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

Episode Date: December 20, 2025

When your life is as outsized as the World’s Greatest Showman PT Barnum it’s pretty easy to - you know - gloss over the grimmer aspects when you turn it into an uplifting musical movie. But the way to understand a person is to look at them, warts and all. Josh and Chuck take a full accounting in this classic episode.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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But there was no link. There was no business plan. I hadn't programmed Kyle to be able to do that yet. I'm Evan Ratliff here with a story of entrepreneurship in the AI age. Listen as I attempt to build a real startup run by fake people. Check out the second season of my podcast, Shell Game, on the IHeart Radio app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Robert Smith, and this is Jacob Goldstein, and we used to host a show called Planet Money. And now we're back making this new podcast called Business History, about the best ideas and people and businesses in history.

And some of the worst people, horrible ideas, and destructive companies in the history of business. First episode, How Southwest Airlines Use Cheap Seats and Free Whiskey to fight its way into the airline. The most Texas story ever. Listen to business history on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, everybody, Chuck here with the greatest show on earth. Rangling Brothers Barnum and Bailey Circus, you say? No, stuff you should know the podcast. That's right.

It's Saturday, and that means it's time for another selects. And this one is from May 2018, P.T. Barnum, colon, more complicated than you've heard. And I pick this one, you guys, for two reasons. One, because I believe in this episode, I predicted that Hugh Jackman would play the man in a movie one day, one of my two predictions, along with Jared from Subway being a creep. And the other reason I picked it out is because I finally saw the movie The Greatest Show on Earth recently with my daughter. And I didn't like it so much.

I didn't think it was that good. So I'm sorry to anyone who had a part in that movie. My daughter loved it. My wife loved it. I just thought it was okay. But this episode is great. So I hope you enjoy PT Barnum, colon, more complicated than you for. heard.

Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of IHeart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant. There's Jerry. Hello. Hello. Hello. Hello. Jerry's got a top hat on. I know. I don't know why. I don't know. She's trying to be all Mr. Monopoly. Or P.T. Barnum. Oh, yeah, I forgot he wore a top hat, allegedly. Oh, no, he did. I saw a picture of it.

Yeah, Hugh Grant certainly did. Hugh Grant, Hugh Jackman. Hugh Lorry, I think it's Hugh Lorry. That's who it was, yeah. No, it's Clive Owen, you're thinking. Yeah, Hugh Jackman, man. Where's that top hat like a champ? He does. I don't know how much you went on the internet.

for this one, because this is a pretty comprehensive article. It actually was, yeah. But the greatest showman really set the internet on fire, man. And a lot of, like, it really brought out a lot of people saying, like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Yeah. Whoa. Yeah.

This is the very definition of the word fantasy. Yeah, it seemed like that movie was, can be best described as a musical whitewashing. Mm-hmm. In every sense of that word. Yeah. So let's destroy it. Yeah, I mean, after reading this, I didn't think, like, man, P.T. Barnum, what a complete A-hole. No, he was just a lot more complicated than that and did a lot of stuff that you just shouldn't just pass over because you can't figure out lyrics to, what rhymes with racism?

Yeah, I mean, he was definitely an enigma, and it seems like he did some good, but also, I mean, he was a hustler, man. For sure. So this is what I didn't fully understand until researching this, Chuck. He's known as the greatest showman, right? But there were plenty of other showmen out there at the time, which makes sense because you have to have something to compare. be compared to to be the greatest, right? But I guess I had just assumed he was like the first or the originator. No, he was not the first showman.

He was a great showman. Yeah. What he really left his mark on was introducing America to pure, unadulterated hucksterism. Sure. And using it for marketing. Humbug. That's what he called it. And he had a lot of quotes.

Some were definitely something he said. Like every crowd has a silver. lining, which means you can shake it out of them and get some money from a bunch of people, right? Yeah. The one about a sucker born every minute that's never been successfully attributed to them 100%. Well, yeah, and one thing is for sure, and is that his autobiography is, I think if you order it, it comes with a salt lick. So you can just lick on that salt while you're reading it.

Right. I don't know what that means, but that seems like something that they would do. Yeah, I mean, he, I think when the man is writing about himself, it's like, you know what, you may just want to believe a third of this. Oh, take it with a grain of salt, but so much so that you need an actual salt lick. Oh, yeah, you didn't get it. I got it now, I got it. So there is one quote that I think kind of describes this guy best, or at least his philosophy, and it also kind of reveals, like, you can't call him harmless, but also the intention. were not entirely evil, right?

Right. He had a quote that said that people don't mind being deceived so long as they're being amused at the same time. Which is kind of true. It does, and it largely lets him off the hook as far as being a huckster, right? But the thing that the greatest showman really glossed over or just outright ignored was that a lot of the amusements that he was presenting to the public were extraordinary.

ordinarily degrading to people at the time. They were super racist. There were just a lot of, there was just a lot of exploitation. He made his money not just by hustling Americans, but by exploiting other Americans too, right? Yeah. And again, like this, a lot of this is contextual. It's not necessarily fair for later generations

to judge previous generations, although it's really fun to do. Yeah. But, yes, you can say, like, this guy was exploitive, even compared to, like, his contemporaries, right? Perhaps. So he has just this very complex character, who I think you and I can agree, was not an evil person. He just did some horrible things here or there.

Should we go back in time? Yes, let's. All right, let's go back to the beginning. Let's hop in the Wayback machine, which is appropriately steampunky right now. Yeah. It takes many forms. I don't know if people realize that. It has a clock without the glass, and you can see the parts inside,

but it doesn't actually function. It's strictly for decoration. So let's go back to 1810, back to Bethel, Connecticut, where this man was born, Mr. Phineas Taylor Barnum. He had sort of a mixed family life. I mean, they pointed out in this article, he was firmly American, and his great, great, great-grandfather came over from England as an indentured servant

in the 17th century. Eventually became a landowner, but they didn't, it's not like they had a ton of money. His dad, Philo, great name. Yeah, all these are great names. He was not super successful, so it was kind of up to young PT to make his own way in life.

Right, yeah, his father was a farmer, which introduced Phineas, to the idea that he really hated like manual, mindless work. Now, he didn't like doing that farm work. But that's not to say he didn't like work. He just liked very specific kinds of work where his energies were appropriately channeled.

Like bilking people out of money. Sure, yeah. I mean, that was kind of it. He liked, he was the definition of the word enterprising, right? Sure. He could figure out a way. He could look at something, literally look at something that you couldn't,

you could almost not give away. You certainly couldn't sell. and turn it into pure profits. Like he got into lotteries for a little while once, right? Yeah, I mean, he went to work, he left the farm, went to work at a country store, and realized quickly, like, just because you're in the country doesn't mean

there aren't like swindlers and cheaters out here. Yeah. So he kind of learned some of the tricks of the trade there. His old man died when he was 15, and he was kind of, his mom had to get a job. But he was basically like, all right, it's kind of up to me now to provide for my.

family so he moved got that another job as a store clerk and as you said got into lotteries yeah and he was early on pursuing a career at clerkship which I guess is a thing yeah but yeah so there's this he saw easy money in lottery so he set up one himself apparently when he was working for these owners of the store um they were away at one point and he got his eyes on some tin kitchenware that just would not sell Yeah. So he took some other stuff that wouldn't sell at that store. These things weren't his, by the way.

Right. And he traded them for a bottle collection, which I guess was the thing that people wanted at the time. Yeah. And he put those things up as prizes, right? And he started a lottery, and these were the prizes. And there were cash prizes. But he ended up selling, like, a thousand tickets or something like that. In this little town store, based on these prizes and some cash prizes,

is saying, like, half of all tickets were going to be winners. And you might win a bottle, or you might win, like, a tin muffin pan, but you could also win this cash. And so these things that had just been sitting on these shelves forever were suddenly turned into something valuable thanks to his marketing expertise. And this is while he's still a teenager. Yeah, we've covered this in something before,

that lotteries were a thing back then that someone could just cook up, you know. It's not like the lotteries we have today, like these sanctioned, sanction ways of stealing people's money but back then you could just cook up a lottery in a small town and be like you know what I've got it was almost like a Ponzi thing like I can raise money right give away some of that money

and prizes and then keep the rest right I think that was in our lotteries episode oh really yeah okay well in order to do that though you have to be a natural born salesperson which is what he was you really do and like lotteries would play like a theme throughout his early career like that's he ended up making his initial, I don't know, fortunes of the right word, but that's how he staked

himself and his family was through lotteries and working in stores and then eventually owning stores, like general stores, grocery stores, that kind of thing. But the lotteries are where he made his money. And he actually figured out that you could make more money with less work than having to go to the trouble of setting up a lottery. Like you said, anybody could just set up a lottery by taking tickets from somebody else's lottery and selling them further out at an increased price. But then he figured out one more thing, Chuck. You didn't even have to go out and sell these things yourself.

You could hire other people to sell them even further out. All you had to do was give them the tickets and collect the money that they brought you. So he ended up making money by basically expanding other people's lotteries for a while. That's right. And in the middle of this, and he had moved to Brooklyn, at this point. He's kind of hopping all over the place there in the northeast.

And to be fair, we're hopping kind of all over his early life right now. Yeah, chronologically. Yeah, yeah. So in this time period, he met who would become his wife, a woman named Charity Hallett, who he described in his autobiography

as a fair, rosy-cheeked buxom girl with beautiful white teeth. Did I mention she had big boobs? Right. But those teeth, man so they would get married and I think they had four daughters but during all this time he did he had a little Josh Clark in him because how do you mean well he was writing letters to local papers that weren't getting published so he said you know what

I'm gonna start my own paper yeah very he clarked himself a paper I'll see you all in hell media yeah and much like yourself you started your own paper which was Kind of cool. Sure. I mean, like if people won't print your crank ideas, just go start your own paper. It's like if you want to get your manifesto out there. Either, yeah, either become Unabomber-esque, which we don't recommend, or start your own paper. That's right.

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

So to me, Chuck, that one really stood out because it shows just how huge this guy's life story is. Yeah. That even if you make a movie out of it, the best you can hope for is to pick like five or six or ten different things

and try to find a thread throughout them, right? Right. Whether that's an accurate portrayal or not, it can't possibly be because this guy's life was just so enormous and he did so many things and he was such an outsized character that a lot of times you either vilify him or glorify him and it was much more a combination of both of those things and I think that example really says it all like he had his notions and he started his own paper and ended up going to jail and subscription boosted so ended up making money from it but at the same time he was legitimately trying

to call out corruption in this town that he cared about. So his character was much more complex than you get from just about any source unless you read biographies about him. Yeah, agreed. So finally, he says, or I'm sorry, Connecticut said, no more lotteries in Connecticut. So he's like, all right, what am I doing here even

if I can't do this little scam? Yeah, he's like, I love this town, but not that much. So in 1834, he left the paper, shut that down, moved his family to New York City. And should we take a break? Perfect. All right. We're in New York City, and we'll be back right after this. If you want to know, then you're in luck.

Just listen to Josh and Chuck stuff you should know. Hi, Kyle. Could you draw up a quick document with the basic business plan? Just one page as a Google Doc and send me the link. Thanks. Hey, just finished drawing up that quick one-page business plan for you. Here's the link. But there was no link.

There was no business plan. It's not his fault. I hadn't programmed Kyle to be able to do that yet. My name is Evan Ratliff. I decided to create Kyle, my AI co-founder, after hearing a lot of stuff like this from OpenAI CEO Sam Aldman. There's this betting pool for the first year that there's a one-person billion-dollar company, which would have been like unimaginable without AI and now will happen.

I got to thinking, could I? I'd be that one person? I'd made AI agents before for my award-winning podcast, Shell Game. This season on Shell Game, I'm trying to build a real company with a real product run by fake people. Oh, hey, Evan. Good to have you join us. I found some really interesting data on adoption rates for AI agents and small to medium businesses. Listen to Shell Game on the IHeart Radio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Michael Lewis here. My book, The Big Short, tells the story of the buildup and burst. of the U.S. housing market back in 2008. It follows a few unlikely, but lucky people

who saw the real estate market for the black hole it would become and eventually made billions of dollars from that perception. It was like feeding the monster, said Eisman. We fed the monster until it blew up. The monster was exploding. Yet on the streets of Manhattan, there was no sign anything important had just happened. Now, 15 years after the Big Short's original release,

and a decade after it became an Academy Award-winning movie, I've recorded an audiobook edition for the very first time. The Big Short Story, what it means when people start betting against the market, and who really pays for an unchecked financial system, is as relevant today as it's ever been, offering invaluable insight into the current economy and also today's politics. Get the Big Short now at Pushkin.fm. slash audiobooks, or wherever audiobooks are sold.

Hi, I'm Danny Shapiro, host of the hit podcast Family Secrets. We were in the car, like a rolling stone came on, and he said, there's a line in there about your mother. And I said, what? What I would do if I didn't feel like I was being accepted is shoes and identity that other people can't have. I knew something had happened to me in the middle of the night, but I couldn't hold on to what had happened. These are just a few of the moving and important stories. I'll be holding space for on my upcoming 13th season of Family Secrets. Whether you've been on this journey with me from season one

or just joining the Family Secrets family, we're so happy to have you with us. I'll dive deep into the incredible power of secrets, the ones that shape our identities, test our relationships, and ultimately reveal who we truly are. Listen to Family Secrets on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. Stuff you should know. Stuff you should know. I got a falafel. Is it good? It's pretty good. Is it from the halal guys? Uh-huh, of course.

Oh, man. Who else you're going to get a falafel from? That's good stuff. Yeah. So, man, this guy really, just reading through. this thing. He did so many jobs. Right. He was a factotum. Dozens and dozens of jobs through his lifetime. Yeah, and I'm glad he didn't just stick to clerking, right? Or even lottery. He had this thing, like something about show business attracted this guy. Oh, yeah. I don't know what it was.

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

and co-owned a grocery store for a while. Right. And so, like, his life is full of him just trying to do these kind of regular things and then being like, nope, got to go buy a lady and put her on display. Right. This was after Chuck, by the way, he had come down with smallpox for a while. Oh, did we miss a smallpox? Yeah, that's what I'm saying.

Like, this guy had a huge life. Man. But let's get to Joyce Heth, right? Yeah. Because she is a very controversial part of P.T. Barnum's life. She was his first foray in a show business, and there's no other way to put it. Like, he purchased her. She was a slave, an elderly slave, who he purchased from another promoter who had been touting her as General George Washington's nursemaid from when George Washington was a child.

This is 1835, right? You do the math. She was supposedly 161 years old. Yeah, so he negotiates a price. he went and saw her and she was blind she had no teeth she was partially paralyzed but she could talk and tell her story yeah she told stories about young george as a boy oh yeah and and to be fair she she was already being exploited it's not like he which is not great but it's not like barnum introduced this into her life no he just purchased her and took it over yes exactly took over the

exploitation for money for for a thousand dollars and he toured with her until she died um not that long later just like a year later not even uh in 1836 he made a lot of dough um and it was it was sort of a watershed moment for him where i think he was like wait a minute i've realized that i can get people um in a room by cooking up these stories and and getting things in the newspaper and printing these posters and even if like if if business was down he would do these crazy things like one of them when business was down appearing with heath at one point he accused her of being a robot what they called at the time on automaton in an anonymous letter to the editor in a newspaper yeah a robot made of whalebone rubber and springs so everyone was like whoa whoa whoa not only is she

George Washington's nursemaid but she's really a robot Right And what that did was it got the people Who had been Avoiding going to see her Because even at the time People were like

This is pure exploitation This woman is being exhibited Like a giraffe would be Or something like that She's an old lady's working her 10 to 12 hours a day Some people think that he worked her to death Literally

And so there was part of the press that was saying and reporting on this with great distaste. So there's a segment of American society who would not be caught dead seeing George Washington's 160-year-old nursemaid. Yeah. But they would conceivably go see an autonomaton if that's really what was going on.

So he managed to dupe the very people who were critical of this exploitation that he was undertaking. He got everybody in that one. Well, yeah, and it gets even worse. finally when she passed away he actually sold tickets to a public autopsy in a saloon so people could come look at this poor woman's insides and this is where it was finally revealed doctor said she's maybe like 81 years old at most right and this was so so jane mcgrath kind of walks past like what a controversy this was like this guy had been like very much touting that she was the nurse

made like he supposedly had the bill of sale to George Washington's father for her so like he was saying like this is legitimately a hundred and six year old woman so in this autopsy that he charged for when when it was exposed that she was actually half that age um it was there was a bit of disgrace there and he had to learn to roll with the punches and it was about this time that that he basically said to himself you can you can take this as a lesson and go on the straight and arrow, maybe get back into clerking. Yeah. Or you can double, maybe triple and quadruple down on this and see where that goes. And he chose the latter of the two for sure.

That's right. He sure did. The next thing that he did, the next person that he kind of took under his wing, was his greasy, greasy wing, was someone called Signor. Signor. Is that Senior?

Yeah. Why is it spelled that way? That is the Italian spelling of Signor. Oh, well, let me turn it on then. Signor Antonio. Nice. Antonio, Antonio. I added an extra bit in there.

Signor Antonio is another way to say it. Well, sure. If you're a dullard. I'm a bit of a dullard, Chuck. I think you know that after 10 years. So this guy, we're really milking that 10-year thing, huh? I've got my S-Y-S-K-10-year-Army shirt on. I see that.

It's very nice. Thank you. I've been working on my buxomness. You're quite buxom. So, Signior Antonio was a balancer. He's one of these guys, like a plate spinner, walked on stilts, juggles. He could throw things in the air and catch them very fast.

Yeah, he's like a hippie. Yeah, exactly. He would be on tour with, he'd had those little sticks. What are those called? Devil sticks? devil sticks or a hacky sack any of those things yeah you pull a hacky sack out of his ear at any moment so this guy he said all right you need to be my newest client i will make you famous uh change your your stage name from signor antonio to signor vivala nice because that's a little more i don't know

exciting i guess i like senior antonio yeah i did too it's a lateral move uh here's the thing though is there were a lot of dudes out there spinning plates so it wasn't like he was so unique but Barnum thought you know what I think you're better than the rest so here's what I'll do and again this is just another example of how good he was at promotion

he said I'll do a free performance for a theater and I'll even be your assistant on stage and people came and so the theater said all right I guess if people come for free they'll pay I think what he was saying was he Yeah, I think that's exactly

I think you're right He just wowed them enough I think That's the impression I have Yeah But even still Despite Vavala being genuinely good He was I think Head and shoulders

Above most of his contemporaries Most plate spinners Yeah I think people saw in the press Oh there's a really good plate spinner We saw a plate spinner At the office last week So I'm not going to go anywhere

To see another plate spinner I'm certainly not going to pay. Yeah. So Barnum had a pretty good idea, but I actually came out of a uncomfortable situation that fell into his lap with Roberts, another plate spinner. Yeah, so this is a rival plate spinner who apparently would go to performances. He was West Coast.

Yeah, he was a Crip. And he would go to Vivalos performances and heckle him, I guess. You call that plate spinning? Boo, terrible plate spills. Stuff like that. And so P.T. Barnum cooked up a thing where he was like, all right, I'll offer $1,000 American dollars to anyone who can perform Vivala's act in public. Roberts accepted, but here's what really happened is he got together with Roberts.

And they all three hatched a plan to do these kind of staged competitions. Right. So they promoted in the press. Platespinning competitions. East Coast, West Coast plate spinning rivalries going on, right? Now, everybody's going to come see this, and everybody did. And in that first performance, Roberts, as was staged, conceded he could not replicate Vivala's act. It was too good.

But I would love to see Vivala replicate my act. And I challenge you, Signor Vivala, to replicate my act tomorrow night at this same theater. And they kept going back and forth like that with this staged rivalry that they, they, they, they, made some cash off of thanks to Barnum's ingenuity. They did. Finally, in 1836, the circus comes into the picture. He joined a traveling circus. Barnum did as a ticket seller, which I take it to mean he doesn't sit in a booth and sell tickets,

but he goes around town selling tickets. Yeah, like Chambers of Commerce or something like that. Yeah, and of course he got a little commish off this thing. So he was making some dough. Vivala joined that same circus as a performer. Of course. They were attached to the hip at that. that point.

No, that was Cheng and Ang. Bunker you're thinking of. That's a dad joke. It totally was. And this one, I thought, was a little bit weird. Apparently, the circus proprietor, a guy named Turner, was into practical jokes and not very good ones, because this practical joke was he convinced a crowd that Barnum was the Reverend Ephraim Avery, who had been acquitted of murder.

but everyone thought that this guy had committed murder. And back then, no one knew what anyone looked like. So he said, this guy is Ephraim Avery, and he almost got lynched, apparently. Yeah, like Ephraim Avery's name was not very well liked in the area. He was, at the very least, he, through having an adulterous affair with a young woman, had induced her to kill herself, or at worst, had murdered her to prevent her from having his illegitimate child. Yeah, not a good guy. But he'd been acquitted, right?

Andy's a reverend, did we mention. So, yeah, the crowd, like, according to Barnum, almost kill them. That's a real funny joke. I know. But then later on, Jane says that Barnum got even with him with his own practical joke. I could find nothing anywhere, including in Barnum's autobiography that mentions that. I think he covered his toilet and saran wrap. Oh, gross.

That is so nasty. No, no, he gave him an upper decker Gross, that's even worse So apparently these guys got into business together And it became a thing where people would go See the circus where the two ringmasters Would kind of go at each other with these practical jokes Right

That became a thing So there's a transition going on Another transition now He is, he started out store clerking, Lotterying went got into show business where it's like basically uh a colonel tom to different performers yeah and then now he's transitioning into the circus but by now he's been like a married to the road about as much as he's been married to charity as well and from all accounts um like he was very much in love with her

and they were like he was faithful and they were they were a real couple but he was on the road a lot there's just no if ands or buts about it he was out there on the road quite a bit. So transitioning to a circus was basically the same thing. It was just a little bigger of an outfit. So it was like a step up. But you got to also keep in mind here that he's spending a lot of time on the road at a time when travel was really long and really tough. That's right. And so he eventually decides working for someone else's circus is for the birds. I'm going to start my own. You'll buy some horses and wagons. I'm going to get a clown. You've got to have a clown. I think he still had Vivala at the time

and started Barnum's Grand Scientific and Musical Theater toured all over the place for a little while and then they disbanded Right Nothing ever seemed to work out for very long No I think that He got fed up

It says with some of the rivalries with other showmen That you would build your whole circus around like an act and all of a sudden the act would be like, I'm sick of this, I'm sick of being on the road, I'll see you later. And all of a sudden your circus would fall apart. I think they were kind of tenuous outfits, right?

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

Yeah, so, I mean, we'll quickly speed through the next couple of years. He did a little steamboat circus for a little while along the Mississippi River. That didn't come along. He tried to do a respectable business again, went into business with a guy who manufactured grease, paste and cologne. That did all right for a little. while but then that failed and then this whole time he still feels that pull to the tent right he sold illustrated bibles for a little while yeah finally here's the thing he wanted stability like being out on the road was tough as steve perry right but he wanted this this to be tied to show

business in some way yeah finally one day and i think the 1841, he had another big break or another big vision. There was a place in New York, a museum. And what you would call today a museum that was up for sale in, I'm not sure where it was, but it was in New York, right? Yes. And it was called Scudder's American Museum. And Barnum heard that Scudder wanted to get out and was putting the whole collection up for 15 grand.

which is a substantial amount of money and definitely more money than Barnum had. But he said, that's it, right there. I can have a permanent place where people come to me and I can be home with my wife and daughters, but I can still have this daily interaction with show business. I got to buy that thing. Well, and it will also accomplish this is

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

It was like Hoy-Polloy-Todry crowds went to the theater. That was associated with like burlesque or something like that. Or even like Humanities Exhibitions, stuff like that. That was theater stuff. A museum, like Scudders, like respectable people. could go there. So what Barnum did was he bought a museum and then dragged it down into the mud. Right. And this whole, the way he financed the museum, I didn't fully understand, to be honest. Do you want me to explain it? If you want. Or we could just say he ended up with a museum in 1841 through

a lot of work and swimming. I think that's fair enough because it is a little bit like, you know, Robin Peter did pay Paul. Right. It wasn't just a straight-up purchase. Let's just say that. Right, but so one thing that you can say about this museum was he renamed Barnum's American Museum. It was a big success, and one of the reasons it was a big success was because he tirelessly worked at finding new and interesting ways to market the thing, right?

Yeah. And by, I'm not sure exactly when, but by a very short time after he opened it, I think that same year in 1841, he was charged 25 cents a person for admission. He had something like 4,000 visitors a day. Yeah. And he took this thing, like I say that he dragged the word museum down in the mud.

He definitely added and expanded to the definition of museum. And then he also had this lecture hall where he had like performances that you would see like in a circus or something like that. And he turned this place into an emporium, just something huge, an enormous spectacle. And something like 850,000 pieces were on display in his museum. So you definitely got your quarters worth, for sure. Yeah, and those are just the pieces. He also, I mean, as far as the circus element, he had everything covered.

He had dancers, musicians, plate spinners, ventriloquist. Well, you've got to have the plate spinners. He had little people. he had big people he had ladies with beards and robots and puppets and animals he had giraffes and grizzly bears like he really had everything humming on all cylinders at this point yeah he really did and again there was still there was that whole threat of like you know there are people being exploited there were people who were complicit in that there were people who were um anyone who came to the museum was gawking at you know the weirdness of these other people or whatever which again today is very odd to us but at the time um was still odd like that's the thing that i think gets lost on people like there were sideshows and things like that but barnum took it to an extraordinary degree and really ran with it and became extremely rich as a result actually should we take a break i'm ready to

All right, the museum's humming along. We're going to take a break. We'll be back right after this. If you want to know, then you're in luck. Just listen to Josh and Chuck. Stuff you should know. Hi, Kyle. Could you draw up a quick document with the basic business plan?

Just one page as a Google Doc. And send me the link. Thanks. Hey, just finished drawing up that quick one-page business plan for you. Here's the link. But there was no link. there was no business plan. It's not his fault.

I hadn't programmed Kyle to be able to do that yet. My name is Evan Ratliff. I decided to create Kyle, my AI co-founder, after hearing a lot of stuff like this from OpenAI CEO Sam Aldman. There's this betting pool for the first year that there's a one-person, a billion-dollar company, which would have been like unimaginable without AI

and now will happen. I got to thinking, could I be that one person? I'd made AI agents before for my award-winning podcast, Shell Game. This season on Shell Game, I'm trying to build a real company with a real product run by fake people. Oh, hey, Evan. Good to have you join us. I found some really interesting data on adoption rates for AI agents and small to medium businesses.

Listen to Shell Game on the IHeart Radio app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Robert Smith. This is Jacob Goldstein. And we used to host a show called Planet Money. And now we're back making this new podcast called Business History about the best ideas. about the best ideas and people and businesses in history. And some of the worst people, horrible ideas, and destructive companies in the history of business. Having a genius idea without a need for it is nothing.

It's like not having it at all. It's a very simple, elegant lesson. Make something people want. First episode, how Southwest Airlines use cheap seats and free whiskey to fight its way into the airline business. The Most Texas Story Ever. There's a lot of mavericks in that story. We're going to have mavericks on the show. We're going to have plenty of robber barons.

So many robber barons. And you know what? They're not all bad. And we'll talk about some of the classic great moments of famous business geniuses, along with some of the darker moments that often get overlooked. Like Thomas Edison and the electric chair. Listen to business history on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Michael Lewis here.

My book, The Big Short, tells the story of the buildup and birth. of the U.S. housing market back in 2008. It follows a few unlikely, but lucky people who saw the real estate market for the black hole it would become and eventually made billions of dollars from that perception. It was like feeding the monster, said Eisman. We fed the monster until it blew up. The monster was exploding.

Yet on the streets of Manhattan, there was no sign anything important had just happened. Now, 15 years after the Big Short's original release, And a decade after it became an Academy Award-winning movie, I've recorded an audiobook edition for the very first time. The Big Short Story, what it means when people start betting against the market, and who really pays for an unchecked financial system, is as relevant today as it's ever been,

offering invaluable insight into the current economy and also today's politics. Get the Big Short Now at Pushkin.fm. or wherever audiobooks are sold. Stuff you should know. Stuff you should know. Okay, we're back. Yeah, so we mentioned earlier about the humbug, this kind of hucksterism. In his biography, or autobiography, which was rewritten by himself, by the way, after people read the first version and said,

what a jerk yeah yeah he was like just openly boastful and a braggard about how much he exploited people and how much he duped the American public he toned it down a little bit in this in the revision but he he did talk a little bit about being slightly embarrassed about kind of how shameless he was

but then again in the next line he would say but you know what this is how everyone is in my business I'm just better at it than them basically yeah he said he said oh there's a great quote i can't find it anywhere though where basically if he if he oh here it is if his advertising was quote more audacious than his competitors it was not because i had less scruple than they but more energy

far more ingenuity and a better foundation for such promises he thought a lot of himself he definitely did but he also worked pretty hard at it for sure and i think If you compared apples to apples at the time, Barnum's jam was way better than anybody else's jam. Yeah, for sure. So, he had three really big successes in a row with his museum here. The first one was called the Fiji Mermaid, F-E-E-J-E. This was in 1842.

And this was a big deal. He got a man named Levi Lyman or Levy Lyman. He was an old colleague of his, and he said, here's what I'll do. You're now Dr. J. Griffin. You're a naturalist for the British Lyceum of Natural History, which was not a real place. And you were an ownership of what we'll call the Fiji Mermaid, which was a, what did we call it in the taxidermy? Rogue taxidermy? Yeah.

It was rogue taxidermy. It totally was. It was like a jackaloupe, except what was it? It was a head of a baboon, torso of an orangutan, and a fish tail just for a good measure. Yeah, and as far back as they can tell, it was probably made by a Japanese sailor in the 1820s, and it passed through a few hands before Barnum finally leased it and put it on display. I wonder where that thing is now. I looked.

I don't know. There are other Fiji mermaids out there. It was like kind of a thread of rogue taxidermy in the mid-19th century, and I think Harvard has one on display. But I look to find out where P.T. Barnum's is, and I can't find it. It's probably like on Richard Branson's headboard or something. It may have actually burned up in one of the many fires that plagued P.T. Barnum's life, sadly. Things are going to get fiery here in this last bit, too.

Yeah. Well, anyway, let's get back to the Fiji Mermaid, though. Okay. Okay, so Dr. J. Griffin is touring. touring with this supposedly touring with this mermaid right sure and barnum but the guy's actually not out there touring barnum basically creates out a whole cloth a tour of this mermaid writes letters about how great this thing is uh in different people's names and then mails them to friends that live around the country and asks them to mail those letters in to newspapers in new york

talking about how this thing has to be seen to be believed. Yeah, so people came far and wide to see this piece of taxidermy. Yeah, and by the way, this whole Jay Griffin thing, like this guy was posing as him. He was giving public lectures made up as a naturalist, a British naturalist, and he was an American promoter. He had nothing to do it. He was just making all this stuff up,

but he would give public lectures on it. I love it. Like the audacity, it's amazing. So the second big victory was when he met up with a four-year-old named Charles Stratton. He was a little person. His cousin, actually. And he stopped growing when he was two feet tall. And he changed his name, rebranded him as General Tom Thumb.

And that name probably rings a bell. They became very famous together. He said he was 11 years old. And they were a media and ticket-selling sensation. Yeah, they would be, like, invited into meet, like, royalty, whatever country they toured. He was a huge hit at the museum. It was, like, a big deal for both Barnum and Charles Stratton. That's right.

A sensation, that's the best way to put it. And the final big victory of the trifecta, when he was in Europe with Stratton, he heard of Ginny Lynn. She was a Swedish opera singer. And this was the kind of thing where he was like, you know what, she doesn't have a beard she's all she is is a talented singer

but she's amazing and this would really legitimize me if I did like a straight up act for a change right so even though she's big over here they don't know about her in America and she could blow up there

so I'm going to offer her $1,000 per performance which was a ton of money and a big risk but he made about a half a million dollars with her or more who he branded the Swedish Nightingale by trotting her around the United States and she was like

beyond a sensation in the United States Yeah, that was another thing too I mean like she was pretty big in Europe but I don't think she was well known if known at all in America But by the time she showed up for the tour starting in 1850 He had managed to like you said Just turn her into a national sensation

Like people had like Beatlemania for this lady Yeah This article says that she was not a very nice person. I didn't see that anywhere else. And I actually saw that. So after the contract between her and Barnum was up in 1851, she continued to tour America with like an actual orchestra, I believe. And she made $300,000 in 1850s money from this whole American tour

and donated every single penny of it to Sweden's public school. school system, which was burgeoning at the time. Yeah. So I don't know what Jane was talking about, but I think she just kind of didn't find America very cultured is what I get. But apparently Jane didn't like that. Well, America probably wasn't very cultured in 1850. Right. But I thought that was pretty neat, man. She took all that money and donated it to the public school system in Sweden. Man, that's crazy. But yeah, so Barnum was not legitimized thanks to that. I think it actually didn't go all that well, but he did enrich himself thoroughly through Jenny Lynn for sure. That's right, but he would go broke again because he's P.T. Barnum. And that's what he does.

In the 1850s, he bought up a lot of land near Bridgeport, Connecticut, because he wanted to make East Bridgeport, that happened in place. He invested in the Jerome Clock Company, wanted to relocate it to East Bridgeport. It was not a smart thing to do. The company went bankrupt, and all of a sudden he was broke again, and this is fire number one. He moves out of his mansion because he's broke, and then after he had moved out, the mansion burned down. Right, but if he had to move out, you would think that he had relinquished ownership, so why does it matter as far as his life goes? Oh. Unless he had a bunch of money stuffed into the insulation or something. He had a breaking bad thing going on.

It might have just been a footnote or something. Or maybe he did. No, I guess if he had to move out, then he didn't own it. I just thought that was a little weird. Yeah. So he was in debt, like big time, like broke, bankrupt, in debt because of this terrible clock company thing, which you should always take as a reason to never put all of your eggs in one basket,

which I guess is what he did. But he managed to emerge from debt. after, I think, five years. And he ended up, during this time, he pawned his museum, but he also put the name of the museum in his wife's name, who was not bankrupt. And so they were able to make some income off of the lease for the museum. And then when he managed to buy the museum back after five years,

he just went like right back to it. Like he didn't miss a beat. Yeah, I mean, this 10-year period from 1850 to 1860, he went broke. He did the smart thing, like he said with his wife. He started giving lectures about making money. He went on tour again with Tom Thumb. He got a dead whale. He bought a dead whale and said, surely people will pay money to see this.

So he was still doing all this crazy stuff. He bought a hippopotamus. He bought two beluga whales. Like, it's just crazy the things that he was doing. Also, Chuck, we have to say the title of the lecture tour, The Art of Money Getting. It's not even the art of making money, the art of money getting. Yeah.

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

Okay, so he was, P.T. Barnum was of this man's party. He was a Jackson supporter. And then the Civil War breaks out. And all of a sudden, Barnum has this like total conversion. He was not like an outright bigoted racist who worked to keep African Americans enslaved, worked as a Confederate sympathizer, anything like that. He was not like an outright bigoted racist who worked to keep African Americans enslaved, worked as a Confederate sympathizer, anything like that. fairly unremarkable and pretty normal. Like, for example, at his museum, if you were black, you couldn't come in. It was a segregated museum. But that was like a lot of businesses at the time. So he was a very normal pedestrian person as far as his politics go and socially as well.

But something happened around the time of the Civil War, and he converted and actually became an abolitionist, huge union supporter, and just basically became patriotic. and dedicated this idea of preserving the union and abolishing slavery. Yeah, and he used that museum as a sort of ground zero for his cause.

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

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

After, a few months after this election, his museum burned down, along with the animals in the exhibit, which is super sad. Yes. It is the first of like two animal fires. He opened a new museum a couple of months after that. Three years later, that museum burned down. Didn't want to rebuild that one. And then finally in the 1870s, like it took a long, long time before he became the P.T. Barnum that most people know as the big circus guy. Right.

The greatest show on earth guy. Yeah, he hooked up with Barnum and Bailey after hooking up with a guy named William Cameron Coupe or Coup. I'm not sure which one it is. But he had P.T. Barnum's Grand Traveling Museum, Menagerie, Caravan, and Circus. Yeah, a little wordy. That was 1871. And then did you cover the 1872 fire? No. There was another fire that killed all the circus animals.

At the winter camp, which is on the site of where Madison Square Garden is right now, there's a horrific fire in the winter camp in 1872 killed a bunch of other circus animals, which this is why this is one of the reasons. why, years later, Barnum and Bailey's Ringling Brothers Circus went away. It was because of animals. Yeah, and he, I mean, he was, by the time this fire happened at the, what was it called, the hippo-theatron? I think so.

He was very successful with that circus. He started with Coop or Coop. They made about 400 grand in the first year, and it was the very first circus to kind of do the traditional thing that we all think of is travel by train, acrobatts, clowns, exotic animals, stuff like that.

And that's when it officially was called the greatest show on earth. So the hippothetron, such a strange word, burns down, and then he's visiting his friend in England,

John Fish, and this is when his wife charity passes away. Yeah. And as Jane put it, he was supposedly too grief-stricken to return for her funeral

but the grief must have subsided quickly because he secretly married Fish's daughter at 63 years old he married 22 year old Nancy Fish Yeah About three and a half months later after his wife passed No word about her teeth No, or her bra size So they got married secretly

14 weeks after charity died And then when they came to the U.S. They had a public wedding Nine months after that So So, yeah, he married her, and I guess he was with her until his death, right? Well, yeah, in 1860, or I'm sorry, 75, he took a break from the circus, got back into politics, and became the mayor of Bridgeport for a little while.

Not East Bridgeport, though. He was talking trash about them. Bridgeport. And apparently he gets a little on his high horse now, because even though he was a drinker, pretty heavy drinker for a while, he quit drinking and then campaigned, against, like, Sunday sales and saloons. And kind of got a little self-righteous, it seems like. Yeah, he also sponsored the Comstock law in Connecticut,

which banned contraception, which puts a lot of onus on to the ladies. And it was in place, apparently, until 1965. And there's a really important word in there, Chuck, sponsored. Like, that means you're the person who brought it to the... the General Assembly, not, you didn't just vote yes on it. Like you're the one who said, everybody, everybody, let's ban contraception for a hundred years. Yeah. And it was successful, actually.

So, yeah, he was, he was a weird dude with a lot of different weird thoughts about things that were sometimes very contradictory over time. And then finally, ironically here at the very end of this podcast, in 1880, he partnered with one James A. Bailey. for P.T. Barnum's great London combined. That's a terrible name for a circus. Worst circus name ever. Then he had the word circus in there. And this is when he got Jumbo the Elephant,

which it was, Jumbo was a legendary attraction until 1885 when Jumbo was killed by a train. And probably caught fire too. And did you know? We were just in Boston that Tufts University, their mascot is Jumbo the Elephant. No, I didn't know.

that yeah my buddy Robert explained that to me and um apparently barnum was one of the early what do you what do you call the people who give universities a lot of money uh endowment and donors grant person sure he was all of that what is that word i know what you're talking about he was all that to tufts and so jumbo the elephant became their mascot and i think because it does say in here he he displayed jimbo's preserved hide and skeleton I think it was or maybe is on display at Tufts oh wow I'm not sure if it still is but I think at one time it was so wait a minute this guy also gave a substantial amount of money

to help found a university I don't know found but to the university that's a benefactor is that the word benefactor yeah maybe to found it I'm not sure the timeline there man that's that's really crazy he did a lot of stuff so go jumbos yeah the fighting jumbos or the Passive aggressive jumbos or what? The stomping jumbos. That's pretty good. So Barnman and Bailey weren't together for too long initially.

They parted ways, but then again joined in 1887, ultimately finally for the Barnman-Baley circus. Yep. They broke up and then they got back together and then it stayed that way until 2016, I think, and then the circus finally closed down. I went to that thing as a kid. I think we talked about that. Sure, I did too. And now we will only go to the Big Apple Circus, as you know.

And I took a long break because Emily and I were tired of going. And then now that we got a kid, my mom was like, you know, you got to start going again. You have to. So we went this year. How was it? Oh, it's okay, you know. I'm not the biggest circus guy, I've realized. Are you afraid of clowns?

No, not these. Are you afraid of acrobatts? I could take these clowns. No, and actually the acrobats at the Big Apple Circus are the what's it call it? It's the famous ones, the family. Oh, the flying Zambonis? Yeah, or was it Zambonis, not Zambonies? I don't remember.

It's something like that. But it's them and still that family. Wow, that's really, that's something. And they, you know, they did a great job. But at the end of the day, I'm just kind of about a third of the way through. I'm looking at my watch, you know. Oh, I got you. I've seen a couple of Cirque to Solays

Those are the last circuses I saw Yeah, those are okay But we saw the Michael Jackson one in Las Vegas And man alive Was it good? Yeah There's a Michael Jackson Cirque Yes dude

And I have to tell you Like I'm not some diehard Michael Jackson fan But you don't have to be This to appreciate this It is amazing Like it's worth going to Vegas to go see Who's not Michael Jackson Turning around and going home

I don't know There's probably a few I'll bet we hear from some Michael Jackson, anti-Michael Jackson fans. Finally, 1890, P.T. Barnum has a stroke during a performance. He has one weird, strange wish at the end of his life is to have his obituary published before he dies.

Yeah. I don't know why I did that, maybe to... I don't know either. I think... I don't know, but that's a heck of a way to end this podcast. Maybe he wanted to feel the public outpouring or something. It could be that or he wanted to proof-read it or something. I don't know.

But if that was what he was after, why didn't they just send it to him ahead of time? They actually published it. Yeah, that's weird. Yeah. Well, we'll find out one day when we die and go to heaven and meet PT Barnum. Agreed. So you got anything else?

Nope. There's probably tons more that we missed. and if you know something about P.T. Barnum that we didn't know. Let us know. We'll just add to this guy's story over time, okay? In the meantime, if you want to read this great article by Jane McGrath, type in P.T. Barnum in the search bar at How Stuff Works. Since I said search bar, it's time for listener mail. All right, I'm going to call this Unabomber follow up. Oh, good. I was into that one. The Unabomber? Yeah. Yeah, that was a good episode. That was a good 10th anniversary episode.

Milk. Hey guys, congratulations on 10 years. Milk, milk, milk. I look forward to many more. Listen to Unabomber and thought it would share something that covers a related of somewhat different aspect of the story. About 10 years ago when I was still a we law student taking a legal ethics course, one of the situations we discussed was Ted Kaczynski and the ethical dilemma his lawyers faced. Criminal defendants had the absolute right to dictate certain aspects of their representatives.

like whether or not to plead guilty, but there are other aspects of the representation that the lawyer controls, the most notable being trial strategy, while lawyers should always listen to the client's overall goals, sometimes it's necessary to override a client's wishes on how to achieve their goals, because the client's desired strategy is either legally incorrect, unethical, or simply ill-advised. Kaczynski's case presented an interesting ethical problem for the attorneys because he refused to allow them to pursue what they perceived to be his best defense and his only hope of avoiding the death penalty, namely, claiming he was not guilty by reason of mental disease, known as the insanity defense. The conflict was that, on one hand, his attorneys had a duty to zealously represent him, but Kaczynski objected so vehemently to the chosen defense that at one point he attempted to go pro se, aka, represent himself, which would have been an utter disaster. As you noted, he pled guilty, so we'll never know what they would have decided to do had he conned a trial, but his case is one which most lawyers thought about

or discussed at some point in their careers. That is good. Fordham Law, go Rams. And that is from Deb. Thanks, Deb. Appreciate that. Yeah, I remember we were kind of saying, like, his whole thing was he played guilty

because he didn't want to plead insane because his ramblings would have been the ramblings of a convicted insane madman. Yeah, very interesting. Again, thanks, Deb. We always love hearing from lawyers out there. That whole joke about lawyers at the bottom of the sea being a good start, we have always found it tasteless.

Sure. So get in touch with us. You can send us and Jerry an email to StuffPodcast at iHeartRadio.com. Stuff you should know is a production of IHeartRadio. For more podcasts to My Heart Radio, visit the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Hi, Kyle. Could you draw up a quick document with the basic business plan? Just one page as a Google Doc and send me the link. Thanks. Hey, just finished drawing up that quick one-page business plan for you. Here's the link.

But there was no link. There was no business plan. I hadn't programmed Kyle to be able to do that yet. I'm Evan Ratliff here with a story of entrepreneurship in the AI age. Listen as I attempt to build a real startup run by fake people. Check out the second season of my podcast, Shell Game, on the IHeart Radio app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Robert Smith, and this is Jacob Goldstein, and we used to host a show called Planet Money. And now we're back making this new podcast called Business History, about the best ideas and people and businesses in history. And some of the worst people, horrible ideas, and destructive companies in the history of business. First episode, How Southwest Airlines Use Cheap Seats and Free Whiskey to fight its way into the airline is. The most Texas story ever.

Listen to business history on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Whether it is getting swatted or just hateful messages online, there is a lot of harm and even just reading the comments. That's cybersecurity expert Camille Stewart Gloucester on the Therapy for Black Girls podcast. Every season is a chance to grow. And the Therapy for Black Girls podcast is here to walk with you.

I'm Dr. Joy Harden Bradford, and each week we dive into real conversations. that help you move with more clarity and confidence. This episode, we're breaking down what really happens to your information online and how to protect yourself with intention. Listen to Therapy for Black Girls on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. This is an IHeart podcast, guaranteed human.