Timesuck with Dan Cummins - 53 - Teddy MF'n Roosevelt! President Tough Guy

Episode Date: September 18, 2017

America's 26th President went from an asthmatic child to a weightlifting, boxing, mountain climbing, book writing, lots-of-animals killing, calvary rough riding, NYC police commissioner, war hero, aut...hor, conservationist, Amazon explorer, and dude who didn't let a bullet to the chest stop him from delivering a campaign speech. He's Teddy Motherfuckin' Roosevelt. He's this week's fascinating edition of Timesuck. Please rate and subscribe and follow the suck on social media!! @timesuckpodcast on IG, @timesuckpodcast on Twitter, and www.facebook.com/timesuckpodcast Merch - https://badmagicmerch.com/ Want to try out Discord!?! https://discord.gg/tqzH89v Want to join the Cult of the Curious private Facebook Group? Go directly to Facebook and search for "Cult of the Curious" in order to locate whatever current page hasn't been put in FB Jail :) For all merch related questions: https://badmagicmerch.com/pages/contact

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Speak softly and carry a big stick. Recognize that. It was coined by none other than Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. The epitome of a man's man. In his 60 years on earth, Teddy would go from an asthmatic bedridden child to sickly to attend school to be in a weightlifter, boxer, mountain climber, establishment challenging politician, New York City police commissioner, big game hunter, author, assassination attempt survivor, conservationist, cattle rancher, cowboy, war hero, Amazon Explorer, and so much more. Find out everything you never knew you needed to know about the complicated and charismatic 26th president of the United States.
Starting point is 00:00:35 Teddy, Motherfucking Roseville, today, on TimeSug. You're the state. To TimeSug. Hey, time suckers, happy Monday or Tuesday or whatever day it happens to be when you're sucking on this suck. I am Reverend Dr. Dan Cummins, Jr. Esquire, and this is Time Suck. And those titles are a Time Suck joke. No Time Suck joke, if you're a first-time listener and wondering who they'll refer to themselves with that many titles, that would be email scammers.
Starting point is 00:01:08 Pump for today's episode, digging in some very interesting history today, fellow members of the cult of the curious. Appreciate you blowing off work and other life responsibilities to have a little fun, learn a little something new. Love learning new interesting facts about the world we live in and the people who have inhabited it. Glad you do too. Thanks to the time suckers who came out to the Columbus Fanny Bound, Columbus Ohio this
Starting point is 00:01:29 past week. Couldn't appreciate the support more. Appreciate the feedback on the new standup. And yeah, I'm actually recording this episode from Columbus because I'll be traveling when it hits tomorrow morning on Monday. And so if you hear anything different, you know, it's just I'm at the mercy of wherever I happen to be lately while I'm touring Huge thanks to Sophie Evans for joining the both Django's research team. Give me a great start to the info covered in this episode
Starting point is 00:01:51 Thanks for all the emails. I am way behind on replying back So if I haven't got back to you nothing personal. I've barely been able to stay on top of just getting episodes out on time I mean, I'm talking barely. I'm talking staying up till 6am, getting up at 8am, kind of crazy shit. Trying to get ahead on these sucks. I have a whole business plan. I don't discuss it fully in each episode, but I just gotta pull, push through for a couple more months and then I think I'll be able to get things
Starting point is 00:02:16 a little calmed down, a little easier. That's the plan. Or crash and burn. One of those two things. You guys keep me going. You really, really do with all the fantastic messages. Trying to, yeah, trying to get ahead on these sucks soon so I can get back to you all.
Starting point is 00:02:30 I know it means a lot. You take your time to send in messages and I definitely want to get back to those and respect that time. A bunch of more shows coming up. Hollywood, California, New Jersey, Portland, Oregon, both Seattle and Spokane, Washington, Wisconsin, Michigan, Colorado, more coming up later in the year.
Starting point is 00:02:46 Not all of those are on the website yet. I'm just waiting for the venues to post their ticket links, but just check out the episode descriptions for times and ticket links of upcoming shows. And then time suckpodcast.com, the schedule you can link to from there, will have those new dates as those venues update their information.
Starting point is 00:03:02 Updates to previous episodes and a sneak peek at next week's episode at the end of this podcast, Teddy Motherfucking Rose about right now. Everyone born into this world, you know, technically lives their heartbeats, their lungs, take in and expel air, right? But some clearly live more than others. And I'm not talking about living longer, talking about some people, you know, make it to 100, barely live it all. You know, did they leave the world any different than they found it? Did they leave a legacy where they have positive influence on the world? Were they a powerful figure, influential in their family or amongst friends or in their neighborhood? Did they get out and travel and see the world? Did they stay
Starting point is 00:03:39 home? But become known for being a solid guy or a great woman or a nice lady or just a kind man a Helping hand Well, Theodore Roosevelt lived the lives of a hundred men maybe a thousand men He explored the jungles of the Amazon. He fell in love and started a family lost his love fell in love and started a family again Refused to let childhood illness to find him becoming a big man strong enough to deliver a speech after being shot You know, he put a successful political career on hold to fight in the cavalry. He boxed about Harvard and then the White House as president. He was not without his faults.
Starting point is 00:04:11 We all have him and we will explore those as well. But overall, there's a damn good reason he's on Mount Rushmore. Several of you have written in wanting a little break from the dark topics we've had recently. This is it. All right. This is inspiring. So let's get pumped up, let's get American. Let's get full Teddy Mother fucking Roosevelt
Starting point is 00:04:28 and jump into one of the great lives in American history with the Times Up timeline. Shrap on those boots, soldier. We're marching down a time-sub-time line. ["Theatore, Roosevelt, Jr." is born in New York City. October 27th, 1858. Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. is born in New York City. He's born at 28 East 20th Street to be precise in Manhattan in a brownstone that was purchased by his grandfather Cornelius Van Schack Rosenfeld as a wedding present for his father, Theodore Roosevelt Senior. Now, his granddad Cornelius Van Schack Roosevelt was also known as CVS
Starting point is 00:05:04 Roosevelt and he is the founder of CVS pharmacies and the inventor of strawberry lemonade and the yo-yo in a parallel universe where my silly lies are actual truths. No, CVS stands for convenience value and service, if you're curious. I was curious enough to look it up because for some reason, I actually did think Cornelius founded the drug store, and the reason for that is sometimes I'm a dummy. No, Teddy's paternal grandfather was a successful New York City landowner, a businessman who became one of the first directors of the Chemical Bank of New York in 1844. A bank that would later reincorporate as the Chase Bank we know today. So he did a right for himself.
Starting point is 00:05:39 Cornelius's father was James Jacobus Roosevelt, another successful American businessman born in New York City on October 25th, 1759, whose own father, James Jacobus Roosevelt another successful American businessman born in New York City on October 25th, 1759, whose own father James Jacobus Roosevelt senior fought and died on behalf of early colonists and the American Revolutionary War. James Roosevelt's father was Joe Hans, uh, Yo Hans Roosevelt's born in New York in 1889 and his father was Nicholas Roosevelt born in New York City in 1658 before it became New York City and was still called New Amsterdam. The Roosevelt's are old, old, old school New Yorkers, true OGs in the history of Manhattan. Now Nicholas was the first Roosevelt to hold a political office in America as an alderman, which is an elected official of a municipal council and he is not only the fourth great grandfather of Teddy Roosevelt, he is also the fourth great grandfather of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Starting point is 00:06:29 All right, the Franklin D Roosevelt, the two presidents being fifth cousins. I just realized that if I hesitated on his middle name, because you always just hear the D, just Franklin D Roosevelt, probably because people are always like, is it fucking Delano? Is it Delano? Is it who gives a shit? Nicholas was also an ancestor of Eleanor Roosevelt. Eleanor and Franklin being fifth cousins once removed
Starting point is 00:06:51 with Eleanor also being theaters niece, making FDR, and Eleanor super Roosevelt, so much Roosevelt blood in one marriage. Both Eleanor and FDR would be great sucks. Suck him so hard someday. Nicholas's father was the first Roosevelt to make it to the new world. Clause, Martensanne, Martensanne,
Starting point is 00:07:11 Vaughn Rosenfeldt, arriving in New Amsterdam, sometime in the mid-17th century, possibly in 1649 or 1650, possibly as early as 1638, old shipping records, not as definitive as historians would like. And he was one of a number of Dutch settlers arriving at the new outpost of the Dutch West India Company.
Starting point is 00:07:30 His name, Rosenveilt, was modified over time to Roosevelt and originally, he had a little farm in present-day Manhattan. The family also had a profitable mill on a small stream, which ran between the East River and the banks of Collect Pond, a farm in Manhattan, man, really hard to imagine that. If you've ever been there, crazy to think that a few hundred years ago, you know, the definitive American metropolis was once, you know,
Starting point is 00:07:53 wilderness, farmland. The Roosevelt family tree is fascinating. And Ken Burns did not do a seven part documentary series for PBS called The Roosevelt's and Intimate History Without Good Reason. I bring all this up just to establish exactly what kind of family Teddy Roosevelt was born into. Because I think it makes his life
Starting point is 00:08:10 all the more remarkable. He reminds me of JFK in his ways. Born into wealth, powerful social and political connections, privilege, could have easily just coasted through life, got some cushy job through his family's connections, been a wealthy socialite, drinking, dining, Manhattan's finest bars, restaurants,
Starting point is 00:08:25 being invited to the most prestigious parties, traveling, vacationing, as he pleases, you know, live in a life of ultimate leisure, but no, just like JFK, he would instead go on to become a war hero, a noted author, the president, and so much more. He didn't just rest on the accomplishments of the many accomplished Roosevelt's who came before him, meant like his dad, He didn't just rest on the accomplishments of the many accomplished Roosevelt's who came before him, men like his dad, Theodore Senior, who was a wealthy glass importer who helped found the New York City Children's Aid Society, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the American Museum of Natural History, and the New York Children's Orthopedic Hospital. So, you know, did some shit.
Starting point is 00:08:59 Got some shit done. Teddy's maternal family, Trees also noteworthy. His mom, Martha Bullock Roosevelt, known as Mitty, came from a wealthy Southern plantation family and is rumored to have been the inspiration for Scarlet O'Hara from the novel and the movie Gone with the Wind. Haven't read it, haven't seen it, I know, I know, I'm a monster. Mitty's father, James Stevens Bullock, was an early Georgia settler in one of the founders of Roswell, Georgia. Her great-granddad was Archibald Bullock, the governor of Georgia during the Revolutionary War, who fought the war and died in Savannah in 1777.
Starting point is 00:09:28 Young theater did not appear destined to follow in the footsteps of his notable ancestors when he was a kid. He severed from asthma as a child, was unable to attend school, so he was taught by tutors. Home schoolers, man, what an inspiration you have in Teddy, right? You don't have to grow up to be socially awkward, shifty-eyed, you know, you're not going to be able to get a job in the school. 10 school, so he was taught by tutors, homeschoolers, man, what an inspiration you have in Teddy, right?
Starting point is 00:09:46 You don't have to grow up to be socially awkward, shift-y-eyed, you know, sweaty palm and shakers, just because you went to homeschool. Had Teddy been born into a different family of different means and education, life would have undoubtedly turned out very, very different for him, you know, like while childhood asthma is really fatal now, it was far more fatal in those days. Teddy's family, you know, they spared no expense on treating him. He was treated to restful summer vacations, whereas his dad would take him out for rides in the family carriage, try to force, you know, be open errands, or his boys' lungs. He wasn't able to go to school. He was taken on educational trips to Europe, the Middle East. When he was discovered that Teddy was also
Starting point is 00:10:25 extremely near-sighted. Teddy Sr. bought in the best prescription glasses available, which was a lot harder to do then. You just couldn't go to the fucking mall, just grab some quick stuff, couldn't pop into Walmart, grab something fast. Teddy Sr. also avoided falling for certain ridiculous asthma treatments that were popular at the time, like smoking cigars. Seriously, that was a asthma treatment.
Starting point is 00:10:46 I'm not sure how doctors arrived at that one. Just having trouble breathing, oh yeah. Well, I got just a fix for that. I got to get you smoking. Smoking. Nothing clears out a bad state of lungs like smoke. The second you have trouble breathing, inhale as much smoke as you can possibly hold in your chest. And if you can't find a cigar, just set something nearby on fire and you huff up that sweet healing smoke.
Starting point is 00:11:12 Oh, man, doctors used to suck. Teddy adored his father, writing years later, I never knew anyone who got greater joy out of living than my father. Or anyone who more, more wholeheartedly performed every duty and no one who might have ever met approach to his combination of enjoyment of life and performance of duty. And how do you create an amazing man? Turns out a great dad goes a long way.
Starting point is 00:11:37 Despite being too sick for school, young Teddy did his best not to let asthma slow him down. He spent summers in Oyster Bay, Long Island, where despite his health, he led expeditions of local neighborhood kids to explore the countryside. I love how he was just an odd kid, man. I get an interest in zoology. I guess that it came from seeing a dead seal one day
Starting point is 00:11:54 to market and he acquired the seals head. And with his cousins, he started what they call the Roosevelt Museum, actual history. Just a little kid doing that. I love it. Pretty creepy though, pretty creepy. Just, you know, young boy playing with the seals head. Maybe that's how you know you have a future president on your hands when you catch your son or daughter playing with a seals head. Hey, you want to mess around
Starting point is 00:12:15 these Lincoln logs, kid? Do you want to fill the ball around? No, just happy with your seal head. Okay, all right. Wash your hands when you're done playing with that dead seal head, please. Okay. Teddy also followed his father's rigorous exercise programs designed to help him overcome asthma. He got a little older, which included hiking, boxing, weightlifting, 1869, young Teddy only 10 years old finishes his first book in natural history on insects. They began when he was nine.
Starting point is 00:12:41 And I say book, you know, technically it's a notebook. Little kid's notebook, but not like a normal, little kids no book, you know filled with just fucking drawings of Monsters and muscle dudes. This is filled with observations of various species of ants spiders ladybugs butterflies fireflies beetles dragonflies hawks Minos crayfish It's now part of a collection at the Harvard College library Not you know and again not a published book or anything, but you know, pretty cool to begin of an interest in the observance and documentation of the natural world that would help define his later presidency.
Starting point is 00:13:11 Whenever young TD, that's what he's called, his childhood nickname, TD, came from him, hating being called Teddy, which is kind of funny to me. He actually hated being called Teddy for his entire life. People call him, nonetheless. Well, when little TD was healthy, he would explore the woods and trails and observe bugs and birds and animals. TD learned the rudiments of taxidermy from John Bell, a famous taxidermist and colleague of wildlife artist, John James Audubon, the man the Audubon Society would later be named after.
Starting point is 00:13:41 And he filled his makeshift museum with animals that he caught or killed, studied, prepared for display. Right, at age 12, he donated some of them. It does myse bat turtle, four birds eggs, and a skull of a red squirrel. The American Museum of Natural History founded by his father. 11 years later, he presented 622 carefully preserved bird skins to this Smithsonian. That's a lot of fucking dead birds. Do you hear what I just said? 622. That's a lot of birds that you have to kill. And then carefully, like, gut and preserve their skin. That's fucking creepy.
Starting point is 00:14:15 One time sucks, object Jeffrey Dahmer gets into taxi dormant in early age. And we all know how he turned out. TD ends up becoming an esteemed president. Man, taxi dormant. What a strange hobby. Like, and I'm sure plenty of normal people are taxi durmists. I'm sure they are. But if my son or daughter was like,
Starting point is 00:14:30 hey, dad, you know what I'd really like to get into? I think it'd be fun to spend a lot of time alone with animal corpses, carefully taking apart their bodies and preserving as much as their skin as possible to stuff an admired later. I mean, ideally, I'd love to have all the shelves of my room completely filled with dead animals. Yeah, sure, sweetie, that'd be great. We'll get going in that right after a few therapy sessions, okay?
Starting point is 00:14:49 Would you mind saying everything you just said to me to a counselor tomorrow? 1876, just about turn 18-year-old Teddy gets his first taste of public school at a little shithole you may have heard of, some little dump called Harvard. He originally chose a study natural history and had considered a teaching career. From the day of Theodore's arrival in Cambridge, he failed to fit into the Harvard mold. It wasn't a traditional student. His clothes were considered too flashy
Starting point is 00:15:15 for many of the more conservative students. I like how young Teddy was flashy, man. Wasn't afraid to stand out during his junior and senior years. I guess Roosevelt would end up spending $2,400 on clothes and club dues, which was what an average American family could live on very comfortably in those days. I guess in the present, it would be about equivalent to $25,000, which a family cannot live on, but you know, that's because of inflation
Starting point is 00:15:38 on goods and everything. He had an annual allowance of $8,000, while the president of Harvard had an annual salary of $8,000 while the president of Harvard had an annual salary of $5,000. A young college kid was some money in the family tree and not afraid to live it up. Fuck yeah, who wouldn't want to do that, man? Well, he didn't just spend everything on clothes. He also had a dorm room full of stuff, specimens, mounted animals, a lot of dead animals in his dorm room.
Starting point is 00:16:06 And again, obviously plenty of people have a normal interest in stuffed animals being from and living in Idaho. Trust me, I know all about taxi dormi, very familiar with it, but stuffing your dorm room with mounted animals, that's too much. I'm gonna say that's too much. Obviously it worked out okay for him, but for the rest of humanity, save that for after college. I think, again, if one of my kids were to do that,
Starting point is 00:16:26 it's not gonna not be addressed. Just really dude, stuff for that cone, and mounted rattlesnake and deer head in your room. Do you just not wanna have friends? All right, are you just wanna have the weirdest kids in school, be your friends? I mean, if you just wanna be an anti-social weirdo, we can save a lot of money and intuition
Starting point is 00:16:40 and just let you live in the basement. Well, Roosevelt made the weirdest work for him. He was a good student. His freshman year, he averaged a 75 live in the basement. Well, Roosevelt made the weirdest work for him. He was a good student. His freshman year, he averaged a 75% in his classes, pretty phenomenal, for someone who had just only been taught at home prior to that. By a sophomore year, that number had gone up to 89%. He wasn't, however, necessarily a favorite amongst his teachers. He had a tendency to be argumentative with professors. And once Roosevelt asked so many questions during a natural history lecture, does the professor exclaimed, now, now look here, Roosevelt, let me talk. I'm running this course.
Starting point is 00:17:08 I love it. Talk a little bastard. He was popular enough with his classmates to win election to the Hasty Pudding Club. And he was a social club secretary during his senior year. Roosevelt was one of five presidents. He others being John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and John F. Kennedy to have been a member of the HACPoting Club. The HACPoting Club, by the way, of 1770, is the oldest collegiate social club, began in a free Mason, gave their soul in 1770 to Satan, and also sacrificed a baby to the devil under the light of the full moon,
Starting point is 00:17:40 in exchange for forming a new country that would be fully and forever controlled by the Illuminati. in exchange for forming a new country that would be fully and forever controlled by the Illuminati. For his initiation, Teddy promised a soul of his own beloved father who would die suddenly in less than two years' time in exchange for a successful political career. Anyway, a few years later, nope, wait, I should address that. The Illuminati shit is not true. I just love to say that, because I love how paranoid people get about any group that is A, old, B, exclusive, and C, secretive. That combo, that trifecta drives people insane. What are they doing there? They must be doing something bad, or they have to keep your secret.
Starting point is 00:18:13 I think they're sacrificing babies to the devil. Somehow it goes to sacrificing babies, slash, like, virgins, to the devil real quick. I think that's because that's probably, I guess, like the most evil thing you can do. Like, I have a hard time thinking like, what will be worse than not only killing an innocent baby, not only like just, like just, yeah, in front of a group of other people, like in a horrible way, like with a knife
Starting point is 00:18:35 or something killing a baby, but trying to sacrifice its soul to the devil. They probably just sit around and just laugh about shit like that at the H.D. putting club. Anyway, February 9th, 1878, during his junior year at Harvard, Teddy's father does die. He dies at the age of 46 on February 9th, 1878 from a gastrointestinal tumor. The cause and great pain for months and prevented him from eating. Initially, he kept the extent of his illness secret from his elder son, Teddy. Then when Teddy was informed, he immediately
Starting point is 00:19:03 took a train from Cambridge to New York where he missed his father's death by a few hours. That is a serious bummer. Teddy Roosevelt biographer H.W. Brands argued that the timing of his dad's death contributed heavily to the younger theater psychology. Since the future president knew his father fully, while growing up, but missed knowing his father man to man. And therefore, absorbed a view of his father entirely in his role as a parent, untampered by realization of his, any kind of human imperfections.
Starting point is 00:19:30 So maybe this is what would later contribute to Teddy working so hard to be that man's man, doing what he thought he would make his dad proud. Or what would make his dad proud? One of the manly arts, his dad at Todd, I mean, I was boxing and he would keep that up for many years after his father's death Our Roosevelt didn't participate on any college team sports
Starting point is 00:19:48 But he did gain some local fame for being a boxing tough guy He did wrestling and boxing at Harvard He entered several college boxing tournaments while he was at Harvard and though only moderately successful The obvious courage and determination he displayed in the ring won him a small following Sometimes Roosevelt's fighting was in prom too Frederick Almy his class secretary recalls that during a torchlight procession and He displayed in the ring won him a small following. Sometimes Roosevelt's fighting was in prompt to. Frederick Almi, his class secretary, recalls that during a torchlight procession
Starting point is 00:20:08 in the Hayes-Tilden presidential campaign, some bystander on the sidewalk, said something that Teddy didn't care for. It felt it was disrespectful. And then the impulsive young Teddy, according to Almi, just reached out and laid the mucker flat. And mucker isn't some weird replacement swear word for fucker.
Starting point is 00:20:24 It's just people who are like protesting some government action. And it's a little bit more than that, but that's basically like the Muck rakers man, they were trying to expose governmental corruption and often did so. But I let's love that he just, you know, he didn't care for what this one guy said and just fucking popped up. Lately, I'm out, flack man. And then this is one of my biggest life regrets, not punching a few people as younger. And it was more socially acceptable.
Starting point is 00:20:46 I know that there's a whole argument that violence only leads to more violence and you should be able to talk out your differences and it's barbaric and it's immature and blah, blah, blah. And I hear you, I really do. However, I do firmly still believe that some people would behave a little better, maybe even a little better life going forward
Starting point is 00:21:02 if someone just gave them one one good hard shot to the face Not hard enough to like maimum not hard enough to cause permanent injury Just hard enough to knock him on their ass and just make him think like damn it. That did not feel good at all That was both very painful and embarrassing. I should probably not act away acted to cause that to happen again The best remembered of the Roosevelt Harvard boxing story center centers around The best remembered of the Roosevelt Harvard boxing story center centers around two matches he had in a lightweight tournament at the Harvard gym in March 1879. He won his first match and also won the crowd with one of those chivalrous acts which sporting fans love during this first match when the referee called time Roosevelt immediately
Starting point is 00:21:39 drops his guard and then the other dude just punched him savagely into the face. Like you got took a hard shot to the face The people watching you know started shouting foul foul, you know We're booing and hissing rose of belt supposedly cut him off. He's just cried out hush. He didn't hear That is so badass man take a cheap shot to the face and then defend the guy who smacks you just hush now doesn't matter He doesn't hit hard enough to make a difference anyway. And the next round, you know, just go back to whooping that doze-ass. On his second match, he meets Charlie Hanks.
Starting point is 00:22:09 They both weighed about 135 pounds, but Hanks was two or three inches taller, had a longer reach. Roosevelt, you know, again, was also near-sided, pretty severely. He's not like he can wear his glasses in the ring, which made it hard for him to see, you know, and Perry, Hanks blows.
Starting point is 00:22:23 And I guess when time was called after the last round, recalls one spectator, his face was dashed with blood and he was much winded, but his spirit did not flag. And if there had been another round, he would have gone into it with undiminished determination. I love the vocabulary of people like, you know, over a century ago. They didn't have our, you know, tech and access to knowledge, but God, they wrote and spoke better. Man, guy was tough. No question about it. Crazy despite like being extremely near-sighted in the days before contacts and corrective vision surgery even went in the ring at all. All right, during his senior year at Harvard,
Starting point is 00:22:57 Teddy presented papers at the Harvard Natural History Society on such topics as the gills of crustaceans and the coloration of birds, still really into studying dead animals. But then for his senior thesis, he shifted away from nature and conservation and wrote a paper called the practicality of giving men and women equal rights, which stressed equal rights for men and women and shocked his classmates. Shocked me, redundant. Do not see that coming. Do not expect it from that era. I like it, man. Earlier in college, a professor encouraged him to apply his knowledge to politics, not to biology as a career. And some sources say this encouragement plus the death of Roosevelt's father caused him to change his major from biology to government and political science. As Roosevelt
Starting point is 00:23:38 wanted to follow in his father's footsteps and have a career in some sort of civil service. You know, he wanted to be the tough guy, his father admired, and also the civic leader, his dad was. And he'd do a pretty damn good job of accomplishing both, I gotta say, 1880, Teddy graduated 22nd, his class, out of 177 from Harvard, and he also marries Alice Hathaway Lee, a young woman from a prominent Massachusetts banking family on his 22nd birthday,
Starting point is 00:24:03 October 27th. So they take off on a European honeymoon, the following spring, and while on his 22nd birthday, October 27th. So they take off on a European honeymoon, the following spring, and while on his honeymoon, Roosevelt decides to climb to the top of the Matterhorn. A mountain over 14,000 feet tall in Switzerland, whose peak had only been reached for the first time in 1865. Of course, he did that. He can't just lay on the beaches of Southern France,
Starting point is 00:24:19 you know, like a normal dude, he has to climb a fucking mountain, a big one. Scalene, this particular mountain, by the way, around this time was becoming fairly popular, and it actually led the little culture there of climbing the Matterhorn led directly to the modern sport of mountaineering around the world. Roosevelt also began attending law school at Columbia, and he finished a book, he had begun Harvard.
Starting point is 00:24:39 The naval war of 1812, a book that covers the naval battles and technology used during the war of 1812, and the book was considered in its day and is still considered a seminal work in its field. And it would have a massive impact on Teddy's political career and the formation of the modern American Navy. Boxing, booking, climbing, marrying, taxi-derming. This guy did not know how just to sit back and enjoy being born into wealth. 1881 he starts a politics. All right, actually drops out of school. Columbia drops out of law school to devote more energy to politics. He starts attending meetings at Morton Hall,
Starting point is 00:25:11 the headquarters of New York's 21st District Republican Association, finds allies in the local Republican party leading to unseeding and incumbent Republican state Assemblyman, who is part of the political machine of Senator Roscoe Concling. Now political machines were political organizations in which either one boss or a small leadership group would command the support of a core of supporters and businesses, usually campaign workers, who would receive political kickbacks for their vote gathering efforts.
Starting point is 00:25:37 And why did these exist? Well in the 19th century, the US was seeing huge waves of immigration from Germany, Ireland, Italy, Poland, and more in US cities like New York. They're just not ready for all these new people. They don't have the proper infrastructure, governmentally, to handle the needs of all these people. At the time, lawmakers generally saw their jobs as to prevent crime, and not much else.
Starting point is 00:25:56 So if these immigrants were, you know, unskilled and poor, which a lot of them were, the only way they could get vital help for their families was to become part of some political machine. Politicians might provide them with jobs or money in exchange for their families was to become part of some political machine. Politicians might provide them with jobs or money in exchange for their votes. And so because of this, New York politics super corrupt. And essentially, similar to what Trump campaigned on, Roosevelt wanted to drain the swamp in the New York of political corruption.
Starting point is 00:26:17 And he gets elected to the New York State Assembly, the Lower House of New York State's legislature in 1882, 1883, 1884. His primary focus as an assemblyman is to block corruption. He tries to get a judge suspected of collusion impeached. And even though the impeachment doesn't go through, he makes a name for himself, right?
Starting point is 00:26:32 As someone who will stand up to corruption in the New York newspapers. In 1882, Rhodesville becomes the Republican party leader of the state assembly. And then in 1883, he allies with Grover Cleveland to pass civil service reform. And then in 1884, he writes more bills than any other legislator in New York, but is then defeated for Speaker of the New York State Assembly.
Starting point is 00:26:51 In 1884, not being elected to be Speaker of the New York State Assembly, it becomes the least of Teddy's problems. True tragedy strikes and he faces one of, if not, the very, very worst day of his life. On Valentine's Day, February 14 to 1884, Roosevelt, he's at work in the New York State legislature attempting to get a government reform bill passed when he's summoned home by his family. Just two days earlier, his wife, Alice, had given birth to their first child, a daughter. He'd soon also name Alice and honor her mother and he returns home from work to find that his mother, Mitty, had just suddenly died of typhoid fever just six years after his dad died.
Starting point is 00:27:29 Now he clearly didn't think the fever had hit her that hard or he wouldn't have gone to work that day. And then hours, just hours after the death of his mom, his wife, Alice, died suddenly of brights disease, a severe kidney illness. In his diary, Roosevelt writes a large X for this day, and then writes, the light has gone out of my life. And after this terrible day, Roosevelt basically never talks about Alice again. He doesn't later write about her and his autobiography, and rarely speaks about her to anybody else. My mother, fuck, can you imagine that? You finally got over the death of your beloved
Starting point is 00:27:58 father. As much as one can, you know, you're 25 years old, you're just getting going in your career, you've got your beautiful young wife, you just had your first child, the future looks so bright, and then the grim reaper comes out of nowhere and just snuffs out two of the most important lights left in your life, your wife and your mom, poof, both gone forever. You have a new baby, you had no intention of raising alone, and I'm sure for a short time at least,
Starting point is 00:28:19 no idea what the fuck you're supposed to do with the rest of your life. I feel like sometimes it's easy to think that those born into wealth and privilege don't have the right to complain about anything, you know? But man, death and illness don't give two shits about who you are. And our struggles to chase our dreams and career sometimes
Starting point is 00:28:33 I think it's very easy to forget that we often already have everything we need around us, you know, those we love. You never know how long they're gonna be there, you know, so soak up every moment that you can. Totally devastated. Roosevelt orders those around him not to mention his dead wife's name. God, man, he must have overwhelmed with grief. He abandoned his politics shortly after that leaves his daughter, Alice, with
Starting point is 00:28:54 his older sister Anna, aka Bami. And at the end of 1884, strikes for a huge chance, a huge strike, strikes out for a huge change of scenery and heads out for the Dakota territories to live as a rancher. Now Roosevelt had originally traveled to North Dakota in 1883 to hunt bison. He impressed his guide when he was there at the time, Joe Ferris, for being determined through bad luck and awful weather to keep hunting. And from Joe Ferris, Roosevelt first learns about the business of cattle ranching. Cattle ranching in Dakota at this time was a boom business.
Starting point is 00:29:23 And because of the nutritious grasses of the Dakotas the recent advent of the northern Pacific railroad allows quick access to Eastern markets So the meat could arrive without spoiling and then after the death of his wife Mom and the loss of his election Roosevelt sees North Dakota is not only a business opportunity But also as freedom and he establishes a ranch name Elkorn You know for hunting and ranching hunting and ranchinging in the West proved an effective medicine for this grieving politician over the next few years. Roosevelt would travel back and forth between New York and his Dakota ranch, you know, visiting daughter Alice and then returning out West, helping with the campaign and the fall of 1884,
Starting point is 00:29:59 and heading back to Dakota, you know, by November to help form a regional stockman's association to protect ranchers interests there. The year 1885, so Roosevelt published the first of his three books about ranching and hunting experiences. Sometime late in the year, Roosevelt also began to court his childhood sweetheart Edith Carrow. Now he needs with later Mary and London on December 2nd, 1886, and they'd go on to have five children together, giving them a Teddy Six children overall. They'd have Theodore and 1887,
Starting point is 00:30:26 Kermit in 1889, Ethel 1891, Archibald 1894, and Quentin 1897. And then also raised Theodore's first daughter, Alice. Now Theodore also enters a race for mayor of New York City in 1886, and he loses it. And then he has back to North Dakota, you know what this future political career very much endowed at this time.
Starting point is 00:30:46 But then Mother Nature decides to sour Teddy's North Dakota experience and sending back East, getting back on track for politics. Roosevelt had predicted earlier that the cattle industry of the badlands North Dakota as it currently was being run was unsustainable. Ranch man were flooding the plains with cattle and there was no regulation in the region and all the land became very much overgrazed. And then weather conditions throughout 1886 brought his prediction to fruition. A late thaw and scorching summer meant a short growing season. So now not nearly enough food for all these cattle. Wildfires take their toll in certain areas, making, you know, leaving even less food. And by winter, the cattle are severely underfed and ranches have little feed
Starting point is 00:31:26 that they've been able to accumulate to save for the winter to left to supply for their livestock. So the winter of 1886, 1887 to make it even worse proves to be extraordinarily harsh, just kind of like one blizzard after another. Quickly bear is what little is left with the grazing land and the cattle end up being found frozen to death where they stood
Starting point is 00:31:43 and temperatures as low as negative 41 degrees Fahrenheit. God dang, man. That is brutal, brutal cold. I don't know if you've ever experienced that cold. I have. I've been like Fairbanks, Alaska, and been like Minneapolis, Minnesota, and some of these places where when it gets down below like negative 25, it's this kind of cold. When you walk outside, your face just immediately turns into a Halloween mask.
Starting point is 00:32:05 It just like your face feels like it just freezes hard. It's like breathing in, becomes painful, your eyes feel like they're freezing. It's insane. Your nose inside your nose, all the moisture in your nose freezes, and it feels like you can just crack your nose. It's unbelievable. Hardier cattle survive a little bit longer. They survive long enough to eat the tar paper
Starting point is 00:32:28 off houses in North Dakota before they die. Cows were found dead in trees after the snow melted, having climbed massive snow drifts to reach the edible twigs before expiring amidst the branches. Fucking what a horrible scene that is. Dead rotting trees, I mean, dead rotting cows up in trees when spring hits, man.
Starting point is 00:32:49 I think most stuff like this when I hear people argue against hunting, just like how cattle can become overpopulated so can deer. And if you don't thin out the herd from time to time, you know, it's a little bit of hunting, a different arguably more horrific death is going to meet the members of that herd. Whether it's mass freezing or mass starvation or some nasty virus.
Starting point is 00:33:08 How is a bullet to the head? More barbaric. The fucking peanut rotting carcass in a tree. Anyway, tens of thousands cattle die in the badlands in the winter of 1886, 1887, about 80% of the total population. And the spring, the little Missouri swells into its floodplain surging with the melting ice. Now the carcasses of innumerable cattle are just bobbin down the icy river.
Starting point is 00:33:32 Again, it just sounds like an image of a some like biblical plague. Roosevelt lost over half his herd in this situation. He wrote to his sister, Bami afterwards, I am planning to get out of the ranching business. Yeah, fucking, I bet you are. And then he did get out and he had a back east. I love little moments like this, man, had this devastation, you know, devastating ranching a trusty, not occurred. How much longer would he have stayed in North Dakota?
Starting point is 00:33:53 You know, what if he would have become, you know, moderately successful in ranching? You know, maybe he wouldn't have gone on to go into politics. Maybe he would have been a, you know, a minor cattle bear in the sorts of, maybe a major one. Either way, he's not going to be the historical figure he becomes. Not going to be a president. It's interesting to sometimes, I think, how huge failures can open even bigger opportunities. I think that's something that's kind of important when you're having a rough patch, man.
Starting point is 00:34:15 It's like, obviously he doesn't always work out. Sometimes a rough patch just leads to another fucking, another rough patch, that's a sad truth of it. But a lot of times, when people get creative, they can really do some soul searching in a rough patch that's a sad truth of it, but a lot of times, you know, people get creative They can really do some soul searching in a rough patch and it puts them on a better path in life Even better than the one that they thought was great that they were on before the rough patch yet All right, he did get some cool stories when he was in North Dakota He wrote about one in his 1880 book rant or 1888 books Excuse me ranch life in the hunting trail and early spring of 1886
Starting point is 00:34:44 Just as the ice was beginning to break up on the Little Missouri River, three thieves cut Roosevelt's boat from its mooring at the Elkorn Ranch, and they take a down river. And Roosevelt, out of personal pride, and out of duty, as the Billions County Deputy Sheriff, chases after them with his ranch hands, Bill, Suule, and Will Motdown.
Starting point is 00:35:02 He wrote, we had no doubt, as head stolen it, or as to who had stolen it. For whoever had done so had certainly gone down the river in it, and the only other thing in the shape of a boat and a little Missouri was a small flat bottom scow in the possession of three hard characters who lived in a shack or hut, some twenty miles above us, and whom we had shrewdly suspected for some time wishing to get out of the country. As certain of the cattlemen had begun openly to threaten to lynch them, they belonged to a class that always holds swayed during the raw youth of a frontier community, and the putting down of which is the first step towards decent government.
Starting point is 00:35:38 The three men we suspected had long been accused, justly or unjustly, of being implicated both in cattle killing, and in that worst of frontier crimes, horse-stealing. It was only by an accident that they'd escaped the clutches to the vigilantes the preceding fall. Their leader was a well-built fellow named Finnegan, who had long red hair, reaching to his shoulders, and always wore a broad hat, and had a fringed buck-skin shirt. He was a rather hard case, and had been chief actor and a number of shooting scripts. Accordingly, we once said to work, and our turn to build a flat bottom scale, wherein to follow them, an early one called March Morning slid it into the icy
Starting point is 00:36:14 current, took our seats, and shoved off down the river. There could have been no better men for a triple this kind than my two companions, Sewell and Dowl. They were tough, hardy, resolute fellows, quickest cats, strongest bears, and able to travel like Bulmus. For three days, the three men navigated the icy winding river among the colorful clay buttes, hoping to take the thieves captive without a fight. A shootout was a concern. For Rose, well noted that the extraordinary formation
Starting point is 00:36:48 of the Badlands with the ground cut up into Colise, Seried walls and battle-mented hilltops make it the country of all others for hiding places and Ambu, Ambu, Ambu's Cades. Fucking, that's the fanciest word for ambush, I've ever seen. Ambu's Cades, Ambu's, Ambu's Cades, Fucking fan, that's the fanciest word for ambush. I've ever seen an abuse gates AMB us amuse
Starting point is 00:37:14 Ambus ambus Cades fucking ambushes god damn it man people people spoke so much better Like it is kind of scary sometimes me when you just look at the vocabulary when you read like a letter From like the late 19th century compared to almost anything anyone writes now. We are our languages terribly it does make me understand some of you guys' complaints about when I pronounced like nuclear you know wrong and stuff you know like god damn it I'm like it doesn't matter and then you're like well kind of it does kind of it does because if we just start slaying everything you know pretty soon we're gonna go from the kind of things I've been reading to just like fucking people hiding their people hiding and the kingdom from the kind of things I've been reading to this like fucking people hiding They're people hiding and the find them and they cannot find them and the try hard fucking this shoot There's kind of shoot the bad guys in hard and make it hard and for them
Starting point is 00:37:55 It's try they're trying and that's president and he found them and then you know, he did it great. He did it good Shit fucking this guy. He did it so good Like we're all 20 years we're all gonna be talking like that anyway rose about stool and dow battled against the elements and during temperatures down to zero degrees Fahrenheit following the thieves for days And then he says finally our watchfulness was rewarded for in the middle of the afternoon of this the third day We've been gone as we came around to Ben we saw in front of us the last boat as I clandest to the faces of the afternoon of this, the third day we had been gone, as we came around to Ben, we saw in front of us the last boat. As I glanced at the faces of my two followers, I was struck by the grim eagle-looking their eyes.
Starting point is 00:38:30 Our overcoats were often a second, and after exchanging a few mudded words, the boat was hastily and silently shoved toward the bank. As soon as it touched the shore-ice, I leaped out, and I ran up behind a clump of bushes, so as to cover the landing of the other, who had to make the boat fast. For a moment we felt a thrill of keen excitement, and our veins tingled as we crept cautiously toward the fire. Or as it seemed likely that there would be a brush. The men we were after knew that they had taken with them the only craft they was on the
Starting point is 00:38:59 river, and so fell perfectly secure, accordingly. We took them by absolute surprise. The only one in camp was a German, whose weapons were on the ground and who of course gave up at once his two companions been off hunting. We made him safe, delegating one of our number to look after him particularly, and see that he made no noise, and then sat down and waited for the others. The camp was under the lee of a cut bank, behind which we crouched, and after waiting an hour or over. The men we were after came in.
Starting point is 00:39:27 We heard them a long way off, and made ready. Watching them, for some minutes, as they walked towards us, their rifles on their shoulders, and the sunlight glinting on the steel barrels. When they were within twenty yards or so we straightened up from behind the bank, covering them with our cocked rifles while I shouted them to hold up their hands, and ordered that in such case in the west a man does not after this regard, if he thinks the giver is in earnest and they obeyed. And get I can't get over the fancy talk.
Starting point is 00:39:52 So much fancy talk going on right now. I love like he said all that like you could have said like, and we found these guys and they're fucking coming towards us and we put our guns and we're like, do put your hands up and they did. He says it just like poetically. It took Roosevelt and his ranch hands over a week to take the captives back to Dickinson, North Dakota, where they were handed over to the sheriff there. Roosevelt must have been a pretty just captor because sometime later, ring leader, that Finnegan guy, Mike Finnegan wrote him a letter from prison saying, part of the letter said, PS,
Starting point is 00:40:18 should you stop over at Bismarck this fall, make a call to the prison? I should be glad to meet you. Dude was dedicated to Justice, man. He's a good man. You can tell he loved an adventure. He loved tracking those dudes and bringing them to jail. God, he had plenty of money. He didn't need to do that. He didn't need to take two weeks out of his life and risk death. My either hypothermia or gunshot. But he felt like it was the right thing to do. It was adjustable noble calls that we were after. And you know, and he just fucking, he loved the rush of adrenaline. Clearly. Okay, 1888 Roosevelt tries to rekindle his political career
Starting point is 00:40:45 by helping campaign for Republican presidential candidate Benjamin Harrison. Harrison wins and appoints Roosevelt to the United States Civil Service Commission, a government agency that has constituted by legislature to regulate the employment and working conditions of civil servants. Oversee hiring and promotions
Starting point is 00:41:01 and promote the values of the public service. Through his position was kind of like a cushy job, Roosevelt used it to fight relentlessly against patronage, which is the practice of politicians given political offices to their friends and allies. Roosevelt's close friend and biographer, Joseph Bishop, described his assault on the spoils system by saying, the very citadel of spoils politics, the here-throw, impregnable fortress that had existed unshaking since it was erected on the foundation laid by Andrew Jackson was tottering to its fall under the assaults of
Starting point is 00:41:30 the audacious and irrepressible young man. Again, man, did every fucking person back then go to Harvard? Goddamn. Benjamin Harrison didn't win re-election in 1892, perhaps because of some damage Roosevelt did, actually call him out for patronage, and Grover Cleveland, who President Harrison had previously beat in the 1888 election, becomes a 24th president in the US. In addition to beginning, he was already the 22nd president. Yeah, he was a Cleveland was the only US president to serve two non-consecutive terms. And Cleveland reappoints Roosevelt to the same position.
Starting point is 00:42:05 Then in 1894, William Lafayette strong a reformist Republican wins the 1894 mayoral election in New York City and asks Roosevelt if he wants a job of police commissioner and Roosevelt of course accepts. Seriously, you're gonna offer him some manly shit, of course he's gonna accept. Do you want to be a police commissioner? Do you want to fight crime? Do you want to be Batman? Yes, yes, of course I do. And you basically boot camps to police force, implements regular inspections of firearms, implements annual physical exams.
Starting point is 00:42:32 You appoint 1600 new recruits based on their physical and mental qualifications. He has telephones installed in station houses. And I think you know, like that's important to note there, that physical and mental qualifications is because previously it had been a lot of that patronage. It's just like, yeah, man, my fucking brother works to please. Yeah, you can just, yeah, just get a job with him.
Starting point is 00:42:49 He also goes around late at night, early in the morning to kind of check on his officers, make sure that they're posts at their posts. You know, he takes his, he takes his jobs very seriously his whole life. Gotta respect that. Also in 1894, Roosevelt meets Jacob Reese, a muck raker, and again, muck rakers were generally considered enemies
Starting point is 00:43:03 at politicians because they sought to expose corruption and poverty in the city You know, it's like photography and journalism But Reese really respected Roosevelt as a man who followed through on promises to crack down on corruption So you know unlike what feels like a lot of politicians today Roosevelt just didn't you know talk to talk He walked the walk man He campaigned on fighting governmental corruption and corruption in general and that is exactly what he did once he was elected Got to respect that. 1896 Roosevelt campaigns again for presidential candidate William McKinley this time, a new
Starting point is 00:43:33 candidate. McKinley appoints Roosevelt to a sits in secretary of the Navy in 1897 when he wins in Roosevelt immediately begins to build up a country's naval strength. He's able to do so because the secretary to the Navy was sick most of this time and left just kind of most responsibilities to Roosevelt. Teddy Roosevelt thought by many as the father of the modern Navy, he persuaded Congress to provide funding for modern steel hold battleships among other things. Roosevelt once particularly, he was interested in Cuba's independence from Spain, which would
Starting point is 00:44:02 correlate with them in road doctrine, which is kind of a proclamation made by James Monroe that there should be no European powers in North America. By the 1890s, Cuba had unsuccessfully battled Spanish rule in Cuba for a number of years. The US had economic interests in Cuba, mainly sugar, but also mining, and wanted to stabilize the region. Treaty was negotiated between the US and Spain, where Cuba would become self-ruling on January 1st, 1898. However, a riot took place in Havana and January, and McKinley sent the USS Maine down to restore order.
Starting point is 00:44:32 And then on February 15th, the Maine is exploded and sinks, and the U.S. declares war on Spain in April of 1898. The first battle occurs in the Philippines, Manila Bay, but subsequent battles occur in Cuba and Puerto Rico. In August, Spain begins negotiating a treaty with the U.S. and then Spain gives up Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Guam to the U.S. for a payment of $20 million. Victory in the Spanish-American War bolsters American patriotism, particularly because it was covered in great detail by newspapers across the country.
Starting point is 00:45:00 Roosevelt would make a huge name for himself in this war. Let's talk about the rough riders right now. Now, the rough riders were a group of some of the toughest and craziest sons of bitches you've ever heard of, who became very famous in 1898 for refusing to wear condoms while having sex with many horses, both wild and domesticated. Wait, no wait, I can't be right, sorry, I'm sorry,
Starting point is 00:45:17 I was looking at a different set of notes for that. The ones I wrote down when I was drunk. No, the rough riders were the first US volunteer cavalry regiment formed on May 6, 1898. Teddy Roosevelt becomes second command next to Colonel Leonard Wood. And then he resigns from his post as a assistant secretary of the Navy just days after the US declares war on Spain
Starting point is 00:45:41 on April 25th. Months away from turning 40, man, how nuts is that? Teddy Roosevelt, he's a 39 year old politician. He's a married father of six who just decides U.S. declares war on Spain on April 25th. Months away from turning 40, man. How nuts is that? He did Roosevelt. He's a 39 year old politician. He's a married father of six who decides, hell with this. I'm not sitting in some cushy office while our boys are out there fighting our wars for freedom
Starting point is 00:45:55 and for pushing the American ideals. I'm gonna grab myself a rifle. I shall help on the back of a goddamn horse and I shall shoot me some spaniards. Newspapers quickly spread word about the formation of this new horse, and I shall shoot me some spaniards. Newspapers quickly spread word about the formation of this new regiment. Roosevelt and Wood are flooded with applications. The Rough Riders end up being a bunch of college athletes, ranchers, minors, native Americans,
Starting point is 00:46:14 hunters, sheriff, and of course, Cowboys, primarily from the American Southwest, where people are more prone to ride on horseback and with the gun. They trained in San Antonio, Texas for several weeks. Then they part Tampa on June 13th, 1898, landing Cuba on June 23rd. Roosevelt is promoted to Colonel because he does have a middle name actually and it is motherfucking. And he takes control of the Rough Riders from then on known as Roosevelt's Rough Riders. My God, I have such an admiration bone right now just rock hard with respect and man love. I may have to take off my pants for the rest of this episode?
Starting point is 00:46:46 I'm gonna hurt myself. Or maybe I've had my pants off the whole time. You don't know, you don't know, maybe that's how I get my suck on. The Rough Riders are most famous for their Marchup Kettle Hill on July 1st, 1898, after the Battle of Las Gassamas and Cuba, major general William Shafter. I always want to say Shatner, I see his name,
Starting point is 00:47:04 William Shaatner, Captain Kirk, travels, William. William Shafter, Captain Kirk, travels back in time to fight in the fucking war. No, Major General William Shafter, planned to take Santiago de Cuba, the island's second largest city, reports of Spanish reinforcements on route to the city, cause them to accelerate his plans.
Starting point is 00:47:19 He orders head on assaults against three hilltop fortified positions that made up the city's outer defenses. Entrenchments, block houses, barbed wire, several cannon are protecting the Spanish defenders. The march to attack position is delayed, unit deployment is confused by this narrow, crowded trail, there's a bunch of enemy fire at 8 a.m. July 1st artillery, artillery began firing on Spanish positions and then they cease in order to avoid counter-battery fire. And then at 1 p.m., and while under Spanish fire, the Cavalry's divisions, Tubergades,
Starting point is 00:47:52 led by the first volunteer cavalry under Colonel Thedo Roosevelt, charge and capture Kettlehill, suffering heavy casualties. Roosevelt himself is exposed to heavy enemy fire. Meanwhile, this managed on San Juan Hill tenaciously held back first divisions infantrymen, two American Gatlin guns appear, and their rapid volume of fire lets the US infantry renew their charge and break into the Spanish trenches.
Starting point is 00:48:15 The same time, Calvary men attacking from Kettle Hill, 500 yards away take another section of San Juan Hill. By 2 p.m., the last elements of Spanish resistance have been eliminated. The US would lose 205 soldiers that day. Another 1200 are wounded. The Spanish would lose 215 men. Another 376 are wounded. We had a bully fight. Roosevelt would say the battle. Also later saying that the Battle of Kettle Hill was the great day of my life. How much does that say about this guy, man? What was the best day of your life? Is it a tie between the births of your kids?
Starting point is 00:48:45 Maybe you're wedding? Maybe becoming president of the United States? Any Hmong will consider off spring and a coward can become president, but only a man. A real man can lead a charge on horseback up a Cuban hill under heavy fire and kill some goddamn spaniards. Huzzah! I don't know if he said exactly that,
Starting point is 00:49:01 but I feel like it's kind of was a sentiment. After returning to the US, Roosevelt prefers to be known as the Colonel or Colonel Roosevelt. I love it. I guess that's what he wanted to be called the rest of his life and some people would. He wanted to be called the Colonel, but most people just called him Teddy, which he hated. After returning home from battle, the Colonel campaigns for Governor of New York in 1989 and wins. He's a war hero.
Starting point is 00:49:23 Of course, he wins. Here, he's going to get his first experience with economic and political issues that he's going to face in his presidency, trust, monopoly, labor unions, consumers, safe business practices, conservation of resources. Roseville holds press conferences twice a day to stay connected to his middle class voters. That's pretty awesome. Passes the Ford franchise tax bill, which taxes public services that were owned by corporations,
Starting point is 00:49:43 such as private owned street cars. He tries to balance fair treatment of workers with the fair treatment of the corporations that employ them and the consumers that keep their businesses afloat. Later this his kind of policy of dealing with businesses and people and trying to come up with a happy solution in between the two is become known as square deal politics, square deal philosophy during this presidency. In 1899, McKinley's vice president, Garrett Hobart, dies of a heart failure, and Roosevelt is added
Starting point is 00:50:12 to the vice presidential ticket at the 1900 Republican National Convention by fellow Republicans who think that the vice presidency will actually politically neuter him. This was soon backfire tremendously, and this is something that would come up in his political career a lot.
Starting point is 00:50:23 He was very aggressive at exposing corruption. He was not afraid to go after fellow politicians. And he was very popular, you know, with the common people. And I'm sure that scared the shit out of a lot of his fellow politicians. And we got him a lot of enemies. And at this time, especially the office of the vice president
Starting point is 00:50:39 was just kind of a figurehead position. So they're like, let's fucking get him in there. We can't chase us anymore. We can't do a bunch more damage, you know, with businesses we're trying to get kickbacks from. Roosevelt campaigns for McKinley makes 480 stops. 480 stops in 23 states, you know. And with its reputation as a war hero,
Starting point is 00:50:59 McKinley and Roosevelt win by a landslide. Roosevelt doesn't like Biden Vice President. Virtually powerless position just not sit well with him. But he does, while being Vice President, McKinley and Roosevelt win by a landslide. Roosevelt doesn't like being vice president. The virtually powerless position just not sit well with him. But he does. While being vice president, he was only vice president for six months. Other one of his most famous phrases, same speak softly and carry a big stick. And you will go far.
Starting point is 00:51:16 He said that while speaking to supporters about US foreign policy is a philosophy on it. At a Minnesota State fair on September 2nd, 1901. Now that phrase would come back to haunt him tremendously later in life when it was revealed that he had been savagely beating his wife and several of his kids with that stick for many, many years. You can look at the actual stick that he used to beat his family with. If you check out a very controversial display about his life at the Smithsonian, that's not true. He didn't beat his family, please tell me to one of you believe that for a second. He didn't beat his family. Please tell me to one of you believe that for a second.
Starting point is 00:51:46 He didn't beat his family to stick. That would kind of change the hero tone of this episode a bit. No, September 14, 1901. No less than two weeks after uttering that phrase, which went viral with political cartoonists, Roosevelt sworn in it, sworn in as the 26th president of the United States after William McKinley is shot by an anarchist, a Leon Cholgosh at the Pan-American exposition
Starting point is 00:52:06 just months into his second term. Roosevelt later would say that if Cholgache had come after him, he wouldn't have fired a second shot, referencing the two shots that Cholgache had fired in the McKinley stomach. And then Roosevelt becomes the youngest president ever at 43 years old and appalled Republicans who thought they had put him in a powerless position.
Starting point is 00:52:24 They're like, God, damn it. So October 16th, 1901, right away, Roosevelt starts shaking shit up at the White House. He becomes the first president to invite an African-American Booker T. Washington into the White House. Got to love this progressive man, man. He did what he felt was right. May 12th, 1902, there's a co-worker strike. It begins in Pennsylvania during which 14,000 workers end up leaving their
Starting point is 00:52:45 jobs and Roosevelt sends a strong message to workers to never walk away from their job by executing all of them. No, he did not. How intense would that be? No, what he does is he gets involved. The prospect of coal shortages in the winter months did not sit well with him. He decides that the public interest demands vigorous executive action. He summons up union leaders, mine operators, to the White House, significant gesture for President, you know, a president at that time, and the development of his reform program, known as the square deal, and he ends the coal strike on October 21st.
Starting point is 00:53:11 May 22nd, 1902, the president established his creator Lake, National Park, and Oregon. I flown over that bunch of times. That is beautiful. June 17th, 1902, Roosevelt signs the Newlands Reclamation Act, funding irrigation projects for the Eradlands, about 20 states in the American West. Now without this act there wouldn't be nearly the farmland west of the Mississippi that you see today. So if you're a farmer in New Mexico, for example, well you can thank Teddy Roosevelt for you know giving you the ability to water your crops.
Starting point is 00:53:37 February 14th 1903 Roosevelt signs a bill creating a department of commerce and labor, the ninth cabinet office which will itself emerge as two separate departments in 1913. February 19th, 1903, some trust busting, the Department of Justice announces that the federal government will prosecute the Northern securities company, a subsidiary of JP Morgan, for violating the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. So, again, man, not afraid to go after these people. And you know, because if his family ties, I spoke about earlier in social connections in New York, he knows these people, right? Like the JP Morgan's of the world, the upper echelon executives, I mean, he's seen him
Starting point is 00:54:10 at parties and stuff, he knows he'll see him again, he just doesn't give a fuck, love it. March 14th, 1903, Roosevelt, pro came Pelican Island, Florida, names of the first federal bird reservation. Probably went down there and scanned about a thousand birds to celebrate her some shit. May 18th, he didn't do that. May 18th, 1903, Roosevelt is caught up in a sex scandal. Rumor circulated of him wearing a one-piece fishnet lingerie outfit in the oval office,
Starting point is 00:54:34 this type of outfit, would forever become known as the Teddy. Still referred to the Teddy today. June 23rd, 1903, it's revealed that the previous entry to this time-soaked timeline is complete bullshit. The host of time-soaked has gotten carried away. He's revealed that the previous entry to this time-sub timeline is complete bullshit. The host of time-sub has gotten carried away. He's doing that way too much right now. Bo Jangles actually took a big pit bull shit on some of the research papers he's been using for these fucking nonsense updates. And Nimrod is pleased.
Starting point is 00:54:57 Hell Nimrod. Okay. Okay. Now I'm refocused. November 3rd, 1903, a revolt breaks out in Panama against Colombian rule. The uprising of sponsor by Panamanian agents and officers of the Panama Canal Company with tacit permission of the Roosevelt administration.
Starting point is 00:55:12 The presence of the American Navy prevents Colombia from crushing the revolt. Why would they do that? Why would they be so nice to Panama? November 6th, 1903, the United States recognizes the Republic of Panama. You know, they're just helping out, you know, some little guy, just helping the poor little Panama out of just the goodness of their hearts.
Starting point is 00:55:27 November 18th, the United States negotiates the, hey, you know, Varia treaty with Panama to build the Panama Canal. The treaty gives the United States total control over 10 mile wide canal zone and return for $10,000 in gold plus a yearly fee of $250,000. Oh, that's why the US was recognizing the Republic of Panama. If they had been located where Ecuador is, they would be part of Columbia right now. But the heads down to we wanted and a deal is struck. And I don't even actually have a problem with that.
Starting point is 00:55:53 I'm just trying to joke about it, but that's how the world works, man. You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours. That's the way the world will continue to work. In February of the next year, Roosevelt appoints the Panama Canal Commission to oversee construction. June 21st, 1904, the Republican Party nominates Roosevelt for the presidency, along with Charles Fairbanks as his vice presidential running mate. November 8, 1904, Roosevelt wins a presidential election, 336 electoral votes to 140. Damn.
Starting point is 00:56:19 With the exception of Maryland, Roosevelt wins every state, north of Washington, D.C., including all the Midwestern and Western states, only shit. Democratic candidate, Alton Parker, a long time New York state Supreme Court judge, was his, it was the democ, you know, the opposing candidate, and he carried the South. And some historians actually think
Starting point is 00:56:36 that the even tempered Parker would have made a fine present. But thanks to falling into Roosevelt's large colorful shadow, he ends up as the only major party presidential candidate to never have a biography written about him. So if you would like to learn more about Alton Parker, well, tough shit. Roosevelt was not to seek another presidential term after this victory in order to deflect democratic charges
Starting point is 00:56:58 that he would just remain in office for life. Right, because he could kind of sneak into third one, because he got into office six months after McKinley is in office, he becomes president. So that one doesn't count, even though it's basically a full term. Now he's doing a second. Some people were really worried about him going for that third term. February 1st, 1905, Roosevelt established the National Forest Service. I've heard of it. September 5th, 1905, Russia and Japan signed the Portmouth Treaty ending the Russo-Japanese War, Roosevelt played a significant role in mediating this conflict, urging an end to hostilities, and
Starting point is 00:57:29 bringing both sides to the conference table in Portsmouth, New Hampshire for his actions. He would win the 1906 Nobel Peace Prize, become the first American to win the award. If you remember, this war really accelerated the demise of the rule of the Russian Zars, our Nicholas as spelled out in the rest putentime suck. June 8th 1906, Roosevelt signs the National Monuments Act, establishing the first of 18 national monuments, including Devil's Tower, Mirror Woods, and Mount Olympus. June 30th 1906, Roosevelt signs the Meet Inspection Act, an appear food and drug act. The legislation calls for both an honest statement of food content on labels and for federal
Starting point is 00:58:08 inspection of all plans engaging in interstate commerce. The major impetus for these measures was the jungle. A scathing report on the meat packing industry written by a muck-raking journalist, Uptans and Claire. And it was a book that Teddy Roosevelt had personally read. This is an excerpt from the jungle, which if you're a meat eater like myself, you'll be very glad, after hearing this, not to be eating meat
Starting point is 00:58:29 at the dawn of the 20th century. There was never the least attention paid to what was cut up for sausage. There would come all the way back from Europe, old sausage that had been rejected, and that was moldy and white. It would be dozed with borax and glycerin and dumped into the hoppers
Starting point is 00:58:44 and made over again for home consumption. There would be meat that had tumbled out onto the floor, in the dirt and sawdust, where the workers had trampled and spit, uncounted billions of consumption germs. There would be meat stored in great piles and rooms, and the water from leaky roofs would drip over it, and thousands of rats would race about upon it. It was too dark in these storage places to see well, but a man could run his hands over
Starting point is 00:59:11 these piles of meat and sweep off handfuls of the dried dumb of rats. These rats were nuisances, and the packers would put poison bread out for them. They would die, and then the rats, the bread, and the meat would go back into the hoppers together. Holy shit, oh my god! Wow, remind me never to eat sausage if I travel back in time to the beginning of the 20th century or any time before that. Holy shit, that is horrific!
Starting point is 00:59:42 Oh, just mmm, what did you use to season this sausage? It just has an unusual tangy flavor to it. Oh, you know just the usual just some dead rats and a lot of rats shit and some spit and some poison bread and some spoiled meat. Mold saw dust dirt and I'm pretty sure that Lawrence took a shit on it. Ah, all right, December 12th, 1906,
Starting point is 01:00:04 Roosevelt appoints Oscar Strauss of New York City to head the Commerce and Labor Department in Strauss as the first Jewish-American to hold a cabinet post. I like it. Progressive. March 2, 1907 to get around restrictive language and an appropriation bill restricting the creation of new forest reserves in six western states. Roosevelt issues proclamation establishing forest reserves and affected states before the law goes into effect. All you sneaky badass. Do did what he needed to get done. He's a man of action.
Starting point is 01:00:32 December 16th, 1907 under Roosevelt's orders, the great white fleet, so named because of the boats color, embarks on a voyage around the world from Hampton, Rhodes, Virginia. The fleet returns triumphantly on February 22nd, 1909, having been enthusiastically welcomed at many ports at underscoring America's growing naval strength. Just kind of shown it off. The voyage would serve as Roosevelt's proudest accomplishment and best example of speak softly and carry a big stick. Proudest accomplishment while in office, I should doubt that accomplishment.
Starting point is 01:01:02 A January 11, 1908 President Theodore Roosevelt designated the Grand Canyon in Northwest Arizona as a national monument. Dude loved national parks almost as much. He loved killing and stuff in the creatures that run their grounds. We're on that a bit. During his presidency, he issued executive orders to create 150 new national forests, increasing the amount of protected land from 42 million acres to 172 million acres. Along with the 18 national monuments, he also created five national parks, 51 wild eye refugees during his tenure. March 4, 1909, Roosevelt's administration ends with the inauguration of William Howard Taft as 27th president, and Roosevelt leaves on the year-long African safari in order to avoid charges that he's attempting to run the White House from the shadows. He also left because he had a serious hanker into kill and document preposterous amount of animals,
Starting point is 01:01:46 again, more than that killing just a bit. All in all, Roosevelt was a fantastic popular and effective president, man. You don't get your face on Rushmore, pulling a James Buchanan. Did you ever remember that that guy was a president? I didn't. The 15th and last president before the Civil War,
Starting point is 01:02:00 James Buchanan predicted the day before his death that history will vindicate my memory. And then the day after he died his story and just kept fucking trash him. Just trying to trash his name ever since. Historical ranking of US presidents, considering presidential achievements, leadership qualities, failures and faults consistently placed Buchanan either dead last or among the very least successful presidents in history. Well, that wasn't the case for Roosevelt.
Starting point is 01:02:23 He was a very memorable and successful president. The first president issued over 1,000 executive orders, more than all of his predecessors President in history. Well, that wasn't the case for Roosevelt. He was a very memorable and successful president. The first president issued over a thousand executive orders, more than all of his predecessors combined. He took the power of the executive branch very seriously, consistently fought on behalf of both the natural world with his conservation efforts, and on behalf of the common man with his trust, bus, team, and swamp training efforts, and greatly strengthened the US military, particularly the Navy, with his naval efforts. On March 1909, after leaving the White House, Roosevelt leaves New York for the Smithsonian Roosevelt African Expedition.
Starting point is 01:02:53 The expedition lands in Mombasa, which is now Kenya, before traveling to the Belgian Congo, now the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and then to Sudan. Roosevelt's companions kill and trap so very many animals. Teddy and his son, Kermit, who would accompany him on numerous adventures, seemed to be engaged in an epic rivalry to see who could decimate the most animals. The President blew away no less than 296 large animals, including 15 zebras, 13 rhinoceros, eight elephants, nine lions, eight ward hogs, crocodile, five wildebeest, six monkeys, two ostrichs, Crocodile, 5-Wil-Db, 6 Monkeys, 2 Ostrages, 3 Python.
Starting point is 01:03:27 Meanwhile, Kermit Roosevelt terminated 216 Critters, bagging 8 Lions, 3 Leopards, 7 Cheetahs, 3 Elephants, 7 rhinoceroses, 3 Sables, Lotta Gazelles, 4 Flamingos, of the big game, 100 Scientists and their Associated Porters and support staff, ate about half of them. With the recipe and skinned, the hide salted and packed up for return to this Smithsonian's Natural History Museum. Now, if you're a conservationist or environmentalist, you're just an animal lover in general, I know this may horrify you,
Starting point is 01:03:55 but remember, this is a very different time. In understanding of concepts like endangered species and over hunting, didn't exist as they do now. And by preserving these animals, Teddy did create a lot more interest in environmentalism and conservation of them than he would have if he hadn't done that. You know, because now people could see these animals
Starting point is 01:04:10 in like American museums, which was a lot of times the only option to see these animals. It's not like they could have had the web back then and could just check them out online. You know, for most people seeing a stuffed cheetah in a museum was the only way that they were ever going to get to see one.
Starting point is 01:04:23 Also though, to be fair, the dude clearly loved to shoot the shit out of everything that moved. I guess that probably just goes back to that fascination and obsession with manliness, right? Like his idea of a man was one who'd ventured, who battled, who fought, who killed. And I'm guessing the big game, Huntie, was just part of that, you know. Of course, he liked to explore jungles and kill and examine everything inside of them. It's not actually weird to me that he did this.
Starting point is 01:04:44 It would be weird to me if he got really into like crocheting all of a sudden, you know, or took up building tiny replica boats and put them in bottles. Well, anyway, so you feel, feel what you want to feel about, uh, his hunting. Uh, that's just my kind of take on it. And that's what he did. Uh, Roosevelt returns the US in 1910 and is immediately disappointed with how much Taft is not like him. Uh, he doesn't ask Roosevelt, uh, who a point to, his cabinets, doesn't prioritize conservation, hasn't even considered
Starting point is 01:05:08 running into war on a horseback and killing some spaniards and he makes Roosevelt fucking sick. And Roosevelt decides to cut his goddamn head off and carry it around the White House screaming, are you not entertained? Are you not entertained? Okay, maybe he doesn't take things quite that far, but he does not like taft. He doesn't like how he's doing stuff. And he does really want progressives to take control of a Republican party and publicly breaks with the conservative Taft administration in August of 1910. When Roosevelt gives a speech in Kansas advocating new nationalism, which emphasizes prioritizing labor over capital interests,
Starting point is 01:05:39 controlling monopolies, and he proposes a ban on corporations contributing to political campaigns. Man, just radical shit. Roosevelt is crazy notions of equality, his crazy notions of basic rights for the common man. He's really out there with his beliefs. Well, Roosevelt still campaigns for Republicans in the 1910 state elections, however, on the
Starting point is 01:05:58 state level in Congress, the Republicans are slaughtered. And Republican progressives try to reorganize the party. Then furious with Taft, another Republican,ives try to reorganize the party. Then furious with taft another Republican Roosevelt decides to run for president. Start to envision himself as a savior of the Republican party saying, I will accept the nomination for president if it is just tended to me. If the people make a draft on me, I shall not decline to serve. Well, Roosevelt doesn't win the Republican nomination, taft wins it. And then Roosevelt decides to give both Taft and most of the Republican Party the proverbial
Starting point is 01:06:25 middle finger. At the GOP convention, he moves all of his supporters into the auditorium theater and creates the progressive party, which was known as the Bull Moose Party. After Roosevelt told reporters, I'm his fit as a Bull Moose. And it's now a three party election. Right, then on October 14, 1912, while campaigning in Milwaukee for his new party, Roosevelt runs into a little campaign snack. Get shot.
Starting point is 01:06:47 Get shot by John Schrank. Now, Roosevelt was at the Gil Patrick Hotel at a dinner provided by the hotel's owner, a supporter, and Schrank, who had been following Roosevelt from New Orleans to Milwaukee, went to the hotel. The ex-president just finished his meal. He was leaving the hotel to enter his car when Schrank shot him. According to documents found on Schrank after the attempted assassination, shrank it written that he was advised by the ghost of William McKinley in a dream to avenge his death.
Starting point is 01:07:12 And then the ghost of William McKinley pointed to a picture of theodore Roosevelt. There you go. Man, all the weird dreams in the suck lately. Last episode, Salem Puritans are getting hanged for appearing in other Salem Puritans dreams as violent witches. Now Teddy Roosevelt is getting shot because if a parent and somebody else is a dream, you know, good reminder that you shouldn't pay attention to your dreams. You know, I'll be honest, I haven't looked into validity of dream analysis, but it seems like a bunch of cockamab me
Starting point is 01:07:35 horseshit to me. I had a crazy dream a while ago about something terrifying, and you know what I did? I ate breakfast and I fucking forgot about it, and I went on about my life as if I had never had it, because it was a dream and I live in the real world. But I shouldn't be still hard on shrink. The guy wasn't playing with a full deck.
Starting point is 01:07:49 He was missing a whole suit or two. Soon after the assassination, temp doctors examined shrink and reported that he was suffering from, quote, insane delusions, grandiose, and character. He was committed to the central state hospital for the criminally insane, and Wapan was constant in 1914 and remained there for 29 more years, dying on September 15, 1943 at Bronchial, pneumonia.
Starting point is 01:08:09 Well the bullet shrank shot at Roosevelt passed through the eyeglass case in his pocket and through 50 pages of the speech he was going to give. And then Roosevelt with his experience in natural science knew that since he was not coughing up blood, the bullet had not reached his lungs so he did not need to go to the hospital quite yet. And how crazy is that? Because of him being neurosided, right? So he has an eye glass case in there. Because of him being a very thorough, hard working dude, he has 50 pages of a speech in there,
Starting point is 01:08:36 and it's the combination of that that keeps him alive. That is so awesome to me. And then he delivers a speech with blood seeping into his shirt. Now, take what waits 90 minutes before accepting medical attention. His opening remarks are Ladies and gentlemen, I don't know whether you fully understand that I've just been shot But it takes more than that to kill a bull moose mother That is the most bad ass thing again. Admiration boner Steel right now complete steel. He's 53 years old when this happens.
Starting point is 01:09:07 Can you imagine that your middle-aged man, you just shrug off a bullet to the chest. That seems like something like, you know, some action hero does in a movie. We were like, that's a little much. That's a little much, Van Dam. That's a little much, Steven Skull. Yes, I'm going back with these references.
Starting point is 01:09:22 All right, seems like maybe something in real life possibly for a 25 or 30 year old special forces Navy SEAL kind of dude might be able to do. Not a 53 year old politician. You know, when I was younger, I used to daydream about doing that kind of stuff, about being that kind of tough, probably because I used to watch a lot of,
Starting point is 01:09:35 you know, Van Dam, Chuck Norris, Arnold Schwarzenegger type movies. I have no delusions about that now. There's no way I would give a speech after that. No way. Even if the doctor with me was like, you're actuallyusions about that now. There's no way I would give a speech after that. No way. Even if the doctor with me was like, you're actually not hit that bad. I think you'll be fine to deliver a speech and then we'll just go to the hospital after.
Starting point is 01:09:52 I'd be like, are you fucking crazy? I just got shot. What kind of doctor are you? You'd be fine to deliver a speech. Easy for you to say, doctor, I didn't see it shot in the goddamn chest. I don't feel so good. I feel dizzy.
Starting point is 01:10:03 I have, tell my kids I love them. You're barely bleeding. You don't tell me how to die. You did not tell me how to die. Despite the heroics of persevering through that speech, Woodrow Wilson, the Democratic governor of New Jersey, would win the 6.1 million votes, and 435 electoral votes needed to become president.
Starting point is 01:10:22 Roosevelt would win 88 electoral votes and 4.1 million votes. And so yeah, the third party candidate did not win. Never has, probably never will. But he did do better than an incumbent president, even though incumbent politicians are rarely unceded. For example, the percentage of incumbent seeking reelection and winning it
Starting point is 01:10:38 in the House of Representatives around 85% for the past 50 years. Roosevelt also received more of the popular vote than any third party candidate in history has before or since getting 27.4% of the popular vote. I still think you should won based on past performance combined with speaking, you know, after taking a bullet to the chest. You better they didn't have like televised debates back then. I think I felt like Roosevelt just could have beat that to death on TV. And why do you think the American people should vote for you, Mr. Wilson? Well, I want to stimulate the economy by reducing tariffs.
Starting point is 01:11:07 I'd like to establish the Federal Trade Commission to protect consumers and prevent the formination of monopolies. I would like to improve international trade relations by ridding toll exemptions for U.S. merchants traveling through Panama Canal. I want to build America's prosperous future while preserving its magnificent past. Very good, very good. And you, Mr. Roosevelt, why do you think the American public should vote for you? If a bullet to the chest couldn't stop me from giving a campaign speech, Woodrow, I'd probably cry like a milk-sop Wilson shouldn't be able to stop me from kicking ass for four more years in DC.
Starting point is 01:11:42 Cut to standing ovation, cut to land slide victory. But that doesn't happen. After his defeat, 1912, Roosevelt leaves for a South American expedition 1913. So many more creatures to find, kill, skin, stuff. He gets support from the American Museum of Natural History, loads his many, many guns, promises to annihilate any non-human creature he'll encounter. Roosevelt describes his Amazon adventure as his last chance to be a boy. I love the essence of adventure and curiosity to do that. He was a time-soaker before there was a time-soaker. Now in the Got South America, they decided to add a goal. They wanted to find the headwaters of the Rio de Duvida, aka the River of Doubt, and find a where connected the Amazon
Starting point is 01:12:20 River. It was later renamed the Roosevelt River in his honor. This expedition begins on December 9th, 1913. They started down the river on February 17th, 1914. And so many adventures in Sioux, the explorers are stalked by a band of natives who end up shooting one of the explorers dogs with arrows. A local porter named Julio shoots and kills another Brazilian member of the expedition. And when he's caught stealing food and takes off and isn't caught, Teddy is bitten by the very venomous coral snake. Luckily, his boot kept the snakes fangs, snakes fangs off from region of skin. Teddy's sound curmed nearly drowns when he's canoe flips over in some rapids. Another man and then the same canoe, and that incident does drown. And another boating mishap rose up, El Jumson to the water to prevent his canoe from crashing
Starting point is 01:13:00 against some rocks. Injures has leg terribly, his tropical fever. The leg injury is so bad he would have to endure emergency surgery on the river bank, which sounds terribly painful. The bullet was never recovered, that bullet that was never recovered from the assassination attempt earlier, worsens with the new infection.
Starting point is 01:13:17 Guess it was just probably too risky to take that bullet out, maybe with an operation. Or maybe he just wanted to be that tough. Maybe he just told the doctors when they were like, we're gonna take that bullet out a couple years before this, he was just like, fuck it, leave the bullet in my chest. If I feel like ridding of it,
Starting point is 01:13:32 I'll just reach in and rip it out myself. Roseville becomes hilarious with infection develops fever that hovers around 103 degrees at one point, begs the team to continue without him. Because he felt like he was a threat to the survival of the others, my God, the son of a bitch was tough. Of course, they don't leave him. You know, and then what ends up happening is he loses over 50 pounds because of fever and injury before he returns to New York in May of 1914. To be fair, he did have some pounds to lose that
Starting point is 01:13:58 bullet in the chest earlier had jacked up his workout routine a bit over the past few years. But on some weight, his expedition chargeded successfully a new river for American maps, River nearly 1500 kilometers in length, which is very impressive to me. And while his findings for that river were initially disputed, like basically some people just didn't think that was possible for him to do all that, subsequent expeditions did confirm his findings. Man, he paid for those findings, didn't he? For the rest of his life, he would be played by flares of malaria and leg infections that would require surgery. 1914, World War I breaks out, and Roosevelt argues for a harsher policy against Germany
Starting point is 01:14:32 and particularly German submarine warfare and the atrocities in Belgium. Congress gives Roosevelt the authority to establish four divisions, similar to the Rough Riders, to go to France, how cool is that? But then President Wilson chooses to send troops under General John Pershing instead. Damn it. Roosevelt's young son, Quinn, would fight in this war. He'd be shot down behind German lines under the July 14, 1918 at the age of 20. And Roosevelt was tremendously proud of his son's service. He had once said regarding his sons, I would rather have them, no, sorry, I would rather have one of them die than to have them grow up his weaklings. My God.
Starting point is 01:15:05 The man never softened as he aged. Tough as nails to the very end. A lot of guys would be slowed down by malaria and constant leg infections and that bullet lingering in their chest, but not the bull moose. You still imagine himself running for president in 1916, again as a Republican, but conservative leaders still don't like him. That's a problem with speaking softly and carrying that big stick around. The people used to smack around with the tend to remember getting hit and they don't
Starting point is 01:15:25 care how quiet you were when you smacked him. And then on January 5th, 1919 Roosevelt starts suffering from some breathing problems. He asks his servant James Amos to turn off the light and he goes to sleep. During the night Roosevelt dies at 60 years old after a blood clot travels to his lungs. After receiving word of his death, his son Archald, telegraphs his other sibling saying, the old lion is dead. He died in oyster bay, New York, the same place he loved exploring, finding that seals head back when he was a kid.
Starting point is 01:15:53 And that is the end of an epic time-stop timeline. Good job, soldier. You made it back. Barely. So wow, what a life, huh? There aren't any more adventures like Teddy Roosevelt anymore. Partly because we've run out of real estate to explore. I think guys like Lawn Musk are going to be the next adventurers, space being the next
Starting point is 01:16:16 Amazon rainforest, the next African jungle. Now to be fair, not everyone thought Teddy was amazing. The biggest thing on his legacy is his opinion of Native Americans. The most horrible quote attributed to Teddy Roosevelt is, The only good Indians are dead Indians. Damn it, that is harsh. Hard to get more harsh, and it's actually kind of a bit of a misquote, and there's variations of it online.
Starting point is 01:16:36 The real quote, when I found a numerous sources is, I don't go so far as to think that the only good Indians are the dead Indians, but I believe nine out of every ten are. So still pretty harsh. think that the only good Indians are the dead Indians, but I believe nine out of every ten are. So still pretty harsh. Roosevelt said that during the January 1886 speech in New York, and he also said, I shouldn't like to inquire too closely into the case of the tenth. And then the most vicious cowboy has more moral principles than the average Indian.
Starting point is 01:16:59 So why did he have this opinion? What form this? You know, because other than that opinion of natives, I mean, he seemed overall, especially progressive for the times he lived in. Well, I think the following exchange he had is revealing in March 1905, Jeronimo. Chief Jeronimo was invited to President Theodore Roosevelt to inaugural girl parade.
Starting point is 01:17:17 Actually Roosevelt had five real Native American chiefs that's parade who wore full head gear and painted faces, rode horses down Pennsylvania Avenue. The intent one newspaper stated was to show Americans that they have buried the hatchet forever. That's, you know, that guy high-five somebody, because of that pun. They buried the hatchet, get it?
Starting point is 01:17:31 Because the Native Americans use hatches. Mwah, mwah, mwah. I hate corny humor like that. After the parade, even though I probably do a fair amount of it on the suck, I just hate it with others. I'm that person. I like it when I do it, but I hate it when others do it.
Starting point is 01:17:43 After the parade, a Geronimo met with Roosevelt in what the New York Tribune reported was a pathetic appeal to allow him to return to Arizona. Now he wasn't allowed to go back to Arizona. He'd been taken away from Arizona after various uprisings. He'd had their against white sellers. But then Geronimo, after this parade says to appeals to President Roosevelt, take the ropes from our hands, Geronimo beggedoe Beggd, with tears running down his bullet scarred cheeks through an interpreter. Roosevelt told Geronimo that the Indian had a bad heart, saying, you killed many of my people. You burned villages, and you were not good Indians.
Starting point is 01:18:16 The president would have to wait for a while and see how you and your people will act on the reservation. So, you know, basically for Roosevelt, kind of a dick, you know, not even kind of, when he came to the Americans. And also, I feel like with him, they just were on the wrong side of the war. You know, they were on the wrong side of his philosophy
Starting point is 01:18:33 where he just saw himself as a proud defender of the American people. And as someone, as we realize, talking about, you know, his cavalry, cavalry exploits in this Spanish-American war, somebody who would violently defend American interests. And I think he just saw Native Americans sometimes as a threat to those interests. And he clearly didn't care for them fighting back.
Starting point is 01:18:52 Which I guess I do understand on a military level. Like, it doesn't make a right. It doesn't make a right, but I understand it. To me, it's like when you hear an old World War II, an old white dude veteran, you know, I guess it doesn't have to be a white dude. Some American, some American, some American World War II veteran, you know, he hasn't had to be white dude. A couple of American, as I'm getting at, some American World War II veteran, you know, refer to like Germans as crowds or the Japanese as Japs. Not cool, not right to do that.
Starting point is 01:19:11 But when he's come out of the mouth of somebody who lost friends to German soldiers or to Japanese soldiers, someone who tried to or did kill German soldiers or Japanese soldiers in a war, you at least get where they're coming from. You get where the animal is, animosity stems from. And yeah, Teddy, a man for a man who was so into conserving nature, he was just strangely against preserving Native American traditions. He was a, he was a big believer in assimilation. He wanted natives to us, you know, just say goodbye to their traditions and form new ones as Americans. Tweed Roosevelt, his great grandson and interim director of the Theodore Roosevelt Association
Starting point is 01:19:45 addressed it this way. When asked, he said, in his presidency, he wanted the Native Americans to experience the American dream, but do that by assimilating. The Indian population had been shrieking for a long time and he believed that if they assimilated that meant prosperity for everyone. Well, maybe. Maybe he meant that. I guess so.
Starting point is 01:20:00 And there you go. There you go. I don't even know what else to say. He wasn't a perfect man. I'd like to think that if he was alive today, he would feel very differently about Native Americans. You know, let's believe that maybe. Or maybe when he came to Native Americans,
Starting point is 01:20:11 maybe he would just do the asshole. I guess there's always that possibility. Okay, so that's that. So that is the idea. I didn't want to not address that. Now, let's quickly look at a few other aspects of Teddy's life with some weird facts. We're not bad.
Starting point is 01:20:23 We're not bad. Facts. We're not bad. Weird fact number one, the teddy bear is based on Teddy Roosevelt. Teddy refused to shoot a black bear that had been tied to a tree on a honey next petition. Mrs. Zippy, I can 90 no two, calling it unsportsman-like. It was tied there because he was having some other people who was with because he was having trouble finding the bear to shoot. Well, word of this hit newspapers across the country in a political cartoonist named Clifford Berryman picked up on the story and drew a cartoon
Starting point is 01:20:48 showing how President Roosevelt refused to shoot the bear. Well, haunting. The Teddy Bear tie came then when Brooklyn, New York candy shop owner, Morris Mitchum saw Clifford Berryman's original cartoon over the bear and he had an idea. He put in his shop window two little stuff, Toy Bears, his wife had made,
Starting point is 01:21:03 and he asked permission from President Roosevelt to call these Toy Bears teddy bears. And then the, you know, he got permission, and then the rapid popularity of these bears led him to mass produce them, eventually forming the ideal novelty and toy company, the originators of the teddy bear. All right, second word, fact. Roosevelt once gave his son Archibald Archie a pet badger when Archie was nine. The badger was named Josiah and had, quote, a temper that was short but a nature that was fundamentally friendly.
Starting point is 01:21:30 Archie would carry this little badger around, hold him in his arms, class firmly around what would have been his waist. Well, when it was suggested by his dad that the badger might take advantage of the situation trying to bite his face, Archie, seeing this as an, I love this, a quote, unworthy assault on the character of Josiah replied, he bites legs sometimes, but he never bites faces. So lucky that thing didn't attack him. Badgers are notoriously ill-tempered and aggressive animal. Third weird fact, President Theodore Roosevelt apparently had his family crest
Starting point is 01:21:59 tattooed on his chest. I can't find a picture of this. I don't know if I don't have one exists, but it comes up all over the place. It comes up all over the place online, like a lot of articles, not just weird websites. And you know, in tattoos, we're much more rare, but certainly did exist in Teddy's day. And so, you know, maybe he really did have a chest plate, so fucking cool, and so perfect for a badass president. All right, last weird fact, apparently, while President Teddy used to skinny dip in a Potomac River, after Strenius walks along the Potomac, the President on occasion would shed off all his clothes and take a plunge in the river to cool off.
Starting point is 01:22:30 Can you imagine of Trump did that today? Or if Obama had done that, probably getting impeached or something of their mental health evaluate, if a presidential candidate did that right now, wouldn't matter what the voting record was, wouldn't matter what their life accomplishments were, career over. Forever. I mean, former Vermont governor and one time presidential hopeful Howard Dean, he lost his career over a weird scream at a rally.
Starting point is 01:22:54 Waving your dick around on a river bank, you're done. You're done forever. For sure, times have changed. We're the facts. All right, so that's some weird facts about Teddy Rose of Elts. I thought I'd throw that in there today instead of doing the edit to the internet segment. I know that's, you know, I know you guys don't like that one. I never heard anything good about that one.
Starting point is 01:23:15 So just kidding, just kidding, just kidding. We have time to check in real quick with some idiots. I actually want idiots, but he is exceptionally idiotic, so I hope you enjoyed this. The History Channel did a cool series called The Presidents, and on YouTube, you can watch the Teddy Roosevelt segment. It's a great video actually. Highly recommended if you need more Teddy in your life after this episode. Now, second comment down under this video, user Mr. A. Z. Rancher writes, Because then, a Supreme Idiot user gave me the details, replies with the realtety.dot.dot. And then provides a link to a page on a website called Tomato Bubble, and it's one of the worst websites I've ever come across.
Starting point is 01:24:14 It's a horrifically ignorant. The page I link to, you know, clicking on that link, features a picture of Hitler, and then a picture of Teddy Roosevelt on the top, and it provides the following caption in between the two photos. It says, one of these men is generally regarded as a cold-blooded monster. The other a warm-hearted champion of the common man. What do you think? And then it goes on to argue that Teddy Roosevelt is a bigger monster than Hitler. He fucking kiddie me.
Starting point is 01:24:39 Here's the evidence for this claim. There's a series of side-by-side photos in like this table, you know, just going down, showing how much worse Teddy is the n'hiller. The first is Hitler feeding the baby deer, right? And that one's contrasted with a picture of, you know, Teddy Roosevelt leaning on the body of an elephant he shot. The next is a photo of Hitler hugging and caressing his dog, contrasted with a photo of Teddy kneeling above the body of a leopard he shot. Then there's the next picture, which is, you know, Hitler feeding another baby deer, and then Teddy standing behind a rhino he shot. And then about 10 more of the same shit.
Starting point is 01:25:09 It's just one picture after another of Hitler would be nice to some little animal and then contrast it with Teddy with the dead animal. You know, Hitler with the deer, Teddy with the fucking cheetah, whatever. Then there's finally a photo of Hitler with a cute little kid on his lap titled vegetarian, and the caption, he could not bear to eat meat because it meant the death of a living creature. What are you fucking talking about? This website has to be run by some just dumb shit,
Starting point is 01:25:31 Holocaust and Iyer. What do you mean he couldn't handle the death of a living creature? Right, the dude commanded unprecedented slaughter all across Europe, oversaw the extermination of millions of Jewish people. Oh, he wouldn't need a deer, so that makes him a better person
Starting point is 01:25:44 than Teddy Roosevelt, you piece of shit. That is such a special kind of dumb. If you believe that insanely disgusting, just horribleness. This photo, this vegetarian, the little girl in the vegetarian caption is contrasted with the pick of Teddy labeled as a trophy hunter. As if being a trophy hunter is a bigger sin than being the architect of mass genocide.
Starting point is 01:26:05 Wow, well, user top gear owns doesn't care for giving me the details link either, and posts, give me the details, what a stupid website. It's almost like never mind all the Jewish people and other minorities Hitler was responsible for killing, at least he didn't kill animals. Hitler was a monster who plunged the world into chaos. Teddy Roosevelt won the Nobel Peace Prize
Starting point is 01:26:24 for preventing war, and get your facts straight. To which Dipshit McGee, aka, gave me the details, responds not once, but twice. First with, Hitler was a monster who plunged the world into chaos. Who started the war retard? Oh yeah, class act. Throwing around the word retard like a still 1990.
Starting point is 01:26:41 And then he posts again writing, what a stupid website? Hello well, okay. Ha ha ha ha ha. A lot of ha ha ha is there. Truth hurts, hello well. Truth hurts, no stupid hurts. Stupid, stupid hurts.
Starting point is 01:26:55 And your comments are especially painful because there's so much stupid in them. There's so much. Give me the details, responds with logic, which we all know really works in these situations. Says pretty sure Hitler started the war, you know, with the whole invading other countries, saying Poland, Belgium, France, et cetera.
Starting point is 01:27:10 Give me the details, comes back with an even more stupid response than before. He says, pretty sure Britain and France declared war first, duh, let people say duh, duh, after the commies, not a lot of doctors probably, like not a lot of like PhDs throwing out duh in a comment. After the commies and polls slaughtered many helpless Germans inside of Danzig, et cetera.
Starting point is 01:27:31 And after Hitler pleaded with Poland to stop the killing many, many times, Hitler finally had to do something, anything. Did you go to public school? And then he refers to another page on the tomato bubble website, a page advertising a book about the real truth of World War II, one that makes Hitler
Starting point is 01:27:44 some kind of sweet pacifist victim. What the fuck? User, give me the details. Did you go to any school at all ever? I feel like you just have never left the Aryan nation's compound. You were born on. Just born and raised there. Never ceases to amaze me how exceptionally ignorant some people are.
Starting point is 01:28:01 Flat earth or Scientologist, this motherfucker, people who just willfully oppose obvious truth, man. The rest of the commenters turn on giving the details and he just keeps trying to send them to more tomato bubble pages, the website of them. I'm guessing he's running. Go there yourself if you need further examination into the staggeringly ignorant mind of today's exceptional idiot of the internet. It is an internet. Okay, so to wrap up, Teddy Roosevelt, sadly no friend of Native Americans, but he was definitely no Hitler. And overall, he was an incredible president, man. Overall, incredible president.
Starting point is 01:28:38 He had a legacy that was vast and profound. And I think we should take one more look at it. One more look at America's 26th president with some top five takeaways. Time shut. Top five takeaway. Number one, Teddy Roosevelt was an incredible conservationist with National Park Service which created 1916, seven years after Roosevelt left office. There were 35 sites to be managed by the new organization.
Starting point is 01:29:02 Roosevelt helped create 23 of those sites. Number two, Roseville's presidency oversaw the creation of the Panama Canal, the most important international shipping development of the 20th century, the American Society of Civil Engineers has called the Panama Canal one of the seven wonders of the modern world. Number three, in 1898, Roseville resigns from his post as assistant secretary of the Navy to command a bunch of cavalry volunteers and lead them up Kettle Hill and Cuba, a top of galloping horse and under heavy gunfire to help win an important battle in the Spanish American war. How many politicians would do that today at 39 years old? Who alive in general would do that today? or the man led an African hunting safari and a dangerous South American jungle expedition after being president of the United States.
Starting point is 01:29:47 What former president has done anything half that exciting after retiring from office since. And number five, new info. Teddy Roosevelt was a fighter for his entire life and literally fought for almost his entire life, taking his boxing, you know, the sport his dad taught him as a kid all the way to the White House while president,
Starting point is 01:30:04 he regularly stood toe-to-to toe and went blow for blow against former professional boxers and other sparring partners brought in to fight him. And they didn't take it easy on him. He finally gave up boxing specifically when a punch from a young artillery officer smashed a blood vessel according to some sources, detached a retina according to others and left him nearly blind in his left eye. And he didn't just box well in the White House. According to sports writer John Finkel, boxers, wrestlers, martial artists, it didn't matter
Starting point is 01:30:30 to Roosevelt. If they'd be willing to punch him in the face or pin him to the ground, he'd take them on. He felt it was the only way he could maintain his natural body prowess. Awesome. Time suck. Top five takeaways. So that was Teddy Roosevelt, man.
Starting point is 01:30:47 You don't have to love him, but you can't deny that ass president. Teddy motherfucker Roosevelt legend in his own time. Thanks for listening to that episode. It was a fun one to do. Fun to do one that wasn't about a murderer. You know, for this week or, you know, somebody else dark and terrifying. Not that we won't do many more of those. I do enjoy those as well.
Starting point is 01:31:04 We are going to get strange again on the suck next week, looking into the heavens gate cult, fastening with that. When that one lost out to MK Ultra and the bonus suck about recently, I told you I'd get it on the schedule soon and now it's on the schedule for this next Monday. What made 39 people think that they had to kill themselves
Starting point is 01:31:21 to board a spaceship in March of 1997? How did they possibly come to believe this was a good plan? What was the deal with their Kuku leader, Marshall Apple White? How great is that name, Marshall Apple White? It's like he was destined to be a cult leader. How are these people able to take out life insurance policies that covered alien abduction insurance? Not joking.
Starting point is 01:31:40 They actually did that. Colt members paid $1,000 on October 10th for a policy that covered up to 50 members and would pay at a million dollars 10th for a policy that covered up to 50 members and would pay at a million dollars per person for an alien abduction or impregnation or death caused by aliens. God, we live in a weird, weird world, don't we? And we're going to suck on one of the weirdest, oddest corners of it next week with a fascinating Heavens Gate cult episode.
Starting point is 01:32:01 Special thanks to Time Suckers Andrew Wood, Brian O'Dell, At In at Insert Fake Name on Twitter and any other Time Sucker who asked for the Teddy Roosevelt episode. I hope you liked it. Special shout out to Tim Lane, friend of a coworker of my wife who I heard is a huge Time Suck fan. Thanks to all you Time Suckers for continuing to say hi after shows, for letting me know you're still spreading the sucked coworker's friends and family. It means so much. Sorry, yet again to those still waiting to hear back after writing in and bust my butt, gonna get a head on research and get to that. I will do it one day as soon as time allows. Why does light have to be so busy? Link to tour dates, time suck podcast.com, we can find you know, also the link to Amazon, the Amazon.com little button there so you can
Starting point is 01:32:38 shop and then while you're shopping Amazon, like normally what you can be supporting the show. I appreciate those of you who are doing that every week. It means a lot, and you can also link to the time sucks store, where you can find hats, shirts, much more. I do realize I need to restock a few items. And a huge thanks to those leaving those iTunes reviews, just completed the ninth bonus episode, three weeks after the eighth bonus episode, and now we're already halfway to the next bonus episode
Starting point is 01:32:59 with over 950 reviews. They're so nice. Recent subject lines include Time Suck is my tribe. Me too chances mom 11703 and love love love Yes, you're so nice Andrew T022 and First and only podcast I'll ever listen to by Bolshevik Poodle. What a great screen name his review cracked my shit up when he typed Dan is like your grandpa in a lot of ways He tells long stories explain conspiracy theories and talks constantly about the horrible people on earth. However, unlike your grandpa, Dan is actually funny, does his
Starting point is 01:33:29 research and doesn't make you want to cut your ears off. Hail Memorad and keep on sucking. Well, thank you. Hail Memorad. Love it. There are negative reviews as well. And that's fine. Suck in for everyone. I'm not going to read those here and encourage those. I am so glad it is for many of you. And well, hopefully all of you. And now let's look back at some new info regarding previous episodes and information about the show itself with some time sucker updates. Starting with an update from a long time fan, Bridget Thatcher, I've met her many times at shows and Utah.
Starting point is 01:34:06 Love hearing from Bridget. Bridget wrote in regarding 9-11 saying, Master of Time, I'm not going to lie, I was terrified to listen to the 9-11 podcast and I found myself putting off. Not because I was worried about how you portray it, but because I mainly listen when I drive and everything 9-11 turns me into a sobbing mess and that can make driving dangerous. I know that probably sounds strange, after all these years, I did not lose anyone in the attack, but I did lose something to myself. I was 17 when it happened on delayed enlistment
Starting point is 01:34:30 for the Air Force until I turned 18. I'm not sure if it was because I'd already pled to myself to defend my country, and I didn't feel I was doing my duty while I was waiting, or what it was, but I had them push up my basic training date to December of that year. I felt so strongly that I needed to hurry so I could do my part. I was a child, but I was a child that was fully willing to fight and give whatever I could
Starting point is 01:34:49 of myself, including my life, to bring these pieces of shit down. The base I was stationed at houses, the B1 bombers that were a big part of the war, I very clearly remember standing on my back porch and listening to and participating in the cheers and cries of excitement. Throughout the on-base neighborhood the night it was confirmed that Osama bin Laden intentionally uncapitalized al-Hafat was killed and the small part of me healed that day. This podcast and your representation of the US as a whole was healed, has healed me even more and definitely more than I expected.
Starting point is 01:35:19 You really delivered Dan as you always do. I was not on a heap of tears throughout the podcast like I thought it would be and I actually felt some relief when I found myself laughing. I did cry at the end though. Saves me my house, not driving, hearing about the heroism and selflessness that happened on that day always gets me. Thank you. The one shout out that I felt like was missing was to air traffic control, the chaos that ensued after the events and the way they handled it, getting every single aircraft that was in the sky onto the ground must have been so
Starting point is 01:35:41 stressful and they navigated all with an hours of realizing what had happened. While they weren't necessarily putting themselves directly in harm's way, they still were integral to the fight to protect the United States. So many heroes that day. Thank you again for doing this podcast. All hail Nimrod, and I'll keep on sucking as long as you keep putting the suck out there. Goddamn. Thank you, Bridget.
Starting point is 01:35:59 Man, you Air Force bad-ass you. My God. I didn't even know that about you. I'm glad you got something out of looking back the day and you're right. Lot of heroes that day. Thanks for sharing some new insight. Hale Nimrod. Another update came in from Hannah Weatherwax about the Salem Witch Trials. And it is hilarious. So we're going to go from dramatically meaningful to ridiculously hilarious. Hannah wrote in saying, hey, master sucker, just wanted to update you on Thomas Granger and the specific problems with bestiality
Starting point is 01:36:26 that occurred in early settlements. He was one of the first people put to death in the Plymouth County in the Plymouth colony. He was convicted of buggery with a mayor, a cow, two goats, sheep, two calves, and a turkey. My point is that they're definitely, we're issues with bestiality in the US and the Thomas Granger definitely had a fetish for livestock.
Starting point is 01:36:46 There was definitely a good reason for having laws against beach reality in the legal code. Also, I'm happy that my 11th grade US history class is finally coming to good use. Hail Nimrod and a weather wax. Oh my God, that is amazing and disturbing. Who's fucking a turkey? I guess Thomas was, man, how is that even possible?
Starting point is 01:37:02 Man, why is turkey sex really that much better than just jerking off? Why do people have to overly complicate their sex lives? I just don't get it. Man, thank you for enlightening me to the real problem of animal buggery and colonial America. I'll never forget that update. How did they catch him?
Starting point is 01:37:15 I just wondered too. Did he actually confess to all that? Did they have a sting operation with somebody just like falling around with the notebook night after night being like, this is God dang, he's fucking a horse now. I don't have to detail that. A couple hours later, he's fucking horse now. I have to detail that. A couple hours later, somehow he got a little raccoon. He's buggering that.
Starting point is 01:37:30 You know, next night, you're like, how did he, how did he catch a squirrel? And I don't even understand how this is happening, but he's humping the shit on that squirrel now. Ridiculous. Slender man trial update, from Time Sikker Mike Mead. Another fan of the show and I've met several times,
Starting point is 01:37:45 I did a Chicago great dude, 15-year-old, and Nissa Weir, one of the two Wisconsin girls who tried to sacrifice their friend to appease the mythical slender man when they were all just 12, was just determined, a couple days ago by a jury to be mentally ill at the time of that attack. And now she will spend at least three years
Starting point is 01:38:01 in a mental hospital instead of being sensed to 10 plus years in prison. After those three years, she'll be evaluated for at least every six months. She's already been incarcerated just FYI for over three years. The other stabbing participant, Morgan Geyser, has pled not guilty to one count of attempted first degree intentional homicide by reason of mental disease or defect. Her trial is set to begin October 9th. I'm guessing she will be found not guilty
Starting point is 01:38:25 if she's going for that just because if Anissa is mentally incompetent, if you've watched that, if you listen to that episode, Morgan seemed to be more so. So it'll be interesting to see how that plays out. And one last update, it's so rewarding when you guys let me know how much of suck means to you. I mean, it really does mean so much. Especially when I'm tired, running on very little sleep,
Starting point is 01:38:44 trying to get to the point where this app is built and hopefully I can hire some help. In addition, I have the fantastic volunteers I do. This email just meant it felt so good to receive just a few days ago. It came in from Time Sucker and Fantastic Human Bean, Bill Stoff, or Stau. I should have asked the pronunciation. It's always tough for me with names. As you know, listening, it's STOUGH.
Starting point is 01:39:05 Stowe, maybe Bill Stowe. Bill Stowe wrote in St. Dan, you time suckin' mother. I am so happy to have been introduced to your podcast by a former student, Brad Hildbrand. I was his high school English teacher millennial ago. Hey, Mr. Stowe, he's probably granddad and can't seem to drop that, Mr.
Starting point is 01:39:19 you need to check out Dan Kermann's time suck. Reminds me of your style or something like that. I taught those hormone clusters for 32 years. I did and I am caught up with your episodes. You are a natural born teacher. You need to be in front of a class, but know it's great what you're doing here. You've unleashed or excuse me,
Starting point is 01:39:35 your unleashed approach to learning is how I would have liked to have been. I did pull on the leash. I sure would have liked to use mother fucker for the emphasis it provides. I'm on highway 285 North New Mexico, somewhere ahead at home to Denver, and just this minute finish or sail in which trial is episode, I sailed into a cutout to write this, if I put it off I won't.
Starting point is 01:39:52 I don't have time to write all I'd like, but you nailed it. This is a subject I know something about, having taught the crucible, off and on for three decades, due to its fucking perfect historically accurate, extremely thorough, and damn funny. I had to pull off the road a couple of times to pee. Old guy, literally laughing out loud, no shit, mouth open, loud laugh, or in sudden urge to take a leak. That may be your best episode. Those Puritans were crazy motherfuckers.
Starting point is 01:40:15 I would have loved to have been able to say that in class, loony cock suckers. You covered it and sucked up an hour and 44 minutes of road time. Game on, back on the road, bill. God dang it, bill, you got me, man. Maybe it feels so good when you sent that, man, I love you, buddy. That feedback means so much coming from a teacher, and I want to use this as an excuse to thank all you teachers out there. I'm sure a lot of you wish you could drop motherfucker in classrooms for time to time. You are building the future of this world. Your cause, your vocation may seem thankful as a times, but it is incredibly
Starting point is 01:40:42 noble and important and beautiful. you're shaping our fucking future. You're guiding the minds that will lead the world tomorrow, may not seem like it at times, but you are touching young minds in an incredibly powerful way, and changing the future destinies of students as you do so, as you inspire them. I had some teachers that remind me of Bill, man, interesting, inquisitive, curious minds
Starting point is 01:41:00 who made learning so much fun. I wouldn't be doing this right now without them, you know? So thanks, Mr. Uptogrough. Thanks, Mrs. Bagley, Father Rhime, and the many others who pushed me to take a closer look at the world around me, you're the fucking best. I'm so proud of my sister, Donna, for being a teacher and for being a damn good one at that.
Starting point is 01:41:17 And that's all for today's Time Sucker Updates. [♪ Music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, music playing, suckers, I need a net. We all did. That's it, everybody. Follow the suck on social media time suckers. You suck heads at time suck podcasts on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram. Have a great week. Take curious. And give a listen to Michael Motherfuck and McDonald's brand new album, Wide Open.
Starting point is 01:41:40 Just dropped this past week, first new studio album, and many years, still got it. You better find it in your heart. You don't let find it in your heart now, baby. Sounds a little bit better when he does it. Sounds a little bit better when he does it. Take a page from Teddy Roseult's playbook, do something adventurous, try not to get your eye punched out, and keep on sucking. I'm a bitch. I'm a bitch. I'm a bitch.
Starting point is 01:42:06 I'm a bitch. I'm a bitch. I'm a bitch.

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