February 19, 2020 • 46 mins
In today’s special episode, Mango sits down with Erin McCarthy, editor-in-chief of Mental Floss to talk about everything 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 darn scared of him.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Part Time Genius, the production of I Heart Radio.
I 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 Pendric guest, but he has
zero interest in Teddy Roosevelt, which is what today's episode
(00:24):
is all about. So of course I led 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 as a meat source, like
(00:45):
he actually wanted to farm hippos in to buy you
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 actually climbed
(01:08):
a mountain of a spite to what we're Teddy's productivity,
life hacks, and also what is big stick energy. So
we're diving into all of that. Let's dig in. Hey there,
(01:40):
podcast listeners, it's mong Issue Tiler. You're listening to part
time genius and my co founder, co host Will Pearson,
decided not to come in today. It is such a
mistake because Lowell 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.
But we'll have to ask our guest today about that.
(02:02):
But I am here with a wonderful Aaron McCarthy. Aaron
is the editor in chief of Mental Class 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 bellies, disastrous attempt to make a
pizza flavored jelly bean, and uh also the oral history
(02:23):
of traffic keepers. But today she's here to talk exclusively
about a different obsession, Teddy Roosevelt. Hey, Aaron, so I
want 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.
I did not know. I mocked up a version of
(02:45):
him cutting like karate chopping aboard like in a Judo
and no one else dug it. But it's still in
the So tell me, how is it that you got
so obsessed with Teddy Roosevelt. So you 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
(03:05):
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. Um,
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 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,
(03:26):
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 t R. It's gonna be interesting. I didn't
know it was the third book in a trilogy. Um.
So I read it, and uh, it was amazing. 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,
(03:49):
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 him.
So that's great. And it didn't confuse you to start
with the third one, like it was like starting with
Back to the Future three or something. Yeah, I don't know.
I mean I was just kind of like, hmm, maybe
(04:10):
I should have gone back to get the other ones,
but I just didn't like it just didn't even occur
to me. And by then I bought it, so I
was like, well, you know, I'm just going to read
this 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. Um, But I came
out of it knowing so much more about him and
(04:30):
just being totally obsessed. So it's amazing how your series
is structured, because it's like history versus and in different
aspects that Teddy Roosevelt's babbling. And I wanted to start
with time because I have no idea how he managed
to get so much into a day. Oh me either,
me either, And it's just baffling, baffling, Like it makes
you tired when you read about how productive he was.
(04:52):
I just strive for that energy every single day, every day. Well,
I mean even as a college student. You think, like
college students should be lethargic or whatever, but like, like
his schedule that you lay out is insane, right, 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
(05:12):
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
apparently all the super productive people in history, well maybe
not all of them, but many of them do that.
You know, they'll say, this block of time is for
(05:32):
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. Well,
the other thing is 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 to all
the time. It's insane. I wonder if he ever got
(05:52):
tired of the sound of his own voice, because like,
I sometimes get tired of this end of my own
voice as I'm sitting in the studio podcasting, Like uh,
I read somewhere that he had a distinctive voice though
too 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
(06:14):
this story that Edmund Morris tells about how when he
was in the New York State Assembly, he would just
yell Mr Speaker, Mr Speaker, like forty times, just over
and over until the speaker would acknowledge him. You know.
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
(06:34):
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 his teeth. Yeah, and uh, I mean, I'm assuming
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 um distinctive, you know, just like really
(06:56):
white and square, and he was always just like chomping
on word. That's funny because I guess if you think
about like the caricatures of him, they do have that,
but it's not something that I had picked up on. Well,
now you're going to notice, Well, he also used to
put those teeth to good use for meals, right, Like
he was a big eater. Oh, big eater, huge eater. Yeah,
(07:17):
and you know, like pretty plain stuff. He wasn't like
um into super duper fancy foods. But yeah, he ate
a lot, so when he wasn't being his active he
got kind of chunky and it made him sad. Yeah.
The other thing I didn't realize was how much coffee
he drank so much, so like a gallon a day. Yeah,
(07:38):
I mean, and what was his his son something that
said something like his coffee mugs resembled a bathtub. 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
it's huge. Um, yeah, it's really it's really big. And
now at the gift shops in some places they actually
(07:58):
sell a bull Moose coffee mug that's really big. So
I obviously bought one, Um, and I drank my coffee
out of it exclusively now because I too have a
bit of a caffeine problem. Not that badly, but pretty
pretty bad. 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.
(08:18):
But he grew up in New York City partially. Yeah,
so he was born in New York City in eight
and um, you know, he was born to a very
wealthy family. His father, Uh, the family business was plate
class importing. But yeah, it's weird, right, And I think
his father was eighth generation Dutch New Yorker. But his
father the was basically a professional philanthropist. He gave money
(08:41):
away like crazy, and he supported a lot 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
(09:01):
it rain towards worthy causes all the time. So tr
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
(09:22):
get him breathe, which makes no sense, but you know,
at that day, it was in that day, it was
you know, that was a cutting edge and you know,
when you're when your kid is sick, you're willing to
do basically anything that you think is going to help. So, um,
you know, his father would put him in the carriage
and and go for these wild rides down the road
(09:42):
trying to force air into try to try to get
him to to breathe. And you know back then, I
mean asthma is still it can be fatal today, but
back then it was it was really bad. So yeah,
he was this 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
(10:04):
get the fresh air tier and his mother would go
to these like health spas where they would take the
waters or do whatever it is that you did in
that day to try to make yourself healthier. Um. 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 uh,
you know, just like a sick, sick little kid. And
(10:26):
then when he was a teenager or just about to
be a teenager, his father said to him you have
the mind, but 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. Yeah, basically,
(10:51):
like that was kind of what it was like. Although
I guess there was like a beautiful garden in the
back yard or whatever, so he would be like lifting
weights and looking out over the garden and um and uh.
And then he took up boxing because he actually took
this trip up to I want to say moose Head
Lake in Maine. But he met these kids on the
stage coach on the way up there, and they just
(11:11):
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. And so then
he was like, I'm going to take up boxing. So um,
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 at the house that's the
White House. Yeah, and then it was like no more boxing,
(11:31):
so that's when he took up judo, anything to stay active.
It reminds me of the Jersey Shore where like all
these people can't fight, but they lift weights. Yeah, but
if you have that much focus towards any activity, I'm
sure you just get great at it, right, Like if
he had that same focus as a child, well, and
(11:52):
I mean like and he applied that same focus to
everything he did 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. And you
(12:14):
can imagine if you worship your father and your father
tells you that, like 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 just 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. Ah,
(12:36):
there's so much good stuff, but we need to pause
more with Aaron after the break. Okay, So we're here
with Aeron McCarthy and Mental Flaws talking about Teddy Roosevelt
(12:58):
as a child. I know from the podcast that he
had a snapping turtle that he like strapped to a
sink or something and tried to train a woodchuck. Yeah. Yeah,
so he 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
(13:19):
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, and he
saw a dead seal at the market and it just
kind of like 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
(13:41):
it up and they I guess we're trying to sell
it or something. 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 he only imagined 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
(14:02):
just bring things home living dead. He keep them in
his room. He had the snapping turtle. Um, I feel
like there were some squirrels that he raised by hand
or something. I mean, he was just obsessed 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
(14:23):
and hunt like he did? As someone told me, that's
very like twenty one 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, you kind of had to
kill them and see what made them work. And so
he did that a lot. Yeah. So now it's hard
(14:43):
hard to reconcile those things, right it is now, yeah,
but not back then. It was just it was it
was the thing. One thing that I think is 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 con revationists because they could see,
you know, that animal populations were depleting, and so they said,
(15:06):
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 a permit to
(15:28):
shoot a bear, which makes me sad, but it's a
thing that happens um 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 the
thing that's kind of controversial these days. Yeah, I mean
they inspire so much wonder you know, and and just
(15:50):
being at the museums and stuff. If you couldn't have
seen all these wonderful taxidermy things, right, Like, it's hard
to imagine being as interested in at least for me. Yeah,
And you know they have in the back rooms and
museums they have just drawers and drawers filled with specimens.
We went to see like the Hippo's Hippo skulls, which
(16:11):
was incredible. 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. If you didn't have those specimens,
(16:31):
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
t R, he would go out and he would just
be like, I'm a bag everything I can bag science.
In high school, I saw Bill Clinton was going to
(16:52):
Africa and they were contrasting his trip there with like
Teddy Roosevelts, and it just listed out all animals he
shot hundreds and hundreds 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 or in a collection of
(17:13):
ticks down in Georgia or something, and I was like,
I want to go there, but maybe one day. 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 and he's always contributing
to things and whatever. Jefferson also kind of had that inclination, right,
(17:35):
like he collected fossils and whatever. But Roosevelt did not
like rated him so much, hated him. 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.
(17:57):
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. And tr
was 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
(18:17):
do with that. He also had an issue with the
way that Jefferson dealt with George Washington, or like tried
to undermine George Washington, and Washington tr held up to
a pretty high He put him on a pedestal um
not as high as the pedestal who put Lincoln on,
but you know, he thought Washington was pretty great. Well
that that was a funny line in your show. Was
(18:39):
was talking about how, you know, he loved Lincoln but
less enamored with his neighbor Jefferson. Jefferson hated Jefferson so much.
And what's so funny is that it's Sagamore Hill, Roosevelt's
long Island of State. 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 Caliberta,
who's the education technician. They're like, what's what's this doing here?
(19:00):
And he goes, you know, I have no idea. That's
really funny. They just needed some things. I know, I know,
it's like somebody's fooling around here. Somebody's playing a little trick.
That's pretty funny. So tell me about his obsession with Lincoln,
because it starts when he's pretty young, right, yeah, well,
so his father actually worked with Lincoln. I get so
confused about the times, but like the fact that he,
(19:22):
like his he kind of interacts with Lincoln because the
lack of hero in someway. Right. But but but also like,
doesn't he have like a Doctor Seuss incident as well?
I feel like he does. Yeah, is so strange in
terms of how far it 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
(19:43):
some way, but start with the start with 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, didn't sign up for
the Civil War. He paid someone to go in his place.
And that is because or at least partially because well, yes,
but not really. I think he probably still would have
(20:06):
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 she also did a little bit of
the guilt trip, like, um, you know, if you died,
I've got all these kids, and like, please don't go
to war. Um. So he didn't. He paid someone to
go in his place. You know, there was probably a
(20:27):
little bit of guilt there. 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 um signing soldiers up for that program.
So he wasn't home a lot, and when he wasn't home,
t R's health took a nose dive. There's just a
(20:48):
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, Diddy
not so much. And her mother and sister were in
the house as well, So it was like a nation
divided and the house divided. So it was kind of
(21:09):
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 McKinley was assassinated,
but then when he was elected of his own right,
(21:30):
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. He thought he
was like the perfect person. It is interesting to me
(21:50):
that Teddy Roosevelt not only took his presidency so seriously right,
like he'd never take a photo of himself in tennis white,
all these things. But can you talk a little bit
about how he and Taft how to falling out because
they were really good friends, right, Yes, they were extremely
good friends, very very close, and actually Taft was TR's
(22:11):
hand picked successor to the presidency, and so as soon
as they decided like Taft is going to be the guy,
Taft didn't even wanted. Taft wanted to be a Supreme
Court justice, and it would have been cool with that.
But his wife was really ambitious and she was like,
you have to be president and was like fine, which
is kind of indicative of how Taft was with everything right.
He kind of let himself be bullied or pushed into things.
(22:31):
And so the minute that tr 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 much about his image and the
image he projected and how people perceived him. And tafton
(22:53):
care He just wanted to golf and fish and do
what he wanted to do. And and so he ascends
to the presidency or he's elected president, Tire 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, and you know, Teddy, come visit me,
and tr is like, no, I don't think it's it's
(23:14):
a good idea. For you know, a former president to
come down, you know, a visit a current president or whatever.
He was like, it's just unseemly. 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 firing of Gifford pin Show, who had been
trs chief of forestry. That was the break. And then
(23:37):
there were also issues with U S 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 TR's life. Basically. I feel like there
was one time when they ran into each other somewhere
and they like shook hands and kind of put on
a show, but they were never close again after that.
(23:58):
That's kind of crazy. Yeah, And I remember from the
show some of the like curses and banter they had
for each other was kind of awful. I mean awful,
but also awesome. It's like this old fangle, like there's
nobody who's better at crafting an insult in Theodore Roosevelt
and you know Taft got some good ones. He called
him a puzzle wit and a fat head and brains
(24:20):
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 human trumpones. Pretty great human trombone.
It's so good. So you know, I just look for
(24:40):
excuses to use that all the time. 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
(25:02):
Mental Fluss talking about Teddy Roosevelt. So I I do
want to talk about I'm sure you get asked about
the story all the time, the one about the bear.
But but the thing I didn't realize was in the
chronology what had happened right before? Right, okay, can you
talk a little bit about that theater Roosevelt went on
this bear hunt and it was partially two sort of
(25:23):
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 the black man, because it basically meant that you
were saying that this black man could marry your daughter.
Tr just kind of didn't really care about that, or
he when he went out to send the invitation, he
(25:44):
was like, he hesitated for a minute, and then he
was like, no, I gotta send it, Like I can't,
I'm ashamed. I can't believe I hesitated. So he sends it.
Book or t Washington comes for dinner. He has dinner
with the whole Roosevelt family, and it's like a working
dinner too, but you know, the kids are there and
and Edith is there, Tier's wife. And then the next
day someone put it in the paper and it was
(26:07):
just chaos. Chaos. I was gonna I was going to
use an expletive, but I was like, what's the word
that doesn't have an explutive in it. Yeah, it's pretty bad.
And actually it never died down, really, I mean people
kept bringing it up and bringing it up and bring
it up long after tr was out of office, basically
up until the day he died. Did he feel like
(26:28):
he'd made a mistake or how did he know? He
was just comfortable with that. Um, he never talked about
it again, and he never invited book Or to Washington
to dinner ever again. So but you know, afterwards, he
sent a letter that was basically like, I don't understand
why everyone is 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
(26:50):
it was a little bit of a risky move. Um.
And 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 um progressive,
you know, like he fought against segregation in New York
when he was governor, and he certainly appointed a few
(27:11):
African Americans to prominent positions. But you know, it just
became such a thing that I think he was kind
of like, and then I'm sure it's slowed policy and yeah, yeah,
and you know he then had to go smooth feathers
is that a phrase? I think? So making things up,
you know, So he went down there to to try
to make amends a little bit. Um. So he goes
(27:34):
down to Mississippi. 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 thousands of bears. Apparently. Tire
from the start was like, this is bad news because
there are million people with us, and you know, this
isn't really a bear hunt. His perception of hunting was,
(27:56):
you know, 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,
not my version of it, but he went ahead and
did anyway. He 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. Um. And so he comes back to the
(28:19):
campsite and they've tied up this 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
here I was like, no, I won't do it. This
isn't sportsmanlike. And so that's that's where the teddy bear
comes from. Someone uh from a toy company came to
him and said, can we use your name for this
teddy bear? And he said sure, okay um, and then
(28:42):
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 god, So I know. It's like. So I want
to talk a little bit about his family because I'm
kind of fascinated by his sister Baby and and how
he relied on her. Talk a little bit about that. Basically,
(29:03):
any time 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 Karin also helped, but to a
lesser extent because Baby was down in Washington, and uh,
(29:27):
he just relied on her and her judgment a lot,
which was rare for that time. Yeah. I think in
the show, you said he referred to her as like
the second White House, her house, the second White House,
which is crazy. Well, I want to hear just a
few of the like fun stories that maybe you haven't
gotten to talk about on the show. Oh my god,
there's so much. Okay, so we've kind of discussed a
(29:49):
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, loves.
But my absolute favorite story about their pets is they
(30:09):
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 walk it with a club, which is yeah,
(30:33):
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, tr was like the
whole household breathed a sigh of relief, except for the dogs,
because the dogs love to chase it um and it
would give them the thrill of the hunt. But yeah,
I mean they had so many, so many pets. He
(30:53):
got a hyena which he named Bill from some diplomat.
They had a hyena for a little while. Um, so
lion cubs, a zebra. They had lion cubs. They had
lion cubs for a little bit. It's crazy. A pig
named Maud. I know. The names are incredible, really good names.
They had a badger named Josiah, which was a gift
from from a little girl who named it after her brother.
(31:15):
And they would just carry this badger around and then
all the guinea pigs who had names like father O'Grady.
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
with it, because they were really good at naming animals.
So that's one story. It's funny. I um, I don't
(31:38):
know if I told you this or not, but my
my granddad was one of the heads of forestry in
India and and he uh had a similar not entirely similar,
but but also ended up shooting animals because um, yeah
you do in the jungles but but but also, um,
there was a bear that couldn't give milk and was
shot my grandfather. But they found um because it was
(32:00):
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 Oh my god, I can't imagine, Like
cats are about as wild as I can get. It
(32:21):
just seems a little intense. One of the things I
had no idea about until I heard your podcast was
um that Roosevelt lived in North Dakota for a while,
So why why does he end up there? Yeah, so
he I believe in eighteen eight three he went out
to the Dakotas to go hunting for bison. So he
(32:42):
basically had a list of big game animals he wanted
to hunt and get you 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 having discussions with
them and uh, and he decides he's going to invest
in a cattle ranch pretty impulsively, because what does he
(33:05):
know about cattle ranching, literally nothing, but he's like, whatever,
I'll just throw some money at this and uh and
become an investor. So he's he gets this cattle ranch
and then um four, his wife and his mother died
on the same day, which was horribly traumatic, as you
might imagine his first wife, Alice, who is Alice's mother.
(33:25):
And so he goes back to the New York State
Assembly and he's got He's kind of like a rough
last term because the Mugwumps, which was a faction um
of the Republican Party, wanted him to support the Democratic
nominee for governor and not the Republican nominee for governor
because the Republican nominee was super corrupt, and tr made
(33:47):
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. He The first ranch he invested in
was called the Maltese cross ranch, and it was sort
(34:10):
of on a thoroughfare out of town. I mean as
much as a thoroughfare as you can have in the
Dakotas at that 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, I
kind of just want to be by myself. And so
he heard about this other parcel of land that was
thirty five miles away from Medoro, which was near where
(34:33):
his other cabin was, and so he bought the rights
to that land for four d bucks, built 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 didn't tend to go out there and stay
there permanently. It just didn't work out that way because
people were still pulling him back to New York. You know.
Like when he moved to the Dakotas, he left his
(34:54):
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 ker mccarrowe, who would 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
of the funniest stories he bought this buckskin suit, fringed
(35:18):
buckskin suit, and uh, you know, I mean his thinking was, oh,
it's 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 Dakotas didn't really wear
that kind of thing. And so he shows up in
this in this get up, pretending to be a cowboy basically,
(35:40):
and they're like, this dude from New York. And he
also had glasses, which at that time people took us
a sign of weakness that they would pick on him
and then he would just pop him 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 portray raid himself to be. But
(36:02):
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 um 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 eventually. That's all the questions I had is like
where does he feel most comfortable? Because he's obviously like
(36:22):
he grows up with well, he goes to an idlie 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? 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
(36:44):
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, you know, when he was like in
the dirt and the mud, you know, doing some kind
of physical activity. One of the questions gave throughout to
me is, uh, he wanted to know is it true
(37:06):
that tr once climbed the matter horn out of spite?
So what was that? I saw the question. I was like, what, 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 matter Horn to
(37:27):
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 have died. Um. And of course he had guides,
but he was pretty much an amateur and he was
just like, I'm doing it exactly. And you know what's
wild is that he was still having asthma attacks at
(37:47):
this time. I mean, he he kind of created this
this myth that he defeated his asthma, which is not true. Um.
He suffered from asthma for the rest of his life,
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
(38:10):
climb mountains and moccasins when he lost his boot in
a stream, which is like not not an easy thing
to do. 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. Well. One
of the things I always hear Um Jorge Kurrn's Goodwin
(38:30):
and say about him is that like he wanted to
be the baby at every you know, frisks or whatever,
and um, you know, I feel like he's always the
center of attention. How did he fair with being president
and then not being president? Oh? Not well, not well
at all. One of the experts that I spoke with,
Clay Jenkinson, who's the founder of the theater Roosevelt Center,
(38:53):
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, I'm not going
to run for re election for a third term because
people will be tired of me and you know, two
terms is enough. And uh, it's like a very stupid
(39:15):
thing to do. Um because people loved him, um, 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 gonna run again. I'm done. 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
(39:37):
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 into
the presidential race is what led to Woodrow Wilson becoming president.
And then he just hated Woodrow Wilson for being a pacifist.
(39:57):
So you know, he just was was bitter, bitter, so bitter,
so mad. 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. Yeah, well, I
I liked that you refer in one of your shows
to his political style as big stick energy, which I
thought was really funny T shirt. I can't take credit
(40:21):
for that. My researcher, Michael Salguerollo came up with that
and he was like, please use that, and I was like, oh,
I'm gonna thanks Michael. He wins a Nobel along the way, right. Yes,
he was the first American to win a Nobel prize
of any kind um and it was partly for his
mediation between the Japanese and the Russians during the Russo
(40:44):
Japanese War, which some people called 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
so he stepped in and was sort of a neutral
media or sort of not. There's this one great scene
(41:05):
where he calls the Russian diplomat over to Sagamore Hill
to tell him how he thinks he shouldn't negotiate, and
he's playing tennis, and he doesn't stop playing tennis while
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 my tennis,
(41:27):
and then he comes back and this went on for
like ninety minutes. I can have to imagine what the
Russian diplomat was thinking. He was like this guy's crazy.
That's amazing, but you know that was that was his style.
So I do want to hear do you know anything
about that doctor who's stories? I do so. I can't
remember the exact date. I feel like it was eight.
(41:49):
But Theodore Roosevelt went to this small town um where
he was going to hand out awards to boy scouts
who had sold a thousand dollars worth of war bonds,
and Theodore guys all like a Dr SEUs, who was
one of those boys. All the boys are standing up
on stage. There are ten of them. Tier only has
nine medals. Um, somebody messed up, and so you know,
(42:10):
he's pinning medals on the lapels of all these kids.
And he gets to theater guys all he doesn't have
a metal and he says, what's this boy doing here?
The boy Scouts master, which didn't say anything. He just
like ran guys all off stage. And then apparently that
gave Dr Seuss stage fright for the rest of his life.
That's incredible, you know, and horrifying. Yeah, I mean, like
(42:33):
it makes sense. It would be so humiliating. And you
know it wasn't his fault, wasn't t R's fault. It
was just just a thing that happened, and uh, and
there were there were implications. So tell me, have you
been inspired by Teddy Roosevelt to change your life in
anyway or have you taken any sort of inspiration from
(42:53):
all these stories? 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 I'm going to start blocking out my time,
um and seeing how how that goes. Or maybe I'll
take up Judo. We'll see. I like that. But no
(43:15):
carrying a badger around or no, no, no, no no.
I mean my cats They're about all I can handle.
I mean, Pearl kind of looks like a badger, so
Pearl Wolfe looks like a badger. So adorable cats. So
tell everyone where they can find the show and and
what episode they should start with. Well, I mean, I
(43:37):
personally think you should start from tr versus Weakness, which
is the first one because it kind of lays the
groundwork for everything that comes next. But um, in terms
of my favorite tier, versus time is a big one. Um,
I like tr versus Language just because it gets into
the whole simplified spelling Tobaccle, which is one of my
favorite stories of all time. Tier versus Corruption is really
(43:58):
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 it's crazy everything he's involved in, from like everything football,
and I 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,
(44:20):
no no, no, no, no, Laon were like, Aaron, you're
crazy stuff. Tear versus Nature is really I don't know.
They're all fun. They're all fun in their own ways.
And I mean I think, what's yeah, I can't make
you choose, but you know, I think what's what's good
about this is that, you know, you read the biographies
about t R and everybody kind of focuses on the
(44:40):
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, we'll see people respond.
(45:00):
It's a really excellent series and and and really really fun.
And uh, you can get history Versus from Mental Flass
everywhere from My Heart to Spotify, the Stitcher to wherever
you get your podcast. But what's next for the series.
So we are looking at an explorer for the second season.
I don't want to say who, don't want to spoil it,
(45:20):
but not the explorer you're probably thinking of. 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, um I mean of course, I mean yeah,
like he was involved in literally everything. Oh, Aaron McCarthy,
(45:43):
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 lolom me, thanks so much for listening. M h h.
(46:10):
Part Time Genius is a production of I Heart radio.
For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the I
heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to
your favorite show. H
Welcome to Part Time Genius, the production of I Heart Radio.
I 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 Pendric guest, but he has
zero interest in Teddy Roosevelt, which is what today's episode
(00:24):
is all about. So of course I led 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 as a meat source, like
(00:45):
he actually wanted to farm hippos in to buy you
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 actually climbed
(01:08):
a mountain of a spite to what we're Teddy's productivity,
life hacks, and also what is big stick energy. So
we're diving into all of that. Let's dig in. Hey there,
(01:40):
podcast listeners, it's mong Issue Tiler. You're listening to part
time genius and my co founder, co host Will Pearson,
decided not to come in today. It is such a
mistake because Lowell 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.
But we'll have to ask our guest today about that.
(02:02):
But I am here with a wonderful Aaron McCarthy. Aaron
is the editor in chief of Mental Class 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 bellies, disastrous attempt to make a
pizza flavored jelly bean, and uh also the oral history
(02:23):
of traffic keepers. But today she's here to talk exclusively
about a different obsession, Teddy Roosevelt. Hey, Aaron, so I
want 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.
I did not know. I mocked up a version of
(02:45):
him cutting like karate chopping aboard like in a Judo
and no one else dug it. But it's still in
the So tell me, how is it that you got
so obsessed with Teddy Roosevelt. So you 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
(03:05):
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. Um,
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 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,
(03:26):
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 t R. It's gonna be interesting. I didn't
know it was the third book in a trilogy. Um.
So I read it, and uh, it was amazing. 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,
(03:49):
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 him.
So that's great. And it didn't confuse you to start
with the third one, like it was like starting with
Back to the Future three or something. Yeah, I don't know.
I mean I was just kind of like, hmm, maybe
(04:10):
I should have gone back to get the other ones,
but I just didn't like it just didn't even occur
to me. And by then I bought it, so I
was like, well, you know, I'm just going to read
this 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. Um, But I came
out of it knowing so much more about him and
(04:30):
just being totally obsessed. So it's amazing how your series
is structured, because it's like history versus and in different
aspects that Teddy Roosevelt's babbling. And I wanted to start
with time because I have no idea how he managed
to get so much into a day. Oh me either,
me either, And it's just baffling, baffling, Like it makes
you tired when you read about how productive he was.
(04:52):
I just strive for that energy every single day, every day. Well,
I mean even as a college student. You think, like
college students should be lethargic or whatever, but like, like
his schedule that you lay out is insane, right, 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
(05:12):
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
apparently all the super productive people in history, well maybe
not all of them, but many of them do that.
You know, they'll say, this block of time is for
(05:32):
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. Well,
the other thing is 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 to all
the time. It's insane. I wonder if he ever got
(05:52):
tired of the sound of his own voice, because like,
I sometimes get tired of this end of my own
voice as I'm sitting in the studio podcasting, Like uh,
I read somewhere that he had a distinctive voice though
too 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
(06:14):
this story that Edmund Morris tells about how when he
was in the New York State Assembly, he would just
yell Mr Speaker, Mr Speaker, like forty times, just over
and over until the speaker would acknowledge him. You know.
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
(06:34):
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 his teeth. Yeah, and uh, I mean, I'm assuming
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 um distinctive, you know, just like really
(06:56):
white and square, and he was always just like chomping
on word. That's funny because I guess if you think
about like the caricatures of him, they do have that,
but it's not something that I had picked up on. Well,
now you're going to notice, Well, he also used to
put those teeth to good use for meals, right, Like
he was a big eater. Oh, big eater, huge eater. Yeah,
(07:17):
and you know, like pretty plain stuff. He wasn't like
um into super duper fancy foods. But yeah, he ate
a lot, so when he wasn't being his active he
got kind of chunky and it made him sad. Yeah.
The other thing I didn't realize was how much coffee
he drank so much, so like a gallon a day. Yeah,
(07:38):
I mean, and what was his his son something that
said something like his coffee mugs resembled a bathtub. 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
it's huge. Um, yeah, it's really it's really big. And
now at the gift shops in some places they actually
(07:58):
sell a bull Moose coffee mug that's really big. So
I obviously bought one, Um, and I drank my coffee
out of it exclusively now because I too have a
bit of a caffeine problem. Not that badly, but pretty
pretty bad. 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.
(08:18):
But he grew up in New York City partially. Yeah,
so he was born in New York City in eight
and um, you know, he was born to a very
wealthy family. His father, Uh, the family business was plate
class importing. But yeah, it's weird, right, And I think
his father was eighth generation Dutch New Yorker. But his
father the was basically a professional philanthropist. He gave money
(08:41):
away like crazy, and he supported a lot 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
(09:01):
it rain towards worthy causes all the time. So tr
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
(09:22):
get him breathe, which makes no sense, but you know,
at that day, it was in that day, it was
you know, that was a cutting edge and you know,
when you're when your kid is sick, you're willing to
do basically anything that you think is going to help. So, um,
you know, his father would put him in the carriage
and and go for these wild rides down the road
(09:42):
trying to force air into try to try to get
him to to breathe. And you know back then, I
mean asthma is still it can be fatal today, but
back then it was it was really bad. So yeah,
he was this 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
(10:04):
get the fresh air tier and his mother would go
to these like health spas where they would take the
waters or do whatever it is that you did in
that day to try to make yourself healthier. Um. 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 uh,
you know, just like a sick, sick little kid. And
(10:26):
then when he was a teenager or just about to
be a teenager, his father said to him you have
the mind, but 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. Yeah, basically,
(10:51):
like that was kind of what it was like. Although
I guess there was like a beautiful garden in the
back yard or whatever, so he would be like lifting
weights and looking out over the garden and um and uh.
And then he took up boxing because he actually took
this trip up to I want to say moose Head
Lake in Maine. But he met these kids on the
stage coach on the way up there, and they just
(11:11):
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. And so then
he was like, I'm going to take up boxing. So um,
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 at the house that's the
White House. Yeah, and then it was like no more boxing,
(11:31):
so that's when he took up judo, anything to stay active.
It reminds me of the Jersey Shore where like all
these people can't fight, but they lift weights. Yeah, but
if you have that much focus towards any activity, I'm
sure you just get great at it, right, Like if
he had that same focus as a child, well, and
(11:52):
I mean like and he applied that same focus to
everything he did 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. And you
(12:14):
can imagine if you worship your father and your father
tells you that, like 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 just 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. Ah,
(12:36):
there's so much good stuff, but we need to pause
more with Aaron after the break. Okay, So we're here
with Aeron McCarthy and Mental Flaws talking about Teddy Roosevelt
(12:58):
as a child. I know from the podcast that he
had a snapping turtle that he like strapped to a
sink or something and tried to train a woodchuck. Yeah. Yeah,
so he 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
(13:19):
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, and he
saw a dead seal at the market and it just
kind of like 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
(13:41):
it up and they I guess we're trying to sell
it or something. 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 he only imagined 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
(14:02):
just bring things home living dead. He keep them in
his room. He had the snapping turtle. Um, I feel
like there were some squirrels that he raised by hand
or something. I mean, he was just obsessed 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
(14:23):
and hunt like he did? As someone told me, that's
very like twenty one 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, you kind of had to
kill them and see what made them work. And so
he did that a lot. Yeah. So now it's hard
(14:43):
hard to reconcile those things, right it is now, yeah,
but not back then. It was just it was it
was the thing. One thing that I think is 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 con revationists because they could see,
you know, that animal populations were depleting, and so they said,
(15:06):
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 a permit to
(15:28):
shoot a bear, which makes me sad, but it's a
thing that happens um 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 the
thing that's kind of controversial these days. Yeah, I mean
they inspire so much wonder you know, and and just
(15:50):
being at the museums and stuff. If you couldn't have
seen all these wonderful taxidermy things, right, Like, it's hard
to imagine being as interested in at least for me. Yeah,
And you know they have in the back rooms and
museums they have just drawers and drawers filled with specimens.
We went to see like the Hippo's Hippo skulls, which
(16:11):
was incredible. 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. If you didn't have those specimens,
(16:31):
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
t R, he would go out and he would just
be like, I'm a bag everything I can bag science.
In high school, I saw Bill Clinton was going to
(16:52):
Africa and they were contrasting his trip there with like
Teddy Roosevelts, and it just listed out all animals he
shot hundreds and hundreds 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 or in a collection of
(17:13):
ticks down in Georgia or something, and I was like,
I want to go there, but maybe one day. 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 and he's always contributing
to things and whatever. Jefferson also kind of had that inclination, right,
(17:35):
like he collected fossils and whatever. But Roosevelt did not
like rated him so much, hated him. 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.
(17:57):
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. And tr
was 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
(18:17):
do with that. He also had an issue with the
way that Jefferson dealt with George Washington, or like tried
to undermine George Washington, and Washington tr held up to
a pretty high He put him on a pedestal um
not as high as the pedestal who put Lincoln on,
but you know, he thought Washington was pretty great. Well
that that was a funny line in your show. Was
(18:39):
was talking about how, you know, he loved Lincoln but
less enamored with his neighbor Jefferson. Jefferson hated Jefferson so much.
And what's so funny is that it's Sagamore Hill, Roosevelt's
long Island of State. 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 Caliberta,
who's the education technician. They're like, what's what's this doing here?
(19:00):
And he goes, you know, I have no idea. That's
really funny. They just needed some things. I know, I know,
it's like somebody's fooling around here. Somebody's playing a little trick.
That's pretty funny. So tell me about his obsession with Lincoln,
because it starts when he's pretty young, right, yeah, well,
so his father actually worked with Lincoln. I get so
confused about the times, but like the fact that he,
(19:22):
like his he kind of interacts with Lincoln because the
lack of hero in someway. Right. But but but also like,
doesn't he have like a Doctor Seuss incident as well?
I feel like he does. Yeah, is so strange in
terms of how far it 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
(19:43):
some way, but start with the start with 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, didn't sign up for
the Civil War. He paid someone to go in his place.
And that is because or at least partially because well, yes,
but not really. I think he probably still would have
(20:06):
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 she also did a little bit of
the guilt trip, like, um, you know, if you died,
I've got all these kids, and like, please don't go
to war. Um. So he didn't. He paid someone to
go in his place. You know, there was probably a
(20:27):
little bit of guilt there. 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 um signing soldiers up for that program.
So he wasn't home a lot, and when he wasn't home,
t R's health took a nose dive. There's just a
(20:48):
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, Diddy
not so much. And her mother and sister were in
the house as well, So it was like a nation
divided and the house divided. So it was kind of
(21:09):
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 McKinley was assassinated,
but then when he was elected of his own right,
(21:30):
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. He thought he
was like the perfect person. It is interesting to me
(21:50):
that Teddy Roosevelt not only took his presidency so seriously right,
like he'd never take a photo of himself in tennis white,
all these things. But can you talk a little bit
about how he and Taft how to falling out because
they were really good friends, right, Yes, they were extremely
good friends, very very close, and actually Taft was TR's
(22:11):
hand picked successor to the presidency, and so as soon
as they decided like Taft is going to be the guy,
Taft didn't even wanted. Taft wanted to be a Supreme
Court justice, and it would have been cool with that.
But his wife was really ambitious and she was like,
you have to be president and was like fine, which
is kind of indicative of how Taft was with everything right.
He kind of let himself be bullied or pushed into things.
(22:31):
And so the minute that tr 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 much about his image and the
image he projected and how people perceived him. And tafton
(22:53):
care He just wanted to golf and fish and do
what he wanted to do. And and so he ascends
to the presidency or he's elected president, Tire 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, and you know, Teddy, come visit me,
and tr is like, no, I don't think it's it's
(23:14):
a good idea. For you know, a former president to
come down, you know, a visit a current president or whatever.
He was like, it's just unseemly. 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 firing of Gifford pin Show, who had been
trs chief of forestry. That was the break. And then
(23:37):
there were also issues with U S 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 TR's life. Basically. I feel like there
was one time when they ran into each other somewhere
and they like shook hands and kind of put on
a show, but they were never close again after that.
(23:58):
That's kind of crazy. Yeah, And I remember from the
show some of the like curses and banter they had
for each other was kind of awful. I mean awful,
but also awesome. It's like this old fangle, like there's
nobody who's better at crafting an insult in Theodore Roosevelt
and you know Taft got some good ones. He called
him a puzzle wit and a fat head and brains
(24:20):
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 human trumpones. Pretty great human trombone.
It's so good. So you know, I just look for
(24:40):
excuses to use that all the time. 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
(25:02):
Mental Fluss talking about Teddy Roosevelt. So I I do
want to talk about I'm sure you get asked about
the story all the time, the one about the bear.
But but the thing I didn't realize was in the
chronology what had happened right before? Right, okay, can you
talk a little bit about that theater Roosevelt went on
this bear hunt and it was partially two sort of
(25:23):
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 the black man, because it basically meant that you
were saying that this black man could marry your daughter.
Tr just kind of didn't really care about that, or
he when he went out to send the invitation, he
(25:44):
was like, he hesitated for a minute, and then he
was like, no, I gotta send it, Like I can't,
I'm ashamed. I can't believe I hesitated. So he sends it.
Book or t Washington comes for dinner. He has dinner
with the whole Roosevelt family, and it's like a working
dinner too, but you know, the kids are there and
and Edith is there, Tier's wife. And then the next
day someone put it in the paper and it was
(26:07):
just chaos. Chaos. I was gonna I was going to
use an expletive, but I was like, what's the word
that doesn't have an explutive in it. Yeah, it's pretty bad.
And actually it never died down, really, I mean people
kept bringing it up and bringing it up and bring
it up long after tr was out of office, basically
up until the day he died. Did he feel like
(26:28):
he'd made a mistake or how did he know? He
was just comfortable with that. Um, he never talked about
it again, and he never invited book Or to Washington
to dinner ever again. So but you know, afterwards, he
sent a letter that was basically like, I don't understand
why everyone is 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
(26:50):
it was a little bit of a risky move. Um.
And 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 um progressive,
you know, like he fought against segregation in New York
when he was governor, and he certainly appointed a few
(27:11):
African Americans to prominent positions. But you know, it just
became such a thing that I think he was kind
of like, and then I'm sure it's slowed policy and yeah, yeah,
and you know he then had to go smooth feathers
is that a phrase? I think? So making things up,
you know, So he went down there to to try
to make amends a little bit. Um. So he goes
(27:34):
down to Mississippi. 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 thousands of bears. Apparently. Tire
from the start was like, this is bad news because
there are million people with us, and you know, this
isn't really a bear hunt. His perception of hunting was,
(27:56):
you know, 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,
not my version of it, but he went ahead and
did anyway. He 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. Um. And so he comes back to the
(28:19):
campsite and they've tied up this 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
here I was like, no, I won't do it. This
isn't sportsmanlike. And so that's that's where the teddy bear
comes from. Someone uh from a toy company came to
him and said, can we use your name for this
teddy bear? And he said sure, okay um, and then
(28:42):
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 god, So I know. It's like. So I want
to talk a little bit about his family because I'm
kind of fascinated by his sister Baby and and how
he relied on her. Talk a little bit about that. Basically,
(29:03):
any time 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 Karin also helped, but to a
lesser extent because Baby was down in Washington, and uh,
(29:27):
he just relied on her and her judgment a lot,
which was rare for that time. Yeah. I think in
the show, you said he referred to her as like
the second White House, her house, the second White House,
which is crazy. Well, I want to hear just a
few of the like fun stories that maybe you haven't
gotten to talk about on the show. Oh my god,
there's so much. Okay, so we've kind of discussed a
(29:49):
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, loves.
But my absolute favorite story about their pets is they
(30:09):
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 walk it with a club, which is yeah,
(30:33):
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, tr was like the
whole household breathed a sigh of relief, except for the dogs,
because the dogs love to chase it um and it
would give them the thrill of the hunt. But yeah,
I mean they had so many, so many pets. He
(30:53):
got a hyena which he named Bill from some diplomat.
They had a hyena for a little while. Um, so
lion cubs, a zebra. They had lion cubs. They had
lion cubs for a little bit. It's crazy. A pig
named Maud. I know. The names are incredible, really good names.
They had a badger named Josiah, which was a gift
from from a little girl who named it after her brother.
(31:15):
And they would just carry this badger around and then
all the guinea pigs who had names like father O'Grady.
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
with it, because they were really good at naming animals.
So that's one story. It's funny. I um, I don't
(31:38):
know if I told you this or not, but my
my granddad was one of the heads of forestry in
India and and he uh had a similar not entirely similar,
but but also ended up shooting animals because um, yeah
you do in the jungles but but but also, um,
there was a bear that couldn't give milk and was
shot my grandfather. But they found um because it was
(32:00):
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 Oh my god, I can't imagine, Like
cats are about as wild as I can get. It
(32:21):
just seems a little intense. One of the things I
had no idea about until I heard your podcast was
um that Roosevelt lived in North Dakota for a while,
So why why does he end up there? Yeah, so
he I believe in eighteen eight three he went out
to the Dakotas to go hunting for bison. So he
(32:42):
basically had a list of big game animals he wanted
to hunt and get you 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 having discussions with
them and uh, and he decides he's going to invest
in a cattle ranch pretty impulsively, because what does he
(33:05):
know about cattle ranching, literally nothing, but he's like, whatever,
I'll just throw some money at this and uh and
become an investor. So he's he gets this cattle ranch
and then um four, his wife and his mother died
on the same day, which was horribly traumatic, as you
might imagine his first wife, Alice, who is Alice's mother.
(33:25):
And so he goes back to the New York State
Assembly and he's got He's kind of like a rough
last term because the Mugwumps, which was a faction um
of the Republican Party, wanted him to support the Democratic
nominee for governor and not the Republican nominee for governor
because the Republican nominee was super corrupt, and tr made
(33:47):
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. He The first ranch he invested in
was called the Maltese cross ranch, and it was sort
(34:10):
of on a thoroughfare out of town. I mean as
much as a thoroughfare as you can have in the
Dakotas at that 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, I
kind of just want to be by myself. And so
he heard about this other parcel of land that was
thirty five miles away from Medoro, which was near where
(34:33):
his other cabin was, and so he bought the rights
to that land for four d bucks, built 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 didn't tend to go out there and stay
there permanently. It just didn't work out that way because
people were still pulling him back to New York. You know.
Like when he moved to the Dakotas, he left his
(34:54):
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 ker mccarrowe, who would 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
of the funniest stories he bought this buckskin suit, fringed
(35:18):
buckskin suit, and uh, you know, I mean his thinking was, oh,
it's 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 Dakotas didn't really wear
that kind of thing. And so he shows up in
this in this get up, pretending to be a cowboy basically,
(35:40):
and they're like, this dude from New York. And he
also had glasses, which at that time people took us
a sign of weakness that they would pick on him
and then he would just pop him 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 portray raid himself to be. But
(36:02):
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 um 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 eventually. That's all the questions I had is like
where does he feel most comfortable? Because he's obviously like
(36:22):
he grows up with well, he goes to an idlie 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? 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
(36:44):
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, you know, when he was like in
the dirt and the mud, you know, doing some kind
of physical activity. One of the questions gave throughout to
me is, uh, he wanted to know is it true
(37:06):
that tr once climbed the matter horn out of spite?
So what was that? I saw the question. I was like, what, 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 matter Horn to
(37:27):
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 have died. Um. And of course he had guides,
but he was pretty much an amateur and he was
just like, I'm doing it exactly. And you know what's
wild is that he was still having asthma attacks at
(37:47):
this time. I mean, he he kind of created this
this myth that he defeated his asthma, which is not true. Um.
He suffered from asthma for the rest of his life,
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
(38:10):
climb mountains and moccasins when he lost his boot in
a stream, which is like not not an easy thing
to do. 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. Well. One
of the things I always hear Um Jorge Kurrn's Goodwin
(38:30):
and say about him is that like he wanted to
be the baby at every you know, frisks or whatever,
and um, you know, I feel like he's always the
center of attention. How did he fair with being president
and then not being president? Oh? Not well, not well
at all. One of the experts that I spoke with,
Clay Jenkinson, who's the founder of the theater Roosevelt Center,
(38:53):
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, I'm not going
to run for re election for a third term because
people will be tired of me and you know, two
terms is enough. And uh, it's like a very stupid
(39:15):
thing to do. Um because people loved him, um, 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 gonna run again. I'm done. 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
(39:37):
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 into
the presidential race is what led to Woodrow Wilson becoming president.
And then he just hated Woodrow Wilson for being a pacifist.
(39:57):
So you know, he just was was bitter, bitter, so bitter,
so mad. 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. Yeah, well, I
I liked that you refer in one of your shows
to his political style as big stick energy, which I
thought was really funny T shirt. I can't take credit
(40:21):
for that. My researcher, Michael Salguerollo came up with that
and he was like, please use that, and I was like, oh,
I'm gonna thanks Michael. He wins a Nobel along the way, right. Yes,
he was the first American to win a Nobel prize
of any kind um and it was partly for his
mediation between the Japanese and the Russians during the Russo
(40:44):
Japanese War, which some people called 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
so he stepped in and was sort of a neutral
media or sort of not. There's this one great scene
(41:05):
where he calls the Russian diplomat over to Sagamore Hill
to tell him how he thinks he shouldn't negotiate, and
he's playing tennis, and he doesn't stop playing tennis while
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 my tennis,
(41:27):
and then he comes back and this went on for
like ninety minutes. I can have to imagine what the
Russian diplomat was thinking. He was like this guy's crazy.
That's amazing, but you know that was that was his style.
So I do want to hear do you know anything
about that doctor who's stories? I do so. I can't
remember the exact date. I feel like it was eight.
(41:49):
But Theodore Roosevelt went to this small town um where
he was going to hand out awards to boy scouts
who had sold a thousand dollars worth of war bonds,
and Theodore guys all like a Dr SEUs, who was
one of those boys. All the boys are standing up
on stage. There are ten of them. Tier only has
nine medals. Um, somebody messed up, and so you know,
(42:10):
he's pinning medals on the lapels of all these kids.
And he gets to theater guys all he doesn't have
a metal and he says, what's this boy doing here?
The boy Scouts master, which didn't say anything. He just
like ran guys all off stage. And then apparently that
gave Dr Seuss stage fright for the rest of his life.
That's incredible, you know, and horrifying. Yeah, I mean, like
(42:33):
it makes sense. It would be so humiliating. And you
know it wasn't his fault, wasn't t R's fault. It
was just just a thing that happened, and uh, and
there were there were implications. So tell me, have you
been inspired by Teddy Roosevelt to change your life in
anyway or have you taken any sort of inspiration from
(42:53):
all these stories? 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 I'm going to start blocking out my time,
um and seeing how how that goes. Or maybe I'll
take up Judo. We'll see. I like that. But no
(43:15):
carrying a badger around or no, no, no, no no.
I mean my cats They're about all I can handle.
I mean, Pearl kind of looks like a badger, so
Pearl Wolfe looks like a badger. So adorable cats. So
tell everyone where they can find the show and and
what episode they should start with. Well, I mean, I
(43:37):
personally think you should start from tr versus Weakness, which
is the first one because it kind of lays the
groundwork for everything that comes next. But um, in terms
of my favorite tier, versus time is a big one. Um,
I like tr versus Language just because it gets into
the whole simplified spelling Tobaccle, which is one of my
favorite stories of all time. Tier versus Corruption is really
(43:58):
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 it's crazy everything he's involved in, from like everything football,
and I 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,
(44:20):
no no, no, no, no, Laon were like, Aaron, you're
crazy stuff. Tear versus Nature is really I don't know.
They're all fun. They're all fun in their own ways.
And I mean I think, what's yeah, I can't make
you choose, but you know, I think what's what's good
about this is that, you know, you read the biographies
about t R and everybody kind of focuses on the
(44:40):
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, we'll see people respond.
(45:00):
It's a really excellent series and and and really really fun.
And uh, you can get history Versus from Mental Flass
everywhere from My Heart to Spotify, the Stitcher to wherever
you get your podcast. But what's next for the series.
So we are looking at an explorer for the second season.
I don't want to say who, don't want to spoil it,
(45:20):
but not the explorer you're probably thinking of. 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, um I mean of course, I mean yeah,
like he was involved in literally everything. Oh, Aaron McCarthy,
(45:43):
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 lolom me, thanks so much for listening. M h h.
(46:10):
Part Time Genius is a production of I Heart radio.
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Part-Time Genius News
Hosts And Creators
Will Pearson
Mangesh Hattikudur
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