Selects: PT Barnum: More Complicated Than You've Heard

Summary

Stuff You Should Know: "Selects: PT Barnum: More Complicated Than You've Heard"

Podcast: Stuff You Should Know
Hosts: Josh Clark & Chuck Bryant
Episode Date: December 20, 2025
Summary by Podcast Summarizer

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Episode Overview

This episode explores the life and legacy of P.T. Barnum, revealing a far more nuanced and complicated figure than the mythologized "greatest showman" of popular culture (most notably depicted in "The Greatest Showman" film). Hosts Josh and Chuck provide a deep dive into Barnum's career as an entrepreneur, marketer, and showman—highlighting his brilliance, his exploitation, and his overall complexity. The conversation touches on Barnum’s innovations, ethical issues, role in American entertainment, personal life, and political transformation.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Myth vs. Reality of P.T. Barnum

Main Theme: The recent movie "The Greatest Showman" sanitized and simplified Barnum’s story, prompting widespread responses calling out its historical inaccuracies.

• Josh Clark: "This is the very definition of the word fantasy." (04:02)
• Chuck Bryant: "That movie...can be best described as a musical whitewashing." (04:07)
• Josh: The real Barnum was neither a villain nor a hero, but a deeply flawed, enterprising, and often exploitative individual.

2. Early Life and Hustle

Key Points:

• Born 1810 in Bethel, CT. Came from humble beginnings—dad was a struggling farmer.
• Hated manual labor but was enterprising, starting with lotteries, trading, and store work as a teen.
• Notable Quote: "He could figure out a way...to turn it into pure profits." (09:24)

3. Natural Marketer and ‘Humbug’ Philosophy

Concept: Barnum’s philosophy of "humbug" blended deception with amusement, justifying stunts as entertainment rather than malicious fraud.

• Josh: "People don't mind being deceived so long as they're being amused at the same time." (06:52)
• Iconic quote often misattributed to Barnum: "There's a sucker born every minute"—but hosts clarify this can't be confirmed.

4. Show Business Origins & Exposing Exploitation

Case Study: Joyce Heth

• Purchased enslaved elderly woman, promoted as George Washington's 161-year-old nursemaid (she was ~80).
• Barnum invented stories, staged publicity stunts (e.g., suggesting Heth was a robot), profited from her exhibition and then her public autopsy.
• Chuck: "He actually sold tickets to a public autopsy in a saloon so people could come look at this poor woman's insides." (23:19)
• Reflects both the era's racism/exploitation and Barnum's uniquely ruthless showmanship.

5. Rogues Gallery of Acts & the Art of Promotion

• Managed and promoted novelty acts: plate-spinners (Signor Antonio/Vivala), traveling circus acts, hoaxes like the "Feejee Mermaid" (a mummified half-monkey/half-fish), and the infamous “General Tom Thumb” (a young cousin with dwarfism, Charles Stratton), and more.
• Barnum’s skill was building hype, using fake rivalry, staged contests, and relentless publicity.
• Josh on the Feejee Mermaid: "Barnum basically creates out a whole cloth, a tour of this mermaid, writes letters about how great this thing is...and mails them to friends...and asks them to mail those letters in to newspapers.” (44:17)

6. Museum Era and Massive Success

• Purchased Scudder's American Museum in 1841, transformed it into Barnum's American Museum—a blend of oddities, performances, and traditional exhibits.
• Charged 25 cents entry, drew thousands daily.
• Used the museum to give his carny-style amusements a veneer of respectability.
• Chuck: “He had little people, he had big people, ladies with beards and robots and puppets and animals. He had giraffes and grizzly bears...he really had everything humming on all cylinders.” (37:25)

7. Highs, Lows, and Fires

• Barnum frequently lost his fortune (notably in speculative investments and several devastating fires) but constantly rebounded through new schemes, tours, and earnings.

8. Politics and Social Change

• Early on, a "Jacksonian Democrat" (party of Andrew Jackson, pro-common man, but status-quo re: race).
• Civil War marked a political transformation: He became a Union supporter and an abolitionist, using his resources to promote the 13th Amendment and black suffrage in Connecticut.
• Chuck: "He used that museum as a sort of ground zero for his cause...he actually won an election to the Connecticut General Assembly, where he worked really hard to ratify the 13th Amendment..." (52:25)
• Later became mayor of Bridgeport, supported temperance—but also sponsored the restrictive Comstock law banning contraception in Connecticut.

9. The Greatest Show on Earth and His Legacy

• Finally solidified his association with the circus through partnerships (notably with Bailey), embracing traveling shows with trains, exotic animals, clowns, and acrobats.
• Managed legendary animal acts, most famously Jumbo the Elephant (who became Tufts University's mascot after death).
• Circus would evolve into the Barnum and Bailey Circus and ultimately the Ringling Brothers Barnum & Bailey Circus.

10. Personal Life and Eccentricities

• Long marriage to Charity Hallett, followed quickly by marrying younger Nancy Fish after Charity’s death.
• Enduring need for attention; requested his obituary published while still alive.
• Josh: “That’s a heck of a way to end this podcast.” (61:31)

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On ‘Whitewashing’ Barnum
  "It seemed like that movie...can be best described as a musical whitewashing." — Chuck (04:07)

• On Exploitation and the Era:
  "He made his money not just by hustling Americans, but by exploiting other Americans, too." — Josh (06:53)

• On Humility and Contradiction:
  Barnum alternates between boastfulness and contrition, especially later in life.
  "Something happened and he was converted to the right side of history, I guess you could call it, you know?" — Josh (53:03)

• On the Feejee Mermaid Hoax:
  "He was giving public lectures made up as a naturalist, a British naturalist...he was just making all this stuff up." — Josh (44:47)

• On Showmanship Above All:
  "If his advertising was more audacious than his competitors, it was not because I had less scruple than they, but more energy, far more ingenuity, and a better foundation for such promises." — Josh, quoting Barnum (41:48)

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Timeline: Key Segments & Timestamps

• Barnum vs. The Greatest Showman Myth: 02:47–04:21
• Barnum’s Childhood & Early Scams: 08:24–12:58
• Lotteries, Newspapers, & Jail: 13:13–15:54
• Move to NYC & Show Biz Origins: 16:04–20:13
• Exploiting Joyce Heth: 20:13–24:34
• Rival Plate Spinners & Early Circus: 24:53–32:22
• Barnum’s Museum Era: 34:25–38:26
• The Art of Humbug / Notorious Hoaxes: 41:06–47:57
• Financial Ruin & Rise Again: 48:08–50:39
• Shift Toward Abolition & Politics: 51:19–53:26
• Fires, the Big Top, and Jumbo: 54:01–58:55
• End-of-life Eccentricities: 61:07–61:36

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Takeaways

• Barnum was not the mythic hero nor the mustache-twirling villain—he was opportunistic, sometimes exploitative, occasionally progressive, and always the consummate showman.
• His career reflected the emerging American appetite for spectacle capitalism, boundary-pushing marketing, and blurred lines between entertainment, deception, and exploitation.
• Even in cultural evolution, some of his practices remain troubling, while others reshaped the entertainment world.
• The episode ends with a reminder that, like Barnum’s life, the true story is messy, fascinating, and far more complicated than the movies suggest.

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For Further Listening

• [SYSK’s prior episodes on Lotteries, Stonewall, and True Crime]
• [Relevant episodes on American hucksterism and media hoaxes]

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Suggested for listeners interested in American history, entertainment legends, myth-busting, and ethical debates on spectacle and exploitation.

Transcript

[Narrator/Advertiser]

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[Chuck Bryant]

Hi everybody.

[Advertiser/Promo Voice]

Chuck here with the Greatest show on Earth, Wrangling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus. You say no Stuff youf Should know the podcast. That's right, it's Saturday, and that means it's time for another Selects. And this one is from May 2018 PT Barnum Colon, more complicated than you've heard. And I picked this one, you guys, for two reasons. One, because I believe in this episode I I predicted that Hugh Jackman would play the man in a Movie. One day. One of my two predictions, along with Jared from Subway being a creep. And the other reason I picked it out is because I finally saw the movie the Greatest show on Earth recently with my daughter, and I didn't like it so much.

[Josh Clark]

I didn't think it was that good.

[Advertiser/Promo Voice]

So I'm sorry to anyone who had a part in that movie. My daughter loved it, my wife loved it. I just thought it was okay. But this episode is great, so I hope you enjoy PT Barnum. Colon, More complicated than you've heard.

[Chuck Bryant]

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

[Josh Clark]

Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. There's Jerry. Hello. Hello.

[Narrator/Advertiser]

Hello.

[Josh Clark]

Hello.

[Chuck Bryant]

Jerry's got a top hat on.

[Josh Clark]

I know. I don't know why.

[Chuck Bryant]

I don't know.

[Josh Clark]

She's trying to be all Mr.

[Chuck Bryant]

Monopoly or P.T. barnum.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, yeah, I forgot he wore a top hat. Allegedly. Oh, no, he did. I saw a picture of it.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, Hugh Grant certainly did. Hugh Grant, Hugh Jackman. Hugh Laurie. I think it's Hugh Laurie.

[Josh Clark]

That's who it was. No, it's Clive Owens you're thinking of.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, Hugh Jackman. Man, he wears that top hat like a champ.

[Josh Clark]

He does. I don't know how much you went on the Internet for this one, because this is a pretty comprehensive article.

[Chuck Bryant]

It actually was.

[Josh Clark]

But the Greatest Showman really set the Internet on fire, man. And a lot of, like, it really brought out a lot of people saying, like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Whoa.

[Narrator/Advertiser]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

This is the very definition of the word fantasy.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. It seemed like that movie was. Can be best described as a musical whitewashing.

[Josh Clark]

In every sense of that word.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

So let's destroy it.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. I mean, after reading this, I didn't think, like, man, P.T. barnum, what a complete a hole.

[Josh Clark]

No, he was just a lot more complicated than that and did a lot of stuff that you just shouldn't just pass over because you can't figure out lyrics to. What.

[Narrator/Advertiser]

Why.

[Josh Clark]

What rhymes with racism.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I mean, he was. He was definitely an enigma and seems like he did some good. But also, I mean, he was a hustler, man, for sure.

[Josh Clark]

So this is what I didn't fully understand until researching this. Chuck, he's known as the greatest showman. Right. But there were plenty of other showmen out there at the time, which makes sense because you have to have something to be compared to to be the greatest. Right. But I guess I just assumed he was like the first or the originator. No, he was not the first showman. He was a great showman.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

What he really left his mark on was. Was introducing America to pure, unadulterated hucksterism.

[Chuck Bryant]

Sure.

[Josh Clark]

And using it for marketing.

[Chuck Bryant]

Humbug.

[Josh Clark]

That's what he called it. And he had a lot of quotes. Some were definitely something he said, like, every crowd has a silver lining, which means you can shake it out of them and get some money from a bunch of people. Right?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

The one about a sucker born every minute, that's never been successfully attributed to him 100%.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, yeah. And one thing is for sure.

[Josh Clark]

Is.

[Chuck Bryant]

That his autobiography is, I think, if you order it, it comes with a salt lick. So you can just lick on that salt while you're reading it.

[Josh Clark]

Right. I don't know what that means, but that seems like something that they would do.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. I mean, I think when the man is writing about himself, it's like, you know what? You may just want to believe a third of this.

[Josh Clark]

I would take it with a grain of salt, but so much so that you need an actual salt lick.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, yeah, you didn't.

[Josh Clark]

I got it now. I got it. So there is one quote that I think kind of describes this guy best, or at least his philosophy. And it also kind of reveals, like, you can't call him harmless, but also, the intentions were not entirely evil. Right, Right. He had a quote, it said that people don't mind being deceived so long as they're being amused at the same time.

[Chuck Bryant]

Which is kind of true.

[Josh Clark]

It does. And it largely lets him off the hook as far as being a huckster. Right. But the thing that the Greatest Showman really glossed over or just outright ignored was that a lot of the amusements that he was presenting to the public were extraordinarily degrading to people at the time. They were super racist. There were just a lot of. There was just a lot of exploitation. He made his money not just by hustling Americans, but by exploiting other Americans, too. Right? Yeah. And again, a lot of this is contextual. It's not necessarily fair for later generations to judge previous generations, although it's really fun to do. But. But, yes, you can say, like, this guy was exploitative even compared to his contemporaries. Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

Perhaps.

[Josh Clark]

So he is just this very complex character who I think you and I can agree was not an evil person. He just did some horrible things here or there.

[Chuck Bryant]

Should we go back in time?

[Josh Clark]

Yes, let's.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right, let's go back to the beginning. Let's hop in. The wayback machine, which is appropriately steampunky right now.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

It takes many forms. I don't know if people realize that.

[Josh Clark]

It has a clock without the glass and you can see the parts inside, but it doesn't actually function. It's strictly for decoration.

[Chuck Bryant]

So let's go back to 1810, back to Bethel, Connecticut, where this man was born, Mr. Phineas Taylor Barnum. He had sort of a mixed family life. I mean, he was. They point out in this article, he was firmly American. His great, great, great grandfather came over from England as an indentured servant in the 17th century, eventually became a landowner, but they didn't. It's not like they had a ton of money. His dad, Philo. Great name.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. All these are great names.

[Chuck Bryant]

He was not super successful, so it was kind of up to young PT to make his own way in life.

[Narrator/Advertiser]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. His father was a farmer, which introduced Phineas to the idea that he really hated manual, mindless work.

[Chuck Bryant]

No, he didn't like doing that farm work.

[Josh Clark]

But that's not to say he didn't like work. He just liked very specific kinds of work where his energies were appropriately channeled.

[Chuck Bryant]

It's like bilking people out of money.

[Josh Clark]

Sure, yeah. I mean, that was kind of it. He liked. He was the definition of the word enterprising. Right. He could figure out a way he could look at something, literally look at something that you could almost not give away, you certainly couldn't sell, and turn it into pure profits. Like, he got into lotteries for a little while once, right?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. I mean, he went to work. He left the farm, went to work at a country store and realized quickly, like, just cause you're in the country doesn't mean there aren't like, swindlers and cheaters out here.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

So he kind of learned some of the tricks of the trade there. His old man died when he was 15 and he was kind of. His mom had to get a job, but he was basically like, all right, it's kind of up to me now to provide for my family. So he moved, got that another job as a store clerk, and as you said, got into lotteries.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And he was early on pursuing a career at clerkship, which I guess is a thing. But yeah. So there's this. He saw easy money in lottery, so he set up one himself. Apparently when he was working for these owners of the store, they were away at one point and he got his eyes on some tin kitchenware that just would not Sell?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

So he took some other stuff that wouldn't sell at that store. These things weren't his, by the way.

[Chuck Bryant]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

And he traded them for a bottle collection, which I guess was the thing that people wanted at the time. And he put those things up as prizes. Right. And he started a lottery, and these were the prizes, and there were cash prizes, but he ended up selling, like 1,000 tickets or something like that in this little town store based on these prizes and some cash prizes, saying, like, half of all tickets were going to be winners. And you might win a bottle or you might win, like, a tin muffin pan, but you could also win this cash. And so these things that had just been sitting on these shelves forever were suddenly turned into something valuable, thanks to his marketing expertise. And this is while he's still a teenager.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, we've covered this in something before, that lotteries were a thing back then that someone could just cook up. You know, it's not like the lotteries we have today, like these sanctioned, sanctioned ways of stealing people's money.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

But back then, you could just cook up a lottery in a small town and be like, you know what I've got. It was almost like a ponce thing. Like, I can raise money, give away some of that money in prizes, and then keep the rest. Right.

[Josh Clark]

I think that was in our lotteries episode.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, really?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay. Well, in order to do that, though, you have to be a natural born salesperson, which is what he was.

[Josh Clark]

You really do. And, like, lotteries would play, like, a theme throughout his early career. Like, that's how he ended up making his initial. I don't know if fortune's the right word, but that's how he staked himself and his family was through lotteries and working in stores and then eventually owning stores like general stores, grocery stores, that kind of thing. But the lotteries are where he made his money. And he actually figured out that you could make more money with less work than having to go to the trouble of setting up a lottery. Like you said, anybody could just set up a lottery by taking tickets from somebody else's lottery and selling them further out at an increased price. But then he figured out one more thing, Chuck. You didn't even have to go out and sell these things yourself. You could hire other people to sell even further out. All you had to do was give them the tickets and collect the money that they brought you. So he ended up making money by basically expanding other people's lotteries for a while.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right. And in the middle of this, and he had moved to Brooklyn at this point, he's kind of hopping all over the place there in the Northeast.

[Josh Clark]

And to be fair, we're hopping kind of all over his early life right now.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, for sure.

[Josh Clark]

Chronologically. Yeah.

[Narrator/Advertiser]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

So in this time period, he met who would become his wife, a woman named Charity Hallett, who he described in his autobiography as a fair, rosy cheeked, buxom girl with beautiful white teeth. Did I mention she had big boobs?

[Josh Clark]

Right. But those teeth, man.

[Chuck Bryant]

So they would get married, and I think they had four daughters. But during all this time, he had a little Josh Clark in him because.

[Josh Clark]

How do you mean?

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, he was writing letters to local papers that weren't getting published. So he said, you know what? I'm gonna start my own paper.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

He Clarked himself a paper.

[Josh Clark]

I'll see you all in hell, media.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And much like yourself, you started your own paper, which was kind of cool.

[Josh Clark]

Sure. I mean, like, if people won't print your crank ideas, go start your own paper.

[Chuck Bryant]

It's like if you want to get your manifesto out there and.

[Josh Clark]

Either become Unabomber Esque, which we don't recommend, or start your own paper.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right. And his was called the Herald of.

[Josh Clark]

Freedom, which is terrible.

[Chuck Bryant]

And this is where it gets a little weird, because he kind of went after people, was eventually hit with a libel suit, and spent 60 days in jail. But that sold a lot of papers. And he was also hailed as a hero because apparently he was legitimately exposing corruption.

[Josh Clark]

Right. So to me, Chuck, that one really stood out because it shows just how huge this guy's life story is, that even if you make a movie out of it, the best you can hope for is to pick like five or six or ten different things and try to find a thread throughout them. Right, right. Whether that's an accurate portrayal or not, it can't possibly be, because this guy's life was just so enormous and he did so many things, and he was such an outsized character that a lot of times you either vilify him or glorify him. And it was much more a combination of both of those things. And I think that example really says it all. Like, he had his. His notions and he started his own paper and ended up going to jail and subscription boosted, so ended up making money from it. But at the same time, he was legitimately trying to call out corruption in this town that he cared about. So his character was much more complex than you get from just about any source, unless you read biographies about him.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, agreed. So finally he says, I'm sorry, Connecticut said no more lotteries in Connecticut. So he's like, all right, what am I doing here even if I can't do this little scam?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, he's like, I love this town, but not that much.

[Chuck Bryant]

So in 1834 he left the paper, shut that down, moved his family to New York City and should we take a break?

[Josh Clark]

Perfect time.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right, we're in New York City and we'll be back right after this.

[Josh Clark]

If you wanna know, then you're in luck. Just listen up to Josh and Chuck stuff you should know.

[Narrator/Advertiser]

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[Josh Clark]

Stuff you should know. Stuff you should.

[Narrator/Advertiser]

Know.

[Josh Clark]

I got a falafel. Is it good? It's pretty good.

[Chuck Bryant]

Is it from the Halal guys?

[Josh Clark]

Uh huh. Of course.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, man.

[Josh Clark]

Who else you gonna get a falafel from?

[Chuck Bryant]

That's good stuff.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

So, man, this guy, really just reading through this thing. He did so many jobs, right?

[Josh Clark]

He was a factotum.

[Chuck Bryant]

Dozens and dozens of jobs through his lifetime.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And I'm glad he didn't just stick to clerking. Right? Or even lottery. He had this thing like something about show business attracted this guy.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, yeah.

[Josh Clark]

I don't know what it was. Maybe nobody but him knows what it was. Maybe he doesn't even know what it was. But he was attracted to the idea of like wowing and amusing and amazing crowds. And he did that pretty early on. I think he was 25 when he got into exhibiting a human being who he purchased and owned for a while, which, by the way, does not show up in the Greatest Showman.

[Advertiser/Promo Voice]

Right?

[Chuck Bryant]

And this is after. In New York, he started a boarding house for a while and co owned a grocery store for a while.

[Josh Clark]

Right?

[Chuck Bryant]

And so like his life is full of him just trying to do these kind of regular things and then being like, nope, gotta go buy a lady and put her on display.

[Josh Clark]

Right. This is after Chuck, by the way. He had come down with smallpox for a while.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, did we miss a smallpox?

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Like this guy had a huge life. But let's get to Joyce Heth, right? Because she is a very controversial part of PT Barnum's life. She was the first, his first foray into show business. And there's no other way to put it. Like he purchased her. She was a slave, an elderly slave who he purchased from another promoter who had been touting her as General George Washington's nursemaid.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yes.

[Josh Clark]

From when George Washington was a child. This is 1835, right?

[Chuck Bryant]

You do the math.

[Josh Clark]

She was supposedly 161 years old.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. So he negotiates a price. He went and saw her and she was blind, she had no teeth. She was partially paralyzed. But she could talk and tell her story.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, she told stories about young George as a boy.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, yeah. And to be fair, she was already being exploited. It's not like he. Which is not great, but it's not like Barnum introduced this into her life.

[Josh Clark]

No, he just purchased her and took it over. Yes, took over the exploitation for money, for $1,000.

[Chuck Bryant]

And he toured with her until she died not that long later, just like a year later, not even in 1836. He made a lot of dough. And it was sort of a watershed moment for him where I think he was like, wait a minute, I've realized that I can get people in a room by cooking up these stories and getting things in the newspaper and printing these posters. And even if, like, if business was down, he would do these crazy things. Like one of them, when business was down, appearing with Heth at one point, he accused her of being a robot. What they called at the time on.

[Josh Clark]

Automaton in an anonymous letter to the editor in a newspaper.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. A robot made of whalebone rubber and springs. So everyone was like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Not only is she George Washington's nursemaid, but she's really a robot.

[Josh Clark]

Right. What that did was it got the people who had been avoiding going to see her because even at the time people were like, this is pure exploitation. This woman is being exhibited like a giraffe would be or something like that. She's an old lady working her 10 to 12 hours a day. Some people think that he worked her to death, literally. And so there was part of the press that was saying and reporting on this with, with great distaste. So there's a segment of American society who would not be caught dead seeing George Washington's 160 year old nursemaid.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

But they would conceivably go see an automaton if that's really what was going on. So he managed to, to dupe the, the very people who were critical of this exploitation that he was undertaking. He. He got everybody in that one.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, yeah, and it gets even worse. Finally, when she passed away, he actually sold tickets to a public autopsy in a saloon so people could come look at this poor woman's insides. And this is where it was finally revealed. Doctor said she's maybe like 80, 81 years old at most.

[Josh Clark]

Right. And this was. So Jane McGrath kind of walks past, like what a controversy this was. Like this guy had been like very much touting that she was the nursemaid. Like he supposedly had the bill of sale to George Washington's father for her. So like he was saying, like, this is legitimately a 106 year old woman. So in this autopsy that he charged for, when it was exposed that she was actually half that age, there was a bit of Disgrace there. And he had to learn to roll with the punches. And it was about this time that. That he basically said to himself, you can take this as a lesson and go on the straight and narrow. Maybe get back into clerking, or you can double, maybe triple and quadruple down on this and see where that goes. And he chose the latter of the two for sure.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right. He sure did. The next thing that he did, the next person that he kind of took under his wing was his greasy, greasy wing was someone called Signor or Signor. Is that senor? Yeah. Why is it spelled that way?

[Josh Clark]

That is the Italian spelling of signor.

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, well, let me turn it on then. Senor Antonio. Antoniono.

[Josh Clark]

Nice.

[Chuck Bryant]

Antonio. Antonio. I added an extra bit in there.

[Josh Clark]

Senor Antonio is another way to say it.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, sure, if you're a dullard.

[Josh Clark]

I'm a bit of a dullard, Chuck. I think you know that after 10 years.

[Chuck Bryant]

So this guy. We're really milking that 10 year thing, huh?

[Josh Clark]

I've got my sysk 10 year army shirt on.

[Chuck Bryant]

I see that. It's very nice.

[Josh Clark]

Thank you. I've been working on my buxomness.

[Chuck Bryant]

You're quite buxom. So Signor Antonio was a balancer. He's one of these guys, like a plate spinner. Walked on stilts, juggles. He could throw things in the air and catch them very fast.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, he's like a hippie.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, exactly. He would be on tour with. He'd had those little sticks. What are those called?

[Josh Clark]

Devil sticks.

[Chuck Bryant]

Devil sticks or a hacky sack.

[Josh Clark]

Any of those things.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, he'd pull a hacky sack out of his ear at any moment. So this guy, he said, all right, you need to be my newest client. I will make you famous. Change your stage name from Signor Antonio to Signor Vivala.

[Josh Clark]

Nice.

[Chuck Bryant]

Because that's a little more, I don't know, exciting, I guess.

[Josh Clark]

I like Senor Antonio.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I do too.

[Josh Clark]

It's a lateral move.

[Chuck Bryant]

Here's the thing, though, is there were a lot of dudes out there spinning plates. So it wasn't like he was so unique. But Barnum thought, you know what? I think you're better than the rest of the. So here's what I'll do. And again, this is just another example of how good he was at promotion. He said, I'll do a free performance for a theater and I'll even be your assistant on stage. And people came. And so the theater said, all right, I guess if people come for free, they'll Pay.

[Josh Clark]

I think what he was saying was he. Yeah, I think that's exactly. I think you're right.

[Chuck Bryant]

He just wowed them enough.

[Josh Clark]

I think that's the impression I have.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

But even still, despite Vivala being genuinely good, he was, I think, head and shoulders above most of his contemporary.

[Chuck Bryant]

Most plate spinners. Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

I think people saw in the press, oh, there's a really good plate spinner. We saw a plate spinner at, you know, at the office last week. So I'm not going to go anywhere to see another plate spinner. I'm certainly not going to pay.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

So Barnum had a pretty good idea, but actually came out of uncomfortable situation that fell into his lap with Roberts. Another plate spinner.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. So this is a rival plate spinner who apparently would go to performance.

[Josh Clark]

He was west coast.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, he was. He was a crip. And he would go to Vivalo's performances and heckle him. I guess you call that plate spinning.

[Josh Clark]

Boo. Terrible plate spinning, stuff like that.

[Chuck Bryant]

And so P.T. barnum cooked up a thing where he was like, all right, I'll offer 1,000American dollars to anyone who can perform Vivala's act in public. Roberts accepted. But here's what really happened is he got together with Roberts and they all three hatched a plan to do these kind of staged competitions.

[Josh Clark]

Right. So they promoted it in the place.

[Chuck Bryant]

Plate spinning competitions.

[Josh Clark]

East coast, west coast plate spinning rivalry is going on right now. It's a hot battle. Everybody's gonna come see this. And everybody did. And in that first performance, Roberts, as was staged, conceded he could not replicate Vivala's act. It was too good. But I would love to see Vivala replicate my act. And I challenge you, Signor Vivala, to replicate my act tomorrow night at this same theater. And they kept going back and forth like that with this staged rivalry that they. They made some cash off of. Thanks to Barnum's ingenuity, they did.

[Chuck Bryant]

Finally, in 1836, the circus comes into the picture. He joined a traveling circus. Barnum did, as a ticket seller, which I take it to mean he doesn't sit in a booth and sell tickets, but he goes around town selling tickets.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Like chambers of commerce or something like that.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And of course, he got a little commish off this thing, so he was making some dough.

[Josh Clark]

Vivala joined that same circus as a performer.

[Chuck Bryant]

Of course, they were attached at the. The hip at that point.

[Josh Clark]

No, that was Chang and Ang Bunker you're thinking of.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's a dad joke.

[Josh Clark]

It totally was.

[Chuck Bryant]

And this one I Thought was a little bit weird. Apparently the circus proprietor, a guy named Turner, was into practical jokes and not very good ones, because this practical joke was. He convinced a crowd that Barnum was the Reverend Ephraim Avery, who had been acquitted of murder. But everyone thought that this guy had committed murder. And back then no one knew what anyone looked like. So he said, this guy is Ephraim Avery. And he almost got lynched, apparently.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, like Ephraim Avery's name was not very well liked in the area. He was. At the very least, he, through having an adulterous affair with a young woman, had induced her to kill herself, or at worst had murdered her to prevent her from having his illegitimate child. But he'd been acquitted. Right. And he's a reverend, did we mention? So, yeah, the crowd, like according to Barnum, almost killed him.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's a real funny joke.

[Josh Clark]

I know. But then later on, Jane says that Barnum got even with him with his own practical joke. I could find nothing anywhere, including in Barnum's autobiography that. That mentions that.

[Chuck Bryant]

I think he covered his toilet in Saran Wrap.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, gross. That is so nasty.

[Chuck Bryant]

No, no, he gave him an upper decker.

[Josh Clark]

Gross. That's even worse.

[Chuck Bryant]

So apparently these guys got into business together and it became a thing where people would go see the circus, where the two ringmasters would kind of go at each other with these practical jokes.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

That became a thing.

[Josh Clark]

So there's a transition going on, another transition. Now he started out store clerking, lotterying, got into show business where it's like basically a Colonel Tom to different performers. And then now he's transitioning into the circus. But by now he's been like a married to the road about as much as he's been married to charity as well. And from all accounts, like, he was very much in love with her. And they were like. He was faithful and they were a real couple, but he was on the road a lot. There's just no if, ands or buts about it. He was out there on the road quite a bit. So transitioning to a circus was basically the same thing. It was just a little bigger of an outfit. So it was like a step up. But you gotta also keep in mind here that he's spending a lot of time on the road at a time when travel was really, really long and really tough.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right. And so he eventually decides working for someone else's circus is for the birds. I'm going to start my own. You buy some horses and wagons. I'm going to get a Clown. You got to have a clown. I think he still had Vivala at the time.

[Josh Clark]

Yep.

[Chuck Bryant]

And started Barnum's grand, scientific and Musical Theater. Toured all over the place for a little while. And then they disbanded.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

Nothing ever seemed to work out for very long.

[Josh Clark]

No. I think that he got fed up. It says, with some of the rivalries, with other showmen, that you would build your whole circus around like an act, and all of a sudden the act would be like, I'm sick of this. I'm sick of being on the road. I'll see you later. And all of a sudden your circus would fall apart. I think they were kind of tenuous outfits.

[Narrator/Advertiser]

Right.

[Josh Clark]

But the thing about Barnum is, like, something about this called to him. Like he would. When his circus collapsed and he was out in the middle of the country on the road and he had to go back home, the first thing he would do is start figuring out his next circus or his next act or whatever it was. He would go back out again. He was indefatigable. Indefatigable in that sense, yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

So, I mean, we'll quickly speed through the next couple of years. He did a little steamboat circus for a little while along the Mississippi River. That didn't come along. He tried to do a respectable business again. Went into business with a guy who manufactured grease paste and cologne. That did all right for a little while, but then that failed. And then this whole time, he still feels that pull to the tent.

[Josh Clark]

Right. He sold illustrated Bibles for a little while.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Finally, here's the thing. He wanted stability. Like, being out on the road was tough. Ask Steve Perry. Right. But he wanted this to be tied to show business in some way. Finally, one day In, I think, 1841, he had another big break or another big vision. There was a place in New York, a museum, and what you would call today a museum that was up for sale in. I'm not sure where it was, but it was in New York, right?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yes.

[Josh Clark]

And it was called Scudder's American Museum. And Barnum heard that Scudder wanted to get out and was putting the whole collection up for 15 grand, which is a substantial amount of money and definitely more money than Barnum had. But he said, that's it right there. I can have a permanent place where people come to me and I can be home with my wife and daughters, but I can still have this daily interaction with show business. I gotta buy that thing.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, and it will also accomplish this is I can still have my freak show performers. But because it's a museum, somehow it has a little bit more respectability because apparently at the time, theaters weren't like they are today. It wasn't like, we're going to the theater. Theaters could be a little bit like a second tier entertainment.

[Josh Clark]

Right. It was like hoi polloi. Tawdry crowds went to the theater that was associated with like burlesque or something like that, or even like human oddities exhibitions, stuff like that. That was theater stuff. A museum like Scudders, like respectable people could go there. So what Barnum did was he bought a museum and then dragged it down into the mud.

[Advertiser/Promo Voice]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

And this whole. The way he financed the museum, I didn't fully understand, to be honest.

[Josh Clark]

Do you want me to explain it?

[Chuck Bryant]

If you want.

[Josh Clark]

Or we could just say he ended up with a Museum in 1841 through a lot of work.

[Chuck Bryant]

And I think that's fair enough because it is a little bit like, you know, Robin, Peter did pay Paul.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

It wasn't just a straight up purchase, let's just say that.

[Josh Clark]

Right. But. So one thing that you can say about this museum, which he renamed Barnum's American Museum, it was a big success. And one of the reasons it was a big success was because he was. He tirelessly worked at finding new and interesting ways to market the thing. Right?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And by. I'm not sure exactly when, but by a very short time after he opened it, I think that same year in 1841, he. He was. He charged 25 cents a person for admission. He had something like 4,000 visitors a day.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

And he took this thing, like I say that he dragged the war museum down in the mud and he definitely added and expanded to the definition of museum. And then he also had this lecture hall where he had like performances that you would see like in a circus or something like that. And he turned this place into an emporium, Just something huge, an enormous spectacle. And something like 850,000 pieces were on display in his museum. So you definitely got your quarter's worth, for sure.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And those are just the pieces. He also, I mean, as far as the circus element, he had everything covered. He had dancers, musicians, plate spinners, ventriloquists.

[Josh Clark]

Well, you got to have the plate spinners.

[Chuck Bryant]

He had little people. He had big people. He had ladies with beards and robots and puppets and animals. He had giraffes and grizzly bears. Like, he really had everything humming on all cylinders at this point.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, he really did. And again, there was still. There was that whole thread of like, you know, there were people being exploited. There were people who were complicit in that. There were people who were Anyone who came to the museum was gawking at the weirdness of these other people or whatever, which again today is very odd to us, but at the time was still odd. That's the thing that I think gets lost on people. There were sideshows and things like that, but Barnum took it to an extraordinary degree and really ran with it and became extremely rich as a result. Actually, should we take a break? I am ready to.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right. The museum's humming along. We're gonna take a break. We'll be back right after this.

[Josh Clark]

If you wanna know, then you're in luck. Just listen up to Josh and Chuck stuff you should know.

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[Josh Clark]

Stuff you should know. Stuff you should.

[Narrator/Advertiser]

Know.

[Josh Clark]

Okay, we're back.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, so we mentioned earlier about the humbug, this kind of hucksterism in his biography there, or autobiography, which was rewritten by himself, by the way, after people read the first version and said, what a jerk.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, yeah, he was, like, just openly boastful and braggart about how much he exploited people and how much he duped the American public.

[Chuck Bryant]

He toned it down a little bit in this. In the revision, but he did talk a little bit about being slightly embarrassed about kind of how shameless he was. But then again, in the next line, he would say, but you know what? This is how everyone is in my business. I'm just better at it than them, basically.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, he said. He said, oh, there's a great quote. I can't find it anywhere, though, where basically, if he. Oh, here it is. If his advertising was more audacious than his competitors, it was not because I had less scruple than they, but more energy, far more ingenuity, and a better foundation for such promises.

[Chuck Bryant]

He thought a lot of himself.

[Josh Clark]

He definitely did. But he also worked pretty hard at it, for sure. And I think if you compared apples to apples at the time, Barnum's jam was way better than anybody else's jam.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, for sure. So he had three really big successes in a row with his museum here. The first one was called the Feejee Mermaid. F E E J E E. This was in 1842, and this was a big deal. He got a man named Levi Lyman or Levy Lyman. He was an old colleague of his, and he said, here's what I'll do. You are now Dr. Jay Griffin. You were a naturalist for the British Lyceum of Natural History, which was not a real place. And you were in ownership of what we'll call the Fiji Mermaid, which was a. What did we call it in the taxidermy? Rogue taxidermy. Yeah, it was rogue taxidermy.

[Josh Clark]

It totally was.

[Chuck Bryant]

It was like a jackalope, except what was it? It was a head of a baboon, torso of an orangutan, and a fish tail, just for good measure.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And as far back as they can tell, it was probably made by a Japanese sailor. In the 1820s. And it passed through a few hands before Barnum finally leased it and put it on display.

[Chuck Bryant]

I wonder where that thing is now.

[Josh Clark]

I looked. I don't know. There are other Fiji Mermaids out there. It was like kind of a thread of rogue taxidermy in the mid 19th century, and I think Harvard has one on display. But I looked to find out where P.T. barnum's is, and I can't find it.

[Chuck Bryant]

It's probably like on Richard Branson's headboard or something.

[Josh Clark]

It may have actually burned up in one of the many fires that plagued P.T. barnum's life.

[Chuck Bryant]

Sadly, things are gonna get fiery here in this last bit, too.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. Well, anyway, let's get back to the Fiji Mermaid, though.

[Chuck Bryant]

Okay.

[Josh Clark]

Okay. So Dr. Jay Griffin is touring with this. Supposedly touring with this mermaid, right?

[Chuck Bryant]

Sure.

[Josh Clark]

And Barnum. But the guy's actually not out there touring. Barnum basically creates out a whole cloth, a tour of this mermaid, writes letters about how great this thing is in different people's names, and then mails them to friends that live around the country and asks them to mail those letters in to newspapers in New York talking about how this thing has to be seen to be believed.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. So people came far and wide to see this piece of taxidermy.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. And by the way, this whole Jay Griffin thing, like, this guy was posing as him. He was giving public lectures made up as a naturalist, a British naturalist, and he was an American promoter. He had nothing to do with it. He was just making all this stuff up. But he would give, like, public lectures on it.

[Chuck Bryant]

I love it.

[Josh Clark]

Like, the audacity. It's amazing.

[Chuck Bryant]

So the second big victory was when he met up with a four year old named Charles Stratton. He was a little person, his cousin, actually. And he stopped growing when he was 2ft tall. And he changed his name, rebranded him as General Tom Thumb. And that name probably rings a bell. They became very famous together. He said he was 11 years old and they were a media and ticket selling sensation.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, they would be, like, invited in to meet, like, royalty. Whatever country they toured, he was a huge hit at the museum. It was like a big deal for both Barnum and Charles Stratton.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right.

[Josh Clark]

A sensation. That's the best way to put it.

[Chuck Bryant]

And the final big victory of the trifecta, when he was in Europe with Stratton, he heard of Ginny Lynn. She was a Swedish opera singer. And this was the kind of thing where he was like, you know what? She doesn't Have a beard. All she is is a talented singer, but she's amazing. And this would really legitimize me if I did, like a straight up act for a change.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

So even though she's big over here, they don't know about her in America, and she could blow up there. So I'm going to offer her $1,000 per performance, which was a ton of money and a big risk, but he made about a half a million dollars with her, or more, who he branded the Swedish Nightingale by trotting her around the United States. And she was like, beyond a sensation in the United States.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, that was another thing, too. I mean, she was pretty big in Europe, but I don't think she was well known, if known at all in America. But by the time she showed up for the tour starting in 1850, he had managed to, like you said, just turn her into a national sensation. Like people had, like Beatlemania for this lady.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

This article says that she was not a very nice person. I didn't see that anywhere else, and I actually saw that. So after the contract between her and Barnum was up in 1851, she continued to tour America with, like an actual orchestra, I believe. And she made $300,000 in 1850s money from this whole American tour and donated every single penny of it to Sweden's public school system, which was burgeoning at the time. Yeah. So I don't know what Jane was talking about, but I think she just kind of didn't find America very cultured is what I get. But apparently Jane didn't like that.

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, America probably wasn't very cultured in 1850.

[Josh Clark]

Right. But I thought that was pretty neat, man. She took all that money and donated it to the public school system in Sweden.

[Chuck Bryant]

Man, that's crazy.

[Josh Clark]

But, yeah. So Barnum was not legitimized thanks to that. I think it actually didn't go all that well. But he did enrich himself thoroughly through Jenny Lind, for sure.

[Chuck Bryant]

That's right. But he would go broke again because he's P.T. barnum, and that's what he does. In the 1850s, he bought up a lot of land near Bridgeport, Connecticut, because he wanted to make East Bridgeport the happening place. He invested in the Jerome Clock Company, wanted to relocate it to East Bridgeport. It was not a smart thing to do. The company went bankrupt. And all of a sudden he was broke again. And this is fire number one. He moves out of his mansion because he's broke. And then after he had moved out, the mansion burned down.

[Josh Clark]

Right. But if he had to move out, you would think that he had relinquished ownership. So why does it matter as far as his life goes? Oh, unless he had a bunch of money stuffed into the insulation or something. I don't know, Breaking Bad thing going on.

[Chuck Bryant]

It might have just been a footnote or something. Or he may. Maybe he did. No, I guess if he had moved out, then he didn't own it.

[Josh Clark]

I just thought that was a little weird.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

So he was in debt, like big time. Like broke, bankrupt, in debt because of this terrible clock company thing, which you should always take as a reason to never put all of your eggs in one basket, which I guess is what he did. But he managed to emerge from debt after I think five years. And he ended up during this time. He pawned his museum, but he also put the name of the museum in his wife's name, who was not bankrupt. And so they were able to make some income off of the lease for the museum. And then when he managed to buy the museum back after five years, he just went like right back to it. Like he didn't miss a beat.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, I mean, this ten year period from 1850 to 1860, he went broke. He did the smart thing, like he said with his wife. He started giving lectures about making money. He went on tour again with Tom Thumb. He got a dead whale. He bought a dead whale and said, surely people will pay money to see this. So he was still doing all this crazy stuff. He bought a hippopotamus. He bought two beluga whales. Like it's just crazy the things that he was doing.

[Josh Clark]

Also, Chuck, we have to say that the title of the lecture tour, the Art of Money Getting.

[Chuck Bryant]

It'S not even the art of making money. The Art of Money Getting.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. So. His star's starting to rise again. At the very least, his fortunes are reversing from just doing any kind of work he can get his hands on. And then all along this way, like, Barnum was a pretty. He was what's known as a Jacksonian Democrat. Andrew Jackson was a populist president. And he was, I think, didn't we lay, he was the one who was responsible for the Trail of Tears. Right. I'm pretty sure that was Andrew Jackson. It was. Remember our two part on Trail of Tears?

[Narrator/Advertiser]

I do.

[Josh Clark]

Okay, so he was. He was P.T. barnum was of this man's party. He was Jackson supporter. And then the Civil War breaks out and all of a sudden Barnum has this like total conversion. He was not like an outright bigoted racist who worked to keep African Americans enslaved, Worked as a Confederate sympathizer, Anything like that. He was fairly unremarkable and pretty normal. Like, for example, at his museum, if you were black, you couldn't come in. It was a segregated museum, but that was like a lot of businesses at the time. So he was a very normal, pedestrian person as far as his politics go and socially as well. But something happened around the time of the Civil War, and he converted and actually became an abolitionist, huge Union supporter, and just basically became patriotic and dedicated to this idea of preserving the Union and abolishing slavery.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And he used that museum as a sort of ground zero for his cause. He had speeches, he had plays that sort of endorsed this. He had Southern copperheads that were protesting outside. They threatened his life. And then he said, at this point, you know what, I might as well just get into politics legitimately. And In April of 1865, he actually won an election to the Connecticut General assembly, where he worked really hard to ratify the 13th Amendment and supported another cause to allow the rights of black people to vote in Connecticut.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. So, like, he was legitimately dedicated to the cause of abolition, which is totally bizarre. Right. And about this time, too, is when the revisions to his autobiography are starting to get much more contrite, much less boastful, and even more apologetic. So he, like, something happened and he was converted to the right side of history, I guess you could call it, you know?

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. So here's where fire number two comes in. After a few months after this election, his museum burned down along with the animals in the exhibit, which is super sad.

[Josh Clark]

Yes.

[Chuck Bryant]

It's the first of, like, two animal fires. He opened a new museum a couple of months after that. Three years later, that museum burned down. Didn't want to rebuild that one. And then finally, in the 1870s, like, it took a long, long time before he became the P.T. barnum that most people know as the big circus guy.

[Josh Clark]

Right.

[Chuck Bryant]

The Greatest show on Earth guy.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah. He hooked up with Barnum and Bailey after hooking up with a guy named William Cameron. Coupe or coo I'm not sure which one it is. But he had P.T. barnum's grand traveling museum, Menagerie, Caravan and circus.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. Little wordy.

[Josh Clark]

That was 1871. And then did you cover the 1872 fire? No, there was another fire that killed the circus animals at the winter camp, which is on the site of where Madison Square Garden is right now. There's a horrific fire in the winter camp in 1872. Killed a bunch of other Circus animals, which. This is one of the reasons why years later, Barnum and Bailey's Ringling Brothers Circus went away, was because of animals.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. And he, I mean, he was, by the time this fire happened at the. What was it called? The Hippotheotron, I think. So he was very successful with that circus. He started with Cooper or Coup. They made about 400 grand in the first year. And it was the very first circus to kind of do the traditional thing that we all think of as travel by train. Acrobats, clowns, exotic animals, stuff like that. And that's when it officially was called the Greatest show on Earth. So the Hippotheatron, such a strange word, burns down. And then he's visiting his friend in England, John Fish, and this is when his wife Charity passes away.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

And as Jane put it, he was supposedly too grief stricken to return for her funeral, but the grief must have subsided quickly because he secretly married fish's daughter at 63 years old. He married 22 year old Nancy Fish about three and a half months later after his wife passed.

[Josh Clark]

No word about her teeth.

[Chuck Bryant]

No, no. Or her bra size.

[Josh Clark]

So they got married secretly 14 weeks after charity died. And then when they came to the U.S. they had a public wedding nine months after that. So, yeah, he married her and I guess he was with her until his death. Right?

[Chuck Bryant]

Well, yeah, in 1860, or, I'm sorry, 75, he took a break from the circus, got back into politics and became the mayor of Bridgeport for a little while.

[Josh Clark]

Not East Bridgeport, though. He's talking trash about them East Bridgeport.

[Chuck Bryant]

And apparently he gets a little on his high horse now because even though he was a drinker, pretty heavy drinker for a while, he quit drinking and then campaigned against like Sunday sales in saloons and kind of got a little self righteous, it seems like.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, he also sponsored the Comstock Law in Connecticut, which banned contraception, which puts a lot of onus onto the ladies. And it was in place apparently until 1965. And there's a really important word in there, Chuck. Sponsored. Like that means you're the person who brought it to the General Assembly. You didn't just vote yes on it. You're the one who said, everybody, everybody, let's ban contraception for 100 years. And it was successful, actually. So, yeah, he was. He was a weird dude with a lot of different weird thoughts about things that were sometimes very contradictory over time.

[Chuck Bryant]

And then finally, ironically, here at the very end of this podcast, in 1880, he partnered with one James A. Bailey for P.T. barnum's Great London Combined.

[Josh Clark]

That's a terrible name for a circus.

[Chuck Bryant]

Worst circus name ever. Then you have the word circus in there. And this is when he got Jumbo the elephant, which Jumbo was a legendary attraction until 1885, when Jumbo was killed.

[Josh Clark]

By a train and probably caught fire, too.

[Chuck Bryant]

And did you know, we were just in Boston, that Tufts University, their mascot is Jumbo the Elephant?

[Josh Clark]

No, I didn't know that.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, my buddy Robert explained that to me. And apparently Barnum was one of the early. What do you call the people who give universities a lot of money?

[Josh Clark]

Endowment donors, grant person.

[Chuck Bryant]

Sure. He was all of that.

[Josh Clark]

What is that word? I know what you're talking about.

[Chuck Bryant]

He was all that to Tufts. And so Jumbo the Elephant became their mascot. And I think. Cause it does say in here, he displayed Jumbo's preserved hide and skeleton. I think it was, or maybe is on display at Tufts.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, wow.

[Chuck Bryant]

I'm not sure if it still is, but I think at one time it was.

[Josh Clark]

So wait a minute. This guy also gave a substantial amount of money to help found a university?

[Chuck Bryant]

I don't know. Found. But to the university that's a benefactor. Is that the word, benefactor?

[Advertiser/Promo Voice]

Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Maybe to found it. I'm not sure of the timeline there.

[Josh Clark]

Man, that's really crazy. He did a lot of stuff.

[Chuck Bryant]

So go Jumbos.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, the fighting Jumbos or the passive aggressive Jumbos or whatever.

[Chuck Bryant]

The stomping Jumbos.

[Josh Clark]

There you go. That's pretty good.

[Chuck Bryant]

So Barnum and Bailey weren't together for too long. Initially, they parted ways, but then again joined in 1887, ultimately, finally. For the Barnum and Bailey Circus.

[Josh Clark]

Yep. They broke up, and then they got back together. And then it stayed that way until 2016, I think. And then the circus finally closed down.

[Chuck Bryant]

I went to that thing as a kid. I think we talked about that.

[Josh Clark]

Sure, I did, too.

[Chuck Bryant]

And now we will only go to the Big Apple Circus, as you know. And I took a long break because Emily and I were tired of going. And then now that we got a kid, my mom was like, you know, you gotta start going again.

[Josh Clark]

You have to.

[Chuck Bryant]

So we went this year.

[Josh Clark]

How was it?

[Chuck Bryant]

Oh, it's okay. You know, I'm not the biggest circus guy, I've realized.

[Josh Clark]

Are you afraid of clowns?

[Chuck Bryant]

No, not these.

[Josh Clark]

Are you afraid of acrobats?

[Chuck Bryant]

I could take these clowns. No. And actually, the acrobats at the Big Apple Circus are the. What's it called? The famous ones. The family.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, the Flying Zambonis. Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

Or was it Zambonis? Not Zambonis.

[Josh Clark]

I don't remember. It's something like that.

[Chuck Bryant]

But it's them. It's still that family.

[Josh Clark]

Wow, that's really. That's something.

[Chuck Bryant]

And they, you know, they did a great job, but at the end of the day, I'm just kind of about a third of the way through, I'm looking at my watch, you know.

[Josh Clark]

Oh, I gotcha. I've seen a couple Cirque du Soleils. Those are the last circuses I saw.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, those are okay.

[Josh Clark]

But we saw the Michael Jackson one in Las Vegas, and man alive, was it good. Yeah.

[Chuck Bryant]

There's a Michael Jackson Cirque.

[Josh Clark]

Yes. Dude. And I have to tell you, like, I'm not some die hard Michael Jackson fan, but you don't have to be this to appreciate this. It is amazing. Like, it's worth going to Vegas to go see who's Michael Jackson turning around and going home.

[Chuck Bryant]

I don't know.

[Josh Clark]

There's probably a few. I'll bet we hear from some Michael Jackson anti Michael Jackson fans.

[Chuck Bryant]

Finally, 1890, P.T. barnum has a stroke during a performance. He has one weird, strange wish at the end of his life is to have his obituary published before he dies. Yeah, I don't know why I did that. Maybe to.

[Josh Clark]

I don't know either, I think. I don't know. But that's a heck of a way to end this podcast.

[Chuck Bryant]

Maybe he wanted to feel the public outpouring or something.

[Josh Clark]

It could be that, or he wanted to proofread it or something. I don't know. But if he wanted. If that was what he was after, why didn't they just send it to him ahead of time? They actually published it.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah. That's weird. Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Well, we'll find out one day when we die and go to heaven and meet P.T. barnum.

[Narrator/Advertiser]

Agreed.

[Josh Clark]

So, you got anything else?

[Chuck Bryant]

Nope.

[Josh Clark]

There's probably tons more that we missed. And if you know something about P.T. barnum that we didn't know, let us know. We'll just add to this guy's story over time. Okay. In the meantime, if you want to read this great article by Jay McGrath, type in PT Barnum in the Search bar at How Stuff Works. Since I said search bar, it's time for listener mail.

[Chuck Bryant]

All right, I'm going to call this Unabomber follow up. Okay, I was into that one.

[Josh Clark]

The Unabomber.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah.

[Josh Clark]

Yeah, that was a good episode. That was a good 10th anniversary episode.

[Chuck Bryant]

Milk. Hey, guys. Congratulations on 10 years. Milk.

[Josh Clark]

Milk.

[Chuck Bryant]

I look forward to many more listen to Unabomber and thought I would share something that covers a related, if somewhat different, aspect of the story. About 10 years ago, when I was still a wee law student taking a legal ethics course, one of the situations we discussed was Ted Kaczynski and the ethical dilemma his lawyers faced. Criminal defendants have the absolute right to dictate certain aspects of their representation, like whether or not to plead guilty. But there are other aspects of the representation that the lawyer controls, the most notable being trial strategy. While lawyers should always listen to the client's overall goals, sometimes it's necessary to override a client's wishes on how to achieve their goals because the client's desired strategy is either legally incorrect, unethical, or simply ill advised. Kaczynski's case presented an interesting ethical problem for the attorneys because he refused to allow them to pursue what they perceived to be his best defense and his only hope of avoiding the death penalty, namely claiming he was not guilty by reason of mental disease, known as the insanity defense. The conflict was that on one hand, his attorneys had a duty to zealously represent him, but Kaczynski objected so vehemently to the chosen defense that at one point he attempted to go pro se, AKA represent himself, which would have been an utter disaster. As you noted, he pled guilty, so we'll never know what they would have decided to do had he gone to trial. But his case is one which most lawyers thought about or discussed at some point in their careers. That is good. Fordham Law. Go Rams. And that is from Deb.

[Josh Clark]

Thanks Deb. Appreciate that. Yeah, I remember we were kind of saying like his whole thing was he didn't he pled guilty because he didn't want to plead insane because his ramblings would have been the ramblings of a convicted insane madman.

[Chuck Bryant]

Yeah, very interesting.

[Josh Clark]

Again, thanks Deb. We always love hearing from lawyers out there. That whole joke about lawyers at the bottom of the sea being a good start. We have always found it tasteless.

[Chuck Bryant]

Sure.

[Josh Clark]

So get in touch with us. You can send us and Jerry an email to stuffpodcastheartradio.com.

[Chuck Bryant]

Stuff youf Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts MyHeartRA radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

[Narrator/Advertiser]

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[Josh Clark]

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[Chuck Bryant]

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[Chuck Bryant]

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