Stuff You Should Know - What Were Human Zoos?

Episode Date: April 25, 2019

One of the off-putting byproducts of 19th century European colonialism were human zoos, living dioramas of people from far-away places made to be gawked at. Listen in to what the deeper meaning of humans zoos held people on both sides of the glass. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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, ya 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 Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Welcome to Step You Should Know, a production of iHeart radios, How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant over there, and there's Jerry over there,

and we have a special visitor today, Chuck, Jerry's miso soup. Is that what that is? Yeah. She's shaking her head now. You lie, Jerry, that is miso soup. I don't care what Jerry says, it's miso soup. Chuck is getting up to sniff it.

One of his beard hairs has dropped into Jerry's soup. Jerry's miso soup. It smells like armpits. I don't know what that is because miso soup smells good. I don't think that's miso. I don't think so. Miso's generally cloudier.

Now Josh is smelling. It smells like miso soup mixed with hospital corridor. If you were smelling, why did the soup ripple under your nose as if you were blowing out? It's so gross. Did not see this intro coming, Chuck. Oh, goodness.

So you feeling okay? Yeah, okay. Little unwieldy lately. This is gonna be good. This is a really interesting one that a lot of people I think don't know about. I didn't know much about this. And I think I came across an article

just randomly somewhere and I was like, human zoos, what is that? And then I was like, oh, hello. Yeah, it's like if you went to an Epcot exhibit where they were showing like, hey, this is what this interesting tribe is like in this part of the world. Okay, so so far, kind of Epcotty.

Let's say Scandinavians. That all depends on your approach, as long as it's not like, look at this weird tribe. Right. And it's like, look at this interesting thing. Right, look at this weird tribe and maybe like throw money and bananas at them to get them to dance for you.

Well, we didn't get to that part. It's like if Epcot used humans instead of statues. Sure, and they do use some humans to an extent. You could actually kind of weirdly trace a line between Epcotts like around the world thing and this. I don't know what that is.

So, you know the big dome at Epcot, the geodesic dome? Sure. If you go behind that, there's a bunch of different countries. Oh, really? I went to Epcot when I was like 12. Oh, oh, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. There's maybe a dozen countries, maybe 10.

Okay. And it's staffed with people dressed like people from those countries. Oh, sure, but they are from those countries, right? I would guess a lot of them are, if not all. Sure. I think that's the deal. You're from Sweden, you're Swedish.

Okay, and you're coming out like saying, hey, I'm from Sweden. How can I help you today? Have some food. Basically the whole point is to go eat. Sure. But there are people kind of bringing their culture forth to be enjoyed and to captivate the people

who are at Epcot, right? Yeah, there's a right way to do that. There is. The human zoos were the exact wrong way to do this. And not only was it the wrong way to do it, they were done for all the wrong reasons too. Yeah, I mean, I wasn't trying to defend this at all when I was researching it,

but I did think about the time period and like a Westerners inherent fascination with other parts of the world, which at its base is like, that's fine. Well, it's okay to be fascinated with another part of the world. Totally. But not like, you know, look at how weird that person is

who is different than me. Let's make fun of them because they, you know, we'll call them more primitive than we are. Right, or are inherently inferior to our race, which is another prevailing idea. And the whole, the premise of this Chuck started with, like you said, just pure curiosity. It was, you know, Europeans traveling around the world

to new areas and were encountering people that they'd ever encountered before. And there was a thread of people who were exploring and like saying, hey, you wanna come back to England with me or to France with me or to the Netherlands with me. I can actually introduce you to the king. And the person would hop along on board and they would go back and they would be gawked at

and everything, but they were treated as an individual. They had an identity. They were a person. Even though they were different and in other, they still had some sort of agency. That was step one. That didn't last very long. Well, no, because as we saw,

there was a fine line between you can go meet the king and you can be the king's pet. Basically, yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. So step two was really supported by this whole thing that happened in about the 1800s, the early, the first half of the 1800s I gather, something called like biological anthropology. And it basically is that thing that I said

about the hierarchy of races, where one race is superior to another that's inferior. And that there's a spectrum of human beings and on the one end are white Europeans, which under this idea, this auspice was the pinnacle of humanity. And on the other end, it just kept going and going until you basically reached other primates like the apes.

And all other peoples of the world were on the spectrum, either closer to apes, closer to white Europeans, but really nothing compared to white Europeans. And so there was this idea that the people around the world were to be studied and analyzed and poked at and prodded and measured to support this burgeoning science, right? Yeah, in the name of like study by scientists supposedly, but as far as the general public was concerned,

something to do on the weekend. Well, that was stage three. Stage three is when the public is finally brought in fully and that's when the human zoos really come in. And that was the peak of colonialism. You remember our Druids episode? It's just dropped today. So do you remember we talked about how like Caesar

and some of these other conquering Romans were like basically writing propaganda about the Druids. They committed human sacrifice and cannibalism and all of that. So they needed to be civilized by the Romans. This is the same exact thing, except it was 19th and 20th century Europeans who were showing their people back home. Look at how uncivilized these people are.

We need to civilize them. This is, it's good that we are colonizing the rest of the world. Yeah, and obviously this happened in Europe. It happened in the United States and North America in France and the 1800s, late 1800s. There was a place, it was an agricultural site. And this was sort of like that Epcotty idea,

which was basically like, let's throw something called the Paris Colonial Exposition and let's recreate these indigenous villages from the colonies. That's always in the background. Sure. People can't forget that because it's not Epcot. It's like, these are places we have conquered basically.

Right. And see what life was like there. So they would recreate this with human, live human beings, not quite human zoos at this point, but more like acting out like what they did, wherever they were from. But also really playing it up to the point where it was just totally artificial.

Yeah, well, yeah, that might speak more to just all art back then. Yeah, but like- There wasn't a lot of subtlety in performance. But if you're also, if you're saying, look at how uncivilized these people are and then turning around to the people and be like really kind of like play up the shouting thing.

Oh yeah, of course. Well, they wanted to sell tickets. Yeah, but- Or at least drive people's attention there. Right. I don't know if they were selling tickets. Yes. To this one specifically.

I believe they were. To the Paris Colonial. So the other thing you have to remember is they weren't just sort of like, it was sort of like they were carnies. They weren't treated well. They had terrible living conditions. Right.

They would get sick, they would get disease, they would be left in the cold. And if they died, they would be buried in a mass grave rather unceremoniously. Yeah, so that's another thing like, okay, so the human zoos are horrific enough, just the idea that they put on these things. And then even worse than that,

that people came to see and like throw money and bananas at people and like mock them and jeer at them. That's bad enough. But then the idea that these people lost their lives as a result of coming over to Europe to put on these performances or whatever, and we're just buried in unmarked graves, that just takes it down just the darkest path.

There is, you know? Like that you go to Belgium to be in this exhibition and end up buried in an unmarked grave. You lost your life because you went to a place you otherwise wouldn't have gone, had Belgium not colonized Congo, you know, in 1876. Right, yeah. I mean, Belgium, we can get into that a little bit.

What was their exhibit called, Congo Rama? Well, that was the last one of all of them, but sure. Yeah. I mean, the first one they were just on was France. Belgium, like I said, it was going on all over the place. And they had Congo Rama spelled with a K even. Well, I think there's Belgian. Is it?

I think so. Okay. Or maybe they're just trying to sell more tickets. Who knows? These were men, women and children once again put in these basically shows that show what their daily life was like, like these living exhibits where white Europeans

would be behind a fence that was always important. That was always huge. A fence there to sort of trump up the idea that like beware of what you're close to. Not just that, Chuck, it also reinforces a sense of separateness and otherness too. Oh yeah. You know what I mean?

Like there's no mingling. You weren't meeting the people like, where you just didn't walk up to somebody and like introduce yourself to the person who was putting on the performance. There wasn't any co-mingling. It was a fence separated you from them. And you were there to observe and watch them

and they were there to perform for you. Yeah. And this jumping back to 1897, King Leopold II brought over 267 Congolese, men, women and children to Brussels. And this was not even for the Kangorama exhibit. This was for his own palace basically. Yeah.

Saying like put them in canoes and lakes and put them over here in the fields. And I just want sort of like this stuff going on all over the place. Yeah. He made it like a diversion. So this is a big deal for the Congo. And King Leopold also was just a straight up villain.

If you are fascinated by this kind of stuff and horrified by it, you should go check out Behind the Bastards by our colleague Robert Evans. Yeah, great show. He's done some work on King Leopold II himself. But so Belgium gets the Congo during this conference in Berlin in the 1870s

where basically Europe divided up Africa and said, this is our colony. That's your colony. That's your colony. And the Congo went to Belgium. And Belgium is like this little tiny country and the Congo is something like 60 or 80 times the size of Belgium.

But Belgium went there and just ran rough shot over the people who were living there to exploit it for its rubber and to make money off of this possession that it now had. But part of this also was for the king to show, these people belong to us. I'm going to have some come live in their primitive ways on the royal grounds.

And all Belgians are welcome to come see our new possessions. And they did, like more than a quarter of Belgian residents, citizens came to see this display the king put on. Yeah, and this was in 1897. But Belgium, like they had one of the last ones, like you said, in 1958 at the World's Fair in Brussels, there was a Congolese village there.

And I believe they had almost 600 people. They were paid and a lot of people will point to that and say like, they didn't have to be there. They could leave, they were paid. But that's sort of, I don't know, that's a bit of a whitewashing, I think. Because a lot of them died as well because of the cold summer. And I think that's really important though

to bring up, Chuck. Like if you read a lot of stuff on this, like it's just like these people were victims and nothing more. And that removes a lot of agency from a lot of the people who went there to make money off of the Westerners who were gonna come gawk at them or whatever.

And they went back home and they took their money with them. There were people who were straight up like victims, who were straight up captives, who were brought to Europe and America virtually against their will. Yeah, we'll talk about them. Or they were tricked or fooled into signing contracts whatever.

But there were a lot of people who came on their own accord and did it because they wanted to because they wanted to make money or whatever. And you have to, like the whole thing's more complex than that. And you have to recognize that fact so that the people do have agency still, the agency that they did have.

But at the same time, you can't point to it and be like, see, that justifies everything the white Europeans did. Because it really justifies basically nothing. Well yeah, and they talk about after 1958, that was kind of the last, well, we'll talk about some sort of modern versions of this. Like EPCOT. No, no.

We love our friends at Disney. I love that. We love our Imagineer friends. Isn't that what they're called? Yeah, some of them. Imagineer. Sure. Oh, you gotta earn that rank?

I think it's a specific kind of job at Disney, I think. I think you really know this, but you'd have to kill me if you really divulged. You've got the insider secrets. So yeah, this is one of the last ones. And they said that the advent of movies and motion pictures is what really stopped it. Because it's not like they said,

we just shouldn't do this anymore. They were just like, well, now we're just gonna make degrading racist films portraying these people. Yeah, like 10 years later. And have a lot more widespread release. What was that first documentary called? Like Mondo Kane or something like that? Yeah.

I've never known how to pronounce it, but it was like basically. Mondo Kane, I don't know if that's right or not. Yeah, that's how it's spelled. But it was like the predecessor to things like faces of death or whatever. And it was just, they just took their camera and went around the world and looked at how savage

and weird other people were who played up everything for the camera. Just focused on weird rituals and stuff like that. But it was the exact same thing. It was a total extension and outgrowth of human zoos. Yeah, and this isn't us saying weird. Just wanna clear that up. Surely that's clear across.

I think so, but we just gotta be careful. That's true. You wanna take a break? Yeah, man, let's take a break and you wanna come back and talk about Odabinga after that? Yeah. All right.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends

to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal?

No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? Also leave a code on your best friend's beeper because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing. Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy,

blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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. Ah, 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 will my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me.

Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander 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 iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. All right, so I feel like we've kind of given like a good overview of human Zeus, right? Like basically from the last quarter of the 19th century,

up to the middle of the 20th century, they had their heyday and then just became more and more tasteless to Westerners over time as it became obvious like what was really going on. But there's one guy who kind of like had the most tragic life I've ever encountered ever. And his name was Otabanga. Yeah, who was the kid kept in a box?

There've been multiple kids kept in a box. For that experience, for that experiment. He was like his father too, wasn't it? Oh, the Skinner kids? I think so. Like these are the two people that come to mind when I think of like worst human existence. This is depressing.

It is. So Otabanga was, he was 103 pounds, he was four foot 11. He was this, when you reference before the break about people that were literally sort of captured and brought over, he fits that bill for sure. He was brought over to the United States by a man named Samuel Werner from South Carolina, proud Gamecock, he was an African missionary

and was commissioned by the St. Louis World's Fair, which was what, 1904? So before that, they said, hey, why don't you go over there and bring us back a bunch of pygmies. And he's like, all right, I know that we're using that word now and they probably won't in the future,

but you shouldn't even like say that word anymore. I see it, I've seen it, I've seen both. I've seen, I've seen it used like it's just, you know, like calling Native Americans Indians, like some, some Native Americans are like, that's what we're used to. I've seen the same thing with pygmies as well. Although I've also seen it's extremely derogatory

because it was also back in the 19th century used as a term for monkey. Right. So like if you're calling an African Congolese tribes person pygmy at the time, you were calling them a monkey. So yeah, I could see how that would be extremely derogatory too. Well, this is certainly the language that you used back

then and they told him to go over there and he was like, great. He got letters from the US Secretary of State, the president of the American Anthropological Association, the governor of Missouri. They'll open some doors. And the Belgian Secretary of State, great name, Chevalier-Couvalier.

Yeah. Cause at the time, Congo was still under the control of Belgium. Right. And they were like, yeah, go get, go round up some people and let's bring them back for the World's Fair. And one of the gentlemen they brought back was Otabenga.

Yeah. So I want to give a little more background on Otabenga because the fact that he was brought back to be in a human zoo is pretty, it's bad enough. Like that's a really dark chapter of anybody's life. Yeah. Like everything about his life leading up to that point predicted that this was going to happen.

Yeah. When he was a little kid, he was born into a tribe, the Umbuti tribe in Congo in about 1883. And one day he went off on an elephant hunt and came back and his entire family and village had been slaughtered by the Belgians. Because remember we said the Belgians like came to Congo

and just overran the place for rubber production. Well, the king held a private army called the force public and they enforced rubber quotas. So if your village didn't meet its rubber quotas for the day or the month or the week or whatever, the force public might come in and kill everyone or they might hold like some public amputations to make an example of somebody.

Or do basically any horrible thing you can do to another human being, all to keep people in line and to keep the rubber flowing for the king's coffers, right? This happened to Otabanga's family. So he finds himself little 100 pound like less than five foot tall Otabanga basically wandering the Congo alone. Yeah.

And he was in short order captured by slave traders who enslaved him and sold him to a labor camp. Yeah, if you see pictures of him, he has these fangs for teeth. His teeth were filed down per the Congolese customs and traditions. So at first I thought that the Americans did that, but he had already did that, but they were like,

oh yeah, this plays into our narrative perfectly. This guy's gonna sell so many tickets. Yeah, so they trot him out at the St. Louis World's Fair. But that's not where his story ends because he went from there to the Bronx Zoo in New York. On display in a literal cage with animals, with chimpanzees sometimes. And orangutans I think was his most frequent companion.

Yeah, and it's really, I mean, just devastating. Like people would poke him and prod him and throw bananas at him. And the New York Times wrote about, I mean, I think their headline was, Bushman shares a cage with Bronx Park apes. And the New York Times was just, it's not like they were writing an article of outrage.

They were saying like, come check this out. They were actually responding to the outrage. So in very short order, the Colored Ministers Convention is what it was called. Some of the black ministers around New York got together and were like, dude, this has to end immediately. There's a black guy in a zoo and he's being held in a cage on public display with a monkey.

Yeah, and this is like 40-something years after the end of slavery. Right, so they banded together and mounted protests and eventually, in pretty quick short order, got Otabenga released to their custody and care. But the New York Times published editorials, at least one of them saying like, what's all the hubbub about?

Like the guy's on the low end of the spectrum. You know, as far as this hierarchy of races is concerned. So why wouldn't we put him in a cage and study him and observe him? Like, of course, there's so much to be learned. Right, so that really kind of gets at the heart of what was driving this at the time, public curiosity, colonization,

but also that completely racist science that would eventually lead to eugenics, the eugenics movement in the West and the United States. Yeah, he was turned over to one of the leaders of the Colored Baptist Ministers Conference, Reverend James Gordon. He was a superintendent of the Howard Colored Orphan Asylum in Brooklyn.

And his quote is like one of the saddest things I've ever read. He said, and this was like, this is how he tried to explain that it was bad. He said, our race, we think, is depressed enough without exhibiting one of us with the apes. We think we are worthy of being considered human beings with souls.

Like the very fact that he had to point out that fundamental so obvious thing is just so sad, you know? Sure. I mean, he had to actually make a press statement saying, by the way, he's a human. Right. Like you understand that, right? Yeah.

And we've got enough problems here trying to gain agency of this country. Can you help us out here? Right. And so they turned him over to him. He lived the rest of his life. He almost went back to Africa in 1914, but World War I broke out

and that stopped all like passenger ship travel. He did go back to Africa once. He visited. He wanted to move back in 1914. So this is what I understand that Samuel Werner, the guy who originally negotiated for Otabenga to come with him back to the World's Fair. Negotiated?

Well, he negotiated with the slaves traders. Oh, okay. He took Otabenga back to the Congo. Oh, yeah. And Otabenga from what I read said, there's no place here for me anymore. I'll come back with you. Came back to the States

and didn't feel any more comfortable or at home in the States. And decided he did want to go back to Africa and never made it back that last time. Yeah. Thanks to World War I. He lived in Virginia. He worked at a tobacco company.

Apparently he was a good worker and a good employee and killed himself. Yeah. Shot himself in the chest. With a borrowed revolver. Yeah. Somehow borrowed makes it even worse. You know what I mean?

Does it? Yeah. Something about it. I can't quite put my finger on it. Interesting. But during this time, so this is, like think about this. His whole family and villages slaughtered.

He's captured and sold into slave labor for years, taken away by an anthropologist who trades a pound of salt in a bolt of cloth for him, is forced into a human zoo, is forced into an actual zoo in a monkey cage. Yeah. And then tries to go back home, doesn't feel at home at home,

comes back to the States, is just depressed for 10 more years, and then takes his own life with a borrowed revolver. Yeah. That was the life of Oda Banga. Before Gordon's part, he tried to help him have a life in the States, got him like, tried to integrate him

with American clothing. He got his teeth capped. Sent him to school. He was educated. Yeah, like he wanted to try and fit in, but he was a man without a home, you know? He didn't fit in anywhere. Yeah.

He was probably sad. Yeah, it's super sad. So he really kind of demonstrates like America's involvement in this. He was prominent in the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair, and he was put on display in the Bronx Zoo. And again, like you said, not just the New York Times was, you know,

arguing in favor of keeping him in there. The fact that he was in there, and that zoo attendance doubled over the previous year, the month he was there, and that the head of the Zoo Logical Society in New York was like, let's bring some monkeys in and put them in with a cage. Because apparently he was taken to the Bronx Zoo

under the auspices that he would be caring for the animals, not that he was gonna be put on display. And once he got there, they're like, we have a different idea for you. Yeah, and he would, I mean, if you read accounts at the time, he would basically just sort of sit there depressed. Eventually, after a couple of weeks,

he got a little obviously cagey, like experiencing zucosis like an animal might, and then they start letting him out to like walk around the forest some, he would shoot his bow and arrow some. But then when people saw that he was in the forest, they would come after him, and he was quickly kind of ushered back into his cage. Right, and awful.

Yeah, so, but yeah, the fact that all this happened really kind of underscores the complicity of everybody alive at the time. I mean, there were people who protested against it. Obviously, the Colored Baptist Ministers Conference was very vocal about it and was secured as release. But they were in the minority, and like everybody else was just tacitly approving this

just by allowing it to go on and not speaking out about it. And some people trace this and the fact that human zoos ever existed directly to the undercurrent of racism prevalent in the West today, that like that is the basis of it. That's certainly part of it. So let's take another break, and then we'll come back and we're gonna talk about

St. Louis. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, the stars of the co-classic show Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point,

but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and nonstop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64?

Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal? No, it was hair. Do you remember AOL Instant Messenger and the dial-up sound like poltergeist? So leave a code on your best friend's beeper because you'll want to be there when the nostalgia starts flowing.

Each episode will rival the feeling of taking out the cartridge from your Game Boy, blowing on it and popping it back in as we take you back to the 90s. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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. Ah, 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 bander 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 iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. So 1904, we talked a little bit about the St. Louis World's

Fair, but they had more living exhibits than just Otabenga. By the way, Otabenga made friends with Geronimo. Did you know that? I did not know that. So the enclosure for the Congolese and the enclosure for the Native Americans were beside one another. And Geronimo and Otabenga actually became pretty good friends from hanging out.

Is that a silver lining? Sure. OK. The Philippines play a large part in this. There was a 47-acre area at the St. Louis World's Fair dedicated to more than 1,000 Filipinos of various tribes. Specifically, this one tribe in the mountains of the Philippines, the Urgarat, they, in fact,

that means in Tagalog, mountain people. And they were unique in the world. And then they successfully defended their land against colonization forever. Right. Like Spain never got to them. That is exceptional. So Ergo, they were left largely intact culturally.

Right. So they had a reputation by the time the St. Louis World's Fair. And I believe they were billed as such as being like the most savage tribe in the world, if not just the Philippines. But either way. Which really means white people had not been able to get to them yet.

So they're just living their nice, peaceful life as they always have. One of the things that was like made, like a lot of hay was made about the Igarats was that they would eat dog. And that they would, in reality, the Igarats did actually eat dog, but it was under very specific circumstances. And if a family sacrificed and ate their dog, their family dog, it was a really bad sign for the family.

It told the rest of the village that they were in some dire straits, because the family would sacrifice the dog, basically like the dog was taking one for the team, to get this family out of whatever horrible streak of luck or whatever they had going on. And then they would eat the dog. And that ritual process would be done. It was very, very rare.

It was basically done as a last ditch attempt to reverse fortunes for this family that had fallen on hard times. Or was undergoing illness or whatever. But that did happen. It did exist. If you take the Igarat people and put them in the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair, that happens every morning.

Every morning. A dog would be sacrificed and eaten by the Igarats. Yeah, and not only that, they would take sacred Igarat rituals, like crowning a chief. And it wasn't enough just to put them on display and have people look at them, they took their traditions, their sacred rituals, and used them as dramatic fodder, basically.

So it's like a theme park schedule to come see these different quote unquote shows performed that were really these Igarat rituals that they had held dear and were untouched by white men until this point. Right. And then let's not forget the dogs that were sacrificed, like every day, because of this. So here's the other thing, too.

You might say, well, that's crazy. They used to sacrifice and eat their dogs. That's weird. That's other, right? They sacrificed and ate their dogs every day for the satisfaction of white crowds who came to see them. So the Igarat village was the most successful and lucrative exhibit in the entire 1904 World's Fair.

There were something like 19 something million people who came to St. Louis for the World's Fair that year. 99% of them paid an extra nickel to go see the Igarat village. Everybody went to see the Igarat village. It's because they wanted to go see someone half dressed, sacrifice a dog, and then eat it. That's what people paid to see.

It had nothing to do with learning about their culture. It had nothing to do with anything. It was about seeing somebody do something horrific and weird for your edification. Yeah, and it was, I mean, there are so many people that you could pluck out of history and sort of use as an example, whether it's Otabinga or this woman, Sarchi Bartman.

Yeah, the hot and taut Venus. Yeah, she was South African and she was born somewhere around 1780 and she was brought to London in the early 1800s and put on display. And she actually had a genetic characteristic called steatopagia. Is that right?

Yeah. Close enough. I should tell the audience I'm nodding silently. But that is when you have a, I mean, the way it's described here medically is a protuberant buttocks and elongated labia. Right, not like genetically protuberant buttocks. Yeah.

Like very, very big. Yes, that's clear. So they brought her over in London, put her on display. Later on, she went to Paris. She was described as having the buttocks of a mandrel. And then finally in 2002, her remains were repatriated to South Africa.

And we haven't even mentioned stuff like that. They would dress up Otabinga's cage with bones and things. Right. Like anything just to make him seem more primitive. And he was probably like, what are all these bones laying around? More primitive, more scary, more in need of civilization. Like if you think about it, that the Igarat exhibit,

the Philippines exhibit and the fact that it was even part of the 1904 World's Fair, it's the same thing. That was a colonial possession of America. The United States had gotten into colonizing itself and the Philippines was one of its colonial possessions. So they were bringing the most savage of the savage from the Philippines over here to basically justify why America was there to civilize the Filipinos.

And it just followed the same script. And apparently it always has. Anytime somebody goes and conquers another land, they have to basically demonstrate how what they're doing is actually good for the people they're conquering. Not that they're being exploited and murdered. This is actually good for them. We're going to civilize them.

And it continued all the way up until that 1958 World's Fair in Belgium. Well, and some people say it continues today while they're not rounding people up and bringing them somewhere else. You can go to what they call human safaris when they basically will put you on a bus or on a boat and drive you to these tribes people

to let you gawk at them from afar. Notably in India's Andaman Island, the Jarawa. Jarawa, sounds like I'm saying that wrong, but it's totally right. I think you nailed it. Their tribe basically, there was a video from 2012 that the Guardian dug up that showed these people just kind of the same thing

except they weren't brought over and put in cages but they're still gawked at. And this was what, six years ago? It's just amazing that this is still going on. I think it is. So the Indian Supreme Court outlawed it but it's still going on as of the most recent article. So I was like 2017.

So yeah, it's like a human safari. Yeah. So, and again, a lot of people directly trace this to the undercurrents of racism in the West today. Something like 1.4 billion people saw human zoos during their heyday from about 1867 to 1958. 1.4 billion people. That's a lot of people, especially if you're considering

that it was really just people in Europe and America, right? And that had to have had an effect. It clearly had an effect. The fact that people were like, oh, I'm gonna go check this out and maybe throw a banana at somebody because I want them to dance.

The fact that that was a mindset clearly is still clinging to the international global psyche, at least in the West today. Yeah, I mean, it definitely helped reinforce that idea of Western white superiority that's still so prevalent. Right. So, you got anything else? Yeah, I mean, we should talk real quick

about this protest art in Oslo about four years ago, four or five years ago. There were these artists that did a recreation of, and this was all to shed light on this. It was protest art, but they were recreating the World's Fair of 1914. In this case, there were Senegalese environments that they were recreating,

and it sort of had mixed results. Like some people got it and were on board and saying, yeah, I see what you guys are doing, sort of like this meta art approach, but then other people came out and said, like it's an abuse of art and really we're highly critical of it. Right.

Which is kind of- They didn't nail it and it didn't go over very well in all quarters. Yeah. One more thing, Chuck, that 1958 World's Fair in Belgium. Like if everything we've said up to this point seems like weird and far off and just past and historical,

go look up the picture of the little girl from Congo at the 1958 World's Fair being fed by an older white woman leaning over a fence to theater. Like it drives home everything. Everything we just said doesn't even compare to this one picture. It just, it's really tough to look at, but it drives the entire thing home. Yeah.

Because it's recent enough that it just feels like, oh, this just happened. Yeah. You know? She's in a little American dress. Yeah. Little white dress. Yeah.

Okay, what about now? You got anything else? Nothing else. Well, if you want to know more about human zoos, just start looking them up around the internet and prepare to get bummed out. And since I said that, it's time for Listener Mail. I'm going to call this,

we got another elephant adopted in our name. Yeah. If you remember a few weeks ago, we read one about somebody who adopted an elephant in our name and sent a little stuffed animal. It was very kind. And this one goes a little something like this. Hey guys, loyal listener going on about 10 years

and I couldn't have been happier than to see your episode on elephants pop up. One of the best Christmas gifts I ever was given was the gift of fostering an orphan elephant at the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust in Kenya. They're an incredible organization that rescues, rehabilitates and reintegrates orphan elephants back into the wild in Kenya.

And they also fund anti-poaching teams and mobile vet units that respond to and treat injured wild elephants and other wildlife. I'm a woodturner and I donate 20% of all my sales to DSWT and I'm thrilled to be able to foster seven orphans right now. That's awesome. So as a massive thank you for raising awareness,

I sent each of you something from my wood shop and donated what I would have made to the DSWT and fostered a sweet little Jado in your name. Jado is pretty cute. Have you seen him? Oh yeah. Yeah. Well, he's an elephant.

Yeah. Thanks for brightening up my commute and satisfying my insatiable thirst for new and interesting facts. Lowell Hutchinson, parentheses, BTDubs, I'm a woman. Thanks a lot, Lowell. Exclamation point. Well, everybody, if you want,

you can go to the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust and look up Jado and see our adopted elephant that we're fostering now, thanks to Lowell. They should call it Joshua. Or... Can you get the name changed? Maybe. It depends on how much you give, I think.

Probably so. There's only like five elephants. They just changed the name for a different picture. Thanks again, Lowell. Lowell didn't say where her website is for woodturning, but if you need some woodturned, look up Lowell Hutchinson and hopefully her site will come up. That's right.

And if you want to get in touch with us like Lowell did or sponsor an elephant for us, that's great too. You can get in touch with us by going on to StuffYouShouldKnow.com and looking up our social links or sending us an email to StuffPodcast at iHeartRadio.com. Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,

visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces.

We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.

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

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