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January 16, 2025 44 mins

On paper -- and, often, in practice -- the world's fair is an astonishing global showcase of groundbreaking innovations. However, as Ben, Noel and Max discover in the second part of this two-part series, not every world's fair has been a success. Tune in as the guys explore several ill-fated examples of expositions gone wrong in California and Louisiana.

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Episode Transcript

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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome back to

(00:27):
the show, Ridiculous Historians. Thank you, as always so much
for tuning in. Let's hear it for the man, the myth,
the super producer, mister Max Williams.

Speaker 2 (00:37):
La la, There goes Max.

Speaker 3 (00:42):
He looks so fine with his amazing like you know,
like deep smoker voice today.

Speaker 1 (00:49):
Oh really, yeah, the weather's on top of all of us,
right yeah, And don't worry, Max is not taking up
a trendy smoking habit. Max. What does your shirts say?
It's on that shirt?

Speaker 3 (01:01):
Oh oh oh, it's it's the newest shirt from my
Michigan blog, I follow and go blog. It says they
have to learn how to lose, which is what Khalil
Molling said to reporters on the field in Columbus a
couple couple of weeks back when Michigan pulled a massive
upset and Ohio States players response to losing the football

(01:22):
game was We're going to assault those people and rip
their flag up and then get the flag stolen from us.
And then it has the score of all four games
in a row that they've lost because they don't know
how to lose.

Speaker 2 (01:32):
And say you get for asking questions.

Speaker 1 (01:34):
Yeah, yeah, I was gonna say, look at us, Noel,
furrowing our brows and nodding, meaningfly together as still we
have very idea. That's mister Noel Brown. They called Noel.

Speaker 4 (01:46):
Burry the flag Brown. I'm giving myself that that nickname.

Speaker 2 (01:49):
That's good. Yeah, that's good.

Speaker 1 (01:51):
That's your super k for today. They called me Ben Bullen.
In various parts of the world. We are journeying together
through the concept that sounds wild when you first explain it.
Like if an alien landed on the planet Earth and

(02:12):
you said, how do I explain a world's fair? You
would essentially have to say, what if all the nations
of the world had a big science fair? And the
alien would say, what is going on with you folks?

Speaker 4 (02:29):
What's the science fair? Is probably what the alien would say.
For me to come up with a little more of
a common language with the alien, maybe numbers.

Speaker 2 (02:36):
Maybe we'll first math, yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:38):
Math, yeah, the universal language. Also, it's crazy in such
an unfair civilization that we call something a world's fair
in the first place. Please check out episode one. Thanks
to our research associate Wren, we learned about some of
the winds in the affairs of world Fairs, and in

(03:02):
this follow up episode we are going to learn about
the times that, to Max's shirt, the World's Fair took
a big swing and did lose.

Speaker 2 (03:14):
And then maybe a bit of a dive.

Speaker 4 (03:16):
We are starting today's episode in the fair city of
Los Angeles, which, as we record this is dealing with
horrific disasters related to wildfires there. And I know, Ben,
you've been checking on some of your pals there and
I have as well, and Max, I think you have too,
And I think our hearts collectively go out to everyone

(03:36):
that's dealing with loss of homes and property and livelihood,
you know, during this really awful situation.

Speaker 1 (03:42):
Agreed and well said, we're keeping you in our thoughts.

Speaker 4 (03:46):
Not to put a damper on today's topic, but we
just thought it was, you know, worth mentioning right up
front here. So let us venture back to the golden
age of Hollywood in the year of nineteen twenty three
at the Motion Picture Exposition.

Speaker 1 (04:07):
Yes, Hollywood is, as ever experiencing a public relations crisis
because the world of entertainment is often not as shiny
as it may appear to the audience. For some context,
we must remember a film director named William Desmond Taylor,

(04:30):
most well known today for the adaptation of Tom Sawyer
by Mark Twain real name Samuel Clemens. Check out our
earlier episodes on Mark Twain. This guy, unfortunately was murdered
in his bungalow and there are some pretty crazy rumors
about what went down.

Speaker 4 (04:50):
Yeah, this is exactly the kind of stuff that our buddy,
Jordan Runtog is super fascinated by.

Speaker 1 (04:56):
Oh, I can't wait for folks to meet Jordan.

Speaker 4 (04:58):
He is also another one of our fantastic new research
associates for Ridiculous History and a podcaster in his own right.
Check out his show TMI Too Much Information and also
Stone's Touring Party, which is the show that we did
together about the Rolling Stones exile on Main Street era.
But he is fascinated with the dark side of Hollywood
and the kind of true crimey noir ish parts of

(05:21):
that city's storied history, a lot of which is quite dark.
And yes, Ben, you're right, rumor has it that he
was William Desmond Taylor was having an affair with an
underage person, an underage young woman named Mary Miles Minter.
Her nightgown was found in his bedroom along with a

(05:41):
love letter.

Speaker 2 (05:42):
But officially this case.

Speaker 1 (05:44):
Does you know, fall under the category of unsolved today unsolved? Yea.
And then we have to go to Roscoe Arbuckle, better
known as Fatty Arbuckle, who was in his day a
pre eminent comedian. He was the kind of guy you

(06:04):
would compare to Charlie Chaplin, who has his Charlie Chaplin,
by the way, has his own dark backstory. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (06:11):
And if I'm not mistaken, we talked about both of
these fellas on a joint episode with our pals at
the Tossed Popcorn podcasts.

Speaker 1 (06:20):
Absolute legends, Yes, and neither toss Popcorn nor Ridiculous History
has ever engaged in the unclean acts that we have
to describe. We are ethically required to be honest. Fatty
Arbuckle was charged with manslaughter after an actress died as

(06:46):
a consequence of something that happened during his known drunken
hotel ragers, all occurring during Prohibition. This is all what
we're giving you here is the context in which the
motion picture exposition occurs. So there's another piece to add

(07:06):
to the fire here. Mabel Norman, another very well known
person in the entertainment industry of the time, she ended
up in the tabloids and the muckraker yellow press for
a dangerous drug habit, and then she.

Speaker 2 (07:27):
You know, the media can be so.

Speaker 1 (07:29):
Brutal, you guys. She was also apparently perhaps having an
affair with William Desmond Taylor. And then in a separate incident,
her driver took her own gun and shot and not fatally,
but shot and wounded an oil tycoon. So look, the public,

(07:55):
like the theater going public, is increasingly having a moral
panic about the creators of their favorite shows. Movie ticket
sales are super down, local censorship boards and morality police
are are trying to hold someone accountable. Yeah, this era

(08:18):
would have been akin to what was you know, portrayed
in the film La Confidential. Danny DeVito's character runs kind
of a muck raking tabloid. I believe it's like hush
hush maybe, or that was the motto, keep it on
the hush hush. But this is you know, the early
days of like paparazzi kind of feeding frenzy and certainly
hasn't gotten any better. But you know, folks in those

(08:38):
days would go to extreme lengths higher private detectives, you know,
to bust a celebrity for something like this cocaine habit
that Mabel Norman had, and it was really just.

Speaker 2 (08:48):
Kind of a dark time in the history of Hollywood.

Speaker 4 (08:52):
But to your point, Ben, this required maybe a bit
of a pr effort on the part of the major
film studios to sort of draw the attention away from
some of these scandals that we're breaking and maybe uh
reintroduce the public to the magic of the pictures.

Speaker 2 (09:07):
You know.

Speaker 1 (09:08):
Yeah, let's let's imagine one of those studio heads do
tune in to our stuff. They don't want you to know.
Series on the Dark Side of Hollywood, by the way,
But imagine one of those studio heads, you know, chopping
his cigar and slamming his fist and going, we need

(09:28):
something wholesome, We need something wholesome. We'll lose in Oklahoma.
So to your point, Noel, the major film studios banded together.
They created something called the mpp DA motion Picture Producers
and Distributors of America, and they created this organization to

(09:51):
present what they called the Motion Picture Exposition in Los Angeles.
And they said, all right, we're going to we're gonna
make this legit. We're going to pitch to middle America
as they called it, and we are going to pull
in some government guys to help us out.

Speaker 4 (10:12):
And lets you be asking yourself, wait a minute, this
doesn't sound like a World's fair, a world's expo, and
you would be absolutely correct. But it really is akin
and on the same scale as a World's fair, and
a first of its kind for highlighting, you know, the
entertainment industry in Hollywood.

Speaker 2 (10:28):
So we thought it was worth mentioning.

Speaker 1 (10:30):
Definitely an exposition and to the point of chasing credibility
as as these folks were wont to do. The point
I was making here is they pull in a Postmaster
General named will Hayes to give them a patina of

(10:50):
credibility and to make it seem a little bit less
like a pr stunt.

Speaker 2 (10:56):
It was.

Speaker 1 (10:57):
It was trying to bring Holly Would the kind of
wholesome culture that a lot of people thought Hollywood lacked.

Speaker 2 (11:07):
You know.

Speaker 1 (11:08):
They wanted highbrow art exhibits, they wanted middle brow kind
of everyman entertainment like pageants, lectures on morality. So in
a very real way, this attempt by America's entertainment industry
echoes the earlier ideas from England when Prince Albert built

(11:33):
a crystal palace to impress people with England and the
idea of the Industrial Revolution. Hollywood tried to do the
same thing with this Motion Picture Exposition. And just for
another moment of clarification here, the Motion Picture Producers and
Distributors of America, the MPPDA, didn't want to be directly

(11:58):
linked to the world, to the World's Fair, to that
governing body.

Speaker 2 (12:04):
Legally right.

Speaker 1 (12:05):
They very much wanted to capitalize on the kind of
excitement and sort of match the kind of scale that
the expo is known for. The like buying air jorbans
on Timu Yeah, like transmorphers the movie Yeah yeah, or
auto Gods. We could do this all day. Oh my gosh,

(12:26):
I want so many more. I want so many more,
Like slightly off brand products. Let's see instead of Apple. Wait,
Snapple's already a thing. Moving on, these guys decide the
exhibit they're holding will be a celebration, because again they're

(12:49):
searching for legitimacy, and they say, what shall we celebrate,
How do we connect with the zeitgeist? Well, it's the
one hundredth headiverse of the Monroe Doctrine, which is where
former President James Monroe decided he would fight against European

(13:09):
interference in the Americas and the Caribbean. Yeah, that's pretty
I don't know, it's a little it's a bit of
a yeah.

Speaker 3 (13:19):
Yeah, it's like ground and not find out that's what
it is, because everyone's like, okay, James, boy okay.

Speaker 1 (13:28):
Well, also, the Monroe doctrine, if I could just take
a step here, the Monroe doctrine is cartoonishly hypocritical. Yeah,
it's not great. Certainly, this is one hundred years right,
This was one hundred years the so even by then
history has sort of you know, shaken out.

Speaker 2 (13:48):
Maybe there are some issues with the Monroe doctrine.

Speaker 1 (13:51):
Yeah, the la exposition occurs in nineteen twenty three, when
James Monroe was president. He first pitched the idea of
the Monroe doctor were in eighteen twenty three. So it
feels like they were looking for any sort of.

Speaker 2 (14:09):
Tye in a hook, as they call it.

Speaker 1 (14:12):
Yeah, and so that's what they did, the super relevant
and super accessible statements of a dead president.

Speaker 4 (14:21):
And in another pretty Hollywood move, the MPPDA actually bribed
Congress to mint the commemorative nineteen twenty three Monroe Doctrine
centennial half dollar. They made seventy five thousand of these,
but only twenty seven thousand of them were purchased ahead
of opening day. That's like kind of an early like
crypto scam almost right, It.

Speaker 1 (14:43):
Is like a puppet up. Oh my gosh, I didn't
think about that, Nol. You nailed it to me. It
calls to mind those late night TV commercials of old
with a commemorative coin.

Speaker 4 (14:56):
One hundred percent, you know what I mean, target it
at you know a lot of time older folks that
would maybe be willing to pump their life savings into
these kind of things. Yeah, it almost reminds me of
the pump and dumps camera just happened with the Haktua girl.
Only twenty seven thousand were purchased and the rest of
them were returned to circulation, which effectively made them worthless

(15:18):
in terms of like their extra cachet right.

Speaker 1 (15:21):
Right right, because legally they would be a half dollar,
they would be fifty cents, and they would have more
value if they were exclusive. So when they all enter
into the public sphere, the remaining hundreds of thousands of

(15:44):
bribery coins celebrating the Monroe Doctrine, they do become less valuable.
You can buy one now for any fan of coinage.
You can buy one now for about seventy eight dollars
and sixty three cents on Amazon. As Ren points out,

(16:06):
they have rave reviews four point five out of five.

Speaker 4 (16:10):
Not bad, not bad. But this already doesn't particularly bode well.

Speaker 1 (16:16):
Yeah, they start exploring different names even before they open.
They end up calling it the American Historical Review and
Motion Picture Exposition. It opens on July second, nineteen twenty three.
They had a thing. I've laughing because they one of

(16:39):
their big tent attractions was supposed to be something they called,
in a burst of creativity, the location.

Speaker 2 (16:47):
Ooh, that's very high hush. It's like the condition right. Yeah,
it's vague and a little bit odd.

Speaker 1 (16:53):
It was an area of the grounds that twenty five
film companies demonstrated the technology behind film production, displaying actual
film sets and costumes for major motion pictures.

Speaker 4 (17:07):
The public would have very much been aware of the time. However,
the media were a lot more interested in the historical
exhibits that the exposition had to offer, including the opening
night tableau of Washington crossing the Della, where they were
really leaning into the raw raw America.

Speaker 1 (17:22):
Of it, all right, because if you have a problem
with our show, you have a problem with America. That's right,
that's the implication they're going for.

Speaker 4 (17:30):
They had some other kind of dramatizations, Lincoln freeing the slaves,
and of course, you know, a callback to maybe our
Colombian exhibition, Columbus landing in the Americas.

Speaker 1 (17:42):
Crystal Baul Cologne is still very, very famous in that day,
and I think perhaps today most well known for being
mentioned in an episode of The Sopranos.

Speaker 3 (17:53):
Yeah, but.

Speaker 1 (17:55):
This is a Christopher Columbus and also maybe now a
little bit more known for being a bit of a
war criminal. Yeah yeah, I agreed, absolute monster. The public, however,
is not interested in what the studios are attempting to sell.
They They're like people who go to a fan convention.

(18:17):
Yeah we can go here a lecture. Yeah, we can
go here at Ted talk and learn about Washington crossing
the Delaware, et cetera, et cetera. But we're really here
to party and meet our favorite celebrities. The problem is
the studios mess up. I'm just gonna be honest. They

(18:44):
did not get all the celebrities they wanted. They did
not anticipate the public demand. So at the very last minute,
they pulled in a few actors, primarily based on the
incredibly strange studio contracts that all actors had. You know,

(19:05):
it's similar to like K pop today. You have a
governing body that can just tell you to jump around,
jump around.

Speaker 2 (19:14):
Get out your seat, and check out the stuff I
don't want you.

Speaker 1 (19:16):
An episode that we mentioned earlier, we go into a
lot of his contract stuff and how the big studios.

Speaker 4 (19:20):
Really had a stranglehold on a lot of their talent.
But unfortunately, in this case, it would seem their stranglehold
was not tight enough to get the top earners, the
top performers to show up. And so at the end
of the day, they had one final hail Mary that
were hoping was gonna, you know, get the butts in
the seats or the feet on the location, and it
was President Warren Jay Harding, Everyone's favorite president.

Speaker 2 (19:43):
I guess he was supposed to show up.

Speaker 1 (19:46):
He was scheduled to make an appearance at this event,
but in a continuing series of unfortunate events, he died
just before his scheduled appearance on August second, nineteen twenty three,
of a heart attack. Yeah, and that Hail Mary being
unsuccessful was really the the financial and optic nail in

(20:09):
the coffin for the MPPDA. And this exposition that is
not legally associated with the World's Fair but is definitely
trying to make you think of the World's Fair. They
were two hundred thousand dollars in debt as a result
of this strange debacle. Could we get an inflation calculation

(20:32):
and a dude, two hundred thousand dollars in nineteen twenty
three money is the equivalent of drum roll, thank you
max three million, six hundred and eighty nine thousand, nine
hundred and seventy six dollars and sixty one cents in

(20:57):
twenty twenty.

Speaker 4 (20:58):
Four sixty one centsage? Really is that insults injury? So yeah,
I mean even that amount. We know movie flops today
lose way more than that, so it's still kind of
a modest loss by today's standards, even when you figure
inflation into the mix. But not a good look. The
whole thing came off as quite a flop.

Speaker 1 (21:20):
Yeah, And speaking of belly flops, we have to note
that if you go to the governing body of the
World's Fair, the Bureau of International Expositions. You'll see that
they do not acknowledge this strange, ridiculous and doomed LA Exposition.

(21:43):
You will see other belly flops like the Louisiana World Exposition,
which is recognized by the governing body and happened happened
just before our ridiculous history cut off in chronology. Noel,
can you take us to nineteen eighty four?

Speaker 4 (22:02):
Well, travel with me too, the lovely city of New Orleans,
New Orleans, New Orleans.

Speaker 1 (22:08):
Smell that you know, Smell that beignet, smell that coffee.

Speaker 4 (22:12):
Smell that horse crap, the vomit and stale beer smell.

Speaker 1 (22:18):
No. I love New Orleans, but it's got some sensory
overload opportunities, let's say it. One of my buddies, who
is not from the United States, was attempting to be
diplomatic with me, and she described New Orleans as quote
a very specific city. It very much does love it

(22:38):
or hate it. I've only been once and I very
much enjoyed myself.

Speaker 4 (22:42):
Though since I've stopped drinking, I don't know if I
would enjoy it quite as much, but we'll see.

Speaker 2 (22:46):
Who knows. I'd love to visit and try so.

Speaker 4 (22:48):
As described by Time magazine writer Michael Demarest, the soul, spirit,
and stomach of the World's Fair is the city itself,
brooding and flamboyant, raucous and bane, devouts and dissolute.

Speaker 2 (23:02):
That is good right.

Speaker 1 (23:03):
The Fair stirs together the razmatazz of Marti Gras, the
harmony of New Orleans, elegant old buildings and French, Spanish, African, Italian, Irish, German, Creole.

Speaker 2 (23:13):
Cajun, gumbo, gusto.

Speaker 1 (23:15):
Those are all hyphenative, yes, sure are of its every day,
every night street life. Good on you, Michael Demerz, what
a turn I could turn a phrase. Very well done.
And having been to New Orleans, if you have the chance,
please go. I am also no longer a partier and

(23:35):
I love the place. The history is amazing, the culture
is different. Also side note nothing to do with the
World's Fair. You can buy a parade in New Orleans.
You can buy a personal parade. A lot of folks
don't know that it's super affordable. Just go nuts, you

(23:56):
know what I mean. Take the money you want to
spend at the bar and get yourself good squad with
a tuba.

Speaker 2 (24:03):
I can't wait to go back. Yeah, I mean parades
are like life there in New Orleans.

Speaker 4 (24:08):
If anyone's familiar with, you know, New Orleans funerals, I
mean there's a parade involved in that.

Speaker 1 (24:12):
It really is just kind of ingrained in the culture
of that city. Yeah, we can't wait to go back.
We should also do a history of Marti Gras. That's cool.
We won't get too true detective with it. So the
Louisiana World Exposition takes place what we would call the
New Orleans metro area. The main location is the Warehouse District.

(24:38):
At this point, the Warehouse District is defunct. It's burned down.
You know, the city doesn't really care about it, and
they gentrify it. Let's be honest, they gentrify eighty four
acres or renovate, they would call it. At first, this
fair is defined by a garish color scheme. They got

(24:59):
a series of statues. There's a mermaid, they're alligators. And
then I know you'll love this nol. They have a
wacky collection of temporary facades veneers and they call this
together the Wonder Wall, which is why you know it

(25:19):
reminds us of Episode one where Chicago's World's Fair. The
Colombian one had a bunch of white plaster over things,
and they called it the White Cities. So now Louisiana
and New Orleans responds with the wonder Wall.

Speaker 4 (25:36):
Yeah, after all this, maybe I don't know a hundred
of Oasis knew about this.

Speaker 2 (25:41):
It's hard to say.

Speaker 1 (25:41):
I'm sure. I'm sure Liam and nol spend a lot
of time on the lyrics.

Speaker 2 (25:46):
Probably well, you know, I mean it's people like them.
It's kind of like them.

Speaker 4 (25:52):
Yeah, for sure, they've got some bangers, no question about them.
I just never need to hear that song ever again.
But this was another example of kind of trying to
gussy up something that maybe was not as appealing otherwise,
sort of like trying to put a little bit of
a shiny veneer on what might be considered by visitors

(26:14):
as like a little bit more of a rundown kind
of Look.

Speaker 1 (26:17):
It's rough, right, is it a hat on a hat?
Are we unnecessarily jushing up things? The fair had some
big ticket, big tent items. There was a three hundred
foot French gondola gondola that connected the Warehouse district to Algiers.

(26:38):
There was an example of the space shuttle, the Enterprise
not the cool one, the real one flown in on
the back of a seven forty seven. There was the
International Women's Pavilion. There were all these, again global exhibits,
thankfully nothing exploiting indigenous people. But there was an Italian village,

(27:01):
there was a German beer garden, and there was a
Louisiana swamp ride. By the way, fellow ridiculous historians, this
was unsuccessful. The exposition was a huge poop in the pants.

Speaker 4 (27:21):
Yes, it was such a financial failure that many, many,
many years later, in nineteen ninety nine, Congress implemented twenty
two US Code two forty five to be international expositions,
which prevented the Department of State from using funds for
a United States pavilion or other major exhibit at a
World's Fair. Because this event was seen as such a

(27:43):
waste of tax payer money, that served as a precedent
to ultimately make sure something like this didn't happen again,
though it certainly took a while for them to get
to it.

Speaker 1 (27:51):
But you know, I love justice, I love it. It
is peak ridiculous history. Uncle Sam lost so much money
that that we decided to make it illegal to lose
that money. That way again, that's how much money we lost.
The total cost of this exposition was about three hundred

(28:15):
and fifty million dollars at the time nineteen eighty four.
So uh Noel, if we could return to our inflation calculator,
I'm gonna set you up with a boop and then
let us know how much money America lost in twenty
twenty four and a dude spoop.

Speaker 4 (28:37):
The total cost of the expedition was around three hundred
and fifty million dollars in nineteen eighty four, money which
today would be a whopping one billion, sixty two million,
seven hundred and seventy seven thousand, one hundred and eighty
nine dollars. Could have made three Avatar movies for that amount.

Speaker 1 (29:00):
Right, and we have to wonder whether you could pay
part of that off an with a Monroe Doctrine centennial
half dollar. The news is still developing, so this is
a quagmire, right, this is a boondoggle. Attendance is forty
percent lower than they had hoped. The Louisiana World Exposition

(29:25):
is the only World's Fair in all of history to
declare bankruptcy while it was still happening. And it's a
sad story. You know, we're taking the piss a bit,
as our British friends like to say. But the exposition
was meant to do good things. It was meant to
revitalize the economy of the overall region. If you cast

(29:49):
your memory back there to the nineteen eighties in the Gulf,
you'll see that they were in dire straits, not the band.
They were situated in the Gulf of Mexico. There was
a lot of offshore drilling. Louisiana was even more heavily
dependent on the oil industry, and oil has often been

(30:15):
a geopolitical leverage point. In a very quick summation here,
we can tell you, as several of our fellow ridiculous
historians will recall, the United States and Iran sometimes don't
get along. So I wish I could say it wasn't so,

(30:37):
but that's the case.

Speaker 2 (30:38):
No.

Speaker 1 (30:38):
In nineteen seventy nine, in particular, President Carter, Jimmy Carter,
a fellow resident of Atlanta, God Bless, he embargoed oil.

Speaker 2 (30:51):
Trade with the nation of Iran.

Speaker 1 (30:54):
The US public panicked because they thought there would be
no oil, no gas for car The price skyrocketed, and
all of a sudden, Louisiana was in an economic bubble. However,
we know how bubbles work. First a bubble forms, and
then a bubble. The bubble burst in the nineteen eighties,

(31:24):
or in nineteen eighties, specifically, when Uncle Sam renewed ties
with the Middle Eastern nation of Rock so they could
still keep pulling in oil. Louisiana was left out in
the cold and a lot of people lost their jobs.
So the fair organizers would were hoping that the exposition

(31:48):
could bring tourism in, could somehow bring other industries right
that were not oil dependent. It didn't work out. I mean,
break it down for us man, what went?

Speaker 2 (32:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (32:00):
By nineteen eighty four, the World's Fair structure had really
kind of become something very different from what it was
originally intended to be, which was, of course a showcase
of invention and innovation and progress. It seems to have
kind of devolved into a much more commercial state fair

(32:22):
kind of situation without that draw of new revolutionary technology being.

Speaker 1 (32:28):
Right, where's our telephone, where's our tell? Where's our television? Right?

Speaker 2 (32:33):
Our flying car?

Speaker 1 (32:34):
Where's our Ferris Will? So this, yeah, this is an
excellent point there. The exposition occurs often in step with
the Olympics. So at this point, right, we talked about
the nineteen oh four stuff in a previous episode. The

(32:55):
Olympics in nineteen eighty four are taking some of the
public's front of my space from the exposition, and it's
taking money from sponsors. So imagine you're a big to
do kind of guy. Right, you have some money, but
not all the money. You can help fund the nineteen

(33:15):
eighty four Olympics, or you can help fund this exposition
in Louisiana. A lot of people decided to focus on
the Olympics. Now, we can't blame them, We're just telling
you what happened. There were a series of competing international events.

Speaker 4 (33:35):
Yeah, and like we mentioned in the first episode, there's
a reason for the World's Fair not seeming to have
the same.

Speaker 1 (33:41):
Prominence as the Olympics does today. And this may have
been the beginning of that back slack.

Speaker 4 (33:46):
Actually, it probably began quite a bit before the nineteen
eighty four World's Fair.

Speaker 2 (33:50):
This is sort of a good example of where it landed.

Speaker 1 (33:53):
Yeah, and then adding on to the complication something we
mentioned in episode one of the World's Fairs, we were
talking about the wins, there was another big win in
Florida that also competed with Louisiana. It is disney World's
newest theme park, Epcot.

Speaker 2 (34:13):
Oh ed.

Speaker 1 (34:13):
Also, we should point out there was a recent World's
Fair in Knoxville, Tennessee, just two years before nineteen eighty four,
in nineteen eighty two. So like the World's Fair is
supposed to be for the world, people who were worlds
fared out a little bit yet it were I think
that's fair to say. And now you're thinking, I've been

(34:35):
to Knoxville, which is a great town. I'm required to
say that. No spoilers. And we also we have to
imagine the tourists, right, the people with money to travel,
money and time to travel. They're saying, we've been to America,
we visited Knoxville. What shall we return to Louisiana If

(35:00):
we go again to the Americas, we must.

Speaker 4 (35:04):
Go to Epcot because it was built as a permanent
World's Fair. It's sort of that quintessential city of the
future kind of look with the what is it Spaceship Earth.

Speaker 2 (35:13):
I love all of that. It's pretty cool even still today.

Speaker 4 (35:16):
I've visited a couple of years ago and I had
a good old time, and it really is a neat attraction,
especially with all of the international areas, you know, and
the different cuisine and you know, sort of recreations of
all of these incredible architectural feats, you know, from everywhere
from China to South America, India and beyond. So what

(35:38):
do I need to go to Louisiana for when I
can just pop over to Epcot and then hit the
Magic Kingdom for you know, some tea cups and in
the photo off with Cinderella mister Toad's Wild Ride as
a banger.

Speaker 1 (35:50):
Yes, yeah, I love Epcot, folks, I oh my gosh,
I'm such a fanboy for it. To top all of
this off the cop locations for this exhibition in New Orleans.
The federal government usually subsidizes these events, and Noel we
mentioned earlier that this was such a disaster that Uncle

(36:15):
Sam decided to make a law saying they will not
pay for these sorts of things. But even before stuff
was getting rolling, the US government had slashed its contribution
to the cause by ten million dollars. So the exposition
found itself over one hundred million US dollars in debt

(36:40):
by the day they closed. But I mean, look, not
everything's going to work. That's the spirit of the World's Fair, right,
It's a great drawing board, and the idea is, you know,
some things are going to be a television, some things
are going to be electro the smoking robot. Not everything's
going to.

Speaker 4 (37:00):
And forgive me if I'm repeating this, but I just
think it's maybe it bears repeating. This was the only
Worldfair to ever actually declare bankruptcy while in progress.

Speaker 1 (37:10):
M hmm, yeah, that's absolutely true. Now we've given you
two examples of when things went wrong, but we want
to be positive offens, so let's close on a positive note.
The United States has started submitting bids again. Enough time

(37:31):
has passed, Enough water under the bridge, so our buddies,
the country we live in has started started asking the
Bureau of International Expositions for another chance. You know what
I mean, take us back in les. Let's go get coffee.
They've submitted a bid to host what is called a

(37:53):
specialized expo. So you know how there are TED talks
and then there are ted X talks. Yeah, the spinoff
specialized Expo is kind of like the ted X to
the World's Fair TED Talk.

Speaker 4 (38:06):
Yeah, And the theme under which they are taking these
submissions is healthy people, Healthy planet. Although the United States
ultimately did lose this bid to Serbia.

Speaker 2 (38:18):
Serbia, I know, Serbia, you never see them coming.

Speaker 4 (38:21):
Hopefully we may one day have a World's Fair in
the States again. And you know, something that occurs to
me now, Ben that we maybe didn't mention it, the
idea of this singular event for showcasing all of the
new tech and innovations or whatever. It makes sense that
it would be difficult to maintain that with all of
the fragmented little expos that take play. And I say little,

(38:45):
I mean you're huge things like CEES for example, or
G three, you know, for like video games. Every kind
of industry has their own World's Fair, you know that's
specifically surrounding a certain genre of innovation, So you just
can't really compete with that.

Speaker 1 (39:00):
That's a great point because the current world expos tend to,
as a result, go broad right CESG three, They specialize
in certain things, just like the Defcon conference in.

Speaker 2 (39:15):
Cases, which is a hacker kind of thing. Right, Well,
let's see me.

Speaker 1 (39:21):
Internet enthusiasts, thank you, enth yeah, yeah, because I don't
want them to get us. So just in case, folks,
you want to learn more about World expos tell us
what you're doing later, because this year the World Exposition
will be held in Osaka, Japan. Going to our point

(39:44):
about keeping things broad, the theme of the idea here
NOL is designing future society for our lives. That's so broad.

Speaker 2 (39:56):
What does that mean?

Speaker 1 (39:57):
Designing future society for our lives? It's going to be
a banger. We're working with accounting right now to see
if we can take ridiculous history there. Just that's what
we call a big swing. Yeah, for sure, for sure.

Speaker 4 (40:11):
And what would be a ridiculous history episode if we
didn't wrap up with a couple of related, unrelated adjacent
bits of tangents and trivia. Angus Young, you know, the
lead guitarist of the aussy rock band ac DC.

Speaker 2 (40:26):
He's the guy that wears dresses like a little schoolboy.
You know what music? That is? The question?

Speaker 4 (40:31):
Ben Well, he thinks, you know, music is shredding on
the electric guitar they apparently are. Angus himself proposed the
group's name after his sister in law pointed out that
the alternating current direct current symbol on her sewing machine
looked kind of cool, and so the band adopted that
name because they felt a symbolized the raw power of

(40:53):
rock that they hoped to bring across in their music.

Speaker 1 (40:58):
Yeah. Man, there's so many there's so many interesting pathways
about like related to the World's Fair. Do you wanna
do you want to kick us one more callback before
we end the show.

Speaker 4 (41:12):
Yeah, we talked about that kind of really dark period
in the Golden Age of Hollywood causing the producers of
motion pictures to band together to create some kind of distraction.
We mentioned William Desmond Taylor being murdered in his bungalow.

Speaker 2 (41:30):
Well.

Speaker 4 (41:31):
Mary Miles Mintor, who I believe was his mistress, confessed
in her unpublished autobiography that she and her mother were
at William Desmond Taylor's bungalow the night he was murdered,
and another Hollywood player, King Vedoor, known for films such
as Warren Peace with Audrey Hepburn and Henry Fonda, claims

(41:52):
Mentor once admitted that her kind of helicopter mother, a
bit of a control freak, was actually the one who
pulled the trigger when she came across her daughter and
Taylor perhaps engaged in some hanky panky there in his home.

Speaker 1 (42:10):
And lest we leave you on a negative note, We'll
give you just just a couple more fun facts about
the expo occurring in October of twenty twenty five. Nol,
you know how we lost to Serbia? Osaka won the
new one here, I know, I know Serbia. The countries

(42:33):
that the countries that Japan went against were Azerbaijan and Russia.
The Azerbaijani theme was developing human capital, building a better future.
The Russian pitch was changing the world innovations, better life
for future generations. I gotta tell you, I hope we

(42:56):
can convince accounting to take us to OSA. Wouldn't that
be cool? How do we pull that off? Like you're
a people person, can you make that happen for us?
I'll see if I could put my people person powers
to good use. Oh I love that alliteration, dude. Okay,
So when you talk to Accounting Noel, please and thank
you in advance. Tell them we're not just going to

(43:17):
explore designing future society for our lives. Tell them also
the sub themes of the Next World Expo are saving lives,
empowering lives, and connecting lives. And then if they're still
on the fence about it, bro toss them one of
those Monroe coins.

Speaker 2 (43:37):
Indeed, exactly, that's a great call.

Speaker 4 (43:41):
Huge thanks to our incredible research associate Extraordinaire Wren Jones.
Huge thanks to super producer Extraordinaire Max von Williams.

Speaker 1 (43:50):
Yes, big, big thanks to you, Research associate renfest Hope
you like the sobri quet, the monoka, the nickname. Big
big thanks of course to our pal mister Max Williams,
as well as his biological brother Alex Dijuano Williams, who
composed this slap and bop. Who else, who else? Who else?

Speaker 2 (44:10):
Oh, you know the usual.

Speaker 1 (44:12):
Christ Frasciotis needs, Jeff codes Here, a Spara, Jonathan Strickland,
the Quizitor, a j Bahamas, Jacobs the Puzzler, Rachel Big
Spinach Lands, everybody who has gone to a world exposition,
and everyone who is tuning in to join us on
the show today. Perhaps most importantly, mister nol Brown.

Speaker 2 (44:36):
You as well, Ben. We'll see you next time. Folks.

Speaker 4 (44:47):
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