amazing.
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: And then in nine six, of course, we get the
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: very famous TV cartoon adaptation, which people still love and
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: enjoy today, including me. Uh. And he ended up being
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: so successful that they gave him his own imprint at
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: Random House. Um. With his wife Helen Palmer Geisel, who
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: was um kind of by all accounts that the woman
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: behind the man. She was an author herself. She wrote
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: quite a few books. One called do you Know Do
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: you Know what I'm going to do next Saturday? To you?
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: One called I Know What She Did last Summer? Um, Man,
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: it's funny. Adding those two words just makes it threatening.
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: It's a horror novel. Uh, one called Why I Built
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: the Google House, and one called I Was Kissed by
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: a Seal at the Zoo. Uh. So I didn't want
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: to just kind of wash over her because she she
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: was an author, and very sadly she ended up committing
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: suicide very late in life. Yeah, within a couple of
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: years of an affair that he had yeah um, And
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: he'd apparently had multiple affairs and her um. Her suicide
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: note supposedly referenced this, this feeling that she'd kind of
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: been overshadowed by him in his career. And like you said,
• 33:04
  Speaker 1: she was very much the woman behind the man, and
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: I think expected to support him and all that thing,
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: and she did. She put her own career away so
• 33:12
  Speaker 1: that she could handle his correspondence and business affairs. She
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: was in charge of correspondence to like sick kids that
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: wrote them our entire classes. And um, she was she
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: was he all he he was the artistic genius who
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: just needed to be left alone so he could make
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: these books every year, and she handled everything else. And
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: ask somebody to put their career away so that you
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: can have yours. It's a big thing to ask somebody. Yeah,
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: I mean she was sixty nine when she uh, and
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: I believe I said committed suicide earlier. I apologize, I know,
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: we don't use that term anymore, So we say now
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: that she died by suicide, Yeah, because committed makes it
• 33:51
  Speaker 1: sound like, oh my god, she committed a sin. Yeah,
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: and we people have written in about that, and I was,
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: I was. We were both glad to be made aware
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: of that. So she was sixteen, ten years old and
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: apparently also suffered from uh Gilliam bear bar game bar
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: a syndrome. Yeah. We got corrected on that some other time.
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: It's how I remember of how to pronounce it. Yeah.
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: Uh so, I mean, who knows why someone eventually takes
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: that path in life. Could be a lot of factors,
• 34:21
  Speaker 1: but yeah, October sixty seven, she overdosed on medication after
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: they've been married for forty years too. Yeah, man um
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: and so shortly after that he married Audrey Diamond geisl
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: who's his widow, who is I believe still alive and
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: basically running his estate still. Yeah, her name was Audrey
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: Stone Diamond, but it was d I M O N
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: D no A. Oh yeah, which is interesting. I wonder
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: if it's efficient. But yes, she became Soyce and he went,
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: just go ahead and get used to it. It's SEUs.
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: She's like, really, I've always said Soyce. He's like, I
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: love you. And she had two daughters. Uh, And he said,
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: I bet you they'd love boarding school. Yeah, and she
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: went okay, And she later on even said, uh, this
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: is a direct quote. She said they wouldn't have been
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: happy with Ted, and Ted wouldn't have been happy with them. Yeah.
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: He really did not want kids or kids to be around.
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: He just liked doing the books that he liked to do.
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: It's pretty interesting. So he um that nineteen fifty seven year,
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: that was a big breakout year for him, and um,
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: that was kind of the year that he became the
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: doctor SEUs that we we see. But he kept writing
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: for many many years, I mean up until his death.
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: In he apparently cranked out like a book a year. Um,
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: some of the some of them over time kind of
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: took on much more progressive tones until he became the
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: Doctor Seuss that we see today. So prior to that though, Um,
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: in recent years, some people have kind of said, hey,
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: you know, Dr SEUs had some really racist, bigoted stuff
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: in his early work, and it's become kind of this
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: national conversation to kind of figure out how to do this,
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: because everyone loves Dr SEUs, loves Dr SEUs, there's nobody
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: who doesn't like Dr Seuss. But if you or his work,
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: I should say, but if you if you start digging into,
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: especially some of his early work, it becomes problematic. Um,
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: you want to take a break, Okay, all right, all right,
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: let's take a break and we will take part in
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: that national conversation right after this. Alright, Chuck, So it's
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: national conversation time. So Dr Seuss, especially in his earliest
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: work as Jack o' lantern and judge writer, the Humor
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: magazine writer, a lot of his stuff was extremely racist,
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: as Ed puts it, not just racist for the time,
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: but but monstrously racist stuff. Yeah, like uh, full on
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: blackface caricatures, um, depicted African American characters, as lazy savages
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: have too many kids. He made jokes about slavery. There's
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: one way can't even read on this show, but it's awful.
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah right. Um. He also, especially as after Pearl Harbor,
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: directed a lot of his creative energy toward making ugly
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: caricatures of Japan and depicting Japanese and Japanese Americans in
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: really unflattering light too. Yeah, and apparently supported tournament. Uh
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: and this isn't you know, you don't want to drag
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: somebody through the mud, but if we're going to give
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: a picture of the man, this is who he was
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: earlier in his life. Right, So Ed makes a really
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: good point. I think Ed's a great American for the
• 38:14
  Speaker 1: way that he kind of kind of handled this too. Um.
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: He's saying that, uh that if you look at his
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: early stuff, he was a younger man at the time,
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: and I think it was we should also say it
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: qualifies as like none of this excuses anything, but but
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: you know, look at the whole, the whole picture of
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: the person. Um, if you look at his earlier stuff
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: or his his worst most racist stuff is when he
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: was youngest, and his most progressive stuff that everybody knows
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: and loves his Dr Seuss when the world was kind
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: of changing too. It's not like in N nine and
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: he was like, I'm gonna deliver, I'm gonna serve up
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: a good old racist cartoon, right exactly. It's not like
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: he invented sea monkeys or something like that. Right. Um,
• 38:57
  Speaker 1: So he kind of progressed with the world. And not
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: only did he progress with the world and kind of
• 39:02
  Speaker 1: change his views too to take on much more progressive stuff. Um.
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: Themes like um like, uh, bigotry with the sneeches is
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: about discriminating against people and just how ridiculous that is
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: how people are actually people. Um. A lot of people
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: point to Horton here's a who as a bit of
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: a mia culpa for his treatment of the Japanese prior
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: to World War two and during World War two. Um,
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: the lorax is obviously pro environmentalism. Um. He fully changed
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: one of us books altogether, an earlier version of and
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: And to think of so On on on Mulberry Street. Yeah,
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: it had the word chinaman in there. It was worse
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: than chinaman, and he he changed that to Chinese person
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: like in the publication of the book for future printings. Um.
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: So he he definitely Um evolved his his works of volts.
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: He never came out in public he said, Hey, I'm
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: really sorry about all the racist stuff that I did earlier.
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: Um by the time he died in I think that
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: that really wasn't the way that the the world was
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: turning at the time. But he does seem to have
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: evolved and changed with the times and and did go
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: back and revise some stuff that had crept into his
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: his work. Yeah. And this is um come to light
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: more prominently in the past few years because there have
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: been like some book festivals and children's literature festivals that
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: have either been boycotted or where they've sort of tried
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: to make him a little less prominent. The cat and
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: the Hat I think was used. Um, wasn't it like
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: an official Read across America? Right here was the mascot
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: for it? Yeah, And did they officially remove the captain.
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: I think they've backed a little bit away from from
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: the Cat in the Hat as a mascot, if not entirely.
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: And I think that they've kind of like Dr Seuss
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: books are not like the focal of the Read Across
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: America campaign like they were right. Uh. And then last
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: year Millennia Trump made the news when she gifted a
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: library some Dr. Seuss books, and the librarian refused that
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: gift and said they are steeped in racist propaganda, caricatures,
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: and harmful stereotypes. I don't know that that all is
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: necessarily true, is it? Yeah? You know, I think that
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: might have been a little too harsh. Well, I mean,
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: if it's if I'm wrong, I don't want to know.
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: The only thing that I've seen that could be pointed
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: to in his work, like his books, was the was
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: the reference in drawing of the Chinese guy um in
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: his first book, And to think I saw it on
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: Mulberry Street. I didn't see anything else. I saw some
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: reference that maybe the cat in the hat was supposed
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: to be black face, but I I saw that one
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: place right and nowhere else. It seemed to be his
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: earlier work, not as children's books. And I didn't see
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: any racist propaganda that had that was hidden in books.
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: If anything, the books that you would give a library,
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: and I didn't know. I don't know what title she
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: gave would have been the more progressive stuff. Yes, she
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: didn't go there and say here, look, here's the old
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: Jack O lantern here's the really dirty stuff, college humor,
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: racist cartoons. Um. And Yeah, to say that his work
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: was steeped in racist propaganda when talking about the children's books,
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: is I agree, it's not accurate, right. What I'm what
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: I'm trying to figure out is is that librarian hip
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: to something we don't know about or or not. I'm
• 42:30
  Speaker 1: very curious to know, Like if we didn't dig quite
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: deep enough. I'm a little surprised because you know us,
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: but um, I want to know if we're missing something
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: that Yeah, for sure. Um. I found an article where
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: they were just asking a lot of professionals, um in
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: children's literature what they thought about all this Because I'm
• 42:47
  Speaker 1: a big dummy, you know, I don't know how to
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: figure this stuff out of my own uh. And and Neelie,
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: she's a professor of children's lit at Vanderbilt, said this,
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: just as every author illustrator is. I think Theodore Geisel
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: was a product of his time. We should not judge
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: him by today's standards, but we must evaluate his books
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: that we decided to share with children using today's standards.
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: That a really great point. Yeah, we cannot wallow in
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: our own nostalgia when we make choices for the books
• 43:11
  Speaker 1: we share with young children. They're simply too many outstanding
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: books available, especially also of the books that were raising
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: our kids on it. It's new to them. If it's
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: if it is steeped in racist propaganda that we're not
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: realizing we're sharing or perpetuating, then yeah, that shouldn't be
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: the case. And Ed makes the great point that in
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: the nineteen twenties and thirties it was the exceptional American
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: who broke out of that mold and was very progressive. Uh.
• 43:39
  Speaker 1: And I wish he would have been one of those,
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: but he wasn't. Yeah, And I think that's one of
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: the reasons why it's there's such a cognitive dissonance when
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: you find this stuff out is because that's what you
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: think of Dr. Seuss based on his work, that like,
• 43:53
  Speaker 1: he would be that kind of guy, but he was human.
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: His work is larger than him because I think what
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: it is. And that's the case with just about everything.
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: It seems like, yeah, I mean, I don't want this
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: to taint your reading of how the grinchtl Christmas this year.
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: Although another thing that he was called out on once
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: was his um there was no female protagonists in any
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: of his books either again products at the time, Yeah,
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: he was a man writing about little male characters. But
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: he went and created a daisy headed Mazie after that,
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: so um he so again. His books became more progressive
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: further on in his career and he handled things like
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: um segregation and discrimination like with the Sneeches Um. The
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: Butter Battle Book was a clear, like glaring allegory for
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: the Cold War in the mutual assured destruction arms race.
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: Kind of a haunting book that ends without any resolution
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: with both sides, the Yuks and the Zooks. I think, um,
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: with their bombs pointed at one another, and it doesn't.
• 44:56
  Speaker 1: It's not like and they lived happily ever after. It's like,
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: what's going to happen? And then his last book that
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: he wrote and published while he was alive was Oh
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: the Places You'll Go, which I had no idea was published,
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: did you. I didn't know anything about it, so it
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: was not. It was his last book that was published
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: while he's alive. It's also his top selling book. So
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: some of these other books have been around for decades
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: longer than All the Places You'll Go. But All the
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: Places You'll Go is this top selling book. Because it's
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: given to grads. Uh every spring there's a new batch
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: of graduates who get All the Places You'll Go as
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: a gift, and like ten million copies have been sold
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: because it's about like your your future from what a
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: wait to just like doing things and taking risks and
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: like trying stuff and you can do it and it'll
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: be hard and you're going to run into two problems,
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: but you know you're you're you're a good person and
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: you're going to make good choices. And I have a
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: story about this. So last night, Um, I was talking
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: to you me and I was like, just out of nowhere.
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: I was like, did you know that of the Place
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: She'll Go was only published in but it's Dr Seus's
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: greatest selling book. And she just looked at me kind
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: of like a little flabbergas, like why would you say that.
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: I was like, Oh, we're doing a Doctor SEUs episode tomorrow,
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: and she's like, that's really weird. I'll be right back.
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: And she went into our bedroom and came back out
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: with a copy of All the Places You'll Go and
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: said this has been under your pillow. She said, I
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: was going to give this to you tomorrow for the
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: last episode of the End of the World. But I
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: just happened to bring it up the day before, and
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: that's crazy. Yeah, I thought that was really surprised. Man,
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: how things work out. But I read it as recently
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: as last night. I'm like, this is an amazing even
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: for SEUs, it's an amazing book. Like an article I
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: read said that somebody somebody said, like, you can tell
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: that he knew this was the last book that that
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: was going to be published while he was alive, that
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: he wanted this to be as his swan song. Interesting, Yeah,
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: I would not be surprised talking about his more progressive
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: views and sort of catching up with the time if
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: either Ellen and or Audrey as the women behind the Man,
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: we weren't helping him along in that respect and saying
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: like hey, get with it. Ohh like for changing his views.
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: Maybe I thought that as well. I could totally see that. Yeah,
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: because if you think about it, Helen Palmer came into
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: his life. Um, yeah, yeah, I could see her having
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: that influence on him. Yeah. He passed away finally of
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: cancer sept seven. And I remember this because that was
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: a rough week. Uh. I was in college and he
• 47:37
  Speaker 1: and Miles Davis died about five or six days apart,
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: and I just remember being like, man, this is this
• 47:42
  Speaker 1: is one of those tough ones for dude, it's my age.
• 47:46
  Speaker 1: They were beeboppers and children's book readers at the same time.
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: I've got one last thing for you about Dr Seuss.
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: Do you have anything else? And I got one more
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: thing too first, Okay, I'll go first. He was a
• 47:57
  Speaker 1: voracious chain smoker, interesting so much so that even back
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: in like the fifties and sixties, he knew he needed
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: to lay off sometimes. So when he needed to lay
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: off of smoking, he would um take up. He would
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: take up a corn cob pipe that he kept turn
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: up seeds in, and anytime he wanted to smoke, rather
• 48:15
  Speaker 1: than light it, he would put a water dropper in there,
• 48:18
  Speaker 1: and then when the turn up seeds started to sprout,
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: he would go back to cigarettes. What yes, I don't
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: fully understand that. He would start a little corn cob pipe,
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: turn up seeds, and then rather than light it, he
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: would just put a seed dropper in puff on it.
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: But nothing was going on. It's all just mental oral fixation.
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: And then after about three days of doing this, the
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: seeds would would sprout. German eight, and he'd be like, okay,
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: I can go back to cigarettes now. So you take
• 48:48
  Speaker 1: about three days off of cigarettes. And he used the
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: crop of turn up greens as his his indicator. I
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: thought you were going to say that that went on
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: to feed like the children in poor neighborhoods or something
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: who hate turn ups. Kids don't mat turn ups. Turn
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: ups are great. I agree. I'm a I'm a root
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: vegetable man myself, so my last thing. In two thousand seven,
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: the federal judge h received a hard boiled egg in
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: the mail from an inmate in prison protesting his diet
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: in prison and the federal The federal judge rendered a decision,
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: and apparently it was worked up the ladder. I can't
• 49:27
  Speaker 1: remember even what it was about, but he rendered a decision. Thusly,
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: I do not like eggs in the file. This is
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: Judge James um your head. I do not like them
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: in any style. I will not take them fried or boiled.
• 49:39
  Speaker 1: I will not take them poached or broiled. I will
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: not take them softer scrambled despite an argument, well rambled,
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: No fan, I am of the egg at hand. Destroyed
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: that egg today today, today, I say, without delay, And
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: they threw him out of court, fired him because he
• 49:58
  Speaker 1: was drunk. No, I don't know. Um wow, I wonder
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: what came out of that. I don't know. And and
• 50:04
  Speaker 1: and it gave very little information about what the case
• 50:07
  Speaker 1: was even on I know, like the guys like, no, really,
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: this is a serious complaint. Please, you're focusing on the
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: wrong thing. Someone help me. Oh goodness. If you want
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: to know more about Dr Seuss, go research and make
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: your own decisions about the man, the work, all that stuff. Okay, agreed. Uh.
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: And since I said that, it's time for listener mail. No,
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: this is our last show of the year, so no
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: listener mail. It's just our time of the year to
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: thank everyone here and year. Is this the end of
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: ten years? Yes, or it's sort of in the middle.
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: April is the beginning and end of a year, right,
• 50:41
  Speaker 1: but the end of our calendar year. And we just
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: thank everyone for hanging in for this long with us.
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: It's amazing that we're still allowed to do this job,
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: hanging there. It'll pay off eventually, and we're gonna keep
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: at it forever forever. And on a personal note, a
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: very happy birthday to my dear sweet wife you me
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: birthday birthday you me uh, And thank you guys for
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: being with us for yet another year, and we'll see
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: you next year, everybody. For more on this and thousands
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: of other topics, visit how Stuff Works dot com m