Speaker 1: Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
Speaker 1: back to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always
Speaker 1: so much for tuning in. This is our part two
Speaker 1: of a two part series on the weird weird rise
Speaker 1: and spoiler alert fall of the flea circus. Hi, I'm
Speaker 1: ben Hi, I'm no uh what? What? What is? How?
Speaker 1: We flee? Flease on, flease on trapeze tiny, Now you'll
Speaker 1: let you do a game. We flease, Okay, we we
Speaker 1: flease on flying trapeze. We three Bethlehem. That's a good one.
Speaker 1: It's a good tongue twister. But no, it's true. We're
Speaker 1: back with fleas um and we should just dive right
Speaker 1: into because I'm sure a lot of you were slightly
Speaker 1: irritated that we left you with such a cliffhanger where
Speaker 1: you're asking yourself, how do they do it? How? How?
Speaker 1: It doesn't make any sense. They're fleas I know that
Speaker 1: these human fleas or a little a few millimeters bigger
Speaker 1: than um, you know, than the traditional dog or cat fleas,
Speaker 1: but still these are basically microscopic creatures. We talked a
Speaker 1: lot about watchmaking, which requires the use of specialized tools
Speaker 1: to handle microscopic or maybe not microscopic, but very small pieces.
Speaker 1: So Gade, we gotta ask you, what's the deal? How
Speaker 1: was the magic made? And before we get to that,
Speaker 1: we have to say that a lot of those questions
Speaker 1: and complaints came from our very own super producer, Casey Pegrum.
Speaker 1: That's true. He was livid. He was so mad at
Speaker 1: you gave me hit. He's got a lot of a
Speaker 1: lot of thoughts about flea circuses and uh yeah, well
Speaker 1: we'll try to do him proud on this one. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna I'm gonna clue you guys in because there's actually,
Speaker 1: I mean, it is a guarded industry. Let's say there is.
Speaker 1: You guys, remember that show Breaking the Magician's Code where
Speaker 1: that guy in the mask was These are how the
Speaker 1: tricks are done. We're still waiting on the flee circus
Speaker 1: version of that. It hasn't happened yet, or you know,
Speaker 1: maybe it did and nobody noticed. I don't know, but um,
Speaker 1: there are you know, some tricks of the trade that
Speaker 1: we that we know about, or or alleged tricks at least.
Speaker 1: Um For example, one of the stories that these uh
Speaker 1: these flea ring masters often tell and apparently by the way,
Speaker 1: they're called professors usually, um, if you're a flee trainer,
Speaker 1: your professor. So one story that these professors like to
Speaker 1: share is that after they trap these fleas, they tame
Speaker 1: them by keeping them in a shallow glass case with
Speaker 1: a lid on it, and of course the fleas jump
Speaker 1: up and bump their heads on the shallow case, and
Speaker 1: after a few days, supposedly they're not jumping so much anymore,
Speaker 1: not because they're dead, they're just a little more docile,
Speaker 1: and they they've learned how high h the roof is
Speaker 1: of their enclosure, and so they don't jump as high
Speaker 1: anymore because they don't want to hit their heads. So
Speaker 1: their spirits are broken, essentially strip them of their will
Speaker 1: to live. In their brain dead, they can barely move
Speaker 1: um and uh know, they're actually just incredibly well trained, right,
Speaker 1: that's what they claim, at least, I mean, yeah, that's
Speaker 1: you know, probably just part of the act explaining that,
Speaker 1: but they will swear to it. That's how they get
Speaker 1: the fleas to um uh to be, that's how they
Speaker 1: tame them, and how they keep them from jumping out
Speaker 1: of the circus ring or whatever. They only jump yea
Speaker 1: high because they've been conditioned to do so. I mean
Speaker 1: they jump at their full capacity. You're out of fleet.
Speaker 1: You don't know where they could go. It could be
Speaker 1: out in the audience, jump onto a person. And that's
Speaker 1: why that's why they hop, right, because they hop from
Speaker 1: host to host. Can't have that. Yeah, But I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, there are those among us who would argue that,
Speaker 1: you know, these guys are kind of full of it. Uh,
Speaker 1: fleas don't have the capacity for learning um. But one
Speaker 1: thing that is true is that some fleas are better
Speaker 1: athletes than others. Right, they can jump higher, or you know,
Speaker 1: just move it a faster clip. And so you know,
Speaker 1: maybe maybe you have ten fleas and there's only one
Speaker 1: that's kind of nimble and athletic enough, you know, for
Speaker 1: the circus life. And so fleet trainers will keep a
Speaker 1: close eye on on, you know, a potential crop of fleas,
Speaker 1: and they will kind of earmark the guys with potential,
Speaker 1: the ones that are doing the most jumping, you know,
Speaker 1: fit for the circus life, and those become the star
Speaker 1: of the shows. The ones that scut you gotta have it.
Speaker 1: There are is there like a minor league for fleas
Speaker 1: are like it's all the big leagues. It's all I
Speaker 1: just I love that as a career description. What do
Speaker 1: you do? Actually, I am the most successful uh flee
Speaker 1: scout in the southeast region of northwest Ohio. It's a
Speaker 1: big claim to fame, big dreams, that's what claim to fame. Okay,
Speaker 1: But but it is true. It makes sense that not
Speaker 1: every every flee could be the equivalent uh the flea
Speaker 1: version of an Hussain bolt, because not every human is,
Speaker 1: right there always exceptionally adept living organisms. Um did they
Speaker 1: how how did they determine this though? Like? Were they
Speaker 1: just able to notice what's appeared to be one flee
Speaker 1: consistently hopping higher or faster more often than the others?
Speaker 1: Like for me, the biggest difficulty and again I'm I'm
Speaker 1: not a professor in this regard, but for me, the
Speaker 1: biggest difficulty would be uh, differentiating one flee from the next. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you would think so, but again, you know, the secrets
Speaker 1: have not all been revealed. Um, we don't know how
Speaker 1: they're keeping track of these guys. Maybe they're marking them,
Speaker 1: you know, color coded fleas. Um, I'm not sure. Maybe
Speaker 1: it's just like you know, a mother with her with
Speaker 1: her brood. You know, she knows them each bye bye,
Speaker 1: touch by site, by personality, person Yeah, classic Jeffrey. But yeah,
Speaker 1: that's uh, you know, and it's really just so okay,
Speaker 1: these guys aren't trained, right, these fleas, they're just doing
Speaker 1: what comes naturally. They're jumping. They're jumping around. Um, they're
Speaker 1: looking for something to land on and feed on. And
Speaker 1: so that the trick part, the entertainment part, comes in
Speaker 1: what you harness it to. Right. It's putting on these
Speaker 1: little collars and and uh, you know, yoking them to
Speaker 1: chariots or putting little tiny instruments in their hands, um,
Speaker 1: and watching them kind of fiddle away at them. Um.
Speaker 1: The audience kind of supplies the rest. The fleas are
Speaker 1: just jumping around, but because they're tied to these little contraptions,
Speaker 1: the audience reads it as a trick. Right. It's not
Speaker 1: a flee just of mindlessly jumping. He's part of a
Speaker 1: chariot race. He's racing the other fleas around. Um. That's
Speaker 1: you know, that's the illusion that they're selling. And again,
Speaker 1: apparently it worked because this has been an act for
Speaker 1: hundreds of years. Um, we do know again, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: some tricks of the trade, like, for instance, the flea
Speaker 1: music band that we talked about earlier. UM, I do
Speaker 1: love a good music band. Well you're not alone in that,
Speaker 1: um Bertolatto. You know, he's the one that kind of
Speaker 1: pioneered that. Um he blew London away with his his
Speaker 1: flea music band. UM and other people ran with the idea,
Speaker 1: but prepared to think less of him for doing that
Speaker 1: trick because how he actually did it was the fleas
Speaker 1: were glued to the base of the flea circus, and
Speaker 1: then the the instruments were glued to their mandibles, and
Speaker 1: so when you heat the base up, the fleas tried
Speaker 1: to escape. They were trying to get away. But again
Speaker 1: the audience is reading this as them playing twiddling and
Speaker 1: playing the instruments. Pay no mind to that smell of
Speaker 1: cooking fleas. You know, I think they're so small and
Speaker 1: probably wouldn't smell like much. But yeah, they're essentially like
Speaker 1: cooking alive and and trying to save themselves in there,
Speaker 1: and that's it's essentially this is this is animal cruelty.
Speaker 1: I think you could argue that this is animal cruelty. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: And you know, insects are very small. We don't usually
Speaker 1: think of in that terms. People swat a fly without
Speaker 1: thinking twice about it, But this is yeah, altogether different. Right.
Speaker 1: You're making tiny contraptions specifically to yoke them into service
Speaker 1: and then kind of torturing them for people's entertainment, and
Speaker 1: it's on such a small scale that you just don't
Speaker 1: really notice that that's what's happening. Yeah, it's still it's
Speaker 1: still in principle the same thing, because just eliminating of
Speaker 1: flea is different from you know, torturing it in a
Speaker 1: very weird way. It's kind of like beer money bear baiting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's also like it's like a much more elaborate form
Speaker 1: of that little psychopath kid that pulled the wings off
Speaker 1: of flies for fun exactly. So you know, some people
Speaker 1: think that um, this form of entertainment, these flee circuses,
Speaker 1: that they actually declined, you know, in the twentieth century
Speaker 1: because of concerns over you know, animal cruelty and kind
Speaker 1: of the welfare of these fleas. That's not really the case.
Speaker 1: There are some groups out there who definitely felt that
Speaker 1: this was wrong and still do um, But really what
Speaker 1: happened was the fleas got harder to find. It was
Speaker 1: harder to source them, and it was difficult to train
Speaker 1: them such as it was, and you know, you had
Speaker 1: to keep replacing them and stuff like that. Things would
Speaker 1: go wrong. Sometimes fleas would drop dead mid performance. Um
Speaker 1: and so as technology progressed, you know, some of these
Speaker 1: enterprising professors found an easier way of doing this, and
Speaker 1: that was the John Hammond route, the mechanical route. They
Speaker 1: turned to h chanical illusions. They had magnets and electrical
Speaker 1: contraptions that would kind of um again, trick the audience
Speaker 1: into thinking that these objects were being moved and manipulated
Speaker 1: by fleas, when in reality it was, you know, a
Speaker 1: gear system. Yeah, so this to me is pretty clever.
Speaker 1: First off, it's it's kinder to the fleas involved, and
Speaker 1: even if they're not my type of animal, that doesn't
Speaker 1: mean they shouldn't be alive, right, but they it's kinder.
Speaker 1: But also it seems like it's a very easy con
Speaker 1: to pull, is it not. I mean, you would you
Speaker 1: would have these contraptions, you could make them elaborate, especially
Speaker 1: if they're just um automations or mechanisms of their own,
Speaker 1: and people if there are a certain distance, way would
Speaker 1: just assume a flea is there right, Oh yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: once again referring to Jurassic Park. That's uh, That's what
Speaker 1: John Hammond says is the little the little kids would
Speaker 1: see it and be like, oh, I can see the fleas, Mommy,
Speaker 1: do you see the fleas? And uh yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: the audience is willing to believe. I think, so you
Speaker 1: don't really have to torture It turns out you don't
Speaker 1: have to torture four hundred plus bugs every night. Oh
Speaker 1: it's it's it's it's charming, and it's a thing we
Speaker 1: do all the time. I mean, there's no such thing
Speaker 1: as superheroes. You know, there's like it's all suspension of disbelief.
Speaker 1: So how is this any different. It's it's a show,
Speaker 1: I would argue, it's not necessarily an overt form of
Speaker 1: like deception. It's sort of part of the whole deal.
Speaker 1: Right yeah, No, absolutely, people want to believe. Right. Um.
Speaker 1: And but again, you know, the flea circus did not
Speaker 1: did not go into decline specifically because of these animal concerns.
Speaker 1: It was actually largely because hygiene improved so much. Um,
Speaker 1: By the time you get to the twentieth century, we
Speaker 1: have stuff like vacuum cleaners and you know air filters
Speaker 1: in our houses and um, you know a lot of
Speaker 1: cleaning agents and stuff. So the fleas pretty much just
Speaker 1: packed their bags and hit the road. It was too
Speaker 1: clean for them. Uh. And so human fleas, which again
Speaker 1: were the ones being used in these circus acts because
Speaker 1: they were bigger and better jumpers, they just got scarcer
Speaker 1: and scarcer until the mechanical kind of flea circus that
Speaker 1: we're talking about, the fleeless flee circus, became the norm. Oh,
Speaker 1: we should point out there was there was a kind
Speaker 1: of i would say an increasingly desperate band aid or
Speaker 1: transitional phase uh that that you hipped us to where
Speaker 1: some circuses said, while these fleas are dead, but we'll
Speaker 1: we'll just keep using them, right Yeah. Yeah, that's probably
Speaker 1: when they were getting harder to find, and it was
Speaker 1: like or you know, I don't feel like training another
Speaker 1: crop all over again, putting them in the shallow case,
Speaker 1: let's skip that and uh yeah, so they would just
Speaker 1: use the dead fleas again and again. They would dress
Speaker 1: them up in their little costumes and just glue them
Speaker 1: down to uh, you know, wherever they needed to be. Um.
Speaker 1: And so yeah, that was kind of uh like you said,
Speaker 1: the transitional phase. You would see that in in live
Speaker 1: flee circuses, where really it was you know a lot
Speaker 1: of dead fleas mixed in there. And you would also
Speaker 1: see it in the mechanical ones where everything was operating
Speaker 1: on gears and pulleys and that kind of thing. But
Speaker 1: then you had, you know, for the for the kids
Speaker 1: who weren't willing to bring their imaginations to it, I
Speaker 1: guess they were you know, dead ones actually glued to
Speaker 1: these surfaces. Um, so fleas were still involved in the
Speaker 1: mechanical ones, but you know, not in the traditional live sense.
Speaker 1: Oh weird, And and people still enjoyed it. People still
Speaker 1: like the show. There weren't protesters out there saying, you know,
Speaker 1: this is a false flee circus f f C. No,
Speaker 1: of course there were, but they were ignored rightly. So, um, no,
Speaker 1: you know, flee circuses are actually still popular. Um it's
Speaker 1: you know, it ain't what it used to be. But
Speaker 1: depending on where you live, you can actually still find
Speaker 1: a modern day flee circus of both varieties mechanical ones
Speaker 1: but also live ones too. Um. For example, there's one
Speaker 1: of the most famous and long running ones is at
Speaker 1: this October Fest celebration in Munich that still goes on
Speaker 1: every year. Um, and there's a bunch in the US too.
Speaker 1: So is the Munich one real or mechanical? It's real?
Speaker 1: Oh wow? So are they still hot gluing a little
Speaker 1: flea boys down to two platforms and heating them up
Speaker 1: and making them flail? Most likely that's weird because Germany
Speaker 1: is a little more progressive in the field of animal
Speaker 1: rights in comparison to a lot of other places. Right,
Speaker 1: I think it was was it Germany where there were
Speaker 1: legal cases or there were cases going to court arguing
Speaker 1: that some uh, non human animals be granted legal personhood Like,
Speaker 1: uh yeah, So it seems like you believe you're correct, sir.
Speaker 1: It seems like that would be a weird country to
Speaker 1: to continue it. But then again, maybe they're just they're
Speaker 1: just saying, well, fleas are fleas or fleas fleas or
Speaker 1: insects to us? Uh it is. It is fascinating though,
Speaker 1: that they're still they're still using the living fleas. I
Speaker 1: guess they wouldn't be legit. Um. There's one detail you
Speaker 1: had gave that really stood out to me, and I
Speaker 1: don't know if it's stopped for you as well know
Speaker 1: which is that? So a great proportion of flee trainers
Speaker 1: historically had backgrounds in you know, theatrical work or in
Speaker 1: stage performance. So is this just maybe like a thing
Speaker 1: where a lot of magicians, especially ones with long careers,
Speaker 1: go on to specialize in something right like up close magic,
Speaker 1: card magic, grand copperfield escalusions or so on. Is a
Speaker 1: flee circus sort of a more specified discipline within the
Speaker 1: world of stage magic. Would you say it's I? I
Speaker 1: think that's right. Um, Like you said, a lot of
Speaker 1: stage magicians kind of pivoted into being a flee circus professor. Uh.
Speaker 1: And again, like we've been talking about, there's a pretty
Speaker 1: long history of miniatures, UM and showmanship, you know, the
Speaker 1: the entertainment business kind of going hand in hand like UM.
Speaker 1: One thing I read that I always thought was interesting
Speaker 1: was Walt Disney was a huge fan of miniatures. And
Speaker 1: again it was from UM touring Europe and finding, you know,
Speaker 1: the remnants from these miniature houses that we talked about
Speaker 1: earlier and just kind of falling in love with the
Speaker 1: detail and the craftsmanship of it. And so before he
Speaker 1: hit on the idea of doing Disneyland, he had the
Speaker 1: idea for something called Disneylandia, which was going to be UM,
Speaker 1: detailed models, little miniatures of the wild West and um,
Speaker 1: you know, different eras in history. He was going to
Speaker 1: pack these things onto train car and drive it around
Speaker 1: the country and have people come and see Disneylandia. UM.
Speaker 1: And that's kind of the idea at the heart of it. UM,
Speaker 1: it's just building these little worlds. We'll check this out.
Speaker 1: You may already know this, UM. But at the Disney
Speaker 1: Family Museum in San Francisco, which is not run by
Speaker 1: the Disney Corporation, it's run by the Dwalt Disney Family Trust. Uh,
Speaker 1: they have all of these like scale models of tomorrow
Speaker 1: Land and of all of the things that became Disneyland, UM.
Speaker 1: And they're beautiful and intricate and exactly like what you're describing.
Speaker 1: So obviously he took that idea and ran with it,
Speaker 1: and then you know, built like the real thing. But
Speaker 1: that was my favorite part of the whole I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's an amazing experience. UM. You can also
Speaker 1: see the kinds of things they show at this museum
Speaker 1: are the kinds of things that would be off limits
Speaker 1: for the Disney Company. Like they have a whole um
Speaker 1: gallery of a lot of those war propaganda Disney cartoons
Speaker 1: and like posters and stuff like in the Furor's face,
Speaker 1: you know, the Donald duck one um, which you know,
Speaker 1: they don't really only even get those on Disney. They
Speaker 1: don't get much not much play these days. But yeah, no,
Speaker 1: I've been to that museum as well, and they they
Speaker 1: do have of um, a lot of his personal collection
Speaker 1: of miniatures there, you know, underglass you can see he's
Speaker 1: got like a whole pantry of all these tiny, tiny
Speaker 1: canned goods and little boxes and stuff and lots of
Speaker 1: you know, tiny spoons. So he fell in love with it.
Speaker 1: There's something about it that just appeals to showman. Um.
Speaker 1: Just like again John Hammond and Jurassic Park. Um, it's, uh,
Speaker 1: there's something about it. So I actually I did have
Speaker 1: a thesis actually, which is that Jurassic Park is the
Speaker 1: history of Flee circuses in reverse. Oh nice, okay, okay, okay,
Speaker 1: okay expound Yeah, yeah, so again original flee circus owners.
Speaker 1: They became, you know, over time, very well versed in
Speaker 1: the difficulties of trying to control a living system. You know,
Speaker 1: they had trouble sourcing the fleas they had trouble training them,
Speaker 1: the performers had short lifespans, they had to be replaced, etcetera.
Speaker 1: So eventually get we were talking about. When the technology allowed,
Speaker 1: they moved to a mechanical system, flee less circuses that
Speaker 1: relied on gears, and they were much more reliable, much
Speaker 1: less messy, and much easier to control. But John Hammond,
Speaker 1: he got into the flea business during that second era,
Speaker 1: the mechanical run of flee circuses, so he was always
Speaker 1: pining for the real thing to go back to that time.
Speaker 1: He didn't have the living system, which he saw as
Speaker 1: a step up because it was more real, Right, I
Speaker 1: just wanted to make something really exactly, something they could
Speaker 1: see and touch and and and then there's there's some
Speaker 1: Uh I'm trying to figure out who are gold bloom
Speaker 1: is in here? Who's the guy who's like fleas? Uh?
Speaker 1: Find a way they do? They find a way? It's
Speaker 1: by jumping. Yeah, I think that's right. So I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, instead of going back to that old kind
Speaker 1: of flea circus and and you know, learning his lesson
Speaker 1: that way, he opted for the dinosaur circus instead, and
Speaker 1: you know, chaos and sued. But I think that's a
Speaker 1: lesson that we see kind of in the real world
Speaker 1: all the time of that trying to control you know,
Speaker 1: a living system as if it were a mechanical one,
Speaker 1: and it breaks down all the time, like with um
Speaker 1: manmade dams and levies or those programs where they try
Speaker 1: to you know, drive out all the carnivores and eliminate them,
Speaker 1: and right exactly, it doesn't work. There's a there's a
Speaker 1: great point there, because what we're seeing is that the
Speaker 1: further technology evolves, the more closely it mimics pre existing
Speaker 1: natural processes or natural mechanisms, and then eventually, you know,
Speaker 1: the idea of want to get very sci fi about it,
Speaker 1: is that the most highly evolved forms of technology quote
Speaker 1: unquote are themselves um indistinguishable from what appears to be
Speaker 1: the natural world, which is which is a neat thing
Speaker 1: to think about. And thank you for classing up the
Speaker 1: episode with this, with this part game. But I do
Speaker 1: want to say there's there is one piece of history
Speaker 1: I found so fascinating and I feel like we'd be
Speaker 1: remiss if we didn't hit it. Uh, The idea of
Speaker 1: acknowledging fleas in an entertaining way and not just in
Speaker 1: like a gloom and doom. These guys spread the play
Speaker 1: kind of way. You found this fantastic, uh, this fantastic
Speaker 1: little tidbit about Mesoamerica. Could you tell us just a
Speaker 1: little bit about that, Yeah, for sure. So one example
Speaker 1: that cropped up in the early nineteenth century, so this
Speaker 1: was around the same time that flea circuses were kind
Speaker 1: of really hitting their stride in Europe, is this form
Speaker 1: of Mexican folk art called pulgas vestidas, which literally means
Speaker 1: dressed fleas. And this was exactly what it sounds like.
Speaker 1: People would take dead fleas and dress them up in
Speaker 1: little outfits, and they would accessorize them too. They put
Speaker 1: on you know, shoes and hats and belts like whatever
Speaker 1: you can think of, and then they would mount the
Speaker 1: fleas and pose them to make these little scenes inside
Speaker 1: of these tiny shadow boxes. They were like the size
Speaker 1: of a dime. And you know, sometimes you see an
Speaker 1: entire mariachi band crammed into one of these things, like
Speaker 1: playing their tiny little instruments, or maybe a pair of
Speaker 1: flea dress like a bride and groom at the altar.
Speaker 1: That was a really popular one. So all kinds of stuff.
Speaker 1: This is kind of like some serial killer stuff right here,
Speaker 1: I'm picturing, yeah, a little I don't know. It's also
Speaker 1: simultaneously adorable and kind of goes back into that like
Speaker 1: whole like obsession with miniaturization that we were talking about.
Speaker 1: It feels like that's the impulse here, is like, oh,
Speaker 1: let's dress that these cute, little, tiny dead things. Um.
Speaker 1: But it's interesting because I'm looking at it now and
Speaker 1: it seems like nobody's quite sure where this started. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think again my conjecture might be that it was
Speaker 1: just like the nature of like, look look at these
Speaker 1: little things, let's make them cute. But there is a
Speaker 1: theory that it began in Mexican convents. Um. I guess possibly.
Speaker 1: You know, like a lot of things start with board
Speaker 1: nuns when they go a little stir crazy, and that's
Speaker 1: that's where Q and on started. Everybody knows that, um
Speaker 1: and you know, started let's dress up the fleas. Uh.
Speaker 1: So then eventually villagers you know, got hip to the idea,
Speaker 1: and when they realized that the shadow Box has actually
Speaker 1: made great souvenirs, uh, they started selling them to tourists.
Speaker 1: So I guess it seems like they were a massive
Speaker 1: hit too, because there are a ton of examples out there, right,
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, these these things were everywhere. Everybody knew about them.
Speaker 1: Actually found this great quote from the Mexican writer Octavio Pause.
Speaker 1: Uh in the nineteen twenties. He weighed in on the
Speaker 1: art of dressing fleas. That's how big it was. He
Speaker 1: called it, quote a difficult art, exquisite and useless. Pause,
Speaker 1: that's pause classiclassics, always always always quick with the hot take.
Speaker 1: But but right, so it's it's uh, not only is
Speaker 1: it exquisite and useless, but also quite pricey. Right, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right. Uh. I checked while I was, you know,
Speaker 1: looking into this and the most recent dressed fleas to
Speaker 1: sell on eBay. This was an auction just about a
Speaker 1: month ago. It was a bride and groom set and
Speaker 1: it's sold for nine hundred dollars US plus u us US.
Speaker 1: This was auction, was in Arizona and uh, you know,
Speaker 1: plus shipping to Nope Bridge too far. I'm sorry, guys,
Speaker 1: but but are these like historical artifacts? Are these modern
Speaker 1: re enactments of these older you know? He was claiming
Speaker 1: that this is uh, this was an original. I guess
Speaker 1: it's kind of a lost art now. So most of
Speaker 1: them are still doing this. You know, this is this
Speaker 1: is um, as you said earlier, both fascinating and pretty creepy.
Speaker 1: I got some Tim Burton vibes off this, but I
Speaker 1: gotta be honest, I didn't know there were two different examples.
Speaker 1: I was thinking of a different kind of meso American
Speaker 1: flee art gave you found a sculpted flee that predates
Speaker 1: the concept of flee circuses entirely like I think it's
Speaker 1: um it was created by Aztec civilization. Could you tell
Speaker 1: us the story about that one? Yeah, absolutely, sorry, sorry
Speaker 1: about that. You know, meso America was flushed with flee art,
Speaker 1: so it's hard to contract sometimes. But uh, yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1: The Aztecs produced this massive collection of intricate sculptures back
Speaker 1: in the fifteen hundreds. A lot of them portray like
Speaker 1: gods and goddesses, but there's some sacred objects to like
Speaker 1: these containers that were used in ceremonies and musical instruments.
Speaker 1: Strangely enough, like plants and vegetables are also represented in
Speaker 1: this collection. There's this, uh, there's some sculptures of grains
Speaker 1: of wheat, and there's also this footlong green stone pumpkin.
Speaker 1: That kind of had my eye on. But uh, there's
Speaker 1: also this whole section dedicated to animals, like a sculpture beast,
Speaker 1: sheerry with snakes, dogs, jaguars, turkeys, all kinds of stuff,
Speaker 1: pretty much any animal they were coming into contact with.
Speaker 1: And that includes this enormous stone fleet. And what's most
Speaker 1: impressive about it to me is the artist sculpted it
Speaker 1: to be hundreds of times the size of a real fleet.
Speaker 1: It's like a foot tall, so you get all these
Speaker 1: details and features that would be really hard to see,
Speaker 1: you know, with the naked eye. Like I don't really
Speaker 1: know how he pulled it off without a magnifying glass
Speaker 1: or microscope or anything like that. It's pretty amazing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this would have predated like the you know, the lens, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, they wouldn't have had anything like that, right
Speaker 1: at least on this part of the world. I would think, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's fascinating because like back in part one, UM when
Speaker 1: we were kind of discussing like the fleas and their
Speaker 1: little parts and how they were posed with things, and
Speaker 1: like how does a fleet hold a tiny Mariotti guitar?
Speaker 1: And it's a little clause I looked up some like
Speaker 1: imagery of like electron microscopes blowing up fleas and they
Speaker 1: are just the most bizarro alien looking little guys. I mean,
Speaker 1: they have these weird little mandibles. And it's very clear
Speaker 1: that like, uh, for a lot of science fiction, you know,
Speaker 1: practical effects and you know, um imagery and film. Uh, clearly,
Speaker 1: insects are are a huge influence, and fleas in particular,
Speaker 1: there's something very you know, alien about you know, like
Speaker 1: they're exactly exactly they can't do the things that we
Speaker 1: would consider routine routine activities like walking right right, um,
Speaker 1: jumping and drinking blood. That's it? Yeah, hm, Now what
Speaker 1: else is there? Man? What else do you need? That's
Speaker 1: a good point. So what do you think it was
Speaker 1: that that that made these sculptors so particularly fascinated with
Speaker 1: these things that they could barely see? I mean even
Speaker 1: I mean I I can't imagine, don't have perfect eyes side,
Speaker 1: but I have pretty good eyes sight. But even like
Speaker 1: squinting and looking up close to one of these, it
Speaker 1: wouldn't look nearly like it would through the electron microscope.
Speaker 1: And I was talking about, what's what where, where's the
Speaker 1: fascination come from? Yeah? Yeah, it's kind of a strange pull.
Speaker 1: But you know, the thing is, none of the subjects
Speaker 1: for these sculptures were chosen at random. Like every one
Speaker 1: of them says something about the concepts of Aztec religion,
Speaker 1: and the key belief of their society was that, you know,
Speaker 1: there were these certain gods, these creator gods, who had
Speaker 1: sacrificed themselves in order to create humans in the world
Speaker 1: and you know, everything in it, and so in order
Speaker 1: to sustain those gifts, to kind of keep the universe going,
Speaker 1: the Aztecs believed that their god's sacrifice had to be
Speaker 1: you know, renewed over and over again with human blood. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: the result of this is, you know, a steady stream
Speaker 1: of ritual human sacrifice, which you know a lot of
Speaker 1: these sculptures do focus on that in gory detail, Like
Speaker 1: some of those vessels I mentioned earlier, those are like
Speaker 1: blood and organ collection tools for these sacrifices. And you know,
Speaker 1: that could also be why the fleet is represented here,
Speaker 1: you know, in such detail as an animal that feeds
Speaker 1: on blood in order to sustain itself. It's you know,
Speaker 1: it's possible the Aztecs like looked at this fleet and
Speaker 1: saw it a kind of little micro scale embodiment of
Speaker 1: you know, the system they saw in place that like
Speaker 1: blood renewal thing something holy. Exactly. Yeah, at the very
Speaker 1: least sacred, like like like the way the you know,
Speaker 1: Indians treat cows. And then exactly, and then we came
Speaker 1: a lot a lot less reverent, making them dance and
Speaker 1: uh yeah, attaching them to a little toy chariots and stuff.
Speaker 1: I don't something don't think the Aztecs would have been
Speaker 1: fans of fleet circuses. Yeah, like, you know, electrifying them
Speaker 1: so they like spaz out and pretend to play instrument.
Speaker 1: I wasn't electrifying, It was just heating them up until
Speaker 1: they started literally cooking place and that kind of even
Speaker 1: still probably wouldn't have one of any points. Yeah, we're
Speaker 1: low on fleet points at least with the where the
Speaker 1: Aztecs are concerned. Yeah, I think I think you guys
Speaker 1: are right. Something tells me, um, the people of that
Speaker 1: time would not have maybe been the hugest fans of
Speaker 1: flee circuses, but Gabe Weird, huge fans of hanging out
Speaker 1: with you. Thank you so much for taking us on
Speaker 1: this journey, not just for one part, but for two parts.
Speaker 1: On the Weird Weird history of the rise and fall
Speaker 1: of Flee Circuses. Yeah, likewise, guys, I've had a blast.
Speaker 1: Thanks for having me on. I hope to come back soon.
Speaker 1: But you know, maybe we could just leave the blood
Speaker 1: contract thing out next time. We're all friends. Sorry, deal breaker, Sorry,
Speaker 1: I tried, No, Nolan, I had a meeting about this.
Speaker 1: We we voted, mandatory majority rules gave but just the same.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for joining us for this two
Speaker 1: partner and and hipping us to the magical uh and
Speaker 1: and and somewhat disturbing world of Flee circuses. And honestly
Speaker 1: you took us even further than even that with the
Speaker 1: whole meso American angles. So huge thanks to you, my
Speaker 1: friend research, your extraordinaire Gabe Lucy. Yeah, and also huge
Speaker 1: thanks to Christopher haciotis here in spirit. Big big thanks
Speaker 1: of course so one' only super producer Casey Pegram. Big
Speaker 1: thanks as well to Alex Williams, who composed this slap
Speaker 1: in Bob and uh, you know, I guess we have
Speaker 1: to say it. Big thanks to Jonathan Strickland's you said,
Speaker 1: you said his name. It's time, gentleman. You did this
Speaker 1: Ben No, no, you both did this. Gentleman. For now,
Speaker 1: you said my name first and then Ben said my
Speaker 1: name second. We all know that if I hear my
Speaker 1: name the three times I appeared, But since your action
Speaker 1: so many other people's names, I just assumed mine was
Speaker 1: in there too, and so here, Wow, I feel like
Speaker 1: your accents changed. It's gotten a little more absurd. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, it's been a while, so I just thought
Speaker 1: i'd really turn it up to eleven. Okay, guys, what's happening? Yeah,
Speaker 1: gave sorry, we should have mentioned this at the top. Um.
Speaker 1: There is a part of the show that we uh,
Speaker 1: we were kind of hoping you wouldn't have to see,
Speaker 1: but every so often, due to another contract signed in blood, uh,
Speaker 1: we are bombed by our own nemesis, h Jonathan Strickland,
Speaker 1: a k a. The Quister, who will not let the
Speaker 1: episode end unless we participate in a battle of wits. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: it's very sad because one half of this equation is unarmed.
Speaker 1: Gave you all Now welcome to the most cringe worthy
Speaker 1: segment in all of podcasting. Yes, they shall present to
Speaker 1: all of you three scenarios, two of which all reel
Speaker 1: and one I made up seas and it is your
Speaker 1: job to figure it out which of the three is
Speaker 1: the fake. As always, after I tell you all three scenarios,
Speaker 1: you will have three minutes to make your decision, and
Speaker 1: you are allowed to ask me questions, but you must
Speaker 1: first proceed that with phrase of my arbitrary choosing. Now
Speaker 1: I understand you were speaking of flea circuses. Now we're
Speaker 1: talking about flee circus. Yes, flea circuses. Well, I have
Speaker 1: chosen a very very similar topic, political assassinations. And so
Speaker 1: before any question you must proceed it with a quotation
Speaker 1: from Stephen Sondheim's musical Assassins. And in case you don't
Speaker 1: know any everybody's got the right to be happy works
Speaker 1: just fine. So if you have a question, you have
Speaker 1: to start with something from Assassins. Here are your three scenarios.
Speaker 1: Scenario number one. Paul, the third Duke of Strawberry, also
Speaker 1: known as Paul the Merciless, had a problem. He met
Speaker 1: an ill fated end at the hands of an assassin
Speaker 1: in fourteen twenty five. He had made many enemies, having
Speaker 1: previously served as bishop in Bavaria, and he ruled with
Speaker 1: an iron fist. He even warred against his own family
Speaker 1: in order to secure his position as duke on a
Speaker 1: night in October fourteen twenty five, and unidentified assassin, likely
Speaker 1: sent by his own sister, didn't just stab Paul to death.
Speaker 1: According to reports, Paul's body was practically drained of all
Speaker 1: blood and left hanging over the rail of his bed
Speaker 1: chamber's balcony, wearing only his chain of office. His passing
Speaker 1: was unmourned. Scenario two. Swiss politician org Yanech had a problem.
Speaker 1: He was many things. Protestant pastor, Roman Catholic, secret society leader, soldier,
Speaker 1: torture supervisor, assistant, axe murderer, duelist, and of course prominent politician.
Speaker 1: He met his end in sixteen thirty nine at the
Speaker 1: hands of a bear, or rather the pause of a man,
Speaker 1: or rather the hands of a man dressed like a bear,
Speaker 1: who assassinated Georgie with an axe. As it said, whether
Speaker 1: Janech was axed a question or some other weapon was used.
Speaker 1: He was really most sincerely dead after the whole thing.
Speaker 1: Scenario A three. Yugoslavian statesman Yosip Broz Tito had a problem,
Speaker 1: and that problem was Joseph Stalin. Stalin's head of state
Speaker 1: security planned out an ambitious assassination on Tito The plan
Speaker 1: was to employ a Soviet agent to pose as a
Speaker 1: diplomat from Costa Rica. The agent would smuggle in lethal
Speaker 1: bacteria into the presence of Tito, infecting him and everyone
Speaker 1: else in the area. But before plan could be set
Speaker 1: in motion, Stalin himself shuffled off this mortal coil in
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty three. Tito would die in nineteen eighty, just
Speaker 1: a few days shy of his eighty eight birthday. Start
Speaker 1: the clock, Okay, I am running to that grandfather clock.
Speaker 1: You mean just one second? You mean that really big
Speaker 1: watch the corner. WoT you push and you push, you
Speaker 1: just insist. Um. I'm gonna be honest, you guys. The
Speaker 1: best thing I can say is I have a thirty
Speaker 1: percent chance of randomly guessing the correct thing here. Same. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The thing about Jonathan is the quister. His quizness is
Speaker 1: that he uh, he puts a lot of effort into
Speaker 1: these uh he really makes them pretty tricky to to
Speaker 1: just get it out right. Gosh, what was the name Assassin?
Speaker 1: The musical? That was pathetic? No, you could what was
Speaker 1: the guy's name the second name? Oh, George Schmarman. It
Speaker 1: sounds like it sounds like a made up it's a
Speaker 1: job because I love a good oomb loud. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: loves a good oomb loud. I feel like that's a
Speaker 1: name that came from the depths of the hellish ma
Speaker 1: that is the quister's mind. Yeah, it's just it's it's
Speaker 1: a good argument with the name that does sound a
Speaker 1: little too fun, written by perhaps someone with a deep
Speaker 1: love of absurd names. But then there's that guy who
Speaker 1: was the axe murderer, Like, what was that all about?
Speaker 1: He was in a bear suit, but he used an axe.
Speaker 1: That's the same guy. Oh right, Yeah, that's still the
Speaker 1: second one. You know, I was paying the most attention
Speaker 1: to the first one, so I think that one was it. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think the real one. That was the real one. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the real one. I I felt pretty pretty real about
Speaker 1: the first one. John that's had to point this out.
Speaker 1: Nobody has heard of Assassin the musical by Stephen hows
Speaker 1: on time if it's not into view with Patrick Harris
Speaker 1: knows all about it. Thank you very much. Uh why
Speaker 1: did you do it? Johnny? Very well done? Mr Bolin.
Speaker 1: What is your question? What is the third scenario? What's
Speaker 1: going on? The get longer longer? I am well, you
Speaker 1: keep pointing out that if I spend too much time
Speaker 1: on one, that's clearly the one that I made up.
Speaker 1: So I made all of them long that's what you get,
Speaker 1: Mr Bolin. You pointed out your your way of figuring
Speaker 1: out my tricks. Uh, that was about about Joseph bros Tito,
Speaker 1: who was Joseph Stalin attempted to assassinate Tito multiple times, actually,
Speaker 1: but one of the plans was to smuggle in a
Speaker 1: form of lethal bacteria to in affect him. The the
Speaker 1: Soviet agent in charge of doing this was not told
Speaker 1: that that was what he would be doing, only that
Speaker 1: he would be bringing in something perhaps poisonous into Tito's presence.
Speaker 1: The way you're talking about that sounds like the way
Speaker 1: someone talks about something they've researched. So I think that
Speaker 1: one's probably real. Although the name of what is it,
Speaker 1: Yosef Bros Yosip Broz Tito, he was Yugoslavia. Do you
Speaker 1: think people called him bros? If Finally, yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: you know how many minutes I left on that three
Speaker 1: minutes out of time. You've got a great since a time.
Speaker 1: I guess we gotta lock in one. I'm gonna go
Speaker 1: with games gut. Yeah, I'm gonna say number three feels
Speaker 1: true that yeah, oh sorry sorry, games Gut was one
Speaker 1: three the description yes with you. Sorry. He had a
Speaker 1: lot of details for that one. Which of the three
Speaker 1: are you saying is the one I made up? Because
Speaker 1: right now you're saying one is real? Three he is really.
Speaker 1: I don't know which one you're saying. I mean two
Speaker 1: is fake? Two is fake fake? Wait wait, wait two
Speaker 1: of them are real? No, two are real. One's fake?
Speaker 1: Which was the bake on the bear one? All right, well, Gabe,
Speaker 1: the daughters go to you. Uh you really you really
Speaker 1: want to be responsible for besmirching our sterling record. I
Speaker 1: think we're ahead right now, we're ahead by one. This
Speaker 1: is gonna eating us out if we lose, alright, you'll
Speaker 1: be dead to us. Well, Gabe, Gabe, you'll welcome on
Speaker 1: the show. Anytime that was that was a real thing
Speaker 1: that happened, was your again? He really was a Swiss politician.
Speaker 1: He really was murdered. The reason the man was dressed
Speaker 1: as a bear was he was murdered on conival of
Speaker 1: Old Times. And yes it's said that it was an
Speaker 1: he was murdered by an ax, although that is that
Speaker 1: part is perhaps the least well documented. But he was
Speaker 1: certainly killed by someone dressed as a air So this
Speaker 1: one's untrue. Also, that one is absolutely true. The one
Speaker 1: that is untrue is Pulled, the third Duke of Straubing.
Speaker 1: There never was such a person. Is there a place
Speaker 1: called Strouby? Yes, there is, it's next to okay, but
Speaker 1: it's but there was no There was no pull the
Speaker 1: third who was who was stabbed to death and left
Speaker 1: drained of blood and hanging over his balcony railing, wearing
Speaker 1: nothing but his chain of office that was completely made up.
Speaker 1: Seas Helloll, we're well done. I'm I'm absolutely exhausted on
Speaker 1: my face. Yeah, yeah, it's tag on all of our faces.
Speaker 1: We you know, we we we were in this together.
Speaker 1: But you should do an episode about your niche seriously,
Speaker 1: because this fellow was you read his biography and his
Speaker 1: list of accomplishments. It is crazy. Got to have yeah,
Speaker 1: we've got to have you on for that one man.
Speaker 1: Uh in maybe your alter ego and I know we've
Speaker 1: built a really weird meathos here because we refer to
Speaker 1: you by your government name and your alter ego. Ah, well,
Speaker 1: if you want to see I agree, I will do it,
Speaker 1: but only if the quizter could be on at the
Speaker 1: end of that episode. Why we'll do it, Jacqueline Hide,
Speaker 1: Jacqueline Hyde vibe. Well, we are tied, folks, so we're
Speaker 1: going into our next bout with the quister with everything
Speaker 1: on the line. As you know, this is a very
Speaker 1: high stakes pursuit we have here. Uh, Jonathan, well played,
Speaker 1: Thank you for your time. Um, we should have known.
Speaker 1: Paul is a weird Paul is a weird name, right
Speaker 1: for a month like a I do have no no,
Speaker 1: there's no no, no, no, there's no paulse except for
Speaker 1: super producer Paul deck Ends mission control of of something.
Speaker 1: I want you to know, Fami, He's the only Paul
Speaker 1: that matters. I will say, Uh, Strickland that when you
Speaker 1: said Duke of Straub, I thought you were going to
Speaker 1: say Duke of Strawberry, which sounds a lot more appealing
Speaker 1: than that story. Well, we've all got a lot to
Speaker 1: learn from history, I think is our takeaway here. Uh,
Speaker 1: if you would like to share some stories about your
Speaker 1: own experiences with weird uh God, where do we go guys?
Speaker 1: Weird flea stories, flee facts God, any of that you
Speaker 1: can find us on the internets of plenty. We like
Speaker 1: to recommend our Facebook page Ridiculous Historians, but you can
Speaker 1: also find us as individuals online. That is correct. You
Speaker 1: can find me on Instagram where I am at how
Speaker 1: now Noel Brown, Ben, how about you my friend? Yes, folks,
Speaker 1: you can find me at Ben Boland bow l I
Speaker 1: n on Instagram. You can also find me on Twitter
Speaker 1: at Ben Bowland. H s W joined the Adventures. I'm
Speaker 1: getting into some weird stuff lately. No spoilers, Uh, Gabe,
Speaker 1: what about you? Well, if people were so inclined, they
Speaker 1: could go to a number of different Transformers message boards
Speaker 1: and track me down under the pseudonym Magic Dishwasher. And
Speaker 1: that is all I am comfortable revealing. So what you're
Speaker 1: saying is you're a giant nerd? Correct? And the way
Speaker 1: we go, Uh, you know it's fair? Fair is fair?
Speaker 1: I hope we don't regret this. But Jonathan, where can
Speaker 1: people find you? If they are so inclined? On a
Speaker 1: chilly November more, you may find me looking down that
Speaker 1: alley you never looked directly at. I'm there, I'm waiting.
Speaker 1: He's also got a show called tex Stuff. You can
Speaker 1: find him on Twitter. Yes, you can subscribe to text
Speaker 1: stuff on all your favorite pub catching apps, or you
Speaker 1: could just go down that alley. Don't do I've got
Speaker 1: change my answer to it to what he said. No,
Speaker 1: it's too late, too late, but I locked it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: blood Oath, See you next time, Folix. Yeah. For more
Speaker 1: podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows