March 3, 2016 • 48 mins
Not too long ago, people would pay money to gawk and stare at a performer with a physical disformity. They were called freakshows and they began in large part thanks to P.T. Barnum, whose circus we still enjoy today. Sounds awful, but some of these performers became rich folks as a result. Exploitive? You decide.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
This episode is brought to you by square Space. Start
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percent off square Space. Build it beautiful. Welcome to you
Stuff you should know from House Stuff Works dot com. Hey,
(00:23):
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. This shout
out up you, Chuck, Priyan, Jerry, and this is stuff
you should know. You introd as if you were asleep
and I just walked by and poked you with a
bold cube and that's your first thing you do is
you wake up and just go, hey, welcome to the podcast.
(00:44):
How are you, sir man. I'm feeling fine, Yeah, good,
feeling fine. That's a Simpsons reference from what the Shining One?
Oh yeah, the Shooting Classic. It's a good one. Um.
So a couple of quick matters of business, a little
(01:04):
c o A. At the beginning, we're talking about freak shows,
and we will be saying freaks and things like that.
That is obviously an antiquated term, um, but a lot
of there are a lot of quotes in here and
a lot of references to uh, freaks and midgets and
pin heads and all these awful terms that they used
(01:26):
to call these people that had, you know, physical deformities
and maladies. Um, so it's not us speaking. This is
a historic in historical context, Like we get the insensitivity. Yeah,
it's not. We're not We're not being insensitive. Here's uh
and we want to shout out if you. We used
a couple of house Stoff how stuff it works, How
(01:47):
stuff Works articles, as well as one from History Magazine
by Laura Grande Priceonomics Zachary Crockett wrote one and who
I have to say, I'm a fan of that dude's work. Yeah,
it was a good artic prisonomics these and some really
interesting articles, agreed. And then one from human Marvels dot com,
which is just a good website by j tithonus now
(02:13):
announced right p E D in a U D. Yeah
that's a tough one. Now, yeah, I assume the D
is silent or maybe not. Maybe it's ped now pay
node node huh freaky and a couple of other places
we visited. So and everyone kind of says the same thing.
(02:34):
But it's a nice, well rounded thing. I think, Yeah,
well they I mean, we're talking about the history of
freak shows and there's only you know, one history. Yeah,
certain things happen, and we found we found very quickly
that like you can't extract um freak shows from P. T.
Barnum or vice versa. No, like they they they are
(02:54):
inextricably bound. But freak shows, um, you know Barnum was
working in the nineteenth century. But the concept of freak shows,
which um is basically someone who is a human curiosity,
and that could be someone who was born with a
genetic deformity, of physical deformity um, some sort of mental
(03:15):
incapacity um, or some people have turned themselves into human curiosity,
say through the wonder of tattooing or um learning to
swallow swords or something like yeah, or like these days
body modification like the gym Rose show or there's one
in Coney Island still that does a like a traditional show. Yeah,
(03:38):
side show by the Seashore also a great song by
Luna Nice, one of my favorite bands. Um. So, the
the whole concept of this of having a human curiosity
and um basically charging gawkers to look at it, it
dates back quite a way, is um. Well, actually not
(03:58):
that far the sixteenth century. That's pretty far, I guess so.
But you would think like, well, the Greeks or the
Romans did this, but apparently no everybody was fairly Um,
from what I understand, everybody just kind of steered clear
of human curiosities to that point. Yeah, I think people
feared them, right. They were locked away mainly because they
(04:18):
thought it was some evil curse or punishment from God.
And this wasn't someone you wanted to consort with. Else
you might bring back, bring down the wrath of God
upon yourself. That's right. But like you said, in the
late fifteen, hundreds of people started to say, you know
what I'm curious about, um, someone with hair growing all
over their face. I'm curious about the human curiosity exactly.
(04:40):
And I know I don't Chuck, I want to say,
I don't think it's coincidence that about this time, science
was starting to spread throughout Europe. So the idea that um,
this was God's breath was was taking a bit of
a back seat to uh, this is a human condition
of some sort, yes, but not so far down the
road of science, to where there was this intermediate period
(05:02):
where they were got Dad, And as we'll find out later,
science would eventually take part in ending the sideshows right
created them and it ended them. Yeah, it's kind of
neat good way to look at it. Uh so one
of the first UM viewings or one of the first
people put on display and you know this is also
going to be well, we'll get into it later, but
(05:23):
the morality of this is very up and down with
exploiting people and these people that would normally be locked
away actually having super lucrative careers long lasting made them
rich well. Plus also, UM, I think one of the authors,
I think it was Crockett points out that, UM, there
early on, if you were in a freak show, there
(05:45):
was a good chance that um, you had been abandoned
by your parents, became a ward of the state and
adopted by somebody who just ruthlessly exploited you and maybe
barely took care of you. But one thing you can
definitely say to his credit, as Barnum came into it
and basically normalized or created an industry out of freak
(06:06):
shows or four freak shows, UM, conditions definitely changed and
the exploitation seems to have less in some way. Yeah.
I think that with the big names like Norman and Barnum,
I think they were all manner of minor side shows
that probably didn't treat them as well. Uh, And usually
Barnum and Norman bought their curiosities from those minor side shows,
(06:30):
lesser show exactly. So we're tking about Tom Norman out
of England. Yeah, they were basically counterparts. Yeah, and what
we'll get into them back to one of the earliest
um quote unquote freaks was a man named Lazarus Colorado
not Colorado, who was a conjoined twin. He had a brother, Johannes,
(06:50):
who was upside down on his chest and technically it
was a parasitic twin to Lazarus. Oh, not conjoined twins.
They were conjoined. But Johannes like didn't eat, okay, he
um he could, He didn't speak, he never opened his eyes,
and apparently the only way you could get a physical
reaction out of him was if you rubbed his chest.
(07:11):
That would make him squirm like quaide and total recall
very much got you. So. Uh. He went on tour,
performed before King Charles the First in the early sixteen forties.
But it was not a big deal. It wasn't a
super lucrative. Side shows weren't really a thing at that point. No,
but this guy was saying, Uh, you guys are gonna
(07:32):
ostracize me. Well, I'm going to charge you to look
at me then, and I'm going to support myself and
my brother doing this. Yeah, he did it himself. It's
not clear whether he worked with a manager or not
or a promoter, but he definitely um made his own
choice to go do this, Yes, exactly. And he was
apparently an otherwise handsome man. That's how everyone described him,
(07:54):
which I think probably for the court Um or Europe
who who came and looked at him, uh, probably just
made it even more mind boggling, you know. But he's
a good guy right right, you know. Uh, P T.
Barnum and I think we should do in a whole
podcast on PT Barnam at some point to really close
out the circus suite. Well, then we shouldn't mention him
again in the show. No Barnum as as a teenager, Uh,
(08:21):
he always had a penchant for making money. He was
one of those magnets sort of weird ways. Uh. He
ran his own lottery as a teenager um in Connecticut
and he said, here's what I'll do. I can just
sell these tickets. I'll give out prizes in varying levels
from dollars on down to like CS and U yeah
(08:45):
and um. But it was very well thought out for
a teenager. He wasn't just like just one prize. He
spread it out so he would entice people to play more. Uh.
And he actually made a lot of money from it
until they outlawed the lottery. He was making like eleven
grand in today's dollars a week as a teenager. Yeah,
nineteen not bad. But then Connecticut and the rest of
(09:06):
the country said no more lotteries for now. Um, we'll
bring that back up later though, don't you worry, TB
C and Um. He had to find other ways to
make work, moved to New York City and in eighteen
thirty five, UM, he had You know, England is where
a lot of this started. We'll talk about Norman in
a second, but he got his queue from England, said
(09:27):
here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna buy a person.
I'm gonna buy my first freak uh, this blind paralyzed
slave woman. And this is a hallmark of freak shows,
as I'm gonna make up a story about her that's
sensational and crazy, like a Ripley's believe it or not
kind of thing, right, and Embarnum in particular was well
known for just taking these things to the nth degree, like, sure,
(09:50):
no one's gonna buy that, but he could sell it
in such a way that people believed it because they
were exponentially dumber back then. Uh. He the story for
her was that she was a hundred and sixty years old,
was George Washington's nurse. Uh and you can pay to
see her, when in fact she was only eighty years old.
(10:11):
She was half that age. Yeah, and her name was
Joyce Heath, and she was just an old lady right. Yeah,
she was an old slave woman who was paralyzed and
blind and was being exploited by p. T. Barnum in
the year before her death. So she dies um, but
before then, like as he's touting her as this hundred
(10:31):
and six year old former nurse made to George Washington. Um,
that gets an initial reaction and then ticket sales drop,
and then PiZZ Barnum did something quite smart. He wrote
an anonymous letter to a Boston newspaper and accused himself
of being a fraud and saying that the the hundred
and sixty year old woman was a fake that she
(10:54):
was actually a machine, a robot made of whale skin
and it and ticket sales went right through the roof again. Man,
what a guy. There should be a good movie about him.
I can't believe there's not, like a modern one. I'm
sure there is, you know, surely, like the what's the one?
The Greatest Show on Earth was a movie? Right, and
(11:16):
Griffith movie or something. Yeah, that's what I mean. But
like Tom Cruise should play him, yeah, and should be
directed by Michael Bay Russell Crowe should No, not Russell Crowe. Well,
how about who could play p. T. Barnum? You know
who who? He would be good at it, but it'd
just be so him. Sam Rockwell, oh totally, he could
(11:37):
play anything. So I'd rather see somebody even broader playing him. Yeah,
I heard research look ahead, Gina. Who would end up
playing him is freaking Hugh Jackman. And yeah, yeah, because
he can do cartwheels. Yeah, what were you gonna say? Somebody?
(11:58):
It might have been during the Bill Gates interview, were
something yesterday that somebody said that no, it was unseen it.
Tom Hanks is the most trusted person in America. Like
for some poll found that like the most trusted person
in America is Tom Hanks. Were we on the list?
I don't think so. Sure you got it dressed on.
We're not even Also rans were never rans? Alright. So
(12:23):
he purchased that woman what was her name, joyce heth
j O I C E H E T H for
a thousand dollars and he made about that every week,
um from exploiting her. I imagined that she got very
little of that. Yeah, although you can't necessarily say that
I didn't see what she was paid, she was very
(12:44):
likely paid. And I'm she was probably fairly well taken
care of, especially considering um that she probably just And
this is based on how Barnum treated other people later
in a documented manner. But um he I don't want
to say he rescued her from slavery because she went
(13:05):
from being a slave to being owned by somebody who
exhibited her. Um. But it's not a guarantee or a
given that her situation got worse after she she was
purchased by Barnum. Right, does that make sense? Man? That
felt like a minefield? I was talking about slavery, human exploitation.
(13:27):
A blind woman who was also paralyzed. Good, good, luck
sir um his first big hoax after that or uh, well,
actually I guess it wasn't a hoax aside from the
made up story. But um, he had a real hoax.
That was a hoax. Well I hope sure, um, but
this was a hoax in two because it was nothing
about it was real. He was promoting something called the
(13:49):
Fiji Mermaid, which was basically rogue taxidermy as all it was.
That's exactly what it was. It was a creature with
a head of a monkey and the tail of a
fish that he bought from Japanese sailors. Well he didn't.
He got it from a sailor who bought it from right,
and actually it was Japanese fisherman. Yeah, and he well,
what's the difference. Well, they're like traditional they didn't necessarily
(14:10):
go to see they were like islanders and this is
like traditional art for them, folk art. So not a
sailor but fisherman. Right, that's that entry one oh one.
Sorry it's so fixated on things. Yeah. Uh. And he
leased it um for twelve fifty a week twelve dollars
(14:31):
and fifty cents um from from the owners have said
rogue taxidermy and he tried, he purnt up pamphlets and
tried to convince everyone it was some real thing. So
he he actually had a um A partner named Levi
what was Levi's name? He's definitely an overlooked guy, Levi Lyman.
(14:51):
Can you imagine like being P. T. Barnum's partner, Like
you'd never be in the spotlight a right, So Levi
Lyman posed as a English doctor, a scientist who was
in possession of this mermaid, and UM P. T. Barnum
very publicly was trying to get his hands on the mermaid,
and this guy was very publicly resisting him because there
(15:12):
was a man of science and this was the real deal.
And it helps just convince everybody, including the newspapers, that
like this is the genuine article, just Rubes Nation, a
world of Rubes. It seems like he ended up opening
up a museum on Broadway in New York City, UM,
eighteen forties, you know, sort of you know, like a
Ripley's Believe it or not kind of thing. Curiosities and
(15:34):
weird things. Yeah, that's those his stock in trade. Uh.
And then we should talk about his counterpart in England,
UM Tom Norman. Yeah, Tommy Norman, Tommy Norman. Uh. He
was named the Silver King and Barnum actually gave him
that name apparently after meeting him, and he said, boy,
what a huge silver showy silver watch you have there.
(15:58):
You're the Silver King. He goes, I am the Sill King.
I've been waiting my whole life for somebody to notice exactly.
So he was doing the same thing in England. Uh.
And he he actually um, he toured with Joseph Merrick
the Elephant Man. Yeah, and he got um castigated by
a lot of people saying, you're exploiting this guy John
(16:18):
Merrick and h is it John or Joseph? What I
say John? Yeah? And it's like an ongoing thing. Oh
is it yeah, I can't remember if it's well, let's
find out. No, it's Joseph for sure. Had just misspoke. Um.
He was attacked in specifically in a memoir by Dr
Frederick Treeves uh called The Elephant Man and other Reminiscences. Uh.
(16:41):
And he shot back and he said, you know what,
I haven't mistreated Merrick, haven't abused him. Uh. He wasn't
forced to do anything. And he said, in fact, the
big majority of showmen are in the habit of treating
their novelties as human beings and in a large number
of cases as one of their own, not like beasts. Right.
So uh, you know, the morality battle was being waged
(17:02):
even back then. Yeah. And I mean if you you
think about um, this time when people would go look
at people who had physical deformities and pay for it
and just look at him just standing there, you think, well,
the whole world was pretty evil and a moral at
the time not necessarily true. There's a, um, a lot
(17:24):
of people who railed against this stuff, like Frederick Treeve's
who was um. He was portrayed by Anthony Hopkins, right,
isn't that him? Yeah? He was in The Elephant Man
the movie? Was he actually Marrick's doctor? Dn't yeh man?
That movie? Yeah? David Lynch god one of the best ever. Um.
And then there was an historian who at the time,
(17:46):
I think in like the eighteen sixties he wrote. His
name was Henry Mayhew and in eighteen sixty when he
was British, he wrote that that these freak shows were
nothing more than human degradation. And he said something that
stuck out to meet Chuck. He said that the men
who preside over these infamous places, know too well the
failings of their audience. And I think he really hit
(18:08):
the nail on the head by he wasn't accusing the
showman because I think he understood that most of these
people were just under contract, and he wasn't accusing the people,
the actual human curiosities, the freaks themselves. He was rightly
placing the blame for all this on the observers, the gawkers.
(18:28):
Like if there wasn't a market for it, they wouldn't
be doing it. Yeah, Like you're the one who is
having the moral failing. Who's paying to go see this
person who may or may not be exploited you don't know,
And uh, it's really on you audience. Yeah, it's pretty
Uh it's a lot of foresight for back then, I
thought so too. So it's not like the point was.
It's not like everybody was just going along with this.
(18:51):
People have had a problem with it basically the whole
time freak shows were around. All right, well, let's take
a break and we'll talk a little bit more about um,
the evolution of the side show. Right after this, we're back.
(19:32):
I brought my pencil. What's up? Oh right, on man.
I didn't get that at first, do you. I'm impressed
that you did get it nice. Uh. That was from
Van Halen's popular song Hot for Teacher from and we
are now nineteen eighties DJs. Uh. So the side shows
(19:56):
became a legitimate thing, a big way to make money.
There were different kinds. Um. There was one called a
tin in one show, which I believed the sides side
show by the sea shore is today you did it
through my missing tooth. Uh. And that is when you
have ten people on display on a platform at once
and people just walk by and look at them. It's
(20:17):
not like a performance. It's just there's a bearded lady,
there's the dog faced boy, there's the tattooed man, and
they're all of the standing there. That's a tin and one. Uh.
They had things, and this was all too to drum
up more money. They would advertise something as an adults
only or a man only even performance. Right. Well, the
(20:38):
men only performance frequently had a stripper you know, yeah, um,
or stuff that they thought that we're just like a
woman shouldn't see or children shouldn't see. I don't know
if it was as much of that as if it
was to just trump up like, oh my god, it's
so bad that a woman can't see lay her eyes
upon it. Um, I think it's all part of the show. Uh,
(21:01):
that's my feeling. At least. One of the things that
they displayed were something called a pickled punk, which is awful,
especially when you find out what it is. Yeah, it's
basically a an abnormal fetus in a formalbe hyde in
a jar. And you could go by and look at
pickled punks and gawk at them for money. It's it's awful. Yeah,
(21:24):
this is what people did, like on Saturday night in Kansas.
So um, the the usually this this side shows of
the freak shows. At first, they were you would be
some enterprising entrepreneur in some small town and you would
notice that a little youngster had um a third leg, okay,
(21:48):
and you your thought was, I can really make some
money with this kid. So you go to their parents
and you'd say, I will give you of all of
the earnings of your child if you let me take
him on the road, and he will stay in the
finest hotels and we're the best clothes as exactly, and uh,
the he will become famous in the world, will love him, h,
(22:10):
just let me handle it. I'm going to be as
manager from now on. And the parents would very frequently,
especially if they were poor, would say, that's great. Do
that give me some money upfront though, by the way, yeah,
especially because a lot of times some of these people
were a burden on their family because of their health condition,
so they were happy to be rid of them. That's
all very sad, okay. So that's how that's how it
(22:32):
definitely started out. And then and it went on like
that um for a very long time as well. But
once borne him and not a Norman and some of
the other guys, the big guys came around, they would
just basically keep an eye out for that kind of thing,
or they would be approached by these guys who would
essentially be middleman kind of like um, somebody who discovered
a boy band selling their contract to a bigger record company.
(22:56):
But this was with human curiosity, people with the third lagger,
hyper trichosis or what have you. UM. And then Barnum
would take him and would would just take whatever exaggerated
origin story that they came with and just throw it
out and come up with one ten times more uh.
And after his uh George Washington's nurse made Joyce heth died,
(23:19):
who was not George Washington's right. He started looking around
for his next collaborator, if you could call him that, um,
and he found out that he had a distant cousin,
a fifth cousin UM named Charles Stratton, who had stopped
growing when he was about two years old. Yeah. He
he never completely stopped. He grew very slowly. He made
(23:42):
it to like just over three feet I think by
the time his death. Yeah. He died at forty five
of a stroke and he was three point three five
ft tall. Um, but grew so slowly. I mean you
know he was He was General Tom Thumb, very famously
renamed General Tom Thumb by his half fifth twice removed cousin.
(24:03):
Uh pt what does that stand for? Even Paul Thomas
Anderson bon uh So he said, you know what this
is great. Um, you were a small person and you're
cute as the dickens, So let me dress you up
in little adult suits and you're my new sidekick. Yeah
(24:24):
that he He collaborated with the kid's dad and said, let's, um,
let's make some money. Uh and he um he taught
him how to sing and dance, pretend he was Napoleon,
He did impressions Cupid, he played Cupid sometimes, and then
he told everybody that this little five year old kid
was actually eleven, which made it all the more astounding
that he was that small, which he didn't even need
(24:46):
to do, you know. And then for about the next
like fifteen or so years, Um turned Tom Thumb into
what was essentially the first international celebrity. Oh was he
the first international celebrity? Pretty much? Tom Thumb was a sensation.
Queen Victoria was a huge fan, met met with him
(25:07):
twice to at least twice um. She apparently was really
big into side shows, but Tom Thumb was her favorite.
Um and he. They made so much money off of
their first European tour that um Barnum bought his museum
with the proceeds. Is there anything grosser than the Queen
of England laughing at a small person imitating Napoleon for money.
(25:33):
She may have even known Napoleon at the time, Oh,
I'm sure she. That probably made it all the funnier
to her. Unbelievable. So, but he was. He was a
rich dude. He was paid uh in today's dollars Tom Thumb.
Oh yeah, over four thousand dollars a week and retired
and lived the high life in New York City. Um.
(25:55):
And you know he didn't feel like he was exploited. No,
he he actually got married. I saw that he had children,
but I could I only saw that one place. I
didn't see it anywhere else. But he he was married
and actually, um, right after the marriage was brought to
the White House to hang out with Abraham Lincoln and
Mrs Lincoln. Yeah, he had twenty people at his funeral.
He he was again, he was a very big deal.
(26:18):
And from what I understand, at the end of the day,
he shed his persona. He was just Charles Stratton, uber wealthy, uh,
some little person um. And when he was doing his show,
he was Tom Thumb who would dress up as Napoleon
or whatever and take your money. But um, he he
and P. T. Barnum together really made a ton of cash.
(26:41):
Tom Thumb was a little better at managing his cash
than Barnum was, because Barnum fell in hard times. A
lot of people don't realize this, but he made some
actually really bad investments over over time too. Yeah, he
invested a lot of his money initially back into his business,
which was smart, right, and but a lot of times
he would be like this is gonna be a hit
and it wouldn't be a hit. He didn't have the
(27:02):
Midas touch necessarily, and he fell on hard times more
than once. One of the times Um Tom Thumb or
Charles Stratton bailed him out. Oh really, I get the
feeling Barnum didn't know when to leave well enough alone,
you know, like he had a big, thriving business and
he just kept wanting to push it further and further.
Hugh Jackman, I'm telling you. Uh So, now we will
(27:23):
talk about a couple of people, um, who are afflicted
with something. Uh. Well, they were micro cephalic, which means
that they have a cone shaped head smaller than normal
shaped head as well. Yes, if you've ever if you're
a Howard Stern fan, then you know beetlejuice, he has
(27:43):
his condition. Um. And they used to call them pinheads
back in the day, awful term. Uh. And there were
a couple of notable I'm not even gonna keep saying that,
but a couple of notable people that performed um in
these freak shows. One was Zip William Henry Johnson renamed
Zip to z I P. He's from New Jersey, born
(28:06):
to newly freed slaves and uh. When Barnum found him,
he says, you know, I'm gonna do gonna make up
the story that you were found during a guerrilla expedition
near the Gambia River. I'm gonna shave your head except
for a little ponytailed tuft on top, and address you
in a suit of fur. And you get up on
that stage and grunt like an animal. Yeah, he was
(28:28):
paid a dollar a day at first to not talk
to grunt and I guess to play the violin really badly. Yeah.
I didn't get was he paid a dollar a day
to start? Okay? I thought that might have been part
of the story that he was in fact paid a
hundred dollars a day. Later he became a very popular
um uh freak. I guess. Yeah. The thing is is
(28:51):
um he Uh. William Henry Johnson was probably not microcephalic
at all. Um he micro cephal microsophilic is totally different microcephalic.
Um he. Actually they think now that he had just
like a slightly abnormally shaped head that was exaggerated by
the haircut that they gave him and that he actually
(29:14):
had no diminished mental faculties once what what at all?
And he was just pretending the whole time, and not
only fooling crowds, but he was also fooling promoters. Yeah,
because that's one of the hallmarks of that condition. Is
I believe that usually it's accompanied by cognitive stunted cognitive development. Ye,
usually very severe, but not in his case. He was
(29:35):
super smart and when he died said we fooled them all. Yeah,
that was his sister and his deathbed. They're also married.
Not true. So he made a lot of money too,
he did. He apparently retired with millions UM a millionaire,
so he's not the only UM Again. Pinhead is what
this specific type of freak was called. Man, I can't
(29:58):
believe I just said that. This feels so wrong. I know, um,
but there's a very side show performer and Chuck. Another
very famous side show performer who was also I guess
technically in the Under the Umbrella Pinhead, who actually was
UM Micro's cephilic was Schlitze. Yes, Schlitze is one of
(30:22):
my favorite people of all time. Yes, let's see, they
don't know for sure his real name, but Um, they
believe it's Simon Metz born in nineteen and one of
the Bronx. And Um, by all accounts from everyone who
ever met Schlitze, everyone loved Schlitze. And he was a
ray of sunshine and a nice, sweet carrying, kind hearted man. Yes,
(30:46):
loved life. Anything that you would take for granted. Um,
Schlitze probably enjoyed the heck out of and Um. He
was very frequently built as a woman. Um. I think
he was bill as an Aztec warrior at first, and
then maybe even an Aztec woman. But he wore dresses
all the time because he was incontinent, and this just
(31:07):
made it the whole thing easier. Um, So he was
bill as a woman for a very long time, and
including in the movie, Um Freaks, the Todd Browning movie
from Schlitze was in that and Schlitze actually has like
this big scene that's like has he has a whole
speaking like a dialogue section, But to this day no
(31:29):
one has any clue what he says. Yeah, should we
talk about Freaks a now or take a break and
then talk about it. Let's take a break, all right,
(31:59):
all right, So the movie Freaks, Uh, I've seen it,
have you I saw it for the first time this
morning when most people see it. Uh. Yeah, it's a
nineteen thirty two pre code film. Uh. There was a
(32:22):
time between when um, they started making movies to four
when the motion picture production code kicked in. Uh yeah
and properly called the Hayese code. UM. For five years
there you could do whatever you wanted, I guess. And
uh that's when this director named Todd Browning made a
movie called Freaks about sideshow performers. And this guy was
(32:47):
he actually ran away that the director actually ran away
and joined the carnival when he was sixteen and worked
as a carnival barker and even uh participated in stunts
and he was he's a circus guy. And he had
a lot of um side show performers as friends. And
you can tell in the movie that that's he's like,
that's who he's whose side he's on, that's who that
(33:10):
they're the heroes of the story with the protagonists antagonists
or normals or whatever. Um and uh it's a really
morally fraud movie these days. But if you just step
back and and think of it as like this guy
having an affinity for sideshow performers and giving them a
(33:32):
shot at at stardom, being on the big screen for
what they are, for who they are, for what they
can do. Um. Then it's a really kind of a
heart growing tale. Heart growing, yeah, in a very weird way.
It's it's wrenching the watch. When's the last time you
(33:53):
saw a college They spent a long time. Just see
it again, all right, we'll check it out like it's
it's tough to watch his gut wrenching. Uh. There are
a lot of um, well, let's just talk about some
of the performers in the movie. Um. One of them
who stands out is Johnny eck John Eckhart Jr. Who
was a twin and he was born with a condition. Uh.
(34:14):
Everyone said that he was cut off at the waist. Uh.
Not exactly true. We actually had um unusable underdeveloped legs
that you never saw, but it appeared as though he
didn't have anything from the torso down. And as from
a young kid, I believe he was even walking on
his hands before his twin brother was even standing. So
(34:35):
he was very advanced in a lot of ways. A
very smart guy. He's a painter. Uh yeah, very accomplished.
The magician. Um, and you had a great personality too,
you could tell. Yeah, and apparently he was good buddies
with um Browning, and Browning always wanted him around and
by his side and was like, you know, you need
to come sit with me by the camera and almost
(34:56):
like his Uh. I don't know if he like could
consider him a co director, but he always wanted him nearby.
Pretty neat Uh. Daisy and Violet Hilton, Yeah, can joined twins, right, yeah,
which they called Siamese twins back in the day. Um,
thanks to Chang and Yang bunker right. Yeah, they were
(35:16):
actually uh some of the first super famous. Uh. They
were from a Siamese fishing village and that's where the
term came from. Yeah, Siam was what we now called Thailand.
That's right, uh and Chang and Ing we're born in
nineteen I'm sorry, eighteen eleven. And they actually performed on
their own for many years, made a ton of money,
(35:38):
They got married, had kids, moved to North Carolina of
all places, and um that well actually interestingly, Daisy and
Violet ended up in North Carolina too, Oh yeah, but
under much much worse conditions. Yeah, but um to finish
with Chang and Ang, they eventually lost their money. They
were millionaires Losser Dough and then we'd worked for in
(36:00):
him later on in life. But I get the impression
that they did it kind of like at their leisure
almost and ended up reamassing another fortune interest from working
with Barnum. Yeah, and they fathered twenty one children between them,
married to Paris sisters and can join. Each had a house.
Then they would spend three days at one house, three
(36:20):
days at the next house. Um and yeah, they had
twenty one kids. Pretty amazing. So Daisy and Violet Hilton,
they were known as Simeon twins back then. Of course, Uh,
we don't use that German anymore, but I mean I
remember that term when I was a kid. So it's
definitely like held on for way too long. Remember Ronnie
and Dinnie Galleon. Yeah, are they still with us? Let's
(36:43):
find out. Well, you're you're checking that. I'll continue. Um,
I believe that. Uh that Browning spotted Daisy and Violet
and said, you guys are great, You're pretty, you can sing.
You'll be a big part of my movie. And they
they had been performers all along. Um. By eighteen, they
were ontour with Bob Hope as part of his dance
(37:05):
troup and made quite a bit of money. Um. But
sadly their story into North Carolina because they made an
appearance in at a midnight showing of Freaks at a
drive in and their manager ditched them and this party
don't get they had no way to leave North Carolina,
so they just stayed there. Yeah, they had to get
a job. That just seems odd to me. If you
(37:28):
don't have any money and knowing to call to ask
for money, you go get a job at a grocery
store and I hope that you can eventually die there.
It seems like they would have gotten enough money to
leave and go back to wherever they live. Well, they
died in Charlotte, North Carolina of the Hong Kong flu.
What is that? It was a flu epidemic. She's that
(37:50):
originated in Hong Kong. But it's a different world back then,
Siamese twins died to Hong Kong flu. None of that
seems politically correct to know. It doesn't who else was
in Freaks? Uh, let's see, Um, there were a pair
of little people named Harry and Daisy Earls, and they
played Hans and frieda right, and Hans is like the
(38:13):
ring master of the side show and um Frida. In
real life, Daisy was known as the midget may West. Um.
And in the movie they're engaged, but actually in real
life they were a brother and sister. Yeah. And they
were in the Wizard of Oz even as munchkins. And
(38:34):
we're in a bunch of movies with Laurel and Hardy
as well, So lifelong performers. So the the whole this
whole movie. And again, um, we kind of we didn't
finish with the schlitz Schlitzy was in it too and
had this whole big speaking part. Um. It was just
adorable in the movie. You could like Schlittsi's personality just
shines right through the movie. Very likable. Yeah, and um
(38:57):
Schlitze was actually uh adopted that no one had any
idea who Schlitzy's biological family was. They were not around.
So the um, the people he performed with and worked for,
actually took care of him. And when his adopted father died,
(39:19):
his father's daughter, biological daughter said hey, schlitzee, Um, I'm
going to commit you to an asylum in Los Angeles.
And that's where Schlitzy was until one day just by
total chance. Chuck. Uh. Another circus performer, I think a
sword swallower right named Bill Bill you're schlitz Yeah, what
(39:44):
are you doing here? You look so sad, And Schlitzy
was like, I remember you, let's go. So Bill Unk
intervened and got Schlitzy out of the institution, and uh
he got to live out his days hanging out in
the park being recogniz eyes by passers by. Yeah, he
lived near MacArthur Park in downtown l A. And uh
(40:06):
lived all the way up until at age seventy one. Yeah,
so you know you gotta see Schlitze. You should see freaks.
But even if you don't see freaks, like, look up
Schlitzy's part A, it'll probably make you want to see freaks.
So Chuck, Um, the Freak Show is well. Some people
(40:28):
say that it's still around and that it's just on
TV in the form of reality shows. Like basically that
same sentiment and everything still has found all over television. Yeah,
exploiting uh people like uh, exploiting obesity and exploiting dwarf
is um and uh, yeah it's on television now. Um.
(40:49):
But the actual side show itself, Um, it's well, it
went away in a lot of ways, at least as
far as like a traveling side show went. And it
went away with the rise of UM the rights for
the disabled. That that that movement that came along in
the starting in about the like late nineteenth century, early
(41:10):
twentieth century, and then really gaining steam by about the
time Freaks came around the movie. Yeah, there were a
few things that kind of killed it, UM, but one's definitely,
like you said, science invented it and killed it as
And here's something that is sort of reprehensible that I
found out. There's a lot of these uh uh side
shows would try and keep doctors away from the people
(41:31):
because they thought, I don't want a doctor coming in
here and saying that the dog faced boy actually has hypertrichosis. Yeah,
because and it's a condition where you have hair all
over your face, because everybody he was a cave caveman, Yeah, exactly.
Did you know? Actually there was another there was a
woman UM named Julia Pastrana, and she had hypertrichosis too,
(41:56):
and she ended up marrying her manager. They were married,
they had a baby together, and she died during childbirth
and and the baby was born still born, and her
husband manager, who ostensibly loved her, said show must go on.
So he mummified his wife and they're still born baby,
and then took him around to display them in the
(42:18):
side show as ever unbelievable. So uh again, doctors would
come along and start explaining these things, and that helped
kill the side show. The rise of television and uh,
you know, at home entertainment meant people weren't going out
to places like sideshows anymore. Yeah, they could stay in
(42:38):
their house and watch television. And apparently you could still
find sideshows like the American Horror Story. Was it freak
Show last season or whatever. I don't watch that, but yeah,
um it was setting I think the fifties, and I
think at that time you could still see, you know,
traveling sideshows here there, but they were pretty broken down
by that point. They were pretty much gone. But by
(43:02):
the sixties there was a girl named Carol Browning and
she I all I could find is that she had
deformed arms and legs. I don't know what that means,
but that was the description that was given given of her.
But she went to a side show and when she
visited the carnival in North Carolina. I think she lived
in Charlotte. No Rawleigh and Carol, what is it with
(43:23):
North Carolina? That's where things beginning in with with sideshows. Well, Carol,
Carol Grant I think was her name. Carol wrote a
letter to the Agricultural Commission, and the Agricultural Commission is
in charge of side shows at the time, at least
in North Carolina, and said this is wrong, like, this
(43:43):
is beyond wrong. I'm I'm offended by this and this
this should not be allowed to happen. And she actually
sparked a national conversation about whether side shows should be
allowed to be around, even if performers wanted to be
a part of them. And that was the final death
knell that conversation. But a lot of people came out
and said, hey, you know what these people, you guys
(44:05):
call them freaks, but you also empty your pockets to them,
and they're wealthy, they enjoy the acclaim, they enjoy the money,
and um, it's actually you who has the problem. And
it didn't have much of an effect. Sideshows went away,
and a lot of the sideshow performers ended up going
from being pretty wealthy or well paid or having a
(44:26):
steady income to um being broke and ending up like
being abandoned by their managers like Daisy and Violet. Yeah,
it's a tricky ground. It is. It's pretty much sad
all the way through except for some success stories. And
that makes the whole thing so morally ambiguous if you
think about it, Like, it's just so easy to look
(44:49):
from here and be like you named your movie freaks
or you you you charge people to look at the
elephant man. But what about those people who say, I'm
cool with this, I'm signing on for this. This is
making a lot of very wealthy. I'm happy. I've I've
had all sorts of opportunities that weren't open to me before,
(45:09):
and I love what I do. What do you do
about that? Like, you can't condemn it. It's not an
easy black and white thing to to deal with. Yeah,
it's called a moral ambiguity. You said it that There
have always been them, them, those them moral ambiguity. There
always will be. Uh, you got anything else? No, if
you want to know more about sideshows, freaks, that kind
(45:34):
of thing, you can type those words into the search
part how stuffworks dot Com. And since I said search
parts not for listener mail. Hey, before listener mail, what
about Ronnie and Donnie? Oh yeah, Ronnie and Donnie are alive. Awesome.
They are sixty four years old as of past October
I think twenty one, and they are the world's longest
(45:57):
living conjoined twins. They're adorable too, they're oh hi ends right, yeah,
very nice. What what documentary did we see on them
or something? I can't remember, but we've we talked about
him a lot over the years, So that's that's great news.
But they're they're still at it all right, So listener mail.
I'm gonna call this one, uh quick feedback on the
(46:18):
Bill Gates podcast. That is quick turnaround. Hey, guys, my
name is Brendan Cologne announced like Cologne, and I'm a
PhD student at Habba Medical School in Pamelas Silver's lab
working on artificial photosynthesis. Shoutout Pamelas Silver. How about that.
(46:39):
I'm a long time fan of the show and wanted
to say what you guys did? You did? You did
a great job covering renewable energy with Phil Gates. During
the episode, there was a question about the current limitations
of artificial photosynthetic systems at present, the biggest issues are scalability,
he cost energy in producing the building materials, and the
efficient extraction of produced rules. Uh. These are standard engineering hurdles,
(47:02):
but like Mr Gates said, we can call them Bill
by the way, I don't think you can, Brendon, we can,
but we can. Uh. These are standard engineering hurdles, but
like Mr Gates said, the final product needs to be viable. Specifically,
such a product would need to harvest in store more
energy in the short term than what was required to
build it makes sense and do so on the cheap. Uh. Fortunately,
(47:23):
biotechnology and photo voltaic technology is advancing at a breakneck pace,
so the future of this technology looks bright. As new
biochemistries are discovered, more products will be available for production,
and one vision of this technology is a local and
individualized production chemicals on demand. I hope this helps. Feel
free to reach out. Cheers Brendon, Thanks Brendon. Yeah, Brendon
(47:47):
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(48:07):
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Stuff you should know from House Stuff Works dot com. Hey,
(00:23):
and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. This shout
out up you, Chuck, Priyan, Jerry, and this is stuff
you should know. You introd as if you were asleep
and I just walked by and poked you with a
bold cube and that's your first thing you do is
you wake up and just go, hey, welcome to the podcast.
(00:44):
How are you, sir man. I'm feeling fine, Yeah, good,
feeling fine. That's a Simpsons reference from what the Shining One?
Oh yeah, the Shooting Classic. It's a good one. Um.
So a couple of quick matters of business, a little
(01:04):
c o A. At the beginning, we're talking about freak shows,
and we will be saying freaks and things like that.
That is obviously an antiquated term, um, but a lot
of there are a lot of quotes in here and
a lot of references to uh, freaks and midgets and
pin heads and all these awful terms that they used
(01:26):
to call these people that had, you know, physical deformities
and maladies. Um, so it's not us speaking. This is
a historic in historical context, Like we get the insensitivity. Yeah,
it's not. We're not We're not being insensitive. Here's uh
and we want to shout out if you. We used
a couple of house Stoff how stuff it works, How
(01:47):
stuff Works articles, as well as one from History Magazine
by Laura Grande Priceonomics Zachary Crockett wrote one and who
I have to say, I'm a fan of that dude's work. Yeah,
it was a good artic prisonomics these and some really
interesting articles, agreed. And then one from human Marvels dot com,
which is just a good website by j tithonus now
(02:13):
announced right p E D in a U D. Yeah
that's a tough one. Now, yeah, I assume the D
is silent or maybe not. Maybe it's ped now pay
node node huh freaky and a couple of other places
we visited. So and everyone kind of says the same thing.
(02:34):
But it's a nice, well rounded thing. I think, Yeah,
well they I mean, we're talking about the history of
freak shows and there's only you know, one history. Yeah,
certain things happen, and we found we found very quickly
that like you can't extract um freak shows from P. T.
Barnum or vice versa. No, like they they they are
(02:54):
inextricably bound. But freak shows, um, you know Barnum was
working in the nineteenth century. But the concept of freak shows,
which um is basically someone who is a human curiosity,
and that could be someone who was born with a
genetic deformity, of physical deformity um, some sort of mental
(03:15):
incapacity um, or some people have turned themselves into human curiosity,
say through the wonder of tattooing or um learning to
swallow swords or something like yeah, or like these days
body modification like the gym Rose show or there's one
in Coney Island still that does a like a traditional show. Yeah,
(03:38):
side show by the Seashore also a great song by
Luna Nice, one of my favorite bands. Um. So, the
the whole concept of this of having a human curiosity
and um basically charging gawkers to look at it, it
dates back quite a way, is um. Well, actually not
(03:58):
that far the sixteenth century. That's pretty far, I guess so.
But you would think like, well, the Greeks or the
Romans did this, but apparently no everybody was fairly Um,
from what I understand, everybody just kind of steered clear
of human curiosities to that point. Yeah, I think people
feared them, right. They were locked away mainly because they
(04:18):
thought it was some evil curse or punishment from God.
And this wasn't someone you wanted to consort with. Else
you might bring back, bring down the wrath of God
upon yourself. That's right. But like you said, in the
late fifteen, hundreds of people started to say, you know
what I'm curious about, um, someone with hair growing all
over their face. I'm curious about the human curiosity exactly.
(04:40):
And I know I don't Chuck, I want to say,
I don't think it's coincidence that about this time, science
was starting to spread throughout Europe. So the idea that um,
this was God's breath was was taking a bit of
a back seat to uh, this is a human condition
of some sort, yes, but not so far down the
road of science, to where there was this intermediate period
(05:02):
where they were got Dad, And as we'll find out later,
science would eventually take part in ending the sideshows right
created them and it ended them. Yeah, it's kind of
neat good way to look at it. Uh so one
of the first UM viewings or one of the first
people put on display and you know this is also
going to be well, we'll get into it later, but
(05:23):
the morality of this is very up and down with
exploiting people and these people that would normally be locked
away actually having super lucrative careers long lasting made them
rich well. Plus also, UM, I think one of the authors,
I think it was Crockett points out that, UM, there
early on, if you were in a freak show, there
(05:45):
was a good chance that um, you had been abandoned
by your parents, became a ward of the state and
adopted by somebody who just ruthlessly exploited you and maybe
barely took care of you. But one thing you can
definitely say to his credit, as Barnum came into it
and basically normalized or created an industry out of freak
(06:06):
shows or four freak shows, UM, conditions definitely changed and
the exploitation seems to have less in some way. Yeah.
I think that with the big names like Norman and Barnum,
I think they were all manner of minor side shows
that probably didn't treat them as well. Uh, And usually
Barnum and Norman bought their curiosities from those minor side shows,
(06:30):
lesser show exactly. So we're tking about Tom Norman out
of England. Yeah, they were basically counterparts. Yeah, and what
we'll get into them back to one of the earliest
um quote unquote freaks was a man named Lazarus Colorado
not Colorado, who was a conjoined twin. He had a brother, Johannes,
(06:50):
who was upside down on his chest and technically it
was a parasitic twin to Lazarus. Oh, not conjoined twins.
They were conjoined. But Johannes like didn't eat, okay, he
um he could, He didn't speak, he never opened his eyes,
and apparently the only way you could get a physical
reaction out of him was if you rubbed his chest.
(07:11):
That would make him squirm like quaide and total recall
very much got you. So. Uh. He went on tour,
performed before King Charles the First in the early sixteen forties.
But it was not a big deal. It wasn't a
super lucrative. Side shows weren't really a thing at that point. No,
but this guy was saying, Uh, you guys are gonna
(07:32):
ostracize me. Well, I'm going to charge you to look
at me then, and I'm going to support myself and
my brother doing this. Yeah, he did it himself. It's
not clear whether he worked with a manager or not
or a promoter, but he definitely um made his own
choice to go do this, Yes, exactly. And he was
apparently an otherwise handsome man. That's how everyone described him,
(07:54):
which I think probably for the court Um or Europe
who who came and looked at him, uh, probably just
made it even more mind boggling, you know. But he's
a good guy right right, you know. Uh, P T.
Barnum and I think we should do in a whole
podcast on PT Barnam at some point to really close
out the circus suite. Well, then we shouldn't mention him
again in the show. No Barnum as as a teenager, Uh,
(08:21):
he always had a penchant for making money. He was
one of those magnets sort of weird ways. Uh. He
ran his own lottery as a teenager um in Connecticut
and he said, here's what I'll do. I can just
sell these tickets. I'll give out prizes in varying levels
from dollars on down to like CS and U yeah
(08:45):
and um. But it was very well thought out for
a teenager. He wasn't just like just one prize. He
spread it out so he would entice people to play more. Uh.
And he actually made a lot of money from it
until they outlawed the lottery. He was making like eleven
grand in today's dollars a week as a teenager. Yeah,
nineteen not bad. But then Connecticut and the rest of
(09:06):
the country said no more lotteries for now. Um, we'll
bring that back up later though, don't you worry, TB
C and Um. He had to find other ways to
make work, moved to New York City and in eighteen
thirty five, UM, he had You know, England is where
a lot of this started. We'll talk about Norman in
a second, but he got his queue from England, said
(09:27):
here's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna buy a person.
I'm gonna buy my first freak uh, this blind paralyzed
slave woman. And this is a hallmark of freak shows,
as I'm gonna make up a story about her that's
sensational and crazy, like a Ripley's believe it or not
kind of thing, right, and Embarnum in particular was well
known for just taking these things to the nth degree, like, sure,
(09:50):
no one's gonna buy that, but he could sell it
in such a way that people believed it because they
were exponentially dumber back then. Uh. He the story for
her was that she was a hundred and sixty years old,
was George Washington's nurse. Uh and you can pay to
see her, when in fact she was only eighty years old.
(10:11):
She was half that age. Yeah, and her name was
Joyce Heath, and she was just an old lady right. Yeah,
she was an old slave woman who was paralyzed and
blind and was being exploited by p. T. Barnum in
the year before her death. So she dies um, but
before then, like as he's touting her as this hundred
(10:31):
and six year old former nurse made to George Washington. Um,
that gets an initial reaction and then ticket sales drop,
and then PiZZ Barnum did something quite smart. He wrote
an anonymous letter to a Boston newspaper and accused himself
of being a fraud and saying that the the hundred
and sixty year old woman was a fake that she
(10:54):
was actually a machine, a robot made of whale skin
and it and ticket sales went right through the roof again. Man,
what a guy. There should be a good movie about him.
I can't believe there's not, like a modern one. I'm
sure there is, you know, surely, like the what's the one?
The Greatest Show on Earth was a movie? Right, and
(11:16):
Griffith movie or something. Yeah, that's what I mean. But
like Tom Cruise should play him, yeah, and should be
directed by Michael Bay Russell Crowe should No, not Russell Crowe. Well,
how about who could play p. T. Barnum? You know
who who? He would be good at it, but it'd
just be so him. Sam Rockwell, oh totally, he could
(11:37):
play anything. So I'd rather see somebody even broader playing him. Yeah,
I heard research look ahead, Gina. Who would end up
playing him is freaking Hugh Jackman. And yeah, yeah, because
he can do cartwheels. Yeah, what were you gonna say? Somebody?
(11:58):
It might have been during the Bill Gates interview, were
something yesterday that somebody said that no, it was unseen it.
Tom Hanks is the most trusted person in America. Like
for some poll found that like the most trusted person
in America is Tom Hanks. Were we on the list?
I don't think so. Sure you got it dressed on.
We're not even Also rans were never rans? Alright. So
(12:23):
he purchased that woman what was her name, joyce heth
j O I C E H E T H for
a thousand dollars and he made about that every week,
um from exploiting her. I imagined that she got very
little of that. Yeah, although you can't necessarily say that
I didn't see what she was paid, she was very
(12:44):
likely paid. And I'm she was probably fairly well taken
care of, especially considering um that she probably just And
this is based on how Barnum treated other people later
in a documented manner. But um he I don't want
to say he rescued her from slavery because she went
(13:05):
from being a slave to being owned by somebody who
exhibited her. Um. But it's not a guarantee or a
given that her situation got worse after she she was
purchased by Barnum. Right, does that make sense? Man? That
felt like a minefield? I was talking about slavery, human exploitation.
(13:27):
A blind woman who was also paralyzed. Good, good, luck
sir um his first big hoax after that or uh, well,
actually I guess it wasn't a hoax aside from the
made up story. But um, he had a real hoax.
That was a hoax. Well I hope sure, um, but
this was a hoax in two because it was nothing
about it was real. He was promoting something called the
(13:49):
Fiji Mermaid, which was basically rogue taxidermy as all it was.
That's exactly what it was. It was a creature with
a head of a monkey and the tail of a
fish that he bought from Japanese sailors. Well he didn't.
He got it from a sailor who bought it from right,
and actually it was Japanese fisherman. Yeah, and he well,
what's the difference. Well, they're like traditional they didn't necessarily
(14:10):
go to see they were like islanders and this is
like traditional art for them, folk art. So not a
sailor but fisherman. Right, that's that entry one oh one.
Sorry it's so fixated on things. Yeah. Uh. And he
leased it um for twelve fifty a week twelve dollars
(14:31):
and fifty cents um from from the owners have said
rogue taxidermy and he tried, he purnt up pamphlets and
tried to convince everyone it was some real thing. So
he he actually had a um A partner named Levi
what was Levi's name? He's definitely an overlooked guy, Levi Lyman.
(14:51):
Can you imagine like being P. T. Barnum's partner, Like
you'd never be in the spotlight a right, So Levi
Lyman posed as a English doctor, a scientist who was
in possession of this mermaid, and UM P. T. Barnum
very publicly was trying to get his hands on the mermaid,
and this guy was very publicly resisting him because there
(15:12):
was a man of science and this was the real deal.
And it helps just convince everybody, including the newspapers, that
like this is the genuine article, just Rubes Nation, a
world of Rubes. It seems like he ended up opening
up a museum on Broadway in New York City, UM,
eighteen forties, you know, sort of you know, like a
Ripley's Believe it or not kind of thing. Curiosities and
(15:34):
weird things. Yeah, that's those his stock in trade. Uh.
And then we should talk about his counterpart in England,
UM Tom Norman. Yeah, Tommy Norman, Tommy Norman. Uh. He
was named the Silver King and Barnum actually gave him
that name apparently after meeting him, and he said, boy,
what a huge silver showy silver watch you have there.
(15:58):
You're the Silver King. He goes, I am the Sill King.
I've been waiting my whole life for somebody to notice exactly.
So he was doing the same thing in England. Uh.
And he he actually um, he toured with Joseph Merrick
the Elephant Man. Yeah, and he got um castigated by
a lot of people saying, you're exploiting this guy John
(16:18):
Merrick and h is it John or Joseph? What I
say John? Yeah? And it's like an ongoing thing. Oh
is it yeah, I can't remember if it's well, let's
find out. No, it's Joseph for sure. Had just misspoke. Um.
He was attacked in specifically in a memoir by Dr
Frederick Treeves uh called The Elephant Man and other Reminiscences. Uh.
(16:41):
And he shot back and he said, you know what,
I haven't mistreated Merrick, haven't abused him. Uh. He wasn't
forced to do anything. And he said, in fact, the
big majority of showmen are in the habit of treating
their novelties as human beings and in a large number
of cases as one of their own, not like beasts. Right.
So uh, you know, the morality battle was being waged
(17:02):
even back then. Yeah. And I mean if you you
think about um, this time when people would go look
at people who had physical deformities and pay for it
and just look at him just standing there, you think, well,
the whole world was pretty evil and a moral at
the time not necessarily true. There's a, um, a lot
(17:24):
of people who railed against this stuff, like Frederick Treeve's
who was um. He was portrayed by Anthony Hopkins, right,
isn't that him? Yeah? He was in The Elephant Man
the movie? Was he actually Marrick's doctor? Dn't yeh man?
That movie? Yeah? David Lynch god one of the best ever. Um.
And then there was an historian who at the time,
(17:46):
I think in like the eighteen sixties he wrote. His
name was Henry Mayhew and in eighteen sixty when he
was British, he wrote that that these freak shows were
nothing more than human degradation. And he said something that
stuck out to meet Chuck. He said that the men
who preside over these infamous places, know too well the
failings of their audience. And I think he really hit
(18:08):
the nail on the head by he wasn't accusing the
showman because I think he understood that most of these
people were just under contract, and he wasn't accusing the people,
the actual human curiosities, the freaks themselves. He was rightly
placing the blame for all this on the observers, the gawkers.
(18:28):
Like if there wasn't a market for it, they wouldn't
be doing it. Yeah, Like you're the one who is
having the moral failing. Who's paying to go see this
person who may or may not be exploited you don't know,
And uh, it's really on you audience. Yeah, it's pretty
Uh it's a lot of foresight for back then, I
thought so too. So it's not like the point was.
It's not like everybody was just going along with this.
(18:51):
People have had a problem with it basically the whole
time freak shows were around. All right, well, let's take
a break and we'll talk a little bit more about um,
the evolution of the side show. Right after this, we're back.
(19:32):
I brought my pencil. What's up? Oh right, on man.
I didn't get that at first, do you. I'm impressed
that you did get it nice. Uh. That was from
Van Halen's popular song Hot for Teacher from and we
are now nineteen eighties DJs. Uh. So the side shows
(19:56):
became a legitimate thing, a big way to make money.
There were different kinds. Um. There was one called a
tin in one show, which I believed the sides side
show by the sea shore is today you did it
through my missing tooth. Uh. And that is when you
have ten people on display on a platform at once
and people just walk by and look at them. It's
(20:17):
not like a performance. It's just there's a bearded lady,
there's the dog faced boy, there's the tattooed man, and
they're all of the standing there. That's a tin and one. Uh.
They had things, and this was all too to drum
up more money. They would advertise something as an adults
only or a man only even performance. Right. Well, the
(20:38):
men only performance frequently had a stripper you know, yeah, um,
or stuff that they thought that we're just like a
woman shouldn't see or children shouldn't see. I don't know
if it was as much of that as if it
was to just trump up like, oh my god, it's
so bad that a woman can't see lay her eyes
upon it. Um, I think it's all part of the show. Uh,
(21:01):
that's my feeling. At least. One of the things that
they displayed were something called a pickled punk, which is awful,
especially when you find out what it is. Yeah, it's
basically a an abnormal fetus in a formalbe hyde in
a jar. And you could go by and look at
pickled punks and gawk at them for money. It's it's awful. Yeah,
(21:24):
this is what people did, like on Saturday night in Kansas.
So um, the the usually this this side shows of
the freak shows. At first, they were you would be
some enterprising entrepreneur in some small town and you would
notice that a little youngster had um a third leg, okay,
(21:48):
and you your thought was, I can really make some
money with this kid. So you go to their parents
and you'd say, I will give you of all of
the earnings of your child if you let me take
him on the road, and he will stay in the
finest hotels and we're the best clothes as exactly, and uh,
the he will become famous in the world, will love him, h,
(22:10):
just let me handle it. I'm going to be as
manager from now on. And the parents would very frequently,
especially if they were poor, would say, that's great. Do
that give me some money upfront though, by the way, yeah,
especially because a lot of times some of these people
were a burden on their family because of their health condition,
so they were happy to be rid of them. That's
all very sad, okay. So that's how that's how it
(22:32):
definitely started out. And then and it went on like
that um for a very long time as well. But
once borne him and not a Norman and some of
the other guys, the big guys came around, they would
just basically keep an eye out for that kind of thing,
or they would be approached by these guys who would
essentially be middleman kind of like um, somebody who discovered
a boy band selling their contract to a bigger record company.
(22:56):
But this was with human curiosity, people with the third lagger,
hyper trichosis or what have you. UM. And then Barnum
would take him and would would just take whatever exaggerated
origin story that they came with and just throw it
out and come up with one ten times more uh.
And after his uh George Washington's nurse made Joyce heth died,
(23:19):
who was not George Washington's right. He started looking around
for his next collaborator, if you could call him that, um,
and he found out that he had a distant cousin,
a fifth cousin UM named Charles Stratton, who had stopped
growing when he was about two years old. Yeah. He
he never completely stopped. He grew very slowly. He made
(23:42):
it to like just over three feet I think by
the time his death. Yeah. He died at forty five
of a stroke and he was three point three five
ft tall. Um, but grew so slowly. I mean you
know he was He was General Tom Thumb, very famously
renamed General Tom Thumb by his half fifth twice removed cousin.
(24:03):
Uh pt what does that stand for? Even Paul Thomas
Anderson bon uh So he said, you know what this
is great. Um, you were a small person and you're
cute as the dickens, So let me dress you up
in little adult suits and you're my new sidekick. Yeah
(24:24):
that he He collaborated with the kid's dad and said, let's, um,
let's make some money. Uh and he um he taught
him how to sing and dance, pretend he was Napoleon,
He did impressions Cupid, he played Cupid sometimes, and then
he told everybody that this little five year old kid
was actually eleven, which made it all the more astounding
that he was that small, which he didn't even need
(24:46):
to do, you know. And then for about the next
like fifteen or so years, Um turned Tom Thumb into
what was essentially the first international celebrity. Oh was he
the first international celebrity? Pretty much? Tom Thumb was a sensation.
Queen Victoria was a huge fan, met met with him
(25:07):
twice to at least twice um. She apparently was really
big into side shows, but Tom Thumb was her favorite.
Um and he. They made so much money off of
their first European tour that um Barnum bought his museum
with the proceeds. Is there anything grosser than the Queen
of England laughing at a small person imitating Napoleon for money.
(25:33):
She may have even known Napoleon at the time, Oh,
I'm sure she. That probably made it all the funnier
to her. Unbelievable. So, but he was. He was a
rich dude. He was paid uh in today's dollars Tom Thumb.
Oh yeah, over four thousand dollars a week and retired
and lived the high life in New York City. Um.
(25:55):
And you know he didn't feel like he was exploited. No,
he he actually got married. I saw that he had children,
but I could I only saw that one place. I
didn't see it anywhere else. But he he was married
and actually, um, right after the marriage was brought to
the White House to hang out with Abraham Lincoln and
Mrs Lincoln. Yeah, he had twenty people at his funeral.
He he was again, he was a very big deal.
(26:18):
And from what I understand, at the end of the day,
he shed his persona. He was just Charles Stratton, uber wealthy, uh,
some little person um. And when he was doing his show,
he was Tom Thumb who would dress up as Napoleon
or whatever and take your money. But um, he he
and P. T. Barnum together really made a ton of cash.
(26:41):
Tom Thumb was a little better at managing his cash
than Barnum was, because Barnum fell in hard times. A
lot of people don't realize this, but he made some
actually really bad investments over over time too. Yeah, he
invested a lot of his money initially back into his business,
which was smart, right, and but a lot of times
he would be like this is gonna be a hit
and it wouldn't be a hit. He didn't have the
(27:02):
Midas touch necessarily, and he fell on hard times more
than once. One of the times Um Tom Thumb or
Charles Stratton bailed him out. Oh really, I get the
feeling Barnum didn't know when to leave well enough alone,
you know, like he had a big, thriving business and
he just kept wanting to push it further and further.
Hugh Jackman, I'm telling you. Uh So, now we will
(27:23):
talk about a couple of people, um, who are afflicted
with something. Uh. Well, they were micro cephalic, which means
that they have a cone shaped head smaller than normal
shaped head as well. Yes, if you've ever if you're
a Howard Stern fan, then you know beetlejuice, he has
(27:43):
his condition. Um. And they used to call them pinheads
back in the day, awful term. Uh. And there were
a couple of notable I'm not even gonna keep saying that,
but a couple of notable people that performed um in
these freak shows. One was Zip William Henry Johnson renamed
Zip to z I P. He's from New Jersey, born
(28:06):
to newly freed slaves and uh. When Barnum found him,
he says, you know, I'm gonna do gonna make up
the story that you were found during a guerrilla expedition
near the Gambia River. I'm gonna shave your head except
for a little ponytailed tuft on top, and address you
in a suit of fur. And you get up on
that stage and grunt like an animal. Yeah, he was
(28:28):
paid a dollar a day at first to not talk
to grunt and I guess to play the violin really badly. Yeah.
I didn't get was he paid a dollar a day
to start? Okay? I thought that might have been part
of the story that he was in fact paid a
hundred dollars a day. Later he became a very popular
um uh freak. I guess. Yeah. The thing is is
(28:51):
um he Uh. William Henry Johnson was probably not microcephalic
at all. Um he micro cephal microsophilic is totally different microcephalic.
Um he. Actually they think now that he had just
like a slightly abnormally shaped head that was exaggerated by
the haircut that they gave him and that he actually
(29:14):
had no diminished mental faculties once what what at all?
And he was just pretending the whole time, and not
only fooling crowds, but he was also fooling promoters. Yeah,
because that's one of the hallmarks of that condition. Is
I believe that usually it's accompanied by cognitive stunted cognitive development. Ye,
usually very severe, but not in his case. He was
(29:35):
super smart and when he died said we fooled them all. Yeah,
that was his sister and his deathbed. They're also married.
Not true. So he made a lot of money too,
he did. He apparently retired with millions UM a millionaire,
so he's not the only UM Again. Pinhead is what
this specific type of freak was called. Man, I can't
(29:58):
believe I just said that. This feels so wrong. I know, um,
but there's a very side show performer and Chuck. Another
very famous side show performer who was also I guess
technically in the Under the Umbrella Pinhead, who actually was
UM Micro's cephilic was Schlitze. Yes, Schlitze is one of
(30:22):
my favorite people of all time. Yes, let's see, they
don't know for sure his real name, but Um, they
believe it's Simon Metz born in nineteen and one of
the Bronx. And Um, by all accounts from everyone who
ever met Schlitze, everyone loved Schlitze. And he was a
ray of sunshine and a nice, sweet carrying, kind hearted man. Yes,
(30:46):
loved life. Anything that you would take for granted. Um,
Schlitze probably enjoyed the heck out of and Um. He
was very frequently built as a woman. Um. I think
he was bill as an Aztec warrior at first, and
then maybe even an Aztec woman. But he wore dresses
all the time because he was incontinent, and this just
(31:07):
made it the whole thing easier. Um, So he was
bill as a woman for a very long time, and
including in the movie, Um Freaks, the Todd Browning movie
from Schlitze was in that and Schlitze actually has like
this big scene that's like has he has a whole
speaking like a dialogue section, But to this day no
(31:29):
one has any clue what he says. Yeah, should we
talk about Freaks a now or take a break and
then talk about it. Let's take a break, all right,
(31:59):
all right, So the movie Freaks, Uh, I've seen it,
have you I saw it for the first time this
morning when most people see it. Uh. Yeah, it's a
nineteen thirty two pre code film. Uh. There was a
(32:22):
time between when um, they started making movies to four
when the motion picture production code kicked in. Uh yeah
and properly called the Hayese code. UM. For five years
there you could do whatever you wanted, I guess. And
uh that's when this director named Todd Browning made a
movie called Freaks about sideshow performers. And this guy was
(32:47):
he actually ran away that the director actually ran away
and joined the carnival when he was sixteen and worked
as a carnival barker and even uh participated in stunts
and he was he's a circus guy. And he had
a lot of um side show performers as friends. And
you can tell in the movie that that's he's like,
that's who he's whose side he's on, that's who that
(33:10):
they're the heroes of the story with the protagonists antagonists
or normals or whatever. Um and uh it's a really
morally fraud movie these days. But if you just step
back and and think of it as like this guy
having an affinity for sideshow performers and giving them a
(33:32):
shot at at stardom, being on the big screen for
what they are, for who they are, for what they
can do. Um. Then it's a really kind of a
heart growing tale. Heart growing, yeah, in a very weird way.
It's it's wrenching the watch. When's the last time you
(33:53):
saw a college They spent a long time. Just see
it again, all right, we'll check it out like it's
it's tough to watch his gut wrenching. Uh. There are
a lot of um, well, let's just talk about some
of the performers in the movie. Um. One of them
who stands out is Johnny eck John Eckhart Jr. Who
was a twin and he was born with a condition. Uh.
(34:14):
Everyone said that he was cut off at the waist. Uh.
Not exactly true. We actually had um unusable underdeveloped legs
that you never saw, but it appeared as though he
didn't have anything from the torso down. And as from
a young kid, I believe he was even walking on
his hands before his twin brother was even standing. So
(34:35):
he was very advanced in a lot of ways. A
very smart guy. He's a painter. Uh yeah, very accomplished.
The magician. Um, and you had a great personality too,
you could tell. Yeah, and apparently he was good buddies
with um Browning, and Browning always wanted him around and
by his side and was like, you know, you need
to come sit with me by the camera and almost
(34:56):
like his Uh. I don't know if he like could
consider him a co director, but he always wanted him nearby.
Pretty neat Uh. Daisy and Violet Hilton, Yeah, can joined twins, right, yeah,
which they called Siamese twins back in the day. Um,
thanks to Chang and Yang bunker right. Yeah, they were
(35:16):
actually uh some of the first super famous. Uh. They
were from a Siamese fishing village and that's where the
term came from. Yeah, Siam was what we now called Thailand.
That's right, uh and Chang and Ing we're born in
nineteen I'm sorry, eighteen eleven. And they actually performed on
their own for many years, made a ton of money,
(35:38):
They got married, had kids, moved to North Carolina of
all places, and um that well actually interestingly, Daisy and
Violet ended up in North Carolina too, Oh yeah, but
under much much worse conditions. Yeah, but um to finish
with Chang and Ang, they eventually lost their money. They
were millionaires Losser Dough and then we'd worked for in
(36:00):
him later on in life. But I get the impression
that they did it kind of like at their leisure
almost and ended up reamassing another fortune interest from working
with Barnum. Yeah, and they fathered twenty one children between them,
married to Paris sisters and can join. Each had a house.
Then they would spend three days at one house, three
(36:20):
days at the next house. Um and yeah, they had
twenty one kids. Pretty amazing. So Daisy and Violet Hilton,
they were known as Simeon twins back then. Of course, Uh,
we don't use that German anymore, but I mean I
remember that term when I was a kid. So it's
definitely like held on for way too long. Remember Ronnie
and Dinnie Galleon. Yeah, are they still with us? Let's
(36:43):
find out. Well, you're you're checking that. I'll continue. Um,
I believe that. Uh that Browning spotted Daisy and Violet
and said, you guys are great, You're pretty, you can sing.
You'll be a big part of my movie. And they
they had been performers all along. Um. By eighteen, they
were ontour with Bob Hope as part of his dance
(37:05):
troup and made quite a bit of money. Um. But
sadly their story into North Carolina because they made an
appearance in at a midnight showing of Freaks at a
drive in and their manager ditched them and this party
don't get they had no way to leave North Carolina,
so they just stayed there. Yeah, they had to get
a job. That just seems odd to me. If you
(37:28):
don't have any money and knowing to call to ask
for money, you go get a job at a grocery
store and I hope that you can eventually die there.
It seems like they would have gotten enough money to
leave and go back to wherever they live. Well, they
died in Charlotte, North Carolina of the Hong Kong flu.
What is that? It was a flu epidemic. She's that
(37:50):
originated in Hong Kong. But it's a different world back then,
Siamese twins died to Hong Kong flu. None of that
seems politically correct to know. It doesn't who else was
in Freaks? Uh, let's see, Um, there were a pair
of little people named Harry and Daisy Earls, and they
played Hans and frieda right, and Hans is like the
(38:13):
ring master of the side show and um Frida. In
real life, Daisy was known as the midget may West. Um.
And in the movie they're engaged, but actually in real
life they were a brother and sister. Yeah. And they
were in the Wizard of Oz even as munchkins. And
(38:34):
we're in a bunch of movies with Laurel and Hardy
as well, So lifelong performers. So the the whole this
whole movie. And again, um, we kind of we didn't
finish with the schlitz Schlitzy was in it too and
had this whole big speaking part. Um. It was just
adorable in the movie. You could like Schlittsi's personality just
shines right through the movie. Very likable. Yeah, and um
(38:57):
Schlitze was actually uh adopted that no one had any
idea who Schlitzy's biological family was. They were not around.
So the um, the people he performed with and worked for,
actually took care of him. And when his adopted father died,
(39:19):
his father's daughter, biological daughter said hey, schlitzee, Um, I'm
going to commit you to an asylum in Los Angeles.
And that's where Schlitzy was until one day just by
total chance. Chuck. Uh. Another circus performer, I think a
sword swallower right named Bill Bill you're schlitz Yeah, what
(39:44):
are you doing here? You look so sad, And Schlitzy
was like, I remember you, let's go. So Bill Unk
intervened and got Schlitzy out of the institution, and uh
he got to live out his days hanging out in
the park being recogniz eyes by passers by. Yeah, he
lived near MacArthur Park in downtown l A. And uh
(40:06):
lived all the way up until at age seventy one. Yeah,
so you know you gotta see Schlitze. You should see freaks.
But even if you don't see freaks, like, look up
Schlitzy's part A, it'll probably make you want to see freaks.
So Chuck, Um, the Freak Show is well. Some people
(40:28):
say that it's still around and that it's just on
TV in the form of reality shows. Like basically that
same sentiment and everything still has found all over television. Yeah,
exploiting uh people like uh, exploiting obesity and exploiting dwarf
is um and uh, yeah it's on television now. Um.
(40:49):
But the actual side show itself, Um, it's well, it
went away in a lot of ways, at least as
far as like a traveling side show went. And it
went away with the rise of UM the rights for
the disabled. That that that movement that came along in
the starting in about the like late nineteenth century, early
(41:10):
twentieth century, and then really gaining steam by about the
time Freaks came around the movie. Yeah, there were a
few things that kind of killed it, UM, but one's definitely,
like you said, science invented it and killed it as
And here's something that is sort of reprehensible that I
found out. There's a lot of these uh uh side
shows would try and keep doctors away from the people
(41:31):
because they thought, I don't want a doctor coming in
here and saying that the dog faced boy actually has hypertrichosis. Yeah,
because and it's a condition where you have hair all
over your face, because everybody he was a cave caveman, Yeah, exactly.
Did you know? Actually there was another there was a
woman UM named Julia Pastrana, and she had hypertrichosis too,
(41:56):
and she ended up marrying her manager. They were married,
they had a baby together, and she died during childbirth
and and the baby was born still born, and her
husband manager, who ostensibly loved her, said show must go on.
So he mummified his wife and they're still born baby,
and then took him around to display them in the
(42:18):
side show as ever unbelievable. So uh again, doctors would
come along and start explaining these things, and that helped
kill the side show. The rise of television and uh,
you know, at home entertainment meant people weren't going out
to places like sideshows anymore. Yeah, they could stay in
(42:38):
their house and watch television. And apparently you could still
find sideshows like the American Horror Story. Was it freak
Show last season or whatever. I don't watch that, but yeah,
um it was setting I think the fifties, and I
think at that time you could still see, you know,
traveling sideshows here there, but they were pretty broken down
by that point. They were pretty much gone. But by
(43:02):
the sixties there was a girl named Carol Browning and
she I all I could find is that she had
deformed arms and legs. I don't know what that means,
but that was the description that was given given of her.
But she went to a side show and when she
visited the carnival in North Carolina. I think she lived
in Charlotte. No Rawleigh and Carol, what is it with
(43:23):
North Carolina? That's where things beginning in with with sideshows. Well, Carol,
Carol Grant I think was her name. Carol wrote a
letter to the Agricultural Commission, and the Agricultural Commission is
in charge of side shows at the time, at least
in North Carolina, and said this is wrong, like, this
(43:43):
is beyond wrong. I'm I'm offended by this and this
this should not be allowed to happen. And she actually
sparked a national conversation about whether side shows should be
allowed to be around, even if performers wanted to be
a part of them. And that was the final death
knell that conversation. But a lot of people came out
and said, hey, you know what these people, you guys
(44:05):
call them freaks, but you also empty your pockets to them,
and they're wealthy, they enjoy the acclaim, they enjoy the money,
and um, it's actually you who has the problem. And
it didn't have much of an effect. Sideshows went away,
and a lot of the sideshow performers ended up going
from being pretty wealthy or well paid or having a
(44:26):
steady income to um being broke and ending up like
being abandoned by their managers like Daisy and Violet. Yeah,
it's a tricky ground. It is. It's pretty much sad
all the way through except for some success stories. And
that makes the whole thing so morally ambiguous if you
think about it, Like, it's just so easy to look
(44:49):
from here and be like you named your movie freaks
or you you you charge people to look at the
elephant man. But what about those people who say, I'm
cool with this, I'm signing on for this. This is
making a lot of very wealthy. I'm happy. I've I've
had all sorts of opportunities that weren't open to me before,
(45:09):
and I love what I do. What do you do
about that? Like, you can't condemn it. It's not an
easy black and white thing to to deal with. Yeah,
it's called a moral ambiguity. You said it that There
have always been them, them, those them moral ambiguity. There
always will be. Uh, you got anything else? No, if
you want to know more about sideshows, freaks, that kind
(45:34):
of thing, you can type those words into the search
part how stuffworks dot Com. And since I said search
parts not for listener mail. Hey, before listener mail, what
about Ronnie and Donnie? Oh yeah, Ronnie and Donnie are alive. Awesome.
They are sixty four years old as of past October
I think twenty one, and they are the world's longest
(45:57):
living conjoined twins. They're adorable too, they're oh hi ends right, yeah,
very nice. What what documentary did we see on them
or something? I can't remember, but we've we talked about
him a lot over the years, So that's that's great news.
But they're they're still at it all right, So listener mail.
I'm gonna call this one, uh quick feedback on the
(46:18):
Bill Gates podcast. That is quick turnaround. Hey, guys, my
name is Brendan Cologne announced like Cologne, and I'm a
PhD student at Habba Medical School in Pamelas Silver's lab
working on artificial photosynthesis. Shoutout Pamelas Silver. How about that.
(46:39):
I'm a long time fan of the show and wanted
to say what you guys did? You did? You did
a great job covering renewable energy with Phil Gates. During
the episode, there was a question about the current limitations
of artificial photosynthetic systems at present, the biggest issues are scalability,
he cost energy in producing the building materials, and the
efficient extraction of produced rules. Uh. These are standard engineering hurdles,
(47:02):
but like Mr Gates said, we can call them Bill
by the way, I don't think you can, Brendon, we can,
but we can. Uh. These are standard engineering hurdles, but
like Mr Gates said, the final product needs to be viable. Specifically,
such a product would need to harvest in store more
energy in the short term than what was required to
build it makes sense and do so on the cheap. Uh. Fortunately,
(47:23):
biotechnology and photo voltaic technology is advancing at a breakneck pace,
so the future of this technology looks bright. As new
biochemistries are discovered, more products will be available for production,
and one vision of this technology is a local and
individualized production chemicals on demand. I hope this helps. Feel
free to reach out. Cheers Brendon, Thanks Brendon. Yeah, Brendon
(47:47):
Cologne pronounced cologne. That's right. Uh. If you are an
expert in something that we talk about, we love hearing
feedback from people like you. You can tweet to us
that s Y s K podcast. You can do us
on Facebook, dot com, slash stuff you Should Know. You
can send us an email to Stuff Podcast at how
stuff works dot com, and, as always, joined us at
(48:07):
our home on the web, Stuff you Should Know dot com.
For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit
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