September 23, 2021 • 48 mins
You've seen her there in NY Harbor, standing tall. But do you know the story of how she came to be? Learn all about the Statue of Liberty today.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh.
There's Chuck in. There is a certain lady holding an
open flip. Nope, holding an open flame and wearing sandals,
(00:24):
so this must be sandals and lady, are we at
a fish concert? Yep, she's an app that has is
an open flame on her phone? Did she just does
she have a whippet balloon at her feet? Yes, that's
exactly right. You can't see it from below the pedestal, though. Ah,
(00:45):
that's very nice, so Chuck, No, No, it's so wrong.
I wasn't talking about someone at a fish concert. I
was talking about the Statue of Liberty. Good, because that's
what I researched. Same here, same here. Because if we
had just both happened to research the wrong thing. Um,
but it was the same thing, we could have still
(01:06):
just pulled it out like we are right now. Maybe,
But but we both researched the Liberty Enlightening the World
statue that's right, better known as the Statue of Liberty
to the you know, HOI POLOI, But for those in
the know, it's really Liberty Enlightening the World. And hope
is Hawaiian for huddled masses. That's right, wretched, um wretched?
(01:28):
Uh it wasn't. Yeah, it was a wretched you're cold
and tired and wretched? Were they wretched? That's that's how
Mma Lazarus put it. And I mean, I don't think
she was being me, and I think she was saying
that the state that they found themselves in was fairly wretched.
She called them your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. And she was
(01:52):
talking to continental Europe. But she was also basically saying,
like you guys suck. You send us your worst. We're
going to turn them into our best. Right. And like
you said, we're talking about the statue that if you
have been to New York City, Uh sits there in
the harbor, looming large at the time, the largest statue.
(02:13):
And clear up one misconception before we kind of get
to the history. You often hear like it was a
gift from the French government to the American government. Uh.
Not true, And I always sort of thought that, but
as we will learn, it's an even cooler story because
like real people paid for it with oftentimes very small donations,
(02:33):
much like uh Bernie Sanders was was building the statue.
It was just about to smoop him with that nice
work man. Thanks so um yeah, they they it was.
It was paid for by hard fought funds that came
from the people. I love that too. But there was
one guy who came up with the idea. This is
one of those things where it's like there was a
dude walking around and the idea for the statue of
(02:56):
Liberty popped into his head. And I love stories that
star like that, some guys just walking down the boulevard
and his name happens to in this case be Eduard
de Delaboulay, and he was walking around France in eighteen
sixty five and saying, you know, this place used to
be a lot better when it was a democracy, right,
(03:16):
and now we're under the rule of Napoleon the third
things aren't so great. And you know where things are
looking pretty decent is over there in those United States
where they have just uh Lincoln has come along issued
the Emancipate Patient Proclamation, and like they're trying to do
things right over there, and I think we should recognize
(03:38):
them and also sort of say to our own French people. Hey,
look at what they're doing over there, not bad? Yeah,
by by honoring America. And in this case it was
going to be giving America birthday gift from France UM
on our hundredth birthday in eighteen seventy six. Yeah, it
would kind of shine a light on friends and be like, hey,
(03:58):
look at how great things can be. Like they ratify
the thirteenth Amendment. Over there is no slavery anymore. Like
people are free, they're taking immigrants, and it's like a
beautiful place. Let's be more like America. UM and right. Yeah,
So he started um asking around um and and sharing
his idea and it actually kind of caught fire in
(04:19):
a lot of ways. It wasn't like a ho home
idea by any means. There are a lot of people
in France who supported it. And one of the people
who joined on board very early on was Frederica Augusta Bartoldi,
who ended up being the sculptor who sculpted the statue
of Liberty. And he sculpted. He came up with the
idea really fast, almost suspiciously fast, and when people grabbed
(04:40):
him by his lapels and said how did you come
up with this beautiful idea so fast they shook out
of him a piece of scrap paper that he had
submitted elsewhere. Yeah. Yeah, he did what any great designer does,
which is kind of sifted through his bag of used
tricks because he was on a deadline. He actually wasn't
(05:00):
on a deadline, but yeah. He had in the eighteen
fifties gone to the Middle East and was inspired by
the Sphinx and the Pyramids and said, you know, I'd
like to do something really nice like that. And he
got his chance when Egypt said, hey, we want a
big lighthouse in the Suez Canal here, and he came
up with this cool, large, tall lady with a lamp
(05:23):
to guide the people's way into through the Suez Canal.
And then they said, nah, we don't think we're gonna
do that anyway, And instead of just being angry and upset,
he said, that's fine, I'll just repurpose it. Yeah, he said,
it's like water off a duck's back. Egypt, I don't care.
I got I got other things to do. And I'd
(05:43):
like to think of it as not that um that
that we got a second hand design, but more like
the design was so great that it must be, it
must come into existence, and that it came into an
even better existence in the harbor off of Manhattan Um
rather than the Suez Canal. Yeah, he worked smarter, not harder.
(06:04):
That's right. That's another way to put if you're a landscaper.
He had to change a few things around. He had
to change Yeah, that in green side up. Those are
the only two things you have to remember. Those are
kind of the rules, I thought. Yeah. Uh so he
changed up a few things from his initial Egyptian design um,
namely the Egyptian look. He changed that up and instead
(06:25):
of this kind of Egyptian headdress, came up with that
cool spiky hat. Yeah. Hey, I didn't realize this, did you. That?
Like that crown against her forehead, that's a crown, but
this those spikes coming off off of it are like
reflections of rays from the sun. They're not meant to be.
It's not like a structural part of the crown or
(06:46):
or not. It's not meant to be. Oh so that's
supposed to be interesting. Yeah, it's seven rays of sunlight
shining out from it like that that I guess is
reflecting off of It's meant to be like the sun
reflecting all. Yeah, you think it's just like a like
almost like, um, I don't know, like a like a
(07:07):
Guarus kind of thing. Yeah, like a spiky, cool grown
yeah exactly. Uh, yeah, I'd be interested. I wonder if
anyone is done little photo shopping without that to see
the true nature of the hat the ground, like to see.
I know a few people who are good at photoshop.
I don't know, but you're gonna get your face in
my body, that's right, and our worst pictures. Uh. The
(07:29):
other thing they changed, or one of the other things
he changed, was the original statue had a lamp, and
he said, the lamp is nice for the Suis Canal,
but let's go with a torch for the United States.
And because it um, it symbolized enlightenment. It was liberty,
enlightening the world, you know, Like, I guess you could
enlighten the world with the lamp, but the lamps more
(07:50):
like showing the way. This is like casting the light
of enlightenment out in every direction. You know that better
metaphorical showing the metaphorical way. Sure almost had metaphysical um.
Then there was also that tablet. She's holding it her side.
The tablet of law with July four, seventeen seventy six
(08:15):
and Roman numerals they're inscribed on the side. That was
a new edition because the first, the original one um
progress carrying a light to Asia in the US canal
just had her had her hand like cup by her side,
not even doing anything. It's kind of like hand on
the hip right or now, Yeah, when I dip, you dip,
we dip right. Uh. And then to call back your
(08:36):
very sly little joke that you stuck in there at
the front of this podcast. You cannot from the ground
level because the pedestal is so tall. See what's going
on with the feet? And I had never really looked,
but right there, if you google a picture of Lady
Statue of Liberty's feet, there are broken shackles and a
(08:56):
broken chain that represents the abolition of slavery. And I
never knew that was there either. Yeah. And so after
Bart told they said, listen, guys, look, I made all
these changes. They they have flattened out his suit and
straightened his tie and put his glasses back on, and
then they lift him up on their shoulders and they said,
bear Toldie, Bear Toldie, And they carried him down the
(09:18):
avenue um and as a kind of an initial parade,
there'd be a lot of parades surrounding the Statue of
Liberty and its development. He disappeared. It was an accident, man,
it was an accident. The group agreed never to speak
of it. But so regardless, what I'm trying to say
is Bear toldie he got the contract to to be
(09:40):
the guy who designed this wonderful statue for France to
give to the United States. Right, so he hops on
a a plane. No no, no, not a plane. I
would guess a steamership or something. I can't imagine how
long that kind of stuff just took, how patients, But
it's a ocean voyage. There's like a sense of adventure, definitely,
(10:02):
but also after you do it, like for the umteenth time,
it's probably like, come on, although if you don't have
any frame of reference of things going any faster, maybe
it doesn't seem quite as long, like you and I
having flown taking a steamer. It's just like but it's
not like someone would have said, you know what else
is a sense of adventure? The concorde, that's right, A
(10:25):
lot quicker too, but very very adventurous. Heard they're bringing
that back. Yeah. I think we talked about that in
an episode. Didn't we do one on the concord? Yeah,
but I don't remember us talking about coming back. I
think we did. I think we mentioned I mean, there
needs to be something super fast. They're like at this point, yes,
we're there, we're at teleportation stage. We're definitely lagging behind.
(10:49):
I think. So that's like the Seinfeld gag when they
when they talk about we're going to try and like
make up some airtime or whatever, and he was just like,
why aren't they just flying as fast as they can
every single time? Does it? That's like, that's a very
good point, the mind boggling Seinfeld. Alright, So in seventy one,
(11:11):
he gets on that steamership. He comes over to travel
to the United States to try and get some support
because this is going to be a very expensive project,
and maybe to kind of scout out some locations and boom,
right there, as he's pulling into New York Harbor, he
sees the light, the metaphorical light, and sees Bedloe Island
b E d l o E right there in the harbor,
(11:33):
and he was like, wait a minute, what is this place?
And everyone said Oh, it's nothing. It's just it's a
hunting and fishing ground, uh for the Lenape Native Americans
here before us, and then the Dutch settled it, and
now the U. S Military owns it and it's you
don't really need to worry about it. And he was like, no,
I do, because that, my friends, is the perfect spot. Yeah,
(11:54):
it was perfectly situated to watch over the ships coming
into the harbor. Um and uh, that became the spot
for the Statue of Liberty. It really is a great
spot for it. And it was renamed Liberty Island in
nineteen fifty six by the Eisenhower administration. So so but totally.
He goes back to France and um, he's met some
(12:16):
Americans and drummed up the interests among Americans. He's found
the site for this amazing place that he's going to
build the world's tallest sculpture on um and he ends
up helping found the Franco American Union, which, as you said,
this wasn't a gift from the French government to the
American government. As as a matter of fact, I think
(12:38):
that was the first thing that Bert TOLDI and his
his friends tried. The friends said no, the Americans said, no,
that's just ridiculous. It's gonna cost too much and it
will never work. So they started trying trying to cobble
together like private support for it, and the results of
that was the Franco American Union. And I have one thing,
one thing to say about the Franco American and Uck
(13:01):
I was like, Franco American sounds really familiar. And then
I realized Franco American spaghetti. Remember that spaghetti in a can. Yeah,
it makes zero sense. The French aren't well known for
their spaghetti and spaghetti sauce, spaghetti right the um the
Italians are. And I think it was an Italian company.
(13:21):
I think they took that name on because they were
founded around the time that the Franco American Union was
trying to drum up interest in the Statue of Liberty project.
I couldn't find support for that. But that's my new hypothesis.
All right, Let's say we take a break and ponder that.
Maybe have some of it, all right, because that's not
chapoy already, that's different, right, I I don't I like both,
(13:41):
but yes, that's different. All right, Well, we'll go do
a sample of each and we'll come back with our
winner right after this. Who won? They were both winners,
(14:15):
all right. I love that ravioli still, I'd never get it,
like once every three or four years, I'll get that
tangy what is even in that? What kind of meat
is in that ravioli? And I'll eat it. I know,
I haven't had Franco American spaghetti since I can't even remember,
but I do remember it being the sweet spaghetti, because
(14:35):
that's what we need, right. Uh. Have you ever been
to the Statue of Liberty, first of all, like in
and traveled up and done the whole thing. I was
hoping you weren't going to ask me that. No, I haven't.
I haven't either. I did you know? It's it's Liberty
Island now and there's Liberty State Park as part of
the grounds. And I went to see radio Head there,
(14:56):
uh in late August two thousand one, right there with
the Statue of Liberty looming and the Twin Towers right
across the water. Good night, And of course, you know,
it was just a couple of weeks after that that
the Twin Towers were gone. It was very, uh surreal
to have gone to that show at that moment in time.
(15:17):
Uh and almost, well not almost twenty years ago, almost,
meaning as we record, just a couple of days away. Right, So, chuck, Um,
you haven't been to the set of Liberty either, I
guess is ultimately the point of your story. No, just
a Radiohead concert, Okay. So I don't feel particularly bad
because I was reading a piece of contemporary journalism, uh,
(15:41):
contemporary too when they restored the set of Liberty, which
we'll talk about for a second later, um, and they
were talking to the foreman, one of the foreman on
the job, and he was saying, like, I've lived in
New York for forty eight years, and it took me
getting this job to come out here. I've never been here.
So I think like a lot of people, including people
who I think tourists, are the ones who have been
(16:03):
to the Statue of Liberty. Not to say like I'm
not a tourist when I go to New York, but right,
it just makes me feel a little less bad that
it's not like, what kind of an American are you
haven't been to the Statue of Liberty? You call me? Yeah,
And it kind of feels like and I'm completely wrong here,
but it kind of feels like one of those where
you're like, no, you know, I get a nice view
of it from New York, and when I fly in
(16:24):
and out, you get a really nice view of it.
Like why do I need to actually go over there?
But that should probably make the journey over there. We'll
do it together holding their hands of fraternity, liberty, egality
and podcaster. That's right, so uh Bert told he comes
back to France. Oh yeah, forgot about. As the story goes,
(16:45):
he attends a wedding and sees this young woman and
it's like whoa ho ho who is that holding that?
Everyone said, yeah, she had a hat box and everyone said,
that's Jean Emily. How do you pronounce her last name? Uh?
Bho bay Hugh. You were doing so good with the
(17:05):
French b a h e u X. I know that
last part would has to be you right, yeah or
go oh baho? Where's going with ms B? Yeah, let's
call her miss B And he said, I have finally
(17:27):
met my lady Liberty. He goes on to Mary this
woman and as legend has it, uh and I don't
think he's ever confirmed from him, but his legend has
it he used her as the body model for the
Statue of Liberty and supposedly his mother Charlotte's face, which
is you know, it introduces a certain level of Freudiani is, um, yeah,
(17:50):
paging Dr Freud big time. My mom's face on my
wife's body. Dave helped us out with this, uh, and
he says that apparently his mother struck a stern, imposing figure,
so that's why he chose his mother's face. You know,
all right, we're just gonna go with that and just
kind of slowly back out of this room. That's right.
(18:13):
The next thing he needed to do after he had
his artistic inspiration and his model was too you know,
he didn't he's not a builder of things. He's he's well,
he is a builder of things, but he's not an
engineer and an architect on that level. Yeah, he was
very much interested in that kind of stuff, but he
was it was way beyond the scope of what he
was capable of understanding himself. Yes, so he needed some
(18:35):
help and he figured that first of all, this is
the tallest statue in the world at the time, so
it's going to be a challenge. And then what I
want to do is build it in France and then
take it apart and then rebuild it in the States.
I kind of get this in a way, but I
almost think that they could have gotten all the parts
(18:58):
and shipped them to the United States to build on
site for the first time. I mean, I kind of
get where he was coming from, though. You don't want
to send everything over and ending up being like Mr
mccraig with a leg for an arm and an arm
for a leg or something like that. You want to
make sure it works first before you if you ask me.
That shows it demonstrates the level of dedication that the
(19:21):
French had to this gift to America. And my hat,
my chef, how is off to them for it? Well,
and I guess he figured because my whole logic was like,
and you could do it in America and solve the
same problems here as you could have solved there, but
it would just be more embarrassing here in America. Well
that but I think he was working with his people
(19:41):
there and you can't bring all those people over, So
that was I'm sure there was a comfort level and
a language issue or barrier potentially that he wouldn't have
to overcome, So I succumb I also think probably that
he he was also using it as a way to
drum up interest in in their for funds for it
as well, because he had to raise money. We'll get
(20:03):
to that. So um Bart totally uh talked to a
couple of architects. The first one he spoke to was
Eugene viole A l EDuke Uh He was a the
greatest architect in France at the time, and he basically said, look,
you want to use this technique called rape whose and
it's basically what you're gonna do is build a skeleton
or something of some sort, some sort of structure underneath
(20:26):
that you can then attach thin sheets of copper too.
So the sculpture is going to be made at copper,
but it's not gonna be like cast or carved or
anything like that. That's that's it would just be impossible
to do. Um Instead, you're just going to fix copper
sheets to it to make the thing out of And
I guess viole A La Duke suggested making a concrete
(20:48):
structure underneath, and um Bert totally was like, Okay, you know,
I like you a lot. We've we've had a lot
of great basketball games together, and um you're my friend,
I'm gonna go with your recommendation. But then val A
Leduke died and he came another guy from our podcast history,
Gustav e fel Or Eiffel there is created the Eiffel Tower.
(21:12):
And he said, yet this is this is all wrong?
Like yes, yes, he's like, I'm trying out some new things. Uh.
He said, yes, I totally agree with val A Leeduke's
idea to use ray puss. That was a stroke of genius.
But the idea of like creating the structure underneath that
a concrete that's way too heavy, way too rigid, and
(21:34):
it's just totally unnecessary. Try out my new technique of
trusses and girders made of wrought iron. It's gonna be
way lighter and it's going to give it a lot
more flexibility. Yeah. I think he kind of thought that,
and I think it was probably right. Is that other
way it was a little more old school, and that
he saw the future, you know, pre Eiffel Tower. He
was the future and wrought iron, I guess. So he
(21:57):
was in love with those iron girders, and so he said,
here's what do We'll design this giant nine two pylon
and that'll be the central point from which everything will spring,
and they'll be this more lightweight, uh kind of grid
of girders and trusses that's going to form that skeleton
from that central pylon and then a secondary another iron
(22:20):
frame even and that's what those copper sheets are going
to be riveted to, one at a time. And he said,
this is the way, like you said, it's gonna have
a little give, uh. And today even the statue of
Liberty can can sway a bit, as all great tall
structures usually are made to go a little bit with
the wind. She can sway about three inches and like herself,
(22:43):
and then the torch can sway up to six inches.
You should see she sways even more if there's a
good Calypso song playing nearby, right or you should have
seen her at that radio Head show. She's getting down
like I love this song song no booze at that show.
That's what I remember, dude, does Radiohead ever get booed? No, no, no,
no booze as an alcohol? Because it was it was
(23:05):
a big surprise because it was a state park. So
you know, fifteen thousand people show up and we're like,
where's the beer line? And they're like, oh, there is
no alcohol here. You can stand in line, but there's
nothing at the other end of it, and so we're like,
we're leaving. Then did everybody go booze? No? Yeah, there
were booze after all, it was fine. We all lived
for two hours without drinking. It was fine. That's amazing. Wow,
(23:27):
that story just keeps getting more and more amazing. I know,
I'm trying to think of some more more fine points.
I'll see if I can think of anything. A giant
snake that wound its way through the audience and everyone
thought it was going to attack everyone and kill him,
but instead it bounce people up and crowd served with them. No,
actually I did remember that. The end of that story
is I happened to bump into my good friend Bill
(23:49):
from it from college, who I didn't even know was there,
and he had snuck some booze in. Oh boozy Bill
was there. Boozy fills like a like a pint of
whiskey or something, and fake binoculars. Yeah, exactly, man, I
remember those. Those are great. Alright. So Eiffel says, this
(24:12):
is the plan. The plans are approved. Eiffel himself supervised
the construction of this tower and the extension tower that
is gonna you know, end up being that right arm
with a torch and that took about two years and
they wounded up in three. But that was just Eiffel's
contribution to just stuff. Yeah, no, no copper at this
(24:35):
point at all. So um there, I mean like at
this point they're like doing some cutting edge stuff. Um.
But one of the reasons why it's cutting edges because
no one's ever tried any of this before. Again, this
is going there making the tallest statue in the world.
They were using like engineering techniques and structures that were unproven.
This was like, um, Eiffel completed his part six years
(24:58):
before the Eiffel Tower debut. So this is new stuff,
unproven and introduced to the world. It's pretty cool that
they were doing that. But one of the first challenges
they ran into was figuring out how to make this
the the little you know, proof of concept tabletop sculptures
that they had created, how to turn those scale models
(25:21):
into the actual thing. Because nowadays, when you design, when
you draw, it's on computers, and the computer exactly yeah
with your elbow and go come on, stupid computer, right,
these guys did not have anything remotely like that at
their disposal. And when we tell you about how they
(25:44):
went from those tabletop models to the actual statue of
liberty yourself, Um, it's going to to blow your mind. Yeah.
What they did have was brains and math and string
and stick to itiveness and stick to it. Because I
was like, right when it occurred to me, Chuck, if
I were leading this thing, the moment it occurred to
(26:05):
me what we had to do, I would just start crying, yeah,
or we would just do our best and it would
the proportions would be all wrong, come out like Mr mccraig,
if we were lucky, who's Mr mccraig. What is that?
It was like their doctor Nick um is talking to
somebody and like one of his old patients shows up
(26:26):
and he's like, Dr Nick, do you remember me? And
he goes, oh, well, if it isn't my old friend
Mr mccraig with the leg for an arm and an
arm for a leg, this guy's got an arm for
a leg and a leg. It was just demonstrating how
bad Dr Nick was at his job. I love it,
Hi frozen body. Yeah, all right, so they need to
(26:48):
ambig in this thing and there's Simpson stuff flying a uh,
and they've got a little tourist model like you said,
and they're all sitting around with their hands on their chin,
and they said, all right, why don't we do this,
Why don't we gradually make it a little bit bigger.
I think we can handle that. And so they you know,
they have this thing called a pantograph. If you look
(27:09):
it up online, it doesn't look like much, but it
uses these little mechanical arms on boom like a boom
to basically you can make something bigger or smaller from
an original using this thing. Yeah, it enlarges the movements
of the pencil or pen you're using to the larger
to the pen that's attached on the other end of
(27:31):
the boom. It just makes a bigger, exact copy. Yeah.
So it's it's like, it's genius to use this, and
they use bigger and bigger ones until they got up
to about a one quarter size, which is really big
and impressive. But that's at the point where they're like, hey, guys,
I hate to break it to you, but that's it
on the pantograph, Like this is as big as we
(27:52):
can go. So from this one quarter size we're just
gonna have to guess, right, Uh, we're gonna have to No,
they figured out another really ingenious way to kind of
measure up from there, and they took that that finished
quarter size version. Yes, that that's the final scale model.
(28:14):
The biggest that it got was the quarter size of
the original or the final um. The final version um.
They built of a structure like a frame around the maquette,
and then they basically attached lines, plumb lines from the
structure to the model at different points. Yeah, they used
string basically, but in much the same way like you know,
(28:35):
on like those cop procedurals like C S I or whatever,
they'll have like the the red dowels like sticking out
of bullet holes to figure out the trajectory. They basically
did that with the Statue of Liberty, but in a
thousand different locations, every fold, every toenail, every like eye
eyelash like like everything. All of that stuff was plotted
(28:57):
out in real life in three mentioned using plumb lines
to to basically create these points of reference. And then
they went back and they measured all of them and
they figured out where all these points would go times four,
and then they built another structure and went from there
and then went went backwards. Yes, I really feel like
(29:21):
I had it until the end there. Yeah, you kind
of pettered it out at the end. Well, now they went,
they went, They multiplied it by four, built the structure
that could accommodate that, and then brought back down plumb
lines to those four times larger points of reference and
then started building from there. Yeah, it's a technique called
pointing up. And all told, there were nine thousand measurements,
(29:43):
three hundred main reference points, and then thousands of these
pieces of string. Because like you said, it's it's every
you know, they can't just get it close. It's every
fold in her gown, every you know, you know, the
the thumbnail meeting the thumb them. It's all like very
very specific because they had to get it just right.
(30:04):
And so then they have to start out building this thing.
And what they decided to do, obviously is build it
in sections because they're gonna have to take it apart
and put it back together. So they built it in
very large sections, uh, starting with wood scaffolding and then
eventually uh, plaster, because you want to you know, you're
(30:26):
you're sculpting. It can't just be wood and copper hammered
on there like it's gotta be there's gotta be some
fine detail and some really rounded smooth edges and stuff
like that. Right, So they made basically wood molds molds
out of wood, sculpture the plaster and it, and then
they had a plaster mold, and then they could take
(30:47):
the plaster mold, which was basically negative um. And then
they put wood into the plaster molds and warped it
so that it fits the plaster perfectly, kind of like
the techniques um that you would used to make a
boat hole, you know, smooth and folded. Um. They did
the same thing with these giant plaster casts, but they
(31:09):
did it with wood, and you think, okay, great wood,
what are you gonna do with wood? Then with those
wood molds that they made from the plaster casts, they
took those thin sheets of copper that were about the
size of two pennies held together. That's what the outside
of the statue of Liberty is. That's the thickness of
her skin. Um. They put those copper plates into the
(31:33):
wood molds and then hammered them smooth, and now all
of a sudden you had the final pieces of the
exterior of Lady Liberty coming together, right, and several hundred
pieces in the end. I mean, it's a big project.
And if you think, boy, you better label that stuff
good fellas, uh, you're right, because by the when this
(31:56):
thing was eventually shipped over, it was a little bit annoying.
And that what happened is what you think would probably happen.
Some of the stuff gets mislabeled, and it wasn't quite
armed for a leg territory, I don't think. But it
was like, all right, now I gotta sift through this
and kind of refigure it all over again. Yeah, I
can't imagine. So I say, we take a break and
(32:19):
come back, and we got to talk about money, everybody,
So just sit tight, Okay, So all this is going
(32:50):
on the copper. By the way, I feel like this
guy's name bears repeating throughout the story or any time
the story is told. Pierre Eugene Secretan was industrialist in
France who donated the copper, really high quality copper we
hear to the project. But that was you know, and
there were other donations and there was other funds raised,
(33:10):
but it was um, it was hard going. They found out.
I get the impression that the French had an easier
time because that Franco American union came together and they said, okay,
how about this. The French will raise about two and
fifty thousand francs about six million dollars for the statue itself,
and the Americans will raise about two d and fifty
(33:31):
thousand dollars about seven million dollars today um to to
create the pedestal. And they basically said, ready break, and
the French went off and started fundraising. The Americans went
off and started fundraising, and I have the impression of
the French had a little easier time of it than
the Americans did. Yeah, it seems like it. I think
the Americans probably thought at the beginning, like, hey, they
(33:54):
just want us to pay for the pedestal, like this,
this is nothing. It ended up being a little more
expensive than the statue itself, so we were kind of
left holding the bag by a little bit. Or the
Americans were like, oh, I thought this was a gift. Yeah,
you want to go Dutch. Great in the Dutch are like,
what does that even mean? Yeah? The check comes, uh
(34:15):
so yeah, that that bases it called the truncated pyramid
which basically means a pyramid that doesn't have the pointy top. Uh,
it gets smaller as it goes up. And it's that
itself is eighty nine ft tall and sixty two ft
wide and about forty ft wide at the top of
that thing where she stands, and it is mostly concrete
(34:37):
and it is Uh, it's got a facade of Connecticut granite.
But that was a big project in and of itself.
And yeah, Chuck, also, I was I was researching the pedestal.
I found out there's eight beams in their eight structural
beams poured into the conqueror the concrete poured around it.
Four of them are horizontal, but then four towards the
top are vertical, and they actually break the top of
the pedestal, and that is what the uh interior. Your
(35:00):
skeleton of the Statue of Liberty is affixed too, so
she's like solidly affixed to that pedestal. It's pretty cool.
That's awesome. So, like you said, the French, I think
you're raising money at a steadier clip. Uh, they're selling
tickets to lotteries. Schools were chipping in a little bit.
I think there were descendants of French soldiers supposedly who
(35:22):
had fallen in the American Revolution, that we're sending in
some money. Yeah, that's that's old school right there, big time. Uh.
They started this is this is kind of a good idea. Actually,
they started having fundraising banquets as the structure was growing
inside it, Like they had one in the kneecap, one
of the thigh, one in the stomach, and then finally
one inside the head. Great way to raise some money, right,
(35:45):
which is what I was saying, Like, I think that's
one of the reasons he built it in France first. Yeah,
it makes sense, and then they did in turn. Eventually
when this thing gets to America in pieces, they start
doing that here. They start trotting this around on First
they had I think the right arm and torch on
display in Philadelphia for the centennial celebration, and then that
(36:08):
same torch and armor at Madison Square Park and you
could pay money to climb up in it and take
a picture. Early couldn't take pictures and sketch pictures of it.
And uh, the Americans held prize fights and they held
auctions and stuff like that. So they were doing their best,
but they were about a hundred grand short in the end,
(36:28):
and that is when a man by the name of
Joseph Pulitzer stepped up. I really like this idea, and
he was like, you know what, we gotta we gotta
get there. I had this rag called the World. It's
got great circulation. And Dave points out he's dead right
that this is kind of one of the biggest and
first crowdfunding campaigns, and that he launched this big thing
(36:51):
of where he was like, listen, this isn't the government.
We don't want rich the government doing this, or the
millionaires of France giving a gift to the millionaires of
the United States. This is supposed to be for the
common person. And so give a dollar, give twenty five cents,
And that's what happened. All these people stepped up and
(37:12):
gave a little tiny increments of money and they fundraised
about a thousand dollars over their goal using that little
crowdfunding technique, and just five months they've the whole past
the goal. Yeah. The whole hook was if you give anything,
I'll print your name in my newspaper. And it worked. Yeah,
oh yeah, if you want to get anything done, offered
(37:34):
to print people's name in the newspaper in a positive,
positive light. That's a big caveat right there, right exactly.
And there was one other thing. Uh, well, there's a
lot of stuff that came out of the fundraising effort,
but one of the most notable things that came out
of it, Chuck, was the poem by M. Lazarus that
we were referring to earlier. Um, she wrote this poem
(37:54):
called the New Colossus, uh as kind of an homage
or a tribute to this Statue of Liberty idea, it's
in order to help raise funds for it, and then
ended up being engraved on a plaque on Liberty Island
at this at the base of the Statue of Liberty,
I believe where it was installed, and I think nineteen
o three, Yeah, that's when it finally wash was inscribed.
(38:17):
But I think that's kind of cool, like she just
submitted this as part of the fundraising auction and it
ended up being those immortal words. So the hat is
off to MLAs Verus as well the spiky crown. That's right.
So um, Okay, we get to the point where, um,
the pieces have been made, they've been assembled together in France,
(38:41):
fundraising banquets have been held in them. They had to
get all the old cigar butts and everything out before
they put them in shipping crates mislabeled shipping crates no less,
And Bart told he goes um to help oversee the
reassembly himself, and um, it's put up, and I believe so.
(39:01):
Five to October June five is when the shipping containers
show up uh in UH in the harbor in New York.
And then um on October six is when the UH
the statue is dedicated. And in between three D fifty
sheets massive sheets of copper that make up the external
(39:24):
skin of the set of Liberty were put together using
three three thousand copper rivets, lots of steam, shovels, tons
of labor. It was just a huge effort. That was
probably the fastest part of this whole project. Yeah, and
it was, you know, once they figured out those miss
uh mislabeled crates, it was it took a while, but
(39:46):
it seemed to go pretty smoothly at least from there.
And I also saw, well, I saw a chuck. They
figured out very quickly that the arm holding the torch
and the head were misaligned and they're not sure what happened,
they think it is. One of the theories is I read,
is that um Bert totally was not happy with how
the statue looked or was going to look based on
(40:10):
creating it in France, and had it purposefully miss a
line to basically change it's it's look a little bit
it's appearance. So interesting. Yeah, alright, So on October they
have despite it being a rainy day, they had about
a million people turn out for this parade down Broadway
and then this eventual dedication ceremony there as still known
(40:33):
as Bedloe Island and Bartoli was the guest of honor.
And this is just kind of a funny way to
to end this story. Is he was up in the
crown and he has a big French flag covering up
her face, and at the right moment he's cued by
someone down below. He's supposed to whip this thing off
(40:54):
at the end of the big speech from the chair
of the American Committee, and he was he was tipped,
was signaled a little bit early, and the chair of
the American Committee was still giving that speech when Bartotli
dropped this flag and no one cared. The cannons went off,
everyone went crazy. Steam whistles are blowing in the harbor.
Brass band goes off, and the chair of the American
(41:17):
committee was like, all right, I guess, uh, who cares.
I'll just finish that later, right, the confession I had
prepared will just go onheard, I guess, But nobody cared.
And it was it was a big, grand success, yea.
And I believe from the time that, uh it was
dedicated in eight six, just to um fourteen million immigrants
(41:41):
passed by Lady Liberty. She definitely did her job right
out of the gate. That's right. They passed by that
copper colored structure. Yeah, at least at first at first,
and that was all planned. You know, copper is going
to oxidize and it's going to form that patina to
protect that copper. And everyone knew that she would eventually
turn green? Did they? Did everyone know that? Well, everyone
(42:04):
who knew anything about copper, I mean, the builders knew it.
And that was part of the whole thing, was that copper,
once it gets this pattina will last forever. But yeah,
there probably were some shmows in New York that were like,
why is it turning green? Uh? And it happened. There's
no direct date, but um, there are photos from as
early as nineteen o six, which is only about twenty
(42:24):
years later, where that Pattina is, where she's she's pretty
green at that point. And I think at this point
in places on that statue that Pattina is as thick
as that copper. It's two twopennies deep. So now it's
four pennies deep in some places. So do you remember
when we were younger, in the mid eighties, there was
like this, the restoration project of the statue. I was
(42:47):
under the impression that they were going to clean the
green off of it, not I don't remember. I don't remember.
I don't think I was under the impression. There's a
reference in in seinfeld Um about how remember George goes
to work for Krueger Industrial Smoothing, and they referenced that
that Krueger was the company that botched the Statue of
(43:09):
Liberty restoration job. So like I have the impression that
other people think that it was supposed to be cleaned
of its green color as well during that But regardless
during I think so too. I think seeing the set
of Liberties anything but that aged copper green weird. But
during that restoration, whether they were trying to clean the
green off or not. UM, they found a few things
(43:32):
about it. They found the torch was irreparably weathered, and
so the torch that she's holding now is new. It's
the second version that created using the exact same methods
as the original one. UM, but they replaced the torch.
And then they also found that a lot of Eiffel's
um wrought iron structure, a lot of it was rusting
(43:54):
and falling apart, so they replaced all of those with
stainless steel. So she got like a really good refresh
and update in nineteen six thanks to a committee led
by Leaya Coca who was appointed by President Reagan. Very few,
very few um uh sentences that are more eighties than that.
(44:15):
And then also we know that the restoration UM worked
at least until the year thirty nine seventy eight thanks
to the Planet of the Apes movies or depending on
who you ask, you're gonna love that spoiler in there. Dude,
it's a movie from ninety eight, I know, I can
you really spoil that? Sure? One of the great endings. Uh. Now,
(44:39):
about three to four million people a year visit Lady
Liberty and you can get in an elevator there on
that ground level to the top of the pedestal, and
you can go all the way up to the crown,
even if you make a reservation apparently, but the elevator
doesn't go that high. They're about a hundred and sixty
two steps that will get you there and uh and
(45:00):
you can look out of that crown. Imagine that's quite
a site. And time was that they would just sell
tickets without reservations and you just buy your tickets and
stand there in line to wait for the people who
went up to come back down because there was not
a lot of room on that that staircase. And now
at least they're like, you know, really innovating since nineteen
six by offering advanced reservations. Apparently it was miserable. So
(45:23):
one other fact about the statue of Liberty Chuck that
stuck out to me was she started out as the
world's tallest statue when she was built and dedicated, but
today she's just number forty seven among the world's tallest statues,
which means we've built a lot of really tall statues
in the last hundred years. It's something that humanity has
been really interested in apparently, that's right. And if anyone
(45:45):
ever says, yeah, I've been there, I stood climbed up
in the right next to the torch, you call that
person a liar. Because no one's been allowed in that
torch since nineteen sixty. They may be thinking crown, yeah,
you and be allowed in the torch again until the year.
That's right. Then you can do whatever you want because
(46:07):
because the torch is just laying there on the beach. Basically,
he finally did it. You darn maniacs. Okay, well, Chuck
has nothing else. I have nothing else. And since I
just said you darn maniacs, it's time for a listener mail.
I'm gonna called this short and sweet. Oh I like
this from a from a younger like Humpty dumpty. That's right. Hey, guys,
(46:31):
I am fourteen years old from northern Utah and I've
been listening to you guys for a while and really
enjoy your podcast. It's really fun to listen to what
spunky things you have to say. I love the use
of spunky there. I listened all the time during car
rides are doing crafts and art. If you would mind,
I would love it if you read my letter for
my siblings and say she during listener mail, how's at
(46:56):
the bomb? Usually don't honor requests. I know I'm below,
like my socks are just down around my toes right now.
But Alyssa Stewart just sounded like a nice kid, and
sometimes it's it's good to kind of one up those siblings.
So to the siblings of Alyssa who Elyssa didn't include,
I'm just gonna say one thing to you. She Wow, Chuck,
(47:21):
I think you just like fundamentally altered Thanksgiving If that happs? Yeah,
birth order out the door, cool order reset. Well, if
you want the cool order in your family, reset, take
your best shot. I'll be surprised if we do it again.
But then Chuck's always full of surprises, so you never
can tell. Can't get a bead on that one, you
(47:42):
know what I mean. In the meantime, you can send
those requests to Stuff Podcasts at iHeart radio dot com.
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio.
For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the i heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts or where every listening to your
favorite shows h
Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of I
Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh.
There's Chuck in. There is a certain lady holding an
open flip. Nope, holding an open flame and wearing sandals,
(00:24):
so this must be sandals and lady, are we at
a fish concert? Yep, she's an app that has is
an open flame on her phone? Did she just does
she have a whippet balloon at her feet? Yes, that's
exactly right. You can't see it from below the pedestal, though. Ah,
(00:45):
that's very nice, so Chuck, No, No, it's so wrong.
I wasn't talking about someone at a fish concert. I
was talking about the Statue of Liberty. Good, because that's
what I researched. Same here, same here. Because if we
had just both happened to research the wrong thing. Um,
but it was the same thing, we could have still
(01:06):
just pulled it out like we are right now. Maybe,
But but we both researched the Liberty Enlightening the World
statue that's right, better known as the Statue of Liberty
to the you know, HOI POLOI, But for those in
the know, it's really Liberty Enlightening the World. And hope
is Hawaiian for huddled masses. That's right, wretched, um wretched?
(01:28):
Uh it wasn't. Yeah, it was a wretched you're cold
and tired and wretched? Were they wretched? That's that's how
Mma Lazarus put it. And I mean, I don't think
she was being me, and I think she was saying
that the state that they found themselves in was fairly wretched.
She called them your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. And she was
(01:52):
talking to continental Europe. But she was also basically saying,
like you guys suck. You send us your worst. We're
going to turn them into our best. Right. And like
you said, we're talking about the statue that if you
have been to New York City, Uh sits there in
the harbor, looming large at the time, the largest statue.
(02:13):
And clear up one misconception before we kind of get
to the history. You often hear like it was a
gift from the French government to the American government. Uh.
Not true, And I always sort of thought that, but
as we will learn, it's an even cooler story because
like real people paid for it with oftentimes very small donations,
(02:33):
much like uh Bernie Sanders was was building the statue.
It was just about to smoop him with that nice
work man. Thanks so um yeah, they they it was.
It was paid for by hard fought funds that came
from the people. I love that too. But there was
one guy who came up with the idea. This is
one of those things where it's like there was a
dude walking around and the idea for the statue of
(02:56):
Liberty popped into his head. And I love stories that
star like that, some guys just walking down the boulevard
and his name happens to in this case be Eduard
de Delaboulay, and he was walking around France in eighteen
sixty five and saying, you know, this place used to
be a lot better when it was a democracy, right,
(03:16):
and now we're under the rule of Napoleon the third
things aren't so great. And you know where things are
looking pretty decent is over there in those United States
where they have just uh Lincoln has come along issued
the Emancipate Patient Proclamation, and like they're trying to do
things right over there, and I think we should recognize
(03:38):
them and also sort of say to our own French people. Hey,
look at what they're doing over there, not bad? Yeah,
by by honoring America. And in this case it was
going to be giving America birthday gift from France UM
on our hundredth birthday in eighteen seventy six. Yeah, it
would kind of shine a light on friends and be like, hey,
(03:58):
look at how great things can be. Like they ratify
the thirteenth Amendment. Over there is no slavery anymore. Like
people are free, they're taking immigrants, and it's like a
beautiful place. Let's be more like America. UM and right. Yeah,
So he started um asking around um and and sharing
his idea and it actually kind of caught fire in
(04:19):
a lot of ways. It wasn't like a ho home
idea by any means. There are a lot of people
in France who supported it. And one of the people
who joined on board very early on was Frederica Augusta Bartoldi,
who ended up being the sculptor who sculpted the statue
of Liberty. And he sculpted. He came up with the
idea really fast, almost suspiciously fast, and when people grabbed
(04:40):
him by his lapels and said how did you come
up with this beautiful idea so fast they shook out
of him a piece of scrap paper that he had
submitted elsewhere. Yeah. Yeah, he did what any great designer does,
which is kind of sifted through his bag of used
tricks because he was on a deadline. He actually wasn't
(05:00):
on a deadline, but yeah. He had in the eighteen
fifties gone to the Middle East and was inspired by
the Sphinx and the Pyramids and said, you know, I'd
like to do something really nice like that. And he
got his chance when Egypt said, hey, we want a
big lighthouse in the Suez Canal here, and he came
up with this cool, large, tall lady with a lamp
(05:23):
to guide the people's way into through the Suez Canal.
And then they said, nah, we don't think we're gonna
do that anyway, And instead of just being angry and upset,
he said, that's fine, I'll just repurpose it. Yeah, he said,
it's like water off a duck's back. Egypt, I don't care.
I got I got other things to do. And I'd
(05:43):
like to think of it as not that um that
that we got a second hand design, but more like
the design was so great that it must be, it
must come into existence, and that it came into an
even better existence in the harbor off of Manhattan Um
rather than the Suez Canal. Yeah, he worked smarter, not harder.
(06:04):
That's right. That's another way to put if you're a landscaper.
He had to change a few things around. He had
to change Yeah, that in green side up. Those are
the only two things you have to remember. Those are
kind of the rules, I thought. Yeah. Uh so he
changed up a few things from his initial Egyptian design um,
namely the Egyptian look. He changed that up and instead
(06:25):
of this kind of Egyptian headdress, came up with that
cool spiky hat. Yeah. Hey, I didn't realize this, did you. That?
Like that crown against her forehead, that's a crown, but
this those spikes coming off off of it are like
reflections of rays from the sun. They're not meant to be.
It's not like a structural part of the crown or
(06:46):
or not. It's not meant to be. Oh so that's
supposed to be interesting. Yeah, it's seven rays of sunlight
shining out from it like that that I guess is
reflecting off of It's meant to be like the sun
reflecting all. Yeah, you think it's just like a like
almost like, um, I don't know, like a like a
(07:07):
Guarus kind of thing. Yeah, like a spiky, cool grown
yeah exactly. Uh, yeah, I'd be interested. I wonder if
anyone is done little photo shopping without that to see
the true nature of the hat the ground, like to see.
I know a few people who are good at photoshop.
I don't know, but you're gonna get your face in
my body, that's right, and our worst pictures. Uh. The
(07:29):
other thing they changed, or one of the other things
he changed, was the original statue had a lamp, and
he said, the lamp is nice for the Suis Canal,
but let's go with a torch for the United States.
And because it um, it symbolized enlightenment. It was liberty,
enlightening the world, you know, Like, I guess you could
enlighten the world with the lamp, but the lamps more
(07:50):
like showing the way. This is like casting the light
of enlightenment out in every direction. You know that better
metaphorical showing the metaphorical way. Sure almost had metaphysical um.
Then there was also that tablet. She's holding it her side.
The tablet of law with July four, seventeen seventy six
(08:15):
and Roman numerals they're inscribed on the side. That was
a new edition because the first, the original one um
progress carrying a light to Asia in the US canal
just had her had her hand like cup by her side,
not even doing anything. It's kind of like hand on
the hip right or now, Yeah, when I dip, you dip,
we dip right. Uh. And then to call back your
(08:36):
very sly little joke that you stuck in there at
the front of this podcast. You cannot from the ground
level because the pedestal is so tall. See what's going
on with the feet? And I had never really looked,
but right there, if you google a picture of Lady
Statue of Liberty's feet, there are broken shackles and a
(08:56):
broken chain that represents the abolition of slavery. And I
never knew that was there either. Yeah. And so after
Bart told they said, listen, guys, look, I made all
these changes. They they have flattened out his suit and
straightened his tie and put his glasses back on, and
then they lift him up on their shoulders and they said,
bear Toldie, Bear Toldie, And they carried him down the
(09:18):
avenue um and as a kind of an initial parade,
there'd be a lot of parades surrounding the Statue of
Liberty and its development. He disappeared. It was an accident, man,
it was an accident. The group agreed never to speak
of it. But so regardless, what I'm trying to say
is Bear toldie he got the contract to to be
(09:40):
the guy who designed this wonderful statue for France to
give to the United States. Right, so he hops on
a a plane. No no, no, not a plane. I
would guess a steamership or something. I can't imagine how
long that kind of stuff just took, how patients, But
it's a ocean voyage. There's like a sense of adventure, definitely,
(10:02):
but also after you do it, like for the umteenth time,
it's probably like, come on, although if you don't have
any frame of reference of things going any faster, maybe
it doesn't seem quite as long, like you and I
having flown taking a steamer. It's just like but it's
not like someone would have said, you know what else
is a sense of adventure? The concorde, that's right, A
(10:25):
lot quicker too, but very very adventurous. Heard they're bringing
that back. Yeah. I think we talked about that in
an episode. Didn't we do one on the concord? Yeah,
but I don't remember us talking about coming back. I
think we did. I think we mentioned I mean, there
needs to be something super fast. They're like at this point, yes,
we're there, we're at teleportation stage. We're definitely lagging behind.
(10:49):
I think. So that's like the Seinfeld gag when they
when they talk about we're going to try and like
make up some airtime or whatever, and he was just like,
why aren't they just flying as fast as they can
every single time? Does it? That's like, that's a very
good point, the mind boggling Seinfeld. Alright, So in seventy one,
(11:11):
he gets on that steamership. He comes over to travel
to the United States to try and get some support
because this is going to be a very expensive project,
and maybe to kind of scout out some locations and boom,
right there, as he's pulling into New York Harbor, he
sees the light, the metaphorical light, and sees Bedloe Island
b E d l o E right there in the harbor,
(11:33):
and he was like, wait a minute, what is this place?
And everyone said Oh, it's nothing. It's just it's a
hunting and fishing ground, uh for the Lenape Native Americans
here before us, and then the Dutch settled it, and
now the U. S Military owns it and it's you
don't really need to worry about it. And he was like, no,
I do, because that, my friends, is the perfect spot. Yeah,
(11:54):
it was perfectly situated to watch over the ships coming
into the harbor. Um and uh, that became the spot
for the Statue of Liberty. It really is a great
spot for it. And it was renamed Liberty Island in
nineteen fifty six by the Eisenhower administration. So so but totally.
He goes back to France and um, he's met some
(12:16):
Americans and drummed up the interests among Americans. He's found
the site for this amazing place that he's going to
build the world's tallest sculpture on um and he ends
up helping found the Franco American Union, which, as you said,
this wasn't a gift from the French government to the
American government. As as a matter of fact, I think
(12:38):
that was the first thing that Bert TOLDI and his
his friends tried. The friends said no, the Americans said, no,
that's just ridiculous. It's gonna cost too much and it
will never work. So they started trying trying to cobble
together like private support for it, and the results of
that was the Franco American Union. And I have one thing,
one thing to say about the Franco American and Uck
(13:01):
I was like, Franco American sounds really familiar. And then
I realized Franco American spaghetti. Remember that spaghetti in a can. Yeah,
it makes zero sense. The French aren't well known for
their spaghetti and spaghetti sauce, spaghetti right the um the
Italians are. And I think it was an Italian company.
(13:21):
I think they took that name on because they were
founded around the time that the Franco American Union was
trying to drum up interest in the Statue of Liberty project.
I couldn't find support for that. But that's my new hypothesis.
All right, Let's say we take a break and ponder that.
Maybe have some of it, all right, because that's not
chapoy already, that's different, right, I I don't I like both,
(13:41):
but yes, that's different. All right, Well, we'll go do
a sample of each and we'll come back with our
winner right after this. Who won? They were both winners,
(14:15):
all right. I love that ravioli still, I'd never get it,
like once every three or four years, I'll get that
tangy what is even in that? What kind of meat
is in that ravioli? And I'll eat it. I know,
I haven't had Franco American spaghetti since I can't even remember,
but I do remember it being the sweet spaghetti, because
(14:35):
that's what we need, right. Uh. Have you ever been
to the Statue of Liberty, first of all, like in
and traveled up and done the whole thing. I was
hoping you weren't going to ask me that. No, I haven't.
I haven't either. I did you know? It's it's Liberty
Island now and there's Liberty State Park as part of
the grounds. And I went to see radio Head there,
(14:56):
uh in late August two thousand one, right there with
the Statue of Liberty looming and the Twin Towers right
across the water. Good night, And of course, you know,
it was just a couple of weeks after that that
the Twin Towers were gone. It was very, uh surreal
to have gone to that show at that moment in time.
(15:17):
Uh and almost, well not almost twenty years ago, almost,
meaning as we record, just a couple of days away. Right, So, chuck, Um,
you haven't been to the set of Liberty either, I
guess is ultimately the point of your story. No, just
a Radiohead concert, Okay. So I don't feel particularly bad
because I was reading a piece of contemporary journalism, uh,
(15:41):
contemporary too when they restored the set of Liberty, which
we'll talk about for a second later, um, and they
were talking to the foreman, one of the foreman on
the job, and he was saying, like, I've lived in
New York for forty eight years, and it took me
getting this job to come out here. I've never been here.
So I think like a lot of people, including people
who I think tourists, are the ones who have been
(16:03):
to the Statue of Liberty. Not to say like I'm
not a tourist when I go to New York, but right,
it just makes me feel a little less bad that
it's not like, what kind of an American are you
haven't been to the Statue of Liberty? You call me? Yeah,
And it kind of feels like and I'm completely wrong here,
but it kind of feels like one of those where
you're like, no, you know, I get a nice view
of it from New York, and when I fly in
(16:24):
and out, you get a really nice view of it.
Like why do I need to actually go over there?
But that should probably make the journey over there. We'll
do it together holding their hands of fraternity, liberty, egality
and podcaster. That's right, so uh Bert told he comes
back to France. Oh yeah, forgot about. As the story goes,
(16:45):
he attends a wedding and sees this young woman and
it's like whoa ho ho who is that holding that?
Everyone said, yeah, she had a hat box and everyone said,
that's Jean Emily. How do you pronounce her last name? Uh?
Bho bay Hugh. You were doing so good with the
(17:05):
French b a h e u X. I know that
last part would has to be you right, yeah or
go oh baho? Where's going with ms B? Yeah, let's
call her miss B And he said, I have finally
(17:27):
met my lady Liberty. He goes on to Mary this
woman and as legend has it, uh and I don't
think he's ever confirmed from him, but his legend has
it he used her as the body model for the
Statue of Liberty and supposedly his mother Charlotte's face, which
is you know, it introduces a certain level of Freudiani is, um, yeah,
(17:50):
paging Dr Freud big time. My mom's face on my
wife's body. Dave helped us out with this, uh, and
he says that apparently his mother struck a stern, imposing figure,
so that's why he chose his mother's face. You know,
all right, we're just gonna go with that and just
kind of slowly back out of this room. That's right.
(18:13):
The next thing he needed to do after he had
his artistic inspiration and his model was too you know,
he didn't he's not a builder of things. He's he's well,
he is a builder of things, but he's not an
engineer and an architect on that level. Yeah, he was
very much interested in that kind of stuff, but he
was it was way beyond the scope of what he
was capable of understanding himself. Yes, so he needed some
(18:35):
help and he figured that first of all, this is
the tallest statue in the world at the time, so
it's going to be a challenge. And then what I
want to do is build it in France and then
take it apart and then rebuild it in the States.
I kind of get this in a way, but I
almost think that they could have gotten all the parts
(18:58):
and shipped them to the United States to build on
site for the first time. I mean, I kind of
get where he was coming from, though. You don't want
to send everything over and ending up being like Mr
mccraig with a leg for an arm and an arm
for a leg or something like that. You want to
make sure it works first before you if you ask me.
That shows it demonstrates the level of dedication that the
(19:21):
French had to this gift to America. And my hat,
my chef, how is off to them for it? Well,
and I guess he figured because my whole logic was like,
and you could do it in America and solve the
same problems here as you could have solved there, but
it would just be more embarrassing here in America. Well
that but I think he was working with his people
(19:41):
there and you can't bring all those people over, So
that was I'm sure there was a comfort level and
a language issue or barrier potentially that he wouldn't have
to overcome, So I succumb I also think probably that
he he was also using it as a way to
drum up interest in in their for funds for it
as well, because he had to raise money. We'll get
(20:03):
to that. So um Bart totally uh talked to a
couple of architects. The first one he spoke to was
Eugene viole A l EDuke Uh He was a the
greatest architect in France at the time, and he basically said, look,
you want to use this technique called rape whose and
it's basically what you're gonna do is build a skeleton
or something of some sort, some sort of structure underneath
(20:26):
that you can then attach thin sheets of copper too.
So the sculpture is going to be made at copper,
but it's not gonna be like cast or carved or
anything like that. That's that's it would just be impossible
to do. Um Instead, you're just going to fix copper
sheets to it to make the thing out of And
I guess viole A La Duke suggested making a concrete
(20:48):
structure underneath, and um Bert totally was like, Okay, you know,
I like you a lot. We've we've had a lot
of great basketball games together, and um you're my friend,
I'm gonna go with your recommendation. But then val A
Leduke died and he came another guy from our podcast history,
Gustav e fel Or Eiffel there is created the Eiffel Tower.
(21:12):
And he said, yet this is this is all wrong?
Like yes, yes, he's like, I'm trying out some new things. Uh.
He said, yes, I totally agree with val A Leeduke's
idea to use ray puss. That was a stroke of genius.
But the idea of like creating the structure underneath that
a concrete that's way too heavy, way too rigid, and
(21:34):
it's just totally unnecessary. Try out my new technique of
trusses and girders made of wrought iron. It's gonna be
way lighter and it's going to give it a lot
more flexibility. Yeah. I think he kind of thought that,
and I think it was probably right. Is that other
way it was a little more old school, and that
he saw the future, you know, pre Eiffel Tower. He
was the future and wrought iron, I guess. So he
(21:57):
was in love with those iron girders, and so he said,
here's what do We'll design this giant nine two pylon
and that'll be the central point from which everything will spring,
and they'll be this more lightweight, uh kind of grid
of girders and trusses that's going to form that skeleton
from that central pylon and then a secondary another iron
(22:20):
frame even and that's what those copper sheets are going
to be riveted to, one at a time. And he said,
this is the way, like you said, it's gonna have
a little give, uh. And today even the statue of
Liberty can can sway a bit, as all great tall
structures usually are made to go a little bit with
the wind. She can sway about three inches and like herself,
(22:43):
and then the torch can sway up to six inches.
You should see she sways even more if there's a
good Calypso song playing nearby, right or you should have
seen her at that radio Head show. She's getting down
like I love this song song no booze at that show.
That's what I remember, dude, does Radiohead ever get booed? No, no, no,
no booze as an alcohol? Because it was it was
(23:05):
a big surprise because it was a state park. So
you know, fifteen thousand people show up and we're like,
where's the beer line? And they're like, oh, there is
no alcohol here. You can stand in line, but there's
nothing at the other end of it, and so we're like,
we're leaving. Then did everybody go booze? No? Yeah, there
were booze after all, it was fine. We all lived
for two hours without drinking. It was fine. That's amazing. Wow,
(23:27):
that story just keeps getting more and more amazing. I know,
I'm trying to think of some more more fine points.
I'll see if I can think of anything. A giant
snake that wound its way through the audience and everyone
thought it was going to attack everyone and kill him,
but instead it bounce people up and crowd served with them. No,
actually I did remember that. The end of that story
is I happened to bump into my good friend Bill
(23:49):
from it from college, who I didn't even know was there,
and he had snuck some booze in. Oh boozy Bill
was there. Boozy fills like a like a pint of
whiskey or something, and fake binoculars. Yeah, exactly, man, I
remember those. Those are great. Alright. So Eiffel says, this
(24:12):
is the plan. The plans are approved. Eiffel himself supervised
the construction of this tower and the extension tower that
is gonna you know, end up being that right arm
with a torch and that took about two years and
they wounded up in three. But that was just Eiffel's
contribution to just stuff. Yeah, no, no copper at this
(24:35):
point at all. So um there, I mean like at
this point they're like doing some cutting edge stuff. Um.
But one of the reasons why it's cutting edges because
no one's ever tried any of this before. Again, this
is going there making the tallest statue in the world.
They were using like engineering techniques and structures that were unproven.
This was like, um, Eiffel completed his part six years
(24:58):
before the Eiffel Tower debut. So this is new stuff,
unproven and introduced to the world. It's pretty cool that
they were doing that. But one of the first challenges
they ran into was figuring out how to make this
the the little you know, proof of concept tabletop sculptures
that they had created, how to turn those scale models
(25:21):
into the actual thing. Because nowadays, when you design, when
you draw, it's on computers, and the computer exactly yeah
with your elbow and go come on, stupid computer, right,
these guys did not have anything remotely like that at
their disposal. And when we tell you about how they
(25:44):
went from those tabletop models to the actual statue of
liberty yourself, Um, it's going to to blow your mind. Yeah.
What they did have was brains and math and string
and stick to itiveness and stick to it. Because I
was like, right when it occurred to me, Chuck, if
I were leading this thing, the moment it occurred to
(26:05):
me what we had to do, I would just start crying, yeah,
or we would just do our best and it would
the proportions would be all wrong, come out like Mr mccraig,
if we were lucky, who's Mr mccraig. What is that?
It was like their doctor Nick um is talking to
somebody and like one of his old patients shows up
(26:26):
and he's like, Dr Nick, do you remember me? And
he goes, oh, well, if it isn't my old friend
Mr mccraig with the leg for an arm and an
arm for a leg, this guy's got an arm for
a leg and a leg. It was just demonstrating how
bad Dr Nick was at his job. I love it,
Hi frozen body. Yeah, all right, so they need to
(26:48):
ambig in this thing and there's Simpson stuff flying a uh,
and they've got a little tourist model like you said,
and they're all sitting around with their hands on their chin,
and they said, all right, why don't we do this,
Why don't we gradually make it a little bit bigger.
I think we can handle that. And so they you know,
they have this thing called a pantograph. If you look
(27:09):
it up online, it doesn't look like much, but it
uses these little mechanical arms on boom like a boom
to basically you can make something bigger or smaller from
an original using this thing. Yeah, it enlarges the movements
of the pencil or pen you're using to the larger
to the pen that's attached on the other end of
(27:31):
the boom. It just makes a bigger, exact copy. Yeah.
So it's it's like, it's genius to use this, and
they use bigger and bigger ones until they got up
to about a one quarter size, which is really big
and impressive. But that's at the point where they're like, hey, guys,
I hate to break it to you, but that's it
on the pantograph, Like this is as big as we
(27:52):
can go. So from this one quarter size we're just
gonna have to guess, right, Uh, we're gonna have to No,
they figured out another really ingenious way to kind of
measure up from there, and they took that that finished
quarter size version. Yes, that that's the final scale model.
(28:14):
The biggest that it got was the quarter size of
the original or the final um. The final version um.
They built of a structure like a frame around the maquette,
and then they basically attached lines, plumb lines from the
structure to the model at different points. Yeah, they used
string basically, but in much the same way like you know,
(28:35):
on like those cop procedurals like C S I or whatever,
they'll have like the the red dowels like sticking out
of bullet holes to figure out the trajectory. They basically
did that with the Statue of Liberty, but in a
thousand different locations, every fold, every toenail, every like eye
eyelash like like everything. All of that stuff was plotted
(28:57):
out in real life in three mentioned using plumb lines
to to basically create these points of reference. And then
they went back and they measured all of them and
they figured out where all these points would go times four,
and then they built another structure and went from there
and then went went backwards. Yes, I really feel like
(29:21):
I had it until the end there. Yeah, you kind
of pettered it out at the end. Well, now they went,
they went, They multiplied it by four, built the structure
that could accommodate that, and then brought back down plumb
lines to those four times larger points of reference and
then started building from there. Yeah, it's a technique called
pointing up. And all told, there were nine thousand measurements,
(29:43):
three hundred main reference points, and then thousands of these
pieces of string. Because like you said, it's it's every
you know, they can't just get it close. It's every
fold in her gown, every you know, you know, the
the thumbnail meeting the thumb them. It's all like very
very specific because they had to get it just right.
(30:04):
And so then they have to start out building this thing.
And what they decided to do, obviously is build it
in sections because they're gonna have to take it apart
and put it back together. So they built it in
very large sections, uh, starting with wood scaffolding and then
eventually uh, plaster, because you want to you know, you're
(30:26):
you're sculpting. It can't just be wood and copper hammered
on there like it's gotta be there's gotta be some
fine detail and some really rounded smooth edges and stuff
like that. Right, So they made basically wood molds molds
out of wood, sculpture the plaster and it, and then
they had a plaster mold, and then they could take
(30:47):
the plaster mold, which was basically negative um. And then
they put wood into the plaster molds and warped it
so that it fits the plaster perfectly, kind of like
the techniques um that you would used to make a
boat hole, you know, smooth and folded. Um. They did
the same thing with these giant plaster casts, but they
(31:09):
did it with wood, and you think, okay, great wood,
what are you gonna do with wood? Then with those
wood molds that they made from the plaster casts, they
took those thin sheets of copper that were about the
size of two pennies held together. That's what the outside
of the statue of Liberty is. That's the thickness of
her skin. Um. They put those copper plates into the
(31:33):
wood molds and then hammered them smooth, and now all
of a sudden you had the final pieces of the
exterior of Lady Liberty coming together, right, and several hundred
pieces in the end. I mean, it's a big project.
And if you think, boy, you better label that stuff
good fellas, uh, you're right, because by the when this
(31:56):
thing was eventually shipped over, it was a little bit annoying.
And that what happened is what you think would probably happen.
Some of the stuff gets mislabeled, and it wasn't quite
armed for a leg territory, I don't think. But it
was like, all right, now I gotta sift through this
and kind of refigure it all over again. Yeah, I
can't imagine. So I say, we take a break and
(32:19):
come back, and we got to talk about money, everybody,
So just sit tight, Okay, So all this is going
(32:50):
on the copper. By the way, I feel like this
guy's name bears repeating throughout the story or any time
the story is told. Pierre Eugene Secretan was industrialist in
France who donated the copper, really high quality copper we
hear to the project. But that was you know, and
there were other donations and there was other funds raised,
(33:10):
but it was um, it was hard going. They found out.
I get the impression that the French had an easier
time because that Franco American union came together and they said, okay,
how about this. The French will raise about two and
fifty thousand francs about six million dollars for the statue itself,
and the Americans will raise about two d and fifty
(33:31):
thousand dollars about seven million dollars today um to to
create the pedestal. And they basically said, ready break, and
the French went off and started fundraising. The Americans went
off and started fundraising, and I have the impression of
the French had a little easier time of it than
the Americans did. Yeah, it seems like it. I think
the Americans probably thought at the beginning, like, hey, they
(33:54):
just want us to pay for the pedestal, like this,
this is nothing. It ended up being a little more
expensive than the statue itself, so we were kind of
left holding the bag by a little bit. Or the
Americans were like, oh, I thought this was a gift. Yeah,
you want to go Dutch. Great in the Dutch are like,
what does that even mean? Yeah? The check comes, uh
(34:15):
so yeah, that that bases it called the truncated pyramid
which basically means a pyramid that doesn't have the pointy top. Uh,
it gets smaller as it goes up. And it's that
itself is eighty nine ft tall and sixty two ft
wide and about forty ft wide at the top of
that thing where she stands, and it is mostly concrete
(34:37):
and it is Uh, it's got a facade of Connecticut granite.
But that was a big project in and of itself.
And yeah, Chuck, also, I was I was researching the pedestal.
I found out there's eight beams in their eight structural
beams poured into the conqueror the concrete poured around it.
Four of them are horizontal, but then four towards the
top are vertical, and they actually break the top of
the pedestal, and that is what the uh interior. Your
(35:00):
skeleton of the Statue of Liberty is affixed too, so
she's like solidly affixed to that pedestal. It's pretty cool.
That's awesome. So, like you said, the French, I think
you're raising money at a steadier clip. Uh, they're selling
tickets to lotteries. Schools were chipping in a little bit.
I think there were descendants of French soldiers supposedly who
(35:22):
had fallen in the American Revolution, that we're sending in
some money. Yeah, that's that's old school right there, big time. Uh.
They started this is this is kind of a good idea. Actually,
they started having fundraising banquets as the structure was growing
inside it, Like they had one in the kneecap, one
of the thigh, one in the stomach, and then finally
one inside the head. Great way to raise some money, right,
(35:45):
which is what I was saying, Like, I think that's
one of the reasons he built it in France first. Yeah,
it makes sense, and then they did in turn. Eventually
when this thing gets to America in pieces, they start
doing that here. They start trotting this around on First
they had I think the right arm and torch on
display in Philadelphia for the centennial celebration, and then that
(36:08):
same torch and armor at Madison Square Park and you
could pay money to climb up in it and take
a picture. Early couldn't take pictures and sketch pictures of it.
And uh, the Americans held prize fights and they held
auctions and stuff like that. So they were doing their best,
but they were about a hundred grand short in the end,
(36:28):
and that is when a man by the name of
Joseph Pulitzer stepped up. I really like this idea, and
he was like, you know what, we gotta we gotta
get there. I had this rag called the World. It's
got great circulation. And Dave points out he's dead right
that this is kind of one of the biggest and
first crowdfunding campaigns, and that he launched this big thing
(36:51):
of where he was like, listen, this isn't the government.
We don't want rich the government doing this, or the
millionaires of France giving a gift to the millionaires of
the United States. This is supposed to be for the
common person. And so give a dollar, give twenty five cents,
And that's what happened. All these people stepped up and
(37:12):
gave a little tiny increments of money and they fundraised
about a thousand dollars over their goal using that little
crowdfunding technique, and just five months they've the whole past
the goal. Yeah. The whole hook was if you give anything,
I'll print your name in my newspaper. And it worked. Yeah,
oh yeah, if you want to get anything done, offered
(37:34):
to print people's name in the newspaper in a positive,
positive light. That's a big caveat right there, right exactly.
And there was one other thing. Uh, well, there's a
lot of stuff that came out of the fundraising effort,
but one of the most notable things that came out
of it, Chuck, was the poem by M. Lazarus that
we were referring to earlier. Um, she wrote this poem
(37:54):
called the New Colossus, uh as kind of an homage
or a tribute to this Statue of Liberty idea, it's
in order to help raise funds for it, and then
ended up being engraved on a plaque on Liberty Island
at this at the base of the Statue of Liberty,
I believe where it was installed, and I think nineteen
o three, Yeah, that's when it finally wash was inscribed.
(38:17):
But I think that's kind of cool, like she just
submitted this as part of the fundraising auction and it
ended up being those immortal words. So the hat is
off to MLAs Verus as well the spiky crown. That's right.
So um, Okay, we get to the point where, um,
the pieces have been made, they've been assembled together in France,
(38:41):
fundraising banquets have been held in them. They had to
get all the old cigar butts and everything out before
they put them in shipping crates mislabeled shipping crates no less,
And Bart told he goes um to help oversee the
reassembly himself, and um, it's put up, and I believe so.
(39:01):
Five to October June five is when the shipping containers
show up uh in UH in the harbor in New York.
And then um on October six is when the UH
the statue is dedicated. And in between three D fifty
sheets massive sheets of copper that make up the external
(39:24):
skin of the set of Liberty were put together using
three three thousand copper rivets, lots of steam, shovels, tons
of labor. It was just a huge effort. That was
probably the fastest part of this whole project. Yeah, and
it was, you know, once they figured out those miss
uh mislabeled crates, it was it took a while, but
(39:46):
it seemed to go pretty smoothly at least from there.
And I also saw, well, I saw a chuck. They
figured out very quickly that the arm holding the torch
and the head were misaligned and they're not sure what happened,
they think it is. One of the theories is I read,
is that um Bert totally was not happy with how
the statue looked or was going to look based on
(40:10):
creating it in France, and had it purposefully miss a
line to basically change it's it's look a little bit
it's appearance. So interesting. Yeah, alright, So on October they
have despite it being a rainy day, they had about
a million people turn out for this parade down Broadway
and then this eventual dedication ceremony there as still known
(40:33):
as Bedloe Island and Bartoli was the guest of honor.
And this is just kind of a funny way to
to end this story. Is he was up in the
crown and he has a big French flag covering up
her face, and at the right moment he's cued by
someone down below. He's supposed to whip this thing off
(40:54):
at the end of the big speech from the chair
of the American Committee, and he was he was tipped,
was signaled a little bit early, and the chair of
the American Committee was still giving that speech when Bartotli
dropped this flag and no one cared. The cannons went off,
everyone went crazy. Steam whistles are blowing in the harbor.
Brass band goes off, and the chair of the American
(41:17):
committee was like, all right, I guess, uh, who cares.
I'll just finish that later, right, the confession I had
prepared will just go onheard, I guess, But nobody cared.
And it was it was a big, grand success, yea.
And I believe from the time that, uh it was
dedicated in eight six, just to um fourteen million immigrants
(41:41):
passed by Lady Liberty. She definitely did her job right
out of the gate. That's right. They passed by that
copper colored structure. Yeah, at least at first at first,
and that was all planned. You know, copper is going
to oxidize and it's going to form that patina to
protect that copper. And everyone knew that she would eventually
turn green? Did they? Did everyone know that? Well, everyone
(42:04):
who knew anything about copper, I mean, the builders knew it.
And that was part of the whole thing, was that copper,
once it gets this pattina will last forever. But yeah,
there probably were some shmows in New York that were like,
why is it turning green? Uh? And it happened. There's
no direct date, but um, there are photos from as
early as nineteen o six, which is only about twenty
(42:24):
years later, where that Pattina is, where she's she's pretty
green at that point. And I think at this point
in places on that statue that Pattina is as thick
as that copper. It's two twopennies deep. So now it's
four pennies deep in some places. So do you remember
when we were younger, in the mid eighties, there was
like this, the restoration project of the statue. I was
(42:47):
under the impression that they were going to clean the
green off of it, not I don't remember. I don't remember.
I don't think I was under the impression. There's a
reference in in seinfeld Um about how remember George goes
to work for Krueger Industrial Smoothing, and they referenced that
that Krueger was the company that botched the Statue of
(43:09):
Liberty restoration job. So like I have the impression that
other people think that it was supposed to be cleaned
of its green color as well during that But regardless
during I think so too. I think seeing the set
of Liberties anything but that aged copper green weird. But
during that restoration, whether they were trying to clean the
green off or not. UM, they found a few things
(43:32):
about it. They found the torch was irreparably weathered, and
so the torch that she's holding now is new. It's
the second version that created using the exact same methods
as the original one. UM, but they replaced the torch.
And then they also found that a lot of Eiffel's
um wrought iron structure, a lot of it was rusting
(43:54):
and falling apart, so they replaced all of those with
stainless steel. So she got like a really good refresh
and update in nineteen six thanks to a committee led
by Leaya Coca who was appointed by President Reagan. Very few,
very few um uh sentences that are more eighties than that.
(44:15):
And then also we know that the restoration UM worked
at least until the year thirty nine seventy eight thanks
to the Planet of the Apes movies or depending on
who you ask, you're gonna love that spoiler in there. Dude,
it's a movie from ninety eight, I know, I can
you really spoil that? Sure? One of the great endings. Uh. Now,
(44:39):
about three to four million people a year visit Lady
Liberty and you can get in an elevator there on
that ground level to the top of the pedestal, and
you can go all the way up to the crown,
even if you make a reservation apparently, but the elevator
doesn't go that high. They're about a hundred and sixty
two steps that will get you there and uh and
(45:00):
you can look out of that crown. Imagine that's quite
a site. And time was that they would just sell
tickets without reservations and you just buy your tickets and
stand there in line to wait for the people who
went up to come back down because there was not
a lot of room on that that staircase. And now
at least they're like, you know, really innovating since nineteen
six by offering advanced reservations. Apparently it was miserable. So
(45:23):
one other fact about the statue of Liberty Chuck that
stuck out to me was she started out as the
world's tallest statue when she was built and dedicated, but
today she's just number forty seven among the world's tallest statues,
which means we've built a lot of really tall statues
in the last hundred years. It's something that humanity has
been really interested in apparently, that's right. And if anyone
(45:45):
ever says, yeah, I've been there, I stood climbed up
in the right next to the torch, you call that
person a liar. Because no one's been allowed in that
torch since nineteen sixty. They may be thinking crown, yeah,
you and be allowed in the torch again until the year.
That's right. Then you can do whatever you want because
(46:07):
because the torch is just laying there on the beach. Basically,
he finally did it. You darn maniacs. Okay, well, Chuck
has nothing else. I have nothing else. And since I
just said you darn maniacs, it's time for a listener mail.
I'm gonna called this short and sweet. Oh I like
this from a from a younger like Humpty dumpty. That's right. Hey, guys,
(46:31):
I am fourteen years old from northern Utah and I've
been listening to you guys for a while and really
enjoy your podcast. It's really fun to listen to what
spunky things you have to say. I love the use
of spunky there. I listened all the time during car
rides are doing crafts and art. If you would mind,
I would love it if you read my letter for
my siblings and say she during listener mail, how's at
(46:56):
the bomb? Usually don't honor requests. I know I'm below,
like my socks are just down around my toes right now.
But Alyssa Stewart just sounded like a nice kid, and
sometimes it's it's good to kind of one up those siblings.
So to the siblings of Alyssa who Elyssa didn't include,
I'm just gonna say one thing to you. She Wow, Chuck,
(47:21):
I think you just like fundamentally altered Thanksgiving If that happs? Yeah,
birth order out the door, cool order reset. Well, if
you want the cool order in your family, reset, take
your best shot. I'll be surprised if we do it again.
But then Chuck's always full of surprises, so you never
can tell. Can't get a bead on that one, you
(47:42):
know what I mean. In the meantime, you can send
those requests to Stuff Podcasts at iHeart radio dot com.
Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio.
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Hosts And Creators
Chuck Bryant
Josh Clark
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