Let's All Go to the World's Fair

Before the internet could show you anything in the universe - including stuff it made up - people had few opportunities to have their minds blown. But every few years, somewhere in the world nations would gather and show off the cool stuff they invented. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:04Josh Clark?

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• 1:03Speaker 00

  Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart Radio.

• 1:13Josh Clark?

  Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck, and it's just us today. Jerry's out on vacation. I mean, she's at a conference, and this is Stuff You Should Know.

• 1:23Speaker 02

  That's right. This was your idea, and something about it just smacks of kind of classic Stuff You Should Know, where we talk about a bygone era, in a way.

• 1:34Josh Clark?

  Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. And so, yeah, we're talking about world's fairs today. Depending on where you are in the world, you might call them international expositions, universal expositions. You might just call them expos if you're pressed for time.

• 1:47Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 1:48Josh Clark?

  And I thought maybe, Chuck, we would just do this entire episode in gibberish that only you and I can understand.

• 1:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's a great idea.

• 1:55Josh Clark?

  This is the one. We're finally gonna do it.

• 1:58Speaker 02

  All right, let's do it.

• 2:00Josh Clark?

  On second thought, let's not do it.

• 2:01Speaker 02

  No, let's not do it.

• 2:04Josh Clark?

  All right, so, well, let's set the stage then in plain English. It's hard to kind of understand now because we live in a world and generally grew up in a world that if we didn't have internet when we were kids, we still had television, cable television, no less. Before that, generations had radio. And then, yes, now today, we can basically go anywhere, see anything, even stuff you don't want to see, because everyone generally has access to the internet, right?

• 2:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:35Josh Clark?

  Before all of this, like, being exposed to new ideas, new things, seeing what the latest cutting-edge stuff was, that was not a common thing for the average person. Like, you just did not see that kind of stuff. And that was generally the role that World's Fairs played.

• 2:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was that. And like, every time I was reading about the different ones from the different nations, it was very much like, hey, look at how great we're doing.

• 3:02Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 3:02Speaker 02

  You know, like, I mean, obviously trying to spur commerce and trade and stuff like that. But a lot of it was sort of showing off.

• 3:09Josh Clark?

  It was showing off. It was showing off, like, with all the technological prowess and all the future ideas that are coming down the pike that each country was working on. There was lots of corporate exhibits eventually. And it sounds to me like a cool place to have been.

• 3:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:25Josh Clark?

  Like, if I had a big list to pick from of stuff I could go time travel to, I would probably go to a couple of these.

• 3:31Speaker 02

  Oh, all right. So Woodstock, the inauguration of Jimmy Carter, and a World's Fair.

• 3:38Josh Clark?

  That's right. Well, let's get into the history of this, shall we?

• 3:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, because they didn't start as World's Fairs. If you want to track the prehistory, you got to go to the National Fairs.

• 3:49Josh Clark?

  Sure.

• 3:50Speaker 02

  England was holding these in the 1700s, barely. I think 1754 was the first real one, when the, what would later be the Royal Society for Arts, but before they got royal, I guess, they were just the Society for Arts. They had different shows. And it was sort of like, I mean, this was the 1700s, so it was, the technology of the time was like, hey, look at this cool new loom, or look at this new cool way we can press cider.

• 4:16Josh Clark?

  Yes, and there was this kind of this new idea called industrial arts, which was essentially designing and inventing new technology. And yeah, it was old timey, but for the time it was pretty cutting edge. And this is what laid the kind of the foundation for the idea of what a world's fair is all about, which is, look at all the technological progress we're making. And I saw that it was essentially inextricably tied together with the Industrial Revolution, that that's really what kind of gave them the oomph needed, you know?

• 4:47Speaker 02

  Steam powered oomph.

• 4:48Josh Clark?

  Yeah, that's right.

• 4:48Speaker 02

  I guess not yet. But steam is coming, don't worry. France would get involved. They saw what England was doing where they're like, well, we can't let them best us. So they started holding theirs also in the late 18th century. And both of them, again, were like marketing themselves sort of abroad, but also to their own people, like, hey, look at how great we're doing rest of France.

• 5:10Josh Clark?

  Yeah, you can feel good about being French.

• 5:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:13Josh Clark?

  And France becomes like basically the apex of world's fairs eventually, or international expositions. But England kind of took the crown back first. And Prince Albert, Queen Victoria's husband, who was of German ancestry, or what we now call Germany, and who we have to thank for Christmas. So thank you, Prince Albert.

• 5:34Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 5:36Josh Clark?

  He hosted the great exhibition of the works of industry of all nations in 1851. And this was what basically everyone who knows about world's fairs, knows anything about world's fairs, says this was the first world's fair.

• 5:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, no one calls it the great exhibition of the works of the industry of all nations.

• 5:57Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 5:57Speaker 02

  Except for us, because we're being technical, because everyone calls it the Crystal Palace Exhibition. Because that's where they built the Crystal Palace. It was in Hyde Park from May to October 1851. And they wanted a real, you know, and you'll see this as a trend, like they really wanted to knock people's socks off when they arrive. And when you arrived at this, you know, kind of glorified greenhouse, and in fact, it was built by a greenhouse builder named Joseph Paxton.

• 6:23Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 6:24Speaker 02

  But it was 18 acres of glass and iron and steel and it was, it created eight miles of display space and it was like, super impressive.

• 6:34Josh Clark?

  Yeah, it was a real ring-a-ding-ding greenhouse. I mean, an 18-acre greenhouse is not easy to make, right? So yes, it knocked everyone's socks off for sure. You said there's eight miles worth of display space inside, so it was also capable of holding 14,000 exhibits.

• 6:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, man.

• 6:52Josh Clark?

  About half of them were from Britain, and one of the reasons that Prince Albert wanted to do this is because he wanted to drum up interest in Europe in particular for imports from Britain.

• 7:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:03Josh Clark?

  Yeah. He was like, hey, we got a bunch of good stuff. Why don't you come over and see it, and then you can place your orders on your way out the door.

• 7:09Speaker 02

  I wonder if they... Could you really place orders?

• 7:13Josh Clark?

  I'll bet you could.

• 7:14Speaker 02

  Did they have like... You think so?

• 7:16Josh Clark?

  Yeah, so there was about 560 exhibits from the US, and one of them was the Colt Repeating Pistol, and I guarantee you could have been like, I want to order some of those. Give me some right now so I can shoot in the air in the Crystal Palace.

• 7:29Speaker 02

  I bet you could have left there with a Colt Repeating Pistol if you had enough money.

• 7:33Josh Clark?

  Probably. Yeah.

• 7:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, but I promised Steam, and that is, that first one is where the Steam engine was officially debuted, as well as the automated cotton mule.

• 7:43Josh Clark?

  Sure.

• 7:44Speaker 02

  For spinning. France, you know, I think you said US had 560, France had 1,760 exhibits. In addition to the Colt Repeating Pistol, did you mention chewing tobacco?

• 7:56Josh Clark?

  I did not.

• 7:57Speaker 02

  And that's where we debuted as a nation, hey, look what we've come up with. Chewing tobacco, which I imagine we stole from indigenous peoples here.

• 8:06Josh Clark?

  Yes, but we really kind of Americanized it. The person running that booth had to dance back and forth pumping its fist like a prospector the whole time.

• 8:16Speaker 02

  Right, and dance on maybe artificial legs, because artificial legs were debuted by the United States there.

• 8:22Josh Clark?

  That's right. We really just had one exhibit, and they were everything compressed together.

• 8:28Speaker 02

  A guy dancing on artificial legs, shooting his pistol in the air, chewing tobacco?

• 8:32Josh Clark?

  Yep, that's exactly right.

• 8:33Speaker 02

  I love it.

• 8:34Josh Clark?

  So, yeah, this was obviously a huge hit. It actually made money for the organizers, which was not the case for all the world's fairs to come. But because of that, a lot of people around the world were like, hey, I want to get in on this. And Paris said, we're first. There was one in Dublin, there was one in Cork, there was one in Munich, there was one in New York. But really, everything kind of moved over to Paris when they said, we're taking over here.

• 9:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. I mean, the other ones were legit world's fairs. I think the one in New York in 1853 through, I think, November 1854. That was a long one, July to November.

• 9:14Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 9:15Speaker 02

  The exhibition of the Industry of All Nations. In that case, they, they did okay, but they were like clearly copied the Crystal Palace. They built their own. They're in Bryant Park, but they lost money. I think the first US one to make any kind of hay was the one in Philly in 1876, right?

• 9:33Josh Clark?

  Yeah, that was the Centennial Exhibition where the typewriter was invented. Alexander Graham Bell demonstrated the telephone. There was also the largest steam engine ever.

• 9:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:44Josh Clark?

  Apparently still holds the record. It was a 700-ton steam engine called the Corliss Engine. It took 65 railroad cars to deliver it to the, to the exhibition in Philadelphia. And when they turned it on, all of the machines at the world's fair came to life because they were all being powered by that steam engine in the center of the whole place.

• 10:06Speaker 02

  That's a pretty fun little knock your socks off moment.

• 10:09Josh Clark?

  It is pretty cool.

• 10:10Speaker 02

  Like everyone's standing around. Well, I guess it was still, it wasn't powering lights at the time, was it?

• 10:16Josh Clark?

  No, not yet.

• 10:17Speaker 02

  Okay, because we're, yeah, that, that happens. It's coming, everybody.

• 10:20Josh Clark?

  It's coming. Yeah, but this whole thing, it really, I mean, it attracted 10 million people and it was a, it was a big one. So I guess I got ahead of myself. Paris hadn't come. Yeah, I'm just really excited about Paris taking over for some reason.

• 10:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, they, they took over in a big way. They hosted eight of them between 1855 and 1937. And a lot of theirs, like most other nations, when they hosted, the government kind of really hosted. In America, it was a lot of like corporate entities from the beginning along with the government. But Paris really took it to a political sort of apex by, like Napoleon really was showing off in the first and second ones. Like, look how great I am and look at all the great things I've done. The third one, I think in 1878 was like, hey, You know, uh, we're, we're doing fine. We've recovered from the Franco-Prussian war and all this internal violence of the Paris Commune. And like, we're still doing great. Look at us.

• 11:17Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that was a big, a big part of those European ones. Like you said, the Paris ones also, um, more charmingly had, um, fountains, like almost all of them had a really cool fountain. And a lot of those fountains are left over. Um, there was one from 1889 called the Fountain of Progress. And it is the first water feature to, to have electric lights inside that shined up from, from, from underwater, which to me is still quite impressive.

• 11:47Speaker 02

  Yeah. Do you think when they debuted it, they were like, and we're gonna have Jacques stand in the fountain while we turn it on. We're pretty sure it's gonna work.

• 11:56Josh Clark?

  Right. No one likes Jacques anyway, so don't worry.

• 11:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, it all worked out for Jacques though. No, but I'm still like, when I see a swimming pool light, I know it's housed in a thing, but I don't know, it all just vaguely makes me nervous.

• 12:10Josh Clark?

  It does, for sure. I get that. But the ones in the fountains, they never make me nervous. They just look so cool to me.

• 12:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, cuz you're not in the fountain.

• 12:18Josh Clark?

  No, no. So it doesn't matter if it's like buzzing with electricity.

• 12:23Speaker 02

  You ever been to Rome?

• 12:25Josh Clark?

  Yes, I have. It's one of my favorite towns.

• 12:27Speaker 02

  Seen that Trevi Fountain?

• 12:28Josh Clark?

  I do. Is that the one with all the, yes, I have.

• 12:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, that, I'd be, you didn't go to Rome and not see the Trevi Fountain?

• 12:34Josh Clark?

  Right. Yeah, it was pretty amazing. Yeah.

• 12:38Speaker 02

  I think that has lights in it.

• 12:41Josh Clark?

  I'm sure it does.

• 12:42Speaker 02

  Or at least around it. The thing was lit up. I was there at night and it wasn't dark.

• 12:45Josh Clark?

  I was there during the day, so I couldn't tell you.

• 12:47Speaker 02

  Okay, I got you.

• 12:49Josh Clark?

  So one of the other things that happened at the 1889 Exposition Universelle was that the Eiffel Tower was debuted. And we talked about this in depth. We did a 2020 episode on the Eiffel Tower.

• 13:01Speaker 02

  That's right, but just a couple of points as a refresher. It was a contest, about 100 entrants, and Gustave Eiffel won it along with his colleagues. And they proposed, at the time, what was going to be the, and it was, I think, the tallest building in the world at about 1,000 feet. And people, you know, the people of the world loved it, but the people of Paris did not like it very much, right?

• 13:27Josh Clark?

  No, they wanted to get rid of it, and it almost got torn down. I think in 1909, it came as close as it ever has. And they said, no, no, we're going to use this as a radio telegraph station. So people in Paris were like, all right, as long as it's serving some purpose, you know? Because I can't remember who said it, but someone said that something that doesn't actually function can never truly be beautiful.

• 13:50Speaker 02

  Oh, really?

• 13:52Josh Clark?

  Yeah, it's something along those lines, yes.

• 13:55Speaker 02

  So like form over function, basically?

• 13:56Josh Clark?

  Function over form, or function and form.

• 14:00Speaker 02

  Function, well, yeah, sure.

• 14:01Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 14:02Speaker 02

  I think we're saying the same thing.

• 14:03Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I think so.

• 14:04Speaker 02

  Oh, we are speaking in code now.

• 14:06Josh Clark?

  That's right.

• 14:06Speaker 02

  It finally happened. They also had what was called the Hygiene Palace at that expo, which sounds super gross.

• 14:13Josh Clark?

  Yeah, it does.

• 14:14Speaker 02

  But it was, you know, it was at a time, you know, it was 1889, so hygiene, you know, we're talking like life-saving hygiene, not like how to smell less. So they showed like hospital stuff, medical stuff, how to raise, they had real babies and showed like, here's how you raise a baby properly.

• 14:30Josh Clark?

  Right. And then also, speaking of babies, they made a full-scale reproduction of the tower at the Medeline Hospital for foundlings, which is where in Paris, if you had a child, this is where you would leave it for somebody else to take over.

• 14:46Speaker 02

  If you didn't want the child, right?

• 14:48Josh Clark?

  Yes, exactly, right. But they even had like a model of a baby and everything, and I don't know why they chose to include that, but they did.

• 14:55Speaker 02

  Uh, I don't know, maybe get the word out.

• 14:57Josh Clark?

  I guess, I guess so, because that was, yeah, they were trying to get the word out in the Hygiene Palace, for sure.

• 15:02Speaker 02

  It's interesting when you can look back at a thing like that, and it can be both sort of the greatest thing and the saddest thing all at once, you know?

• 15:09Josh Clark?

  For sure, yeah.

• 15:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:11Josh Clark?

  Yeah, we should, yeah.

• 15:14Speaker 02

  We should build one?

• 15:15Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Well, it's funny you mentioned that. I started one this morning. You can come over and help me finish it.

• 15:22Speaker 02

  Awesome. That expo was very profitable. They made a ton of money on it. And I don't think we said at the beginning, like from the beginning, these world's fairs, a portion of the money that they make on these has gone, or at least in the United States, has gone into funds that help, that still help fund like industrial arts programs for students.

• 15:43Josh Clark?

  Yeah, that first Crystal Palace exhibition has a fellowship fund that helps people in industrial design get through grad school still today from 1851. Yeah.

• 15:55Speaker 02

  Should we break or should we talk about the 1900 Expo?

• 16:00Josh Clark?

  Let's talk about the 1900 Expo because just to, just to kind of keep this contained for a second, basically this, these biggest ones, the ones that really made the biggest splash are still contained in Europe, largely Great Britain and France.

• 16:14Speaker 02

  Okay. All right. I agree. This one had, the 1900 attracted 50 million people.

• 16:19Josh Clark?

  That's crazy.

• 16:20Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, these are 1900 people. So getting that many people. Yeah. I mean, you can get 50 million people pretty easily together now in any given space.

• 16:29Josh Clark?

  For sure. It's like nothing.

• 16:30Speaker 02

  But it was a big deal back then. And again, showcasing Paris as like sort of one of the leading modern cities, they debuted something pretty cool there called the Cinerama, which they still have these and they have one of these in Atlanta, the Cyclorama. In Atlanta is this kind of thing where you go in this sort of immersive theater experience where they have projections, but also paintings. And it's like a 360 degree screen. And in their case, they simulated a balloon ride because it sounds like balloons were all the rage at the time.

• 17:02Josh Clark?

  For sure. They also had an actual balloon race, a long distance balloon race as part of the exposition.

• 17:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:09Josh Clark?

  That reminded me when I was reading about the Cinerama, when we did our Salt Lake City show that one time.

• 17:15Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 17:16Josh Clark?

  Before the show, during the afternoon, I was walking around downtown Salt Lake and I ended up in like the main Mormon temple.

• 17:25Josh Clark?

  And one of the things they have there as an exhibit is a, I think it's basically 300 degrees. It's not 360, but it is really close.

• 17:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:34Josh Clark?

  Like high def movie screen that is right there in your face.

• 17:38Speaker 02

  Oh, cool.

• 17:38Josh Clark?

  Of Brigham Young, like, receiving the message from God.

• 17:43Speaker 02

  Oh, wow.

• 17:43Josh Clark?

  It was so disorienting that I ended up like staggering out of there in the middle of it. Like, I couldn't take it. It was just overwhelming.

• 17:51Speaker 02

  The message or the 300 degree?

• 17:54Josh Clark?

  I guess a little bit of both, but I think more the, more the, the whole 300 degree thing. It's, it was the most immersive video experience I've ever seen by far.

• 18:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm wondering, I haven't been to the Sphere in Vegas, but I'm wondering if, I mean, it looks super cool, but I wonder if there is any sort of like, oh, boy, this is too much kind of feeling.

• 18:14Josh Clark?

  Probably. I mean, it's, it's Las Vegas.

• 18:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's true. It's all too much.

• 18:18Josh Clark?

  So, uh, one of the great things about the 1900 exposition came from the United States. It was an exhibit by American black scholars, including W E B Du Bois and Booker T. Washington, uh, who attended and basically said, here is all the progress that black Americans have made since the end of slavery. It sounds really cool.

• 18:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, they had, uh, books, they had inventions, they had art, um, they had just straight up photographs of like, look, we have, uh, black nuns in the United States. We have black soldiers. We have black college students. Um, and then apparently W E B, uh, Du Bois was sort of the early USA Today because he loved making infographics.

• 19:00Josh Clark?

  Mm hmm.

• 19:01Speaker 02

  And he made infographics showing like their literacy rates were rising, uh, they were, they own taxable property. And these were from actual, uh, Georgians, I think.

• 19:11Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 19:11Speaker 02

  Uh, and then also like, hey, our literacy is so good, uh, among black Americans. Like, we're better than Romania and Russia at this point.

• 19:19Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Um, they, uh, that if you, I went and looked at some of Du Bois's, um, infographics and they're really interesting. Like, he came up with some really interesting ways to cram a bunch of data into one page visually. So it's worth looking up, especially if you like colorful things.

• 19:34Speaker 02

  Uh, ooh, I do. And that is very USA Today.

• 19:37Josh Clark?

  Mm hmm.

• 19:38Speaker 02

  Shall we break now?

• 19:40Josh Clark?

  Yes.

• 19:41Speaker 02

  All right. We will be right back after this.

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• 23:10Speaker 02

  All right, so we're back. More world's fairs. Latin America is getting involved now. I think this is after they had freed themselves from Spanish rule. Early 19th century, they wanted to, again, show like, hey, we're doing pretty well. Not only were they sending factions to other world's fairs, like in Europe and the United States, but Cordoba and Buenos Aires, Argentina, had their own. Santiago, Chile, had their own. And this was like between the 1870s and 1880s.

• 23:41Josh Clark?

  Yeah. At the time, there was a lot of tension, though, apparently, between the country's boosters who were like, look at us. Like, we don't need Spanish rule. We're doing all this cool, interesting stuff and we're inventing all this stuff. And then others there were like, no, the point of this is to like, sell ourselves as sources of raw materials.

• 24:00Speaker 02

  Right.

• 24:01Josh Clark?

  And places where you can overthrow regimes to grow bananas more cheaply.

• 24:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think that was, that was a big point, right? Like, hey, we can actually make stuff here. We're not just to be sort of looted for what we can provide you.

• 24:13Josh Clark?

  Precisely. And then the people who made money from the country being looted, they were the ones who were like, no, no, no, we need to just show off how easily we're looted.

• 24:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. There were, you know, speaking of looting, there were world's fairs in places that were colonized at the time. There was one in 1883 to 84 in Calcutta. Kingston, Jamaica had one in 1891. Hanoi had one in 1902. And this was, you know, hey, look at the local culture, but also like clearly coming from the colonizer side. Like, look how great they're doing thanks to us.

• 24:46Josh Clark?

  Right, exactly.

• 24:49Josh Clark?

  Okay, so there were, like, they spread all over the world because they were so impressive and they really did bring a lot of attention and industry and business and

• 25:00Josh Clark?

  exports from these countries that were hosting these things. Like, they were not just vanity projects. There really were big returns on them. And the US got back in the game. I don't know if it was the first one after the Philadelphia one. It could have been. But far and away, in the United States, the most famous world fair was the Chicago World's Fair of 1893, the World's Columbian Exposition. It was a pretty good world's fair, if I do say so myself.

• 25:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, and if you're one of the gazillions of people who have emailed us over the years to do one on the Chicago World's Fair and H.H. Holmes, the serial killer,

• 25:40Speaker 02

  we should probably do a standalone episode on that because this is just going to be a sort of a quickie on Chicago. And I know there's a lot more to it than this. So I guess that's me saying, prepare to be disappointed a little bit. But more like a preamble to like, there'll be a deeper episode coming because a lot of people have asked for this over time. It is, you know, mainly known for the fact that H.H. Holmes, serial killer, was kidnapping young women who traveled to that Chicago fair and had his murder castle in Inglewood. And there was a great, great book called The Devil in the White City, which I still haven't read, but everyone said it's just amazing. It's by Erik Larson and it's on the list.

• 26:20Josh Clark?

  As far as popular histories go, it is easily in the top five.

• 26:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, man. I gotta read this thing.

• 26:26Josh Clark?

  It's so good, so readable. He does such a great job of putting you there. And it is like, it does cover H.H. Holmes and all the terrible stuff he does in depth. But it also covers the fair in depth. It's just, it was an amazing thing.

• 26:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, so we're gonna cover the fair not so in depth. But we're gonna mention a few things for sure. This is where we got Cracker Jacks. This is where we got the dishwasher.

• 26:48Josh Clark?

  Sure.

• 26:49Speaker 02

  This is where we got the, the modern zipper, which they called a clasp locker at the time.

• 26:54Josh Clark?

  We did an episode on that too in 2020.

• 26:56Speaker 02

  That's right. What else?

• 26:58Josh Clark?

  The Ferris wheel came from the 1893 expedition, which very quickly after that became like a staple of world's fairs. And it was very appropriately designed by George Washington Gale Ferris Jr. Who was from Pittsburgh and the first one he designed was 264 feet tall. 36 cars and offered a 20 minute ride in exchange for 50 cents, which is about $18 today. And you could see the whole dang fair from the top of that Ferris wheel and it blew people's minds.

• 27:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, I thought it was, when I was reading this, I thought it was interesting that they became a thing, but like more like a, or at least in the United States, more like a fairgrounds or a carnival thing. And just more recently, like the past like 15 or 20 years, I feel like went back to this original idea, put like a huge Ferris wheel in a downtown city.

• 27:51Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 27:52Speaker 02

  Just so you can like see stuff.

• 27:53Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And bear in mind also at the time, we kind of take it for granted now, but in the same way that you, the average person was not exposed to cutting edge technology and new ideas and awesome new products and stuff. People, people, especially in the midwestern United States, were not exposed to a view of 264 feet. Like this is an extremely novel experience for most of the people who attended that fair.

• 28:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, for sure. Atlanta's got one. You ever been on that one?

• 28:23Josh Clark?

  No, I have not. I haven't been on a Ferris wheel in a long, long time.

• 28:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know, London has the eye, Atlanta has theirs. It's, you know, it's, it's, it was fun to take Ruby when she was little. But like, there's no reason for you to go on it.

• 28:39Josh Clark?

  Okay, good to know. Even the London Eye, have you been on that one?

• 28:44Speaker 02

  I haven't been on that, but hey, there's a Ted's Montana Grill right there, the Tabernacles right there. So if you got tickets to see a show at the Tabernacle, go eat at Ted's Montana Grill, have a bison burger.

• 28:55Josh Clark?

  Check.

• 28:55Speaker 02

  Ride on the Ferris wheel and then you've done it.

• 28:58Josh Clark?

  We're going to see Echo and the Bunny Men in May, so we'll ride the Ferris wheel then.

• 29:03Speaker 02

  Remind me about that before it happens, because I might meet you there.

• 29:06Josh Clark?

  I just did.

• 29:08Speaker 02

  What? Oh, man, that's in May. You gotta remind me like three days before.

• 29:11Josh Clark?

  I will. Maybe we can ride the Ferris wheel together, you, me, you, me, and Emily.

• 29:15Speaker 02

  Oh, man, our Instagram would blow up. Would you believe it?

• 29:18Josh Clark?

  I think I just blew some people's minds by saying you, me, you, me, and Emily.

• 29:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, people get that confused a lot.

• 29:26Speaker 02

  This is way off target because we were just talking about something that reminded me of it, but I had a funny Simpsons reference last night.

• 29:32Josh Clark?

  Wait a minute, you're about to go on a tangent because those aren't allowed on our podcast.

• 29:37Speaker 02

  Do you ever make a joke that you know no one else will get, but so it's really a joke for you?

• 29:41Josh Clark?

  Like 80% of the time, maybe?

• 29:44Speaker 02

  I was watching Emily, or Emily was gone last night, so Ruby and I had a daddy-daughter night in which we usually like order cheeseburgers and watch a like an action movie or something.

• 29:54Josh Clark?

  Cute.

• 29:54Speaker 02

  And I showed her speed last night. And I queued it up and I was like, you're gonna love this. I'm not even gonna tell you anything about it. And she was like, no, wait, will you at least tell me the name of it? And I went, it's called The Bus That Couldn't Slow Down.

• 30:10Speaker 02

  And she was like, really? And I went, no, it's a Simpsons joke. And then she wouldn't just let it go. She had me explain the whole thing, which, you know, fell on deaf ears, but it's one of my all-time favorite kind of Simpsons jokes.

• 30:21Josh Clark?

  I don't remember that joke.

• 30:24Speaker 02

  It was Homer was describing a movie that he had just seen and he was like, it's a bus whose speed couldn't slow down because if it had less speed, it would blow up and the speed would cause it to whatever. And he said speed like eight times and they asked him what the name of it was. He said the bus that couldn't slow down.

• 30:42Josh Clark?

  Man, that show just keeps on giving, doesn't it?

• 30:46Speaker 02

  Speed holds up pretty good, too, by the way.

• 30:48Josh Clark?

  Oh, yeah. Kiuna Reeves' short hair is really great in that movie.

• 30:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, he was hunky and it's like. Yeah, it really, it was, I mean, it's so action-packed. It was, it was great. I enjoyed it.

• 31:00Josh Clark?

  Yeah, Dennis Hopper as a bad guy, a crazed bad guy, is pretty much timeless.

• 31:05Speaker 02

  He was great. And I remembered the bus stuff, but that's just the middle part. I forgot the whole first part and the last part, which was also tons of action.

• 31:12Josh Clark?

  I don't remember that.

• 31:14Speaker 02

  Yeah. Go back and then watch it. We'll watch it before we go on the Ferris wheel.

• 31:18Josh Clark?

  We just did a mini-crush.

• 31:19Speaker 02

  I know, we did. Uh, where are we? Oh, we're back at 1893 because that's where electricity really came in, right?

• 31:26Josh Clark?

  Yes. That was another big thing in Devil in the White City. Um, they, they really went behind the scenes. I think there was a huge struggle between George Westinghouse and Thomas Edison to get the contract to light the 1893 World's Fair. And Westinghouse won.

• 31:40Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 31:41Josh Clark?

  Um, and he lit this fair up and it was gorgeous. I didn't see it, but I read Eric Larson's description and it sounded just totally amazing.

• 31:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, that sounds cool. That's also where Chicago really got a lot of its beautiful architecture that we love today.

• 31:58Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 31:58Speaker 02

  Uh, with their neoclassical buildings, a lot of them were temporary at the time. Uh, and that's why they called it the White City, but it really influenced the design going forward to promote that Boz art style. Is that how you say it?

• 32:11Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 32:12Speaker 02

  Thanks. Uh, and also if you're wondering, like, did they do that at other fairs? That's, we got Art Deco from the 1925 exhibit in Paris.

• 32:22Josh Clark?

  Yes. And a little traveler's tip here, if you ever find yourself in New Zealand, I think the northern part of it, do yourself a favor and go visit Napier. It's a small town. I don't remember what part of New Zealand it's in, but you really can't miss anything in New Zealand. It's not that big. And it suffered an earthquake in, I think, 1931 and like the whole downtown was leveled. So they were like, well, what, what style is in right now? Oh, Art Deco. So they rebuilt their entire downtown in Art Deco. All these amazing different buildings and amazing different colors. And they have preserved it like perfectly.

• 32:57Speaker 02

  Oh, man, I love Art Deco. I gotta check that out.

• 33:00Josh Clark?

  Oh, yes. This is the Art Deco town, known internationally as the Art Deco town.

• 33:06Speaker 02

  Had never heard of it. I thought you were going to recommend the River Tour, the Architectural Tour in Chicago.

• 33:11Josh Clark?

  I didn't take that one. That sounds kind of cool, though.

• 33:14Speaker 02

  It's awesome. Uh, for like a, a big sort of large mass tour thing. It's really great.

• 33:20Josh Clark?

  Did Ferris Bueller go on that in the movie? Cause I know he was on a boat at some point, or they showed people on a boat.

• 33:26Speaker 02

  I don't know if there's a shot of that or not.

• 33:29Josh Clark?

  All right. Well, let's just say there is.

• 33:31Speaker 02

  Okay, but I did it. Chuck Bueller did.

• 33:34Josh Clark?

  Um, okay. Oh, yeah. So that was 1893. Like we said, go read that book. You will not regret it. And then jumping forward a little bit, but staying in the United States, there was the St. Louis World's Fair in 1904. Have you ever seen Meet Me in St. Louis, Chuck?

• 33:53Speaker 02

  No, I take it that was you that added that that was a terrible saint, terrible, uh, musical?

• 33:58Josh Clark?

  Yes. It was, it was.

• 34:02Josh Clark?

  Like I didn't want to be, I didn't want to exist for those couple of hours while I was sitting there watching this play. It's so dumb and the music is so stupid and everything about it is just terrible.

• 34:15Speaker 02

  Where'd you see this?

• 34:16Josh Clark?

  At the Fox.

• 34:17Speaker 02

  Wow. So like of a Broadway revival?

• 34:20Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And this period of American history, I just find creepy and I don't really like it anyway. You know, there's a lot of like sousaphone music and stuff like that.

• 34:30Josh Clark?

  So, and this is like a whole thing set at that time and it's just, it's not good, dude.

• 34:34Speaker 02

  Wow. All right.

• 34:36Josh Clark?

  Okay. So don't see it.

• 34:39Speaker 02

  Okay. Go see Hell's Kitchen instead, or Operation Minzmeat.

• 34:42Josh Clark?

  Okay. Um, but also there's a lot of misconstrued facts, I guess.

• 34:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, this sounds like a bit of a, uh, I don't know. I don't like the 1904 exhibit because they, they'd said, a lot of people say like, that's where the hamburger came from and the hot dog and the ice cream cone. And some of that stuff is partly true, right?

• 35:04Josh Clark?

  Yes, hot dogs were first served in buns at the 1904 fair.

• 35:09Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 35:09Josh Clark?

  But hot dogs already existed.

• 35:12Speaker 02

  Right.

• 35:12Josh Clark?

  Ice cream cone wasn't invented there, but this is where the first place where a lot of people saw ice cream cones for the first time.

• 35:19Speaker 02

  It sounds like a bunch of junk food.

• 35:20Josh Clark?

  Yeah, it definitely was. Cotton candy was debuted at the 1904 fair. And I feel like there's a nice little twist to the inventor, don't you?

• 35:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, he sold it as fairy floss. His name was William J. Morrison, and he was in fact a dentist. I think that's one of those little fun facts that people like to throw around. Absolutely true. But there was also Dr. Pepper debuted there, Jell-O, Puffed Rice Cereal. It sounds just like a bunch of like, American junk.

• 35:51Josh Clark?

  Yeah, this is where a lot of it came from, for sure. And then also, just, we might edit this part out, but just between you and me, the first electric plug and socket debuted there too, which is pretty significant. But I want to give a little hat tip to Livia for explaining what an electric plug and socket does, which allowed lights and appliances to be safely attached to and detached from a central power supply.

• 36:17Speaker 02

  Oh, man, Livia's the best.

• 36:18Josh Clark?

  That's the dedication that we can expect from Livia.

• 36:22Speaker 02

  And also, you can get way more in-depth information. We kind of did a whole episode that covered this kind of thing. In 2019, our episode on human zoos and how awful they were.

• 36:32Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 36:33Speaker 02

  But they had stuff like that here, like native villages, and that's in quotes, where they had very offensive, sort of misleading exhibits about indigenous Americans and Filipinos and Africans and, yeah, just a sort of a bummer of a World's Fair, I think.

• 36:50Josh Clark?

  Yeah, for sure. Yeah, they would basically be like, hey, let's take every single racist conception or misconception and attitude that we have toward all these different groups and bring them to life. And that's exactly what it was. So, yeah, that was, it was a good episode in that it was, it explained it pretty well, but it was definitely a bummer of an episode, for sure.

• 37:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, but you could wash it all down with a Dr. Pepper, so what could be wrong?

• 37:14Josh Clark?

  That's right. And give somebody a big smile and like, half of your teeth are missing.

• 37:19Speaker 02

  All right, I think we're at our second breakpoint, and we'll talk about sort of the next wave of World's Fairs and then kind of the death of World's Fairs, right after this.

• 37:29Speaker 07

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• 37:41Speaker 07

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• 37:47Josh Clark?

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• 38:09Josh Clark?

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• 38:50Josh Clark?

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• 39:26Josh Clark?

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• 40:18Josh Clark?

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• 40:49Josh Clark?

  So after World War I, World's Fairs became less common and less successful. I blame going off of the gold standard.

• 40:58Speaker 02

  Right.

• 41:00Josh Clark?

  But there's still plenty that came along that you'll, if you know anything about World's Fairs, pay any kind of attention to it. You'll be like, no, there was Expo 67 in Montreal, or there was Expo 70 in Osaka, Japan. Yes, yes, we'll get to all those. But the general point is here is that they were less successful because people started to see radio. There were movies, or they started to listen to radio. Movies became widespread and very popular. And then simultaneously to that, there were so many World's Fairs to choose from, no matter where you were in the world. You might be in a large area, a large city, that...

• 41:40Josh Clark?

  Has multiple world's fairs competing with one another in the same region, certainly the same country. That happened and it became a bit of a mess. So this group called the Bureau International Expositions, the BIE, established in Paris, of course. They said, we're going to step in, we're going to start regulating these events. We're going to take this mess and we're going to mash it into a devil's tower plateau of mashed potatoes. We're going to create something coherent out of it.

• 42:07Speaker 02

  Wow. Nice ref. Yeah, they established some rules. Well, the first rule was like, unless it's officially sanctioned by us, it's not even a world's fair. So you got to go through us. It can't be more than six months. You can't run these things for nine, 12 months. You got to have a theme, like get it together, everyone, like a party with a theme is so much better.

• 42:27Josh Clark?

  Sure.

• 42:28Speaker 02

  And since then, this was in 1928, there have only been 50 world's fairs. Since, I guess they established in 1928, but 1931 is when they officially started sanctioning them. And there's only been 50 since then.

• 42:43Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 42:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:44Josh Clark?

  Can you imagine some poor guy who's like, hey, this isn't an official world's fair? And wants their money back?

• 42:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:51Josh Clark?

  So after the Cold War started, these things, you kind of mentioned at the outset, they seem to be like different countries saying like, look at how great we are. But that was a huge part of world's fairs that were during the Cold War, especially between the American and the Soviet pavilions.

• 43:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:09Josh Clark?

  They were like, basically like, here's the stage where we can show the rest of the world how much better we are than you, Russia, and vice versa.

• 43:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, absolutely. A little fun fact we got to throw in there, do you remember the Montreal Expos, which are now the Washington Nationals in Major League Baseball?

• 43:24Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 43:24Speaker 02

  That name came from the Montreal Expo that happened in 1967.

• 43:30Josh Clark?

  Yep.

• 43:31Speaker 02

  It's a fun little fact. New York had a couple of big ones in Queens. They had one in 39 and 40. The world of tomorrow was a big theme and they debuted things like air conditioning, television, nylon stockings. Pretty good. They debuted a robot that smoked cigarettes. Named Electro, who had a dog, a robot dog named Sparko.

• 43:54Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 43:54Speaker 02

  And this was kind of notable mostly for, well, for those things, but also the fact that they were able to put a bunch of money into reclaiming Flushing Meadows and Corona Park, which at the time was a dumping ground for ash and just a really gross spot. But, um, you know, when you, when you fly, if you see Men in Black or you fly over it, it's where the New York Mets used to be. Um, and you would see that big steel globe from Men in Black, very famously, that was the New York World's Fair in 39 and 40.

• 44:27Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Um, I looked at pictures of Electro and he looks like a 1939 robot for sure. Huge barrel chest and then like, like he, I, a little bit like Mr. Roboto, but a little less detailed in the face. But he did smoke cigarettes. I saw it.

• 44:46Speaker 02

  It's nice.

• 44:47Josh Clark?

  One of the other things about World's Fairs too, is depending on what the world was doing, like for example, if they were about to enter a world war or were already embroiled in one, it could make for some awkward stuff. Like Germany was going to open a pavilion at the 1939 World's Fair. And after they invaded Czechoslovakia, um, the rest of the world was like, no, you're not allowed here at this World's Fair. Um, the UK, Poland, Czechoslovakia, a few other countries that were already involved in World War II had pavilions there. And so like, stuff that was going on in Europe was being reflected in the World's Fair.

• 45:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, for sure. Um, we're heading back to Queens because I mentioned they had two there and they had their second one there in 64, 65. And this was a pretty, um, pretty big one too. Uh, I think this is where that sphere came from was the 64, 65, if I'm not mistaken. Uh, this is where computers really made their first big go. Uh, IBM had a huge, they had like an acre, uh, acre sized spot, uh, display. Um, they had a, uh, this is where Walt Disney really made a big splash too. Uh, I think they debuted, it's a small, the literal, it's a small world ride there. Which is pretty cool. And then if you've ever been to the Magic Kingdom in Orlando and rode or ridden the Carousel of Progress,

• 46:06Speaker 02

  uh, that made its debut there. That was GE, you know, and if you've ever ridden it, it's clearly like a. Like, hey, look what's what's gonna happen not too far from now.

• 46:15Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and they did one for the state of Illinois, too. And I looked that up and apparently they they created an animatronic talking Abe Lincoln, which I believe ended up giving rise to the Hall of Presidents.

• 46:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, one of the creepier things you can do at Disney.

• 46:31Josh Clark?

  It really is. One of the other things is that the 1964 World's Fair was so gee whiz, look at the future, that Isaac Asimov, the great science fiction writer, was prompted to write an essay. Yeah, about what the what the World's Fair in 2014, 50 years in the future, would look like. And he got some right, he missed the mark a little bit. Like, for example, he got right that robots will neither be common nor very good in 2014, but they will be in existence.

• 47:04Speaker 02

  That's certainly true. They're getting better now, but 2014 robots, the one I had, was not very impressive.

• 47:10Josh Clark?

  Did it smoke cigarettes, though?

• 47:12Speaker 02

  It did. Well, it did. We did.

• 47:14Josh Clark?

  That's the key to a good robot.

• 47:16Speaker 02

  Had to have a smoking buddy.

• 47:18Josh Clark?

  That's right. What else, Chuck? What else did he say?

• 47:21Speaker 02

  Uh, well, this one is interesting because it sounds like he got it just right. But just, you know, you'll have to hear the after, the afterword. He said that society will suffer mental, emotional, and socio-psychological consequences from our technology. And if you read that, you think, man, he nailed it in 1964. Like, right on the head. But he had a different take than that. He was like, no, that's gonna happen because it's gonna be like wall-e, basically, where nobody works because robots are doing everything. And we're gonna suffer from what he called enforced leisure. And everyone's just gonna be lazy and it's gonna be awful. And he said, the most glorious single word in the world will have become work.

• 48:05Speaker 02

  That's cute.

• 48:05Josh Clark?

  He missed that mark a little bit, for sure.

• 48:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 48:09Josh Clark?

  So, the 1964 World's Fair was basically the last great World's Fair that the United States ever threw. There have been plenty of great World's Fairs since then, but as far as the US is concerned, 64 was the last good one. 62 in Seattle, that gave us the Space Needle. It was called the Century 21 Expo. And 10 million people showed up and this kind of showed the beginning of a trend of declining attendance in the fairs that were thrown in America, because this was about the time that Americans decided that we wanted to stop being informed.

• 48:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, and you know, we're not bagging on any of these cities and any of their World's Fairs. It's just sort of a fact that this is when attendance really started to wane. Some of them lost a lot of money. We love that Space Needle, but 10 million people, is it like two years later in New York, there were 56 million?

• 49:05Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 49:06Speaker 02

  And that brings us to New Orleans and the Louisiana World Exposition in 1984. New Orleans is one of my favorite cities in the world. Truly, truly, deep down, I love New Orleans.

• 49:17Josh Clark?

  Nice.

• 49:17Speaker 02

  But they put on a pretty shoddy World's Fair in 1984.

• 49:23Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I mean, it was really heavy on the New Orleans culture. Like, they have a lot to show off as far as that's concerned. The amphitheater there was designed by Frank Gehry. The parts that were done well were just little magical spots, right?

• 49:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:38Josh Clark?

  But there are also lots of parts that were like asphalt and concrete thoroughfares that just kind of looked like, like just something you might stumble upon in a park in a small town at some point, like with the booths set up along each side. Some of the actual design structures and buildings were very, very bland. And then, one of the main reasons they wanted to throw this was because they wanted to revitalize New Orleans as a town where you could just come outside of Mardi Gras, outside of Jazz Fest. Like, you can just come anytime and it'll be fun. So, the riverfront that they were promoting was largely abandoned, was pretty rundown, and this is where they built the World's

• 50:20Josh Clark?

  Fair area. So, you could kind of see the reality of the area at the edges pretty clearly.

• 50:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, some of the stuff wasn't even finished. So this isn't just us, again, like with our opinions on things. Like when you have two massive alligator statues atop the Wonder Wall in Bayou Plaza, and they're not done, and along their backs, there's not even, you know, alligator scales, and it's just the metal structure that was underneath. Uh, it's not great. It was unfinished. Um, they, you know, if you were from New Orleans or Louisiana, you probably had a great time. I imagine a lot of people had a great time, but, um, they, you know, Ronald Reagan didn't even go. I think the president almost always goes, or had always gone, to it's in the opening. Um, less than 10 million people went, and they lost a ton of money on it.

• 51:11Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and so to be fair, like, this wasn't just New Orleans' fault. They were, they were victims of this longstanding, or this trend. Yeah, I guess it was longstanding by then of American attendance being pretty shoddy.

• 51:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:24Josh Clark?

  The Knoxville World's Fair, which gave us the Sun Sphere, which is still around.

• 51:28Speaker 02

  I remember that one.

• 51:29Josh Clark?

  That was held two years before. Epcot came along two years before, and it billed itself as a permanent World's Fair.

• 51:35Speaker 02

  Not fair.

• 51:36Josh Clark?

  Nope. The Olympics were being held in LA that same year, and it was sucking a lot of the enthusiasm and energy over to the West Coast. Plus, Louisiana and surrounding states like Texas, where you would rely on a lot of your visitors to come from, their local economies just went in the toilet because the oil industry hit a huge bust time.

• 51:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I think, uh, the organizers for the New Orleans Fair went bankrupt. Uh, they lost more than 120 million bucks. Uh, creditors apparently, allegedly got back eight cents on the dollar.

• 52:09Josh Clark?

  Mm-hmm.

• 52:10Speaker 02

  And it was, it was such a bust that they canceled the 1992 World's Fair in Chicago.

• 52:15Josh Clark?

  I know.

• 52:16Speaker 02

  Um, yeah, it was, it was not great.

• 52:19Josh Clark?

  No, but, like we said, there have been plenty of, um, there were plenty of non-American-thrown World Fairs that were outstanding. One of the ones that frequently gets pointed to is Osaka in 1970. And this is about the time, so Europe kind of kicked it off. It spread throughout the world. America did its best to kind of take over for a while. And then it moved east. The kind of the epicenter of where World's Fairs are held moved from the, to the Middle East and east generally, more often than not these days. And Osaka 70 seemed to kind of kick that off.

• 52:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, they debuted IMAX movies in 1970 in Osaka with a 17-minute film called Tiger Child. I think the 2010 Expo in Shanghai, I think, has the record, right, of visitors, 73 million people, the largest of all time. So that's, you know, they're certainly not dead. I was wondering, at some point a couple of years ago, like, what happened to the World's Fairs? And, you know, they're just happening in a big, big way in places like Shanghai, so it's not as much on my radar.

• 53:26Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 53:26Speaker 02

  And also, I think, things like CES, the Consumer Electronics Show, and other sort of specific industry expos and trade shows have sort of dampened the appetite for these, don't you think?

• 53:38Josh Clark?

  For sure, but they are still around. Osaka is gonna hold another one, or, I'm sorry, it held another one in 2025. There's one in Belgrade, Serbia, Belgrad, I can't remember which way you say it, that's coming in 2027. And then Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, is, I think, the furthest out one that's already scheduled for 2030. So it's definitely still happening. I would like to go to one just to see what the heck's going on. I'd like to go to the Belgrade one.

• 54:04Speaker 02

  Oh, that'd be cool.

• 54:05Josh Clark?

  And also, just one other thing, I want to just shout out Expo 70 in Osaka, that is where Yumi's aunt and uncle met.

• 54:14Speaker 02

  Oh, nice.

• 54:14Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I thought so, too. He was a smoking robot, she was a showgirl.

• 54:22Speaker 02

  Classic story.

• 54:23Josh Clark?

  Uh, you got anything else?

• 54:25Speaker 02

  I got nothing else.

• 54:25Josh Clark?

  All right, well, that's it, everybody. That's World's Fairs. I guess we'll see you in Belgrade in 2027. And until then, Chuck, I say it's time for listener mail.

• 54:38Speaker 02

  That's right. We heard from a lot of people about our short stuff on the MacGuffin.

• 54:42Josh Clark?

  Oh, we're talking about this?

• 54:43Speaker 02

  Which was pretty, it was pretty fun. I think it was kind of appropriate that we couldn't quite define it, because it's quite hard to define.

• 54:49Josh Clark?

  Okay, fair enough.

• 54:51Speaker 02

  But we heard from a writer-director legit. Hey, guys, I'm a writer-director from LA. I thought I could share how I've always viewed the MacGuffin. When you're trying to develop a film plot, you might have a specific location or scenario that you want your characters to end up in. But sometimes you can't think of a natural way to get them there. So that's where you throw in a MacGuffin. In fact, if you're really in the zone while you're writing, you can use it as a placeholder even. And say, like, the protagonist stops by the house to grab a MacGuffin, only to find a dead body in the yard. One of the reasons it can be difficult to identify a MacGuffin from a specific movie is because the writer might be disguising it to avoid what could be perceived as lazy screenwriting. One of the more obvious examples

• 55:35Speaker 02

  is a character needing to find the secret map that leads to the treasure or the next clue. That is from Josh Beck, writer-director. And like I said, we heard from a lot of people. One was kind of funny. We heard from somebody who kind of said, "I don't care what George Lucas says. R2-D2 is not a MacGuffin. It's the plans that are MacGuffin." Because the person is never the MacGuffin. It's the object. And I had the great sorrow to write this person and say, "I'm sorry to break it to you, but R2-D2 is an object." And not a person. I know, it's true, though. Like, if the whole point to this writer's email was, "Hey, it's not the person, it's the object."

• 56:18Speaker 02

  It's like, well, an android isn't a person.

• 56:21Josh Clark?

  So I feel like then Josh backed you up, that the MacGuffin is totally irrelevant to what you care about in the whole thing and that it's kind of like this thing that gets you to the thing that's the point. Which is basically what you were saying, yes. Both the first time when you brought it up in some other episode and the short stuff. You stuck to your guns. So it sounds like you were right. But then all of those people out there, who are like Maltese Falcon is the quintessential example of a MacGuffin. That is just wrong, then. That's not true. Yes, it's the point of the whole thing. Everything everyone's doing is centered around getting their hands on the Maltese Falcon. Nothing else matters. There's no interpersonal stuff that really matters.

• 57:05Josh Clark?

  That is the point of everything, so it can't possibly be a MacGuffin.

• 57:09Speaker 02

  Is, but is the Maltese Falcon itself important?

• 57:13Josh Clark?

  Yes.

• 57:14Speaker 02

  The, well, what, what does it do?

• 57:16Josh Clark?

  It gives you riches beyond measure.

• 57:19Speaker 02

  Oh, okay.

• 57:20Josh Clark?

  It's like, yes, and it's irreplaceable. It's its own thing. It's, it is not a MacGuffin. And I don't ever want to talk about MacGuffins again after this. I'm so sorry that I ever brought it up.

• 57:32Speaker 02

  We also heard from a lot of people who pointed out the Big Bang Theory TV show thing, where they say that Indiana Jones was a MacGuffin himself. Because if he was not a part of that movie, like, nothing, nothing would have mattered. Like, the Nazis would have opened up the Ark and it would have killed them all. And nothing would have changed.

• 57:52Josh Clark?

  Oh.

• 57:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't know about that because it ended up in his hands and ended up in the storage, but I don't know.

• 57:59Josh Clark?

  That's a, huh, I hadn't thought about that point. Wow, that Chuck Lorre, he's amazing.

• 58:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 58:06Josh Clark?

  Did I ever tell you about the time we were in Los Angeles? And it was the day after Charlie Sheen's meltdown and like, the entire future of, like, that whole show was up in the air. We just happened to be in LA that one day, and I just happened to be walking at the McDonald's that John Cryer happened to go to and started stress eating like a McMuffin in his Mercedes.

• 58:33Speaker 02

  A MacGuffin. No, I remember you telling me that story. That is incredible.

• 58:37Josh Clark?

  Think about the timing, all the different little things that had to happen to just bring me to pass to see that one guy. Who's, who's issues were on the world stage right then.

• 58:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 58:49Josh Clark?

  It was nuts. Yeah, so I hope he's doing better.

• 58:53Speaker 02

  Oh, he's doing fine.

• 58:54Josh Clark?

  Good. Well, that was Josh who wrote in, and thanks to everybody who wrote in about MacGuffins. We did get a lot of great emails from everybody, so thank you. And if you want to write us a great email, whether you're a writer or director, both, neither, doesn't matter, we want to hear from you. Send it off to [email protected].

• 59:16Speaker 00

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