September 24, 2019 • 39 mins
Although he was wildly popular during his final Presidential term (the world-famous Teddy Bear was even inspired by him), Theodore Roosevelt declined to run for the office again in 1908. Immediately after the inauguration of President Howard Taft in 1909, Roosevelt set out on his dream trip -- a safari across the African continent. Join the guys and special guest Daniel Scheffler, the host of Everywhere, as they explore the complicated, paradoxical relationship Roosevelt had with conservation and hunting, along with how a Teddy Bear inspired Daniel to travel to over 120 countries.
You can listen to Everywhere wherever podcasts are available. Listen here.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
to the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you as always for
tuning in. You could be anywhere in the world you'd
like to be, but today you are here with us.
I'm Ben, call me Ishnel. Alright. You see what I'm
doing there, white whale, white rhino. Huh. Just know it's
making a connection there, doing my best. Um, how are
(00:49):
you doing, Ben, I'm doing pretty well. I'm doing pretty well.
I am excited for today's episode. No, speaking of rare animals,
we are joined as always with a very rare and
brilliant creature. Indeed, our superproducer, Casey Pegram He's like a
gilded bird that you know you just want to see
fly away, and he actually is going to fly in
(01:10):
a good way, spread his wings and he's going to
do that. About halfway through this session. He told us
not to be concerned when he gets up and has
to scoot out to another engagement. He's very considerate of
any possible abandonment issues, you know. But no, you and
I have a special guest today. We're not alone in
this endeavor, or at least we won't be when Casey
abandons us. So we are joined with a very special guest,
(01:35):
a friend of ours, a friend of the show, and
hosts of our own travel podcast, Everywhere Ridiculous Historians. Please
welcome Daniel Scheffler. Hello. Well, let me just tell you
when Casey leaves, I am happy to tell you where
he's going. I'm not going to tell you now. I
(01:56):
will tell you when he leaves because I know exactly
where going and we maybe even don't, so this will
be a surprise for us all. I look forward to it. Daniel,
thank you for so much for joining us on the show.
Tell us a little bit about Everywhere. Well, first I
have to tell you that you did tell your lovely
listeners that they could be anywhere, but really they should
be everywhere. Ha ha. Let see what I did there? Yes, hell,
(02:20):
absolutely right. So the show came from this place where
I was really frustrated with travel as an industry, promoting
it in ways of just being either luxurious or backpacking,
and I felt that there was no in between. I
also felt that they were just all these endless lists
(02:41):
of places to go eat here, five best bars in Barcelona,
ten best coffee shops in Melbourne, Like who cares? Google
can tell you that, like, you don't need a season Travelers,
someone who's dedicated their life to travel to give you that.
So I wanted to create a show that was about
inspiring people, not what to do, where to go, but
(03:04):
really how to be. So Channon and I my producer,
have gone on this incredible journey of finding destinations that
I have memories of incredible trips I've been on and
turning it into this kind of narrative story, followed with
interviews with people doing incredible things high and low. So
(03:27):
there's you know, famous people, but there's also the baggage
hand left from LaGuardia Airport on my show. So it's
come from that place of like travels for everybody. Whether
you're going to Disney Springs, Dishney Springs or whether you're
going to Denmark, it doesn't matter. What matters is how
(03:48):
you are when you're doing this. So that's really the
kind of essence of the show. And it's been like
the greatest story of my life creating this. And another
thing that you mentioned it being sort of about how
to be and you have a set set of commandments
that you sort of espouse as sort of like the
I guess the mission statement of the show. Can you
tell us a little bit about those Well, you know,
(04:08):
I felt that God apparently needed ten and I just
didn't think that ten would be enough for me. So
I rallied up a bunch more. And the commandments are
a sort of way of holding the episode in a
kind of wink way. Absolutely, people think that a commandment
(04:29):
is necessarily religious, but in this context theyren't. It's tied
to like a little bit of ethics and a little
bit of moral imperentive. And I want people to take
it with a pinch of salt, of course, and you
throw it out with your luggage. And I use it
as a guideline because it helped enrich my travel life.
(04:49):
But they're not in the negative. All my commandments. On
the positive, thou shalt like, thou shalt shut the cup
and learn something, or thou shalt be generous, And that's
been so incredibly beautiful on all my journeys. When I
think about these things, sometimes they're funny, sometimes they hot wrenching,
(05:10):
but it's the way of traveling that opens your mind.
And this this is fascinating to me. I I personally
enjoy the commandment idea and I love that you hit
on the fact that they are all positive. They're all
positively framed. There, thou shalts and I think people see
travel as aspirational at times, but if we're being honest,
(05:32):
good travel is inspirational right right. And in your career
as a travel writer, you've been to over a hundred
and twenty countries. Is that correct? That is correct. I
have been doing this for a little while. I started
off um as a little boy. My parents are big travelers,
(05:54):
and I started as a little boy. My first trip
that I have a memory of, a clear memory of,
was to Mauritius and I went to an aquarium and
lost my favorite teddy ban. And the story in my
family and the kind of joke that started from that
was I have been searching for that Teddy bat ever since,
(06:19):
and a hundred and twenty seven countries later, I'm yet
to find it. But I have found everything else, including myself.
So that's what travel has done for me. I lost something,
and I lost I guess a part of myself and
in order to find myself poetic. This leads into something
(06:39):
that we wanted to speak with you about now. For
any listeners who are for some reason not yet aware
of everywhere. Uh. We we want to give people a
little bit of background. Daniel, you are you are from
South Africa? Is that correct? Well, I like to say
that I was born in Africa, bread in Europe and
(07:01):
now choose to live in America. So I was I
was born in South Africa. What's amazing about the name
South Africa is that some people don't know where that is. Um.
I think it's sort of obvious, but I love to
point it out. So South Africa. Um, it's in the
southern part of Africa. Continent Africa. Um, the southern part
(07:28):
of this continent Africa. And um yeah, I was born
in in the capital, and I grew up um sort
of more in Europe and also South Africa, and I
now I now live in America. But I have a
tenderness for South Africa, as so many people who go.
It gets under your skin, whether you're killing animals like
(07:50):
Teddy Rosenfeld, or whether you're colonizing, or whether you're kind
of pondering about your your place there. It is a
very special, special place because it's the beginning of humanity.
It started there, whether it's Mrs Pless or the whatever
(08:12):
latest foot footsteps or bones they found. It all started there,
and I think that it's undeniable when you arrive there
and some people behave in this fascinating way, and I
guess this is where you find that history so in ridiculous,
is that some people arrive in Africa and all they
want to do is protected and build conservation around it
(08:34):
and hold it dear, because that's how they understand the
beginning of our life, a beginning of humanity. And then
there's the other side of people who go and all
they want to do is take it and own it
and control it. And it's fascinating. It's interesting because we're
talking about today is sort of somewhere a combination of
(08:55):
the two. Right, So, Teddy Roosevelt and it has made
claim to famous far as we're concerned as a country.
Largely is that he was the twenty six president of
the United States. But he was also a well known
outdoorsman um and considered himself one of the great conservationists.
But the way he chose to exercise this conservation um
was a little interesting, and we're gonna get into that.
(09:17):
But he is also what the Teddy bear to to
go full soccer circle here, was named after right, That's
that's correct, Noel. Yes. Uh. Teddy Roosevelt has a complicated
relationship with animals. He's a fan of the safari. Uh.
Some of our listeners may not know that the Teddy
bear that you search for that set you off on
(09:40):
your journey, Daniel was likely invented in honor of President
Theodore Roosevelt. Back in nineteen o two, Theodore Roosevelt is
on a bear hunting trip, going back to what we said,
hunted animals in a place called Onward, Mississippi. And everybody
(10:00):
else in his group had success finding and hunting bears
except for our boy, Theo Roosevelt. So his assistance corner
a bear, a real bear, black bear, and they tie
it to a tree. And then they summoned Teddy Roosevelt
to the tree where the bears tied up, and they say, okay,
(10:22):
here you go, we found you a bear. Go ahead
and shoot it. And Roosevelt says, no way, that's unsporting,
that's not fair, that's not how nature is supposed to work.
I'm not going to shoot this bear. First of all,
assistance tied bear to tree. That is a buried the
lead there, My friend, these were some early assistance, and
a black bear, not a grizzly. Okay, so it was
(10:43):
a little baby bear, which is even less sporting, right,
come on, So Teddy was having none of it. So
here's what happens next. So the media of the day, uh,
loves this story. It spreads like wildfire throughout newspapers of notes.
They love the fact that he was he turned it down,
turned down the opportunity, right, it was seen as a
noble thing to do. And when people started circulating the story,
(11:08):
the President of the United States refuses to shoot this bear,
this is great pr right. There's a political cartoonist who
comes into play, a guy named Clifford Berryman. Clifford Berryman
reads an article in the paper about Teddy Roosevelt being
a class act, or at least not shooting cornered and
tied animals, and he makes a cartoon satirizing the President
(11:33):
refusing to shoot a bear. It's right, this is an
audio podcast, so you'll have to trust us. You'll have
to look it up, uh, And it's it's Teddy Roosevelt
in his out in the field hunting gear. And when
this cartoon publishes in the Washington Post on November sixteenth
of the same year, nineteen o two. It inspires a
guy named Morris mitched them two make a little bit
(11:56):
of coin off this. You see, Morris's wife, Rose made
off to animals. He owned a candy shop. She made
stuffed animals. Good combo, good, great combo, you know, piece
and carrots right there. And Morris says, you know what, Rose,
why don't you make a stuff bear, a toy bear,
and we'll dedicate it to Teddy Roosevelt and we'll call
(12:16):
it wait for it, can you guess? Yeah? I can,
but I want a Teddy Bear. So this piece of history.
What's interesting is this one little story ends up becoming this,
this fundamental piece of your origin story, Daniel. And it
also leads us to look more closely at Teddy Roosevelt himself, who,
(12:39):
as we said it was a complicated figure. You and
Nolan I were talking off air about this fascinating story
from the Smithsonian that you would sent us, You would
hip us to this called Teddy Roosevelt's epic hunt for
a white rhino. Isn't that insane? This man who's so
(13:00):
known for what he's done for conservation is also in
Africa hunting. I guess at the time those animals were
not as extinct or kind of needed to be protected
as much as they are now. But he he wrote
executive orders that he got into trouble for to protect
(13:21):
forests and wildlife across America. In fact, some of his
executive orders established a hundred and fifty million acres of
reserved forestry. He's a legend. I mean, I have been
more interested in Roosevelt than before because I heard Elizabeth Warren,
my candidate, talk about how she loves him, that is
(13:43):
her favorite president. So I've been reading about him and
kind of getting into his thoughts about almost all things.
But what I do find fascinating about that piece about
the white rhino is he meant well, he didn't know
well in some weird way, And that really is the
African story. You know, China is is kind of moved
(14:05):
into into Africa and taking land and developing land, and
it's amazing what's happening. They're giving people opportunity, but at
the same time they they leave and they take all
this incredible um natural resources with them. So there's a
shield and a sould story. That's always been the African story.
(14:26):
And Teddy Roosevelt represents so much of that. Even today.
You know, when people complaining about hunting, um, there is
a certain amount of hunting that actually funds uh, you know,
the purchase of hunting licenses, That money actually goes into
(14:47):
wildlife conservation. So it's a very interesting dichotomy. And that's
very much the same with Africa even today. A lot
of the big game hunts go into providing, you know,
resources for some of these under served community. So it's
a little bit interesting to kind of have to reconcile
killing a noble creature with potentially saving them or their
(15:08):
habitat and on. UH. In Roosevelt's safari, the one involving
the white rhino, UH, they also were aiming for what
they saw as the greater good, right, the bigger picture.
They believe that they weren't out there just for fun,
just for giggles. They thought they were conducting a safari
(15:29):
for the purpose of science, which in many ways they
weirdly were. So Roosevelt actually, um, it was the last
year of his presidency. He was a lame duck president
in nineteen o nine, and he was really hot to
get out to Africa and do a safari. So he
floated this idea to a guy named Charles Doolittle Wolcott
(15:50):
love the name. It's a great, great name, who was
in charge of UM, the Smithsonian's Natural History museum. And
they didn't at the time have a particularly robust collection
of like taxidermied wildlife, which is very much a thing,
and it remains very much a thing today at you know,
the Field Museum in Chicago, for example. At the time
(16:12):
nine they were regularly sending out expeditions to these parts
of the world to kill and stuff these creatures and
and put them up in display. There's even um, I
I can't remember where I saw, but there is. Uh.
There are certain natural history museums that have like these
libraries almost that are catalogued carcasses of different birds that
(16:33):
are taxes, deermy and stuff. They're not put on display,
but you can open up a drawer and then there's
like this bird carcass in there, and their cattle catalog
like library books. It's very strange, but this is absolutely
a thing. And Teddy Roosevelt says, all right, Walcott, Um,
you guys are kind of like, you know, asleep at
the wheel here when it comes to getting an awesome
collection of these creatures that I personally believe are going
(16:54):
to be gone soon, which is like another weird dichotomist thing,
which we'll get into. He knew that they were gonna
be gone, yet he was still totally okay with contributing
to that by killing hundreds of them. Yeah, and Walcott says, cool,
because not only is this an amazing opportunity for him
to get some specimens, what a pr coup, right, I mean,
(17:15):
this is like literally the most famous type of person
that could provide these specimens to him, So they'll have
like an extra added value, right then? Yeah, yeah, exactly.
And so Theodore Roosevelt, we have some of the correspondents
that he wrote to Charles Doolittle Walcott, and just a
quick excerpt here, I think gives us the lay of
the land. Roosevelt says, as you know, I am not
(17:38):
in the least a game butcher. I do like a
certain amount of hunting, but my real and main interest
is the interest of a faunal naturalist, faunal f a
U in a l flora fauna. And then he says,
now it seems to me that this opens up the
best chance for the National museum to get a fine
collection not only of the big game beast, but of
the smaller animals and birds of Africa. And looking at
(18:01):
it dispassionately, it seems to me that the chance ought
not to be neglected. And then he goes on UH
and explains that he plans to publish a book and
then he will use the proceeds from the book to
pay for a safari that he and his son, Kermit Roosevelt.
This episode is full of amazing names that that he
(18:22):
and his son will take. They're going to take this
safari to Africa, to the African continent, and they are
going to attempt to capture as much big game again ostensibly,
the way he's phrasing it is not for some thrill
of a hunt, but is for the It's for the
education of the masses, right, the greater good. And this
(18:45):
this Daniel, I would I would defer to you. You
know here here in the States, when kids grow up, UH,
in the US, you only hear about hunting in terms
of like hunting deer or something. Right, you don't really
in this country here about UH Safari's are these big
game expeditions. And I'm just curious when people who have
(19:09):
never been on a safari or even been to the
continent of Africa. When we see depictions of big game
hunts in fiction or safar as you know, in films
and stuff, is that in any way accurate? Is this
the thing that still happens? Was it something that just
happened you know? Uh in days of your no um?
(19:30):
In fact, the Trump children often go to Africa to
hunt um animals, so it is still happening. In fact,
recently a lion trophy was approved for import into the US,
and these things are still happening because tourists operators somehow
managed to get around the rules. Um. They are of
(19:53):
course incredible countries like Botswana where it's outlawed and not allowed,
But it is happening. People like to kill. It's part
of our very humanity, is it not. We um We
establish ourselves on on this planet in a way that
we have to kill to survive, So why would we
be changing? You know, we evolve, but perhaps we don't
(20:17):
fully evolve past these things. So I think there is
still a fun factor for some people, but it is
a real problem. I think that Africa hasn't dealt with
this particularly well because where there's money. Anything can be bought,
and even nature. And I recently interviewed the CEO of
(20:40):
Conservation International and their quest is to look at conservation
in new ways and to open up conversations. And next
week is Climate Week in New York. And I think
it's important that we do look at what's the real
important issue for all of us. So the question really
is is nature important to like? Is it truly important
(21:02):
to you? And I don't think we have a unanimous
thought process on that because to some people they're ready
to go to live on mars elon Musk is fixing
that for us? And for other people this is the
one life I get. I could live it up. Who cares?
So I wonder if nature is truly important to you?
(21:22):
And as someone who's from Africa, I grew up looking
at this stuff more critically because I was aware of
it because my parents are big safari goes. As if
my husband would tell you that they on safari all
the time. If you need to speak to Daniel's parents,
they'll be on safari. Um and part of that is
is conservation awareness. My parents really take that very seriously
(21:44):
and so do I and UM. I think places like
sing Geta in Tanzania, and in Zimbabwe and South Africa
and now in Rwanda are really really taking the safari
experience to the next level. So not only is it
not the proverbial out of Africa Meryl Streep experience, it
(22:05):
is also one where by going you are contributing to
having nine hundred full time anti poaches on the reserve. Um.
If you buy a villa in at sin Guita in Tanzania,
you are obligated to pay a monthly or yearly fee
in order to contribute to anti poaching. And I think
(22:27):
that that's spectacular and more places should be doing this.
I've also been on safari in India and it's a
very different thing. They have much more respect for the animals. Um.
I went to parts of Rajasthan where the leopard live
open and free next to villagers and they've never had
(22:50):
any issues. The leopard just walks right up to and
would never do anything because people would never kill them
and they would never kill people. And that's very different.
In Africa. There's a relationship. Has It's gone back so
much to hunter gatherer and then to Teddy Rosenfelt days
and now too the Trump Junior days of hunting. M hmm.
(23:16):
And when when we go back and look at Roosevelt's
Roosevelt's hunting in Africa, Roosevelt and Kermit, I'm just looking
for excuses to say Kermit, when thank you? When uh,
when we look at this, we see that, regardless of
his stated aims, Roosevelt did kill a lot of animals. Yeah, exactly.
(23:41):
I mean it goes back to um we talked about
with Jack and Miles from The Daily Zeitgeist on an
episode we did about weird flexes, weird historical flexes, the
fact that Charles Darwin again known in history, thought of
as one of the great naturalists, not really so much conservations,
but even I find those terms interchangeable, at least in
my mind that whether that may or may not be
(24:02):
the case. Charles Darwin would like eat every animal that
he catalogs, every but he ate a lot of like
endangered like turtles and stuff like. He definitely probably single
handedly contributed to some of the species that he was
studying becoming endangered, sure, because he ate so many of them.
So that's the thing here with Teddy right he um
(24:23):
you know has a ball on the safari Um. He
again like he's so preoccupied with this at the end
of his presidency that he admittedly can't focus on anything
other than this. He's you know, gathering weapons and ammunition
and having maps charted and all this and all he
needs from Walcott. The big ask that he's he's he's
(24:44):
expecting from Walcott is to supply uh, some personnel who
can actually stuff these creatures on demand in the field
in the field field taxidermist and naturalists who because he
his job isn't catalog I mean maybe catalogs to the
species that he kills for his personal little journal entry
which will read you in a little bit. It's it's fascinating,
(25:06):
but he has to have professionals from the from the
museum to actually do the real scientific work. And he
agrees because Walcott knows this is a deal and a
half and it's not really costing him much because I
believe Teddy Roosevelt financed his own trip with his own money.
And then because again he knew he was going to
get paid back when he published this book, which he did. Um.
So the Safari is a huge success um in that
(25:29):
he killed somewhere in the neighborhood of let's see five
hundred and twelve animals between between he and his son.
And there is actually a fantastic article on vox Um
that that has a page out of the book that
he published in nineteen ten, one year later called African
(25:51):
Game Trails, An account of the African Wonderings of an
American Hunter Naturalist that he lets. So he coined his
own like little category. Sure, he's not a hunter gatherer,
he's a hunter naturalist. Um. And it's as the headline is,
list of game shot with the rifle during the trip.
So we've got and it's like this, It literally looks
like a scorecard and like darts or something. And it's
(26:14):
divided by him and his son. We've got tr on
the left and k are our boy Kermy on the right.
And uh, let's just go through him together for a minute.
We got lion, leopard, cheetah, hyena, elephants, square mouth rhinoceros,
hook lip rhinoceros. There's the common zebra, the big zebra
of course, giraffe, the bongo, the bush buck. I'm sorry,
(26:35):
the bongo, yes, the bongo. Uh. Teddy himself didn't shoot any,
but his son Kermit killed two. He got two of them.
The giant eland. I don't know a lot of these animals. Then, yeah,
I've got to say, you know, not being a funnel
naturalist by profession myself, there are a couple of deep
cuts on here that are new to me. And you know,
(26:56):
it's so tough to try to ascribe motive or personal
motivation to historical figures. You know, we we know only
what was said about them at the time, only what
research proofs, and only what they wrote write their own records.
So it's this is just me speaking personally. It's tough
(27:19):
to your point, Daniel, about the the idea of killing
for fund that human impulse. It's tough for me to
figure out how much of his scientific interest was true
and valid versus how much of it was sort of
a facade to rationalize this vast amount of death. I mean,
(27:42):
his rhetoric is pretty um consistent. Yeah, I mean he
says here quoted in this mental pliss article um from
the book. Kermit and I kept about a dozen trophies
for ourselves. Otherwise we shot nothing that was not used
either as a museum specimen or for meat. As it's
an interesting line here. The mere size of the bag
(28:04):
indicates little as to a man's prowess as a hunter,
and almost nothing as to the interest or value of
his achievement. So I mean, he thought pretty highly of
himself and the uh, you know, the value of this
achievement and this this, this expedition, you know. And it
is true that the Smithsonian at the time didn't have
(28:25):
the most impressive collection of fauna from the African continent.
I believe they sent someone to explore Kilimanjaro in eight
and they sent somebody else, uh to the eastern Congo.
But those expeditions produced relatively few specimens in comparison to
other museums. At this point, uh, Walcott of course is
(28:54):
on board. But we have to remember, Um, there's a
point you raised earlier, Daniel, regarding resource extraction, the idea
of taking from a place. No one had the conversation
at the Smithsonian in the halls of the Roosevelt residents.
No one said, hey, should we be taking these animals? Like,
(29:16):
should we be taking these animals, stuffing their carcasses and
transporting them across an ocean? No nobody said, what does
that mean for the people who live there? You know?
And that seems like a problem that continues today. I
think it's a big problem, and I don't really know
the exact solution. I do feel like there are some
progressive countries around the world, like Costa Rica that are
(29:40):
really focused on eco tourism and bringing awareness to this,
and obviously places like Bhotan, but the small countries, and
I think a lot of this is much easier because
of the size um. I think these these things are
more challenging in places like China and Russia and of
course America, and there's not a lot of value put
(30:04):
on this in this moment in our current political life
in the world. Other things are kind of more important.
So I wondered, like what could be done. I mean,
I think legislation is important, but I think it's the
private sector. It's it's big tech that has to solve this.
And whether it's Elon Musko or his brother, Kimball Musco,
(30:25):
or perhaps Conservation International, but those are the kind of
voices that that's really necessary because governments will come and
change and evolve, and they're so slow moving. But and
you know, the UN is caught up in a lot
of bureaucracy. But I think that these big tech companies
could actually make a difference. So maybe it's a call
(30:45):
to them to be like, let's start our own tech app.
Let's call it Teddy Free Free Teddy, and we started
conservation awareness campaign. What do you think. I'm all for it.
I'm on board. Yeah, I like the idea of free
Teddy do we? I guess then do we get to
(31:08):
count as co founders? We just want to be in
the pictures? Man, right, I think you are. You just
co founded it with me. So this is great. There's
there's one one last thing that we say. No, of course,
Teddy Roosevelt went on to have many adventures, and somewhere
(31:29):
in this wide world of ours, Daniel Scheffler's Teddy Bear
is having adventures all its own, and we hope that
one day you two will finally be reunited. It makes
me think of that part in h Amalie where the
gnome you know, goes everywhere and takes pictures and she
(31:49):
sends the pictures people. Maybe one day you'll start getting
anonymous pictures in the mail from your teddy bear having
adventures that would be creepy and heartwarming at the same time. Somehow, Oh,
I love that. That's so beautiful. I really hope that
that Teddy is still living on somewhere beautiful because I
have I have a very very dear friend, and she
(32:11):
has a teddy bear called Little, and he travels with
her everywhere. He's always in her bag. And Little has
a friend, her wife's teddy bear called Moyenne. In fact,
at the moment they are fighting. But I always spend
a lot of time. There's hundreds of photos with me
and Little and Moyenne all over the world. So I
(32:34):
guess I'm living I'm vicariously living my life with my
old Teddy through the new Teddy Bears. Because history may
not repeat, but it certainly rhymes sure does. Right. Well,
I have been thinking, you know, now I'm on a
Teddy Roosevelt kick. And this week at the met in
New York, they commissioned these incredible, incredible statues by a
(32:58):
Kenyan American artist, UM. And she has done these female
sculptures and she's put them in the Metropolitan Museum of
Arts el Codes. They are four of them, and they
are these sort of powerful woman African queens looking out
(33:18):
onto the world. They called the New Ones will Free
Us and um it's part of the METS sort of
shift in their commissioning and um the natural history museums
shift in how they re examining statues, in particular the
Teddy Roosevelt statue, which some people think should be torn
down because some people have called Roosevelt racist towards African
(33:43):
Americans and Native Americans. And it's a fascinating thing because
I think it was a different time, right, Like do
we think of racism in the same way then as
we do now? Probably not. And he was He was
a very complicated figure, of course. You know, one thing
we learned about history is that people are very rarely
(34:04):
one heroic or on villainous. Roosevelt himself has some inherent contradictions.
We know because he wrote these contradictory statements. He said
the game butchery is as objectionable as any other form
of wanton, cruelty or barbarity. But then he also later
(34:26):
wrote that creeping after game made our veins thrill, and
he praises elephant poachers, saying a few careers are more
adventurous or more fraught with peril if you are keeping
score of the animals at home. Roosevelt killed eight elephants. Yeah,
and we sort of teased at the top of the
show the idea of a white whale kind of situation,
(34:47):
like a moby dick, like he was in the search
of this creature that he had yet to bag, and
that was the white rhinoceros, which is a very specific
species that's much different from the very common black rhino
that he had been collecting for some time. Um. And
it's it's not even the color that has to do
with their difference. They're actually in different generas um. So
(35:08):
they are very wildly different. The white rhino comes from
the Afrikaans word wide w y d, which means literally wide,
So the name white doesn't even refer to it's sort
of a bastardization English bastardization of that Afrikaans word. And
he did ultimately get several of these and they are
(35:30):
currently on display in the Natural History Museum the Smithsonian
Institute in washing in d C. And they are called
the Roosevelt Rhinos. Well, do you know how to tell
the difference between a black rhino and a white rhino? No?
How So, what's funny is the major difference is the
shape of their mouths. Black rhinos developed a pointy lip
(35:54):
which they used to pick up fruit and select leaves
from twigs, and white rhinos have a flat, wide lip,
as you said, wide to graze on grass. So that's
how you tell the difference whilst you're on safari. Then
you don't kill them, you just look at their lips exactly.
That sounds like a plan, especially considering now we have
(36:16):
to wonder what would have happened if Roosevelt had not
bagged that those Roosevelt rhinos. Today, the northern white rhino
is extinct in the wild, and I think there are
only a hand few left alive, with two or three now.
So we end today's story with a look at Teddy Roosevelt.
That may be surprising to some of our fellow listeners.
(36:39):
He would call it an adventure. This expedition of his
is something that many people don't learn about today, and
that's that's a shame. Daniel. We want to thank you
so much for joining us today and for anyone who
yearns to to travel a little bit further from their
(37:00):
comfort zone geographically speaking, for people who want to join
you on your adventures as you literally travel everywhere. Where
can they find the podcast, where can they learn more
about you? Well, it's definitely on the I Heart Radio app,
but also anyway you get into a podcast, um where
at Everywhere podcast on Instagram. But I'm not a social
(37:24):
media guy much so I'm more like, listen to the show.
Take it. Don't see it as head knowledge, see it
as hot knowledge, and I'll see you everywhere. Love it.
Thank you so much, Daniel. If you want to find
us on the social media's, you can find us at
Ridiculous History on Instagram. If you want to join our
community on Facebook, where are the Ridiculous Historians where you
(37:45):
can connect up with your fellow listeners and exchange memes
and conversation. And Ben and I even creep in there
from time to time and get in on the fun.
If you'd like to follow us individually, I am at
how Now Noel Brown on Instagram. You can see me
get kicked into and kicked out of various countries, locales
and locations on Instagram where i am at Ben Bully
(38:07):
in a burst of creativity. I'm at Ben Bully hsw
on Twitter. Thanks as always, who are super producer Casey Pegram, who,
by the way, stayed the whole time made it. I
don't think that was for us. I think he was
staying for you. Daniel, he just didn't want you to
know where he was going because I was going to
reveal I should still do it, well, you should still
(38:27):
tell you I feel free. Yeah, I want to hear this.
He's going to France. He's always going to always popping
off to France, and and alas he's usually on Mike
on the show today, but we're having are you on
Mike on the show today? I'm on I'm on the
weird Mike, so probably sounds might that might sound funky.
We'll see. Uh, he may or may actually be on
the show because we've got some Mike issues in this
(38:49):
new studio. But La Bush will indeed return huge Thanks
to Casey Pegram for sticking around big Thanks to you
Daniel for being on the show with us. Thanks to
thank you so much, You're so welcome. Thanks to Alex
Williams who composed our theme. Thanks to research associate Gabe Losier,
and thanks to research associate Ryan Bearish. Thanks to the
(39:10):
quiz ster for not dropping in at the end of
this episode when he doesn't drop and thanks to thanks
of course to Christopher has Yodas. Thanks you know, thanks
with some caveats and asterix to Theodore Roosevelt and uh,
hey you no, thanks to you man. I like your
shirt today. He appreciate it, but like your shirt too
and the cut of your jim. We'll see you next time, folks.
(39:41):
For more podcasts for My Heart Radio, visit the I
Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Welcome
(00:27):
to the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you as always for
tuning in. You could be anywhere in the world you'd
like to be, but today you are here with us.
I'm Ben, call me Ishnel. Alright. You see what I'm
doing there, white whale, white rhino. Huh. Just know it's
making a connection there, doing my best. Um, how are
(00:49):
you doing, Ben, I'm doing pretty well. I'm doing pretty well.
I am excited for today's episode. No, speaking of rare animals,
we are joined as always with a very rare and
brilliant creature. Indeed, our superproducer, Casey Pegram He's like a
gilded bird that you know you just want to see
fly away, and he actually is going to fly in
(01:10):
a good way, spread his wings and he's going to
do that. About halfway through this session. He told us
not to be concerned when he gets up and has
to scoot out to another engagement. He's very considerate of
any possible abandonment issues, you know. But no, you and
I have a special guest today. We're not alone in
this endeavor, or at least we won't be when Casey
abandons us. So we are joined with a very special guest,
(01:35):
a friend of ours, a friend of the show, and
hosts of our own travel podcast, Everywhere Ridiculous Historians. Please
welcome Daniel Scheffler. Hello. Well, let me just tell you
when Casey leaves, I am happy to tell you where
he's going. I'm not going to tell you now. I
(01:56):
will tell you when he leaves because I know exactly
where going and we maybe even don't, so this will
be a surprise for us all. I look forward to it. Daniel,
thank you for so much for joining us on the show.
Tell us a little bit about Everywhere. Well, first I
have to tell you that you did tell your lovely
listeners that they could be anywhere, but really they should
be everywhere. Ha ha. Let see what I did there? Yes, hell,
(02:20):
absolutely right. So the show came from this place where
I was really frustrated with travel as an industry, promoting
it in ways of just being either luxurious or backpacking,
and I felt that there was no in between. I
also felt that they were just all these endless lists
(02:41):
of places to go eat here, five best bars in Barcelona,
ten best coffee shops in Melbourne, Like who cares? Google
can tell you that, like, you don't need a season Travelers,
someone who's dedicated their life to travel to give you that.
So I wanted to create a show that was about
inspiring people, not what to do, where to go, but
(03:04):
really how to be. So Channon and I my producer,
have gone on this incredible journey of finding destinations that
I have memories of incredible trips I've been on and
turning it into this kind of narrative story, followed with
interviews with people doing incredible things high and low. So
(03:27):
there's you know, famous people, but there's also the baggage
hand left from LaGuardia Airport on my show. So it's
come from that place of like travels for everybody. Whether
you're going to Disney Springs, Dishney Springs or whether you're
going to Denmark, it doesn't matter. What matters is how
(03:48):
you are when you're doing this. So that's really the
kind of essence of the show. And it's been like
the greatest story of my life creating this. And another
thing that you mentioned it being sort of about how
to be and you have a set set of commandments
that you sort of espouse as sort of like the
I guess the mission statement of the show. Can you
tell us a little bit about those Well, you know,
(04:08):
I felt that God apparently needed ten and I just
didn't think that ten would be enough for me. So
I rallied up a bunch more. And the commandments are
a sort of way of holding the episode in a
kind of wink way. Absolutely, people think that a commandment
(04:29):
is necessarily religious, but in this context theyren't. It's tied
to like a little bit of ethics and a little
bit of moral imperentive. And I want people to take
it with a pinch of salt, of course, and you
throw it out with your luggage. And I use it
as a guideline because it helped enrich my travel life.
(04:49):
But they're not in the negative. All my commandments. On
the positive, thou shalt like, thou shalt shut the cup
and learn something, or thou shalt be generous, And that's
been so incredibly beautiful on all my journeys. When I
think about these things, sometimes they're funny, sometimes they hot wrenching,
(05:10):
but it's the way of traveling that opens your mind.
And this this is fascinating to me. I I personally
enjoy the commandment idea and I love that you hit
on the fact that they are all positive. They're all
positively framed. There, thou shalts and I think people see
travel as aspirational at times, but if we're being honest,
(05:32):
good travel is inspirational right right. And in your career
as a travel writer, you've been to over a hundred
and twenty countries. Is that correct? That is correct. I
have been doing this for a little while. I started
off um as a little boy. My parents are big travelers,
(05:54):
and I started as a little boy. My first trip
that I have a memory of, a clear memory of,
was to Mauritius and I went to an aquarium and
lost my favorite teddy ban. And the story in my
family and the kind of joke that started from that
was I have been searching for that Teddy bat ever since,
(06:19):
and a hundred and twenty seven countries later, I'm yet
to find it. But I have found everything else, including myself.
So that's what travel has done for me. I lost something,
and I lost I guess a part of myself and
in order to find myself poetic. This leads into something
(06:39):
that we wanted to speak with you about now. For
any listeners who are for some reason not yet aware
of everywhere. Uh. We we want to give people a
little bit of background. Daniel, you are you are from
South Africa? Is that correct? Well, I like to say
that I was born in Africa, bread in Europe and
(07:01):
now choose to live in America. So I was I
was born in South Africa. What's amazing about the name
South Africa is that some people don't know where that is. Um.
I think it's sort of obvious, but I love to
point it out. So South Africa. Um, it's in the
southern part of Africa. Continent Africa. Um, the southern part
(07:28):
of this continent Africa. And um yeah, I was born
in in the capital, and I grew up um sort
of more in Europe and also South Africa, and I
now I now live in America. But I have a
tenderness for South Africa, as so many people who go.
It gets under your skin, whether you're killing animals like
(07:50):
Teddy Rosenfeld, or whether you're colonizing, or whether you're kind
of pondering about your your place there. It is a
very special, special place because it's the beginning of humanity.
It started there, whether it's Mrs Pless or the whatever
(08:12):
latest foot footsteps or bones they found. It all started there,
and I think that it's undeniable when you arrive there
and some people behave in this fascinating way, and I
guess this is where you find that history so in ridiculous,
is that some people arrive in Africa and all they
want to do is protected and build conservation around it
(08:34):
and hold it dear, because that's how they understand the
beginning of our life, a beginning of humanity. And then
there's the other side of people who go and all
they want to do is take it and own it
and control it. And it's fascinating. It's interesting because we're
talking about today is sort of somewhere a combination of
(08:55):
the two. Right, So, Teddy Roosevelt and it has made
claim to famous far as we're concerned as a country.
Largely is that he was the twenty six president of
the United States. But he was also a well known
outdoorsman um and considered himself one of the great conservationists.
But the way he chose to exercise this conservation um
was a little interesting, and we're gonna get into that.
(09:17):
But he is also what the Teddy bear to to
go full soccer circle here, was named after right, That's
that's correct, Noel. Yes. Uh. Teddy Roosevelt has a complicated
relationship with animals. He's a fan of the safari. Uh.
Some of our listeners may not know that the Teddy
bear that you search for that set you off on
(09:40):
your journey, Daniel was likely invented in honor of President
Theodore Roosevelt. Back in nineteen o two, Theodore Roosevelt is
on a bear hunting trip, going back to what we said,
hunted animals in a place called Onward, Mississippi. And everybody
(10:00):
else in his group had success finding and hunting bears
except for our boy, Theo Roosevelt. So his assistance corner
a bear, a real bear, black bear, and they tie
it to a tree. And then they summoned Teddy Roosevelt
to the tree where the bears tied up, and they say, okay,
(10:22):
here you go, we found you a bear. Go ahead
and shoot it. And Roosevelt says, no way, that's unsporting,
that's not fair, that's not how nature is supposed to work.
I'm not going to shoot this bear. First of all,
assistance tied bear to tree. That is a buried the
lead there, My friend, these were some early assistance, and
a black bear, not a grizzly. Okay, so it was
(10:43):
a little baby bear, which is even less sporting, right,
come on, So Teddy was having none of it. So
here's what happens next. So the media of the day, uh,
loves this story. It spreads like wildfire throughout newspapers of notes.
They love the fact that he was he turned it down,
turned down the opportunity, right, it was seen as a
noble thing to do. And when people started circulating the story,
(11:08):
the President of the United States refuses to shoot this bear,
this is great pr right. There's a political cartoonist who
comes into play, a guy named Clifford Berryman. Clifford Berryman
reads an article in the paper about Teddy Roosevelt being
a class act, or at least not shooting cornered and
tied animals, and he makes a cartoon satirizing the President
(11:33):
refusing to shoot a bear. It's right, this is an
audio podcast, so you'll have to trust us. You'll have
to look it up, uh, And it's it's Teddy Roosevelt
in his out in the field hunting gear. And when
this cartoon publishes in the Washington Post on November sixteenth
of the same year, nineteen o two. It inspires a
guy named Morris mitched them two make a little bit
(11:56):
of coin off this. You see, Morris's wife, Rose made
off to animals. He owned a candy shop. She made
stuffed animals. Good combo, good, great combo, you know, piece
and carrots right there. And Morris says, you know what, Rose,
why don't you make a stuff bear, a toy bear,
and we'll dedicate it to Teddy Roosevelt and we'll call
(12:16):
it wait for it, can you guess? Yeah? I can,
but I want a Teddy Bear. So this piece of history.
What's interesting is this one little story ends up becoming this,
this fundamental piece of your origin story, Daniel. And it
also leads us to look more closely at Teddy Roosevelt himself, who,
(12:39):
as we said it was a complicated figure. You and
Nolan I were talking off air about this fascinating story
from the Smithsonian that you would sent us, You would
hip us to this called Teddy Roosevelt's epic hunt for
a white rhino. Isn't that insane? This man who's so
(13:00):
known for what he's done for conservation is also in
Africa hunting. I guess at the time those animals were
not as extinct or kind of needed to be protected
as much as they are now. But he he wrote
executive orders that he got into trouble for to protect
(13:21):
forests and wildlife across America. In fact, some of his
executive orders established a hundred and fifty million acres of
reserved forestry. He's a legend. I mean, I have been
more interested in Roosevelt than before because I heard Elizabeth Warren,
my candidate, talk about how she loves him, that is
(13:43):
her favorite president. So I've been reading about him and
kind of getting into his thoughts about almost all things.
But what I do find fascinating about that piece about
the white rhino is he meant well, he didn't know
well in some weird way, And that really is the
African story. You know, China is is kind of moved
(14:05):
into into Africa and taking land and developing land, and
it's amazing what's happening. They're giving people opportunity, but at
the same time they they leave and they take all
this incredible um natural resources with them. So there's a
shield and a sould story. That's always been the African story.
(14:26):
And Teddy Roosevelt represents so much of that. Even today.
You know, when people complaining about hunting, um, there is
a certain amount of hunting that actually funds uh, you know,
the purchase of hunting licenses, That money actually goes into
(14:47):
wildlife conservation. So it's a very interesting dichotomy. And that's
very much the same with Africa even today. A lot
of the big game hunts go into providing, you know,
resources for some of these under served community. So it's
a little bit interesting to kind of have to reconcile
killing a noble creature with potentially saving them or their
(15:08):
habitat and on. UH. In Roosevelt's safari, the one involving
the white rhino, UH, they also were aiming for what
they saw as the greater good, right, the bigger picture.
They believe that they weren't out there just for fun,
just for giggles. They thought they were conducting a safari
(15:29):
for the purpose of science, which in many ways they
weirdly were. So Roosevelt actually, um, it was the last
year of his presidency. He was a lame duck president
in nineteen o nine, and he was really hot to
get out to Africa and do a safari. So he
floated this idea to a guy named Charles Doolittle Wolcott
(15:50):
love the name. It's a great, great name, who was
in charge of UM, the Smithsonian's Natural History museum. And
they didn't at the time have a particularly robust collection
of like taxidermied wildlife, which is very much a thing,
and it remains very much a thing today at you know,
the Field Museum in Chicago, for example. At the time
(16:12):
nine they were regularly sending out expeditions to these parts
of the world to kill and stuff these creatures and
and put them up in display. There's even um, I
I can't remember where I saw, but there is. Uh.
There are certain natural history museums that have like these
libraries almost that are catalogued carcasses of different birds that
(16:33):
are taxes, deermy and stuff. They're not put on display,
but you can open up a drawer and then there's
like this bird carcass in there, and their cattle catalog
like library books. It's very strange, but this is absolutely
a thing. And Teddy Roosevelt says, all right, Walcott, Um,
you guys are kind of like, you know, asleep at
the wheel here when it comes to getting an awesome
collection of these creatures that I personally believe are going
(16:54):
to be gone soon, which is like another weird dichotomist thing,
which we'll get into. He knew that they were gonna
be gone, yet he was still totally okay with contributing
to that by killing hundreds of them. Yeah, and Walcott says, cool,
because not only is this an amazing opportunity for him
to get some specimens, what a pr coup, right, I mean,
(17:15):
this is like literally the most famous type of person
that could provide these specimens to him, So they'll have
like an extra added value, right then? Yeah, yeah, exactly.
And so Theodore Roosevelt, we have some of the correspondents
that he wrote to Charles Doolittle Walcott, and just a
quick excerpt here, I think gives us the lay of
the land. Roosevelt says, as you know, I am not
(17:38):
in the least a game butcher. I do like a
certain amount of hunting, but my real and main interest
is the interest of a faunal naturalist, faunal f a
U in a l flora fauna. And then he says,
now it seems to me that this opens up the
best chance for the National museum to get a fine
collection not only of the big game beast, but of
the smaller animals and birds of Africa. And looking at
(18:01):
it dispassionately, it seems to me that the chance ought
not to be neglected. And then he goes on UH
and explains that he plans to publish a book and
then he will use the proceeds from the book to
pay for a safari that he and his son, Kermit Roosevelt.
This episode is full of amazing names that that he
(18:22):
and his son will take. They're going to take this
safari to Africa, to the African continent, and they are
going to attempt to capture as much big game again ostensibly,
the way he's phrasing it is not for some thrill
of a hunt, but is for the It's for the
education of the masses, right, the greater good. And this
(18:45):
this Daniel, I would I would defer to you. You
know here here in the States, when kids grow up, UH,
in the US, you only hear about hunting in terms
of like hunting deer or something. Right, you don't really
in this country here about UH Safari's are these big
game expeditions. And I'm just curious when people who have
(19:09):
never been on a safari or even been to the
continent of Africa. When we see depictions of big game
hunts in fiction or safar as you know, in films
and stuff, is that in any way accurate? Is this
the thing that still happens? Was it something that just
happened you know? Uh in days of your no um?
(19:30):
In fact, the Trump children often go to Africa to
hunt um animals, so it is still happening. In fact,
recently a lion trophy was approved for import into the US,
and these things are still happening because tourists operators somehow
managed to get around the rules. Um. They are of
(19:53):
course incredible countries like Botswana where it's outlawed and not allowed,
But it is happening. People like to kill. It's part
of our very humanity, is it not. We um We
establish ourselves on on this planet in a way that
we have to kill to survive, So why would we
be changing? You know, we evolve, but perhaps we don't
(20:17):
fully evolve past these things. So I think there is
still a fun factor for some people, but it is
a real problem. I think that Africa hasn't dealt with
this particularly well because where there's money. Anything can be bought,
and even nature. And I recently interviewed the CEO of
(20:40):
Conservation International and their quest is to look at conservation
in new ways and to open up conversations. And next
week is Climate Week in New York. And I think
it's important that we do look at what's the real
important issue for all of us. So the question really
is is nature important to like? Is it truly important
(21:02):
to you? And I don't think we have a unanimous
thought process on that because to some people they're ready
to go to live on mars elon Musk is fixing
that for us? And for other people this is the
one life I get. I could live it up. Who cares?
So I wonder if nature is truly important to you?
(21:22):
And as someone who's from Africa, I grew up looking
at this stuff more critically because I was aware of
it because my parents are big safari goes. As if
my husband would tell you that they on safari all
the time. If you need to speak to Daniel's parents,
they'll be on safari. Um and part of that is
is conservation awareness. My parents really take that very seriously
(21:44):
and so do I and UM. I think places like
sing Geta in Tanzania, and in Zimbabwe and South Africa
and now in Rwanda are really really taking the safari
experience to the next level. So not only is it
not the proverbial out of Africa Meryl Streep experience, it
(22:05):
is also one where by going you are contributing to
having nine hundred full time anti poaches on the reserve. Um.
If you buy a villa in at sin Guita in Tanzania,
you are obligated to pay a monthly or yearly fee
in order to contribute to anti poaching. And I think
(22:27):
that that's spectacular and more places should be doing this.
I've also been on safari in India and it's a
very different thing. They have much more respect for the animals. Um.
I went to parts of Rajasthan where the leopard live
open and free next to villagers and they've never had
(22:50):
any issues. The leopard just walks right up to and
would never do anything because people would never kill them
and they would never kill people. And that's very different.
In Africa. There's a relationship. Has It's gone back so
much to hunter gatherer and then to Teddy Rosenfelt days
and now too the Trump Junior days of hunting. M hmm.
(23:16):
And when when we go back and look at Roosevelt's
Roosevelt's hunting in Africa, Roosevelt and Kermit, I'm just looking
for excuses to say Kermit, when thank you? When uh,
when we look at this, we see that, regardless of
his stated aims, Roosevelt did kill a lot of animals. Yeah, exactly.
(23:41):
I mean it goes back to um we talked about
with Jack and Miles from The Daily Zeitgeist on an
episode we did about weird flexes, weird historical flexes, the
fact that Charles Darwin again known in history, thought of
as one of the great naturalists, not really so much conservations,
but even I find those terms interchangeable, at least in
my mind that whether that may or may not be
(24:02):
the case. Charles Darwin would like eat every animal that
he catalogs, every but he ate a lot of like
endangered like turtles and stuff like. He definitely probably single
handedly contributed to some of the species that he was
studying becoming endangered, sure, because he ate so many of them.
So that's the thing here with Teddy right he um
(24:23):
you know has a ball on the safari Um. He
again like he's so preoccupied with this at the end
of his presidency that he admittedly can't focus on anything
other than this. He's you know, gathering weapons and ammunition
and having maps charted and all this and all he
needs from Walcott. The big ask that he's he's he's
(24:44):
expecting from Walcott is to supply uh, some personnel who
can actually stuff these creatures on demand in the field
in the field field taxidermist and naturalists who because he
his job isn't catalog I mean maybe catalogs to the
species that he kills for his personal little journal entry
which will read you in a little bit. It's it's fascinating,
(25:06):
but he has to have professionals from the from the
museum to actually do the real scientific work. And he
agrees because Walcott knows this is a deal and a
half and it's not really costing him much because I
believe Teddy Roosevelt financed his own trip with his own money.
And then because again he knew he was going to
get paid back when he published this book, which he did. Um.
So the Safari is a huge success um in that
(25:29):
he killed somewhere in the neighborhood of let's see five
hundred and twelve animals between between he and his son.
And there is actually a fantastic article on vox Um
that that has a page out of the book that
he published in nineteen ten, one year later called African
(25:51):
Game Trails, An account of the African Wonderings of an
American Hunter Naturalist that he lets. So he coined his
own like little category. Sure, he's not a hunter gatherer,
he's a hunter naturalist. Um. And it's as the headline is,
list of game shot with the rifle during the trip.
So we've got and it's like this, It literally looks
like a scorecard and like darts or something. And it's
(26:14):
divided by him and his son. We've got tr on
the left and k are our boy Kermy on the right.
And uh, let's just go through him together for a minute.
We got lion, leopard, cheetah, hyena, elephants, square mouth rhinoceros,
hook lip rhinoceros. There's the common zebra, the big zebra
of course, giraffe, the bongo, the bush buck. I'm sorry,
(26:35):
the bongo, yes, the bongo. Uh. Teddy himself didn't shoot any,
but his son Kermit killed two. He got two of them.
The giant eland. I don't know a lot of these animals. Then, yeah,
I've got to say, you know, not being a funnel
naturalist by profession myself, there are a couple of deep
cuts on here that are new to me. And you know,
(26:56):
it's so tough to try to ascribe motive or personal
motivation to historical figures. You know, we we know only
what was said about them at the time, only what
research proofs, and only what they wrote write their own records.
So it's this is just me speaking personally. It's tough
(27:19):
to your point, Daniel, about the the idea of killing
for fund that human impulse. It's tough for me to
figure out how much of his scientific interest was true
and valid versus how much of it was sort of
a facade to rationalize this vast amount of death. I mean,
(27:42):
his rhetoric is pretty um consistent. Yeah, I mean he
says here quoted in this mental pliss article um from
the book. Kermit and I kept about a dozen trophies
for ourselves. Otherwise we shot nothing that was not used
either as a museum specimen or for meat. As it's
an interesting line here. The mere size of the bag
(28:04):
indicates little as to a man's prowess as a hunter,
and almost nothing as to the interest or value of
his achievement. So I mean, he thought pretty highly of
himself and the uh, you know, the value of this
achievement and this this, this expedition, you know. And it
is true that the Smithsonian at the time didn't have
(28:25):
the most impressive collection of fauna from the African continent.
I believe they sent someone to explore Kilimanjaro in eight
and they sent somebody else, uh to the eastern Congo.
But those expeditions produced relatively few specimens in comparison to
other museums. At this point, uh, Walcott of course is
(28:54):
on board. But we have to remember, Um, there's a
point you raised earlier, Daniel, regarding resource extraction, the idea
of taking from a place. No one had the conversation
at the Smithsonian in the halls of the Roosevelt residents.
No one said, hey, should we be taking these animals? Like,
(29:16):
should we be taking these animals, stuffing their carcasses and
transporting them across an ocean? No nobody said, what does
that mean for the people who live there? You know?
And that seems like a problem that continues today. I
think it's a big problem, and I don't really know
the exact solution. I do feel like there are some
progressive countries around the world, like Costa Rica that are
(29:40):
really focused on eco tourism and bringing awareness to this,
and obviously places like Bhotan, but the small countries, and
I think a lot of this is much easier because
of the size um. I think these these things are
more challenging in places like China and Russia and of
course America, and there's not a lot of value put
(30:04):
on this in this moment in our current political life
in the world. Other things are kind of more important.
So I wondered, like what could be done. I mean,
I think legislation is important, but I think it's the
private sector. It's it's big tech that has to solve this.
And whether it's Elon Musko or his brother, Kimball Musco,
(30:25):
or perhaps Conservation International, but those are the kind of
voices that that's really necessary because governments will come and
change and evolve, and they're so slow moving. But and
you know, the UN is caught up in a lot
of bureaucracy. But I think that these big tech companies
could actually make a difference. So maybe it's a call
(30:45):
to them to be like, let's start our own tech app.
Let's call it Teddy Free Free Teddy, and we started
conservation awareness campaign. What do you think. I'm all for it.
I'm on board. Yeah, I like the idea of free
Teddy do we? I guess then do we get to
(31:08):
count as co founders? We just want to be in
the pictures? Man, right, I think you are. You just
co founded it with me. So this is great. There's
there's one one last thing that we say. No, of course,
Teddy Roosevelt went on to have many adventures, and somewhere
(31:29):
in this wide world of ours, Daniel Scheffler's Teddy Bear
is having adventures all its own, and we hope that
one day you two will finally be reunited. It makes
me think of that part in h Amalie where the
gnome you know, goes everywhere and takes pictures and she
(31:49):
sends the pictures people. Maybe one day you'll start getting
anonymous pictures in the mail from your teddy bear having
adventures that would be creepy and heartwarming at the same time. Somehow, Oh,
I love that. That's so beautiful. I really hope that
that Teddy is still living on somewhere beautiful because I
have I have a very very dear friend, and she
(32:11):
has a teddy bear called Little, and he travels with
her everywhere. He's always in her bag. And Little has
a friend, her wife's teddy bear called Moyenne. In fact,
at the moment they are fighting. But I always spend
a lot of time. There's hundreds of photos with me
and Little and Moyenne all over the world. So I
(32:34):
guess I'm living I'm vicariously living my life with my
old Teddy through the new Teddy Bears. Because history may
not repeat, but it certainly rhymes sure does. Right. Well,
I have been thinking, you know, now I'm on a
Teddy Roosevelt kick. And this week at the met in
New York, they commissioned these incredible, incredible statues by a
(32:58):
Kenyan American artist, UM. And she has done these female
sculptures and she's put them in the Metropolitan Museum of
Arts el Codes. They are four of them, and they
are these sort of powerful woman African queens looking out
(33:18):
onto the world. They called the New Ones will Free
Us and um it's part of the METS sort of
shift in their commissioning and um the natural history museums
shift in how they re examining statues, in particular the
Teddy Roosevelt statue, which some people think should be torn
down because some people have called Roosevelt racist towards African
(33:43):
Americans and Native Americans. And it's a fascinating thing because
I think it was a different time, right, Like do
we think of racism in the same way then as
we do now? Probably not. And he was He was
a very complicated figure, of course. You know, one thing
we learned about history is that people are very rarely
(34:04):
one heroic or on villainous. Roosevelt himself has some inherent contradictions.
We know because he wrote these contradictory statements. He said
the game butchery is as objectionable as any other form
of wanton, cruelty or barbarity. But then he also later
(34:26):
wrote that creeping after game made our veins thrill, and
he praises elephant poachers, saying a few careers are more
adventurous or more fraught with peril if you are keeping
score of the animals at home. Roosevelt killed eight elephants. Yeah,
and we sort of teased at the top of the
show the idea of a white whale kind of situation,
(34:47):
like a moby dick, like he was in the search
of this creature that he had yet to bag, and
that was the white rhinoceros, which is a very specific
species that's much different from the very common black rhino
that he had been collecting for some time. Um. And
it's it's not even the color that has to do
with their difference. They're actually in different generas um. So
(35:08):
they are very wildly different. The white rhino comes from
the Afrikaans word wide w y d, which means literally wide,
So the name white doesn't even refer to it's sort
of a bastardization English bastardization of that Afrikaans word. And
he did ultimately get several of these and they are
(35:30):
currently on display in the Natural History Museum the Smithsonian
Institute in washing in d C. And they are called
the Roosevelt Rhinos. Well, do you know how to tell
the difference between a black rhino and a white rhino? No?
How So, what's funny is the major difference is the
shape of their mouths. Black rhinos developed a pointy lip
(35:54):
which they used to pick up fruit and select leaves
from twigs, and white rhinos have a flat, wide lip,
as you said, wide to graze on grass. So that's
how you tell the difference whilst you're on safari. Then
you don't kill them, you just look at their lips exactly.
That sounds like a plan, especially considering now we have
(36:16):
to wonder what would have happened if Roosevelt had not
bagged that those Roosevelt rhinos. Today, the northern white rhino
is extinct in the wild, and I think there are
only a hand few left alive, with two or three now.
So we end today's story with a look at Teddy Roosevelt.
That may be surprising to some of our fellow listeners.
(36:39):
He would call it an adventure. This expedition of his
is something that many people don't learn about today, and
that's that's a shame. Daniel. We want to thank you
so much for joining us today and for anyone who
yearns to to travel a little bit further from their
(37:00):
comfort zone geographically speaking, for people who want to join
you on your adventures as you literally travel everywhere. Where
can they find the podcast, where can they learn more
about you? Well, it's definitely on the I Heart Radio app,
but also anyway you get into a podcast, um where
at Everywhere podcast on Instagram. But I'm not a social
(37:24):
media guy much so I'm more like, listen to the show.
Take it. Don't see it as head knowledge, see it
as hot knowledge, and I'll see you everywhere. Love it.
Thank you so much, Daniel. If you want to find
us on the social media's, you can find us at
Ridiculous History on Instagram. If you want to join our
community on Facebook, where are the Ridiculous Historians where you
(37:45):
can connect up with your fellow listeners and exchange memes
and conversation. And Ben and I even creep in there
from time to time and get in on the fun.
If you'd like to follow us individually, I am at
how Now Noel Brown on Instagram. You can see me
get kicked into and kicked out of various countries, locales
and locations on Instagram where i am at Ben Bully
(38:07):
in a burst of creativity. I'm at Ben Bully hsw
on Twitter. Thanks as always, who are super producer Casey Pegram, who,
by the way, stayed the whole time made it. I
don't think that was for us. I think he was
staying for you. Daniel, he just didn't want you to
know where he was going because I was going to
reveal I should still do it, well, you should still
(38:27):
tell you I feel free. Yeah, I want to hear this.
He's going to France. He's always going to always popping
off to France, and and alas he's usually on Mike
on the show today, but we're having are you on
Mike on the show today? I'm on I'm on the
weird Mike, so probably sounds might that might sound funky.
We'll see. Uh, he may or may actually be on
the show because we've got some Mike issues in this
(38:49):
new studio. But La Bush will indeed return huge Thanks
to Casey Pegram for sticking around big Thanks to you
Daniel for being on the show with us. Thanks to
thank you so much, You're so welcome. Thanks to Alex
Williams who composed our theme. Thanks to research associate Gabe Losier,
and thanks to research associate Ryan Bearish. Thanks to the
(39:10):
quiz ster for not dropping in at the end of
this episode when he doesn't drop and thanks to thanks
of course to Christopher has Yodas. Thanks you know, thanks
with some caveats and asterix to Theodore Roosevelt and uh,
hey you no, thanks to you man. I like your
shirt today. He appreciate it, but like your shirt too
and the cut of your jim. We'll see you next time, folks.
(39:41):
For more podcasts for My Heart Radio, visit the I
Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.