November 11, 2025 • 46 mins
Today Mango sits down with Erin McCarthy, editor-in-chief of Mental Floss, to talk about our 26th president, Teddy Roosevelt… from whether he really climbed a mountain out of spite, to how a seal inspired his fossil collection, to what made him so darn productive (hint: it helps to drink coffee from a mug the size of a bathtub). Plus, we get into just how high-pitched TR’s voice was, and why Dr. Seuss was so scared of him.
This episode originally aired on February 19, 2020.
Want an official, numbered, limited edition Part-Time Genius membership card? Of course you do. Get in touch and share a fun fact, your name, and your mailing address and we’ll send you one for free. Email higeniuses@gmail.com, DM us on our socials, or leave a message at (302) 405-5925. (We may share your fact on an upcoming episode, but don’t worry, your contact info is private.)
Follow us on Instagram @parttimegenius and Bluesky @parttimegenius.bsky.social!
Photo (actually, it's a photomechanical print) via the Library of Congress.
Learn more about your ad choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Part Time Genius, the production of iHeartRadio. Guess
what Will Ah, That's right, Will is not here today. Actually,
before this episode, Will told me he loves Teddy Ruxpin
and Teddy Pendergast, but he has zero interest in Teddy Roosevelt,
(00:23):
which is what today's episode is all about. So of
course I let him off the hook. But me, I
love Teddy Roosevelt, and one of the things I love
most about him is that every story you hear about
the man is better than the last. He gave the
White House its name, he invited the first black man
over for dinner there. He made things like national parks,
but he also tried to bring hippos to the US
(00:44):
as a meat source, like he actually wanted to farm
hippos in the Bayou and get people into hippo bacon.
He walked his pet bear around on a leash, and
one time in Montana this guy called him four Eyes,
and even though the dude had two loaded guns on him,
Teddy casually noted him out. I mean, the stories are insane,
but I have so many questions, from whether Roosevelt once
(01:07):
actually climbed a mountain out of Spie to what were
Teddy's productivity, life hacks and also what is big stick energy?
So we're diving into all of that. Let's dig in.
(01:40):
Hey that our podcast listeners, it's Mangashi Dealer. You're listening
to part time genius and my co founder, co host
Will Pearson, decide not to come in today. It is
such a mistake because Loel is wearing a shirt with
the words Emily Spinach on it. It's got a picture
of a cartoon garter snake, and I'm guessing it has
something to do with Teddy Roosevelt because he always plans
for these things. We'll have to ask our guests today
(02:01):
about that. But I am here with a wonderful Aaron McCarthy.
Aaron is the editor in chief of Mental Bloss, a
position I used to have years ago, and she's an
old friend. Some of her interviews and articles are still
some of my favorites on the site. She's the one
who told me all about jelly Belly's disastrous attempt to
make a pizza flavored jelly bean, and also the oral
(02:23):
history of Trafford Keepers. But today she's here to talk
exclusively about a different obsession, Teddy Roosevelt. Hey, Aaron.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
Hi, So I want.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
To get into your new podcast, History Versus, which is
all about Teddy Roosevelt. And I'm not sure if you
know this, but I years ago I desperately tried to
get Teddy Roosevelt on the cover of Mental Floss.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
I did not know.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
I mocked up a version of him cutting like karate
chopping aboard like in a judo up and no one
else dnug it. But it's still in.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
The arts, I'm king.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
So, tell me, how is it that you got so
obsessed with Teddy Roosevelt.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
So so I feel like when you work at Mental Floss,
history is kind of your thing. It's just like, yeah,
I mean, it's just like it somehow becomes part of
everything that you do. And so, you know, I knew
a little bit about him. I was like, oh, yeah,
you know, the conservation president. He liked to hunt things,
and that was sort of where my knowledge ended. And
then I took a fateful trip to the Strand Bookstore
(03:20):
and I was just kind of wandering and looking at
the shelves as I want to do, and I saw
Colonel Roosevelt by Edmund Morris, and I was like, okay,
I'll just like pick this up and I'll read this, Like,
I don't know that much about Tart, it's going to
be interesting. I didn't know it was the third book
in a trilogy. So I read it and it was amazing.
(03:42):
I cried at the end on the subway, like a
real weirdo, and so then I had to go back
and read the others, and then it was just like,
you know, full speed ahead from there. I was just like,
did you know that Theodore Roosevelt did this? And did
you know that he did this? And now I just
can't stop talking about him ever and making a podcast
about it. So that's great.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
And it didn't confuse you to start with the third one.
It was like starting with Back to the Future three
or something.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I was just kind
of like, hmm, maybe I should have gone back to
get the other ones, but I just did, like it
just didn't even occur to me, and by then I
had bought it, so I was like, well, you know,
I'm just going to read this, Yeah, and then you know,
you go back and I actually I feel like I
read them. I read the third one, the first one,
and then the second one, so it was like, really weird,
(04:27):
but I came out of it knowing so much more
about him and just being totally obsessed.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
So it's amazing how your series is structured, because it's
like history versus and then different aspects that Teddy Roosevelt's battling.
And I want to start with time because I have
no idea how he managed to get so much into
a day.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
Oh me either, me either, And it's just baffling, baffling,
Like it makes you tired. Yeah, when you read about
how productive he was, I just strive for that energy
every single day.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
Yeah, every day. Well, I mean even as a college student.
You think like college students should be lethargic or whatever,
but like his schedule that you lay out is insane, right.
Speaker 2 (05:04):
Yeah, And I mean that's part of what made him
so productive was that he just had this devotion to
a schedule. And what he would do is he would
block out his time, which allowed him to be more productive.
You know, I spoke with productivity experts and they were like,
this is the key. Obviously he had a lot of energy,
which helped a lot, but you know, he was just
really really focused and he blocked out his time and
(05:25):
apparently all the super productive people in history. Well, maybe
not all of them, but many of them. Yeah, do that.
You know, they'll say, this block of time is for
reading my book. And you know, he had the schedule
from when he was on the campaign trail and it
was literally every hour and a half an hour was
blocked out. He had something else going on, and that
allowed him to be super focused and super productive.
Speaker 1 (05:43):
Well, the other thing was that he was also like,
not only was he reading and doing all these things
and writing letters, but you're just giving speeches NonStop too,
all the time. It's insane.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
I wonder if he ever got tired of the sound
of his own voice, because, like, I sometimes get tired
of this as I'm sitting in the studio podcasting, like ugh, I.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
Read somewhere that he had a distinctive voice though too.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
Right, he did. He spoke with this really distinctive style,
and some people actually think he had a speech impediment
as a kid. But he had this kind of high
pitched voice and he would distort words. So there's this
story that Edmond Marris tells about how when he was
in the New York State Assembly, he would just yell
mister speaker, mister speaker, like forty times, just over and
(06:23):
over until the speaker would acknowledge him.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
You know.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
So he was he was a weirdo. They always talk
about his teeth. One of my favorite things that I
learned from this podcast is that people talked about his
teeth all the time. And so when he was police
Commissioner of New York, Vendors Street Vendors used to make
these whistles and they were Roosevelt whistles and they had
his teeth on them. Yeah, And I mean, I'm assuming
(06:47):
they were really cheap because I can't find any of
them on eBay. I've looked, but yeah, like his teeth
were just so distinctive, you know, just like really white
and square, and he was always just like chomping on words.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
That's funny because I I guess if you think about
like the caricatures of him, they do have that, but
it's not something that I picked up on.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
Well, now you're gonna notice, Well.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
He also used to put those teeth to good use
for meals, right, Like he was a big eater.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
Oh, a big eater, huge eater. Yeah, and you know,
like pretty plain stuff. He wasn't like into super duper
fancy foods. But yeah, he ate a lot, so when
he wasn't being as active, he got kind of chunky
and it made him sad. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:30):
The other thing I didn't realize was how much coffee
he drank.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
So much, so like a gallon a day.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
Yeah, I mean, and what was his his son something
that said something like his coffee mugs resembled a bathtub.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
Yeah, it's more in the nature of a bathtub. And actually,
if you go to the birthplace in New York, they
have like a tea cup of his and it's huge.
It's huge. Really, Yeah, it's really, it's really big. And
now at the gift shops in some places they actually
sell a bull Moose coffee mug that's like really big.
So I obviously bought one and I drink my coffee
out of it exclusively now because I too have a
(08:05):
bit of a caffeine problem. Not that badly, but pretty bad.
Speaker 1 (08:10):
Well, tell me a little bit about his childhood, because
I feel like you think about Teddy Roosevelt and you
imagine him as this super rugged person, which he was.
But he grew up in New York City partially.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
Yeah, so he was born in New York City in
eighteen fifty eight, and you know, he was born to
a very wealthy family. His father. The family business was
plate glass importing. Really but yeah, it's weird, right, And
I think his father was eighth generation Dutch New Yorker.
But his father, THEI was basically a professional philanthropist. He
gave money away like crazy, and he supported a lot
(08:43):
of causes like the Newsboys lodging house, and he would
bring the kids along to go down there. So service
was like a really big part of his life growing up.
His father also was part of the founding of the
American Museum of Natural History and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
So like this guy was just give away money, making
it rain towards worthy causes all the time. So Tir
(09:05):
was born. He was the second child, first son. He
had his first asthma attack at age three, and he
had asthma so badly that he would have to sleep
sitting up. His parents really didn't think he was going
to live to see his fourth birthday. They would make
him drink black coffee and smoke cigars to try to
get him to like breathe, which makes no sense, but
(09:25):
you know, at that day it was or in that
day it was. You know, that was the cutting edge.
And you know, when your kid is sick, you're willing
to do basically anything that you think is going to help.
So you know, his father would put him in the
carriage and go for these wild rides down the road
trying to force air into TR's lungs, Yeah, to try
to get him to breathe. And you know back then,
(09:48):
I mean asthma is still it can be fatal today,
but back then it was it was really bad. So yeah,
he was this sickly little kid, but well traveled. So
you know, they lived in New York and the family
would go out. They would spend summers in New Jersey
or out on Long Island just to kind of get
the fresh air. Tir and his mother would go to
these like health spas where they would take the waters
(10:11):
or do whatever it is that you did in that
day to try to make yourself healthier. And they toured
Europe and they did the same sort of thing over there.
So yeah, he had this kind of crazy, crazy childhood
where he was all over the place and you know,
just like a sick, sick little kid. And then when
he was a teenager or just about to be a teenager.
His father said to him, you have the mind, but
(10:33):
not the body, and so you have to build your body.
And so now we think of him as this robust guy,
and he really built himself up to be that robust guy.
He basically they built a little gym out on the
piazza and he would be out there, like lifting weights
and pull ups and yeah, I mean, yeah, basically, like
that's kind of what it was like. Although I guess
there was like a beautiful garden in the back yard
(10:56):
or whatever, so he would be like lifting weights and
looking out over the garden. And then he took up
boxing because he actually took this trip up to I
want to say, Moosehead Lake in Maine. But he met
these kids on the stage coach on the way up there,
and they just beat the crap out of him, and
so you know, he's like, I've been lifting weights for
two years, why can't I like take on these kids.
(11:18):
And so then he was like, I'm going to take
up boxing. So he became a lifelong boxer at least
until he got punched in the eye and lost part
of the site in his eye. As President the White House, yeah,
just crazy, Yeah, and then it was like no more boxing,
so that's when he took up judo, anything to stay active.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
It reminds me of the Jersey Shore where like all
these people can't fight, but they lift weights to say, yeah,
but if you have that much focus towards any activity,
I'm sure you just get great at it, right, Like
if you had that same focus as a child.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
Well, and I mean like and he applied that same
focus to everything he did, like all throughout his life,
so you know, and I mean I think it helped
that his father was the one to kind of push him.
He worshiped his father, and you can sort of see
how that plays out throughout the rest of his life
in a lot of really interesting ways. But his father
told him weakness is a shame and often a sin.
(12:13):
And you can imagine if you worship your father and
your father tells you that, what would happen or how
you would act down the line to kind of not
be not show your weakness. So whenever he has any
kind of major tragedy in his life, he just is
like he doesn't show it, he doesn't talk about it,
he acts like it didn't happen. And I think you
can trace that back to not wanting to show weakness.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
Ah, there's so much good stuff, but we need to
pause more with Aaron after the break. Okay, So we're
here with Aaron McCarthy and of Mental Floss talking about Teddy
(12:57):
Roosevelt as a child. I know from the podcast that
he had a snapping turtle that he like strapped to
a sink or something. Yeah, and he tried to train
a woodchuck is Yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
Yeah, so he was that possible. I mean, I don't
think it was, but you know he was going to try,
so he you know, growing up in New York, you
sort of feel like maybe you're not going to see
a lot of nature, but there's actually a lot of
nature all around you in New York, which I can
attest to. So one day he was walking down the street.
He was going to get strawberries from the market or something,
(13:30):
and he saw a dead seal at the market and
it just kind of like changed his whole life in
New York. Yeah, it had been swimming in the harbor
and somebody killed it and which poor seal. But you know,
they brought it up and they I guess we're trying
to sell it or something. Sure, And so he saw
it and he was like, I need to know everything
about this seal. So he was measuring it and he
really wanted to bring it home with him, which I
(13:52):
can only imagine what people would have thought at his house.
But he ended up bringing the skull home, and then
that sort of kicked off this obsession with nature, and
so he would just bring things home living dead. He
keep them in his room. He had the snapping turtle.
I feel like there was some squirrels that he raised
by hand or something. I mean, he was just obsessed
(14:13):
with obsessed with nature. And it's a funny thing too,
because you know, I think today we kind of think
to ourselves, like, well, how could someone who loved nature
so much go out and hunt like he did? As
someone told me, that's very like twenty first century attitude.
Back in the day, there wasn't a difference between being
a hunter and a scientist. You know, if you wanted
to know about animals, if you wanted to study them,
(14:35):
you kind of had to kill them and see what
made them work. And so he did that a lot.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
Yeah, so no, it's hard to reconcile those things.
Speaker 2 (14:44):
Right it is now, yeah, but not back then. It
was just it was it was the thing. One thing
that I think is interesting that came up in the
course of researching this is that, you know, a lot
of hunters of that day were the first constan deists
because they could see, you know, that animal populations were depleting,
(15:05):
and so they said, you know, we need to take
care of these like if we want to still be
hunting them many years in the future, we need to
make sure that the populations are managed. And so you'll
see that, and you'll see that today. Like if you
are a hunter and you pay for a hunting license,
a lot of times that goes back to conserving animal populations.
Protecting animal populations, you know, so if you pay for
(15:27):
a permit to shoot a bear, which makes me sad,
but it's a thing that happens that goes back to
helping bears. So it's one of those things. I'm actually
surprised more people didn't yell at me about that Nature
episode because I'm a big believer in scientific collections. Yeah,
that's a thing that's kind of controversial these days.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
Yeah, I mean, they inspire so much wonder you know,
and just being at the museums and stuff, and if
you couldn't have seen all these wonderful taxidermy things, right, Like,
it's hard to imagine being as interested in animal at
least for me.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
Yeah, and you know they have in the back rooms
of museums they have just drawers and drawers filled with specimens.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
For me, once we went to see like the hippos
hippos skulls, which was incredible.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
They're so cool, They're massive, they're huge. It's like, how
can you figure out, for example, if mercury levels are
rising in the world's oceans. Well, you can go back
and you can look at the feathers of seabirds in
scientific collections and you can prove that mercury is rising
in the ocean.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
If you didn't have those specimens, you couldn't make that discovery.
So that's kind of important. The way that scientists collect
today is not like it used to be. I mean,
I feel like, especially for tr he would go out
and he would just.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
Be like, bag stuff.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
I'm a bag everything I can bag science.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
In high school, I saw Bill Clinton was going to
Africa and they were contrasting his trip there with like
Teddy Roosevelts, and it just listed out all animals he shot.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
Hundreds, like hundreds, five hundreds of animals. Yeah, yeah, And
they went to the Museum of Natural History, they went
to the Smithsonian. There are some like I guess ticks
that came from those animals are in a collection of
ticks down in Georgia or something.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:16):
Crazy, And I was like, I want to go there,
but maybe one day.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
Well. The other thing that's interesting to me is that Roosevelt.
You think of him as such a collector, right he
has this like little museum in his house or in
his room or whatever, and and he's always contributing to
things and whatever. Jefferson also kind of had that inclination, right,
like he collected fossils and whatever. But Roosevelt did not
like Jefferson.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
Hated him so much, hated him.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
Why is that?
Speaker 2 (17:43):
Well, one, Jefferson was a constitutionalist, right, so he really believed,
at least my understanding of it is he believed that
the president's powers were limited to what was written specifically
in the Constitution. And I think he kind of bent
the rules a little bit for the Louisiana purchase, but
otherwise it was basically like the Constitution is what it is.
(18:04):
And Tir was a Hamiltonian and he sort of thought, well,
you know, if it's not expressly forbidden by law or
the Constitution, I can kind of do what I want.
And he did so I think it has something to
do with that. He also had an issue with the
way that Jefferson dealt with George Washington, or like tried
(18:24):
to undermine George Washington, and Washington tr held up to
a pretty high He put him on a pedestal, not
as high as the pedestal he put Lincoln on, but
you know, he thought Washington was pretty great.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
Well, that was a funny line in your show, was
talking about how, you know, he loved Lincoln but less
enamored with his neighbor Jefferson.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
Jefferson hated Jefferson so much. And what's so funny is
that at Sagamore Hill, Roosevelt's Long Island estate, there is
a portrait of Jefferson hanging I think like on the
second or third floor. And as we were touring it,
I said to Tyler Coloberta, who's the education technician there, like,
what's what's this doing here? And he goes, you know,
I have no idea.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
That's really funny.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
He just needed some things, I know, I know it's
like somebody's fooling around here, somebody's playing a little trick.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
That's pretty funny. So tell me about his obsession with Lincoln,
because it starts when he's pretty young, right.
Speaker 2 (19:15):
Yeah, well, so his father actually worked with Lincoln.
Speaker 1 (19:17):
I get so confused about the times, like the fact
that he like his he kind of interacts with Lincoln
because of the lack of heir in some way, right,
But also like, doesn't he have like a Doctor Seuss
incident as well?
Speaker 2 (19:32):
I feel like he does.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
His trick is so strange in terms of how far it.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
Expands, and basically it's like if something crazy happened in
the time when Theodore Roosevelt was alive, Theodore Roosevelt was
basically there or involved in some way. But start with
the Lincoln Lincoln. So his father worked with Lincoln on
this program that would okay, well, let me back up.
So Theodore Roosevelt's father did not go to war and
didn't sign up for the Civil War. He paid someone
(19:57):
to go in his place. Sure, and that is because yes,
or at least partially because well yes, but not really.
I think he probably still would have gone except that
his wife was a Southerner and her brothers were fighting
in the war, and she could not bear the idea
of her husband potentially fighting her brothers. And I think
(20:17):
she also did a little bit of the guilt trip, like,
you know, if you died, I've got all these kids,
and like, please don't go to war. So he didn't.
He paid someone to go in his place. You know,
there was probably a little bit of guilt there, sure,
And so what he ended up doing was working with
the Lincoln administration to create this program that would allow
soldiers to send money home to their families. And so
he actually traveled a lot during the war signing soldiers
(20:41):
up for that program. So he wasn't home a lot,
and when he wasn't home, TR's health took a nose dive,
which is a whole other thing. So he worked with
Lincoln in that capacity, and they even went to church
together one time. So Big Theodore and Little Theodore both
big Union guys not so much. And her mother and
(21:03):
sister were in the house as well, so it was
like a nation divided and a house divided. So it
was kind of a delicate time. So he really revered
Lincoln for that, and he also revered Lincoln for keeping
the country together in a time of great strife, and
so his when he was sworn in for the first time,
he was elected, so he assented to the presidency when
(21:25):
McKinley was assassinated, but then when he was elected of
his own right, his secretary of State, John Hay, gave
him a ring with Lincoln's hair in it. And John
Hay had been lincoln secretary of State as well, and
so he kept that his whole life, and it's at
Sagamore Hill, along with a portrait of Lincoln that's basically
looking down at his desk. So he really loved Lincoln.
(21:46):
He thought he was like the perfect person.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
It is interesting to me that Teddy Roosevelt not only
took his presidency so seriously right, like he'd never take
a photo of himself in tennis whites, all these things.
But can you talk a little bit about how he
and Taft had a falling out because they were really
good friends.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
Right, Yes, they were extremely good friends, very very close,
and actually Taft was TIR's handpicked successor to the presidency,
and so as soon as they decided like Taft is
going to be the guy, taf didn't even want it.
Taft wanted to be a Supreme Court justice. It would
have been cool with that, but his wife was really
ambitious and she was like, you have to be president
and I was like fine, which I is kind of
(22:26):
indicative of how Taft was with everything, right. He kind
of let himself be bullied or pushed into things. And
so the minute that Tir decided this is going to
be the guy, he starts sort of coaching him, you know, like,
don't let people see you golfing. It's bad form, you know.
I don't let people take a photo of me and
my tennis whites. And that's one of the things that
makes him a modern president was that he cared very
(22:47):
much about his image and the image he projected and
how people perceived him. And Taft didn't care. He just
wanted to golf and fish and do what he wanted
to do. And so he ascends to the presidency or
he's elected president. Tir goes off to hunt in Africa
for a year and he comes back and Taft is
sending him these letters where he's basically whining about how
he can't get anything done and he can't lose weight,
(23:09):
and you know, oh, Teddy come visit me, and Tir
is like, no, I don't think it's a good idea
for you know, a former president to come down, you
know and visit a current president or whatever. He's like,
it's just unseemly. Yeah, but I guess the real falling
out and there are people debate about why it happened,
but the people that the experts that I spoke with,
one of them at least thought that it was the
(23:31):
firing of Gifford Pinchot, who had been TR's chief of forestry,
that was the break. And then there were also issues
with US Steel and Taft went after US Steel, which
is a merger that Tier had approved, and it was
just like a whole mess, and then they were just
at each other's throats for the rest of TIR's life. Basically.
I feel like there was one time when they ran
(23:52):
into each other somewhere and they like shook hands and
kind of put on a show, but they were never
close again after that.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
That's kind of crazy. Yeah, And I remember from the
show some of the like curses and man banter they
had for each other was kind of awful.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
I mean awful but also awesome.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
I don't know, it's like this old fangle, like.
Speaker 2 (24:12):
There's nobody who's better at crafting an insult than Theodore Roosevelt.
And you know, Taft got some good ones. He called
him a puzzle whit and a fat head and brains
less than a guinea pig. And I mean he would
know because his children had so many guinea pigs. But
you know, his favorite or my favorite insult of his
is he called William Jennings Bryan, a professional yodeler, a
human trombone, which is like.
Speaker 1 (24:36):
Human trombone's pretty great human trombone.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
It's so good. So you know, I just look for
excuses to use that all the time.
Speaker 1 (24:42):
There's so much good stuff there. We need to pause
more with Aaron after this break. So we're here with
Aaron McCarthy of Mental Floss talking about Teddy Roosevelt. So
(25:05):
I do want to talk about I'm sure you get
asked about the story all the time, the one about
the bear. But the thing I didn't realize was in
the chronology what had happened right before, right ca, Can
you talk a little.
Speaker 2 (25:17):
Bit about that. Theodore Roosevelt went on this bear hunt,
and it was partially to sort of smooth feathers over
because he had had Booker T. Washington over to the
White House for dinner, and back then it was just
really not considered proper to have dinner with a black
man because it basically meant that you were saying that
this black man could marry your daughter. Tr just kind
(25:39):
of didn't really care about that. Or when he went
out to send the invitation, he was like, he hesitated
for a minute, and then he was like, no, I
got to send it, like I'm ashamed. I can't believe
I hesitated. So he sends it. Booker T. Washington comes
for dinner. He has dinner with a whole Roosevelt family,
and it's like a working dinner too, but you know,
the kids are there and Edith is there, Tierre's wife.
(26:03):
And then the next day someone put it in the
paper and it was just chao chaos. I was gonna
I was going to use an expletive, but I was like,
what's the word that doesn't have give it? Yeah, it
was pretty bad. And actually it never died down, really,
I mean people kept bringing it up and bringing it
up and bringing it up long after Tir was out
(26:24):
of office, basically up until the day he died.
Speaker 1 (26:27):
Did he feel like he'd made a mistake or how
did he know?
Speaker 2 (26:30):
He was just comfortable with that. He never talked about
it again, and he never invited Booker T. Washington to
dinner ever again. So but you know, I afterwards, he
sent a letter that was basically like, I don't understand
why everyone's so upset, and you know, I'll have him
back to dinner anytime I want. And then he just
never did because I think he realized that politically it
was a little bit of a risky move. Sure, and
(26:52):
he was always very attuned to his image. Yeah, And
I mean, I I don't know if he cared so
much about his image, Like he was very progressive, you know,
like he fought against segregation in New York when he
was governor, and he certainly appointed a few African Americans
to prominent positions. But you know, it just became such
(27:16):
a thing that I think he was kind of like that.
Speaker 1 (27:19):
I'm sure it slowed policy and stuff.
Speaker 2 (27:21):
Yeah. Yeah, and you know he then had to go
smooth feathers is that a phrase?
Speaker 1 (27:26):
I think? So?
Speaker 2 (27:27):
And making things up for you know, So he went
down there to try to make amends a little bit.
Speaker 1 (27:33):
So what do. He goes down to Mississippi.
Speaker 2 (27:36):
He goes down to Mississippi on a bear hunt, and
they're led by this legendary bear hunter who supposedly has
killed thousands of bears. It's probably more like a few hundred,
but sure, thousands of bears, apparently. Tr from the start
was like, this is bad news because there are a
million people with us, and you know, this isn't really
a bear hunt. His perception of hunting was, you know,
(27:56):
you go out with a few dogs, or you go
out on your own, and and you know, you do
it that way. But there were a whole bunch of
people with them, and so he was like, this not
my version of it. But he went ahead and did
it anyway. It was at the invitation of the governor
of Mississippi or one of the senators. But so he
goes down there and he's everybody has shot a bear
but him. And so he comes back to the campsite
(28:20):
and they've tied up this kind of sickly bear that
has already killed some of the dogs, and they're like,
here's a bear for you to shoot, and Tierra was like, no,
I won't do it. Yeah, this isn't sportsmanlike and so
that's where the teddy bear comes from. Someone from a
toy company came to him and said, can we use
your name for this teddy bear? And he said sure, okay,
(28:41):
and then it became a thing. But I think what
most people don't necessarily realize is that it's not like
they let the bear go. Somebody else killed it with
a knife. Oh godd So I know it's like, oh.
Speaker 1 (28:53):
Yeah, So I want to talk a little bit about
his family because I'm kind of fascinated by his sister
Baby and how he relied on her. Can can you
talk a little bit about that.
Speaker 2 (29:03):
Basically, anytime he had a big decision to make, he
would bounce it off of her, which is wild, you know,
because he's the president and that was not really something
that was done at that time. But she was very
involved in his political career. She was always writing letters
for him and sort of making connections for him. And
I think his sister Karn also helped, but to a
(29:23):
lesser extent because Bamy was down in Washington and he
just relied on her and her judgment a lot, which
was rare for that time.
Speaker 1 (29:31):
Yeah. I think in the show you said he referred
to her as like the second White House.
Speaker 2 (29:36):
Her house is the second White House, which is crazy.
Speaker 1 (29:39):
Well, I want to hear just a few of the
fun stories that maybe you haven't gotten to talk about
on the show.
Speaker 2 (29:45):
Oh my god, there's so much. Okay, So we've kind
of discussed a little bit about how the Roosevelts had
this insane menagerie of pets. So Emily Spinach obviously was
Alice's pet garter snake that she would carry around in
her purse. Yeah, low loves loves. But my absolute favorite
(30:07):
story about their pets is they had a bear, a
small black bear named Jonathan Edwards. The kids named it
Jonathan Edwards because of its calvinistic tendencies, but then also
I guess Edith was somehow related to Jonathan Edwards. But
they used to take it for walks. They had like
a leash, It was a chain basically, and they would
(30:29):
walk it with a club, which is a club. Yeah,
I mean I guess it would get out of hand,
you know, And I could see it getting out of
hand pretty quickly. And eventually they gave it to the
Bronx Zoo. And when they did, Tir was like the
whole household breathed a sigh of relief, except for the
dogs because the dogs love to chase it and it
would give them the thrill of the hunt. But yeah,
(30:51):
I mean they had so many, so many pets. He
got a hyena which he named Bill from some diplomat.
They had a hyena for a little while, so lion cubs,
a zebra, they had lion cubs. They had lion cubs
for a little bit. Yeah, it's crazy. A pig named Maud.
Speaker 1 (31:07):
I know, the names are incredible, really good names.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
They had a badger named Josiah. This was a gift
from a little girl who named it after her brother,
and they would just carry this badger around. And then
all the guinea pigs who had names like father O'Grady.
So they were really, really good at naming animals. And
I feel like if anybody out there needs an animal name,
just look up what tr named his pets and go
(31:31):
with it, because they were really good at naming animals.
So that's one story.
Speaker 1 (31:36):
It's funny. I don't know if I told you this
or not, but my granddad was one of the heads
of forestry in India and he had a similar not
entirely similar, but also ended up shooting animals because yeah,
you do in the jungles. But but also there was
a bear that couldn't give milk and wish hot my grandfather,
(31:58):
but they found because it was attacking like villagers or something,
and they found the three cubs and so my granddad
brought him home. And so my mom has no fear
of animals because she had like a pet bear like
as a kid. They didn't have a club to walk
around with, but certainly played with the.
Speaker 2 (32:16):
Fi Oh my god, I can't imagine, like cats are
about as wild as I can get. Yeah, it just
seems a little intense. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:24):
One of the things I had no idea about until
I heard your podcast was that Roosevelt lived in North
Dakota for a while. So why does he end up there?
Speaker 2 (32:35):
Yeah, so he I believe in eighteen eighty three he
went out to the Dakotas to go hunting for bison.
So he basically had a list of big game animals
he wanted to hunt and get rid of of, you know, yeah, yolo,
And so he went out to the Dakotas to hunt
bison and he gets one. But while he's out there,
he is staying with these cattle ranchers, and so he's
(32:58):
having discussions with them and he decides he's going to
invest in a cattle ranch pretty impulsively. What does he
know about cattle ranching, literally nothing, but he's like, whatever,
I'll just throw some money at this and become an investor.
So he gets this cattle ranch, and then in eighteen
eighty four, his wife and his mother died on the
same day, which was horribly traumatic, as you might imagine
(33:22):
his first wife, Alice, who is Alice's mother. And so
he goes back to the New York State Assembly and
he's got kind of like a rough last term because
the Mugwumps, which was a faction of the Republican Party,
wanted him to support the Democratic nominee for governor and
not the Republican nominee for governor because the Republican nominee
(33:44):
was super corrupt, and tr made some comment that ended
up getting out into the press and it was like
a whole big mess. And so after his term was done,
he was like, this isn't for me. I'm going to
move to the Dakotas and become a cattle rancher. And
so he just like up and moved to the Dakotas.
He bought another ranch that was more solitary. The first
(34:06):
ranch he invested in was called the Maltese Cross Ranch,
and it was sort of on a thoroughfare out of town.
I mean as much as a thoroughfare as you can
have in the Dakota's side time, but you know, it
was pretty People would come by, and you know, he
was like, I don't want to talk to anybody, you know,
kind of just want to be by myself. And so
(34:26):
he heard about this other parcel of land that was
thirty five miles away from Medoro, which was near where
his other cabin was, and so he bought the rights
to that land for four hundred bucks, built a cabin
out there, and he lived out there off and on
for a few years. He was never like fully fully
out there, but he did intend to go out there
(34:47):
and stay there permanently. It just didn't work out that
way because people were still pulling him back to New York.
Speaker 1 (34:52):
You know.
Speaker 2 (34:52):
Like when he moved to the Dakotas, he left his
daughter Alice with his sister baby, and so he would
go back to see her and sort of take part
in political things and then he met or reconnected with
his childhood sweetheart, Edith Kurmit Crow, who had become a
second wife, and so he was back and forth a lot.
So he didn't move out there permanently, but he was
out there for quite some time. And I think one
(35:12):
of the funniest stories he bought this buckskin suit, fringed
buckskin suit, and you know, I mean his thinking was, oh,
it's really soft and comfortable, and you know, you can
wear it and move through the brush and it's really quiet.
But people in the Dakota's didn't really wear that kind
of stage. And so he shows up in this get
(35:37):
up pretending to be a cowboy basically, and they're like,
this dude from New York. And he also had glasses,
which at that time people took as a sign of weakness,
so they would pick on him and then he would
just pop them right in the face and they would
realize like, oh, well, I shouldn't have done that. And
he was like a boss man out there, and so
he was never quite I think the cowboy that he
(35:59):
portray himself to be. But he also wasn't a person
who was afraid to get dirty. So he would spend
thirteen hours out in the saddle with the rest of
his men and work really hard, just like just like
you know, the men. So they really respected him. They
came to respect him, not at first, but well efectually.
Speaker 1 (36:17):
That's one of the questions I had, is like where
does he feel most comfortable, because he's obviously like he
grows up with well, he goes to an ivyley school,
he's in the army, he's like, you know, like he's
in so many different scenes. Like where is he most
at home?
Speaker 2 (36:33):
I mean, I think he always felt the most at
home in nature. You kind of see a pattern when
any tragedy occurs in his life where he works himself
to the point of exhaustion, I think, basically trying to
keep himself from thinking, and then he just goes and
he retreats to nature and that kind of heals him
after every major death in his life. That's the pattern
he follows. So I think he always felt most at home,
(36:57):
you know, when he was like in the dirt and
the mud, you know, doing some kind of physical activity.
Speaker 1 (37:01):
One of the questions gave throughout to me is he
wanted to know is it true that tr once climbed
the matterhorn out of spite? True, So what's that strue?
I saw that question, I was like, what.
Speaker 2 (37:13):
Yeah. So on his first honeymoon, tr heard some British
climbers in the lobby of the hotel he was staying in,
basically like bragging about it. And so he just decided
that he was going to summit the matterhorn to show
them that he could climb just as well as any
brit could. And he did it. And the matter horn
is like, is like a really difficult like many people
(37:35):
have died. And of course he had guides, but he
was pretty much an amateur, and he was just like,
I'm doing it force the personality exactly. And you know
what's wild is that he was still having asthma attacks
at this time. I mean, he kind of created this
myth that he defeated his asthma, which is not true.
He suffered from asthma for the rest of his life,
(37:55):
for his whole life. But you know, he basically was
just like, I'm not going to let this stop me.
I'm not going to show that I'm weak. Just the
stories of his physical exertion make me. It's inspiring and
also exhausting. He would go to Maine and just like
climb mountains and moccasins when he lost his boot in
a stream, which is like not an easy thing to do,
(38:17):
you know, or they he'd hunt caribou for thirty six
miles in the snow with just like a blanket. He
was a crazy guy. Yeah, it's crazy.
Speaker 1 (38:26):
Well. One of the things I always hear Doris Kurnce
Goodwin say about him is that like he wanted to
be the baby at every you know, risks or whatever,
and the you know, I feel like he was always
the center of attention. How did he fare with being
president and then not being president?
Speaker 2 (38:45):
Oh? Not well, not well at all. One of the
experts that I spoke with, Clay Jenkinson, who's the founder
of the Theodore Roosevelt Center, was basically, just like after
he left the presidency, he was the most unpleasant guy
because he just he felt like he should be the guy.
What happened was in his second term, early on he said,
(39:07):
I'm not going to run for reelection for a third
term because people will be tired of me, and you know,
two terms is enough. And it's like a very stupid
thing to do, because people loved him and he could
have had a third term, but instead, you know, he
said early on that he wasn't going to run again,
and so at the end of it he was like, nope,
I said, I wasn't going to run again. I'm done.
(39:27):
And then you know, Taft kind of didn't keep up
his reforms in conservation, he went after us steel. I
think he also sort of apologized to the Colombian government
for helping Panama pull off a coup so that the
Panama Canal could happen. He was just furious, furious, and
he really hated Woodrow Wilson like so much. His entrance
(39:49):
into the nineteen twelve presidential race is what led to
Woodrow Wilson becoming president. And then he just hated Woodrow
Wilson for being a pacifist. So you know, he just
was bitter, bitter, so bitter, so mad. Yeah, he just
really wanted to be president. You know, he always thought
that he could do a better job, and I mean
maybe he could have.
Speaker 1 (40:10):
Yeah. Well, I liked that you refer in one of
your shows to his political style is big stick energy,
which I thought was really funny. I feel like that
belongs on a T shirt.
Speaker 2 (40:20):
Yeah, I can't take credit for that. My researcher, Michael
Salgarolo came up with that and he was like, please
use that, and I was like, oh, I'm gonna so,
thanks Michael.
Speaker 1 (40:31):
He wins a Nobel along the way, right.
Speaker 2 (40:33):
Yes, he was the first American to win a Nobel
prize of any kind, and it was partly for his
mediation between the Japanese and the Russians during the Russo
Japanese War, which some people call World War Zero because
it was like an early mechanized war and they were
killing each other in huge numbers. It had the potential
to really sort of unsettle things in the Pacific, and
(40:57):
so he stepped in and he was sort of a
neutral mediator, sort of not There's this one great scene
where he calls the Russian diplomat over to Sagamore Hill
to tell him how he thinks he should negotiate, and
he's playing tennis, and he doesn't stop playing tennis while
(41:18):
he's talking to this Russian diplomat, you know, like in
breaks from the game. He comes over and he says, well,
here's what I think you should do. Here's what I'd recommend,
and then he goes back to play. Some of the
tennis and then he comes back and this went on
for like ninety minutes, and I have to imagine what
the Russian diplomat was thinking. He was like, this guy's crazy.
That's amazing, But you know that was his style.
Speaker 1 (41:37):
Yeah, so I do want to hear it. Do you
know anything about that Doctor Sue's story.
Speaker 2 (41:43):
I do so. I can't remember the exact date. I
feel like it was nineteen eighteen, but Theodore Roosevelt went
to this small town where he was going to hand
out awards to boy scouts who had sold one thousand
dollars worth of war bonds, and Theodore gaise El doctor Seuss,
was one of those boys. All the boys are standing
up on stage, there are ten of them. Tier only
(42:05):
has nine medals. Somebody messed up, and so you know,
he's pinning medals on the lapels of all these kids
and he gets to Theodore guys all he doesn't have
a medal, and he says, what's this boy doing here?
The boy scouts master, which is didn't say anything. He
just like ran guys all off stage. And then apparently
that gave doctor Seuss stage fright for the rest of
(42:27):
his life.
Speaker 1 (42:28):
That's incredible. I know and horrifying.
Speaker 2 (42:32):
Yeah, I mean, like it makes sense. It would be
so humiliating. And you know, it wasn't his fault, wasn't
TR's fault. It was just just a thing that happened,
and uh and there were there were implications.
Speaker 1 (42:44):
So tell me, have you been inspired by Teddy Roosevelt
to change your life in any way or have you
taken any sort of uh inspiration from all these stories?
Speaker 2 (42:54):
I really want to try to be more productive and
sort of block out my time. Like I'm a big
believer in a to do list, but apparently that's not enough.
That doesn't help you be productive enough. So I think
in twenty twenty, I'm going to start blocking out my
time and seeing how how that goes. Or maybe I'll
take up Judo. We'll see.
Speaker 1 (43:12):
I like that. But no carrying a badger around.
Speaker 2 (43:17):
Or no, no, no, no, no, Chuck no. I mean
my cats they're about all I can handle. I mean,
Pearl kind of looks like a badger, So Pearl Woolfie,
it looks like a badger.
Speaker 1 (43:27):
So Ada tell everyone where they can find the show
and what episode they should start with.
Speaker 2 (43:37):
Well, I mean, I personally think you should start from
tir versus Weakness, which is the first one because it
kind of lays the groundwork for everything that comes next.
But in terms of my favorite episode, Tier versus Time
is a big one. I like Tier versus Language just
because it gets into the whole simplified spelling debacle, which
is one of my favorite stories of all time. Tear
(43:57):
versus Corruption is really fun because I think you get
a really good sense of the unusual style he used
to take on corruption. They're all kind of close to
my heart, to be honest, and.
Speaker 1 (44:07):
It's crazy everything he's involved in, from like everything football,
and I.
Speaker 2 (44:13):
Mean, like there's so much we couldn't even get into,
you know, like I could go forever. But you know,
every time I said, like let's add an episode, no, no, no, no,
Yler and Dylan were like, Aaron, you're crazy stuff. Tear
versus Nature is I don't know, they're all fun. They're
all fun in their own ways, and I mean, I think,
what's children. I can't to make the choos, But you know,
(44:34):
I think what's good about this is that you know,
you read the biography is about tr and everybody kind
of focuses on the thing that they want to focus
on doing a podcast like this in this format has
kind of allowed us to drop in and out of
his life, to feature different things, and I think it's
actually allowed us to get into some of the not
so great stuff, you know, and explore that in a
way that I hope is enlightening and thoughtful. So you know,
(44:57):
we'll see people respond.
Speaker 1 (45:00):
It's a really excellent series and really really fun. And
you can get History Versus for Mental Class everywhere from
iHeart to Spotify, the Stitcher to wherever you get your podcasts.
But what's next for the series.
Speaker 2 (45:14):
So we are looking at an explorer for the second season.
I don't want to say who, I don't want to
spoil it, but not the explorer you're probably thinking of.
Speaker 1 (45:23):
Huh.
Speaker 2 (45:24):
So that's fun. And then for the third season, I
have an author i'd like to feature. Awesome, and we'll see.
And there's kind of a Theodore Roosevelt connection to all
to both of those nice I mean, of course there is.
I mean, yeah, like he was involved in literally everything.
Speaker 1 (45:42):
Well, Aaron McCarthy, thank you so much for being here.
That's it for Part Time Genius this week. We'll be
back next week with an episode on elevators. I think
it's going to be great, I promise, And in the
meantime from Will Gabe Lolami, thanks so much for listening.
Speaker 2 (46:10):
Part Time Genius is a production of iHeartRadio. For more
podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite show.
Welcome to Part Time Genius, the production of iHeartRadio. Guess
what Will Ah, That's right, Will is not here today. Actually,
before this episode, Will told me he loves Teddy Ruxpin
and Teddy Pendergast, but he has zero interest in Teddy Roosevelt,
(00:23):
which is what today's episode is all about. So of
course I let him off the hook. But me, I
love Teddy Roosevelt, and one of the things I love
most about him is that every story you hear about
the man is better than the last. He gave the
White House its name, he invited the first black man
over for dinner there. He made things like national parks,
but he also tried to bring hippos to the US
(00:44):
as a meat source, like he actually wanted to farm
hippos in the Bayou and get people into hippo bacon.
He walked his pet bear around on a leash, and
one time in Montana this guy called him four Eyes,
and even though the dude had two loaded guns on him,
Teddy casually noted him out. I mean, the stories are insane,
but I have so many questions, from whether Roosevelt once
(01:07):
actually climbed a mountain out of Spie to what were
Teddy's productivity, life hacks and also what is big stick energy?
So we're diving into all of that. Let's dig in.
(01:40):
Hey that our podcast listeners, it's Mangashi Dealer. You're listening
to part time genius and my co founder, co host
Will Pearson, decide not to come in today. It is
such a mistake because Loel is wearing a shirt with
the words Emily Spinach on it. It's got a picture
of a cartoon garter snake, and I'm guessing it has
something to do with Teddy Roosevelt because he always plans
for these things. We'll have to ask our guests today
(02:01):
about that. But I am here with a wonderful Aaron McCarthy.
Aaron is the editor in chief of Mental Bloss, a
position I used to have years ago, and she's an
old friend. Some of her interviews and articles are still
some of my favorites on the site. She's the one
who told me all about jelly Belly's disastrous attempt to
make a pizza flavored jelly bean, and also the oral
(02:23):
history of Trafford Keepers. But today she's here to talk
exclusively about a different obsession, Teddy Roosevelt. Hey, Aaron.
Speaker 2 (02:30):
Hi, So I want.
Speaker 1 (02:31):
To get into your new podcast, History Versus, which is
all about Teddy Roosevelt. And I'm not sure if you
know this, but I years ago I desperately tried to
get Teddy Roosevelt on the cover of Mental Floss.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
I did not know.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
I mocked up a version of him cutting like karate
chopping aboard like in a judo up and no one
else dnug it. But it's still in.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
The arts, I'm king.
Speaker 1 (02:55):
So, tell me, how is it that you got so
obsessed with Teddy Roosevelt.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
So so I feel like when you work at Mental Floss,
history is kind of your thing. It's just like, yeah,
I mean, it's just like it somehow becomes part of
everything that you do. And so, you know, I knew
a little bit about him. I was like, oh, yeah,
you know, the conservation president. He liked to hunt things,
and that was sort of where my knowledge ended. And
then I took a fateful trip to the Strand Bookstore
(03:20):
and I was just kind of wandering and looking at
the shelves as I want to do, and I saw
Colonel Roosevelt by Edmund Morris, and I was like, okay,
I'll just like pick this up and I'll read this, Like,
I don't know that much about Tart, it's going to
be interesting. I didn't know it was the third book
in a trilogy. So I read it and it was amazing.
(03:42):
I cried at the end on the subway, like a
real weirdo, and so then I had to go back
and read the others, and then it was just like,
you know, full speed ahead from there. I was just like,
did you know that Theodore Roosevelt did this? And did
you know that he did this? And now I just
can't stop talking about him ever and making a podcast
about it. So that's great.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
And it didn't confuse you to start with the third one.
It was like starting with Back to the Future three
or something.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I was just kind
of like, hmm, maybe I should have gone back to
get the other ones, but I just did, like it
just didn't even occur to me, and by then I
had bought it, so I was like, well, you know,
I'm just going to read this, Yeah, and then you know,
you go back and I actually I feel like I
read them. I read the third one, the first one,
and then the second one, so it was like, really weird,
(04:27):
but I came out of it knowing so much more
about him and just being totally obsessed.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
So it's amazing how your series is structured, because it's
like history versus and then different aspects that Teddy Roosevelt's battling.
And I want to start with time because I have
no idea how he managed to get so much into
a day.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
Oh me either, me either, And it's just baffling, baffling,
Like it makes you tired. Yeah, when you read about
how productive he was, I just strive for that energy
every single day.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
Yeah, every day. Well, I mean even as a college student.
You think like college students should be lethargic or whatever,
but like his schedule that you lay out is insane, right.
Speaker 2 (05:04):
Yeah, And I mean that's part of what made him
so productive was that he just had this devotion to
a schedule. And what he would do is he would
block out his time, which allowed him to be more productive.
You know, I spoke with productivity experts and they were like,
this is the key. Obviously he had a lot of energy,
which helped a lot, but you know, he was just
really really focused and he blocked out his time and
(05:25):
apparently all the super productive people in history. Well, maybe
not all of them, but many of them. Yeah, do that.
You know, they'll say, this block of time is for
reading my book. And you know, he had the schedule
from when he was on the campaign trail and it
was literally every hour and a half an hour was
blocked out. He had something else going on, and that
allowed him to be super focused and super productive.
Speaker 1 (05:43):
Well, the other thing was that he was also like,
not only was he reading and doing all these things
and writing letters, but you're just giving speeches NonStop too,
all the time. It's insane.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
I wonder if he ever got tired of the sound
of his own voice, because, like, I sometimes get tired
of this as I'm sitting in the studio podcasting, like ugh, I.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
Read somewhere that he had a distinctive voice though too.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
Right, he did. He spoke with this really distinctive style,
and some people actually think he had a speech impediment
as a kid. But he had this kind of high
pitched voice and he would distort words. So there's this
story that Edmond Marris tells about how when he was
in the New York State Assembly, he would just yell
mister speaker, mister speaker, like forty times, just over and
(06:23):
over until the speaker would acknowledge him.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
You know.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
So he was he was a weirdo. They always talk
about his teeth. One of my favorite things that I
learned from this podcast is that people talked about his
teeth all the time. And so when he was police
Commissioner of New York, Vendors Street Vendors used to make
these whistles and they were Roosevelt whistles and they had
his teeth on them. Yeah, And I mean, I'm assuming
(06:47):
they were really cheap because I can't find any of
them on eBay. I've looked, but yeah, like his teeth
were just so distinctive, you know, just like really white
and square, and he was always just like chomping on words.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
That's funny because I I guess if you think about
like the caricatures of him, they do have that, but
it's not something that I picked up on.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
Well, now you're gonna notice, Well.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
He also used to put those teeth to good use
for meals, right, Like he was a big eater.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
Oh, a big eater, huge eater. Yeah, and you know,
like pretty plain stuff. He wasn't like into super duper
fancy foods. But yeah, he ate a lot, so when
he wasn't being as active, he got kind of chunky
and it made him sad. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:30):
The other thing I didn't realize was how much coffee
he drank.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
So much, so like a gallon a day.
Speaker 1 (07:37):
Yeah, I mean, and what was his his son something
that said something like his coffee mugs resembled a bathtub.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
Yeah, it's more in the nature of a bathtub. And actually,
if you go to the birthplace in New York, they
have like a tea cup of his and it's huge.
It's huge. Really, Yeah, it's really, it's really big. And
now at the gift shops in some places they actually
sell a bull Moose coffee mug that's like really big.
So I obviously bought one and I drink my coffee
out of it exclusively now because I too have a
(08:05):
bit of a caffeine problem. Not that badly, but pretty bad.
Speaker 1 (08:10):
Well, tell me a little bit about his childhood, because
I feel like you think about Teddy Roosevelt and you
imagine him as this super rugged person, which he was.
But he grew up in New York City partially.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
Yeah, so he was born in New York City in
eighteen fifty eight, and you know, he was born to
a very wealthy family. His father. The family business was
plate glass importing. Really but yeah, it's weird, right, And
I think his father was eighth generation Dutch New Yorker.
But his father, THEI was basically a professional philanthropist. He
gave money away like crazy, and he supported a lot
(08:43):
of causes like the Newsboys lodging house, and he would
bring the kids along to go down there. So service
was like a really big part of his life growing up.
His father also was part of the founding of the
American Museum of Natural History and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
So like this guy was just give away money, making
it rain towards worthy causes all the time. So Tir
(09:05):
was born. He was the second child, first son. He
had his first asthma attack at age three, and he
had asthma so badly that he would have to sleep
sitting up. His parents really didn't think he was going
to live to see his fourth birthday. They would make
him drink black coffee and smoke cigars to try to
get him to like breathe, which makes no sense, but
(09:25):
you know, at that day it was or in that
day it was. You know, that was the cutting edge.
And you know, when your kid is sick, you're willing
to do basically anything that you think is going to help.
So you know, his father would put him in the
carriage and go for these wild rides down the road
trying to force air into TR's lungs, Yeah, to try
to get him to breathe. And you know back then,
(09:48):
I mean asthma is still it can be fatal today,
but back then it was it was really bad. So yeah,
he was this sickly little kid, but well traveled. So
you know, they lived in New York and the family
would go out. They would spend summers in New Jersey
or out on Long Island just to kind of get
the fresh air. Tir and his mother would go to
these like health spas where they would take the waters
(10:11):
or do whatever it is that you did in that
day to try to make yourself healthier. And they toured
Europe and they did the same sort of thing over there.
So yeah, he had this kind of crazy, crazy childhood
where he was all over the place and you know,
just like a sick, sick little kid. And then when
he was a teenager or just about to be a teenager.
His father said to him, you have the mind, but
(10:33):
not the body, and so you have to build your body.
And so now we think of him as this robust guy,
and he really built himself up to be that robust guy.
He basically they built a little gym out on the
piazza and he would be out there, like lifting weights
and pull ups and yeah, I mean, yeah, basically, like
that's kind of what it was like. Although I guess
there was like a beautiful garden in the back yard
(10:56):
or whatever, so he would be like lifting weights and
looking out over the garden. And then he took up
boxing because he actually took this trip up to I
want to say, Moosehead Lake in Maine. But he met
these kids on the stage coach on the way up there,
and they just beat the crap out of him, and
so you know, he's like, I've been lifting weights for
two years, why can't I like take on these kids.
(11:18):
And so then he was like, I'm going to take
up boxing. So he became a lifelong boxer at least
until he got punched in the eye and lost part
of the site in his eye. As President the White House, yeah,
just crazy, Yeah, and then it was like no more boxing,
so that's when he took up judo, anything to stay active.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
It reminds me of the Jersey Shore where like all
these people can't fight, but they lift weights to say, yeah,
but if you have that much focus towards any activity,
I'm sure you just get great at it, right, Like
if you had that same focus as a child.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
Well, and I mean like and he applied that same
focus to everything he did, like all throughout his life,
so you know, and I mean I think it helped
that his father was the one to kind of push him.
He worshiped his father, and you can sort of see
how that plays out throughout the rest of his life
in a lot of really interesting ways. But his father
told him weakness is a shame and often a sin.
(12:13):
And you can imagine if you worship your father and
your father tells you that, what would happen or how
you would act down the line to kind of not
be not show your weakness. So whenever he has any
kind of major tragedy in his life, he just is
like he doesn't show it, he doesn't talk about it,
he acts like it didn't happen. And I think you
can trace that back to not wanting to show weakness.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
Ah, there's so much good stuff, but we need to
pause more with Aaron after the break. Okay, So we're
here with Aaron McCarthy and of Mental Floss talking about Teddy
(12:57):
Roosevelt as a child. I know from the podcast that
he had a snapping turtle that he like strapped to
a sink or something. Yeah, and he tried to train
a woodchuck is Yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
Yeah, so he was that possible. I mean, I don't
think it was, but you know he was going to try,
so he you know, growing up in New York, you
sort of feel like maybe you're not going to see
a lot of nature, but there's actually a lot of
nature all around you in New York, which I can
attest to. So one day he was walking down the street.
He was going to get strawberries from the market or something,
(13:30):
and he saw a dead seal at the market and
it just kind of like changed his whole life in
New York. Yeah, it had been swimming in the harbor
and somebody killed it and which poor seal. But you know,
they brought it up and they I guess we're trying
to sell it or something. Sure, And so he saw
it and he was like, I need to know everything
about this seal. So he was measuring it and he
really wanted to bring it home with him, which I
(13:52):
can only imagine what people would have thought at his house.
But he ended up bringing the skull home, and then
that sort of kicked off this obsession with nature, and
so he would just bring things home living dead. He
keep them in his room. He had the snapping turtle.
I feel like there was some squirrels that he raised
by hand or something. I mean, he was just obsessed
(14:13):
with obsessed with nature. And it's a funny thing too,
because you know, I think today we kind of think
to ourselves, like, well, how could someone who loved nature
so much go out and hunt like he did? As
someone told me, that's very like twenty first century attitude.
Back in the day, there wasn't a difference between being
a hunter and a scientist. You know, if you wanted
to know about animals, if you wanted to study them,
(14:35):
you kind of had to kill them and see what
made them work. And so he did that a lot.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
Yeah, so no, it's hard to reconcile those things.
Speaker 2 (14:44):
Right it is now, yeah, but not back then. It
was just it was it was the thing. One thing
that I think is interesting that came up in the
course of researching this is that, you know, a lot
of hunters of that day were the first constan deists
because they could see, you know, that animal populations were depleting,
(15:05):
and so they said, you know, we need to take
care of these like if we want to still be
hunting them many years in the future, we need to
make sure that the populations are managed. And so you'll
see that, and you'll see that today. Like if you
are a hunter and you pay for a hunting license,
a lot of times that goes back to conserving animal populations.
Protecting animal populations, you know, so if you pay for
(15:27):
a permit to shoot a bear, which makes me sad,
but it's a thing that happens that goes back to
helping bears. So it's one of those things. I'm actually
surprised more people didn't yell at me about that Nature
episode because I'm a big believer in scientific collections. Yeah,
that's a thing that's kind of controversial these days.
Speaker 1 (15:46):
Yeah, I mean, they inspire so much wonder you know,
and just being at the museums and stuff, and if
you couldn't have seen all these wonderful taxidermy things, right, Like,
it's hard to imagine being as interested in animal at
least for me.
Speaker 2 (16:01):
Yeah, and you know they have in the back rooms
of museums they have just drawers and drawers filled with specimens.
Speaker 1 (16:07):
For me, once we went to see like the hippos
hippos skulls, which was incredible.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
They're so cool, They're massive, they're huge. It's like, how
can you figure out, for example, if mercury levels are
rising in the world's oceans. Well, you can go back
and you can look at the feathers of seabirds in
scientific collections and you can prove that mercury is rising
in the ocean.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
If you didn't have those specimens, you couldn't make that discovery.
So that's kind of important. The way that scientists collect
today is not like it used to be. I mean,
I feel like, especially for tr he would go out
and he would just.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
Be like, bag stuff.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
I'm a bag everything I can bag science.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
In high school, I saw Bill Clinton was going to
Africa and they were contrasting his trip there with like
Teddy Roosevelts, and it just listed out all animals he shot.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
Hundreds, like hundreds, five hundreds of animals. Yeah, yeah, And
they went to the Museum of Natural History, they went
to the Smithsonian. There are some like I guess ticks
that came from those animals are in a collection of
ticks down in Georgia or something.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:16):
Crazy, And I was like, I want to go there,
but maybe one day.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
Well. The other thing that's interesting to me is that Roosevelt.
You think of him as such a collector, right he
has this like little museum in his house or in
his room or whatever, and and he's always contributing to
things and whatever. Jefferson also kind of had that inclination, right,
like he collected fossils and whatever. But Roosevelt did not
like Jefferson.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
Hated him so much, hated him.
Speaker 1 (17:42):
Why is that?
Speaker 2 (17:43):
Well, one, Jefferson was a constitutionalist, right, so he really believed,
at least my understanding of it is he believed that
the president's powers were limited to what was written specifically
in the Constitution. And I think he kind of bent
the rules a little bit for the Louisiana purchase, but
otherwise it was basically like the Constitution is what it is.
(18:04):
And Tir was a Hamiltonian and he sort of thought, well,
you know, if it's not expressly forbidden by law or
the Constitution, I can kind of do what I want.
And he did so I think it has something to
do with that. He also had an issue with the
way that Jefferson dealt with George Washington, or like tried
(18:24):
to undermine George Washington, and Washington tr held up to
a pretty high He put him on a pedestal, not
as high as the pedestal he put Lincoln on, but
you know, he thought Washington was pretty great.
Speaker 1 (18:36):
Well, that was a funny line in your show, was
talking about how, you know, he loved Lincoln but less
enamored with his neighbor Jefferson.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
Jefferson hated Jefferson so much. And what's so funny is
that at Sagamore Hill, Roosevelt's Long Island estate, there is
a portrait of Jefferson hanging I think like on the
second or third floor. And as we were touring it,
I said to Tyler Coloberta, who's the education technician there, like,
what's what's this doing here? And he goes, you know,
I have no idea.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
That's really funny.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
He just needed some things, I know, I know it's
like somebody's fooling around here, somebody's playing a little trick.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
That's pretty funny. So tell me about his obsession with Lincoln,
because it starts when he's pretty young, right.
Speaker 2 (19:15):
Yeah, well, so his father actually worked with Lincoln.
Speaker 1 (19:17):
I get so confused about the times, like the fact
that he like his he kind of interacts with Lincoln
because of the lack of heir in some way, right,
But also like, doesn't he have like a Doctor Seuss
incident as well?
Speaker 2 (19:32):
I feel like he does.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
His trick is so strange in terms of how far it.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
Expands, and basically it's like if something crazy happened in
the time when Theodore Roosevelt was alive, Theodore Roosevelt was
basically there or involved in some way. But start with
the Lincoln Lincoln. So his father worked with Lincoln on
this program that would okay, well, let me back up.
So Theodore Roosevelt's father did not go to war and
didn't sign up for the Civil War. He paid someone
(19:57):
to go in his place. Sure, and that is because yes,
or at least partially because well yes, but not really.
I think he probably still would have gone except that
his wife was a Southerner and her brothers were fighting
in the war, and she could not bear the idea
of her husband potentially fighting her brothers. And I think
(20:17):
she also did a little bit of the guilt trip, like,
you know, if you died, I've got all these kids,
and like, please don't go to war. So he didn't.
He paid someone to go in his place. You know,
there was probably a little bit of guilt there, sure,
And so what he ended up doing was working with
the Lincoln administration to create this program that would allow
soldiers to send money home to their families. And so
he actually traveled a lot during the war signing soldiers
(20:41):
up for that program. So he wasn't home a lot,
and when he wasn't home, TR's health took a nose dive,
which is a whole other thing. So he worked with
Lincoln in that capacity, and they even went to church
together one time. So Big Theodore and Little Theodore both
big Union guys not so much. And her mother and
(21:03):
sister were in the house as well, so it was
like a nation divided and a house divided. So it
was kind of a delicate time. So he really revered
Lincoln for that, and he also revered Lincoln for keeping
the country together in a time of great strife, and
so his when he was sworn in for the first time,
he was elected, so he assented to the presidency when
(21:25):
McKinley was assassinated, but then when he was elected of
his own right, his secretary of State, John Hay, gave
him a ring with Lincoln's hair in it. And John
Hay had been lincoln secretary of State as well, and
so he kept that his whole life, and it's at
Sagamore Hill, along with a portrait of Lincoln that's basically
looking down at his desk. So he really loved Lincoln.
(21:46):
He thought he was like the perfect person.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
It is interesting to me that Teddy Roosevelt not only
took his presidency so seriously right, like he'd never take
a photo of himself in tennis whites, all these things.
But can you talk a little bit about how he
and Taft had a falling out because they were really
good friends.
Speaker 2 (22:05):
Right, Yes, they were extremely good friends, very very close,
and actually Taft was TIR's handpicked successor to the presidency,
and so as soon as they decided like Taft is
going to be the guy, taf didn't even want it.
Taft wanted to be a Supreme Court justice. It would
have been cool with that, but his wife was really
ambitious and she was like, you have to be president
and I was like fine, which I is kind of
(22:26):
indicative of how Taft was with everything, right. He kind
of let himself be bullied or pushed into things. And
so the minute that Tir decided this is going to
be the guy, he starts sort of coaching him, you know, like,
don't let people see you golfing. It's bad form, you know.
I don't let people take a photo of me and
my tennis whites. And that's one of the things that
makes him a modern president was that he cared very
(22:47):
much about his image and the image he projected and
how people perceived him. And Taft didn't care. He just
wanted to golf and fish and do what he wanted
to do. And so he ascends to the presidency or
he's elected president. Tir goes off to hunt in Africa
for a year and he comes back and Taft is
sending him these letters where he's basically whining about how
he can't get anything done and he can't lose weight,
(23:09):
and you know, oh, Teddy come visit me, and Tir
is like, no, I don't think it's a good idea
for you know, a former president to come down, you
know and visit a current president or whatever. He's like,
it's just unseemly. Yeah, but I guess the real falling
out and there are people debate about why it happened,
but the people that the experts that I spoke with,
one of them at least thought that it was the
(23:31):
firing of Gifford Pinchot, who had been TR's chief of forestry,
that was the break. And then there were also issues
with US Steel and Taft went after US Steel, which
is a merger that Tier had approved, and it was
just like a whole mess, and then they were just
at each other's throats for the rest of TIR's life. Basically.
I feel like there was one time when they ran
(23:52):
into each other somewhere and they like shook hands and
kind of put on a show, but they were never
close again after that.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
That's kind of crazy. Yeah, And I remember from the
show some of the like curses and man banter they
had for each other was kind of awful.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
I mean awful but also awesome.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
I don't know, it's like this old fangle, like.
Speaker 2 (24:12):
There's nobody who's better at crafting an insult than Theodore Roosevelt.
And you know, Taft got some good ones. He called
him a puzzle whit and a fat head and brains
less than a guinea pig. And I mean he would
know because his children had so many guinea pigs. But
you know, his favorite or my favorite insult of his
is he called William Jennings Bryan, a professional yodeler, a
human trombone, which is like.
Speaker 1 (24:36):
Human trombone's pretty great human trombone.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
It's so good. So you know, I just look for
excuses to use that all the time.
Speaker 1 (24:42):
There's so much good stuff there. We need to pause
more with Aaron after this break. So we're here with
Aaron McCarthy of Mental Floss talking about Teddy Roosevelt. So
(25:05):
I do want to talk about I'm sure you get
asked about the story all the time, the one about
the bear. But the thing I didn't realize was in
the chronology what had happened right before, right ca, Can
you talk a little.
Speaker 2 (25:17):
Bit about that. Theodore Roosevelt went on this bear hunt,
and it was partially to sort of smooth feathers over
because he had had Booker T. Washington over to the
White House for dinner, and back then it was just
really not considered proper to have dinner with a black
man because it basically meant that you were saying that
this black man could marry your daughter. Tr just kind
(25:39):
of didn't really care about that. Or when he went
out to send the invitation, he was like, he hesitated
for a minute, and then he was like, no, I
got to send it, like I'm ashamed. I can't believe
I hesitated. So he sends it. Booker T. Washington comes
for dinner. He has dinner with a whole Roosevelt family,
and it's like a working dinner too, but you know,
the kids are there and Edith is there, Tierre's wife.
(26:03):
And then the next day someone put it in the
paper and it was just chao chaos. I was gonna
I was going to use an expletive, but I was like,
what's the word that doesn't have give it? Yeah, it
was pretty bad. And actually it never died down, really,
I mean people kept bringing it up and bringing it
up and bringing it up long after Tir was out
(26:24):
of office, basically up until the day he died.
Speaker 1 (26:27):
Did he feel like he'd made a mistake or how
did he know?
Speaker 2 (26:30):
He was just comfortable with that. He never talked about
it again, and he never invited Booker T. Washington to
dinner ever again. So but you know, I afterwards, he
sent a letter that was basically like, I don't understand
why everyone's so upset, and you know, I'll have him
back to dinner anytime I want. And then he just
never did because I think he realized that politically it
was a little bit of a risky move. Sure, and
(26:52):
he was always very attuned to his image. Yeah, And
I mean, I I don't know if he cared so
much about his image, Like he was very progressive, you know,
like he fought against segregation in New York when he
was governor, and he certainly appointed a few African Americans
to prominent positions. But you know, it just became such
(27:16):
a thing that I think he was kind of like that.
Speaker 1 (27:19):
I'm sure it slowed policy and stuff.
Speaker 2 (27:21):
Yeah. Yeah, and you know he then had to go
smooth feathers is that a phrase?
Speaker 1 (27:26):
I think? So?
Speaker 2 (27:27):
And making things up for you know, So he went
down there to try to make amends a little bit.
Speaker 1 (27:33):
So what do. He goes down to Mississippi.
Speaker 2 (27:36):
He goes down to Mississippi on a bear hunt, and
they're led by this legendary bear hunter who supposedly has
killed thousands of bears. It's probably more like a few hundred,
but sure, thousands of bears, apparently. Tr from the start
was like, this is bad news because there are a
million people with us, and you know, this isn't really
a bear hunt. His perception of hunting was, you know,
(27:56):
you go out with a few dogs, or you go
out on your own, and and you know, you do
it that way. But there were a whole bunch of
people with them, and so he was like, this not
my version of it. But he went ahead and did
it anyway. It was at the invitation of the governor
of Mississippi or one of the senators. But so he
goes down there and he's everybody has shot a bear
but him. And so he comes back to the campsite
(28:20):
and they've tied up this kind of sickly bear that
has already killed some of the dogs, and they're like,
here's a bear for you to shoot, and Tierra was like, no,
I won't do it. Yeah, this isn't sportsmanlike and so
that's where the teddy bear comes from. Someone from a
toy company came to him and said, can we use
your name for this teddy bear? And he said sure, okay,
(28:41):
and then it became a thing. But I think what
most people don't necessarily realize is that it's not like
they let the bear go. Somebody else killed it with
a knife. Oh godd So I know it's like, oh.
Speaker 1 (28:53):
Yeah, So I want to talk a little bit about
his family because I'm kind of fascinated by his sister
Baby and how he relied on her. Can can you
talk a little bit about that.
Speaker 2 (29:03):
Basically, anytime he had a big decision to make, he
would bounce it off of her, which is wild, you know,
because he's the president and that was not really something
that was done at that time. But she was very
involved in his political career. She was always writing letters
for him and sort of making connections for him. And
I think his sister Karn also helped, but to a
(29:23):
lesser extent because Bamy was down in Washington and he
just relied on her and her judgment a lot, which
was rare for that time.
Speaker 1 (29:31):
Yeah. I think in the show you said he referred
to her as like the second White House.
Speaker 2 (29:36):
Her house is the second White House, which is crazy.
Speaker 1 (29:39):
Well, I want to hear just a few of the
fun stories that maybe you haven't gotten to talk about
on the show.
Speaker 2 (29:45):
Oh my god, there's so much. Okay, So we've kind
of discussed a little bit about how the Roosevelts had
this insane menagerie of pets. So Emily Spinach obviously was
Alice's pet garter snake that she would carry around in
her purse. Yeah, low loves loves. But my absolute favorite
(30:07):
story about their pets is they had a bear, a
small black bear named Jonathan Edwards. The kids named it
Jonathan Edwards because of its calvinistic tendencies, but then also
I guess Edith was somehow related to Jonathan Edwards. But
they used to take it for walks. They had like
a leash, It was a chain basically, and they would
(30:29):
walk it with a club, which is a club. Yeah,
I mean I guess it would get out of hand,
you know, And I could see it getting out of
hand pretty quickly. And eventually they gave it to the
Bronx Zoo. And when they did, Tir was like the
whole household breathed a sigh of relief, except for the
dogs because the dogs love to chase it and it
would give them the thrill of the hunt. But yeah,
(30:51):
I mean they had so many, so many pets. He
got a hyena which he named Bill from some diplomat.
They had a hyena for a little while, so lion cubs,
a zebra, they had lion cubs. They had lion cubs
for a little bit. Yeah, it's crazy. A pig named Maud.
Speaker 1 (31:07):
I know, the names are incredible, really good names.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
They had a badger named Josiah. This was a gift
from a little girl who named it after her brother,
and they would just carry this badger around. And then
all the guinea pigs who had names like father O'Grady.
So they were really, really good at naming animals. And
I feel like if anybody out there needs an animal name,
just look up what tr named his pets and go
(31:31):
with it, because they were really good at naming animals.
So that's one story.
Speaker 1 (31:36):
It's funny. I don't know if I told you this
or not, but my granddad was one of the heads
of forestry in India and he had a similar not
entirely similar, but also ended up shooting animals because yeah,
you do in the jungles. But but also there was
a bear that couldn't give milk and wish hot my grandfather,
(31:58):
but they found because it was attacking like villagers or something,
and they found the three cubs and so my granddad
brought him home. And so my mom has no fear
of animals because she had like a pet bear like
as a kid. They didn't have a club to walk
around with, but certainly played with the.
Speaker 2 (32:16):
Fi Oh my god, I can't imagine, like cats are
about as wild as I can get. Yeah, it just
seems a little intense. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (32:24):
One of the things I had no idea about until
I heard your podcast was that Roosevelt lived in North
Dakota for a while. So why does he end up there?
Speaker 2 (32:35):
Yeah, so he I believe in eighteen eighty three he
went out to the Dakotas to go hunting for bison.
So he basically had a list of big game animals
he wanted to hunt and get rid of of, you know, yeah, yolo,
And so he went out to the Dakotas to hunt
bison and he gets one. But while he's out there,
he is staying with these cattle ranchers, and so he's
(32:58):
having discussions with them and he decides he's going to
invest in a cattle ranch pretty impulsively. What does he
know about cattle ranching, literally nothing, but he's like, whatever,
I'll just throw some money at this and become an investor.
So he gets this cattle ranch, and then in eighteen
eighty four, his wife and his mother died on the
same day, which was horribly traumatic, as you might imagine
(33:22):
his first wife, Alice, who is Alice's mother. And so
he goes back to the New York State Assembly and
he's got kind of like a rough last term because
the Mugwumps, which was a faction of the Republican Party,
wanted him to support the Democratic nominee for governor and
not the Republican nominee for governor because the Republican nominee
(33:44):
was super corrupt, and tr made some comment that ended
up getting out into the press and it was like
a whole big mess. And so after his term was done,
he was like, this isn't for me. I'm going to
move to the Dakotas and become a cattle rancher. And
so he just like up and moved to the Dakotas.
He bought another ranch that was more solitary. The first
(34:06):
ranch he invested in was called the Maltese Cross Ranch,
and it was sort of on a thoroughfare out of town.
I mean as much as a thoroughfare as you can
have in the Dakota's side time, but you know, it
was pretty People would come by, and you know, he
was like, I don't want to talk to anybody, you know,
kind of just want to be by myself. And so
(34:26):
he heard about this other parcel of land that was
thirty five miles away from Medoro, which was near where
his other cabin was, and so he bought the rights
to that land for four hundred bucks, built a cabin
out there, and he lived out there off and on
for a few years. He was never like fully fully
out there, but he did intend to go out there
(34:47):
and stay there permanently. It just didn't work out that
way because people were still pulling him back to New York.
Speaker 1 (34:52):
You know.
Speaker 2 (34:52):
Like when he moved to the Dakotas, he left his
daughter Alice with his sister baby, and so he would
go back to see her and sort of take part
in political things and then he met or reconnected with
his childhood sweetheart, Edith Kurmit Crow, who had become a
second wife, and so he was back and forth a lot.
So he didn't move out there permanently, but he was
out there for quite some time. And I think one
(35:12):
of the funniest stories he bought this buckskin suit, fringed
buckskin suit, and you know, I mean his thinking was, oh,
it's really soft and comfortable, and you know, you can
wear it and move through the brush and it's really quiet.
But people in the Dakota's didn't really wear that kind
of stage. And so he shows up in this get
(35:37):
up pretending to be a cowboy basically, and they're like,
this dude from New York. And he also had glasses,
which at that time people took as a sign of weakness,
so they would pick on him and then he would
just pop them right in the face and they would
realize like, oh, well, I shouldn't have done that. And
he was like a boss man out there, and so
he was never quite I think the cowboy that he
(35:59):
portray himself to be. But he also wasn't a person
who was afraid to get dirty. So he would spend
thirteen hours out in the saddle with the rest of
his men and work really hard, just like just like
you know, the men. So they really respected him. They
came to respect him, not at first, but well efectually.
Speaker 1 (36:17):
That's one of the questions I had, is like where
does he feel most comfortable, because he's obviously like he
grows up with well, he goes to an ivyley school,
he's in the army, he's like, you know, like he's
in so many different scenes. Like where is he most
at home?
Speaker 2 (36:33):
I mean, I think he always felt the most at
home in nature. You kind of see a pattern when
any tragedy occurs in his life where he works himself
to the point of exhaustion, I think, basically trying to
keep himself from thinking, and then he just goes and
he retreats to nature and that kind of heals him
after every major death in his life. That's the pattern
he follows. So I think he always felt most at home,
(36:57):
you know, when he was like in the dirt and
the mud, you know, doing some kind of physical activity.
Speaker 1 (37:01):
One of the questions gave throughout to me is he
wanted to know is it true that tr once climbed
the matterhorn out of spite? True, So what's that strue?
I saw that question, I was like, what.
Speaker 2 (37:13):
Yeah. So on his first honeymoon, tr heard some British
climbers in the lobby of the hotel he was staying in,
basically like bragging about it. And so he just decided
that he was going to summit the matterhorn to show
them that he could climb just as well as any
brit could. And he did it. And the matter horn
is like, is like a really difficult like many people
(37:35):
have died. And of course he had guides, but he
was pretty much an amateur, and he was just like,
I'm doing it force the personality exactly. And you know
what's wild is that he was still having asthma attacks
at this time. I mean, he kind of created this
myth that he defeated his asthma, which is not true.
He suffered from asthma for the rest of his life,
(37:55):
for his whole life. But you know, he basically was
just like, I'm not going to let this stop me.
I'm not going to show that I'm weak. Just the
stories of his physical exertion make me. It's inspiring and
also exhausting. He would go to Maine and just like
climb mountains and moccasins when he lost his boot in
a stream, which is like not an easy thing to do,
(38:17):
you know, or they he'd hunt caribou for thirty six
miles in the snow with just like a blanket. He
was a crazy guy. Yeah, it's crazy.
Speaker 1 (38:26):
Well. One of the things I always hear Doris Kurnce
Goodwin say about him is that like he wanted to
be the baby at every you know, risks or whatever,
and the you know, I feel like he was always
the center of attention. How did he fare with being
president and then not being president?
Speaker 2 (38:45):
Oh? Not well, not well at all. One of the
experts that I spoke with, Clay Jenkinson, who's the founder
of the Theodore Roosevelt Center, was basically, just like after
he left the presidency, he was the most unpleasant guy
because he just he felt like he should be the guy.
What happened was in his second term, early on he said,
(39:07):
I'm not going to run for reelection for a third
term because people will be tired of me, and you know,
two terms is enough. And it's like a very stupid
thing to do, because people loved him and he could
have had a third term, but instead, you know, he
said early on that he wasn't going to run again,
and so at the end of it he was like, nope,
I said, I wasn't going to run again. I'm done.
(39:27):
And then you know, Taft kind of didn't keep up
his reforms in conservation, he went after us steel. I
think he also sort of apologized to the Colombian government
for helping Panama pull off a coup so that the
Panama Canal could happen. He was just furious, furious, and
he really hated Woodrow Wilson like so much. His entrance
(39:49):
into the nineteen twelve presidential race is what led to
Woodrow Wilson becoming president. And then he just hated Woodrow
Wilson for being a pacifist. So you know, he just
was bitter, bitter, so bitter, so mad. Yeah, he just
really wanted to be president. You know, he always thought
that he could do a better job, and I mean
maybe he could have.
Speaker 1 (40:10):
Yeah. Well, I liked that you refer in one of
your shows to his political style is big stick energy,
which I thought was really funny. I feel like that
belongs on a T shirt.
Speaker 2 (40:20):
Yeah, I can't take credit for that. My researcher, Michael
Salgarolo came up with that and he was like, please
use that, and I was like, oh, I'm gonna so,
thanks Michael.
Speaker 1 (40:31):
He wins a Nobel along the way, right.
Speaker 2 (40:33):
Yes, he was the first American to win a Nobel
prize of any kind, and it was partly for his
mediation between the Japanese and the Russians during the Russo
Japanese War, which some people call World War Zero because
it was like an early mechanized war and they were
killing each other in huge numbers. It had the potential
to really sort of unsettle things in the Pacific, and
(40:57):
so he stepped in and he was sort of a
neutral mediator, sort of not There's this one great scene
where he calls the Russian diplomat over to Sagamore Hill
to tell him how he thinks he should negotiate, and
he's playing tennis, and he doesn't stop playing tennis while
(41:18):
he's talking to this Russian diplomat, you know, like in
breaks from the game. He comes over and he says, well,
here's what I think you should do. Here's what I'd recommend,
and then he goes back to play. Some of the
tennis and then he comes back and this went on
for like ninety minutes, and I have to imagine what
the Russian diplomat was thinking. He was like, this guy's crazy.
That's amazing, But you know that was his style.
Speaker 1 (41:37):
Yeah, so I do want to hear it. Do you
know anything about that Doctor Sue's story.
Speaker 2 (41:43):
I do so. I can't remember the exact date. I
feel like it was nineteen eighteen, but Theodore Roosevelt went
to this small town where he was going to hand
out awards to boy scouts who had sold one thousand
dollars worth of war bonds, and Theodore gaise El doctor Seuss,
was one of those boys. All the boys are standing
up on stage, there are ten of them. Tier only
(42:05):
has nine medals. Somebody messed up, and so you know,
he's pinning medals on the lapels of all these kids
and he gets to Theodore guys all he doesn't have
a medal, and he says, what's this boy doing here?
The boy scouts master, which is didn't say anything. He
just like ran guys all off stage. And then apparently
that gave doctor Seuss stage fright for the rest of
(42:27):
his life.
Speaker 1 (42:28):
That's incredible. I know and horrifying.
Speaker 2 (42:32):
Yeah, I mean, like it makes sense. It would be
so humiliating. And you know, it wasn't his fault, wasn't
TR's fault. It was just just a thing that happened,
and uh and there were there were implications.
Speaker 1 (42:44):
So tell me, have you been inspired by Teddy Roosevelt
to change your life in any way or have you
taken any sort of uh inspiration from all these stories?
Speaker 2 (42:54):
I really want to try to be more productive and
sort of block out my time. Like I'm a big
believer in a to do list, but apparently that's not enough.
That doesn't help you be productive enough. So I think
in twenty twenty, I'm going to start blocking out my
time and seeing how how that goes. Or maybe I'll
take up Judo. We'll see.
Speaker 1 (43:12):
I like that. But no carrying a badger around.
Speaker 2 (43:17):
Or no, no, no, no, no, Chuck no. I mean
my cats they're about all I can handle. I mean,
Pearl kind of looks like a badger, So Pearl Woolfie,
it looks like a badger.
Speaker 1 (43:27):
So Ada tell everyone where they can find the show
and what episode they should start with.
Speaker 2 (43:37):
Well, I mean, I personally think you should start from
tir versus Weakness, which is the first one because it
kind of lays the groundwork for everything that comes next.
But in terms of my favorite episode, Tier versus Time
is a big one. I like Tier versus Language just
because it gets into the whole simplified spelling debacle, which
is one of my favorite stories of all time. Tear
(43:57):
versus Corruption is really fun because I think you get
a really good sense of the unusual style he used
to take on corruption. They're all kind of close to
my heart, to be honest, and.
Speaker 1 (44:07):
It's crazy everything he's involved in, from like everything football,
and I.
Speaker 2 (44:13):
Mean, like there's so much we couldn't even get into,
you know, like I could go forever. But you know,
every time I said, like let's add an episode, no, no, no, no,
Yler and Dylan were like, Aaron, you're crazy stuff. Tear
versus Nature is I don't know, they're all fun. They're
all fun in their own ways, and I mean, I think,
what's children. I can't to make the choos, But you know,
(44:34):
I think what's good about this is that you know,
you read the biography is about tr and everybody kind
of focuses on the thing that they want to focus
on doing a podcast like this in this format has
kind of allowed us to drop in and out of
his life, to feature different things, and I think it's
actually allowed us to get into some of the not
so great stuff, you know, and explore that in a
way that I hope is enlightening and thoughtful. So you know,
(44:57):
we'll see people respond.
Speaker 1 (45:00):
It's a really excellent series and really really fun. And
you can get History Versus for Mental Class everywhere from
iHeart to Spotify, the Stitcher to wherever you get your podcasts.
But what's next for the series.
Speaker 2 (45:14):
So we are looking at an explorer for the second season.
I don't want to say who, I don't want to
spoil it, but not the explorer you're probably thinking of.
Speaker 1 (45:23):
Huh.
Speaker 2 (45:24):
So that's fun. And then for the third season, I
have an author i'd like to feature. Awesome, and we'll see.
And there's kind of a Theodore Roosevelt connection to all
to both of those nice I mean, of course there is.
I mean, yeah, like he was involved in literally everything.
Speaker 1 (45:42):
Well, Aaron McCarthy, thank you so much for being here.
That's it for Part Time Genius this week. We'll be
back next week with an episode on elevators. I think
it's going to be great, I promise, And in the
meantime from Will Gabe Lolami, thanks so much for listening.
Speaker 2 (46:10):
Part Time Genius is a production of iHeartRadio. For more
podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite show.
Part-Time Genius News
Hosts And Creators
Will Pearson
Mangesh Hattikudur
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Ruthie's Table 4
For more than 30 years The River Cafe in London, has been the home-from-home of artists, architects, designers, actors, collectors, writers, activists, and politicians. Michael Caine, Glenn Close, JJ Abrams, Steve McQueen, Victoria and David Beckham, and Lily Allen, are just some of the people who love to call The River Cafe home. On River Cafe Table 4, Rogers sits down with her customers—who have become friends—to talk about food memories. Table 4 explores how food impacts every aspect of our lives. “Foods is politics, food is cultural, food is how you express love, food is about your heritage, it defines who you and who you want to be,” says Rogers. Each week, Rogers invites her guest to reminisce about family suppers and first dates, what they cook, how they eat when performing, the restaurants they choose, and what food they seek when they need comfort. And to punctuate each episode of Table 4, guests such as Ralph Fiennes, Emily Blunt, and Alfonso Cuarón, read their favourite recipe from one of the best-selling River Cafe cookbooks. Table 4 itself, is situated near The River Cafe’s open kitchen, close to the bright pink wood-fired oven and next to the glossy yellow pass, where Ruthie oversees the restaurant. You are invited to take a seat at this intimate table and join the conversation. For more information, recipes, and ingredients, go to https://shoptherivercafe.co.uk/ Web: https://rivercafe.co.uk/ Instagram: www.instagram.com/therivercafelondon/ Facebook: https://en-gb.facebook.com/therivercafelondon/ For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iheartradio app, apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.