Stuff You Should Know - The Statue of Liberty

Episode Date: September 23, 2021

You've seen her there in NY Harbor, standing tall. But do you know the story of how she came to be? Learn all about the Statue of Liberty today. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Munga Chauticular and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to

believe. You can find in Major League Baseball, International Banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Dushchuk and there is a certain lady holding an open flame and wearing sandals. So this must be Stuff You Should Know.

Sandals. And lady, are we at a fish concert? Yep. She has an app that is an open flame on her thumb. Did she just, does she have a Whippet balloon at her feet? Yes, that's exactly right. You can't see it from below the pedestal though. Oh, that's very nice. So Chuck, no, no, it's so wrong. I wasn't talking about someone at a fish concert. I was talking about the Statue of Liberty. Good, because that's what I researched. Same here. Same here, because if we had just both happened to research the wrong thing, but it was the same thing, we could have still just pulled it out like we are right now.

Maybe, but we both researched the Liberty Enlightening the World Statue. That's right. Better known as the Statue of Liberty to the, you know, Hoipoloa, but for those in the know, it's really Liberty Enlightening the World. And Hoipoloa is Hawaiian for huddled masses. That's right. Wretched, wretched, it wasn't, yeah, it was wretched. You're cold and tired and wretched. Were they wretched? That's how Emma Lazarus put it. And I mean, I don't think she was being mean. I think she was saying that the state that they found themselves in was fairly wretched. She called them your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. And she was talking to continental Europe, but she was also basically saying like, you guys suck. You send us your worst, we're going to turn them into our best. Right. And like you said, we're talking about the statue that if you have been to New York City, sits there in the harbor, looming large at the time, the largest statue and clear up one misconception before we kind of get to the history. You often hear like it was a gift from the French government to the American government. Not true. And I always sort of thought that, but as we will learn, it's an even cooler story because like real people paid for it with oftentimes very small donations, much like

Bernie Sanders was building the statue. I was just about to smoke him with that nice work, man. Thanks. So yeah, it was paid for by hard fought funds that came from the people. I love that too. But there was one guy who came up with the idea. This is one of those things where it's like, there was a dude walking around and the idea for the statue of liberty popped into his head. And I love stories that start like that. Some guys just walking down the boulevard and his name happens to in this case be Edouard de la boule. And he was walking around France in 1865 and saying, you know, this place used to be a lot better when it was a democracy. Right. And now we're under the rule of Napoleon III. Things aren't so great.

And you know where things are looking pretty decent is over there in those United States where where they have just Lincoln has come along, issued the Emancipation Proclamation and like they're trying to do things right over there. And I think we should recognize them and also sort of say to our own French people, hey, look at what they're doing over there. Not bad. Yeah. By honoring America. And in this case, it was going to be giving America a birthday gift from France on our hundredth birthday in 1876. Yeah. It would kind of shine a light on France and be like, hey, look at how great things can be. Like they ratify the 13th Amendment over there. There's no slavery anymore. Like people are free. They're taking immigrants in. It's like

a beautiful place. Let's be more like America. The ironies abound, right? Yeah. So he started asking around and sharing his idea and actually kind of caught fire in a lot of ways. It wasn't like a home idea by any means. There were a lot of people in France who supported it. And one of the people who joined on board very early on was Frédéric Auguste Bartoli, who ended up being the sculptor who sculpted the Statue of Liberty. And he sculpted, he came up with the idea really fast, almost suspiciously fast. And when people grabbed him by his lapels and said, how did you come up with this beautiful idea so fast? They shook out of him a piece of scrap paper that he had submitted elsewhere. Yeah. Yeah. He did what any great designer does, which is kind of sifted

through his bag of used tricks. Right. Because he was on a deadline. He actually wasn't on a deadline. But yeah, he had in the 1850s gone to the Middle East and was inspired by the Sphinx and the pyramids and said, you know, I'd like to do something really nice like that. And he got his chance when Egypt said, hey, we want a big lighthouse in the Suez Canal here. And he came up with this cool, large, tall lady with a lamp to guide the people's way into through the Suez Canal. And then they said, nah, we don't think we're going to do that anyway. Right. And instead of just being angry and upset, he said, that's fine. I'll just repurpose it. Yeah. He said, it's like water off a duck's back, Egypt. I don't care. I got other things to do. And I'd like to think

of it as not that we got a secondhand design, but more like the design was so great that it must come into existence and that it came into an even better existence in the harbor off of Manhattan rather than the Suez Canal. Yeah. He worked smarter, not harder. That's right. That's another way to put it, if you're a landscaper. He had to change a few things around. He had to change, yeah, that and green side up. Those are the only two things you have to remember. Those are kind of the rules of thought, man. So he changed up a few things from his initial Egyptian design, namely the Egyptian look. He changed that up. And instead of Egyptian headdress, came up with that cool, spiky hat. Yeah. Hey, I didn't realize this.

Did you? That crown against her forehead, that's a crown, but those spikes coming off of it are like reflections of rays from the sun. It's not like a structural part of the crown or it's not meant to be. Oh, so that's supposed to be interesting. Yeah, it's seven rays of sunlight shining out from it, like that I guess is reflecting off of it. It's meant to be like the light of the sun reflecting off. Yeah, you'd think it's just like almost like, I don't know, like a Guares kind of thing. Yeah, like a spiky cool crown. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I'd be interested. I wonder if anyone has done little photo shopping without that to see the true nature of the hat, the crown. I'd like to see that. I know a few people who are good at photo shop.

I don't know, but you're going to get your face in my body. That's right. In our worst pictures. The other thing they changed or one of the other things he changed was the original statue had a lamp and he said, the lamp is nice for the Suez Canal, but let's go with the torch for the United States. And because it symbolized enlightenment, it was liberty enlightening the world. I guess you could enlighten the world with the lamp, but the lamp's more like showing the way. This is like casting the light of enlightenment out in every direction. Yeah, showing the metaphorical way. Sure. Almost had metaphysical. Then there was also that tablet she's holding at her side, the tablet of law with July 4, 1776,

and Roman numerals there inscribed on the side. That was a new addition because the first, the original one for progress carrying a light to Asia in the Suez Canal just had her hand like cupped by her side, not even doing anything. It's kind of like hand on the hip, right? Or no. Yeah. When I dip, you dip, we dip. Right. And then to call back your very slight little joke that you stuck in there at the front of this podcast, you cannot from the ground level because the pedestal is so tall, see what's going on with the feet. And I had never really looked, but right there, if you Google a picture of the lady's statue of Liberty's feet, there are broken shackles and a broken chain that represents the abolition of slavery. And I never

knew that was there either. Yeah. And so after Bertoldi said, listen guys, look, I made all these changes. They flattened out a suit and straightened his tie and put his glasses back on. And then they lift him up on their shoulders and they said, Bertoldi, Bertoldi. And they carried him down the avenue as a kind of an initial parade. There'd be a lot of parades surrounding the statue of Liberty in its development. Never to be seen again. He disappeared. It was an accident, man. It was an accident and their group agreed never to speak of it. But regardless, what I'm trying to say is Bertoldi, he got the contract to be the guy who designed this wonderful statue for France to give to the United States. Right. So he hops on a plane? No, no, no. Not a plane. I would guess a

steamership or something. Yes. I can't imagine how long that kind of stuff just took and how patient it would be. I know. But it's an ocean voyage. There's like a sense of adventure. Definitely. But also after you do it, like for the umpteenth time, it's probably like, come on. Although if you don't have any frame of reference of things going any faster, or maybe it doesn't seem quite as long, like you and I having flown, taking a steamer, it's just like, oh my God. It's not like someone would have said, you know what else has a sense of adventure, the Concorde. That's right. A lot quicker too, but very adventurous. I heard they're bringing that back. Yeah, I think we talked about that in an episode. Didn't we do one on the Concorde?

Yeah. But I don't remember us talking about it coming back. I think we did. I think we mentioned and I mean, there needs to be something super fast. They're like at this point. Yes, I agree. We're there. We're at teleportation stage. We're definitely lagging behind. I think so. That's like the Seinfeld gag when they uh, when they talk about uh, we're gonna try and like make up some airtime or whatever. And he was just like, why aren't they just flying as fast as they can every single time? That's like, that's a very good point. It was a mind-boggling Seinfeld. All right. So in 1871, he gets on that steamership. He comes over to travel to the United States to try and get some support because this is going to be a very expensive project and maybe to kind of scout out

some locations and boom, right there as he's pulling into New York Harbor, he sees the light, the metaphorical light and sees Bedlow Island, B-E-D-L-O-E, right there in the harbor. And he was like, wait a minute, what is this place? And everyone said, oh, it's nothing. It's just, it's a hunting and fishing ground for the Lenape native Americans here before us. And then the Dutch settled it and now the U.S. military owns it. And it's, you don't really need to worry about it. And he was like, no, I do because that, my friends, is the perfect spot. Yeah. It was perfectly situated to watch over the ships coming into the harbor. And that became the spot for the Statue of Liberty. It really is a great spot for it. And it was renamed Liberty Island in 1956 by the

Eisenhower administration. That's right. So Bertoldi, he goes back to France and he's met some Americans and drummed up the interests among Americans. He's found the site for this amazing place that he's going to build the world's tallest sculpture on. And he ends up helping found the Franco-American Union, which as you said, this wasn't a gift from the French government to the American government. And as a matter of fact, I think that was the first thing that Bertoldi and his friends tried. The friends said, no. The Americans said, no, that's just ridiculous. It's going to cost too much and it'll never work. So they started trying to cobble together like private support for it. And the result of that was the Franco-American Union. And I have

one thing to say about the Franco-American Union, Chuck. I was like, Franco-Americans, sounds really familiar. And then I realized Franco-American spaghetti, remember that spaghetti in a can? Yeah. Makes zero sense. The French aren't well known for their spaghetti and spaghetti sauce. Their spaghetti. Right. The Italians are. And I think it was an Italian company. I think they took that name on because they were founded around the time that the Franco-American Union was trying to drum up interest in the Statue of Liberty project. I couldn't find support for that, but that's my new hypothesis. All right. I'd say we take a break and ponder that, maybe have some of it. All right. Because that's not Chef Boyardee. That's different, right?

I know I like both, but yes, it is different. All right. Well, we'll go do a sample of each and we'll come back with our winner right after this. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Okay. I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man.

And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep. We know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life step by step. Not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangesh Hattikar and to be honest, I don't believe in astrology. But from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life in India. It's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get second hand

astrology. And lately I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention because maybe there is magic in the stars. If you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, major league baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had a handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change, too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Who won? They were both winners. All right. I love that ravioli still. I never get it like once every three or four years. I'll get that tangy what is even in that, what kind of meat is in that ravioli and I'll eat it. No, I haven't had Franco-American spaghetti since I can't even remember, but I do remember it being the sweet spaghetti. That's what we need. Right. Have you ever been to the Statue of Liberty, first of all, like in and traveled up and done the whole thing? I was hoping you weren't going to ask me that. No, I haven't. I haven't either. I did. You know, it's Liberty Island now and there's Liberty State Park as part of the grounds and I went to see Radiohead there in late August 2001, right there with the Statue of Liberty looming and the Twin

Towers right across the water at night. Wow. Wow. And of course, you know, it was just a couple of weeks after that, that the Twin Towers were gone. It was very surreal to have gone to that show at that moment in time and almost, well, not almost, 20 years ago, almost meaning as we record just a couple of days away. Right. So, Chuck, you haven't been to the Statue of Liberty either, I guess, is ultimately the point of your story. No, just a Radiohead concert. Okay. So I don't feel particularly bad because I was reading a 1986 piece of contemporary journalism, contemporary to when they restored the Statue of Liberty, which we'll talk about for a second later. And they were talking to the foreman, one of the foremen on the job and he was saying,

like, I've lived in New York for 48 years and it took me getting this job to come out here. I've never been here. So I think like a lot of people, including people who, I think tourists are the ones who have been to the Statue of Liberty. Not to say like, I'm not a tourist when I go to New York, but it just makes me feel a little less bad. That's not like, what kind of an American are you? You haven't been to the Statue of Liberty, Yukami? Yeah. And it kind of feels like, and I'm completely wrong here, but it kind of feels like one of those where you're like, no, you know, I get a nice view of it from New York. And when I fly in and out, you get a really nice view of it. Like, why do I need to actually go over there? But that should probably make the journey over there. We'll do

it together. Holding the hands of fraternity, liberty, equality and podcaster. That's right. So Bertoldi comes back to France. Oh, yeah, I forgot about him. As the story goes, he attends a wedding and sees this young woman and it's like, whoa, who is that? Holding that hat. Everyone said, yeah, she had a hat box and everyone said this, Jean-Emily, how do you pronounce her last name? Behu. Behu. Behu. You were doing so good with the French. Behu. Behu. B-A-H-E-U-X. I know that last part, what has to be you, right? Yeah, or go. Oh, Behu. Behu. Behu. We're just going with Ms. B. Yeah, let's call her Ms. B. And he said, I have finally met my Lady Liberty. He goes on to marry this woman and as legend has it,

and I don't think he's ever confirmed from him, but as legend has it, he used her as the body model for the Statue of Liberty and supposedly his mother Charlotte's face, which is, you know. It introduces a certain level of Freudianism. Yeah, paging Dr. Freud big time. My mom's face on my wife's body. Dave helped us out with this and he says that apparently his mother struck a stern imposing figure, so that's why he chose his mother's face. All right. We're just going to go with that and just kind of slowly back out of this room. That's right. The next thing he needed to do after he had his artistic inspiration and his model was to, you know, he didn't, he's not a builder of things. He's,

he's, well, he is a builder of things, but he's not an engineer and an architect on that level. Yeah. He was very much interested in that kind of stuff, but it was, it was way beyond the scope of what he was capable of understanding himself. Yeah. So he needed some help and he figured that, first of all, this is the tallest statue in the world at the time, so it's going to be a challenge. And then what I want to do is build it in France and then take it apart and then rebuild it in the States. Yes, dude. I kind of get this in a way, but I almost think that they could have gotten all the parts and ship them to the United States to build on site for the first time. I mean, I kind of get where he was coming from though. You don't want to send everything over

and ending up being like Mr. McCreg with a leg for an arm and an arm for a leg or something like that. You want to make sure it works first before you, if you ask me, that shows it demonstrates the level of dedication that the French had to this gift to America. And my hat, my chapeau is off to them for it. Well, and I guess he figured, because my whole logic was like, and you could do it in America and solve the same problems here as you could have solved there, but... It'd just be more embarrassing here in America. Well, not that, but I think he was working with his people there and you can't bring all those people over. So I'm sure there was a comfort level and a language issue or barrier potentially that he wouldn't have to overcome. So I succumb.

I also think probably that he was also using it as a way to drum up interest in their funds for it as well. True, because he had to raise money. We'll get to that. So Bert told me, talked to a couple of architects. The first one he spoke to was Eugene Ville LaDuke. He was the greatest architect in France at the time. And he basically said, look, you want to use this technique called Ray Pousset. And it's basically what you're going to do is build a skeleton or something of some sort, some sort of structure underneath that you can then attach thin sheets of copper to. So the sculpture is going to be made at copper, but it's not going to be like cast or carved or anything like that. That's, that's, it would just be impossible to do. Instead, you're just going to

affix copper sheets to it to make the thing out of. And I guess Ville LaDuke suggested making a concrete structure underneath. And Bert told me, it was like, okay, you know, I like you a lot. We've, we've had a lot of great basketball games together and you're my friend. So I'm going to go with your recommendation. But then Ville LaDuke died and then came a, another guy from our podcast history Gustave Eiffel or Eiffel. There he is. Created the Eiffel Tower. And he said, yet this is, this is all wrong. Like, yes. They said, why are you speaking Russian? Yes. He's like, I'm trying out some new things. He said, yes, I totally agree with Ville LaDuke's idea to use Ray Pousset. That was a stroke of

genius. But the idea of like creating the structure underneath out of concrete that's way too heavy, way too rigid, and it's just totally unnecessary. Try out my new technique of trusses and girders made of rawed iron. It's going to be way lighter and it's going to give it a lot more flexibility. Yeah. I think you kind of thought the, and I think it was probably right, is that other way it was a little more old school and that he saw the future, you know, pre Eiffel Tower, he was, I guess. The future is rawed iron. I guess so. He was in love with those iron girders. And so he said, here's what we'll do. We'll design this giant 92 foot pylon and that'll be the central point from which everything will spring. Right. And there'll be

this more lightweight kind of grid of girders and trusses that's going to form that skeleton from that central pylon. And then a secondary, another iron frame even, and that's what those copper sheets are going to be riveted to one at a time. And he said, this is the way, like you said, it's going to have a little give. And today, even the Statue of Liberty can sway a bit as all great tall structures usually are made to go a little bit with the wind. She can sway about three inches and like herself, and then the torch can sway up to six inches. You should see, she sways even more if there's a good Calypso song playing nearby. Right. Or you should have seen her at that Radiohead show. She's getting down. She's like, oh, I love this song. Oh man,

this is a good song. No booze at that show. That's what I remember. Does Radiohead ever get booed? No, no, no, booze as in alcohol. Oh, gotcha. It was a big surprise because it was a state park. So, you know, 15,000 people show up and we're like, where's the beer line? And they're like, oh, there is no alcohol here. You can stand in line, but there's nothing at the other end of it. And so we were like, we're leaving then. Did everybody go booze? No, yeah, there were booze after all. No, it was fine. We all lived for two hours without drinking. It was fine. That's amazing. Wow, that story just keeps getting more and more amazing, Chuck. I know. I'm trying to think of some more fine points. I'll see if I can think of any. A giant snake that wound its way through

the audience and everyone thought it was going to attack everyone and kill them, but instead it bounced people up and crowd-served with them. No, actually, I did remember the end of that story is I happened to bump into my good friend Bill from college who I didn't even know was there and he had snuck some booze in. Oh, boozy Bill was there. Boozy Bill. He snuck in like a pint of whiskey or something. And some fake binoculars. Yeah, exactly. Oh man, I remember those. Those are great. All right, so Eiffel says, this is the plan. The plans are approved. Eiffel himself supervised the construction of this tower and the extension tower that is going to end up being that right arm with a torch.

And that took about two years and they wound it up in 1883. But that was just Eiffel's contribution. Just his part. Two years for his stuff, yeah. No copper at this point at all. I mean, at this point, they're doing some cutting edge stuff, but one of the reasons why it's cutting edge is because no one's ever tried any of this before. Again, they're making the tallest statue in the world. They were using engineering techniques and structures that were unproven. Eiffel completed his part six years before the Eiffel tower debuted. So this is new stuff, unproven and introduced to the world. It's pretty cool that they were doing that. But one of the first challenges they ran into was figuring out how to make

the little proof of concept tabletop sculptures that they had created. How to turn those scale models into the actual thing. Because nowadays, when you design, when you draw, it's on computers and the computer. You hit the up button. Exactly. Yeah. With your elbow and go, come on, you stupid computer. And biggin. Right. These guys did not have anything remotely like that at their disposal. And when we tell you about how they went from those tabletop models to the actual statue of liberty yourself, it's going to blow your mind. Yeah. What they did have was brains and math and string. And stick-to-itiveness. Because right when it occurred to me, Chuck, if I were leading this thing, the moment it occurred to me what we had to do, I would just

start crying. Yeah. Or we would just do our best and the proportions would be all wrong. Come out like Mr. McCreg, if we were lucky. Who's Mr. McCreg? What is that? It was like Dr. Nick is talking to somebody and one of his old patients shows up and he's like, Dr. Nick, do you remember me? And he goes, oh, well, if it isn't my old friend, Mr. McCreg, with the leg for an arm and an arm for a leg. This guy's got an arm for a leg and a leg for a leg. It was just demonstrating how bad Dr. Nick was at his job. Yeah, I love it. Hi, frozen body. Yeah. All right, so they need to embiggen this thing. Man, there's some stuff flying all over the place. All over the place. And they've got the little tourist model, like you said,

and they're all sitting around with their hands on their chin. And they said, all right, why don't we do this? Why don't we gradually make it a little bit bigger? I think we can handle that. And so they have this thing called a pantograph. If you look it up online, it doesn't look like much, but it uses these little mechanical arms on boom, like a boom, to basically you can make something bigger or smaller from an original using this thing. Yeah, it enlarges the movements of the pencil or pen you're using to the pen that's attached on the other end of the boom. It just makes a bigger exact copy. Yeah, so it's genius to use this. And they use bigger and bigger ones until they got up to about a one quarter size, which is really big and impressive. Yeah. But

that's at the point where they're like, Hey guys, I had to break it to you, but that's it on the pantograph. Like this is as big as we can go. So from this one quarter size, we're just going to have to guess. Right. We're going to have to wing it. No, they figured out another really ingenious way to kind of measure up from there. And they took that finish quarter size version. The maquette. Yes, that's the final scale model. The biggest that it got was a quarter size of the original or the final version. They built of a structure, like a frame around the maquette. And then they basically attached lines, plum lines from the structure to the model at different points. Yeah. Yeah, they use string basically. But in much the same way, like, you

know, on like those cop procedurals like CSI or whatever, they'll have like the red dowels, like sticking out of bullet holes to figure out the trajectory. They basically did that with the Statue of Liberty, but in a thousand different locations, every fold, every toenail, every like eyelash, like everything, all of that stuff was plotted out in real life, in three dimension, using plum lines to basically create these points of reference. And then they went back and they measured all of them and they figured out where all these points would go times four. And then they built another structure and went from there and then went backwards. Yes. I really feel like I had it until the end there. Yeah, you kind of petered out at the end.

Well, no, they went, they multiplied it by four, built the structure that could accommodate that, and then brought back down plum lines to those four times larger points of reference and then started building from there. Yeah, it's a technique called pointing up. And all told, there were 9,000 measurements, 300 main reference points. And then thousands of these pieces of string, because like you said, it's every, you know, they can't just get it close. It's every fold in her gown, every, you know, the thumbnail meeting the thumb, it's all like very, very specific because they had to get it just right. Yeah. And so then they have to start out building this thing. And what they decide to do, obviously, is build it in sections because they're going to

have to take it apart and put it back together. So they built it in very large sections, starting with wood scaffolding, and then eventually plaster because you want to, you know, you're sculpting, it can't just be wood and copper hammered on there. Like it's got to be, there's got to be some fine detail and some really rounded smooth edges and stuff like that. Right. So they made basically wood molds, molds out of wood, sculpted the plaster in it, and then they had a plaster mold, and then they could take the plaster mold, which was basically a negative, and then they put wood into the plaster molds and warped it so that it fit the plaster perfectly, kind of like the techniques that you would use to make a boat hull, you know, smooth and folded.

They did the same thing with these giant plaster casts, but they did it with wood, and then you think, okay, great, wood, what are you going to do with wood? Then with those wood molds that they made from the plaster casts, they took those thin sheets of copper that were about the size of two pennies held together. That's what the outside of the Statue of Liberty is, that's the thickness of her skin. They put those copper plates into the wood molds, and then hammered them smooth, and now all of a sudden you had the final pieces of the exterior of Lady Liberty coming together. Right, and several hundred pieces in the end. I mean, it's a big project, and if you think, boy, you better label that stuff good, fellas.

You're right, because when this thing was eventually shipped over, it was a little bit annoying in that what happened is what you think would probably happen. Some of this stuff gets mislabeled, and it wasn't quite armed for a leg territory, I don't think, but it was like, all right, now we got to sift through this and kind of refigure it all over again. Yeah, I can't imagine. So I say we take a break and come back, and we got to talk about money, everybody, so just sit tight. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new I Heart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Okay, I see what you're

doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help, this I promise you. Oh, God. Seriously, I swear, and you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh, man. And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yeah, we know that, Michael, and a different hot sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life, step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never ever have to say bye,

bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the I Heart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangesh Atikular. And to be honest, I don't believe in astrology. But from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention. Because maybe there is magic in the stars, if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, Major League baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had to handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology,

my whole world can crash down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change, too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, so all this is going on. Copper, by the way, I feel like this guy's name bears repeating throughout the story, or anytime the story is told, Pierre Eugene Secretan was an industrialist in France who donated the copper, really high quality copper we hear to the project. But that was, you know, and there were other donations and there was other funds raised, but it was hard going,

they found out. I get the impression that the French had an easier time because that Franco-American Union came together and they said, okay, how about this, the French will raise about 250,000 francs, about $6 million for the statue itself. And the Americans will raise about $250,000, about $7 million today to create the pedestal. And they basically said, ready, break. And the French went off and started fundraising. The Americans went off and started fundraising. And I have the impression that the French had a little easier time of it than the Americans did. Yeah, it seems like it. I think the Americans probably thought at the beginning, like, hey, they just want us to pay for the pedestal. Like, this is nothing. It ended up

being a little more expensive than the statue itself. So we were kind of left holding the bag by a little bit. Or the Americans were like, oh, I thought this was a gift. Yeah. But you want to go Dutch? Great. And the Dutch are like, what does that even mean? Yeah, the check comes. So yeah, that base is called the truncated pyramid, which basically means a pyramid that doesn't have the pointy top. It gets smaller as it goes up. And that itself is 89 feet tall and 62 feet wide and about 40 feet wide at the top of that thing where she stands. And it is mostly concrete. And it's got a facade of Connecticut granite, but that was a big project in and of itself. Yeah, Chuck. Also, I was researching

the pedestal. I found out there's eight beams in there, eight structural beams poured into the concrete, the concrete poured around it. Four of them are horizontal, but then four toward the top are vertical and they actually break the top of the pedestal. And that is what the interior skeleton of the Statue of Liberty is affixed to. So she's like solidly affixed to that pedestal. It's pretty cool. That's awesome. So like you said, the French, I think, are raising money at a steadier clip. They're selling tickets to lotteries. Schools were chipping in a little bit. I think there were descendants of French soldiers, supposedly, who had fought in the American Revolution that were sending in some money. Yeah, that's that's old school right there. Oh, big time. They started,

this is this is kind of a good idea, actually, they started having fundraising banquets as the structure was growing inside it. Like they had one in the kneecap, one in the thigh, one in the stomach, and then finally one inside the head. Great way to raise some money. Right, which is why I was saying like, I think that's one of the reasons he built it in France first. Yeah, it makes sense. And then they did, in turn, eventually, when this thing gets to America in pieces, they start doing that here. They start trotting this around. First, they had, I think, the right arm and torch on display in Philadelphia for the Centennial celebration. And then that same torch and arm were at Madison Square Park. And you could pay money to climb up in it and take

pictures or you couldn't take pictures and sketch pictures of it. And the Americans held prize fights and they held auctions and stuff like that. So they were doing their best. But they were about a hundred grand short in the end. And that is when a man by the name of Joseph Pulitzer stepped up. Really liked this idea. And he was like, you know what, we got to get there. I had this rag called The World. It's got great circulation. And Dave points out, he's dead right, that this is kind of one of the biggest and first crowdfunding campaigns. And that he launched this big thing of where he was like, listen, this isn't the government. We don't want rich, the government doing this or the millionaires of France giving a gift to the millionaires of the United States.

This is supposed to be for the common person. And so give a dollar, give 25 cents. And that's what happened. All these people stepped up and gave little tiny increments of money. And they fundraised about a thousand dollars over their goal using that little crowdfunding technique. In just five months, they got past the goal. Yeah. The whole hook was, if you give anything, I'll print your name in my newspaper and it worked. Yeah. Oh yeah. If you want to get anything done, offer to print people's name in the newspaper in a positive light. That's a big caveat right there. Right, exactly. And there was one other thing. Well, there was a lot of stuff that came out of the fundraising effort. But one of the most notable things that came out of it, Chuck, was the poem

by Emma Lazarus that we were referring to earlier. She wrote this poem called The New Colossus as kind of an homage or tribute to this Statue of Liberty idea in order to help raise funds for it. And then it ended up being engraved on a plaque on Liberty Island at the base of the Statue of Liberty, I believe, where it was installed in, I think, 1903. Yeah, that's when it finally was inscribed. But I think that's kind of cool. She just submitted this as part of the fundraising auction and it ended up being those immortal words. So the hat is off to Emma Lazarus as well. Yeah, I agree. The spiky crown. That's right. So, okay, we get to the point where the pieces have been made. They've been assembled together in France. Fundraising banquets have

been held in them. They had to get all the old cigar butts and everything out before they put them in shipping crates. Mis-labeled shipping crates, no less. And Bertoldi goes to help oversee the reassembly himself. And it's put up in, I believe, so 1885 to October, June of 1885, is when the shipping containers show up in the harbor in New York. And then on October 28th, 1886, is when the statue is dedicated. And in between, 350 sheets, massive sheets of copper that make up the external skin of the Statue of Liberty were put together using 300,000 copper rivets. Lots of steam shovels, tons of labor. It was just a huge effort that was probably the fastest part of this whole project. Yeah. And once they figured out those mislabeled crates,

it took a while, but it seemed to go pretty smoothly at least from there. And I also saw, well, I saw Chuck, they figured out very quickly that the arm holding the torch and the head were misaligned. And they're not sure what happened. They think it is one of the theories I read is that Bertoldi was not happy with how the statue looked or was going to look based on creating it in France and had it purposefully misaligned to basically change its its look a little bit, its appearance. Oh, interesting. Yeah. All right. So on October 28th, they have, despite it being a rainy day, they had about a million people turn out for this parade down Broadway and then this eventual dedication ceremony. They're still known as Bedelow Island.

And Bartoli was the guest of honor. And this is just kind of a funny way to end this story is he was up in the crown and he has a big French flag covering up her face. And at the right moment, he's queued by someone down below. He's supposed to whip this thing off at the end of the big speech from the chair of the American committee. And he was, he was tipped. He was signaled a little bit early. And the chair of the American committee was still giving that speech when Bartoli dropped this flag and no one cared. The cannons went off. Everyone went crazy. Steam whistles are blowing in the harbor. Brass band goes off and the chair of the American committee was like, all right, I guess who cares? I'll just finish that later. Right. The confession

I had prepared will just go unheard, I guess. But nobody cared. And it was, it was a big grand success. Yeah. And I believe from the time that it was dedicated in 1886, just to 1924, 14 million immigrants passed by Lady Liberty. So she definitely did her job right out of the gate. That's right. They passed by that copper colored structure. Yeah, at least at first. At first. And that was all planned. You know, copper is going to oxidize and it's going to form that patina to protect that copper. And everyone knew that she would eventually turn green. Did they? Did everyone know that? Well, everyone who knew anything about copper. I mean, the builders knew it. And that was part of the whole thing was that copper, once it gets this

patina will last forever. Right. But yeah, there probably were some schmos in New York that were like, why is it turning green? And it happened. There's no direct date, but there are photos from as early as 1906, which is only about 20 years later, where that patina is where she's pretty green at that point. And I think at this point in places on that statue, that patina is thick as that copper. It's two pennies deep. So now it's four pennies deep in some places. So do you remember when we were younger in the mid 80s, there was like this, the restoration project of the Statue of Liberty? I was under the impression that they were going to clean the green off of it. Were you not? I don't remember. I don't remember. I don't think I was under the

impression. There's a reference in Seinfeld about how member George goes to work for Kruger Industrial Smoothing. And they referenced that Kruger was the company that botched the Statue of Liberty restoration job. So like, I have the impression that other people think that it was supposed to be cleaned of its green color as well during that. But regardless, I think so too. I think seeing the Statue of Liberty is anything but that aged copper green weird. That'd be so strange. But during that restoration, whether they were trying to clean the green off or not, they found a few things about it. They found the torch was irreparably weathered. And so the torch that she's holding now is new. It's a second version that was created using the exact same

methods as the original one. But they replaced the torch. And then they also found that a lot of Eiffel's wrought iron structure, a lot of it, was rusting and falling apart. So they replaced all of those with stainless steel. So she got like a really good refresh and update in 1986, thanks to a committee led by Lee Iacocca, who was appointed by President Reagan. Very few sentences that are more 80s than that. And then also we know that the restoration worked at least until the year 3978, thanks to the Planet of the Apes movies, or 3955, depending on who you ask. You're just going to lob that spoiler in there. Dude. It's a movie from 1968. I know, I know. Can you really spoil that? Sure. One of the great endings. Now about three to four million people

a year visit Lady Liberty. And you can get in an elevator there on that ground level to the top of the pedestal. And you can go all the way up to the crown, even if you make a reservation, apparently. Right. But the elevator doesn't go that high. There are about 162 steps that'll get you there. And you can look out of that crown. I imagine that's quite a sight. And time was that they would just sell tickets without reservations and you just buy your tickets and stand there in line to wait for the people who are up to come back down. Because there was not a lot of room on that staircase. And now at least they're like, you know, really innovating since 1986 by offering advanced reservations. Yeah. Apparently it was miserable. Right.

Right. So one other fact about the Statue of Liberty truck that stuck out to me was she started out as the world's tallest statue when she was built and dedicated. But today she's just number 47 among the world's tallest statues, which means we've built a lot of really tall statues in the last hundred years. It's something that humanity's been really interested in apparently. That's right. And if anyone ever says, yeah, I've been there. I stood, I climbed up in that right next to the torch. You call that person a liar because no one's been allowed in that torch since 1916. Yeah. They may be thinking crown. Yeah. You won't be allowed in the torch again until the year 3978. That's right. Then you can do whatever you want because nobody's there.

Yeah. Because the torch is just laying there on the beach. Basically. You finally did it. You darn maniacs. Okay. Well, Chuck has nothing else. I have nothing else. And since I just said, you darn maniacs, it's time for a listener mail. I'm going to call this short and sweet. Oh, I like those from a, from a younger like Humpty Dumpty. That's right. Hey guys, I am 14 years old from Northern Utah. And I've been listening to you guys for a while and really enjoy your podcast. Truly fun to listen to what spunky things you have to say. I love the use of spunky there. Sure. I listen all the time during car rides or doing crafts and art. If you would mind, I would love it if you read my letter for my siblings and say sheesh during listener mail.

Wow. Those are the bomb. We usually don't honor requests like this. I know. I'm below like my socks are just down around my toes right now. But Alyssa Stewart just sounded like a nice kid. And sometimes it's good to kind of one up those siblings. Yeah. So to the siblings of Alyssa who Alyssa didn't include, I'm just going to say one thing to you. Sheesh. Wow. Chuck, I think you just like fundamentally altered Thanksgiving at that house. Yeah. Birth order out the door. Cool order reset. Well, if you want the cool order in your family reset, take your best shot. I'll be surprised if we do it again, but then Chuck's always full of surprises. So you never can tell.

Can't get a bead on that one. You know what I mean? Yes. In the meantime, you can send those requests to stuffpodcast.iHeartRadio.com. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never ever have to say

bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Munga Chauticular and it turns out astrology is way more widespread than any of us want to believe. You can find in Major League Baseball, international banks, K-pop groups, even the White House. But just when I thought I had a handle on this subject, something completely unbelievable happened to me and my whole view on astrology changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, give me a few minutes because I think your ideas are about to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts.