December 1, 2011 • 33 mins
Sure we take it for granted the elephant represents the Republican party and the donkey Democrats, but have you ever wondered why? Josh and Chuck explore the foundation of these bizarre political symbols in this old-timey episode of Stuff You Should Know.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you should Know
from House Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with me as always as
Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and that makes this stuff you
(00:22):
should know, the continued political edition. Because we did presidential pardons,
we're all political now. Well, this is the time of
the year, you know. Yeah, it's beginning to look a
lot like political season. I'm going to day to cast
my ballot for Georgia to start letting everybody buy booze
(00:43):
on Sunday. I am too. I appreciate you doing that. No,
I'm voting against it. A lot of people on the
a j C they had, you know, the opinion, like
what do you think? And the people that were against it,
we're all just like, well, you got six days of eak,
Like why to change it? Why bother? You know, it's
just the one day. Is it really that big of
(01:04):
a pain? And it's like what has lost on these
people is that this is the United States of America.
It's about freedom. It's not about buying booze on Sunday.
It's about somebody else telling you not to when this
is two thousand eleven. Yes, um, nice chuck. Yeah. Well, um,
let's stop talking politics and instead let's talk animals. Let's
(01:27):
talk biology. You know much about donkeys? Uh? No, okay,
not really. Well, donkeys are a member of the horse family,
but there are different species from horse. Donkeys and mules
are not the same, correct there Uh, because there are
different species. It makes it really weird that they can
(01:48):
not only mate but procreate. But donkeys and horses do
get it on and with the producer mules. So, um,
a mule is actually the offspring of a male donkey
jack and a female horse a mayor. How I do
not know that in forty years a henney is a
(02:09):
is the offspring of a female donkey a jenny, and
a male horse stallion. So a mule or a henny
can be boy or girl. It depends on what their
parents were. So this is actually the second podcast where
we've started with equestrian definitions. Yes, interesting, and I also
(02:31):
want to give a little shout out to the donkey.
Apparently a donkey they're very well known for stubbornness, of course,
but um, apparently it is a misinterpretation as I understand it.
Of they're incredibly well defined sense of self preservation. They
are not very easily frightened or um forced into doing
(02:54):
something they think is not in their own best interest,
which comes off to us as stubborn jackass donkey mule
who won't go down the trail, and they're like the
gold No, no, I could fall off that interesting. Yeah,
so I think humans should start listening to their donkeys
and to make sure that people don't accuse us of
um doncubias. Yes, I want to talk also about elephants too,
(03:18):
because if you talk donkeys, you have to talk elephants
and eventually electric eels, which we'll get too later at
the tea party. No, no, no, I thought they might
have had their own. I don't know. I don't think so.
I don't think it's electric eels. Pretty awesome. They do
have that carved up snake. Yeah, they don't tread on
me snake that was carved up into the thirteen colonies,
(03:42):
But that's definitely not an electric eel. Elephants and are
are a horse of a completely different color. A few
couple of facts of them. They are, their societies are
structured by female. They the if you see a group
of elephants walking around, they're all female. They live in
the same family their whole lives. The elephant pack is
(04:04):
led by a female. It's matriarchal, and males spend their
whole lives like just basically doing their own thing, hanging
out and then coming around to mate every once in a
a while. And these lives can can live, can go
for up to eighty two years. And elephants are pretty
amazing animals. They are very well known to mourn, scientifically
proven to mourn they're dead. The first study that established
(04:26):
that was in two thousand five that found that elephants
will return to where their loved ones have fallen and
visit their bones and skulls and tusks and want to
stroke them and just kind of meditate over them for
a while. That's very sad, right. So you have donkeys,
you have elephants. You have American politics. That I think
(04:49):
is as interesting as the story of how they became
symbols of politics. I would say it's more interesting, alright.
It depends on your your leanings. This one was written
by Sam Abramson. You remember him. He was a good guy.
I have no idea. I doubt if he listens. Uh so,
(05:10):
Thomas Nast. If you're gonna start the discussion on how
the donkey and the elephant became symbols of our two
political parties, there's only one place to start and end,
and that is a German. Oddly enough, a German born
political satirist and illustrator, cartoonist, wood block cutter. Yeah, really
(05:34):
named Thomas Nast, who was born in Germany, came over
to New York City when he was six, and uh
was a natural. He was a shoeing right off the
bat with this artwork stuff. Yeah, he was pretty good,
you can tell. And you've if you haven't heard of him,
you've still seen his stuff somewhere out there. You've seen
a Thomas Nast illustration. Any time you think of nineteenth
(05:56):
century UM political cartoons, what you're envisioning as a Thomas
Nast illustration or Uncle Sam? It depends one. I always
think of his UM flag, Thomas flag. I can't remember
his name anyway, he was the one who painted that
I want you, Uncle Sam. Yeah, but Nasa is the
one who popularized the first images of Uncle Sam's that right. Well,
(06:20):
Uncle Sam was around him he was. He was the
one who first put him in like a star spangled
suit and made him tall and gaunt, model after Abraham Lincoln.
But Uncle Sam was, if I may uh. He was
possibly named after a guy named Samuel Wilson, not Abrahamson
no Ok, who was a meat packer from Troy, New York,
(06:40):
UH in the early nineteenth century, and who was who
got a great reputations being very honest, and so he
got a government contract to send meat provisions to the
troops UH during the War of eighteen twelve, and these
crates would come arrive stamped us, and the troops came
to mention that this was a quol Sam or Uncle
(07:01):
Sam Wilson, which came to be a symbol for the
United States as a whole, and they were providing Uncle
Sam's brotting food for the soldiers. In their minds, yes,
it's nice. Nothing but horse me in. Santa Claus, the
modern Santa Claus as we know him, was sort of
captured by a Nast as well as that, right, Yeah,
you got a story there, I do think so people
(07:21):
say that Thomas Nast invented Santa Claus, and that is
it's pretty close. There was St. Nick was since your clause,
there was all these these conceptions of Santa Claus based
around St. Nick. Thomas Nast was the one who associated St. Nick,
who still today in Germany. He's honored. He has a
day on December six where people give one another gifts,
(07:44):
but it's not Christmas. Thomas Nast took the gift giving
idea associated with St. Nick, put it to Christmas for
Harper's and then added the elves as well. So the
whole idea of Santa Claus coming and bringing gifts was
Thomas Nast. Yeah, like eighteen sixty two, I believe, for
the cover of Harper's Weekly, Thank you Thomas Nast. And
(08:05):
then by eighteen eighty one he was fat and jolly
thinks that Thomas Nast as well? How is this Santa
gonna be lean and mean? Yeah, he was a little
skinny and it's off putting to see a skinny Santa
Clause earlier ones. All right, well you spilled the beans
on that spoiler. Harper's Weekly was where Nast worked for
twenty four years from eighteen sixty two to eighteen eighty six,
(08:28):
and um, that is where he made his name, like
big time. He was influential. He was countrywide famous. I
don't know about world famous. I don't know if a
whole lot of people were world famous at the time. Yeah,
he's definitely like a household name, I think. Yeah, he
was a rock star. This is when a political cartoon
really meant something and actually held sway in elections. Not
(08:52):
so today. Yeah, because you know, so many people were illiterate,
which is kind of unfortunate, because Thomas Nast drew in
a time where you could draw a bunch of stuff
and be like, oh, this doesn't make any sense, and
just put labels on him. Apparently you can label absolutely everything.
It's like, okay, this tree. Sometimes he would come to
your house and explain it to you if you still
(09:13):
didn't get well. And I mentioned wood cut these. Uh,
he did not draw these in pen and ink until later,
which would end up being his undoing. We'll get to that.
But he actually carved these things. That's how they printed these.
These are carvings. It's amazing, especially when you look at
the detail. It's a striking Josh, I agree. I didn't
(09:34):
realize there are wood carvings until about thirty minutes ago,
so you're still reeling. Yeah, I'm a little I'm still queasy.
I still have the taste of vomit in my mouth.
All right. So, politically speaking, Nast was a Republican, but
Republicans at the time aren't exactly what we might think
of today. It was a shift over the years. Yeah,
(09:55):
that many people know this. It's a big eye open anything.
It's like learning in eighth grade that, um, the United
States like pretty much brought genocide down on Indians in America,
you know, like learning like, wait, what are you talking about? Like, yeah,
there are cowboys and stuff, but what do you mean
the same thing with this, Like that Republican and Democrat
(10:15):
is fluid term, but really it's like conservative and liberal
or the two opposing forces at all times. Yeah, that's
a good way to put it. Actually, And at the time,
I guess Republicans were very much socially liberal and he
was on board with that and ended up having problems
with his own party because of that, which influenced his cartoons.
We calling cartoons, I think, yeah, political cartoons. It's a
(10:38):
it's an acceptable term. So donkey should we start there? Yeah,
the donkey first came about in eighteen seventy, was the
first time the donkey made its appearance, and that was
in uh and I have these printed out too. That
was this one right here. The copper Head Northern Democrats
were called copper Head Democrats opposed the Civil War, and
(11:02):
he thought they were racists. Well that's what Sam calls them.
Well that's what NAS thought of them, though, right right,
But I think that they I think that that's over
that's an overbroad description. I think that the copper Head
Democrats were made up of like there were the crux
of the peace movement, right they also basically they were
(11:23):
made up of people who said it's unconstitutional to force
a country together for one part of it wants to secede.
There were a lot of different voices, but yes, they
were very powerful, and Nast definitely opposed them for sure.
And the copper Head is a snake, in case you
didn't know that, So it's definitely a derogatory term, deadly snake.
It is a deadly snake that we have right here
in Georgia. Uh So, in eighteen seventy the he showed
(11:45):
that the donkey kicking a dead lion the donkey, and
like you said, he would just literally label them. He
would write words on the body of the animals saying
this is what this is. Uh, no subtext. The donkey
was the copper Head Press, which was he was taking
a jab at the press, not necessarily the party. And
then the lion was Edwin and Stanton Lincoln, Secretary of War.
(12:07):
It was dead and dead in the photo and it
looks like there's a little eagle looking on even like
what are you doing? But the eagles not labels. And
I think that's the capital in the background. Yeah, I
think so. So yeah, he he would just write on it,
like on the side of the donkey it says copper
Head Press and it looks like have you heard of
I think his name is Vim vander Wall or something
(12:28):
like that. He he came up with the cloaca machine.
He's an artist from the Netherlands. Uh. He has has
like this whole exhibit where he like tattoos pigs really yeah,
and like like elaborate tattoos and it looks a lot
like this. I really like the woodcut or just that
style that like the donkey having writing on the side
(12:49):
of it. Okay, I got you, it's been graffito. So
that is um. That was the first appearance of the donkey. Uh.
The next one was in eighteen seven, be four, when
Republican Ulysses s Grant Ulysses was vying for a potential
third term, which freaked a lot of people out right. Well,
(13:10):
he freaked people out twice. Did he try to do
that twice? Well, they tried to get him to run
for a third consecutive term in eighteen seventy six, but
he pooh pooed it. But then he went and traveled
abroad and came back and said, I'm a better man.
I think I could be president for a third time,
third non consecutive term in eight Yeah, which is why
that that this third term panic. The eighteen seventy four
(13:32):
cartoon was when people were like, well, he can't. You
can't have a three term president, even though you could constitutionally,
that's right. So if you look at this one, this
one is like, this is crazy. This looks like a
Grateful Dead album cover or something. It's got a donkey
in sheep's clothing labeled Caesarism, obviously referencing Julius Caesar is
(13:53):
some mad, power hungry tyrant. And then there's all sorts
of other stuff going on, and we'll get to the
as the elephant plays a part in this one as well.
I like the giraffe a lot on that one. It
was kind of up where he looks like he's wearing
a vest. Yeah, he's wearing some sort of a suit.
Giraffe in a suit. And that was called third term Panic. Yeah.
(14:14):
But again, even though he was symbolizing the Democratic Press
mainly with the donkey, it's sort of stuck is the
Democratic Party even though that wasn't in his original intent?
Is that right? Um? I don't know. I don't know
if like he I don't think he originally intended it,
but I think over time he just came to see
it as I think it. Yeah, popularly was picked up
(14:37):
and kind of forced him to use it later on.
You know. But even though the Democrats still haven't, that's
not their uh their symbol officially, they've never adopted the
brain jackasses their official party symbol. I wonder why, although
the Republicans have they've adopted their symbol. That's true. But
there there's some stuff in that third Term Panic thing,
(14:57):
um that kind of pops up that was clear really
important to Nast, Like inflation. There's like a plank he
wrote inflation on. So apparently at the time there was
a big struggle going on about abandoning the gold standard,
or printing um as much silver as you wanted, or
issuing paper so you could basically cause inflation so people
(15:23):
could pay off their debts so they could buy stuff
more cheaply, that kind of thing. And apparently Nast opposed
that the inflation because that's like a plank that's broken
over this pit. That the elephant the Republican vote, I
think is what it is. Chaos, Right, there's chaos because
farmers can pay their bills kind of thing. So he
(15:43):
was like, he was definitely a social liberal, but I
get from this that he was also not a populist,
Like I think he liked people in theory but not
in practice. Right, And then you know this is important
because he was a guy who only drew what he
believed in, which would also further prove to be his
undoing later on. Yeah, but you gotta take your hat
(16:04):
off to somebody like that. You know, Well, he'd made
his name. I guess he was like, do you know
who I am? I'm the nasty man. I'm not gonna
draw anything I don't believe in. Uh so, what where
are we here? There was another example, um, a presidential
candidate grabbing a donkey labeled Democratic Party by the tail. Yeah,
so that was Thomas F. Bayard. Yeah, and he was
(16:27):
grabbing it by the tail. He was actually one of
those guys who fought to repeal, um the issuance of
paper money legal tender that doesn't really mean anything, rather
than use gold. And so I guess Nasty approved of him,
even though he's a Democrat. And that's this one right here,
right yeah, And that's uh, he's he's trying to keep
the donkey from finding falling into a pit another pit
(16:47):
labeled financial chaos. It's very popular motif at the time,
I guess. And then in the background of this one
you do see the dead Republican Party elephant with is
that Lincoln hovering above him? Probably I think Nas kind
of had a thing for for Lincoln had a thing
for him. It's strictly in an idol way with an Oh,
(17:10):
so that is the donkey That fairly summarized how it
got started. Yeah, like you said, I mean he started
just kind of using it and associating it with the
Copperhead Democrats, Democratic Press, and then ultimately people just said, well,
I can't read, but I see that you're making fun
of the Democrats, and that's the donkeys. So the Democrats
are donkeys, and I said, okay, we'll go with that.
(17:32):
Oh and also, by the way, the Wizard of Oz
apparently is a popular allegory for UM politics at the time,
including that whole gold standard abandonment. Was it meant to be? It? Yeah?
Frank Baum, who who wrote it was a political writer
UM for many many years before he wrote it. And
the gold the yellow brick road is the gold standard.
(17:54):
And then Dorothy's shoes originally were silver, not ruby, and
so silver and gold was a call out to this
UM free silver idea of printing sixteen silver coins to
every gold coin printed to make money cheaper and abundant. Right,
So interesting, a lot of a lot of subtle stuff
going on in the late nineteenth century. You know, Well,
(18:17):
they're way more obvious now, I guess because they can be. Yeah,
at least we don't label our political cartoons as much.
It's still a tradition that's upheld. It is. You just
don't see words all over the place. I don't read
a lot of political cartoons anymore. To you I just
don't run into him very often, but I almost always
enjoy him when I do upentially that Mike Luckovich guy,
he is good. He is a local boy too, Yeah,
(18:39):
luck of it just good. You know, I'm a big
family Circus fan. Yeah, that's rarely political. You know when
Jeffy like tracks a month through the through the House
and it's like, Jeffy, have you seen the altered version
of those? There's altered versions of everything. These are pretty funny.
They're really really dirty, but they're funny. Dirty is not there?
(19:00):
Or they just like um filthy? Yeah they felt okay, alright,
So moving on to the elephant. Uh, this was Nast's party,
the Republicans at the time, so obviously his cartoons about
the elephant are going to be more positive, I guess,
or sad. Yeah, true, like the dying elephant. Yeah. I
(19:20):
think he probably intuitively knew the elephants mourn they're dead,
which makes you sad when you think about elephants, which
is why you choose the elephant. I wonder if he
knew that. I don't think you did. That's appropriate though,
before he actually ever, it keeps saying penned in here,
but carved his first elephant. Um. It was used twice before,
(19:41):
once in eighteen sixty four, uh, in a Lincoln campaign
literature piece, and then in eighteen seventy two by Harper's
but it wasn't until eighteen seventy four that he used it,
So I can imagine the Lincoln use of it was
very intended to be derogatory. Yeah, probably all jackasses. So
that's uh or turn panic. The one we already talked
(20:01):
about was the first Um Republican elephant that he had carved. Okay,
but the first appearance of the Republican elephant and the
Democratic um donkey together as the as those two is
the representative the whole party was the Stranger Things Have
Happened cartoon where he's got the donkey by the tail.
(20:24):
As far as I know, it's the first. That's what
that one was called, Stranger Things have Happened. Uh. In
eighteen seventy six, there was one called the Political Situation.
Pretty straight up, Uncle Sam is confused. He is labeled
the vote of the people, and there's a two headed
elephant choosing to decide which road Democratic road of the
Republican road to go down. That's fairly self explanatory. I
(20:46):
think it is, but it's also kind of confusing because
Uncle Sam's confused. So as he's saying the Republicans can
go one of two ways at the time, Well, no,
because there it's two headed, so I would imagine it
was it's more representative of the two already system. I
think Nasty was pretty drunk that day, So, uh, what
(21:07):
else do we have here? Um? There was the oh
my favorite, I haven't seen it yet. Did you print
it out? The one with the tombstone? No, I couldn't
find that one. I thought this was very um sweet,
but nasty. Apparently, when Rutherford B. Hayes uh ran for
president he won the eight seventy six election, that um
(21:31):
that Grant didn't go for the third term four right,
and Hayes apparently said that he would only run once.
And I guess he wasn't a very well like guy
because he was one of those presidents who won through
the electoral vote but lost the popular vote, and apparently
lost the popular vote pretty bad, and so his whole
(21:52):
presidency was in no way, shape or form a mandate.
It was it was very representative of the fact that
this country, our country was still very much torn apart
from the Civil War, and so nas created this cartoon
where this um elephant that Sam describes as bruised and
battered is crouching down at a tombstone of the Democratic Party,
(22:16):
which I thought was pretty cool because it's like he
had the sense that there was still, no matter how
um acrimonious things got, that these two parties were still
American parties, that there's still a whole wild world out
there for us to hate, and why are we hating
each other? You know, Yeah, that's sort of a nice sentiment. Yeah,
(22:37):
but I don't want to characterize nastas uh an isolationists
or even a nativist, like he had one of his
Uncle Sam paintings or I'm sorry carvings. Was um Uncle
Sam and Columbia right Liberty uh hosting a Thanksgiving dinner
with all the peoples of the world, which included some
Chinese people, some um black people, some Native American Indians, uh,
(23:03):
and uh a host of others, but not the Irish.
I don't think the Irish were president. But it was
like it's world or suffrage for all, you know, equality
for everyone in the world. Come on, comal, you're all invited.
It was pretty cool. He's definitely not a bigot, as
far as I could tell you, it does seemed like it. Uh.
So you know what standpoints out is it? And it's true.
(23:25):
It's kind of striking that a hundred and fifty years
after this or so, that these are still the symbols.
I mean, the Republicans officially adopted the elephant. But he
points out that a lot of that was due to
just how influential and popular Nast was at the time.
It just became part of the national fabric because of him.
There was some good quotes about him after well, while
(23:47):
he's working. Even apparently, Um Abraham Lincoln called Nasta's quote
best recruiting sergeant during the eighteen sixty four re election.
And this is while he was traveling around the country heckling, Uh,
what's his name? Oh, Stephen, it's not Stephen Decatur. What
was that guy's name? I don't know. We'll go with
(24:08):
Ambrose Beers, even though it's not right. I can't believe
we don't remember that guy's name. I know, my head
is just bulging. Uh. Mark Twain said that Nast won
a prodigious victory for grant I mean, for civilization in progress.
It's Mark Twain for you. What a guy. He can
turn it price. So he Um, you said that he
(24:30):
kind of gave up his UH career in a lot
of ways by being stubborn as a donkey. Yeah. Um.
Especially he was apparently in very good with Fletcher Harper,
who founded Harper's Weekly. Um, do you read Harper's. No,
it's monthly, it's Lewis Lapham just left and I got
(24:53):
into it right before he left, and I got sucked
into Harper's and then he left, and now I'm like,
it's just not is good? Why Why did this happen
to me? Why does everything bad happen to me? But
it's still it's very good. And it's been around since
the mid nineteenth century, which is pretty impressive for a magazine,
(25:14):
and endured endors. But Junior came aboard and UM didn't
really side with um. Thomas nast right, Yeah, I mean
Na's had a lot of freedom under under Fletcher Harper,
but Joe Jr. Kind of tightened down the ranks, and
it's like, hey, man, don't be so square. People want
to be entertained. So there was a bit of a
(25:34):
shift and UH in in the the way American public
wanted to you know, what they wanted to read in magazines,
and then uh, people wanted to not be bothered anymore. Yeah,
they were stick of it. So the other death Noel though,
was was they went to photochemical reproduction and they didn't
do the woodblock cuttings anymore. And apparently woodblock, even though
(25:57):
I mean it looks to me like incredibly detailed, it
gives you a lot of leeway to make mistakes that
you don't get with pen and ink and paper. So
his shortcomings all of a sudden stood out. They're like,
this guy kind of sucks. It's just it's just not
true Santa Claus. Yeah, so he he ended up like, um,
penniless as you as you love the term, Um, I
(26:20):
do you don't you love the term penniless. I was
listening to an old podcast and you're like, I hate
that term. It's so no. One doesn't happen. He does
the Niagara Falls one. She's I need to lighten up
back then. Huh. But anyway, he was very much broke
um and he tried to He tried to open his
own uh paper, Nast Weekly, which lasted six months, and
(26:44):
luckily he had a friend in Teddy Roosevelt, right, yeah,
and he he appointed him to Council General to Ecuador
and NASA. I guess it's like, all right, I guess
I'll go to Ecuador. It's because there's money there, because
I'm Penniless's better than doing nothing. And it actually was
not better than doing nothing, because he got yellow fever
there and died six months later. Yeah. Uh so that's
(27:07):
a pretty weird end of that guy, if you ask me,
But it was. He was sixty two and at the
turn of the last last century, the last last turn
of the century. He uh, sixty two is not bad.
It's a pretty good run for back then, especially being
a household name wentce your celebrities over. You might as well,
I mean, you're dead anyway, and that just hasn't You
(27:30):
haven't actually died yet, but you might as well be,
you know. So there you go, the donkey and the
the elephant. If if you feel like we've explained this,
if you now understand it and gotten to the bottom
of it, you were not paying attention because it's still
as convoluted as ever. It's not all that's all from that. Well,
(27:52):
don't you wish though that there was like some sort
of like, oh, here's the reason why he chose the donkey. Oh,
of course he would choose an elephant. It's totally intuitive. No,
it's the ramblings of a madman. You used to carve
stuff into woodblocks and Fletcher Harper published it for the
consumption of everybody else. But now you know, knowing is
half the battle the track. So if you want to
(28:14):
learn more about Thomas Nast, if you want to read
one of the extraordinarily rare Samuel Abramson articles on the site,
you can type in the words why are a donkey
and an elephant the symbols of the Democratic and Republican
parties question mark. You could probably also just type in
(28:35):
donkey and elephant and it will bring it up. So
h I think I said that you should type it
into the search bar, and if I didn't, you should
type it into the search bar at how stuffworks dot com.
Since I said that, it's time now for listener mail.
Josh Bison feedback from Canada Burlington, Ontario, specifically, guys, your
(28:58):
recent Bison podcast put me uh in mind one of
the coolest experiences of my life when I lived out
in Alberta, I'd often go hiking and Elk Island National Park.
I was halfway around one of the parks longer trails
one day when I looked down, I saw a fresh
buffalo chip. What's that is? Scat? As I pondered what
(29:18):
this meant, I heard a snort and about ten to
fifteen meters in front of me, which is a length
that I don't understand. It's roximately okay, it was ards okay,
I get yards. Uh ten to fifteens in front of
me was a bison. I froze. I was alone, hadn't
seen another soul on the trail. I knew roughly eight
(29:41):
kilometers whatever that is from the road, I'm sorry, from
the trailhead in either direction, and I knew uh. This
animal decided to charge, I was as good as dead,
and we stared each other down for a few minutes.
I don't know what was going through its mind, but
I was weighing my options. If I turned around and
it decided at a charge, I might not hear it
coming and wouldn't be able to take evasive action. If
(30:04):
I went forward, I might provoke it and be in
deep troubled. I knew I couldn't stay there all day,
so I decided to take a single step towards it.
To Gage's response, good move, I think. I moved towards it.
It gave a snort and turned its head away from
me and ran into the woods to my right. Very cool,
I thought, No sooner had I thought that. Then from
(30:24):
my left came a thundering herd of bison stampeding across
the trail. There must have been twenty to thirty of
them running in front of me, following their lookout. That
was a scout, I guess, into the forest. I stood there, utterly,
all struck for several minutes before I decided to move
forward to where they had just been. For the next
fifteen minutes, everywhere, I bet. For the next fifteen minutes
(30:46):
or so, I kept looking over my shoulder just in
case they were hiding behind a tree, ready to pounce
on me like a giant cartoon kangaroo. Interesting imagination. So
they didn't pounce. He made it back say, and he
just says, if anyone finds himself in this situation, probably
won't happen. Don't do what I did. I got lucky.
(31:07):
These are wild animals, not petting zoo bison. I could
have easily been trampled and left to die. So that
is Gordon C from Burlington, Ontario, Canada. Weird weird ending there.
He doesn't give any any suggestions of what to do. No,
but he did say that it was the most amazing
(31:29):
experience of his life, seeming the thundering herd of bison
right in front of him. I will bet I thought
it was pretty cool. Yeah. Um, I want to add
something from the Bison podcast. We got a tweet from
some guy recently was saying, hey, I was really disappointed
you guys used the word Indian instead of Native American.
And I was like, oh, yeah, that's a smart guy. Well,
how about I provide you with the link to an
(31:51):
article that has a poll that shows that in clear
for of all Indian Native American Indians, UM prefer the
term Indian over Native American, prefer Native American, and then
like six percent or whatever the rest is prefer something else.
Don't call me, I'll call you all right. So the
(32:13):
the not a majority, but very close to it for
Indian over Native Americans. So chew on that pal. We
were doing something right for once, and he goes, no,
I'm talking about people from India are offended by that
like me, And I was like, oh, you're to handle
is Sanjay something? And I haven't responded yet, but I
(32:35):
hadn't considered that. Yeah, I knew we were doing right
by Indians of North America, but I hadn't considered how
Indians of India also known as Asian Indians felt about it.
And I'm curious to know. So I would like to
hear from everybody, uh, if from Asian Indians and North
American Indians. And I'm sure I'm just like offending everybody
(32:58):
in any way, shape or form right now, but like
figure out how to establish this. I want to know,
how do you consider that either? And even if you're
not Asian Indian or American Indian, yes, uh, we want
to hear from you. If you have a good suggestion
to about how to end this conundrum. Uh, you can
tweet to us like Sanjay did at s Y s
(33:21):
K podcast. Um, you can uh go to Facebook also
known as the the fifty thousand at Facebook dot com,
slash stuff you Should Know, and you can send us
a plain old fashioned email at Stuff podcast at how
Stuff Works dot com. Be sure to check out our
(33:44):
new video podcast Stuff from the future. Join how Stuff
Work staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing
possibilities of tomorrow, brought to you by the reinvented two
thousand twelve Camray. It's ready, are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you welcome to Stuff you should Know
from House Stuff Works dot Com. Hey, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Josh Clark with me as always as
Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and that makes this stuff you
(00:22):
should know, the continued political edition. Because we did presidential pardons,
we're all political now. Well, this is the time of
the year, you know. Yeah, it's beginning to look a
lot like political season. I'm going to day to cast
my ballot for Georgia to start letting everybody buy booze
(00:43):
on Sunday. I am too. I appreciate you doing that. No,
I'm voting against it. A lot of people on the
a j C they had, you know, the opinion, like
what do you think? And the people that were against it,
we're all just like, well, you got six days of eak,
Like why to change it? Why bother? You know, it's
just the one day. Is it really that big of
(01:04):
a pain? And it's like what has lost on these
people is that this is the United States of America.
It's about freedom. It's not about buying booze on Sunday.
It's about somebody else telling you not to when this
is two thousand eleven. Yes, um, nice chuck. Yeah. Well, um,
let's stop talking politics and instead let's talk animals. Let's
(01:27):
talk biology. You know much about donkeys? Uh? No, okay,
not really. Well, donkeys are a member of the horse family,
but there are different species from horse. Donkeys and mules
are not the same, correct there Uh, because there are
different species. It makes it really weird that they can
(01:48):
not only mate but procreate. But donkeys and horses do
get it on and with the producer mules. So, um,
a mule is actually the offspring of a male donkey
jack and a female horse a mayor. How I do
not know that in forty years a henney is a
(02:09):
is the offspring of a female donkey a jenny, and
a male horse stallion. So a mule or a henny
can be boy or girl. It depends on what their
parents were. So this is actually the second podcast where
we've started with equestrian definitions. Yes, interesting, and I also
(02:31):
want to give a little shout out to the donkey.
Apparently a donkey they're very well known for stubbornness, of course,
but um, apparently it is a misinterpretation as I understand it.
Of they're incredibly well defined sense of self preservation. They
are not very easily frightened or um forced into doing
(02:54):
something they think is not in their own best interest,
which comes off to us as stubborn jackass donkey mule
who won't go down the trail, and they're like the
gold No, no, I could fall off that interesting. Yeah,
so I think humans should start listening to their donkeys
and to make sure that people don't accuse us of
um doncubias. Yes, I want to talk also about elephants too,
(03:18):
because if you talk donkeys, you have to talk elephants
and eventually electric eels, which we'll get too later at
the tea party. No, no, no, I thought they might
have had their own. I don't know. I don't think so.
I don't think it's electric eels. Pretty awesome. They do
have that carved up snake. Yeah, they don't tread on
me snake that was carved up into the thirteen colonies,
(03:42):
But that's definitely not an electric eel. Elephants and are
are a horse of a completely different color. A few
couple of facts of them. They are, their societies are
structured by female. They the if you see a group
of elephants walking around, they're all female. They live in
the same family their whole lives. The elephant pack is
(04:04):
led by a female. It's matriarchal, and males spend their
whole lives like just basically doing their own thing, hanging
out and then coming around to mate every once in a
a while. And these lives can can live, can go
for up to eighty two years. And elephants are pretty
amazing animals. They are very well known to mourn, scientifically
proven to mourn they're dead. The first study that established
(04:26):
that was in two thousand five that found that elephants
will return to where their loved ones have fallen and
visit their bones and skulls and tusks and want to
stroke them and just kind of meditate over them for
a while. That's very sad, right. So you have donkeys,
you have elephants. You have American politics. That I think
(04:49):
is as interesting as the story of how they became
symbols of politics. I would say it's more interesting, alright.
It depends on your your leanings. This one was written
by Sam Abramson. You remember him. He was a good guy.
I have no idea. I doubt if he listens. Uh so,
(05:10):
Thomas Nast. If you're gonna start the discussion on how
the donkey and the elephant became symbols of our two
political parties, there's only one place to start and end,
and that is a German. Oddly enough, a German born
political satirist and illustrator, cartoonist, wood block cutter. Yeah, really
(05:34):
named Thomas Nast, who was born in Germany, came over
to New York City when he was six, and uh
was a natural. He was a shoeing right off the
bat with this artwork stuff. Yeah, he was pretty good,
you can tell. And you've if you haven't heard of him,
you've still seen his stuff somewhere out there. You've seen
a Thomas Nast illustration. Any time you think of nineteenth
(05:56):
century UM political cartoons, what you're envisioning as a Thomas
Nast illustration or Uncle Sam? It depends one. I always
think of his UM flag, Thomas flag. I can't remember
his name anyway, he was the one who painted that
I want you, Uncle Sam. Yeah, but Nasa is the
one who popularized the first images of Uncle Sam's that right. Well,
(06:20):
Uncle Sam was around him he was. He was the
one who first put him in like a star spangled
suit and made him tall and gaunt, model after Abraham Lincoln.
But Uncle Sam was, if I may uh. He was
possibly named after a guy named Samuel Wilson, not Abrahamson
no Ok, who was a meat packer from Troy, New York,
(06:40):
UH in the early nineteenth century, and who was who
got a great reputations being very honest, and so he
got a government contract to send meat provisions to the
troops UH during the War of eighteen twelve, and these
crates would come arrive stamped us, and the troops came
to mention that this was a quol Sam or Uncle
(07:01):
Sam Wilson, which came to be a symbol for the
United States as a whole, and they were providing Uncle
Sam's brotting food for the soldiers. In their minds, yes,
it's nice. Nothing but horse me in. Santa Claus, the
modern Santa Claus as we know him, was sort of
captured by a Nast as well as that, right, Yeah,
you got a story there, I do think so people
(07:21):
say that Thomas Nast invented Santa Claus, and that is
it's pretty close. There was St. Nick was since your clause,
there was all these these conceptions of Santa Claus based
around St. Nick. Thomas Nast was the one who associated St. Nick,
who still today in Germany. He's honored. He has a
day on December six where people give one another gifts,
(07:44):
but it's not Christmas. Thomas Nast took the gift giving
idea associated with St. Nick, put it to Christmas for
Harper's and then added the elves as well. So the
whole idea of Santa Claus coming and bringing gifts was
Thomas Nast. Yeah, like eighteen sixty two, I believe, for
the cover of Harper's Weekly, Thank you Thomas Nast. And
(08:05):
then by eighteen eighty one he was fat and jolly
thinks that Thomas Nast as well? How is this Santa
gonna be lean and mean? Yeah, he was a little
skinny and it's off putting to see a skinny Santa
Clause earlier ones. All right, well you spilled the beans
on that spoiler. Harper's Weekly was where Nast worked for
twenty four years from eighteen sixty two to eighteen eighty six,
(08:28):
and um, that is where he made his name, like
big time. He was influential. He was countrywide famous. I
don't know about world famous. I don't know if a
whole lot of people were world famous at the time. Yeah,
he's definitely like a household name, I think. Yeah, he
was a rock star. This is when a political cartoon
really meant something and actually held sway in elections. Not
(08:52):
so today. Yeah, because you know, so many people were illiterate,
which is kind of unfortunate, because Thomas Nast drew in
a time where you could draw a bunch of stuff
and be like, oh, this doesn't make any sense, and
just put labels on him. Apparently you can label absolutely everything.
It's like, okay, this tree. Sometimes he would come to
your house and explain it to you if you still
(09:13):
didn't get well. And I mentioned wood cut these. Uh,
he did not draw these in pen and ink until later,
which would end up being his undoing. We'll get to that.
But he actually carved these things. That's how they printed these.
These are carvings. It's amazing, especially when you look at
the detail. It's a striking Josh, I agree. I didn't
(09:34):
realize there are wood carvings until about thirty minutes ago,
so you're still reeling. Yeah, I'm a little I'm still queasy.
I still have the taste of vomit in my mouth.
All right. So, politically speaking, Nast was a Republican, but
Republicans at the time aren't exactly what we might think
of today. It was a shift over the years. Yeah,
(09:55):
that many people know this. It's a big eye open anything.
It's like learning in eighth grade that, um, the United
States like pretty much brought genocide down on Indians in America,
you know, like learning like, wait, what are you talking about? Like, yeah,
there are cowboys and stuff, but what do you mean
the same thing with this, Like that Republican and Democrat
(10:15):
is fluid term, but really it's like conservative and liberal
or the two opposing forces at all times. Yeah, that's
a good way to put it. Actually, And at the time,
I guess Republicans were very much socially liberal and he
was on board with that and ended up having problems
with his own party because of that, which influenced his cartoons.
We calling cartoons, I think, yeah, political cartoons. It's a
(10:38):
it's an acceptable term. So donkey should we start there? Yeah,
the donkey first came about in eighteen seventy, was the
first time the donkey made its appearance, and that was
in uh and I have these printed out too. That
was this one right here. The copper Head Northern Democrats
were called copper Head Democrats opposed the Civil War, and
(11:02):
he thought they were racists. Well that's what Sam calls them.
Well that's what NAS thought of them, though, right right,
But I think that they I think that that's over
that's an overbroad description. I think that the copper Head
Democrats were made up of like there were the crux
of the peace movement, right they also basically they were
(11:23):
made up of people who said it's unconstitutional to force
a country together for one part of it wants to secede.
There were a lot of different voices, but yes, they
were very powerful, and Nast definitely opposed them for sure.
And the copper Head is a snake, in case you
didn't know that, So it's definitely a derogatory term, deadly snake.
It is a deadly snake that we have right here
in Georgia. Uh So, in eighteen seventy the he showed
(11:45):
that the donkey kicking a dead lion the donkey, and
like you said, he would just literally label them. He
would write words on the body of the animals saying
this is what this is. Uh, no subtext. The donkey
was the copper Head Press, which was he was taking
a jab at the press, not necessarily the party. And
then the lion was Edwin and Stanton Lincoln, Secretary of War.
(12:07):
It was dead and dead in the photo and it
looks like there's a little eagle looking on even like
what are you doing? But the eagles not labels. And
I think that's the capital in the background. Yeah, I
think so. So yeah, he he would just write on it,
like on the side of the donkey it says copper
Head Press and it looks like have you heard of
I think his name is Vim vander Wall or something
(12:28):
like that. He he came up with the cloaca machine.
He's an artist from the Netherlands. Uh. He has has
like this whole exhibit where he like tattoos pigs really yeah,
and like like elaborate tattoos and it looks a lot
like this. I really like the woodcut or just that
style that like the donkey having writing on the side
(12:49):
of it. Okay, I got you, it's been graffito. So
that is um. That was the first appearance of the donkey. Uh.
The next one was in eighteen seven, be four, when
Republican Ulysses s Grant Ulysses was vying for a potential
third term, which freaked a lot of people out right. Well,
(13:10):
he freaked people out twice. Did he try to do
that twice? Well, they tried to get him to run
for a third consecutive term in eighteen seventy six, but
he pooh pooed it. But then he went and traveled
abroad and came back and said, I'm a better man.
I think I could be president for a third time,
third non consecutive term in eight Yeah, which is why
that that this third term panic. The eighteen seventy four
(13:32):
cartoon was when people were like, well, he can't. You
can't have a three term president, even though you could constitutionally,
that's right. So if you look at this one, this
one is like, this is crazy. This looks like a
Grateful Dead album cover or something. It's got a donkey
in sheep's clothing labeled Caesarism, obviously referencing Julius Caesar is
(13:53):
some mad, power hungry tyrant. And then there's all sorts
of other stuff going on, and we'll get to the
as the elephant plays a part in this one as well.
I like the giraffe a lot on that one. It
was kind of up where he looks like he's wearing
a vest. Yeah, he's wearing some sort of a suit.
Giraffe in a suit. And that was called third term Panic. Yeah.
(14:14):
But again, even though he was symbolizing the Democratic Press
mainly with the donkey, it's sort of stuck is the
Democratic Party even though that wasn't in his original intent?
Is that right? Um? I don't know. I don't know
if like he I don't think he originally intended it,
but I think over time he just came to see
it as I think it. Yeah, popularly was picked up
(14:37):
and kind of forced him to use it later on.
You know. But even though the Democrats still haven't, that's
not their uh their symbol officially, they've never adopted the
brain jackasses their official party symbol. I wonder why, although
the Republicans have they've adopted their symbol. That's true. But
there there's some stuff in that third Term Panic thing,
(14:57):
um that kind of pops up that was clear really
important to Nast, Like inflation. There's like a plank he
wrote inflation on. So apparently at the time there was
a big struggle going on about abandoning the gold standard,
or printing um as much silver as you wanted, or
issuing paper so you could basically cause inflation so people
(15:23):
could pay off their debts so they could buy stuff
more cheaply, that kind of thing. And apparently Nast opposed
that the inflation because that's like a plank that's broken
over this pit. That the elephant the Republican vote, I
think is what it is. Chaos, Right, there's chaos because
farmers can pay their bills kind of thing. So he
(15:43):
was like, he was definitely a social liberal, but I
get from this that he was also not a populist,
Like I think he liked people in theory but not
in practice. Right, And then you know this is important
because he was a guy who only drew what he
believed in, which would also further prove to be his
undoing later on. Yeah, but you gotta take your hat
(16:04):
off to somebody like that. You know, Well, he'd made
his name. I guess he was like, do you know
who I am? I'm the nasty man. I'm not gonna
draw anything I don't believe in. Uh so, what where
are we here? There was another example, um, a presidential
candidate grabbing a donkey labeled Democratic Party by the tail. Yeah,
so that was Thomas F. Bayard. Yeah, and he was
(16:27):
grabbing it by the tail. He was actually one of
those guys who fought to repeal, um the issuance of
paper money legal tender that doesn't really mean anything, rather
than use gold. And so I guess Nasty approved of him,
even though he's a Democrat. And that's this one right here,
right yeah, And that's uh, he's he's trying to keep
the donkey from finding falling into a pit another pit
(16:47):
labeled financial chaos. It's very popular motif at the time,
I guess. And then in the background of this one
you do see the dead Republican Party elephant with is
that Lincoln hovering above him? Probably I think Nas kind
of had a thing for for Lincoln had a thing
for him. It's strictly in an idol way with an Oh,
(17:10):
so that is the donkey That fairly summarized how it
got started. Yeah, like you said, I mean he started
just kind of using it and associating it with the
Copperhead Democrats, Democratic Press, and then ultimately people just said, well,
I can't read, but I see that you're making fun
of the Democrats, and that's the donkeys. So the Democrats
are donkeys, and I said, okay, we'll go with that.
(17:32):
Oh and also, by the way, the Wizard of Oz
apparently is a popular allegory for UM politics at the time,
including that whole gold standard abandonment. Was it meant to be? It? Yeah?
Frank Baum, who who wrote it was a political writer
UM for many many years before he wrote it. And
the gold the yellow brick road is the gold standard.
(17:54):
And then Dorothy's shoes originally were silver, not ruby, and
so silver and gold was a call out to this
UM free silver idea of printing sixteen silver coins to
every gold coin printed to make money cheaper and abundant. Right,
So interesting, a lot of a lot of subtle stuff
going on in the late nineteenth century. You know, Well,
(18:17):
they're way more obvious now, I guess because they can be. Yeah,
at least we don't label our political cartoons as much.
It's still a tradition that's upheld. It is. You just
don't see words all over the place. I don't read
a lot of political cartoons anymore. To you I just
don't run into him very often, but I almost always
enjoy him when I do upentially that Mike Luckovich guy,
he is good. He is a local boy too, Yeah,
(18:39):
luck of it just good. You know, I'm a big
family Circus fan. Yeah, that's rarely political. You know when
Jeffy like tracks a month through the through the House
and it's like, Jeffy, have you seen the altered version
of those? There's altered versions of everything. These are pretty funny.
They're really really dirty, but they're funny. Dirty is not there?
(19:00):
Or they just like um filthy? Yeah they felt okay, alright,
So moving on to the elephant. Uh, this was Nast's party,
the Republicans at the time, so obviously his cartoons about
the elephant are going to be more positive, I guess,
or sad. Yeah, true, like the dying elephant. Yeah. I
(19:20):
think he probably intuitively knew the elephants mourn they're dead,
which makes you sad when you think about elephants, which
is why you choose the elephant. I wonder if he
knew that. I don't think you did. That's appropriate though,
before he actually ever, it keeps saying penned in here,
but carved his first elephant. Um. It was used twice before,
(19:41):
once in eighteen sixty four, uh, in a Lincoln campaign
literature piece, and then in eighteen seventy two by Harper's
but it wasn't until eighteen seventy four that he used it,
So I can imagine the Lincoln use of it was
very intended to be derogatory. Yeah, probably all jackasses. So
that's uh or turn panic. The one we already talked
(20:01):
about was the first Um Republican elephant that he had carved. Okay,
but the first appearance of the Republican elephant and the
Democratic um donkey together as the as those two is
the representative the whole party was the Stranger Things Have
Happened cartoon where he's got the donkey by the tail.
(20:24):
As far as I know, it's the first. That's what
that one was called, Stranger Things have Happened. Uh. In
eighteen seventy six, there was one called the Political Situation.
Pretty straight up, Uncle Sam is confused. He is labeled
the vote of the people, and there's a two headed
elephant choosing to decide which road Democratic road of the
Republican road to go down. That's fairly self explanatory. I
(20:46):
think it is, but it's also kind of confusing because
Uncle Sam's confused. So as he's saying the Republicans can
go one of two ways at the time, Well, no,
because there it's two headed, so I would imagine it
was it's more representative of the two already system. I
think Nasty was pretty drunk that day, So, uh, what
(21:07):
else do we have here? Um? There was the oh
my favorite, I haven't seen it yet. Did you print
it out? The one with the tombstone? No, I couldn't
find that one. I thought this was very um sweet,
but nasty. Apparently, when Rutherford B. Hayes uh ran for
president he won the eight seventy six election, that um
(21:31):
that Grant didn't go for the third term four right,
and Hayes apparently said that he would only run once.
And I guess he wasn't a very well like guy
because he was one of those presidents who won through
the electoral vote but lost the popular vote, and apparently
lost the popular vote pretty bad, and so his whole
(21:52):
presidency was in no way, shape or form a mandate.
It was it was very representative of the fact that
this country, our country was still very much torn apart
from the Civil War, and so nas created this cartoon
where this um elephant that Sam describes as bruised and
battered is crouching down at a tombstone of the Democratic Party,
(22:16):
which I thought was pretty cool because it's like he
had the sense that there was still, no matter how
um acrimonious things got, that these two parties were still
American parties, that there's still a whole wild world out
there for us to hate, and why are we hating
each other? You know, Yeah, that's sort of a nice sentiment. Yeah,
(22:37):
but I don't want to characterize nastas uh an isolationists
or even a nativist, like he had one of his
Uncle Sam paintings or I'm sorry carvings. Was um Uncle
Sam and Columbia right Liberty uh hosting a Thanksgiving dinner
with all the peoples of the world, which included some
Chinese people, some um black people, some Native American Indians, uh,
(23:03):
and uh a host of others, but not the Irish.
I don't think the Irish were president. But it was
like it's world or suffrage for all, you know, equality
for everyone in the world. Come on, comal, you're all invited.
It was pretty cool. He's definitely not a bigot, as
far as I could tell you, it does seemed like it. Uh.
So you know what standpoints out is it? And it's true.
(23:25):
It's kind of striking that a hundred and fifty years
after this or so, that these are still the symbols.
I mean, the Republicans officially adopted the elephant. But he
points out that a lot of that was due to
just how influential and popular Nast was at the time.
It just became part of the national fabric because of him.
There was some good quotes about him after well, while
(23:47):
he's working. Even apparently, Um Abraham Lincoln called Nasta's quote
best recruiting sergeant during the eighteen sixty four re election.
And this is while he was traveling around the country heckling, Uh,
what's his name? Oh, Stephen, it's not Stephen Decatur. What
was that guy's name? I don't know. We'll go with
(24:08):
Ambrose Beers, even though it's not right. I can't believe
we don't remember that guy's name. I know, my head
is just bulging. Uh. Mark Twain said that Nast won
a prodigious victory for grant I mean, for civilization in progress.
It's Mark Twain for you. What a guy. He can
turn it price. So he Um, you said that he
(24:30):
kind of gave up his UH career in a lot
of ways by being stubborn as a donkey. Yeah. Um.
Especially he was apparently in very good with Fletcher Harper,
who founded Harper's Weekly. Um, do you read Harper's. No,
it's monthly, it's Lewis Lapham just left and I got
(24:53):
into it right before he left, and I got sucked
into Harper's and then he left, and now I'm like,
it's just not is good? Why Why did this happen
to me? Why does everything bad happen to me? But
it's still it's very good. And it's been around since
the mid nineteenth century, which is pretty impressive for a magazine,
(25:14):
and endured endors. But Junior came aboard and UM didn't
really side with um. Thomas nast right, Yeah, I mean
Na's had a lot of freedom under under Fletcher Harper,
but Joe Jr. Kind of tightened down the ranks, and
it's like, hey, man, don't be so square. People want
to be entertained. So there was a bit of a
(25:34):
shift and UH in in the the way American public
wanted to you know, what they wanted to read in magazines,
and then uh, people wanted to not be bothered anymore. Yeah,
they were stick of it. So the other death Noel though,
was was they went to photochemical reproduction and they didn't
do the woodblock cuttings anymore. And apparently woodblock, even though
(25:57):
I mean it looks to me like incredibly detailed, it
gives you a lot of leeway to make mistakes that
you don't get with pen and ink and paper. So
his shortcomings all of a sudden stood out. They're like,
this guy kind of sucks. It's just it's just not
true Santa Claus. Yeah, so he he ended up like, um,
penniless as you as you love the term, Um, I
(26:20):
do you don't you love the term penniless. I was
listening to an old podcast and you're like, I hate
that term. It's so no. One doesn't happen. He does
the Niagara Falls one. She's I need to lighten up
back then. Huh. But anyway, he was very much broke
um and he tried to He tried to open his
own uh paper, Nast Weekly, which lasted six months, and
(26:44):
luckily he had a friend in Teddy Roosevelt, right, yeah,
and he he appointed him to Council General to Ecuador
and NASA. I guess it's like, all right, I guess
I'll go to Ecuador. It's because there's money there, because
I'm Penniless's better than doing nothing. And it actually was
not better than doing nothing, because he got yellow fever
there and died six months later. Yeah. Uh so that's
(27:07):
a pretty weird end of that guy, if you ask me,
But it was. He was sixty two and at the
turn of the last last century, the last last turn
of the century. He uh, sixty two is not bad.
It's a pretty good run for back then, especially being
a household name wentce your celebrities over. You might as well,
I mean, you're dead anyway, and that just hasn't You
(27:30):
haven't actually died yet, but you might as well be,
you know. So there you go, the donkey and the
the elephant. If if you feel like we've explained this,
if you now understand it and gotten to the bottom
of it, you were not paying attention because it's still
as convoluted as ever. It's not all that's all from that. Well,
(27:52):
don't you wish though that there was like some sort
of like, oh, here's the reason why he chose the donkey. Oh,
of course he would choose an elephant. It's totally intuitive. No,
it's the ramblings of a madman. You used to carve
stuff into woodblocks and Fletcher Harper published it for the
consumption of everybody else. But now you know, knowing is
half the battle the track. So if you want to
(28:14):
learn more about Thomas Nast, if you want to read
one of the extraordinarily rare Samuel Abramson articles on the site,
you can type in the words why are a donkey
and an elephant the symbols of the Democratic and Republican
parties question mark. You could probably also just type in
(28:35):
donkey and elephant and it will bring it up. So
h I think I said that you should type it
into the search bar, and if I didn't, you should
type it into the search bar at how stuffworks dot com.
Since I said that, it's time now for listener mail.
Josh Bison feedback from Canada Burlington, Ontario, specifically, guys, your
(28:58):
recent Bison podcast put me uh in mind one of
the coolest experiences of my life when I lived out
in Alberta, I'd often go hiking and Elk Island National Park.
I was halfway around one of the parks longer trails
one day when I looked down, I saw a fresh
buffalo chip. What's that is? Scat? As I pondered what
(29:18):
this meant, I heard a snort and about ten to
fifteen meters in front of me, which is a length
that I don't understand. It's roximately okay, it was ards okay,
I get yards. Uh ten to fifteens in front of
me was a bison. I froze. I was alone, hadn't
seen another soul on the trail. I knew roughly eight
(29:41):
kilometers whatever that is from the road, I'm sorry, from
the trailhead in either direction, and I knew uh. This
animal decided to charge, I was as good as dead,
and we stared each other down for a few minutes.
I don't know what was going through its mind, but
I was weighing my options. If I turned around and
it decided at a charge, I might not hear it
coming and wouldn't be able to take evasive action. If
(30:04):
I went forward, I might provoke it and be in
deep troubled. I knew I couldn't stay there all day,
so I decided to take a single step towards it.
To Gage's response, good move, I think. I moved towards it.
It gave a snort and turned its head away from
me and ran into the woods to my right. Very cool,
I thought, No sooner had I thought that. Then from
(30:24):
my left came a thundering herd of bison stampeding across
the trail. There must have been twenty to thirty of
them running in front of me, following their lookout. That
was a scout, I guess, into the forest. I stood there, utterly,
all struck for several minutes before I decided to move
forward to where they had just been. For the next
fifteen minutes, everywhere, I bet. For the next fifteen minutes
(30:46):
or so, I kept looking over my shoulder just in
case they were hiding behind a tree, ready to pounce
on me like a giant cartoon kangaroo. Interesting imagination. So
they didn't pounce. He made it back say, and he
just says, if anyone finds himself in this situation, probably
won't happen. Don't do what I did. I got lucky.
(31:07):
These are wild animals, not petting zoo bison. I could
have easily been trampled and left to die. So that
is Gordon C from Burlington, Ontario, Canada. Weird weird ending there.
He doesn't give any any suggestions of what to do. No,
but he did say that it was the most amazing
(31:29):
experience of his life, seeming the thundering herd of bison
right in front of him. I will bet I thought
it was pretty cool. Yeah. Um, I want to add
something from the Bison podcast. We got a tweet from
some guy recently was saying, hey, I was really disappointed
you guys used the word Indian instead of Native American.
And I was like, oh, yeah, that's a smart guy. Well,
how about I provide you with the link to an
(31:51):
article that has a poll that shows that in clear
for of all Indian Native American Indians, UM prefer the
term Indian over Native American, prefer Native American, and then
like six percent or whatever the rest is prefer something else.
Don't call me, I'll call you all right. So the
(32:13):
the not a majority, but very close to it for
Indian over Native Americans. So chew on that pal. We
were doing something right for once, and he goes, no,
I'm talking about people from India are offended by that
like me, And I was like, oh, you're to handle
is Sanjay something? And I haven't responded yet, but I
(32:35):
hadn't considered that. Yeah, I knew we were doing right
by Indians of North America, but I hadn't considered how
Indians of India also known as Asian Indians felt about it.
And I'm curious to know. So I would like to
hear from everybody, uh, if from Asian Indians and North
American Indians. And I'm sure I'm just like offending everybody
(32:58):
in any way, shape or form right now, but like
figure out how to establish this. I want to know,
how do you consider that either? And even if you're
not Asian Indian or American Indian, yes, uh, we want
to hear from you. If you have a good suggestion
to about how to end this conundrum. Uh, you can
tweet to us like Sanjay did at s Y s
(33:21):
K podcast. Um, you can uh go to Facebook also
known as the the fifty thousand at Facebook dot com,
slash stuff you Should Know, and you can send us
a plain old fashioned email at Stuff podcast at how
Stuff Works dot com. Be sure to check out our
(33:44):
new video podcast Stuff from the future. Join how Stuff
Work staff as we explore the most promising and perplexing
possibilities of tomorrow, brought to you by the reinvented two
thousand twelve Camray. It's ready, are you
Stuff You Should Know News
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