Timesuck with Dan Cummins - 452 - The Life and Works of Dr. Seuss

Episode Date: April 28, 2025

You've undoubtably heard of Dr. Seuss. The author of The Cat in the Hat, How the Grinch Stole Christmas!, Green Eggs and Ham, Horton Hears a Who! The Lorax, and so many other classic works of children's literature. But... how much do you know about Ted Geisel? Ted is the man behind the pseudonym, and he lived a very interesting life. And he wasn't able to make a living as the author of children's book until he was in his fifties.Merch and more: www.badmagicproductions.com Timesuck Discord! https://discord.gg/tqzH89vWant to join the Cult of the Curious PrivateFacebook Group? Go directly to Facebook and search for "Cult of the Curious" to locate whatever happens to be our most current page :)For all merch-related questions/problems: [e-mail] (copy and paste)Please rate and subscribe on Apple Podcasts and elsewhere and follow the suck on social media!! @timesuckpodcast on IG and http://www.facebook.com/timesuckpodcastWanna become a Space Lizard? Click here: https://www.patreon.com/timesuckpodcast.Sign up through Patreon, and for $5 a month, you get access to the entire Secret Suck catalog (295 episodes) PLUS the entire catalog of Timesuck, AD FREE. You'll also get 20% off of all regular Timesuck merch PLUS access to exclusive Space Lizard merch.

Ted, Ted, Ted, a child's mind and an adult's head. Read, read, read. He built his name, fulfilling that need. Ted, Ted, Ted, it took some time to build his name. Book, book, book. Over sixty and all, he wrote, and no two the same. And yes, we are talking about a Ted today. Theodore Seuss Geisel, aka Dr. Seuss. A man who once wrote, I don't write for

children, I write for people. Once a writer starts talking down to kids, he's lost. Kids can pick up on that kind of thing. Ted Geisel published over 60 books throughout his career, cementing himself as one of the most, if not the most, beloved children's authors in history along the way. Since 1937, generations of children have fallen in love with reading, in large part, because of Dr. Seuss books. Geisel's works have captured the attention of young readers for decades with their short engaging rhymes and colorful unique characters. His works, which have collectively sold over 600 million copies worldwide, have also earned

numerous awards. Which is pretty funny when you consider that Geisel never set out to be a children's author. It was certainly not a lifelong dream. In fact he wanted to be an English professor but then he found that post-grad studies just were not for him. And more importantly he found a supportive encouraging partner who gave him the courage to pursue what he was truly talented at Drawing strange characters and assigning stranger names and stories to them It was his wife who convinced him to pursue a full-time career as a cartoonist

and he got to start writing and drawing for a weekly satirical magazine you've probably never heard of and Masterminding a wildly popular national ad campaign for an insecticide that no longer exists. When he finally set out to publish his first children's book he faced 27 straight rejections before a publisher finally decided to take a chance on him. And only then because a former classmate had just gotten the job working for that publisher and Ted just happened to almost literally run into that classmate. And even then, he still didn't become a household literary name overnight. It took years. Dr. Seuss's writing career grew slowly and steadily until the 1950s when he wrote his first book that went viral in a sense. And then he and his wife turned his brand into a business empire that

has stood the test of time. This week, we will discuss the early life of Ted Geisel, the first use of his famous pen name, how he got his start as an author, how he and some of his works ended up in the crosshairs of so-called cancel culture, and we'll learn how Dr. Seuss became a household name in this thing one and thing two, seven hump, whomp, whoville, yertle the turtle, don't let the Grinch steal your Christmas edition of Time Suck. This is Michael McDonald and you're listening to Time Suck. Ah! You're listening to Time Suck.

Well happy Monday and welcome or welcome back to the Cult of the Curious. I'm Dan Cummins, the Suckmaster, nasty, nasty boy, purveyor of low budget horror, moral deviant and you are listening to Time Suck. Hail Nimrod, hail Lusifena, praise be to good boy Bojangles and glory be to Triple M. One quick charity announcement and then it's SUSE o'clock. This month we were able to donate $11,620 to Farm Rescue which is the only nonprofit organization of its kind providing farm and ranch families with the operational support they need in times of crisis. Farm Rescue sees a world where family

farms and ranches can thrive for generations to come. We also added $1,290 to the scholarship fund. Learn more about Farm Rescue by visiting farmrescue.org. Hail Nimrod and thank you to all of our space visitors for allowing us to make that donation. And now let's get back into this topic. Today we'll kick off this Knox and Box Fox and Socks extravaganza with a brief overview of how Dr. Seuss influenced the children's book industry before diving into a full timeline of his life and slow Joe Crow's sew-in-whose-clothes-Sews-clothes career. For many decades, teachers gave early readers and beginning readers a text called basal readers or primers a Famous example of early reading primers are the dick and Jane series of books

You know stuff like dick said look look look up look up up up Jane said run run run dick run run and see Remember those I do I uh I remember Run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, run, But those two had to have known they were sneaking in some passages that would be interpreted by some as being sexual. In some of those old books. I mean, didn't they? I mean, come on, check out these excerpts. I'm not making these up.

Starting with a story that includes their cat Puff. Come, baby. Look up, baby. Look up and see Puff. Look up and see Dick. See Dick go up. See Dick go up, up, up. Oh, Jane. See Dick go up. See Dick go up, up, up. Oh Jane, see Dick come down." This next one's even more ridiculous. Jane said,

Oh Dick, I cannot find the balls. Come Dick, come. Come and find the balls. I mean, come on. They were giggling when they snuck some of that shit in there, weren't they? Or were they totally oblivious? Was it just a different time? Do I just have a dirty mind? Is it totally fine for Jane to want Dick to come and find the balls? Anyway, these primers were written based on the theory that beginning readers learned new words by associating them with pictures and memorizing them through repetition. But by the mid-1950s, this whole word or look and say method was facing pushback from proponents of phonics-based instruction. Oh, phonics!

That's another method to teach reading and writing to beginners. You remember the old, uh, Hooked on Phonics worked for me! Those commercials, they went on for fucking decades. Hooked on Phonics worked for me! Call 1-800-A-B-C-D-E-F-G! Hooked on Phonics worked for me. Call 1-800-A-B-C-D-E-F-G. Hooked on Phonics worked for me. Phonics teaches the relationship between the sounds of language called phonemes and the letters called graphemes. Phonics can be used with any writing system that's alphabetic. It teaches the quote building blocks of reading. Starting in the 19th century until the 1970s, the term phonics was originally used as a synonym for phonetics, the study and

classification of speech sounds. The phonics principle was actually first formally presented by English educator John Hart way back in 1570 CE. Before phonics, children learned to read with the ABC method where they recited letters from each word of a familiar text which in the Western world was primarily the Bible. Hart suggested that when it came to learning how to read, the focus should be on the relationship between graphemes and phonemes. There's still debate today amongst educators about the best way to teach young minds to read, or I guess just minds in general, but currently phonics seems to be the most widely accepted approach. No one wants Jane to make Dick come anymore for some reason.

Here in the U.S. in 2000, a government-formed national reading panel examined the research and declared phonics crucial to young readers. This led to a truce between the two schools of thought called balanced literacy, which borrowed from both approaches with the goal of getting kids to enjoy or excuse me to read enjoyable books as quickly as possible. Researchers are constantly studying the science of reading which refers to research relating to how a child's brain learns to read and the current science calls for educators to focus on the building blocks of words. For young students it starts with rhyming games or clapping out syllables of a word. See dick go up. See Jane come. See dick come. See dick make Jane come. See Jane make dick come.

See dick go down. Oh, you get it. Students might also be asked to sound out quote nonsense words such as those featured so prominently in Dr. Seuss novels. With colorful pictures, short sentences, and plenty of rhymes, Dr. Seuss books have become a key resource for early readers. Back in the 1950s critics pointed out that the Dick and Jane books were boring and overly repetitive with bland illustrations. And also there's probably way too fucking much come and ball talk. Oh Dick I cannot find the balls come dick come come and find the balls enough Jane enough Put your bicycle in the garage already stop begging dick to ride it But they really did find them boring

I mean other than a few patches you can giggle at if you interpret them sexually they are painfully boring and The illustrations somehow more boring than the words. Dr. Seuss, who by the 50s was a well-respected children's author, was asked by William Spalding, then the director of Houghton Mifflin's educational division, to write an engaging first grade primer. Spalding was concerned about the difficulty many children were having when it came to learning to read, Ted was tasked with being restricted to a list of 350 pre-approved vocabulary words supplied by, again, textbook publisher Houghton Mifflin. The challenge was tough. Writing a book that excited first graders in 225 words or less and not leaning on a bunch

of dick and balls and Jane come talk out of those 350 pre-approved words, Ted was not to use more than 225 of them. Very challenging amount of words to tell a complete story with. He would end up using only 223 in a story that was only 1621 total words long. For comparison, my notes for a typical episode of Time Suck clock in at between 27,000 and 32,000 words. To be fair, 5 to 10,000 of those words are unnecessary profanity and or stupid jokes. Each story of the fictional nightmare fuel episodes over on the scared to death feed that I write tend to land somewhere between 10,000 and 12,000 words. So he would tell a story in 1,600 words. Ted spent months looking over the word list trying to figure out how to piece some semblance of a story together. At one point he said to himself, if I find two words that rhyme

and make sense to me, that's the title. The words cat and hat caught his eye. Guessing you can see where this is going. He rewrote the story over several more months before he delivered his final The Cat in the Hat manuscript. Biographer Brian J. Jones wrote about this book, with its likable and somewhat subversive main character, galloping verse and deliberate sense of humor, The Cat in the Hat was everything that Dick and Jane was not. Jones continued, and yet Geisel had not exactly flouted the prevailing pedagogical approach, he turned some of its defects into merits.

The stultifying repetitions of the typical primer had been replaced with joyously musical ones. Some of the cat's most comically absurd escapades are entirely consistent with the look-and-say method. On the other hand, with its reliance on memorable rhyming pairs and word families, The Cat in the Hat, beginning with its catchy title, accentuated for early readers how sound and symbol correspond. The book served as a gateway to the phonics-based approach, which eventually supplanted the whole word pedagogy. The Cat in the Hat started up a revolution in reading instruction, according to The New Yorker.

It went playground viral, right? Kids on playgrounds talking about it to their friends, and their parents end up buying the books for them. Adorable. So as fast as I could I went after my net and I said with my net I can get them I bet. I bet with my net I can get those things yet. Then I let down my net it came down with a plop and I had them at last. Those two things had to stop. Then I said to the cat now you do as I say you pack up those things and you take them away.

Oh dear said the cat you did not like as I say, you pack up those things and you take them away. Oh dear, said the cat, you did not like our game. Oh dear, what a shame, what a shame, what a shame. This silly and super fun book about that darn rascally troublesome cat sold more than a thousand copies per day for years after it first went on sale on March 12th, 1957 and was on its way to selling 250,000 copies by Christmas of 1957. Within three years it had sold over 3 million copies. By 2017 it had sold over 16 million copies, selling another half million copies a year

since. The Cat in the Hat was the book that truly made writing a full-time lifelong and lucrative career for Dr. Seuss. One of his most famous quotes was, I feel my greatest accomplishment was getting rid of Dick and Jane and encouraging students to approach reading as a pleasure not a chore. By now the guy who never set out to be the author of books for children was incredibly passionate about children's literature. As Ted Geisel wrote for a 1960 LA Times editorial, children's reading and children's thinking are the rock-bottom base upon which this country will rise or not rise. In these days of tension and confusion,

books for children have a greater potential for good or evil than any other form of literature on earth. Interesting take. Alright, a nation's children's learning to read so incredibly important. If you can't read, if you don't have that base, you will be seriously limited in what types of jobs you will be able to attain. You'll be limited very much so in what kinds of media, what type of information you're able to digest, receive, absorb for work or social or self-enrichment or leisure reasons. You're dependent on having information about the world around you shared to you by someone else who can read. Changes a lot

of things. Although he was passionate about children's literacy, Dr. Seuss told an interviewer late in life, I'd like to say I got into children's books because I had a burning passion, a great message to bring to the youth of the world, but it was because I was going nuts. Yeah, the reality was he was sick of the other work he was doing. He wanted to focus on his drawings, drawings he'd been doodling since he was a little kid. He wanted to share his own stories, not work on the creative ideas for others in primarily ad campaigns.

Okay, with some context established, let's now begin this timeline to see how exactly Ted Geisel became Dr. Seuss, the author that has entertained generations of children. Let's find out why he felt like he was going nuts. Go go go into the timeline where we watch our knowledge grow. Dates dates dates. What fascinating trivia in life awaits. Stop stop stop. Why am I stalling? When will it start? Drop, drop, drop into the timeline with a curious heart. Shrap on those boots, soldier. We're marching down a time-sucked timeline. Theodore Seuss Geisel was born on March 2nd, 1904 in the city of Springfield, Massachusetts.

The actual German pronunciation of Seuss rhymes with the word voice, seuss, but the American pronunciation rhymes with the word juice, seuss. According to biographer Brian J. Jones's book, Becoming Dr. Seuss, the main source for this timeline, Springfield has been nurturing and stirring American imaginations for nearly 300 years. American independence was won with the reliable ammunition and gun carriages produced by the Springfield Armory beginning in 1777. A decade later, Daniel Shays, spouting a different kind of idealism, would attempt to steal muskets and ammunition from the same armory in a thwarted attempt to overthrow the government of Massachusetts. By 1795 Springfield Armory would regularly be producing

the muskets that would be carried on the shoulders of American soldiers all the way through the war of 1812 and on into the Civil War. Springfield, the city of just over 150,000 people today, almost exactly 700,000 in its metro area has been home to many influential people over the years. Local businessmen Horace Smith and Daniel B. Wesson, founders of the famous gun company Smith & Wesson, had roots in Springfield as well as Charles Goodyear, who discovered and patented the process for making vulcanized rubber in a Springfield factory in 1944. One can never have enough vulcanized rubber. And now the most famous blimps in the world bear his name. In 1843, Springfield brothers Charles

and George Merriam acquired the rights to publish Noah Webster's An American Dictionary of the English Language. Then in 1891, Canadian-born physical education teacher James Naismith was looking for a way to keep his students busy during the long New England winters. He put a peach basket on a 10-foot high pole in the gym with the local international YMCA training school and named his new game, Squid Game or basketball. Love Squid Game season two by the way. And that's why the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame is located in Springfield today Ted's grandfather Theodore Adolf Geisel born in July of 1844 in the village of Mülhausen Right in the heart of modern Germany today. It's a bit more than a village with almost 40,000 people

Don't seem to run a lot of people Excuse me don't seem to run across a lot of people with Adolf for a first or middle name anymore. Wonder why that is. T. A. Geisel moved south to the village of Pfotsheim, now a city of almost 130,000 known as the gateway to the Black Forest at the age of just 14, to complete a six-year apprenticeship with a local jeweler. Man, he then joined the German cavalry and served in the German army during the seven-week Austro-Prussian War of 1866 and then not long after that he would leave Germany behind.

In 1869, 25-year-old T.A. boarded the steamship Ohio and moved to the United States. His extended family helped him get a job at a jewelry store in Springfield, Massachusetts. Two years later in 1871, T.A. would marry Christine Schmazel, a fellow German immigrant, and he became an American citizen four years later in 1875. He was known as a talented jeweler in Springfield and was apparently the go-to man for brooches. If you lived in the New England area and you needed a fucking brooch, you were a goddamn fool if you didn't go to T.A. Geisel. You hear me? A fool! Despite his success. In 1876, T.A. abandoned the jewelry business to start a new career as a brewer. He pooled his resources with the brewer's apprentice named Christian Kulmbach and purchased a small brick plant in town. The facility initially only produced about a thousand barrels each year, but the two young businessmen were ambitious, dreamed of

expansion, and then pursued that dream aggressively. T.A. helped turn the brewery into one of the largest in the region. On June 28th, 1879, T.A. and his wife celebrated the birth of their fourth child and their first son, Theodore Robert A. Geisel. They would have two more surviving children over the next decade, but as the first son, T.R., was expected to take over the brewery. The brewery expanded during TR's early childhood, eventually producing a thousand barrels a day. Quite a jump up from a production of a thousand barrels a year. And then by 1893, Kölnbach and Geisel were producing over 400,000 barrels of beer annually.

And then TA bought his partner out, renamed the business Highland Brewing Company, made himself president, treasurer, and manager. Five years later Highland Brewing was sold and incorporated with seven local companies to form the Springfield Breweries Company. TA still worked and insisted on managing his Highland facility and he wanted to have 19 year old TR hired on as treasurer of the entire organization. By 1901, TA was able to buy his business back.

He made TR his partner in the Liberty Brewing Company and appointed him as both treasurer and secretary. At this time, TR was seeing 23 year old Henrietta Seuss, a baker's daughter. Nettie was a first generation German American. She had been born on May 13th, 1878. Her parents were George and Margaretha Seuss, who had immigrated from Bavaria and established a bakery in Springfield. They were very active in the city's German community and George Seuss was a founder of the Springfield Turnwaren, a social club and gym frequented by the area's Germans.

Nettie had been working at her family's downtown bakery since she was 15. She even skipped going to college out of loyalty to her family and the business. According to biographer Brian Jones, T.R. and Nettie made an attractive if somewhat intimidating couple. Both were six feet tall and athletic in build. Nettie, a dark haired beauty, weighed nearly 200 pounds, was an expert diver, and in a town that took marksmanship seriously, was a crack shot with a rifle. Like his father, TR was a dark haired and dark eyed young man with a regal bearing, also was an accomplished horseman, as well as one of the very best sharpshooters in the region.

Sound like a real fucking warrior couple. Brienne of Tarth in the mountain, if you know the references. Both sets of parents might not have approved of their relationship. On August 31st 1901, Tiara and Nettie snuck off to New York to get married. They eloped. They kept it secret for almost a year until the Springfield Republican leaked the news reporting that quote, the announcement was as much a surprise to their closest friends as to other. No one had been giving an inkling of what happened. Inkling. Nettie was visibly pregnant by the time the marriage was revealed in March of 1902.

Their daughter, Margaritha Christine Geisel, born July 4, 1902, born on the 4th of July. A little less than two years later, their son Ted, the future Dr. Seuss, is born. Over a year later, the family then moves to 74 Fairfield Street in Springfield. Ted recalled that his parents hired a live-in nanny and housekeeper named Anna to help raise him. And apparently Ted quickly became terrified of Anna because she would lock him in her bedroom closet when he misbehaved.

Locking a kid in a closet is fucking wild. Not sure how anyone could ever feel that's a fair thing to do to a kid. I feel like a hog tying some out of control kid who just will not listen or behave is more humane than locking them in a dark closet Another one of Ted's most vivid childhood memories involved a brown stuffed dog named Thea Fras- oh my god Theophrastus After the ancient Greek writer and philosopher he kept Theophrastus his entire life.

I wonder if Theo did some time with little Teddy in the dark closet. Another memory involved the death of his little sister Henrietta, who was born August 17th, 1906. Then she developed pneumonia and died just a little over a year later, December 19th, 1907. Ted would be forever haunted by the image of his sister's small casket inside their house. Ugh. Henrietta was his parents' last child, but Ted would grow up around a large extended family. They often gathered together for family dinners and parties on the weekends. Although Springfield had a small German community, less than 1% of the total population by 1910, they were a very active bunch. They hosted dress balls, gymnastics exhibitions,

and a rifle club. Ted's family also honored their heritage by speaking German at home. His parents even attended a Lutheran church with services in German, although they were not overly devout. Brian Jones writes, but apart from its underlying morality, religion would always be more obligation than inspiration. Though as a child, Ted took an obvious delight in making up rhyming verses to remember the books of the Old Testament. One of those rhymes was, The great Jehovah speaks to us in Genesis and Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers 3, followed by Deuteronomy. Pretty cool to see the seeds for his later writing style be developed here.

Ted also learned rhythmic chants from his mom when putting her son to bed. She would chant out a list of daily pie flavors at the bakery. April, mince, lemon, peach, apricot, pineapple, blueberry, coconut, custard, and squash. I bet he got tickled when she would suddenly yell out squash. Ted later would credit his mom for the rhythms in which I would write and the urgency with which I would do it. Reading was also a big pastime for the entire family. Their house was always full of books and newspapers. Ted would later say, and I love this, teaching a child to read is a family setup. It's the business of having books around the house, not forcing them. Parents should have

20 books stacked up on tables or set around the living room. The average kid will pick one up, find something interesting, and pretty soon he's reading. I think that's so true. In a 1979 interview with Parents magazine, Ted claimed he was reading Dickens by age six. And maybe he was doing that. Maybe it wasn't quite by age six. On his biography, Brian J. Jones writes that Ted had a tendency to exaggerate when telling stories about his life and that he tended to add details, you know, as the decades would progress. Ted had a distinct memory of children's books. He recalled reading the Brownies, their book, a book about spirits from English and Scottish folklore, and the book series Goops and How to

Be Them. Ted would credit the Brownies for awakening his desire to draw. He also recalled how Arthur Winfield's Rover Boys novels featuring three brothers who played pranks at a boarding school made him want to read. His mom used those novels to bribe him into focusing on his piano lessons. That's awesome. I remember begging my mom for Hardy Boys books. Ted started kindergarten in the fall of 1908 at Summer Avenue School. Didn't have many memories of his elementary years and was quote typical if was a quote typical if unexceptional student. He was more interested in playing with toys and his neighborhood friends than his studies. Pretty normal. Ted's parents were not cruel or strict disciplinarians. His father TR taught his

son discipline and decency though. Ted never understood his father's obsession with marksmanship but he did come to understand the discipline and commitment it would take to perfect that skill. His dad taught him whatever you do do it to perfection which is a good life lesson. Right? Whatever you do, do it to the best of your ability. Take pride in what you do. I've talked to Kyler Monroe a lot about that over the years. I wouldn't tell them perfection. I actually don't believe in perfection, but I do believe in the pursuit of it. All right. I, I do say that like, you know, the world would be better place if we all truly cared

about doing a good job, whatever that job might be. But I do think if you consistently try to get better, whatever your job is, and you do take pride in doing good work, you will attain some level of success and it will be whatever it is, it'll be more than what you would have attained otherwise, which I think makes it worth it. Right? You'll definitely be further along. You'll be more successful than you would have been if you didn't care about the quality of your work and just phoned it in. Ted later always hung one of his dad's paper shooting targets with multiple bullseye shots in his office to remind him to stay committed to doing what it took to achieve excellence.

In 1909, T.R. Geisel was appointed to fill a vacancy on the board of Springfield's park system. He was put in charge of overseeing the Forest Park Zoo, a facility inside Springfield's Forest Park neighborhood that was home to alligators, monkeys, swans, lions, elk, and more. And now young Ted started spending Sunday afternoons at the zoo, and then he tried to draw the animals when he got home The very beginning of his later career as an illustrator

He tried his hand at realistic drawings, but said he was just never good at him. There's never a strong suit He said I was always drawn with pencils pens crayons or anything and nearly always it was animals goofy looking ones My mother overindulged me and seemed to be saying everything everything you do is great. Just go ahead and do it. Well, I think that's a great maternal policy. Good job, Mom. Building little Teddy's confidence up, nurturing that young mind. New York Times later, you know, as long as there's effort. You don't want to just have a kid that just puts one fucking scratch across paper

and like, you know, Harold, that is the greatest thing ever. The New York Times later quoted Ted as saying, I used to hang around there a lot at the zoo. They'd let me in the cage with small lions and small tigers and I got chewed up every once in a while. What a cool experience as a little kid. By middle school Ted was a self-admitted rabble rouser and smart ass. Said he made himself the enemy of a neighbor named Horace Clark who lived at 36 Fairfield Street when he tried to hang a string telephone line between his window and that of his best friend Bill King which was Clark's next-door neighbor. During Halloween of 1912 Ted and his friend Charles Napier decided to play pranks on their neighbors and Ted went to Horace Clark's home to rattle a spool against his window while

Charles Napier took it a bit further and took a piss on Clark's front porch. They loved to fuck with poor Chuck. Napier escaped but Ted was caught and he later recalled, I'm afraid my father never believed me when for many years after I protested my innocence. Horace nabbed and blamed me for the nuisance that CN had committed at least half an hour before. He then dragged me to my house rang the doorbell and told my father what I had not done to his porch, using, of course, the dignified sentence, Theodore wetted my stoop. In 1914, Ted's grandfather sold his business again, selling it to the Springfield Breweries

Company once more, same company he'd sold it to back in 1898. There would be no buying it back this time. This sale marked his official retirement. Ted's father, T.R. Geisel, kept working there, was promoted to manager of the family brewery. He earned $100 a week, about $3,200 with current inflation. Ted's young world was changing a lot around this time. During World War I, a lot of American communities began to express a fair amount of anti-German sentiment,

including in Springfield. Ted's classmates would start to call him the German Brewerers Kid. The Geisel family tried to ignore it but they would also leave town a fair amount to get away from it all during World War I. Ted was aware that his family was well off but at the same time he said he was also aware that his family's German heritage meant they would never truly attain the social status of the long-established families like the Westons. Still, Springfield breweries is doing well, moving over 500,000 barrels of beer across New England each year. However, brewers get nervous about the growing

temperance movement. There was concern that the government would prohibit the sale of alcohol altogether, which of course they would. Even the guys those neighbors were lobbying for a liquor ban which had to have caused a little bit of tension Imagine working in a brewery then having next-door neighbors who are vocal about wanting to make all alcohol illegal for everyone Hey, pete, you doing anything fun this weekend? Uh, yeah, me and my family will probably be spending most of the weekend down at the brewery, you know protesting It'll be a beautiful day when they shut down that den of sin and debauchery once and for all.

What about you? I'll also be down at the brewery. I'll be managing it, managing the brewery that my dad built up from nothing. In order to affirm his family's American loyalties, 14-year-old Ted became one of the top sellers of war bonds in Springfield. And then later in front of an audience of thousands, he was the last of 10 boy scouts who were to receive a personal award for their efforts from former president Theodore Roosevelt. However, Roosevelt was only given nine medals.

He was misinformed. And when he got to poor little Ted, he said in front of the entire audience, what's this little boy doing here? And then Ted was whisked off the stage and and the crowd of thousands had a good laugh, and he felt humiliated by the misunderstanding. He was so scarred by that experience that he dreaded public appearances for the rest of his life. Poor little guy.

Who is this imposter? This stolen valor imposter acting like they've sold a bunch of war bonds? Get this phony out of my sight! No, please, I beg for my knees. I am, I am who my knees I am I am who I say I am you see I did not con I did sell bonds oh please oh please respond of the spectacle I am NOT fond and now before Ted begins high school time for this week's first two Mitchell sponsor breaks if you don't hear these

ads if you want to help us with donations each month sign up on patreon and get the entire catalog ad for you more. And we're back into the story now. Let's see how high school goes for young Teddy. Ted started high school in the fall of 1917. According to author Brian J. Jones, for Ted however school was something to be endured not mastered, though he later boasted of maintaining the B average quote quote, without working. Ted struggled with basic math so much so that he refused to balance a checkbook later in life. Numbers is not his friend. He enjoyed foreign languages, but he hated Latin, hated it so much,

he frequently skipped class. Ted would later say, in high school you had to go out for some kind of activity. I looked at these bruisers who were playing football and I decided to do something with a pencil. It worked and I enjoyed it. I like that. You know, he was okay. Not doing what some back then, I'm sure expected all the boys to do just because they were boys,

which, you know, never makes any sense. Just because football is good for some doesn't mean it's good for all. Doesn't mean it was good for Ted. High school is so strange that way, right? You get pushed into all these experiences that do not suit you. I mean, I get it, you gotta try some stuff, but so many kids being pressured and doing things they have no talent for or interest in because, you know, other kids enjoy those things or just because those things have been done.

Ted became known in high school amongst his peers for one-liners, which were called grinds back then. Ted often joked about Latin class saying things like, "'It'll be just our luck to be in Latin class "'when they turn back the clocks.'" He also wrote and drew for the Springfield Recorder. He attributed some of his cartoons to the pen name of Pete the Pessimist. His earliest known cartoon was a joke about a classmate named Francis Blinn, written FWA,

who took six years to graduate. The cartoon shows a balding elderly man with a cane and a diploma under his arm. Poor Francis! Kid probably had a legit learning disability. Little Teddi's just piling on. This early cartoon, done at Francis's fucking expense, was a simple line drawing of his profile. Ted was imitating the style of comics and newspapers at the time. Surprisingly, Ted only took one art class in high school, did not complete it, but simple line drawing of his profile. Ted was imitating the style of comics and newspapers at the time. Surprisingly, Ted only took one art class

in high school, did not complete it, but the only class he'd ever taken his life for art. He later recalled, "'At one point during the class, I turned the painting I was working on upside down. I didn't know exactly what I was doing, but actually I was checking the balance. If something is wrong with the composition upside down,

then something's wrong with it the other way.' And the teacher said, "'Theodore, real artists don't turn the composition upside down then something's wrong with it the other way and the teacher said Theodore Real artists don't turn their paintings upside down. I Somehow felt I wouldn't learn much from that teacher. So I left the course Good for him at an early age to be able to recognize that yeah, some teachers are actually not good at what they're teaching Ted's father felt that his son needed more physical activity. So I made him enroll in dance classes which Ted hated, quit as soon as he could. Next his dad enrolled him in fencing classes at the Turnverein, that social club slash gym in town for Germans primarily.

Ted called these classes hour long agonies because it didn't just involve fencing. He was forced to do calisthenics, rope climbing, required to wear a pink jersey. Apparently he just hated the whole thing. He attended 17 classes before his dad finally allowed him to quit after a lot of complaining. But then how embarrassing is this for a teen boy? Ted's instructor informed TR that his son had no pectoral muscles. Like none. So he recommended he buy Ted a canoe so he could row to develop some sort of upper body strength. Mr. Geisel, I have terrible news. Your son doesn't have a chest.

He literally has no pecs, just ribs. Just weak, little baby boned ribs that I could easily cave in and or shatter with one punch. If anyone, I mean anyone, ever tries to hurt your son, they will be successful. Ten received an 18-foot canoe for his 15th birthday. He would push it out into the water, but he would he would refuse to row it, I guess ever. I mean he couldn't! How's he supposed to row with no chest? It's amazing he can hold a pencil, push it around a piece of paper to draw and write with no chest. 1919 marked a shift in the Geisel family. That was a year where Ted finally received pectoral implants and now he could knock out

a thousand push-ups in one go. No, Ted's grandfather passed away. December 5th of that year, he was 79 years old, had been suffering from a prolonged illness. Also on October 28th, 1919, Congress passed the Volstead Act, Which defined intoxicating liquors that would be prohibited by federal law one of the fucking dumbest laws We've had so many dumb laws still have so many dumb laws. This is one of the dumbest ones ever passed Now is Ted's dad about to lose his job TR Geisel had to try to come up with solutions to keep the brewery open even change the recipe of his company's beer to reduce The alcohol content, but it would not be enough

Prohibition went into effect January 17th, 1920. TR had been promoted to president of Springfield Breweries that same week. Talk about poor timing. And then the business quickly shut down just days later. While his dad was out trying to figure out how he's gonna make more money, Ted was focused on typical teenage issues like dating at this time. Brian J. Jones writes, while he would go for cheap laughs about women in his college humor magazine and would later be criticized for the absence of female protagonists in his work, Ted quietly idealized women and craved their attention and acceptance. Ted considered himself an awkward wallflower during high school, but he was determined

to have a girlfriend, so he got involved in the social committee and prom committee. His first kiss was with a girl named Libby Ellsborg and Ted would later say I don't know why I kissed Libby and neither did she. His first real crush was a girl named Thelma Lester. Thelma Lester that's a kind of funny sounding combo there. He said of her I loved her right down to the bottom of my boots. During high school Ted was also involved in the debate club, served as secretary of the Student Senate, and he performed in the productions of The Mikado and Twelfth Night. During his final semester of high school Ted wrote a two-act minstrel show

where he performed in Blackface. I know, I know. But before you climb to the top of the nearest mountain and shout, fuck Dr. Seuss and his racist asshole and burn all of his books. He did do that in 1922, over a century ago, back when a lot of people truly did not seem to understand how racist that was and back when some people who did do that were not actually racist as crazy as that by sound. To show how normalized blackface was culturally back then, child star Shirley Temple, biggest child star of all time arguably, wore blackface in the 1935 film The Littlest Rebel, no one batted an eye. Actor Fred Astaire, big dancer, wore blackface on film in 1936's Swingtime and again in 1948's

Easter Parade, no one seemed to care, Cancel culture never came for him. No protests. Bing Crosby did it in six different movies. The last being 1944's Here Come the Waves. Not saying this was right, but you know it was just people's the culture's reaction to it was not like it would be now. Also Bing Crosby fought like hell for Louis Armstrong to receive equal billing in the 1936 film Pennies from Heaven. He insisted Armstrong be given a prominent role and featured on the film's poster even in the face of heavy resistance from the producers. And that was a significant achievement. It marked the very first time a black performer in America had ever received such recognition

in a major motion picture. And it would not have happened had Bing not stuck his neck out. So hard for me to write Bing off as being a, you know, aggressive racist deserving of being canceled when he also fought and fought harder than anyone else who had clout in his era, apparently in 1936 or previously, because he appeared in blackface. Am I saying it was a good call and all those instances and that no one should have had the right to complain about it then or now?

No, not saying that. Also going to be limited in my ability to understand how upsetting it is, you know, because I'm a white dude. But I'm saying that doing it in 1922 does not necessarily mean that the person doing it was a dirty racist bastard. I do always try and avoid presentism, which is the tendency to interpret past events in terms of modern values and concepts. Because it is illogical and often unfair. Sorry for the detour, but it's rightfully a sensitive subject in a culture with a history of a lot of racism. And I think it deserves to be handled delicately.

Dicks, dicks, dicks. Hateful folks who act like pricks. Oh, oh, oh. Oh, how they poison the well when they go low. Shame, shame, shame. Why must some poison the well when they go low shame shame shame Why must some schmucks behave in ways so lame? Someone who did something cringy last week we should blame but perhaps others who did it long ago We're not playing the same type of game Ted's principal in high school William C. Hill described him as a young man of upright character and good ability For senior superlatives, Ted's classmates voted

him class artist and class wit. His senior quote was, next comedy appeared with great applause. Clearly early on he wanted to do something with a comedic element to it. It was important to Ted's parents that he attend college but he wasn't sure where he wanted to go. Many students at his school were influenced by their English teacher Edwin A. Smith, just 23 years old at the time. His students called him red apparently because that was the color of the tip of his penis. Ted said about red, rather than being just an English teacher, Smith was one of the gang, a real stimulating guy who was probably responsible for me starting to write. Red encouraged Ted to read the works of Hilaire Billoc, a French poet who wrote books for children

with violent themes such as the Bad Child's Book of Beasts in 1896 and 1907's Cautionary Tales for Children. Ted found himself enjoying the rhymes in these books. Rhymes such as the microbe is so very small you cannot make him out at all, but many sanguine people hope to see him through a microscope. Because his idol, Red Smith, graduated from Dartmouth, Ted decided that's where he wanted to go to school. Oh, and Red Smith had red hair.

His nickname had nothing to do with the tip of his penis. Guessing you that was bullshit immediately. But when I didn't correct it immediately, I do hope some of you were like, wait, what? Why was that guy showing kids his dick around school? were like, wait what? Why was that guy showing kids his dick around school? Seuss entered Dartmouth College in the fall of 1928. He would major in English. Ted wrote about his time at Dartmouth and what he wrote was published in the beginnings of Dr. Seuss in formal reminiscence, a book that came out in 2004

to commemorate the hundredth anniversary of his birth. And he wrote that at Dartmouth, I began to get it through my school that words and pictures were yin and yang. I began thinking that words and pictures married might possibly produce a progeny more interesting than either parent. It took me almost a quarter of a century to find the proper way to get my words and pictures married. At Dartmouth I couldn't even get them engaged. He also wrote about one of his mentors at college. Well my big inspiration there at Dartmouth was Ben Presssey, W. Benfield Pressey of the Department of English.

He was important to me in college as Smith was in high school. He seemed to like the stuff I wrote, he was very informal and had little seminars at his house plus a very beautiful wife who served as Coco. In between sips of Coco we students read our trash aloud. He's the only person I took any creative writing courses from ever, anywhere, and he was kind and encouraging. Ted would eventually become editor-in-chief for the school's humor magazine, Jack O'Lantern. Geisel called his work for Jack O'Lantern, an extension of my activities in high school and a lot less dangerous than doing somersaults off the ski jump.

At Jack O'Lantern, the writers did not sign their literary content, so it's not possible to compile a full list of Ted's writings at Dartmouth. He wouldn't remember all of them either. In addition to Jack O'Lantern, Ted did occasional work for the Dartmouth, America's oldest newspaper. First issue published in August 27, 1799. And in that first issue their motto, my god, was published, 1999 and in that first issue their motto, my god, was published Here range the world explore the dense and rare and view all nature in your elbow chair a lot of rhyming today April 11th 1925 the last semester of Ted's senior year He organized a party for Jack O'Lantern staff to celebrate the magazine's success

But then got caught drinking during Prohibition and the brewery manager's son and brewery founders grandson gotten quite a bit of trouble. Ted wrote, the night before Easter of my senior year there were ten of us gathered in my room at the Randall Club. We had a pint of gin for ten people so that proves nobody was really drinking. That is still fucking true. This was not a rager. This was a couple kids sipping on some gin. Quite possibly sipping on some gin and juice just like Snoop D-O-Double G. I mean it was during the Prohibition era that that drink became a popular drink. Back to Ted. But Paul Randall who hated merriment called Chief Rude the chief of police and he himself in person raided us.

We all had to go before the Dean, Craven Laycock. Oh my god, this guy's name was Craven Laycock. Dean Laycock! And we were all put on probation for defying the laws of prohibition and especially on Easter evening. Ted was fired from his position as editor-in-chief, but he wanted to at least keep writing for Jack O'Lantern. He would keep writing cartoons and jokes anonymously for Jack O'Lantern even though he was forbidden from doing so. He also kept illustrating for them but he had to come up with a pseudonym for that because you were supposed to sign your artwork. He initially signed some of the

illustrations with the pen names of L. Burbank, Thos Mott Osborne, and D.G. Rossetti. Those were a bunch of inside jokes. Also signed two cartoons with the pen names of Seuss and T. Seuss. The first versions of what would later become his very famous pen name. Ted wrote, To what extent this corny subterfuge fooled the Dean I never found out. But that's how Seuss first came to be used as my signature. The doctor was added later on. The doctor would apparently be a reference to his uncompleted doctorate degree and I'll explain how that when that shows up later. Ted graduated with his bachelor's of arts in English from Dartmouth in 1925. Following graduation Ted planned on winning the Campbell

Fellowship in English Literature and then going to Oxford. He wanted to be a professor at this point in his life. Professor of literature. He wrote about this to his father and T.R. Geisel misread the letter. He thought his son already had won this fellowship and he told her neighbor, Maurice Sherman, who is the editor of the Springfield Union, and then the editor published the headline, Geisel Wins Fellowship to Go to Oxford. Everybody was so proud. But then Ted lost the fellowship. What an embarrassing experience. And then his dad, quote, had to dig up the money to send me to Oxford anyway to save face.

It's a pretty funny way to end up at Oxford. At Oxford Ted met a new mentor named A.J. Carlyle. He wrote, my tutor was A.J. Carlyle, the nephew of the great frightening Thomas Carlyle. I was surprised to see him alive. He was surprised to see me in any form. Thomas Carlyle. I was surprised to see him alive. He was surprised to see me in any form. Thomas Carlyle, by the way, literary giant of the Victorian era. A famous, widely revered Scottish intellectual who wrote a number of historical and philosophical works and more. A guy who helped establish the National Portrait Gallery in both London and Edinburgh. A guy who founded the London Library and on and on. He died in 1881 at the age of 85. And Ted wrote of his nephew, He was the oldest man I've ever seen riding a bicycle. That was the only man he'd ever seen who never ever should have come to Oxford.

This brilliant scholar had taken firsts in every school in Oxford, accepting medicine without studying. Every year up to his 80s, he went up for a different first just for the hell of it. Patiently he had me write essays and listen to me read them in the usual manner of the Oxford tutorial system, but he realized I was getting stultified in English schools. I was bogged down with old high German and Gothic and stuff of that sort in which I have no interest whatsoever. And I don't think anybody really should. Well he was a great historian and he quickly discovered that I didn't know any history. Somehow or other I got

through high school and Dartmouth without taking one history course. He very correctly told me I was ignorant and he was the man who suggested that I do what I finally did. Just travel around Europe with a bundle of high school history books and visit the places I was reading about, go to the museums and look at pictures and read as I went. That's what I finally did." Man, how fucking cool Ted got a chance to do that. I'm jealous. Ted added another anecdote about the professor who drove him out of Oxford by lecturing on the punctuational differences in Shakespearean text. Jesus Christ. After the professor spent an hour and a half

discussing the punctuation in the first two pages of King Lear, Ted got up and started packing his shit. He was done. He also wrote about his Oxford notebook, which in his word, demonstrates that I wasn't very interested in the subtle niceties and complexities of English literature. As you go through the notebook, there's a growing incidence of flying cows and strange beasts. And finally at the last page of the notebook, there are no notes on English literature at all. There's just strange beasts. Yeah, doodling way more fun than learning about Shakespearean punctuation differences. The most important person Ted met at Oxford was undoubtedly his future wife, Helen Marion Palmer. Helen was born September 16, 1898 in New York City, grew up in Orange, New

Jersey. Helen graduated from Wellesley College in Massachusetts, then came to Oxford in the fall of 1924 to become a teacher. She would graduate with a Master's of Arts in 1926. She would go on to write several children's books like her husband and could have written so many more if she hadn't been so busy helping his career. Ted later wrote, she was a gal who was sitting next to me when I was doing this notebook and she was the one who said, you're not very interested in the lectures. She picked me up by looking over and saying, I think that's a very good flying cow. It was she who finally convinced me that flying cows were a

better future than tracing long and short E through Anglo-Saxon. She was the one who convinced me that I wasn't for pedagogy at all. On the other hand, she did complete the English schools that year, took her degree in English lit. This enabled her to get a job teaching English in the States and that enabled us to get married. That's awesome. And pedagogy by the way, it's come up several times. I can never f**king remember that word. It's the method and practice of teaching. I can never fucking remember that word. It's the method and practice of teaching I can never remember what that word means or even how to say it have to look it up every time it comes up You know how many times I've worked that word into a conversation zero

By 1927 Ted had dropped out of Oxford He just wasn't cut out for the rigorous study of subjects He didn't give a shit about and now he spent a year traveling in Europe something He was able to do because his parents were, despite his dad losing the brewery job, you know, because of prohibition, they're fucking loaded. Man, he and recent suck subject Mr. Rogers. So fortunate to have family financial support

most of the world can only dream of. And they both appreciate it. And their names rhyme. So that's a fun coincidence. Fred and Ted, Ted and Fred, both born a step ahead. Fred and Ted, Ted and Fred, they used their heads to stay ahead. Their families gave them wings to spread, but it was they who chose to flap them, Fred and Ted, Ted and Fred. During his travels, Ted attended a lecture by a French professor,

Emile Lagree, a translator and scholar of English literature. Ted spoke to him at the end of the lecture and the professor convinced him to come to the Sorbonne, a famous public research university in Paris. Ted claimed he registered at the Sorbonne and went to the professor's house to find out what he wanted him to do. He said, I have a most interesting assignment which should only take you... This is like insane sense. He said, I have a most interesting assignment which should only take you... It's like insane sense. He said I have a most interesting assignment which should only take you about two years to complete. That's all. He said that nobody

had ever discovered anything that Jonathan Swift wrote from the age of 16 and a half to 17. He said I should devote two years to finding out whether he had written anything. If he had I could analyze what he wrote as my doctor of philosophy thesis. Unfortunately if he didn't write anything, I wouldn't get my doctorate. I remember leaving his charming home and walking straight to the American Express Company and booking myself a passage on a boat to Corsica. There I proceeded to paint donkeys for a month. Then I proceeded with Carlisle's idea and began living all around the continent, reading

history books, going to museums, and drawing pictures. I remember a long period in which I drew nothing but gargoyles. They were easier than Mona Lisa's. While floating around Europe trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life, I decided at one point that I would be the great American novelist. So I sat down and wrote the great American novel. Turned out to be not so great. So I built boiled it down and the great American short story wasn't very great in that form either. The adventure had to end at some point.

His family was not willing to fund a life endless adventure. So Ted returned to the US now, moved back in with his parents, and while living with his parents, he submitted cartoons to national magazines to make some money. The Saturday Evening Post eventually accepted one of his submissions. Huge win for the young hopeful illustrator. And they published it in their July 16th, 1927. Ted now 23 years old signed his cartoon Seuss. He later explained why he decided to bring back the use of his college pen name writing, the main reason that I picked Seuss professionally is that I still

thought I was one day going to write the great American novel. I was saving my real name for that and it looks like I still am However, there was no real point to the anonymity because the post published the byline beside the drawing drawn by Theodore Seuss Geisel He was paid 25 bucks for that cartoon and still had a thousand dollars saved up from his time at the Jack O'Lantern back at Dartmouth She was told his parents he was moving out now He headed New York City moved in with his Dartmouth friend John C. Rose in a one-bedroom studio in Greenwich Village located above a nightclub called the Pirates' Den. Man, I bet that nightclub was fucking awesome. In this moment, I want to travel back in time and be a young dude living above the Pirates' Den in Greenwich Village. Ted wrote about his time in

this bachelor pad, the last thing we used to do at night was to stand on chairs and with canes we bought for that purpose play polo with the rats. Oh my god. And try to drive them out so they wouldn't nibble us while we slept. God what a place. Yeah I still want to go there. Somehow the the rat talk actually makes it sound wilder and more appealing. Ted continued, and I wasn't selling Anywhere's. I tried to do sophisticated things for Vanity Fair. I tried unsophisticated things for the Daily Mirror. I wasn't getting anywhere at all until John suddenly said one day, there's a guy called Beef Vernon of my class at Dartmouth, who has just landed the job as a salesman to sell advertising for Judge.

And Judge was a weekly satirical magazine, which was published from 1881 all the way to 1947. Ted's friend continued with, his job won't last long because nobody buys any advertising and judge. But maybe before beef gets fired we can con him into introducing you to Norman Anthony the editor. Oh fucking beef! You can't count on a dude named beef to keep out regular employment any place for very long. Only thing you can count on with Beef is Beef consistently fucking up opportunities. Beef Beef he kept it brief. Brief employment brief was Beef. But he bounced back quick quick was Beef quick with jobs and quick with grief. Ted reached out

to Beef and Beef to his credit hooked Ted up. Beef might not have been steady and reliable in some ways but he was a good dude god damn it. Ted was offered a job as a staff writer slash artist for the humor magazine for 75 bucks a week. And that was enough money for Ted to make him feel like he could finally marry Helen, who was back in the US teaching now. Helen will be the one to persuade Ted to give up his idea of being a professor and to focus on being a full time cartoonist. Very cool. Supportive people so important to artistic creation behind so many artists you know and love are people who, if they had not sacrificed and supported those artists in pivotal moments of their careers, you would never experience their art. I feel so lucky to have had such a good supportive partner in Lindsay.

Helen later said, per the New York Times, Ted's notebooks were always filled with these fabulous animals. So I set to work diverting him Here was a man who could draw such pictures. He should be earning a living doing that Helen would later become her husband's business manager and editor Ted and Helen will get married in Westfield, New Jersey, November 29th 1927 then the week after the wedding Ted salary is reduced from 75 bucks a week to 50 bad timing Because of a lack of profit things started to get weird. Judge magazine, Ted wrote that he was once paid with a hundred cartons of shaving cream and 13 nail clippers. Some story behind that. Because Ted's family was no longer financially supporting baby boy

and they weren't making a lot of money, the newlyweds moved into an apartment across from a library stable in Hell's Kitchen or livery. I always want to say library, livery stable, Hell's Kitchen where quote, Horses frequently died in the stable and they dragged them out and leave them in the street where they'd be picked up by sanitation two or three days later. Fuck. So where to think of a horse stable in Manhattan? But actually they're still there. Most of the city's roughly 200 carriage horses that pull people around Central Park and

whatnot live in stalls in Clinton Park stables in Hill's kitchen today. And the NYPD has about a hundred horses kept in stables, mostly in Hill's kitchen. Anyway, Hill's kitchen was a shithole back then. And Ted said he carried a cane to fend off muggers. He and Helen worked hard to get out of the area, eventually moved to 79th Street and West End Avenue. That corner there. Ted continued writing for Judge and about half of his work would include drawings. In his Dartmouth memoir, he would write, I started to do a feature called Boyds and Beasties.

It was a mock zoological thing. And I put the doctor on Seuss to make myself sound more professional. And that is how Dr. Seuss came to be. From a forgotten feature called Boys and Beasties published in a forgotten magazine called Judge. The more you know. And I know that it is now time to take today's second of two mid-show sponsor breaks. Thanks for listening to those sponsors. We returned to 1928. Find out how work is now going for young married man, Ted Geisel.

Worked by Dr. Seuss soon began to appear outside of Judge and other magazines like Liberty College, Humor and Life. Ted even got a project with Vanity Fair, but that one didn't end up working out. Ted's next job was working for Standard Oil's advertising department. He would work for Standard Oil for over a decade and his ads for the insecticide Flit manufactured by Standard Oil became nationally famous. I highly recommend googling Dr. Seuss Flit advertisements. Very cool to see the exact kind of illustration style he would use for his later children's books

being used to market insecticide. His advertising campaign continued for 17 years and made quick Henry the flit, a very popular catchphrase in the US. And that all started in the spring of 1928. In Ted's own words about the time, I've been working for Judge almost four months when I drew this accidental cartoon which changed my whole life. It was an insecticide gag. It was a picture of a knight who had gone to bed. He had stacked his armor beside the bed. There was this covered canopy over the bed, and a tremendous dragon was sort of nuzzling him. He looked up and said, darn it all, another dragon. And just after I'd sprayed the whole castle with,

with what, I wondered. There were two well-known insecticides. One was flit and one was fly tox. So I tossed a coin. It came up heads for flit. So the caption read, another dragon. And just after I'd sprayed the whole castle with flit. Here's where luck came in. Very few people ever bought Judge. It was continually in bankruptcy and everybody else was bankrupt too. But one day, and this is still Ted saying this, but one day the wife of Lincoln L. Cleaves, who was the account executive on Flit, the McCann Erickson advertising agency, failed to get an appointment at her favorite hairdresser and went to a second-rate hairdresser where they had second-rate magazines around. She opened Judge while

waiting to get her hair dressed and she found this picture. She ripped it out of the magazine, put it in her reticule, which is a fancy word for purse, took it home, bearded her husband with it, and said, Lincoln, you've got to hire this young man. It's the best flit ad I've ever seen. He said, go. He said, go away. He said, you're my wife,

and you have nothing to do with my business. Oh, and excuse me, and you're to have nothing to do with my business. Jesus. Then Ted kept saying, so she pestered him for about two weeks, and finally he said, all right, I'll have him in. I'll buy one picture

He had me in I drew one picture which I captioned quick Henry the flit and it was published Then they hired me to do two more and 17 years later. I was still doing them The only good thing Adolf Hitler did in starting World War two was that he enabled me to join the army and finally stopped drawing Quick Henry the Flit. I'd drawn them by the millions. Newspaper ads, magazine ads, booklets, window displays, 24 sheet posters, even Quick Henry the Flit animated cartoons. Flit was pouring out of my ears and beginning to itch me. Ted wrote about the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey, the makers of Flit. They had a product called Esso Marine, a lubricating oil for boats, and they didn't have a lot

of money to spend on advertising. They decided to see what we could do with public relations. So Harry Bruno, a great PR man, Ted Cook and Vern Carrier of Esso and I cooked up the Seuss Navy. Starting small at one of the New York motorboat shows, we printed up a few diplomas. We took about 15 prominent people into membership. Vincent Astor and sailors like that who had tremendous yachts. So we could photograph them at the boat show receiving their certificates. We waited to see what happened.

Well, Astor and Guy Lombardo and a few other celebrities hung these things in their yachts. And very soon everyone who had a putt-putt wanted to join the Seuss Navy. Next year we started giving annual banquets at the Biltmore. It was cheaper to give a party for a few thousand people furnishing all the booze than it was to advertise in full-page ads. And it was so successful because we never mentioned our product at all. Reporters would cover the party and they would write our commercials for us. So we would end up with a national coverage about the Seuss Navy met blank and then they would have to explain it by talking about Esso Marine. At the time war was declared in 1941

we had the biggest Navy in the world. We commissioned the whole Standard Oil fleet. We also had for example the Queen Mary and most of the ships of the US lines. Then an interesting thing happened. I left to join the army and somebody said thank God Geisel's gone. He was wasting a great opportunity. He wasn't selling the product. We have Seuss Navy hats and we have Seuss Navy glasses and Seuss Navy flags. He said these things carry advertising on them. They put advertising on them and the Navy promptly died. The fun had gone out of it and the Seuss Navy sank. He was such a smart dude. For all the years

he worked on these flit and sexicide ads and you know the Seuss Navy and all that. Ted's work was seasonal and he was able to finish it in about three months out of each year which left him you know a lot of free time on his hands. Standard Oil allowed him to work for humor magazines in the offseason but his contract was limited about what else he could do and that is actually what led him into children's books. He later said, I would like to say I went into children's book work because of my great understanding of children. I went in because it was not excluded by my standard oil contract. Isn't that funny how strange little circumstances like that

can change somebody's life for the better in just incredibly powerful ways? Viking Press offered to have a contract to illustrate a children's anthology. The book did not do well, not under its original title. But then, but this would be his big break in children's literature and this is so funny to me. Ted wrote, the book was originally published in England where it was called Schoolboy Howlers. Some smart person at Viking Press in New York, I think it was Marshall Best, bought out a reprint of the English edition under the title Boners. That's right, boners like erections but not

because that's not what the word meant to people back then. The first boners book was published in 1931, a good three decades before the word boner became common slang for erection and the first boners book was published three years after the beginning of the flit advertising campaign. At the time, boner was synonymous with blunder, and the book sold well. There were seven released eventually. Dr. Seuss only wrote four of them. The publisher owned the rights to the title and the concept. A compilation of Ted's four books would sell very well during World War II, but it would not make Ted a bunch of money because he

didn't own the rights. Ted wrote, whereupon hundreds of teachers in the USA began sending in Boners from their examination papers, and the Boner business boomed. That's a great sentence. And the boner business boomed. Ted was paid a flat fee for his writing, no royalties again. So despite the popularity, the series 1.3 million copies of the compilation, The Pocket Book of Boners, would be in print by 1945. Again, Ted did not make a fortune off of that. His creativity and success with both the Boner series and his Flint marketing campaign did lead to opportunities to create ads for Ford Motor Company, NBC, the, oh my gosh, I hate this word.

Narragansett, there we go. Narragansett Brewing Company. I always want to say Narragansett or something. Narragansett. I don't know. Actually, when I look at it, Narragansett. It actually does look right. It just freaks me out when I first see it. Anyway, he created unique characters like the ones later featured in his books such as the motoraspis, the carbunculus. Ted would say about his quirky characters, if I start out with the concept of a two-headed animal, I must put two hats on his head and two toothbrushes in the bathroom. It's logical insanity.

Before he could ever have expected to become a big name in the children's book world, Ted was developing all the skills and success he would need to build that career. He's being paid to develop his distinct illustration style, working on all these advertising campaigns. He was learning how to sell a concept and as few catchy words as possible in the world of advertising. Right? Catchy word economy and a distinctive illustration style. That's what would make that combination. Is what would make him a star in the world of children's books. And now let's learn about how Ted Geisel published his first Dr. Seuss children's book. Ted published his first book and

well you know of the Dr. Seuss line that we've come to know and to think that I saw it on Mulberry Street in 1937 under his pen name of Dr. Seuss. He was 34 years old. It's a story that follows a boy named Marco who describes a parade of imaginary people in vehicles traveling along a road, Mulberry Street, in an elaborate fantasy he dreams up to tell his father at the end of his walk. However, when he arrives home, he decides instead to tell his dad what he actually saw, which was just a simple horse in a wagon. Here's a little taste. Now, what can I say when I get home today? All the long way to school and all the way

back. I've looked and I've looked and I've kept careful track, but all that I've noticed, except my own feet, was a horse in a wagon on Mulberry Street. There's nothing to tell of. That won't do, of course. Just a broken down wagon that's drawn by a horse. That can't be my story. That's only a start. I'll say that a zebra was pulling that cart. And that is a story that no one can beat when I say that I saw it on Mulberry Street. And now let's hear how Dr. Seuss ended up writing this first book. Pretty cool little story. Ted liked to take a vacation whenever he was really struggling for new ideas and while

on vacation he would decompress like a lot of people by taking his belt and wrapping around the clothing rod inside of his closet then he would fasten that around his neck while he you know would take off his pants and do what you know Dick and Jane all that stuff we talked about earlier. Seriously now no uh auto-erotic asphyxiation was not how he decompressed as far as I know. He liked to take a vacation. He was stumped and burnt out and he and Ellen would travel to Europe in the summer of 1936. They would spend several weeks in the Bavarian Alps. Sounds awesome. Their return trip home was spent stuck inside a big ship due to bad weather. Ted found himself fixated on the rhythm of the ship's engines until quote, finally Helen suggested I think up nonsense

rhymes to be said to the rhythm of the damned engines just to get rid of it. Instead, Ted began writing down ideas for a narrative story. A stupid horse and wagon horse, excuse me, a stupid horse and wagon horse and chariot, chariot pulled by a flying cat, flying cat pulling a Viking ship, Viking ship sailing up a volcano, volcano blowing hearts, diamonds and clubs. Those are the first words he said I ever wrote in the field of writing for children. I put them down in the bar of the MS Kungsholm sometime during the summer of 1936. I wrote them for only one reason. I was trying to keep my mind off of the storm that was going on.

Ted then wrote a rhyming couplet, I saw a giant eight miles tall who took the cards fifty-two and all. He continued reciting words and phrases until the following lines hit him. And this is a story that no one can beat. I saw it all happen on Mulberry Street. This is the idea that stuck. Ted wrote, when I finally got off the ship, that refrain kept going through my head.

I couldn't shake it. He didn't have a solid plan for his story. And at that point in his career, still not interested in writing solely for children, which was kind of like looked down upon in the literary world. He kept returning to his list of ideas from the ship and continued writing verses.

He read them to Helen, asked for her opinion, because he valued her opinion above all others. Ted spent the winter of 1936 and early 1937 writing and drawing on this project. He said, six months later, I found I had a book on my hands. So what to do with it? Despite his success in advertising, despite the success of the Boners books, Ted had no literary agent, so he had to visit publishers himself to try and get a book deal. And he would be rejected 27 times in a row. That's fucking crazy. So many no's. How many people would have given up after one rejection? Would you have given up after one? Would you have given up after five or

ten or twenty or twenty five? He kept going. His book was originally titled A Story That No One Can Beat. Some editors pointed out that the book had no moral lesson, which annoyed Ted. He complained, what's wrong with kids having fun reading without being preached at? Other publishers disliked the rhyming verse in the story. Well, after his 27th straight rejection, Ted was finally fucking done. Ted, oh Ted, he'd lost his head. He'd been beaten, beat, defeat after defeat, shuffling down the street on the saddest of feet. Ted, oh Ted, he was done. He was through. 27 failures, not two, and his book he withdrew. No one wanted Ted's

silly, silly tale, so he walked home lonely, chilly, and pale with thoughts that screamed, fail, fail, fail. Walking along the streets of New York Ted planned to burn his manuscript once he got home in his apartment buildings incinerator but then by chance on Madison Avenue he bumped into an old Dartmouth friend, not beef unfortunately, Mike McClintock who had just started working as an editor in Vanguard Press's children's division that very fucking morning. Ted later said, if I'd been going down the other side of Madison Avenue, I'd be in the dry cleaning business today. Ted met with Vanguard president James Henley soon after this chance run and he claimed

the meeting lasted just 20 minutes and ended with signing the contract. That might have been, you know, one of his embellishments, but whatever, he got it. But, and to think I saw it on Melbury Street, it was published September of 1937 under the Dr. Seuss pseudonym. Vanguard gave the book a full-page ad and published it weekly and it worked. It did sell. Sales increased through word of mouth. Clifton Fadiman reviewed the book, this big critic at the time in the New Yorker, and wrote, They say it's for children, but better get a copy for yourself and marvel at the good Dr. Seuss's impossible pictures and the moral tale of a little boy who exaggerated not wisely but too well

Ted decided if the great kip fadiman likes it I'll have to do another the New York Times called the book highly original and entertaining The Atlantic wrote that the book was so completely spontaneous that the American child can take it to his heart on site Took a while, but it hit the modest 15,000 copies sold milestone that the publisher hoped for. And then it kept selling. Ted worried that the $1 price was too much, but by 1943, Mulberry Street had sold 31,600 copies, earning Ted $3,500 in royalties over those seven years. Roughly $65,000 in today's money, just under $10,000 a year. Not nearly

enough to live on, not a smashing success, but a lot better than nothing. You know, it was promising. It gave Ted the hope to continue. Later Ted would be criticized for what has been viewed as a slight towards girls in this first book. And the story the character Marco rejects including the detail of a reindeer pulling a sleigh in his imaginative story, saying that quote, even Jane could come up with that idea. In 1977 Ted was asked about that line and told the Saturday Evening Post, suddenly, after all these years, I'm deluged with protests over that one line. They say that line will cause boys to grow up feeling superior to their sisters.

They demanded I change the line. Ted insisted it was nothing personal, that Marco was expressing nothing more than normal sibling rivalry. It was not about Jane being a girl, it was about Jane being his sister, his sibling. He wrote, the boy in my story did feel that way about his sister and I wasn't about to change a rod. Ted also faced criticism for the way he illustrated Asian people in this book, which I will discuss before we are through today. Over the next decade Ted would write four more books, published hundreds of political cartoons, co-write an Academy Award-winning documentary, and more. Helen would write about her husband. About two weeks before the completion of every

book he seems to go into a tailspin. He decides that nothing in the book is any good, that he can't possibly finish it, and I have a great job to do in keeping everything from falling in the scrap basket. I'm at my wits end trying not to be rude. Man, I still get that. I have felt that way about every fucking stand-up album and special I've ever done. By the summer of 1938 Ted's second book was completed and The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins was published that fall. It received good reviews, but sales? Not so great.

Many have overlooked Ted's dedication in this book to Chrysanthemum Pearl, age 89 months going on 90. Chrysanthemum Pearl was Ted and Helen's imaginary daughter. When asked about having kids, Ted would famously say, you have them, I'll entertain them. But according to according to author biographer Brian J. Jones Ted also said it was not that we didn't want to have children that wasn't it Around 1931 Helen had experienced severe abdominal pains Doctors determined she needed removal of both ovaries her actual diagnosis is unclear But doctors most likely concerned about severe ovarian cysts Ted and Helen now knew they would never be able to have kids, at least not biologically.

They were devastated, but wanted to keep that private, only telling immediate family. That was when they dreamed up their imaginary daughter of Chrysanthemum Pearl and made her birthday around the time of Helen's surgery. That is pretty fucking cute. Anytime a friend would then tell a story about their child and Ted's presence, he would make up a story of his own about his imaginary child Chrysanthemum Pearl. On December 17th 1938 Ted now meets Bennett Cerf co-founder of Random House. Cerf told Geisel he liked what he had seen in his first two books and asked if he had any other projects in mind and Ted apparently told

him quote not especially maybe an adult book with naked ladies. And Surf reportedly responded, you come with me and I'll print anything you do. It's fucking awesome. Ted said about that meeting, I felt Bennett Surf was the kind of star I wanted my wagon hitched to. You could tell that Bennett was going somewhere. Well Surf was true to his word and did end up publishing Ted's Naked Lady book, a story titled The Seven Lady Godivas. Ted's first book for adults, one of his only, I think he did only two, The Seven Lady Godivas were published on New Year's Eve, 1939.

It was a reimagining of the historical figure or possibly mythological figure said to have once rode naked through the streets of Coventry in protest of taxes and was only seen by a voyeuristic tailor named Peeping Tom. And that is the origin of that term for a voyeur. The more you know. Ted's tale featured the seven Godiva sisters and their suitors who were calling the Peeping Brothers, or excuse me, who were called the Peeping Brothers. And Geisel is telling the nudity of the Godivas was incidental. The sisters were simply so smart that they had no time for frivolous froth, which included

things like jewelry and clothing. Ted later said, I tried to draw the sexiest looking women I could, and they came out just ridiculous. I think their ankles came out wrong and things like that. The book showed women's bare buttocks and exposed breasts, but no nipples. So fucking weird that that has been the line for censors in this country for so long when it comes to frontal nudity, upper body frontal nudity for women. Do the breasts have nipples?

Filthy nipples? How dare those devil nozzles literally keep all human babies from dying until the recent invention of formula but they're disgusting. Man, fuck the Puritans. Those paranoid superstitious hateful dipshits. They poisoned the well of this country's formation. Still trying to clean out that bullshit today. Ted thought this book would be popular with adults writing, at the time I was groping for a way to get out of what I was doing. Unfortunately didn't sell well. Ted said it was my first adult humor book and my

last. It was a complete failure. He blamed the $2 price in part for the book's failure and also thought the non-erotic drawings disappointed his adult readers because they just were not sexy. Parents were also pissed because the book was sold alongside his first two children's books and stories. Some libraries would actually discard the adult book or refuse to carry out. How dare they show women's nudity? In total, Random House only sold 2,500 copies of Godiva's original printing, but Random House didn't drop him.

Seuss's second book for Random House, 1939, was The King's Stilts, a fairy tale for children. Unfortunately, this book, also a huge failure, only sold 4,648 copies in the first year. Luckily, co-founder Bennett Cerf still believed in Ted and sent him on a book signing tour all the way to Cleveland. At this point, Ted was not sure there would ever be another Dr. Seuss book, especially because he was still making pretty decent money with his flit ad gig. He'd also been working on a side project he thought was gonna change everything. An invention he called the Infantograph. The Infantograph's banner said, if you were to marry the person you are with, what would your children look like? Come in and have your Infantograph taken. The premise was that a couple would sit side by side and

then a double lens camera would blend their features together creating an image of their future child. Ted hoped that the Infantograph would be his big claim to fame. In his words, it was a wonderful idea but all the babies tended to look like William Randolph Hearst. That's so fucking funny to me. Yeah fun concept but tech just not there yet to execute it. Good thing the infantograph was a failure or you would never have the Grinch and Whoville and so much more.

Ted had already started working on another children's book by the fall of 1939, a story about an elephant stuck in a tree. Ted would say that the inspiration for Horton Hatches the Egg was totally accidental. He said, I was just sitting doodling on some transparent paper. I had drawn a tree.

I had drawn an elephant. When one paper lighted on top of the other, it looked as if the elephant were sitting in the tree. Ted went through several names before he settled on Horton, an elephant who volunteers to sit on an egg for a bird named Maisie. Ted decided Maisie would be a lazy bird abandoning her egg and Horton would sit on the egg because he promised to take care of it. The book features the line, I meant what I said and I said what I meant.

And elephants faithful 100 percent. Horton's considered the archetypal Sue's hero, according to the New York Times. Ted was very proud of this one. He wrote to someone at Random House, it is a beautiful thing, the funniest juvenile ever written. I mean, being written. Never before have I stood before myself and pointed so proudly saying, genius you are. Jesus. I feel certain it will sell well over a million. P.S. I like my new book. So he's obviously just joking around. Horton Hattie's EA was completed in the spring of 1940. It didn't quite sell a million copies, at least not in Ted's lifetime. It's definitely sold more than a million now. It had sold 987,996 copies by 2001, but it only sold 5,800 copies in the

first year and then 1,645 the second. So the book did alright. Still not nearly well enough for Ted to make writing books his full-time gig. Between 1940 and 1942 Ted made more money doing cartoons for adults. He drew over 400 editorial cartoons for the New York City daily newspaper, PM, alone. PM was founded by writer and publisher Ralph Ingersoll and was in print between 1940 and 1948. Ted was very politically minded at this point in his life and wanted to express his opposition to American isolationism, including aviation hero Charles Lindbergh, who held that view. He said, I found that I could no longer keep my mind on drawing pictures of Horton the

Elephant. I found myself drawing pictures of Lindbergh, the ostrich. According to a History.com article about this part of Ted's career, although the cartoon sport his distinctive style and a fanciful menagerie of creatures, the subject matter is quite foreign, in more ways than than one to dr. Seuss readers one cartoon depicts a Lindbergh quarter with an ostrich sticking its head in the ground in place of an American eagle another showed Lindbergh patting the head of a Swatchka covered sea serpent that sport that sported Hitler's trademark mustache so yeah he was just

dr. Seuss not cool with Charles Lindbergh being like nah we don't need to worry about Hitler ah that's Europe's problem. It'll be fine. They'll figure it out. His cartoons also encouraged the conservation of resources and the purchase of savings bonds and stamps to raise money for the American World War II effort. When Ted heard news of the bombing of Pearl Harbor, he put down what he was doing and drew a bird labeled isolationism, being blasted into the sky by an explosion with the caption

he never knew what hit him. In recent years, many have described the depictions of the Japanese and some of Ted's political cartoons as being racist To again pull a quote from history.com about this with the United States now at war with Japan Geisel's cartoons increasingly trafficked in racial stereotypes. He portrayed Japanese leaders as narrow-eyed buck-toothed caricatures and Again, I will address this before the episode is over. On February 13, 1942, PM ran a Dr. Seuss cartoon captioned, waiting for the signal from home. The cartoon depicted Japanese Americans along the Pacific coast,

lining up to get bricks at TNT. Biographer Brian J. Jones would call this one of the lowest moments in Dr. Sousa's career. Further, it's a shockingly tone-deaf message coming from Ted Geisel who had experienced bigotry by association during World War I when he was pelted with coal and mocked for no reason other than a shared heritage with the enemy. At the same time he's making these drawings, Ted was also speaking out against anti-semitism and fascism. March 27th 1942 the Saturday Evening Post published a piece by writer Milton S. Mayer called the case against the Jew. Mayer accused Jews of being the source of national and international issues.

The very next day PM editor Ralph Ingersoll published an editorial on the front page of PM that said America is great because of the fact that not races or creeds, but the people themselves are what is important. Neither the colors they come in nor the creeds their fathers handed down to them shall be allowed to hinder nor to help them in their pursuit of happiness. Ted was inspired by PM's response and marked a turning point in his career. He drew cartoons disavowing anti-semitism and racism of all forms. He still used his cartoons to speak out against Japan and the war atrocities the

Japanese Empire was committing and to be clear they were especially ruthless as we have gone over numerous times here before. But Ted never again advocated for the internment of Japanese Americans like he had previously. In June of that year, civil rights leader A. Philip Randolph spoke in front of a crowd of 18,000 at Madison Square Garden, asking for an end to discrimination in the military, in labor unions, and in government contracting. And two weeks later, Ted produced a cartoon also advocating for the war industry to end discrimination. Back to 1942 now, Ted Geisel was too old for the draft, but he was recruited to use his creative skills

for the benefit of the US during the Second World War. He originally applied for a commission from Naval Intelligence, but it was a long approval process. And so in December of 1942, he accepted a commission from the Army. And Ted would say, they, the Army, didn't want me, but they had to have me. He reported for active duty at Fort MacArthur, California, in the San Pedro neighborhood of Los Angeles, January 7th, 1943. Ted joked that he joined the army to save face. He said, I got a letter to the editor at PM saying, Dr. Seuss, who was so old he

can't be drafted, got us into this war. I thought maybe I'd started the war, so I better join up. Ted had been actively recruited to join the army by lieutenant colonel Frank Capra the director and command of a unit from the Within the signal core which creates and manages communications and information systems for the military Capra was tasked with producing training films informational brochures and other educational materials for soldiers And yes, this is that Frank Capra the biggest director in Hollywood at the time One of the biggest ever guy who won the Academy Award for best director three separate times In late 1942 Capra sent out writer Leonard Spiegelgas to New York to look for writers artists and filmmakers Spiegelgas found Ted Geisel and reported quote

He has remarkably good brain and seems to me useful infinitely beyond a cartoonist Ted was offered a temporary appointment with Capra's unit effective December 31st 1942. Days later Ted found out he had been accepted by Naval Intelligence but now declined their offer. After arriving at Fort MacArthur Ted was commissioned as a captain. Frank Capra's unit moved into the vacant Fox studio, the lot at 1421 North Western Avenue in Hollywood California,. Showbiz! That location was called Fort Fox. Today it's a strip mall. It's a Target, a Pizza Hut, and a couple other shops.

Ted's duties at Fort Fox were similar to a regular day job, which allowed him to go home at the end of the day. He and Helen moved into a three-bedroom home in Hollywood. When Ted arrived, Capra's unit was working on the first of a seven-film series titled Why We Fight. The first film, Prelude to War, examined how Japan conquered Manchuria and how Italy conquered Ethiopia. It would later win an Academy Award for Best Documentary.

Capra told his team, You are working for a common cause. Your personal egos and idiosyncrasies are unimportant. There will be no personal credit for your work, either on the screen or in the press. The only press notices we are anxious to read are those of American victories." Fucking hell, Nimrod. Capra was apparently a very cool dude, widely respected by all the men in his unit. Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Paul Hogan would later say that the innate quality of

Capra's leadership was so implicit that he never had to exert it. It came from the power of that man's character. Capra's unit would produce 17 orientation and propaganda films, just uh some just 10 minutes long, some over an hour. They also produced regular 15 minute news reels every two weeks and a weekly staff film report, which was a classified project. The briefing films included war footage that was viewed by the president and other federal officials. The unit had to sort through over 200,000 feet of raw footage and cut together reels with narration and occasional animation. One of Ted's first assignments was making art for a U.S. Medical Corps booklet teaching soldiers to protect themselves from malaria. Captain Monroe Leaf, a PR consultant

author of the story of Ferdinand, a children's book, believed that soldiers would be more likely to read and understand a brochure if it was similar to children's literature. He offered to write the text and created a character called Anne, short for the anaphylese mosquito which transmits malaria. It was very easy for Seuss to draw a mosquito because of all the work he had done for Flit. Capra then approached Ted with the concept that would become the newsreel's most popular segment. A year earlier he assigned a staff writer to develop a short comedic film titled Hey Soldier, where a private learns the rules of the army the hard way. The film was never produced, but Capra noticed that

the soldiers preferred animated segments. Capra proposed a series of animated shorts now about a bumbling soldier named Private Snafu. Snafu, by way is a military acronym. Stands for Situation Normal All Fucked Up. It means that the situation is bad but that that's the normal state of affairs. I have used that word a ton of times over the course of my life never knew it was an acronym until this week. Once again the more you know. Well Ted sent project bids to Disney and Warner Brothers about this. Disney wanted full ownership of the private snafu character which sounds

like Disney. Warner Brothers did not. Ted worked with writer and animator Charles M. Jones who had been directing projects for Warner Brothers for six years. Ted wrote the scripts for the first installments of private snafu to set the tone and pace for other writers. That experience would help him learn how to create storyboards. Private Snafu first premiered in June of 1943. Massive hit amongst the soldiers. Britannica will describe Private Snafu as a bald bumbling GI with the looks of Elmer Fudd and the voice of Bugs Bunny. In nearly 30 episodes the misadventures of the Inep soldier both entertained and educated servicemen by demonstrating the pitfalls

of doing things exactly as they shouldn't be done, such as disobeying orders, evading censors, and leaking classified information. Ted's private Snafu cartoons were much more risqué than his normal works, but the acronym that inspired the name was a change to Situation Normal All F fouled up. You know, can't have can't have fucked. It's gonna, you know, just cause people lose their minds. Snafu was not censored like other cartoons at the time though because it was solely for a military audience and did not have to uphold the motion picture production code. The cartoons could include mild profanity, off-color jokes, and double entendres. I had no idea these cartoons were made. Same animation styles, old Looney Tunes cartoons.

I had no idea these cartoons were made. Same animation styles, old Looney Tunes cartoons. Here's an excerpt from Private Snafu's, a Private Snafu cartoon called Spies. Oh, he's being spied on. Shhh, don't pre-divert to no one, but he's going on a trip. Hey, give me some magazines to read for when I'm on the ship. Uh oh, being spied on. Don't pre-divert to no one, but he's going to go by ship. So you get it, right? Private Snafu walks around town, leaking a minor detail here, a minor detail there, thinking nothing of it, you know, unbeknownst to him, Japanese,

Italian, and German spies are following him everywhere he goes, and they're putting all the pieces together, and they figure out what his secret mission is. And then they blow him the fuck up when he's out at sea on that mission. He's got bombed. He's sinking down to the bottom of the ocean. Looney Tunes style. Now he's fucking down there in hell. He went all through the ocean down into hell. The devil appears. The devil looks like Hilly. The devil looks like Hillary. Come on, let's go and tell the In March of 1944, Ted was promoted to major and now I began focusing on live action documentaries. One of those was Your Job in Germany, which explained to soldiers what their mission would be after the Nazis surrendered. Your Job in Germany, directed by Frank Capra, was later remade into the Academy Award winning 1945 short documentary film, Hitler Lives.

Ted would not be credited for that film. Your Job in Germany warned soldiers that Germans could not be trusted. A line from the film read, the Nazi party may be gone but Nazi thinking, Nazi training and Nazi trickery remain. The German lust for conquest is not dead. Very interesting for Ted to work on that as a German-American with German-born grandparents and undoubtedly relatives still living in Germany.

Ted traveled to Europe to show generals where the top secret film or excuse me to show generals there the top secret film and he actually ended up being trapped for three days behind German lines during the Battle of the Bulge, last major German offensive on the western front until he could be rescued. The only poor review of his documentary came from General George Patton, the infamous George Patton, who said a one-word profanity and then walked out of the screening. I gotta suck Patton one of these days. Dude was such a fucking character. Just a living legend, especially during World War II. Before moving on, let me share just a few excerpts of Patton's infamous speech to the Third Army delivered in 1944 before the Allied invasion of France when Patton was 58 years old. I'll bounce around between a few great quotes from this speech.

You are all not going to die. Only 2% of you right here today would be killed in a major battle. Every man is scared in his first action. If he says he's not, he's a goddamn liar. An army is a team. It lives, eats, sleeps, and fights as a team. This individual hero stuff is bullshit. The bilious bastards who write that stuff for the Saturday Evening Post don't know any more about real battle than they do about fucking.

Each man must think not only of himself, but think of his buddy fighting alongside him. We don't want yellow cowards in the army. They should be killed off like flies. If not, they will go back home after the war, goddamn cowards, and breed more cowards. The brave men will breed more brave men. Kill off the goddamn cowards and we'll have a nation of brave men. God, no one give a fucking pep talk. Like old blood and guts. Back to Ted, he also wrote the script for the film Know Your Enemy Japan, which was released the same day the atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. Ted also worked on the 18 minute film, Our Job in Japan,

but General MacArthur prevented that film's release before it was finished. Following the war, Ted and Helen would use the unreleased Our Job in Japan short film as the basis for their screenplay for the 1947 documentary Design for Death, which would earn another Academy Award. Very cool that the two of them won an Academy Award together or each one won while working together. During his service Ted received a Legion of Merit

Award for exceptionally meritorious service in planning and producing films particularly those utilizing animated cartoons for training and forming and enhancing the morale of the troops. Also in 1947 Ted and Helen moved to La Jolla California, a sleepy and gorgeous seaside community just north of San Diego. Best weather in the whole damn country in my opinion. Average daily temperature year-round 70.5 degrees Fahrenheit with a slight breeze coming off the ocean. The always sunny, the mean daily maximum temperature varies from 66 in January to 79 in August. The low 47 to 66 degrees

based on the month. Record low just barely below freezing in January. 99 out of 100 days for me at least. Doesn't get too cold at night. Doesn't get too hot during the day. Low humidity and ocean air. Sorry, I'm just a huge fan of the San Diego area climate. The Geisel's had visited La Jolla during their November 1928 one-year anniversary trip two decades earlier and knew they wanted to live there permanently. Telling you it's got that weather. The views. They lived in an old observation tower, which they appropriately named the tower. It's the badass piece of property. Here in La Jolla, Ted will mostly

dedicate the remainder of his life to writing books and he wrote many if not most of them in the Tower. He would publish again over 60 books. He won't be able to only write books for a while though. Still not making enough money off of just books but he'll write and illustrate for at least eight hours a day and then garden in his spare time. He and Helen were also active in their community and served on several non boards. But Ted wasn't only writing children's books in the post-war years, 1951. Ted co-wrote the animated short Gerald McBoing Boing, which was actually another Academy Award winner. Who knew he fucking won all these Academy Awards? Here's a little sample.

They say it all started when Gerald was two. That's the age kids start talking. At least most of them do well when he started talking you know what he said he didn't talk words he went instead cried his father his face turning gray that's a very odd thing for a young boy to say his father his face turning gray that's a very odd thing for a young boy to say and poor Gerald's father rushed to the phone and quick dial the number of Dr. Malone come over fast the poor father fled our boy can't speak words he goes boing boing instead you get the idea damn kid won't stop saying boing boing in other words like that.

It just makes little sound effects with his mouth instead of words. It's actually a really sad cartoon. I'm surprised they allowed something kind of like that dark to win. Gerald's dad will end up insisting that Dr. Malone operate on his boy to find the source of the noises and Gerald will die on the operating table. And then his dad will mangle his corpse, dig into his guts with his hands to find the source of the strange sounds his son is making, but he can't. He ends up committed to an insane asylum for the rest of his life, constantly crying out, the boing boing is in the blood! The boing boing is in the blood!

No, he grows up to become a, essentially a famous sound effects creator for Hollywood productions. It's a happy tale. Ted started working on one of his most beloved books, Horton Hears a Who, in the fall of 1953. The manuscript was delivered to Random House in January of 1954 and released in August of that year. Horton Hears a Who was inspired by Ted's visit to Japan in 1953. He was affected by the devastation of the atomic bombing and retracted some of his previous anti-Japanese views. That's awesome. The book features the famous line, a person's a person no matter how small, which was not a commentary on the size of Japanese people I don't think.

Horton, here's a who, also marked the first time Geisel had deliberately written a book with an ethical point of view. His 1953 book The Sneetches also touches on racism in an age-appropriate way for children. The Sneetches are a group of yellow bird-like creatures, some of whom have a green star on their bellies. At the beginning of the story, Sneetches with stars discriminate against and shun those without stars. And then an entrepreneur slash con artist, a fucking grifter, named Sylvester McMonkey McBean Calling himself to fix it up Chappie He appears offers the snitches without stars the chance to get them with his star on machine for three dollars each

The treatment is instantly popular But this upsets the original star ability snitches as they are in danger of losing their special status McBean then tells them about his star off of losing their special status, McBean then tells them about his star off machine costing $10, and the Sneetches who originally had stars happily pay the money to now have them removed in order to remain special. However, McBean does not share the prejudices of the Sneetches and allows the recently starred Sneetches through this machine as well. Ultimately, it escalates with the Sneetches running from one machine to the next, until, quote, neither the Plane nor the Starbellies knew whether this one was that one, or that one was this one, or which one was what one, or what one was who. The Sneetches eventually learn after growing broke and getting swindled by that

son of a bitch, that no good rat fink McBean, that neither Planebellied nor Starbellied Sneetches are superior, and they're able to get along and become friends. Team meat sack. Hail Nimrod. But still at this point, the money from books is not enough to live on and Ted continued doing mostly ad work. As discussed in the intro, in 1954, Life published an article criticizing American children's reading levels.

And now Random House asked Ted to write a children's primer using about 220 vocabulary words. Ted's resulting work, The Cat in the Hat, is published in March of 1957. It was 223 words. It is this iconic book that cemented Geisel's place in children's literature. Oh dear, said the cat, you do not like our game. Oh dear, what a shame, what a shame, what a shame. Then he shut up the things in the box with a hook, and the cat went away with a sad kind of look.

That is good, said the fish. He has gone away. Yes, but your mother will come. She will find this big mess, and this mess is so big, and so deep, and so tall, we cannot pick it up. There is no way at all. And then, who was back in the house? Why the cat!

Have no fear of this mess mess said the cat in the hat I always pick up all my playthings and so I will show you another good trick that I know Then we saw him pick up all the things that were down He picked up the cake and the rake in the gown and the milk and the strings and the books and the dish and the fan And the cup and the ship and the fish and he put them away Then he said this is that then he was gone with a tip of his hat. That was his first true hit. Sold very well right out of the gate,

12,000 or more a month, the first few months, then it went up from there. Within three years, it sold nearly a million copies, also received critical acclaim. And now at the age of 53, Ted does not have to take work he doesn't want to do. Especially because that same year, Ted also published How the Grinch Stole Christmas, now a holiday classic that encourages young readers to perform good deeds.

Sales for this book seem to have been similar for sales of Cat in the Hat. It's happening, it's finally happening. He is now a full-time professional author. But before exploring more of his literary success, let's back up to the timeline, or back up the timeline a few years and discuss one of the most significant developments in Dr. Seuss's personal life. In the early spring of 1954, Ted learned that Dartmouth wanted to bestow him with an honorary doctorate degree several weeks before heading to the commencement ceremony. In May, Ted and Helen attended a dinner party together in La Jolla and when they got up to leave Helen, who was now 55 years

old, she complained of pain in her feet and ankles and a physician who happened to be a guest at this party asked to examine her. Helen refused to let him take a closer look because she was embarrassed. Ted then drove the couple home, even though Helen typically always drove because Ted was infamously a terrible driver and he got Helen into bed. By the following morning, the pain had intensified, spread to her legs and lower back that night, Helen was taken to a clinic. By this point, her arms, hands, and face were numb and she couldn't swallow.

Quickly, Helen had trouble standing, speaking, and focusing, which caused her to become panicked. Ted took her to see a doctor, and he diagnosed her with Guillain-Bouret syndrome, a serious disorder, where the immune system mistakenly attacks the nerves and it can lead to paralysis. Helen was transferred to see a specialist at the San Diego County Hospital. By the time she arrived there she was unable to breathe on her own, had to be taken to the ICU placed on an iron or placed in an iron lung which was commonly used to treat people suffering from polio at that time. Interesting fact about polio, the polio vaccine actually discovered by a neighbor of the Geisels in La Jolla, Jonas Salk. Helen's health steadily deteriorated until she was fully paralyzed from the neck down. It's fucking terrifying.

She was also disoriented, confused, became convinced that she was in prison because she and Ted had lost all their money and her health continued to deteriorate further. She struggled to recognize her husband or her doctors, eventually lost the ability to speak at all. Ted was frantic and frightened, refused to leave the hospital to go home for a long time. He tried to work, but he couldn't focus. The Dartmouth commencement ceremony was out. Fortunately, Helen started to improve in late June. She regained the ability to swallow on her own, could make some sounds, but wasn't talking yet. Starting on July 4th, she was removed from the iron lung for brief periods of exercise. Helen was then moved to the

Rehabilitation Center of Santa Monica for four months of physical therapy. Ted checked into the nearby Ocean Palms Hotel to work and visit his wife as often as he could. That was when he received his first copies of Horton Here's a Who for publication. Crazy what personal problems he was dealing with when he wrote that beloved book. Helen's paralysis proceeded further in July and August and feeling a return to her neck, chest, arms, and legs. She still couldn't speak nor feed herself though, would need extended physical therapy. When she then finally learned to speak again, strangely one of her first words was

rabbit. Dead recalled that Helen improved through sheer force of will, was eventually able to walk without crutches. She was finally able to return to La Jolla in September. She moved into a friend's guest house as the tower was built on a hill and had too many stairs. Helen sadly would be plagued by varying levels of nerve pain in her legs and feet for the rest of her life. She described it as a feeling that her shoes were always several sizes too small. Which sounds fucking terrible. The summer following the beginning of Helen's health problems in June of 1955, Dartmouth bestowed an honorary degree of humane letters to Geiselnau with the citation, you single-handedly have stood as Saint George

between a generation of exhausted parents and the demon dragon of unexhausted children on a rainy day. Oh man that's so good. Jumping ahead three years in 1958 Ted and Helen who other than foot and leg pain is back to where she was before her illness. They co-founded Beginner Books Incorporated, a division of Random House. Phyllis Cerf was one who helped push them to do that. Phyllis was a former actress, newspaper writer, ad exec, the wife of Random House co-founder Bennett Cerf. Incredibly impressed by Cat in the Hat. After reading it, hearing about its sales, she went to her husband with an idea. She suggested that Random House set up an imprint dedicated solely to publishing books just like the Cat in the Hat. Dr. Seuss sales were booming at the time.

Random House was the largest publisher of children's books in the US. It was a perfect combo. In late 1957, Phyllis invited Ted to lunch while he was visiting New York and she proposed beginner books, which would use a list of approved vocabulary words and would serve the same purpose as the Cat in the Hat, getting young children interested in reading, and Ted was on board. He told the New York Times in 1962, I'd say that the most useful of my books is the Cat in the Hat. That had a different purpose, to help reading, and it goes back to my old ambition to be an educator. There were

some important stipulations on Ted's side. He had to be allowed to produce books independent of the venture and Helen had to be brought in as a full partner, which is super cool. Phyllis Serf accepted his terms and they launched Beginner Books in June of 1958. Ted was made president, Phyllis was made chief executive, and Helen was an equal but untitled partner. Phyllis later told Publishers Weekly, "...we want to publish books that take up where textbooks leave off."

Initially, educators and parents were skeptical that beginner books could continue producing engaging easy-to-read books every single year. But no need to worry, Ted was on fire now, now that he didn't have to, you know, be distracted by other work. Write, write, write. Ted could write with all his might. Late at night by candlelight. My, that Ted would write and write. Draw, draw, draw. The wonderful creatures Ted would draw. Creatures that would make you ooh and ah.

Thing one and thing two, the Grinch and Cindy Lou Who. Oh, the wonderful new and strange things our dear Theodore now drew for you. Beginner books would publish famous Dr. Seuss work such as Hop on Pop, One Fish Two Fish, Red Fish, Red Fish Blue Fish, Green Eggs and Ham, and Fox in Socks. Fox in Socks teaches tongue twisters such as Socks on Chicks and Chicks on Fox, Fox on Clocks on Bricks on Blocks, Bricks and Blocks on chicks and chicks on fox, Fox on clocks on bricks on blocks, Bricks and blocks on knocks on box. Ted and Helen also created the Dr. Seuss Foundation in 1958 and to date that organization

has gifted over $300 million to charitable causes. So hail Nimrod. December 18th, 1966, Dr. Seuss's book, The Grinch Who Stole Christmas is adapted into a made for TV cartoon for CBS. The 26-minute special was budgeted at more than $300,000, approximately $3 million in present-day funds, which was a shocking amount for a 26-minute cartoon. In comparison, A Charlie Brown Christmas only cost $96,000, and that was $20,000 over its original budget.

It was listed as a Cat in the Hat production. I bet many of you have seen it. A shitload of times. They still air the hell out of this every holiday season and I still love it. Every who down in Whoville liked Christmas did not. Oh, Grinch. The Grinch hated Christmas the whole Christmas season. Now, please don't ask why no one quite knows the reason. It could be perhaps that his shoes were too tight. It could be his head wasn't screwed on just right. But I think that the most likely reason of all may have been that his heart was two sizes too small.

Pretty funny that the Grinch might be grumpy because his shoes are too small, or I guess his socks are too tight, right? Considering what we know about Ted's wife Helen's feet pain. How her feet felt, due to her Guillain-B beret syndrome like her shoes were always several sizes too small. Is that a little? Inspiration there she pretty grumpy. I bet she was I would fucking be grumpy if my feet hurt all the time In 2000 the Grinch story was adapted into a full-length animated live-action feature starring Jim Carrey fucking crushed made almost 350 million dollars at the box office against a budget of 123 million dollars and has made who knows how many more millions on DVDs, syndication, and streaming rights sales. And then the story was remade into

an animated film in 2018 starring Benedict Cumberbock and Rashida Jones, crushed even harder, made 540 million dollars at the box office versus a seventy five million dollar budget holy shit that's a lot of profit how many mansions in the Hollywood Hills were built with Grinch money the Grinch the Grinch how many pennies did he make many forget to pinch and that wasn't the only dr. Seuss book to be adapted into a movie in 2008 Horton here's a Who released as an animated film starring Jim Carrey again Steve Carell Carol Burnett 85 million dollar budget just under 300 million to the box office Jim Carrey making so much Seuss coin

2012 the Lorax was adapted into an animated movie starring Danny DeVito, Zac Efron, Taylor Swift, Betty White power I mean Betty White. Oh Betty White we love her, 70 million dollar budget, 351 million dollars of the box office, it was also 2003's Cat in the Hat film starring Mike Myers, Alec Baldwin, Kelly Preston and Dakota Fanning, 109 million dollar budget, 134 million dollars of the box office, not as good but still profitable and who knows we know how it's done with you know streaming rights, sales, syndication, all that. There's also been TV series, television specials, Broadway musical, etc. Dr. Seuss's IP has made other people hundreds of millions of dollars over the years.

Pretty magical when you think about it. There are probably a dozen or more multimillionaires out in the world who owe most of their fortune to one guy's doodles and rhyming, you know, stories. Dr. Seuss was a full-time, thriving, respected children's author by the 1960s, but his personal life would be troubled by a terrible tragedy. Ted and Helen, at this point in their lives, loved to host weekly sit-down dinners at their house with at least 30 guests. These big parties. Sounds awesome. Invitations to their home were, according to one source, some of the most coveted in the region. Around 1963 estimated based on a letter written by Geisel, they became close with

another married couple, Gray and Audre Demond. Audre was born on August 14th 1921 in Chicago. She earned her bachelor's of science in nursing from Indiana University in 1944. Later worked at the Cambridge City Hospital in Massachusetts and Audre married a doctor, a cardiologist to be exact, E. Gray Diamond who went by Gray in 1945. Gray served in the US Army Medical Corps, was the head of the Department of Medicine at the University of Kansas Medical Center. Audrey had dreamed of marrying a doctor, having two daughters and she did. Her daughters are Lark Grey, Damon Cates and Leah Diamond, or Leah Damond. And Audrey's life was going according to plan until she met Ted Geisel.

Ted liked Grey because he had a great sense of humor, but he was more interested in Audrey for different reasons. Uh-oh. It's little Ted, little Ted, and I want to come in. I want to get to know you, dear Audrey, both outside and in. Little Ted, little Ted doesn Ted and I want to come in. I want to get to know you dear Audrey both outside and in Little Ted little Ted doesn't care that we're married doesn't think with that head He only wants you naked dear Audrey and with him in bed The demands often picked up the Geisel's drove them to parties in town or the couples would spend time together at the tower and Ted was Attracted to Audrey because of her silly nature and bubbly personality, but let's be fucking real Also because she was very fit had a great figure much younger than him and they had some chemistry

Helen could sense something was going on between the two how sad for her and she told her friend Judith Morgan whose husband served on Community boards with Ted I don't know how it happened But suddenly four have to go everywhere together on top of the stress of her suspicions and perhaps in part because of them Helen's health would start to decline again in 1965 and now she feared she was going blind. And then on March 24th, 1967, in the midst of all this, Ted is pulled over in San Diego after police officer sees him change lanes three times. He's arrested, taken to city jail, and he fails his sobriety test with a blood alcohol content level of 0.13. He's released. The incident did

not cause much damage to his reputation beyond a few headlines with titles like Dr. Seuss was soused. Not bad. Helen Geisel celebrated her 69th birthday, September 23rd, 1967, and in an effort to revive their marriage, which was now Rocky, Ted and Helen go on an extended vacation in Colorado. Ted will bring with him three kilos of Viagra, a 50 gallon steel drum of industrial strength lube, two giant suitcases of sex toys. He'll work with a contractor to have a sex swing installed in the home they've rented. A special vinyl covering will be added to the floor and walls. Ten different sizes of dildos will be

mounted on the floor and those walls. The room had black lights, fans, heaters, dozen shower heads, and a small lap pool with a wave machine. Ted had professional sex workers, men and women both, flown in from Thailand, Nigeria, Brazil, Germany, and Kansas. He had professionally trained sex monkeys brought up from Panama. He had an entire Cirque du Soleil troupe of contortionists and acrobats brought in from Las Vegas. He physically prepped for a month with a special yoga instructor from India had two of his ribs removed Had three inches added to his penis by the best cosmetic surgeon in Beverly Hills He had his nutsack reshaped to make it smoother more symmetrical and more attractive had it resize to provide a more appealing visual

He experimented with LSD and spent two weeks living as a power bottom in West Hollywood to become more open and comfortable with different sexual Experiences, but it still wasn't enough. Ted O'Teddy tried it all. He even had a dominatrix stomp on his balls. He gathered up lube, he shaved his pubes, he sucked on both Dick and Jane's boobs. He tried the bottom and he tried the top. Ted did everything he could to make that pussy pop. But in the end it wasn't enough, even when he dressed up like the Gimp. Helen's kitty was still dry and little Ted was still limp. Okay back to

reality now. I need a little silliness before this gets so sad. Following the Colorado vacation where their romance was clearly sadly tragically not rekindled, the couple returns to La Jolla in mid-October and resumes socializing with their friends and then just days, Helen Geisel died of suicide. October 23rd, 1967. She went to bed around 11pm the night before. Ted was up late that night working on his book, the foot book, until 2am. At that point he went to sleep in his own bedroom.

The couple's housekeeper, Alberta Shaw, arrived for work at 10am the morning of the 23rd. The house was locked and quiet, which was unusual because Helen was at least normally up at that time but Helen's bedroom door is closed. When Shaw cracked open the door after knocking and hearing no answer she found Helen in bed and a half empty bottle of sodium pentobarbital tablets on her nightstand along with a handwritten note. Helen's note read as follows and this is so sad. Dear Ted, what has happened to us? I don't know. I feel myself in a spiral going down, down, down into a black hole from which there is

no escape, no brightness. And loud in my ears from every side I hear, failure, failure, failure. I love you so much. I am too old and ameshed in everything you do and are that I cannot conceive of life without you My going will leave quite a rumor, but you can say I was overworked and overwrought your reputation will not be harmed Sometimes think of the fun we had through the years God damn Now you get a suicide note like that from your spouse

Oh the pain you would feel knowing how much pain you would cause them, whether you had done so intentionally or not, or consciously or not, whether it was actually your fault in some way or not. But the guilt, the fucking guilt and so sad she had dedicated her life to his life for so long, she could not imagine spending her final years alone if he were to leave her. And she must have known, she had one foot out the door, that one line, I am too old and a mesh in everything you do and are that I cannot conceive of life without you. Oh, that must have stabbed Ted right in the heart.

Ted said about the loss of his wife, I didn't know whether to kill myself, burn the house down, or just go away and get lost. Well, he wouldn't do any of those. Throughout the following winter of 1967 going into 1968, Ted was highly aware of the gossip about him and Audrey. There was a lot of speculation that Helen had taken her life primarily because of an ongoing affair between Ted and Audrey. Sounds like, you know, she probably hadn't done that. If Ted ever felt partially responsible for her death, he never said so and Audrey never

said so either. Audrey believed her relationship with Ted was inevitable. She once said, he fell in love. I have to feel that in the big picture it was meant to happen. In the spring of 1968, Ted informed a crew of scheduled contractors working on his home that there had been a change in plans. The architect learned that Audrey was now living at the tower just six months following Helen's death and that she was now in charge of the remodel. Weeks prior, Audrey informed her husband that quote, something was lacking and she was moving to Reno of the remodel. Weeks prior, Audrey informed her husband that, quote, something was lacking, and she was moving to Reno long enough, to the day, just long enough,

to meet the residency requirements so she could legally file for divorce. Grey Daman, her husband, is shocked, but when he realized his wife was leaving him, he knew immediately who she was leaving him for. And apparently all he asked of her was that she not get into a car with Ted if he was driving. Seriously, because as we mentioned earlier, he was notoriously that bad of a driver, which is so fucking funny and also so sad. Baby, I love you. Please don't leave me. Don't leave me and the girls. What if you must? Promise me this.

You will never get into a car with that man when he's behind the wheel. I know you love him, but he's a fucking menace. Ted told a friend around this time, my best friend is being divorced, and I'm going to Reno to comfort his wife. Eh, not a good look. Man, how messy. At 64 years old, Ted fucks his best friend's wife behind his back, has an affair with his best friend's wife,

that upsets his own wife to the point that she took her own life. Not the final chapter I expected from Dr. Seuss, I gotta say. And I know, no one's perfect. Didn't expect Ted to be perfect. I just I didn't expect this either. Definitely my least favorite part of the story. Ted wrote to a friend in late May, let me put it out flat on the line without any comment or begging for understanding. On the 21st of June, Audrey DeMont is going to Reno to divorce Grey DeMont. Audrey and I are going to be married about the first week in August. I'm acquiring two daughters ages 9 and 14. I

am rebuilding the house to take care of the influx. I am 64 years old. I am marrying a woman 18 years younger. This is not a sudden nutty decision. This is an inevitable, inescapable conclusion to five years of four people's frustration. All I can ask is you try to believe in me." Well, I guess you never know what goes on behind closed doors as they say. Maybe these four had been pretty miserable in their respective marriages for years. Biographer Brian J. Jones quoted Audrey as saying, it would have been nice if we'd met married earlier, but the feeling was that at his age you grab for the gusto, you

don't wait, you don't think you have much time. As planned, Audrey checked into a hotel in Reno, June 21st, 1968. Weeks later, August 5th, Ted and Audrey are married at the Washoe County whore, I was gonna say, that was a weird Freudian slip. I started to say the Washoe County whorehouse instead of courthouse. All right, subconscious, fucking tell them how you feel. Audrey then not only left her husband,

she sent her daughters to a boarding school. Why? She didn't think they would be happy with Ted. Ted and Ted wouldn't have been happy with them. She later said, Ted's a hard man to break down, but this is who he was. He had lived his whole life without children and he was very happy without children.

And she maybe didn't do this, I will add right now. She said that in numerous sources as it comes up. That she sent her kids to boarding school immediately. I was like what the fuck? And then Audrey admitted she herself had never been very maternal. There were too many other things I wanted to do. She said my life with him was what I wanted my life to be. However, as the years passed Ted would develop a close relationship with Audrey's daughters who maybe were not treated as I first thought when I read that stuff about boarding school and divorce. Thankfully in January of 2019 following her mom's death in late 2018 Audrey's youngest daughter Legray D'amon, Leah Legray, did an interview to

combat the narrative that her mom did not want her around and that her stepdad did not want her around either. She wanted to clear up this long-standing misconception and set the record straight. And she said, "'My mother died one month ago tomorrow and it has been devastating for me.' The slant towards her in the media. "'I felt my family has been disfigured and my past rewritten my happy past.'

She recounted how her mom called her after speaking to the New York Times in 2000 and regretted making some comments. She added, "'I can't explain why my mom said some of the things she said.' And I can't explain why she mom said some of the things she said. And I can't explain why she said those things about the family. It's simply not true. I was not sent away.

I had a very strong family life with mom and Ted. I can never say enough good things about Ted. He was loving, kind, fun, and wonderful. At no time was this man the man who would send away a nine-year-old. Audrey Geisel had given two interviews in which she described herself as not maternal and Ted is not wanting her kids around, right, prompting conversation with her youngest daughter, Lark Grey. Daman said, quote, we talked about that and she stopped it. And then she added, my mom wasn't June Cleaver, she was Audrey Geisel, she wasn't baking cookies, she was

doing her own thing, but she was a wonderful mom for me. Daman said she briefly attended boarding school five years later at the age of 14 but spent her childhood like many children of divorced parents mostly shuttling back and forth between two homes which were two loving homes. Said she divided her time between her father cardiologist E Grey Diamond or Damon. God I want to say fucking diamond because it's a weird spelling. It's D-I-M-O-N-D. One fucking letter away from diamond. In Kansas City, Missouri and the Geisel's in La Jolla and she said she had a lot of nice things to say about or and she had

a lot of nice things to say about Ted that she certainly never needed to say. Like Ted Geisel should never be seen as a cold self-absorbed selfish man. I adore Ted or adored. He was a very center of my life. I knew him since the age of two and he became my step-pop when I was nine. She recalled her time with Geisel as being full of peace and serenity. He worked in the house and I was always with him, she said. There was no door to his studio. It opened to the house. He'd make you little things, draw you little pictures and drop them on you

as he walked past you, because I was always on the floor reading. He would make me montages and collages. When I look at my ears with Ted, there was a sensation of peace. It was heaven. My mom created a beautiful household for us and Ted was the center of my life. Ted, there was a sensation of peace. It was heaven. My mom created a beautiful household for us, and Ted was the center of my life. And my pop was a wonderful pop. There was never any estrangement. So I'm very glad that she gave that interview.

Without it, anyone researching Ted's life would have thought very differently about him as a parent based on other sources. After her marriage to Ted, for the rest of her life, Audrey would be heavily involved in running Ted's business affairs, and then she would work hard to preserve his legacy after his death. She would later work on the films The Lorax, Hortnair's A Who, and the made-for-TV-Sews movie Daisy Head Maisie. But now let's return to earlier in the timeline. In 1971, Ted published The Lorax, a book that warned about the dangers of mistreating the environment.

The book came out before environmentalism was a popular movement. Here's a little excerpt. Catch calls the one slur. He lets something fall. It's a truffula seed. It's the last one of all. You're in charge of the last of the truffula seeds, and truffula trees are what everyone needs.

Plant a new truffula, treat it with care, give it clean water, and feed it fresh air. Grow a forest, protect it with care, give it clean water and feed it fresh air. Grow a forest protected from axes that hack, then the Lorax and all of his friends may come back." Ted called books like The Grinch and the Lorax his big books. The New Yorker wrote that these moralistic books have become fables for the modern age. The Cat in the Hat and Sam I Am have taught generations of children to read, but the likes of The Grinch and the Lorax have guided their thinking and feeling. In early 1983 Ted signed the biggest merchandise deal of his career. It was a 10-year contract with Colco, the manufacturer of the Cabbage Patch Kids. Colco offered guys

old ten million dollars to market Dr. Seuss plush toys and video games. Oh fuck yeah. Ted wasn't sure he wanted to spend the final years of his life doing merchandising but he signed the deal on the condition that he would get final approval of all products. But also he signed it because who doesn't want an extra 10 million dollars? You fucking kidding me? Especially back in 1983 when 10 mil was the equivalent of what 32 mil would be today? To get that on top whatever he was making selling books, which is a lot. Oh my god. Saturday the day after signing that agreement Ted who was now was now 79 years old, went for a routine dental checkup and the dentist found small cancerous lesions at the base of his tongue the result of 60 years of smoking.

The doctor recommended surgery to remove the affected area of his tongue, which Ted was not willing to do. He instead went to the University of California Medical Center in San Fran for a second opinion. Their doctors confirmed the cancer diagnosis and recommended a radiation treatment followed by iridium transplant at the base of his tongue to kill the cancer cells. Ted also rejected that treatment. He didn't want his hair to fall out. He talked to Audrey, agreed to a compromise.

He would let the doctors excise the cancer without removing a big portion of his tongue and would have an iridium implant inserted near the site of the lesions. He went into surgery February 14th, 1983, told Audrey, or he and Audrey told no one that he had cancer. Months later December 16th, 1983 Ted underwent a radical neck dissection and deep biopsy to remove the rest of the cancer which had now spread to one of his lymph nodes. Meanwhile, he just kept working.

In 1984 he published the Butter Battle book which discussed the arms buildup and threat of nuclear war during the Reagan administration. The book is about the Ukes and the Zooks, who live on opposite sides of a long curving wall. The Ukes wear blue clothes, the Zooks wear orange. The primary dispute between the two cultures is that the Ukes eat their bread with the butter side up, while the Zooks, those fucking savages, eat their bread with the butter side down. Kill them all! The conflict between the two sides leads to an escalating arms race, which results in the threat of mutually assured destruction. Here's how it ends. Grandpa leapt up the wall with a lopulous leap, and he cleared his horse's throat with a boppulous beep. He screamed, Here's the end of that terrible town full

of Zooks who eat bread with the butter side down. And at that very instant we heard a clup-clup of feet on the wall and old Vantage clupped up. The boys in his backroom had made him one too. In his fist was another big boy, Boomaroo. I'll blow you, he yelled, into pork and wee beans. I'll butter side up you to small smithereens. Grandpa, I shout it, be careful. Oh, gee, who's going to drop it? Will you or will he? Be patient, said Grandpa, we'll see. We will see." Love how he was making fun of how tribal and illogical we humans truly are in his kids' books,

you know, which were just so much more delightfully subversive than I realized. That same year, Ted won the Pulitzer Prize for his special contribution over nearly half a century to the education and enjoyment of America's children and their parents. In addition to his Academy Award when he works, Ted also won three Emmys over the course of his life, excuse me, the Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal and a Peabody Broadcasting Award. 1986 to age 82 Ted published your only old once, a book for obsolete children, a book centered on aging, a picture book for obsolete children. A book centered on aging. A picture book for adults.

This is his second adult book. His first book for adults in 47 years. The book follows an elderly man on a visit to the Golden Years Clinic where he endures long waits and bizarre medical tests. Your Only Old Once was written shortly after Geisel had suffered through a series of illnesses during which he spent a considerable amount of time in hospital waiting rooms. To pass the time, he began sketching images of hospital machines and scenes of medical procedures. How cool to be in a fucking room with this guy while he's doing that. He later began to work those ideas into a book. Geisel quipped that he was

fed up with a social life consisting entirely of doctors. Man, here is an excerpt. For your pill drill, you'll go to room 663 where a voice will instruct you repeat after me. This small white pill is what I munch at breakfast and right after lunch. I take the pill that's kelly green before each meal and in between. These loganberry colored pills I take for early morning chills. I take the pill with zebra stripes to cure my early evening gripes. These orange tinted ones, of course, I take to cure my charley horse. I take three blues at half past eight to slow my exhalation rate.

On alternate nights at nine p.m. I swallow pinkies, four of them. The reds which make my eyebrows strong I eat like popcorn all day long. The speckled browns are what I keep beside my bed to help me sleep. This long flat one is what I take if I should die before I wake It's fucking great Ted's final book Oh the places you'll go was published a year before he died in 1990 Oh the places you'll go has become a popular graduation gift for both high school and college students The book is about the journey of life its challenges and joys and here are the final verses and

Will you succeed? Yes, you will indeed. 98 and three-fourth percent guaranteed. Kid, you'll move mountains. So be your name Buxom or Bixby or Bray or Mordecai Ali Van Allen O'Shea. You're off to great places. Today is your day. Your mountain is waiting.

So get on your way. That's beautiful. Ted still wasn't yet ready for retirement after finishing this book. After writing Oh! The Places You'll Go, he started working on a screenplay for a planned feature movie version of the book. And in July of 1991, at the age of 87, Ted published a one-volume collection of some of his earlier works titled Six by Seuss. Ted also did one of his final interviews in the summer of 1991. It was a written interview. He was asked if he wanted to share a moral message with his readers that hadn't yet been included in his books. And he wrote,

any message or slogan, whenever things go a bit sour in a job I'm doing, I always tell myself, you can do better than this. The best slogan I can think of to leave with the kids of the USA would be, we can and we've got to do better than this and then Ted crossed out The word kids and said I no longer write for children. I write for people In early September of 1991 Ted told his secretary. He was done signing books He accepted he was dying of cancer and refused any more cancer treatments He decided he wanted to die at home in the tower his home of so many years then a few weeks later Ted Geisel did die in his sleep. September 24th, 1991 at the age of 87. On his deathbed he was asked if he had any final thoughts to share with the world and he responded, quote,

let me think about it. I truly hope he intended for those to be his final words that he wanted to end on a cliffhanger. His official cause of death was oral cancer. Dr. Seuss's legacy has remained strong in the decades after his death in 1993. Audrey Geisel founded Dr. Seuss Enterprises to protect and promote her husband's intellectual property and benefit charitable organizations. 1995 the University of California San Diego renamed its main library in honor of Ted Geisel. 1997 the art of Dr. Seuss collection was launched. Limited edition prints and sculptures of Ted's artwork could now be found at galleries alongside the works of Rembrandt, Pablo Picasso and others.

That same year the National Education Association partnered with Dr. Seuss Enterprises to launch a youth literacy initiative called Read Across America. March 2nd Ted's birthday became National Read Across America Day. The celebration has been held on or near his birthday ever since. 1999, over 200 of Ted's political cartoons were collected and published by history professor Richard H. Manier. Old Dick Manier in the book Dr. Seuss Goes to War. In 2015, Random House Children's Books published a new undiscovered Seuss book titled What

Pet Should I Get? Audrey had discovered Ted's manuscripts and sketches in their home in 2013. There have since been additional posthumous publications such as the Bipolo Seed and other Lost Stories in 2011 and Horton and the Quugger Bug and More Lost Stories in 2014. Audrey Geisel passed away herself December 19th, 2018 in La Jolla at the age of 97. And with that, let's hop out of this timeline that has been a lifeline to help me wrap my head around the guidelines of Dr. Seuss's literary skyline. Good job, soldier. You've made it back. Barely. Barely.

Theodore Seuss Geisel. Dr. Seuss. How fun was it to revisit some of his most widely read books? Was it a nice trip down memory lane? Do you feel deprived if you never got to read any of his books growing up? It's never too late to start. If you want to check out some of his books and are low on funds, you can go to anyflip.com. Just A-N-Y-F-L-I-P, anyflip.com, where you can read most of his books with accompanying illustrations for free. Read them for yourself, read them to your kid.

No need to reach for the bookshelf, heaven forbid. You just need the internet, which you already use. It's how you got this podcast, so you have no excuse. Jump into the imagination of one of the best. Ted wasn't perfect but who is? I have no guess. His books don't just help you read they help you think and for that there will always be a need nudge nudge wink wink. But seriously how fun. What a cool life he led. I mean you know I really don't like how things ended with his first wife but I can separate the art from the artists and still appreciate his catalog.

However, we still have one thing I've yet to address. So to the takeaways we go to discuss what can you guess? Time Shuck Top 5 Takeaways Number one, Ted Geisel aka Dr. Seuss came from a family of German immigrants who settled in Springfield, Massachusetts. The Geisel family grew their wealth and developed a strong reputation through a successful local brewery. Number two, although he was famous for his colorful and unique drawings, Ted never formally studied art. Not really. He took one art class. Didn't even finish it. Number three, Ted first used the pen name Seuss, which is his middle name,

after he was fired as editor of his college humor magazine for drinking. He continued using the name Seuss throughout his career, later out of the doctor as a reference to his unfinished graduate studies. Number four, Geisel's first book, and to think that I saw it on Mulberry Street, was rejected 27 times in a row. Ted gave up on his dream of publishing a children's book until he had a chance encounter with an old friend who worked for Vanguard Press, his first publisher. And number five, new info, Dr. Seuss canceled? On March 2nd, 2021, Dr. Seuss Enterprises announced that six of his books would no longer be published due to insensitive imagery. Dr. Seuss Enterprises released the following statement, today on Dr. Seuss' birthday, Dr. Seuss Enterprises celebrates reading and also our mission of

supporting all children and families with messages of hope, inspiration, inclusion, and friendship. We are committed to action. To that end, Dr. Seuss Enterprises, working with a panel of experts, including educators, reviewed our catalog of titles and made the decision last year to cease publication and licensing of the following titles and to think that I saw it on Mulberry Street, If I Ran the Zoo, Mick Eligot's Pool, on Beyond Zebra, Scrambled Eggs Super, and The Cat's Quizzer.

These books portray people in ways that are hurtful and wrong. Ceasing sales of these books is only part of our commitment and broader plan to ensure Dr. Seuss Enterprises' catalog represents and supports all communities and families. Well, there were mixed reactions to this announcement to say the least. Both support and outrage. The New York Times reported the announcement seemed to drive a surge of support for Seuss Classics. Dozens of Dr. Seuss books quickly moved to the top of Amazon's print bestseller list. Many wanted to grab copies before they were gone. The statement made headlines and led to complaints about cancel culture, particularly from conservative

figures. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy posted a video of himself on YouTube reading Green Eggs and Ham the day after the announcement. Tucker Carlson, host for Fox News at the time, criticized cancel culture and said it was demented to pull these Seuss books, adding, if we lose this battle, America is lost. That guy loves hyperbole. Ben Shapiro tweeted, we've now got foundations book burning the authors to whom they are dedicated.

Well done, everyone. President Joe Biden dropped Dr. Seuss altogether from read across America today. Feels like a pretty knee jerk reaction to me, based more in political optics than reason perhaps, but that's just my opinion. There's a lot of opinions out there, still out there about all this. The New York Times wrote,

The estate's decision represents a dramatic step to update and curate Seuss's body of work, acknowledging and rejecting some of his views while seeking to protect his brand and appeal. It also raises questions about whether and how an author's work should be posthumously curated to reflect evolving social attitudes and what should be preserved as part of the cultural record. Philip Nell, a children's lit scholar and author of Dr. Seuss, American Icon, told The Times, It will cause people to re-evaluate the legacy of Dr. Seuss and I think that's a good thing.

There are parts of his legacy one should honor and parts of his legacy that one should not. They may be motivated by the fact that racism is bad for the brand or they may be motivated by a deeper sense of racial justice. Ebony Elizabeth Thomas, associate professor at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education told The Times, folks are not remembering the text itself they are remembering the effective experiences they had around those texts. White children or parents might not have noticed the offensive anti-Asian stereotyping in Mulberry Street. In recent decades librarians and scholars have pushed to reevaluate classic White children or parents might not have noticed the offensive anti-Asian stereotyping in Mulberry Street.

In recent decades, librarians and scholars have pushed to reevaluate classic children's books to contain stereotypes and caricatures. For example, books like Tin Tin and Babar, I never know how you say that elephant's name, Babar, B-A-B-A, have been accused of promoting colonialism and imperialism and have been withdrawn from some libraries following criticism of how non-white characters are depicted. Some authors have edited their works in response to criticisms. Some books have been taken out of circulation altogether such as 10-10 in the Congo, that book no longer widely available in the US. During his lifetime Ted had issued an apology for some of his political cartoons and said they were the result of snap judgments that every political cartoonist has to make. Others have pointed out anti-semitic or Islamophobic overtones in his comics and ads in his later

career. In his book was the cat in the hat black, the hidden racism of children's literature, and the need for diverse books. Scholar Philip Nell makes the case that the character has roots in blackface minstrelsy. Oh my god, minstrelsy. Not a word often said aloud. Blackface minstrel... minstrelsy... oh my god minstrelsy not a word often said aloud blackface minstrel... oh my god minstrelsy there we go in 2019 a journal dedicated to the study of diversity in children's lit published a paper titled the cat is out of the bag orientalism anti blackness and white supremacy and dr. Seuss's children's books yee authors argued that much of Geisel's work exhibits racism or bias against black, Asian, Mexican, Native American, Jewish people, women, other groups.

Authors wrote minimizing or erasing or not acknowledging Seuss's racial transgressions across his entire publishing career deny the very real historical impact they've had on people of color and the way that they continue to influence culture, education, and children's views of people of color. Philip Bump, a national columnist for the Washington Post wrote continue to influence culture, education, and children's views of people of color. Philip Bump, a national columnist for the Washington Post wrote in March of 2021, if Dr. Seuss's profile wanes a bit as a result of the attention being paid to his drawings, the only form of canceling at play here, to whom is harm being done? The answer of course is people who perceive criticism of the casual racism of the past as criticism of their own behavior or as a reminder of how the world around them is changing. A lot of

strong opinions. A lot of definitive opinions about a subjective thing here. Ultimately the estate's decision did not have much effect on the overall success of Dr. Seuss sales. Dr. Seuss continues to outsell other books and children and adult categories. In 2022 it was reported that Dr. Seuss was the number one literary license in the U.S. by print sales according to data from NPD BookScan, meaning he sold more copies than any other IP-based books in both children and adult titles. Okay, so where exactly did all this outrage come from? Most of what I can tell, just reading in other sources that I haven't referenced

here, mostly based for most people being upset in how Dr. Seuss illustrated specifically Japanese characters. And I gotta say, I may be unpopular opinion, but I don't agree personally with this criticism and I'll explain why. I think a lot of his critics overlooked the fact that his illustration style was based in caricature just across the board. Anyone who has ever seen any of Dr. Seuss's illustrations who also has a basic understanding of the art of caricature should in my opinion be able to tell immediately that you know he exaggerated the features of all his people and creatures for comical effect right the

very definition of caricature is a picture description or imitation of a person in which certain striking characteristics are exaggerated in order to create a comic of grotesque effect When I see a dr. Seuss illustration of a little blonde white girl, for example I see somebody whose big blue eyes have been made so much bigger like ridiculously cartoonishly So because that's how caricatures work when I see an old Dr. Seuss illustration of somebody who is Japanese, their comparatively smaller eyes are now much, much smaller. So is that, just in and of itself, inherently racist? While I'm not an expert, I don't think so. I don't think this was like overt racism. And I'm not saying people shouldn't have complaints, right? We should all be able to wait on this.

But for me, like in old political cartoons, did Dr. Seuss lean on racial stereotypes about the Japanese? Yes, he did. But did he do the same thing for Hitler's Germans? Did he do the same thing for Mussolini's Italians? Oh, he sure did. They all had various ethnic features grossly exaggerated. Was anybody outraged by Ted's depiction of Germans or Italians?

Not from what I can tell. Was there a lot of outrage specifically about Japanese depictions? Yeah, and most of it 70 years later. And that to me is just that inconsistency is where it gets a little ridiculous for me. While racism is certainly very, very real, and while racism in this country certainly exists and always has, I find certain accusations of racism in cases like this not as heavy as others, I guess maybe the most diplomatic way to say it. I just I find the way many of us choose to single out some behavior as racist and ignore

other from my perspective pretty identical behavior to be a little absurd. And here's an example of what I mean. Just a few weeks ago at Zany's Comedy Club in Nashville, Lindsay and I are hanging out with three Jewish friends. One wanted us to all share our best street jokes. Ironically, for somebody who's toured as a comic for over 20 years, I have a fucking terrible memory for street jokes. And I just never really cared about them, to be honest. I'm much more likely to roll my eyes and laugh at a street joke.

Sorry, street joke lovers. Only one I can consistently ever remember is the first street joke I was ever told. A joke about two Polish hunters that my grandpa told me when I was probably like eight years old. And one that definitely plays on racial stereotypes about Polish people. Not being smart and being very gullible. Before telling it, one of our Jewish friends said something to the effect of, I would ask Lindsay if she's okay with this, but since she's Polish, she won't understand what we're saying anyway.

And Lindsay laughed and probably because you're wondering what joke I'll tell a truncated version. It's not a good joke. I'm just saying it's not that funny of a joke, but the joke is two Polish hunters go out in the woods and one starts not feeling well and they go to make camp and then when it's time to hunt the one who's not feeling well is just like you know what go ahead and hunt without me I'm gonna stay here and just see if I can you know get feeling better and maybe take a little nap so he takes a nap the other guy goes gets a deer brings it back and He sees that the guy is not asleep is asleep. He decides to play a joke on him He takes all the guts out of the deer and he pushes the guts ridiculously under the sleeping Polish hunter

guts out of the deer and he pushes the guts ridiculously under the sleeping Polish hunter. Then he leaves to go hunt more. Then he comes back and his previously not feeling good friend is up, he's awake and he's making a stew with the deer meat and he seems great and the guy's surprised and he goes, hey man how you feeling? And the guy's like, oh man I'm doing great but I was very sick. You're not gonna believe this but when I took a nap I woke up to realize I had shit all my guts out but with the help of this trusty stick I got them all back in and that's it. Just a stupid joke about somebody who just shoves fucking deer guts up their ass because they think that's normal to do. No one was upset. But what if I would have told a Jewish joke based on stereotypes about you know Jewish people having all the money or controlling Hollywood or this alleged love of gold

Well, I think our Jewish friends there would have still laughed because they have fucked up sense of humor like I do But I strongly feel that other Jewish people might be very offended not all but some so why is it worse to make a Jewish joke? Than a Polish joke similarly. Why is it worse to make a Japanese joke based on Polish joke? Similarly, why is it worse to make a Japanese joke based on stereotypes than it is to make, let's say, a German joke? Is it because the Japanese have historically been the victims of more discrimination and prejudice than the Germans here in America?

I think on the surface that's how we justify it. But does that make sense when you really analyze it? Can we make fun of a group of people because they've only been mocked or disenfranchised a bit? As if there's an acceptable level of prejudice. Imagine if I joke the same way about the Japanese language in the way that I have about the Italian language on this podcast. I fucking promise you I would lose listeners. I would get angry emails. I might even lose sponsors. Might be dropped by my ad agency altogether if I did the Japanese version as a white dude of

Maserati Bugara spaghetti! Right? But is that fair? Does that actually make sense? Just like I'm not Japanese, I'm also not Italian. But if I was Asian, say Filipino, could I then make fun of an Asian accent based in a country where I'm not from and not draw the ire of almost anyone? Oh yeah, I think so. If I was Filipino, could I make fun of the Italian language? Yes, again, I think so based on watching a lot of stand-up comedy for so long. But if I was Italian, while I could make fun of the Italian language, I could not make fun of the Japanese language.

And I just say all of this to illustrate that sometimes racism is very obvious. But there are also unspoken rules when it comes to racism that are not very obvious and that are wildly subjective. And the interpretation of each of these rules varies considerably from person to person, right? What amounts of evidence of someone being racist based on anecdotal evidence from my own life experience varies tremendously from person to person. And based on this subjectiveness, I personally don't think Dr. Seuss was at least overtly racist. And therefore there would be no need

to cancel him posthumously, or posthumously, which actually hasn't been done by the way. You can still find all the books if you want to, at least an ebook form. And I will add, I can be wrong. I can be wrong about this. I'm just one person. I'm a white dude in a country

where white dudes have had it pretty good, making this opinion. If the drawings upset you, or you're worried that they will upset your children, well then don't read them. Other than the Sneetches, everyone should read the fucking Sneetches. The Sneetches does a great job of showing how silly racism truly is. And look, would a true racist back when no one was calling him racist really write such a book? Perhaps some of us mistook what he drew in his books. Perhaps we can overlook what might have been an innocent mistake and not get so shook. Time Suck Top 5 Takeaways Dr. Seuss has been sucked. Thank you to the Bad Magic Productions team for help with making Time

Suck again. Thanks to Queen of Bad Magic, Lindsay Cummins. Thanks to Logan Keith, producing, you know, helping get this episode polished and put out. Thanks also to Olivia Lee for the initial research she did this week. And thanks to the all-seeing eyes moderating the cult of the curious private Facebook page, the mod squad making sure Discord runs smooth, and everybody at the Time Suck subreddit and Bad Magic subreddit. So many fantastic sacks doing so much for this community and now let's head on over to this week's Time Sucker updates. First up solid meat sack David just gonna just gonna go with first name sending a message to Bojangles at timesuckpodcast.com with the subject line of Russian cyber war

episode. Hello, Mr. Cummins, bearer of the mighty leash of Bojangles and made up catchphrase guru. I've been listening for some time to Time Suck ever since I heard about this podcast on Spotify from one of my favorite comedians. For the first three years, I think I listen to every episode. What is big deal? I like Time Suck. As of late, I haven't listened to all of the serial killer episodes. That has nothing to do with the quality of the podcast.

I'm just trying to be a more positive person and listening to other people's pain hurts more than it used to. Yeah, okay. I know I get that. I'm sorry that this is going to be a long email. You probably won't even get to it, which is completely fine. Oh, you're so wrong. However, I just wanted to give my two cents on the situation in Russia. First, I need to tell you why my opinion matters even a tiny bit. From the time I was 14 years old, I wanted to serve in the army and fight the Soviet Union. To that end, I started learning all I could about them.

Then the wall came down and things started to change. But I went ahead with my plans anyway. The plans changed again as they always do. I was called to serve a mission for my church in Russia in 1994. The Russian people often refer to these years as the bad 90s. I was in town in the middle of Russia called Saratov. I stood in bread lines and toilet paper lines and lines for anything else that I needed. However, I found myself loving the people of Russia. I found them to be hard-working, brutally honest, and they loved their families. After spending two years there on my

mission and then another eight months there on my own, I came home and joined the Army. As you know, Special Forces units in the army have a target country and mine was Russia. I still have dozens of manuals from this military sitting on my bookshelf on how to fight the Russian army. I could go on with about this but I just wanted to give you a kind of a basic rundown. So I really liked the episode on Russia's side war and of course it's all very true. However you like almost everyone refer to the Russian government as the Russians and I found that people cannot separate the people of the country from the government of the country as you correctly said the Russian people have Endured a hundred years of propaganda and yet they still see through a lot of it

They still genuinely believe that it is in everyone's best interest for the US and Russia to have good relations However, there has been so much propaganda in the US against Russia that I do not feel like the citizens of this nation feel the same. My own sister, this is so funny, who admittedly is not the sharpest tool to shed, teaches her children that Russia and Russians are a terrible place and that they shouldn't even bother trying to learn about their culture or language. Russian history is filled with good people doing great things. Stanislav Petrov, Vasily Arkhipov, Alexei Annenenko, Valery Bespilov, Boris Baranov, just to name a few. I wonder if you could maybe do a short suck on something good from Russia.

I just know that you're a person who believes that everyone should be good citizens of the world and care about each other. And I know that the people of Russia, a lot of them, are those kind of people. Thanks for all you do and please, please keep butchering Russian words and names. I love it. Seriously though, if you ever want some pronunciation guides on words, I'd be happy to do that, David. Well, David, thank you for the offer and thanks for the kind words. And you bring up a very fair point. The Russian government and the Russian people are of course two different bodies of people. I doubt the Russian government represents the hearts and minds of the average Russian citizen any more than

the US government represents the hearts and minds of many of us. Definitely not me. And yeah, that's a great suggestion. I should try and find a positive story set in Russia. Still flying by the seat of my pants most weeks here, but I will try and remember to find time to find that story. I do feel terrible for the people of Russia Actually, they've endured so much first centuries of mistreatment under the czars Then over 70 years of hell with communism and now a bunch more bullshit under whatever the fuck Putin's regime is Thank you again, and thank you for your service

Next Smart sack Katrina Whittier sent in a message with the subject line of, kids are badass. Hi Dan, I wanted to send over a short video and follow up to your Russian episode. Great work my guy. Did you know that kids in Finland start learning about how to spot fake news and disinformation started in pre-k? I did not know that. Here's a short video if you want to learn more. I thought the ending really wrapped up with information we could all benefit from hearing. It's a Finnish quote.

You have the right to your own opinion, but you don't have the right to your own facts. Anyway, thanks. Love you. Bye. Katrina. Katrina, that's a fucking great quote. You have the right to your own opinion, but you don't have the right to your own facts. That is so perfectly worded and so sadly,

extremely relevant to life today. And yes, let me play a bit of the beginning of the video that you sent me. This is pretty fascinating. In this era of disinformation almost everywhere, a question, when it comes to identifying scams, hoaxes and fake news, are you smarter than a fourth grader?

The answer might surprise you, as Chris Livesey discovered. To say that Finland values education is an understatement. No, that's not Finnish they're speaking. This is a Spanish class at a public elementary school No, that's not Finnish they're speaking. This is a Spanish class at a public elementary school in the capital Helsinki. And yet their language proficiency is not the only thing that makes these fourth grade Finns so remarkable. At just 10 years old, they're already learning to separate fact from fiction. Today's assignment, ever somebody who's seen an alien. So like it's already fake because it says that it was 10 years ago in 2013 and still

nobody has seen aliens ever. So you're saying that if this happened 10 years ago, you probably would have heard about an alien. Yes. These kids are already pros. They've been at it since they were six and they'll keep sharpening their ability to spot hoaxes, avoid scams, and debunk propaganda throughout their education. Man, I'm telling you, the Nordic countries are where it's at.

Even though I disagree with that kid, it's probably been aliens. But I like what he's saying. I like what he's saying. If there was a definitive society, like proof, like positive proof that was undeniable, you know, like we had like a video of some fucking alien that was shot like ten years ago that all the scientists are like, hell yeah, that's not CGI. That's not fake. That's definitely an alien. It'd be the biggest news story of all time. But yeah, the Nordic countries are where it's at, you know. We should truly be trying to emulate them in so many ways. I truly believe that truly smart people

are not afraid to admit when they're wrong. They're not afraid to admit someone is doing something better than them, right? They wanna learn from them. They will be humble enough to try to learn from them. And I wish we could be a smart country and a humble country in that way, right? A country that's not afraid to say,

hey, look at that over there. Man, that's better. Let's not be arrogant. Let's be humble. Let's be curious. Let's learn and improve So thank you Katrina. That's very inspiring and hopeful man It's just fucking Jesus Christ speaking at least three languages at 10 years old and learning critical thinking skills, ah I love your name by the way, Katrina. That's a great name. Okay, one more sweet sack Curtis Nevins

Nevins sent in a message with the subject line of hello Dan and the amazing bad magic fam I just finished the mr. Rogers episode and holy fuck. I didn't cry once not one time. Nope, not me You may not realize this but mr. Rogers and time sucker almost identical one slight difference You're a mush mouth and mr. Rogers was a hot hard father daddy dripping in wool Mr. Rogers taught us to be kids. We needed someone to guide us through the first difficult half of our lives. It's like the torch was passed to you for the race's last leg. Time Stuck teaches us how to be adults in the same way. You feed our curiosity, teach us how to

accept, agree to disagree, and most importantly not give up and look after each other. Other similarities you both sing to us and spark our imagination. I sometimes can't remember Bojangles is a real dog then remember of course he is you both have puppets but none of his puppets are very creepy like Woody. Two Mr. Rogers facts. Korn has a song called Mr. Rogers on the Life is Peachy album. I forgot about that. I used to listen to that album a long time ago many years ago. If I recall correctly he wrote the song after a dream which Mr. Rogers tried to kill him and two Mr. Rogers would narrate himself feeding the fish each episode with

I'm feeding the fish because of a letter he received from a young blind girl who was worried the fish were hungry. I am not sorry about the length or girth of this email. My doctor says it is perfectly normal. If you read this on the air, please give a shout out to the four of the best humans I've ever known. My girlfriend Leandra and her husband David. out to the four of the best humans I've ever known. My girlfriend Leandra and her husband David that listen to the suck. My girlfriend Catherine who doesn't listen to the suck yet, but she will come around. And my best friend Davis who doesn't listen yet either. Please say, fuck you Davis, join the fucking cult already before Curtis bangs your mommy. Hail Nimrod Curtis. PS, next time I trip to shrooms I will catch Mr. or I will watch Mr. Rogers and or

relisten to this episode. It'll be glorious. Oh man watching Mr. Rogers on shrooms. I probably have like this I would cry but be so happy. Curtis thank you for taking the time to send in a message. They really made me feel good about what I what I do. I appreciate you more than you you probably will know. And I love hearing that the reason that Mr. Rogers fed the fish was so that he said the words, you know, I'm feeding the fish, was so that little girl would not worry about them starving. The man was a fucking angel. I have shit on cults so much, but if Mr. Rogers was around today and started a cult and asked me to join, oh, would I consider it? Thanks for the messages, everybody. Thanks for the messages, everybody. Thanks, Time Suckers. I needed that.

We all did. Well, thank you for listening to another Bad Magic Productions podcast. Scare to Death and Time Suck each week short sucks and nightmare fuel on the Time Suck and Scare to Death podcast feeds twice a month. Read something good this week. Maybe some Dr. Seuss this week. Maybe a daily affirmation. Maybe a quick poem or some useful information. Whatever helps your mind to keep on trucking. Whatever makes your soul want to keep on sucking. Was this episode everything you had hoped it would be? Did it make you want to go on a big reading or writing spree? Did you pay five bucks a month to hear it, or did you get it for free?

Did you shake your head in agree, or wish you could shake me out of a tree? However it hit you, I hope it made you want to look into how important it is to read, to write, to feed, to fight our minds so that we might create our own cat in the hat, something we make that leaves the world a better place than it was before there was of you a trace.