What Were Human Zoos?

Jerry's soup. Jerry's miso soup. It smells like, aren't its it's I don't know what that is. Because miso soup smells good. I don't think that's me. So it is generally cloudier now Josh is smelling. It smells like miso soup mixed with hospital corridor. If you were smelling, why did the soup ripple under your nose as if you were blowing out so gross? Did not see this intro coming? Chuck? Oh goodness, So you feel okayh yeah, okay, a little

unwieldy lately. This's gonna be that's gonna be good. This is a really interesting one that a lot of people I think don't know about. I didn't know much about this, and I think I came across an article just randomly somewhere, you know, human zoos. What is that? And I was like, oh, yeah, it's like if you went to an EPCOT exhibit where they were showing like, hey, this is what this interesting tribe is like in this part of the world. Okay,

so so far kind of epcotty. Let's say Scandinavians. That all depends on your approach, you know, as long as it's not like, look at this weird tribe and it's like, look at this interesting thing, right, look at this weird tribe and maybe like throw money and bananas at them to get them to dance for you. Well, we didn't

get to that part. It's like if EPCOT used humans instead of you know, statues, and they do use some humans to an extent, you could actually kind of weirdly trace a line between Epcots like around the world thing and this I don't know what that is. So you know the big dome head Upcot, the geodesic domes. If you go behind that, there's a bunch of different countries. I went to Epcot when I was like twelve, Oh oh yeah, yeah. Yeah. There's maybe a dozen countries, maybe ten,

and it's staffed with people dressed like people from those countries. Sure, but they are from those countries, right, A lot of them are, if not all, that's the deal. Like, if you're Sweden, you're Swedish, okay, and you're coming out like saying, hey, I'm from Sweden, how can I help you today? Have some food? Basically the whole points to go eat. But they're they're people kind of bringing their culture forth to to be um enjoyed and um and to captivate the

people who were at Epcot. Right, Yeah, there's there's a right way to do that. There is. The human zoos were the exact wrong way to do this, and not only was it the wrong way to do it, they

were done for all the wrong reasons too. Yeah, I mean I was I wasn't trying to defend this at all when I was researching it, but I did think about the time period and like a Westerner's inherent fascination with other parts of the world, which at its base is like that's fine, It's okay to be fascinated with another part of the world totally, but not like you know, look at how weird that person is who is different

than me. Let's make fun of them because they you know, we'll call them more primitive than we are, right, or are inherently inferior to our race, which was another prevailing idea, and the the whole the premise of this chuck started with, like you said, just pure curiosity. It was, you know, Europeans traveling around the world to new areas and we're

encountering people that they'd never encountered before. And there were a there was a thread of people who were exploring and like saying, hey, you want to come back to England with me, or to France with me, or to the Netherlands with me. Um, I can actually introduce you to the king and the person would hop along on board and they would go back and they would be gawked at and and everything. But they were treated as

an individual. They had an identity, they were a person even though they were different and another they still had some sort of agency. That was step one that didn't last very long. Well, no, because as we saw, there was a fine line between you can go meet the king and you can be the King's pet basically, yes, yeah, yeah, So step two was really supported by this whole thing

that happened. And about the eighteen hundreds, the early early, the first half of the eighteen hundreds, I gather something called like biological anthropology, and it basically is that thing that I said about the hierarchy of races, where one race is superior to another that's inferior, and that you know, there's a spectrum of human beings and UM on the one end, or white Europeans, which under this this idea, this auspice was the pinnacle of humanity, and on the

other end, it just kept going and going until you basically reached um. Other primates like the apes and all other peoples of the world were on the spectrum either closer to Apes, closer to to white Europeans, but but

really nothing compared to white Europeans. And so there's this idea that the people around the world were to be studied and analyzed and and um poked at and prodded and measured in this to support this burgeoning science, right yeah, in the name of like study by scientists, supposedly, but as far as the general public was concerned, something to do on the weekend. Well that was stage three. Yeah.

Stage three is when the public is finally brought in fully and that's when the human zoos really come in. And that was the peak of colonialism. You remember our Druids episode. It's just dropped today. So do you remember we talked about how like Caesar and some of these other conquering Romans were like basically writing propaganda about the Druids. They committed human sacrifice and cannibalis and all that. So

they need to be civilized by the Romans. This is the same exact thing, except it was you know, nineteenth and twentieth century Europeans who were showing their people back home. Look at how uncivilized these people are. Um, we need to civilize them. This is it's good that we are colonizing the rest of the world. Yeah. And obviously, um, this happened in Europe, it happened in the United States and North America. UM, in France and the eight hundreds

late eighteen hundre it's there was a a place. It was an agricultural site. Um. And this was sort of like that Epcotty idea, which was basically like let's throw something called the Paris Colonial exposition, and let's recreate these uh and indigenous villages from the colonies. That's always in the background. You know. People can't forget that because it's not Epcot. It's like, these are places we have conquered basically, um,

and see what life was like there. So they would recreate this with human live human beings, um, not quite human zoos at this point, but more like acting out like what they did, you know, wherever they were from, but also really playing it up to the point where it was just totally artificial. Yeah. Well, yeah, that might speak more to just all art back then there was

a lot of subtlety and right performance. But if you're also if you're saying, look at how one civilized these are, and then turning around to the people, be like really kind of like play up the shouting thing. Yeah, of course. Well they wanted to sell tickets or at least drive people, you know, drive people's attention there. I don't know if they were selling tickets, yes, said this one specifically. I

believe they were to the Paris colonial um. So the other thing you have to remember is they weren't just sort of like, uh, it was sort of like they were carneys, they weren't treated well, they had terrible living conditions. They would get sick, they would get disease, they would be left in the cold, and if they died, they

would be buried in a mass grave, whether unceremoniously. Yeah, so that's another thing, Like because the humans zoos are horrific enough, just the idea that that they put on these things, and then even worse than that that people came to see and like throw money in bananas at people and like mock them in jeer at them. Um, that's bad enough, But then the idea that these people lost their lives as a result of coming over to Europe to put on these performances or whatever, and we're

just buried in unmarked graves. That just takes it down just the darkest path there is, you know, like that that you go to Belgium to to be in this exhibition and end up buried in an unmarked grave. You lost your life because you went to a place you otherwise wouldn't have gone had Belgium not colonized Congo, you know, in in eighteen seventy six, right, Yeah, I mean Belgium. We can get into that a little bit what was

their exhibit called Congo Rama. Well that was the last one of all of them, but sure, yeah, I mean the first one they were just something. It was France Belgium. Uh, like I said, it was going on all over the place and they had congo rama spelled with the K even well I think this's Belgian, is it? I think? So okay? Or maybe they're just trying to sell more tickets. Um,

who knows. Uh. These were men, women and children once again put in these basically shows that show uh what they're a ley life was like like these living exhibits where white Europeans would be behind defense. It was always important. There was always huge offense there to sort of trump up the idea that like beware of what you're close to, not just that chuck. It also reinforces a sense of separateness and otherness too. Oh yeah, you know what I mean,

Like there's no mingling. You weren't meeting the people, like where you just didn't walk up to somebody and like introduce yourself to the person who was putting on the performance. There wasn't any co mingling. It was offense separated you from them, and you were there to observe and watch them, and they were there to perform for you. Yeah. And this uh, jumping back to King Leopold the Second brought over two hundred and sixty seven Congolese men, women and

children to Brussels. Uh. And this was not even for the Congo rama exhibit. This was for his own palace basically, yeah, saying like put them in canoes and lakes and put them over here in the fields, and I just want sort of like this stuff going on all over the place. Yeah. He made it like a diversion. So this is a big deal for the Congo. And King Leopold also was just a straight up villain. If you are um fascinated by this kind of stuff and horrified by you should

go check out behind the bastards. By our colleague Robert Evans, he's done some work on King Leopold the Second himself. But so Belgium gets the Congo during this this this U conference in Berlin in the eighteen seventies where basically Europe divided up Africa and so this is our colony. That's your calling, that's you're calling me. And the Congo went to Belgium and Belgium is like this little tiny country and the Congo is something like sixty or eighty

times the size of Belgium. But Belgium went there and just ran rough shot over the people who were living there, to expla void it um for its rubber and to make money off of this this possession that it now had. But part of this also was for the king to show these people belong to us. I'm gonna have some come live in this in their primitive ways on the royal grounds, and all Belgians are welcome to come see

our new possessions. And they did, like more than a quarter of Belgian residents citizens came to see this, this display the King put on. Yeah, and this was in seven but Belgium, like they had one of the last ones, like you said, in nineteen at the World's Fair in Brussels. That was a Congolese village there and uh, I believe they had almost six hundred people. Um. They were paid And a lot of people will point to that and say, like they didn't have to be there, they could leave.

They were paid, But that's sort of I don't know, that's a bit of a whitewashing. I think so because a lot of them died as well because of the

cold summer. And I think that's really important though to bring up Chuck, Like if you read a lot of a lot of stuff on this, like it's just like these people were victims and and nothing more, um, And there removes a lot of agency from a lot of the people who went there to make money, um, off of the the Westerners who were going to come gawk at them or whatever, and they went back home and

they took their money with them. Um. There was there were people who were straight up like victims, who were straight up captives who were brought to you know, Europe in America virtually against their will or or they were um they were tricked or fooled into signing contracts whatever. But there were a lot of people who came on their own accord and did it because they wanted to,

because they wanted to make money or whatever. And you have to like, the whole thing is more complex than that, and you have to recognize that fact so that the people do have agency still the agency that they did have. But at the same time, you can't point to and be like, see, that justifies everything the white Europeans did,

because it really justifies basically nothing. Well yeah, and they talk about after nineteen fifty eight that was like kind of the last Um, well, we'll talk about some sort of modern versions of this, but like ecot no, no, we love our friends at Disney. We love our imagineer friends. You know what they're called. Yes, imagine you gotta earn that rank. I think it's a specific kind of job at Disney. Okay, I think, Um, I think you really know this, but you'd have to kill me if you

really divulged. You've got the insider secrets. Um. So, yeah, this is one of the last ones. And they said that the advent of movies and motion pictures is what really stopped it, because it's not like it's not like they said we just shouldn't do this anymore. They were just like, well, now we're just gonna make degrading racist films portraying these people, like ten years later and have

and have a lot widespread, more widespread release. What was that first documentary called like Mondo Kane or something like that. I've never known how to pronounce it, but it was like my sen I don't know, Yeah, that's right, that's how it spelled. But it was like the predecessor to things like faces of death or whatever. And it was just they just took their their camera and went around the world and looked at how savage and weird other people were who played up everything for the camera, just

focused on weird rituals and stuff like that. But it was the exact same thing. It was a total extension and outgrowth of human zeus. Yeah, and this was this isn't us saying weird. Just clear that up, I think so. But we just gotta be careful. You want to take a break, Yeah, man, let's take a break, and uh, you want to come back and talk about Oda binga

after that? Yeah? All right, all right. So I feel like we've kind of given like a good overview of human zuos, right like basically from the last quarter of the nineteenth century up to the middle of the twentieth century, they had their heyday and then just became more more and more tasteless to Westerners over time as it became obvious like what was really going on. Um. But there's one guy who kind of like had the most tragic life I've ever encountered ever, and his name was Ode Banga. Yeah,

who was the kid kept in a box. There's been most experience for that experiment. It's like his father too, wouldn't it. I don't. Oh, the skinner kids, I think so like these are the two people that come to mind when I think of like worst human existence. This is depressing. So ode Banga was um. He was a hundred three pounds. He was four ft eleven um. He was this this when you referenced before the break about people that were literally sort of captured and brought over,

he fits that bill for sure. Uh. He was brought over to the United States by a man named Samuel Verner from South Carolina, Proud game Cock. He was an African missionary and was commissioned by the St. Louis World's Fair, which was what nineteen o four. So before that they said, hey, why don't you go over there and bring us back a bunch of pigmies and and he's like, all right, I know that we're using that word now and they probably won't in the future, but you shouldn't even like

say that word anymore. I see it. I've seen it. I've seen both. Yeah, I've seen I've seen it used like it's just you know, like calling Native Americans Indians like some some Native Americans are like, it's well, we're used to I've seen the same thing with Pygmy's as well, although I've also seen it's extremely derogatory because it was also back in the nineteenth century used as a term for monkey. So like if you're calling uh an African um Congolese tribes person um pigmy, at the time, you

were calling him a monkey. So yeah, I could see how that would be extremely derogatory too. Well, this is certainly the language they used back then. And they told him to go over there, and he was like great. He got letters from the U. S Secretary of State, the president of the American Anthropological Association, the governor of Missouri. That'll open some doors, and the Belgian Secretary of State. Uh great name Chevalier couvaliera Um because at the time

Congo was still under the control of Belgium. And they were like, yeah, go get go, round up some people and let's bring him back for the World's Fair. And one of the gentlemen they brought back was ode Banka. Yeah, so I want to give a little more background Odebanka because the fact that he was brought back to to be in a human zoo is pretty it's bad enough, like that's a that's a really dark chapter of anybody's life. Like everything about his life leading up to that point

predicted that this was going to happen. Um When he was a little kid, he was born into a tribe Muti tribe in Congo in about three and one day he went off on an elephant hunt and came back and his entire family and village had been slaughtered by the Belgians. Because remember we said that the Belgians like came to Congo and just overran the place for rubber production. Well, the king held a private army called the Forced Publique,

and they enforced rubber quotas. So if your village didn't meet, it's you know, rubber quotas for the day or the month or the week or whatever. The Force public might come in and kill everyone, or they might hold like some public amputation to make an example of somebody Um, or do basically any horrible thing you can do to another human being, all to keep people in line and to keep the rubber flowing for the king's coffers. Right,

this happened to Oda Banga's family. So he finds himself Um a little hundred pound, like less than five ft tall oda banga Um basically wandering the congo alone, and he was in short order captured by by slave traders who enslaved him and sold him to a labor camp. Yeah. His uh if you see pictures of him, he has these fangs for teeth. His teeth were fied filed down per the you know Congolese um customs and traditions. So at first I thought that the Americans did that, but

he had already did that. But they they were like, oh yeah, this like plays into our narrative perfectly. It's gonna sell so many tickets. Yeah, so they they trot him out at the St. Louis World's Fair. Um. But that's not where his story is because he went from there to the Bronx Zoo in New York. Um on display in a literal cage with animals with with chimpanzees sometimes and orangutans, I think was his his most frequent companion. Yeah, and it's really, I mean just devastating, like people would

pokem and prod him and throw bananas at um. And the New York Times wrote about I mean, I think they're harold their headline was bushman shares a cage with Bronx park apes. Um, and the New York Times was just it's not like they were writing an article of outrage. They were saying, like, come check this out. They were actually responding to the outrage. So very short order. Um,

the Colored Minister's Convention is what it was called. Um, the some of the black ministers around New York got together. We're like, dude, um, this has to end immediately. We like, there's a black guy in a zoo and he's being he's being held in a cage on public display with

a monkey. Yeah, and this is like forty something years after the end of slavery, right, So um, they banded together and mounted protests and and eventually, in pretty quick short order, got um Odobanga released to their their custody and care. Um. But the New York Times like published editorials, at least one of them saying like, what's all the

hubbub about? Like the guys on the low end of the spectrum, you know, Um, as far as this hierarchy of races is concerned, so why wouldn't we put him in a cage and study him and observe him like of course there's much to be learned, right, So that really kind of gets it at the heart of of what was driving this at the time, public curiosity, colonization, but also that completely racist science that would eventually lead to eugenics, the eugenics movement in the West in the

United States. Yeah, he was turned over to um one of the leaders of the Colored Baptist Minister's Conference, Reverend James Gordon. Uh, he was a superintendent of the Howard Colored Orphan Asylum in Brooklyn. And his quote is like one of the saddest things I've ever read, he said, And this was like, this is how he tried to explain that it was bad. He said, our race, we think is depressed enough without exhibiting one of us with the apes. We think we are worthy of being considered

human beings with souls. Like the very fact that he had to point out that fundamental, like so obvious thing is just so sad, you know. I mean, he had to actually make a press statement saying, by the way, he's a human, like you understand that, right, And we've got enough problems here trying to gain agency in this country. Uh, can you help us out here? And so they turned him over to him. Uh. He lived the rest of

his life. He almost went back to Africa UH in nineteen fourteen, but World War one broke out and that stopped all. Like passengership. He he did go back to Africa, want he visited. He wanted to move back in nineteen fourteen. So this is what I understand that. Um. Samuel Verner, the guy who originally negotiated UM for Odobanga to come with him back to the World's Fair, negotiated well. He

negotiated with the slaves traders. Um. He took Odebanga back to the Congo, and Odebanga, from what I read, said, there's no place here for me anymore. I'll come back with you. Came back to the States and didn't feel any more comfortable or at home in the States and decided he did want to go back to Africa and never made it back that last time. Yeah, thanks to World War One. Um. He lived in Virginia. He worked at a tobacco company. Um. Apparently it was a good

worker and a good employee. Uh. And killed himself. Yeah, shot himself in the chest with a borrowed revolver somehow borrowed makes it even worse. You know what I mean? Does it? Yeah, something about it? I can't I put my finger on interesting. But Um during this time, so this is like think about this. His whole family and villages slaughtered. He's captured and sold into slave labor for years. Um taken away by an anthropologist who trades a pound assault in the bolt of cloth for him, is forced

into a human zoo. Is forced into an actual zoo in a monkey cage. UM, and then he tries to go back home, doesn't feel at home at home, comes back to the States. It's just depressed for ten more years, and then takes his own life with the borrowed revolver that was the life of Oda Benga. For Gordon's part, he tried to help him have a life in the States. UM got him like, tried to integrate him with American clothing. He got his teeth capped. UM sent him to school.

He was he was like he wanted to try and fit in, but he he was a man without a home. You know, he didn't fit in anywhere. Yeah, it's really really sad. Yeah, it's super sad. So he really kind of UM demonstrates like a mayor. Erica's involvement in this. He was, he was prominent in the nineteen o four St. Louis World's Fair, and he was put on display in the Bronx Zoo. And again, like you said, not just the New York Times was you know, arguing in favor

of keeping him in there. The fact that he was in there, and that zoo attendants doubled over the previous year the month he was there, and that, um, the head of the Zoological Society in New York was like, let's bring some monkeys in and put him in with a cage, because apparently he was taken to the Bronx Zoo under the auspices that he would be caring for the animals, not that he was going to be put on display. And once he got there there like we

have a different idea for you. Yeah, and he would I mean, if you read accounts at the time, he would basically just sort of sit there depressed. Eventually, after a couple of weeks he got a little obviously kg um like experiencing zukosis like an animal might. Uh. And then they start letting him out to like walk around the four some. He would shoot his bow and arrow some. But then when people saw that he was in the forest, they would come after him and he was quickly kind

of ushered back into his cage. Yeah so um, but yeah, the fact that all this happened really kind of underscores the complicity of everybody alive at the time. I mean, there were people who protests protested against it. Obviously, the the Colored Baptist Minister's Conference was very vocal about it and were secured his release. But they were in the minority, and like everybody else was just tacitly approving this, just by allowing it to go on and not speaking out

about it. And some people trace this um and the fact that human zoos ever existed directly to the undercurrent of racism prevalent in the West today. That like that is the basis of it, certainly part of it. So let's let's take another break. Then we'll come back and we're gonna talk about St. Louis. So nineteen o four we talked a little bit about the St. Louis World's Fair, but they had more living exhibits than just Oda Banga. By the way, Odebanga made friends with Geronimo. Did you

know that? I did not know that, So they're the enclosure for the Congolese and the enclosure for the Native Americans were beside one another. Geronimo and Odebank actually became pretty good friends. I'm hanging out. Is that a silver lining? Okay? Um? The Philippines play a large part in this. That was a forty seven acre area at the St. Louis World's Fair dedicated to more than a thousand uh Filipinos of various tribes UM specifically this uh one tribe in the

mountains of the Philippines, um the Ergo Rot. They in fact that in means in Tagalog mountain people uh. And

they were unique in the world. And then they successfully defended their land against colonization forever like they were never Spain never got to them, uh so Ergo they were, you know, left largely intact culturally, right, So they had a reputation UM by the time the St. Louis World's Fair, and I believe they were billed as such as being like the most savage tribe in the world, if not just the Philippines, but either way, which really means white people had not been able to get to them yet.

So they're just slipping their nice peaceful life as they always have. One of the things that was like made like a lot of hay was made about the igar rots was that they would eat dog, and that um they would. They In reality that the rats did act really eat eat dog, but it was under very specific circumstances. And if a family sacrificed and ate their dog, their family dog, it was it was a really bad sign

for the family. It told the rest of the village that they were in some dire straits because the family would sacrifice the dog basically like the dog was taking one for the team, um, to get this family out of whatever horrible streak of luck or whatever they had going on, and then they would eat the dog and that that ritual process will be done. It was very very rare. It was basically done as a last ditch attempt to reverse fortunes for this family that had fallen

on hard times or was undergoing illness or whatever. But that did happen. It did exist. If you take the Igorante people and put them in the nineteen four St. Louis World's Fair, that happens every morning. Every morning, a dog would be sacrificed and eaten by the agats. Yeah, and not only that they would take like uh sacred ego rot rituals um like crowning a chief. And it wasn't enough just to put them on display and have

people look at them. Is they took their traditions, their sacred rituals and use them as as dramatic fodder basically, Right, So it's becomes it's like a theme park schedule to come see these different quote unquote shows performed that were really these ego rot uh rituals that they had held dear and were untouched by white man until this point. Right. And then let's not forget the dogs that were sacrificed like every day because of this. Right. So here's the

other thing too. You might say, well, that's crazy. They used to sacrifice and eat their dogs. That's that's weird. That's other, Right, they sacrifice and their dogs for every day for the um satisfaction of white crowds who came to see them. So the igorat Um Village was the most um successful and lucrative exhibit in the entire nineteen o four World's Fair. There were something like nineteen something million people who came to St. Louis for the World's

Fair that year. Of them paid an extra nickel to go see the Igorott Village. Everybody went to see the Iggorott Village is because they wanted to go see someone half dressed sacrifice a dog and then eat it. That's what people paid to see. It had nothing to do with learning about their culture and nothing to do with anything. It was about seeing somebody do something horrific and weird

for your edification. Yeah, and it was. Um. I mean, there are so many people that you could pluck out of history and sort of uh used as an example, whether it's Otta Binga or this woman uh Sarchy Bartman, Yeah, the hot and taught Venus. Yeah. She was South African and she was born somewhere around seventeen eighty and she was brought to London in the early eighteen hundreds and put on display. And she actually had a genetic characteristic um called stia tope stiatpagia. Is that right? I think

so close enough, I should tell the audience. I'm nodding silently, but that is when you have a um. I mean the ways described here medically is a protuberant buttocks and elongated labia, right, not like like like genetically protuberant buttocks yeah, like like very very big. Yes, that's that's clear. Um. So they brought her over in London put her on display. Later on she went to Paris, she was described as having the buttocks of a mandril um. And then finally

in two thousand two, her remains were repatriated to South Africa. Um. And we haven't even mentioned stuff like that. They would dress up Odabinga's cage with bones and things like anything just to make him seem more primitive, and he was probably like, one, are all these bones laying around? More primitive,

more scary, more in need of civilization. Like if you think about it, that the Igorat exhibit, the Philippines exhibit, and the fact that it was even part of the nineteen o four World's Fair, that it's the same thing that was a colonial possession of America. The United States had gotten into colonizing itself, and the Philippines was one of its colonial possessions. So they were bringing the most savage of the savage from the Philippines over here to

basically justify why America was there to civilize the Filipinos. Um. And it was this. It just followed the same script and apparently it always has. Anytime somebody goes and conquers another another land, they have to basically demonstrate how what they're doing is actually good for the people they're conquering, not that they're being exploited and murdered there. This is actually good for them. We're going to civilize them. And it continued all the way up until that nineteen fifty

eight World's Fair in Belgium. Well, and some people say it continues today while they're not rounding people up and bringing them somewhere else. Um, you can go to what they call human safari's when they basically will put you on a bus or on a boat and drive you to these tribes people to let you gaulk at them from afar Uh, notably in India's on Deman Island, the Jarawa Jarhuahua. It sounds like I'm saying they're wrong, but

it's totally right uh their tribe. Basically, there was a video from two thousand twelve that The Guardian dug up that showed these people just you know, it's kind of the same thing, except they weren't brought over and put in cages, but they're still gawked at. And this was what six years ago. It's amazing that this is still going on. I think it is so the Indian Supreme Court outlawed it, but it's still going on. Is of the most recent article as I was like two thousand seventeen.

So yeah, it's like a human humans of far Yeah. So um. And again, a lot of people directly trace this to the undercurrents of racism in the West today. Something like one point for billion people saw human zoos during their heyday from about eighteen sixty seven and ninety eight. One point for billion people. That's a lot of people, especially if you're considering that it was really just people in Europe and America, right, Um, and that that had to have had an effect. It clearly had an effect.

The fact that people were like, oh, I'm gonna go check this out and maybe throw a banana at somebody because I want him to dance. The fact that like that was a mindset clearly is still clinging to the to the international global psyche, at least in the West today. Yeah, I mean it definitely helped reinforce that idea of Western

white superiority that's still so prevalent. So you got anything else, Yeah, I mean we should talk real quick about this protest art in Oslo about four years ago, four or five years ago, there were these artists that did a recreation of and this was all to bring UM, to shed light on this. It was protest art, but they were recreating the World's Fair of nineteen fourteen UM. In this case, there were Senegalese environments that they were recreating UH and

it sort of had mixed results. Like some people got it and we're on board and saying, yeah, I see what you guys are doing, sort of like this meta art approach. But then other people came out UM and said, like it's an abusive art and really we're highly critical of it, which is it didn't It didn't They didn't nail it, and it didn't. Yeah, go over very well in all quarters. Yeah, one more thing. Check that nineteen

fifty eight World's Fair in Belgium. Like if if everything we've stayed up to this point seems like weird and far off and and just past and historical. Go look up the picture of the little girl from uh Congo at the World's Fair UM being fed by an older white woman leaning over a fence to theater. Like it drives home everything everything we just said doesn't even compare

to this one picture. It just it's really tough to look at, but it drives the entire thing home because it's it's recent enough that it just feels like, oh, this just happened. Yeah, she's in a little little American dress. Yep, a little white dress. Okay, what about now? You got anything else? Nothing else? Well, if you want to know more about human zoos, just start looking them up around

the the internet and prepared to get bummed out. Uh. And since I said that it's time for listener mail, I'm gonna call this we got another elephant adopted in our name. Yeah. If you remember a few weeks ago, we read one about somebody who adopted an elephant in her name and sent a little stuffed animal. Was very kind. Uh. And this one goes a little something like this. Hey, guys, loyal listener going on about ten years And I couldn't have been happier. And to see your episode on elephants

pop up. One of the best Christmas gifts I ever was given was the gift of fostering an orphan elephant at the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust in Kenya. They're an incredible organization that rescues, rehabilitates UH, and reintegrates orphan elephants back into the wild in Kenya. And they also find anti poaching teams and mobile vet units that respond to entreat injured wild elephants, UH and other wildlife. UM a wood turner, and I donate of all my sales to d s w T. And I'm thrilled to be able

to foster seven orphans right now. So as a massive thank you for raising awareness, I sent each of you something from my wood shop and donated what I would have made to the d s w T and foster to sweet little Jotto in your name. Jotto is pretty cute. Have you seen him? Oh? Yeah, he's an elephant. Thanks for brightening up my commutant, satisfying my insatiable thirst for new and interesting facts. Lowell Hutchinson parentheses, BT dubs, I'm

a woman. Thanks a lot lot exclamation point. Well, everybody, if you want, you can go to the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust and look up Jotto and see our adopted elephant that we're fostering now thanks to Lowell. They should call it Josh oh or can you get the name changed? Maybe it depends on how how much you give. I think, Um, there's only like five elephants that they just changed the

name right, a different picture. Thanks again, Lowell and low didn't say where what her website is for wood turning, but if you need some wood turned, look up Lowell Hutchison and hopefully her site will come up. That's right. Uh and uh. If you want to get in touch with us like lolded or sponsor an elephant for us,

that's great too. You can get in touch with us by going on to stuff you Should Know dot com and looking up our social links or sending a certain email to stuff podcast at i heart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H