October 23, 2020 • 22 mins
In this final bonus episode of History Vs., Erin and Mental Floss fact checker Austin Thompson discuss the challenges and delights of tracking down the truth about Theodore Roosevelt—and bust some TR myths, too.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
History Verses is a production of I Heart Radio and
mental Flaws. You often hear Theodore Roosevelt described as larger
than life, which I think we can all agree is
pretty accurate. And as with many other larger than life characters,
there are plenty of myths and misconceptions surrounding tr some
(00:22):
of which were encouraged and perpetuated by Roosevelt himself. As
Kathleen Dalton writes in Theodore Roosevelt's A Strenuous Life, he
sought to keep his inner life and less attractive traits
well hidden. He also encouraged his friends and authorized biographers
to tell an upbeat, socially acceptable, stiff, upper lipped version
of his life. Many of his friends and biographers obliged him.
(00:46):
Dalton goes on to say that the guardians of his
story would edit or destroy letters they deemed embarrassing, and
would even hide the family secrets to present a better
picture of Roosevelt's life. A lot of his fact checking
stuff is to do with his legacy. There he really
intertwined because these myths and legends are such a part
(01:07):
of the story. That's mental flass. Is fact checker Austin Thompson,
who has been taking a magnifying glass to stories on
Mental Flasses website and to our YouTube videos for years,
and he looked at every script of this podcast too.
He knows better than many how complicated unraveling the truth
behind history can be. So for this final bonus episode
(01:27):
of History Versus, I couldn't wait to get him on
the phone to debunk some tr myths and talk fact
checking one of the most famous figures in history. I
found an absolutely brilliant nineteen twelve New York Times article
about Theodore Roosevelt which was saying, if you had four
experts who swore that he boiled his grandmother and hat
(01:50):
her in the eighteen nineties, he would come back with
documentary proof because she actually died of the eighties. Just
a quick break, or to say that. When Austin was
fact checking the script, he realized that he'd misremembered what
the article said. It was actually twenty experts not for okay,
carry on. If you have people who swear under oath
(02:12):
that he had a meeting with Standard Oil at this date,
he would come back with a dated photograph of him
talking to a mother's congress. I think I d has
to do with that he does come to the White
House and all the history from a perspective of being
a historian. So he knows that he's great. He knows
(02:35):
his great, everyone's His entire life has been clear. He
is great. He can produce dated evidence for anything you
might say he did. I think it's because he wanted
to control his historical view in a way that other
people wouldn't. But nowadays we wouldn't think. Is that weird.
(02:57):
When we were putting these episodes together, the general process
went like this. I came up with the themes for
each episode, then put together outlines that pulled together a
ton of information around those themes. In each outline were sources, quotes,
and beats that I wanted to hit, along with pieces
of the interviews I conducted that I wanted to include.
Then the writer, sometimes me, sometimes another Mental Falls staffer,
(03:21):
would use that outline to write the script, which would
go through an editing process where myself and members of
the production team would weigh in and make tweaks, and finally,
before I recorded, the script would go to Austin and
he'd dig in, and I mean really dig in. Not
only did he find errors, Hey I'm not perfect, but
He would also nearly always find some new piece of
(03:42):
information or interesting story that I want to include. As
I was researching Theodore Roosevelt and looking at all sorts
of things, two things that struck me about them that
when we fact checking a lot easier. The other one
made it basically impossible. He mythologizes, but you can get
(04:06):
so much information about him from other sources that aren't him.
Would be like, you spent five minutes with him ten
years ago, you're suddenly writing a book the time I
spent with Theodore Roosevelt, the family he's staying with in Germany,
who's saying, oh, he's going to be president. That all
exists independent of anything he did. So he is in
(04:29):
control of his image to a certain extent. But there's
such a world that you can pretty much verify most
things he's saying. And then the other thing that makes
it harder is the change that we've talked about is
the changing views of Theodore Roosevelt. That's like if you
read something from the nineteen tenth it is a different
(04:50):
perspective than if you read something from the n It's
lucky because with Theodore Roosevelt, we have so many of
his primary documentar aation, but it's still really hard to
sort of sift through all of that to say that
was this person saying that about Vietore Roosevelt because this
is actually how it is, or just because that was
(05:12):
the prevailing view at the time. Also, socio culturally, we
like to think of history is this great monolithic thing.
It happened, and now we can just kind of go
back and look at bits and pieces of it. We
as a culture don't. I don't think we really like
to view history is having trends, that there are differences
(05:38):
in how history is being viewed from one day to another,
one culture to another. We're not talked to think of
history in that way. So when you're fact checking something
like the podcast scripts, do you usually try to go
for the primary documentation first, or in the case of
(05:58):
Theodore Roosevelt, when you know that he did not like
to write about things that were difficult, like, for example,
he didn't include his first wife in his autobiography at all.
Are you looking elsewhere when you're fact checking, Well, it
depends on the thing. I mean, you know, he's there
(06:18):
to tell a story, so as long as you read it,
no wing read what he says, knowing this is the
story he wants you to hear. Then I always like
to go back to primary sources because there's just gave
r so many of them, and as I said, so
(06:41):
many of the people who even interacted with him briefly
would be writing books about the events that happened. It
is when you get into more sort of obscure, especially
obscure leaders or figures in history, that it does start
to really became I'm a problem of how much weight
(07:04):
are you willing to put on the secondary source. I'm
sure if you read some of my podcast suggestions, there
are times when it will be really awkwardly suggested, saying
this person said this, and that's because I mean, it's
maybe true, but these other sources say it's aren't necessarily
(07:27):
as strong. So we often go back and forth and
play like a little bit of like is this okay?
What do you think about this phrasing? Because we don't
want to mislead anybody, right, we want to make sure
that we're that we're being accurate. I have spent ages,
like I don't even know how long, debating whether a
single word is correct, because it's like it does make
(07:53):
a difference Do you want to get into some myths
now or do you do you have other thoughts? I
think I don't think I've got anything else that I
wanted to talk about the process of fact checking. It's
just kind of like you go through documents and then
you try to decide is this reasonable? Is this accurate?
(08:13):
Does this person say what this person says? Is this
person correct? Is this person citing some lost documentation that
was found at the top of a monastery and how
during Resbekistan and then be monastery burned down, So you're
relying entirely on them. It's hard tr myths coming up
(08:36):
after the break. In the course of making this podcast,
we came across a number of tr myths and misconceptions,
some of which we touched upon briefly in the regular episodes,
and some we just didn't have time to get to.
(08:58):
So we figured we'd finish up this season digging deeper
into a few of them. And if you're going to
take onto your myths and misconceptions, you might as well
start at the beginning. Everyone knows that Theodore Roosevelt was
a sickly asthmatic kid who, after a directive from his father,
built his body to the point where he had cured
himself of asthma. Right, well, not so fast. According to
(09:22):
Door Roosevelt, that is what's happened. But there's a really
interesting paper from a couple of years ago. The misunderstood
asthma of Theodore Roosevelt makes meritical interesting. So it says, no,
the as moment away when he was somewhere between twelve
to fifteen, and that's about the age you'd expect the
(09:43):
asthma to lighten itself up, even if he was doing
absolutely nothing. As the paper notes, this phenomenon is well
recognized by clinicians today but was unknown in Tears time.
Looking back at Tiers inference, it is tempting to speculate
about how his misplaced sense of accomplishment may have influenced
(10:04):
his thinking about what else he might achieve if he
set his mind to solving new problems. In reality, his
asthma didn't fully go away, and in fact, it sometimes
reared its ugly head later on in his life. When
Edith was in labor Alice, his daughter Alice remarked something
(10:24):
like the train and my father came in wheezing. As
he rushed to be by her side. He had asthma
attacks throughout his entire life, but they were not as bad.
According to the article. At the time, and for all
of Theodore Roosevelt's life, asthma was thought to be psychosomatic.
The idea that they thought at the time asthma was psychosomatic,
(10:47):
I think probably was a really big part of why
Theodore Roosevelt wanted to proclaim himself as having cured his asthma.
I mean, this is a guy who thinks basically every
thing is weaker than he is. So if he's truly
viewing that his asthma is entirely in his head, I
(11:09):
can make sense to me why he would then pretend
that it wasn't. That's my opinion on the matter. But yeah, okay,
this is one of my favorites. So there is a
photo floating around on the Internet in which Theodore Roosevelt
(11:30):
is writing a moose. So did Theodore Roosevelt ever write
a moose? Well, not that we know you spent a
lot of you spent a lot of time in Maine.
So but now the picture is definitely fake, But it
was never supposed to be viewed as real. It was
from a New York Tribune and if you just take
(11:54):
the picture by itself, it won't manly. That's awesome, But
the whole stick is cast writing an elephant, Theodore Roosevelt
writing a moose, and Woodrow Wilson writing a donkey. It's
for the president, and they were whatever the n version
of photoshopped was onto the animal of the respective party.
(12:17):
And then I can only imagine someone found a copy
of that picture and Theodore Roosevelt manly and went with it.
But I think it's kind of interesting about that picture, though,
is since that was debunked several years ago, is there's
a secondary myths that has since emerged that the New
(12:38):
York Tribune made up that picture as a way to
help Roosevelt. Where that's not true either that there's no evidence,
I mean, yea, in the picture, Theodore Roosevelt is bigger
than the other two, But there's nothing in the New
York Tribune to suggest that it's being done to support
(13:00):
Roosevelt at the expense of the other candidates. But it's
just a sort of weird secondary myth that emerged after
the first myth was debunked. It says a lot about
the president by what kind of myths surround them as
we go back. So George Washington, he's not telling a lie.
Abraham Lincoln, he's beating three hundred people in a wrestling match.
(13:25):
It's a myth, but we still want to attach because
it's truthfulness and ruggedness on the frontier. Meanwhile, the great
myths about William how it's taffed is he gets stuck
in the bathtub. So it's I think it's says a
lot about Roosevelt. The misconceptions, almost all of the misconceptions
(13:45):
we're going to be going through, they have to do
with how manly he is. He by force of will
he punked his asthma. He wrote a moove, and I
think that saizz a lot, not about Theodore Roosevelt, but
about how our view of Theodore Roosevelt he shaped. So
one thing that you will often see floating around it
(14:07):
has to do with when tr was sworn in after
William McKinley was assassinated. So tr was on vacation in
the mountains. McKinley takes a turn for the worse. He
barrels down to Buffalo to try to make it to
the president's side. The president dies and TR is sworn in.
(14:28):
In some guy's house in Buffalo on not a Bible.
And so the myth is, or the popular conception is
that tr is the first president who was not sworn
in on a Bible. Yeah, most of those facts are
fine until you get right to the end with the
Bible back. The story is just that they were in
(14:51):
such a rush they couldn't grabbed a Bible. But the
guy whose house it was Amsy Wilcox. He commented later
that there were there were modes of Bibles around the house.
It just didn't occur to anyone to use the Bible
because that was not the tradition in the area they
were in at the time. So you do have earlier
(15:14):
that definitely didn't do a Bible. John Quincy Adams says
explicitly in his diary it was on a book of law.
And then they there is sort of hit or mask
who's on a Bible, because most people weren't explicit in
recording that until later. So I think it's the interesting
one is after Theodore Roosevelt, but Calvin Coolidge when he's
(15:37):
inaugurated after the death of Harding, he to the exact
same thing, that they had a Bible at hand, but
it wasn't used because that wasn't the tradition of the area.
So it just would not have occurred to anyone that, oh, yeah,
we need to use this Bible until later. So, yes,
Theodore Roosevelt was going in without a Bible. No, he
(16:01):
wasn't the first. And despite what some seem to think, No,
there's absolutely zero meaning to such a thing other than
nobody thought of it half the time. But then you know,
like when he was actually elected of his own accord,
wasn't he sworn in on a Bible at that point? Yes,
he wasn't making any point, it's just in upstate New York,
(16:22):
they didn't use bibles in Nobody thought anything of it
until afterwards, and they're like, oh, yeah, that's how you
do it in the rest of the country. Okay, I
have one more note here for something that, um, it's
just a question mark. Tattoo question mark, And I feel
(16:43):
like we have to talk about it because we've talked
about it before. It's like cat choose and judicial recall.
Those are the two stories I've been hoping to avoid. Okay,
So the rumor goes that Theodore Roosevelt had a tattoo
on his chest of the Roosevelt family crest, and it's
(17:05):
everywhere but dot dot and I'll let you take it
from there. Probably not, but maybe is that enough. So
I spent I don't even want to think how long
trying to figure out did he have a tattoo? And
(17:27):
in the end, my guess is probably not, because there
are clear descriptions of him doing things they're chested when
a tattoo would have been notable, but nobody commented on
end not being said, they might just not have commented
on it. And there aren't many pictures of like a
(17:48):
shirtless Roosevelt during this during the time period where he
said to have the tattoo. I was really hoping that
I could find his autopsy report, but turned out he
didn't have enough, say after he died. So that's that's
the kind of thing you have to Yeah. It just
(18:09):
goes to show the lengths that you will go to
to figure something out. Yeah. And so I then tried
to trace the myth back and I don't think I
was able to get the myth before the nineteen seventies,
So there's like a fifty year gap where there's no
(18:30):
mention of Theodore Roosevelt having a tattoo, then it just
kind of appears, and I've never, despite lots and lots
of looking, been able to close that gap. So that
is not proof that he he didn't have a tattoo,
but I'm pretty confident he didn't because, as I said,
(18:52):
there were times when people are describing his bare chest
and the tattoo would have been no are they and
they didn't comment on it. Yeah, so we end where
we begin tattoo question mark. Yeah, basically, are you sick
of Theodore Roosevelt yet? No, I'm not sick of Theodore
(19:15):
Roosevelt because he's just interesting. I mean, safely. It's such
a good person for the first season of this podcast,
because I'm thinking it's there aren't that many people who
have reinvented themselves so many times. Most people are fairly
(19:36):
consistent in their lives. Theodore Roosevelt, he was like never
more than five six years at any one thing in
his entire career, which makes him a very interesting person
to research, and you just keep learning new things about him.
I Mean, one of the things I find amazing about
(19:57):
Theodore Roosevelt is that his entire life he just kind
of he just kind of overshadows everyone around him. People
at the time, we're saying William McKinley was essentially the
next Lincoln. He was viewed as a truly great president.
(20:17):
And now William McKinley, who yeh, he makes list of
the most forgotten presidents. And that's because or Roosevelt is
just this force of nature that everything around him is
dimmed by his incredible head. Or Roosevelt miss yeah, a
(20:40):
very bright light. A huge thanks to Austin Thompson for
hopping on the phone to chat and for fact checking
every episode of this podcast. I truly could not have
done it without him. And with that, we're wrapping up
this first season of the podcast. I have to be honest,
(21:00):
we did not intend to stick with tr this long.
We had initially planned to launch a new season in June,
and then COVID nineteen happened and messed up all of
our best laid plans. But I'm happy to announce that
we'll be back in early one with a brand new
season of the podcast, although it's going to be slightly
different than what we did for this first season. First,
(21:20):
we're going to be changing the name of this feed
so that we can put all of our mental last
podcasts here, though, we'll only be doing one season at
a time, so don't worry, we won't be spamming you. Also,
rather than bring you another season of History Versus, we're
going to explore a different topic with a different host.
But I promise it's incredibly compelling, and the host is
someone you've heard on this podcast before, and there is
(21:42):
a bit of a tr connection, so stay tuned. History
Versus is hosted by me Aeron McCarthy. This episode was
written by me, with fact checking by Austin Thompson. The
executive producers are Aaron McCarthy, Julie Douglas, and Tyler Klang.
The supervising producer is Dylan Fagin. This show is edited
by Dylan Fagan and lowbro Anti. For transcripts, photos, and
(22:04):
even more about Theodore Roosevelt, check out our website and
Mental floss dot com slash History Versus. History Versus is
a production of I Heart Radio and Mental Floss. For
(22:30):
more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart
Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
History Verses is a production of I Heart Radio and
mental Flaws. You often hear Theodore Roosevelt described as larger
than life, which I think we can all agree is
pretty accurate. And as with many other larger than life characters,
there are plenty of myths and misconceptions surrounding tr some
(00:22):
of which were encouraged and perpetuated by Roosevelt himself. As
Kathleen Dalton writes in Theodore Roosevelt's A Strenuous Life, he
sought to keep his inner life and less attractive traits
well hidden. He also encouraged his friends and authorized biographers
to tell an upbeat, socially acceptable, stiff, upper lipped version
of his life. Many of his friends and biographers obliged him.
(00:46):
Dalton goes on to say that the guardians of his
story would edit or destroy letters they deemed embarrassing, and
would even hide the family secrets to present a better
picture of Roosevelt's life. A lot of his fact checking
stuff is to do with his legacy. There he really
intertwined because these myths and legends are such a part
(01:07):
of the story. That's mental flass. Is fact checker Austin Thompson,
who has been taking a magnifying glass to stories on
Mental Flasses website and to our YouTube videos for years,
and he looked at every script of this podcast too.
He knows better than many how complicated unraveling the truth
behind history can be. So for this final bonus episode
(01:27):
of History Versus, I couldn't wait to get him on
the phone to debunk some tr myths and talk fact
checking one of the most famous figures in history. I
found an absolutely brilliant nineteen twelve New York Times article
about Theodore Roosevelt which was saying, if you had four
experts who swore that he boiled his grandmother and hat
(01:50):
her in the eighteen nineties, he would come back with
documentary proof because she actually died of the eighties. Just
a quick break, or to say that. When Austin was
fact checking the script, he realized that he'd misremembered what
the article said. It was actually twenty experts not for okay,
carry on. If you have people who swear under oath
(02:12):
that he had a meeting with Standard Oil at this date,
he would come back with a dated photograph of him
talking to a mother's congress. I think I d has
to do with that he does come to the White
House and all the history from a perspective of being
a historian. So he knows that he's great. He knows
(02:35):
his great, everyone's His entire life has been clear. He
is great. He can produce dated evidence for anything you
might say he did. I think it's because he wanted
to control his historical view in a way that other
people wouldn't. But nowadays we wouldn't think. Is that weird.
(02:57):
When we were putting these episodes together, the general process
went like this. I came up with the themes for
each episode, then put together outlines that pulled together a
ton of information around those themes. In each outline were sources, quotes,
and beats that I wanted to hit, along with pieces
of the interviews I conducted that I wanted to include.
Then the writer, sometimes me, sometimes another Mental Falls staffer,
(03:21):
would use that outline to write the script, which would
go through an editing process where myself and members of
the production team would weigh in and make tweaks, and finally,
before I recorded, the script would go to Austin and
he'd dig in, and I mean really dig in. Not
only did he find errors, Hey I'm not perfect, but
He would also nearly always find some new piece of
(03:42):
information or interesting story that I want to include. As
I was researching Theodore Roosevelt and looking at all sorts
of things, two things that struck me about them that
when we fact checking a lot easier. The other one
made it basically impossible. He mythologizes, but you can get
(04:06):
so much information about him from other sources that aren't him.
Would be like, you spent five minutes with him ten
years ago, you're suddenly writing a book the time I
spent with Theodore Roosevelt, the family he's staying with in Germany,
who's saying, oh, he's going to be president. That all
exists independent of anything he did. So he is in
(04:29):
control of his image to a certain extent. But there's
such a world that you can pretty much verify most
things he's saying. And then the other thing that makes
it harder is the change that we've talked about is
the changing views of Theodore Roosevelt. That's like if you
read something from the nineteen tenth it is a different
(04:50):
perspective than if you read something from the n It's
lucky because with Theodore Roosevelt, we have so many of
his primary documentar aation, but it's still really hard to
sort of sift through all of that to say that
was this person saying that about Vietore Roosevelt because this
is actually how it is, or just because that was
(05:12):
the prevailing view at the time. Also, socio culturally, we
like to think of history is this great monolithic thing.
It happened, and now we can just kind of go
back and look at bits and pieces of it. We
as a culture don't. I don't think we really like
to view history is having trends, that there are differences
(05:38):
in how history is being viewed from one day to another,
one culture to another. We're not talked to think of
history in that way. So when you're fact checking something
like the podcast scripts, do you usually try to go
for the primary documentation first, or in the case of
(05:58):
Theodore Roosevelt, when you know that he did not like
to write about things that were difficult, like, for example,
he didn't include his first wife in his autobiography at all.
Are you looking elsewhere when you're fact checking, Well, it
depends on the thing. I mean, you know, he's there
(06:18):
to tell a story, so as long as you read it,
no wing read what he says, knowing this is the
story he wants you to hear. Then I always like
to go back to primary sources because there's just gave
r so many of them, and as I said, so
(06:41):
many of the people who even interacted with him briefly
would be writing books about the events that happened. It
is when you get into more sort of obscure, especially
obscure leaders or figures in history, that it does start
to really became I'm a problem of how much weight
(07:04):
are you willing to put on the secondary source. I'm
sure if you read some of my podcast suggestions, there
are times when it will be really awkwardly suggested, saying
this person said this, and that's because I mean, it's
maybe true, but these other sources say it's aren't necessarily
(07:27):
as strong. So we often go back and forth and
play like a little bit of like is this okay?
What do you think about this phrasing? Because we don't
want to mislead anybody, right, we want to make sure
that we're that we're being accurate. I have spent ages,
like I don't even know how long, debating whether a
single word is correct, because it's like it does make
(07:53):
a difference Do you want to get into some myths
now or do you do you have other thoughts? I
think I don't think I've got anything else that I
wanted to talk about the process of fact checking. It's
just kind of like you go through documents and then
you try to decide is this reasonable? Is this accurate?
(08:13):
Does this person say what this person says? Is this
person correct? Is this person citing some lost documentation that
was found at the top of a monastery and how
during Resbekistan and then be monastery burned down, So you're
relying entirely on them. It's hard tr myths coming up
(08:36):
after the break. In the course of making this podcast,
we came across a number of tr myths and misconceptions,
some of which we touched upon briefly in the regular episodes,
and some we just didn't have time to get to.
(08:58):
So we figured we'd finish up this season digging deeper
into a few of them. And if you're going to
take onto your myths and misconceptions, you might as well
start at the beginning. Everyone knows that Theodore Roosevelt was
a sickly asthmatic kid who, after a directive from his father,
built his body to the point where he had cured
himself of asthma. Right, well, not so fast. According to
(09:22):
Door Roosevelt, that is what's happened. But there's a really
interesting paper from a couple of years ago. The misunderstood
asthma of Theodore Roosevelt makes meritical interesting. So it says, no,
the as moment away when he was somewhere between twelve
to fifteen, and that's about the age you'd expect the
(09:43):
asthma to lighten itself up, even if he was doing
absolutely nothing. As the paper notes, this phenomenon is well
recognized by clinicians today but was unknown in Tears time.
Looking back at Tiers inference, it is tempting to speculate
about how his misplaced sense of accomplishment may have influenced
(10:04):
his thinking about what else he might achieve if he
set his mind to solving new problems. In reality, his
asthma didn't fully go away, and in fact, it sometimes
reared its ugly head later on in his life. When
Edith was in labor Alice, his daughter Alice remarked something
(10:24):
like the train and my father came in wheezing. As
he rushed to be by her side. He had asthma
attacks throughout his entire life, but they were not as bad.
According to the article. At the time, and for all
of Theodore Roosevelt's life, asthma was thought to be psychosomatic.
The idea that they thought at the time asthma was psychosomatic,
(10:47):
I think probably was a really big part of why
Theodore Roosevelt wanted to proclaim himself as having cured his asthma.
I mean, this is a guy who thinks basically every
thing is weaker than he is. So if he's truly
viewing that his asthma is entirely in his head, I
(11:09):
can make sense to me why he would then pretend
that it wasn't. That's my opinion on the matter. But yeah, okay,
this is one of my favorites. So there is a
photo floating around on the Internet in which Theodore Roosevelt
(11:30):
is writing a moose. So did Theodore Roosevelt ever write
a moose? Well, not that we know you spent a
lot of you spent a lot of time in Maine.
So but now the picture is definitely fake, But it
was never supposed to be viewed as real. It was
from a New York Tribune and if you just take
(11:54):
the picture by itself, it won't manly. That's awesome, But
the whole stick is cast writing an elephant, Theodore Roosevelt
writing a moose, and Woodrow Wilson writing a donkey. It's
for the president, and they were whatever the n version
of photoshopped was onto the animal of the respective party.
(12:17):
And then I can only imagine someone found a copy
of that picture and Theodore Roosevelt manly and went with it.
But I think it's kind of interesting about that picture, though,
is since that was debunked several years ago, is there's
a secondary myths that has since emerged that the New
(12:38):
York Tribune made up that picture as a way to
help Roosevelt. Where that's not true either that there's no evidence,
I mean, yea, in the picture, Theodore Roosevelt is bigger
than the other two, But there's nothing in the New
York Tribune to suggest that it's being done to support
(13:00):
Roosevelt at the expense of the other candidates. But it's
just a sort of weird secondary myth that emerged after
the first myth was debunked. It says a lot about
the president by what kind of myths surround them as
we go back. So George Washington, he's not telling a lie.
Abraham Lincoln, he's beating three hundred people in a wrestling match.
(13:25):
It's a myth, but we still want to attach because
it's truthfulness and ruggedness on the frontier. Meanwhile, the great
myths about William how it's taffed is he gets stuck
in the bathtub. So it's I think it's says a
lot about Roosevelt. The misconceptions, almost all of the misconceptions
(13:45):
we're going to be going through, they have to do
with how manly he is. He by force of will
he punked his asthma. He wrote a moove, and I
think that saizz a lot, not about Theodore Roosevelt, but
about how our view of Theodore Roosevelt he shaped. So
one thing that you will often see floating around it
(14:07):
has to do with when tr was sworn in after
William McKinley was assassinated. So tr was on vacation in
the mountains. McKinley takes a turn for the worse. He
barrels down to Buffalo to try to make it to
the president's side. The president dies and TR is sworn in.
(14:28):
In some guy's house in Buffalo on not a Bible.
And so the myth is, or the popular conception is
that tr is the first president who was not sworn
in on a Bible. Yeah, most of those facts are
fine until you get right to the end with the
Bible back. The story is just that they were in
(14:51):
such a rush they couldn't grabbed a Bible. But the
guy whose house it was Amsy Wilcox. He commented later
that there were there were modes of Bibles around the house.
It just didn't occur to anyone to use the Bible
because that was not the tradition in the area they
were in at the time. So you do have earlier
(15:14):
that definitely didn't do a Bible. John Quincy Adams says
explicitly in his diary it was on a book of law.
And then they there is sort of hit or mask
who's on a Bible, because most people weren't explicit in
recording that until later. So I think it's the interesting
one is after Theodore Roosevelt, but Calvin Coolidge when he's
(15:37):
inaugurated after the death of Harding, he to the exact
same thing, that they had a Bible at hand, but
it wasn't used because that wasn't the tradition of the area.
So it just would not have occurred to anyone that, oh, yeah,
we need to use this Bible until later. So, yes,
Theodore Roosevelt was going in without a Bible. No, he
(16:01):
wasn't the first. And despite what some seem to think, No,
there's absolutely zero meaning to such a thing other than
nobody thought of it half the time. But then you know,
like when he was actually elected of his own accord,
wasn't he sworn in on a Bible at that point? Yes,
he wasn't making any point, it's just in upstate New York,
(16:22):
they didn't use bibles in Nobody thought anything of it
until afterwards, and they're like, oh, yeah, that's how you
do it in the rest of the country. Okay, I
have one more note here for something that, um, it's
just a question mark. Tattoo question mark, And I feel
(16:43):
like we have to talk about it because we've talked
about it before. It's like cat choose and judicial recall.
Those are the two stories I've been hoping to avoid. Okay,
So the rumor goes that Theodore Roosevelt had a tattoo
on his chest of the Roosevelt family crest, and it's
(17:05):
everywhere but dot dot and I'll let you take it
from there. Probably not, but maybe is that enough. So
I spent I don't even want to think how long
trying to figure out did he have a tattoo? And
(17:27):
in the end, my guess is probably not, because there
are clear descriptions of him doing things they're chested when
a tattoo would have been notable, but nobody commented on
end not being said, they might just not have commented
on it. And there aren't many pictures of like a
(17:48):
shirtless Roosevelt during this during the time period where he
said to have the tattoo. I was really hoping that
I could find his autopsy report, but turned out he
didn't have enough, say after he died. So that's that's
the kind of thing you have to Yeah. It just
(18:09):
goes to show the lengths that you will go to
to figure something out. Yeah. And so I then tried
to trace the myth back and I don't think I
was able to get the myth before the nineteen seventies,
So there's like a fifty year gap where there's no
(18:30):
mention of Theodore Roosevelt having a tattoo, then it just
kind of appears, and I've never, despite lots and lots
of looking, been able to close that gap. So that
is not proof that he he didn't have a tattoo,
but I'm pretty confident he didn't because, as I said,
(18:52):
there were times when people are describing his bare chest
and the tattoo would have been no are they and
they didn't comment on it. Yeah, so we end where
we begin tattoo question mark. Yeah, basically, are you sick
of Theodore Roosevelt yet? No, I'm not sick of Theodore
(19:15):
Roosevelt because he's just interesting. I mean, safely. It's such
a good person for the first season of this podcast,
because I'm thinking it's there aren't that many people who
have reinvented themselves so many times. Most people are fairly
(19:36):
consistent in their lives. Theodore Roosevelt, he was like never
more than five six years at any one thing in
his entire career, which makes him a very interesting person
to research, and you just keep learning new things about him.
I Mean, one of the things I find amazing about
(19:57):
Theodore Roosevelt is that his entire life he just kind
of he just kind of overshadows everyone around him. People
at the time, we're saying William McKinley was essentially the
next Lincoln. He was viewed as a truly great president.
(20:17):
And now William McKinley, who yeh, he makes list of
the most forgotten presidents. And that's because or Roosevelt is
just this force of nature that everything around him is
dimmed by his incredible head. Or Roosevelt miss yeah, a
(20:40):
very bright light. A huge thanks to Austin Thompson for
hopping on the phone to chat and for fact checking
every episode of this podcast. I truly could not have
done it without him. And with that, we're wrapping up
this first season of the podcast. I have to be honest,
(21:00):
we did not intend to stick with tr this long.
We had initially planned to launch a new season in June,
and then COVID nineteen happened and messed up all of
our best laid plans. But I'm happy to announce that
we'll be back in early one with a brand new
season of the podcast, although it's going to be slightly
different than what we did for this first season. First,
(21:20):
we're going to be changing the name of this feed
so that we can put all of our mental last
podcasts here, though, we'll only be doing one season at
a time, so don't worry, we won't be spamming you. Also,
rather than bring you another season of History Versus, we're
going to explore a different topic with a different host.
But I promise it's incredibly compelling, and the host is
someone you've heard on this podcast before, and there is
(21:42):
a bit of a tr connection, so stay tuned. History
Versus is hosted by me Aeron McCarthy. This episode was
written by me, with fact checking by Austin Thompson. The
executive producers are Aaron McCarthy, Julie Douglas, and Tyler Klang.
The supervising producer is Dylan Fagin. This show is edited
by Dylan Fagan and lowbro Anti. For transcripts, photos, and
(22:04):
even more about Theodore Roosevelt, check out our website and
Mental floss dot com slash History Versus. History Versus is
a production of I Heart Radio and Mental Floss. For
(22:30):
more podcasts from my Heart Radio, visit the I Heart
Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
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