The Greatest SCAM on Earth | TMT 169

Summary

Too Many Tabs with Pearlmania500

Episode 169: The Greatest SCAM on Earth

Date: March 22, 2026
Host: Mr. Pearlmania and Mrs. Pearlmania

---

Episode Overview

This episode takes a deep dive into the real history of P.T. Barnum—contrasting the mythologized, sanitized "Greatest Showman" musical/move with the darker, more complex, and ethically fraught reality. The hosts, a husband-wife duo, mix humor, exasperation, and robust research as they detail how Barnum’s real-life actions ranged from innovative marketing and political activism to exploitation, deception, and outright horrific behavior that is routinely omitted from pop culture portrayals.

Content Warning:
The hosts explicitly warn at [01:32] that this episode contains graphic historical content, especially regarding racial exploitation and the treatment of those considered "freaks" or human curiosities in the 19th century. Listener discretion is advised.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Musical vs. Reality

• The hosts begin by critiquing "The Greatest Showman" (2017), which Mr. Pearlmania describes as "the greatest show pile of shit I've ever seen" [03:14].
• The film is lambasted for its inaccuracies, millennial-targeted music, and for glossing over—if not outright erasing—Barnum’s morally dubious activities.
• Quote: "That's why I had to get jacked by Hugh too many times. Remember to smile." – Mr. Pearlmania [02:47]
• The movie's central characters Zac Efron’s "Carlisle" and Zendaya’s trapeze artist are fiction, introduced for manufactured drama and diversity [70:48].

2. P.T. Barnum: Early Life and Journalism

• Real name: Phineas Taylor Barnum, born 1810 in Connecticut [06:02].
• Married Charity Hallett at 19; she was 21—a rare age dynamic for the time [07:12].
• Opened a general store, then founded a newspaper, The Herald of Freedom, at age 23 [09:09]. Used it to lambast church corruption and local politics.
• Barnum’s paper was sued for libel three times; he even served 60 days in jail after being found guilty of libeling a church deacon [18:10]. He famously continued to run his paper from a “decked out” cell, enjoying public support [19:00].
• Quote: “I do love the idea of P.T. Barnum being the print version of Candace Owens." – Mr. Pearlmania [16:16]

3. Barnum’s American Museum: The Pre-Circus Empire

• Barnum purchased and rebranded the Scudder Museum in Manhattan, creating Barnum's American Museum in 1841 [22:18].
• Museum was a combination zoo, freak show, wax museum, and more: featured dioramas, panoramas, waxworks, glassblowers, phrenologists, live and stuffed animals (from elephants to beluga whales), a trunk "Jesus's disciples sat under," a flea circus, an oyster bar, and pretty baby contests [26:16 - 35:07].
• Memorable Moment/Tangent: The egress scam—he posted signs marked "This Way to the Egress," tricking people into exiting because they thought it was another exhibit [45:54].
• Hosted pretty baby contests (precursors to modern pageants), judging "Prettiest baby, Fattest baby, Finest triplet," [32:48], drew tens of thousands.
• Fraudulent exhibits included the Fiji Mermaid (a monkey sewn to a fish tail) and others [37:52].

4. Barnum’s Marketing Genius and Scams

• He routinely manipulated media by printing exaggerated or negative reviews to draw crowds—deploying "all press is good press" decades before it became cliché [42:10].
• Ran outlandish, misleading print ads, a tradition compared to modern TikTok shop scams and internet clickbait [43:39].
• In the museum, promoted deception both in marketing and in routing guests out faster to increase turnover [45:55].

5. Onstage Diversity and Exploitation

• Barnum staged performances by "oddities": little people (not the word he used), giants, conjoined twins (Chang and Eng), bearded ladies, tattooed men, and ethnic acts including Native Americans and, controversially, blackface minstrels [40:48].
• Quote: “He bought a four year old with dwarfism.” – Mrs. Pearlmania [85:11]
• General Tom Thumb (Charles Stratton), adopted by Barnum, became an international celebrity. The podcast laments the erasure of his real significance and humanity in the film [84:33 – 88:55].

6. The Jenny Lind (Swedish Nightingale) Saga

• Barnum brought Swedish opera star Jenny Lind to America, paying her a massive advance. She insisted on charitable and equitable terms, including access for lower-income attendees [58:07].
• Contrary to the film, there was no great love story—she found Barnum’s relentless marketing distasteful and broke the contract amicably [66:29].
• Quote: “They character-assassinated her... She's described to me as a plain-dressed woman who only cares about orphans." – Mr. Pearlmania [67:47]

7. Circus Creation and Later Success

• Only at age 60 did Barnum found his traveling circus, under the tongue-twisting title "Barnum’s Grand Traveling Museum, Menagerie, Caravan and Hippodrome," later shortened to "The Greatest Show on Earth" [82:34].
• Introduced the 3-ring circus, and made Jumbo the Elephant a star [83:28].
• Purchased his own train—forever linking the circus to railroad imagery [92:51].

8. Disasters and Fires

• His museum survived a Confederate arson plot (the “Confederate Army of Manhattan” was just 8 saboteurs) [49:49], but ultimately burned down in 1865 because of a gas leak [52:29].
• Animals trapped inside were killed either by fire or by police as they attempted escape, including the beluga whales whose tanks he tried—and failed—to break to douse flames [54:52].
• “He did Reverse Free Willy. Yes, he did murder Willie." – Mr. Pearlmania [55:00]

9. Politics, Real Estate Schemes & Social Morality

• Barnum was a temperance (anti-alcohol) zealot and real estate speculator.
• Built grand (and stylistically absurd) mansions in Connecticut, including Iranistan (Byzantine/Turkish domes, plowed by a live elephant, later burned down) [77:41].
• Served as mayor, promoted “moral” entertainment, and invented the theatrical matinee to lure a respectable, sober, family audience [72:03].
• Memorable quote: "No, this movie brought gaslighting to our living room." – Mr. Pearlmania [106:44]

10. The Darkest Truths: Slavery and Exploitation

• Barnum left the Democratic Party over its stance on slavery, became an anti-slavery Republican, and even acknowledged his own former slaveholding: "I whipped my slaves. I ought to have been whipped a thousand times for this myself." [96:21]
• His first “showman” act in New York was to lease and exhibit Joyce Heth, an elderly, blind, and paralyzed enslaved woman whom he falsely billed as George Washington’s 161-year-old nurse [97:20]. He forced her to work 10-12 hours daily; upon her death, he charged the public 50 cents each to view her public autopsy in a saloon, marketing it as proof of her ancient age [99:10].
• The hosts do not hold back their horror and outrage:
  Quote: "He had her chopped up in a fucking bar to count her bones like they were tree rings." – Mr. Pearlmania [99:25]

11. The Myth vs. The Memory

• The sanitized portrayal in The Greatest Showman erases anything difficult or horrifying for modern audiences.
• Mrs. Pearlmania reveals that Hugh Jackman was specifically cast in the role as a “likable” stand-in for Barnum as part of a multi-year, heavily marketed project, backed by Rupert Murdoch (to whom Jackman is personally close) [100:07].

---

Notable Quotes & Moments

• “That's the whole thing about this podcast. I make you upsetty spaghetti for the shits and gigs for the rest of us.” – Mrs. Pearlmania [05:22]
• “He bought a four year old with dwarfism.” – Mrs. Pearlmania [85:11]
• “He had her chopped up in a fucking bar to count her bones like they were tree rings.” – Mr. Pearlmania [99:25]
• “No, this movie brought gaslighting to our fucking living room.” – Mr. Pearlmania [106:44]
• "She dies, 1873. Who? Charity, the wife." – Mrs. Pearlmania [105:13]
• "I am apoplectic. This is fucking insane..." – Mr. Pearlmania's reaction to the Joyce Heth story [99:42]
• "Wolverine, you fucking bag of shit." – Mr. Pearlmania on Hugh Jackman starring as Barnum [103:05]

---

Timeline of Key Segments

| Timestamp | Topic/Segment | |-----------|---------------| | 01:32 | Content warning and episode premise | | 03:12 | Critique/"Greatest Showman" movie | | 06:02 | P.T. Barnum’s early life and marriage | | 09:09 | Newspaper career, libel trials | | 22:18 | Barnum’s American Museum: buyout and attractions | | 24:33 | “Freak show” beginnings, waxworks, and curiosities | | 32:48 | Pretty baby contests & spectacle | | 37:52 | The Fiji Mermaid myth debunked | | 42:10 | Marketing genius and scams | | 45:54 | The "egress" prank | | 49:49 | Confederate arson, museum fire | | 58:07 | Jenny Lind saga and touring | | 70:48 | Circus formation at age 60, 3-ring innovation | | 84:33 | General Tom Thumb’s real prominence | | 97:20 | The Joyce Heth atrocity – Barnum’s true beginnings | | 99:10 | Public autopsy horror | | 106:44 | End-of-life, hypocrisy, legacy |

---

The Hosts’ Tone and Final Thoughts

Tone:
The hosts blend snark, righteous anger, and darkly comic asides, oscillating between outrage at both historical facts and their pop culture erasure. They frequently break for banter, meta-references to their own relationship and podcast “bits”, and running gags about millennial aesthetic and marketing.

Final Takeaways:

• The Greatest Showman does not merely omit, but aggressively rewrites, Barnum’s history for comfort and commercial appeal—effectively erasing truths about exploitation, racism, and American entertainment history.
• Barnum was a contradictory figure: a master of marketing, a political shapeshifter, a showman whose innovations still shape American spectacle culture... and a perpetrator of scams, exploitation, and outright abuse.
• The hosts are unflinching in refusing to let “feel good” pop culture blind their listeners to history’s very real, ugly details.
• “Not making this would have been better”—the common refrain about Hollywood’s whitewashing of history [107:29].

---

For Listeners:
If you think you know P.T. Barnum from the movies or Broadway, this episode will shatter your illusions—with receipts, dark humor, and palpable exasperation.

[End of Summary]

Transcript

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Ever notice how ads always pop up at the worst moments when the killer's identity is about to be revealed during that perfect meditation flow. On Amazon Music, we believe in keeping you in the moment. That's why we've got millions of ad free podcast episodes so you can stay completely immersed in every story, every reveal, every breath. Download the Amazon Music app and start listening to your favorite podcasts ad free included with Prime. So you're running out of closet space. The good news? You don't need to stop shopping. You just need to start selling with the RealReal. The RealReal is the world's largest and most trusted resource for authenticated luxury resale. Whether it's that mini bag that can't even fit your phone or those boots you never fully broke in, the RealReal handles everything from photography and copywriting to shipping and pricing. So you can just sit back, get paid, and make room for things that actually feel like you. And with 10,000 new arrivals every single day from top designers like Prada, Celine, Louis Vuitton, and Loewe, all for up to 90% off retail, you're bound to find something perfectly on brand to fill that extra closet space with. Plus, right now you can get an extra $100 to shop when you sell for the first time. Make room for what feels like you go to therealreal.com to start selling and get your extra $100 to keep [e-mail] that's therealreal.com terms apply

[Mr. Pearlmania]

for the second time in too many tabs History we're putting a content warning at the beginning of this episode. Mrs. Pearlmania and I are well aware that many, many, many of our listeners listen or watch this show with children present. And that's fine, that's good, usually. But on this episode, we're talking about P.T. barnum. Many people think of him as the circus man or the character that Hugh Jackman played in a musical. Well, we're here to remind you that P.T. barnum was a man who existed before the Civil War in America. And what people found entertaining before the Civil War in America are now considered crimes. Horrific crimes, some that may induce nightmares to younger children. We highly recommend that you put headphones on or watch it privately before a kid hears or sees this, just because of the graphic nature of some of the content that we cover at the very end of this episode. Thank you. And now let's cut back to me an hour and 45 minutes ago before he learned way too much. Today's episode is about circuses, the history of the circuses. Right, Mrs. P?

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Sorta.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

What is it really about then, P.T.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

barnum.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Oh, that's why we had to watch that movie.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

That's why we watched that Hugh Jackman musical.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

That's why I had to get jacked by Hugh too many times. Remember to smile. Welcome to Too Many Tabs, a podcast where a husband and wife duo sit next to each other in front of crumbling wallpaper. And today.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Sitting next to each other and what's feeling like I'm going to throw it out there.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Crumbling marriage. What? You made me watch a Hugh Jackman musical.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah. I made you watch the Greatest Showman.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Yeah. And it was the greatest show pile of shit.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

I've ever seen.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

I can't even tell you it was good. I can't even lie.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

No. 9 songs, all of which were millen. Millennial Stomp. Woo. Musical Suspender slapping.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Boot tapping.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah, a lot of that.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

All of that. A little bit of that. A little bit of that. Hugh Jackman with a weird filter at one point on his face. Because they were trying to make Hugh Jackman look 20.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Young.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

He wasn't young. He was old then. He doesn't even have Wolverine powers.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

He's still old now.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

He's old now.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Older than ever.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

And. And Zac Efron showing up.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yep.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

That wasn't great.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

What do you mean?

[Mr. Pearlmania]

The only good part was the bartender. Anyway, why did I have to watch the great. An hour and 45 minute musical with only nine songs.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Oh. Oh. Because I wanted to do an Episode. Episode on P.T. barnum. And I wanted you to be prepared. I wanted you to understand the lore.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

There was no prepared. I could feel the whole time I was watching that, I was like, I don't think that's right. I. I don't know when this is even supposed to be set. They were just like, it's the 1800s in New York. And I'm like, but when in the 1800s? The 1800s is a very vibrant and violent time.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah, we've covered it before.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

I'm pretty sure this movie took place during Gangs of New York Times. Martin Scorsese's Gangs of New York.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

But instead it felt very much like I was at a millennial burger joint watching people go, oh, but this lady has a beard.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Oh, we do think we shoestring French fries out of a metal cup.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

We do things differently here at this museum.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Ah, aioli, aioli. Listen, okay, let me tell you about them because I needed you to see it, to understand. Number one, why I don't like it. And number two, why it was so wrong that it made me need to do all of this research about P.T. barnum so I could talk to you about it because I have too much knowledge in my brain and I need to tell you.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

So you made me sit through a musical.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yes.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

So I would feel mad and bad.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yes.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

So you could then tell me about the main character.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yes.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Of the musical.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

That's the whole thing about this podcast.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Okay.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

I make you upsetty spaghetti for the shits and gigs for the rest of us.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

We've done 169 episodes.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Oh, really?

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Not counting. This is episode 169.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Okay.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

That is not counting book clubs where you've read a book to me. Story, reports, rebrand. That's not counting the. The after parties. That's not counting vibing with the food idiot, which is exclusive on the Patreon. Yeah. Just of too many tabs. Formerly known as Permania 500, the podcast. Yeah. We've done 169 episodes. But this one. Yeah, this one you made me sit through an hour and 45 minutes. Stomp. Whoop. Musical.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yes.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Okay.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Okay, so P.T. barnum, his full name is Phineas Taylor Barnum.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

I know that because Hugh Jackman says it repeatedly throughout the movie.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

He was born in 1810 in Connecticut.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

He was born in Connecticut.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

He was born in Connecticut.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Okay. They do not make that clear in the movie.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

They just kind of walk to the water and you're supposed to know that that's Connecticut.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

And they. They also. It doesn't even have, like, a New England feel to it. No, I don't even think Connecticut really has a New England feel to it, though. Connecticut is just.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Any more fights with New England people. You need to stay.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

No, no, I only fight with people from Maine. Okay. Here, from Connecticut, I passed through 195.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

When he was 15 years old, his father passed away.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Whose father?

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

P.T.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

barnum. Okay, I thought we're talking about Hugh Jackman.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

No, P.T. barnum.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

P.T. barnes. Which they showed in the musical. Yeah, they showed a young P.T. barnum, and that's where he got the top hat from. Because God forbid, a musical, God forbid any modern movie not explained to you, where exactly everything comes from.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

They have to spoon feed you things. They do. So the. In the movie, he was, like 9 when he died, but in real life, he was 15. Anyway, at age 19, he gets married to a woman named Charity Hallett, and she's 21.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Okay, so that is. That's Michelle Williams in the movie.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

And they do make a big deal about that. But let me just dial back here. They tried to show. They showed him going up to get. Wasn't it Chastity?

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Charity.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Charity. They go up to talk to Charity and her dad, he's like, I'm going to marry her. And they put, like a. They put, like, a TikTok age filter on him.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

He looks weird.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

It does look bad.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Hugh Jackman looks weird. Michelle Williams does not look 21.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

No.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Hugh Jackman looks like he's about 45.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yep.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

At least. Yeah. Hard 45. Australian. 45. And Michelle Williams looks like a widower, because she is. And they're supposed to be 19 and 21.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah. Listen, millennials are able to handle this because we grew up with TV shows that show high schools, but where all the high school people were actually, like, in their 20s, mid-20s.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

RIP James Vanderbeek.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

So, like, I think we're just used to it. Also, I grew up watching 90210.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

So like, the same idea of, like, the Melrose Place, that it's an over. Everybody was like, 30. I'm in high school.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Okay, all right, keep going.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

So my brain's. Okay. Okay. So he gets married to an older woman.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

You didn't. You didn't clock that Older woman.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Well, that's nice. Can I just say, after the last couple years that we've had Epstein files hearing that he married someone two years older.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Nice. I'll give him that. Was she rich?

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

I don't. I didn't actually look into her that much.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

You didn't look into her that much?

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

There was so much to cover with him.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Okay. Because the whole movie, like, half the movie is about. Supposed to be, like, their love. Well, it's like the. It's like a love story of all times and, like, all these different things. And he realizes by the end of the movie, oh, maybe I'm not actually just, like, a malignant narcissist. Maybe I should be with my family.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Maybe. They did have four daughters. Four.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

They only showed two in the movie.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Two of them died.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

That actually tracks. Yeah. Okay.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

So he opens a general store.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

There was a. Can I tell you, there was a moment there where I was like, they wrote two daughters off. And it's like, no, the Lord wrote two daughters off. Whoa.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Whoa. So he opens a General Store in 1831 that he runs in Connecticut.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Okay.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

But he also, at the same time, decides he wants to get into the newspaper business.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Oh, okay. Okay. All right. Now I'm mad again.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Why are you mad?

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Because in the movie, the News. The only newspaper he has.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Okay.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

In the movie is he is when he was. He's a poor homeless kid with a dead dad and a top hat, and he's starving.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

An orphan.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

He tries to steal some bread.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

And then a lady with a weird face gives him an apple. Like that's legit. Like, they're like, no, look, he's being like. Throughout this movie, he's being saved by freaks. Like that's their whole thing. He's being saved by people he's gonna eventually put in the shot show. But there's a whole part where he's sitting next to basically a pile of old newspapers.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yes.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

And then he picks them up and he just starts selling old newspapers like they're new.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Reselling old papers like they don'.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Have dates on them.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Well, that's that. They took some liberties with that.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Okay. With that.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

He did start his own newspaper called the Herald of Freedom.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

The Herald of Freedom.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

It only ran for a few years. It was a weekly Connecticut newspaper that he basically just used to talk shit about the relationship between the church and state. So, like, Connecticut really didn't have a lot of separation of church and state. And he hated that.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Okay.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

He was with. He was a ideologist of the Jacksonian ideology. Do you know about that?

[Mr. Pearlmania]

No. What's a Jacksonian ideology?

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

So the Jacksonian ideology is. Was a political movement led by President Andrew Jackson.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Oh.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

And it championed greater rights, political power and participation for the common man against the entrenched elites.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Yeah. So that's populism.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Key principles included expanding voting rights to all white males, the spoil system, which is also known as patronage. And the patronage system is a political practice where the winning party rewards its supporters, friends and relatives with government jobs, contracts and favors, prioritizing loyalty over merit in an aim to build party loyalty, which often results in corruption, incompetence, and high turnover rates.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

So this is literally exactly the reason why Andrew Jackson is Donald Trump's favorite president. Like, famously. He's famously Donald Trump's favorite president. And there's actually right now they're talking about how Donald Trump, the other day, he claimed that he talked to former president about Iran.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

And then they reported. Reached out to all four living former presidents. Like, they talked to you and like, I don't talk to that asshole. And so now people are wondering if he was just wandering the halls of the White House.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah, there's just ghosts of presidents in there.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Yeah. He was either talking. He was. Listen. He was either Talking to Andrew Jackson's portrait.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Or he called up Glenn Beck to have a little chat with the George Washington AI that he talks to every day.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

That. Okay.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Do you know about that?

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

No.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Glenn Beck built and built, quote unquote, an AI that is George Washington as a podcaster.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Oh, my God, I hate that.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

So I want you to take famous slaver George Washington with his. With his fake stolen teeth.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

You take him, put him in a tight schmedium V neck.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

And give him a podcast Mike.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

A cigar. I'm picturing the Andrew Tate style down.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

No, no, but he's full Andrew Tate. No, it's supposed to be. He's like a man oversee. Yeah, he's Andrew Tate. Ish. Yeah, but he's like a man oversee. And they gave him like an old guy haircut. They can't even do young George. That's the other part. They couldn't even be like, picture him from like the French and Indian War.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Have a background of the cherry tree.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

No, it's just like a podcast background.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

It's like, put some effort into it. It would, but it's the background that works.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

It's Glenn Beck. Okay. He converted to Mormonism. But get back to the Jacksonian side of things. The patronage system is much different than the Patreon system, which you can support us by going to perlmania500.net to get ad free shows.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Nice integration.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Thank you.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

The Jacksonians also believed in limited federal government, rugged individualism, while also fostering white supremacy and the expansion of slavery.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Yeah, they were pro slavery and they were also pro things like the Trail of Tears. Yeah. This is literally a genocide party that was also trying to get. The whole thing you said earlier there about the expansion of the vote to all white men was because you had to be a landholder early on. Yeah. Like you. If you rented, you couldn't vote.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Can't vote.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

And there was a lot of different stuff in there about representation. Notice they didn't say anything about women or anything else, but this was a big. This is a big part of them.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

So his four page newspaper contained a mix of news, advertisements, articles, court notices, editor commentary, and occasionally a puzzle. He often reported wild stories about the church. And like, he once reported about the expulsion of a member of a Baptist church in New York for, quote, repeated attempts on the chastity of several virtuous females.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Oh, you tell me. A Baptist, a member of a Baptist church member. Baptist church was getting. Was, was getting handsy with women. Yeah, that never happens today. He also I'm glad. This is. This is a historical podcast, right? This is a comedy history podcast.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

That's what this is. A comedy.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

And there's no right now, currently in 2026. No. Especially in the Baptist and Southern Baptist churches. There's never any sex scandals whatsoever, because these are. These are godly people. Yeah, but you're saying P.T. barnum kept pointing these out all the time.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

He also reported that a Presbyterian clergyman spent hours with, quote, his hired girl three or four times a week after his wife had gone to bed. The paper also reported the same clergyman took other women, one at a time, to secluded fishing spots on an unfrequented road.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Wait, fishing spot. Fishing spots, Fishing spots.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Romance.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

So 1830s Presbyterians were doing the same Tinder move. Yeah, it's just. Guy with fish.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Guy with fish.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

The only picture of me is me with a fish.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Guy with fish.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Just. Just out there. Fellas, fellas, analytically, I know there's enough of you out there. Don't post a fish picture.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

No.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Posting yourself with a fish, that's no bueno.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Wait, can I say something, though?

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Post a picture of just the fish.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

No, no. Post a picture of you having cooked a fish. Like, if you took a picture and it was like, oh, I prepared this salmon with this asparagus, and, like, you show that you, like. You know how to cook.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

You know, a skill.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

What? That's actually honestly, pretty good. Catching fish is one thing.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Cooking.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Scaling it. Cooking it. Knowing what herbs and spices to use.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Yeah. Plating. Yeah, plating.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Plating the fish enough to make a dinner. Come on, y'.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

All. Listen, listen, listen. Do any of this, and I landed her. But you. You don't. You don't have my personality or eight Coors lights, a microphone, and a spotlight on you in the back room of an open mic at a sports bar across the street from a prison.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

And you don't have my lowered standards.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Nope, you don't. Now, that's Mrs. P. My little scratch and dent.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

I'm the scratch and.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Okay, okay. This paper was sued for libel three times.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

P.T. barnum's paper.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

The Herald of Freedom.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

The Herald of Freeman was freedom. Was Su. Sued for libel three times.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

I do love the idea of P.T. barnum being. Being. Being the print version of Candace Owens. He'd be out here, be like, that's funny, Mary Todd Lincoln. Real crazy that suddenly you have nothing to say about what happened to Abe. Wow. Wow.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

He's. He's. Doesn't seem that anti Semitic from the research I've Done.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

He doesn't.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

I didn't find that much anti Semitism enough to compare him to Candace.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Okay. There you go.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

It's funny. It's the guy. Tell you the part that's very funny is typically when you read people like this, there almost always is a Wikipedia section that you get down to that certain area and they go. And then there's the anti Semitism.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

No, no, there's worse things.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Oh, yeah.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Oh, let's get into it.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Okay.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

First libel suit was brought by a butcher who was also a politician. PT had accused him of being a spy in the Democratic caucus.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Oh.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

P.T. was found guilty and fined several hundred dollars back then.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

That's a lot of money.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

This is back in the 18.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

That's right. He said he was a spy at the dnc.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

He was a DNC spy. You can sue people for claiming that.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

You can.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Oh, wow. And there's precedent that you could win a few hundred bucks.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

I'm saying.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Hey, buddy.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Considered. Hey, consider.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Hey. Oh, man, I gotta. You know what? I've saved a lot of tiktoks.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah. The. His second libel charge was filed by his own uncle and former business partner. This libel suit was withdrawn, though.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Okay, so the uncle had it. It was.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

It was a bit of a threat situation. Now, the third suit, libel suit. PT Was found guilty of libeling a Presbyterian Church deacon by accusing him of being a righteous hypocrite and, quote, guilty of taking advantage of a poor, destitute orphan boy.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

What?

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

The case was based on the deacon purchasing a note worth $42 for only $25 from the orphan.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Oh.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

PT was fined $100 and sentenced to 60 days in prison.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

So basically, there was a loaning situation. This is. He was accusing. Taking advantage of an orphan boy in 2026 has violently different connotations.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah, yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Than back then. Back then, he was just like, oh, you scammed him.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

He scammed him.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

He claimed he scammed it. Or he's already broke.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Why are you scamming him?

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Yeah, exactly. He's an orphan.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah. Don't worry, though. He had a fully decked out cell where he often received visitors and continued to run his newspaper until release.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

That's okay. I mentioned the prison. Where? Across the street from where you and I met. That's Eastern State Penitentiary. And famously, Al Capone was kept there.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Luxury lug. And the thing is, you can go there. You can see the cell. Yeah. Al Capone had a fully decked out cell as well.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

This is the thing.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Leather goods.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Yeah. Finally I think he had, like, a radio in there. This is Al Capone, but, like, going back to PT Barn. Like, there's a thing in American society of, like, going to jail but being, like, really good at it.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah. Like Ghislaine, how she gets to play with puppies now.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Yeah, yeah. Jelaine gets to hang out with the puppies, and then she has Jen Shaw complaining that she's there. Jen Shaw's like, I did reputable stuff. I'm a Real Housewives scammed old people. Yeah. Not children.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

So. So he's in this decked out cell.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

When he's released, he was accompanied home by a parade of supporters that literally paraded him home back to his house for three miles.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Wow.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

So, like, he comes out, there's all these people that are big fans of the newspaper. They're like, free our boy.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

And then he gets out and there's a full parade as they walk back to his house and cheer him the whole way. Wow.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Could you guys imagine Hugh Jackman walking down the street wearing his dead dad hat while he's being cheered by the people like.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

You said that that Presbyterian deacon abused a child Financially. Financially.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But listen.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

After this happens, he's gonna take a minute, he's gonna collect himself.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

And then he's gonna decide to move to New York City.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

We have to be quiet for this ad break, everybody, because Mrs. P is taking a nap. And she's taking a nap. Thanks to this week's sponsor, Brooklyn Bedding. Brooklyn Bedding is here to improve your sleep. Brooklyn Bedding makes amazing mattresses for every body and sleep style. With cooling mattresses for hot sleepers and hard to find sizes for all different types of bedrooms, it's easy to find your perfect match using the Brooklyn Bedding Sleep Quiz. And I can't tell you, over the last year, we've been using Brooklyn Bedding mattresses, and it's helped us sleep through probably one of the worst periods in time to sit up way too late and doom scroll. When I'm sitting there staring at my phone at the horrors, I feel the mattress begin to envelop me and tell me to put that phone down. Mrs. P would tell you about how it perfectly matches her sleep style, but she's asleep on that mattress right now. But I want you to be able to try out the mattress and I want you to be able to save a lot of money on it. All Brooklyn Bedding mattresses are designed and assembled in the USA and Brooklyn offers 120 night comfort trial. If you don't love your mattress, swap it or return it. Hassle free. Go to BrooklynBetting.com and use our promo code Too many at checkout to get 30% off site wide. This offer is not available anywhere else. That's BrooklynBetting.com promo code T O O M A N Y for 30 off site wide. Support the show and let him know that too many tabs sent you brooklynbetting.com promo code too many sh. Don't wake up Mrs. P from her nap. Wow, what a good break. Honestly, you look so well rested.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

You look great.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

And you're glowing, honestly.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Oh, my gosh. Thanks.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

So nice. Okay, so Mrs. P.T. barnum moves to New York City. Which borough does he move to?

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Manhattan.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Oh, the big one. Okay.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

He purchases the Scudder Museum. It's called the Scudder American Museum in 1841.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Okay.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

He renames it to Barnum's American Museum America.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Okay.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

He improves the building and adds exhibits. The museum offered both strange and educational attractions and performances. Some were extremely reputable and historical and scientific. Like, they're. They're good. They're real.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Okay.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

While others were just Boulder Dash.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Now, hold on. Then when we watch the movie.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Okay.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

The Greatest Show.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

I forgot about the movie.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Yeah, well, I can't. It's burned forever with rage the back of my retinas. All right. This is a Les Miz movie situation all over again.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

This is a good movie.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

No, it's not. But the. This situation in the movie, what we see, they. The newspaper thing is completely glossed over.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

They don't do any of that different stuff. He gets a job basically working as an accountant in the movie. And then the company goes under. He steals some random paperwork. Then he scams a bank.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

To then open this museum.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

I think the bank fraud did happen.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Okay.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

So the thing is, is he's holding down a couple different jobs.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Between the move in 1834 till 1841. When he has enough money.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

He worked at all different types of odd jobs, did all kinds of things. And there is like. He moves money weird and sustained suspicious. And he definitely works weird with money. And I think that he did do that. The issue is when I was reading through his biography.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

He wrote it. And you can't trust anything he says.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Got it. So this is very much an if I did it situation. Okay. All right. So this is an Art of the deal by P.T. barnum.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Okay. Got it, got it, got it. Yeah. So. So in the movie.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

There's that part. So he buys the building.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

And then in the movie, he fills it with like a bunch of dead stuffed animals and wax figures. And then he shows it to his kids. And then his daughter's like, everything inside in there is dead. You need something alive and magnificent. The best part is as he, as his daughter is saying this, his daughters are laying in bed and he's already like beating the fail at the museum. The look of smoldering rage at his daughters as they're telling him. And they're telling him basically like, dad, you need to set up a freak show.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

And as that's happening in the movie, I don't even know. I don't know if Hugh Jackman has kids. I know he's a godparent and we'll get into that, but there was a moment he was looking at them. I was like, I don't, I don't think he likes these kids.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

I mean, some people don't like it when you give them ideas.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

I don't know anyone like that.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Does Hugh Jackman have kids? Let's see. Yes, he has two children with his ex wife.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Okay.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Okay. So he converted the exterior of the five story building and put up advertisements lit with limelight. Now this is a big deal because back in the day, limelight was used inside the theater, not outside.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Yes.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Limelight is. Okay, I want you guys to picture something. You're watching. Oh, you're watching a movie that's set back in saloon days. Yeah, I think that's the best way to put it.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Old west saloon days. And they're gonna have a. They're gonna have a cancan come out, right?

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

You know those little. There's like these little bumps at the bottom of the stage. That's limelight.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

And those are typically inside. They're on stages.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yes.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

With big curtains behind them. Yeah. So you're saying he's putting them outside

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

to light up these huge banners and advertisements. He's putting posters.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

And nobody else is doing this.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

No one else.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

This is like, people are like, whoa, marketing.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Yeah. Because again, he's basically. He's also. He's doing Vince McMahon stuff.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Oh, yeah, he's really good. It sounds like he's really good at marketing. And in the movie they kind of show. He's really good at. He's good at marketing. He's good at, like coming up with names quickly on the fly.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Oh, yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

You know, they try to show it as him a kid, as he's able to sell old Newspapers as new. Yeah. All that type of stuff.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

It's real Boomer energy.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

It is. It is real pretty. Boomer bootstraps. Pull him up.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

So his museum, the American Museum. The American Museum was a combination zoo, museum, lecture hall, wax museum, theater, and freak show.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Oh.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Barnum filled the American Museum with dioramas, panoramas, cosmoramas.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Hold on, wait. What is a cosmo Rama?

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

A cosmorama is like, when you go into, like, a museum or like a zoo, sometimes they'll have like the big spread out panoramic picture of, like, Washington D.C. of like, the White House.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Right. And so it's just like this huge painting or re. Replica of big buildings that, like, we've seen. So, like, you could do like the Taj Mahal and it'd be like, you got to see the Taj Mahal.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Oh. Because it's so massive.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

And it's like, all enveloping.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Exactly.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

You know what? There's one of those actually, at the Gettysburg Museum.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Oh, yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

And so the Gettysburg Battlefield. You can go there and there's this massive painting. I think it's of like day two or three of the Battle of Gettysburg. And when you go there for the tour, do you, like, they. They tell you the story of the battle, and it's like. It's supposed to be like you're standing on that hill.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

With V. With V.R. these days, actually, it's weird. It's like an early form of VR.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Because like, with VR headsets, the ones that are stationary. More like the Oculus Rift or one of those. Or it's gonna be the Meta Quest. When you put it on and you're just kind of sitting there and you look around like this. It's that same idea. But you don't have the headset on. It's just the walls have been painted round.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

And then you can kind of look around. And so in the Gettysburg battlefield, you can look around, they're like. And here's where the charge happened. And this is over. And then when you turn over this way, it's over here and then over here. I remember going. I remember seeing in the early 2000s, and it was a. You know, it was a big deal in the early 2000s. They were like, hey, all of our tour guides have laser pointers now.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Wow. And I was like, whoa, look out.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

I like tour. When you have a little key. That's an elephant. That's pretty specific to the Philadelphia.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

That's specifically the Philadelphia Zoo.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

It was an elephant.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Oh, yeah. You turn it and Then a little speaker spoke. Yeah, okay. So. So.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Okay, I'm not even done.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

I know, I know, but they didn't have these Cosmo things in the movies. The. The movie solely was like, we have a room with a stuffed elephant and a giraffe and a Napoleon. And then over in this room, we have. Literally.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Why is it me against this movie?

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Because this movie sucked. You made me watch this fucking movie.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

He also had scientific instruments, modern appliances, a flea circus, a loom powered by a dog.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Wait, hold up. Stop. Hold on. All right. I haven't heard the term flea circus since the last time I watched, like, a 1940s Looney Tune movie. Or TV, like, a little short.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

That opens with. The times were different back then.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Like, there's so many. There's so many, like, Looney Tunes things where, like, growing up and, like, watching them, especially when they were on, like, Cartoon Network back in the day to, like, Phil times Now when I'm like, I'll sit down with the baby. I'd be like, oh, you know what? Let's put on, like, a Looney Tune. And I'll click like a compilation.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Why are there so many guns?

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Every single one opens with. Listen, it was a different time. You're like, what are you talking about, warning labels now? Yeah. No, you'll be sitting there watching. I'll be watching something I remember watching as a child 35 years ago, which is, like 60 years old. And I'm sitting there watching it, and I'm just like, there's nothing wrong. Oh, my God. Yeah, because now you see it with the code switching. Yeah, but fleece circuses is crazy because that's just a little contraption to make it look like the stuff is teeter totter. It's a little thing. And then dog with a loom.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

The dog's running the loom. He's powering it.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

How does it. That is that.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

I think he's treadmilling. I think he's treadmilling and.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Oh, and then the loom is moving the thing. Okay.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Dog. Dog treadmilling.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

I was picturing a world where the dog has to run the shuttle back, dog sitting.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

And he's, like, doing the loom like this. Like, it's Snow White. Is that Snow White? I don't know. Okay. He also had the trunk of a tree under which Jesus's disciples supposedly sat. I love the mark.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

That is crazy.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

He just got the trunk of a tree, and he's like, the Jesus sat under.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

This is a really old tree.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

It's so Old Mark, Peter and Paul, they had lunch under this tree.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

It's very much of a. George Washington slept here. So, yeah, that's a big thing in this area. Like, going all the way up into New England, everything. George Washington slept here because he's on a podcast tour. Exactly. He's got to stay tuned. You guys might see me around with crashing out. You never know.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Okay, so he has the tree trunk that the disciples sat under.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Okay.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

An oyster bar.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Wait, he just has an oyster bar.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

You have an oyster bar.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

There just is an oyster bar.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

You have a bar. You serve oysters. You get to people a little drunk.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Can you. Okay, hold on. I'm just picturing a world where you go to, like, I've been to museums, right? Like the Franklin Institute and a bunch of other museums. They'll do, like, adult nights, right? And they're like, oh, my God, come to this museum. You can have a couple of beers. And the Franklin Institute is really cool. They will do a science experiment, stuff like that. And they'll show you, like, how to shoot electricity or. I did a pro wrestling thing there. I refereed a pro wrestling match at the Franklin Institute for the Knights thing. And that's cool. But imagine you're going to a museum and then someone's like, yeah. What are you doing? Oh, yeah, I just want to. Hungry?

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Do you want. Do you want a snack that makes you horny?

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah. Do you want. What's on slurping back some raw shelled fish?

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Really? The. The smelliest, grossest snack that weirdly makes you horny later?

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yep. They also had a rifle range.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

That makes sense. Honestly, you did say it's Barnum's American Museum. If they didn't have a rifle range, I would have suspected things.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Communism.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Wax works. It was a wax museum.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

That was in the movie that was like, so far, by the way, nothing you've listed in here has been in. There's so many interesting things they're leaving out of this movie to insert. Millennial stomp, whoop, Suspender slapping tunes. At one point, they literally just go, oh, oh. And the whole time I'm like, someone's about to serve me fries in a tin. Yeah.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Glassblowers, taxidermists. Phrenologists.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Wait, pause. Phrenologists.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

They had professional phrenologists there.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Those are guys who would walk up and they touch your head and be like, why? I can't touch your hair.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Don't touch my hair.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Okay, all right.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Well, you're not a phrenologist, number one. Okay, well, number one My hair takes time.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

No. Well, with a Philadelphia accent. You're not a phrenologist. It's really. What do you think?

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

You're the Philly fanatic over here.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

No, not for nothing. You're not a phrenologist.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Listen, you didn't go to community college for phrenology.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Listen, all I'm saying is this dude walks up and he rubs your head and he tells you, he's like, yo,

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

you're not a good looking Ed.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

I'm just saying, dude, according to this bump right over here, you're bad at math.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Also, pretty baby contests.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

I'm sorry, what?

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Pretty baby shows. I looked it up.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Featured contests for Prettiest baby, Fattest baby, Finest triplet, and most promising Finest triplet.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

He's putting the triplets against each other.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Which one's the best?

[Mr. Pearlmania]

I. I love the fact that this. Okay, as you've described this over time, once you hit pretty baby contest. Can I tell you what this where I'm now picturing this? Yeah. P.T. barnum is a minor league baseball team.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

What?

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Because like if you go to a minor league baseball game, nobody's there for the game. They have to do all this like crazy wacky stuff.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Fireworks, cowboy monkeys.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

And that's how you end up with the Savannah Bananas.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yup.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Which I can I tell you I want to go to. I refuse to allow conservatives to have Savannah Bananas.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

No, we got to steal it.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

We don't. There's certain things we're like, oh, it's family friendly. And that means automatically people think it's conservative coded. No, no.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

We're going to live it up.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

I'm going to a Savannah Bananas game.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Okay. And we're going to live it up. I'll go there. I'll go to a Savannah Bananas game wearing an Obama shirt. I don't give a fuck.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Hell yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

And I'll be like, what do you want to go,

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Barnum? PT Utilized celebrity judges and local moms to ensure respectability of these baby contests. Got the best moms in the game.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

That's my level of celebrity. I think that might be where I'm at. Yeah. I think judging baby.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

I think that's a good looking baby.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

I think 5 million followers.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

You got three babies. That one right there, that's the cutest one.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Middle baby baby.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Middle baby.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Middle baby's the cutest one. The other two uggos. I think that's because, you know, I did a thing this. I did a thing over the last weekend. Yeah. I went to South Fellini.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

You gave out Mini weenies.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

I gave out many weenies to South Felini and like 200 people came out and said, hi.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

I know.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

And nobody had me judge any babies. I did feed a couple mini weenies to tiny dogs.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

And at one point, with a bunch of. Yeah. I did my same pose with everyone. Like, ah, I did that pose.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

And this one guy screamed with me and he scared two children. So I. I bought them stickers. I was like, oh, you get stickers. Here's stickers like that. South Pollini has a lot of really cool stuff, including stickers.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

These events are widely considered precursors to modern child pageants.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

So if PT Barnum didn't exist, JonBenet Ramsey would be alive. That's what you just said. That's what you just said. That's what you just said.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

The Grand National Baby show was one of his biggest ones. Was so popular it attracted 61,000 visitors. You can't dead air.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Okay, I can dead air. I need. I need the listeners. Okay. Specifically the listeners. Yeah, the viewers. They just watched me pause for a while.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

But the listeners needed to sit in that for a minute. Yeah. 61,000 people came out to the Grand National Baby Show. This is insane. And he's not like. He's like, we have new rattler technology here. So they're just there just to look at these babies.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

You guys got some fresh babies. Now.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Here's the thing. I'll say, having been having recently in the last few years, had a baby.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Our kid would win.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah. For sure.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

And I think that's how. That's how sure. Did you like?

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

This is. I got the cutest baby going in.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

And I'm sure. I'm sure there was a registration fee.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

And then you got a ribbon, probably.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

And you got it. You. Oh, you got a stunt on all your friends.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Yeah. Because you even said their fattest baby. Right? Yeah, that's. Listen.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Oh, we wouldn't build that category.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Yeah. Because listen, you got some fat little thighs.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Oh, who's got cutest baby toes? My kid. It's always going to be my kid.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Dad. Fist fights.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

It doesn't matter. And ever. Listen, right now, there are people who are going on to Apple Podcasts to give us one star because they're like, how dare you say your kid is nicer than us? Which is why we need all of you listeners to give us five stars.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Five stars.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Five stars on Apple Podcast.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Thank you.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

All right.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Also, I was not done my list of things that are at this museum took a side. There's a talk about the baby show.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

This is. This is why I hate private equity, because they would have come in and streamlined all of. That's the thing. They came in. We know him as the circus guy. Yeah. You have now listed so many things that things don't even fucking exist anymore.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Ned. The learned seal.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

What?

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

That's the name of the learned seal. The seal that could do tricks. Ned. The learned seal.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Well, now that is just owned by SeaWorld, which is owned by Blackstone Equity. Yeah. Brian. Which we did an episode on. Yeah. Which has not been paying Sesame Street. We found out.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Oh, yeah. They might be closing Sesame Street. Private equity has been failing to pay them.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Yes. Sesame Royalty. Sesame Place is owned by Blackstone and their own owed royalties. And one day, for some reason, they.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Imagine getting sued by Big Bird. Dude.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

You're getting sued by Big Bird.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

That's crazy.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Imagine going to court against Elmo. Oh, oh, look. Look here. You owe us money. How much money? 1. Ah, ah, ah. 2, 3.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

He flipped the bird, everybody.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

They also had the Fiji Mermaid.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Oh, I know that one. I know the Fiji Mermaid.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah. What do you know about.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Yes. Okay. That was fake.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yes, it was.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

It was a monkey and a lizard.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

It was a monkey and a fish tail.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Yes. And because I remember, this is one of those things when I was younger, when they were trying to teach us to, like, watch out for scams.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

They would teach us specific about the Fiji Mermaid. I forgot that that was actually.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

And the jackalope.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

And the jackalope's another one. Yeah. You could just create stuff. And now it's like. Now you'd have to teach kids. They just do AI. But back in the day, they're like, listen. People would spend the time to go make.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Also had little people. He did not use that term. He had giants.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Okay.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

He had.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

In the movie, they made him an Irish giant.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

The guy showed up, he's like, I'm Russian. He's like, you're Irish. And I was like, that is Vince Mc. That's a Vince McMahon move. That's straight up a Vince McMahon move. I think he's literally done that. He's taken Irish people and made them Russian, and Russian people made them Irish.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Vince McMahon has done that also in the movie. He also doesn't. He. He never uses. He never uses the bad word.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

For little people.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

No.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

And. But they go out of their way in the movie. And, like, the whole time I was like. I feel like back then they just said it.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah. They did a Lot. A lot.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Okay. They also had a pair of Siamese twins named Chang and Ang.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Chang and Ang? Yeah, they're. They're like the. The reason term Siamese twins is because Chang and Ang are from what was then called Siam.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yes.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

And so everyone got 10 because of how famous they became.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

For being conjoined twins. Yeah, everyone called it that. Now we refer to them as conjoined twins.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yes.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

But even when I was a kid, like, the people were still calling them Siamese twins. But what's crazy about them, they came in from. I think it was somewhere in the Carolinas. But they were like, even as conjoined twins who were from Asia.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

They were slave owners.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

What?

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Yeah, they came to America, they got married, had a butt ton of kids.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

A butt ton of kids.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

21.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Okay. So there are two guys.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

They married two women, and then they. Oh, my God. They. Okay.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Yeah, don't. You don't need to do the math.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

I know. I was. I was picturing how it went. Okay.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Yeah, don't. You don't want to do the math on this. I don't want to do it every time. Every time I hear about, like, the conjoined. Like, this is one of the. Also one of the things, though, of why people get into conjoined twins. And remember a while ago. No, like, why they get, like, really interested. Because they'll be like, well, how do you. What's the math? What's the procedure here? Because the reason why I mentioned that is I remember back in the talk show days because, remember I did the Jerry Springer episode a long, long, long time ago.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Like three years ago, we did that about Jerry Springer. And in that we talked about freak shows.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yes.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

And the modern side of it. Jerry Springer and a bunch of these other daytime talk shows they would regularly have conjoined twins on. Yeah. And half the audience's questions were like, like, oh, but you got a boyfriend then who?

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

What?

[Mr. Pearlmania]

And the ones like, I take a nap.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

You know what I mean? Like, that's just how. But it's like, this is weird.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Sometimes you just gotta take a nap.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Sometimes you just gotta take a nap while the other one's busy.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

They're also. They had a bunch of animals in the building. No.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Oh, P.T. barn.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

In the museum.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

In the museum.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Because I said there's, like a zoo in there.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

They've got grizzly bears, elephants, and beluga whales in giant tanks.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Baby beluga. Like the Rafi song.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

I don't know what that is.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

You don't Know the Raffy song. Baby Beluga. No Baby Beluga. Okay.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

They also had Native Americans who performed traditional songs and dances.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Human zoo magicians. Okay.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Ventriloquists.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Okay.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

And black face minstrels who performed biblical tales and Uncle Tom's Cabin.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Yep, that's. I think that that last part, especially Uncle Tom's Cabin part, is, I think, in gangs in New York. Yeah. Because we're right around. Again, we're around gangs in New York time. I just want to point out when we watched the Greatest Showman.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

None of that was in there.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

They didn't put that.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

They had. They had. They had conjoined.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

They didn't put the know nothings in there. Fighting in the streets.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

They didn't put no.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

That.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

No. No nothing. Guys kind of show up.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah, yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

There's some guys show up to like. Like to rough up. They're like, oh, we don't like that your freaks are around here.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I remember.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Yeah. And they burned the place down in the. In the thing.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Hold that thought.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Okay.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Hold that thought.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Okay.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Okay. Barnum often published articles in newspapers claiming that his exhibits were fake, which caused audiences to show up in mass to see for themselves. Oh, he was a big proponent of. No, no. Like, bad press is not bad press. You know what I mean?

[Mr. Pearlmania]

All press is good press.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

That's it.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Yes. I like that you went with the negative.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah, sorry.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Bad press is good press. No, all press is good press. Doesn't matter. What's just. Again, that's Vince. Vince McMahon. Believe that. Who taught Trump to believe that. Because Trump knows if you just put his name out there, then they're not talking. They're talking about the minimum. They're talking about. You're always talking about you. And we actually saw that in the movie a little bit.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

He gets the write up from the one guy.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Who's like, this show, this whole thing is trash. And I hate it. And then he printed everywhere. Yeah. He says he goes reprint the review and put. If you bring this, you get half off. Yeah.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

To get in.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

And again, it's also one of those things is same thing with the Howard Stern show. Back in the day, there was a thing from the Howard Stern movie Private Parts.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Okay.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

There's a scene in there where they talk about people who listen to Howard Stern show. They said people that like them. Them listen to them for 30 minutes a day. And they said. Okay. And they said, people that hate them listen to them for an hour.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Because when. But. And this is the thing. This is how social media works.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

We need more haters to listen to our podcast.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Honestly, no, I don't.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

I don't need.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Because I don't want to turn into a Lolcow, which we did an episode on. We're talking about Chris Chan and other things because again, this is PT Barnum stuff and how this gets extrapolated for in the future. Yeah, right.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Okay. So he makes. Takes all those advertisements. Then he started printing these massive colored posters to display all the exhibits that were often just flat out lies and exaggerations of what the exhibits were.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Yeah, they were tick tock. AI TikTok shop. AI videos.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Am I wrong? Yeah. Anybody who's been on TikTok shop, honestly, anybody who tried to purchase something from the Internet, there's like a whole. There's a whole genre of content creator right now is just people who buy stuff from TEMU and then open and they show you what they bought and then they open it. Yeah, that's a whole. That's a.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

That literally was talking about.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

You were talking about doing it.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

I got the craziest Teemu ad.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

It was for this massive couch.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

It was for a huge, like, couch. It had like 50 pillows on it. And it was clearly a picture of an AI picture. And like, I was just like, I need to know what they're gonna send me.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

But I have never ordered from Teemu. I don't think I ever will.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

I don't trust the situation after that super bowl ad they did.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Yeah. But Mrs. P, can I tell you something right now? Yeah. You can't trust those advertisements. But I can. I tell you what, you can trust this sponsor. This week's episode of Too Many Tabs has been sponsored by Delete Me. And now a word from our sponsor. Delete Me. I'm going to show you guys exactly how I protect my family from data brokers on the Internet. Delete. That's right. I just removed Mrs. Pearl Mania's information from data brokers by using Delete Me. Delete Me is a service that helps you remove your information and your family's information from data brokers people, finder websites and background track organizations all across the Internet. It's a great platform. We used it ourselves and we discovered that we had so much information that was out there that was for sale for anyone. And I want to offer you a special deal on this platform right now. Go to joindeleteme.com pearlmania20 today to save 20% on a delete Me membership. That's right. This is going to Be a great way to make sure that you are protected, your family's protected, and you're going to feel all of those savings. Joinedeleteme.com Pearlmania20 save 20% today. Now how do I bring her back? Oh, I know how to do it. And back to the show. So tell me more about these delicate, deceptive practices that P.T. barnum was doing back in the 1800s.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

So, okay, here's the other thing. This is. This is a bit deceptive. It's okay. At one point, PT Noticed that people were lingering too long at the exhibits.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Okay.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

So he posted signs that indicating this way to the egress.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Oh, this way to egress.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Not knowing that egress was another word for exit, people followed the signs to what they assumed was a fascinating exhibit, only to end up outside. Love it.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Honestly.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

So funny.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

That's great.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

That's incredible.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

I will give it to him. All right. This is. He's starting to turn into a scammer with a heart of gold on that one. That's mischievous. Yeah, that's mischievous because I would say yet the egress. Because, I mean, there are words that are similar. Egress.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

I think that's a bird.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah, I think you're right. I would think if I didn't know what egress meant, I would think it was a bird exhibit.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

I would think it's a bird exhibit.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah. And you were like, oh, just through this door.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

And then slam the door behind you. And out on the 1800 Manhattan sidewalk covered in horseshit.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

I do fear immediately that I've given away too much about myself because now people will know how to trick me into walking into a Looney Tunes style box trap by putting up a big arrow sign that says birds. Interesting. Birds this way. And I'm. And I just Mouse Tufted titmouse.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah. But what's the Black eyed, Dark eyed Jinko? That one. What a name.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

What a name.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

At its peak, the museum was open 15 hours a day and had many as 15,000 visitors a day.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

15,000.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

That's because. That's why he's getting them through the egress.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

And they're open 15 hours a day. Yes. That's crazy. And this is pre light bulbs. Yeah, we're like pre light bulbs. He's.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

We're doing at night. Work, work, work.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

We're doing torches. We're doing. We're doing the limelight.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

38 million customers paid the 25 cents admission to visit the museum between 1841 and 1865. The total population of the United States in 1860 was under 32 million.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

So 6 million more people than there were people went through his building.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yes, that's repeat customers, baby.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Well, that's what I mean. When you start to listen, he keeps adding stuff.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

So he gives always something new to see.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Yeah, there's always something new.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

This is crazy.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Okay, during the Civil War, Barnum's exist.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Oh, my God. I just realized this was all derby. The Civil War's not even in the fucking movie. It's not even in the fucking movie, babe. That whole movie.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

They got Zac Efron and Zendaya.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

In an interracial relationship.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

During Civil War times.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

And they don't even mention the fucking Civil War. Slavery never comes up once. They just have to stomp, whoop, sing at each other.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

So Barnum's museum drew large audiences seeking diversion from the conflict. So he added pro Union exhibits, lectures and dramas.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

He demonstrated a commitment to the cause. And he even hired Pauline Cushman In 1864, an actress who had served as a spy for the Union, to give a lecture about her thrilling adventures behind Confederate lines.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Okay, okay, so he really is the. He really is different than Candace Owens.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yes.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Because he's pro Union.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Okay, just again, table that.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Yeah. Okay, okay, but. But real quick, real quick. Because he's doing the pro Union stuff, right? That is a big switch because you were talking about when he had the newspaper side being the Jacksonian side of things, which was very Democrat, pro slavery. Now he's in New York. It sounds more like he's back then Republican and pro Union and antislavery.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Exactly.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Okay.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

He does become what we. What they would call Republican back then.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Yeah. An abolitionist is really what matters more

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

than anything else over that total November of 1860. 1864, the Confederate army of Manhattan attempted and failed to burn down the museum.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Wait, hold on. Yes, in 1864, there was a Confederate army of Manhattan. New York. New York.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yes.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Okay, because I've never heard of this. I've heard of the. Of the army of the Potomac. I've heard of the Virginia battalions and all these different. Different generals. All these different guys. Yeah, I've never heard of. I'm sorry, what was it called again? The Confederate.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Confederate army of Manhattan.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Okay, so there is what, like 10,000 does like Confederate sympathizers?

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

It was a group of eight Southern operatives.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Eight.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Eight. Eight.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

And they call themselves an army.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Eight?

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Eight isn't even a synagogue. You got to have 12 to get a fucking rabbi. They're not an army. That's it. That's a Confederate squad at best. Mm. That is eight.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

These eight Southern operatives. Basically. On Friday night, November 25th, starting around 8:45pm the group attempted to simultaneously start fires all over New York City. 19 hotels, a theater, and P.T. barnum's American Museum. They tried to light them all on fire.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Okay.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

The objective was to overwhelm the city's firefighting, resour sources by distributing fires around the city.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Okay. So this was going to. They were trying to do Confederate 9 11.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Because everything, you name the hotels, but also the Barnum Museum is just because they're well known. These are. These are opportunity attacks. And again, it's kind of for publicity and marketing.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Look, we can get it. We can get all the way past enemy lines into New York and attack the Barnum Museum.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Again, not in the movie.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Not in the movie.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

This is fascinating.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Not.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Would have loved to have heard about this.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

None.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Because in the movie it gets burned down by a mob of guys.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

There's more than eight of them, though. And you're telling me these eight guys, it didn't happen.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

It didn't. They didn't successfully burn it to the ground.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Okay.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

They only were able to arrest one of the guys. Seven got away.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Seven of them got away.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Only caught one guy.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Well, this is bad.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

He escaped prison, actually, I looked him up.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

What?

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

He got out?

[Mr. Pearlmania]

He got out?

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

He got out. He sneaked out.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

This is. See, this is the thing, though. This is. This is one of the downsides of living in this technological era. And like, back then, they didn't even understand the concept because they don't understand tracking the way it is. Yeah, but like now there's credit reports, there's phone tracking, there's the Internet, there's IP addresses, there's all these different things. Right now you can never get away from who you are.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Because you're always going to be you. But back then, you just went two counties over never. And no one would know. And that's where you put your other family. Yeah.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

You know, okay, so here's the thing. The American Museum did burn to the ground in one of the biggest fires New York City has ever seen in July of 1865. So one year later, it did fully fucking burn down.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

It did burn down.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yes.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

And was it because of a mob?

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

No. Animals in the museum were seen jumping from the burning building only to be immediately shot by the police.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Okay, not in the movie. That wasn't in the movie. I want to just point that Out. You know what was in the movie? In the movie, Zac Efron goes running into a flaming building. And he's like, zendaya, no. And he goes running into the flaming building.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah. She makes it out.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

She comes running out from around the corner and she was like, I was out of the building. And then P.T. barnum, Hugh Jackman, looks at his wife and children.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

And goes, I gotta do this.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

I gotta save Zac Efron.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

The whole building is surrounded by people.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

They're surrounded.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

It.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

He goes running in.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

And then carries out Zac Efron like he was Supergirl from the COVID of Crisis on Infinite Earths. A reference that three people understand.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Okay. So many of the animals were unable to escape the blaze and died in their enclosures, including the two beluga whales.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Can I. Can I just say. Can I just say they could have done. They could have done the peewee, Pee Wee Herman freeing the animals thing.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

If you're going to lie so much in this movie, if you're going to change so many things, show P.T. barnum saving a whale. Show him running out of the building with birds and the tigers and everything else. And then ignore the fact that the cops just started shooting any animal that they saw. Because if. I mean, for real, if I'm a New York city cop in 1865. Right? Yeah. And an orangutan comes blasting out of a flaming window. Pop pop, buddy, pop pop. That's just how that's gonna go. All right? I'm not. I'm not risking anything. That museum is full of, like, cannibals and shit.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Actually, he did not save them. At one point. The reason the beluga whales died.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Yeah. Cuz they're in water.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Because he cracked the glass panes of their tank to. In an attempt. Attempt to put out the fire with the water. So the beluga whales actually died in the flames because he smashed their tanks trying to put out the fire.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

So he. He thought he could break the wall and flood the entire floor with the beluga whale tanks.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Which just killed the whales.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

So he killed the whales.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

He did Reverse Free Willy. Yes, he did murder Willie.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Mm.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Motherfucker. And this is who Hugh Jackman wanted to be.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

The fire was likely started by a broken glass gas line in a neighboring restaurant. And the whole building did collapse within an hour and a half.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

This is that. Which they showed that in the movie.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Mind you, again, this is all happening Civil War times. You never even see like a soldier in the movie.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

No.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

New York City was like Basically occupied by soldiers during that time.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

It was allegedly during this fire that a fireman by the name of Johnny Denham killed an escaped tiger with his axe before rushing into the burning building and carrying out a 400 pound woman on his shoulder.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

He made that up. That's made up. They faked that one. They faked that one. Yeah, that's very.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

That feels like a PT plant.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Like that's 100%. That's a hundred percent. Also, also, I keep forgetting because during the movie, one of the people like, look at this freak. Oh my God. He's a human oddity. He's just fat. Yeah, he's just a fat guy. Yeah, that's it. That's all it is. Yeah, a little big and they're even. Then they're like, yeah, you know, honestly, let's pretend you're even fat.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Let's, let's pop the numbers.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

We gotta pop the numbers. We gotta juice some numbers over here. This is crazy. Yeah, they said that a single firefighter, cuz he, he killed a tiger with an ax and then he picked up the biggest lady he ever did see and carried her to safety right past a boiled whale. Fucking psycho. Jesus Christ.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Okay, now before all that happened, all

[Mr. Pearlmania]

of this, by the way, just, just, just mind you again, they didn't want to show any of this in the movie. They just wanted to put Hugh Jackman in a fucking hat. And a top hat. Yeah, and a top hat and a red coat. That's what they want to do. They want to put Hugh Jackman in a top hat and a big red coat and then have them do this move a couple times.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

So Barnum, at a certain point, Pizzey had gone on tour, a European tour. Okay. I don't want to get into all the stuff on the tour.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

They show it in the movie.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah, they do show a little bit of the tour and he meets, he discovers this singer, Jenny Lind, the. Who is known as the Swedish Nightingale.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Oh, so she's Zara Larson.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Who is that?

[Mr. Pearlmania]

She's a Swedish singer.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Oh, okay.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

People like her.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

I don't know who that is.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

That's. We're, we're not supposed to.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Oh.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

But every now and then my, any one of my FYPs show me a Zara Larson like fan cam concert. And every time I go, not interested. Yeah, this is not for me. Yeah. And every time my fyp.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Glenn, are you sure you don't know a little about Zara? We're gonna show you Larson.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Who?

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Brie Larson?

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Yeah, Brie Larson.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

I Know who she is?

[Mr. Pearlmania]

That's the actress. Zara Larson is a. Is a Swedish singer.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Oh, okay.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

And her music, to me, I don't. I'm not. It's fine.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

You're not the target audience.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

I'm not the target. And this is the thing. This is where. This is what's crazy, though. I think I was supposed to be the target audience for this movie. The Greatest Showman.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

I am not the target audience for that movie. It's a bad movie.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Okay. So he discovers this singer, Jenny Lind, okay.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

During this tour, the Swedish Nightingale.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Swedish Nightingale. He had never heard Lynn sing, but the word of mouth about her singing was so good, he offered her the chance to sing in the United States for $1,000 a night, for 150 nights, all expenses paid.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

That's $150,000. Yeah, that's. Okay. That's. That's a. That's a good.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Jenny demanded the fee in advance and

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Barnum agreed for the whole thing.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Pay me up front.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Up front. 150. Okay.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Me up front.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

And that's. Listen, back then. That's a ton of money.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah. She used the fee to raise. She donated the fee basically to charities, principally endowing schools for poor children in Sweden. Now, Barnum borrowed heavily on his mansion and his museum to raise the money to pay Liz.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Okay.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

He was still short some funds, so he persuaded a Philadelphia minister that Lynd would be a positive influence on American morals, and the minister lent him the final $6,000.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Can I say, yeah, I'm not shocked that somehow you tied this to Philadelphia.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

I didn't know I was going to when I was writing this.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Okay, well, you did.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Did okay.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

You did.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

I didn't even mean to.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Also, I just. I find it interesting that he's doing this whole moral pitch when in the movie, the whole thing is that people hate him and the freaks and everything else because they're truly the moral ones.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah. No, he is, like, fully immoralist. I will get into it a little bit later in this, but he. He likes to. It's. It's interesting because in the beginning when he had his newspaper, he was so anti church and, like hyper morality, but he's kind of.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

I forgot about that.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah. He definitely, like, starts leaning into that in a different way.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Okay.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Later. So the contract also afforded Lind the option of withdrawing from the tour after 60 or 100 performances. But she would have to pay pt. $50,000 to get out of her contract.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Okay.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Which would be one $1.5 million in today's. Market if she broke the contract.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Okay, so if 50,000 is 1.5, then he's paying her 4.5 million up front.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

That's a crazy amount of money in today's money for. I mean I'm saying that's just like a crazy amount for that many. And again, for somebody he's never heard.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah. He's never heard her say.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

He's never heard her say.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

He's only heard she's good.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

He's only ever heard she's good.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

You got to hear she's real good.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

And then the whole time she's like this is for the old fashioned.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah, exactly.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

When I was and notice I did a British accent because in the movie the Swedish nightingale has a British accent for some. Oh, look at me, I'm the sweet.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

It's noting down. Have you ever heard a Swedish accent?

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Yes, because I've heard Zara Larson talk too many times on Instagram reels, but no Swedish accent. I mean even back then there should be like an earringer Bergen. Like there's like a little bit of.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

She's the sweetest chef.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Yeah. Swedish stuff. What I did. Yeah. Swedish chef. Swedish Nightingale.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Lindenhurst, a small party sailed to the United States in September of 1850.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

She got a small posse crew.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

She was a celebrity before she arrived because Barnum had spent months in preparation marketing her. Nearly 40,000 people greeted her at the docks when the boat landed. Another 20,000 people were at her hotel cheering when she arrived. And P had merchandise sold at the docks and the hotel. He had the merch ready.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

That's so smart. That's so smart. I can't tell you how often I'm like I wish I. I want merch ready.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

I got. I got some merch ready. Anyway, I don't talk about.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Okay, well we'll save it. Okay.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Secret.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

But. But I love this idea also. It just. This is also one of those things from back in the day. There's only been a few times more recently where we've seen things I think about a few years ago as a year or two ago like Kaisernat did a thing in New York work.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Oh yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

And he was just like yeah, I'm doing gonna be at this like I think like some small.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah like 40, 000 teenagers showed up.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

It wasn't even that many. It was like 2000.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

It felt like it.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

I know but same.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

It was like 2000 too many teenagers.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

But regardless, I mean back in the day there were so many times like pre television.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Pre phone. Pre Pre smartphone, all these different things. There's so many times like there's like famous ones, I think, especially from like World War I era where before movies really took off, where there was like guys in front of Wall street like doing acrobatics and stuff like that. We're doing some tumbling for you gentlemen. And it's like all these guys in our lunch break, it's like 25,000 people on the lunch break to be like, hey, look at that. That guy can do a backflip.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

That's nice.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Meanwhile now it's like, yeah, okay, yeah, that's.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah. We're just on the subway trying to go to work. It's a really nice backflip. I got to go to work.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

We got to go, man.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Okay. So when she sees how many people are there, the merch, the people at the hotel, she realizes that she stands to make a lot more money than she had thought. So she insists upon a new contract.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Okay.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Immediately. And Barnum signs it. This contract paid Lynn the original fee plus the remainder of each concerts profits after Barnum's $5,500 management fee.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Okay.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Lind was determined to accumulate as much money as she possibly could for her chair charities.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Okay. Because she got to help the orphans.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

She's helping the orphans.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

All right. So, so. And by the way, she sounds like a good person. Yeah, the, the, the, the, the musical.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

No, that. She's not like that. She's very like plain dress. She's a very plain.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

They try to make her like.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

She's not like fancy schmancy.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

No, they try to make her like real sexy. And then what type of music is she saying?

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

She's like opera. It's like an opera.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Yeah, see? Exactly. They don't even do. She's just like some modern song during.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

When she was singing, I was like, is this Sia? Like it was very like every song.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

America's Got Talent, every for Simon Cowell to like hit the button.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Every song in this had like 2010. It was just like 2010. It was like somebody just heard a Mumford and Son song or Lumineers or Sia or something else. I was like, I know exactly who. What our audience. This was targeted for us. It was us.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

The tour began with a concert at castle Garden on September 11, 1850.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

What? It was their own 9, 11.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

It was a major success.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Okay.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Recouping Barnum four times. His investment tickets for some of her concerts were in such demand that Barnum sold them at auction.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

And these were pre Ticketmaster.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yes. Public enthusiasm Was so strong that the press coined the term Lind mania.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Oh, come on. Lynn sanity is right there. That's bullshit. There was a. There was a basketball player in New York, a big deal. He played like two games and he was on the COVID of every magazine. Lynn sanity.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

The blatant commercialism of Barnum's ticket auctions distress lind, and she persuaded him to reserve a substantial portion of tickets, Tickets at reduced prices for lower income people to attend the shows.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Yeah, yeah. Which is exactly like what so many artists want to do today. Yeah, they can't. They can't because, again, because of ticketmaster. But good news. Donald Trump and his department of justice with Pam bondi, ticket master, they love it. They gave him a small fine and said, yeah, you gotta get rid of like two arenas or something.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Guys are fine or whatever.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Yeah. So, yeah, ticketmaster's still in control of everything. No, it's not changing on the tour.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Barnum's publicity was always preceding Lynn's arrival to generate enthusiasm as he had as many as 26 journalists on his payroll at all times.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Oh, so he's paying journalists and back then the journalists were basically influencers.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah, exactly.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

So he literally has a little influencer core.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah, exactly.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Running around writing up stuff about everything. That's smart.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

After new York, the company toured the east coast with continued success and later traveled through the southern states. States and Cuba. By early 1851, Lynd had become uncomfortable with Barnum's relentless marketing and she invoked a contractual right to sever ties with him. They parted amicably. Lynn performed 93 concerts in the u. S. For Barnum, earning her about $350,000, while Barnum netted at least $500,000, equivalent to $19 million in 2025.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

So that's so crazy because in the movie they highly. They don't even imply it. They, like, make it a whole plot point. They're like this Swedish redhead with a British accent really wants to bone Hugh jackman. Yeah, no, she just needs to get back to Michelle Williams.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah, no, she did not like him. Yeah, she was just like, you're. He's really good at being a manager, but eventually he's just so annoying.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

She's like, he's such a scumbag. Yeah, he's just like, he's getting the money shake.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

He's the best promoter in the game.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

He literally gets Cody rhodes money shakes.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Who's the promoter with the ponytail that I used to think was so funny? He like the slicked back ponytail for. He used to Do Brock Lesnar's.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Oh, Paul Heyman.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

He's very. She's very. Paul Heyman.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

He's Paul Heyman. Yeah. No, he's Paul Heyman. He's. He's Don King. Yeah, he's very Don King. For the boxers. Yes, 100%. I love that you remember Paul Heyman of having a slicked back ponytail and not just a little balding nightmare who ripped off so many wrestlers in the early 2000s.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

I thought he was pretty funny.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Yeah, he is a funny guy. He's a funny guy. He's also evil.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

That goes. That's. It's wrestling.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

I know.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

That's just how it is.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

No, but I mean, like off, like out of character. He's also kind of evil.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

All right, listen, let's take a break.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Okay.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

And so that I can gather my thoughts.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Yeah. Because I just can't get they. I just want to say the greatest showman character assassinated her.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

They really did.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

They really did. Because everything you're describing to me is a plain dressed woman who only cares about orphans. Yeah. And it's like, I can raise up so much money.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

She's like, I'm gonna be able to get so much money for I can

[Mr. Pearlmania]

help so many people and that. Go back to probably a nunnery or whatever.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Like she just feels like that way.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

And they made her a sexy redhead. That's what they do with a British

[Mr. Pearlmania]

accent who desperately wants.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Then the whole thing is in the movie. They're like, oh, because she breaks his contract, it destroys him and he loses his house.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

That's not true. A different business opportunity destroyed him and he did lose his house. One of many.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

But that's much later because different. Yeah, but that's much later, though. And also they imply that the place burns down at the same time as the this breakup happens.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

The timelines are wrong.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Yeah. Because this is 15 years before the fucking place burns down. Let's take a look. And it wasn't burned down by a fucking mob. It was burned down by a gas line.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

President Trump just banned abortion access for veterans who get care through the va. Veterans fought for our freedoms. Now we should fight for theirs. Tell Congress to restore abortion care for Veterans. @nwlc.org Veterans the Global Gaming League is

[Mr. Pearlmania]

presented by Atlas Earth, the fun cashback app. Hey, it's Howie Mandel and I am inviting you to witness history as me and my how we do it gaming team take on Gilly the king and wallow. 2, 6, $7 million gaming in an epic global gaming league video game. Showdown. Plus a halftime performance by multi platinum artist, Travy McCoy. Watch all the action and see who wins and advances to the championship match right now at Global Gaming League league.com. that's globalgamingleague.com in partnership with Level Up Expo. So business P. One thing that's crazy that I'm realizing now is that we've now covered the movie. Yeah, we've covered most of the movie now because the movie ends with the. The. That thing burning down. Yeah, the. The museum burning down. Him and Lind having like their breakup. The museum burning down. And then he's just like, oh, we don't need a building. We could get a tent. And then it just closes with a circus story.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah. That's not what happened.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

That's not what happened. I'm shocked. I'm shocked that this Hugh Jackman movie is completely full of lies.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Back at the museum, he wants to get into theater, and theater at the time is considered really indecent. But he wants theaters to become more respectable, middle class entertainment.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Wait, hold on. That's the reverse of the movie. That's the reverse of the movie. In the movie, theaters are respectable, but the. The Zoo Museum isn't. They're like the Zoo Museum. That's like Jerry Springer style trash. Why be respectable? Like the theaters? And he even brings in Zac Efron, who I think at one point is supposed to be British.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

I don't know.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

I think at one point he's supposed to be British and then they forget his accent about halfway through. But like, he's supposed to be respectable and his parents now hate him because of all this stuff. By the way, I looked it up. I did look it up as I was looking through this movie.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Zac Efron's character and Zendaya completely made up. Oh, the character of Carlisle, the playwright.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Never fucking existed.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

That checks.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

It's just a guy they created. Same thing with Zendaya's character completely made up because they're like, we need to have like a love story over here on the side.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

And like, is it a love story?

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

It feels seem like they really talk. They just kind of make eyes at

[Mr. Pearlmania]

each other and they hold hands once or twice. But then also there's a power imbalance because, you know, it's 18, 60 something.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

She's a black woman trying to survive in New York.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

And he is a junior partner in the business that employs her.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

That's fucking. What are we talking about here?

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

So he builds New York City's largest and Most modern theater. And he named it the moral lecture room.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

P.T. barnum. I created the Moral Lecture Room.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Moral Lecture Room.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Okay.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Would be a place I would never go.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

So actually, there's a place. There's a place right off of Times Square, because I noticed that last time I was up there, I was walking by where it's just off Broadway.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Okay.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

There is, like, a permanent, like, Christian theater there.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Okay.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

That is, like, always running sermons.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah, I remember that.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

It's like always running. This is what kind of what that feels like.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

That would just drop people off.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Yeah. This is kind of what that feels like.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Barnum hope that this would attract the family crowd and win the approval of the city's moral crusaders. He started the nation's first theatrical matinees to encourage families and to lessen their fears of crime.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Matinees were invented because they're like, listen, come here at two.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Guns out.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Sun's out, guns in, suns out, guns in. Also, we'll keep the hookers over there.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Oh, yep, we'll keep the hookers.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

We love a matinee. Listen.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Love a matinee.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

I try to mostly book matinees.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

I know.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Mainly because of our audience. We got things to do.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

We got places to be. We want to find parking. We want to get a meal. We want to be home in our soft pants by a reasonable time.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

And babysitters are easier to get daytime hours than they are at night. All right. Yeah.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

The theater opened with a show called the Drunkard.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

What?

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Which is basically a temperance lecture. And Barnum had. Oh. Because the whole thing is he's become, like, a sober zealot at this point.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

That is not in the movie. That's the reverse of the movie. What are you talking about? In the movie, they have the. The only scene I liked in the entire movie is when Hugh Jackman and Zac Efron are dancing in a bar. And the bartender is clearly, like, part of the. He's like, I gotta get this guy drunk, and then he can work with me, and I'll get him out of the theater. This whole thing. And the bartender's doing these cool moves in the background, and, like, they're sliding shot glasses around.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

You're telling me by that point he was sober.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

And he hated alcohol.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah. Yeah, he was. So he became one of those sober people that, like, starts hating alcohol for everybody else.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

But to be fair, like, all of America was hammered at that.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah, for sure.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Like, pre prohibition, America was like, they

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

were dying of crazy alcohol.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Yeah. And also the. The alcohol Wasn't regulated.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

That's what I mean. Like, it's like you were getting poisoned

[Mr. Pearlmania]

by the people going blind. People were literally going blind drunk.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

It is a thing that can happen. So the proof level is so high.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Also, the whole thing is, like, he's this. He's a zealot for sobriety. He also. These shows, like the Drunkard and these matinee shows became really popular with women because alcoholism was becoming so rampant among working class men that they were seeking, like, a place to go and hear about, like, sobriety and stories of, like, successful, like, men getting sober.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Yeah. And the thing is, the other reason why the alcoholism is getting so bad is before then, you kind of had to know the place where they made that wall. One specific type of alcohol. And we're getting into industrialization, so you can, like, liquor stores are starting to show up. You can go to a bar and it has more than just one cask of something. You know, like, if you go watch the thing where it's like, oh, it's like ancient times or whatever, like medieval times. And there's like two big. Three big barrels. That was what they had for the year of Pepsi. Yet now you're getting into the times of like, oh, we can get little. I get a quarter something.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Times are getting bullied on the Internet right now.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Good, good.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah, I agree.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Every time. Yeah, yeah. They want women who are knights.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah. And then. But it's. It's marketing genius. Nancy Barnum would do it. You put lady nights on the horses and you have ladies night.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

And then all the gals show up and we get to watch the jousting

[Mr. Pearlmania]

with the lady sapphic swords.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

That is so good.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

I know.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

And the people in the. The medieval times, people like, no, we don't want to have.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Yeah, but they're also anti union, so. The medieval times have also been anti union.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Is bullshit. Because they're like. You were trying to be historically accurate. And I'm like, you serve Pepsi.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Yeah, they do. They don't give you a fork. You can't get a fork at medieval times. I think you have to fight really hard to get a point.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

I'll bring my own fork.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

I know. Because they're like, they didn't have forks back then. So you have to eat the drums.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

They didn't have electric lighting and bath and toilets that flushed.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Give us lady nights.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Anyway.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

And Pepsi.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Okay.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

So in a goblet.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Barnum with a paper crown also began investing, and he had this big idea to develop a part of Connecticut called East Bridgeport.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Can't say. Real fast, real fast. I'm just gonna tell you right now. It's gonna be very interesting when we find out in the comment sections of this video if we have any Medieval Times performers that watch this show and when they comment on it. Yeah. A month or so from now, we will then read that comment on the after party, which you can only [e-mail] our Patreon, because it's one of our payroll podcasts where we react to your comments from YouTube Patreon and from our secret YouTube.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah. And if you are one of the knights, let us know because we're trying to get Lady Nights. Okay. So he is trying to build up this part of Connecticut. And he's basically just like, wants to revitalize the area and he builds out like an industrial area and all this stuff. And he extends substantial loans to this company called the Jerome Clock Company. But that company went bankrupt. And when they went bankrupt, they took a huge chunk of his wealth. He invested way too much and way too dangerous.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

So he went real hard in with a real estate developer.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yes.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

And then that real estate developer destroyed the good thing he had going.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yes.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Never heard of that happening.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Never heard about a real estate developer dragging everybody into bankruptcy slowly over time.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

This next thing you're gonna tell me, somehow Iran's involved.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

This began four years of litigation and public humiliation for P.T.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

barnum.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

For P.T. barnum.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Because he was humiliated in the press because he also. This money.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Yeah. Because they're like, dude, you trusted a real estate developer. Read a book.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

PT also decides he's going to go on a lecture tour. So basically he becomes a temperance speaker. And I believe that he did this literally to raise funds to handle the lawsuits with this, like, clock company.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

By 1860, he emerged from debt and built a mansion that he called Linden Croft.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Okay.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Now he had two other mansions, but he's building this third mansion. But Linden Croft was actually built on the same spot of one of his other mansions, which was called Iranistan.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Okay. I was joking about the Iran thing earlier, and you just said Iranistan.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah. Let me show you a picture of it.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

What are we doing here?

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

I ran Stand was his previous mansion, and it had big Turkish style domes. He even had an Indian elephant on premises that would like plow the fields. Like, it would look like it was plowing the fields, but it would just be like walking through all decorated. And hundreds of people would flock to this mansion to witness the spectacle of this house.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Iranistan Wait, okay, hold on. In the movie. In this stupid movie you made me watch.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yes.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Which I'm still mad about.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yes.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

In that movie, he built. He and his wife, Chastity.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Charity.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Charity. He and Charity, as children, used to play in this dilapidated mansion. And then later he buys it because it's down the road from her parents mansion.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah, he want to stunt on the parents.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Yeah, he wants to stunt on the parents. And then he fixed it up. At no point in time did it look like that.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

That.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

At no point in time did it look like it was supposed to be something that is owned by the Shah of Iran.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Like also, it wasn't called Iran back then. It was called Persia. That name was changed later because Iranian. Just so you guys, Iran has to do with followers of Zoroastrianism. And you know what? Zoroastrian people, they worship in fire temples. Oh, so maybe this fire curses is because he with Zoroaster too hard.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Okay. So Iranistan was. He called it his showman's palace.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Okay.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

So he commissioned it to be a spectacular mix of Byzantine, Turkish and Moorish influences, featuring domed, arched galleries, ornate detailing, and it made it one of the most distinctive homes in America, let alone the fact that it's in Connecticut.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Yeah. Now that house and the picture of it looks like it should be someplace super warm. Yeah, but it's in Connecticut. It's around the corner from Hartford.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

It's a cool, cold, chilly elephant.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

This is a. Okay.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

All right.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

And also, just to go back real fast over the things, the influences. Yeah, Read it them again for me real fast.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

You had Byzantine.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Turkish, Moorish.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Okay. So those are the corners of where the Islamic empires and influences are meeting Europe. Moorish influences are really coming in in Spain. All right. That is where when Muslims had came in and like they got all the way to France in the early times of the early expansion of the Caliphate. And so that is like an area where that was really well known in Europe. And then Byzantine and Turkish, that is Constantinople and today Istanbul.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

But basically that corner of that. But somehow he made it. He ended up making something that looks like it should be India.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Like somehow he up in this really weird way.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

But then people back then didn't know.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

They didn't know because it's not like

[Mr. Pearlmania]

they had TV and they didn't have travel content.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Nope.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

So they were just like, yeah, that's fucking crazy. And then on top of that, they're seeing an elephant. Like, you don't even have to build a house that night. So you have an elephant. Michael Jackson, like, this is Neverland Ranch, Iranistan.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Burned down.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Yes, because he. With Zoroaster. I already said that. You told me that it burned down.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

No, it burned down because a workman there accidentally lit it on fire. There was like a repair guy who accidentally burned the whole place down.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Well, this is back when things just burned down.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

He described Lindenkroft, that's the one he built afterwards in the same spot as a refined gentleman's retreat. Okay. This was a stately Italian style mansion.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Okay.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Classy.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Okay.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Then he also had Waldemere, which was his grand seaside escape.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

The only time we see him seaside in the movie is at the end when he walks up to his wife and he's like, sorry, I've been a narcissistic, abusive psychopath. And she's like. Like, I just want you to listen to me. And I started screaming at the screen. Yeah, Pearlman.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Also there was the Marina, which he called the Final show place, which was like a really. A nice modern brick mansion. Pretty classic for the times. Like, not like super crazy.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

That was a strip down one.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Okay.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Okay.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

I like that all of them have names. I will give them that. I do like that. I like.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Gotta name your mansion.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Gotta name your mansion.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Because when you inevitably pass away and it becomes haunted, we need something to call it.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Yes. We have to be able to call it something.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

So, okay, it's 1870.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Okay.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

He's 60. He's 60. It's 1870. Okay. This is when he establishes the traveling circus.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

This is when he does it.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yes.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

60 years old.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

60. Okay.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

I want to point something out.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

In the movie, when he establishes the traveling circus.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah, yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

He's not 60. No, he's like maybe late 40s. Because he's Hugh Jackman. He's not an old man in that. No, he just. Is just. Just some guy.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

He named it P.T. barnum's Grand Traveling Museum, Menagerie, Caravan and Hippodrome.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

That's a little long.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

It's a bit much.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

That's a little. But also, though, back in those days in like the 1870s, 1880s, everything had too long of a name. It was always way too precise. Yeah, yeah. Too precise of a name.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

He changed the name eventually to something a little smaller. PT Barnum's Traveling World Fair. Great Roman Hippodrome and the Greatest show on Earth.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

The Greatest show on Earth is one that's gonna stick.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

That's.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Yeah, the Greatest show is gonna stick.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

This was the first circus to display three rings. Okay.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Okay.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

The Show's primary attraction was Jumbo, an African elephant that Barnum had bought from the London Zoo. Zoo.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

I don't like that. I don't like that he bought an elephant from the London Zoo. No, I feel like they wouldn't do that today.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

No.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

And actually, because.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah, because the British just don't give back anyway.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Well, they don't do that. But also Barnum and Bailey's, which eventually this becomes. Yeah, that is. They famously lost their elephants at the end.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Now they don't have. Now they're back, but they don't have elephants.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

The circus still contain acts similar to the museum, including acrobats, cats in quotations, freak shows, and General Tom Thumb, a person with dwarfism that he dressed up like a war general.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Okay. Yeah. And he's in the movie. Yes, he's like a big part of the movie.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

General Tom Thumb is. Throughout the movie. He's. They take him to go see Queen Victoria and he's like, what's up, toots? You're not so. So tall either. Yeah, he says that to her. There's like a few times where he has like lines.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

That are really good. But he was. That wasn't his name. They never even call him Tom.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Let me tell you something about Thomas Tom Thumb. Okay. General Tom Thumb was a star.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Oh, really?

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Okay. He was a big time star. And the fact that they portrayed him so poorly in the movie is one of. Out of all the terrible things in this movie and the rewrites to history, not giving Tom Thumb his flowers is crazy because his name was Charles Stratton. And PT Adopted him. Him when he was four years old from his parents in the movie.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

He was 22.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

He taught the boy how to sing and dance and mime and impersonate famous peoples. For all of his childhood, he.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

He bought a child.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

He bought a four year old with dwarfism. Stratton made.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Wait, wait, hold on. This is who Hugh Jackman wanted to be? Yeah, they made this movie. Just so you know, I looked it up.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Okay.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

They made this movie for Hugh Jackman when Hugh Jackman hosted the Oscars.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Okay.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Back in 2009. All right, all right. He did. He wanted to show everybody that he's more than Wolverine. He's a song and dance man. And he ran around with a cane and a big coat with castles tails on him and everything else. And some people quoted, hey, looks kind of like P.T. barnum. And someone's like, oh, we could do a musical about P.T. barnum with him. And he said, I Love it. And then they spent years creating this movie for him and then slowly changing shit like this.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

So bad.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Yes.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Because it wasn't just written about him. It was just written for the other guy.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Yeah, it was written for. It was a Hugh Jackman. This is a Hugh Jackman movie.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

This is Hugh Jackman the entire time living P.T. barnum's life. Not Hugh Jackman. It being P.T.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

barnum.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

But then on top of that, just to bring it real home, it was started. They started writing this in 2009, and then it came out in 2017. So it's at the height. It's the entirety of the Obama administration.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Which is why every song is so fucking dated when you're watching it. If you watch this movie now. I know, I know. So many of you probably been mad at me this whole fucking. This whole podcast.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Oh, I love that movie. It was so great. We never watched it until then. As I was watching, I was like, oh, wait, that song's from fucking TikTok. Then she started saying, oh, I heard that song one time. TikTok.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

No, no. The whole thing is like, the reason why so many people went back to that movie is in 2020, during lockdowns, so many people were trying to remember things that brought them joy. So they watched the Greatest Showman. Because the Greatest Showman has music that reminds him of Obama's America.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah. Or just watch Moulin Rouge.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Or just watch Moulin Rouge.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Rouge would have been a better choice.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

But also on top of that, with all of this, it's part of that. Obama's America. It's part of that idea of, like, post racial.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

And also that we put all this stuff behind us. And so now living in a world where we're being run by a fucking freak show of corrupt psychopaths who are trying to kill us all the time. It doesn't feel right.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Jeffersonians.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Yeah, Jefferson. Jacksonian.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Jacksonian.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Jacksonians. These Jacksonian psychos that are running everything into the ground. When you watch a movie where everyone's like, we're going to overcome this because we're going to come together. Oh, Oh. I was like, you and your 35, hamburger man. All right, back to Tom Thumb. I'm sorry, I just had to. I just had to blurt that out.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Stratton. His name.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Charles Stratton.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Charles Stratton.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Charles Stratton.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Charles Stratton made his first tour of America at the age of five with routines that included impersonating characters such as Cupid and Napoleon Bonaparte. The tour was A huge success.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

I like that you said it the Italian way. Yeah, I like that you did. Yeah. You said. Instead of. You said Napoleon Bonaparte. Yeah, yeah, that was, that was. He would shoot you for that.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

There's a lot of people that would.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

I know now. Okay.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

A year later, Barnum took young Stratton on tour of Europe, making him an international celebrity. Along with P.T. stratton appeared before for Queen Victoria, he met the three year old future King Edward VI. After his three year tour in Europe, Stratton began his rise to stardom in the United States. Stratton's fame grew at an astonishing rate and his popularity and celebrity surpassed that of any actor of the time. I'm telling you that Tom Thumb was the biggest star. He was the Tom Cruise of the age.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

They could have made the movie. Movie about him.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yes.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

And about how he was being. He got purchased by Hugh Jackman.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Because in the movie again, there's that scene where they, they show him meeting Queen Victoria. Yeah. He's like, ah, what's up toots? But he's like. He feels very much five. Yeah, he's supposed to be five years old. Yeah, he's supposed to be five years old and very small. But that's like I completely understand why they couldn't get somebody to do that.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

But in the movie they make it the entire joke over and over again. Or like they do this implication that everyone thinks that he is a little child when he is an older man.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

And I feel like it's a voiceover, Right. Like it felt. The voice doesn't make sense.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

The voice. There's something, I think it was, I think it was ada. It's like ADR or something like that where they come back in to like

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

go match and they like deepened it or something.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

There was something odd with that side of it. But like this whole time it's just driving me insane. Again, you're taking a much more interesting story and a much more like just real one and you're sanitizing it to the point where you. It's. This is. They shouldn't even call him P.T. barnum. They just could have called him the Circus Man. Yeah, he could have just been Circus Man.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

On his return home from his second tour in 1847, he was aboard the SS Cambria and he became friends with the Irish explorer John Palliser, who told him of the famine in Ireland and how he was raising money for the victims. General Tom Thumb contributed, at nine years old, $50 to the collection for the relief of the famine. Victims in Ireland. His huge donation made front page news and brought more eyes to the suffering of the Irish people. $50 would be $1983.24 today.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Okay. All right. So legit. He's a good person. Okay. And this is the guy who they literally just every now and then, pepper throughout the movie to make Hugh Jackman's character feel better.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yes.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Because the whole movie, Hugh Jackman's like, oh, it's not going well, guys. And then a bearded lady. Tom Thumb.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

A guy covered in tattoos come in like, oh, sir, you're the first person ever treat us like a person.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

You've been advocating for us the whole time. Nobody ever was nice to us before.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Meanwhile, he purchased you at 4 and took you from home.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

And made you do two European tours before you're nine.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Stratton's first performances in New York City marked a turning point in the history of the freak show entertainment. Before Stratton's debut, the. The presentation of, quote, human curiosities for entertainment was deemed dishonorable and seen as a carnival attraction. However, after viewers were introduced to Stratton and his performances, they changed their perception. People held. He changed the perception that people held towards freak shows. Stratton's performances made the carnival shows one of the most favored forms of theatrical entertainment in the US at the time. At the age of seven, Stratton performed a grand full length fairy tale melodrama. While. While Barnum sought to capitalize on Stratton's small stature, he also aimed to highlight and showcase his many true gifts as a performer. He was a talented actor, incredible singer, dancer and comedian.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

So he's a triple threat. Yeah, he's just a triple threat. That happens to be small.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

And okay. Yeah.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

He was so popular that after Stratton got married, he was invited to the White House personally by Abraham Lincoln.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Again, why would you leave that out of the movie? Yeah, you could have put Lincoln in the movie.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Lincoln should have been in the movie.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Lincoln should have put. Put the Lincoln back into the greatest showman.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

What the fuck?

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Barnum was also one of the first circus owners to buy his own train. So that's important, I guess, right?

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Yeah, that is. Well, we don't. I know that. I knew that because of our kid.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah. Because we'd be watching a lot of trains.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

A kid's super into trains. Big shout out.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Shout out. Mike Armstrong.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Mike Armstrong, the train guy.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

One, two, three, four and five.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Train School or Four Goes Hard. Yeah. But one of the ones that we Had. We were watching of all these model trains, there was one where somebody bought. There was like a Barnum and Bailey Ringling Brothers train set that has all the different things on it and like a giraffe's head sticking out of it. All those different things. So you can go put it around your train thing. And then also even things like the little. The little train that could.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

In that book it is pulling circus animals and stuff like that.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

The idea of giraffes and elephants and the clowns.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Yeah, the. The idea of a circus being on a train.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Now it doesn't make sense, actually. Really? It doesn't make sense. No. But it's because of P.T. barnum. That's something that's left in our brain.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Brain. Something else that happened. He was appointed as one of the founding trustees of Tufts University in Massachusetts. Yes. He funded the Barnum Museum of National History within the university. And because of this, the elephant jumbo is still the school's mascot to this day.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Huh? The Global Gaming League is presented by Atlas Earth, the fun cashback app. Hey, it's Howie Mandel and I am inviting you to witness Witness History as me and my How We Do It Gaming team take on Gilly the king and wallow. 2, 6, $7 million gaming in an epic Global Gaming league video game showdown. Plus a halftime performance by multi platinum artist Travy McCoy. Watch all the action and see who wins and advances to the championship match right [e-mail] that's globalgamingleague.com in partnership with Level Up Expo. It feels like we're getting near the end.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Oh, no, no. Because now he has to get into politics.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

He's getting into politics.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

That's what you do. Yeah, politics.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Well, he's been. He was a newspaper man. He's a big showman. He's the greatest showman.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Just like Hugh Jackman in the movie. So he gets into politics.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

I can't think of any celebrity that would have a TV show that could then become really political. Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Doesn't happen in America anymore. Yeah. Okay.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

So he's significant involved in politics. He focuses on race, slavery. Race and slavery and sectionalism in the period preceding the American Civil War.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

So P.T. barnum is really into race and he's. Is he anti or pro slavery?

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

He's anti slavery.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Okay, got it.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Very much so.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Okay.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

He's opposed to the Kansas Nebraska act of 1854 which supported slavery and left it. He left the Democratic Democratic Party because it had endorsed slavery. So this is he's becoming a Republican.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Because they're anti slavery Republicans.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Got it. And also he's part of the north and the north is very anti slavery for many different reasons. And it's just more, it's more prevalent in that area versus the South. And that's kind of where the split goes during that time. And it's really. Republicans are considered the radicals. The radical abolitionists are all Republicans for the most part part. Any members of the Democrats that are abolitionists eventually either leave the Democratic party or go over and then they have their own schism and then it stays that way basically until 1964. Yeah, yeah.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Barnum was elected to the Connecticut General assembly in 1865 as an anti slavery Republican.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Okay.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

He said during the ratification of the 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution where he acknowledged that he had over own slaves when he lived in the south. He said, quote, I whipped my slaves. I ought to have been whipped a thousand times for this myself. But then I was a Democrat, one of those nondescript Democrats who are northern men with southern principles.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Wait, hold on a second for me, real fast. So they left out the whole him being a southern slave owner out of the movie.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Let me tell you something even fucking crazier. They left out out.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Because him saying that is infuriating. Because of something else I found out.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

In 1835. So this is like just when he moves to New York with his wife.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

1835 is early in the move to New York.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Yeah. Which, which just so you know, in 18 in the movie, when they show him during this period of time, they're like dancing in laundry on a rooftop.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah, that's their whole thing.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Yeah. They're. They're dancing on the rooftop.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

That's what they showed us about 1835.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

First invented investment into this business that he's going to become like a showman.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Was. He purchased a blind and almost completely paralyzed slave named Joyce Heth.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Wait, hold on, P.T. barnum bought a woman?

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yes.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

He bought an old woman.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

An old blind paralyzed woman. He billed her as George Washington's 161 year old former nurse.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

What the fuck?

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Slavery was already outlawed in New York. But Barnum exploited a loophole hole that allowed him to lease her for $1,000. Borrow. He had borrowed 500 of that to complete this lease sale.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

So he leased a slave woman? Yes, he. He leased an enslaved woman and then he proceeded to lie and say that she was the nursemaid of George Washington.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yes, yes. That was his selling point for you to Pay a nickel to come view her.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

To just look at an old blind woman.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yes.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Who was just barely alive. This is how he got his start.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yes.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

This is how. This is the first step on becoming the greatest showman. It wasn't taking his dad's hat off of a fucking coffin. It wasn't selling newspapers. It wasn't doing a tap dance. It wasn't lying about a fucking loan. It was bomb. Dying a old woman.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yes. He forced her to work 10 to 12 hours per day.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

She was 79.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah. She died in February of 1836. So one year. She died a year into his lease.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Into his lease, he leased a human being.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Okay.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Barnum hosted a live autopsy, shut the

[Mr. Pearlmania]

body, shut the up in a New

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

York saloon to prove she was actually 160 years old and charged 50 cents at the door.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

He had her chopped up in a fucking bar to count her bones like they were tree rings.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yes. Yep. After her death, the story was exposed as a hoax.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

What the fuck are we doing here? What the fuck? Why would you make them. What the fuck? I am apoplectic. This is fucking insane. Like I understand that later he becomes anti slavery, whatever great people need to go on, change all this other different shit, but the fact. No, no, it makes sense. It makes sense that Hugh Jackman want to make this movie. You want to know why?

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Why?

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Because you know, there's some things we left out about Hugh Jackman in this movie. I know.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

This is not an episode about who? Jackman?

[Mr. Pearlmania]

No, it should be. It should be about him and his deep close little friendship with Rupert Murdoch, the owner of Fox News.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Wait, what?

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Because this year Hugh Jackman. Hugh Jackman this year did his little song and dance tap dance for fucking Rupert Murdoch's 95th birthday. What? Yeah, this year, 2026, Hugh Jackman hopped on a stage, did a little dance for Rupert Murdoch. And Rupert Murdoch at the time owned 20th Century Fox, which is the production company that produces Fox garbage movie. And the reason why it was green lit and the reason why it was created is because he's such close personal friends with Rupert Murdoch. Guess what? Remember earlier I said he was a godparent?

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Guess who he's a godparent to?

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

No.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Rupert Murdoch's kids that he had with Wendy Deng in 2003.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Oh, no. Wolverine.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Why Exactly. Wolverine, from the Fox movies of the x men before 20th century spots was sold to Disney. Disney. He's been close personal friends his entire, basically his entire adult life with Rupert fucking Murdoch. And so of course, of course the Owner of Fox News went and glossed over the fact that they're making a movie and a song and dance movie. A stomp, whoop, clap, let's do it. Snap our fucking suspenders movie about a man who chopped up an old lady and claimed that he was one of Washington slaves. Slaves. Rupert Murdoch, a man who supported Donald Trump, who came to. That's breaking about Philadelphia. But Donald Trump sent his goons into Philadelphia to remove evidence and plaques about the fact that George Washington clept slaves in the first presidential manner here in Philadelphia. We had a court case about it because they went and they literally ripped everything off the walls. They figured out where George Washington's house was right by Independence Mall. They built a little, little thing for it and they put a place about the enslaved people that lived there and that George Washington was so into fucking slavery that they had to make sure these slaves were forced to go back to Virginia after a certain amount of months. Because there was a law in Pennsylvania at the time that if an enslaved person came across the Mason Dixon line and was here for a certain period of time, they were automatically granted their freedom. Automatically, Immediately. And George fucking Washington sent his people back because he didn't want to make sure that they knew of this loophole where they hung out here too long. And a few of them escaped. And George Washington spent the rest of his life and their lives writing to them, saying, don't you want to come back? Don't you want to come back? And so instead they suppress all that fucking history. They created the fucking cherry tree. They created the fucking wooden teeth and all that other bullshit. And then we have hucksters like this piece of shit come out there, buy a lady who has nothing to do with any of this shit, and chop her fuck it up. He wouldn't even let her be free. In debt, death. And this is the guy that Hugh Jackman wanted to do. Oh. Oh, fuck you, Hugh Jackman. Fuck you, Wolverine, you fucking bag of shit.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yep.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

I'm just. I'm sorry, that's just. Fuck. That's so fucking insane. I understand, I understand later in his life, you were saying the 13th Amendment, which is what banned slavery. I understand that, yeah, he made changes and all those things.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

It didn't ban slavery. It just made it so that, that if you are imprisoned, yes. For breaking a law and then implied criminality, yes. Then you could be a slave of the state.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

It moved it from. It moved it from owning people to leasing them for a specific period of time. Once they have a judicial, a judicial order against them. That's what the 13th Amendment truly did at the end of the day. Yeah, it was written that way on purpose.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Charity died.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Charity. Okay. What? What are you talking about? Charity died.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

The wife.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

P.T. barnum's wife. I forgot. Yeah. I'm sorry. I got so mad at fudgeing Hugh Jackman. For what? Peter. Peter, I'm doing that. I forgot about Charity, who was played by Michelle Williams.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Charity dies in 1873. Okay, he's 63.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

P.T. barnum's 63.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

This is born 1810. I can do math. Okay, I'm sorry. I'm just. I'm hot now. I'm literally hot. I'm like that yelling. And then these lights. And then you made me watch this movie.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

I keep it.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Here's the thing. I don't hate all musicals. Can I just say this real fast?

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

I don't hate all musicals.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Name one you like.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

I really like Cabaret.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Oh, yeah, that's true.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

I really like the Music man growing up. I really like Fiddler on the Roof. That's probably just because it does something to me.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

What are some other ones I liked? What was the rock and roll musical we went to?

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Oh. Oh, I know what you're talking about.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

The one that's all rock and roll stuff.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Where it was rock and roll songs. I like that one. I like the Buddy Holly Story. I saw that one. I saw the Lion King. I like the Lion King. I liked. No, there's a. There's musicals that I like.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Like. Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

And I was. I mean, that was Rock of Ages. Rock of Ages.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

I remember that one.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

I enjoyed Rock of Ages.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Okay.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

We went to a matinee show.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

We sure did.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Yeah, we did. Which apparently was invented by P.T. barnum. After he cut up a lady in

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

a bar, Charity dies.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

I'm glad you put that at the end. Just so you know. I'm glad this is the. Because I. If you told me this early. Yeah. It would just be me.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

I couldn't open with it.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

No.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Too much.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Well, you know what? They knew that. I even put it in the movie.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Movie.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

They had to put in a song about, oh, we're gonna overcome this.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

She dies, 1873. Who? Charity, the wife.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Okay, got it.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

In 1874, a few months after his wife's death, he marries Nancy Fish, his friend's daughter who is 40 years his junior.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Wait, so he. At 63, he marries a 23 year old?

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yes.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

So they cut out that. Yeah, they never even got to that. The movie ends with him basically watching his Kids do ballet while sitting next to his wife.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Implying that it's the greatest love story ever told and that they're close friends who actually are partners, even all the way back then.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Kind of like implies. Implies like some equalness, mutual respect and love. And it's. And instead, because the only age difference in the movie is supposed to be Zac Efron and Zendaya.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Because he was nearly 30 and she was like 80. 18. Yeah. That is the weird, creepy age difference in that movie. What you're saying is they cut out the fact that his wife died and then he married a lady named Fish.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Upon hearing of Charity's death, Barnum traveled to Southport to be with Fish and her father, John. He did not attend his wife's funeral.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Okay, I can see why they cut that out of the movie. I can see that they need to make sure. They needed to pretend that he cared about his daughter doing ballet while the other one pretended to be a tree in the background.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

In 1875, a year later, he served as mayor of Bridgeport, Connecticut, and he worked to improve the water supply. He brought gaslighting to the streets.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Oh, yeah. No, this movie brought gaslighting to our fucking living room. All right? That's what it fucking did. That's what he did. When he died. Did he die? Is he gonna die soon? Does he die soon?

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

He was big into enforcing liquor and prostitution law.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Okay, Mr. Moral, go count some more bone rings.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

He was instrumental in the inception of the Bridgeport Hospital.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Okay.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

He was the. He was the first president of that hospital.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Uh huh.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

He did die of a stroke in 1891.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Jesus Christ. He lived to be 81 years old. 60 years after he counted a lady's

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

rings, his circus was sold to ringling brothers on July 8th of 1907 for $400,000, which is the equivalent to about $13 million million dollars.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Jesus. And that's it. And they died.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

So he died. And then his thing is sold. That guy and you. Jackman. I don't care that. It's just. It's so. I'm just. That is so infuriating. I hated that movie. It's bad enough that it was historically inaccurate. The things that they purposely left out are so goddamn wrong. Yeah, it's so wrong. And it's. It's. It's worse. Not making this would have been better. Yeah, I just want to say not making this would have been better. They're. They're. It's saccharine. They pretend that he cares about these people when he's clearly Using them the entire time. Yeah, the leaving out, like. Yeah, yeah, sure. By the end he's, he's a. He's a slightly better person. He probably wanted to get into heaven by that point.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

But like all this other him also,

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

he lives out General Tom F. Thumb.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Yeah. Well, they had him there. They had him there.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

But they left them out.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

No, but they never even called him General Tom Thumb. He literally is sitting there at the one point he sees the whole reason he ends up in. In the movie, the reason why he wants to start getting freaks after his kids say, you need to have something alive.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Is he sees the apple and he sees a book about Tom Thumb, like one of his kids nursery rhyme books. And he sees the Tom Thumb. He's holding the Tom Thumb book and an apple. He's like, oh, that freak gave me an apple. And I remember seeing a dwarf. Dwarf.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

And then bing, bang, boom, before you know it, we're stomping People. Yes. 100 people. He does a whole. Like the X Men. We gotta go collect our X Men.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Yeah.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

It literally is almost shot for shot, like X Men first class when they're traveling around.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

He knows X Men. Okay. Anyway.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

No, he doesn't. He knows. He knows Rupert Murdoch and Nicole Kidman.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Give your hand.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

I don't want to give you my hand.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

And we did it.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

We did it.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

We had a comedy history podcast.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Yeah. And we're gonna do it again next week. Same channels, same place you find them every Sunday at noon.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Five stars.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Five stars. Like and subscribe ad free on the Patreon.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Say it all.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Yeah, we'll see you next week.

[Mrs. Pearlmania]

Bye.

[Mr. Pearlmania]

Too many frauds and too many scammers that we wish weren't real. Too many cons and too many spammers and we're starting to feel like we've got too many, many times. Open it too many times. Remember to smile. Marketing is hard, but I'll tell you a little secret. It doesn't have to be. Let me point something out. You're listening to a podcast right now and it's great. You love the host. You seek it out and download it. You listen to it while driving, working out, cooking, even going to the bathroom. Podcast are a pretty close companion. And this is a podcast ad. Did I get your attention? You can reach great listeners like yourself with podcast advertising from Libsyn Ads. Choose from hundreds of top podcasts offering host endorsements or run a pre produced ad like this one across thousands of shows to reach your target audience in their favorite podcasts. With Libsyn ads, go to Libsynads.com that's L I B S Y N ads.com Today, the Bleacher Report app is your destination for sports. Right now, the NBA is heating up, March Madness is here, and MLB is almost back. Every day there's a new headline, a new highlight, a new moment you've got to see for yourself. That's why I stay locked in with the Bleacher Report app. For me, it's about staying connected to my sports. I can follow the teams I care about, get real time scores, breaking news and highlights all in one place. Download the Bleacher Report app today so you never miss a moment.