Let's All Go to the World's Fair

Summary

Stuff You Should Know — "Let's All Go to the World's Fair" (March 5, 2026)
Hosts: Josh Clark & Chuck Bryant

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Josh and Chuck take listeners on a lively, insightful tour through the history of the World's Fair. They explore its origins in industrial exhibitions, the cultural and technological milestones showcased over the decades, and the evolving significance and decline of these international expos. With their signature warmth and banter, the hosts highlight forgotten triumphs, curious tidbits, and complex legacies—from the Crystal Palace and Eiffel Tower to the Ferris wheel, art deco, and even Dr. Pepper.

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I. Setting the Stage: What Was (and Is) a World's Fair?

• Contrast with Modern Media Access
  • Pre-radio, TV, and internet, the World's Fair was a rare way for ordinary people to encounter cutting-edge technology, art, and ideas ([03:13]).
  • Josh Clark: "Before all of this... being exposed to new ideas, new things, seeing what the latest cutting edge stuff was, that was not a common thing for the average person."
• Purpose and Tone
  • Part international trade show, part national pride parade—countries showed off their latest inventions and cultural achievements ([04:02]).
  • Chuck Bryant: "It was very much like, hey, look at how great we're doing."

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II. The Prehistory and Origins of World's Fairs

• Early National Fairs
  • England and France held national expositions as early as the mid-1700s to display industrial progress, such as looms or cider presses ([05:25]).
• Industrial Revolution Influence
  • These exhibitions became intertwined with the Industrial Revolution, energizing the movement toward larger, international ambitions ([05:25]).
• The First Official World's Fair: London 1851
  • The Great Exhibition at the Crystal Palace is commonly regarded as the first World's Fair ([06:45]).
  • Jaw-dropping architecture: 18 acres of glass and iron, eight miles of displays ([07:33]).
  • Hosted 14,000 exhibits, including Britain’s latest machines—and the American "Colt repeating pistol" ([08:01]).
  • Introduced chewing tobacco and artificial legs ([09:05]).

Notable Moment
Josh Clark: "A guy dancing on an artificial leg, shooting his pistol in the air. Chewing tobacco." ([09:37])

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III. The Rise of Paris and Other Global Fairs

• Paris as Apex Host

  • Paris hosted eight fairs between 1855–1937, using expositions for both political messaging and public morale ([11:41]).
  • Napoleon, post-war recoveries, and civic restoration themes.
  • Chuck Bryant: "Paris really took it to a political sort of apex."

• Spectacular Innovations & Structures

  • Fountains illuminated by underwater electric lights (a first in 1889) ([12:26]).
  • Eiffel Tower debut: From controversial contest winner to Paris landmark ([14:10]).

    Josh Clark: "People of the world loved it, but the people of Paris did not like it very much." ([14:36])

• Oddities and Social History

  • The "Hygiene Palace" at 1889 fair: public health, baby care, and social models ([15:16]).
  • Educational funds from proceeds continue to this day—e.g., the Crystal Palace exhibition's fellowship fund ([16:52]).

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IV. World's Fairs Come to America (and Beyond)

• U.S. Growth and Milestones

  • Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition (1876): Showcased the telephone (Bell), typewriter, and world's largest steam engine ([10:42], [11:29]).
  • Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition (1893):
    • Cultural legacy and dark side (H.H. Holmes).
    • Debuted Ferris wheel, modern zipper ("clasp locker"), Cracker Jack, dishwasher ([27:43]–[28:02]).

    Josh Clark: "It blew people's minds." ([28:02])

    • Electrification: Westinghouse beat Edison for the contract, illuminating the fair ([32:30]).

      Josh Clark: "He lit this fair up, and it was gorgeous... totally amazing." ([32:56])

  • Broader U.S. impact: Neoclassical architecture, Beaux Arts/Art Deco influence ([33:15], [33:18]).

• Latin America, Colonized Regions & World Inclusion

  • Argentina, Chile, Jamaica, India, Vietnam held their own fairs to assert modernity and post-colonial identity ([24:45]–[25:50]).
  • Contention over promoting raw materials vs. genuine modernization ([25:05]–[25:24]).

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V. Culture, Technology, and the Good, Bad, and Ugly

• Landmark Moments

  • 1900 Paris Expo: Attracted 50 million; introduced "Cinerama" immersive theater ([17:23], [17:38]).
  • W.E.B. Du Bois & Booker T. Washington: Black American achievement exhibit, innovative early infographics ([19:28]–[20:44]).

    Chuck Bryant: "W.E.B. Du Bois...was sort of the early USA Today because he loved making infographics." ([19:47])

• Food, Fads, and What’s (Not) American

  • 1904 St. Louis: First hot dog in a bun, cotton candy (by a dentist!), Dr. Pepper, Jell-O, electric plug/socket ([36:08]–[37:21]).

    Chuck Bryant: "His name was William J. Morrison, and he was, in fact, a dentist." ([36:36])

  • Less savory: "Native villages"/human zoos—explored in their 2019 episode ([37:23]–[37:54]).

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VI. Regulation, Rivalries, and the Cold War Era

• The Birth of Regulation

  • Overabundance and competition prompted the founding of the Bureau International Expositions (BIE) in 1928 ([41:28]–[43:22]).
    • Imposed time limits, required themes, official sanctioning.
    • Only 50 sanctioned fairs since 1931.

• Fairs as Cold War Stages

  • U.S. and Soviet pavilions became showcases for rivalry ([43:31]–[43:48]).
  • 1939 NY Fair, World War II tensions altered who could participate ([45:25]).

• Postwar Spectacles and Popular Culture

  • 1964–65 NY Fair: "It's a Small World" ride premiere; IBM and Illinois pavilions; early animatronic Abraham Lincoln ([46:54]–[47:07]).

  • Isaac Asimov’s predictions for 2014 in an essay inspired by the fair ([47:10]–[48:48]).

    Chuck Bryant: "He was like, no, that's gonna happen because it's going to be like Wall-E... everyone's just going to be lazy and it's going to be awful." ([48:01])

  • Space Needle built for 1962 Seattle fair ([48:48]).

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VII. Decline and Transformation of World's Fairs

• American Fairs’ Waning Popularity

  • Attendance and enthusiasm drop post-1964; major fairs lose money ([49:27]–[51:50]).
  • The 1984 New Orleans fair: cultural richness but logistical and financial disaster ([49:45]–[52:07]).

    Chuck Bryant: "It was unfinished. If you were from New Orleans and Louisiana, you probably had a great time. I imagine a lot of people had a great time, but Ronald Reagan didn't even go... they lost a ton of money on it." ([51:06])

• International Shifts and Modern Expos

  • Expo 70 (Osaka): Debuted IMAX, set trends in Asia ([52:58]–[54:17]).

  • Expo 2010 (Shanghai): Record-breaking 73 million visitors ([53:34]).

  • Other contemporary examples—Belgrade 2027, Riyadh 2030 ([54:43]).

    Josh Clark: "I'd like to go to one just to see what the heck's going on." ([54:43])

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VIII. Lighter Moments, Tangents, and Quotes

• Hosts’ Banter and Tangents
  • Travel daydreams: "Woodstock, the inauguration of Jimmy Carter, and a World's Fair" ([04:40]).
  • Simpsons reference: "The Bus That Couldn't Slow Down" ([31:26]), unique for its inside-joke delivery.
  • On Ferris wheels and city skylines:

    Chuck Bryant: "There's no reason for you to go on [Atlanta's Ferris wheel]." ([29:33])
    Josh Clark: "Maybe we can ride the Ferris wheel together. Yumi. Yumi and Emily." ([30:15])

• Personal Connections
  • Josh Clark: "Expo 70 in Osaka. That is where Yumi's aunt and uncle met. He was a smoking robot, she was a showgirl." ([54:53])

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IX. Listener Mail Segment (Beginning at ~55:17)

• On the "MacGuffin" Discussion
  • Several listeners, including LA writer-director Josh Beck, offered definitions and film writing wisdom about MacGuffins' role in plotting ([55:21]–[56:02]).

    Josh Beck (listener mail): "You can use it as a placeholder... protagonist stops by the house to grab a MacGuffin only to find a dead body in the yard." ([56:02])

  • Debate over what really counts as a MacGuffin (“R2D2 is not a MacGuffin, it’s the plans!”) ([56:49]).
  • Fun anecdote: Josh Clark saw Jon Cryer stress-eating a "McGuffin" (McMuffin) in LA after the Charlie Sheen incident ([58:45]).

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Key Timestamps

• 03:13 — The pre-internet era and the social role of World's Fairs
• 06:45 — London’s Crystal Palace: the "first" World’s Fair
• 14:10 — Eiffel Tower’s debut in Paris
• 19:28 — W.E.B. Du Bois’s infographics at the 1900 Paris Expo
• 27:43 — Chicago 1893 Fair: Ferris wheel, zipper, Cracker Jack
• 32:30 — Illuminating the fair: Westinghouse vs Edison
• 41:28 — Regulation and the founding of BIE
• 46:54 — Robotics, Disney, and computing at the 1964 NY Fair
• 49:45 — America's declining World's Fair attendance (1980s)
• 53:34 — World's Fairs in Asia and the record-holding Shanghai Expo
• 54:43 — Future World's Fairs: Belgrade 2027, Riyadh 2030
• 55:17 — Listener mail: MacGuffin discussion

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Final Thoughts

Josh and Chuck demonstrate how the World's Fair encapsulated the hopes, anxieties, and ambitions of nations—while regularly debuting iconic inventions and shaping architecture, pop culture, and international competition. Their blend of research, humor, and pop culture references (plus a dash of personal nostalgia) keeps the episode rich and accessible, providing a thorough look at a sometimes-overlooked piece of world history.

Josh Clark: "It was a good episode. And that it was. It explained it pretty well. But it was definitely a bummer of an episode, for sure." ([37:54])

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For more details or a trip down the rabbit hole of World's Fair history, check out the full "Let's All Go to the World's Fair" episode!

Transcript

[Chuck Bryant]

This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human with no fees or minimums on checking accounts. It's no wonder the Capital One bank guy is so passionate about banking with Capital One. If he were here, he wouldn't just tell you about no fees or minimums. He'd also talk about how most Capital One cafes are open seven days a week to assist with your banking needs. Yep, even on weekends it's pretty much all he talks about in a good way. What's in your wallet? Terms apply. See capitalone.combankCapital1NA Member FDIC

[Sponsor/Announcer]

this message is sponsored by Regeneron and Sanofi. Josh Clark and Chuck Bryant do not have direct experience with the product advertised or the disease.

[Chuck Bryant]

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[Josh Clark]

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[Chuck Bryant]

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[Sponsor/Announcer]

Severe allergic reactions, including skin reactions, can occur. Get help right away for face, mouth, tongue or throat swelling, wheezing or trouble breathing. Tell your doctor of new or worsening eye problems like eye pain, vision changes, skin symptoms, joint aches and pain, or a parasitic infection. Don't change or stop other treatments without talking to your doctor.

[Josh Clark]

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[Chuck Bryant]

Welcome to Stuff youf Should Know, a production of iHeartradio.

[Josh Clark]

Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck. And it's just us today. Jerry's out on vacation. I mean, she's at a conferen. And this is stuff you should know.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right. This was your idea. And something about it just smacks of kind of classic stuff you should know, where we talk about a bygone era, in a way.

[Josh Clark]

And so, yeah, we're talking about World's Fairs today. Depending on where you are in the world, you might call them International Expositions, Universal Expositions, you might just call them Expos if you're pressed for time.

[Chuck Bryant]

Sure.

[Josh Clark]

And I thought maybe, Chuck, we would just do this entire episode in gibberish that only you and I can understand.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, that's a great idea.

[Josh Clark]

This is the one. We're finally going to do it.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right, let's do it.

[Josh Clark]

On second thought, let's not do it.

[Chuck Bryant]

No, let's not do it.

[Josh Clark]

All right, so, well, let's set the stage then. In plain English. It's hard to kind of understand now because we live in a world and generally grew up in a world that if we didn't have Internet when we were kids, we still had television, cable television, no less. Before that, generations had radio. And then. Yes. Now today, we can basically go anywhere, see anything, even stuff you don't want to see, because everyone generally has access to the Internet, right?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Before all of this, like, being exposed to new ideas, new things, seeing what the latest cutting edge stuff was, that was not a common thing for the average person. Like, you just did not see that kind of stuff. And that was generally the role that World's Fairs played.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, it was that. And like, every time I was reading about the different ones from the different nations, it was very much like, hey, look at how great we're doing.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

You know, like, I mean, obviously trying to spur commerce and trade and stuff like that. But a lot of it was sort of showing off.

[Josh Clark]

It was showing off. It was showing off, like, all the technological prowess and all the future ideas that are coming down the pike that each country was working on. There was lots of corporate exhibits eventually. And it sounds to me like a cool place to have been.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Like, if I had a big list to pick from of stuff I could go time travel to, I would probably go to a couple of these.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, all right. So Woodstock, the inauguration of Jimmy Carter, and a world's Fair.

[Josh Clark]

That's right. Well, let's get into the history of this, shall we?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Because they didn't start as World's Fairs. If you want to track the prehistory, you got to go to the National Fairs.

[Josh Clark]

Sure.

[Chuck Bryant]

England was holding these in the 1700s, barely. I think 1754 was the first real one when the. What would later be the Royal Society for Arts. But before they got Royal, I guess they were just the Society for Arts. They had different shows and it was sort of like, I mean, this was the 1700s. So it was. The technology at the time was like, hey, look at this cool new loom. Or look at this new cool way we can press cider.

[Josh Clark]

Yes. And there was this kind of. This new idea called Industrial Arts, which was essentially designing and inventing new technology. And yeah, it was old timey, but for the time it was pretty cutting edge. And this is what laid the kind of the foundation for the idea of what a World's Fair is all about, which is, look at all the technological progress we're making. And I saw that it was essentially inextricably tied together with the Industrial Revolution, that that's really what kind of gave them the oomph needed, you know, Steam powered oomph. Yeah, that's right.

[Chuck Bryant]

I guess not yet. But steam is coming, don't worry. France would get involved. They saw what England was doing where they're like, well, we can't let them best us. So they started holding theirs also in the late 18th century. And both of them, again, were like, marketing themselves sort of abroad, but also to their own people. Like, hey, look at how great we're doing. Rest of France.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, you can feel good about being French.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And France becomes like basically the apex of World's Fairs, eventually, your international expositions. But England kind of took the crown back first. And Prince Albert, Queen Victoria's husband, who was of German ancestry, or what we now call Germany, and who we have to thank for Christmas. So thank you, Prince Albert.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, yeah.

[Josh Clark]

He hosted the Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of all nations in 1851. And this was what basically everyone who knows about World's Fairs, knows anything about World's Fairs, says this was the first World's Fair.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. No one calls it the Great Exhibition of the Works of the Industry of all nations, except for us, because we're being technical. Because everyone calls it the Crystal Palace Exhibition because that's where they built the Crystal Palace. It was in Hyde park from May to October 1851. And they wanted a real, you Know, and you'll see this as a trend. Like they really wanted to knock people's socks off when they arrive. And when you arrived at this, you know, kind of glorified greenhouse, and in fact, it was built by a greenhouse builder named Joseph Paxton.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

But it was 18 acres of glass and iron and steel, and it created eight miles of display space. And it was like, super impressive.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, it was a real ring a ding ding greenhouse. I mean, an 18 acre greenhouse is not easy to make. Right. So, yes, it knocked everyone's socks off for sure. You said there's eight miles worth of display space inside. So it was also capable of holding 14,000 exhibits.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, man.

[Josh Clark]

About half of them were from Britain. And one of the reasons that Prince Albert wanted to do this is because he wanted to drum up interest in Europe, in particular for imports from Britain. Yeah, yeah. He was like, hey, we got a bunch of good stuff. Why don't you come over and see it? And then you can place your orders on your way out the door.

[Chuck Bryant]

I wonder if they could. You really place orders?

[Josh Clark]

I'll bet you could.

[Chuck Bryant]

They had like. You think so?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. So There was about 560 exhibits from the US and one of them was the Colt repeating pistol. I guarantee you could have been like, I want to order some of those. Give me some right now so I can shoot in the air in the Crystal Palace.

[Chuck Bryant]

I bet you could have left there with a Colt repeating pistol if you had enough money.

[Josh Clark]

Probably.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, yeah. But I promised steam. And that first one is where the steam engine was officially debuted, as well as the automated cotton mule for spinning France. You know, I think you said us had 560. France had 1760 exhibits in addition to the Colt repeating pistol. Did you mention chewing tobacco?

[Josh Clark]

I did not.

[Chuck Bryant]

And that's where we debuted as a nation. Hey, look what we've come up with. Chewing tobacco, which I imagine we stole from indigenous peoples here.

[Josh Clark]

Yes. But we really kind of Americanized it. The person running that booth had to dance back and forth, pumping its fist like a prospector the whole time.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right. And dance on maybe artificial legs. Because artificial legs were debuted by the United States there.

[Josh Clark]

That's right. We really just had one exhibit, and they were everything compressed together.

[Chuck Bryant]

A guy dancing on an artificial leg, shooting his pistol in the air. Chewing tobacco.

[Josh Clark]

Yep, that's exactly right.

[Chuck Bryant]

I love it.

[Josh Clark]

So, yeah, this is obviously a huge hit. It actually made money for the organizers, which was not the case for all the World's Fairs to come. But because of that, a lot of people around the World were like, hey, I want to get in on this. And Paris said, we're first. There was one in Dublin, there was one in Cork, there was one in Munich, there was one in New York. But really everything kind of moved over to Paris. When they said, we're taking over here.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, for sure. I mean, the other ones were legit World's Fairs. I think the one in New York in 1853 through, I think November 1854. That was a long one. July to November, Yeah. The exhibition of the industry of all nations. In that case, they did okay. But they were like clearly copied the Crystal Palace. They built their own. They're in Bryant park, but they lost money. I think the first US one to make any kind of hay was the one in Philly in 1876, right?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, that was the Centennial exhibition where the typewriter was invented. Alexander Graham Bell demonstrated the telephone. There was also the largest steam engine ever, which apparently still holds the record. It was a 700 ton steam engine called the Corliss Engine. It took 65 railroad cars to deliver it to the. To the exhibition in Philadelphia. And when they turned it on, all of the machines at the World's Fair came to life because they were all being powered by that steam engine in the center of the whole place.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's a pretty fun little knock your socks off moment.

[Josh Clark]

It is pretty cool.

[Chuck Bryant]

I thought, like, everyone's standing around. Well, I guess it was. Still, it wasn't powering lights at the time, was it?

[Josh Clark]

No, not yet.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay. Cause we're. Yeah, that happens. It's coming, everybody.

[Josh Clark]

It's coming. Yeah, but this whole thing, it really, I mean, it attracted 10 million people and it was a. It was a big one. So I guess I got ahead of myself. Paris hadn't come yet. I'm just really excited about Paris taking over for some reason.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I mean, they took over in a big way. They hosted eight of them between 1855 and 1937. And a lot of theirs, like most other nations when they hosted the government, kind of really hosted in America. It was a lot of like corporate entities from the beginning along with the government. But Paris really took it to a political sort of apex by like, Napoleon really was showing off in the first and second ones. Like, look how great I am and look at all the great things I've done. The third one, I think in 1878 was like, hey, you know, we're doing fine. We've recovered from the Franco Prussian War and all this internal violence of the Paris Commune. And like, we're still doing great. Look at us.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that was a big. A big part of those European ones, like you said. The Paris ones also more charmingly, had fountains. Like, almost all of them had a really cool fountain. And a lot of those fountains are left over. There's one from 1889 called the Fountain of Progress, and it is the first water feature to have electric lights inside that shined up from underwater, which to me is still quite impressive.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Do you think when they debuted it, they were like, and we're going to have Jacques stand in the fountain while we turn it on. We're pretty sure it's going to work.

[Josh Clark]

No one likes Jacques anyway, so don't worry.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. It all worked out for Jacques, though. No, but I'm still, like, when I see a swimming pool light, I know it's housed in a thing, but I don't know. It all just vaguely makes me nervous.

[Josh Clark]

It does, for sure. I get that. But the ones in the fountains, they never make me nervous. They just look so cool to me.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, because you're not in the fountain.

[Josh Clark]

No, no. So it doesn't matter if it's, like, buzzing with electricity.

[Chuck Bryant]

You ever been to Rome? Yes, I have.

[Josh Clark]

It's one of my favorite towns.

[Chuck Bryant]

Seen that Trevi Fountain?

[Josh Clark]

I do. Is that the one with all the. Yes, I have.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. You didn't go to Rome and not see the tribe you found, Right?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. It was pretty amazing. Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

I think that has lights in it.

[Josh Clark]

I'm sure it does.

[Chuck Bryant]

Or at least around it. The thing was lit up. I was there at night, and it wasn't dark.

[Josh Clark]

I was there during the day, so I couldn't tell you.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay, I got you.

[Josh Clark]

So one of the other things that happened at the 1889 Exposition Universelle was that the Eiffel Tower was debuted. And we talked about this in depth. We did a 2020 episode on the Eiffel Tower.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right. But just a couple of points as a refresher. It was a contest about a hundred entrants, and Gustav Eiffel won it, along with his colleagues. And they proposed at the time what was going to be the. And it was, I think, the tallest building in the world at about 1,000ft. And people, you know, the people of the world loved it, but the people of Paris did not like it very much. Right?

[Josh Clark]

No, they wanted to get rid of it. And it almost got torn down, I think in 1909, it came as close as it ever has. And they said, no, no, we're going to use this as a radio telegraph station. So people in Paris were like, all right, as long as it's serving some purpose, you know, because I can't remember who said it, but someone said that something that doesn't actually function can never truly be beautiful.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, really?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, it's something along those lines. Yes.

[Chuck Bryant]

So like form over function, basically.

[Josh Clark]

Function over form or function and form, function.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, yeah, sure, yeah, I think we're saying the same thing. Yeah, I think so too. Oh, we are speaking in code now.

[Josh Clark]

That's right.

[Chuck Bryant]

It finally happened. They also had what was called a Hygiene palace at that Expo, which sounds super gross.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, it does.

[Chuck Bryant]

But it was, you know, it was at a time, you know, it was 1889. So hygiene, you know, we're talking like life saving hygiene, not like how to smell less. So they showed like hospital stuff, medical stuff, how to raise. They had real babies and showed like, here's how you raise a baby properly.

[Josh Clark]

And then also speaking of babies, they made a full scale reproduction of the tower at the Madeleine Hospital for foundlings, which is where in Paris, if you had a child, this is where you would leave it for somebody else to

[Chuck Bryant]

take over if you didn't want the child. Right?

[Josh Clark]

Yes, exactly right. But they even had like a model of a baby and everything in it. I don't know why they chose to include that, but they did, I don't

[Chuck Bryant]

know, maybe get the word out.

[Josh Clark]

I guess so. Because that was. Yeah, they were trying to get the word out in the Hygiene palace for sure.

[Chuck Bryant]

It's interesting when you can look back at a thing like that and it can be both sort of the greatest thing and the saddest thing all at once, you know, for sure.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, we should.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, we should build one.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Well, it's funny you mentioned that. I started one this morning. You can come over and help me finish it.

[Chuck Bryant]

Awesome. That expo was very profitable. They made a ton of money on it. And I don't think we said at the beginning, like from the beginning, these World's Fairs, a portion of the money that they make on these has gone, or at least in the United States has gone into funds that still help fund like industrial arts programs for students.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. That first Crystal palace exhibition has a fellowship fund that helps people in industrial design get through grad school still today from 1851. Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Should we break or should we talk about the 1900 Expo?

[Josh Clark]

Let's talk about the 1900 Expo because just to kind of keep this contained for a second, basically these biggest ones, the ones that really made the Biggest splash are still contained in Europe, largely Great Britain and France.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay, all right, I agree. This one had the 1900, attracted 50 million people.

[Josh Clark]

That's crazy.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I mean, these are 1900 people. So getting that many people. Yeah, I mean, you can get 50 million people pretty easily together now in any given space for sure.

[Josh Clark]

It's like nothing but it was a

[Chuck Bryant]

big deal back then. And again, showcasing Paris as like sort of one of the leading modern cities. They debuted something pretty cool there called the Cinerama, which they still have these. They have one of these in Atlanta. The Cyclorama in Atlanta is this kind of thing where you go in this sort of immersive theater experience where they have projections but also paintings and it's like a 360 degree screen. And in their case, they simulated a balloon ride because it sounds like balloons were all the rage at the time for sure.

[Josh Clark]

They also had an actual balloon race, a long distance balloon race as part of the exposition.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

That reminded me when I was reading about the Cineorama when we did our Salt Lake City show that one time.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Before the show, during the afternoon, I was walking around downtown Salt Lake and I ended up in like the main Mormon temple. And one of the things they have there as an exhibit is a. I think it's basically 300 degrees. It's not 360, but it is really close.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Like high def movie screen that is right there in your face.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, cool.

[Josh Clark]

Of Brigham Young, like receiving the message from God.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, wow.

[Josh Clark]

It was so disorienting that I ended up like staggering out of there in the middle of it. Like I couldn't take it. It was just overwhelming.

[Chuck Bryant]

The Message or the 300 degree?

[Josh Clark]

I guess a little bit of both, but I think more the whole 300 degree thing.

[Chuck Bryant]

Interesting.

[Josh Clark]

The most immersive video experience I've ever seen by far.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. I'm wondering. I haven't been to the sphere in Vegas, but I'm wondering if. I mean, it looks super cool, but I wonder if there is any sort of like, oh boy, this is too much kind of feeling, probably.

[Josh Clark]

I mean, it's Las Vegas.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, that's true. It's all too much.

[Josh Clark]

So one of the great things about the 1900 Exposition came from the United States. It was an exhibit by American Black scholars, including W.E.B. du Bois and Booker T. Washington, who attended and basically said, here is all the progress that black Americans have made since the end of slavery. It sounds really cool.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. They had books, they had inventions, they had art, they had just straight up photographs of like, look, we have black nuns in the United States. We have black soldiers, we have black college students. And then apparently W.E.B. du Bois was sort of the early USA Today because he loved making infographics. And he made infographics showing, like, their literacy rates were rising, they owned taxable property. And these were from actual Georgians, I think.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

And then also like, hey, our literacy is so good among black Americans. Like, we're better than Romania and Russia at this point.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. I went and looked at some of Du Bois infographics and they're really interesting. Like, he came up some really interesting ways to cram a bunch of data into one page visually. So it's worth looking up, especially if you like colorful things.

[Chuck Bryant]

Ooh, I do. And that is very USA Today. Shall we break now?

[Josh Clark]

Yes.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right. We will be right back after this. Well, now, when you're on the road driving in your truck, why not learn a thing or two from Josh and Chuck? It's stuff you should know. All right. All right. So we're back more. Hey, everyone. We want to talk to you a little bit about Wayfair. Because no matter what your aesthetic, whether it's mid century modern, farmhouse, contemporary, eclectic, it doesn't matter because Wayfair is going to have something for you.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, Wayfair, they've got just what you need. And it's convenient, too, because they have a ton of different stuff to choose from. A huge selection of home decor items. And it's easy to find exactly what's right for you with their amazing search engine.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right. Whether you're starting a home project, you need like furniture upgrades or accent pieces or functional decor. Or if you're just doing a spring refresh and you need some outdoor furniture or patio decor, maybe lighter bedding, Wayfair has got it all.

[Josh Clark]

Yep. And thousands of five star reviews help you shop with confidence. So find furniture, decor and essentials that fit your unique style and budget. Head to Wayfair.com right now and shop all things home. That's W A Y-F-A-I R.com Wayfair. Every style, every home.

[Chuck Bryant]

Hey, everybody. Support for the show today comes from public, so it kind of feels like there's two types of investing platforms. You've got the old school brokerages that look like they were designed in like 1995. And then you have those other platforms, you know, the ones that feel less like investing and more like a casino.

[Josh Clark]

Public is neither. It's the investing platform for people who actually take this Stuff. Seriously, you know, people who are serious about building their wealth. Because on public you can build a portfolio of stocks, options, bonds, crypto without all the bugs or the confetti.

[Chuck Bryant]

Retirement accounts. Yep. High yield cash. Of course. They even have direct indexing. Honestly, this is what an investing platform should look like. Modern design, simple to use, and customer support that actually cares.

[Josh Clark]

Go to public.comsysk and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.comsysk ad paid for by Public

[Sponsor/Announcer]

Holdings Brokerage services by Public Investing Member FINRA SIPC Advisory Services by Public Advisors SEC Registered Advisor Crypto Services by ZeroHash. All investing involves risk of loss. See complete [e-mail] disclosures

[Josh Clark]

hey, everybody, get this. LinkedIn has grown to a network of over 1 billion professionals and 130 million decision makers. And that's where it stands. Apart from other ad buys.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, for sure. You can target your buyers by job title, industry, company role, seniority skills, even company revenue. So you can stop wasting budget on the wrong audience.

[Josh Clark]

Yep. That's why LinkedIn ads generates the highest B2B ROAS of all online ad networks. Seriously, all of them.

[Chuck Bryant]

And get this. If you spend $250 on your first campaign on LinkedIn ads, you get a free $250 credit for the next one. Just go to LinkedIn.comSYSK that's LinkedIn.comSYSK Terms and conditions apply. World's fairs Latin America is getting involved now. I think this is after they had freed them spell themselves from Spanish rule early 19th century. They wanted to again show like, hey, we're doing pretty well. Not only were they sending factions to other World's Fairs like in Europe and the United States, but Cordoba and Buenos Aires, Argentina had their own. Santiago, Chile had their own. And this was like between the 1870s and 1880s.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. At the time there was a lot of tension though, apparently between the country's boosters who were like, look at us. Like, we don't need Spanish rule. We're doing all this cool, interesting stuff and we're inventing all this stuff. And then others there were like, no, the point of this is to like sell ourselves as sources of raw materials.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

And places where you can overthrow regimes to grow bananas more cheaply.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I think that was a big point. Right. Like, hey, we can actually make stuff here. We're not just to be sort of looted for what we can provide you.

[Josh Clark]

Precisely. And then the people who made money from the country being looted, they were the ones who were like, no, no, no. We need to just show off how easily we're looted.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, exactly. There were, you know, speaking of looting, there were World's Fairs in places that were colonized at the time. There was one in 1883-84 in Calcutta. Kingston, Jamaica, had one in 1891. Hanoi had one in 1902. And this was, you know, hey, look at the local culture. But also, like, clearly coming from the colonizer side, like, look how great they're doing. Thanks to us.

[Josh Clark]

Right, Exactly. Okay. So there were, like. They spread all over the world because they were so impressive, and they really did bring a lot of attention and industry and business and exports from these countries that were hosting these things. Like, they were not just vanity projects. There really were big returns on them, and the US Got back in the game. I don't know if it was the first one after the Philadelphia one. It could have been. But far and away in the United States, the most famous world fair was the Chicago World's Fair of 1893, the world's Columbian Exposition. It was a pretty good world's fair, if I do say so myself.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And if you're one of the gazillions of people who have emailed us over the years to do one on the Chicago World's Fair and H.H. holmes, the serial killer. Um, we. We should probably do a standalone episode on that, because this is just gonna be a sort of a. A quickie. Yeah. On Chicago. And I know there's a lot more to it than this, so I guess that's me saying prepare to be disappointed a little bit.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

But more like a preamble to, like, there'll be a deeper episode coming. Because a lot of people have asked for this over time. It is, you know, mainly known for the fact that H.H. holmes, serial killer, was kidnapping young women who traveled to that Chicago fair and had his murder castle in Inglewood. And there was a great, great book called the Devil in the White City, which I still haven't read, but everyone said it's just amazing. It's by Erik Larson, and it's on the list.

[Josh Clark]

As far as popular histories go, it is easily in the top five.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, man, I gotta read this.

[Josh Clark]

It's so good, so readable. He does such a great job of putting you there. And it is like, it does cover HH Holmes and all the terrible stuff he does in depth, but it also covers the faire in depth. It was an amazing thing.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. So we're gonna cover the faire not so in depth. But we're gonna mention a few things for sure. This is where we got Cracker Jacks. This is where we got the dishwasher.

[Josh Clark]

Sure.

[Chuck Bryant]

This is where we got the modern zipper, which they called a clasp locker at the time.

[Josh Clark]

We did an episode on that too. In 2020.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right. What else?

[Josh Clark]

The Ferris wheel came from the 1893 Exposition, which very quickly after that became like a staple of World's Fairs. And it was very appropriately designed by George Washington Gale Ferris Jr. Who was from Pittsburgh. And the first one he designed was 264ft tall, 36 cars, and offered a 20 minute ride in exchange for 50 cents, which is about $18 today. And you could see the whole dang fair from the top of that Ferris wheel. And it blew people's minds.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I thought it was. When I was reading this, I thought it was interesting that they became a thing, but like more like a. Or at least in the United States, more like a fairgrounds or a carnival thing. And just more recently, like the past, like 15 or 20 years, I feel like, went back to this original idea. Put like a huge Ferris wheel in a downtown city just so you can like see stuff.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And bear in mind also at the time, we kind of take it for granted now. But in the same way that you, the average person, was not exposed to cutting edge technology and new ideas and awesome new products and stuff, people, especially in the Midwestern United States, were not exposed to a view of 264ft. Like, this is an extremely novel experience for most of the people who attended that fair.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, yeah, for sure. Atlanta's got one. You ever been on that one?

[Josh Clark]

No, I have not. I haven't been on a Ferris wheel in a long, long time.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, you know, London has the Eye, Atlanta has theirs. It's, you know, it's. It was fun to take Ruby when she was little, but like, there's no reason for you to go on it.

[Josh Clark]

Okay, good to know. Even the London Eye. Have you been on that one?

[Chuck Bryant]

I haven't been on that. But hey, there's a Ted's Montana Grill right there. The Tabernacle's right there. So if you got tickets to see a show at the Tabernacle, go eat at Ted's Montana Grill, have a bison burger ride on the Ferris wheel, and then you've done it.

[Josh Clark]

We're going to see Echo and the Bunnymen in May. So we'll ride the Ferris wheel then.

[Chuck Bryant]

Remind me about that before it happens because I might meet you there.

[Josh Clark]

I just did.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's in May. You got to remind me, like, three days before.

[Josh Clark]

I will. Maybe we can ride the Ferris wheel together. Yumi. Yumi and Emily.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, man, our Instagram would blow up. Would you believe it?

[Josh Clark]

I think I just blew some people's minds by saying Yumi, Yumi and Emily.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, people get that confused a lot. This is way off target because we were just talking about something that reminded me of it, but I had a funny Simpsons reference last night.

[Josh Clark]

Wait a minute, you're about to go on a tangent because those aren't allowed on our podcast.

[Chuck Bryant]

Do you ever make a joke that you know no one else will get, but. So it's really a joke for you?

[Josh Clark]

Like 80% of the time, maybe.

[Chuck Bryant]

I was watching Emily or Emily was gone last night. So Ruby and I had a daddy daughter night in which we usually like, order cheeseburgers and watch a. Like an action movie or something cute. And I showed her speed last night, and I queued it up and I was like, you're gonna love this. I'm not even gonna tell you anything about it. And she was like, no, wait, will you at least tell me the name of it? And I went, it's called the Bus that Couldn't Slow Down. And she was like, really? And I went, no, it's a Simpsons joke. And then she wouldn't just let it go. She had me explain the whole thing, which, you know, fell in deaf ears. But it's one of my all time favorite kind of Simpsons jokes.

[Josh Clark]

I don't remember that joke.

[Chuck Bryant]

It was. Homer was describing a movie that he had just seen, and he was like, it's a bus whose speed couldn't slow down because if it had less speed, it would blow up and the speed would cause it to whatever. And he said speed like eight times. And they asked him what the name of it was. He said, the bus couldn't slow down.

[Josh Clark]

Man, that show just keeps on giving, doesn't it?

[Chuck Bryant]

I know. Speed holds up pretty good too, by the way.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, yeah. Keanu Reeves short hair is really great in that movie.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, he was hunky. And it's like. Yeah, it really. It was. I mean, it's so action packed. It was great. I enjoyed it.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, Dennis Hopper is a bad guy. A crazed bad guy is pretty much timeless.

[Chuck Bryant]

He's great. And I remembered the bus stuff, but that's just the middle part. I forgot the whole first part and the last part, which was also tons of action.

[Josh Clark]

I don't remember that.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, go back and watch it. We'll watch it before we go on the Ferris wheel.

[Josh Clark]

We just did a mini crush.

[Chuck Bryant]

I know we did. Where are we? Oh, we're back at 1893, because that's where electricity really came in, right?

[Josh Clark]

Yes. That was another big thing. In Devil in the White City, they really went behind the scenes. I think there was a huge struggle between George Westinghouse and Thomas Edison to get the contract to light the 1893 World's Fair. And Westinghouse won. Yes. And he lit this fair up, and it was gorgeous. I didn't see it, but I read Eric Larson's description, and it sounded just totally amazing.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, that sounds cool. That's also where Chicago really got a lot of its beautiful architecture that we love today with their neoclassical buildings. A lot of them were temporary at the time, and that's why they called it the White City. But it really influenced the design going forward to promote that Beaux Arts style. Is that how you say it?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Sponsor/Announcer]

Thanks.

[Chuck Bryant]

And also, if you're wondering, like, did they do that at other fairs? That's. We got Art deco from the 1925 exhibit in Paris.

[Josh Clark]

Yes. And a little traveler's tip here. If you ever find yourself in New Zealand, I think the northern part of it, do yourself a favor and go visit Napier. It's a small town. I don't remember what part of New Zealand it's in, but you really can't miss anything in New Zealand. It's not that big. And it suffered an earthquake in, I think, 1931. And, like, the whole downtown was leveled, so they were like, well, what. What style is in right now? Oh, Art Deco. So they rebuilt their entire downtown in Art Deco. All these amazing different buildings and amazing different colors, and they have preserved it, like, perfectly.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, man, I love Art Deco. I gotta check that out.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, yes. This is the Art Deco town known internationally as the Art Deco town.

[Chuck Bryant]

Had never heard of it. I thought you were going to recommend the river tour, the architectural tour in Chicago.

[Josh Clark]

I didn't take that one. That sounds kind of cool, though.

[Chuck Bryant]

It's awesome for like, a big sort of large mass tour thing. It's really great.

[Josh Clark]

Did Ferris Bueller go on that in the movie? Because I know he was on a boat at some point or they showed people on a boat.

[Chuck Bryant]

I don't know if there's a shot of that or not.

[Josh Clark]

All right, well, let's just say that.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay. But I did it. Chuck Bueller did.

[Josh Clark]

Okay. Oh, yeah. So that was 1893. Like we said. Go read that book. You will not regret it. And then jumping forward a little bit, but staying in the United States. There was the St. Louis World's Fair in 1904. Have you ever seen Meet Me in St. Louis, Chuck?

[Chuck Bryant]

No. I take it that was you that added that. That was a terrible saint, a terrible musical.

[Josh Clark]

Yes, it was. It was like I didn't want to be. I didn't want to exist for those couple of hours while I was sitting there watching this play. It's so dumb, and the music is so stupid, and everything about it is just terrible.

[Chuck Bryant]

Where'd you see this?

[Josh Clark]

At the Fox. Wow.

[Chuck Bryant]

So like a Broadway revival.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. In this period of American history I just find creepy, and I don't really like it anyway. You know, there's a lot of, like, sousaphone music and stuff like that. Okay. So. And this is like a whole thing set at that time, and it's just. It's not good, dude.

[Chuck Bryant]

Wow. All right.

[Josh Clark]

Okay. So don't see it.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay. Go see Hell's Kitchen instead. Or Operation Mincemeat.

[Josh Clark]

Okay. But also, there's a lot of misconstrued facts, I guess is how you could put it.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. This sounds like a bit of a. I don't know. I don't like the 1904 exhibit because they said a lot of people say, like, that's where the hamburger came from and the hot dog and the ice cream cone. And some of that stuff is partly true, right?

[Josh Clark]

Yes. Hot dogs were first served in buns at the 1904 fair. But hot dogs already existed.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

Ice cream cone wasn't invented there. But this is where the first place where a lot of people saw ice cream cones for the first time.

[Chuck Bryant]

It sounds like a bunch of junk food.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, it definitely was. Cotton candy was debuted at the 1904 fair. And I feel like there's a nice little twist to the inventor, don't you?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, he sold it as fairy floss. His name was William J. Morrison, and he was, in fact, a dentist. I think that's one of those little fun facts that people like to throw around. Absolutely true. But it was also Dr. Pepper debuted there. Jell O Puffed rice cereal. It sounds just like a bunch of American junk.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, this is where a lot of it came from, for sure. And then also, just we might edit this part out, but just between you and me, the first electric plug in socket debuted there too, which is pretty significant. But I want to give a little hat tip to Livia for explaining what an electric plug and socket does, which allowed lights and appliances to be safely attached to and detached from a central power supply.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, man, Livia is the best.

[Josh Clark]

That's the dedication that we can expect from Livia.

[Chuck Bryant]

And also you can get way more in depth information. We kind of did a whole episode that covered this kind of thing in 2019, our episode on human zoos and how awful they were. But they had stuff like that here, like native villages and that's in quotes, where they had very offensive, sort of misleading exhibits about indigenous Americans and Filipinos and Africans and. Yeah, just a sort of a bummer of a World's Fair.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, for sure. Yeah. They would basically be like, hey, let's take every single racist conception or misconception and attitude we have toward all these different groups and bring them to life. And that's exactly what it was. So, yeah, that was. It was a good episode. And that it was. It explained it pretty well. But it was definitely a bummer of an episode, for sure.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. But you could wash it all down with a Dr. Pepper, so what could be wrong?

[Josh Clark]

That's right. And give somebody a big smile and like, half of your teeth are missing.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right, I think we're at our second break point and we'll talk about sort of the next wave of World's Fairs and then kind of the death of World's Fairs right after this. Well, now, when you're on the road driving in your truck, why not learn a thing or two from Josh and Chuck? It's stuff you should know. Stuff you should know. All right, Hey, everybody. Support for the show today comes from public. So it kind of feels like there's two types of investing platforms. You've got the old school brokerages that look like they were designed in, like, 1995. And then you have those other platforms, you know, the ones that feel less like investing and more like a casino.

[Josh Clark]

Public is neither. It's the investing platform for people who actually take the stuff seriously. You know, people who are serious about building their wealth. Because on public, you can build a portfolio of stocks, options, bonds, crypto without all the bugs or the confetti.

[Chuck Bryant]

Retirement accounts. Yep. High yield cash. Of course. They even have direct indexing. Honestly, this is what an investing platform should look like. Modern design, simple to use, and customer support that actually cares.

[Josh Clark]

Go to public.comsysk and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.comsysk ad paid for by Public

[Sponsor/Announcer]

Holdings Brokerage services by Public Investing Member FINRA SIPC Advisory Services by Public Advisors SEC Registered Advisor Crypto Services by ZeroHash all investing involves risk of loss. See complete [e-mail] disclosures.

[Josh Clark]

Hey, everybody, get this. LinkedIn has grown to a network of over 1 billion professionals and 130 million decision makers. And that's where it stands apart from other ad buys.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, for sure. You can target your buyers by job title, industry, company role, seniority skills, even company revenue. So you can stop wasting budget on the wrong audience.

[Josh Clark]

Yep. That's why LinkedIn ads generates the highest B2B ROAS of all online ad networks. Seriously, all of them.

[Chuck Bryant]

And get this. If you spend $250 on your first campaign on LinkedIn ads, you get a free $250 credit for the next one. Just go to LinkedIn.com sysk that's LinkedIn.com sy Terms and Conditions apply. You buy insurance for peace of mind. But the policies you trust often cause the biggest financial shocks. Every year, millions of claims are denied because people's policies quietly excluded what happened. Insurers know every detail. Policyholders rarely do. So for just 27 cents a day, my policy advocate reads your policies and explains in plain language where you're vulnerable. They don't sell insurance. They give you the same understanding insurers have had for decades before you trust your policy to protect you. Let my policy advocate tell you what it really says. Go to mypolicyadvocate.com.

[Josh Clark]

So after World War I, World's Fairs became less common and less successful. I blame going off of the gold standard, right? But there's still plenty that came along that you'll. If you know anything about World's Fairs, pay any kind of attention to it. You'll be like, no, There was Expo 67 in Montreal or there was Expo 70 in Osaka, Japan. Yes, yes, we'll get to all those. But the general point is here is that they were less successful because people started to see radio. There were movies, or they started to listen to radio. Movies became widespread and very popular. And then simultaneously to that, there were so many World's Fairs to choose from. No matter where you were in the world, you might be in a large area, a large city that has multiple World's Fairs competing with one another in the same region, certainly the same country. That happened, and it became a bit of a mess. So this group called the Bureau International Expositions, the bien established in Paris, of course, they said, we're going to step in, we're going to start regulating these events. We're going to take this mess and we're going to mash it into a devil's tower. Plateau of mashed potatoes. We're going to create something coherent out of it.

[Chuck Bryant]

Wow. Nice ref. Yeah. They established some rules. Well, the first rule was, like, unless it's officially sanctioned by us, it's not even a World's Fair. So you got to go through us. It can't be more than six months. You can't run these things for 912 months. You gotta have a theme. Like, get it together, everyone. Like, a party with a theme is so much better.

[Josh Clark]

Sure.

[Chuck Bryant]

And since then. This was in 1928. There have only been 50 World's Fairs since. I guess they established in 1928. But 1931 is when they officially started sanctioning them, and there's only been 50 since then.

[Josh Clark]

Right. Can you imagine some poor guy who's like, hey, this isn't an official World's Fair, wants their money back.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

So after the Cold War started, these things you kind of mentioned at the outset, they seem to be like different countries saying, like, look at how great we are. That was a huge part of World's Fairs that were during the Cold War, especially between the American and the Soviet pavilions.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

They were basically like, here's the stage where we can show the rest of the world how much better we are than you, Russia, and vice versa.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, absolutely. A little fun fact we gotta throw in there. Do you remember the Montreal Expos, which are now the Washington Nationals in Major League Baseball? That name came from the Montreal Expo. That happened in 1967.

[Josh Clark]

Yep.

[Chuck Bryant]

It's a fun little fact. New York had a couple of big ones in Queens. They had 1 in 39 and 40. The world of Tomorrow was a big theme, and they debuted things like air conditioning, television, nylon stockings. Pretty good. They debuted a robot that smoked cigarettes named Electro, who had a dog, a robot dog named Sparko. And this was kind of notable mostly for. Well, for those things, but also the fact that they were able to put a bunch of money into reclaiming Flushing Meadows and Corona park, which at the time was a dumping ground for ash and just a really gross spot. But you know, when you fly, if you see Men in Black or you fly over it, this is where the New York Mets used to be. And you would see that big steel globe from Men in Black, very famously. That was the New York World's Fair in 39 and 40.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. I looked at pictures of Electro, and he looks like a 1939 robot, for sure. Huge barrel chest. And then, like, he look a little bit like Mr. Roboto, but a little less detailed in the face. But he did smoke cigarettes. I saw it.

[Chuck Bryant]

It's nice.

[Josh Clark]

One of the other things about World's Fairs too is depending on what the world was doing. Like, for example, if they were about to enter a world war or were already embroiled in one, it could make for some awkward stuff. Like Germany was going to open a pavilion at the 1939 World's Fair. And after they invaded Czechoslovakia, the rest of the world was like, no, you're not allowed here at this World's Fair. The uk, Poland, Czechoslovakia, a few other countries that were already involved in World War II had pavilions there. And so, like, stuff that was going on in Europe was being reflected in the World's Fair.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, for sure. We were heading back to Queens because I mentioned they had two there and they had their second one there in 64, 65. And this was a pretty, pretty big one too. I think this is where that sphere came from, was the 6465, if I'm not mistaken. This is where computers really made their first big go. IBM had a huge. They had like an acre, acre size spot display. They had a. This is where Walt Disney really made a big splash to. I think they debuted. It's a small. The literal It's a Small World ride there, which is pretty cool. And then if you've ever been to the Magic Kingdom in Orlando and rode or ridden the Carousel of Progress that made its debut there, that was ge, you know. And if you've ever ridden it, it's clearly like, hey, look what's going to happen not too far from now.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And they did one for the state of Illinois too. And I looked that up and apparently they created an animatronic talking Abe Lincoln, which I believe ended up giving rise to the hall of Presidents.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. One of the creepier things you can do at Disney.

[Josh Clark]

It really is. One of the other things is that the 1964 World's Fair was so, gee whiz, look at the future that Isaac Asimov, the great science fiction writer, was prompted to write an essay about what the World's Fair in 2014, 50 years in the future would look like. And he got some right. He missed the mark a little bit. Like, for example, he got right that robots will neither be common nor very good in 2014, but they will be in existence.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's certainly true. They're getting better now. But 2014 robots, the one I had was not very impressive.

[Josh Clark]

Did it smoke cigarettes, though?

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, it did. We did.

[Josh Clark]

That's the key to a good robot.

[Chuck Bryant]

Had to Have a smoking buddy.

[Josh Clark]

That's right. What else, Chuck? What else did he say?

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, this one is interesting because it sounds like he got it just right. But just, you know, you'll have to hear the afterword. He said that society will suffer mental, emotional and socio psychological consequences from our technology. And if you read that, you think, man, he nailed it in 1964, like right on the head. But he had a different take than that. He was like, no, that's gonna happen because it's going to be like Wall E, basically, where nobody works because robots are doing everything. And we're going to suffer from what he called enforced leisure. And everyone's just going to be lazy and it's going to be awful. And he said the most glorious single word in the world will have become work. That's cute.

[Josh Clark]

He missed that mark a little bit, for sure.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

So the 1964 World's Fair was basically the last great World's Fair that the United States ever threw. There have been plenty of great World's Fairs since then, but it' as far as the US is concerned, 64 was the last good one. 62 in Seattle that gave us the Space Needle. It was called the Century 21 Expo. And 10 million people showed up. And this kind of showed the beginning of a trend of declining attendance in the fairs that were thrown in America. Because this was about the time that Americans decided that we wanted to stop being informed.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And you know, we're not bagging on any of these cities and any of their World's Fairs. It's just sort of a fact that this is when attendance really started to wane. Some of them lost a lot of money. We love that space needle. But 10 million people isn't like two years later. In New York there were 56 million.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

And that brings us to New Orleans and the Louisiana World Exposition of 1984. New Orleans is one of my favorite cities in the world. Truly, truly, deep down, I love New Orleans. But they put on a pretty shoddy World's Fair in 1984.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, I mean, it was really heavy on the New Orleans culture. Like, they have a lot to show off as far as that's concerned. The amphitheater there was designed by Frank Gehry. The parts that were done well were just little magical spots, right?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

But there are also lots of parts that were like asphalt and concrete thoroughfares that just kind of looked like, like a. Just something you might stumble upon in a park in a small town at some point. Like with the booth set up along each side, some of the actual design structures and buildings were very, very bland. And then the. One of the main reasons they wanted to throw this was because they wanted to revitalize New Orleans as a town where you could just come outside of Mardi Gras, outside of Jazz Fest. Like, you can just come anytime and it'll be fun. So the riverfront that they were promoting was largely abandoned. It was pretty run down. And this is where they built the World's Fair area. So you could kind of see the reality of the area at the edges pretty clearly.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. I mean, some of the stuff wasn't even finished. So this isn't just us, again, like, with our opinions on things. Like when you have two massive alligator statues atop the wonder Wall in Bayou Plaza and they're not done, and along their backs, there's not even alligator scales, and it's just the metal structure that was underneath. It's not great. It was unfinished. If you were from New Orleans and Louisiana, you probably had a great time. I imagine a lot of people had a great time, but Ronald Reagan didn't even go. I think the President almost always goes or had always gone to attend the opening. Less than 10 million people went, and they lost a ton of money on it.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And so to be fair, like, this wasn't just New Orleans fault. They were. They were victims of this long standing or this trend. Yeah, I guess it was long standing by then of American attendance being pretty shoddy. Yeah. The Knoxville World's Fair, which gave us the Sun Sphere, which is still.

[Chuck Bryant]

I remember that one.

[Josh Clark]

That was held two years before EPCOT came along, two years before. And it billed itself as a permanent World's Fair.

[Chuck Bryant]

Not fair.

[Josh Clark]

Nope. The Olympics were being held in LA that same year, and it was sucking a lot of the enthusiasm and energy over to the West Coast. Plus Louisiana and surrounding states like Texas, where you would rely on a lot of your visitors to come from their local economies, just went in the toilet because the oil industry hit a huge bust of.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I mean, I think the organizers for the New Orleans Fair went bankrupt. They lost more than 120 million bucks. Creditors apparently allegedly got back 8 cents on the dollar. And it was such a bust that they canceled the 1992 World's Fair in Chicago.

[Josh Clark]

I know.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. It was not great.

[Josh Clark]

No. But like we said, there have been plenty of. There were plenty of non American throne world fairs that were outstanding. One of the ones that frequently gets point pointed to is Osaka in 1970. And this is about the time. So Europe kind of Kicked it off. It spread throughout the world. America did its best to kind of take over for a while and then it moved east. The kind of the epicenter of where World's Fairs are held. Moved from the. To the Middle east and east generally more often than not these days. And. But Osaka 70 seemed to kind of kick that off.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, they debuted imax movies in 1970 in Osaka with a 17 minute film called Tiger Child. I think the 2010 expo in Shanghai, I think, has the record. Right. Of visitors, 73 million people, the largest of all time. So that's, you know, they're certainly not dead. I was wondering some point a couple of years ago, like, what happened to the World's Fairs? And, you know, they're just happening in a big, big way in places like Shanghai. So it's not as much on my radar. And also, I think things like ces, the Consumer Electronics show, and other sort of specific industry expos and trade shows have sort of dampened the appetite for these, don't you think?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, for sure, but they are still around. Osaka is going to hold another one or. I'm sorry, it held another one in 2025. There's one in Belgrade, Servier. Belgrade. I can't remember which way you say it. That's coming in 2027. And then Riyadh, Saudi Arabia is, I think, the furthest out one that's already scheduled for 2030. So it's definitely still happening. I would like to go to one just to see what the heck's going on. I'd like to go to the Belgrade one.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, that'd be cool.

[Josh Clark]

And also just one other thing, I want to just shout out Expo 70 in Osaka. That is where Yumi's aunt and uncle met.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, nice.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, I thought so too. He was a smoking robot, she was a showgirl.

[Chuck Bryant]

Classic story.

[Josh Clark]

You got anything else?

[Chuck Bryant]

I got nothing else.

[Josh Clark]

All right, well, that's it, everybody. That's World's Fairs. I guess we'll see you in Belgrade in 2027. And until then, Chuck, I say it's time for listener mail.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right. We heard from a lot of people about our short stuff on the MacGuffin.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, we're talking about this, which was pretty.

[Chuck Bryant]

It was pretty fun. I think it was kind of appropriate that we couldn't quite define it, because it's quite hard to define.

[Josh Clark]

Okay, fair enough.

[Chuck Bryant]

But we heard from a writer director, legit. Hey, guys, I'm writer director from la. I thought I could share how I've always viewed the MacGuffin when you're trying to develop a film plot, you might have a specific location or scenario that you want your characters to end up in, but sometimes you can't think of a natural way to get them there. So that's where you throw in a MacGuffin. In fact, if you're really in the zone while you're writing, you can use it as a placeholder, even, and say, like, the protagonist stops by the house to grab a MacGuffin only to find a dead body in the yard.

[Josh Clark]

Oh.

[Chuck Bryant]

One of the reasons it can be difficult to identify a MacGuffin from a specific movie is because the writer might be disguising it to avoid what could be perceived as lazy screenwriting. One of the more obvious examples is a character needing to find the secret map that leads to the treasure or the next clue. That is from Josh Beck, writer, director. And like I said, we heard from a lot of people. One was kind of funny. We heard from somebody who kind of said, I don't care what George Lucas says. R2D2 is not a MacGuffin. It's the plans that are MacGuffin. Because the person is never the MacGuffin. It's THE object. And I had the great sorrow to write this person and say, I'm sorry to break it to you, but R2D2 is an object and not a person.

[Josh Clark]

I don't know.

[Chuck Bryant]

I know it's true, though. Like, if the whole point to this writer's email was, hey, it's not the person, it's the object, it's like, well, an Android isn't a person.

[Josh Clark]

So I feel like then Josh backed you up that the MacGuffin and totally irrelevant to what you care about in the whole thing, and that it's kind of like this thing that gets you to the thing that's the point. Which is basically what you were saying. Yes.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay.

[Josh Clark]

Both the first time when you brought it up in some other episode, and the short stuff you stuck to your gun, so it sounds like you were right. But then all of those people out there who are like, maltese Falcon is the. The quintessential example of MacGuffin. That is just wrong. Then that's not true. Yes, it's the point of the whole thing. Everything everyone's doing is centered around getting their hands on the Maltese Falcon. Nothing else matters. There's no interpersonal stuff that really matters. That is the point of everything. So it can't possibly be a MacGuffin.

[Chuck Bryant]

But is the Maltese Falcon itself important? Like, yes. Well, what. What does it Do.

[Josh Clark]

It gives you riches beyond measure.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, okay.

[Josh Clark]

It's like, yes. And it's irreplaceable. It's its own thing. It is not a MacGuffin. And I don't ever want to talk about MacGuffins again after this. I'm so sorry that I ever brought it up.

[Chuck Bryant]

We also heard from a lot of people who pointed out the Big Bang Theory TV show thing where they say that Indiana Jones was a MacGuffin himself because if he was not a part of that movie, like, nothing. Nothing would have mattered. Like, the Nazis would have opened up the ark and it would have killed them all and nothing would have changed. Yeah, I don't know about that because it ended up in his hands and ended up in the storage, but I don't know.

[Josh Clark]

That's a. Huh. I hadn't thought about that point. Wow, that Chuck Lorre, he's amazing.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Did I ever tell you about the time we were in Los Angeles and it was the day after Charlie Sheen's meltdown and, like, the entire future of, like, that whole show was up in the air. We just happened to be in LA that one day, and I just happened to be walking at the McDonald's that Jon Cryer happened to go to and started stress eating like a McMuffin in his Mercedes.

[Chuck Bryant]

A McGuffin. Now, I remember you telling me that story. That is incredible.

[Josh Clark]

Think about the timing, all the different little things that had to happen to just bring me to pass to see that one guy who. Whose issues were on the world stage right then.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, it was pretty nuts. Yeah. So I hope he's doing better.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, he's doing fine.

[Josh Clark]

Good. Well, that was Josh who wrote in. And thanks to everybody who wrote in about McGuffins. We did get a lot of great emails from everybody, so thank you. And if you want to write us a great email, whether you're a writer or director. Both. Neither doesn't matter. We want to hear from you. Send it off to stuffpodcastheartradio.com

[Chuck Bryant]

Stuff youf Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite show. When you think about protecting what matters, it's usually your family, your future, or the stability you've worked a lifetime to build. Right? That's why Protective is here. They're on a mission to help more people achieve the sense of protection and financial security they deserve. Trusted by 32 million people, protective is by your side with life insurance, retirement, employee benefit and asset protection solutions. If you're wondering what protecting your future could look like, check out protective.com to learn more. For more information and important disclosures, please visit protective.com this episode is brought to you by Audi. We all know that feeling. A change of plans, a new opportunity. Instead of overthinking, what if you just said yes with the all new Audi Q3? The answer is easy. It's made for the yes life. With the power and room to handle whatever pops up. Yes to adventure, yes to right now. Because saying yes without hesitation, that's real luxury. The all new Audi Q3 made for the yes life. Learn more@audi USA.com if you were to try two Zero Sugar Colas with their labels removed and make the decision based on taste alone, do you know which one you'd choose?

[Josh Clark]

Well, last year Pepsi put that to the test for tens of thousands of people across the country in a revival of the iconic Pepsi Challenge, and the results were clear. 66% of people preferred the taste of Pepsi Zero Sugar over Coke Zero Sugar. That's the idea behind the Pepsi paradox, that when labels and bias disappear, people prefer the taste of Pepsi Zero sugar.

[Chuck Bryant]

It really makes you wonder, are you choosing the zero sugar cola that you actually prefer or are you settling for the label that you think you prefer?

[Josh Clark]

Go out and try Pepsi Zero Sugar Today. You deserve taste. You deserve Pepsi.

[Chuck Bryant]

This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed Human.