Bonus 8 Circus Finished

The hosts begin by discussing their recent experiences with tequila and how it didn't end well for one of them. They then move on to talk about the history of the circus, starting with its origins in ancient Rome. They discuss the different types of circuses and their purposes, including chariot races and other forms of entertainment. They also mention some of the well-known circuses from that time, such as the Circus Maximus and the Circus Flaminius. They conclude by expressing their interest in visiting these ancient circuses if they had a time machine. Welcome to Illiquid History Bonus Episode Bonus Episode Bonus Bonus Review Bonus Bonus Bonus. I like bonuses. It's a bonus episode! Bonus! Okay, Morgan, what's going on? What's happening? Uh, I barely have a brain left, so this will probably be an interesting episode. Yeah. I'm still recovering from a week, over a week ago, when the tequila struck. So, it turns out... Mine is a tequila. Mine is a tequila. Turns out, um, 30-year-old Emily can't hang like college Emily. So, she, she was hurting for days, for days. Oh, man. Um, so I've learned my lesson, and I don't think I can ever look at straight tequila again. It sounds like a really hard lesson was learned that evening. Yes, yes, but Nick took great care of me. And, uh, poor guy. Poor guy. I did not throw up in the truck, though, so. Good for you. We'll go down in history being proud of that. Good for you. I'm proud of you. Probably never drink straight tequila again. Yeah, that sounds like a bad idea. At any age. At any, at any age, that's the kicker right there. I've never had just anything good happen on a night where I drank straight tequila, or shots of tequila. Like, even if I'm not in control of what happens, it's just, good things don't happen. No, that one slice of pizza could not hold off the shitstorm that that tequila... The gallon of tequila that he drank. The gallon of tequila I drank, and three beers, with one slice of pizza. It couldn't... Turns out, didn't tell you this, I snapchatted the book club. One of the, my book club. And all it said was apparently a picture of me, my face. I apparently had scrolled away, like, hidden in the bathroom to take this selfie. And I, at almost midnight, I sent them a selfie that had a bunch of incoherent words, and then the phrase, tequila shits. And, I'm sure I meant to say, shots. But, as I was hiding in the bathroom, that probably was... Yeah, I was about to say, you're in a bathroom. And what's bad is I don't remember sending that at all. The next morning, I was checking my snapchats, and I was like, why is everybody acting like somebody was really drunk last night? And then I was like, oh, did I send y'all something? That was me. I see where I sent it, but I don't remember what it was. That's funny. Tequila shit. And I'm only telling y'all this because we're behind a paywall. Yeah. No, but we are by now. Yes. There's been a lot of, Emily has unveiled a lot of stuff about herself on these bonus episodes. Y'all get to, I got, I got some great looking hams. And, uh, I don't drink tequila anymore. So, that's my bio. It is all out there. All right. It's all out there. Let's get talking about the circus, speaking of my drinking. Yeah, you clown. Yeah, I'm just clowning. Just clowning. Uh, yeah. So, funny story. Emily texted me, like, last week, and she's like, what are we doing for a bonus episode? And I was like, uh, uh, uh, this is April, April 1st, April Fool's Clowns Circus. That was how that train of thought went. I was wondering how you came up with the circus, but it's perfect. It's absolutely perfect. Well, thank you. I panicked when you were like, what are we doing for a bonus? I don't know. I'm out of ideas. Well, if you're hearing this on the day it airs, um, I hope you had a great April Fool's Day. That was four days ago. Oh, so this is April 5th today? 5th. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Happy day of releasing. Happy belated April Fool's. My son has been, uh, practicing for April Fool's. Apparently, where my daughter's favorite holiday is Valentine's Day, his, like, minor holiday. Yeah. His is April Fool's, and he has been playing, trying to play tricks on us. And then he'll go, I'm just practicing. Uh, yeah. So y'all are in for a really big one come April Fool's Day. I'm not going to tell him what it is, what day it is. I'm going to be like, oh man, April Fool's Day is yesterday. Shit. Sorry. Oh, his little face. I know. He'd be so sad. He'd be like, I've been practicing for the ultimate prank. And he, unfortunately, he does not have school that day because it's a day after Easter and a Monday, so they don't have school. So then I'm stuck with prankster six year olds. That's funny. Bullshit. Okay. Back to the circus. Yeah. Anyway, let's, let's jump on into the story. So I'm going to be covering just kind of the overall history of the circus. And Emily is going to jump in with some fun facts about the elements of the circus. Yeah. The elephants of the circus. The elephants in the room. Yeah. So early history. I, if y'all know me, you'll know I love etymology or where words come from. Yeah. Etymology of circus comes from the Latin circus, which means circle. Circus comes from circus. It means ring or circular line. And this word originated from Rome. The original circuses were basically a giant built in ancient Rome. They were used for chariot races. Cool. Those were the OG circuses. And in 1791, it eventually evolved to mean like show our modern understanding of circus. Now it kind of more means like a group of traveling performers. So it has evolved over time. The Roman circus is based on the Greek Hippodrome. They're basically a giant structure made for seating thousands for chariot races. It was U-shaped. In addition to chariot races, they also hosted like wrestling, gladiatorial fights. The circus was originally as part of the Ludi. I assume it's pronounced Ludi or Luddi. I'll say Luddi, it sounds better. Or a religious holiday or festival in ancient Rome. Romans loved public entertainment. And each successive Roman emperor tried to outdo his predecessors, upping the ante and the number of days of Ludi. So in 100 BC, there were 49 Ludi days. By the second century, there were 135 Ludi days. And by the fourth century, there are 176 Ludi days. So it's like half the year is just like these public celebration and entertainment. It's like every other day. Yeah. And it wasn't just the circus. There are also like theater plays and then amphitheaters, which hosted more of the gladiator fights. The chariot racing was the most popular, as I'm sure you can imagine. We love races. We've talked about NASCAR. That's basically in our DNA. It's within our ancestors loved racing. I'm sure their ancestors loved racing of some form. Yeah. I mean, think about it. They had to race for their lives. They had to run from the wildlife that was trying to kill them. Yeah, they've been racing. It's within our, just us. And then a few thousand years later, they're like, let's do this for fun. Find a horse on some wood with a wheel. A wheel. A what? A wheel. The first circus in Rome was called the Circus Maximus, or the greatest circus. It was originally made from wood, burned down a few times, finally made from stone. It was 400 meters long and 90 meters wide and could seat 250,000 people. That's a pretty great circle. Yes. Yeah. It was the first and largest stadium in the old kingdom in Rome. Wow. And I have a picture of it here in the notes for you, Emily. It's kind of this first brown picture. Good Lord above. So I don't know if this is like, I doubt this is what it looks like today. I figure this is probably an artist's rendition. But this big, long U-shaped structure is the circus. And most circuses had some kind of divider in the middle of the track to make it so you had to go around. How cool would it be to have a time machine and just like go see this ship? It would probably be horrifying as well. Because I know the chariot races were not like, they were like NASCAR on crack. Yeah, that's true. But it's still super cool. It's very cool. It's really, really cool. Next. After that, there's the Circus Flaminius, which was built in 221 BC by Gaius Flaminius Nepos. Okay. It didn't have any permanent seating and it was not used for chariot games. It was used for Tritonian games, which were horseback races, but they were more for religious ceremonies to appease the gods versus like entertainment. But here's an artist's rendition of the Circus Flaminius. Pretty similar, not quite as big as the Circus Maximus, but it's kind of like a rectangular structure, like with walls, and there's a barrier in the middle to make it a ring. Then we have the Circus of Maxentius. It was seldom used and is the best preserved circus from this time, built between 306 and 312 AD. And then below that I have pictures of what it probably looked like back in the day and then the current picture of the circus. Cool. Cool. Okay. Yeah. I'm assuming we're looking at two different angles of this. That's what I was kind of figuring. But if you look, and I'm going to make this top one bigger. Sorry, audience, you guys can't see what we're doing to our Google Docs page. But you see like kind of in the middle right, there's kind of like a tower back here. Yeah, I assume that is a similar tower than what to what we see. Or it's like one of the corners of the circus, because it looks like there's some towers on each side of the flat part of the U-shape. Yeah. And so maybe like the two towers in the lower picture, like you can even see a wall coming from one. So I assume this other tower is like the other side of that circus. Yeah, because if you look, it has the distinctive pillars on one side between the two. And if you look at the modern day, you can see those are evenly spaced. Mm hmm. So that looks like the flat side. Yeah, that's, that's what I assume. Yes. There's been a few times where I've looked at like, if I go to museums, or I'm watching stuff, and they're like, we saw this thing. Like archaeologists are saying they saw this thing. And I'm looking, I'm like, I haven't looked at an ultrasound. It's like, are you sure that's a baby? It could be an alien. I don't know. I'm looking at a blob. It does look like static to me. I'm looking at like, change the channel. It's not working. Yeah. Whenever we watch like, oh my gosh, our show. Why can't I think of it? Expedition Unknown? Yeah, I kept wanting to call it Great Exploration. I'm like, I don't know what it's called. And they use like LiDAR or something to look at something underground. It's like, you can see the shape and I'm like, I don't see a shape. But I trust you. I trust you. You're an expert on the LiDAR. Don't lie. Yeah. So I couldn't find anything about the circus between ancient Rome and in like the 1700s. So I assume that when Rome collapsed, the idea of the circus just kind of like there was still entertainment, but the idea of the circus came back in the late 1700s, which I'll get into more detail about. The modern circus can be credited to a man named Philip Astley. He was an ex-cavalry man who had a writing school that was established in 1768 that he had with his wife, Patti. They were both quote unquote, expert writers. And this is from the Victoria and Albert Museum in England. They could perform all kinds of tricks on horseback. What a talent couple. I know, right? And Philip had an act called the Tailor of Brentford, which is considered to be the first circus clown act. And then Patti would ride around with bees covering her arms and hands. Bees? Like swarms of bees. Nope. Super crazy. Don't like that. So they started like with this writing school, they had lessons in the mornings, and then they would perform in the afternoons for the public. And eventually this started evolving a little bit. And he started putting like installing like a ring in his performance space. And the ideal size that he kind of estimated was about 42 meters. That was the optimal size for a horse to run around in a circle and provide enough centrifugal force to keep him on horseback and do all these tricks. Cool. So science. Science. Like he could, I don't even know all kind of tricks he was doing. I don't know how many tricks he can do on horseback, but apparently it was super popular. And he started including other acts from around London and Paris into his shows, including quote, acrobats, jugglers, rope dancers, clowns, and strongmen. That's another quote from the V&A Museum. Cool. In 1780, he eventually built a roof over the area to make it more permanent so people could come year round. And two of Astley's rivals, Charles Dibdin and Charles Hughes are credited as originally coining the term circus and opened the Royal Circus close to Astley's writing school. Rude. I know. But so before this, like his show wasn't referred to as a circus, it was still Astley's writing school. But Charles Dibdin and Charles Hughes like incorporated the ring that he used for his show. And we're like, oh, let's just use like the Latin word for circle, which is circus. And that's how we got our modern understanding of circus. I guess. Thanks, Charles and Charles. Yeah, I know. In 1795, Astley unveiled the Royal Amphitheater after the original building burned down. Lots of buildings burned down. This wasn't even like the first one. There were several that he built and burned down at this point. He had the iconic circus ring as well as a stage that were connected by ramps. And this allowed for even more amazing acts and tricks. It all burned down in 1803. Of course, he rebuilt in 1804 with reinforced stages and more intricate interior designs. And then this picture I have below that is a artist's depiction of, I believe, the second rebuilding of the amphitheater. And this is another quote from the V&A Museum website, quote, he continued to collect new acts from home and abroad with clowns, rope walkers and tumblers complementing the equestrian entertainment. And this is where I come in. Okay, so at this point, the circus is established. So let's get into some of the main acts, the performers that that were popular during this time of the circus. The first being acrobats. So in Western history, in the like Minoan, okay, so 2000 BCE is when we start seeing acrobats in Minoan art. And these contain depictions of acrobatic feats on the backs of bulls. Okay, so that's cool. European Middle Ages is when we see performances of acrobats as well in the Middle Ages in Europe, if I could talk today. And around 1770. So pretty much right at the beginning is when we saw acrobats being showcased in the circuses. And the flying trapeze was not invented till 1859. So almost 100 years. And I think I saw something when I was it came across when I was researching it was really originally just rope. Yeah, loose rope. And then they eventually attach like a bar to two pieces of rope. And now you have trapeze. Yeah, pretty much. So more on the eastern side of the world, the Han Dynasty had acrobats from the 200 BCE area is where we're seeing evidence on pottery and stuff like that. And then the Tang Dynasty in the 600 to 900 CE. And that's when they started to develop a long side European as far as like the trajectory of how they they're doing things. So some famous acrobats, we've got William Lennard Hunt, also known as the Great Farini, and Jean Francois Gravelot, also known as the Great Blondine. And both walked the tightrope across Niagara Falls in 1859 and 1860. No shit across all of freaking Niagara Falls. I have not me like I'm not even afraid of heights. But no, I'm too clumsy. Yeah, my toes don't work well enough. Could never you take one step if you're bad. Just like, I'll start out with my left foot and everyone's like, and the right foot. Death doesn't even hit the road. No. I miscalculated. Where's my barrel? You know, people have actually gone across and lived in a barrel. Yeah. The odds aren't good. No, it's wild. And that would hurt. Oh, yeah. So okay. Leona Dare. She lived between 1855 and 1922. And she was most famous for the iron jaw, which is dangling by her feet from the trapeze. And she would hold her partner only using her teeth. Oh, my God. Yeah. And then Lillian Litzell. She lived between 1892 and 1931. She would hang 50 feet above the ground without a net. She would propel herself up and around the ring with one arm. And while it was called the one arm planche, p l a n g e, it would dislocate her arm every time she did it. Her shoulder dislocated shoulder and she did it 100 rotations during the course of her act. Oh, my God. Yeah. And she unfortunately noticed I said 1892 to 1931. I believe I didn't write this down. I should have. I believe she passed away because of one of her acts like she did fall like her death. So oh, my goodness. On to animal acts. So we have established already that there always have been horses. Horses were the main act from the very beginning of the modern circus at Astley's. Yeah. And eventually Astley did get one elephant. So elephants came on pretty soon. And it was during the 1830s that traveling menageries of animals joined in with traveling circuses because of financing. When they came to the Americas, they didn't have enough money independently to travel. So they grouped together and then they started just performing together because they were at the same place at the same time. It was also around this time in the 1830s that lions were being introduced. So Isaac A. Van Amborough, he was supposedly the first man to put his head in a lion's mouth and live. And live. Yeah, that's the take it there and live. And he was also the one to say that the way to control the animals was physical domination, which is icky, meaning just beating them, basically. So his image is where we see the chair and the whip kind of vibe going on with the animals, the stereotypical ringleader image. And by 1919, the Ringling brothers had acquired Barnum and Bailey's. Combined, they had 1,100 people, 735 horses, and almost 1,000 wild animals by 1919. Wow. Insane number of animals. That's so many. But the animals, I feel like, was one of the downfalls of the circus eventually. I don't get into it. Yeah, you're going to get into it probably a little bit more. I don't talk about animal welfare specifically, just more of like how the modern circus kind of started dwindling away. So I'll talk more about the animal abuse then. So serious and widespread opposition to the circus's use of animals didn't really arise until a philosopher, Peter Singer's book, Animal Liberation, came out in 1975. So this is 200 years of this happening. And with the founding of the Animal Legal Defense Fund in 1979, and PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, in 1980, the circus was facing its first bit of like opposition on the grounds of animal welfare. And the animals were, and here's one of the some of the problems, the animals were regularly kept in cages for extended periods of time for travel between the performances. Because I mean, they're going from state to state on trains. Yeah. So with many of the enclosures failing to meet the standards set by the industry itself. And in one case, a lion died while being transported by train through Arizona when temperatures inside the car reached 109 degrees. Oh, I know. And in another, a tiger was kept in a cage for almost 20 hours when a circus took a five hour trip to its next tour stop. Oh, man. Yep. The treatment of elephants was kind of like their central, I guess you go for the biggest one, the one people think of the most. It was in the center of the animal rights campaign since the 1970s. And it's just it's so difficult to transport these animals ethically. And the elephants would use like they would use a bullhook to like it not good, not good. So that was a big point of contention for the animal rights activists as well. To the point where some cities and California and Rhode Island in particular, that those two states have banned the use of bullhooks in general. There was also in 1885. So this has been going on for a long time. Jumbo, Barnum and Bailey's, one of their elephants was hit by a train in 1885. So it's been a long, long overdue. It was a long overdue issue. Yeah. And in 1994, there was an escape and death of an elephant named Tyke. And that brought it out even more. So all of this came to a head in 2016, when the last elephant performance was made by the Ringling Brothers. And the last Ringling Brothers performance itself was made in May of 2017. All the animals that have retired, have retired to a conservation center in Florida. Okay. But now they're research subjects. And I, hopefully it's ethical. I did not look into it. But apparently elephants have a very low cancer rate, like for their species. And they're trying to figure out if there's anything we can learn through that. So, okay, it sounds like they're in good hands. Hopefully it's, yeah, like you said, ethical, ethical, yeah, search going on. Yeah. Because historically, animal research has not been. No, not good. Literally, I was reading that. I was like, oh, they retired. Oh, no. Research facility. Oh, no. They did call it a conservation center. Okay. So hopefully that means that they're living there the rest of their lives happy and comfortable. Elephants are so smart. They really are so smart. So clowns, now just jesters and clowns developed from the mythical figures known as tricksters. And the first known clowns date from the fifth dynasty of Egypt around 2400 BCE. And they entertained the hell out of the pharaohs. I guess they like that. The Romans also had a tradition of professional jesters. And in their society, these individuals were called balotrons. And they move freely in the company of high society members due to their talent to amuse and distract. In the 11th and 12th centuries of Europe, the title minstrel or little servant was that name was given for a wide range of entertainers, including singers, musicians, jugglers, tumblers, magicians, and jesters. So they were part of like a bigger subject, you know. Okay. And both men and women were employed as minstrels, minstrels. And there is a record of a female jester called Adeline owning land in Hampshire in 1086. Nice. Because apparently they sometimes would get paid in land. So cool. Yeah. And the jesters in China seem to have been celebrities as well. In some biographies and historical texts, it is mentioned that jokes from these jesters were passed around among ordinary people, and that everyone loves them. So the first true circus clown was in 1805. So kind of, I know you said that Astley had like kind of the first clown act, but the first time that we see like a modern looking clown was Joseph Grimaldi in 1805 in England. And his clown character was just referred to as Joey. Okay. I'm going to bring it back just a little bit because I think this is kind of ridiculous. But kind of in like the more medieval times, clowns kind of doubled not only as entertainers, but advisors. And through their art and such, they they knew how to read a room. Okay, so they were believed to be neutral observers. So they always stayed in like the periphery of politics. And say a king is having a conversation with, I don't know, another country leader or something like that. And one of them says something, and it pisses the other one off. Well, instead of letting things escalate, the jester or the clown would come in, would hop into the conversation, and just be as outrageous as possible to make them laugh, to de-escalate, de-escalate the issue. Neat. Isn't that cool? That's, that's some top tier de-escalation tactics. It's stressful for the jester. But yeah, if it prevents two countries from going to war, then yeah. But what if war happened anyway? Well, then they weren't a good enough jester. No, the jesters were expected to accompany their kings and masters into the battlefield in times of war. And their job was to wage psychological warfare. So the night before battle, they would boost the armies with morale songs and stories. And then the next morning, when both of the armies would line up, the jesters would race up and down, either on foot or on horseback, between the two armies. And half the time, they were like, calming their armies down. The other half of the time, they were roasting the other armies. And it doesn't sound like real life. It can't be. And it was a very dangerous job, because a lot of them just got killed. Yeah, they said the wrong thing. I don't, they're pissing off the enemy. Out in the open. Yeah. Yeah, this, I'm sure it did happen because truth is stranger than fiction. True. But it does not sound real. I'm just imagining like a circus clown on a horse going up and down. Absolutely. Like the clown from the Simpsons. What's his name? Um, he talks like he smoked a cigarette or two. I know. I'm trying to remember. But I'm just imagining the clown. Yeah, Krusty. I'm imagining Krusty on the back of a horse, like roasting the other army. That's what I'm imagining. So in the 12th century, the title Follice or Fool began to be mentioned in regards to the jesters or the clowns. This is where I said they often used the word Follice, or the clowns. This is where I said they often were rewarded with land as payment for their service. I found one thing that said early clowns were also priests. I found no other evidence of that. So I'm just gonna throw that in there and be like, don't know. Do with it what you will. If you can find more info, please let me know. And the clowns of ancient Greece were typically bald and wore padded clothing to appear larger. Ancient Roman clowns wore pointed hats, and were the butt of jokes, pretty much. The Italians of the 16th century introduced mask characters. And this is the Harlequin and the Pirouette masks. So types of clowns, we've got the white face clown, and that is depicted in like 1801, designed by Joseph Grimaldi. And it has its face and neck covered with white makeup, mouth covered, mouth painted in a grin, black eyebrows, very extravagant clothes, and he is like a sophisticated character. The highest status in the clown hierarchy is what it says. And then we've got August. It's August with an E. So is that Auguste? August? I don't know. I don't know. August clown. August. They have like the face painted pink, red, or tan. Mouth and eyes are painted white. Lips and eyebrows are black. Clothes could be well fitted or, you know, bigger. And this character is more of a joker or a fool. So less sophisticated, more kind of goofy. And then we have the character clowns. And those are parodies of different types of things like butcher, baker, policeman, hobo, housewife, that kind of thing. And common stereotypes that were developed in North America were the hobo, the tramp, and the bum. The hobo travels and has no luck but has a positive attitude. The tramp is the same but without a positive attitude and is always sad. The 1980s is when we started seeing evil clowns in pop culture. So some famous clowns. I know we mentioned Joseph Grimaldi. He was between 1778 and 1837 and he was English. He is pretty much given the title of the inventor of the modern day clown. We've got Matthew Sully. He was the first circus clown in the United States. He performed in Ricketts Circus and was a harlequin, tumbler, and singer. John Durang was the first American-born circus clown. He also performed at Ricketts. Jean Baptiste Cashmere Brouchard. He was the one that really brought the circus clowns into the United States in 1804 after there was kind of a dry spell where the no circuses were like doing their thing. He brought it back and Joe Pentland was an early modern clown who had a skit where he would appear in the circus as a drunken sailor and often and offered to ride a horse. After a few failures, falls laughter from the audience, he would strip into a leotard and start riding with skill. So it was you know a fake. And then we've got Charlie Chaplin of course who was known as the little tramp. Some clown slang which I thought was super cute. So clown alley is a part of the backstage where clowns get dressed and where they hold their props. We've got boss clown which is a clown responsible for leading all the other clowns. We've got charivari and when that's a type of aerobatic clown routine. We've got a carpet clown which is a clown who starts his act from the audience for better effects. We've got the first of May which is a novice performer. And we've got a trooper who is a seasoned veteran clown. Okay. Yes. And then we have juggling. This one's super short. So the earliest recording juggling was painted in the wall of tomb 15 in Egypt's Beni Hassan cemetery complex. So long time ago. And it was seen in China around 600 BCE. And they would throw multiple objects up and down without dropping. And when we say objects we mean weapons. There was a story where this one guy scared off like an army because he just started juggling weapons and it scared them. I love that. That's pretty effective. It is pretty effective. Now we've got Greece around 400 BCE, Romans in the second century, and then medieval Europe along with other places. In the more modern times, jugglers came around from the very beginning. 1768, one of the top acts that Philip Astley actually hired were jugglers at the time. And in 1793, juggling arrived to the circuses of the United States. And then it just kind of it stayed. She stayed the whole time. Yeah. They're still jugglers. They're still jugglers. And then last of the original performances that we're going to talk about is fire eating, or breathing, or fire manipulation. The earliest fire eating records was 133 BCE. He was a Syrian who led a slave revolt by breathing fire and smoke. So I guess that is so badass. That's amazing. Listen, in 133 BCE, if the dude that told me that, I don't know what his story is, but say the divine gods told me we need to revolt and I will breathe fire and he breathed fire, I'll go get my pitchforks. We're revolting now. So different tribes and cultures all over the world practice fire rituals and fire dances from way far back. Yeah. I mean, Aztecs, Syria, Bali, I mean, all over the place. And the Balinese still perform their angel fire dance and other ancient rituals and their thought to ward off witches at the time of an epidemic. And then we've got spring festivals and other things all over the world. But how does fire breathing work? So you can hold carefully. It's hot. Yeah. You can hold burning fuel in your mouth, but because it's the vapors that are burning and it's separated from your mouth, so your mouth won't be burned. And you can close your mouth really fast and it will cut the oxygen off so quickly that it shuts down the flame. It dampens the flame. So there are multiple kinds of fire manipulators and that's fire eating tricks are classified as extinguishers, transfers, and that's moving the flame from one area to another, and vapor tricks, which is held in the mouth during or before extinguishing. And then you've got specialty tricks as immolation, retention, shotgun, slow burn, straight stuff, teething, and tongue stuff. What's that tongue stuff do? The only word I know out of, like, I mean, I know what tongue stuff means. In regards to fire, like the only one I understand all of that is immolation. Which is like setting yourself on fire. Yeah. So that's a lot of tricks. So many tricks. More than I was expecting with fire. We've also got straight stuff, teething, and tongue stuff all in a row. Is there not straight stuff? Okay. Anyway. Gay stuff. So in 1713, a couple famous ones, there was a guy who performed, I don't know how to say his name. He was a man from Savoy in the Western Alps. He performed in London. He performed in front of Louis XIV, the head guy in Venice, emperor of Austria. And he was so good. He drew the attention of the Spanish Inquisition. And nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition. If it hadn't been for, like, his royal buddies being like, no, he's a cool dude. He would have been on the receiving end of an Inquisition interrogation. Oh, my God. The Spanish Inquisition's like, this guy is a devil and breathing fire. It's not natural. So Robert Powell was the most famous 18th century fire eater. And he performed in Great Britain and Europe. And he worked until the 1750s, charging one shilling per show. Signora Josephine Bardelli was the first renowned female fire eater and was billed as, quote, the fireproof female in the early 19th century. And she is well known in London for putting hot lead in her mouth. Ooh. Yeah. We've got Carlo Alberto, the great African wonder. And he was the first black fire eater in the 1840s. And we've got Dr. Mayfield. And he appeared at the Ripley Auditorium in the late 1930s, where he, quote, shaved himself with a blazing blowtorch before putting, quote, the torch directly in his mouth, extinguishing the flame with his tongue. Wow. Yes. Well, those are some great facts about different kinds of circus acts. Thanks, Emily. You're welcome. That sounded very sarcastic when I said that. And I did not mean it to sound as sarcastic as I did. I'm very tired. I apologize for that. It's not. I'm struggle busting right now anyway. So kind of taking it back to Astley and the Royal Amphitheatre. In 1824, a man named Andrew Ducrot took over management for the Royal Amphitheatre. He was another circus performer. He was, according to the Victoria and Albert Museum, quote, father of British circus equestrianism. Wow. So he was also very good with horseback tricks. He came from a circus family. Apparently his dad, both of his parents were circus performers. I think his mom was a trapeze artist, and his dad was a strong man. Wow. His dad could hold like a table full of children with his teeth. What? Like, it was crazy. He was also a really good actor. And the tricks and stunts that he would perform on horseback also came, they were like full-on like theater performances with drama and scenery and costume changes, all done on horseback, like super intense. Wow. When he was 19, he joined Astley's Circus with his Flying Wardrobe Act, quote, and this is from the V&A Museum again, quote, in which he would speed around the ring on horseback dressed as a drunkard in rags. After many false falls and the removal of several waist coats, he would reveal himself as a star writer of the show. And that's still an act that's performed today to like introduce clowns and stuff. Cool. Important events were also acted out at Astley's, including dramatizations of the Battles of Waterloo and Alma, as well as the Crimean War. Geez. So it was like, it was like TV before TV. That's super cool. And then I have a poster from one of these like performances at Astley's Royal Amphitheater for the Battle of Alma. And I mean, it's legit, like there's like muskets and a bunch of people and horses and that all within like this, this circus building. That's so cool. The circus officially came to the US in 1793 by John Bill Ricketts, who you've mentioned. He opened the circus two years prior in Edinburgh before he came to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and actually George Washington was one of his guests. Cool. He came to the US. Ricketts Circus travels from Charleston, South Carolina to Quebec, Canada over seven years. But in the meantime, he was establishing permanent circuses along the eastern United States up towards Canada, and a lot burned down. Unfortunately, in 1799, one of his permanent circuses, the Pantheon, burned to the ground and he was left destitute after that. And then eventually, I didn't write this down in my notes, but actually, it's not funny, he was sailing back to England, and then the ship sank. Oh, no. And him and all the money he had earned back were lost forever. Really sad, really sad ending to Mr. Ricketts. I know. And Ricketts' rival, Philip Lailson, established the circus in Mexico in 1802. So it's, it's starting to spread like mostly Europe and the Americas, but it will eventually start becoming worldwide. Right. Now we're kind of moving into the Victorian era of the circus. Joshua Purdy Brown is, and I've seen multiple different people being credited with the tent, I just included two. Joshua Purdy Brown is credited as being the first circus entrepreneur to utilize a tent for the circus instead of building a permanent structure in 1825. But I've also seen other people are credited with the circus tent as well. Right. Around the same time, and in the same area, a farmer named Hachalia Bailey, Hachala Bailey, bought an African elephant and started touring with it across the country, later acquiring other exotic animals to show off. And this is kind of what you were talking about earlier about 10 years later, American circuses became known as traveling menageries with exotic animals and other shows. And the distinction with American circuses is that they were run by businessmen, whereas, like British and European circuses were more family owned. Right. In the 1850s, the circus was all over the UK and some are even present in like actual theaters and like not just like circus buildings, but actual theaters. Cool. Starting in the late 1700s, circuses started traveling around more often and utilizing rails to get them from place to place more quickly. By the late 1800s, circuses were huge in Europe and America. Starting in 1853, an Italian circus owner named Giuseppe Chiarini started touring the globe with his circus. So he went to Havana, South America, Japan, Mexico, Chile, Argentina, China, Brazil, Australia, New Zealand, Tasmania, Singapore, Java, Siam and India. Damn, he went everywhere. In not a very long time, I think it was less than a decade, he went to all these different countries and continents. Yeah. Introducing the European idea of the circus to all these different places. They started kind of developing their own circuses within their own kind of cultures. I didn't find a whole lot of information about other circuses though, it was mostly focused on like European and American circuses. Then we have a man named Richard Sands. He was an acrobat, a circus owner, an equestrian and a ceiling walker. He had an air walking act where he used suction cups to walk on ceilings. He unfortunately died in 1861 after falling off a building in Massachusetts performing the stunt, like the plaster broke off. Very unfortunate. He was also one that was credited with the big top tent style of circus tents. Again, I'm not sure, every single website I went on, someone else was credited with the tent. It was the 1700s, 1800s. I mean, it wasn't the most well documented of times. Right. You were mentioning earlier horses were huge in circuses with some human performers, but by the mid 1800s, acrobats really took over the performances within circuses. I feel like at this point, sorry, the horses just started to become a tool for the acrobats. Yeah, I agree. They were already doing a lot of tricks on horseback and it was probably a little bit easier to start doing just human only stunts versus having to train a horse to handle being within a circus and that environment and also tolerating tricks on horseback and then feeding the horse, you know. I was going to say, keeping the horse alive is expensive. Yeah. So there's a bunch of different companies and circus families and groups. I'm only going to talk about a couple because there's so many. I was just scrolling through page after page after page of different circuses and I was like, I'll go with some of the more popular ones. So first one is Barnum and Bailey's. I think everyone's heard of Barnum and Bailey. So it started with P.T. Barnum. He actually paired up with a man named William Coop and in 1871 started the P.T. Barnum's Museum, Menagerie, and Circus, which featured a variety of unique animals and humans in 1871. And this is also where we start seeing like the side shows, the human, I hate to say freak shows. I hate to say freak shows too. Yeah, we'll get into that a little more. Yeah. Yeah. Emily, we'll talk more about that, but there's just a lot of exploitation of people that looked different. But Barnum and Coop also revolutionized rail transport and the circus tent. They added up to seven rings and increased the length of the circus tent because they were like, well, you need to make it bigger, but you can't make it taller. So they made it longer. And then they're like, well, people won't be able to see if it's too long. So then they added more circus rings and they're like, well, we can make it even bigger and added more circus rings. So it was just enormous. In 1881, Barnum paired with a man named James Bailey, and they formed the famous company, Barnum and Bailey's. A decade later, after Barnum died, Bailey went on with their greatest show on earth was the title of their show. And he toured Europe, shocking Europeans with the American Spectacle Circus between 1897 and 1902. It's definitely a different way of doing things. Yeah. And I think I maybe mention it a little bit later. I do. I'll talk about it later. It's just something like a difference between clowns in the US and Europe. But it's later on. We also have the Ringling Brothers. While Bailey was off in Europe, the Ringling Brothers capitalized on his absence and made their show extremely famous and popular in the United States. It dominated. The source I was reading said Bailey came back and he was like, hey, you took my market. There were five brothers in the Ringling Brothers company, Al, Otto, Alf T., Charles and John. When Bailey died in 1906, the Ringling Brothers acquired Barnum and Bailey Circus and combined the two. And in 1919, they came out with the official title Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Combined Shows. They couldn't have come up with a better name than that. No, it's Ringling Brothers and I wonder if they were because Barnum and Bailey was like the circus before the Ringling Brothers stepped in. So I wonder if they're trying to capitalize on both names, both names, both fan bases. Yeah, we have the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey all in one show. Come on down. Probably. That's what I was thinking. I don't know for sure. That's what happened or not. Then we also have George Sanger. He was the most successful circus owner in the 1800s. Started at 15 by selling candy. Oh, which I think that's a pretty, pretty big glow up, right? Yeah. By his 30s, the circus was known nationwide in England. And he started using wild animals such as lions. Yeah, in his performances, and he actually bought Asley's Amphitheater in 1871. Wow. Yeah. So by this point, we've got other things that we really think about in the when you think about the circus, you think of everything we talked about earlier, but also things like escapology. And this is about the time we start seeing things like that come into play. When it comes to escapology, Harry Houdini put it on the map. There was only like one other set of it was a set of brothers, the Davenport brothers in the 1860s that inspired Houdini. But it just kind of wasn't done before that at all. And he Houdini actually went around with a couple of the circuses and did his escape stuff. So we've got five different techniques. And we've got lock picking, sleight of hand. So that's, you know, secretly palming a key or using misdirection to distract the audience. We've got contortionism, which I thought about doing a whole section on that, but it just, it wasn't tying in well. So they basically push themselves into a box and then get out. Yeah. Or bending their bodies in weird, unnatural ways. Like I can't, a great jacket, ropes. It just, it makes me uncomfortable. Yeah. We've got misdirection. So that's, you know, making the audience look right when you're doing something to the left, or vice versa. And then psychological techniques. So this is building tension, creating the anticipation. And then that enhances the audience perception of the difficulty of the escape. So if you build it up there, the audience is going to think that it's more impressive. I mean, if you think of all the ones, especially like, I remember when there were some magicians that were really popular when we were kids and they would like be underwater and there'd be handcuffs. Yeah. It's like, oh, the suspense, they could drown. Yeah. What are they, what's going to happen? And they never drowned. They always got out of the handcuffs or the box or whatever. Yeah. The next section is the human cannonball. And this one was interesting. So on June 13th of 1871, an Englishman named George Farini patented what he called the projector, which was simply a spring loaded platform used to flip people in the air. And in 1873, a man masquerading as a woman, Lulu, was the first person in America to go airborne on this contraption. And Lulu might have got about 25 to 30 feet. That's like 7.6 to 9 meters at the apex of the flight. She would grab on to a trapeze or a rope. Now, fast forward a couple more years in 1877, a 14 year old girl named Rosa Maria Richer, stage named Zazzle, was the first person to get shot out of a cannon. So they took the projector platform and put it inside a cannon. They had fireworks for effect. Was this like a legit cannon that they retrofitted? Or did they make it all from scratch? I have no idea. But I think at the time she was performing at either Barnum or Ringling. One of the two, I don't remember. Unfortunately, she had to retire in 1891 because she fell from a tightrope and broke her back. Oh, God. Yeah. It almost killed her. So we're lucky it didn't kill her. She lived to be in like her late 70s, early 80s. Okay. So she was fine. And her husband still worked at the circus. So they were a circus family. Okay. Around this time, the Yankee Robinson Circus shot a man named George Loyal out of a cannon towards a woman on the trapeze. And that woman would catch him mid-flight. So then we start seeing, you know, in around 20 years, it's not just being shot out of a cannon. It's being shot out of a cannon at a precise, you know, trajectory to be caught by a person. Yeah. The spectacle is upping and upping and upping. Yeah. So now the last one, The Freak Show, which we're going to call side shows, and we're going to refer to them as performers because it just feels better. Yes. So like Morgan said, the first instance of the side show occurred mid-17th century. I mean, actually, technically, I know Morgan said the first one in America was Barnum and Bailey's. The first one technically was in the mid-17th century. There were conjoined twins born in 1617. And I don't think they performed in circuses, but it was definitely like a side show style where like he had a guy had like a, his twin was growing out of his torso. Yeah. He didn't do anything. He just went around. That's how he made his money. Yeah. Because the circus didn't come in the US to like the late 17, early 1800s. So it may have just been like its own. It was. Yeah. That's, I guess that's what I'm trying to say. It's like it's its own thing, its own show, but it had that kind of vibe to it. Yeah. Yeah. Fast forward to the Barnum and Bailey's. So then we have a show that is not connected to a circus that started again in England. It was started by Tom Norman, an English businessman, and it gave more of what it says is an entrepreneurial spin when he gathered a bunch of people with physical abnormalities and then called it a freak show. I hate that. And it was known as the Silver King. He was known as the Silver King for his ability to draw in customers. So this is where we see Miss Norma, who was a woman born without arms or legs, and also the world's ugliest woman, which is just sad. That's sad. That's very sad. Then we see P.T. Barnum bringing that concept, doing his own spin on it and bringing it into the circus like we are aware of now. And he called it P.T. Barnum's Grand Traveling Museum Menagerie Caravan and Hippodrome. All of the above. What a mouthful. After Barnum did it, it started to become more commonplace and it was typical to see just like physical oddities and it started to become less popular around World War II when, you know, people's mindsets changed. Now, there is a link. I do want you to click on that, Morgan, under famous. So there's a few I wanted to talk about, but honestly, it was just easier for me to click the link and then we read it together while you look. So the first one I want to talk about is Grady Stiles. What a wild story. He was born with ectrodactyly. And so basically his hands, his fingers and his toes formed into claws. So his name is Grady Stiles. He is known as the Lobster Boy. He grew up in the circus. I think his dad was in the circus as well. And as an adult, Stiles, Grady Stiles and his two youngest children performed as the Lobster Family. So apparently that trait carried on. But apparently Stiles was not the nicest of guys. And he was an abusive alcoholic who beat his wife. And on the eve of his oldest daughter's wedding, he shot and killed her fiancé because her fiancé said something nasty about him. He ended up being convicted of third degree murder, but no one knew how to deal with his disabilities. So they just sentenced him to house arrest and 15 years of probation. Wow. So in 1992, 1992. Wow. Yeah. Let's see. Yeah. His eldest daughter's wedding was in 1978. So that was when she was supposed to get married in 1992. Stiles' wife Mary and her son hired a sideshow performer to kill Stiles for $1,500. Oh, shit. So Wyatt shot and killed Grady Stiles. And then he wasn't very liked. So like nobody came to the funeral. But then Mary got arrested. So she she went to prison. They figured out what happened. And apparently she has a tattoo on her butt that reads Grady Stiles Jr. What? Why put your child's name on your butt? I don't know. But apparently his son Grady Stiles III was also born with the condition and works as a sideshow performer today. And apparently him and his sister made a television appearance in 2014. All right. Yeah. We've got General Tom Thumb. Oh, my God. I know he lived he was born in 1838. By the time he died at the age of 45 in 1883 from a stroke. He was only 3.35 feet tall and weighed 71 pounds. Oh, my goodness. He stopped growing at six months old, and then started growing again again, slowly. So by his 18th birthday, he was two feet 8.5 inches tall. I wonder how old he is in this picture, because he looks like a kid like his face looks like a kid's face. Yeah, like a baby face, like with a wide, like circular eyes, the tiny nose, the big cheeks, like he looks like he has a baby face in this picture. But he's also like wearing be like a 40 year old man. He's so cute. Like he looks like a baby. And that's I'm sure it's infantile infantilizing a grown man, but he just looks like a baby. Okay, this one is wild. Four Legged Lady, Myrtle Corbin. Whoa. So Myrtle Corbin was born with deformity of conjoined twins. But that twin formed from only like the hip pelvis down. So she had two separate pelvises, and the smaller set of inner legs that she was able to move. So her father started showing her to people around town for a dime when she was just a month old. So eventually, she started working for PT Barnum, and performing when she was 13. And then later for the Ringling Brothers, and at Coney Island. And by the time she was 18 years old, she made enough money to retire. Good for her. She went on to marry and have five children. And it was said that three were born from one pelvis, and two were born from the other. So she had two, two uteruses, probably. Yeah, wait, wait, wait. So did she have like two, like, sets of reproductive? I guess so. Organs. Oh my god, that is so wild. So wait, okay, this is gonna sound really weird. So her husband knocked up one of her one like switch, I guess, but he had his like pelvises. It's so weird to think about. But like, I can't think about it too hard. Well, I mean, good for her for like, graduate, like graduating, retiring at 18. And having like a nice big family. Yeah, she's, she's just getting it. Yeah. I mean, good for her. Yeah. Okay, we're gonna skip down to Isaac Sprague, the living skeleton. Oh my god. So when he was born in 1841, he had a completely normal childhood. One day, he just stopped gaining weight. He started losing weight at the age of 12. And he became a performer 1865. He was known as the living skeleton or the original thin man. And he toured the country after PT Barnum hired him for his American Museum, but the building burned down. So then he just went and toured the country. He died in Chicago of asphyxia in 1887, weighing only 43 pounds. Oh my god. Oh, for reference, my six year old son weighs 60. Yeah, he I mean, he looks like he has a head in a rib cage and like his, you can see like his joints on his arms and his legs. Yeah. Oh man, his knees are about twice as wide as his calves. Yeah. And his thighs. Yeah. Oh, man. Yeah. And he was born in 1841. So he was only 46 when he died. Oh, this is sad. Yeah. We've got Ella Harper. She had backwards legs. Oh my god. It kind of freaks me out a little bit. So we're gonna, I wanted to throw her in there, but I can't think about that for too long. And then we've got Ching and Ng. They were born conjoined twins in 1811. They had two complete livers that were fused together. And imagine, like, I think they each had an arm, but then they both have their own torsos. And they thought independently of each other. The condition and the location of their birth is the original, where the term Siamese twins came from. Okay. So in 1829, they toured the world with a man named Robert Hunter. When their contract was up, they just went into business for themselves. They eventually settled in North Carolina, married two sisters, Adelaide and Sarah and Yates. Between them, they had 21 children. Oh, shit. So one had 11 and one had 10. I guess. I'm just splitting it up that way. It could have been like 19 and, you know, three, but two. So apparently Ng woke up one morning in 1874 to find that Ching had died in his sleep. A doctor was summoned to separate them. But it was too late. And Ng did die. Oh, three hours later. But a death cast of Ching and Ng, as well as their conjoined liver can be seen at Mütter Museum in Philadelphia. Very interesting. And we've got Schlitzie the Pinhead. Oh, he is microcephaly. Yes. Oh, that's such a mean term. I know. He's for some of microcephaly. Okay. It was not okay. But it was also the 20s. I know. I mean, I know. He was born in the Bronx in 1901. But yeah, he seems so nice. He looks nice. In that picture. I've had to work with people with not have to, but like I have worked with people with microcephaly before. And it's just, oh, I know. So he also he began a film career in the sideshow in 1928. And Todd Browning's 1932 movie called Freaks. Yeah, but both films were drama set in the circus. And they did and I'll give them this, they used actual performers from the sideshows. And I'm sure I will out of all of this, okay, Schlitzie did pass away at the age of 70 in 1971. So he lived a long life. For a lot of these people, I think this might have been the only way that they could earn money. And I can appreciate them being able to kind of fend for themselves in this manner. I think that I'm sure so many ugly things were, you know, said to them over their lifetimes. But yeah, I'm glad they were able to find something that I mean, make money, work, you know, even if it was, yeah, gawking at them for their physical differences. On the bright side to this, Myrtle Corbin, like, retired at 18. So I mean, she was doing all right. Good for her. Yeah. So that's, that's all I got. Okay, on the rest of that. All right. Um, okay, I will hop back up to finish out. I don't have a whole lot more information. Okay, so by the 20th century, like you mentioned earlier, equestrian acts are starting to decrease, especially in favor of like more acrobatic and clown performances. And there's also this shift where clowns were different between the US and Europe. In the US, clowns were very silly, more of what we think of today when we think of clowns, like very over the top comedic acts, where clowns in Europe were more, they did more like theatrical performances, more drama, probably more alongside those roles that you're talking about, like with the white face and the august clowns and stuff. Yeah. And then in the early 1900s, like the circus had come to Russia at some point, and Lenin, who was the dictator, I guess, dictator of Russia at the time, like loved the circus. And he was like, Okay, we're nationalizing Russian circuses. And like creating like all these institutes and schools. And with all these different schools for acrobatic training, Russia actually had a very high standard of acrobatics. Cool. And the Russian circus started becoming super popular, were top tier, no one else could compete with them. They had extremely skilled performers, including gymnasts and acrobats, which eventually gave way to what we would call the contemporary circus, which I'm about to get into. So the contemporary circus is what we more consider about today's circuses. So in the mid, like Emily talked about earlier, when she was talking about animal welfare in the circus, people were like, we don't really think this is right. She already mentioned a lot of that stuff. So the traditional circus started decreasing. And like there are still some traditional circuses out today, but they're not very common. I'm sure like especially with the animals and stuff, there are fewer and fewer traditional circuses, and they've made way for more of the contemporary acrobatics and human performance focus modern contemporary circuses. And most of these circuses, they're not just a bunch of random acts from together for entertainment, they tell some kind of story. Some of the more famous ones are Circus Oz, which is a circus in Australia, Cirque du Soleil, and Archaeos, which is like a French heavy metal circus. And contemporary circuses started popping up in the 1970s, especially in France, Australia, the West Coast of the United States and the UK. And that's really all I have. And I have one more fun fact. Yeah, that was like, I gotta have a little note about this. So everyone knows like the music associated with circuses. So this song is called Entrance of the Gladiators. It's a military march written by Czech composer Julius Fucic. And it's called Entrance of the Gladiators because he really liked gladiators. It was originally called like the Chromatic March. And he learned about gladiators. And he's like, No, this song is about gladiators now. But it doesn't sound like gladiators. Well, it this was before it started being used for the circus. It started being used and associated with circuses in 1901. Before because it is a military march, like the very upbeat loud brass. True. That's like a march. And then the 1901 it was like adapted. And now it's very closely associated with the circus. That's funny. Okay, so I would get into all of the sources that I had. But seeing as I had probably like 20, I'm not going to do that. I'll go into some of the ones I use because I don't use as many. And we probably use some of the same sources. So the history of the Ludi, which is again, the Roman celebrations I got from NovaRoma.org. History of Circus from HistoryOfCircus.com. The story of circus from the Victorian Albert Museum, there's a lot about the circus, mostly about the European circuses. And that's VAM.ac.uk. That's a cool little website. And then the short history of the circus by Dominique Gendo on circopedia.org. Nice. And then I have a little one from Wikipedia about the entrance of the gladiators. Nice. I have let's see 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15. That's a lot. Yeah. There was some like, I had to look up like two or three different sources to find any squished together information on this stuff. It was like, well, they just kept wanting to tell me about circuses. And if y'all saw my TikTok last month about the scary clown face guy, like I think he was a puppet. I'm not sorry about that. I needed y'all to suffer with me because I feel haunted now. That thing was terrifying. Emily sent me a picture. She was like, why did he do this to us? And sent me that picture. I was like, also, so the picture I sent you is not the same facial expression that's in the video. So when I opened it back up, the face had changed. Oh, I hate that. Why would they do that to us? Hate, hate, hate, loathe entirely. Okay. I'm going to look. Okay. There's a horrible, weird puppet. He's looking right at you. Yeah. Okay. It's a jump scare every time. Why does it look like that? I don't know. Why does his face move? Why is it different? I have no idea. And that website has like, either no information on it at all, or it's all just like weird links. And it just the entire I didn't I didn't know a website could get up give off bad vibes. Yeah, that's I don't like that. I didn't like it at all. And it was too early in the morning to be it was like 9am I hadn't even had breakfast yet. I was only on coffee number two. And I opened it up. Hate, hate, hate, loathe entirely. Oh, so bad. Um, yeah, so I guess we don't need to get into socials. It's a bonus episode. Yeah, you guys know, you guys love us already. And you're already on Patreon. So you guys know that. Share us. Comment. Tell a friend. Yeah. Yeah, you're welcome for going over the history of circus. Might have been a little bit of a circus. Yeah. Y'all don't know, but we had to stop about 15 times. One because I had to help my husband push an entire Jeep back into the garage. So, you know, we edit out all the all the weird silences that happen when we have to walk away from our recording equipment briefly. Normally, if Morgan walks away, I end up singing to myself. And then I hear that later. I just cut it out. So you're welcome for cutting it out. Yes. Okay, so if you're gonna make a website about the circus, please don't just put creepy puppets on it. Yeah, I saw several really great websites about the circus. Don't don't do what this website did. No, and not a single clown puppet guy was there. Yeah. Like, don't don't do that. Don't do that. Chucky ventriloquist dummy who looks like he's cracking around the edges. Yeah, hate it. Hate it. Hate it. Hate it. Hate it. Hate, hate, hate. Loathe entirely. Yeah. Oh, and I'm in the basement alone, too. Oh, you're in the spooky basement. Oh, no. No. Anyway. Okay. Well, this was great. We should go. Yes. Okay. Bye.