Futility Closet - 089-An African From Baltimore

Episode Date: January 11, 2016

In the 1920s Bata Kindai Amgoza ibn LoBagola toured the United States and Europe to share the culture of his African homeland with fascinated audiences. The reality was actually much more mundane: His name was Joseph Lee and he was from Baltimore. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll tell the curious story of this self-described "savage" and trace the unraveling of his imaginative career. We'll also dump a bucket of sarcasm on Duluth, Minnesota, and puzzle over why an acclaimed actor loses a role. Please consider becoming a patron of Futility Closet -- on our Patreon page you can pledge any amount per episode, and all contributions are greatly appreciated. You can change or cancel your pledge at any time, and we've set up some rewards to help thank you for your support. You can also make a one-time donation via the Donate button in the sidebar of the Futility Closet website. Sources for our feature on Bata LoBagola: Bata Kindai Amgoza ibn LoBagola, LoBagola: An African Savage's Own Story, 1930. David Killingray and Willie Henderson, "Bata Kindai Amgoza ibn LoBagola and the Making of An African Savage's Own Story," in Bernth Lindfors, Africans on Stage: Studies in Ethnological Show Business, 1999. Alex Pezzati, "The Scholar and the Impostor," Expedition 47:2 (Summer 2005), 6. James Olney, Tell Me Africa: An Approach to African Literature, 2015. Louis Chude-Sokei, The Last "Darky": Bert Williams, Black-on-Black Minstrelsy, and the African Diaspora, 2005. John Strausbaugh, Black Like You: Blackface, Whiteface, Insult & Imitation in American Popular Culture, 2007. Bata Kindai Amgoza Ibn LoBagola papers, New York Public Library Archives & Manuscripts. Jim Christy, "Scalawags: Bata Kindai Amgoza ibn LoBagola," Nuvo, Summer 2013. Kentucky representative James Proctor Knott's derisive panegyric on Duluth, Minnesota, was delivered in the U.S. House of Representatives on Jan. 27, 1871. This week's lateral thinking puzzle was contributed by listener Ben Snitkoff, who sent this corroborating link (warning -- this spoils the puzzle). 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. Enter promo code CLOSET at Harry's and get $5 off your first order of high-quality razors. 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 89. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Greg Ross. Today's show will tell the curious story of this self-described savage and trace the unraveling of his imaginative career. We'll also dump a bucket of sarcasm on Duluth, Minnesota, and puzzle over why an acclaimed actor loses a role. Our podcast is supported primarily by our amazing fans. The show takes us many hours every week to research and put together,

so if you'd like to help us keep bringing you your weekly dose of quirky history and lateral thinking puzzles, please check out our Patreon campaign at patreon.com slash futilitycloset or see the link in our show notes. An unusual story appeared in 1929, first in Scribner's magazine and then later in book form. It was called Lobagola, an African Savage's Own Story, and it purported to be the autobiography of a man named Batakindai Amgoza ibn Lobagola,

who called himself a savage who came out of the African bush into modern civilization and thenceforth found himself an alien among his own people and a stranger in the 20th century world. The author claimed to be from what was then called Dahomey and is now Benin in West Africa. And the story he tells is that when he was seven years old, which would have been around 1896, he sneaked away from his village with a group of his friends and journeyed down to the sea. They paddled a canoe out to a ship that was anchored in the bay there and got their first glimpse of white men. They were welcomed on board for about an hour and just explored the ship, but when the ship was getting ready to depart and blew its whistle, his friends were frightened and jumped overboard and were devoured by sharks.

He wasn't because he'd been sort of detained below decks and came up just in time to witness all this. But the ship's crew had to go and didn't know what to do with him, so they just took him along with them. And in March 1896, the ship docked in Glasgow, Scotland, of all places, where he was completely alone, but happily was defended, befriended by a gentleman there. And a quarter of the book is basically given over to an account of his childhood in Scotland, where he was brought up and educated in Glasgow and Edinburgh. And eventually he just takes up the life of a world-traveling entertainer and an informant to anthropologists and a lecturer on African culture, sort of a cultural ambassador to Europe and America, and eventually also served as a soldier in World War I. He actually fell into show business sort of by accident in the book.

He was in Coventry and they were putting together a Lady Godiva parade and a British promoter there just asked him to play a West African chief. They just needed someone in order to represent all cultures. In the book, he writes, all parts of the world, so they said, were to be represented, but I was the only black person to be had. So they just sort of put him up to this. But he found he was very good at it. He was bright and charming and could answer questions quickly. And also apparently at the time you could tell a white audience almost anything about Africa and they'd believe it. There was so much ignorance and racism at the time.

at the time. So he would move back and forth between Europe and the United States and was in Philadelphia at one point giving talks on Africa when he was noticed by some learned gentlemen there and became a cultural informant at the University of Pennsylvania. And on the strength of that, was invited to speak also at the University of Oxford in England. And so the story goes in the book. At the time of the writing of the book, he was a touring lecturer on African culture. He was just sort of had written the book to sort of share this interesting story about himself. The book is quite specific in the early going about his life in Dahomey in West Africa. Here's one quote from it. If you should climb a tree, the lion can easily get help from the elephant because the elephant and the lion are friendly.

The lion tells the elephant that it wants you down from the tree, and the elephant shakes the tree or pulls it up by the roots, and down you come. When I say the book first showed up in 1929, it got some good notices when it first appeared. The New York Sun presented it as a book of the day and compared it to René Morin's Batuala of 1921, which had been the first black novel to win the French Prix Goncourt.

But more of the reviews started to say, there's some entertaining storytelling in this book, but I'm not sure the truthfulness is all there, that he's really telling it. Yeah, that lions and elephants cooperate like that. An unsigned writer in the Times Literary Supplement

wrote, the book is ostensibly fact and not fiction, but it imposes an inordinate strain upon the reader's credulity. Particularly people who were familiar with West Africa said the falsity of the story should be obvious to anyone who really knew that area. In The Nation, an anthropologist named Melville Herskovitz wrote, the internal evidence indicates that this self-termed savage not only did not lead the early life he says he did, but that he never went very far into the interior of West Africa and could have visited the coastal region only casually. So the question is, if he wasn't who he says he was, who was he? And it turns out he was from Baltimore. The British researchers David Killingray and Willie Henderson, who put together a masterful job of trying to piece together his actual life, found that the book, he published the book in 1929, and that by 1931 he was in jail.

And in 1932 the Naturalization Service was pressing him pretty hard. They said, you keep insisting you're from West Africa. We're going to deport you there unless you tell us who you really are. And at that point he came out and said, my name's Joseph Howard, and I was born in Baltimore, and gave them a birth certificate. I think it would have served him right if they'd taken him to West Africa and left him there. So they found out, killing Ray and Henderson and piecing together his actual life, found out that he had a history of presenting himself as an African, but just sort of causing trouble in various communities, and he would simply pass on to the next community.

But the authorities, no one had time to really take a sufficient interest in his case to figure out what to do, so they just kind of send him on his way. So that's what led Killing Ray and Henderson to try to piece together his life. Generally, they found that his character in real life was somewhat quite similar in broad strokes to the characters he comes across in the book. They describe him as a footloose vaudeville artiste and entertainer in Britain and the United States and briefly in Nigeria. And he was not alone in this, in presenting himself as an African to white audiences in Europe and the United States, which is a sad commentary on the whole times there was

so much ignorance and racism that it was actually easier. You could get more respect, appreciation, and mobility presenting yourself as an African than as an African American, which is what he really was, to everyone's shame, I think. So if he started in Baltimore, he actually did apparently go to Glasgow at some point. His writings show that he knew the city fairly well, and the newspaper accounts mention that he did have a trace of a

Scottish accent. So it's not clear how he got there, but he did apparently spend some time there. On one of his visits to England, he may have encountered an African show which may have given him the idea to come up with his false name, and he picked up some African-looking props, a fez, a robe,

and some sandals, which don't correspond actually to the culture that he says he came from, but I guess look plausibly African enough to convince white audiences. He returned to the U.S. in 1909 and entertained first at a dime museum and then in vaudeville. And remarkably, a couple of what I thought were the hardest parts of the book to believe turned out apparently to be true. He did actually meet some learned gentlemen

at the University of Pennsylvania who wanted to know about West Africa, and they took him on as a sort of cultural informant and displayed him as a, quote, real South African at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. He was invited by a man named Frank Speck, who was the assistant curator of general ethnology, to perform dances and other rituals for museum visitors.

And Speck also interviewed him at length and recorded him speaking on wax cylinders. Here's an excerpt about all this from the Philadelphia Press of January 28, 1911. And this sort of gives a tenor for the racism of the times. Headline is, Shows Student Real Negro, Pennsylvania U Professor Has in Toe South African Specimen. And the story reads, Dr. Frank G. Speck of the University of Pennsylvania Museum has a real South African on exhibition at the museum. Amgoza is the name of the black man, and every morning, decked in only his native dress, he parades through the halls of the University Museum. The clothing is composed of only a sheepskin.

Dr. Speck is always on the lookout for representatives of the different types of man, and when he heard that Amgoza was to visit Philadelphia, he made arrangements for him to visit the museum. Amgoza is by far the best exhibit at the museum. While he looks like the wildest black man that came out of African jungles, he is extremely intelligent. It's just so, I mean, it's just mind-boggling, yeah, to hear about this person being, you know, the most interesting exhibit at the museum. I know, and this isn't that long ago. I mean, that was in 1911. So, but apparently he was able to make his way. Being an exhibit. He wrote, even in the book, this is striking too, I thought.

Even in the book, which again, he's purporting to be coming from Africa originally. He says, he's quite candid in saying that a lot of what he told them, even at Penn, was made up. He writes, I talked to them just as I had talked to the audiences that I had been appearing before. I had no idea that I was supposed to be any more accurate in imparting information to the men who were assigned to question me at the University of Pennsylvania than I had been when talking to a common crowd at a theater, which is surprising that, I mean, it's one thing that he can talk to a vaudeville audience and convince them of what he was sort of making up about Africa, but it's even worse that he could talk to an Ivy League anthropology department and convince them of the truth of things that I think mostly he was just making up. Yeah, that's a little confusing.

He told Speck that he was born in Dahomey and that he was a black Jew descended from the lost tribes of Israel. And he was already apparently putting together the story that he eventually wrote in the book. He said at a young age he'd been taken to Scotland where he went to boarding school and learned of, quote, civilization. And then he returned to his homeland and then visited Europe again many times and eventually went to the United States, lecturing and performing for audiences about his customs and his culture. States, lecturing and performing for audiences about his customs and his culture. Killing Ray and Henderson, the researchers I'm following here, say that it looks like he did get to Africa at some point, not to Benin, but to Nigeria. So he got some of the details there about Africa that he would tell in his lectures,

but he may have picked up some of the rest just from popular travel books. It's not clear where he was getting the information. But he did well enough at Penn, apparently, that he was recommended to Oxford to an anthropologist named R.R. Merritt, who invited him to speak there on fetishism to the newly established University of Anthropology Society there in 1911. And then in World War I, he did enlist in the British Army, which took him to Palestine and Egypt, And then in World War I, he did enlist in the British Army, which took him to Palestine and Egypt. And he taught there after the war for a period and then returned to the United States and started speaking in high schools. It's actually, I mean, even if they believed his whole story, I mean, if you think about it, he's claiming that he was seven when he got on this European ship, right, and got taken to Glasgow. So, I mean, if you took somebody from anywhere at the age of

seven and then let, you know, 20 years go by or whatever, how much would they really have understood or known or really remember of the place they had come from that they could actually accurately describe anything? I mean, it seems amazing to me that they would have even expected that of him. Yeah, I think... Given the story. It raises a lot of questions, but it just kind of shows how benighted the whole culture was at the time. I mean, he was getting more skepticism from book reviewers than he was from anthropologists. It's just none of it makes sense, really. Anyway, apparently he was very good at it. He was talking in high schools when he came to the publisher or of the magazine Scribner's, and then Dr. Frederick Hauk Law, who was head of the English department at Stuyvesant High School in New York.

And it was actually Law's idea to turn all of this into a book. It wasn't even Lobagola's idea to do it. There was a vogue, I should say, at the time for books about unthinkably exotic cultures. And so they sort of, I guess, thought that this would sell. So Lobogola wrote the manuscript in pencil and then typed it laboriously on a series of typewriters, and Law saw to getting it published in Scribner's. The interesting thing here is that Law apparently was well-traveled enough that it's hard to believe that he didn't realize that the story was false.

Yeah. There's no explicit evidence showing that this was a deliberate con, that he knew that he was publishing a false story, but it's kind of hard to see it making sense any other way. Why had he swallowed it all? Yeah. So it was published in Scribner's in 1929 and then by Knopf after that. And then they sent him out, believe it or not,

Law hired a man named James Pond to act as a tour manager, and the two of them sent Lobogola out on a lecture tour of the United States in which he would discuss the book and take questions and answers. And apparently he was just very good at this. He was bright and articulate and thought quickly and apparently was very charming personally and had a way of reflecting a question back on the audience without really answering it. So this all came across very well. And the whole thing was actually quite a success. By 1930, he was making at least $300 a month and had an apartment in New York. It wasn't the story he was telling, the falsity of the story that did him in finally. It was just a sort of personal instability.

He was prone to drinking and gambling on the road and getting into trouble with the law. And on top of all the rest of it, he was gay. So in 1930, that was a big problem because he was continually in trouble with the police for sodomy and perversion and just had a sort of a criminal record for this. And in increasingly desperate states financially. Eventually, he wound up in prison again. And this is where we came in. The naturalization service finally confronted him and said, you keep insisting you're from West Africa. We'll deport you there unless you tell us who you are. And he said, my name's Joseph Howard Lee. I was born in Baltimore in 1887. He said his father had been a cook from Maryland and his mother was a servant

from North Carolina. And he spent his last 13 years there in prison in the Attica Correctional Facility in New York. And there's actually a twist at the end here. I said that he gave them a birth certificate to prove his identity, but the birth certificate didn't actually have his name on it. It just said unnamed 17th child, which is very irregular. So the naturalization service sent someone to Baltimore to try to, I guess he still had perhaps family or acquaintances there who could sort of vouch for his identity. And they came back and said that they were satisfied that that's who he really was. But that's not really quite proof, especially for someone who had such a long history of dissembling and sort of reinventing his history. So he lies now in the cemetery at the Attica prison in 92, under a headstone that says Paul Lobagola, we know he invented that identity, but we don't know quite for certain who he really was.

It's interesting, and I'll close with this. If you read the book, knowing the whole story, some of it comes across in a different light. On page 64, he writes, Oh, the white man who has meant so much to me in my life and has cost me so much. He has given me clothes and money, things I never knew before, but he has taken from me much that is worthwhile. I am neither white nor black. I am a misfit in a white man's This episode is brought to you by our patrons and by Harry's, who remind you that 2016 is here, a new year, and a fresh start. If you've been thinking about New Year's resolutions,

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In 1871, the U.S. Congress was looking for ways to encourage railroads to extend their lines out into the American Midwest. One of the things they were considering was a land grant, basically giving away some land in order to encourage them to do this. And one of the railroads in particular they were hoping could extend its line out to a town called Duluth, Minnesota. One of the representatives who opposed this measure was J. Proctor Knott from Kentucky, who thought this was foolish. He thought it was basically a bridge to nowhere. Why would you make this big expensive investment in order to serve a tiny town that he couldn't even find on a map? So he rose to speak about this, and he chose to use sarcasm. This is what he said. Duluth! The word fell upon my ear with peculiar and indescribable charm like the gentle murmur of

a low fountain stealing forth in the midst of roses, or the soft sweet accents of an angel's whisper in the bright joyous dream of sleeping innocence. Duluth! T'was the name for which my soul had panted for years as the heart panteth for water brooks. But where was Duluth? Never in all my limited reading had my vision been gladdened by seeing the celestial word in print. And I found a profounder humiliation in my ignorance that its dulcet syllables had never before ravished my delighted ear. Nevertheless, I was confident it existed somewhere, and that its discovery would constitute the crowning glory of the present century, if not of all modern times. I knew it was bound to exist in the very nature of things, that the symmetry and perfection of our planetary system would be incomplete

without it, that the elements of material nature would long since have resolved themselves back into original chaos if there had been such a hiatus in creation as would have resulted from leaving out Duluth. In fact, sir, I was overwhelmed with the conviction that Duluth not only existed somewhere, but that wherever it was, it was a great and a glorious place. I was convinced that the greatest calamity that ever befell the benighted nations of the ancient world was in their having passed away without a knowledge of the actual existence of Duluth. That their fabled Atlantis, never seen save by the hallowed vision of inspired poesy, was in fact but another name for Duluth. That the golden orchard of the

Hesperides was but a poetical synonym for the beer gardens in the vicinity of Duluth. I was certain that Herodotus had died a miserable death because in all his travels and with all his geographical research he had never heard of Duluth. I knew that if the immortal spirit of Homer could look down from another heaven than that created by his own celestial genius upon the long lines of pilgrims from every nation of the earth to the gushing fountain of Poesy opened by the touch of his magic wand, if he could be permitted to behold the vast assemblage of grand and glorious productions of the lyric art called into being by his own inspired strains, he would

weep tears of bitter anguish that instead of lavishing all the stories of his mighty genius upon the fall of Troy, it had not been his more blessed lot to crystallize in deathless song the rising glories of Duluth. Yet, sir, had it not been for this map kindly furnished me by the legislature of Minnesota, I might have gone down to my obscure and humble grave in an agony of despair because I could nowhere find Duluth. Had such been my melancholy fate, I have no doubt that with the last That's not even the whole thing. I'll put a link to the whole speech in the show notes. Not got what he wanted. After the speech, link to the whole speech in the show notes. Knott got what he wanted.

After the speech, they took a vote, and the railroad bill was killed, and then Congress adjourned for the day. To their credit, the citizens of Duluth had a sense of humor about all this. They invited him to visit their city, which he did, and in 1894, a city near Duluth was incorporated as Proctor Knott. It was named explicitly for him. In 1904, it adopted its present name of Proctor Knott. It was named explicitly for him. In 1904, it adopted its present name of Proctor, Minnesota. It's Greg's turn to try to solve a lateral thinking puzzle. I'm going to give him an odd-sounding situation, and he has to figure out what's going on, asking only yes or no

questions. Today's puzzle comes from Ben Snitkoff. I minorly reworded it, but this is Ben's puzzle. A studio received a lot of laudatory fan mail for a guest star on a television show. In spite of the positive fan mail, his character only returned to the show once more. Why? Is this true?

Yes. Can I call it an actor? Yes. Is the, can I call it an actor? Yes. Is the actor human? Yes. Did the actor die? No. Okay.

Was the, all right. So basically an actor appears as one character on a TV show. Yes. To wide praise. Yeah. The studio receives a lot of positive fan mail. But comes back only once afterward. That's correct.

And doesn't die. Okay. Is this a show that you know I've seen? No, I don't think you have seen it. Did it air in like the last, say, ten years? I believe so. Okay. But I could be wrong.

Did the actor want to come back? yes and the show continued so there was a show for him to be on yes so you'd say he was prevented from coming back for some reason? not prevented did he have another commitment that just prevented him from no I wouldn't use the word prevented

alright so he wanted to come back but didn't yes would it have been impossible So he wanted to come back, but didn't. Yes. Would it have been impossible for the actor to play this part again? No. Is it a male? Is it a he? Yes, it's a he.

Okay. So had the opportunity and the desire to come back. Yes. And the audience wanted it. Yes. Is it something to do with the plot, that it just wasn't? No. Do I need to know more about the show?

Would it help me to guess like what genre or anything? No, it wouldn't. It doesn't matter what the show is specifically. Is the problem that the actor wanted to come back but the studio

wouldn't hire him? Yes. But the studio received a lot of fan mail praising him. Yes, and that's the puzzle. Yes. Was it a business decision on the studio received a lot of fan mail yes praising him that's the puzzle yes was it a business decision on the studio's part that they thought it would be a bad it would be bad business to bring him back no i wouldn't say that so the studio expected if they did bring him back they'd get good ratings and the show would be well received they had no reason not to expect no reason not to expect that but they didn't did they hire someone

else for that part no So the part didn't appear again. Right. But it could have, they could have made the decision to have the part recur, but they chose not to. With him or with another actor? Right. Uh, are there other people involved, other actors involved besides this guy? No. So I need to figure out why the studio decided. Right. That's what you need to figure out. Um, I need to figure out why the studio decided. Right. That's what you need to figure out.

Is there some backstory here, like some of his earlier actions or something that disposed the studio against him? Tricky to answer. Okay. But it's some animus against the actor as opposed to the character or the plot of the show or anything. They had nothing against the show. Right. Okay. Was the actor employed in some other capacity by the studio?

No. By another studio? No. But they had a reason, a business reason. I don't know about a business reason. Would you say a personal reason? Maybe. Okay.

Was it, wow. Was it one particular person on the studio staff who made this decision? No. So it's like he had an affair with the president's wife or something. Yeah, well, I guess that would do it, yeah. But no, it's not like that. Is there a crime involved? No.

And you say you don't need to know what the actor's, professional history or the role he was playing? Yeah, yeah. I mean, I'm having trouble answering some of these questions. Okay, no, don't answer if you can't. But it has nothing to do with the role he was playing? Yeah, yeah. I mean, I'm having trouble answering some of these questions. Okay, no, don't answer it again. But it has nothing to do with the role he was playing. I can answer that part of the question. I mean, I guess you'd say there's a little bit of a backstory here, but I don't want you to think, like, deep backstory. Okay, but something he apparently did while he was employed earlier on the show.

Something happened. Something along those lines. That the studio was afraid he would do again? No. That they were just unhappy with? Yes. And that was enough to turn them against hiring him again? Yeah.

It has to do with the fan mail actually. Oh, was he writing the mail? No. That's a good guess that's a good guess and you said there aren't other people involved other than the people writing the fan mail was the fan mail genuine they you said they were getting mail they got positive fan mail for him yes so they were sent by actual fans who really did like the show yes but there was actually something about the fan mail that caused the studio to decide not to hire him again

that's the twist to the whole thing it it turns on the fan mail because of specifically how it was phrased or expressed no so they just say we love the show we love this guy yeah i gather okay is there something physically about the mail itself or the way it was sent or received? Not about the way it was sent or received. All right, something about the mail. I'm being very cryptic here. When you say mail, do you mean like physical letters?

I don't know. I think it might have been like emails, and I'm not sure if it was physical letters or emails. All right, let's say it was emails then. Okay, let's say it was emails. Just for the sake of discussion. Just for the sake of discussion. Something about the, I don't know which. I'm not sure. They might have know which. I'm not sure. They might have been letters.

I'm not sure what they were. The part of the world that they came from? No. Or the people who were sending them? No. The phrasing of the language? No. The way they referred to the actor?

No. I feel like I'm close, but I can't hear. Let's say, okay. You were closest when you said, did he write them himself? Because if the studio had caught on that he'd written them himself, then obviously they'd be annoyed with him and not hire him again. That's the closest you've gotten. It's like something like that.

All right. Was it something, so it's, had he contrived some way to make himself look more popular than he really was? I think so. I think you'd say something along those lines. Not in terms of these letters, but in the past, you're saying saying like in the earlier seasons of the show no no no no he really was genuinely popular well he was only he was only on the show twice okay this one time and then they got positive letters and they used him one more and then they wouldn't hire him again

but i'm just trying to say was he sort of misrepresenting something was he involved in somehow i know he didn't write the letters but you're saying i was somewhat close when i asked Was he sort of misrepresenting something? Was he involved in somehow... I know he didn't write the letters, but you're saying I was somewhat close when I asked. Yeah. Is he trying to artfully present an impression to the studio that's not accurate? I don't know about it not being accurate,

but he was definitely trying to present a position to the studio. Does it have to do with his identity? No. position to the studio. Does it have to do with his identity? No. It has to do with the timing of the letters. They were... Is it like the postmark on the letter?

Or the time stamp? Yeah. They had been written before... What? Before he was... Before the end of the first season no he was only on two two episodes but they were written before he'd appeared yes that's exactly this is true yes ben says biff jaeger was a guest star on the first season of star trek the next generation after he recorded his first episode he he solicited Star Trek fan clubs

to write into the studio on his behalf. But when the letters of acclaim arrived before the episode aired, the studio confronted him about it. That is kind of hard to explain. Biff admitted that he solicited feedback. He claims he was soliciting positive or negative feedback and denied that he was trying to influence the studio to make him a recurring character. But he actually had contacted these Star Trek fan clubs and were like, write in about my character. Write in about it. Wow. So of course they didn't hire him again.

Wow. I had no idea. I thought it was a cute story. Thanks to Ben for sending that in. And if anybody else has a puzzle they'd like to send in for us, please send them to podcast at futilitycloset.com. That wraps up another episode for us. If you're looking for more Futility Closet, you can check out our books on Amazon or visit the website at futilitycloset.com,

where you can sample more than 8,000 Selkuth Esoterica. 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, please consider becoming a patron to help keep us going. You can find more information at patreon.com slash futilitycloset. You can also help us out by telling your friends about us or by clicking the donate button on the sidebar of the website. 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. Thank you.