Doomed to Fail - Ep 153 - Silly Rhymes, Serious Messages: Dr. Seuss

Episode Date: November 18, 2024

Oh, the tales we will tell, the stories we’ll share,Of a man with a hat and a cat—so rare!From Lorax to Horton, the lessons abound,But what of the whispers, the questions around? We’ll dive into messages, morals, and themes,Equality, kindness, and big hopeful dreams.But wait! There’s more—controversy’s here,With books pulled from shelves and debates far and near. Was the Grinch misunderstood, or perhaps it’s a ruse?Let’s unravel the world of dear old Dr. Seuss. 🎧 Tune in now for a rhyme-filled ride!Click the link to join us inside! #DrSeuss #PodcastEpisode #OhThePlacesYoullGo #HortonHearsAWho #TheLorax #ControversyUnpacked #SocialJusticeStories https://www.nytimes.com/2000/11/29/nyregion/public-lives-mrs-seuss-hears-a-who-and-tells-about-it.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Our_Job_in_Japan  Join our Founders Club on Patreon to get ad-free episodes for life! patreon.com/DoomedtoFailPodWe would love to hear from you! Please follow along! Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doomedtofailpod/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/doomedtofailpod  Youtube:  https://www.youtube.com/@doomedtofailpod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@doomed.to.fail.pod Email: [e-mail] 

It's a matter of the people of the state of California versus Hortonthal James Simpson, case number B.A.019. And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country. Hey, Taylor. Hi. See, was that aouncey-ish? It was. I really liked it. Thank you. Thank you. Would you like to introduce us since I remember all the time? Yes. And I'd like to thank all of our new, you. new listeners from blue sky which is just like another social media network that i joined and we have 53 followers and they're not people we know seriously yeah because a person named let me look doctor um who was it some wonderful person no dr lindsay fitz harris who has 40 000 followers

It was a historian. She re-posted us because I had sent something to her about Amelia Earhart because she had said something about Fred Noonan. And she said, doomed to fail. It's such a great concept for a podcast. And shared it. So, I don't know, 53 followers, hopefully new ones. So, okay, now we'll introduce us.

Thank you, by the way. So thank you. And welcome new and old people to Doom to Fail for the podcast. It brings you history as most notorious disaster. at epic failures twice a week every week and i am taylor joined by far as yep we are joined here together on this glorious glorious day um thanks for doing that taylor i somebody brought up blue skies to me i mean there's so many places on the internet so i just want to like grab someone's attention you know do you remember for like five minutes there was this there's this huge backlash way back in

a day about Facebook's data policy and this company launched it was when we were living in LA where it was going to be free and it was going to be a social media network and it wasn't going to sell your data was it going to sell advertising and it was like all just black and white look like a newspaper do you remember this I don't know it all looks the same it's your point it's like every week there's a new one yeah so I'm like I'll join this one I'll join this one I'll join that one I'll get us out there so I joined threads for like five minutes I was like why am I here I don't want to be here at all I mean, I'm not doing anything scientific.

Like, I'm not doing anything different on the different, the different sites. Like, our stuff... Not working in the algorithms? I'm not. I mean, dear God. No, my, um, everything that I post on Instagram automatically posts to our threads, but like, that doesn't mean anything, you know? Yeah.

It's out there. It's out there. If you could find us, find us. We'd love it. Well, the fact that you're doing it is appreciated. So, thank you. I appreciate that. I appreciate it.

Sweet. So today we're going to do a story from. your neck of the woods and is this going to be one where i'm going to be guessing since i guess we're not going to be doing fairy tales today actually we kind of are oh wow okay i know and i guess um i thought there was some there's something else that i wanted to do um it's a little bit longer and i got a book about it and i was listening to it and then i was like oh you know what i'm actually flying to washington Washington state on Thursday and i was like i should listen to this book on the plane that makes a lot more sense you know so i decided to do something else because

our friend Morgan mentioned something that you mentioned in our last episode and she was like, oh my gosh, there's so much more to this story. So I want to have you guess. And I Wikipediaed the list of most bestselling fiction authors. And I remember how we talked about this with Agatha Christie. Right. When we talked about her, it's like the list is ridiculous. And the Wikipedia list actually says, quote, this is a dynamic list and may never be a, able to satisfy particular standards for completeness. So, you know, it's a guesstimate. But this person is on that list of the bestselling nonfiction authors. And he is right behind Tom Clancy. And again, like the estimate is insane. So he wrote 44 books. And he's sold anywhere between

100 and 600 million of them. So like, thanks for that. Very specific data point. But he's on the list. Who do you think that could be? Is it potentially? No. They are children's books, obviously, because they're kind of like, I don't think you'd say fairy tales, but the children's books. Goosepumps. No, but that's such a good guess. No, they're not chapter books, they're just like regular books, and they rhyme. And there's been movies in Broadway musicals about them.

I don't know. Okay, it's Dr. Seuss. oh yeah okay I try my best you know it's funny I actually thought Dr. Seuss was like a made up human that like a major book publishing company was like let's make him sound really professional

call him Dr. Seuss that's a silly name so it seems like it would be and that reminds me like you know VC Andrews have you ever heard of her no so she writes like absolutely bonkers books like children or flowers in the attic remember that one?

I've heard of that one. I heard that's one of like a really sad or scary book, right? There is, it's so incestual that like I was watching. I remember being at a hotel with my family, like my extended family. We were like hanging out in like the living room of the hotel room. And there was the flowers in the attic movie was on TV. And it's so confusing because all they do was have kids with their brothers and their cousins because they're like locked in this attic for a part of it. Like it's a whole thing.

Thank you. It just came back to me. I remember. Yeah. And I like was looking at a family tree. And I couldn't even figure it out looking at a family. tree. I'm like, this is wild. But V.C. Andrews, as a person, died a long time ago, but they were still writing books under her name for a long time after she died. You know? Interesting. So that, that definitely does happen, but that did not happen with Dr. Seuss. And I want to show you all my Dr. Seuss books. These are the ones from when I was a kid. I have the Lorax. I have how the Grinch stole Christmas. I have the Snitches and other stories, which we'll talk about. I have happy birthday to you, which is lovely. I have these kind of like random ones. I have, I'm not going to get up today. And miles and miles and miles. of reptiles, which are, like, to your point, like, kind of in the style of Dr. Seuss and by his, like, um, what is it, by his, like, the cat in the hats learning library. So it's just like about, like in his style that they still make today. I also have, of course, Horton, here's a who. Of course. And then I have a couple other ones that I actually have bookmarked things to show, to share with you. So I will share with you those in a little bit. But they are, they're good. So let's talk about them.

We'll talk about his political messages, some of his faults, some cancel-culture-y things, and then some of his, like, most famous work. You're saying cancel culture was a thing when Dr. Seuss was alive, too? No. It is a thing now, and he was involved in it. So I have some examples. I'm going to have limited patience, but we'll go through it. So, Theodore Seuss, Gaisal, Seuss is a real name.

It was his mother's maiden name. So it sounds ridiculous. but it's a real name he was born on march 2nd 1904 in springfield massachusetts his mom was henrietta his dad was also theodore his dad ran the family brewery until prohibition and then his dad became the supervisor of parks in town so they were like well off fine normal whatever in 1925 Theodore went to Dartmouth and he was the editor of the humor magazine that started in 1908

called the Dartmouth Jacko Lantern which is still around and he loved writing for it but he got caught drinking gin in his dorm with some friends because it was Prohibition he got in trouble and he had to stop doing his extracurricular activities

Why was it called the Jackalanchion? Was it just like a Halloween only? No, I kind of looked it up. They called the Jacko. I feel like it probably was like I feel like it would make people uncomfortable if they read the archives of it. Got it. You know? Like, we could talk about that probably separately.

That can be a separate. Yeah. Yeah. Like, but he was forced to resign from the paper, but he still wanted to write and contribute. So he just wrote under the name Seuss instead of Geisel, which is like, seems easy to figure out. But whatever he had to be able to. Again, they didn't have internet. They could just go on.

Facebook and find it out. So, you know, but so he was still, he still was writing and he, he wrote kind of, you know, all through college. He went to Oxford after, after undergrad to try to earn a PhD in English literature. While he was there, he met a girl named Helen Palmer. And Helen was like, dude, you're, you are such a great and talented artist. You should do this instead of your PhD. So he dropped out of school.

And Helen would say later, Ted's notebooks were always filled with these fabulous. animals. So I set to work diverting him. Here is a man who could draw such pictures. He should be earning a living doing that. It's just supportive and cool. She's like... So Dr. Seuss drew the pictures himself? Yeah.

Yeah. He wrote and drew all of these. It's so cool. Yeah. And it's so specific. You know, you know when it's a Dr. Seuss drawing. It's really cool. Yeah. I've been to several art galleries in the past few years where they

have like a doctor sue section where it's like the some of them are original original of his drawings and some of them are just like like three D like statues and busts that were created of his characters that like it looks so much more interesting in like three dimensions you know like when you see them yeah and I feel I know I don't later I'll tell you that he lived in La Jolla which is near San Diego no way okay because where I saw the first one of the well I guess it wasn't in La Jolla. It was close, so it was in the good to be on its way to La Jolla from L.A. That makes sense. Like you said, there's a lot of places you can see it. But I feel when I drive through Joshua Tree National Park that I live next to that there's no way he didn't

drive through Joshua Tree National Park. Absolutely. You know, like, absolutely. Yeah. Like, it's just so. See it in there. The greenery there, like the fauna is just like so, no, the flora. It's just so like weird other world. Yeah. Yeah. There's, I feel like he had to. He had to have seen it because that's what a lot of his trees look like. It's like that. Um, but yes, so he did a lot of drawings. Oh, that also reminded me when we were in, I want to say Prague or maybe in Italy, we went to a Tim Burton exhibit. That was similar to that. They had like sketches he did on a napkin at a bar and you're like, oh my God, that's so cool. You know, like very distinctly him and like really cool. Um, so. he left oxford helen was going there as well but they both left um they were married in 1927 um she might not have had been able to have children like physically but anyway they didn't have kids he would say you have the kids and i'll entertain them you know he wasn't interested in having his own kids um she also helen wrote some books as well and they were co-writers on a movie that i'll talk about in a little bit so now it's like the late 20s and the 30s and he has some jobs doing things like cartoons for for the Saturday Evening Post, stuff from different magazines. He does a pesticide called Flit. He like draws their characters.

So he's like getting these advertising jobs that are actually paying him a fair amount of money. And people loved it. Like we were just saying, it's like very Dr. Seuss. Like his illustration style is like really, you know, distinct. His first book that he illustrated was actually not something that he wrote. It was a collection of like sayings and jokes for kids.

it has such a good name it's called the pocket book of boners is that is that joke are you going to a bit no I feel like boners means like a joke so it's called the pocketbook

boners and the second one is called more boners they're so innocent I'm super mature and I laughed at that so in 1936 Helen and Ted were traveling around and he said that the

the way that his boat was moving was made him want to start writing things in verse it just like reminded him a poetry so he wanted to start doing things that rhymed and so thank god he did because that's a lot of his you know fun stuff is is the rhyming stuff um so the first book that he wrote was and to think that i saw it on mulberry street which is about um it's a reference to a mulberry street in springfield so kind of going back to his hometown um his second book was miles's favorite book um it is the Miles is my son. He's seven. It is Horton hatches the egg, which I will show you right now. It is about an elephant named Horton. Yeah. Who sits, sits on a nest for an entire year.

And the bird, Maisie, who he was supposed to be sitting on the nest for us, she disappeared to Palm Beach. And some hunters found Horton, and they took him to America, and they sold him to a circus. And he gets, the circus gets down to Palm Beach, and Macy sees him, and she wants her egg back. and Horton doesn't know what to do. He gets off the egg and she's like, it's my egg, I want it back because he did all the work. And all of a sudden, the egg starts to crack while Meezy and Horton are like staring at and trying to figure out what to do when they're in the middle of the circus.

And then the people came shouting, what's all this about? They looked and they stared with their eyes popping out. Then they cheered and they cheered and they cheered and they cheered more and more. They'd never seen anything like it before. my goodness my gracious they shouted my word it's something brand new it's an elephant bird and it should be it should be it should be like that because horton was faithful he sat and he sat he meant what he said and he said what he meant and they sent him home happy 100 percent i can tell you've read this to miles a hundred times because you you picked up all the right inflections in tones we we can say

i think by memory like the first three pages we've read it so much she loves it um But it's about, you know, being loyal and saying what you mean. And he always says, I meant what I said. And I said what I meant. An elephant's faithful 100%. So it's lovely. And that's the first time we hear Horton. And we'll hear him again.

And Horton hears a who. So then it's World War II. And this is the stuff that gets a smidge controversial. And we'll talk about cancel culture. So, and I'll show you. Dr. Seuss was a liberal Democrat. He wholeheartedly, wholeheartedly supported FDR, including the bad things that FDR did like Japanese internment camps, you know? That little thing.

Yes. So some of the stuff is very, very stereotypic of Japanese people, the political cartoons that he drew during this time. There's one you can see it on a Wikipedia if you want to. It's essentially saying that Japanese people drawn in a very exaggerated way. are hoarding TNT, waiting for a signal from home to attack in America, and that's why they need to be in campus. So that's bad. That's on his Wikipedia page?

Yes. So he did that. Later, he's going to tone it down a little bit and be like, you know, to kind of take that away, but it's complicated. And there's a lot more complicated stuff between him and Japan, but I do want to mention that Horton Here's a Who is about, it's about, you know, the allied occupation of Japan. And it is dedicated for my great friend, Mitsugi Nakamura of Kyoto, Japan. So he did dedicate Horton Here's a Who to his Japanese friend, and he's, like, figuring it out. In

2021, his publisher, so there's still like a Dr. Seuss publishing arm, they stopped publishing six of his books that I saw at on Mulberry Street. If I ran the zoo, McElegate's Pool, On Beyond Zebra, scrambled egg super, and the cat's quizer. So I have three of those that I've had

my whole life. And I will show you kind of what people mean. So if I ran the zoo is about a boy who's like, if I ran the zoo, my auntie animals would be better than just like lame lions or whatever. So it has some going to places and finding these really exotic animals like this. You know, I can show you. This is like a deer with like really cool horns, you know. And he's like, this would be in my zoo. It would be much more, much more interesting.

And then there's this page where he travels, uh, to the African island of Yurka and meets these guys. So that's not great. Wait, what is it? It's a depiction of African people. Oh. Oh, that's bad. In a bad way. So that's what people were like, we don't want to...

For the record, when I said sweet, I couldn't actually see the details of it. Now you see. So that's the thing. That's the thing. And they were like, we know what? That could offend some people, so we're not going to publish it anymore. On Beyond Zebra, where they talk about different letters that are different than and other letters.

He does a lot of, like, I think he's doing, like, people from India or cultures where they wear turbans, and they're a lot like this. Can you see them? Yeah. So it's just, like, not wonderful. So they stopped publishing them.

The Katz Quizzer, which he wrote in the 1970s, so, like, he's not really, like, 100% over the Japanese thing. There's this page where it says, how old do you have, this is like a, it's like a trivia book. How old do you have to be to be a Boy Scout, to be a Girl Scout, to drive a car, to fry an egg, to vote for president, to be the president? And the last question is, how old do you have to be to be a Japanese, Ted? What does that mean? I think the answer is zero.

You can be Japanese when you're born, but like, I think that's what they were. I know, but what is, like, I don't understand it. It's a, it's a trivia question. Why is it offensive? because it says be a Japanese oh it's the A part I think so yeah okay yeah um but the answer is all Japanese or Japanese the minute they are born which is fair I think I mean honestly I just skimed through this trying to find something offensive and that was the one thing that I saw I don't know what else there is in here it's probably something else he did draw this weird picture of a dinosaur

that I'm not 100% on board with like what dinosaur is that Ted no I mean he did put fur where it didn't belong and clearly he did that with scales yeah um he also oh the answer is to fry an egg how old you need to be to fry an egg the answer is the correct answer is go ask your mother so that's nice that's cute um so this did spark a debate on cancel culture my boomer aunt on facebook was like they're canceling dr sues blah and it's like though they're not they're just saying that these particular images might offend people so we're going to stop publishing them if you have them you can have them if you want to find them you can find them but that's that's what we're doing which is totally the right of the publishers to do that and something that we've learned just last week with

the grim brothers is they did that all the time they toned stuff down because people were like it's going to scare kids too much so they would change it or they would write a disclaimer at the beginning of it like that's not new you know usually i will say my default when someone's like we got to cancel someone. I'm like, I fuck that. I'm like, clearly they're nut cases. But I will say that like we all were given

Dr. Seuss as little kids. And I would think that if I was like a Japanese American kid or an African American kid and I'm being depicted that way in front of my like in the book in front of like class like that would make me feel otherwise and

that wouldn't feel great. So in this situation and only in this situation, Look at you right now. I'm like, really impressed. We're not canceling Dr. Seuss, but like, yeah, have the publishers remove the images so the people, little kids don't feel like they're different and bad different. Yeah. And then I think, I think so like during that time, I also, I have this book of these two books

that are old, like 100 years old, that were my great grandmas of children's stories. I was skipping through them and there was another one that depicted African people, like, absolutely terribly. And I just ripped it out. I was like, I can do this. I can make the decision myself. I don't even know if this is like, I might have to cut this out. So I went to like a super, super white like school, right?

And like me and this other black kid were the only like non-white people in our class. And we obviously got taught about like Jim Crow and slavery and everything else. And it was like done in like super, super detail. Like here's when we had like black versus white fountains. And here's where someone's back look like for not doing their job. jobs the way that the masters wanted to and i always remember that i was like can we tone this down a little bit like there's only one kid that is seeing this in like having something reflected back like obviously this obviously teach this stuff like i don't know it just like in my mind

i was like you just created this weird dynamic where i was like we're all like everybody's just like looking at him like how does he feel right now like you made you made you made him stand out more in a way that was like receiving attention that you probably don't want to be receiving and I don't know the answer to that like I do think you should tell the the truth no you know about things of course but then also like we talked about those we talked about the alamo that when people talk about the alamo they stop in classes and stare at the Mexican kids you know and like blame and like look at them like how are they feeling you know so yeah it's it's it's tough I don't know I don't know the answer but yeah but I feel like that's a really

fair experience to have you know that's what the doctor susan when you showed me literally my first thought went to that kid i was like yeah yeah like i we were all reading this stuff and there was probably like an asian kid in class i didn't notice and he saw that picture of the Asian person was like oh so we're just like jokes to everyone here like that's not nice a lot yeah totally yeah it's really it's really interesting how we are how we read things based on who we are and the time that we're in which is literally exactly what the what the grandbrothers were talking about thinking about talking about like laws and the time that you're in and things like that you know yeah so super interesting um so again he did did tone a little bit of it down not all the way but still um during the war

um itself he did political posters obviously in 1943 he joined the army as a captain and he was this is kind of cool he was a commander of the animation department of the first motion picture unit of the United States Army Air Forces. That's his awesome job. That's what Reagan did during the war, too. He was in the motion picture unit, you know. Do you get a purple star, like, if you draw really fast? Maybe.

So he wrote films that included things like your job in Germany, our job in Japan, and one called Private Snufu. I can't even imagine the shenanigans that Private Snuffu gets into. They're training videos, basically like, I mean videos, or training movies, basically like, your job. Your job in Germany is from 1945 about Europe after World War II. Same with our job in Japan. And our job in Japan is 17 minutes long.

You can watch it on Wikipedia. I watched a little bit of it. What it is about is going to Japan after the war and how do you talk to those people and how do you work with them. It was seen as being sympathetic to the Japanese citizens and General MacArthur hated it and was like absolutely not. But it basically, the parts, as I was like pass forwarding and watching two minutes of a 17-minute movie, people aren't bad, but they were led by bad people. And one of the things they say, the narrator says, is what do we do with them when we get there? They can make trouble or they can make sense, and it's our job to make them make sense. And so it talks about like the religion in Japan and how easy it was them to follow like a dictator and one person.

And then it shows them like frisking people on the street and saying things like, we're sticking around. and we're taking no more chances. So it's a lot. But was meant for people who were going to Japan after the war and to be like, how do we deal with us? It turned into a longer documentary, which has a very confusing name called Design for Death, which is basically the same thing but extended.

But I don't know why it's called Design for Death. That feels very extreme. But you can't find that. I couldn't find it. I wasn't on Wikipedia, but right? I would love to see the Dr. pursuits illustrations for design for death. Well, it's not a cartoon.

It's like a... I know. I know. I'm just saying if he converted it. No, totally. And so actually he and his wife, Helen, both were the credited writers for Design for Death. And it won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Film in 1947. So that's just like the stuff that we need to know about his wartime pursuits and such.

So after the war, they moved to La Jolla. We already talked about. Beautiful. You're San Diego. Beachy. Very nice. And in 1954, Life magazine published a thing about children not wanting to learn how to read because the books were boring and that kids weren't excited about literacy and the literacy rate in America was really, really low. So that's what he decided to do something about it. And I, literacy rates are not great. So even today in America, 54% of U.S. adults have a literacy level below sixth grade. 20% of U.S. adults are, functionally literate. Like they can't... 20%. 45 million

U.S. adults are functionally literate and read below a fifth grade level, and that's 20%. 44% of you as adults do not read one book in a year. And yeah, so those are some of the things that are having right now. And if you have a literacy rate

below like fifth and sixth grade, it's hard for you to do things like understand the prescriptions you're taking. you know like real day-to-day stuff um i was gonna say hold the job or you know figure out how to sign up for student aid for your kids to go to college like oh my god exactly yeah so also nobody can read their prescriptions it's just fucking scribbles the doctor i mean i throw i mean well like the 17 pages you get from the walmart when you pick it up in the pharmacy i always throw it away but like imagine you should be reading this i throw them away but that's not my literacy rate

I just tossed them in the garbage, because I don't care. So that, I mean, that's now. But 1954 was also bad. So he decided to make books more fun. And guess what the first book he wrote to make books more fun? Is it Grinch? Cat in the Hat. But Grinch was second.

I love Cat in the Hat. Yeah. So Cat and the Hat, the Grinch is so good. Miles and I read The Grinch together today. Green eggs and ham, also very fun. Green eggs and ham, amazing. Yep. And a lot of people bought them.

Many of his books are at like the very beginner level. they're easy to read, they're fun, their rhyming is fun, all of that. So that's, you know, what makes him one of the top selling authors of all time. In 1955, Dartmouth gave him an honorary doctorate of human letters. And he joked then he had to be called Dr. Dr. Seuss, because then he really had a doctorate. That's very good. Which is cute. So he wasn't able to go to Dartmouth in 1995 to accept that award because Helen was getting sick.

So it sounds like she had some, like, physical and some mental illness. elements that were happening. And then in the next, you know, 10 years or so, they're living in La Jolla and he, Ted and Helen, meet another couple and they become good friends. And he begins to have an affair with a woman named Audrey, who's married to a real doctor, which I thought was funny. So, he's a real doctor now, though. Come on.

I mean, he's an honorary doctor at a few main letters. He doesn't have like a, he's not going to perform surgery on you. Like, if I say, is there a doctor on this plane? I'm not going to ask for him. So Shaq has an honorary doctor. Are you saying Shaq's not a doctor? Yes. I'm saying if someone's like it's their doctor on this plane, I guess I do want Shaq to be the one that comes to my rescue.

Yeah, don't get yourself canceled for no reason, Taylor. Well, I don't want like a doctor of poetry from Harvard. I don't want that guy, you know? No, nobody wants that guy. So he begins an affair with Audrey. And on October 23rd, 1967, Helen dies by suicide. Um, she wrote a letter to him. She was she, uh, she was 69, I believe. It's a pretty old.

Like, just let the time run out. Like, just let the clock, shot clock's about to call it anyway. I think she just had, she had, I mean, he was very, I think probably pretty obviously having this affair. Um, and she wrote in a letter to him, her, her letter was, dear Ted, what has happened to us? I don't know. I feel myself in a spiral going down, down, down, down, and doing. a black hole from which there is no escape, no brightness. And loud in my ears from every side, I hear failure, failure, failure. I love you so much. I'm too old and enmeshed in everything you do and are that I cannot conceive of life without you. My going will leave quite a rumor, but you can say I was overworked and overwrought. Your reputation with your friends and

fans will not be harmed. Sometimes think of the fun we had through all the years. So it sounds like he was trying to leave her. And she was like, I can't do that. The next year, like within a year, he married, Audrey would get divorced and they would get married in 1968. They would remain married until his death in 1991. There's a New York Times article. Dr. Seuss lived till 91. Mm-hmm. No way. Dude, I thought when you start, I thought you're going to start telling us a story about how, like,

he was born right after the Civil War. Like, I didn't realize he was not that old. no not that old not that old we're alive at the same time as dr sues i know i feel like i wonder what happened the day he died did our parents tell us where we said you know i don't know they must have well they must have you know yeah they must have yeah um so audrey had two kids and they sent them away because ted didn't even want to be around kids so i think they just like ended up living together. She gets super rich. Like obviously this one there's absolutely bananas rich. The article that is in the New York Times about her is from 2000, but that's right before the movie The Grinch comes out. She's like about to get a fucking windfall of cash. Like the first weekend the Grinch was

in theaters. It made like $150 million and just like more and more from that. Obviously like part of it was all that was all part of his estate. So she got a ton of money from that. And And it's weird, but I like, I don't hate it, the Jim Carrey one. Some people hate it, some people love it. I never saw that. Yeah, I don't hate it. I think it's, I think it's cute. Dr. Seuss won a special Pulitzer Prize in 1984,

citing his contribution over nearly half a century to the education and enjoyment of America's children and their parents. He passed away of cancer on September 24th, 1991. His ashes were scattered over the Pacific Ocean. He has so many, like you said, museums. things named after him. On April 4th, 2012, the Dartmouth Medical School was renamed the Audrey and Theodore Geisel School of Medicine because they spent the gate, they donated so much money to the college. And there's a crater on the planet Mercury that is named after him as well, which is cool. So some of his political works that I want to talk about, and this is what

Morgan was like, we have to talk about this, which I totally agree with. So like we said, He was like a liberal Democrat, followed FDR, very anti-fascist. So some of his books, in the best order I can get them in, in 1954, he wrote Horton, Here's a Who, which is, you know, tolerance and empathy. This is the one that he did, he had dedicated to his friend in Japan. Have you ever read Horton? Here's a Who? I'm sure I am. It's not one that I remember off the top of my head, though. So Horton, the elephant picks a clover, which doesn't look like a clover. It looks like a dandelion. and he hears someone on it.

He hears someone talking to him. And he has like big ears. No one else can hear it. Everybody makes fun of him. And he realizes that there's a whole city, like a whole planet on a speck of dust inside this clover. He has, and he's trying to save them. And his friends try to get rid of the clover, tell him he's going crazy. He ends up finding them.

He makes the who's, the who's other people who live on the clover, make as much noise as possible to tell other people hear them. And the tagline is, a person's a person, no matter how small, which is, like, be nice to people. And then pro-life people decided that that was a good slogan for them. I hate politics so much. Like, like, legitimately, like, why is everything so horrible? Like, horrible. And Audrey was like, absolutely not and donated a lot of money to Planned Parenthood. So.

Oh, my God. It's so funny. How do you do that? The hoarding here's a who, come on. I know. I know. There's another one that I can't show you a picture of, but it is called Yurtle the Turtle from 1958.

It's an anti-fascist story about a turtle that builds a throne on the backs of other turtles, just trying to get bigger and bigger. And obviously, the turtle symbolized Hitler and, you know, how there shouldn't be totalitarian government. And then the book was removed from school. for being, quote, too political in some places, because of the quote, quote, I know up on top you are seeing great sites, but down here on the bottom, we too should have rights. That feels good, but people were like that's too political, 1958.

Yeah, I mean, yes, of course I would get banned. Hoover was wearing dresses and spying on MLK and reading through his news. Like, yeah, of course they're going to ban that. Why is who are on your telephone? He's not everyone else's. I shouldn't even mind. There's one about the sneaches, which is anti-prejudice and empathy, which I, Miles and I also read this morning. But it is the star-bellied sneaches and the ones that don't have stars on their belly.

That's all the only difference between them is stars and the star belly of snitches think they're better than the other sneaches. And then a man comes to town and he says, I'll give you a star, I'll take your star off. They go back and forth till they can't remember. remember who had a star to begin with or why it was important and then the guy runs away with all their money. So it's like, you're dumb for like little little prejudices, you know, like everyone comes on. It's quite lovely. The star bellies leeches and the plain belly snitches. So it's the absurdity of judging others based on superficial differences, obviously. There's also the Lorax. This is the one that we talked about a little bit last week.

The Lorax with his Joshua trees is definitely about environmentalism. The movie The Lorax is quite cute. Danny DeVito is the Lorax in the thing. But it is about a man who goes to, finds a place, finds this tree, starts chopping out all the trees to make a product called a thneed, which is a really fun word to say. A thneed is something that everyone needs. It's like a sweater, a scarf, a thing, whatever. And he chops on every single tree. until there are no more trees

and the Lorax is telling you this story and he gives you the very last seed or no not the Lorax the Onsler is the person who actually chopped down all of the trees he's telling you the story he says plant this one last seed and then the Lorax and all his friends may come back wait I'm going to read it

at the very end Catch says the onceler he's let something fall it's a trefoil a seed it's the last one of all you're in charge of the last of the last truffle of the trefala seeds and the treffola trees are what everyone needs plant a new truffola treat it with care give it clean water and feed it fresh air grow a forest protect it from axes that hack then the lorax and all of his friends may come back so that's pretty

on the nose for stop chopping down trees everyone why are you looking at me i don't actually you know what i chopped down a tree like last week but that was a one did not okay i didn't chop it down i didn't chop it down it was going to fall it was dead it was a dead it was a dead Dead truth. I'm going to follow my house. I'm talking about that. I'm talking about you. That's hilarious. There's another, two more that I'll mention. There's one called Marvin K. Mooney, will you please go now? Which is about a child who needs to be asked to go all the time.

And I think this might be the similar to this, I'm not going to get up today. Like the kid just doesn't want to do anything story. But basically it's like, Martin, you have to go. You have to go. I don't have it, but that's the thing. And then in the right before Nixon resigned, Dr. Seuss took his own copy of Marvin K. Mooney, will you please go now, cross off the word Marvin K. Mooney and wrote Richard Nixon. And then they like scanned it and put it in the paper as like a political commentary, which is cool. You know what's funny is back then I already thought Nixon was like this devil human being.

And now in hindsight, like he voluntarily was, I don't. There's nothing. I have no comment on that. And then the last one is the butter battle book, which is a book about the Cold War. Essentially, it is about two opposing sides who are fighting over which side you butter your bread on. And they get so mad at each other that they continue to build up these great arms and these bombs. And they're just like staring at each other. And the bombs are just ready to drop. and they don't know when they will drop,

but it's about something so trivial and so stupid and everyone's so scared. So it's definitely about the Cold War. It actually reminded me in Sneaches, there's another story that I think is very similar about two people. There's two Zaks, these little creatures. So there's a north-going Zax and a south-going Zax,

and one always walks north, when always walks south, they run into each other, and they won't move. So they just stare at each other, and civilization grows around them, and they never budge from their, like, silly thing that they're what is it about stubbornness or yeah about stubbornness

and like what you'll miss if you're stubborn and like what people will spend their time thinking about if you're thinking about like superficial crap and trying to pull people up for the way they butter their bread you know quite fun it is very very

cute it also makes me wonder like how do adults become like so different for me other when we were all raised on the same diet of like dr sus you know like the animal and the like earth in the humanity stuff like soaked in super deep into my brain and that's why i don't know i don't i don't get how not everybody is not like that i know that is such

a wonderful question how you can consume the same things and get different results I don't know how you can be raised in the same household and think so differently, you know? Yeah, I mean, yeah, that's me and my brother. I, like, I would gladly sacrifice a house that has dog hair and drool and is allowed to have a dog. And he would rather, like, have a clean house and he doesn't want to be around the dog ever. Like, yeah, it's weird. Yeah. went to the same school district too

it's even weird no i know it's like it's it's interesting i don't know i don't know i don't know what it is but i do love me at dr seuss book i love the miles of hudges egg so much you guys got a you know what actually

yeah yeah i think um i think california adventures has a dr seuss land oh i bet i know that there is one i didn't look it up but that sounds fun too. Well, there's definitely one in Orlando. I've been to the one in Orlando, but I'm pretty sure the one in Anaheim has it too.

So, I mean, if Miles is, like, that big into it, like, that would totally be worth the trip for him. You know what? I'm positive. It has one because I, maybe it was universal, not California Adventures. Yeah, I think it's universal.

But they had this, like, very cute little Dr. Seuss, like, train. They're, like, when I got into it, I realized it was for kids. And I was like, oh, shit, I'm going to come off this thing. I'll also have a great time That's a third time by the way Taylor I've gotten into like a roller coaster thing

That was like made for children and nobody stopped me And I got in and I realized that it wasn't meant to suit my body I know that we're um you know this is an audio medium But far as this is tall Oh yeah You're not a small person and yeah I'm also like like vertically and horizontally Like I'm also like a bigger

I'm going to put myself Husky? And I don't I don't think that you should be on a child's ride. No, no, no, it's not a good It's not good for me. Oh, gosh, that's so funny.

Also, I think maybe a follow-up to your episode you did a while ago about roller coaster accidents. My, I found Florence under the table watching a YouTube video about people who had died at Disneyland. I was like, Florence, I get this.

I get you. I get you. you but stop it yeah like i think i was like i mean i had to have been like 15 16 before i discovered like faces of death and all those but that was that's when it came out that's when he came out i guess if it was a route earlier i probably would have sought it out also kids are maturing younger every generation well are they are they going the backwards way way i guess we're the other way i guess you're maturing later in life the more the older we get in time i don't know i think it's earlier no because think about it like

If it was like the 1700s, I'd be dead right now and you'd be like Oh, sure, sure, sure. Like, it means to go in the other direction. That's true. It's true. Not great. That was fun, Taylor. That brought back a lot of memories.

Yeah, a lot of fun memories. Yeah, it's fun. It's fun to read. After you read a couple of them in a row, you think and rhyme for about an hour. Can I, can I? Can I throw out a special request? Uh-huh. Goosepumps.

Oralstein. Oh, yeah. I mean, he's still around. Like, I mean, is he still around? Is he all right? Yeah. No, I think it's still alive because I think that there is some episodes of Castle where he's like a writer who's like trying to be a detective where he like has a group of writers that he plays poker with and one of them is definitely Aral Stein. He has written 240 books.

This guy's got to be a billionaire. Is he a billionaire by now? I mean, he must be. Oh, he's... He's lower than Dr. Seuss on this random list in Wikipedia, but... Higher than Stephen King. R. L. Stein Networth. Weird. He looks like David Axelrod, doesn't he?

200 million. He does. God, he's so rich. Yeah. Very fun. In his prime, he was making $40 million a year. Man, he deserves it. I mean, his books, like, the only, I, I firmly believe the reason I'm so obsessed with horror movies right now and in the Manhattan House, it had to have been R.L. Stein books, like, goose on books when I was a kid. I think it's like,

I don't know. I read a couple of them, but I was too scared. Really? Yeah. I feel like I want to revisit them maybe or like, you know, I like, there's like, I think I liked the Goose movie was dumb in like a fun way. I thought it was so fun. Yeah.

It was even remotely scary. Yeah. It was like Cabin in the Woods kind of vibe where it was like stupid fun. Yeah. Yeah. Totally. Oh, that's fun. Yeah.

So that's all I have for today. I do have one thing that I wanted to remember to tell you. It's not that exciting, but my brother did see Buster Murdoch at the airport, which is, like, funny and weird that he's out there living a life. What is he supposed to do? Well, he, like, potentially murdered someone, remember? Oh, that's right. He did.

He didn't show that girl. He's, like, a weird orphan because his dad's in jail and his dad killed his mom and his brother. He's just, like, living by all his money and, like, all the stuff happened to him and he's like traveling places i guess he like would do that but i just i think that's was was was he was kinkade on the flight with him or i don't think so he says not at the airport i said what was he doing he goes i don't know just like living his life and i was like weird and he's like i know that's it he'll be fine i'm not worried about him but yeah um that's so funny did he take a picture by any chance uh no i can't imagine that was hilarious yeah um i'm

I'm literally looking up where I can buy literally like the entire collection of Guestump books and I don't think they sell those. I bet you can get them on eBay or something or you could just start collecting them like if you go to a, go to a thrift stores and just like manifest them. That's why I did for the Harry Potter books. I was like, I want all the Harry Potter books and like they were all of the different thrift stores.

How many are? How many of those are there? Um, seven. Okay, that's not that many. That's different than buying 240. This is going to, like, I don't have to cash out my 401k to buy this. Like, different situation. It is also, I'm sorry, everyone.

I remember two things I forgot to tell you. Remember, I called you, to remind you to tell you that Hans Christian Anderson went to the Green Brothers house and they were like, who you are, you have to leave, which is hilarious. And another thing that I'm forgetting that I forgot to tell you during this episode is that some of Dr. Seuss's political cartoons were against people who were like America first because they were like um trying to be isolationist and keep us out of the war and one of the people that he was particularly mad at was the american nazi charles limberg because limburg was like oh come on we don't need to be a part of this war let europe figure it out because he was obviously

rooting for the nazis oh yeah yeah you know wait so dr sus was anti limburg is what you're saying yes got it because he could tell that man loved gerbils there's a tin collection of oral stine oh my god tell what am i going to do this yeah i've seen you 20 books from 55 books that's not bad no i've seen you with one book you might have to get a shelf if you get these i did you know what taylor i don't need this shit literally i think about is when i will have a library to be able to put my own books in so like um yeah i'm working my way up i'm almost there good for you um awesome well thank you so much far as no thank you that was also i I love the stories that bring back

elements my childhood that also only mildly involved canceling someone when it's like a full on canceling it's like please stop ruining my childhood people. Yeah, I agree. This one was a justifiable miniature version of that.

So anyways, thank you for sharing. Do you have anything to read off than the buster Murdof? No. That's it. But thanks friends. And if If you want to follow us in the 10,000 places, we are at Doom to Fill Pod on everything, I think, that I can think of at the moment.

So find us there. We're on YouTube. Yeah. And if we're not on something, like, tell us what it is because we can't keep up with social media, except TikTok. I don't, are you on, are we on TikTok? We are on TikTok. And because I, I mean, I don't do it all the time.

We do get a good amount of views on it and people, like, save our videos because I think The thing that with TikTok that I do, that I post, cross post to other things is I show my face, which I'm like not against, but like I think people like it better when you see the people behind it, you know? That's true. So. The final reveal is going to be seeing my face. That's like if you guys listen, let's, if we get a million listeners, the gift for that is seeing my face. Oh, God's hilarious. You're like absolutely not mysterious because everyone knows your full name is on episodes, but that's fine.

And on our cartoonized Cartoon version is on this program. Have you been putting those flyers around Austin? I'm working on it, Taylor. I haven't gotten around to it. I just got back from Dallas. Put it around Dallas. Cool.

Well, thank you, everyone. Thank you, new listeners. Hope you like it. We have a lot of episodes. So go back and listen to them. Yes. And any suggestions, ideas, thoughts you have? Write to us at Doomnafell Pot at Gmail.

dot com follows on the socials at doom to fail pod and that's it i'll go ahead and cut it off if you're good taylor that's it thank you