9 Rinkrinkerfink Facts about Dr. Seuss

ideas in Switzerland, near the forka pass. There's a little town called Gletch, And two thousand feet up above Gletch there's a smaller hamlet called Ubergletch. I go there on the fourth of August every summer to get my cuckoo clock fixed. And while the cuckoo is in the hospital, I wander around and talk to the people in the streets. They are very strange people, and I get my ideas from them. Of course, so apparently he hated the question

where do you get your ideas? And you got to ask so much This is the answer he came up with. But today's nine Things is all about everyone's favorite doctor, Doctor SEUs, So let's dive in good y, hey their podcast listeners, Welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson and as always I'm joined by my good friend man Ticketer and sitting behind that soundproof glass refusing to eat his breakfast, even though you know what we've provided him with, what a box and a fox. I think he might

prefer it with a boat and a goat. I guess so. Well, that's our friend and producer Tristan McNeil. And actually he's on the other side of some new soundproof glass. So much happening here at how stuff works that we're actually in a brand new studio. I think they called this. They call it a whisper room, Is that right? Yeah, but they haven't named it after rock Star yet. Okay, so we have we have Bowie, and we have Eno

and now we're waiting to name this one. Huh. Okay, all right, Well we'll let Tristan decide what that's gonna be, because he's pretty bossy. All right, Well, man, go back to are a topic. I know you're a fan of Dr SEUs. I'm a huge fan of Dr SEUs. But

do you have a favorite fact about him? Definitely? So you know, we've both read a lot of little things about him over the years, and there's so many cute facts like he, uh, he wore bow ties because they were harder to spill soup on, or he actually had hundreds of hats that he kept hidden, but he pulled

him out for dinner parties. But my favorite thing about him is that his doctor told him he had to quit smoking, and he had this little pipe that he used, but instead of smoking with it, he potted a little p plant in it, and a friendly like some people say it's a strawberry plan. Some people say it was like a radish plant. I guess, But whatever the case was, whenever he had an urge to smoke, he'd actually take out a little medicine dropper and feed his little pipe. Yeah.

I just think it's one of my favorite little facts about him. Yeah, I like that. But you know, the thing I always get stuck on is the fact that he didn't have any kids, and apparently he and his wife Helen had tried to conceive but they couldn't. Yeah, it actually heard that, And also that he was scared of kids, like he had this quote, you make them, I amuse them. Well, I think he thought they were unpredictable, and you know, found them a little hard to be around.

But he'd also get annoyed when his friends would talk endlessly about their kids, so he made up a couple of his own, just to drop in a conversation. I had never heard that. Yeah, sometimes he'd signed their names on this Christmas card, so you might see, you know, his and his wife's name, but then also kids like

Norval and Wally and Wickersham and Snud of course. But the pride of his family was little Chrysanthemum Pearl, the daughter he'd boast about the most, and apparently she was super precocious for an imaginary child at least, and made a quote most delicious oyster stew with chocolate frosting and flaming Roman candles. He even dedicated a book tour the five hundred Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins. That's really funny, and

I've actually never heard that before. Actually, speaking of things I hadn't heard before, there's this story that Mark Mancini wrote for Mental Fluss, and it's about the time Teddy Roosevelt traumatized a young Theodore geisl which which is I guess Dr Seuss real name. That's right, you know, because SEUs was actually his middle name, and it's supposed to

be pronounced I think zoice, right, Yeah, that's right. It was a pen name he adopted over the years, and even though people mispronounced it, he kind of liked it better as Zeus because it rhymed with mother goose, so he accepted the mispronunciation. But uh, back to my stories. So, during World War One, the Boy Scouts started selling war bonds to help the forces abroad, and a young Teddy Geyzell decided to join in the efforts and prove his patriotism.

He was actually of German heritage, so he felt he had something extra proven. Remember this is when like sauerkraut was being rebranded as Liberty cabbage, so there's a lot of anti German sentiment. Anyway, As part of Troop thirteen of Springfield, mass geis Ll sold over a thousand dollars worth of bonds. And this is way back in Yeah that's a lot of money. Yeah, certainly, so, like any fundraiser, his grandparents actually kicked in a lot of dough to help.

But he did so well that the Boy Scouts decided to honor him and nine other boys for their work, and they sent Teddy Roosevelt to town. But the problem was they only gave tr like nine medals, and when Dr Seuss walked on stage, he was the last one to get his, and Teddy Roosevelt didn't have a medal for him, so he just yelled what's this boy doing here? And then this other parent like instead of explaining the situation, he just whisked him off and uh, and apparently Dr

SEUs was just totally humiliated. That's like, that's kind of sad though. Yeah, I mean, I guess it is kind of an honor to get barked up by Teddy Roosevelt, but it must have been in volmer. Yeah. Well, you know, one thing I love about Dr SEUs is that that wasn't the only time he actually got in trouble. And this is kind of a well known story, but back when he was in college at Dartmouth, he was actually kicked off the college humor paper for being caught with

a bottle of gin. And that this was during prohibition, of course, and he was actually the editor in chief at the time, and his grandfather was a brewer, so if anyone could get his hands on alcohol during that time, it would be Geyzell. But but that didn't stop him from writing and drawing. And it's actually when he started playing with pseudonyms, and he continued work under names like THEO Lessa, which is his name backwards, THEO fast as SEUs or Rosetta Stone and then of course later Dr Seuss.

And also I don't know if you knew this, but he did a stint at Oxford after college. He was doing his masters there. I had no idea he'd spent time in Oxford. Yeah, that's actually where he met his first wife. But then he returned to the US to start his work as an illustrator. But why don't we talk a little bit about some of our favorite books? Definitely, So one book I loved as a kid and I had actually heard a political rumor about was Marvin K. Mooney,

Will you please go Now? And it's about someone telling little Marvin the millions of ways he can and should definitely go, and then at the end he finally leaves. But the rumor I had heard about it was about Richard Nixon. So it came out two months after Watergate, which is what made people think the two were connected. Though it's highly unlikely that SEUs could have written it and put it out in time to coordinate with that.

I mean, SUSI used to work for eight hours a day on his books, and it often took him like a year and a half to two years to be happy with them. So it was more of a happy coincidence, but one that he was actually happy to indulge. And when the book came out, he sent a copy of the book to his friend, the political humor columnist Art buck Walt, and uh, he crossed out the name Marvin K. Mooney and added Richard M. Nixon throughout it. And buck Walt actually printed the whole book as a column, which

you know, only hidened the rumors. But what's funny is that the book keeps resurfacing from time to time, uh, you know, with new politicians in his place. So it was actually used for Mubarak in Egypt recently, and Maureen Dowd referenced it in relation to the Clintons. Wow, I had not heard that before. All right, well, here's something I had learned while researching The Cat and the Hat. This week, not every week, you get the research. That's

what I love about her jobs. But Apparently the inspiration started with an article in Life magazine. Now this was in nineteen fifty four, and it was by a writer named John Hershey, and this is from biography dot com. So Hershey writes, quote, in the classroom, boys and girls are confronted with books that have insipid illustrations depicting the slicked up lives of other children, all feature abnormally courteous,

unnaturally clean boys and girls. In bookstores, anyone can buy brighter, livelier books featuring strange and wonderful animals and children who behave naturally and sometimes misbehave. So an editor read that and invited Dr SEUs over. And at the time he was more of an ad exact and a political cartoonist, and he said, write me a book that kids can't put down. And the Cat in the Hat is the

result of that conversation. That's pretty awesome. I've actually read something about how one of the things Dr SEUs is proudest of was killing off the boring Dick and Jane series, I think so I read that too, and he really tried to infuse a bit of mischief, and he wanted the kids to be inspired by the cat. You know, to revolt against authority, but not too much. They of course clean up the mess at the end of the story.

But the other funny thing I learned was that the fish in the story, who's you know, kind of the kid's conscious, but is also a doomsday character. He was modeled after Cotton Math or you know that the Puritan minister. And like you said, you know, SEUs really worked hard at that book, and it's not easy to make something come pelling with less than two hundred and fifty words. But after a year and a half's worth of work, the book published and it was an immediate bestseller. I

love that. But let's take a quick break and then do our last two facts. Welcome back to Part Time Genius. Now we're talking about doctor SEUs, so Mango. Obviously, there's too much to cover, No way we could cover this in just one nine things. We might have to come back to this as a full length episode at some point. But but what do you want to cover for your

final fact? So, I mean, I know there's a lot to say about the lorax or the sneeches and how it was actually written because it inspired the civil rights movement, but uh, the story I want to talk about is that without doctor SEUs we wouldn't actually have the Barren Steine Bears. Really. Yeah, So apparently the Barren scenes were inspired by a New Yorker profile of doctor SEUs that was just written about how he's launching this new imprint

for Random House. And apparently once they submitted their entry, he took to the couple immediately, and of course he had lots of notes for them. He actually shortened their author's names from Stanley and Janice to stan and jan so they kind of had where that sous r. And he asked them to make their rhymes in the books with more consonants and less contractions because it was easier

for kids. He also thought kids want more details from the books, so so he actually asked them to think about, like what type of tobacco does Papa Bear smoke, which you know is one of these details that kids might love, but it's funny to think about because you know, you don't want to talk to kids about tobacco. But mostly he tried to get the story to move, and he

asked them to put something compelling on every page. And the Berenstein's first they wanted to do a follow up book about penguins, but their book did so well that they've actually done hundreds of books ever since. I remember seeing this, uh, this interview about why they chose to write about bears, and I think it was stand that said, you know, something to the effect of, you know, we we chose bears because they can stand up on hind legs and they look good in clothes or something like that.

I like that. I mean, it's also funny to me that SEUs commissioned this very sweet book on bears and morals. But the books he actually loved the most for those by Maury Sendak, because they're darker and more of what he related to as a kid. Yeah, but what's your last fact? All right? Well, like you said, there's so much good stuff about Dr. Sus. I definitely think we can do a full episode on the Grinch who Stole Christmas Eve. So this is super short of all Dr

Seus's many accomplishments. Do you know what he was most proud of? I don't know. Maybe that Gerald mcboying Boyne cartoon, or or that he was the first person to win a Pulitzer for writing children's books. He would think, I mean,

that seems like a pretty decent accomplishment. But you know, the thing he was proud of stuff was donating the lion waiting pool at the San Diego Zoo, Like so who's actually had a history with zoo's And he of course wrote the book If I Ran the Zoo, which you know, is famous for the first use of the word nerd. So we have him to you know for that, that's a big one. But his dad also managed the zoo when he was a it and he'd go down and draw the animals there and it's part of where

he learned to love to draw. That makes me smile, and it's definitely something I didn't know before today's episodes. I'm gonna give you the trophy, thank you so much, but actually, you know what, I think Dr Seuse deserves the trophy. So we're just going to voice this to Dr Seuse. Thank you guys for listening, and we'll be back with a full length episode tomorrow