Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - World's Fairs

Episode Date: November 13, 2023

Alex Schmidt and Katie Goldin explore why world's fairs are secretly incredibly fascinating. Special guest: J. Keith van Straaten.Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources and for this week's bonus episode.Come hang out with us on the new SIF Discord: https://discord.gg/wbR96nsGg5

World's Fairs. Known for being global. Famous for being old-timey. Nobody thinks much about them today, so let's have some fun. Let's find out why World's Fairs are secretly incredibly fascinating. Hey there, folks. Welcome to a whole new podcast episode, a podcast all about why being alive is more interesting than people think it is. My name is Alex Schmidt, and I'm not alone because I'm joined by my co-host Katie Golden. Katie, hi. Hi. Hello. Hi. Thought you could get rid of me, didn't you? Set a new canon where I'm your rival. Yeah, we'll just unspool it. We'll figure it out. And we are both so glad to be joined by a very special guest this week. He's the host of the

wonderful podcast Go Fact Yourself right here on Maximum Fun. The writer, comedian, host, and more, J. Keith Van Straten. J. Keith, hello. Hello, everybody. I am your rival. I've decided. Right. It's about time.

Fight, fight, fight. I needed a heel turn. I can't have two rivals. It doesn't make narrative sense. It just can't be. Oh, okay. I can't have two rivals. It doesn't make narrative sense. It just can't be. Oh, okay. I have to confess, I recently had to learn what heel turn was because I heard the expression so often. I swear I thought it was something in dance.

Ah. I thought it was a choreography move, like kick, ball, change, heel turn, and left, like that kind of a thing. Heel, toe, heel, toe. It turns out it's something else. Yeah. Yeah, so I will volunteer to unheel turn. heel turn and left like that kind of a thing. Heel toe, heel toe. It turns out it's something else. Yeah. Yeah. So I will volunteer to unheel turn.

There's probably a term for that also. Like I'm going to be a hero turn from the heel and then the kickball change. I'm going to do, yeah, a plie and a grand jeté. Oh. Well, there are wrestling fans who are yelling at their podcast device right now. And I apologize to none of them. They like being angry. It's food to wrestling fans.

Yeah, we'll be one stable. We'll fight them. Another stable. It's great. But, folks, we have a wonderful topic this week to explore with our special guest, Jake Heath. And the topic is World's Fairs. Thank you very much, Jenna Pateman, for leading a very, very fun push for this on the Discord and in the polls, and also some research tips as well. But starting with Jay Keith, the question we always ask is, what's your relationship to this topic or opinion of the topic, World's Fairs? I don't have much of a specific relationship that I can remember. I generally associate it with two things.

One of inventions and discoveries and things that are revealed to the world for the first time. So there's that excitement kind of romance about it. But also there's an association, I guess, in the more modern times of abject failure. You know, I think I may have watched like a modern marvels or something like that about world's fairs and like, or seeing these, these YouTube videos about like abandoned places. And, you know, my recollection, I did no research for the, for this, for this conversation, but my recollection was that there were a lot of ones that were meant to revitalize a community or bring in new infrastructure. And then it's

just been kind of abandoned and, you know, grown over or collapsed or whatnot. Like, I'm a big baseball fan. And so I'll watch any kind of baseball documentary. And my recollection is there's at least a couple baseball stadiums that, you know, part of the reason they were built and part of the reason they were such spectacular failures was because they were specifically built for a World's Fair with the idea that like this multi-purpose stadium is going to be used for, you know, to show off, you know, tractors and rockets. And then eventually a team is going to play here in this, you know, cavernous concrete monstrosity. So I think I might be thinking of Montreal, but there might be others. Yeah. And then, yeah. And then just seeing footage

later where I remember like Vladimir Guerrero got like a hit or a home run there. And you just see the background is this like shiny plexiglass behind them and these baggies, you know, draped over the wall to make the wall. And, you know, theseped over the wall to make the wall and, you know, these huge decks of bleachers that are like on their side because that's what they, that's how they configure it for, you know, a Canadian football stadium. So just these like, you know, horribly ugly, you know, brutalist kind of structures. Yeah. But then of course the beautiful one in Queens, you know, in New York that made an appearance in Men in Black and that, you know, where you can you can see when you're watching the U.S. Open or a Mets game or something like that, that that actually is a really cool park.

But they kind of seem to not know what to do with it. And if I recall, there actually is a theater there that I went and saw a show at. And I just remember thinking, like, this is a really cool thing to do once. It was it's just like really out of the way. And yeah, it's just interesting that and how few of them kind of seemed to work in the long term, which I'm thinking about here in L.A. as we're approaching the Olympics in a few years and, you know, all that, you know, people still kind of fall for this idea of, yeah, we're going to build all these super huge things and they're going to last forever and it's going to revitalize. And, you know, once in a while it works, but very rarely it works. Yeah, right on. Katie, how about you? How do you feel about these?

Yeah, I mean, it's an interesting concept. I think that people love a big, weird thing. Like, yes. And I think that's what the World Fair was all about. Big big weird things. And some of them end up being popular, like the Eiffel Tower. Some of them don't, like all that stuff you mentioned. I think it's interesting that we kind of live in a post-big weird thing era, except that there is that thing in Vegas now, the orb. What's it called? The sphere. Yeah. The dome. Yeah, orb? The sphere. Yeah.

The dome. Yeah, U2's thing. Yeah, it's like a big sphere of screens and everyone's wild about the sphere. And I think it's an interesting, I mean, I think humanity for a long time has enjoyed big weird things or big gaudy showy things

like we've had, you you know from cathedrals to big structures there's some kind of reverence towards big stuff that we build for no other purpose except to have this big thing and I think I mean the world fair thing we've talked about kind of incidentally on the show a few times, right, Alex? Like when we talked about Ferris wheels, when we talked about pickles, I think, and ice cream comes up a lot. Absolutely. Yeah. Nobody needs to hear another episode to understand this one. But I recommend pairing it with the Ferris wheel episode if you haven't heard it. We talk all about the 1893 Chicago Fair.

episode, if you haven't heard it. We talk all about the 1893 Chicago Fair. And also, there's an old episode about the Scream and the possible influence of the 1889 Paris World's Fair on that. That's also where they built the Eiffel Tower. These are often the debut of a big weird thing. We all love it. But then also, just countless technologies, sciences, cultural practices. There's too many for us to index in an episode. And I would like to state for the record, I am pro Eiffel Tower. I am pro ice cream and certainly pro pickle. So I know, and I love the idea that from, from what I understand, again, having done no research, that the idea of a world's fair was to bring people together from all over the world in ways that they wouldn't otherwise to, you know, to innovate and to share cultures like that. That idea is really beautiful. But no, I dig.

I dig. I enjoy ice cream. That's what I wanted to make sure was clear. Me too. Yeah, makes sense. And then I think there was one, again, you'll know more than I do, but I think there was one somewhere in Tennessee, I think, that also was meant to revitalize the community and had these towers that just kind of got, you know, left behind. Knoxville, that's what it was. Yeah. If folks know a Simpsons episode where the boys go on a road trip, misled by a 1982

travel guide, it leads them to the ruins of the 1982 World's Fair in Knoxville, Tennessee. And the former Sun Sphere is now a wig sphere, storing discount wigs that the boys wear. So that... Yes, that is probably the only reason I know that. Yeah, I think that's a lot of Americans' most recent World's Fair memory, is that joke on the Simpsons, because we don't really do them here anymore. But as we're about to talk about, they still happen all over the world, like all the time. And we'll get into it with a quick set of fascinating numbers and statistics. And this week that is in a segment called... Stats, you got what I need. But you say it's just a trend. And you say numbers are trends. Oh, baby stats.

There we go. That name was submitted by Brian Werner. Thank you, Brian. We have a new name for this every week. Please make a massillion wacky and bad as possible. Submit through Discord or to SifPod at gmail.com. The podcast is just kind of a front for Alex to break into the music industry to get an agent. The first number here, this is how huge these are still, to my astonishment.

The number is 73 million people. That is the attendance of the Shanghai World Expo in 2010 and the all-time biggest attendance for a World's Fair recently. That's an unfathomable number of people. We were mentioning baseball earlier. The total attendance for all of Major League Baseball in 2023 was about 70 million across all of the thousands of games. And so more people went to this one World's Fair in Shanghai in 2010. When I try to picture a group of people, I think I max out at 15. Then my brain just, like, goes to white noise. That's why I can't book 16 guests to join us. It won't work. We can't do it.

There aren't enough windows. I just stop rendering people in my brain after about 15. I just stopped rendering people in my brain after about 15. Yeah. Yeah. And I think us and a lot of other people, we think of World's Fairs as some kind of early 1900s or 1800s thing. They are still huge. Wow. And that Shanghai one is not even really an outlier.

The 1970 World Expo in Osaka, Japan drew 64 million people. 1958 World's Fair in Brussels, Belgium drew 41 million. And that Montreal Expo is really interesting. In 1967, the Montreal World Expo drew a little over 50 million people. Five-zero. Wow. Where do you put them all? Exactly. And that was kind of the question in Canada, because this expo also probably set a record that will never be broken in terms of the ratio of fair guests versus national population.

Right. At the time, there were only about 20 million Canadians, and they drew 50 million people to the Montreal World's Fair. and they drew 50 million people to the Montreal World's Fair. I just imagine Canada like tilting into the ocean, just kind of listing too many people in Montreal. Right, like that's the origin of Quebec separatism, is that they just started drifting away like an iceberg. But yeah, these things are huge still.

And there are old ones that drew big audiences too. But probably the most amazing old one is the St. Louis, Missouri World's Fair in 1904. Because in 1904, St. Louis drew 20 million people. At the time, there were only 80 million people in the United States. million people. At the time, there were only 80 million people in the United States. And also, everybody coming to that did not travel by car or by airplane. So this was a train trip for basically everybody, if not an ocean voyage before that. Man, people really wanted to get those waffle cones, huh? I'd risk scurvy to get a waffle cone. But yeah, do you know like what the percentage of people who went to that fair were from the U.S. and how many were international?

Like was this people from the U.S. all coming or was it just a lot of international people? Perfect question. We don't know for 1904. And then part of the record setting Shanghai Expo is that almost all the visitors were just coming from China. Right. that has impacted attendance somewhat. Like there's still a lot of people coming if it's easy, but there seems to be less of a trend, a tradition of global convergence at these things. Yeah. I also have a question about some of these numbers, because is that however many million admissions or is it individual people? Cause like, let's say it's, I don't know how long a world's fair lasts, but let's say it's a 10 day affair. If I go, if I, if I show my past 10 times, or is that, you know, you know what I'm saying? Or it's like, for instance, like sometimes you'll,

sometimes you'll go to a baseball game and there'll be, you know, like 12,000 people though, but they're announced it as a sellout because they sold that many tickets. People just showed up for their bobblehead and then went home. Is there a bobblehead situation with the world's fair? Right. Could it be like a couple guys going 10 million times each? Thank you. Thank you, Katie. That's exactly. No, that number you can imagine. But yeah. Yeah. And Abe Simpson in and out the door. Right. Yes. The answer varies across every fair. The modern ones, it's usually ticket sales. And the earlier ones, it's kind of guessing.

The modern ones, it's usually ticket sales. And the earlier ones, it's kind of guessing. Okay. And I'm not poo-pooing. I mean, even if it were half of that, it's still bananas numbers that you're talking. Yeah, this is then and kind of now one of the most popular things on Earth. And especially in the U.S., I think most of us think of it as a weird penny-farthing bicycle era thing that is not relevant at all. I saw, I visited London recently and I saw a guy on a penny farthing.

Wow. Didn't seem to be doing a performance. Didn't seem to be asking for tips, just riding on it. Just living. Yeah. I was mad. I was angry. Thank you, Katie. I hear that is the correct response.

Speaking of the Europeans, we have some next numbers here. And these are a fast set of years. 1889, that's when the Eiffel Tower was completed in Paris. 1962 is the year of the opening of the Space Needle in Seattle. Those are two prime examples of buildings that we have because of World's Fairs. And there's sort of a global phenomenon of buildings or neighborhoods or entire practices that came from a World's Fair, and we just don't know it. There's too many to index. And then in contrast to that, a couple more year numbers, 1893. 1893 is the

original Ferris wheel at the Chicago Columbian Exposition. On our episode All About It, we talk about it getting relocated, reused at the 1904 World's Fair, but then relocated again and abandoned and wrecked. And then another year number here is 1936.

1936 is when the Crystal Palace burned down. And the Crystal Palace was the centerpiece of the 1851 World's Fair in London. We'll talk a lot more about it later. But that and the Ferris wheel and other monumental stuff from fairs are just gone. And that's the other common phenomenon with these. A city or a country will put massive organizing and money into one of these, and sometimes it leaves kind of no footprint at all.

What happened in the crystal? Were they making crystal meth in the palace? Is that why it burned down? The name does add up. That's true. Thank you. I recognize words. Yeah, they named it that because they were amazed by glass in 1851.

That makes sense. They were like, wow, a building mostly made of glass. Can you believe it? And now that's kind of normal. I can see through this material. Right. So like, wait a minute. Now, I thought, is crystal different from glass?

Pretty sure it is, right? It is. And they just decided that it was so magical how much glass there was, they would give it a more heightened name. I see. Well, lying. It was good salesmanship, I think. Call it lying. Palace of lies. But yeah, and World's Fair is on top of this giant structure situation. They often

have had a really weird underbelly during their operation. Within the giant famous stuff, like the old timey equivalent of that Vegas sphere, World's Fairs had pavilions from as many countries as possible. And especially in the past, that would just lead directly to massive racism. Like there were fairs that would... Sounds like the Epcot syndrome. to massive racism. There were fairs that would... The Epcot syndrome. It'd basically be, hey, look at these people

from another country, and then sometimes they would call that a human zoo, and the spectacle was just look at different races. And also many fairs were trying to be on the cutting edge of science, but then many fairs were held in eras when eugenics was considered

cutting edge science, and so... That's just kind of a thing with a lot of especially the past versions of these. All right. Well, you're off the hook. You're off the hook, Knoxville. The only time I want to hear human zoo is in the context of aliens abducting us. The Twilight Zone. Preferably sexy aliens. Yeah. One of the middle chapters of Slaughterhouse-Five. There we go. Great.

Yeah. I thought that was one of the other ones, but I guess a lot of his books have aliens in it. Vonnegut's all about it. He loves it. Yeah. Do you think that people from other cultures that knew that they were being brought over to be sort of otherized and observed and judged unfavorably? Like, or do you think it was pitched to them as like, I guess this naive idea? I'd had this romantic idea of like, we want to share your culture with the world and have you learn other cultures. And it turns out, no, we want to point and laugh at you and, you know, throw popcorn to see if you'll eat it. Measure your head.

Measure your cranium to see how smart you are. It's never a good sign when they break out the calipers. Never. Here, place these leeches on you and see if it makes your complexion change. It seems like in a lot of cases, it was a blurry mix of both being a human zoo and having their culture shown off. Like some of these fairs, people just did not understand tolerance or humanity in a way

where there was a difference to them, I think. Right. Anytime you get white people involved, things are bound to head that way yeah and then these fairs also had tons of carnival and sideshow type entertainment so you know sometimes they're presenting fake cryptids sometimes it's basic carnival scam stuff where you just lose money on a rigged game um and then also there's a maybe least known thing where almost all world's fairs presented

erotic dancers and stripping. Oh, I'm back in. Hey, now. Hey, now. Yeah. You lost me at the racism. You got me back in with the I think you said sexy aliens, but I was honestly tuning you out a little bit.

Tuning you out a little bit. Yeah, this is not really their reputation today, but takeaway number one. Until very recently, World's Fairs sold themselves on sexy dance shows. Nice. Wow. It turns out as recently as 1964, it was newsworthy if a World's Fair was not going to have nude or nearly nude women performing. Wait, so like there was outrage if there weren't enough boobies? Yeah, the 1964 New York World's Fair barred sexualized entertainment and it got reported all over the country in newspapers.

And the Fort Worth Star-Telegram headlined it, Hoochie Coochie to be bumped from World's Fair at New York. God. Well, at least they were taking it seriously. Man, I miss old timey headlines. Yeah. Reporting on a war, and it's like, you wasn't a bit of a pickle. But yeah, I mean, I do like that the boobies were traditional and we were going against tradition to cover up the boobies.

Yeah, it was just very common at most fairs. That article about Hoochie Coochie lamented the lack of, quote, nudie cutie capers planned for the fair. And that fair, they ran it in 1964 and 1965. And due to hugely low attendance numbers in 64, they brought it back for 65. They were like, now will you come? Because people were kind of mainly coming through the doors of a lot of world's fairs for sexy shows. Can I just say that sounds like erotica written by Dr. Seuss. The rhyming there. A lot of rhyming.

Oh, the nudie cutie capers. Yeah. That was my favorite episode of Scooby-Doo. Yeah. Right. It's like a nude lady except for one mask that they pull off at the end. Yeah. Right. It's like a nude lady except for one mask that they pull off at the end. Yeah. And they would have gotten away with it if it weren't for those meddling kids.

That lady's got rubies. More like booby-doo, am I right? Got him. You guys had it at the show, right? You can cut that out. Not a chance. We'll loop it in several more times. Yeah, that's good.

That is staying in. Put that in the premium boco. Premium. Yeah, and this pattern that New York was dealing with was a long running thing. 1933 World's Fair in Chicago. The mayor threatened to shut down nude performances. But then they ended up popularizing a nude dancer named Sally Rand, who was famous for her ostrich feather fan dance ending in full nudity. She was barred from performing at the fair, so she just

repeatedly snuck into various venues that let her do it. Oh, hell yeah. Oh, hell yeah. Yeah, she ended up becoming one of the biggest selling points of the fair while doing constant outlaw shows that were not part of the fair. I love it. That's how she found her feathers. She just snuck into the farm exhibit and then, oh, look at that, an ostrich.

It's whatever animal she's near. Yeah, yeah. Is that a naked lady trying to sneak into the fair? No, I believe that's an ostrich, which is OK. We do allow ostriches, I guess. They're tall enough for the rides, first of all. There's nothing in the rulebook that says an ostrich can't play. There's nothing in the official burlesque rulebook that says an ostrich can't do a nudie show.

burlesque rule book that says an ostrich can't do a nudie show. The other other thing World's Fairs did is they also scammed people with a misleading promise of nudity. Apparently, in particular, the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, there was an event for Algerian belly dancing. And this is one of many World's Fair presentations that was presented as exotic quote-unquote and advertising and things and then it would just turn out to be the basic meaning of exotic of it's from a different country than this country and yeah yeah there's there's there's some not so great history of conflating the two yeah So there was also that scam being done to people looking to see nudity. And I think this is not really thought about a lot with World's Fair history. Like that 1933 Chicago Fair, the official theme was a century of progress and amazing science and

advancement. And a lot of people were there to see naked people. This is another way World's Fairs were kind of the internet before the internet was. That's where the world gathers to see it. That really is very interesting. That's something I never would have guessed. You think about that time as wholesome and Puritan. And when I look at newsreel footage of people going to World's Fairs, all the guys are in suits and the women are these, you know, heavy, modest dresses, you know,

it's in the middle of summer and super humid places and yeah, no wonder they wanted to take all their clothes off. But yeah, I had no idea the sex, the sexual element, I guess I shouldn't be surprised just because of, you know, humans, but that, that, that's something I never would have guessed was part of that. Yeah, me neither. Yeah, we just talk about a guy looking at electricity for the first time or something is what we think was happening. Right. But if you pull back on the frame, you see what's actually making those sparks. Like it's an electricity picture of a lady. Like, oh, I see.

Yeah. And it kind of reminds me of the like history of film, like moving pictures. Like one of the early things were these peep shows where it's like, how can we get people interested in this new technology of film? Boobies. Yeah. Well, that's like, it's like almost all technology. You know, we look at all the advancements in the internet about streaming and online payments and all that that all came because of boobies, because of porn. Absolutely. Thank you, porn. The power of butts.

Yes. The power of butts compels you. Yeah, it helped give us every World's Fair thing. And it's across the history of this next number. The next number is 35. The next number is 35. And 35 is the number of officially recognized World's Fairs between 1851 and now. But also that number is very disputed.

It turns out it comes from a French organization called the Bureau International des Expositions, the BIE. How come the French are always electing themselves like arbiters of things? They're like, we have this Michelin guide. It's like, who says this restaurant is good? It's like, the French. And also the tires. Right. Yeah, this is super

weird because the next number is 1928. The year 1928 is when an international treaty created the BIE. And the goal was to have one governing body for the timing and locations of World's Fairs. Before 1928, we didn't have that at all. Places would just say, I'm doing a World's Fair now. I declare a World's Fair. I declare it. Yes. The Michael Scott dot GIF.

Yeah, that Michael Scott move is takeaway number two. Before 1928, every World's Fair was a wild local gamble. That's pretty late in the history of these from 1851 to then. It was just a city or a country saying, we are the world's fair on this date in this time and hoping everybody else played along. That's it. Yeah. Which is we I had never thought about anybody running this, but I had also never thought about the lack of somebody running this, if that makes sense. Like it's just been kind of happening this way.

Right. It's like when you're like, hey, let's just do a party, and there's that moment of nervousness five minutes before people are supposed to start showing up. If nobody shows up, do I just kind of do the party on my own? Do I do a World's Fair on my own? Is it just us two guys going in and out 10 million times? What if you threw a World's Fair and nobody showed up? Right.

That's kind of happened a lot of places, yeah. Oh, yeah? Even with the BIE? Oddly, no. The BIE, usually people come. Got it. Let's get that seal of BIE approval. We always look for it. Yeah, it turns out it really moves the needle.

One big example comes from the 1960s because in 1962, Seattle got BIE approval to do a World's Fair. And that's actually the last approved World's Fair in the United States, 1962 in Seattle. Wow. And also in order to get that approval, the leaders of Seattle specifically glad-handed this French organization as much as possible. Like they made a bunch of trips to France.

They held a meeting where they taught everybody how to pronounce the name Seattle. They presented like visual aids of the location of Seattle on the earth. Seattle. Seattle. No, no, no. Seattle. Seattle.

Seattle. Yeah, I'm glad we could play that real clip of the meeting. That wasn't anybody doing impressions. That's what happened. real clip of the meeting. That wasn't anybody doing impressions. That's what happened. But yeah, and that fair, it drew almost 10 million visitors, which is not huge by these standards, but was a lot for what Seattle was going for. And then by comparison, a couple years earlier, Portland, Oregon tried to do a big fair. And they called it the Oregon Centennial Exposition and International Trade Fair.

They pitched it to the whole world. Buddies. But they didn't have BIE help, and they drew $1.5 million versus $10 in Seattle. That's better than I thought it would be. I thought like 20 people might have come. But again, I can only imagine about 15 people at once. Right. So you're really stretching.

Yeah. Right. Yeah. So they all leave and then five come back. Right. Not great. Yeah. And like this organization oddly has a lot of pull.

They're just good at using this international treaty and their connections all over the world to get all sorts of countries to participate in what's designated a world fair. Because all of these are kind of a tinkerbell thing. It's just, can you convince people there ought to be a world fair in this year at this location, just because? I feel like we're giving the French too much power. They can tell us what champagne is, what good bread is. I don't know. I didn't vote for them. I don't know if you know this, but have there been other attempts since then to get a World's Fair in the U.S.?

That seems like a long time without one, like if a U.S. city actually wanted one. There's a really weird thing where the 1964 World's Fair in New York City was not officially a World's Fair. Just everyone called it that. That's basically what the U.S. has been doing. We have not gotten that approval, but things like 1982 in Knoxville and most recently 1986 in New Orleans, they either got no approval or they got partial approval to do what's called a specialized expo. They either got no approval or they got partial approval to do what's called a specialized expo. So 1982 in Knoxville was officially a specialized expo celebrating energy technology and was not a World's Fair. Exciting.

That's a good title for a thing. Unauthorized expo celebrating energy. Yeah. And the other weirdest thing about these guys is the BIE don't just certify things to be World's Fairs. They have also codified what past events count as World's Fairs in their opinion. Now, hang on. Like before they existed,

they are retroactively declaring various events World's Fairs or not World's Fairs. They're retconning World's Fairs. Yeah, yeah. So they have declared that the first ever World's Fair was 1851 in London. And then the next was 1855 in Paris and a list of 35 World's Fairs. The most recent official one was 2020 in Dubai. The next one is 2025 in Osaka in Japan. They're saying it's canon that Dumbledore went to this World's Fair.

When we were talking about baseball before, it made me think of the Baseball Hall of Fame again. Like they're doing that thing where the current Baseball Hall of Fame will say, this guy in the 1920s, he's also a Hall of Famer now, which is fine, but also it's just kind of this one organization saying so. Right. I was in Osaka this year and I saw no, oh, I'm not, I'm not offended that I wasn't personally invited to the 2025 world's fair, but it seems odd that I saw no mention of it. No one, no one was talking. Like it wasn't any of the guidebooks. It wasn't in any of the conversations I had about, oh, you know, we're getting the World's Fair in a couple of years. Like, you'd think that would be a huge thing or like this giant structure is being built, you know, for the World's Fair. None of that. I saw more ads for, you know, ramen places than for the World's Fair. Like at the airport, I'm just thinking of like, I'm just thinking about all the places that I went where it seems like there would be huge signage.

Right. And there was nothing. It's just, it's odd. Like, and yet I'm sure they're going to get tens of millions of people. Yeah. Yeah. How did marketing in the past work for World's Fairs? Like how, when did they start marketing the World's Fair and how did they

get the word out? The answer is basically as soon as basic forms of marketing were invented, they applied them. Because 1893 in Chicago was sort of the debut of a lot of the basic concepts of advertising, like pickle pins for Heinz products. Pickle pins? Yeah, it's a little pin shaped like a pickle, and Heinz would give it out. Oh, that would be my guess. I know it sounds like a writing pin shaped like a pickle that you can write with, which I like that idea. I thought it was something meant to pierce the pickle

just to get out that extra juice. Oh, I'm going to Google this. I want to get a pickle pin. It's a medal of honor for the pickle that you pin onto the pickle. Congratulations, pickle. You've done it. Yeah. And that and that promotion challenge, it's part of why, especially in the late 1800s, this was just a massive gamble by so many cities. And apparently from the 1880s to the 1910s, so 30 plus years, they stopped at World War I, but 1880s to 1910s, world cities held more than 40 international expositions that were pitched as some sort of world's fair. So more than once a year, there was a place saying this.

Melbourne, Australia, 1888, Hobart, Tasmania, 1894, Guatemala City, 1897, and the French colonial city of Hanoi in 1902 and 1903 all said, we're the world's favorite. I'm sorry to interrupt, but I did a little Googling and it turns out that you can get pickle pins from the Heinz History Center online. They're $5.70. I was like, oh, I don't know if I want to spend that. They're sold in quantities of 10. That's 10 pins for $5.70. That's pretty good.

I can imagine 10 people wearing 10 Pickle Pins. And they have 3,570 in stock as of this recording. So anyone listening to this, they might only have 3,560 by the time we're done. Get them while you can. Katie, don't think about that number. Katie, watch out. Oh, sorry. Too many pickle pins.

These probably are reproductions, if I'm being honest. All right. Sorry to interrupt, but I got distracted by pickle pins. All these events are as random as a pickle pin oh i like would you find that fun great can we can we use that phrase that's as random as a pickle pin it does sound good pretty good yeah it does sound good all right i'm gonna try to move that in all right sorry to interrupt you're telling about something somewhat... No, it's on theme. Yeah.

Yeah, I love this situation where there is a version of the International Olympic Committee for World's Fairs now. And before that, the entire world, every city that felt important was just saying, I'm the World's Fair now and nobody do this year. It's my year. And it was a weird fight between. Yeah, like the Wild West out there. Yeah. And then in the process, they all set up sexy dance shows and tried to build a weird building to draw everybody.

Crazy, man. Yeah, it's like when you have a college party and then someone else is like, well, I'm going to have a party on the same day. You're not my friend if you don't show up to my party. But it's like a whole country. Yeah, yeah, really. And guys who spent millions of dollars of old timey money on it and are like, I hope the biggest fortune in the world comes back to me. Was this always sort of government funded or was it private entrepreneurs? It was both. And it's tilted toward private companies over time. Like, yeah, more and more.

It's been a pavilion from especially in 1964. It was like GE and Coke and Ford. And before that, it tended to be national governments. The Heinz pickles. Yeah. And Heinz and stuff. And before that, it tended to be national governments. The Heinz pickles. Yeah, and Heinz and stuff. Yeah. So it's sort of Olympics are sort of a thing that has evolved from this in terms of practices where we're like, everything is branded. But yeah. Also, the doping, I understand, has gotten crazy in the World's Fair market. Just too muscular of a guy giving out pickle pins, like stabbing through people.

And folks, that's the whole progression of these. We are going to take a quick break before returning with the most bizarre structure in World's Fair history. Is it giant ostrich feather boobies? I'm staying tuned for that. Folks, I know I say this every week. It's because it's true every week. You are hearing this episode because of listeners who support this show directly. A very small group of listeners, far less than 10% of listeners, are the only reason this podcast exists. If we ever got to a full 10% of listeners supporting the show, that would be earth-shaking.

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Ghostbusters, and his very detailed plans about how he'll spend his afterlife. I think I'm going to roam in a few places, yes. I'm going to manifest and roam. All that and more on the next Bullseye from MaximumFun.org and NPR. Hello, teachers and faculty. This is Janet Varney. I'm here to remind you that listening to my podcast, The JV Club with Janet Varney, is part of the curriculum for the school year. Learning about the teenage years of such guests as Alison Brie, Vicki Peterson, John Hodgman, and so many more is a valuable and enriching experience, one you have no choice but to embrace, because yes,

listening is mandatory. The JV Club with Janet Varney is available every Thursday on Maximum Fun or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you. And remember, no running in the halls. And we are back and with an answer. What is that weirdest structure? And also more fundamentally, why have there been a bunch of World's Fairs? Why does this keep happening? The answer is takeaway number three. One London event created the practice of recurring World's Fairs by making Paris jealous of a giant greenhouse. Yeah, this is about the Crystal Palace, which was built in London and is misleadingly named. It's a giant glass structure that was designed by a guy who was a professional builder of greenhouses.

Ah, interesting. Was it full of plants or was it just they liked the sort of look of it being all glass? The second thing, they just liked that look. And my negative reading of this guy is he was good at building greenhouses and said, what if the British Empire and British royal family put all of the money they could possibly could into just making the biggest greenhouse ever built? And that was as far as his creativity went. Right. Yeah, because it's like,

it just does kind of look like a greenhouse, but really big. And that's the experience you want as a visitor, is you want, when you're in the middle of the summer in London, wearing heavy, non-breathable clothing, you want to be in a greenhouse. Yeah.

I've always wanted the experience of being a little ant underneath the magnifying glass of a 12-year-old boy. Yeah, if you sit in there long enough, a potato would grow out of your armpit. Yeah, and basically illustrations of this. There aren't a lot of pictures, but there were some plants at some of the setups, I think, just because that's decor and they could. And it wasn't greenhouse hot, but it was just a big glass and iron structure. And they blew people's mind because it wasn't made of brick or whatever. Oh, that's interesting. You could see through it, kind of.

And they said, wow, I've never seen this big of a building with this big of windows. It was before high rises and stuff. This was 1851. So you didn't even have to pay to get into the sexy butt shows because you could see right in there. And so that was so impressive to Paris that they were like, oh, yeah, we're going to build a big tower. was so impressive to Paris that they were like, oh yeah, we're going to build a big tower. Eventually, basically, yeah. Because what was happening here is 1851 London, the World's Fair was sort of an ordinary event other than this Crystal Palace building. Beyond that, it was an exposition of industry and technology and also stuff from the world. Boring. And a bunch of other countries had been doing that, in particular France.

France felt like they were the leader in technological and scientific expositions. They were like in charge of that and then got very upset when the British leapt beyond them with this Crystal Palace building. Yeah, I love that. That's so French. To be jealous and mad and then try to like, basically say, No, we're, we're the ones who decide whether buildings are cool, or that wine is champagne or not. It's us. Yeah. Yeah, they they were like, I we really don't like that the British seem to be

ahead of us by putting together, it wasn't even called a World's Fair, but it was called the Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations. And this was bigger than what the French had done. It displayed more than 100,000 objects across more than 10 miles of exhibition space. Whoa. If you sort of wound around it walking, you would walk 10 miles. That's a lot. I get those steps in. Whoa. If you sort of wound around it walking, you would walk 10 miles. That's a lot.

I get those steps in. Yeah. I feel like I'd need at least two pickles on a stick to make it. Yeah. And they kind of drew a massive audience, partly because of the humongousness of it. Like they made a profit, drew more than 6 million guests. It was a huge smash success financially, too. But the biggest draw was this crystal palace that just captured people's imaginations. Sir Joseph Paxton was a professional greenhouse builder, and so he just pitched a gigantic glass and iron structure that would not be that hot, but would be four times the size of St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. Central Fountain standing 27 feet high high made of four tons of glass. It was just the most glass.

And then that was the main reason people came was to see all the glass. How much did it cost to build this thing? Oh, I don't have a figure. In pounds. In pounds. And how long did it take to build this? In pounds. In pounds. And how long did it take to build this? In pounds. Years sterling? I don't know.

In British years. Part of why they kind of didn't sweat the money is one of the couple of people very involved in running this was Prince Albert, the husband of Queen Victoria. So with him being into it and with the British Empire robbing and raiding the whole world, they basically had a blank check. They could do whatever they wanted. And that's what they chose to do. They chose to build a giant glass house.

Yeah, and this made France very mad. And so as soon as they possibly could, Paris put on a rival exhibition in 1855. And then by BIE standards, the next World's Fair was London 1862. So then the next World's Fair was Paris 1867. And as you look at the timeline, it's basically another city does a World's Fair,

so then Paris does a World's Fair. And then another city does a World's Fair, so then Paris does a World's Fair. For an event this size, they basically started planning the next one after, you know? Like, they're just like, great fair, what's our next fair? Was the Paris attitude toward all this. I kind of admire it.

They wanted to stay on top. Yeah. And like, that's why they're where the BIE is based. It's partly because all these fairs kept happening there. So why not? Like, makes sense was the logic. Has Paris had the most fairs officially of the official 35 fairs? Have most of them been in Paris? Yeah. There's also more diversity now in terms of a new city every time. So Paris will probably have the record forever. They just did a lot of them early on. Paris, more like unfair-us for their fairs. Yeah. And so these people weren't just inventing the idea of a world's fair. They were inventing

the idea that we needed to keep doing them. They were inventing the idea of an inferiority complex as well. Yeah. Right. Psychological science advancing. Yeah. But yeah. And even as Paris did all this, that Crystal Palace stood for a long time because the British used it in the exhibition, then disassembled it, put it in South London instead. And it kept hosting events for many decades. I'll link an Atlas Obscura piece about a particularly funny event in the 1870s where cat fanciers held a cat show to try to improve the reputation of cats. Because in the 1870s, they were seen as gross street animals

that just hunt mice and not pets yet. Did it work? Apparently it helped, yeah. It helped. We have a whole episode about cat food I'll link to. It helped create a trend of humans actively feeding cats as pets in Europe. Surprising. Because have you ever seen a cat in humidity?

It's not pretty. Ooh, greenhouse. Yeah, there's not a lot of greenhouse cats, huh? No. I would love to visit a giant greenhouse full of cats. That's sort of my dream. Yeah, I don't know. For me, I love cats,

but have you ever pet a cat when your hand is sweaty? It just all comes off. All the fur is now on your hand. Now your hand is a it just is it all comes off all the fur is now on your hand now your hand is a cat yeah well thank you for ruining my dreams i appreciate that that's my job and yeah and so this this remained an iconic part of london apparently at one point they had put enough additions on the Crystal Palace that it was the largest building in the world by volume. But then it kind of lost allure and novelty after many decades, and it was semi-abandoned when a fire started in 1936 and burned it down.

I can't imagine how a fire would start in a building made out of glass, where the sun goes through the glass. I'm trying to think. Someone put a piece of paper at the bottom of it. And that was the end. What if the fire started because they finally depolluted London's sky? Like finally there was sunlight and that immediately. Yeah, there was enough to focus like a magnifying glass.

But yeah, and so that building's gone. It's also weirdly known to soccer fans. Oh yeah. There's a soccer team called Crystal Palace that started in that general area. It's named after the building that created World's Fairs and a bunch of other stuff. Hmm. Huh. the building that created World's Fairs and a bunch of other stuff.

Somehow soccer and a giant building made out of almost entirely glass doesn't seem like it'd go together, but... But then you add in the cats and it makes perfect sense. Right, there you go. Now it's all

coming together. Maybe it burnt down because one of the cat fanciers who lost in the cat pageant bore a grudge. They're very grudgeful people, the cat fanciers. Truly frightening people. Hey folks, that's the main episode for this week. Many, many thanks again to J. Keith Van Straden,

our very special guest. He's the host of the show Go Fact Yourself here on Maximum Fun, along with his co-host Helen Hong, and then wonderful comedy guests and astounding special guests, because not only is there humor and trivia and interesting information, there's also people getting to basically meet the person of their dreams in terms of an interest that they have in something they're passionate about. There's a recent episode of that show with our buddy Jason Pargin, meeting a guest who I jaw dropped when I started hearing their name and voice. I just couldn't believe it. So Go Fact Yourself is the podcast. You're going to love it. Please check it out. And Go Fact Yourself is not the only thing we're linking because welcome to the outro with fun features for you, such as help

remembering this episode with a run back through the big takeaways. Takeaway number one, until very recently, World's Fairs sold themselves on sexy dance shows. Takeaway number two, before 1928, every World's Fair was a wild local gamble. Takeaway number three, one London event created the practice of recurring World's Fairs by making Paris jealous of a giant greenhouse. And beyond that, many mind-boggling numbers, especially about when fairs happened and how many million bajillion people went to them. Those are the takeaways. Also, I said that's the main episode because there is more secretly incredibly fascinating stuff available to you right now if you support this show at MaximumBun.org. Members get a bonus show every week where we explore one obviously incredibly fascinating story related to the

main episode. This week's bonus topic is how Robert Moses and Walt Disney ended American World's Fairs. Visit SIFpod.fun for that bonus show, for a library of more than 14 dozen other secretly incredibly fascinating bonus shows, and a catalog of all sorts of MaxFun bonus shows, including special episodes of Go Fact Yourself. It's special audio. It's just for members. Thank you for being somebody who backs this podcast operation. Additional fun things.

Check out our research sources on this episode's page at MaximumFun.org. Key sources this week include the book Fair America by historians Robert W. Rydell, John E. Findling, and Kimberly D. Pell, plus further books on the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, the 1964-1965 New York World's Fair, plus digital resources from the British Library, the Smithsonian, the Oregon Historical Society, and more. That page also features resources such as native-land.ca. I'm using those to acknowledge that I recorded this in Lenapehoking, the traditional land of the Munsee Lenape people and the Wappinger people, as well as the Mohican people, Skadigok people, and others.

Also, Katie taped this in the country of Italy. Jay Keith taped this on the traditional land of the Gabrielino-Wartongva people and the Waneño people. I want to acknowledge that in my location, Jay Keith's location, and many other locations in the Americas and elsewhere, Native people are very much still here. That feels worth doing on each episode. And join the free SIF Discord, where we're sharing stories and resources about Native people and life. There's a link in this episode's description to join that Discord. We're also talking about this episode on the Discord,

and hey, would you like a tip on another episode? Because each week I'm finding you something randomly incredibly fascinating by running all the past episode numbers through a random number generator. This week's pick is episode 108. That's about the topic of American cheese, and that episode features special guest Bill Oakley, a Simpsons writer and the creator of the steamed hams bit, so basically the best comedy bit involving cheeseburgers, American cheese on them. So I recommend that episode. I also recommend my co-host Katie Golden's weekly podcast, Creature Feature, about animals and science and more. Our theme music is Unbroken Unshaven by the Budos Band. Our show logo is by artist Burton Durand. Special thanks to Chris Souza for audio mastering on this episode. Special thanks to the Beacon Music Factory for

taping support. Extra, extra special thanks go to our members and thank you to all our listeners. I'm thrilled to say we will be back next week with more secretly incredibly fascinating So how about that? Talk to you then. Maximum Fun. A worker-owned network of artist-owned shows supported directly by you.