Futility Closet - 036-The Great Moon Hoax

Episode Date: December 1, 2014

In 1835 the New York Sun announced that astronomers had discovered bat-winged humanoids on the moon, as well as reindeer, unicorns, bipedal beavers and temples made of sapphire. The fake news was reprinted around the world, impressing even P.T. Barnum; Edgar Allan Poe said that "not one person in ten" doubted the story. In this episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll review the Great Moon Hoax, the first great sensation of the modern media age. We'll also learn why Montana police needed a rabbi and puzzle over how a woman's new shoes end up killing her. Sources for our segment on the Great Moon Hoax: Matthew Goodman, The Sun and the Moon, 2008. The Museum of Hoaxes has an excellent summary of the hoax and its significance in media history, including the text of all six articles. Listener mail: Lauren May, "Terrified Banstead Family Confronted by 'Dark Figure' on Bypass," Epsom Guardian, Feb. 23, 2012. Michael Munro, "'The Springer' Leaps From WW2 Urban Legend to Anti-Fascist Superhero," io9, Sept. 3, 2014 (accessed Nov. 30, 2014). Eric A. Stern, "Yes, Miky, There Are Rabbis in Montana," New York Times, Dec. 4, 2009. "Body of Boy Found as Snow Melts," The Hour, March 1, 1978. You can listen using the player above, download this episode directly, or subscribe on iTunes or via the RSS feed at http://feedpress.me/futilitycloset. Many thanks to Doug Ross for the music in this episode. If you have any questions or comments you can reach us at [e-mail]. Thanks for listening!

Welcome to Futility Closet, a celebration of the quirky and the curious, the thought-provoking and the simply amusing. This is the audio companion to the website that catalogs more than 8,000 curiosities in history, language, mathematics, literature, philosophy, and art. You can find us online at futilitycloset.com. Thanks for joining us. Welcome to Episode 36. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. In today's show, we'll learn about the Great Moon Hoax, a series of articles in the New York Sun in 1835 that described flying man bats and sapphire temples on the moon. We'll also learn why Montana police needed a rabbi

and puzzle over how a woman's new shoes end up killing her. On August 21st, 1835, the New York Sun published a single sentence on its front page among 26 other items. The sentence read, The Edinburgh Courant says, telescope of an entirely new principle, which is intriguing enough. People were already sort of science and astronomy-minded in New York anyway in 1835, because Halley's Comet was due to arrive later that year. So this was the right time for something like that to arrive on the front page. But they started trumpeting it quite a bit stronger after that. Four days later, another item appeared describing an article in

what it said had appeared in the supplement to the Edinburgh Journal of Science, and the Sun promised now that the forthcoming articles would reveal, quote, celestial discoveries of higher and more universal interest than any in any science yet known to the human race, discoveries that cannot fail to excite more ardent curiosity and afford more sublime gratification than could be created and supplied by anything short of a direct revelation from heaven. Whoa. Which is pretty strong hype, I think. But they almost lived up to it, I would say. What they wound up running was a series of six articles describing what they said were discoveries by John Herschel, a British astronomer working in South Africa, who's a real well-regarded astronomer who was really working at the time but had nothing to do with any of this.

And the series of articles gradually revealed that life had been discovered, profuse life, on the moon. The first article just described the telescope, which it said was 24 feet in diameter and had this special second lens that was responsible for these amazing discoveries. The second lens magnified and clarified the image and cast it onto this canvas screen where people could see it. And with such clarity, they said that, quote, even the entomology of the moon, in case she contained insects upon her surface, could be viewed on this screen, which is pretty good. That's pretty impressive. Day two, they went into lunar geology, but then mentioned that this was profusely covered with a dark red flower, so there's plant life up there, and herds of brown quadrupeds similar to bison, a goat of a bluish lead color, and a strange amphibious creature of a spherical form which rolled

with great velocity across the pebbly beach that's just day two seriously this was printed in a newspaper yes it took up five six of the front page on the first day it was a big splash and this is i should say the the new york sun was already the highest circulation paper in new york city so this is this is a big splash so they were living up to that initial hype, I guess. This just gets better and better. Day three, there's more geology, and they announce that Herschel's discovered 38 species of trees, twice this number of plants,

nine species of mammals, and five of ovipara. Among the mammals are, quote, a small kind of reindeer, the elk, the moose, the horned bear, and the biped beaver, which is my favorite part. The beaver resembles the beaver of the earth in every other respect

than in its destitution of a tail and its invariable habit of walking upon only two feet. It carries its young in its arms like a human being and moves with an easy gliding motion. Its huts are constructed better and higher than those of many tribes of human savages, and from the appearance of smoke in nearly all of them, there is no doubt of its being acquainted with the use of fire. I'm still stuck on which is more amazing here, that these things are existing on the moon, or that we would have a telescope that is so good

that we could see how be that is so good you're way ahead of everyone we could see how beavers were carrying their young um we'll get into that in a second it's not clear it's not clear how much people believe this but contemporary accounts of it seem to indicate that a lot of people were buying this we're thinking it's literally true. I'll go on. That's day three of the six days. That's just day three. Day four. Scientists discovered human-like creatures living inside a ring of red hills that they called the Ruby Coliseum. Here's a description

of these creatures. Quote, They averaged four feet in height, were covered except on the face with short and glossy copper-colored hair, and had wings composed of a thin membrane without hair lying snugly upon their backs, from the top of their shoulders to the calves of their legs. The face, which was of a yellowish flesh color, was a slight improvement upon that of a large orangutan, being more open and intelligent in its expression and having a much greater expansion of forehead. The mouth,

however, was very prominent, though somewhat relieved by a thick beard upon the lower jaw and by lips far more human than those of any species of simian genus. In general symmetry of body and limbs, they were infinitely superior to the orangutans, so much so that, but for their long wings, Lieutenant Drummond said they would look as well on a parade ground as some of the old cockney militia. And these creatures apparently were seen to engage in conversation, and those seem to be rational creatures. Uh-huh. And just adding a second lens to a telescope lets you see what parts of their body have hair or not.

This is pretty amazing. You're seeing right through the whole technology into this. More so than I think people did at the time. Day five is a bit mysterious. Apparently they discovered a temple made of polished sapphire that was apparently abandoned and whose roof was fashioned to look like a mass of flames rising upward. Okay.

There's not as much to that, except that they seem to have some kind of religion. They ran out of details. Yeah, I guess. And then on day six, which is the last article, apparently the astronomers were said to have discovered higher orders of these ape creatures, which they called Vespertilio homo. These new ones were, they said, of a larger stature than the former specimens, less dark in color, and in every respect, an improved variety of the race. These lived near the temple and reigned in a universal state of amity among all classes of lunar creatures. This is sort of a paradise on the moon.

They spent their time flying, bathing, conversing, and collecting fruit, which grew on nearby trees. Unfortunately, you'll be grieved to hear that at this point, the lens of the telescope caught the sun's rays and burned down the wall of the observatory. So they had to give up reporting any more of what had been discovered on the moon, which is sort of convenient because I don't know how they were going to top some of this recent stuff. But they promised more in an upcoming volume,

which they, once they repaired everything. As I said, it's not clear how many people actually believe this. We know it sold like figurative hotcakes. P.T. Barnum, who wrote later a book about humbugs at the time, said the sensation created by this immense imposter, not only throughout the United States, but in people, wrote in a later essay, As these discoveries were gradually spread before the public, the astonishment of that public grew out of all bounds. He said that not one person in ten doubted the story's veracity. And that estimate is doubled by Horace Greeley, who said it fooled nine-tenths of us. He said, A grave professor of mathematics in a Virginia college told me seriously that he had no doubt of the truth of the whole affair.

Oh, wow. In his 1884 book, History of New York City, Benson Lossing wrote, The construction of the telescope was so ingeniously described, and everything said to have been seen with it was given with such graphic power and minuteness and with such a show of probability that it deceived scientific men. It played upon their credulity and stimulated their speculations. It's interesting reading about this because even people who think it's a hoax kind of admire the clarity with which it was brought off.

So it's not, if this happened today, there'd be sort of a scandal and an outrage about it. But journalistic ethics hadn't evolved to a point way back then that anyone thought to be really outraged about it to the extent we would today, which I think is interesting. Yeah. I mean, I guess it says how different newspapers were regarded. And as I say, it sold amazingly well. The articles were reprinted in newspapers in New York and across the country

and eventually in illustrated editions throughout the world, and they all attributed it to the Edinburgh Journal of Science. When back issues of the New York Sun sold out, they published a pamphlet which sold 20,000 copies in the first week and eventually a national edition sold 40,000 copies. P.T. Barnum wrote that the Sun sold $50,000 worth of moon hoax materials back in 1835, $50,000. Wow. You may be wondering what John Herschel thought of all this, since he's now being trumpeted in the international press as the discoverer of

fire-wielding lunar beavers. Apparently he had a sense of humor about it in the beginning and then kind of got tired of it. Shortly after the articles appeared, Francis Beaufort, the Royal Navy hydrographer, wrote to ask him if he'd heard about all this. And he said yes. And he knew of at least one American clergyman who had told his congregation that he expected to begin purchasing Bibles to give to the moon's denizens. But people kept asking, understandably, kept asking him about this. And by 1836, he was asking a London bookseller to publish a formal denouncement of what he was then calling incoherent ravings.

He wrote, I feel confident that you oblige me, therefore, by inserting this my disclaimer in your widely circulated and well-conducted paper, not because I have the smallest fear that any person possessing the first elements of optical science, to say nothing of common sense,

could for a moment be misled into believing such extravagancies, but because I consider the precedent a bad one, that the absurdity of a story should ensure its freedom from contradiction when universally repeated in so many quarters and in such a variety of forms. Which is an interesting quote to hear from today's perspective when that happens almost every day. You know, whatever's most sensational. Yeah, just if enough people are saying it, it must most sensational. Yeah, just if enough people

are saying it, it must be true. Yeah, or it just gets carried along. This was early enough that someone thought that was a bad thing. They had enough perspective to see that. The first intimations that this might be a hoax came from, I guess predictably,

the editor of a competing paper, James Gordon Bennett, the editor of the New York Herald, who began by pointing out, first of all, and quite tellingly, that the Edinburgh Journal of Science had ceased publication three years earlier. Oh, well, that is rather a telling point, yes. That John Herschel doesn't possess an LLD, as he was said to in the article, and that he said the description of shadows on the moon was incorrect on mathematical principles. But even he is sort of complimentary.

He wrote Mr. Locke, he attributed all this, the hoax, to the editor of The Sun, Richard Adams Locke, who was a 35-year-old itinerant journalist who just started editing the paper a couple months earlier. Bennett, this competing editor, wrote, Mr. Locke, however, deserves great credit for his ingenuity, his learning, and his irresistible drollery. He is an original genius and very gentlemanly in his manners. If he would come out and tell the public frankly the whole secret of history of the hoax, he would lose nothing in character or in talents. We tender to him cheerfully the columns of the Herald for that purpose. And Locke wrote back a rather artfully worded dodge as to whether this was a deliberate hoax. He wrote, some paragraphs written by Mr. James Gordon Bennett were put into my hand this morning,

which strangely enough attribute to me the astonishing astronomical discoveries lately made at the Cape of Good Hope by Sir John Herschel. Mr. Bennett, in seeking for notoriety, has found a mare's nest. I beg to state, as unequivocally as the words can express it, that I did not make those discoveries, and it is my sincere conviction, founded on a careful examination of the internal evidence of the work in which they first appeared, that if made at all, they were made by the great astronomer to whom all Europe, if not incredulous America, will undoubtedly ascribe them. That's carefully worded because he says, I didn't make the discoveries. Well, no one's claiming he made the discoveries. We're saying he publicized discoveries that were never made.

Also, his disavowal here includes the phrase, if made at all, he says, careful examination of the internal evidence of the work in which they first appeared that if made at all, they were made by the great astronomer to whom all Europe. In other words, he's acknowledging that they might not have been made, sort of in passing. But if they were made, they still go back to to to herschel to herschel so he's sort of trying to carefully straddle offense there uh bennett kept after him but he didn't make uh he didn't say anything more about it it's possible that lock who later did confess felt sort of contractually bound because he was working for the paper and he thought the secret wasn't his to reveal. It's not clear. He never quite comes out and says that.

And the explanation he does give I don't think makes any sense. Anyway, the first stories appeared in August, and by the beginning of September, the word hoax was starting to be thrown around quite freely. And Locke, the guy who turned out to have written these things, didn't come forward to say anything further. At a local watering hole in New York where reporters gathered, Locke told a journalist friend named Finn, who worked for the Journal of Commerce, Finn told him that he was thinking of reprinting the Moon story in his own journal and Locke allegedly told him, don't print

it right away, I wrote it myself. Finn took that as a scoop, and the Journal of Commerce ran a piece denouncing the series as a hoax, so it's starting to get out at this point. But even so, it was being continually reprinted just because it sold so well. The Sun never did formally admit the hoax,

but its denials became less and less insistent. But as I say, finally, Locke did come out with what he said was the whole story in a letter to the New World on May 16, 1840. He said he was unaffectedly ashamed of it, but took this opportunity to explain it, quote, since these will explain the motives of an attempt which has been gravely denounced as mischievous and immoral, and perhaps supply an excuse for the imperfections in its execution. He said it was a satire, which I think doesn't make any sense.

There was a movement abroad called natural theology in which a particularly man named Thomas Dick was saying the extent, at least as I understand it, of the universe was proving to be so great that it seemed odd that God's creation would be limited to a single planet full of rational creatures. So they began, this natural theology movement was spreading the notion that the universe was full of life, all of which were enjoying God's creation. So they were putting forth the idea that there were rational creatures on the moon.

And Locke was saying that his hoax articles were intended to satirize that, which he thought that was sort of trespassing on proper science, just sort of presuming that there were living creatures up there that when their existence hadn't been proven. Yeah, that seems kind of a thin explanation. The reason that doesn't make, I mean, there's a lot of reasons that doesn't make sense. The main one to me is that if the whole point of this was a satire designed to poke fun at natural theology, he should have stepped onto the stage once this thing had made a

splash and said so. And maybe made it clearer i mean it wasn't run as a satire or a parody no and it doesn't read that way yeah so i'm not sure what it's possible that it's just as simple that he just wanted to sell more papers but he never gave a different explanation he just insisted it was a satire of this sort of religious movement i guess that's the most face-saving thing he could come up with. Yeah. It is in the... The significance now, apart from Breeling being hugely entertaining,

is that this is the first real mass media hoax. The New York Sun was the first penny paper in New York. Up until that time, newspapers cost six cents, which put them out of reach of a large mass of people. And so newspapers until that time were supported by subscriptions rather than advertising. And the Sun's great innovations are that it used steam-powered printing presses and newsboys to help get the word out for a very low price, and so they could rely on advertising and just write for a huge mass audience.

So this was the first time really, at least in the United States, where such a wide-scale host could even be perpetrated. And the interesting thing about that, a good example is Edgar Allan Poe, of all people, just shortly before this, had written a story about a Dutch bellows mender named Hans Fall who had supposedly taken a balloon to the moon and in a two-part story, they were going to describe what he found there. But because Poe published that story in the Southern Literary Messenger, a literary magazine, it didn't have enough circulation for it to make any kind of splash.

I mean, people read it, but it didn't reach enough people. Poe writing this as fiction? Because it was my impression that the newspaper was running it as fact. Yeah, well, people disagree about that. Some people think Poe's tone in Han's Fall was too comical for anyone to take it seriously as fact. But Poe was much good. He's remembered now as mostly a mystery and macabre writer, but he had quite a sense of playful mischief and perpetrated a number of other hoaxes.

So it's possible he intended it as an actual hoax that people would believe. I see. In fact, he felt kind of ill-used because he thought there are a lot of parallels between his story and what later showed up in the pages of The Sun. They're both stories about trips to the moon. They're both based on John Herschel's treatise on astronomy. and they're both based on John Herschel's treatise on astronomy. So Poe felt that the Sun hoax had stolen enough of his own story that he never actually published the second half of Hans Fall because he thought there was no point now.

But from the perspective of sort of media studies, what's significant about this is that Poe didn't succeed, at least arguably in part, because he was publishing it in a little magazine. And the Sun had such a wide reach now as a penny paper that they could really put over a much more successful widespread media hoax, the first of its kind and sadly not the last. So that's sort of what it means now. I think the other thing that is interesting to me in reading all these stories

is that from our perspective today, looking back on it, it looks like an old-timey science fiction story, sort of like Jules Verne. But Verne was actually writing 20 and 30 years after this. This is 1835. It's very early for this sort of thing to show up. So is this sort of like the first versions of science fiction, actually? Yeah.

And if you just saw the illustrations, read some of the stories, you wouldn't realize that it had shown up that early. So Locke deserves credit at least for that much well i think what really astounds me is to realize that newspapers well of course it says it seems um uh too innocent of me to say that they can't be trusted but you know a lot of people take when we don't have good written history of different things we look back at the newspaper accounts and say that that is where we can get some of the written history

to know what actually happened. And it's kind of alarming to realize, well, you really can't. I mean, it can be this off, like this is just entirely made up. And we ran into some of this in the airship episode, especially in the 19th century. Yeah.

Journalistic ethics hadn't really evolved yet. So there were all kinds of hoaxes and pranks and jokes and stuff that were published in papers deliberately to fool the readers. That's the part, I guess, the deliberately to fool the readers. It's not that they were mistaken or they rushed to judgment, but that it was deliberately made up. It upsets me now because now if you go to journalism school, the ethics is all over the place. I mean, obviously it still happens today and it shouldn't happen ever. But this is really, the fact that this was done so sort of baldly at the time without any thought for the readers. I mean, your reliability is all you've really got ultimately in journalism.

And if you just throw that away, then it's sort of the worst crime you can commit. We'll have links to the full text of the 1835 articles in our show notes at futilitycloset.com. If you're starting to think about your holiday gift buying this year, check out the Futility Closet books. Both are filled with hundreds of quirky oddities and curiosities, offbeat inventions, odd words, and brain-teasing puzzles, perfect for anyone who enjoys small bites of mental candy. Look for them on Amazon and discover why other readers have called them a fascinating compendium of interesting bits of information and fun books that can really be enjoyed by all. We've gotten in several interesting emails from some of our listeners recently.

Brian Adams wrote in to say, I just finished listening to episode 34 where you talked about Spring-Heeled Jack, and it reminded me of another Spring-Heeled character who was more of a superhero than a villain in Czechoslovakia during World War II. I read about the mysterious Perak, or Spring Man, on the website IO9. Here they describe how the Perak pops up in Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia, mostly in the form of anti-Nazi graffiti often positioned in very inaccessible portions of buildings. Supposedly, fear of this figure caused Czech workers to refuse to take on night shifts, slowing production of German munitions.

to refuse to take on night shifts, slowing production of German munitions. And Brian sent a link to the io9 article, which talks about this legendary Springer or Spring Man that was supposedly seen jumping over speeding trains or flying through the air before disappearing into the night with an unearthly shrieking whistle. And as Brian notes, was frequently credited with leaving anti-German graffiti in seemingly inaccessible places. In 1946, an animated cartoon about Perak was released, which basically portrayed him as a quasi-superhero who defied the German forces that occupied Czechoslovakia during the war, and other fictional works featuring this Perak followed that. Mike Dash notes that there have been traditions of leaping or jumping men such such as Spring Hill Jack or Pedok, throughout the whole world.

And to me, that just raises an interesting anthropological question of why that would be. I mean, if you're going to invent that somebody has some special powers, I'm not sure why springing would be the first one you think of. Yeah, it makes you wonder how these things get started. I mean, once they're going, you can see it just becomes a... Yeah, but if they popped up independently all around the world, it makes you wonder what the archetype is there or what... And why, what is it about human psychology that makes people attracted to that idea? So fascinated by springing, yes. Jim Finn wrote in about the same episode saying, thought you might appreciate that there was a sighting of something that they compared with

Spring-Heeled Jack just under three years ago. Take this to mean whatever you want it to mean. And Jim sent in a link to an article from the Surrey Comet, which describes how the Martins and their four-year-old child were traveling by taxi in Surrey, in England, on the night of February 14, 2012, when they saw a terrifying apparition that looked and moved like the legendary Spring-Heeled Jack. All the people in the taxi reported seeing a dark figure with no features that ran across the road in front of the taxi before appearing to leap 15 feet over a roadside bank. Yeah.

Mr. Martin said, All four of us were baffled and voiced our sighting straight away with the same detail, a dark figure with no real features but fast in movement with an ease of hurtling obstacles I've never seen. And then he added, we have ever seen anything like this. If it was a burglar, it is the fastest I had ever seen anyone run. That's the only other explanation, but it was just too quick. That does sound exactly like the descriptions of Jack. Right. Without more than 100 years later.

Apparently the taxi driver in this case was so freaked out by the whole thing that he didn't want to drive back by himself in the dark. I wouldn't either. And the paper reports that the police had no reports of any unusual incidents that evening. So if it was Spring Hill Jack, it kind of fits his pattern of just spooking people without appearing to try to do anything else. Yeah. There's like no apparent aim, like you mentioned. Right. That does sound the same.

So he spent the 20th century in Czechoslovakia and then he's come back. Right. Yes. Spring Hill Jack is back in southern England. The next two emails concern lateral thinking puzzles that we've run, and they will spoil the answers for you if you haven't heard the puzzles yet. So if you're a little behind in listening to our shows, you might want to fast forward a bit or take your earbuds out for a few minutes. Good point. Sherry Hillman wrote in about our puzzle from episode 34 and said,

the recent puzzle about police dogs trained in foreign languages reminded me of this story, which made quite an impression on me at the time that it was published. And Sherry sent in a link to a New York Times article from 2009, which recounts how all three of Montana's rabbis started a joint Hanukkah celebration at the state capitol building. After their ceremony in 2008, a Helena police officer went up to one of the rabbis and introduced his bomb security dog, Mikey. The officer, John Foskett, had been having a problem because Mikey had been trained in Israel and only responded to Hebrew, which John Foskett did not know any of. That's a problem. Foskett had been given a list of a dozen Hebrew commands and expressions, things like stay and search and good doggy. But Mikey just wasn't responding to Foskett's attempts to pronounce these in Hebrew. So the officer had tried using a Hebrew instructional audio book from the library to try to improve his pronunciation.

But Mikey still just wasn't buying it. It just was not good enough Hebrew, apparently. So what happened? So the only thing Foskett could think to do was to hunt out for a rabbi to help him improve his pronunciation. So he found this rabbi, and he was able to help Foskett with his pronunciations, and that did allow Foskett to finally be able to work effectively with Mikey. The Times report that Mikey became a star of the Helena police force, and that he and Foskett were even called in by the Secret Service during a presidential visit.

So it was very effective. And he was finally able to put Mikey through his paces. The article says, it is good news all around. The officer keeps the Capitol safe and the Hebrew pooch is feeling more at home hearing his native tongue. But the big winner is the rabbi, a recent arrival from Brooklyn who is working hard against tough odds to bring his Lubavitch movement to Montana. He has been scouring the state for anyone who can speak Hebrew and is elated to have found a German shepherd he can talk to.

And Sherry said, I just love the idea of a policeman in Montana learning Hebrew. That's a good story. Chris Owens wrote in about our puzzle in episode 30. And he said, I'm a little slow getting through the podcast, but I thought I'd write in about the lateral thinking puzzle in the Oak Island Money Pit episode. It was a good puzzle, and it reminded me of a number of cases I've noticed over the years of people, sometimes children, sometimes alcohol is involved, dying in the snow tragically close to

their own houses and not being found until after a thaw. Maybe it's not a surprise to people who live in snowy places, but I find it interesting in a tragic way. I attach for your reference the story of young Peter Gosselin, who had disappeared in 1978. Although police relatives and hundreds of volunteers searched the neighborhood, his body was only found weeks later in his own front yard. So, I suppose, good puzzle and sadly plausible. Yeah, that's really sad. Chris sent in the link to a newspaper account of actually a rather grim story of a 10-year-old boy who was missing in Massachusetts for three weeks after a blizzard struck. And I'll leave it up to listeners if they want to find the link in the show notes and read the story for themselves.

I was interested to hear that this kind of thing actually does happen and that the puzzle was even more plausible than we realized at the time. We've lived in North Carolina for the last several years and this doesn't happen here. Yeah, we don't get enough snow. We don't begin to get enough snow

and the snow doesn't stick around for long enough. So that was interesting to hear. We'll have all the links that were sent in to us about these stories in our show notes at futilitycloset.com. Thanks to everyone who writes in to us. And if you have any questions or comments, please send them to us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. This week I'm going to be trying to solve a lateral thinking puzzle. Greg's going to give me an odd-sounding situation, and I have to try to figure it out asking only yes or no questions. This is from listener Michael Martin, actually from Michael Martin's kids.

He was on a carpool ride home with his kids and his neighbor's kids and heard them doing this puzzle in the car. He says, I'm sure they've not heard of the term lateral thinking puzzle. That's exactly what they were doing, though. Oh, that's not going to put any pressure on me that kids were able to solve this. Yeah, these are 4th and 6th graders. Oh, no. So, here it is.

A woman puts on a brand new pair of shoes that she hasn't worn before. She goes to work. She dies. What happened? These are always morbid. I don't know why. Somebody always dies.

Okay. All right. Does it matter what her occupation is? Yes. And does it matter what kind of shoes these are? Yes. Okay. Is she in the performing arts? guess i'd say yes is she a circus performer yes oh um is she a clown no she a trapeze artist no

uh does she work with animals no circus performer. Juggler? No. I haven't been to any circuses. See, you have to be a fifth grader to solve this. Who's in the circus? Does what she do involve leaving the ground? No. So she stayed on the ground.

She would normally stay on the ground while performing her job. That's right. But she's a circus performer. Yes. Does she have some physical characteristic or characteristics that are important? No. Okay. So she's not like a weird looking person that performs in the circus.

Is she the ringmaster? No. Gosh, who's in the circus? Is she an acrobat no um okay um i have no idea what kind of circus performer she is um okay are these shoes that people would normally wear to just go walking outside and go about their business yes yes so they're not like ballet shoes or, or, I mean, so they're like, would you have to buy these shoes in a specific kind of store? No. So you could just go buy these shoes in the mall? Yes. Okay. Um, would you say there was something wrong with the

shoes? No. Was there something unexpected about the shoes? No. Did she expect the shoes to have some property or characteristic that they failed to have? No. I wouldn't say that. Okay. Were they her shoes? Yes. Were they the right size?

Yes. I'm so getting nowhere. That's how I usually feel. I'm just like I've run out of circus performers is my problem um okay i don't know who does what at a circus you said she's a performer though she's not like in the you know selling peanuts or something that's right she's she's actually a performer so she'd be down like in the ring that's right would be watching her and she'd be doing something.

Yes. Yes. Would she be moving in odd ways? No. No. And you say she stays on the ground and it doesn't involve animals. Does whatever she does involve more than one person? Yes. She needs more people.

And you said she's not a juggler or an acrobat. That's right. Is she dancing? No. Okay, so there are multiple people. Are there more than two people? No. So there's just two people.

There's her and another person. That's right. Performing something. Yes. At a circus. Correct. Typically. And she doesn't leave the ground.

Does the other person leave the ground? No. Is somebody like throwing knives at her? Yes. Yes. Oh, okay. So she's the woman who stands against the thing and the person throws knives at her. Yes. And somehow her shoes caused her to get the knife thrown. Oh, oh, they were heels. She was taller than normal. Exactly right. Oh my goodness. That was really good. You did fine. I hope I did it well as well as the kids did. Okay. If you'd like to send in a puzzle for us to use, you can send them to us at podcast at futilitycloset.com.

That's another episode for us. If you're looking for more Futility Closet, check out our books on Amazon or visit the website at futilitycloset.com where you can sample over 8,000 captivating distractions. At the website, you can also see the show notes for the podcast and listen to previous episodes. Just click podcast in the sidebar. If you'd like to support Futility Closet, you can tell your friends about us, leave a review of the books or podcast on Amazon or iTunes, or click the donate button on the sidebar of the website. Thanks so much to all of you who have already done these things. We really appreciate your help.

And if you have any questions or comments about the show, you can reach us by email at podcast at futilitycloset.com. Our music was written and produced by Doug Ross. Thanks for listening, and we'll talk to you next week.